Jackdaw (The World of A Charm of Magpies)

“Come if you like.” Ben hadn’t meant to say it, but as he did, it seemed absurd not to. For heaven’s sake, why shouldn’t his pal watch the match? Plenty of locals did, plenty of friends cheered them on. Jonah could cheer him. His secret lover, his Jay, there in the crowd. The thought was a thrill.

“Really?” Jonah’s eyes widened. “Can I, Ben?”

He seemed almost childlike in moments like this, as though the tiniest concession was unexpected and thrilling. It squeezed the air from Ben’s lungs every time. “Of course you can. I want you watching me.”

“Oh, I will.” Jonah’s smile was brilliant. “Every tackle and scrum and, um…”

“Pass.”

“Pass,” Jonah agreed. “And score a goal for me.”

“Try,” Ben said patiently.

“Don’t just try, score one.” He yelped as Ben rolled him over again, onto his back. “Hey!”

“It’s called a try, you ape.” Ben shook him, laughing. “You’ll have to learn the rules.”

“I’ll learn. And you’ll score me a try. And when we come home, I’ll do the trying and deal with the tackle.”

Ben did score a try—two, in fact, reckless and unbeatable in the knowledge of his lover’s eyes on him—and Jonah whooped from the sidelines, a gaggle of new friends already formed around him. Part of the crowd. Part of Ben’s life.

“Score me a try,” was what Jonah said every game after that, and more often than not, Ben had.

Even at the time, dizzied by the constant ripple of laughter and chatter that had overtaken his quietly ordinary life, and by the bewildering pleasures of Jonah sprawled in his bed, Ben had questions. The most obvious was where the man got his money. Jonah could not read, not even a few words, but his hands showed that he was no manual labourer. Contract work, he said when pressed, distracting Ben with a kiss, and every now and then he would disappear for a day or two or three, and come back crackling with gleeful energy and flush with guineas.

Ben didn’t ask. He didn’t let himself consider if he should. It was perfect, impossibly perfect, and to ask would be to break the enchantment, like the fairytale prince who lit the candle to look on his lover, and lost her. That was a ludicrous thought, himself in that role, but this felt like a fairytale, or a fantasy. Glorious Jonah, with his ever-brimming eyes and his warm, shameless body, and all for staid, straightforward, serious Ben.

There was a night when they lay in each other’s arms in the still-hot evening air, a light rain drumming on the open window that neither had the energy to get up and shut. Jonah had fucked him wonderfully, crowing with pleasure as Ben bucked and cried out under him, whispering his name as he came in his turn. Ben held him afterwards, sated and pleasantly sore, and Jonah ducked his head into the crook of Ben’s shoulder and said, “I love you.”

He said it so freely, so generously, and every time it made Ben’s heart stretch a little wider, letting him in.

“I love you too.” Ben kissed his tousled black hair. Jonah snuggled down with a satisfied sigh, but Ben couldn’t leave it there. “Why?”

“Why what?” Jonah asked. “Why do I love you?”

“Well. Yes.”

Jonah gave him a look of some confusion, more amusement. “But why would I not? Of course I love you.” He spoke as though it were axiomatic. I am Jonah, therefore I love Ben. And the converse would be true, Ben recalled from distant memories of arithmetical logic. I am Ben, therefore I love Jonah.

“Because you’re perfect. You’re extraordinary. I’m so ordinary.” Ben didn’t feel ordinary in Jonah’s arms, and this was pure self-indulgence, but the question still nipped and buzzed around him.

“But you aren’t ordinary. You’re Benedict Spenser. There’s only one of you in the world, and you love me. Nobody’s ever been less ordinary than you.” Jonah paused, looking at Ben, and the laugh died out of his eyes, leaving deep seriousness. When he next spoke it was more slowly, as if puzzling the words out. “You’re not ordinary, Ben, but…you make me feel ordinary.”

“You? What do you mean?”

“I don’t mean boring. I mean… You make me feel as though there’s nothing different about me. That there’s no reason anyone should hate me or condemn me or arrest me, or even look at me twice. I’m just an ordinary man quietly getting on with his quiet life, and I’m doing it with you.” Jonah smiled up at him. It was a gentler, more serious smile than the usual blinding sparkle, and it thrilled Ben all the more deeply for that. “It’s wonderful.”

Ben thought he knew what Jonah meant, that he was referring to their illicit affections. He had no idea that it was as close as his lover would come to a confession.

Now

A cat poked its head around a chimneypot and made Ben jump out of his reverie. Jonah laughed, that merry laugh that had been missing from Ben’s life so long.

“The cuff,” Ben said abruptly. “You could have picked it. Freed yourself.”

“I could, yes. More to the point, I’m a practitioner, Ben. I can manipulate the ether, the air around us. Your thoughts. I can do…a lot of things. I could have stopped you putting it on me at all.”