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They would have a full English at the house one morning, then perhaps they would go out the other. Alex would need: four eggs, four slices of bacon, two sausages, two tomatoes, two field or eight button mushrooms, a tin of beans, brown sauce, bread and butter. A truncated full English, strictly. He agreed with his mother – Frances, not his real mother – that one did not go in for black pudding these days. Also: milk, oranges for juice, tea, coffee and sugar. Perhaps marmalade, jam, Marmite for good measure.
Or would Danny want to go out both mornings? Last time Alex spent the weekend in this village, he of course ate all his meals at the house he had rented. He imagined Danny would want to go out at least once so he could see the shops. But if it was twice, then the provisions would be wasted, which was a shame. Then again, if Alex did not bring them and Danny did want to eat at the house, they’d have to buy provisions in the village. One could easily find the provisions in such a tiny village in the off season (he imagined Frances drawling) rather unsatisfactory.
Would there be a teapot? A cafetiere? A citrus juicer? He calculated the volume this would take in the boot. It seemed increasingly likely he would have to leave his map trunk behind, bringing only the relevant maps. It depended how much luggage Danny would have – probably not much. Everything Danny owned would not fill a large suitcase. Alex recalculated, rotating objects in his mind.
He would have had more certain data if they were staying in the house he had stayed in before: a stone cottage on a bare hill above town, with a broad view to the edge of the cliffs and the sea beyond. He had liked that place. But he remembered, too, the slight melancholy of the bedroom with its twin cream towels tied with ribbon, each topped with a sprig of freesia from the garden outside – of the twin champagne flutes by the bath. A romantic stage set on which he had been unwillingly cast in a play about his own loneliness. He would have liked to erase that memory by sleeping in that bed, drinking from those champagne flutes, with Danny.
But there was the matter of that white van currently parked outside in his street. He feared there was going to be the same white van, or a similar one, parked in the village. He was concerned that whatever house he booked, there would be surveillance installed by the time they arrived.
Accordingly he had booked the previous house using his home internet and usual credit card. Then he had booked a different house over the phone to the village’s estate agent, calling from a public park while he was out for a jog, using a phone and credit card that belonged to an alias.
For caution, he had not looked at the second house online – just selecting from descriptions and prices on the phone. The place he had picked was an eighteenth-century converted stable. The conversion was recent enough, and the price high enough, that it ought to be decent. But were there, for instance, proper napkins? A tablecloth? The conversion might have modern styling, and eschew table linen. And what shape was the table?
He would bring a round tablecloth, which could look good on a rectangular, square or round table. Danny would laugh at him for bringing a tablecloth, and Alex would enjoy his laughing.
At the same time it was necessary to plan for contingencies relating to the white van.
He was first spoken to about discontinuing his work several months ago, and shortly afterwards detected keylogging malware installed on his laptop. In response, he staged an incident of power failure at his flat, causing the laptop to lose network connectivity temporarily. During this window he backed up several copies of his work to flash drives.
Then, in the copy still on the laptop, he coded – then encrypted – an exception in the retinal scan logic that identified if the scanner was being used on him, and if it was, substituted the finding ‘Truth’ for all findings of ‘Lie’. He also built and encrypted a subroutine that inserted randomised fail conditions into the program.
Having doing this, he accessed the malware’s unsent data log and deleted the record of his activities since the network had been off, then powered the laptop down. Then he turned the power to the flat back on, and called the power company to cancel his earlier service callout.
Later that night, he powered on the laptop again and purported to work on the program. When the randomised errors began to occur, he hissed and purported to be working frantically to debug them.
He repeated this procedure several times over the next few days – purporting to work on the program, encountering the errors, evincing frustration and purporting to try to debug – both at home and at the office. Gradually, over the next several weeks, he purported to be working on the project far less frequently, and with little success. For the last fortnight he had not touched it at all.
The van had not disappeared from his street. He thought it would in time.
But he had also planned for the contingency that it would not. He had seeded to Danny the words, laptop battery. He had put one of the flash-drive backups in a cryptex, and concealed the cryptex inside an empty battery casing in the laptop.
It was difficult to plan for that future. One could not encompass it with the whole of one’s mind. The contingencies branched and spiralled in multitudes, and in most of them, he would no longer be able to affect events. In many of them, he was dead. In others, he was captured, tortured. Also, it was likely Danny did not love him anymore. This thought caused a hot space to open in his mind past which it was difficult to reason.
He had taken a long time to decide what the combination should be on the cryptex. If this contingency became activated, it might be the last thing he would ever say to Danny.
He chose ‘0000001’. What he ought to have said that night by the fire – the number of men there were for him in the world.
They crested the curve of a green hill, and could see it: the chalk grassland undulating down to its sudden cessation at the edge of the cliff, like a page torn off. Then a vast expanse of sea, slate-blue today beneath a thin veil of cirrostratus cloud, stippling into cirrocumulus in the southwest.
Alex heard Danny breathe in sharply.
‘Those are the fort things you want to look at?’ Danny said at last.
‘The pillbox forts, yes,’ Alex said. They were the small, grey concrete box shapes along the cliff edge, tiny as sheep from here. ‘Though I must apologise in advance: someone’s often urinated in them. Or dropped rubbish.’
‘That’s all right,’ Danny said, ‘I’ll just look at the sea.’ He was looking down, Alex judged, because he was embarrassed by how pleased he was.
‘Good,’ Alex said. ‘That’s settled.’
They descended the long ribbon of road into town, past wooden stiles and indifferent, black-faced sheep.
The high street was narrow, cobbled and eleven shops long. Alex parked. He did not open the central locking, though Danny looked expectant. ‘I’ll just nip in and get the keys, then we can settle in before we explore, if you like,’ Alex said.
‘All right,’ Danny said.
Alex had to walk most of the high street to find the estate agent. There was a white van in the street, he noted, but it was old and dirty, and had a business name on the side. He saw the driver wheeling a hand trolley back out from one of the shops.
Alex probably ought to have let Danny out of the car. It was just he didn’t want Danny coming into the estate agent with him and finding out that Alex had used a false name for the booking.
Alex opened the door, whose movement rang a small brass bell.
The woman at the counter was dealing with someone else, so he had to wait a moment. Could Danny see him in here? He did not think so. He risked making a phone call to the other house’s booking agency, which was in the next town over, to apologise and cancel that booking. ‘And to whom am I speaking?’ said the woman on the phone.
Since Alex had used the false name with the people in whose shop he was standing, he could not now be overheard giving his real one. ‘Can’t you just look up the booking number?’ he said, pretending to be irritable.
The woman at the counter was ready for him now, and raised an eyebrow.
When he got off the phone, he smiled as flirtatiously as he could and said, ‘Your place sounded much nicer than theirs.’
The stable conversion was bright inside, whitewashed walls with an exposed, beamed ceiling, the fittings in modern chrome and grey.
They carried the things in from the car. It took five trips. ‘We’re prepared, then,’ Danny said, amused, upon first seeing how full the boot was. But by the time it had all come in, he had gone quiet.
At one point, while Danny was out at the car, Alex set his multi-frequency scanner to run, and put it behind a vase on a bookcase. On a subsequent trip, he checked it – there was nothing suspicious.
When they finished, Alex said, ‘I should…’ and began to put the food in the fridge. Danny tried to help, but there was not quite enough room to manoeuvre around the fridge. ‘It’s all right,’ Alex said, and Danny withdrew.
Alex opened the half-case of champagne he had brought, and put two bottles in the fridge. ‘Two?’ he asked.
Danny was standing strangely, with his weight on one foot. ‘I dunno.’
‘Three,’ Alex said, trying to be jolly, and put another in the fridge.
Alex inspected the courtesy bottle of champagne the hosts had left out for them – the winery was unknown to him – and rejected it, pushing it to the back of the benchtop. He fluffed the flowers that had been beside it in a vase.
Danny was still standing on one foot, looking at the bench. ‘What’s wrong?’ Alex said.
‘Nothing,’ Danny said.
‘Do you want to see the house?’ Alex said.
‘All right,’ Danny said.
They looked at the bathroom – white and chrome, and more flowers. Alex saw champagne flutes by the spa, just like the other place.
The bedroom was a loft, up an open staircase of what must be repurposed original timber. The bed was king size, pure white. Flowers on the bedside tables.
Alex turned to Danny. ‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s great.’ Danny’s voice was quiet.
‘What is wrong? Have I done something?’
The fact was, there was something slightly wrong with Alex, socially speaking, and it could never be ruled out that he had done something.
‘No!’ Danny said – truthfully, Alex judged. ‘I just…’
Alex took him by the shoulders. This sometimes helped.
‘I don’t belong here,’ Danny said.
‘Of course you do,’ Alex said. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing.’ Danny hugged him, hiding his face.
Alex hugged back.
‘I feel underdressed for the house,’ Danny joked into Alex’s shoulder.
‘It’s only a house,’ Alex said. ‘You can dress however you like. The house can get lost.’
Danny laughed and pushed Alex towards the bed. Alex allowed himself to fall, make the duvet puff up around him with a whoosh. Danny climbed on top on him, cheeks swelling with a smile.
‘We can get another house if you don’t like it,’ Alex said. ‘It’s easily done. The money’s no problem.’
‘No,’ Danny said, and kissed him, with tongue.
Alex rolled them over. Danny groped his backside and rolled them back again.
Alex had got hard. Danny rocked his hips over it, grinning.
Then, grinning even more broadly, he got off Alex and stood up. ‘We should unpack properly.’
They went to the pub for dinner. There was still no white van outside on the street.
The pub was an old carriage house, dark and low-ceilinged. Several people, older couples, were dressed like Alex was, in zip-off trousers and anoraks. Danny was the only person dressed for the city.
Danny had a pint with dinner. He had got bangers and mash. He poked one glossy sausage with his fork and looked at it significantly, then looked at Alex.
Alex took his meaning and smiled into his pint, making eye contact.
Danny smiled into his pint also.
When they got back to the house, they had champagne in the spa.
Alex was rather tall to be in here with another person – they sat at opposite corners, but had to have their legs entwined in the middle, which was not disagreeable.
‘Is it good?’ Alex said, seeing Danny swill off a third of a glass of champagne in one mouthful.
‘Yes,’ Danny said. ‘But I hope you know I couldn’t have told the difference from the one they left for us.’
‘I bet you could – in a blind test,’ Alex said.
Danny made a face.
‘I’m glad you like it, anyway,’ Alex said, and poured him some more.
‘Thank you.’
One of the centre jets was pulsing onto Alex’s shin. ‘I feel like my leg hair’s being blown in a gale.’ He was aware of being tipsy.
This was something he had discovered with Danny: just saying things because they occurred to you.
Danny picked up Alex’s ankle and stroked the hair on the shin down. Then he stroked the hair on Alex’s big toe.
‘You don’t have hairy toes,’ Alex said, rueful.
‘No,’ Danny said. ‘You’re a hobbit. An unbelievably’ – he kissed the top of Alex’s foot, which was also hairy – ‘handsome, unusually tall’ – he blew air, ticklish, into Alex’s wet instep – ‘hobbit.’ He stroked up Alex’s leg, beneath the calf.
Alex slouched to give Danny access to more of his leg. Danny’s hand moved to his inner thigh.
‘Have you cleared out?’ Danny’s voice was low.
Have you been to the toilet, so there’ll be nothing there when we have sex – was what Danny meant. Alex still felt a twinge of shame about their first time, when he had not known to do that.
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ Danny said. ‘Did you bring your little thing?’
He meant Alex’s plug, which Danny had got for him, which helped him get ready.
‘Yes.’
‘Get it for me,’ Danny said. ‘And get the lube, and come back in the spa.’
‘All right.’ Alex had got hard, and was clumsy getting up. He nearly knocked his champagne flute over, and moved it to the bench beside the sink instead. Alex was dripping all over the floor. He found what he needed in his toiletry bag – leaving wet fingerprints on the lining – and came back to the spa.
‘Kneel up here,’ Danny said, pointing to the first step below the water.
Alex did, carefully. Danny could tell him to rob a bank in this state.
He was light-headed now, the blood gone to his groin. Danny began applying the lube.
‘Ah,’ Alex said, hanging his head.
‘Good?’
‘Yes,’ Alex said.
Danny teased the tip of the plug around in a circle. ‘Want this?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right, relax for me now,’ Danny said.
Alex sighed.
Danny pushed it slowly in a little way, then withdrew it. Then in again, perhaps three-quarters of the way. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes, please.’
In it went, all the way – a slight sting as the widest part went in. Alex made a noise.
It still startled him, that curious sensation of the muscles acting of their own volition to take hold of it, pulling it into place. The deep, strange feeling of intrusion.
‘Come down here.’ Danny coaxed him down onto the next step. Hot water closed over his hips.
A spa jet was shooting right between Alex’s legs. Danny clamped his arms around him from behind. Danny was hard too, snug against Alex’s backside.
Danny closed his hand on Alex. ‘I’ll come,’ Alex warned, ‘in the water.’ This seemed rather disgusting.
‘Good,’ Danny said, and stroked him. ‘Do it.’
Alex did. Some of it went in the water. Some of it exploded all the way out of the water and onto the side of the spa.
‘Now we’re stewing in it.’ Alex felt drunk.
‘Mmm.’ Danny stroked his belly and thighs.
Some time passed.
Danny said warmly, ‘Get out. I want to fuck you.’
‘Yes,’ Alex said, and did.
They dried themselves roughly. Danny’s eyes were black with pupil. He backed Alex into the vanity cabinet and kissed him.
Upstairs in the loft, Danny threw a pillow on the middle of the bed, tore the decorative ribbon off a folded towel, and threw the towel over the pillow.
Alex did not need to be told what to do. He lay face-down over the pillow.
‘There’s a mirror,’ Danny said.
Alex looked. At once he had to look away – it was like being burnt.
‘Look, look,’ Danny said.
Alex could not look directly at himself – at his backside tilted up like that. Danny was long, slim, smooth, dark-eyed. He watched Danny putting the condom on in the mirror, while Danny watched Alex’s face.
Danny climbed over Alex’s hips. It was too much again: Alex turned his face into the duvet. Danny wiggled the plug gently till Alex’s muscles let go, then eased it out part of the way. Then put it back in again. Then wiggled it again, taking it out, then pushing it back in.
Soon the muscles softened and he could pop it in and out easily. Alex gave in and looked again – watched Danny’s elbow moving back and forth.
Danny took the plug out and put it in a tissue on the bedside table. He got over Alex’s thighs again and notched himself in place. Slowly, with their eyes locked together in the mirror, Danny made his cock disappear.
Alex watched himself lift his hips a fraction higher, to get it that last bit deeper.
‘You’re so beautiful.’ Danny abandoned the view in the mirror to plaster himself on Alex’s back, kissing between Alex’s shoulder blades.
In the morning, Alex checked his scanner again. It was still detecting nothing.
He stepped outside in his dressing gown to take the air – or rather, to see if there was a white van in sight. From the front gate there was an unimpeded view uphill to the high street. It was a bright blue day with a mild breeze, and there was no van anywhere.
Alex began making breakfast while Danny was in the shower. Danny emerged presently, drawn by the smell, barefoot and towelling his dark hair. He put his towel over a chair back and looked the provisions over. ‘It’s so much.’
Alex finished putting the mushrooms in the pan. Danny embraced him from behind. ‘You never let me do anything.’
‘You never let me do anything,’ Alex said.
‘Is there something you want to do?’ Danny slid his hand into Alex’s dressing gown.
Abruptly, it was apparent they were talking about sex. This happened so easily with Danny. Before, Alex had never talked about it in all his life.
‘It’s just –’ Alex said. ‘It’s as though I become mesmerised by you. I’m so passive.’
‘Is that bad?’
‘No,’ Alex said. ‘I mean, do you think it’s bad?’
‘No.’ Danny squeezed him.
‘I’m still working it out, I suppose.’ A little of the old shame was rising.
‘As soon as you do, let me know, because I want you to have everything,’ Danny said.
‘I want you to have everything, too,’ Alex said, and turned around to kiss him.
Alex let the bacon burn because they were kissing.
‘Oh, sorry,’ Alex said, turning it over.
‘I’m your kryptonite,’ Danny said.
‘Red kryptonite, maybe.’
‘Which one’s that?’
‘The one that makes him steal sports cars,’ Alex said.
‘I’ll take it,’ Danny said, dimpling.
They went out to walk to the pillboxes. The day continued clear and blue.
From the edge of the cliff you could see the full stretch of the road coming down the hill into town. Alex kept an eye on it as they walked. No white van descended the road. He was increasingly confident the white van was not coming.
Danny stood on the edge of the cliff and flirted with peering down to the narrow chalk-rubble beach below, then reeled back.
Alex was standing on the concrete roof of a pillbox, calculating its position relative to the previous one. ‘They’re three point seven eight one degrees out of line,’ he shouted down to Danny.
Danny decided to join him, and Alex gave him a hand up.
‘Is that important?’ Danny said – shouting a little over the wind.
‘No,’ Alex conceded, and laughed.
Danny was cold, so Alex put his arm around him.
‘If it were dark, we could see Prospero now,’ Alex said.
‘What’s Prospero?’
‘The British satellite?’ Alex said. ‘Went up in 1971, but then the project was cancelled straight afterwards because the UK left the Space Race. People were still contacting it as late as 2004. I used to pretend to write it letters. Because I didn’t have any human friends.’ Alex could see now that this was funny.
‘What did you write about?’ Danny thought it was funny too.
‘Newton’s Laws of Motion.’
‘That sounds quite relevant to a satellite.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
They kissed.
Alex said, ‘I think if I were writing it a letter now, I’d say, Hello, how are you? Guess what? I got laid!’
Danny held onto him to laugh. ‘I hope your friend would approve.’
‘If not, he can sod off,’ Alex said.
Danny squeezed him.
They got down and walked along the cliff edge.
‘Have you been abroad?’ Alex said, though he could guess the answer.
‘No.’ Danny shook his head back like a horse. ‘Is France that way?’ He pointed due south, straight out to sea.
‘No, this way,’ Alex said, pointing southeast. ‘I’ll take you if you want. I’ll take you anywhere.’
‘Stop,’ Danny said, hiding his face in Alex’s shoulder.
‘No,’ Alex said. ‘I won’t.’