9. Aug, 2020

'Well Met'

My brother had a new partner and pronounced himself very happy.  I was glad because he had been alone for some time now, still socialising as hard as ever, with himself if nobody else was available for company.  I felt that he was tipping, that alcohol was winning over his control of it.  Everything about him was fatter, his cheeks cherubic and always heatedly pink.  He sweated easily now and since he had formerly been fastidious, this was unusual to see.  When he told me over the phone, so joyously, about Alec, this fascinating, fun young man he had met, who had now moved in, I was pleased and hoped things would last this time.  It didn’t surprise me that his lover had moved in so quickly.  'If it works, it works,' had always been Kit’s motto.  If it didn’t, he was quick to end things and move on.  I wondered if he realised himself that he looked older and as middle-aged as he was, or still felt gilded by the youthfulness he had retained for many more years than most.  Kit maintained a high octane personality of effusive vitality, so it was hard to tell.

When I arrived as invited to meet Alec and spend the evening with them, it was soon clear that this time in a relationship of Kit’s, the boot was on the other foot.

“Come in, come in, Ste!” he greeted me, with a warm embrace.  Kit had never departed from our childhood diminutives, however much our parents had done their best to maintain our Christophers and Stevens in full.  “Ste - this - is Alec!” he announced, with verbal fanfare.

Alec was boyish figured, with a crest of dark hair sporting a peroxide streak and perfectly manicured eyebrows in a smooth-skinned face.  I soon found that I didn’t care for the way he looked at Kit, which became particularly apparent over the evening meal.

Kit was rattling off cattily amusing anecdotes, as was his habit, but Alec looked at him steadily with a possessive, pressuring expression. It was as though he might choose stop Kit in his tracks at any time with a rebuke or a put down, some reminder that Kit was required to be hyper-aware of the need to please Alec above all - not put him out by being embarrassing or deemed inappropriate in some way.  Former lovers had been indulgent audiences for Kit’s intelligent wit and story-telling, whereas Alec was a demanding one.  He had a moody, difficult air and looked ever ready to turn sulky, awkward, be a table-turner.  I wasn’t sure why I thought this so strongly, perhaps it was in the way Kit kept throwing Alec glances, as if to check he was still in good graces.  Wine had started to flow but Alec put a stop to it.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough, Kit?” he asked.  “You know how you get.”

Kit roared with laughter, and turned to me as if it were the biggest joke in the world and, although I had been anxious for Kit in this regard myself, I didn’t like it.

“How does he get, Alec?” I asked.

Alec didn’t look at me, continuing to pin Kit down with his eyes instead.

“He gets how I don’t like him.  Don’t you, Kit?” he said.

There was something of a threat in his tone and in the cool gaze of his pretty, thickly lashed eyes.  Kit’s laughter died a little awkwardly and he put the next bottle of wine he had been about to open down again.

“All right,” he said and he flicked an odd glance at me, eyes lowered, a plea for me not to say any more, I understood.

This wasn’t like my brother, for whom an opportunity to be shockingly over the top and more party animal than anybody else was never previously passed up.  He would enjoy pushing the boat out and encouraging everybody else to do so with him.  He was, or always had been, an out all nighter, in the thick of it.  It would be a shame if Alec, while being a good influence, doused him altogether, I thought.

I couldn’t see what Kit found so enthralling about Alec because apart from the looks, which Kit obviously found very sexually attractive in him, he seemed to me to be playing on being petulant and spoiled while gaining the upper hand.  Still, it wasn’t any of my business.  After dinner, Kit had an announcement to make.

“You’ll never believe it, Ste, but I’ve finally tied the knot!  Alec and I got married a month ago.”  He gave his new spouse a shy smile, seeking approval to have shared this wonder, the marvel that this beautiful boy had married him.  “Just a little ceremony by ourselves,” said Kit.

“What?  Why didn’t you have a proper wedding?” I exclaimed, finding it hard to believe that such a prime excuse for a fine shebang had been let to pass by my brother.  “I could have been best man!  Mum and Dad would have loved it!”

“Alec hasn’t got any family, you see, so that would have been hard for him,” said Kit, caressing the back of Alec’s hand, which was laid flat on the table beside him.

“Oh,” I said, looking at Alec, sitting there so self-contained and indifferent to me as Kit’s brother that I found this sensitivity hard to credit.  “Well. Congratulations,” I offered.

I went to give my brother a big hug.  Alec rose but when I turned to him, there was only the offer of a hand to shake and a smooth cheek turned for a kiss on it.  I can’t say that I minded.  He went out of the room and came back with several packets of pills and a glass of water, which he passed to Kit.

“What’s all that?” I asked.

“Heart meds and vitamins,” Kit answered.  “Things were a bit on the blink.  Too much partying!” he winked, with a return of the old bumptious Kit bounciness.

“You needn’t worry,” said Alec, putting the hand of ownership on my brother’s shoulder.  “He’s got me to look after him now.”

It was when I left later on, after only another hour or so during which I began to feel very much in the way, that I found myself, on going, not happy for Kit but worried for him.  His middle age, so long resisted, seemed to be being imposed on him and I had had no idea before of any health problems.  My big brother, always so full of beans, seemed indestructible.  He saw me out. Then the the porch light fell on his face, where I thought I saw for the first time, around the eye socket and on his cheekbone, what could almost have been the faint shadow of a bruise.  Alec was hovering behind, as delicate a presence as a pondskater on water but nonetheless there, so I didn’t say anything except, “If you ever need me, Kit, you will ring me, won’t you?”

“My dear Ste!” he exclaimed, with his best, theatrically carrying laugh.  “When have I ever needed anyone?  Except, of course, Alec, now.  I couldn’t do without you could I, darling?”

Behind him, boy-man Alec pouted a little, as if he were a person being kept only just this side of argument, a thing for which constant fine tuning was needed.  I left to drive away feeling uneasy but there was nothing, of course, that I could do about it.  I had never seen Kit under anybody’s thumb before but it seemed to me that this was the unlikely case here, despite the evident adoration he had for his very new partner.

I would wish, later, that I had done more, because Kit died of heart failure less than six months later, during which time I hadn’t seen him.  His house and his money naturally went to his grieving young husband, who had kept the death and the  funeral as secretly private as their wedding until after the event but none of us could have gone to it anyway due to the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.

It was perfectly possible that Kit had developed heart trouble and had died of that, except that I didn’t believe it but Kit had been cremated and I had assured my parents, to spare them, that he had been very happy indeed with Alec, and so, again, there was nothing, very sadly, that I could do about it.