The Partnership

by Barry Unsworth

‘But it isn’t only the girl, or even mainly,’ said Foley. ‘Don’t you see? The whole situation is changed now. We can’t go on… How can I go on living with you like this, knowing that I can never reciprocate this special feeling you have for me? I should always be feeling as though I were exploiting you.’

  ‘Of course,’ Moss said, ‘I shouldn’t dream of … I wouldn’t do anything to offend you.’ But there was no conviction in his voice.

  Foley again prepared to escape, now that Moss seemed milder, more amenable. Privately, he was still amazed at the other’s disingenuity. Thinking in terms of heterosexual relations he knew that if he were in the same position he would constantly be trying to change the girl’s mind; all his actions would have a quality of ingratiation. It was not conceivable that just being with a loved person could suffice the need for involvement – if Moss thought so, he was deceiving himself.

  With the situation thus under control, and Moss seemingly tamed, Foley rose from his armchair, saying at the same time in a casual tone: ‘Well, I can’t at the moment, I’m afraid, see any solution to all this, except, of course, for us to live separately. Extra rent, but it can’t be helped.’ He was attempting, on the tide of these remarks as it were, to flow past Moss in the direction of the door, when he heard a harsh intake of breath like a sob. The next moment he felt himself seized with painful firmness by the upper arms and he was looking down at one side of Moss’s face – the other being pressed with considerable force against his dressing-gown. The side he could see was very pale and had its eye closed and was contorted about the mouth. In order to get his face low enough to press against Foley’s chest, Moss had had to adopt an ungainly, crouching position and for the first second or two Foley’s feeling was one of startled solicitude: he thought that Moss had been attacked by some sort of cramp. But he realised almost immediately, from the wordless tenacity of the grip and some abasement in the posture, that Moss was in fact embracing him. Immediately upon realisation of this he began struggling, gently at first, then more firmly, to extricate himself; but Moss, breathing now in great noisy gulps partially stifled in the folds of the dressing-gown, continued to hold him in a clutch that demonstrated clearly – if any demonstration had been needed – the relative quality of their muscles.

  ‘Let me go, Michael,’ he said, but Moss for only answer turned his head so that it was hidden completely, and held on. For a space of time they were locked together, Foley pushing away with all his strength and Moss clinging. Foley began to pant from his exertions. He felt the lacerating absurdity of his situation but lacked the physical strength necessary to disembarrass himself of Moss. ‘Let me go, I tell you!’ he cried again, breathlessly. The terrible, unbudging deference of Moss’s stance horrified him further and added to his sense of nightmare. ‘You’re hurting my arms,’ he said. He was desperately considering a kick in the region of Moss’s shin when, with a sound between gasp and moan, the other released him, so suddenly that he staggered back. Moss straightened up and put both hands over his face, standing there for a full minute, while Foley confusedly adjusted his dressing-gown.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Moss said, through his hands. Foley felt unable for the moment to utter any words at all. The crudely practical nature of Moss’s next remark shocked him into composure. ‘What would you have done,’ Moss enquired slowly, uncovering his face, which was completely drained of colour, and looking steadfastly at Foley, ‘if I hadn’t let go?’

  ‘I think I should probably have kicked you,’ Foley said as coldly and promptly as possible. He felt upset but determined to make no concessions. Above all he must not allow Moss to think there had been any prospect of his resistance collapsing. The very fact that he could frame such a question at so delicate a juncture brought home to Foley, as perhaps nothing had before, Moss’s essential unscrupulousness, the urgency of his need. ‘I should certainly have kicked you,’ he said. On the shin. I don’t know whether I’ve ever told you this, but I know a bit of judo. Anyway, I hope this has finally convinced you that things can’t go on like this. It’s not fair to either of us.’

  ‘Not fair? How do you mean, not fair?’ Moss said quickly. ‘Why is it not fair? I can stand it if you can.’

  ‘I don’t mean it’s unfair to me because of the temptation,’ Foley explained patiently. ‘It doesn’t present itself to me as a temptation at all. It’s just a bloody unpleasant and embarrassing position for me to be in.’ I suppose, he thought, Moss can’t quite believe in anybody not having a dash of it, since it bulks so large in him. He decided to end the conversation on a man of the world note.

  ‘I sympathise, don’t think I don’t sympathise,’ he said. ‘I’m all for revising the laws. Consenting adults in private is fine with me. I mean, don’t think I’m prejudiced. But I don’t want to join in these revels. They are not for me. And I’m hardly likely to change now. After all, let’s face it, the majority are with me.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure,’ Moss said. He spoke in a gruff and argumentative tone, wanting to hide the extent to which Foley’s jaunty and unfeeling remarks had wounded him, setting him without distinction among the merely tolerated. Ronald spoke as though it were simply an activity, like a game of cards; more strenuous than this perhaps, but similar, requiring only a shared inclination, a knowledge of how to play. Did he think of girls in this way? Surely love should permeate all other relations. It should commit, even the hypothesis of love that is, all the person to it. What consenting adults did in private: Ronald knew more about this than he did. But love did not stop when you put your clothes on. It occurred to Moss suddenly and without irony that Ronald’s attitude to sex was unhealthy.

  ‘Don’t be too sure,’ he said again.

  ‘Oh well, yes,’ Foley said. ‘I know you enlist them in their thousands. But we can’t really argue about what is latent. The point is that the majority act as though they agree with me. And it’s acts that count, surely.’

  ‘I should have thought it was feelings,’ Moss said.

  There was silence between them for a short time, then Foley began to move towards the door. ‘Be that as it may,’ he said, with deliberate unconcern.

  ‘Wait,’ said Moss. ‘Don’t go yet. Don’t go like this. If I promised it wouldn’t happen again …’

  ‘What would be the use of that?’ Foley said. He turned at the door, looked back at Moss. They stood regarding each other for a long moment in silence. Suddenly a kind of ripple passed over Moss’s features. He opened his mouth as if to speak, making at the same time a shrugging movement. Then Foley saw that his eyes had filled with tears. While he watched a tear spilled over and went coursing down Moss’s left cheek until it was arrested at the corner of his mouth. He made no attempt to brush the tears away or to turn aside, but went on looking at Foley steadily, even raising his face a little, as though wishing to exhibit his tears as proof of the gravity of the matter.

  The sight of this naked weeping in one normally so stolid was horrifying, and Foley did not know what to do. He felt a desire to comfort Moss, and even experienced a sympathetic moistening in his own eyes which for a moment hindered his vision. But at the thought of actually approaching Moss his nerve failed him. After a further moment of helpless gazing, he turned and with a muttered ‘Good night, Michael,’ made his escape. He had at least, he told himself, spared Moss further humiliation. But almost immediately, as he was mounting the stairs, he was assailed by an extremely disagreeable sense of his own inadequacy. He should have found a way of smoothing things over, instead of scuttling away like that. He paused halfway up the stairs and stood wondering whether to go back. But presently the sheer relief at having escaped swept over him again and he proceeded up the stairs more quickly.

  Moss noted the pause and the acceleration. He had not moved since Foley left. He could hardly see for the hot tears, but he made no attempt yet to brush them away. He had not really believed that Foley would come back but his breath caught when the other stopped and he released it only when he heard the bedroom
door closing. His throat was wrenched and painful with the effort of quelling sobs that kept rising. He felt some wonder at this fit of crying which had come upon him so suddenly. It was many years since he had cried. He did not feel pity for himself and the tears had nothing in common with his most constant memory of crying, the harsh, angry crying of boyhood fist-fights when victory had not been signal enough. They were tears of sorrow. It was Ronald’s tragic obtuseness that he mourned for now. So intimately had Ronald been held in his thoughts that he could not believe the pain of this division was confined to himself. The intricate, daily spun and ramified coil of their association was ruined, and this was because Ronald had refused to accept his place in it, and his place, his topmost place, in the hierarchy of Moss’s affections. He had not seen how he fitted in there, how he was the heir to all the moments of pain Moss had endured and the treasures of devotion he could now dispose of. Ronald had simply turned his back on all this. He had fought to keep Ronald fixed in his habitual assessment, which had seemed to him, and still did seem, the same as fighting to keep Ronald a perfect human being. And it was from this height that Ronald had coldly and without compunction descended. Ronald had abdicated from his own perfection and torn out of Moss in the process some capacity for belief in such perfection. It was a violation quite unforgivable. Moss knew he would never forgive it.

  He returned to his chair and settled himself down deliberately to think of Ronald as unfavourably as possible. His was a nature incapable of compromise and now it was necessary for Ronald to be reduced to the ranks as soon as possible. He had always known that Ronald was weak and vain. These qualities had formerly seemed endearing. But Ronald had forfeited indulgence now, and it could readily be seen that he was a very bad character indeed. Moss reviewed in his mind the three years of his life with Ronald. The business meant nothing to him as such. It had been for him simply the symbol of their covenent. It had made Ronald happy to see it expanding and Ronald’s happiness had been his happiness. Three years of his life he had given, and for what? So that Ronald could make a little money, persuade himself he was an artist, put on airs, make those cherubs dangling upstairs? Those cherubs … Ronald had always been discouraged immediately at the smallest setback. Ten times over the business would have crashed. What had he, Moss, got out of it all? Ronald’s gratitude had gone into those bloody angels and cherubs dangling about upstairs …

  Patiently he cultivated animosity towards Foley, but reminiscence was not good for this, cluttering his mind with remembered images, each peculiarly characteristic, each with its colour deepened by the pain of his present rejection: Ronald standing, walking, sitting, grave, smiling. On the little beach below the cottage Ronald in brief black trunks that did not reach to his navel, his hair sleek from the sea, shook himself like a puppy scattering drops around him on the sand. Ronald came in with a bunch of daffodils and could not untie the string that held the stalks, the sap wet his fingers and he pretended to be disgusted by thinning his lips. In the attic among the cherub lamps Ronald was holding up his feather brush and rays of sunshine from the high windows fell on him. His arms glowed through the thin white shirt.

  Moss thought again of that miraculous conversation in The Fisherman’s Arms down by the quay in Lanruan, where it had all begun. He remembered the details of this as though they too were elements in his deception. Water on the flat cobbles along the quay, the sky reflected in it. The swoosh of someone’s swill going stealthily into the harbour. The bright fishing-nets on their tarred poles. Himself shy with the accomplished stranger who began so casually to speak to him. He had had too much sun in the afternoon and his shoulders were sore under the rub of his shirt. Ronald had seemed from the start so much the sort of person to whom this never happened, who never peeled, but was always smooth-skinned, even and urbane. That talk of theirs! Begun so carelessly by Ronald, pursued with such diffident persistence by himself, while the light waned outside and the harbour water glassed over with evening. And that thunderous proposition which seemed to grow out of it almost by accident. He remembered his excitement as he walked back to his boarding house, the promise of the summer night and the stars. He had not known then, but he knew now – and he faced it squarely – that it was the prospect of associating with Ronald that had caused that excitement, not any hope of commercial success, not the thought of a change of job. Then and always it had been Ronald.

  And how did Ronald himself regard that first meeting? For the first time, and with considerable effort, Moss asked himself what Ronald must have felt, seeing in the bar this raw-looking, lobster-faced person in a hairy jacket, clutching a glass of Guinness. It must have been clear to Ronald after a short while that he lived alone, was unmarried, did not much care for his work, and possessed – though this transpired somewhat later – two hundred and fifty pounds, the savings of four years. Why then had he always insisted on believing these overtures, this proposition of Ronald’s to be generous? He had needed from the beginning to feel grateful to Ronald and protective also. He had needed to refashion Ronald into an object worthy of devotion. Ronald had been luckier than he could have dreamed possible, finding a person not merely credulous but desperate to be exploited.

  No simple withdrawal of love could disengage him now. The experiment having failed, the equipment too must be broken. Only an act of vandalism could effect this severance. Moss’s face settled into a vindictive expression which was not now merely an exercise.

  14

  Next day they spoke little to each other, barely saw each other in fact, since each kept strictly to his own working quarters.

  Even getting ready for Max’s party in the evening they did not exchange many words; and the ten-mile drive to Max’s house passed in complete silence. Moss drove, with the blank and rather sad expression he always had when concentrating. Foley wondered idly, as the car snouted through these devious lanes, further and further from the coast into the rural hinterland, why Simon Lang had installed Max in a remote hamlet like Treleath, not even near the sea. Perhaps he had wanted to keep the association as quiet as possible. But in that case he had certainly miscalculated. Max’s constant drinking and his chichi manners would have attracted attention anywhere; in this retreat he must be almost grotesquely conspicuous, chattering and flaunting among the softly scandalised village people. Perhaps Simon had simply wanted to keep Max as far as possible from London, to avoid the embarrassment of drunken, recriminatory visits.

  They were rather early – it was only about eight o’clock, so it was not surprising to find no other cars outside the house. Max himself let them in, but a changed and indeed almost unrecognisable Max, so collected and responsible his whole manner. He shook hands with them both, looked straight into their faces and said, ‘So glad you could come,’ with an exactly similar intonation to each of them separately. His appearance, too, had changed. Gone was the Monte Carlo insouciance of his normal drinking kit, the gay scarfs and coloured pullovers. He was dressed in a charcoal-grey suit and maroon woollen tie and these clothes made him look frailer than ever and somehow seedy.

  When they went into the large and comfortably appointed living-room they saw a young man, willowy and beautiful, in a dark serge suit of sober elegance. Max introduced him in the same careful manner as Eric.

  ‘He has come down from London a little ahead of Simon,’ he explained, flicking his cuffs and smiling. He was quite sober and did not seem to be drinking anything. Eric had a gin. ‘To prepare the way,’ Max added, after a pause of considerable length. It was difficult to judge whether this last remark had been intended humorously, because although Max grimaced as he said it, Eric did not seem to find it funny.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Foley said, smiling at everyone in a non-committal way. Moss said nothing at all. Eric, who had beautiful slanting eyes and a charming manner, smiled and said, ‘Oh not really, Max, just the trains were more convenient this way.’ His voice had a kind of RADA resonance and would obviously carry well. This was obviously the talker, the fixer, the
advance guard.

  ‘What will you have?’ said Max and his mouth twitched twice. ‘We have gin, and gin, and whisky, and gin …’

  Foley asked for whisky and Moss did too. ‘Did you have a good journey down?’ Foley asked Eric.

  ‘Not very,’ Eric said. ‘The train was crowded.’ His smile diminished somewhat. ‘We didn’t know we’d be coming to a party,’ he said.

  Foley’s imagination was stirred by the proof of Simon’s power that the presence of Eric afforded. He obviously used human beings like counters, sending them here and there to construct a required atmosphere, a desired set of relations. Foley had never met anyone with minions before, and he looked forward more than ever to Simon’s arrival. He wondered suddenly what Moss was making of all this. Moss was sitting on his own in a comer, holding a large whisky and staring austerely straight before him. Eric went over to speak to Max who was standing against the far wall of the room. The doorbell rang and Max disappeared, coming back a minute or two later leading a baldish, youngish man with irritably mobile eyebrows, and a blonde, rather expensive-looking woman.

  Max and Eric were standing close together, talking. ‘But who else is coming, Max?’ Foley heard Eric say. ‘Surely you remember how many, at least?’

  ‘Just a few friends,’ Max said, flicking his cuffs again, and tugging slightly at his left lapel. ‘Friends of Simon, mutual friends.’

  ‘But Simon has no friends here in this part,’ Eric said.

  The doorbell rang. ‘Excuse me,’ Max said.

  Several more people now arrived together and among them Graham, in a dark blue fisherman’s sweater, looking surprisingly amenable without his cap. Suddenly the room seemed crowded. Except for Graham, Foley found that he knew none of the guests. They did not seem to be local people. And in these first few minutes, while Max and Eric were getting drinks for everyone, it became apparent that they were all complete strangers to one another. Everybody seemed surprised and politely resentful at finding so many other people present. On what basis had Max selected these people to meet Simon? Max had no fixed body of acquaintance from whom to select. He had no friends, no permanent attachments except Simon himself. His contacts with people were intense, drunken, dissolved at closing time, forgotten the next morning. These invitations must have been issued during the past week or so in all the bars where Max happened to find himself, to all the people who appeared to recognise Simon’s name.