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The longer the strike went on, the more miserable a lot of folk got, but Michael's family adapted all right. His mam went out to work in Hartlepool, and at the end of spring term so did Annie; it wouldn't have been worth the train fare if they hadn't always left before it was light outside and come back well after it was dark, so Michael was at home alone a lot of the time he wasn't at school, and that was all right. Quiet. Didn't last, though; his dad got an elbow to the eye in a clash with the police and stopped going down to the picket line, and his hearing had gone, so even when he wasn't in a rage he shouted all the time. Michael couldn't stay out of the house all the time his dad was in it, so he kept as quiet as he could, walking on eggshells while his dad ignored the washing-up and snarled—at Michael, at the postman, at the dog in the street (whether it was barking or not), at whoever. Michael was quiet enough that his dad, half-deaf and generally drunk as he was, probably never knew whether he was in the house or out of it anyway. That was the only explanation Michael could think of for, first of all, why his dad was putting on his mam's clothes and shoes, and more than that, why Michael didn't get his head kicked in the first time he saw him. He crept away from the door as quietly as he could, but the next time, he made sure he was even quieter so his dad wouldn't know he was staying and watching.
He didn't want to join the boxing lessons. He didn't have gloves, even crap old ones like Billy's, and he didn't want to fight with the other boys, and he didn't mind spending his time by himself, and he definitely didn't want to ask for 50p per week to pay for it. (He hadn't known about the ballet, but it was pointless wondering if he'd have wanted to join the ballet class if he had known about it; even now that he did, if he didn't want to try to get 50p per week off his dad for boxing, would he be mad enough to give it a go for ballet? Not likely. Billy was brave, not him.) Anyway, Michael didn't want to learn how to throw a punch, and he already knew how to dodge one.
Then when Mam and Annie said they were fed up of Dad drinking up their wages, Dad fucked off to the miners' lodge and mainly stayed there. After that it was quiet enough that Michael could sometimes hear the shouting from the Elliots': At the end of the summer term, when Billy's dad found out he'd been going to the ballet instead of the boxing and made him quit, Michael could hear them clearly—almost as if they'd been in the next room.
So Michael was on his own all during the summer holidays, and no one could stop him trying on Annie's old dresses. And the makeup she used to hide in her school bag before she got slightly better stuff for work now that Mam knew about it. He wore half her things better than she'd done, he thought, and he had better eyelashes than hers as well, so it was no bother that it took him ages to get the hang of the mascara. Billy looked at him like he was mad, but no worse than that, and Michael knew he wouldn't tell, because after all Michael hadn't told anyone about the ballet, had he? Billy had carried right on learning ballet with Mrs Wilkinson (though he still hadn't got a tutu, which Michael couldn't understand; what was the point of doing ballet without a tutu?) and not telling his dad about it, and Michael hadn't said a word, not even about the audition in Newcastle, which he hated thinking about even though usually he quite liked thinking about Billy dancing.
Billy missed his audition when Tony was arrested. Michael wanted to be glad he wouldn't be going away; but Billy was so downhearted Michael found he was sad after all. Still, he thought it was all over. Then at Christmas they'd gone to the boxing hall, and Billy had given him a tutu at last and taught him some basic beginner ballet steps. They were laughing, and Billy was flying through the air as Michael swung him on the climbing rope, and just as he was thinking it would be his turn in a minute, Billy hopped down and started to really dance, and oh—and then Mr Elliot came in, and Billy saw him and stopped, and Michael froze. The music kept playing, but time felt like it had stood still. They looked over at him, and Michael remembered he had the tutu on over his trousers, and it took ages to squirm out of it, and he thought he was dead; and then Mr Elliot looked back at Billy, and he thought Billy was deader than that. But in the second before Billy didn't give up, Michael could tell he wouldn't. It wasn't over at all. Billy looked his dad right in the eye and started dancing, and then he turned his back on him and danced some more, and he was brilliant. He was soaring. Michael had never seen anything like it. How could Mr Elliot not see it too? He turned and walked away without a word, past Mr Watson and out into the night, but before Billy flew after him, Michael made sure he got the applause he deserved.
The strike ended, and Billy moved to London, and Michael began his second year at the comprehensive, and he was alone, just when everyone was suddenly trying with all their might to pair off. Bands of boys talking about which girls they'd shag, not that half the boys had a chance with any of the girls, and gaggles of girls talking about which boys they'd allow to shag them, and by the end of third year a lot of the discussion was no longer hypothetical. Michael tried to stay out of it. He generally said he didn't want to shag anybody at school, which the boys took to mean he didn't want to shag any of the girls they knew, which was true as far as it went. Apparently no one had much idea Michael didn't want to shag girls at all. Debbie Wilkinson might have had, for about five minutes (in second year, when she was still in a strop over Billy having left without saying goodbye to her specifically), but she soon turned her attention to the boys in the year above them and forgot about Billy—and Michael, it appeared—entirely.
Sometimes it seemed as if everyone had forgotten Billy entirely. Michael never heard anybody else speak of him, not even to ask his family what they heard from him or how he was getting on. They'd all dug so deep to get him and his dad the coach fare and that, and they'd all been so proud of him for getting into that Royal Ballet School, but once he was gone it was as if he'd never been there. Mind, Michael himself never asked the Elliots about Billy either, but he didn't need to; he wrote to him, when he could get a stamp, and Billy wrote back, when he could get a minute. Michael had known he would miss Billy, but he hadn't guessed what that would feel like. Although: He knew Billy didn't fancy him, but when he really thought about it, he understood he didn't actually fancy Billy either. Only he'd known it would be safe to let Billy suspect and then confirm that Michael—well, that Michael hadn't been just playing with Annie's clothes. Dressing up made him feel—not as if he was someone else, but maybe as if he could be. Or as if he always had been someone else, and now he was himself. He couldn't really explain it, not that anyone had asked, but then Billy wrote about dancing in a real show at the end of term: He said he learned the steps, and then putting on the costumes kind of connected up his body and his mind and he could feel his performance change, like now he really meant it.
Michael read that letter over and over and thought about it for days. He felt a bit like putting on a dress connected up his body and his mind somehow, but not in a way that he was performing—pretending—when he did it. More like the other way about, and even more so with the makeup: He felt as if he was some sort of a decoy, faking his way through it most of the time, but with the right makeup and his hair teased properly, he fitted in his role and was really real. So he alternated between nicking old things from Annie when she'd almost used them up and nicking new things from the shops, and he got better and better at using the stuff, and by the end of his fourth year he could even get away with wearing rouge to school, especially on cold days. He'd have felt even better—more like himself—with a bit more of a face on, because he definitely couldn't wear a girl's uniform; but he didn't want to go too far.
By the middle of fifth year, he'd learnt to shape his eyebrows and to paint his toenails, which were always hidden by his shoes, so why not. He panicked when his chin and upper lip started getting fuzzy, but he soon saw the bright side: As long as he wore tracksuit bottoms instead of shorts in PE no one needed to know he'd shaved his legs as well as his face. In fact a bit of aftershave was a completely acceptable bit of preening, which was nice until the girls started to notice; at that point the pairing-off pool was smaller than it had been, as some pairs were practically hitched already, but also much more active, as the ones who weren't became more desperate or more daring or both. And everyone knew where were the safe places to slip away to and when were the safe times, and practically everyone knew exactly who would trade what for how much or how little and who wouldn't give anything up for owt. Billy wrote that it was the same at his school, but with less than half as many people—only it was likely there were more poofs in Billy's year than in the whole of Michael's school, which improved everyone's chances, didn't it: Those lads could get off with one another, and Billy and the other normal boys would have better luck with the girls. (Bad luck for the girls, though, Michael supposed, just in terms of numbers.) So the bolder girls started to announce that Michael always smelled good, and everyone had a laugh and saw he was still keeping himself off the market; but rumors flew like young birds, flapping about and only occasionally getting a little way off the ground. And then one Friday in April Mark Robson, who played loose forward, raised an unmistakable eyebrow at him, and who in the world could blame him for accepting that invitation to slink behind the shed together after the rugby and have a go?
He should have known: Sometimes, the more truth was in those rumors, the more likely they were to rear up and beat your face in if you got too close. Everyone could blame him, was the answer, and everyone would and did. Absolutely everyone knew by lunchtime the next day. The gossip varied as to its accuracy, but everyone agreed it had been Michael up against the wall, which was true; only they differed on whether he'd had Mark Robson (ahem) in his hand or in his mouth or up his arse. The rugby team had always had the most to say about poofs and nancies—even Mark; especially Mark; nobody took any notice of what Mark had had in his hand or in his mouth—and it turned out that having known how to dodge a punch when he was 11 and his dad was drunk wasn't at all helpful when he was 16 and the rugby team were angry. Michael should have known they'd kick the shit out of him.
He almost didn't mind. Thumping or no, going behind that shed was the best decision Michael had made in years: The snogging was nothing special, but he'd quite enjoyed the rest of it, Mark's feet under his knees and the backs of Mark's legs in his hands and him, Michael Caffrey, making Mark Robson make those noises; and when that was done, and Mark had undone Michael's trousers and pressed the heel of his hand just there, Michael had shut his kohl-lined eyes and felt like a fledgling beginning to get some air under his wings.
Michael got out of Everington at the end of May, the very first minute he could. He went to Durham and took a job in a pub in North Bailey, and if the rugger buggers had thought he was a poof, they should have seen some of the blokes coming in from the poncy university colleges. Even the ones who weren't poofs were nancier than he was, which meant for about the first six months he never had any idea whether they were giving him eyes or no. He learned, though, and he learned a lot of other things besides. He learned to tell the difference between a fancy lad swanning about just generally and one who was looking with interest at him in particular. He learned telling them he was 18 wasn't enough to keep him from getting done for indecency, and he couldn't pass for 21, so being able to spot the rozzers and avoid their snares was an important survival skill; he learned to tell the difference between someone genuinely angling for a swift one against the garden gate and a copper who was pretending for exactly as long as it took to get his trousers undone. He learned that blond git whose face Billy'd rearranged in his audition was right—the cathedral was very impressive. He learned how to kiss, and he learned how to give a competent hand job in a hurry; but he also learned he much preferred to suck a cock than to yank at it. And he learned he could do a lot better than he'd done with Mark Robson.
He thought he might fall in love. That was the next thing after leaving school, wasn't it? For ages he pulled pints and smiled up at good-looking customers from under his fringe and flirted with the ones who smiled back, and he felt more and more as if he really meant what he was doing, like Billy had said. He didn't have to sneak about quite the way he'd done back home—he could dress how he liked, and he had wages and could buy his own makeup and even jewellery if he wanted. As long as he paid his rent and showed up for work on time, the rest of his life was really up to him, even more than it always had been back at his parents' house. Falling in love would be grand.
He didn't hear from Billy as much as he used to do. Not never, but a lot less often the more time passed since—since they'd had anything in common, Michael began to understand, gradually, his heart sinking just a little further every time he did get a letter from Billy that was less and less staying in touch with his best friend and more and more polite chatter with French words in it. (He'd managed an entrechat six, but so far just once. He was finally taller than most of the girls, even when they were en pointe, so it was easier to work on pas de deux.) Worse yet was when letters from Billy didn't come at all, of course. And what could he tell Billy in his own letters in turn? The barmaids are all right but the new manager's a dickhead. Can't keep stocks at proper levels for shit. Peanuts and pork scratchings coming out of our ears, but the other night we ran actually out of vodka. For a minute I thought the punters would riot. None of that was graceful. He wasn't learning beautiful things. Certainly nothing you'd only talk about in French. By now it seemed he and Billy had been paddling in different ponds for so long that they didn't have anything left to say to each other. Eventually he stopped writing; Billy couldn't possibly be interested in how many packets of crisps they could have sold if the boss had only believed them when they said he should order some.
And he never did seem to fall in love, did he. The university students would let him suck their cocks, but barely any of them remembered his name; he was just that cute bit of rough behind the bar. And the local folk carefully ignored his eyeliner and lippy and experimental hairdos, which mainly meant ignoring him as well, when he was lucky. He developed a lot more skill with the brushes and sponges and pencils, so when he was unlucky he learned to use makeup not just to pretty himself up but to cover up the bruises. Most of them.
He finally left Durham when he'd been there long enough that the first-years looked young. It was nonsense, of course, because they were, what, 18?, and he wasn't even 21, but he'd been on his own for almost five years, and even before that, even as a child of ten, he'd been doing half the cooking and cleaning and all his own washing—but some of these soft-handed toffs, even the older undergraduates, they could barely boil eggs. Michael gave notice and packed a single bag and headed for London, where he assumed he'd meet adults.
He got a job at a pub in Soho and quickly realized that he might have been judging those wide-eyed freshers unfairly; he felt as if he was on another planet. Rainbows everywhere. And all this time he'd understood that most people fell into two groups, the ones who liked him and would be good for a shag and the ones who didn't and were to be avoided as much as possible. But here he'd discovered a whole third category of people who knew he was a poof who wore makeup and didn't do anything at all with either of those bits of information: didn't avoid the sight of him, didn't get their cocks or their fists out—not even to threaten him. It didn't even seem that they might. Friends, he supposed, which was frankly a bit of a surprise. For the first time since he could barely remember, when he wasn't working there were people he was happy to spend time with rather than being quiet and alone, and they didn't mind his hair or his clothes or his rings and they didn't want anything from him that he could get in any kind of trouble for giving them. (And then the age of consent for his sort was lowered from 21 to 18, just in time for it not to matter to him after all.) It felt strange, but strangely freeing, as if he was able to stand up taller now that he wasn't so often expecting to drop to his knees.
And then one evening it happened. He and Teju were at Covent Garden—Teju had begun as exactly that sort of friend; they'd met at the pub and enjoyed each other's company and a lot of the same sorts of films and music and shows and that, so they went places together sometimes when they were both free and they could get cheap last-minute tickets to whatever. And then when whatever was finished they went back to their respective homes. Michael couldn't believe how relaxing it was to be on what could have been a date, but wasn't. Until one time Teju had cautiously reached out and taken his hand as they walked back to the Tube, and Michael had felt a tingle sizzle through his whole body, and he'd left his hand in Teju's and given it a squeeze and then they'd gone back to their respective homes. And when they'd seen each other next and he'd asked what Teju meant by it, or what he thought Michael might be thinking, Teju had smiled and taken his hand again but not pulled him into an alley or undone his flies or anything of the kind. Which was how Michael learned you could find that you had come to love someone you already knew, and nobody had to fall anywhere.—Anyway, they were at Covent Garden, and Michael was sitting back comfortably; he and Teju were laughing about something someone had said the other day; and Michael was leafing through the playbill. And then he turned a page just as the lights dimmed and the overture began, so he couldn't look closer to be sure he'd seen what he thought he'd seen; he had to swallow his gasp, and for the next hour and a half he barely heard a note of the opera, although he was on the edge of his seat, watching for the corps de ballet to appear. And when they did, he saw he'd been right: There was Billy, in the second row one place away from the middle. He didn't do a solo, but he and his partner were the second of three couples in a sort of small-ensemble thing, one of the back points of a triangle, before and after the central couple did a solo duet, if there was such a thing, and also each did a bit of solo work.
Michael couldn't look away. He gripped Teju's knee. He wished desperately for the interval so he could tell him: I know him! Second from the front, on the right, that's my best friend from school. I haven't seen him in ten years—He thought about the way Billy had danced at 11, the rhythm filling up his little body until he couldn't stop it rattling out, springing and jumping around that boxing hall and off the stone garden walls and that, all tapping feet and defiant chin and big knobbly knees. And here he was now, at least a foot taller, long lines and broad shoulders and graceful strength right down to and into the floor, moving so smoothly and lifting the ballerina over his head as if she weighed no more than a feather one moment and fairly flying the next, somehow weightless himself but also keeping in perfect step with the dancers at the other points of the triangle. It was brilliant to watch, and Michael shivered with a frisson of relief and gratitude that Billy had been able to leave Everington when he did, that he'd been able to come so far. He suddenly remembered that Billy had kissed him goodbye the day he'd left, run back up the hill and kissed Michael on the cheek, just as Michael had dared to kiss him once, the first boy he'd ever thought of kissing, the first boy who'd ever known he'd wanted to. He thought about his own journey as well: about the skinny kid trying on his sister's blue dress and liking it; the lad with big eyes putting on her makeup and liking it better; the young man finally knowing that he belonged just as he was, painted face and unexpected hair and all, because that was who found someone he loved, someone who loved him. He felt Teju's hand on his back, between his shoulders. He couldn't wait to introduce them. He wondered how fast they could get to the stage door after the final curtain; and as he watched Billy leaping through the air, Michael felt himself soaring, at last, finally flying free.