Lukas’ father was a tall man. He wore glasses with silver frames and had thin, white hair, which he raked back over his head. He was nearer to sixty than fifty, Matthew supposed, and was wearing a dinner suit.

‘Matthew,’ he said, coming forward. ‘It’s so good to see you again.’

He held out his hand and Matthew shook it.

‘Hello, Sir.’

In the sudden panic of his arrival, Matthew had smacked the handle on the vice, to loosen it, and jerked Lukas’ runner off the edge of the bench. He had gripped Lukas around the waist and pulled him forward, and down, lifting him first, but not enough. The padlock had wedged in the vice, and Lukas’ balls were trapped there. His legs were hanging down, but his arse was held backwards and up, while Matthew kept pulling him forward and down. Lukas’ head collapsed onto Matthew’s shoulder, his hands slipping down Matthew’s back as they tried to grip something. Matthew heard a whimper, but had kept pulling, in a panic, because he could hear the rattle of the garage door opening. And he had kept pulling him till his hands slipped from Lukas’ waist.

Lukas was suspended, like a bridge, his balls at one end, his head on Matthew’s shoulder at the other.

Matthew gripped his waist again and lifted him as high as he could, though Lukas’ body was trying to swing toward him.

The padlock snapped out of the vice and Lukas’ swung forward all of a sudden. His genitals slapped against Matthew’s mouth, his balls hitting Matthew’s chin with the weight of the padlock behind them.

Lukas’ thighs fell inwards.

Matthew lowered him gently, but he sunk to the floor, sitting on his heels, with his thighs clamped together, and his genitals locked underneath him. He put a hand in his groin and pressed down, as though he was trying not to piss, steadying himself with his other hand as he slipped a bit sideways.

‘Here,’ Matthew said, handing him his pyjama pants.

Lukas didn’t move.

He was sucking his thumb!

Matthew pulled him up by his arm and held him, as the bright glare of headlights fell onto the back wall.

‘Hold onto the car,’ he said. He bent down behind Lukas, stepping his runners into the pyjama bottoms while Lukas steadied himself on the roof of the car, his legs shaking, his groin held in a little and his arse sticking backwards. Matthew was aware of his hair brushing Lukas’ arse, of the smell of soap, and then he was pulling Lukas’ pants up, and reaching around him to tie them from behind.

‘Can you do it?’ he said, fumbling, as a dark red Saab rolled into the garage, feeling the soft warmth of Lukas’ genitals through the flannelette. Lukas didn’t move. Matthew managed to tie the cord, thankful that he could see Lukas’ father in the car, could see his head stretched up, in profile, measuring the distance to the wall, unaware of either Lukas or himself, behind Lukas’ car, where Lukas’ legs were trembling now, Matthew realised, sending ripples through his pyjamas.

‘Sorry,’ Matthew said, putting his hand between Lukas’ shoulder blades.

Lukas nodded, his teeth clenched, his whole body beginning to shiver.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m cold.’

‘Here, pretend you’re looking for something.’

Matthew opened the passenger door and thrust Lukas into it. He leant over and opened the glove compartment, took the manual out of it and put it into Lukas’ lap, opening it and saying, ‘Pretend you’re looking for something.’

Lukas nodded and put his hands on the manual.

‘Matthew!’ Lukas’ father said. ‘It’s so good to see you again!’

They shook hands.

‘And do your eyes still contain all the mysteries of interstellar space?’

Matthew offered a tentative smile. He didn’t suppose his eyes had ever contained these mysteries, though he remembered the old man’s saying that they did.

His literary allusions.

Old world manners.

Foreign peculiarities.

And he remembered, too, wishing, as a child, that Lukas’ father had been his father, when that never could have happened.

‘Lukas has been showing me his car,’ he said.

‘Yes. He shook be safe in that, you think?’

Matthew nodded.

‘It has all the biz – brakes and stability controls and one hundred thousand airbags or some such thing. It’s a cushion, I said to him. You’d be crashing into a cushion.’

Matthew tried not to smile.

‘You’d have to be an idiot to crash that thing,’ Mr Sorensen said confidentially, and then he stood back and looked at Matthew. ‘Well, you certainly aren’t any less handsome, but still a boy I think, like all you young men nowadays. You’ll come upstairs and have tea with me in a moment. Yes? Good. I’ll go up to my room and change and then we’ll have a talk, just like the old days. Lukas!’ he called, calling him Lukash, ‘You make us tea?’

Lukas looked up. He nodded.

And Matthew breathed a sigh of relief.

#

In the drawing room, Matthew sat in silence, listening to the ticking of the clock on the mantle piece.

The room was warm, too warm, he thought, and too exquisitely furnished to be comfortable. Matthew wondered how a person could come up with such a collection of chairs, sofas, tables, vases and paintings, wondering how all of it had been put together into harmony, the dominant colours being blue and gold. There was red in the carpet, though, striations of it, and something like ochre in the wallpaper. The ceiling was a fantastic menagerie of trumpeting cherubs and clouds, a beatific vision of heaven, he supposed.

Lukas came in bearing the tea tray, with a silver pot and cups and saucers and an arrangement of cakes and slices. His father followed him, entering from the hall, and closing the door behind him.

Lukas had put a sweater on in the meantime, a bone one, a fisherman’s sweater with a round neck and a ribbed pattern, though as he was pouring the tea, Matthew noticed his pyjama pants gaping a little and wondered what Mr Sorensen would say if he saw what Lukas had done to himself, thinking, at the same time, that his father would then know what they had been doing in the garage together.

His face felt hot.

Lukas handed him the tea, and offered him a piece of cake.

Matthew refused it.

‘And what about this spring weather we’re having?’ Mr Sorensen said. ‘Not very seasonal, is it?’

‘It’s been pretty cold,’ Matthew said.

‘Too cold,’ Lukas added. ‘And wet.’

‘And what are you doing with yourself, Matthew? What plans do you have for your future?’

Matthew told him how he had got into the conservatorium, saying that he was taking a gap year, like Lukas, like most of his friends, telling Mr Sorensen that Christian was the only one he knew who had started his course.

Mr Sorensen asked Matthew to play for them and Matthew agreed, choosing a piece of Satie and following this with Chopin’s Valse Brillante in A Minor. He got up from the piano afterwards feeling both melancholy and diffident, as he always did after performing.

He sat down on the sofa and turned to Lukas’ father.

‘Lukas said you’ve got a new book out.’

‘Not a new one. A translation,’ Mr Sorensen said. ‘But here, I’ll get you a copy.’

He walked into his study and returned with a copy of the novel, inscribing it ‘To a dear friend of the family, with love,’ and then told Matthew how he translated his novels himself, writing first in Danish, and then coming out with an English version, creating two quite separate novels which were somehow not synonymous, a Danish and an English one.

The book was called “A Dream to Die With”.

On the cover was a picture of a woman falling backward into tangerine clouds.

Matthew supposed he would have to read it.

He helped Lukas load the dishwasher after Mr Sorensen had left them, reminding Matthew to call him Lars as he went.

‘Yes, Sir,’ Matthew had replied, only realising what he had said after Mr Sorensen had gone.

How the hell was he going to call him Lars?

Lukas was putting a cup into the dishwasher.

‘You know,’ Matthew said, ‘I really like your dad.’

‘Yeah, I know you do.’

‘He’s like…I don’t know. I wish my father was like that.’

Lukas shrugged his shoulders.

Matthew picked up an apple and took a bite out of it.

‘What are you eating that for?’

Matthew stopped with his mouth partly open.

‘It’s one of McCady’s apples.’

Does she have her own apples? Matthew wondered, starting to chew again. ‘Well it’s too late now,’ he said, his mouth still full, ‘I’ve started it.’