Ham Tea
“You’ll eat ham,” Bern Haigh says, and puts a plate in Lyle’s hands before Lyle has finished saying hello.
It is a paper plate with a wall of thin pink ham on it, a boiled egg, a scoop of coleslaw and a slice of buttered white bread folded in half. Half the village hall is stood about with the same plate, murmuring over cups of tea the colour of a wet road. Margaret Haigh went into the ground at two o’clock, up the hill behind the chapel, and now the whole dale is eating in her honour. Lyle drove four hours from Manchester to be here and he hasn’t had a bite since a service-station bacon roll at seven.
“I’m sorry about your mam,” he says. It comes out stiff. He has a good black suit on that he bought for his own divorce, and he has just remembered that it pulls across the stomach.
“Aye. Well. She’d have said you’d got fat.” Bern’s mouth moves, which on him counts as a smile. He has squeezed himself into the funeral jacket he must have worn for his dad, and when he reaches for a cup the sleeve rides up over a wrist like a fence post, pale scars across the knuckles from a lifetime of walling. His beard has gone white since Lyle last saw it. “Eat your egg. You look like you’ve come to be hanged.”
Lyle eats the egg. He used to come up here for lambing, fifteen years back, the spring his marriage went sour and his boss told him to take his leave or lose it. He was twenty-six and useless, and Maggie Haigh put him in the back bedroom and said nobody leaves this house hungry. Bern was forty-two and silent and taught him to turn a lamb without breaking it. They never touched. Lyle left on the first of May with a bag of eggs and a feeling like a stone in his chest, and today he has driven up for the funeral of a woman who was kinder to him than his own mother, because he couldn’t think of one decent reason not to. He did not allow himself to think of the other reason.
“You staying?” Bern asks.
“I’ve a room at the Bull. Phoned this morning. Wasn’t going to stay long.”
“Bull’s full. Half of Leyburn’s been in.” Bern looks at the ham on his own plate like it’s something he’ll have to shift. “There’s your old room. Bed’s aired. I put a bottle in it Thursday.”
“A hot-water bottle?”
“Aye. For you. In case.” He says it to the ham. “Mam always said to, if you came.”
Lyle puts his plate down very carefully on the trestle. His hands have started to do something he’d rather they didn’t.
“All right,” he says. “I’ll stay.”
By nine the village hall is empty and the two of them are doing the tea urn. Lyle dries, Bern washes, a third of a dale’s worth of cups in a sink the size of a bath. The cleaners have gone and so has the vicar. Somebody’s aunt left a Tupperware of parkin on the draining board with a note that says for Bernard. Out of the window the fell is a black shape against a sky only slightly less black.
“She went quick,” Bern says. “Tuesday morning. She’d had her porridge. She sat in the chair and said she was feeling queer, and by the time I’d got the phone she’d gone.” His big red hands go on moving in the water. “I’ve been thinking all week I should’ve rung you. Then I thought, he’ll not want to be bothered. Then Doreen from the Co-op told me you’d split with that fella in Chorlton.”
“Eighteen months back.”
“That’s what she said.” Bern puts a cup on the rack. He doesn’t look round. “I didn’t ring because I didn’t know what I’d say. Fifteen years. I thought, he’ll have forgotten.”
“I didn’t.”
It is very quiet in the hall. The urn ticks as it cools. Bern’s hands stop moving.
“I did think about ringing,” Lyle says, because somebody has to. “Most of those fifteen years. Mostly at lambing.”
Bern turns round. He is a good deal bigger than the sink, and his shirt is wet to the elbows, and he is looking at Lyle with his whole grey face gone slack and shy. He says, “I’m fifty-seven. I’m too old to be daft about this.”
“I’m forty-one. It doesn’t get better.”
“Right then.” He dries his hands on his trousers. He crosses the floor in two strides and puts one hand on the back of Lyle’s neck, hot and heavy, smelling of washing-up liquid, and kisses him.
It is a rough kiss, close-mouthed and awkward for the first second, the beard prickling hard, and then Lyle opens his mouth and Bern makes a sound deep in his chest like a gate coming off a latch. His other hand lands on Lyle’s waist and stays there. Lyle gets both fists in the front of that tight funeral jacket and hangs on, and for a while there is only the tick of the urn and the dishcloth dripping off the side of the sink.
“I’ve not done this for years,” Bern says into his mouth. “I’ve no notion how it goes.”
“It goes upstairs.”
“Aye.” Bern’s laugh comes out cracked. “Come on, then.”
They lock the hall and stop at Lyle’s car for his overnight bag, and then they walk up to the farm in the dark, because Bern says he walked down and he’ll walk back, a funeral being no night for driving. He carries the parkin under one arm and a torch in the other fist. The lane runs up between dry-stone walls he must have mended a hundred times, and halfway up, by the stile, he stops and plays the beam over a gap in the top courses where three stones have slipped.
“Meant to do that Tuesday,” he says.
“Do it Monday.”
“Aye.” The torch goes back on the lane. His free hand finds Lyle’s in the dark and takes it, a broad rough hand that closes all the way round his, and neither of them says anything else until the farmhouse gate.
The farmhouse smells of wool and woodsmoke and, faintly, of the old dog who died in March. Bern doesn’t put the light on. He leads Lyle up the stairs by the hand like a man leading a horse past something frightening, past the back bedroom with the hot-water bottle in it, and into the big room at the front where a heavy brass bed stands under a window full of stars.
They agree two things out loud, sitting on the edge of it with their shoes still on. Both of them were tested in the spring and neither has been with anyone since. Lyle has a tube of water-based lube in his overnight bag. He packed it in Manchester at six this morning, feeling like a fool, and he says so, and Bern looks at him, and then at the floor, and says, “Well, I’m glad one of us had hope.”
Then Bern gets him out of the black suit. He does it one piece at a time with those enormous hands, careful over the buttons like they’re a gate catch he doesn’t want to break. The jacket goes on the chair and the shirt follows. When Lyle stands in his vest and boxers with his stomach out, hot to the ears, Bern puts his face to it and breathes in, and says “Bloody hell, there’s some of you,” so thrilled that Lyle starts to laugh, and then stops, because Bern’s tongue has found his navel.
“Get your own off,” Lyle says, shaky. “Let me see.”
Bern straightens. Slowly, like it costs him, he gets the funeral jacket off and the shirt after it, and then the vest, and white hair comes up out of the collar and keeps on going across a chest like a barrel. His belly hangs soft over his belt. Lyle thinks of the fells behind the farm, and that he is about to be allowed to climb one. When the trousers go down Bern’s cock is already thick and half hard, uncut, standing out of a nest of white hair, and it looks the way Lyle always imagined. He has imagined it often enough.
“Go on,” Bern says, voice thick. “If you want.”
Lyle kneels on the rag rug and takes him in his mouth. Bern says “Oh, Christ” up in the dark, a long exhale, and puts a hand against the brass bedstead as if the floor were moving. The skin is hot and salty, and when Lyle lets the foreskin slide back and runs his tongue around the head, Bern’s whole belly shakes.
“You’ve done that before,” Bern says through his teeth.
“A bit.”
“Aye, a bit.” A hand comes down on his hair, gentle. “Steady, love. I want this to last.”
Lyle slows. He rolls the heavy balls in his palm and takes Bern deeper, as far as he can before he gags, and Bern groans, a long unguarded sound that goes right down Lyle’s spine. “Oh, you lovely man. That’s it. Don’t stop that.” The rug is rough under Lyle’s knees and he doesn’t care. He keeps on until Bern pulls him off by the hair, gasping, and hauls him up onto the bed, and lies on top of him, and for a while they only kiss, with Bern’s whole slow weight pressing Lyle into a mattress that groans like a ship.
The bed is where it goes slow.
Bern lies between his legs for what feels like an hour and does things with his mouth and beard that Lyle hadn’t expected a man like him to know. He rims him with a big flat patient tongue until Lyle is whimpering into the pillow. Then he slicks him with the lube, a finger and then two, and every time Lyle bucks he says “Easy, love, easy, I’ve got you,” and Lyle thinks he’ll die of it.
“Now,” Lyle says. “Bern. Please. I want you.”
“I’ll hurt you.”
“You won’t.”
“I’m not small.”
“I know. I’ve been looking at it all night.” Lyle laughs, wet-eyed. “Fifteen years.”
Bern’s mouth works. He wipes his hand on the sheet, takes a long breath, and settles between Lyle’s thighs with the head of his cock at the slick hole. It is slow and thick and almost too much, and Lyle bites the pillow and grips his shoulders. Bern stops dead every time he tenses. He says, “Breathe, love,” and waits, until Lyle opens a little more and takes another inch, and another, and the long fat heat of him fills Lyle up until Bern’s belly rests on his and neither of them is moving.
“I’m all the way in, love,” Bern says, hoarse. “God. You’re holding me like a fist.”
“Don’t stop. Just move. Slow.”
Bern rocks his hips in long unhurried strokes, nearly out and then in again, so deep that Lyle feels the head of him drag across something that makes his whole body shiver. The brass bed creaks a rhythm. Lyle wraps his legs round Bern’s back and tilts up to meet him, and the white hair of Bern’s chest rubs his nipples with every thrust.
“Is that good?” Bern says. “Tell us. I’ll not know unless you say.”
“It’s so good. You fill me right up, I can feel you in my teeth.” The words come tumbling out. “Fuck me like that. Oh, God, Bern, just keep going.”
“Aye, love. I’ll go all night if you want.” He bends and kisses Lyle’s throat, then his open mouth. “You feel lovely round me, all soft and hot. I’ve wanted to be in you since you were twenty-six and daft with it.”
Lyle’s breath leaves him in a rush. Bern pulls out, slow and dripping, and Lyle makes a wounded noise at the loss. “Hands and knees,” Bern says. “Let me see you take it.” Lyle gets up on the mattress with his forehead on his folded arms and his arse up, and Bern kneels behind him and pushes in again, steady, one broad hand spread across the small of his back. The angle goes deeper and drags harder, and Lyle shoves back onto it with a groan from his belly.
“That’s it. Rock back on it.” Bern’s voice is pure gravel. “Christ, I can see where I go into you. Bloody beautiful.”
“Harder. Bern, harder, I won’t break.”
“I’ll give you what I’m giving you.” But he gives a bit more, and the slap of him against Lyle’s arse fills the room, and Lyle howls into the blanket. Bern’s fingers dig into his hips. “Say my name again. I like hearing it.”
“Bern. Bern. Oh, God. Bern.”
Bern’s big hand slides under him and closes around Lyle’s cock, thick fingers wrapping all the way round, and he strokes once, slow, like he’s checking the weight of something. “Come when you like. I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere.”
Lyle comes with a long cracked cry, all over Bern’s fist and the blanket, his arse clamping on the cock inside him, and Bern says “Ah, Christ, hold on, hold on” and drives in twice more, deep, and shudders over him with a groan that shakes the headboard. Then he collapses half on his side, the whole bed rocking, and drags Lyle round to face him and holds on.
They sleep for an hour, or something near it.
The second time is at dawn.
Lyle wakes with the room gone grey and a cockerel somewhere shouting about it, and with Bern awake already, lying on his side facing him on the pillow, one great hand resting on Lyle’s hip, watching his face in the dim.
“Morning,” Bern says. His voice is worn down to gravel. “I wasn’t sure you’d still be here.”
“Where would I go?”
“Back to Manchester. Back to telling yourself it was one night.” His thumb moves on Lyle’s hip. “I’ll not hold you to anything. I want you to know that.”
“Bern.” Lyle rolls closer, until their noses almost touch, and finds Bern half hard again against his thigh, big and warm. He slides his hand down and wraps it round both of them as best he can. “I’m holding you to something.”
“Aye?”
“This. Now. Go slow.”
They do it face to face on their sides, with Lyle’s leg lifted over Bern’s hip and Bern’s arm under his neck. It takes a long time. Bern gets inside him again with a lazy push and holds there. They kiss in the grey light, wet and slow, mouths meeting and parting, and Bern rolls his hips in small circles, barely moving at all, a deep slow rocking that reaches every part of him. Lyle hangs on to the back of his neck and rocks to meet him. The window goes pale at the edge. A ewe coughs on the pasture. The whole house is quiet around them, and the old brass bed makes its small steady squeak.
“I could do this forever,” Bern whispers.
“You could. You’re a very patient man.”
“Stubborn old sod, more like.” He kisses Lyle’s temple, his eyelid, and moves a little faster. “Tell me you’ll stay till Monday.”
“I’ll stay till Monday.”
“Tell me you’ll come up at Easter.”
“Bern.”
“Say it.”
“I’ll come up at Easter.” Lyle’s breath catches because Bern’s cock has just found exactly the right place. “And lambing. God, right there. And the summer. Fuck, Bern, I’m going to come again.”
“Right with me, love.” The big hand finds Lyle’s cock between them.
They come together, nose to nose with their foreheads touching, Bern’s low rough groan going into Lyle’s open mouth and Lyle’s helpless cry answering it, the slow jerking heat of Bern deep inside him and Lyle’s own come spilling hot between their bellies. Neither of them looks away. When it’s over Bern kisses him hard and says nothing at all, just holds his face between those huge scarred hands as if it might get away.
At seven they go down to the kitchen in the clothes they find. Bern puts the kettle on and stands at the window in his old vest and braces, watching the ewes on the hill, and Lyle sits at the long table in one of Maggie’s cardigans, which is too small for him, with a plate of parkin and a cup of tea the colour of a wet road.
“I’ve the lambing to think on in February,” Bern says, to the window. “I could do with a hand.”
“I’m a quantity surveyor.”
“You turned a breech once. I saw you.”
“Fifteen years ago. I cried.”
“Aye.” The corner of Bern’s mouth moves. He turns, rubbing the back of his neck, and the early sun through the glass lights every white hair in his beard. “You cried and you got it out.” He crosses the kitchen and sets one heavy hand on top of Lyle’s head, and leaves it there. “Stop at the farm till Monday. Then we’ll see about February.”
Fiction by the Woolnight editorial team. AI-assisted drafting; reviewed and edited by humans before publication.