Adam: A Sensuous Coming of Age Tale (35 page)

Summer was well advanced; most colours were gone except
– in the shadier places – for rampant green. Tall seed-heads nodded on either side of them and had to be brushed away where they encroached upon the path. The springs were merely trickles feeding the mossy limestone basins and the boggy patch across which lay the sleeper path of logs was nearly dry. They followed the path on up, then down a bit, then up again to the grassy clearing on the jutting spur, to the place where the brief length of wooden fence stopped you from missing the U-turn in the path and disappearing over the cliff edge, the spot where he had first made love with Sylvain. Adam didn’t tell Michael this; he didn’t need to. The opportunity that the spot presented was as clear to him as day.

The two of them stood on the lowest rung of the guard-fence and looked out over the woods beneath.
They did what Adam had thought of doing (but had not had time for) on his first visit with Sylvain, and pissed together over the edge, seeing who could spray the furthest and watching their twin arcs rain down upon the treetops below, finishing with little spurts and splashes of diminishing force. Neither of them suggested having sex. In this place, at this time, it would have seemed in bad taste to both of them. Their cocks remained unstiffening, indifferent; they looked briefly without touching, then stowed away and chastely re-zipped.

‘
The bit you’ve left out, of course,’ said Michael, as they strolled back the way they had just come, ‘is what exactly happened during the arrest. I did ask Sean but he said you hadn’t told him either.’ Michael shot Adam a sidelong look. ‘Of course I don’t know if that was true.’

‘
It was,’ said Adam. ‘I think I hid the memory even from myself for quite some time.’

‘
Do you want to tell me now?’

Adam
looked around, then led them to an apron-sized patch of grass and sat down, patting the ground beside him. Michael joined him. Adam held up his left hand and pointed to it with the fingers of the other one. Near the outside edge of the palm, below the root of the little finger, there was a sizeable scar.

‘
I noticed that,’ said Michael. ‘So did Sean.’

‘
It all happened very fast. Sylvain threw open the car door almost before we’d stopped. He’d grabbed the shot-gun from behind the seat and was out of the car before I’d realised. But I was pretty quick then too. I was out of the car on his side – I don’t know how I got there so fast – the gun was halfway to his shoulder, the gendarmes were out of their car now too, and right behind us. It would have been point-blank range. I rugby-tackled him, no time for thinking, then both guns went off together.’

‘
Both guns?’

‘
The shot-gun fired into the ground as we came down and the gendarme’s bullet went whistling over our heads. That’s when I got bitten. And he wouldn’t let go. I didn’t know … I never thought … perhaps I ought to have guessed that on top of everything else he was epileptic too. I’d heard his mother once talking about his various medicines but never took it in. He recovered just as the
flics
were trying to wrestle him away and that’s when he let go my hand. They often don’t remember what happens during their attacks – epileptics, I mean, not the
flics
– so he didn’t realise what was going on. He just looked at me and said – and this was the thing that hurt me, not the biting – ‘Tu m’aimes pas’. Then they bundled him away.’

‘
Wow.’ And Michael shook his head, for once unable to come out with a better-crafted rejoinder.

‘
He’d been on all sorts of different medications, I don’t know what they were. He’d been on them for years. But for the last three days we were together, and for a few days before that, he hadn’t been taking them. I didn’t know any of that at the time, only when Céline told me three weeks later. That made a number of things fall into place. It explained why he seemed more together in some ways, driving, cooking, looking after me when I was sick …’

‘
But more liable to go to pieces when he thought he was under pressure. I see.’

‘
When he saw the police, then everything just seemed to fall apart. Once we were inside the police station – and we were taken in separate vehicles and not allowed to see each other after we got there – they were determined to treat him as the criminal and me as the victim. I must have blanked out a lot that happened but I remember going on and on about that: that it wasn’t true the way they saw the situation. That we were in it together …’

‘
Well, that was hardly true,’ objected Michael. ‘You didn’t plan to abduct yourself. It sounds as if you both went a little crazy.’

‘
Well, anyway,’ said Adam, ‘ it didn’t do any good, whatever I said. They bandaged up my hand before they let me go home with my father. I can remember looking at the bandage in the car.’

‘And playing the cello?
One has to ask.’

‘
Will not be a problem. Sean asked that, too. I started practising again when I went to England. The wound wasn’t in such a vital place, although it seemed to go quite deep. And it’s healed very well already. I don’t remember it hurting much at the time even. There were too many other things to think about.’

‘
Yes,’ said Michael. ‘
You don’t love me
is a phrase calculated to induce the extremest state of shock in anyone.’

Adam
caught his friend round the head with an arm and pretended to wrestle with him. Michael shook himself free. ‘Did you love him?’

Adam was thoughtful for a second, then he said:
‘I was in love with him and he was with me.’

‘
Well, at least you’ve had that experience.’ Michael sounded a little jealous.

‘
Yes, but is that love?’ Adam asked, suddenly, urgently. ‘Is being in love the same as love? Do you understand me?’

‘
I think I do.’

‘
Well then, is it?’

‘
Why am I the expert all of a sudden?’ Michael asked. It’s you that’s had all these experiences, not me. You know, with Sylvain, with Sean…’

Adam
opened his mouth to say something but Michael stopped him. ‘ I know you’ve always treasured the things between you and Sean, in a way you never have with me. Don’t try to deny it out of politeness. And for some mad reason he feels something of the same for you.’ Michael pulled a seeding grass head and began detaching the seeds with little spiky movements. ‘ I don’t know if falling in love, and being in love, and loving someone are all part of the same thing or something different. I know they’re not the same as sex at least. I don’t have that confusion.’

Adam
was unsure if the last remark was a barbed one aimed at him but he let it go unchallenged. He didn’t want a re-run of their argument about change and develop. ‘Well then,’ he said. ‘What is love? Adults seem to think it’s something that nobody can comprehend or experience until they’re about forty. Which would be a bit sad. Make being young a bit of a waste of time. What do you think love is?’

Michael
looked awkward for a moment. ‘Oh I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But maybe, maybe love should be a kind of journey.’ He stopped abruptly and looked down at the ground between his legs.

Adam
looked at him closely, trying to guess his thoughts, suddenly curious about his old friend in a new way. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s walk on a bit.’

‘And what about the tribunal?’ Michael asked some time later, as they were walking back through the village to the house. ‘Where and when’s all that?’

‘
I’m not supposed to know anything about it,’ Adam told him. ‘But I do, of course. Céline keeps me up to date with what she knows. It’s due to be held in Chalon, or maybe Macon, any day now. The outcome seems to be all fixed too. Sylvain gets sent to a psychiatric institution until he’s better …’

‘
Until he forgets about you, you mean. Sorry to be brutal.’

‘
He’s supposed to not contact me, that’s all. I don’t think forgetting is actually part of the deal. And Céline says it might only be a matter of a few weeks. It’s a sort of symbolic gesture. Justice being seen to be done. Though not by me. I’m not expected – they don’t want me – to be there at the tribunal, so the date’s kept under wraps.’

‘
And how do you feel about that?’

‘
Pretty gutted,’ Adam said. Then: ‘ Look, enough of that.’ Even the most self-absorbed of people get tired of talking about themselves eventually and Adam wasn’t really one of those. ‘We’ll give Christophe a ring as soon as we get back in. Fix up to meet some time tomorrow.’ He knew that Michael would wag his tail at this.

But the call to
Christophe had to take second priority. A message from Céline waited on the answer-phone. Would Adam ring her back? When he did she told him of a change of plan. The venue for the
Tribunal Correctionnel
had changed. It would be held much nearer home: in Chaumont, half an hour away. The date was two days hence. Céline even knew the time.

‘
That settles it,’ said Adam to Michael after putting down the phone. ‘We’re going.’

Michael
was dubious. ‘To do what, exactly?’

‘
I don’t know,’ said Adam. ‘But it seems like destiny, don’t you think? Or God, or fate?’

‘
Or Adam,’ Michael said.

There were five more days before they would all return to England. Most of the family’s remaining belongings were boxed up, awaiting the next meandering Pickfords lorry that trundled its way up onto the plateau. On the day of departure Hugh would drive alone to Calais with the car packed to the gunwales with the necessities of existence – this plan had been worked out when Adam was not expected to be here in France at all – while Adam (now that he
was
here) would go back on the bus and ferry with Michael. It was the only practical way to transport his cello.

Having gone back with
Adam to England a fortnight ago the cello had returned to France with him ten days later. Since rejoining his father here Adam had taken to playing it out in the garden in the late evening in emulation of Beatrice Harrison. He felt he was entitled now to a certain degree of eccentricity and his father did not try to stop him. He had discovered to his surprise, when he asked his mother to let him come back to his father in France and she had let him, that recent events had given him a new power over his parents. He could stamp his foot, say what he wanted, and get his own way: something which had never been allowed to happen before. This new power did not extend to the nightingales on the other hand; none joined in his al fresco music making; but he found a wonderful and surprising peace out on the lawn under the all-seeing sky in the thickening dusk.

‘
You’re really weird, man,’ said Michael, when Adam had treated him to two or three of the easier movements among the Bach unaccompanied suites while Michael brushed away moths and flying beetles. ‘But I think I like you weird. I wouldn’t like you any other way.’

That night as they lay snuggled together in bed they were both surprised to discover a new tenderness growing up between them, and the sex that they enjoyed together, which up to now had served a predominately functional purpose, seemed to be developing into something else.

Next day they spent with Christophe who came panting up from the lakeside on his bike. It didn’t have to be spelled out to anyone that Adam’s house, with his father out all day at work, made the more attractive venue for their reunion. And in fact it was Michael and Christophe who spent most of the day together. Adam surprised himself by his broadminded lack of jealousy, leaving them in peace in the remoter corners of the garden while he practised the cello and put his mind to fine-tuning the details of his plan for the morrow.

It was
Hugh’s last day on the dam project. There was packing up to do there too plus a final meeting which they called a
bilan.
He was far too preoccupied to question the two boys when they told him they wanted to spend the day in Langres. He even drove them into town. But as soon as they got there they made a beeline for the bus-station and took the first bus out to Chaumont where they killed time until the early afternoon.

It wasn’t difficult to find the court house.
They took from their pockets the ties they had kept hidden there so as not to unleash astonished questions from Hugh, and put them on while still on the opposite side of the street. Needless to say they had dressed in long trousers rather than their usual summer shorts. Then, taking courage from the memory of his bold entry into the Lion d’Or in Givry two months earlier when he was much less smartly dressed, Adam took a deep breath and led the way up the steps.

No sooner had they arrived in the entrance hall than they came face to face with someone
Adam knew: they had met once or twice at school and teenage parties. It was Céline’s father and he recognised Adam too. He stood, broad-shouldered in the foyer, seeming almost to block their way, though that was an impression only; the space around them was open and wide. He wore a dark suit, immaculately pressed, and its knife-edge creases made him look somehow as if he were wearing armour like a medieval knight. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said in English. ‘I wonder what brings you here.’ He smiled a little reluctantly. ‘Though I fear that I already know.’ Still in faultless English he asked to be presented to Adam’s friend, and shook Michael’s hand with the suggestion of a formal bow.