Believing the Lie

BRYANBARROW CUMBRIA

Ian Cresswell was setting the table for two when his partner arrived home. He himself had taken off early from work, a romantic evening in mind. He’d bought lamb, which was in the oven with a fragrant blanket of seasoned bread crumbs browning over the shoulder of it, and he’d prepared fresh vegetables and a salad. In the fire house, he’d uncorked wine, polished glasses, and moved before the fireplace two chairs and the old oak game table from one corner of the room. It wasn’t quite cold enough for a coal fire although the ancient manor house was always rather chilly, so he lit a bank of candles and fixed them to the cast iron grate, then he lit two more and placed them on the table. As he did so, he heard the kitchen door open, followed by the sound of Kav’s keys being tossed into the chipped chamber pot on the window seat. A moment later Kav’s footsteps crossed the kitchen flagstones, and the squeak of the old range’s door caused Ian to smile. It was Kav’s night to cook, not his, and Kav had just discovered the first surprise.

“Ian?” More footsteps across the slate flagstones and then into and across the hallan. Ian had left the door to the fire house open, and he said, “In here,” and waited.

Kav paused at the doorway. His gaze went from Ian to the table with its candles to the fireplace with its candles to Ian again. His gaze went then from Ian’s face to Ian’s clothes and it lingered exactly where Ian wanted it to linger. But after a moment of the kind of tension that, at one time, would have sent the two of them directly to the bedroom, Kav said, “I had to work with the blokes today. We were shorthanded. I’m filthy. I’ll have a wash and get changed,” and backed out of the room without another word. This was enough to tell Ian that his lover knew what the scene before him presaged. This was also enough to tell Ian what direction their coming conversation was, as usual, going to take. An unspoken message of this kind from Kaveh would at one time have been enough to stymie him, but Ian decided that wouldn’t be the case tonight. Three years of concealment and one year in the open had taught him the value of living as he was meant to live.

It was thirty minutes before Kaveh rejoined him, and despite the fact that the meat was ten minutes out of the oven and the vegetables were well on their way to becoming a culinary disappointment, Ian was determined not to feel affronted by the time it had taken the other man to return. He poured the wine — forty quid for the bottle, not that it mattered, considering the occasion — and he nodded to the two glasses. He picked his own up, said, “It’s a good Bordeaux,” and waited for Kav to join him for a toast. For clearly, Ian thought, Kaveh saw that a toast was Ian’s intention, else why would he be standing there with his glass lifted and an expectant smile on his face?

For a second time, Kav’s gaze took in the table. He said, “Two places? Did she ring you or something?”

“I rang her.” Ian lowered his glass.

“And what?”

“I asked for another night.”

“And she actually cooperated?”

“For once. Aren’t you having some wine, Kav? I got it in Windermere. That wine shop we were in last — ”

“I had words with bloody old George.” Kav inclined his head in the direction of the road. “He caught me on the way in. He’s complaining about the heating again. He said he’s entitled to central heating. Entitled he said.”

“He’s got plenty of coal. Why’s he not using it if the cottage is too cold?”

“He says he doesn’t want a coal fire. He wants central heating. He says if he doesn’t have it, he’s looking for another situation.”

“When he lived here, he didn’t have central heating, for God’s sake.”

“He had the house itself. I think he saw that as compensation.”

“Well, he’s going to have to learn to cope, and if he can’t do that, he’ll have to find another farm to rent. Anyway, I don’t want to spend this evening talking about George Cowley’s grievances against us. The farm was for sale. We bought it. He didn’t. Full stop.”

“You bought it.”

“A technicality soon to be taken care of, I hope, when there’ll be no I. No yours and mine. No me, no you. Only we.” Ian took up the second glass and carried it to Kav. Kav hesitated for a moment. Then he accepted it. “Jesus God, I want you,” Ian said. And then with a smile, “Want to feel how much?”

“Hmmm. No. Let’s let it build.”

“Bastard.”

“I thought that’s how you like it, Ian.”

“First time you’ve smiled since you walked in the door. Tough day?”

“Not really,” Kav said. “Just a lot of work and not enough help. You?”

“No.” They both drank then, eyes on each other. Kav smiled again. Ian moved toward him. Kav moved away. He tried to make it look as if his attention had been caught by the gleam of cutlery or the low bowl of flowers on the table, but Ian wasn’t deceived. What he thought in reaction was what any man would think when he’s twelve years older than his lover and he’s given up everything to be with him.

At twenty-eight there would be any number of reasons Kaveh could give in explanation of why he wasn’t ready to settle down. Ian wasn’t prepared to hear them, however, because he knew there was only one that served as the truth. This truth was a form of hypocrisy, and the presence of hypocrisy was central to every argument they’d had in the last year.

“Know what today is?” Ian asked, raising his glass again.

Kav nodded but he looked chagrined. “Day we met. I’d forgotten. Too much going on up at Ireleth Hall, I think. But then — ” He indicated the table. Ian knew he meant not only the setup but also the trouble he’d gone to with the dinner. “When I saw this, it came to me. And I feel like a bloody wretch, Ian. I’ve nothing for you.”

“Ah. No matter,” Ian told him. “What I want is right here and it’s yours to give.”

“You’ve already got it, haven’t you?”

“You know what I mean.”

Kaveh walked to the window and flicked the heavy closed curtains open a crack as if to check where the daylight had gone to, but Ian knew that he was trying to work out what it was he wanted to say and the thought that he might want to say what Ian didn’t want to hear caused his head to begin its telltale throbbing and a flash of bright stars to course across his vision. He blinked hard as Kaveh spoke.

“Signing a book in a registry office doesn’t make us any more official than we already are.”

“That’s bollocks,” Ian said. “It makes us more than official. It makes us legal. It gives us standing in the community and, what’s more important, it tells the world — ”

“We don’t need standing. We already have it as individuals.”

“ — and what’s more important,” Ian repeated, “it tells the world — ”

“Well that’s just it, isn’t it,” Kaveh said sharply. “The world, Ian. Think about it. The world. And everyone in it.”

Carefully, Ian set his wineglass on the table. He knew he should get the meat and carve it, get the veg and serve them, sit, eat, and let the rest go. Go upstairs afterwards and have each other properly. But on this night of all nights, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything more but say what he’d already said to his partner more than a dozen times and what he’d sworn he wouldn’t say tonight: “You asked me to come out and I did. For you. Not for myself, because it didn’t matter to me and even if it had, there were too many people involved and what I did — for you — was as good as stabbing them through their throats. And that was fine by me because it was what you wanted, and I finally realised — ”

“I know all this.”

“Three years is long enough to hide, you said. You said, ‘Tonight you decide.’ In front of them you said it, Kav, and in front of them I decided. Then I walked out. With you. Have you any idea — ”

“Of course I do. D’you think I’m a stone? I have a bloody idea, Ian. But we’re not talking about just living together, are we? We’re talking about marriage. And we’re talking about my parents.”

“People adjust,” Ian said. “That’s what you told me.”

“People. Yes. Other people. They adjust. But not them. We’ve been through this before. In my culture — their culture — ”

“You’re part of this culture now. All of you.”

“That’s not how it works. One doesn’t just flee to a foreign country, take some magic pill one night, and wake up the next morning with an entirely different system of values. It doesn’t happen that way. And as the only son — the only child, for God’s sake — I have… Oh Christ, Ian, you know all this. Why can’t you be happy with what we have? With how things are?”

“Because how things are is a lie. You’re not my lodger. I’m not your landlord. D’you actually think they’ll believe that forever?”

“They believe what I tell them,” he said. “I live here. They live there. This works and it will continue to work. Anything else, and they won’t understand. They don’t need to know.”

“So that they can do what? Keep presenting you with suitable Iranian teenagers to marry? Fresh off the boat or the plane or whatever and eager to give your parents grandbabies?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“It’s happening already. How many have they arranged for you to meet so far? A dozen? More? And at what point do you just cave in and marry because you can’t take the pressure from them any longer and you start to feel your duty too much and then what do you expect to have? One life here and another in Manchester, her down there — whoever she is — waiting for the babies and me up here and… goddamn it, look at me.” Ian wanted to kick the table over, sending the crockery flying and the cutlery spinning across the floor. Something was building within him, and he knew an explosion was on its way. He headed for the door, for the hallan that would take him to the kitchen and from there outside.

Kaveh’s voice was sharper when he said, “Where’re you going?”

“Out. The lake. Wherever. I don’t know. I just need to get out.”

“Come on, Ian. Don’t be this way. What we have — ”

“What we have is nothing.”

“That isn’t true. Come back and I’ll show you.”

But Ian knew where showing you would lead, which was where showing you always led, which was to a place having nothing to do with the change he sought. He left the house without looking back.

EN ROUTE TO BRYANBARROW CUMBRIA

Tim Cresswell slouched in the back seat of the Volvo. He tried to close his ears to the sound of his little sister begging their mother once again to let them live with her. “Please please extra pretty please, Mummy” was the way she put it. She was, Tim knew, trying to charm their mother into thinking she was actually missing something without her children in constant attendance. Not that anything Gracie might say or the way she might say it would do any good. Niamh Cresswell had no intention of allowing them to live with her in Grange-over-Sands. She had fish to fry that had nothing to do with any responsibility she might feel towards her offspring. Tim wanted to tell Gracie this, but what was the point? She was ten years old and too young to understand the workings of pride, loathing, and revenge.

“I hate Daddy’s house,” Gracie was adding in hopeful good measure. “There’re spiders everywhere. It’s dark and creaky and full of draughts and it’s got all these corners where there’re cobwebs and things. I want to live with you, Mummy. Timmy does ’s well.” She squirmed round in her seat. “You want to live with Mummy ’s well, don’t you, Timmy?”

Don’t call me Timmy, you stupid twit, was what Tim actually wanted to say to his sister, but he couldn’t ever get mad at Gracie when she looked at him with that expression of trusting love on her face. When he saw it, though, he wanted to tell her to harden up. The world was a shit hole, and he couldn’t understand why she hadn’t yet worked that out.

Tim saw that his mother was watching him in the rear view mirror, waiting to hear how he would answer his sister. He curled his lip and turned to the window, thinking that he could almost not blame his father for dropping the bomb that had destroyed their lives. His mother was a real piece of work, she was.

The bloody cow was acting true to character, even now, all pretence about why they were heading back to Bryan Beck farm. What she didn’t know was that he’d picked up the phone in the kitchen the exact same moment she’d taken up the phone in her bedroom, so he’d heard it all: his father’s voice asking would she mind keeping the kids another night and his mother’s voice agreeing to do so. Pleasantly agreeing, for once, which should have told his father something was up, because it certainly told Tim as much. So he was unsurprised when his mother came out of the bedroom less than ten minutes later dressed to the nines and breezily told him to pack up because his father had phoned and he and Gracie had to go back to the farm earlier that evening than usual.

“Something nice he has planned for you,” she said. “He didn’t say what. So get yourselves together. Be quick about it.”

She went on to search for her car keys, which Tim realised he should have pinched. Not for his own sake, but for Gracie’s. She damn well deserved another night with their mother if that’s what she wanted.

She was saying, “See, there’s not even enough hot water for a proper bath, Mummy. And the water trickles out and it’s brown and disgusting. Not like your house where I c’n have bubbles. I do so like bubbles. Mummy, why can’t we live with you?”

“You know very well,” Niamh Cresswell finally said.

“No, I don’t,” countered Gracie. “Most kids live with their mums when their parents get divorced. They live with their mums and they visit their dads. And you got bedrooms for us anyways.”

“Gracie, if you want so much to have all the details about the situation, you can ask your father why it’s different for you two.”

Oh right, Tim thought. Like Dad was actually going to give Gracie the facts on why they lived on some creeped-out farm in some creeped-out house on the edge of a creeped-out village where there was nothing to do on a Saturday night or a Sunday afternoon but smell the cow shit, listen to the sheep, or — and this would be if one was truly lucky — chase the village ducks from their stupid duck house and their holding pen into the stream across the lane. Bryanbarrow was the end of nowhere, but it was just perfect for their father’s new life. And about that life… Gracie didn’t understand. She wasn’t meant to. She was meant to think that they took in lodgers, only there was only one, Gracie, and after you go to bed where do you think he really sleeps and in what bed exactly and what do you think they do there when the door is closed?

Tim tore at the back of his hand. He dug in his nails till he broke the skin and felt tiny crescents of blood bubbles form. His face was a blank, he knew, because he’d perfected that expression of absolutely nothing going on in his head. That and the hands and the damage he could do to them and his overall appearance kept him where he wanted to be, which was far away from other people and far away from everything else. His efforts had succeeded, even, in getting him out of the local comprehensive. Now he attended a special school near Ulverston, which was miles and miles and miles from his father’s house — all the better to cause a mind-boggling inconvenience to him every day, naturally — and miles upon miles from his mother’s house and that was the way he wanted it because there, near Ulverston, no one knew the truth of what had happened in his life and he needed it that way.

Tim watched the passing scenery, silent. The drive from Grange-over-Sands to his father’s farm spun them north in the fading daylight, up through the Lyth Valley. There the landscape was patchwork: paddocks and pastures that were the green of shamrocks and emeralds and that, like a wave, rolled into the distance to swell up to the fells. On these, great outcroppings of slate and limestone burst forth, with grey scree fanning out beneath them. Between the pastures and the fells stood groups of woodland, alders that were yellow with the autumn and oaks and maples that were gold and red. And here and there erupted buildings that marked the farms: great hulking stone barns and slate-fronted houses with chimneys from which wood smoke curled.

Some miles along, the landscape altered as the wide Lyth Valley began to close in. With that closure came the advent of woods, and the leaves from their trees banked the road, which began to wind between drystone walls. It had started to rain now, but when didn’t it rain in this part of the world? This part of the world was known for its rain, and the result was moss thickly growing on the stones of the walls, ferns shoving themselves out of crevices, and lichens underfoot and on the bark of the trees.

“It’s raining,” Gracie said unnecessarily. “I hate that old house when it rains, Mummy. Don’t you, Timmy? It’s horrible there, all dark and damp and creepy and horrible.”

No one replied. Gracie dropped her head. Their mother made the turn into the lane that would take them up to Bryanbarrow, quite as if Gracie had not spoken at all.

The road here was narrow, and it proceeded upwards in a series of hairpin bends that carved a route through woodland of birch and chestnut trees. They passed Lower Beck farm and a disused field that was thick with bracken; they coursed along Bryan Beck itself, crossed it twice, climbed a bit more, and finally swung into the approach to the village, which lay below them, nothing much more than the juncture of four lanes giving onto a green. That it had a public house, a primary school, a village hall, a Methodist chapel, and a C of E church made it a gathering place of sorts. But only on evenings and Sunday mornings, and even then those gathered in the village either drank or prayed.

Gracie began to cry as they crept over the stone bridge. She said, “Mummy, I hate it here. Mummy. Please.”

But her mother said nothing, and Tim knew she wouldn’t. There were certainly feelings to consider in this matter of where Tim and Gracie Cresswell would live, but the feelings were not those of Tim and Gracie Cresswell. That was the way it was and the way it would be, at least till Niamh gave up the ghost or finally just gave up, whichever came first. And Tim wondered about this last, he did. It seemed that hate could kill a person, although when he thought about it, hate hadn’t yet killed him so perhaps it wouldn’t kill his mother either.

Unlike so many farms in Cumbria, which maintained a distance from villages and hamlets, Bryan Beck farm sat just at the edge of the village, and it comprised an ancient Elizabethan manor house, an equally ancient barn, and an even more ancient cottage. Beyond these the farm’s pastures opened up, and in these grazed sheep, although they were not the property of Tim’s father but rather belonged to a farmer who rented the land from him. They lent the farm “an authentic look,” Tim’s father liked to say, and were in keeping with “the tradition of the Lakes,” whatever that was supposed to mean. Ian Cresswell was no bloody farmer and as far as Tim was personally concerned, the stupid sheep were a great deal safer with his father keeping his distance from them.

By the time Niamh had pulled the Volvo into the drive, Gracie was in full blub mode. She seemed to think if she sobbed loud enough, their mother would turn the car around and take them back to Grange-over-Sands instead of what she had planned, which was to give them the boot just to mind-fuck their father and then dash off to Milnthorpe to body-fuck her poor twit of a boyfriend in the kitchen of his stupid Chinese takeaway.

“Mummy! Mummy!” Gracie was crying. “His car’s not even here. I’m scared to go inside if his car’s not here ’cause he’s not home and — ”

“Grace, stop it this instant,” Niamh snapped. “You’re acting like a two-year-old. He’s gone to the shops, that’s all. There’re lights on in the house and the other car’s here. I expect you can work out what that means.”

She wouldn’t say the name, naturally. She might have added, “Your father’s lodger is at home,” with that nasty emphasis that communicated volumes. But that would be to acknowledge Kaveh Mehran’s existence, which she had no intention of doing. She did say, “Timothy,” meaningfully, and inclined her head towards the house. This meant he was to drag Gracie from the car and march her through the garden gate to the door because Niamh didn’t intend to do it.

He shoved his door open. He tossed his rucksack over the low stone wall and then jerked open his sister’s door. He said, “Out,” and grabbed her arm.

She shrieked, “No!” and “I won’t!” and began to kick.

Niamh unfastened Gracie’s safety belt and said, “Stop making a scene. The whole village will think I’m killing you.”

“I don’t care! I don’t care!” Gracie sobbed. “I want to go with you, Mummy!”

“Oh, for the love of God.” Then Niamh was out of the car as well, but not to help Tim manage his sister. Instead, she grabbed up Gracie’s rucksack, opened it, and threw it over the wall. It landed — this was a mercy at least — on Gracie’s trampoline, where its contents spilled out into the rain. Among those contents was Gracie’s favourite doll, not one of those hideously misshapen fantasy women with feet in the wear-high-heels position and nippleless tits at attention but a baby doll so scarily realistic that to toss it out to land on its head in the middle of a trampoline should have been considered child abuse.

At this Gracie screamed. Tim shot his mother a look. Niamh said, “What did you expect me to do?” And then to Gracie, “If you don’t want it ruined, I suggest you fetch it.”

Gracie was out of the car in a flash. She was into the garden and up onto the trampoline and cradling her doll, still weeping, only now her tears mixed with the falling rain. Tim said to his mother, “Nice one, that.”

She said, “Talk to your father about it.”

That was, of course, her answer to everything. Talk to your father, as if he, who he was, and what he’d done comprised the excuse for every rotten thing Niamh Cresswell did.

Tim slammed the door and turned away. He went into the garden while behind him he heard the Volvo take off, bearing his mother to wherever because he didn’t much care. She could fuck whatever loser she wanted to fuck, as far as he was concerned.

In front of him, Gracie sat howling on her trampoline. Had it not been raining, she would have jumped upon it, wearing herself out, because that’s what she did and she did it every day, just as what he did was what he did and he did it every day as well.

He scooped up his rucksack and watched her for a moment. Pain in the arse, she was, but she didn’t deserve what she’d been handed. He went over to the trampoline and reached for her rucksack. “Gracie,” he said, “let’s go inside.”

“I’m not,” she said. “I’m not, I’m not.” She clutched her doll to her bosom, which caused a little tear in Tim’s own chest.

He couldn’t remember the doll’s name. He said, “Look, I’ll check for spiders, Gracie, and I’ll get rid of cobwebs. You can put… whatsername… in her cot — ”

“Bella. She’s called Bella,” Gracie sniffed.

“All right. Bella-she’s-called-Bella. You can put Bella-she’s-called-Bella in her cot and I’ll… I’ll brush your hair. Okay? The way you like it. I’ll do it up the way you like it.”

Gracie looked at him. She rubbed her arm over her eyes. Her hair, which was a source of unending pride for her, was getting wet and soon enough it would be frizzy and unbrushable. She fingered a long and luxurious lock of it. She said, “French braids?” so hopefully that he couldn’t deny her.

He sighed. “All right. French braids. But you got to come now, or I won’t.”

“’Kay.” She scooted to the edge of the trampoline and handed him Bella-she’s-called-Bella. He stowed the doll headfirst into Gracie’s rucksack and carried this along with his to the house. Gracie followed, scuffling her feet in the gravel on the garden path.

Everything changed when they got inside, though. They went in through the kitchen at the east side of the house, where a roast of some kind stood on the top of the primitive range in the fireplace, its juices congealing in the pan beneath it. A pot next to this pan held sprouts gone cold. A salad was wilting on the draining board. Tim and Gracie hadn’t had their dinner, but by the look of things here, neither had their father.

“Ian?”

Tim felt his insides harden at the sound of Kaveh Mehran’s voice. Cautious, it was. A little tense?

Tim said roughly, “No. It’s us.”

A pause. Then, “Timothy? Gracie?” as if it might actually be someone else mimicking his voice, Tim thought. There was noise from the fire house, something being dragged across the flagstones and onto the carpet, a bleak “What a mess,” and Tim experienced a wonderful moment in which he understood they’d probably had a fight — his dad and Kaveh going after each other’s jugular with blood everywhere and wouldn’t that be a treat. He headed towards the fire house. Gracie followed.

To Tim’s disappointment, all was well within. No overturned furniture, no blood, no guts. The noise had come from Kaveh dragging the heavy old games table from in front of the fireplace back to where it belonged. He looked down-in-the-mouth, though, and that was enough for Gracie to forget that she herself was a walking emotional smash-up. She hurried over to the bloke straightaway.

“Oh, Kaveh,” she cried. “Is something wrong?” whereupon the bugger dropped onto the sofa, shook his head, and put his face in his hands.

Gracie sat on the sofa next to Kaveh and put her arm round his shoulders. “Won’t you tell me?” she asked him. “Please tell me, Kaveh.”

But Kaveh said nothing.

Obviously, Tim thought, he and their dad had had an argument of some sort and their dad had taken off in a temper. Good, he decided. He hoped they both were suffering. If his dad drove off the side of a cliff, that would be excellently fine by him.

“Has something happened to your mummy?” Gracie was asking Kaveh. She even smoothed the bloke’s greasy hair. “Has something happened to your dad? C’n I get you a cup of tea, Kaveh? Does your head hurt? D’you have a tummy ache?”

Well, Tim thought, Gracie was taken care of. Her own cares forgotten, she’d bustle round playing nurse. He dropped her rucksack inside the fire house door and himself crossed to the room’s other door, where a small square hall offered an uneven staircase to the first floor of the house.

His laptop occupied a rickety desk beneath the window in his bedroom, and the window itself looked out on the front garden and the village green beyond it. It was nearly dark now and the rain was coming down in sheets. The wind had picked up, piling the leaves from the maples beneath benches on the green and tossing them helter-skelter into the street. Lights were on in the terrace of houses across the green, and in the ramshackle cottage where George Cowley lived with his son, Tim could see movement behind a thin curtain. He watched for a moment — a man and his son and it looked to him like they were conversing but what did he know, really, of what was going on — and then he turned to his computer.

He logged on. The connection was slow. It was like waiting for water to freeze. Below him, he could hear the murmur of Gracie’s voice and in a moment the sound of the stereo being turned on. She was thinking that music would make Kaveh feel better. Tim couldn’t think why, as music did sod-all for him.

Finally. He got onto his e-mail and checked for messages. There was one especially that he sought. He’d been waiting anxiously to see how things were going to develop, and there was no way he could have assessed this from his mother’s laptop. Absolutely no way.

Toy4You had finally made the proposition that Tim had been angling for. He read it over and thought for a while. It was little enough to ask for what Tim expected to get in return, so he typed the message he’d been waiting to type these many weeks of playing Toy4You along.

Yeah, but if I do it, I need something in return.

He hit send and couldn’t help smiling. He knew exactly what he wanted in exchange for the favour that was being asked of him.

LAKE WINDERMERE CUMBRIA

Ian Cresswell had cooled off long before he reached the lake, as reaching the lake necessitated a twenty-minute drive. But the cooling off only applied to Ian’s need to explode. The feelings beneath that need had not changed, and betrayal was first among them.

Our situations are different didn’t appease Ian any longer. It had been fine at first. He’d been so besotted with Kav that the fact that the younger man might not himself do what he’d successfully demanded of Ian had barely registered in Ian’s mind. It had been enough to walk out of the house in the company of Kaveh Mehran. It had been enough to leave behind his wife and his children in order — he declared to himself, to Kaveh, and to them, for God’s sake — to finally and openly be who he was. No more slithering off to Lancaster, no more nameless groping and nameless fucking and feeling the momentary relief of taking part in an act that was, for once, not such a miserable chore. He’d done that for years in the belief that protecting others from what he’d admitted to himself when it was too late to do anything about it was more important than owning himself as he knew now he was meant to be owned. Kaveh had taught him that. Kaveh had said, “It’s them or it’s me,” and had knocked on the door and walked into the house and said, “Do you tell them or do I tell them, Ian?” and instead of saying Who the hell are you and what’re you doing here? Ian had heard himself make the declaration and out he’d walked, leaving Niamh to explain to the kids if she cared to explain, and he wondered now what the hell he’d been thinking, what sort of madness had overcome him, whether he had actually been suffering from a mental disease of one kind or another.

He wondered this not because he didn’t love Kaveh Mehran and still wanted him in a manner that felt like a form of insane obsession. He wondered it because he hadn’t stopped to consider what that moment had done to them all. And he wondered it because he hadn’t stopped to consider what it might mean if Kaveh didn’t do the same for Ian as Ian had done for him.

To Ian, Kaveh’s making the declaration seemed simple enough and far less damaging than what Ian had done. Oh, he understood that Kav’s parents were foreigners, but they were foreigners in culture and religion only. They’d lived in Manchester for

more than a decade so they were hardly adrift in an ethnic sea of which they had no understanding. It had been more than a year now that they’d lived together — he and Kaveh — and it was time for Kaveh to speak the truth about what he and Ian Cresswell were to each other. The fact that Kaveh could not embrace that simple fact and share it with his parents… The unfairness of it all made Ian rail.

That need to rail was what he wanted to get out of his system. For he well knew that railing would accomplish exactly nothing.

The gates stood open at Ireleth Hall when he arrived, which generally meant that someone was visiting. Ian didn’t want to

see that someone or anyone else, however, so instead of heading towards the medieval house that loomed above the lake, he took a side route that led directly down to the water and to the stone boathouse built on its shore.

Here he kept his scull. It was sleek, low in the water, tricky to climb into from the stone dock that ran round three sides of the boathouse’s dim interior, and just as tricky to climb out of. This trickiness was intensified at the moment by the lack of illumination in the boathouse itself. Generally the light provided by the waterside doorway was sufficient, but the day had been overcast in the first place and now it was getting dark. That, however, couldn’t be allowed to matter because Ian needed to be out on the lake, digging the hatchet blades into the water, increasing his speed and burning his muscles, till the sweat pouring from him allowed him to experience nothing but effort alone.

He untied the scull’s dock line and held the shell close to the dock’s edge. There were three stone steps into the water not far from the lakeside entry to the boathouse, but he’d found that using them was risky. Over time the lake water had encouraged algae to grow upon them, and no one had cleaned the steps in years. Ian could have done it easily enough, but only when he used the scull did he actually think about the matter of seeing to the steps, and when he used the scull it was generally because he needed to use it and he needed to use it as soon as possible.

This evening was no different. With the dock line in one hand and the other on the gunwale of the shell to hold it steady, he lowered himself gingerly into the scull, balancing his weight precariously so that he didn’t flip the craft and fling himself into the water. He sat. He coiled the line and placed it into the bow. He fixed his feet into the stretchers and he pushed off from the dock. He was facing outward so it was a simple matter to ease the scull towards the archway and onto the lake.

The rain, which had begun during his drive to Ireleth Hall, was falling more determinedly now and had he not wanted to work the tension out of his body, Ian knew he would not have continued at that point. But rain was a small matter and it wasn’t raining as hard as it could. Besides, he didn’t intend to be out that long. Just for the time it took him to send himself flying over the water north in the direction of Windermere. When he’d worked up enough sweat, he’d return to the boathouse.

He fixed the long oars into their rectangular locks. He adjusted the position of the looms. He gave an experimental movement of his legs to ensure that the seat ran smoothly on its slides and then he was ready to set out. Less than ten seconds saw him some distance from the boathouse and heading to the centre of the lake.

From there, he could see the shape of Ireleth Hall with its tower, its gables, and its many chimneys telling the tale of the centuries that had gone into its making. Lights shone from the drawing room’s bay windows and from the first-floor bedroom of the owners of the place. On the south side of the building the massive geometrical shapes of the topiary garden — gloomy against the evening sky — rose above the stone walls that enclosed them, and some one hundred yards away from this and partly hidden from Ireleth Hall itself, more lights poured from every floor of another tower, twin to the structure that was the earliest part of Ireleth Hall but in this case a folly built to resemble the stern and square pele towers of Cumbria and used to house one of the most useless females that Ian Cresswell had ever encountered.

He turned from the sight of the hall, the tower, and the topiary garden, country home of his uncle, a man whom he loved but did not understand. “I accept you so you must accept me,” Bernard Fairclough had said to him, “because we all live lives of accommodation.”

Ian wondered about this, however, just as he wondered about debts to be paid and to whom such payment needed to go. It was one other thing on his mind this evening. It was one other thing that kept him out on the water.

The lake was not a lonely place. Because of its size — the largest body of water in Cumbria — a few small towns and villages sprang up intermittently on its shores, and in scattered areas within the rest of the undeveloped landscape the occasional slate-fronted house stood, either a country home long ago converted into a high-priced hotel or a private domicile that usually spoke of a well-heeled individual with the funds to live in more than one place because as autumn gave way to winter, the lakes became unwelcoming to those who weren’t prepared for heavy wind and snow.

Thus, Ian felt no sense of isolation out on the water. True, he was the only one rowing at the moment, but there was comfort along the shore where boats used by members of a local club and boats, kayaks, canoes, and sculls belonging to inhabitants of the lakeside houses had not yet been removed from the water for the coming winter.

He couldn’t have said how long he rowed. It couldn’t have been long, he thought, as it didn’t seem as if he’d gained much distance. He’d not yet come upon the Beech Hill Hotel, from which he’d be able to see clearly the hulk of Belle Isle lying low in the water. That usually marked the halfway point of his workout, but he realised he must have been more exhausted than he thought from his discussion with Kaveh because he found his muscles were growing weary, telling him it was time for turning back.

He sat for a moment, still, unmoving. He could hear traffic noises from the A592, which ran along the east shore of the lake. But aside from the rain hitting the water and against his windcheater, that was it. Birds were abed, and everyone of sense was indoors.

Ian breathed deeply. A shiver shuddered through him, someone walking on his grave, he thought wryly. Either that or the weather, which was far more likely. Even in the rain, he caught the scent of wood smoke from a chimney nearby and in his mind he pictured a warming blaze, himself in front of it with his legs stretched out, and next to him Kaveh. In a similar chair, holding in his hand a similar glass of wine, taking part in a desultory end-of-day conversation of the kind millions of couples had in millions of homes all over the planet.

That, he told himself, was what he wanted. That and the peace that came with it. It didn’t seem so much to ask: just a life moving forward as other lives did.

Some minutes passed in this way: with limited sounds, Ian at rest, the scull moving gently with the rhythm of the water. Had it not been raining, he might even have dozed. But as it was, he was becoming progressively wetter and it was time to head back to the boathouse.

He reckoned he’d been on the water for more than an hour, and it was in complete darkness that he made his final approach to the shore. By this time, trees were mere shapes on the land: angular conifers as solid as standing stones, wispier birches line-drawn against the sky and among them maples with palmate leaves trembling as the rain beat upon them. A path among them led down to the boathouse, a fanciful structure when seen from the water, for even now despite the weather and the hour, the shape of it formed a mass of crenellation, slate, and limestone and its weatherside doorway rose in a gothic arch more suitable to a church than to a shelter for boats.

The light had burned out above this doorway, Ian saw. It should have come on with the fall of darkness, illuminating the exterior of the boathouse even if it did little enough to shed light on the building’s insides. But where a yellow glow would have — at least in better weather — attracted moths, there was nothing at all. Along with the algae on the jetty steps, it was something else to be seen to.

He aimed for the arched opening and glided within. The boathouse was nowhere near the main house, nor was it near the tower folly, so there was nothing — no hint of distant light — to break the gloom, and the darkness was absolute. There were three other craft stored there. A well-used fishing rowingboat, a speedboat, and a canoe of uncertain vintage and even more uncertain seaworthiness were tied up haphazardly along the front and the right side of the dock. It was necessary to work one’s way among them to get back to the far end where the scull had been tied, and Ian was able to do this by feel, although he caught his hand between the rowingboat and the scull and he swore as the fiberglass of one smashed his knuckles into the wood of the other.

The same thing happened against the stone dock, and he felt the blood this time. He said, “Goddamn,” and pressed his knuckles against his side for a moment. The damn things hurt like the dickens and told him that whatever else he did, he needed to do it with care.

There was a torch in his car, and he had enough sense of humour remaining to congratulate himself for having left it there where it would do him absolutely no bloody good. More carefully this time, he reached out for the dock, found it, and then sought the cleat to tie up the scull. At least, he thought, he could make a cleat hitch in light or in dark, in rain or in shine. He did so and released his feet from the stretchers. Then he shifted his weight and reached for the dock to heave himself up and out of the shell.

As these things do, it happened when the balance of his weight was on a single stone of the dock and his body was momentarily arched out of the scull and over the water. The stone that should have taken his weight — and now apparently too long in place on the dock to do so — became dislodged. He fell forward, and the scull — tied only at its bow — shot backwards. Down he went into the frigid water.

On his way, however, his head slammed into the slate from which the dock had long ago been fashioned. He was unconscious when he hit the water, and within a few minutes he was also dead.