Gabriel inhaled slowly, calming thoughts that were leaping way too far ahead.
‘We’d best get back to your questions, then,’ he said, in a commendably level tone. ‘I’m sure you’d like more background information.’
James tapped the edge of his empty tea cup. ‘You lived on the streets for a time, I gather. That’s how you know these folk. Maybe it’s why they trust you.’
Gabriel leaned back in his chair, displaying a studied, feigned nonchalance.
‘My father insisted that I study industrial chemistry, if I was going to study the sciences at all. He’d have preferred business studies, politics and international relations, and I couldn’t think of anything more repugnant. When I switched to a fine arts major in my second year, he said he’d disown me if I didn’t return to the career path he’d selected for me. I didn’t back down. When the money ran out not long after, I kept on with the arts degree with a chemistry minor – it proved handy when I was experimenting with all manner of art media – but things were very precarious. My brother Michael tried the same “play along and you won’t starve” bargaining. I told him where to stick it. I even sent him a helpful sketch in case he was confused about the process.’ Gabriel smiled tightly. ‘And after that I slept on dorm floors until people were sick of me. I sometimes managed to crash in the library for a few days. On and off I was on the street for the night. Or for several.’
Or several weeks or months at a time, but James didn’t need to know that.
‘That must have made it hard to study.’
‘Oh,’ said Gabriel airily, dismissing what had indeed been a very tough few years. ‘It’s marvellous how motivating it can be when you’re telling the old man and his heir to go fuck themselves. There are plenty of ways to survive if you plan. Showers on campus, the occasional boyfriend who’ll let you stay the night and eat jam sandwiches in exchange for a little light housekeeping.’ And things best not gone into now. ‘People waste a lot of food in the cafeteria. I managed. In my third year I ran into Helene again, and she gave me a hand. She was starting up the gallery then, so she let me sleep in the back room for a while until I found a room to rent. She began to represent my work. I got by.’
‘The university couldn’t help you with accommodation?’
‘According to them, I didn’t need help. I had a family with pots of cash. My father liked to remind them of it. He was very keen on me giving up my childish notions.’
‘Which only spurred them on,’ suggested James with a grin.
‘Of course.’ Gabriel decided to confess the worst of it, sure that James wouldn’t do anything as stupid as pity him. ‘The worst patch, over one semester break, had me living in a tunnel for a month during winter. Not an experience I’d care to repeat. My brother Michael said that I was playing at poverty, like I could just go home if...’
Damn. Too much.
‘Going home isn’t always an option,’ observed James gently. ‘People don’t always see that.’
‘No, they don’t,’ agreed Gabriel, ‘It wasn’t one for me. I don’t… I didn’t–’
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said James. ‘Nobody chooses to spend a month of English winter in a tunnel if they think there’s an option.’
Gabriel was grateful for the understanding; for not having to explain why he couldn’t return to his father’s house, his father’s authority. ‘The closest they came to making me obedient was after that semester in the tunnel,’ he said. ‘I caught pneumonia and spent the next three weeks in hospital. That’s when Helene found me, found out what my father was playing at, and offered me her store room.’
Gabriel pushed away the wearisome memories. His father’s house – he never thought of it as home – had never been an option, once he’d escaped from it.
The one time he’d tried to make himself go back, he’d ended up hiding in a pub loo having a panic attack so severe it took hours for the shaking to subside. The days of being sent away to psych wards had long gone, replaced by the combined rigours of bullying, control and emotional neglect, but the fear of it remained. And then there were the other things in the house. The things that didn’t frighten him, really, but the consequences of them – hard beds and sedatives and restraints and worse – those things terrified him.
One way or another, he had meant to escape, and he’d managed it, with Helene’s help and without self-medication. It was a triumph of sorts.
‘It was while I was on the street that I began to help my… compatriots of the road. The police can be complete arses if they think they have an easy mark. Being homeless isn’t the same as being useless.’ Gabriel’s tone was scornful. ‘They targeted a homeless man I knew once, accusing him of an assault that he obviously hadn’t done. For a start, he’d been in the park with me for the night. For another, his Parkinson’s was too bad for him to have held a weapon. I persuaded the senior officer on the case to leave the poor bastard alone. A week later I got Detective Inspector Bakare to investigate an attack on Hannah, when nobody seemed to give a damn about a couple of public school boys being vile shits. It was as well I got there before they got their lighter to work. It turned out they’d already killed someone else.’
James, Gabriel noted, was both disgusted and unsurprised. Oh yes, here was a man who knew what the world could be like.
‘After that, people came to me for help with little things. Finding family members, sometimes. Difficulty with the police less often, but they did me the honour of trusting me, and they let me paint them. They live in a hard world, and they’re hard people, but they’re due as much respect as anyone else. A lot more respect than people like my father, who think they can buy and control and punish anyone who doesn’t agree with them.’
Gabriel let out a long, slow breath. He hadn’t meant to get that heated. ‘So, that’s my life story, the highlights reel. Your turn. Why do you even want to help me?’
James folded his hands on the table in front of him. ‘I’ve told you some of it. Grew up an only child with Mum and Granda in Edinburgh. Never met my dad. Came to London after Granda died. I lost my mum in a car accident while I was studying medicine. I graduated, looked for work, and joined the army. I got the bright idea that the infantry was a better use of my skills. GPs are ten a penny. A really good Combat Medical Technician can make a huge difference on the front line. I served in Africa and the Middle East. Things went horribly wrong in Helmand two years ago.’ He glanced down to his fingers, saw that they were clenched and made the effort to relax them again.
‘Honourable medical discharge because officially I’m a basket case if I’m around large quantities of blood. No use on the front line, not much better at a base. I came back to London eighteen months ago. I put a down payment on this place with what I inherited from Mum and Granda, and I’m paying the rest off as I can. Army pensions, lodgers, and whatever I can manage as a suburban GP. Trying to be useful instead of a useless wreck.’
His tone wavered. Honesty for honesty seemed to be his resolution.
‘I’m acutely aware that I’m completely fucked up. Everything went to shit in Helmand. Things happened, to me and to… to others, that I can’t undo. But I have to believe I can still choose to be who I want to be. Choose who I am. I don’t have to be a victim of what happened to me and the… the consequences of that. So I choose to be a doctor and help those who need it most. If people are going AWOL and nobody else cares, maybe I can help. I can be more than just this fucked-up ex-combat medic. If that’s all right.’
‘Fine by me,’ said Gabriel. He held out his hand and James, after a quizzical moment, shook it. ‘Partners,’ Gabriel said.
James smiled, hope brightening his blue eyes. ‘Partners.’
James