Nicholas Royle - First Novel

After a while, the man asked fewer questions, but they became more pointed. Encouraged by Ray’s answers, the man gave him some directions. Eventually the man got up and left the pub and Ray walked out behind him, following him to a public toilet just off Shaftesbury Avenue. Ray waited for a moment while the man went in and then he went in also. The light in the toilet was completely different from that outside. There were skylights, but they were of thick glass and the air inside was damp and gloomy. There was a smell of disinfectant and pools of water on the floor. The attendant’s heavy wooden door appeared locked. On the right-hand side were four cubicles, faced by a urinal on the left. Ray walked up to the third cubicle along, which was shut. He gave a short double-knock and immediately heard a bolt being drawn back within. The door was pulled open and Ray stepped inside. The man, whose semi-erect penis was poking out of the fly of his jeans, pushed the door shut behind Ray and locked it.

Without speaking, the man sat on the pulled-down toilet seat and placed his hands on Ray’s belt. His eyes swivelled upwards to seek approval. Ray felt incapable of voluntary movement and imagined — hoped, even, although he would have not liked to admit it — that his lack of any signal would be taken as acquiescence.

The man unbuckled Ray’s belt, unzipped his fly and lowered his trousers, followed by his underpants. He started to rub and stroke Ray’s penis, which responded by becoming stiffer, longer, heavier. The man glanced up at Ray, who was looking down on what was taking place with something close to disbelief. The man might have thought that the expression on Ray’s face was a smile. It might even have actually been a smile.

The man put Ray’s penis in his mouth and started to move his head backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. His left hand alternately encircling Ray’s penis at the root and lightly squeezing his testicles, the man moved his right hand down to his own penis, which Ray could see was now fully engorged. The man moved his right hand quickly up and down the shaft of his own penis while continuing to suck on Ray’s and to fondle his balls. After a few moments, the man convulsed and jerked backwards as he ejaculated. He stopped rubbing himself, but his penis remained hard and erect and white in the greenish underwater light of the cubicle as he continued to do what he was doing to Ray, who was trying to shut down the workings of his own mind so that he might relax enough to achieve the same kind of release. Suddenly into his mind popped an image of himself on the beach at Whitley Bay, the damp sand under his feet, the hard convolutions of the shell in his hand, the tall white lighthouse rising out of the sea. The feeling — the conviction — that life was short and unpredictable. The promise that he would not live in regret. And he suddenly exploded with the very opposite of regret, with joy, a great, spontaneous, shocking rush of joy.

And the man grinned as he wiped his face with the back of his hand.

In the morning, just before ten, there’s a knock on the door. I open it.

‘ Ksssh —’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I say, interrupting him, although I notice he’s not looking as annoyingly chipper as usual. The annoyingly chipper look, though, is, I suspect, paper-thin.

‘Shall we go for a drive?’ he says.

‘I thought we were going for a walk.’

‘Summat I want to show you. We can go in your car.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘I thought you were picking me up.’

‘My car’s fucked, mate.’

‘Right. Hang on.’

I go back inside for the keys. This is a bad idea, I can tell. It doesn’t take a clairvoyant.

‘Come on then,’ I say, locking the front door behind me and opening the car.

Lewis sits with his legs far apart, so that I keep knocking his right knee with the gearstick. He neither apologises nor makes any effort to move his leg.

‘Where are we going, then?’ I ask him.

‘Get on to the M60,’ he says. ‘Westbound.’

For some reason I’d expected us to be going in the opposite direction.

‘Are you going to tell me where we’re going or what?’

‘I’ll direct you,’ he says, adding, ‘ if that’s all right .’

It’s my turn to say ‘Whatever’.

The motorway is pretty quiet, unlike Lewis.

‘All that teaching you do,’ he says, ‘do you enjoy it?’

‘Depends,’ I say.

‘On what?’

‘On how good they are, or how willing they are to take advice.’

‘Which ones are willing to take advice? The good ones or the others?’

I see the gilt domes and trashy cupolas of the Trafford Centre coming up on the right-hand side.

‘Generally,’ I say, ‘the worse they are, the more resistant they are to accepting any advice at all, whether it’s from me or the other students.’

‘Take the next exit,’ he says. ‘What about the good ones?’

‘Now and again,’ I say, indicating to leave the motorway, ‘you get someone who’s very good and knows it and doesn’t really see the point in listening to what anyone’s got to say about their stuff. Left or right?’

‘Left. Maybe they’re right?’ he says as I change down into second and my hand knocks his knee.

‘In one or two cases, maybe, but then what are they doing on the course? The best ones might know they’re doing something right but they’re keen to take on board any advice, whether it’s from me or anyone else in the group.’

‘Straight on,’ Lewis says. ‘Anyway. It’s not like anyone buys books any more.’

We drive in silence for a while. Salteye Brook is on our left — the old course of the River Irwell — hidden behind a long line of redbrick houses with white PVC window frames and the shortest front paths in Manchester.

‘It does sometimes seem,’ I say finally, in response to his last comment, ‘as if there are more people studying creative writing than there are people buying books. Even some of those who want to write can hardly be bothered to read.’

‘Turn right here,’ Lewis says, pointing across my chest.

I turn into the car park and pull into a free space at the end, killing the engine.

‘Ta,’ says Lewis as he opens his door and gets out.

‘You’re welcome,’ I mutter as I open my own door.

Barton Aerodrome was opened in 1930, the first purpose-built municipal airport in the UK. It was intended to be the Manchester airport but within a short time it became obvious that the boggy terrain would not support the heavier aircraft coming into service, and plans were drawn up for Ringway to the south of the city. Renamed City Airport Manchester in 2007, it remains a busy airfield for general aviation. Some eighty or so private owners keep their Pipers and Cessnas there, paying fees to the airfield authority for the privilege.

Lewis leads me through the little gate on to the airfield itself. No security here. Apart from the CCTV cameras that I see bolted to the brickwork of the control tower and affixed to a couple of free-standing poles.

To our left, fifty or sixty planes are parked in neat rows, all facing the same direction — west. Ahead of us, the grass runway that I recognise from the DVD runs from left to right, west to east. And to the right, a few more planes, scattered more randomly than the larger group.

I experience a strange sense of temporal displacement as I scan the endless green for a glimpse of the red dress or the little yellow hat. I realise I don’t know what colour dress the woman was wearing. I can picture her walking away from the camera — I look up for the right camera to orient myself within the field of that shot — but I can’t remember what colour dress she was wearing.