We try to walk quietly along the narrow gap between Bishopscourt and the fence but the coarse gravel crunches under our feet. Thick creeper growing up the wall brushes at my face. The thorns had scratched Felix's bare legs as he climbed out the window. I was protected by my habit, which, for my exile, I wear over my naked body. I am aware of dried ejaculant across my belly. I hold my sandals. Felix never wears shoes. He has hard, calloused feet, which I felt last night.

 

Niagara
Paul Goddard

[extract]

Although I was actually born first, by some four minutes, it was my brother Rich who was always mentioned first. I had accepted long ago that this would be the drill for life. Now in our teens, the majority of guys our age were all too obviously works in progress, all erupting skin and warty knees. Rich, on the other hand, was an inhabitant of another world entirely. He glowed with the kind of glossy, inorganic beauty that department store mannequins rarely achieve. Even the tiny freckles sprinkled either side of his compact, sculpted nose looked like they’d been airbrushed on. He was pretty like a girl, but also handsome thanks to his square jaw and stern, far-away eyes. He was like a young Elvis, or Brando, but this time created with more potent, exotic ingredients.

I wondered how I would appear to a stranger passing by as I sat there in my board shorts on my stupidly big beach towel. A slightly sunburnt nerd, I suspected. I squinted my half-Asian, half-almond-shaped eyes against the afternoon sun and attempted once more to spot Rich on the beach.
That day I had developed a theory. It was that, essentially, all we are as a human being is a set of eyes atop a length of wobbly spine. After all, we devote much more brain space to storing and processing visual sensations, when compared to what we set aside for our other flimsy senses. There’s even a whole squiggly bit for memorising a lifetime’s worth of faces. As I stretched out on my towel, I wondered if there were other grey bits for storing images of killer tits, or really outstanding teeth.

Of course, owning a set of these magic eye gadgets had a down side. While they let us gorge on the eye candy of creation on a daily basis, they also reminded us, all too exactly, of our rank in this well-lit Eden.

It wasn’t just that everybody looked more at Rich, although they did do that, it was the effect that Rich had on his audience that I never got completely used to. Somehow people would become like lucky race-goers who had managed to get close enough to the rail to lock eyes with a champion thoroughbred’s twitching, nervous pupil as it passed. When people met Rich, I noticed that they always acted as if they had encountered something, rather than just greeted a stranger.

It was generally agreed that Rich looked ‘less Asian’ than I did. I would always smile to myself when this remark was made. It was as if these people secretly wanted to thank our Chinese mother for holding back enough on the soy sauce during her pregnancy, for only one of us to come out looking chinky. For some reason, girls loved to tell Rich that they had thought that he was part Spanish, or Italian, as if to be mistaken for anything other than what he actually was, was a huge compliment.
I thought that it was funny that Rich had never once mentioned that he was perhaps a little more blessed in the looks department than I. Rich was far too well mannered to expose such a belief, if he indeed held it. He behaved as if he was the son of an aristocratic European family, rather than the son of a suburban real estate agent.

One weekend, years ago, Dad asked us to wash the family’s aging diesel Mercedes station wagon. I was feeling sick and uncooperative that day, so Rich did the job by himself. Dad was astounded by the gleaming results of the soap-up and gave Rich a pile of coins for his good work. When Rich went to give me half, I told him that the money was all his. Rich gave me his most awful look. He put the coins on the ground and blasted them down the drain with a jet of water. At the age of ten he had already decided that money was far too common a concern to ever wrinkle his brow.

While Rich was more likely to sigh than laugh at most situations, this wasn’t to say that he was without a sense of humour. Recently we’d been forced to attend our cousin Nathan’s birthday party. Nathan’s major point of interest was that everybody knew that he was gay, except Nathan himself. Even Mum commented that the ‘Venetian Masked Ball’ theme was an unusual one for a boy’s sixteenth birthday party. We agreed to go, but on one condition: there would be no dressing up.

The guests were, without exception, exceedingly plain girls and awkward, lispy boys. Within twenty minutes we had found a secret spot in the garden for a quick smoke. Rich was only a few puffs in, when one of the female clarinet-player types from inside pushed aside the branch of a shrub, so she could offer him a tray of party food. However, when she saw that Rich was smoking a cigarette, her pupils doubled in size in a quarter of a second and she literally swayed back on her feet. She then did the weirdest, funniest thing. She pretended that she hadn’t seen us, walked past and then circled back up toward the house at, more or less, a full sprint.
A long, silent moment passed and then Rich turned to me and looked me in the eye. It was Rich who bent over first as he shrieked the most hysterical yelps of laughter I’ve ever heard. Within seconds, I was a goner too. When the finale occurred – our startled Uncle Ian trotting out toward us holding a torch – Rich actually fell to the ground and started rolling around on the grass.

My lips curled themselves into a little smile at the thought of all of this. Feeling the sun on my back was like discovering a prayer. I loved coming to the beach house. Rich and I had been brought here every summer since we were two years old. Diablo, the Boxer, was buried out the front and Mao, the Siamese, was buried out the back. It was here one day too, a long time ago, that I sucked some of the skin on my arm into my mouth and decided that I tasted like oranges and salt.

Last summer, Mum told me one afternoon that the first time she had seen Marilyn Monroe was in the film Niagara. She thought that Monroe was the most beautiful woman that she’d ever seen, but she was also glad not to be her. I asked her why she had thought this and Mum just smiled and said that I’d understand one day.

When I looked down at my stomach I noticed that I was beginning to colour. I also couldn’t help admiring the trail of black hairs that crept up from beneath my waistband and ended at my neat little navel. That year I had begun sprouting forests of hair and new landscapes of muscles had emerged where once there had only been puppy fat.

Contents listing
Read another extract

£3.00

 

Home /\/ Reading room /\/ About Total Cardboard /\/ Bookcover design gallery

 

We try to walk quietly along the narrow gap between Bishopscourt and the fence but the coarse gravel crunches under our feet. Thick creeper growing up the wall brushes at my face. The thorns had scratched Felix's bare legs as he climbed out the window. I was protected by my habit, which, for my exile, I wear over my naked body. I am aware of dried ejaculant across my belly. I hold my sandals. Felix never wears shoes. He has hard, calloused feet, which I felt last night. ‘I liked the monkey.' I put a finger to my lips. We aren't clear yet. I imagine the Bishop snoring in his night-shirt and dreaming of Armagnac and chocolates or, perhaps, the place of the skull. The staff are already up, probably having a smoke in the wash house. But they see nothing. We are heading for the front gate. It is just before dawn. That cold, grey pause when objects are indeterminately drawn and darkling fears mingle with hope. I know Felix, though. Curly, black hair and sturdy, tanned legs and fine hair upon his cheeks. He's enjoying the adventure. He tip-toes, as if in a pantomime, as we draw near to the front of the house. No-one had noticed him in the crowd last night. I'm glad he came. How did he get invited? There had been a fête to celebrate the Feast of the Most Precious Blood. He liked the monkey because it wore a matelot's cap and smock and played a red piano accordion. It could also genuflect and cross itself at the appropriate moments during the Mass. Felix said he might like to learn to do that too. He grasps my hand and we dash across the Long Lawn. There have been morning showers upon the grass. We leave our doubled marks on crushed blades and pass quickly through the honey suckle arbour and enter the Garden of Contemplation. It is enclosed by tall boxhedges on three sides, still dripping with rain, and a stone wall at the far end. I see the oak door, solid, closed in the middle of the wall. It is never locked. The first evanescent glimmerings of sunrise quicken above the wall. I am eager to move on. ‘Let's stay here a while. I like it here.' He picks up a peacock feather and I sit on a marble bench to put my sandals on. Felix kneels on the flagstone surrounding the pool and tries to make out his reflection in the dark water. He spits in it. He strolls between the trestles covered in sodden white linen, marveling at the remains of the fête. Silver trays and crystal bowls laden with untouched pineapples, pomegranates, peaches and plums. The sweet smell of early putrefaction has not been washed away. He drinks claret from a forgotten glass and selects a pomegranate. He sits beside me, admiring the waxen fruit. He splits it open and offers me half. Daintily he picks out some crimson seeds, one by one, to eat. Replete, he places the unseeded hemisphere on the gravel and stamps on it. His foot is sticky red. He stares at the smashed fruit, bewildered. I feel anxious because She will arrive soon and I am not prepared. I am expected in chapel for Matins. I wonder what Felix normally does at this time of day? Roll over and eat chocolate donuts? Fondle himself? I will soon find out. Felix stretches and places his hands behind his neck. I kiss him under the arm and taste him. ‘You haven't forgotten, have you?' I plead. ‘I'm sorry. Just enjoying the garden.' He rests his head on my shoulder. Whisper. ‘I love you.' The promise is fulfilled. The Lady walks through the arbour and takes her seat on a marble bench. She wears a coronet of white rosebuds. She waits. We have to go. I dare not look at her as we make for the gate. Felix waves cheerily good-bye. I have my hand on the iron handle. I am about to finally leap over the wall. ‘Please. Before we go. What is your name?' I couldn't say. I hear slow, solemn hoof beats on the gravel behind me. My name was sprinkled on my infant forehead with the royal waters. Perhaps, Adam? The denizens of hell have no name. I look back. The Unicorn with the braided mane appears in the Garden and, tenderly, lowers his glistening horn into the lap of the Lady. Chantacleer crows. * * * ‘Bollocks. Absolute bollocks. What were you thinking?' says Bart. I put the uni paper down on the desk. He continues folding the Queer Soc newsletters. I look out the window, across the Quad. The window is grimy. Smeared, smoky, grey. I pause. Aware of sharp pubic cramp. Pituitary FSH. Secretion of estrogen. Corpus Luteum. Bloody time. ‘Publish and be damned? Anyway. It's about human nature.' He stops folding, looks straight at me. Patient, certain, emphatic. ‘You know there's no such thing, Eva.' Hmm. The window is really dirty. I smile to myself. Now I see through a glass darkly… I put the paper into my satchel. ‘Don't you want to know how it ends? Adam pays Felix and grabs a coffee and a taxi? No? No. They take a room in a boarding house with plastic roses on the table and a Sacred Heart print on the wall. Adam turns into an alcoholic, tedious insurance clerk and Felix batters him to death.' Get up. Go.