Stories Written on Lined Paper - 19. Another One of Those Family Photographs

Graeme Meades resented the man even before he met him. He’d also applied for the job of Claims Manager, although it was a sideways move. It would have meant a promotion for him, and he needed that now he and Sophie were engaged. He’d been nervous at the interview, but he still felt it went well; he knew two out of the three people on the interview panel. One of them was Terry Sanger, who he’d worked with before Terry got his own promotion. After he left the interview, he’d felt so positive about it that as he walked back to his desk he’d felt a wave of relief wash through him. His prayers would be answered; the job was his.

Two days later, they told him he hadn’t got the job. Terry Sanger had called him at his desk, as Graeme was working through another spreadsheet. His conversation was short. They’d given the job to an external candidate, someone new to the company. Their conversation had been brief before Terry Sanger rang off, and Graeme had kept his voice level. But afterwards he was barely able to contain his disappointment; he’d been crushed. He’d needed that promotion, he’d believed that promotion was his, and they had taken it away from him. Again, he’d been frustrated and disappointed; life was so unfair.

As it grew closer to the time when Stephen Cartmel would start as the new Claims Manager, Graeme felt his resentment growing and deepening. Even before he’d met Cartmel he’d taken against him; he couldn’t help himself. He was so angry and hurt that it clouded his judgement; he couldn’t see the best in Stephen Cartmel. This man had obviously got the job by deception or some kind of favouritism, lied on his CV, lied at his interview, Graeme didn’t know which, but it had to be something. Otherwise the job would surely have been his. Graeme was so frustrated and disappointed that his view of everything soon turned black and white.

Stephen Cartmel started work on a bright Tuesday morning. Graeme was unimpressed by this; the man couldn’t even start work on a Monday morning like everyone else. The man was trying to make himself look special, Graeme knew, but he kept it to himself

The next day, Wednesday, Terry Sanger hosted a “Meet our new Claims Manager” in the canteen to introduce Stephen Cartmel, and everyone in Department B had to attend. Graeme had arrived at two minutes to eleven, just before it started, and hid away at the back of the room. Terry Sanger, in his far too tight pants, had stood up and simply said:

“I want you all to warmly welcome our new Claims Manager, Stephen Cartmel.”

People clapped in the way they always did when management made an announcement. Graeme joined in because he knew it was expected of him.

Stephen Cartmel had stood up when he was introduced and stepped next to Terry Sanger.

Stephen Cartmel was certainly a handsome man. His features were strong, though with a smooth and almost sculpted look to them. His skin was flawless, almost glowing with health. His pale blonde hair was short but swept over his head in a soft and gentle wave. Stylish but not too unconventional for an office, it certainly complemented the features of his face and his bright, vivid blue eyes. He wore a snuggly tight navy-blue suit, though nowhere near as tightly fitting as Terry Sanger’s pants. Underneath it he wore a carefully fitted white shirt, but none of his clothes hid that his body was compact and still muscular. Cartmel smiled broadly at them all with a mouthful of shining white and neat teeth.

It wasn’t right for a man to be that handsome, Graeme knew; it bordered on the idolatrous.

Cartmel had given a short speech, telling people he was friendly and that his office door was open to everyone, smiling as he did. He certainly seemed to have a lot of charm. Was that how he’d got the job? But was he any good at it? Graeme knew he could do the job with almost his eyes closed, and he’d certainly not have made all this fuss about it.

As soon as Cartmel stopped talking he started greeting different people, moving around the room and shaking hands with everyone he met. Graeme felt disgusted; the man was trying to be some sort of glorious leader. At that point he’d gone to leave the room.

As he’d approached the doorway out of there, Debbie Furlong had stepped in his way and said:

“Aren’t you going to greet our new Claims Manager, like everyone else?”

“I’ve got too much work I need to do,” he quietly said as he stepped past her.

He could feel her angry stare on the back of his head as he left the room. She’d never liked him, but that wasn’t his fault. He had merely stood up for the truth.

He avoided Cartmel for nearly the next two weeks. He’d felt such a dislike for the man. He must have used some underhand or dishonest approach to get the job. Graeme had been right to dislike him before he even started there. Also, how could he trust a man who obviously paid so much attention to his appearance?

But Stephen Cartmel was the Claims Manager, and Graeme couldn’t avoid him forever. By Friday of Cartmel’s second week Graeme had three files he needed to show the man. He’d tried to get Debbie Furlong to take the files to Cartmel’s office for him, but she’d flatly refused. So, stealing himself, that Friday afternoon, Graeme took the files to the man’s office himself.

He’d found Stephen Cartmel was sat behind his desk, working on his computer, and glanced up as Graeme entered the office.

“How can I help you?” Cartmel said, in that rich telephone voice.

“Err… I need you to check over these three cases,” Graeme replied.

“Pass them here and I’ll add them to my list,” Cartmel said and actually smiled up at Graeme. “I’ll look over these as soon as I can, but I’m snowed under here,” he said as he took the files off Graeme.

“There hasn’t been a Claims Manager here for some time,” Graeme replied.

“I was told that before I started, but I didn’t know that things had got this bad.”

As Stephen Cartmel took the files from him, the corner of one of them clipped a picture frame, there on the man’s desk, causing it to fall over. Graeme glanced down and saw the photograph staring up at him.

It was a portrait of three people sitting on a park bench. Stephen Cartmel was one of them, though he was casually dressed, with a red flush to his checks, and he had his arm around the second man in the picture. The other man was equally as handsome as Cartmel, though his hair was dark and tightly curling and his complexion was richly olive. Between them sat a boy of maybe five or six, staring into the camera with a broad smile upon his face, which was framed with loosely curling brown hair. The three faces seemed to form a triangle in the picture’s composition; they were three handsome faces smiling out of the photograph.

“Who’s that?” Graeme asked, without thinking.

“That’s my husband, Pip, and our son, Jaime. We adopted him when he was six months old,” Stephen Cartmel replied.

“You’re homosexual.” The words fell out of Graeme’s month before he could check himself.

“I’m gay, yes. So what?”

Graeme felt his face begin to flush with embarrassment.

“No, nothing,” he mumbled. He didn’t have the courage to speak, faced with the stare of this handsome man. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got work to do,” he hurriedly said.

He didn’t wait to hear Cartmel’s reply before he rushed out of there. He didn’t bother waiting for the lift; instead he rushed down the two flights of stairs to the floor where his desk sat. When he reached his own cubicle, he just slumped down at his desk. He hadn’t been expecting that; the sight of that photograph had surprised and then shocked him. He disliked Cartmel, but he’d not thought the man was homosexual, though the man did pay too much attention to his appearance.

He’d been relieved to leave work at five o’clock that Friday.

He’d not seen Sophie until Sunday morning, when he’d sat next to her at church. All Saturday she had been busy with the preparations for her sister’s wedding, the next month, and after church she was bubbling with tales of the previous day, which soon turned into her excited wishes for her own wedding, though they hadn’t even chosen a date for it. The sermon that morning had been preached by Revd Robert and had been about all the recent attacks on traditional marriage.

As he’d walked her home, holding her hand as he did so, he’d finally been able to talk to her about Stephen Cartmel.

“I’ve met the new Claims Manager at work.”

“The man who stole your job?” Sophie said.

“Yes,” he quietly agreed.

“We prayed that that job would be yours. We had Words of Knowledge that it would. Then the devil steals it away from you.”

“Yes,” he agreed with her. In truth he’d never felt as confident that the job would be his as she had been, but he’d taken the lead from her confidence. “I’ve met him, the new Claims Manager, and he’s homosexual.”

“That’s appalling,” Sophie said, the distaste plain in her voice.

“And him and his husband are raising a child together,” Graeme said.

“He doesn’t have a husband. Only wives have husbands. They have same-sex sexual partners. Calling them anything else normalises them,” she bluntly said.

“And they’re raising a child together.”

“That is disgusting. They’ll only damage that child, because they can’t really love it, not the way normal parents do.”

“But I don’t know what to do about it all. I have to work with him; he is the Claims Manager now.”

“You have to tell him the truth, that his life is disgusting, sterile, and sinful in God’s eyes, and he must repent or else risk losing his very soul.”

It all sounded so blunt and yet so easy when she said it. Sophie worked in one of her father’s Christian Bookshops, where they only employed other Christians, and didn’t have to face non-Christians at work.

“I will do my best,” Graeme said as the two of them turned into the tree-lined avenue where Sophie’s home was.

He didn’t find the courage to do as she advised; instead he did the opposite. He avoided Stephen Cartmel at work.

It wasn’t easy, though. Cartmel was the Claims Manager, and so much of Graeme’s work had to be referred through him. At first he’d been able to get Debbie Furlong to take his files with her when she went to see Cartmel, which was three or even four times a day. But she had quickly realised what he was doing and refused to be part of it.

“For God’s sake, take your own files to him,” she’d snapped at him as Graeme felt himself inwardly shrink from her blaspheming. “So he got the job you went for, get over it. He’s a really nice guy. If you’d get off your high-horse for five minutes then you’d see it.”

He’d not argued with her; what was the point? Instead he’d moved on to asking whichever temp was working with them to take his files two floors up to Cartmel’s office, but only when Debbie Furlong wasn’t around to see what he was doing.

Stephen Cartmel always attended their weekly department meetings, but Graeme just didn’t speak to him during these. It was easy to do so, because he rarely spoke at those meetings now. There had been no point in pushing himself after he didn’t get the Claims Manager job. Now he just remained silent through the whole meeting. The problem was, throughout the meeting, he found his attention being constantly drawn back to Stephen Cartmel, sitting next to Rose Stewart, their Head of Department. Cartmel was too handsome and too well groomed, it was indecent, but Graeme couldn’t stop himself from glancing back at the man, even if Cartmel was saying nothing.

He had managed to avoid the man for nearly three weeks when he ran straight into him, on the way to the canteen that Wednesday lunchtime.

He had been hurrying along the corridor, hoping to get to the canteen and have an early lunch. He had a meeting at two o’clock with Rose Stewart, and he needed to prepare for it. He’d been warned, bluntly by Debbie Furlong, that the office gossip was that Rose was angry because his work had been slipping over the past few weeks. He knew he had become too preoccupied by Stephen Cartmel. But if he got to the canteen early, then he could get back to his desk when the main office was empty, and then he could prepare some spreadsheets showing that his work was good, even if he had to do some Future Accounting to make it look like he was working better than he had been.

Graeme had hurried around the last corner, before the canteen, and also collided head-on with Stephen Cartmel. The man was dressed in a very tailored navy-blue suit that flatteringly hugged his body, and his blond hair was carefully styled. Graeme took a backwards step in surprise and to stop their bodies touching.

“Graeme Meades. Anyone would think you were avoiding me,” Cartmel said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

“I’ve… I’ve been very busy,” Graeme quickly replied. It wasn’t technically a lie.

“Yes, far too busy to come to a meeting with me. I’ve sent you God knows how many emails that I need a meeting with you, and all I get is half-arsed answers.”

Graeme tried to ignore the man’s blasphemy and bad language.

“But I’ve been very busy,” he protested.

“I’ve found major discrepancies in four of your case files already, and I need a meeting with you to discuss them.”

“I’ll email you after lunch and we’ll arrange a meeting,” he quickly said.

“When?” Cartmel snapped back. “I’ve been emailing you about this for two weeks. Anyway, it is too late now. I’ve gone over your head and got a meeting with you and your Department Head, Rose, at two.”

“What? No!” Graeme protested, a moment of panic snatching at his mind.

“You gave me no choice. You won’t arrange a meeting with me. What have you got against meeting with me?” Cartmel demanded.

“You’re… You’re…” Graeme started to say, but his courage failed him.

“What? I got the job you wanted? I was told you failed your interview.”

“No, it’s because you’re homosexual!” Graeme spat out.

“What?”

“I’m a Bible believing Christian, and your lifestyle is immoral and disgusting!” Graeme carried on, adrenaline now pounding in his head and pushing his words out. “And you’re raising a child in that sinful environment and corrupting that innocent child.” He gasped in a breath of air, he’d been talking so fast.

“God, you homophobic dinosaur!” Cartmel snapped back, distaste dripping from his voice.

“You can’t argue with what I say because it’s the Word of God,” Graeme retorted, repeating what he’d heard so often at church.

“Don’t give me that bigoted crap. That’s what every bigot says when they try to hide behind religion. You were the one who just said it. You accused me of corrupting my own son. I’m going to bring this up at our meeting this afternoon. You don’t speak to me like that.”

“No, I was expressing my beliefs,” he protested.

“Tell that to Rose, because I’m not interested in your pathetic excuses,” Cartmel replied, and then just walked past him and away down the corridor. For a moment he stared at the retreating figure of Cartmel. He’d said too much yet again. He’d listened to Sophie and others at church when his instinct had said be quiet, but he was such a failure, such a fool, such a… The emotions jumped into his mind as his face flushed with embarrassment.

Graeme turned on his heels and almost ran from there.

He ran along the corridor and up the stairs to the floor above. He only stopped running when he reached the Gents’ toilet and was able to lock himself away in a cubicle. Ignoring the strong smell of pine disinfectant, he sat down on the closed toilet seat and wept, bitter and hard tears. It was always so unfair. His life was always so hard and complicated, and he always seemed to do the wrong thing. Eventually he always did what he was told to do at church.

He’d worked so hard, believed so hard, tried so hard at being a Christian, but still he’d failed. Repeatedly at church, he’d been told that if he was faithful God would reward him. Well, he had been faithful, believed everything demanded of him, done everything required of him, and he’d been rewarded with nothing. All that was happening was that his life was getting progressively harder and harder. It was always an uphill struggle, and every time it got steeper and more difficult.

He’d prayed every night for change, kept himself pure from all temptations, and even became engaged to Sophie, though all he felt for her was friendship, and sometimes not even that, but nothing had changed. He was still deeply sexually attracted to men. He’d only ever become sexually aroused thinking about men, and a close relationship with another man was what he secretly longed for. These feelings and emotions were only getting stronger as time passed. He was damned for being who he was, no escape.

Stephen Cartmel was everything he didn’t dare let himself hope to be. Stephen Cartmel was homosexual, but he was happy and healthy with it, he had an attractive lover whom he seemed to care a lot about, and they had even adopted a child together. Stephen Cartmel seemed unbelievably happy with his life, and he was achingly handsome too. Cartmel had even got the job Graeme had longed and prayed for, and Cartmel was good at that job.

He’d wanted to reach out to Cartmel. Frighteningly, part of him wanted to reach out and touch Stephen Cartmel’s handsome face, to kiss those deep red lips… but he’d destroyed his chance with his own… He didn’t want to allow that thought, but images of Stephen Cartmel’s handsome and tight muscular buttocks jumped before his tear-blinded eyes.

He was going to hell, and no one would save him.

Graeme couldn’t stop weeping. Even though a cramping pain had seized at his chest and stomach, the weeping seemed to have taken him over…