Boy Friends by Michael Pedersen

Author:Michael Pedersen
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2022-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

23–24 July 2018

Upon departing Curfew, each visiting artist must leave behind a trace of themselves – something beyond fingernails and eyelashes, beyond replenished spices, a refilled gas canister or their height scratched into the door frame.

I elect to buff up Curfew’s cosy yet august library of books by donating my well-thumbed version of The Rain in Portugal by Billy Collins. It’s a winner all around – stanzas that could charm the pants off a reluctant reader, and not too unnerving for someone braced for a period of solitary confinement. But it’s not just Billy; I made this copy bespoke – attaching to the inside cover a poem I wrote for you as a way of saying cheerio. I resolve not to read this one again; its voice will live in The Rain in Portugal, listening to the rain in Cushendall.

With the book smug on the shelf, it’s time to leave Curfew’s sanctum. I’ve measured the distance from The Grey Hotel to The Curfew Tower in units of missing and loving. The eight months between laying my head down in our Cape Town abode and making a nest of these antique bricks appear more as an epoch of understanding than a linear passing of time.

And so, to me, The Curfew Tower and The Grey Hotel are twinned in the way cities, towns and counties are twinned. I may be the only one to have made such a correlation and thus will contact the Intercontinental Twinning Association to homologate this match. I believe Curfew’s keeper has an ‘in’ with the ITA.

What’s clear is that I’m reluctant to heave the anchor up, come out of my Tower’s mooring. I’ve spent 90 per cent of my time here on my own and not a day has gone by where I’ve not written or thought about you for hours – no qualms about it, nae danger.

We did not watch Withnail & I, stray too far nor frequent any of the watering holes. But I did visit you with a depth, divinity and dedication that is not possible in the routine of my Scottish city living.

Through Curfew’s mucky windows my mind has flown. Voyaging into stories of childhood and the friendships that sculpted me – love’s losses and life’s murky lessons. I’ve slept not with sight of stars but with their sensation, which, in some ways, proved better than the stars themselves.

I will soon be crossing ocean, from Northern Ireland back to my intimate Scottish anchorage. I hope my vessel is seaworthy. I hope my head is ready for the hush and plunge of familiar sociality; I hope my courage holds firm. After a month cradled in Curfew, I am ready to visit where you left us.

* This being a common Scottish term for going trick-or-treating around Halloween – disguising oneself in a costume or mask and visiting local houses hoping for rewards of coin or confectionery.

† I might stress, claiming to be Hughes’s ‘bullet’ carries little to no gravitas or pertinence. It’s likely I was

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