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Gabe had wanted to move to the mainland before the races.
“There’s time,” Tommy had said, looking at him with his chin propped up on his hand. “We can stay for the races—who knows, if I race I might win first!”
Gabe had given him a quelling look and taken Tommy’s hand across the table. It was quiet at the Falks’, for once—Tommy’s father was out on the sea with his boat, Tommy’s mother was at Palsson’s for the November cakes (only Palsson’s got the honey/butter balance right, which was essential), and all the little siblings were at school, except Mollie the baby, who was with her mother.
Tommy wiggled his hand away and continued. “Anyway, what about Puck and Finn? You have to tell them you’re going away, and the races might bring a bit of money before we go, you know, the house—” He stopped suddenly and flushed, and Gabe looked back at him, trying to ignore what he’d just said. Tommy was very pretty, as everyone knew, though they thought it was the lips and Gabe thought it was the eyes; Tommy had eyes the precise colour of the November sea, dark grey and starkly beautiful.
“Where do you think the money will come from?” asked Gabe. “You’re not winning the race, there’s Sean Kendrick on that red stallion, and maybe Ian Privett on Penda—he almost won on her that year, remember?”
Tommy gave him a good-humoured look. “The tourists are coming,” he said. “There’s more money when they’re around. Besides, there’s always gambling.” His expression became less playful, gentler. “You have to tell Puck and Finn, you know. And you should leave them something. I don’t know—make it easier.”
“How the hell do I make it easier?” Gabe asked. “It’s foolish when I think about it! I can’t just leave them here, with our parents gone and nobody to make money or look after them!”
Tommy sucked in an infinitesimal breath and looked away, and Gabe felt the heaviness of guilt in his gut. “You said you couldn’t bear it here,” said Tommy after a moment. “You said you couldn’t bear always having to hide and calling me ‘best friend’ all the time. You said you wanted us to be able to walk down the street holding hands without everyone we know seeing and being nasty! Is that so foolish to you?”
Silence, for a moment.
“I didn’t mean that,” said Gabe. “I only meant—”
“I know what you meant. Just think a little first, you idiot,” interrupted Tommy, and he leaned across the table and kissed Gabe on the mouth.
***
Girls don’t ride in the Scorpio Races.
Gabe was confused, and felt a little dizzy, and wondered for the third time why he was leaving Thisby. He clenched his hands on the edge of the beaten-up red sofa and took a deep breath. Words were finding it difficult to make any amount of sense to him. Even Peg Gratton’s voice sounded like a horde of angry horseflies; only Tommy was getting through, his hands rough on Gabe’s shoulders.
“Gabe, what’s the matter? Tell me. Gabe!”
Gabe looked at Tommy and Peg Gratton standing by the sofa and Thomas Gratton fiddling with the stew over on the stove and Beech in the door and forced some words out. “Puck’s riding. In the races.”
The effect on the Gratton household was immediate. Tommy grimaced and went back on his heels; Peg Gratton’s eyes widened and she let a quiet ‘dear Lord’ slip into the air; Thomas Gratton stopped stirring, started again, and then stopped for good; and Beech grunted (he sounded surprised).
“Riding? In the races?” said Tommy. “But—”
“It’s not illegal,” said Peg Gratton. “It was never in the rules. Girls can ride, if they think of it.” She looked faintly impressed, but she glanced around the room and she looked serious again.
“Is she mad? Absolutely insane, possibly?” said Tommy.
“No,” said Gabe. “I told her I was leaving. She used it to keep me on Thisby.” He took another deep breath. “Quite smart of her, really.”
“Are you?” asked Peg Gratton. “Staying?” In the corner Thomas Gratton shot a quick at Beech, but Peg Gratton looked at Tommy instead.
“Until the races,” said Gabe. He caught Tommy’s eye and wished for some sympathy. Tommy frowned.
“I’m racing too,” he said abruptly. Gabe jerked his head up to look at him.
“Tommy—!”
“If you’re staying, I’m staying. And if I’m staying, I’m racing.”
***
“We need money!”
“You aren’t going to win! You’re going to die or you’ll never walk again, or you’ll be a quadriplegic and you won’t be able to brush your own teeth! Do you even have a capall uisce?”
“Yes!”
“First Puck and now you—what is this?”
“This might be my last November on Thisby and I’m going to race. If you don’t like it you just forget about both of us and go already.”
“I don’t want you—or Puck—to die in this thing! For money! Because Sean Kendrick is going to win this year, like every year, and the money’s going to Benjamin Malvern, like every year! It’s not worth it, Tommy. Please.”
“Gabe, listen. I’m racing and Puck’s racing. Accept it. Once it’s over you and I will go to the mainland and get good jobs and live together and send money back and Puck can keep Dove and the house with Finn and everything will be fine.”
“You might die. And stop kissing me to make me shut up!”
***
Puck doesn’t even have a capall uisce. It’s a little dun mare pony (yes, horse, fifteen-and-a-half hands, whatever—still has a distinct ponyish look to her). Tommy doesn’t know whether to laugh or sit back in awe. Well, right now he can’t do either; the road is slick with the rain and the air heavy with fear of the capaill uisce, and he checks the road and the fields around them and Dove running beside the car constantly. The sky is dark and dangerous. No time for either laughing or sitting back.
It should be cold—it’s nearly November, after all—but the car is too hot. Somebody left the heater on. Tommy can’t do anything about that, either. Gabe, next to him in the front seat and utterly dripping wet, asks him where to go. They decide on the Grattons’, because of Dove. A storm is coming, says Finn; it will last only a day and a night, but that’s quite long enough.
Gabe’s face is calm, but Tommy feels his fear like a live thing.
***
At the Grattons’ they congregate in the kitchen. While Peg and Beech and Gabe argue about where everyone will sleep, Tommy stands by the stove, ‘keeping an eye on the stew’ as he’s told Peg, but really watching Puck.
She stands uncomfortably in the doorway, looking around at the walls and the little knickknacks on the shelf by the window and Gabe. As Tommy watches, her expression shifts from awkward to sad, and he looks away before she can catch him watching. It seems like a private thing, family grief.
Then Puck leaves to look for Finn in the bathroom and Gabe goes after her and Tommy decides that he’s done enough stew-observing, and he messes around with Beech and they get progressively louder until, when the Connollys come back, Peg kicks them out into the living room. Gabe stays behind to talk to her, but the rest of them—Puck included now—fool around with a sock stuffed with dried beans until Finn asks about Gabe.
Puck wants to get him, but Tommy knows him better and stops her. Gabe needs careful handling right now. He leans around the corner to the kitchen and steps inside. “Gabe!” he hisses. Both Gabe and Peg turn, and when Peg sees him she waves her spoon in the air.
“Stew’s ready!” she says, her hair puffed up around her head in a mass of damp ginger curls. Something hisses on the range, and she swears under her breath; Gabe flinches, slightly, and Tommy jerks his head in the direction of the living room. Gabe walks over to him. Tommy suddenly recognizes the look on Gabe’s face—he’s still terrified, and he’s rubbing his collarbone, which is only something he does when he’s trying to disguise his hands quivering. It’s been an hour, maybe two, since they came in the door.
Tommy grabs his wrist away and holds it between them, feeling Gabe’s heartbeat pound against his fingertips for a few seconds; then, with a deep look, he lets his hand fall, pastes on a smile, and turns back to Puck. “Food’s ready,” he says. Puck’s gaze flicks between him and her brother for a moment—Tommy’s heart speeds for a moment—and then she steps back for room. Gabe glances at Tommy, and Tommy allows his false smile to become real for a moment.
Dinner is quiet. For the first time, doubts about leaving Thisby creep into Tommy’s thoughts; do they have this on the mainland, these undemanding silences, island quiets? He hears the rain, blown sideways by the wind, lashing the side of the house, and the high faint scream of a capall uisce somewhere out on the beach. No, this they don't have on the mainland. He shakes back to himself and glances sideways at Gabe, who is eating his lamb stew slowly and has his gaze fixed on the outdoors. Tommy wonders what he can see there, because it’s dark and all he can see himself is the reflection of the two of them.
***
The tide is low and the beach is crowded today, so Tommy keeps his capall uisce mare at home and simply watches the rest of the riders from the cliff. He knows from years past that days like today are the days where people die.
Ian Privett on Penda is keeping good control of her, though he’s well above the tide line and is keeping his distance from everyone else. Sean Kendrick, normally visible on his red stallion, isn’t on the beach. Neither is Puck. Smart. Down by the water, two men Tommy doesn’t recognize—tourists, probably, from the mainland—try to keep their capaill uisce away from each other, but one of them reaches out and pushes the capall uisce of the other one and then he is on the ground, his stallion galloping like lightning to the water. Tommy sees a smear of red soaking the sand, and he looks away.
The bite of late October is clear in the air, and Tommy ducks his head deeper into his scarf. It’s Gabe’s, actually, and it smells like him—a little like wood smoke, a little like toothpaste, and more than a little like fish. He doesn’t remember borrowing it. It has got to have been when they picked up Puck and Finn from the house in the storm; Gabe must have left the scarf in the car.
Somebody touches him on the shoulder suddenly, and Tommy jumps, then sees who it is. Gabe. It’s strange to see him here, right when he was thinking of him, but Tommy is glad.
“Hello,” says Gabe, and taps Tommy’s wrist in greeting. His dark blond hair flies into his eyes with the wind. “Isn’t that my scarf?”
Tommy laughs. “Yes. You want it back?”
“No,” says Gabe. “You keep it, you look cold enough already. Besides, I’ve got Beech’s scarf to keep warm.”
Tommy fixes him with a mock accusatory look. “Have you joined the league of thieves now too, Gabriel Connolly?” he says.
“Peg gave it to me,” says Gabe, entirely seriously. “What are you doing here? I don’t see your capall uisce around.”
“She’s not here,” says Tommy. “The beach is too crowded today—look.” He jerks his chin in the direction of the beach, where high-pitched screaming, of both capall uisce and man, can suddenly be heard. Gabe shivers; Tommy knows what he’s about to say and heads him off.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
Gabe glances at him and tilts toward him slightly. “It’s Sunday, Tommy.”
A moment of comfortable island silence surrounds them.
“Tommy,” says Gabe.
“Gabe?”
“I’m worried.”
Tommy knew this was coming; he slips his hand out of the pocket of his coat and wraps it around Gabe’s wrist, holds it gently. “Puck will be fine. You’ve seen her on Dove, you know she can ride.”
Gabe rocks slightly. “I’ve talked about this too much, haven’t I? You know what I’m going to say before I do.” He laughs, slightly hysterically. Tommy doesn’t say anything. He knows Gabe won’t talk to anybody else about this. “Anyway,” says Gabe, “it’s not just Puck I’m worried about.”
They are quiet again; Tommy wonders what to say. It’s true they already had this discussion a few weeks ago. Eventually, he decides that all he needs is the truth, however abrupt it is. “I love you, you know.”
They have never said those words casually; he and Gabe have always had to be content with rushed kisses and hiding and holding hands in the dark. It feels special, this moment. Gabe stares at him in surprise, but he twists his hand up and laces his fingers together through with Tommy’s. It seems to be difficult for him to speak, but he does. “I know.”
Tommy moves slightly closer to him. “Don’t worry about me,” he says. “If you need to worry about anyone, worry about Sean Kendrick. He’ll be beaten this year, I’ll make sure of that—or Puck will.”
Gabe gives a tiny smile and takes his hand away from Tommy; he slides his fingers over the pulse point on Tommy’s wrist and lets it linger. “I’ll always worry about you,” he says. “Can’t stop—God knows I’ve tried. Just ask Father Mooneyham.”
Tommy laughs. “That’s your way of saying I love you, isn’t it?” he asks. Gabe pauses.
“I suppose it is.” He laughs too, a little, and Tommy looks out over the beach. A dark capall uisce is screaming, and men are shouting, and there is a dark shape lying stretched out on the sand next to the still figure of the tourist. Their blood pools have mingled.
“I promise I’ll be careful,” says Tommy, and Gabe kisses him quickly, and then he has to leave.
***
Tommy was dead.
Gabe knew it would happen, he knew as soon as the words came out of Tommy’s mouth—I’m racing too—that something would happen. The worries gnawed at him for three weeks and then they became real, the moment Puck came flying through the door at work, red hair damp and wild, ignoring the boss and panting Oh Gabe, oh my God, he’s dead, he’s dead, he was on the beach, he’s dead—
He couldn’t quite believe it.
***
The funeral was on the beach, and they were burning him. Gabe wanted to protest—I want to visit him, please bury him, don’t burn him away to nothing!—but he saw the empty grey eyes of Mrs. Falk and held his tongue. “He was my best friend on this island,” he said instead. “I would have done anything for him.” And the irony of the words was thick on his tongue, and he felt the tears on his face, which was cold with the November wind, and he did nothing to stop them. What had Tommy said, back in the Falks’ kitchen all those weeks ago? You said you couldn’t bear always having to hide and calling me ‘best friend’ all the time. You said you wanted us to be able to walk down the street holding hands without everyone we know seeing and being nasty! Gabe knew he was saying something to Mrs. Falk, and her lips were moving in response, but he couldn’t hear anything she said; only Tommy’s voice whispering in his head. And Gabe wanted to run away from Mrs. Falk and the bonfire and the beach, he wanted to run and scream from the cliffs I loved him!
***
Gabe is leaving Thisby today. It is a fair day, blue sky and high streaky clouds and still a bitter kind of almost-December wind that cuts right through his jacket, though not through his scarf. He watches the ferry chug its way to the dock and breathes deeply, slowly. He never thought he would be standing here without Tommy.
At first, after the races, he thought he might stay on Thisby. Now that Tommy was dead, what reason did he have to leave? He and Puck hadn’t argued in a month over anything that mattered and there were no money worries, which meant that he could do a bit of what he wanted.
He didn’t know what he wanted. Yes, he did.
He wanted Tommy.
Everything he saw on Thisby reminded him of Tommy: the beach, the cliffs, Skarmouth, the Grattons’, even his own house, for God’s sake—he couldn’t stop thinking of that damn chicken. It made him laugh, sometimes, but long after the laughter was over the ache would still be there.
So he’s leaving today. He’s already made his goodbyes to the Grattons; Peg had hugged him tightly and made him promise to look after himself, Thomas had shaken his hand and grunted, and Beech was already gone to the mainland. Gabe hadn’t spoken with Beech much after the races—without Tommy, there was nothing for them to talk about, it seemed. He’s said goodbye to Dory Maud and Elizabeth and Annie, and they’d laughed as he’d almost gotten his eye poked out by the fertility goddess on his way out of the shop, so everything was all right with them.
Now, he was alone with just Puck and Finn, and they were crying, all three of them, and Puck was ordering him to write every day and come home for birthdays and Christmas and Easter and the Races next year, and Finn reminded her that postage and ferries were expensive and then reminded himself that they had the money and ferries could go to hell, and Gabe said he certainly hoped not or else he’d end up there, and then they were hugging and laughing and crying all at once.
***
On the ferry Gabe watched the water. It was still November, and he liked to be cautious, so he watched for the shadows and uncertain ripples that announced the presence of a capall uisce underneath the sea. He didn’t see any at all, which was strange.
He turned his back to the railing, and watched the cliffs of Thisby disappear over the horizon, and he thought of a kiss, and eyes the colour of the November sea.