A Quiet Kind of Thunder(19)

He relaxes, the familiar beam reappearing. Great. Ready to start? Oh! He raises his finger and then jumps up. Popcorn. Be right back.

Popcorn. The way he put up his finger as his face pinged like a microwave. He’s so adorable. Oh God, I think I love him.

I stand up to look around the room, stepping towards a family portrait above the fireplace. Rhys, who must be about ten or eleven in the picture, is standing between two other boys – one older, one younger – and in front of his parents. They look like the perfect family, standing all proud together. I find family portraits of nuclear families fascinating.

I decide that Rhys doesn’t look much like either his mother or his father, though he is almost identical to his older brother. They have the same grin and the same warm, slightly mischievous eyes.

I hear the sound of Rhys returning and I glance behind me to smile, hoping it won’t look weird that I’m just standing here staring at a photo of his family. You look a lot like your brother, I say.

Rhys is holding a giant bowl of popcorn, so he shrugs and smiles rather than reply, putting the bowl on the floor between our cushions and then coming to stand beside me.

Aled’s at university, he explains now his hands are free. I nod, remembering that he told me that a couple of weeks ago. Edinburgh. Pharmacy, like my dad.

Your dad’s a pharmacist?

He nods. Mum is too. That’s how they met.

Your dad is from Guyana, right? I have to fingerspell Guyana and I get it wrong, adding in at least one extra A, feeling my face warm.

But he smiles, patient, and fingerspells it correctly for me. Yes.

Have you ever been there?

Just once a couple of years ago. We visited my grandparents. I want to go back one day, though. He grins. Shall we watch the film?

I nod quickly, hoping I haven’t asked too many annoying questions. We sit together on our little cushion fort and I reach for a handful of popcorn so I have something to do with my hands. Rhys presses the remote and the film starts with the sound of typewriter keys click-clacking, staccato and tense. I worry then that Atonement isn’t the best film to watch with a deaf friend. For one thing, it’s the atmospheric kind of film that uses the score like dialogue, filling in the long silences between characters with explanatory mood music. Is the closed captioning enough? I watch Rhys’s face, trying to read him from my peripheral vision. Does he know what he’s missing? I wonder. Does he mind? But then I turn back to the screen and realize I’ve missed a whole chunk of the opening because I’d been worrying about Rhys missing something. There’s irony for you.

I try to settle myself into the film, but I’m so aware of Rhys beside me that I don’t do a very good job of it. He is calm and still, his shoulders relaxed and his head slightly tilted. Every time he reaches for some popcorn, my heart goes zip, because maybe this is the time he reaches for my hand, maybe . . .

But of course he doesn’t, because I am Steffi. I am not Meg.

We don’t talk during the whole film. When the library sex scene happens – which I had completely forgotten about until the moment the library door opens on-screen and my entire body heats up twenty degrees – we both studiously avoid even looking at each other. When the horses are shot on the beach, I have to hold in tears, and I turn my head slightly away from Rhys so he won’t see. Maybe this wasn’t the best choice of film for us to watch together – so heavy and intense – but it’s too late now.

When the credits roll, Rhys turns to me, his expression open and expectant. Did you like it?

Yes. Actually, I feel emotionally drained. I’m working hard not to act as grief-stricken as I actually feel.

How did it compare to the book?

I hesitate, trying to articulate my thoughts in my own head before I even think of translating them into the language we share. It’s a very good . . . I flail, stopping mid-sentence. I have no idea what ‘adaptation’ is in BSL. Film, I finish helplessly.

Better than the book?

No, as good. Different.

Are you OK?

Yes! Why?

I can read faces. It’s what I do. Sad?

I think carefully, hands poised. The thing with having limited BSL skills is that it forces you to condense complex emotions into their simplest form in order to communicate them. It made my heart hurt.

He smiles. For a crazy moment I think he’s going to take my hand, but instead he uses his own to tell me that he knows what I mean, that he feels the same.

‘DINNER!’ an unexpected voice bellows from behind me, and I pretty much jump out of my skin.

Rhys scowls, groans, then rolls his eyes. Sorry, he says to me.

‘Hi!’ the voice comes again and I turn reluctantly. The voice belongs to a teenage boy who must be Rhys’s brother Alfie. Small for a thirteen-year-old and skinny, with a crop of messy dark hair, he is balancing on the ends of his toes and absently hopping from foot to foot, like there is too much of him to contain. ‘Are you Rhys’s girlfriend?’

Rhys, who has got to his feet, takes a swipe at him and Alfie dodges, grinning. Ducking his head under Rhys’s aloft arm, he crosses his eyes at me. ‘Are you?’

‘No,’ I say.

‘Aw.’ He looks disappointed. He turns to Rhys and they begin a blisteringly fast conversation, hands and faces in constant motion. It’s both impressive and impenetrable. I realize just how slow Rhys has to be when we’re talking and it makes me feel a little embarrassed and a lot inadequate. Why is he even putting up with me?