The Lovers

THE LOVERS

ALAN AHRENS-MCMANUS

First published in SCOTLAND, JANUARY 2015

Copyright 2015 Alan McManus

All rights reserved.

EPUB ISBN: 9781311291608

Smashwords edition published by Alan McManus

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This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for you use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank-you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organisations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

To Gavin,

for emotional and financial support.

Thanks to the many strait men with whom, over the years, I’ve enjoyed ambiguous friendship. Special thanks to the many friends who read this second volume of The Bruno Benedetti Mysteries and gave me advice, some of which I’ve incorporated. Thanks to my massage teacher in Redwood CA who said: ‘when you bring peace to the body, you bring peace to the world’. Apologies for any surviving mistakes concerning civic procedures and also to the lovely nurse who guided me to the public levels of a certain hospital when I was wandering about apparently lost in the basement labyrinth. Thank-you, dear Reader, for your continuing curiosity. For those interested in the critique of crony capitalism, I recommend The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Thanks to Peggy Greb, US Dept. of Agriculture, for releasing the photo of A Red Rose, a detail of which I have used for my cover photo, to the Public Domain on www.publicdomainpictures.net/

Contents

Chapter One – Summer Sun Screech

Chapter Two – Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Chapter Three – Anarchy

Chapter Four – A Fool’s Errand

Chapter Five – Tears, Fears and Grinning Gargoyles

Chapter Six – Charades

Chapter Seven – Early One Morning

Epilogue – Breakfast

Chapter One – Summer Sun Screech

I sighed again and stopped oiling Justin’s magnificent shoulders.

Your mind isn’t on this today, is it, Bruno? He sounded more concerned than churlish and I spread almond base and peppermint essential oil down his back and started to rub sunwise with my right thumb and widdershins with my left on either side of the deep muscular cleft of his spine, in silence. You can leave it if you want, mate.

There was no reason why he should suffer from my sadness – and it was hardly a chore. I held his sculptured abs with my left hand and made small circles with my right knuckles, slowly working on either side from the small of the back to half-way up. I didn’t speak till I had pushed back each shoulder to jut out the blades and slide the blade of my palm underneath then push my hands alternatively like cats’ paws down on top of his collarbone and run my fingers down his proud chest, following the line of his ribs. I moved to the front of the stool where he was sitting, wearing a skimpy white bathtowel – that contrasted with his early tan – and an expression of solicitude. I oiled his left hand, forearm, biceps and triceps without even thinking about it, You know, in the Bible, Ham was cursed because he saw his father’s nakedness. Well I know the racist use of that myth and all that but there are some things that just shouldn’t happen. And helping your father change his underwear is one of them.

Justin said nothing – either from the Nirvana my practised hands had put him in (although there was none of the usual evidence of that) or from a reticence to say the wrong thing on what he knew to be a painful subject.

Sometimes it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s really okay. He watches The Quiet Man for the millionth time (blissfully unbothered by John Wayne’s family values: marital rape and wife-beating). I make him tea (which he promptly forgets he’s had) and he might even sweep up the garden paths if it’s a nice day. I even tell him about what I’m up to – and he’s the only one in the entire family who actually listens and doesn’t try to change the subject. Okay he forgets ten minutes later, but at least I’ve told him. I realised that I’d been holding his right arm in the air for too long (while rubbing the side of his torso) and clawed my fingers round his shoulderblade while I took his wrist lightly and shook the whole arm out, before transferring to the other side.

Well that’s good then. He’d opened his blue eyes and held my hazel gaze. The warmth in his look was like a benediction and I felt that perhaps everything wasn’t quite as bad as it seemed.

Sorry, Justin. I shouldn’t be going on and on and on. I feel as if I talk about it every day. He just smiled, encouragingly, and I held his left hand palm-down between my two hands and pressed and pulled out firmly from the centre.

It’s just that sometimes I feel I could just smack him one, when he says, ‘Where’s Mum?’ and I’ve just told him; sometimes I’m rude and just give him such short answers ‘cos I just can’t tell him over and over again who’s dead and who’s alive in the family and who’s married and where everybody lives. And sometimes I just want to run out of the house – even if I’ve said I’ll look after him so Mum can get a well-deserved break. The other day she stayed five minutes more at a neighbour’s than she said she would and I almost decked him and ran away ‘cos I was so angry.

Sounds like it’s you needs a break.

I looked at him angrily and he breathed in – swelling his chest (probably on purpose) – then out slowly, watching me. How can you be angry with Adonis? Especially if you’re oiling him. It’s my mother needs the break. Not me. I should be able to cope. I mean it’s not much is it? Look after your father. It’s not even every day. Sometimes I don’t even see him for two whole days, or even three. And I’m not there day in day out night in night out, getting three hours sleep and trying to convince him not to go out to work at five-thirty in the morning. Even so, some people have it worse – I mean he’s third generation but he could be speaking Italian to my mother and thank God that hasn’t happened yet, I could cope but not her, she only knows the endearments. My voice quavered.

He waited until I had finished speaking and was clasping both his arms over his abs with my right arm while my left, elbow down the back and palm resting on his left shoulderblade, turned him gently, then repeated the procedure in mirror-image.

There’s a Psychic Fayre on at the Concert Hall today.

Oh right, did you want to go? He looked towards the window where the rare Scottish sun was cloudbusting, high in a June sky. On the other hand, this peppermint, which I only added because it’s refreshing on a hot day, is supposed to scare off the midges too, so if you were thinking of trotting along to Kelvingrove Park...

He looked a trifle abashed. It’s just that you don’t get much: hot summer days in Glasgow.

And you’ve been working on that physical perfection all Winter and Spring for exactly the occasion to display it to admiring single witless females – preferably leggy and blonde – to lure back to your lair later. Right, well if this living-room’s going to be littered with love-lorn females like dead flies on a web then that fayre sounds like a good idea.

Justin laughed – difficult as I was holding his head, slightly turned to the left, cheek against my bare chest as I smoothed the muscle (I could never remember its name) from below the ear to the shoulder. You have the strangest thingummies, whatchacallem?

Expressions; similes to be exact.

Yeah. So you going then? Do you good.

I was pressing firmly on his forehead, drawing my fingers back to his temples slowly. Maybe, sore subject over, he now felt free to enjoy the carnal delight that is massage. Or maybe the towel was just thinking of leggy blondes. But that’s a metaphor, anthropomorphic metonymy and a good guess all at the same time. At least one of us was happy.

… 

I really wasn’t in the mood for a lot of New Age and Wicca paraphernalia with a piped background of whale music with Pan pipes, synths and off-beat drumming. However I wasn’t exposing my unexercised flesh in the park to the glee of every female I’d ever taught Alchemy to, so that they’d get an introduction to Justin. Not like last Saturday.

So I found myself spurning Kelvinbridge Underground and the buses and walking the mile or so to the city centre, down Great Western Road, across Charing Cross and into the ‘twenty-four hour cabaret’ of Sauchiehall Street – I felt like Gulliver when he ends up home and laughs at his own people for being so small. Seldom had so many, wearing so few clothes, and those so unwisely chosen, exposed such large amounts of chip-fed flesh while they trundled happily along.

In the Mediterranean-culture countries I’d lived in while teaching English, the people took care of themselves, exercised their bodies and some taste in clothes, didn’t get drunk regularly – and smoked themselves to death. Okay you can’t have everything but at least they were attractive! What right had this vulgar horde of pleasure seekers – dressed in painfully clashing pastel shades of material Nature never intended – to happiness? How could they rejoice in this incipient sun, romping from beer to burger while listening to Summer Sun Screech or whatever was on the radio these days?!

I wished I’d put on my sandals. My feet were hot. And I was the only one not wearing shorts. My general philanthropy continued until I got to the doors of the Concert Hall, paid the £2 entrance fee, walked in, and heard the Pan pipes.

Then my mood got worse. I had a girlfriend – long, long ago and for about thirty seconds – who used to adjust my aura when I was angry. If some hippy came up now and tried the same stunt, I’d deck them – and feel a lot better.

Hi, Bruno, should have known this would be your thing; you look hot – have you been walking? The apparition, tall, elegant and fair with a porcelain-perfect complexion to match her manners, slipped her arm through mine and led me into the melee.

Clara! What the hell you doing here?

Complimentary medicine, Bruno, it’s widely used more and more in pre-natal, post-operative and palliative care. Good chance to network.

I’d always dismissed Clara with her ‘21st Century medicine in 19th Century hospitals’ excuse for closure mantra as having the real concern of your average call-centre operator. But I was pleased to see her, Well Justin’s prostituting his pert pounds of flesh in Kelvingrove Park… , her eyes flickered momentarily, then recovered, so I thought I’d check this out. I’ve never actually been to one before.

Really? Well let me show you: Kryllian photography is there, next to Dowsing and the Tarot Booth, Reiki is by the door behind you and Feng Shui by the back wall. Tibetan Voicework, Holotrophic Breathing and Astrology – oh and Hypnotic Regression – all in the centre. All the rest are just books, crystals and artefacts. I think. Oh yes, and there’s someone from Findhorn. Not sure what she’s doing.

"Just being I expect, probably in purple."

You sound a bit cynical! I thought you were into all this?

Been spending too much time at my parents – it’s getting me down.

Clara looked at me appraisingly. I thought you looked a bit peaky this morning. I thought it was because you’d just got up. You know: that sports injury almost sorted, I thought you should be back to your usual perky self about now. I half-smiled, wanly. I hate it when women mother me, but it does make me feel better. I also liked the way she referred to my groin strain, suffered while working in a nursing home, as a sports injury. Look, why don’t you just get in the swing of it? Go-with-the-flow and all that? It’s really quite a fun-fair. I’ve had my fortune told twice – completely different of course – and bought a crystal necklace for Imogen, I think it’ll really match her eyes. Oh look, there’s a session on Bach Flower Essences that I don’t want to miss. Coming – or will you just mill about?

I’ll mill. Good advice, Clara, thanks.

She smiled her brief but perfect smile and was gone.

A pack of goths slouched past me (I had to admire their leather-clad dedication on such a hot day) heading towards a stall selling crucifixes, and what were surely not miniature shrunken heads. I fingered some twisted candles distractedly and decided I liked the beeswax ones better. Another stall had tinkly mobiles and the next dragons and elves and stuff with semi-precious stones. Semi-precious, that just about described all this hippy-shit. And the sellers. One, with long black hair and a silver streak dramatically through the centre (whose name was no doubt ‘Vanya’ or ‘Shasta’ and whose Pacific, West Coast twang probably started out as Atlantic) was giving the punters the patter on Spirit Cards.

Yeah, like they’re mood-influenced, I mean your etheric energy manifests in your choice of card, spiritually you are guided by your Higher Self – or your Deeper Self some people like to language it differently but the essence is the same… 

As well as for people who lift lids while you’re cooking, there is a special place in Hell for