The Moon Tunnel

He saw them through a keyhole, that first time. It dated his passion, the shape of that vision – the heavy Victorian lock on the old outbuilding, the clunky key removed, to leave this window into their world.

Summer: 1983.

It had been the dairy once, his mother had said, for the farm which had stood on the bank above. Marco used it for wood, delivered into this treeless landscape by the merchant’s barge. But his boys had oiled the lock, and kept the key between them, securing for themselves a secret place for their childhood games.

But this wasn’t a childhood game.

He’d lost them quickly that day, as he increasingly did, and knew with a sickening certainty that they had contrived an escape. Which meant only one thing, that they were what he hoped they would never be.

But he didn’t have the key, so he knew where they’d be. He’d crept to the woodstore and sat in the grass, soaked in sunshine. At first he’d heard only the whispers: lips pressed to ears, obscuring what meaning there was. Then the sound of clothes slipping to the floor, a zip, a shirt drawn over shoulders and hair. They were out of sight, on the floor and then he heard the sound of a cork, not freshly drawn, but twisted out by hand. But no sound of the wine pouring, just the drinking from the neck, and the smack of a hand passed across wet lips.

The jealousy made him dizzy, so he sank down on his knees and closed his eyes. When he looked again he could see them: and it was worse, their mouths locked and her long pale fingers searching over his dark naked body. Summer: so a single ribbon of sunlight from the missing tiles in the roof crossed their backs, from the muscles of his thigh to the cool curve of her breast. He watched the bodies, moving awkwardly at first, but then with the twin powers of lust and youth.

His own excitement rose, giving him something of his own from their betrayal of him. He touched himself, only briefly, but the release was almost immediate, and although he caught the cry before it broke free he knew he’d made a noise, a whimper for the loss of his self-respect.

Hidden in the stifled cry was a name: Louise.

But they were deaf to the world outside the foetal bundle they had made of each other, the human jigsaw puzzle without a gap. He saw her arch her back when he came, and the redness of her breast darkened amongst the shadows of the woodstore. The silence was luxurious and intense, and he heard his own heart beating within it.

Then, guiltily, he slunk away into the long grass beyond the garden, his passion gone, only to be replaced by the jealousy of Cain.