Charles by Con Riley

30

Charles drove away from Casterley, not looking back once in the rear-view mirror.

Instead, he stared ahead, cursing under his breath at the heavy half-term traffic, a tide of holidaymakers drawn south down the M5 in search of sun and surfing. The journey took way longer than usual, worsening once past Exeter, the main artery into Cornwall clogged with caravans and cars loaded with surfboards. Finally, the land rose away from the road, the moorland climbing, and granite shaded the tops of tors grey in the distance.

Charles shielded his eyes, noticing that the sky was a strange shade over those peaks, clouds hanging low above them despite the sunshine he drove through.

Not part of the microclimate,he heard Hugo tell him. Nowhere there to shelter.

It was late afternoon by the time he got to the car park, several Glynn Harber minibuses parked there amongst others.

Relief he hadn’t known he’d reined in leapt ahead like one of the hunters from Casterley’s stables, keen to let go and gallop. He felt the same urge to run after he parked, only towards Hugo this time instead of away.

He grabbed his rucksack, then he hesitated, looking at the sky again just as a minibus reversed out of its space. The driver stopped behind him, wound down his window, and hailed Charles.

“Hey? If you’re thinking about setting out, I’d give it a miss, if I were you.” He pointed towards the clouds. “That weather’s coming in, not going.”

Charles hefted his rucksack onto his back and raised a hand. “It’s okay. I’m not heading out for long.” He caught sight of the logo on the side of the minibus. “True Grit? I think I met your mum.” The man leaning out of the minibus window certainly shared her smile.

“You know her?” The driver stuck a hand out. “Ed Britten. And my partner Pasha.”

“Only met her at her garden. She mentioned you.” Charles shook Ed’s hand and then reached across him to shake with the man next to him. “And you. Said you were both—”

“—in a singing contest?” Pasha said. “Five years ago, maybe, but she still tells everyone she meets like it’s brand new.”

“No,” Charles said. “That you were both responsible for that war memorial garden. She told us not to miss it. It…” Charles wavered, before doing what Keir had advised him, taking a first bite in owning his feelings. “It made me think.” And feel. “It was exactly what my….” He couldn’t quite make himself use the same word Ed had—partner or boyfriend had always seemed words other people used, not him. “Your garden resonated for someone special to me. For the man I’m here to catch up with.”

“I’m kind of sorry to hear that,” Ed said, “but also glad, if it helped.” His gaze lifted. “Still might be a better plan to wait for him here rather than heading onto the moors right now.”

“I’ll be fine. I know where he’ll be.” This search wouldn’t be anything like his last one in the woods at Glynn Harber. He’d watched Hugo plan the route with Luke on their table at the stables. Had copied the same simple straight line on his iPhone map that morning. There were no trees here to fool him. Finding Hugo would be plain sailing. Charles gestured to the minibuses. “He’s with a school group. A big group. I won’t be able to miss them.”

Ed looked up at clouds that hung even lower in the few minutes they’d been talking. “And you’re okay navigating?”

“Sure,” Charles said. “Even got a map and compass.” He tapped the pocket holding his phone.

“How about one of these?” Pasha held up a whistle, passing it over when Charles shook his head. “Go ahead and take it,” he said when Charles hesitated. “You can bring it back the next time you visit.”

Charles put it into his pocket, waving as the minibus drove off. Then he turned to face the moor, the clouds even lower, and took his first step to a reunion he hoped to God would be welcome.

* * *

It tookCharles hours longer than he expected to get to High Tor from the car park.

The view of the moors from their date at the pub must have been deceptive, he decided. On that sunny evening, it had looked no more than a half hour stroll. In reality, afternoon turned to evening while he trudged across moorland that went on forever, boggy patches flooding his trainers. Each smaller peak he crested only showed High Tor still in the distance.

Finally, he reached it, starting a climb that left him winded, his palms stinging from the rough granite, his hair plastered flat by rain that blurred his vision. At the top, he stood, and panted.

“This is fun,” he muttered, echoing what Hugo had once told him. “For masochists, maybe.”

Charles turned in a careful circle, the boulder on top of the tor slippery, then he glanced at his phone, which had turned out to be no use as either map or compass. East might as well have been west, and north could have been south for all the help it gave him. Charles wished he could dig into Hugo’s pockets then. Pull out binoculars to see farther than the encroaching mist let him. He peered, squinting through a dusk that rapidly turned gloomier.

There was no sign in any direction of the others.

No tents in sight forming their camp.

No lights to head towards as the gloom deepened.

Nothing.

“I’m so fucked.”

He turned around again, arms outstretched to keep his balance, worry starting to curl inside him like the mist did around the tor’s base. “I came from that direction,” he insisted, as though saying it aloud would somehow magic a view of the school’s minibuses in the distance. “I even took a bearing. The car park was in the east, behind me.”

But, he had to admit as he checked his app again, if the buses had been parked there before, he now couldn’t see them. He couldn’t make out the boxy outline of the Defender either. Not while both the mist and the dark crept closer, masking the spot in the distance where he was certain he’d started out from.

Well, almost certain.

“No, I’m right. This is High Tor.” It had to be, otherwise he’d gone badly off-course.

He shook his phone as though that might make its needle point to Hugo, but all it did was turn off, its battery depleted. Charles shoved it back into his pocket, his shoulders sagging, and not due to the weight of his now-soaked rucksack.

“They’ve gone back to Glynn Harber.”

Of course they had.

Luke wasn’t stupid enough to keep the students out here with visibility so low, and the mist thickening to fog. Charles bet Nathan wouldn’t have got lost.

Stop.

They’re friends, like me and Keir, that’s all.

So what if they were together at uni?

I’ve banged half of London.

“And Bath,” Charles huffed. “Fair proportion of Cheltenham, too. And let’s not forget the crabby isle of Ibiza.”

What we started could be more. Much more, if I tell him how I feel about him.

Charles wanted to believe that, but, soaked to the skin, and so much more than lost now, any confidence that coming back was the right thing to do drained like his iPhone battery.

He clambered down the tor again to stand at its base where he did something he hadn’t since childhood, sending his thoughts skywards, loud and clear and honest.

“I am not stupid,” he told whatever force might be listening, imagining it towering like the tor above him. “If you made me, I’m sure you already know that. But I can’t help feeling that if this is another test, you also already know that I can’t pass it. So if you don’t want me to find Hugo you can let up now; I get it. Nathan’s….”

He didn’t want to replay what Nathan had said in the classroom about them picking up where he and Hugo had left off, or see Hugo nodding like that was everything he’d wanted.

“He’s more on Hugo’s wavelength, and I should give up.” But perseverance was carved into more than Casterley’s stonework; it ran through Charles like quartz through granite. “The thing is,” he said addressing the base of the tor as if it were a person who listened, only a gauzy curtain of mist between them, “I can’t help wondering why you’d do it. Why make me fall for someone like him when I was perfectly happy?”

You weren’t,that small voice inside him whispered.

“Okay. Maybe you didn’t make me fall for him, but now I’m not the same person, am I? Or, maybe I am, only with a different mindset. Go back to fucking around now?” His sigh gusted. “Doesn’t appeal like it used to.”

That didn’t actually feel like a bad thing. His next confession did though.

“So, fucking around doesn’t appeal anymore, but neither does watching him with someone else. You see, I’m not sure I can stay at Glynn Harber, if they get back together,” he admitted, his voice lowering.

He tried to rally, imagining his namesake not knowing if he’d see the man he loved ever again. He’d built a home for him, regardless—a safe place for so many people.

“I do have something else to keep me busy now. A brand new path to follow. And people have much bigger problems.” His thoughts turned to his brother, his heart squeezing, the prayer he sent up for him and Felicity silent, but heartfelt.

“People have so much real pain to deal with.” He saw Hugo again, reliving a shelling that had changed him, and his voice come out as thick as the mist around him. “So I don’t know why my chest won’t stop aching.” He couldn’t help asking, “Next time you send me down a new path, could you do it without showing me what I’ll be missing? Could have done without seeing that loved-up look on him. Just saying.”

But he looks at you the same way,that small voice inside him insisted. Has done for a while now.

Hope found a crack to squeeze through.

Does he?

Charles turned his voice skyward again. “You know, all of this would be a lot easier to deal with if I hadn’t fallen for him. But I did. I fell harder than I know what to do with, so if you want me to hope that Hugo loves me, you’re going to have to give me more to work with.”

He stood at the foot of High Tor, the last of the light fading, and waited, but that small voice had no more to offer.

No matter how hard he listened, he couldn’t hear it.

Instead, Charles heard a whistle.