While Kevin was worshipping his cock, Ray kept his hips from moving, and I noticed he even folded his hands together behind his back. Just like Prince Philip. If he’d been a smoker I swear he’d have lit up a cigarette. Then he politely pulled out, without the pat on the back that Kevin might have thought he’d earned. And came over to me.
He gave me my chance to shine. By now the other members were ready for another deal of poker, but he kept on going, pumping his cock into my mouth. He closed his eyes. He was telling them that tonight he didn’t care about the cards. For once the cards could wait. The poker club could wait until he was good and ready, even though the album side I’d come to recognise as Deep Purple had finished. Then when the members were getting restless, he did a sort of double-take. He didn’t come, that would have been too obvious. But he opened his eyes.
Every time I saw him again, Ray’s eyes were bluer than I remembered them, even if I had seen him the day before and spent the night with him. I wondered if his eyes weren’t actually luminous, so that blue built up behind the lids when he was asleep. And I’d try to be awake before him, so that I could catch the moment when the pent-up blue spilled out.
Ray suddenly stopped and opened his eyes, and he said, almost dreamily, ‘I’m sorry, am I keeping people waiting? I must have lost track of time.’ Then he made the gesture that would have been ruffling my hair, if I’d had more hair, and zipped himself up. Then he murmured, ‘I was thinking about something else,’ and calmly went back to the poker table.
So I was left sweaty and dribbling, also deeply happy and vindicated. Ray had really shown Kevin what was what. He’d really put him in his place by fucking my face.
And in point of fact Kevin was a sweetheart. I really warmed to him once we got used to each other. Technically, as neither of us actually belonged to the club, and each of us could only speak if addressed by a member, conversation between us was impossible, but Kevin found his way round that little difficulty. Even though I, I’m ashamed to say, would have been content to keep everything chilly and correct. Some way short of cordial, looking over from my thermos of tea and my history book at his bottle of Coke and New Musical Express. Diet Coke hadn’t been invented then.
Kevin stuck his tongue out. At first I was scandalised and offended, thinking he was simply being rude. Paul had just finished with him to go back to the poker game, and I thought this was just rivalry and defiance. His way of saying, I’m being taken care of. I’m being looked after just as well as you. To stop me getting above myself.
But it wasn’t that at all. He had nerve, that one. I noticed he was doing something funny with his eyes. He was crossing them, making out that he was looking down on that extended tongue. Then he made an exaggerated pounce with a pair of pinching fingers down onto his tongue. All this while Paul was hardly back in the game, and could look over at him at any moment. Paul who had quite a temper on him. And Kevin was miming finding one of Paul’s ginger hairs glinting on his tongue with a grimace to show how little he appreciated it being left there. It was his way of making peace. Making things all right between us, and letting me know he wanted us to be friends.
He didn’t have to do that, but I was glad that he did. We were careful not to be noticed by the membership, but there was a little flicker of communication going between Kevin and me the whole time. Saturday nights had a whole new dimension, suddenly. We would mime having our fingers crossed that Alan’s poker hand would be good or his bluffing inspired. If he folded his hand and came towards us, we’d look away, me at the Roman Empire or the First World War, him at the reviews of Clash concerts, each despite our new connection hoping that he would choose the other. Then afterwards the lucky one would send rueful looks to the unlucky one, or if we were feeling really daring mime being sick. Alan wasn’t clean. He was the only one who wasn’t. Alan’s cock tasted of stale piss and neither of us wanted it, ever.
Then one night Alan tried to fuck my arse, and Ray threw him downstairs. I wasn’t supposed to leave my post unless it was to run an errand for a member, which was why I had a thermos for my tea, but Alan sent me to fetch some beer from the kitchen, and then he cornered me there. After the earlier embarrassment, I wasn’t even sure he hadn’t the right to fuck me — I thought I knew he didn’t, but it had never been said, and I didn’t dare to cry out, but I managed to knock the dustbin over, sending some bottles rolling, and that came to the same thing. Ray came flying in, no words just action. I think he’d have thrown Alan downstairs even it was Alan who was playing host that night and they were his stairs, which thank God they weren’t or the repercussions for the club would have been much nastier. We were at Big Steve’s place in West Byfleet.
We never saw Alan again. For all I know he was the best poker player on God’s earth, but Kevin and I never missed him. Afterwards Ray stroked my head to comfort me, and asked me the same question he always asked and always answered in the same way. Not ‘What am I going to do with you?’, which he’d pretty much demonstrated month by month, but ‘Why did I take you on?’ He always supplied an answer of his own to that question. The answer he gave was always, ‘No-one else would have you.’
It’s true there’s never been a queue. But Ray always seemed to be getting at something else, with that question and that answer, as if there was something he needed me to understand. Looking at it sensibly, if no-one else would have me, if I wasn’t any sort of prize, then that should be a reason for Ray to stay away too. He could have anyone he wanted, with his looks and his personality. So: how did it come about that it was a good thing and not a bad one that I had no other options? I tried not to think about it too much. It might not be a good idea for me to know Ray’s reasons. I was a bit superstitious about that. I didn’t want to jinx things.
This is how I worked it out. My value to him was my loyalty. I belonged to him. Loyalty wasn’t just one virtue among others, it was the only virtue in the world as far as he was concerned. It made me worth having, which meant that before me, someone in the past must have let him down. There must have been someone who hadn’t been told ‘No-one else would have you’, or who’d found someone else who would, and who’d just moved on after all Ray’s devotion, after the effort he had put in.
It made a sort of sense. Maybe Ray had learned a horrible lesson, and that’s why he had drawn such a clear line, I mean by not letting me have a key to where he lived. Maybe a boy before me who nobody talked about, a silly lad who broke his heart, if that’s what happened, had taken advantage and just expected to be looked after. Not to lift a finger. So Ray was going to make sure it didn’t happen again. It was funny to think that Ray, who lived in the present like no-one I’ve known, might have been shaped by the past in a small way.
It wouldn’t be right to say that Ray held me back. It would be ungrateful and wrong. But it’s a fact that I wouldn’t have been able to work shifts, the way I do now, if I was still with Ray. Fifteen years I’ve been on the road now. I wasn’t cut out to be a gardener, and I knew that even then. But I couldn’t have been on early turn or late turn at work and still fitted in with Ray’s schedule. Ray’s life.