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CHARLES
After the glorious blues and lush greens of the island, London fitted around me like a dark, oppressive cloak. And we were but a week out of summer. Somebody clever once wrote that, in London, he had seen as much life as the world could show. I disagreed. I could comb its famous sights and tramp its grubby grey pavements for the remainder of my days and never stumble across a corner as perfect as Loix. And more specifically, a man like Florian.
Not that I attempted to prove that author wrong, because I was way too busy. And anyhow, like the heady Parisian days of my youth, that magical place was not my life. Nor was that beautiful man.
And my coping strategy, as ever, was to lose myself in work.
For as long as I could remember, I’d likened the mathematical machinations of my brain to a steam locomotive, although I kept that slice of madness to myself, not even sharing it with my mother. As I laid down stark black numbers on a white screen, over and over, I did so in time to a beat in my head, a rhythmic chug-chug, chug-chug, chug-chug. And when I reached the end of a line, a paragraph, or a particularly tricky calculation, and pressed down hard on send or save or copy or print, a triumphant woo-wooo! would break into the chugging. As a reward, I’d treat myself to a pause while sharp navy washed over me, a little thrill all of its own. Then, as if we’d whizzed through a station en route to fuck knows where and regained a straight section of track, I began a new set of black on white. The chuffing and chugging would pick up speed, and the concept of people, friends, lovers, place, and even time itself would fade in the far distance.
Which was fine and dandy, in its own way. And went partly to explaining, but not excusing, why a week went by before I remembered I’d promised to call Florian.
In the end, he phoned me. From the beach, where he was practising skimming stones, he said, to impress me next time I visited. Collapsed on my sofa after eighteen hours hunched over my desk, I scraped out a laugh, too dog-tired for a witty response. As wonderful as it was to imagine that windswept man, dark curls flapping around his face and so full of natural fucking goodness, I regretted taking the call as soon as I picked up, then hated myself for even thinking that. Each word he spoke in his wonderful language, a little distorted by the ocean breeze, reminded me that Marcus had spirited me away, without the proper goodbye Florian deserved. Like a malevolent demon, he’d whirled through my love affair and ripped me from him without looking back.
What’s more, I’d fucking let him. And now a tricolour of navy, black and white had taken over.
That Florian spoke to me at all was a miracle. Weary down to my bones, I leaned back into the sofa and searched for the right headspace. Orange hovered in my eyeline.
“How is the work for the new client going?” Florian asked.
Where did I begin? Explaining was like reciting a short prayer and, on the basis of that, expecting him to understand the entire Christian creed. I’d lose him in the first paragraph. “Coming along well.”
“That’s good. Keeping you busy, I guess.”
Was that a subtle dig? Deserved, anyhow. I’d been on the brink of phoning before, but I’d been waiting to find a clear window for an unhurried chat. Which never materialised.
“Yes, I meant to call you yesterday, but time ran away with me. Sorry.”
“You make it sound a chore.” He laughed, soft and low. “It shouldn’t be.”
Florian walked as he talked, rustling and breathy. In the background, waves lapped at the shore, birds cawed, broken shells crunched under his feet. I wondered if they were bare, and pictured him in my head; ratty jeans and one of his faded blue cooperative sweatshirts thrown over a T-shirt to keep out the autumn chill.
“I think we’re both better in person than down a phone line.”
“Yeah, probably,” he agreed, then hesitated. “Charles, we never… never had a chance to bottom this thing out, did we? Us, and where we were going?”
“No. And that’s my fault. Goodbyes are hard, aren’t they? Especially rushed ones.”
He walked a little further, not answering. His breath whispered down the phone line. “Is that what this is?” he asked. “Goodbye? I mean, I don’t want it to be, but it probably should.”
Marcus once told me about a summer fling he’d enjoyed in Spain while working as a young intern in an investment bank, and his mortification when the girl had turned up on his London doorstep, out of the blue, and not half as alluring as she’d seemed frolicking in a bikini in the Mediterranean sunshine. Was that us? Already? After no more than a week? I imagined Florian enduring the wind, rain, and smog of London. The crowds of commuters battling their way through the Tube, the crazy traffic. He’d detest it, with every fibre of his being.
I rubbed at my tired, dry eyes. “I don’t know. I… I can’t think right now. About anything apart from this client. There is too much going on.”
“I understand.”
An ache tugged at my chest. My proud Frenchman. My beautiful proud salt harvester. If only I had half his integrity. His courage. His solid mental health. To have found the reserves to tell Marcus to fuck off, or at least to have laid out the ground rules. To have insisted I finish my period of sick leave, to have arranged to work freelance. To have had the balls to stand up to him and fight for the chance to be walking along a desolate beach arm-in-arm with my lover right now, instead of drowning in numbers and orange and the creeping certainty that, if I was honest with myself, I was still a little unwell.
“How’s Papi?”
I endeavoured to steer the conversation away from us. Because if he asked whether the project was finishing soon, I’d have to lie. Our new client had important connections; his connections had more connections. Already, Marcus was plotting the next big thing.
“He’s fine,” Florian answered. “He asked where that nice Belgian had disappeared to. I said Brussels. It was easier. And then he asked once more, ten minutes later, so I said Bruges. I hope he doesn’t ask again because I’m running out of Belgian cities.”
I laughed, the second time in one short phone call. The second time today, but that was okay, because work wasn’t a laughing matter.
Orange pulsated to the beat of his voice, insisting we wrap the conversation up soon. I had a three-way Zoom meeting scheduled for a prompt start a few minutes from now, with Marcus and the client’s accountant, even though I hadn’t long left the office. I needed time to prepare. Already I was performing mental gymnastics, reviewing the extrapolated data to satisfy the accountancy company with a view to manipulating the presentation of it to our advantage. So I failed to catch Florian’s next sentence.
“Sorry, what?”
