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‘Don’t drink too much, will you. At forty, alcohol has a way of—’
‘Thirty-seven.’
‘Where is it being held?’
‘Chelsea Barracks.’
Finally satisfied with having all he needed, Ben sat down alongside Aleksey on the bed. ‘Why do you think I agreed to Tim being here while I’m away?’
‘Because you did not want your side of the bed to go to waste?’
‘What do you think I’ll be thinking about the whole time I’m at the dinner?’
‘Eating?’
‘What do you think I’d do if I came home tomorrow to find you collapsed by the tennis court again?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, you do exaggerate, Benjamin. I was resting for a moment until—’
‘What would I do? To you?’
Aleksey curled his lip fractionally, but on the opposite side from Ben. ‘I can only imagine.’
‘Good, well you keep picturing that. You can swim for half an hour. You can walk over to visit Mol Mol or Enid. You cannot drink more than one bottle of wine. I know how many we have. I will do the maths. Do I need to say that wine is the strongest thing you touch? Do I need to say this, Nik?’
‘Aleksey.’
‘Don’t! You don’t get to do that when we’re having this kind of conversation.’
Aleksey tested various translations of this conceptconversation. He hadn’t noticed much back and forth going on.
‘So? Do we understand each other?’
Aleksey slumped a little, but cheered up when he reasoned that the very fact of them having thisconversationmeant that Ben knew he really had no power over him at all, and that once he left…well…he wouldn’t be here. He could do maths, too.
Ben twisted around a little and bent one leg up onto the bed so he was facing Aleksey’s profile. He hooked a finger in his waistband, a familiar tethering that had been going on for many years between them.
‘Why do I say these things that you don’t want to hear?Aleksey?’
‘Because you mistake me for someone who likes to be…constrained?’
‘Any other reason?’
Aleksey pulled Ben’s hand into his own and then lay back, staring up, feeling old, dispirited. ‘Because you don’t trust me. No, because I give you no reason to trust me.’
Ben began to play with the strong fingers held in his own, watching their hands entwining. ‘I thought once about us separating.’ Aleksey turned his head sharply at this, his sense of bone-deep fatigue lifting suddenly. If Ben noticed the sudden alertness, he didn’t comment on it, but continued with his train of thought. ‘It was at John’s funeral. I actually got the notion that death was a better way to part two people than just falling out of love. That it was easy, sharp, final—how messy falling out of love was compared to that. But of all the stupid things I’ve thought over my life, and you can stop smirking, because most of my really dumb ones have been about you, that was the most idiotic.’ He raised his eyes fully to Aleksey’s and explained distinctly, ‘You almost died. I would rather you left me again if that’s what you need to do than stay here if you are not as committed to your life with me as I am. That’s the promise I want from you. I want you to get better. I wantyouto want that for yourself.’
What could any sensible man say to that?
Aleksey made a mental note to ask one and replied a little sulkily, ‘I will swim. I will take a little walk. I will play nicely with Timmy. I do not even particularly want to drink the wine.’
‘I’ve hidden the chocolate, so I wouldn’t be too rash.’
Aleksey smiled slightly ruefully, and pulled Ben down to lie by his side. He thought about all that Ben had said. There was a decided sagacity to his assertions that surprised him; Ben wasn’t known for deep insights about the human condition. But he had understood something essential about them perhaps. Ben appeared to intuit that everything he, Aleksey, did was for escape. He wanted to fly free, whether through violence, cruelty, lies, deceptions, drugs, alcohol, sex…it was all movement from a centre he could not bear to be constrained within, to an expanse he wanted to explore. But Ben had been out there on the edge of things, seeking to come home: needing to dig in, to feel secure, to have and be had. They had met somewhere on these respective, opposite journeys and had fused, locked together now for life. Was this tension, this balance between them—one pulling away, one pulling back—good or bad? It made the bond between them stronger from the struggle, that was for sure.
It was their dance.
It was their life.
