Vidal sighed, plucked an olive from the dish, and ate it with the air of a man taking some time to compose himself. “Very well. I shall go first, since it’s evidently going to fall to me to demonstrate how the thing is done. I lost my virginity, Beauchamp, at the age of fifteen, to a boy called Pau who was the son of the man who managed my father’s olive groves. It happened in the stone hut at the top of the western terrace where the pickers took their lunches in the summer, and it was, I’m sorry to tell you, not romantic in the slightest. Pau was sixteen, and he had the finesse of a man attempting to open a tin of sardines with his bare hands. I bled a little. I cried a little. Afterwards we ate the bread and cheese his mother had packed for him, and I decided on the spot that I was going to become extraordinarily good at this particular activity, if only so that I’d never again have to endure the experience of being so badly fumbled at by anyone.”
Vidal paused to select another olive.
“I kept my promise to myself, Beauchamp. I’ve been making up for Pau’s sins ever since.”
Beauchamp, who had been chewing at his bread, kept his eyes fixed on a point somewhere above Vidal’s left shoulder and took another pull of his wine to fortify himself.
“So.” Vidal waved an olive in an encouraging circle. “Your turn.”
Beauchamp reached for the bowl of eggs and began to serve himself a portion. He took his time about it, arranging the eggs on the plate beside a chunk of manchego, adding a cornichon, then a heap of radishes. From the bread basket he took two more pieces, on the grounds that one could never have too much bread, especially if it kept his mouth too full for him to speak.
“Beauchamp. You’re building afortificationout of your breakfast.”
Beauchamp put a forkful of egg into his mouth and chewed it. Vidal waited. Beauchamp nibbled on a piece of cheese. Vidal continued to wait. Finally, because Vidal appeared prepared to sit there until nightfall waiting for Beauchamp to participate in this conversation, he set his fork down on the edge of his plate.
“I did a gap year in South America before Sandhurst.”
Vidal’s whole face lit up as though Beauchamp had produced a Diptyque candle from behind his ear. “A gapyear, Beauchamp! In SouthAmerica! This is marvellous, this isexactlythe sort of thing I wanted to know. Where? Tell me where. Tell meeverything.”
“Peru, mostly. Bit of Bolivia. I was with a charity that built houses for families who’d lost theirs in the floods. It was a good year.”
“Agoodyear.” Vidal rolled the phrase around his mouth. “Beauchamp. My dear man. You went to South America at the age of — what, eighteen? Nineteen? You were young, you were free, you were presumably surrounded by other young people who were also young and free, and the best you can offer me is that it was agood year. Did nothing else happen?”
“I learned to lay a foundation, sir. And some Spanish.” He reached for the block of manchego and held it up between thumb and forefinger. “Este queso está muy bueno. ¿Me puedes pasar el pan, por favor?”
Vidal stared at him across the dressing gown. Then he clapped his hands together once, delighted.
“Beauchamp! He speaks! He makes a joke! In a second language, no less, which is more than the average Englishman manages in his first!” He passed the bread with a flourish. “But no. You don’t escape me by charming me with your cheese Spanish. I’m on to you now. I’ve seen the edges of a personality and I’ll not rest until I’ve excavated the rest of it.” He set his olive down with great seriousness. “I’m not asking about the Spanish, Beauchamp. I’m asking about yoursexual awakening. Every young man who goes to South America has a sexual awakening. It is practically a condition of the visa. Did you have a Pau of your own? Were they a local? Were they another volunteer? Did you fall in love with someone who broke your heart in a hammock?”
“I was seeing someone back home, sir.” The wine had got ahead of him by a glass and a half. His tongue had slipped the leash, and the sentence was out on the grass between them before he could recall it.
Vidal went still.
It was a small change, and Beauchamp only caught it because he’d spent the last fortnight learning this man’s tells. The forward lean eased and the bright inquisitorial glee went out of his face.
“Ah.” Vidal’s voice had come down half an octave. “I see.”
Beauchamp should have stopped there, but the wine was doing its work, and Vidal was watching him with an attentiveness that was more dangerous, in its quiet way, than any of the teasing had been.
“We met on a summer music course. I was seventeen. He was at the Royal Opera by twenty. We were together until last spring.”
The numbers sat there in the sun. Seventeen to thirty-five. Eighteen years. He hadn’t said the years aloud to anyone since the night Julian had left, because every time he let his mind linger on it, the pain came out of hiding.
Vidal didn’t pounce on any of it, or ask what had happened. His eyes stayed on Beauchamp’s face, searching.
The gentleness caught Beauchamp off guard, and so he found himself pressing on. “I was very devoted to him, sir. So there was no wild sexual awakening in the Amazonian jungles. I’m sorry to disappoint.”
“Devoted all the way from Lima.” Vidal considered him over the rim of his glass. “That isexactlythe sort of thing I am learning to expect from you, my Beauchamp. But surely there must have been the occasional spicy video call to pass a lonely Tuesday evening in the highlands.”
“Technology hadn’t got that far yet, sir.”
“Beauchamp.You are telling me you are a man of a vintage that predates the dick pic. I am going to need a moment to reconcile this information with the rest of my understanding of you.”
“Spicy conversation this early? Now I know I’m gonna have a good breakfast.”
Connor had come through the garden door in grey trousers and a waistcoat over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the forearms. His hair was still damp at the temples from his shower.
“Mornin’, gents. Thought I heard a summons.” He came across the grass and lowered himself onto the far corner of the dressing gown next to Vidal. His eyes swept the spread, theglasses, and Beauchamp’s face. Then he reached for an olive as if nothing had happened at all. “Don’t mind me. Carry on.”
