Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(204)

“Okay. All right. You go out when I'm working nights. And we haven't been doing it like we used to. I know the signs, Cliff. Something's going on.”

“Shit. I f*cking do not believe this. You expect me to sit here and wait for you, right? But I can't sit here with nothing to do. I start climbing the walls. So I go out. I have a walk. I take a drive. I have a drink at Never Say Die. Or I work on a special order at the shop. D'you want some proof for all this? Should I get the barmaid to write me a note? How ’bout setting up a time clock at the Distractions so I could punch in and out for you?”

This explosion achieved a nice effect. Gerry's voice altered, a subtle gentling that told Cliff he was well on his way to having the upper hand. “I'm saying that if we need to get tested, we need to get tested. Knowing the truth is better than living a death sentence without even knowing it.”

Gerry's alteration in tone told Cliff that an escalation of his own passion would douse even more of his lover's. “Great. So get tested if you want to, but don't expect me to do the same, because I don't need a test, because I'm not bloody cheating. If you're going to start sifting through my business, though, I sure as hell c'n do the same to you. And just as easy. Believe me.” He raised his voice further. “You're gone all day on the pier, aren't you, and half the bleeding night pounding away on some bloke's house—// by the way that's what you're really pounding on.”

“Hang on,” Gerry said. “What's that supposed to mean? We need the money, and as far as I know, there's only one legal way to get it.”

“Right. Fine. Work all you want, if that's what you're doing. But don't expect me to be like you. I got to have breathing room, and if every time I need to have space you're going to think I'm f*cking some bloke in a public loo—”

“You go to the square on market days, Cliff.”

“Christ! Jesus! That really cuts it. How else am I going to do the shopping if I don't go to the square on market days?”

“The temptation's there. And both of us know how you are round temptation.”

“Sure we know, and let's both get straight on why we know.” Gerry's face grew red. Cliff knew that he was inches away from scoring the definitive goal in this verbal football match they were engaged in. “Remember me?” he taunted. “I'm the poofter you met in the market square loo when ‘taking precautions’ wasn't near as important as buggering any bloke willing to have you.”

“That's in the past,” Gerry responded defensively.

“Yeah. And let's have a look at the past. You liked your cottaging days as much as I did. Giving blokes the eye, slipping into the loo, doing the business on them without even finding out their names. Only I don't wave those days in front of your face when you don't act like I want you to do. And I don't take you through an inquisition if you stop by the market square for five minutes to pick up lettuce. If that's what you're picking up, by the way.”

“Hang on, Cliff.”

“No. You hang on. Cheating works both ways, and you're out more nights than me.”

“I already said. I'm working.”

“Right. Working.”

“And you know how I feel about fidelity.”

“I know what you say about fidelity. And there's a hell of a lot of difference between what blokes say and what they feel. I figured you might understand that, Ger. I guess I was wrong.”

And that had been that. Deflated when his argument had been turned against him, Gerry'd backed off. He'd sulked for a while, but he wasn't a man who liked to be at odds with anyone, so he'd ended up apologising for his suspicions. Cliff hadn't accepted the apology initially. He'd said gloomily, “I don't know, Gerry. How can we live in peace together—in harmony like you always said you wanted—when we get into rows like this?”

To which Gerry had said, “Forget it. It's the heat. It's getting to me or something. I'm not thinking straight.”

Thinking straight was what everything was all about, in the end. And Cliff was finally doing that. He shot along the country road between Great Holland and Clacton—where the summer wheat languished under a sky that hadn't produced a drop of rain in four scorching weeks—and he realised that what was called for now was a rededication of the self to another. Everyone received a wake-up call sometime during his life. The key was to recognise that call for what it was and to know how to answer it.

His answer would be straightforward fidelity from this time on. Gerry DeVitt, after all, was a good enough bloke. He had a decent job. He had a house five steps from the sand in Jaywick. He had a boat and a motorcycle as well. Cliff could do a lot worse for a permanent situation than hooking up with Gerry. Hell, Cliff's past was a veritable study on that point. And if Gerry was a bit of a bore sometimes, if his compulsion for neatness and promptness began to wear against one's natural grain now and then, if he clung too closely so that one wanted to swat him into the next time zone every once in a while …weren't these in reality small inconveniences compared to what Gerry had to offer in return? Certainly. At least they seemed to be.

Cliff turned along the seafront in Clacton, spinning along Kings Parade. He always hated this stretch of going home: a line of seedy old buildings nudging the shore, a score of ancient hotels and decrepit nursing homes. He hated the sight of the doddering pensioners, clinging to their zimmers with nothing to look forward to and only the past to talk about. Every time he saw them and the environment in which they lived, he renewed his vow never to be among them. He'd die first, he always told himself, before he ended his life this way. And always as he came in sight of the first of the nursing establishments, his foot pressed down on his old Deux Chevaux's accelerator and his eyes shifted to the undulating mass of the grey-green North Sea.