The Professionals Circuit Archive - Chanson de Matin	     Chanson de
Matin

 

by Jane

  
 It was the sun that woke me, because he had looped the curtains back to
look out. Tree-lined street, seen a thousand times before, made beautiful
by autumn, a touch of gold on the sameness of the city, briefly, before
the wind whipped it all away and the trees went the way of all things,
into ruin.

Autumn's a funny time of year; you're riding high on what's left of
summer, counting the days before the cold sets in. A lot like life. And
the one thing that used to really frighten me was time.

I woke easily, blinking at him, but didn't move a muscle. He was sitting
on the ottoman under the window, a blanket wrapped about him because it
was a bit chilly, his chin cupped in his right palm, elbow on the window
ledge, eyes focused on some curiosity far away. The sunlight made those
curls of his over to gold, a few shades darker than the gold of his tan,
and I smiled; if he'd had a halo and wings the image would have been
complete, and it's an optical illusion. He's not an angel, he's a little
demon at times, stubborn, bad tempered, idealistic.

But I'm not complaining -- I wouldn't change him. I've had eleven years to
learn every nuance of that mercurial nature; against my will, he made me
like him, back in the days when he was a scruffy article in rags and
leather. Against my better judgement, he made me love him, as he literally
blossomed under my nose. What had been engaging became ravishing, what had
been attractive became irresistable.

So I endured his moods and stayed on while the girls came and went, while
he fell into and out of love, while his one big affair went wrong. I was
there when he fought for his life with two bullets in him; and when he
looked at me one day and recognised the look on my face... It didn't even
surprise him by that time. Five years of friendship, getting closer and
closer, sharing everything -- it's not possible to harbour secrets when
two people have come so close they're starting to think like one.

I remember every detail about the day he held out his hand to me. He
laughed, but gently, fondly. He hadn't been out of hospital very long; he
was stretched out on the sofa, half asleep, a book open on his chest, and
I was sitting on the floor with my feet in the hearth by the gas heater.
Early winter, cold. I had my back against the edge of the sofa, dozing,
listening to the rain that was pelting down outside, feeling the warmth of
him just behind me. He must have cramped up or pulled his operation site
or something, because he gave a little moan of discomfort and I was half
awake in a second, turning toward him, all the fretting and worries of the
last couple of months red raw under my skin, incapable of hiding it. No,
he was fine, just stretching like a big cat, looking at me as if he
understood everything... I think he did by that time. I blinked at him and
he laughed softly at me, brushed his knuckles down my cheek. And he lay in
my arms that night with his head on my chest and his aches and pains
soothed away by loving.

Every time it rains I remember that day, six years ago. He'll be forty
next year, so soon, but those genes of his are kind. He's hardly changed,
and if he has, it's for the better. He's more beautiful now than he was
then; still skinny, still graceful, all green eyes and curls, strands of
silver at his temples, and smiles that'd woo a schoolgirl of eight or a
dutchess of eighty, if he wanted to, but he saves that for me, only me,
since the day it rained and I let my love show through the pretense of
matey concern. It's a bloody shame I'm such a good liar; I could have let
it show years before, so he told me, he wouldn't have minded... That's
life.

There's a great melancholy about autumn; something is dying, and though
you know it'll be reborn next year, it just isn't the same. Have you ever
choked up listening to 'The Last Rose Of Summer?' Life's like that. You
hang on to your youth like a creature fighting to survive, because
winter's there waiting for you, long and cold and inevitable.

I used to worry about it, about being alone and older, but slowly, after
Ray let me into his heart, the worry ebbed away. I'd weather the storms of
middle age and grow old disgracefully, I thought, while he went on like
Dorian Gray, never changing, or, if he grew old too I just wouldn't
notice. But that morning as I lay watching him sitting on the ottoman, I
realised he was restless.

And he'd been restless for some time, as if his feet were itching, as if
he had to be moving, as if... I wondered, afraid to guess too accurately.
I sat up and he stirred, turning from the view and smiling at me, the
illusion of halo and wings strengthening. Six years, and I love him so
much it hurts! He's an ache, down under my heart, incurable. Not that I
want it cured, thank you -- I like it. Call me a masochist. I lifted the
blanket on his side of the bed invitingly and he came back to me, dropping
his rug and sliding back between the sheets, his skin cool and soft over
hard muscles.

But his eyes were distant, as if he was looking at something I couldn't
see. "You want to tell me about it?" I asked quietly, hoping for an answer
I could understand. He can be philosophical to the point of vagueness
sometimes.

"Nothing to tell," he said, soft as a sigh.

"You're restless," I observed carefully. "What about?"

He turned those green eyes on me searchingly and I kissed him. "The Call
of the Wild, or something," he said when I let him speak again.

"The what?"

Ray laughed. "There's a whole world out there, Bodie. I've never seen any
of it. Sometimes... I'd like to travel, do things. Go adventuring before
--" He chuckled again. "Before middle age sets in."

The penny dropped with a resounding clang and I hugged him hard. "So
that's what's bothering you. It's your next birthday, isn't it?"

"Not worried, just sore," he admitted. "Maybe I want more out of life."

"More than what?"

"Oh, more than a civil servant's pay and a pension at the end of it. It's
not the job, it's not the pay, really. It's the horizon, Bodie. It's too
close."

I nodded wisely -- I knew what he meant. I'd been through this myself over
twenty years before it crept up on him. I ran when I had to; wild,
dangerous years., miserable too. Not to be compared with home and comfort,
but then, you have to learned. "Time for you to get up and leave, isn't
it?" I said. "Sail around the world, climb the Andes, fly gliders over the
Hindu Kush, whatever you want to do."

He smiled at me dreamily. "Will you come with me?"

"Are you kidding? Course I will." I drew him close and kissed his chest.
"Can just see us hiking through the Kulu Valley, or Kashmir."

"Riding horses on the Pampas," he added, "baggy pants and cowboy hats. Nah
-- rounding up sheep in Queensland."

"Fancy yourself as Clancy of The Overflow, do you?" I smiled. "Why don't
we buy a ketch and go island hopping? Where -- the Caribbean or the South
Pacific? You'd look a treat in a grass skirt."

He buried his face in my chest and wriggled one leg between mine,
chuckling. "The Maldive Islands, New Guinea. Headhunter country.
Cannibals, too, so they say."

"You'd be safe enough, then," I said into his hair, "there isn't enough on
you to make a decent sandwich. Running cargoes to places out of a Joseph
Conrad book." I smiled as he drew his leg up and down, caressing me. He
knows exactly what I like, almost without thinking about it, always did.
"Or maybe we could scrounge up enough between us to buy a DC-3. There's a
great plane. They carry a ton and you can fix 'em with a hammer. We could
run air freight between the Windward Islands and Barbados."

"And South America," Ray added, pressing close to me. "They reckon there's
still emeralds to be dug out of the ground in Columbia. Lost mines of the
Conquistadores."

"You want to romance a stone?" I chuckled.

He dug me in the ribs with one sharp finger. "Twit. What about growing
coffee on a plantation below the volcano, ringed around with rain forests?
Saw that it a film once."

"You and me and fifty Andean Indians -- and Grace Kelly trying to make a
pass at the pair of us, and failin' miserably! I saw the same film." I
kissed his nose. "Nah, I fancy the mysterious east. India, or Indonesia.
Thailand... The City of The Angels, steaming and green and humid."

"Hiking up to Angkor Wat..." He heaved a sigh that had nothing to do with
what he was saying and turned over in my arms, pressing his back against
my chest with a moan. "Oh, Bodie."

"Ray." I nudged myself in between his legs and his thigh muscles clamped
about me as I reached around and took hold of him in my right hand. His
wriggles were nearly unbearable and I couldn't talk any more, couldn't
find the breath for it, as I loved him, my lips on the back of his neck,
not needing to enter his body, though he would have offered it. He's
strong, and his muscles held me, warm and firm and safe. Beautiful.

He rolled over again afterward, sticking to me with the tangible product
of loving, and kissed me, and we lay there dreaming, sharing fantasies
while the autumn winds blew winter ever closer outside. Inside, it was
still spring, still young and fresh, and it always would be. I knew that
as we laughed over our dreams; time couldn't touch us. No one who can
dream, and who is in love, ever has to be afraid of time.

We weren't going anywhere -- both of us knew that. All we needed was here
in this room, in this bed. Not the sex, though, God knows, we need it as
much now as when we started. No, sex you can get almost anywhere. It's the
love you can't seem to find, no matter where you look, until one day it's
there like a belt around the ear, and...

The sun was gone and a gust of wind blew rain at the window. I smiled into
his hair as he fell asleep with his head on my shoulder, dreaming with my
arms around him. Ketches and mountains, islands and emeralds, all the
things we'll never do -- don't need to do. Dreams are always better than
what's real -- except for him, and he's better than the dreams I used to
have about him when I loved but couldn't touch, before he needed me as
much as I needed him, and reached out to me at last.

I closed my eyes, breathing in the scents that rose from his skin, his
hair tickling my nose, and dreamed my own dreams. Kashmir, Antigua,
Tahiti; scenes out of films, images from books, montages from my own
memory, and us. Well, maybe the ketch and the coffee plantation were a bit
far fetched, but three weeks in Barbados were definitely within the bound
of possibility. I had just enough left from my wild, mercenary youth to
spirit him into the midst of one of this fantasies and indulge him
shamelessly, and we would have accumulated that much leave by mid-winter.

Rain pattered at the window again, and he cuddled closer with a sigh, not
quite waking. I pressed a kiss to the warm crown of his head and offered
up thanks for mornings, and autumn, and dreams; and him.

-- THE END --

*April 1986*

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