“Nobody locally. At least nobody I could think of. My Uncle Pat—my mother’s younger brother—lived somewhere in London. They didn’t have kids, and whenever they visited, we got on well. I never met any of my dad’s family. And everyone else I knew was either connected to school or the church. And honestly, I wasn’t thinking straight. If it hadn’t been the school holidays, I might have gone to see the school counsellor in the morning. But I was hurting, Lenny, and all I could think about was getting as far away from Drayton as I could, from everyone and everything, and never coming back.”
“What did you do?”
“The next morning I caught the first train to London. Naive really, but I thought I might be able to figure out where my uncle lived. Even though I had no phone number and no address. We’d driven there a couple of times, but I’d never paid attention, had slept most of the way. As you probably guessed, I wasn’t the brightest of students, because I’d pinned all my hopes on a future being a professional rugby player. All I remembered was the town they lived in had the word green in it somewhere. So the first place I went to was Green Park, in the heart of London. Of course, I didn’t recognise anything.”
“Christ, Ade. What happened then?”
“I ended up living on the streets. This would have been back in the early nineties. I fell in with other homeless kids. Homelessness is still an issue in this country but was huge back then. A group of us turned tricks to survive, which was dangerous but put food in our mouths. Not sure if you remember, but that was back when Colin Ireland, the serial killer, was on the loose, killing gay men he picked up from the Coleherne leather bar. Makes me shiver when I think about it, because that place was one of our haunts. They warned me some clients could get a bit rough, but I had size and muscle on my side, so nobody tried to mess with me. I didn’t drink alcohol back then or take any of the drugs they offered, either, so always kept a clear head. Honestly, Lenny, I’m not proud of some of the things I did, but I had to get by somehow. Not just that, but doing what we did was illegal—the age of consent was still twenty-one—so any clients were also committing a crime.”
Leonard stared horrified at Adrian, trying to imagine a scared fifteen-year-old version desperately trying to survive on the city streets. He took a mouthful of beer but the liquid tasted sour on his tongue. However futile the idea, he couldn’t help wondering what might have happened if he had confronted Adrian about the name-calling at school and found out the truth. Would they have become friends? Would Adrian’s life have taken a different turn?
“Eventually this old guy, Felippe, asked me to move in with him. There used to be a traditional pub called the City of Quebec behind Marble Arch—not sure if it’s still there—where elderly gay men would hang out at the weekends. A friend introduced me. Somewhat unkindly, he labelled the place the elephant’s graveyard. Young boys like me could make fast cash, often for very little work. For some reason, Felippe took a shine to me. The few times I went home with him, all I ever did was pour him drinks, listen to him tell stories about his life during the war—he served in the Royal Navy—sponge him down in the bath and sleep next to him for the night. Not once did we do anything remotely sexual. He lived in the heart of Marylebone, in a beautiful studio apartment. I’ve no idea exactly how old he was, but I guess he must have been in his early eighties. Anyway, the four or five times he invited me back, I suppose he was trying to gauge whether he could trust me. One Sunday he asked me to be his full-time houseboy—buying food, keeping the apartment tidy for him—he had an old Irish woman who came in and cooked and cleaned every other day. His eyesight wasn’t good, so I’d read newspaper articles, books and sometimes letters aloud to him—he’d help me with words I didn’t know, and explain what they meant, so we both benefited. I also made sure he took his medication, bathed and dried him. Sometimes he had dinner parties at home with these other old gay men—got professional cooks in for that—and I used to act as a waiter wearing only tight shorts and a tight vest. The old boys loved that. I even had a front door key, new clothes to wear and an allowance.”
“How old were you?”
“When I started there? Sixteen. Seventeen, maybe. I stayed with him for about four years. One of his nieces came round from time to time to look in on him. She clearly came from money and always turned her nose up at me as though I’d dropped off the bottom of her shoe. And then I came home from the shops one day to find Felippe in his favourite leather chair by the fire. Thought he’d fallen asleep but when I touched his hand, he was as cold as stone. I phoned the niece, who called her doctor friend, and they confirmed he’d died. Peacefully enough. After that, other people came in and took over, and I was tossed back out on the street with the black plastic rubbish sacks.”
“Bloody hell, Ade.”
“All in the past. And it wasn’t not like you, Lenny. You lost a lover. I only lost a job. A cosy one, I grant you, but that’s all it really was. The problem was that by then I’d lost touch with my street mates. Began to find out many were either in hospital or had died. One West Indian friend, Tommy, got me into this gay escort agency at night as well as selling the street magazine for homeless people,The Big Issue. Those were some of my darkest days. I was doing exactly that on Christmas Eve, freezing my arse off outside St Martin-in-the-Fields when a man stopped across the pavement and called my name. Uncle Pat. You know, you asked me if I was religious and I told you I’d had some special moments? Well, that day, a miracle happened. Yeah, maybe you could call it coincidence, but there he was. Said he recognised me from my hair, even though I was a lot older and had lost a lot of weight by then. Told me he’d heard from my mother what happened and she’d asked him to keep an eye out, in case I’d made my way to London. We went for a coffee, and he insisted I come home with him, and stay with him and Aunt Penny for Christmas. Turns out they lived in Hither Green. Got me an apprenticeship with his building company and that’s how I started in the building trade. I stayed with them until they retired, then rented my own flat locally. And that’s where I remained until I got the call from Mum, to tell me Dad had been diagnosed with dementia. At first I told her to stick him in a home—I still hated the man—but my aunt talked me round. She’d been a nurse before retiring, and I remember her words to this day. She said, ‘There is no cure for dementia, Adrian. I know he turned his back on you once, but you are a better man than that. In his time of need, don’t be the same man as your father. Go and help your mother.’ So I came back to the town I hoped never to see again, and between the two of us, my mother and I took care of him until he passed away.”
Thankful for the fading light, Leonard felt warm tears welling. He always considered the way Kris’ family had treated him to be unjust and unfair, but compared to Adrian’s life, he had been living in a comfortable cocoon.
“Your aunt was right, Ade. You are an extraordinary man, a better man than anyone I know, and I’m not just saying that because you’re helping me. I wish I’d gotten to know you at school, wish we’d been friends then, and maybe all those dreadful things might never have happened. But then I might not be sitting in front of the same Adrian.”
At those words, a smile curled Adrian’s lips.
“No, maybe you’d be sitting in front of an ex-England international rugby star. Begging for my autograph.”
Leonard laughed aloud. Despite everything, Adrian could still crack jokes. The simple act of surviving what he had been through would have crushed most men.
“Yeah, okay. You just keep telling yourself that. Do you still see your uncle and aunt?”
“Of course. As often as I can. They’ve retired now and live in a bungalow in Hastings on the south coast. Honestly, Lenny, they showed me more love and understanding than my parents ever did. Uncle Pat wanted me to get back into rugby, but that ship had sailed. Wow, it’s getting a bit nippy now. Do you want to go inside? Or shall we head back?”
“Do you mind if we head back?” said Leonard, pressing his fingers into a sore spot on his left shoulder. “My muscles are starting to ache. I think I’m ready for a long, hot shower and a good night’s sleep. Do you mind taking the empties back while I bring the car round?”
“Of course.”
Leonard studied Adrian as he headed towards the pub door, the way he moved, so carefully for such a big guy, before he disappeared inside.
All this time and he had considered Adrian a homophobic bully. Before his father’s funeral, if anyone had asked him if he’d ever known Adrian Lamperton, he would probably have dismissed him as a dim-witted sports jock he went to school with, who probably ended up having everything handed to him on a plate as a professional rugby player.
How wrong could he have been?
But somehow their lives had collided, and Leonard had grown not only to admire Adrian but to feel an undeniable attraction to him. Maybe Adrian had been right about fate. Both were approaching fifty, both having resigned themselves to being alone, both having given up hope on finding anything—or anyone—lasting for the rest of their lives. Although Leonard was rarely given to such whimsical notions, he had to wonder if their various meetings—at the local pub, by his father’s broken-down car—had not been chance at all. Maybe they were both being given a second chance.
His friend, businessman Kennedy Grey, had once mused to a group of friends that ‘opportunities alone are merely choices that happen to fall into our laps. It’s whether we have the balls to act on them, and what we decide to do with them that changes the course of our lives.’
Leonard had not been fooled. Everyone had thought he had been talking about business, but Leonard had known full well Kennedy had meant every word about how he had managed to snag his prize husband, Kieran.
After standing and dragging out his car keys, Leonard took a bracing breath of cold air and headed for the car.
Time to take a chance.
Chapter Twelve
Together
