Rory's Boys

by Alan Clark

  Like a fool, I drove the Merc back to Mount Royal but I wasn’t leaving it in Tufnell Park. As I parked in the East Court, the bell in the Clock Tower struck midnight and I saw a shadowy figure coming through the archway beneath. It was Elspeth. She was clutching a carrier-bag which seemed to be quite heavy. She’d just been out for a wee breath of air, she said.

  ‘For goodness’ sake Miss Wishart, you’ll get mugged or worse,’ I said. ‘This isn’t the Isle of Bute. Where on earth have you been at this time of night?’

  ‘I’m over twenty-one Rory Blaine, so I’ll thank you to mind your own concerns,’ she said, fumbling for her keys. ‘Cheery-bye to you now.’

  The door was firmly closed in my face. As she’d pulled her keys from her pocket, I’d noticed something fall onto the gravel. It was a packet of Mates Endurance.

  A note was lying at the bottom of the glass staircase. Faisal had gone to sleep in the spare room, as he didn’t want to disturb me. He was wiped out and wanted to lie-in. Mamma Rosa hadn’t made it. He’d see me when he surfaced. There was a big X.

  *

  Window-cleaners perched on precarious ledges whistling cheerful ditties. Florists scampered up the front steps submerged in armfuls of gladioli. Wine-merchants and caterers lugged their wares to the cellars and the kitchens. A few milkmaids and chimney-sweeps and we could’ve done the Act Two opening of Oliver! Tomorrow was Preview Day at Mount Royal and our prospective residents were coming en masse. After nearly three years, we still had lots of dotted lines but not a single signature.

  Through the open basement windows, I could hear Big Frankie thundering at the delivery people; he wasn’t always camp and docile, he could be camp and fierce too. Elspeth was striding about, hectoring a squad of cleaners and polishers. Dolores Potts and her gardeners were raking gravel and deporting even the tiniest weed that had dared to immigrate to her flowerbeds. Vic and I toured around like ‘nice’ and ‘nasty’ policemen; I created troubled waters, Vic poured the oil. He said he told them I was at an awkward time of life. Hot flushes, that kind of thing.

  It was a knackering day but some sort of Dunkirk spirit carried us through to the end. In the evening, when all the vans had gone, Dolores Potts strolled into the office. But she’d not come for her usual chat, she had a treat for Vic and me in the Italian Garden.

  ‘Stand there,’ she ordered. ‘The engineers finished this afternoon.’

  Dolores disappeared down the horseshoe staircase into the gardens. Behind the steps were some electrical junction boxes; machinery could be heard to whirr and whine. From the direction of the Great Fountain there was gurgling and burping and then, with a violent hiss, a plume of water shot thirty feet into the air, a sight I’d not seen for more than half a lifetime. From the height of the terrace, we could see right down across the Italian Garden to the Orangery and, beyond that, out over the tops of the trees to the city skyline. Dolores had emphasized it would be several years before the gardens looked as good as they once had. But they seemed pretty fine to me. I found myself wishing that Granny could have seen them.

  ‘Enjoy!’ shouted Dolores and disappeared. I wanted to yell that the verb was transitive, but doubted she’d have a clue what I meant. Vic and I went down and rubbernecked the fountain. The Koi carp had vanished under the lily-pads, sheltering from the sudden downpour. A light breeze skittered the spray beyond the rim of the basin, showering our faces and hair. The evening sun was slowly dropping away behind the plume, lighting it up like some gigantic watery sparkler. We sat on a safely dry bench.

  ‘Personal question?’ I asked after a while. ‘You know what you were saying on TV, about your love songs, all that stuff. I’ve been wondering. Did you never find anybody?’

  ‘Not really. Ironic, isn’t it?’ he replied. ‘Though I loved my ex-wife actually, in a funny sort of way. We were good chums and without that things never work out. But in the end she wanted the full monty. Otherwise, most of my relationships have been, well, casual. Early on, that was to do with the times. Later, when it was all a bit easier, some nice people hung around for a while. A few star-fuckers of course, but others seemed to like me for me. But I found I always wanted to move on. Part of it was the old cliché of being in love with the audience. It’s quite true, all that, you know; hard for any one person to compete with. But maybe part of it was being scared I’d lose them, like I’d lost my folks. I suspect you can relate to that.’

  He glanced at me for an answer but I didn’t give him one.

  ‘And besides, I was waiting for the trumpets,’ he said. ‘My old buddy Stevie Sondheim once wrote a song about how, when lurve comes along, there won’t be trumpets, choirs of angels, thunder-claps. It’ll just be kind of ordinary, creep up on you like a cold. But Stevie and I differ on that one.’

  ‘You heard the trumpets?’

  ‘Oh yes, just the once. The whole goddam regimental band,’ he smiled.

  ‘And the other party?’

  ‘Sadly not,’ he replied. ‘I guess you’ve heard them loud and clear though. With Faisal?’

  ‘Oh yeah, sure,’ I said. I wondered whether to tell him about the Khan’s ultimatum, the freeze-frame life I was living in the flat. But I didn’t. There had been so many confessions lately, to Elspeth, to Faisal and to Ms Prada as always. I didn’t want to become an emotional incontinent.

  ‘That’s nice. I’m sure it’s not always easy though,’ he said. Had he sensed something? His antennae were as sharp as Elspeth’s.

  ‘So there’s never been anybody else?’ I asked ‘Where there’s life there’s hope.’

  ‘No toots, never anybody else,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Never will be now.’

  I looked at his face for evidence of lying, but found none. I guessed I’d been mistaken and that Big Frankie hadn’t yet declared himself after all. I felt a wee surge of pleasure at what lay in store for Vic; like a parent before Christmas with the Playstation wrapped and hidden under the bed.

  The plume of water suddenly faltered and collapsed. Dolores shouted her apologies, explaining that she had to run it in gently, like a Volvo. As the ripples in the basin were soothed away, the Koi carp began to re-emerge from beneath the lily-pads. The biggest one appeared first, like a scout, followed by his smaller, more timid cohabitants. Silence fell on the garden again.

  ‘You remember that day in the Reform Club?’ I asked, ‘With Marcus Leigh and those photos of his dead Italian boy? You said everything was worth it for the chance of the joy.’

  ‘And I believe it,’ said Vic. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said.

  ‘An early night I think toots,’ said Vic. ‘Showtime tomorrow.’

  ‘Showtime,’ I said.

  I headed back to the flat. I’d no idea whether Faisal would be there or not. There were staff shortages at the hospital he’d said; he had to do extra shifts. During the brief periods he’d been around, I’d felt he was keeping his distance, only talking about trivia, not something that came naturally to him at all. In bed though, he’d clung to me fiercely, his bearded face on my shoulder, his hairy bicep across my chest. There had been no actual sex, no reaching for the doctor’s bag with the ropes and straps. I’d been quite glad of the break from all that, it wasn’t great for my back and had now become just a wee bit boring. Maybe it was because it felt like his ghastly father was in bed with us, though there had been no further mention of the old bastard or the ultimatum. I certainly wasn’t going to ask what decision he’d come to, it was up to him to tell me. Besides, I was pretty sure he’d not reached one. He was constantly restless, no longer seeming interested in what was happening with the house. He remembered to ask an occasional polite question but the days when the project thrilled and inspired him appeared to be gone. He’d not mentioned The Lazarus Programme in weeks.

  As always, he was amiable enough with everyone; but he’d formed no friendships here, never really connected with any of them. I’d watched Vic, Elspeth, Big Frankie and others reach out to him
then slowly retreat back into the necessary civilities and no more. He’d promised to be on parade tomorrow but I’d had to more or less go on my hands and knees.

  While the rest of Mount Royal pulsated around us, our life in the flat was holding its breath. Maybe my pedestal had crumbled from under me when I’d not been looking.

  TWELVE

  ‘Whadda fuck ya doin’ here, ya low-life motherfucker?’ the podgy American yelled across the room.

  Vic’s welcoming smile withered away.

  ‘Cos this is my territory, ya piece of shit!’ he shouted back.

  ‘Well I’m takin’ it over now, ya sonofabitch.’

  ‘Latino scum!’ roared Vic, ‘Get back to Puerto Rico with the other cheap whores.’

  On a table in the Gilded Hall was a display of weaponry from the Battle of Worcester. Vic grabbed a dagger and the American did the same. They began to circle each other like wrestlers, their blades flashing in the sunlight that spilled through the open front doors. Faisal tried to move between them.

  ‘Guys please, what on earth?’

  ‘Back off Paki,’ the American snarled like an alley-cat, ‘it ain’t your fight.’

  A small thin man accompanying the American found his voice too.

  ‘Sir, I believe there’s some awful mistake,’ he called to Vic. ‘Beaumont is from New Orleans but has no Hispanic blood whatsoever.’

  ‘Stay out of this faggot,’ said Vic, brandishing his knife, ‘or these eight hard inches go right up your Yankee ass.’

  The podgy American crumpled into laughter.

  ‘He’d think Santa had come early. These days, the only thing he gets up there is his colonic irrigation tube,’ he said, dropping the dagger and throwing his arms around Vic. ‘Oh babe, it’s so wonderful to see you.’

  ‘My dear Beau,’ said Vic, hugging him tightly. ‘Is it really forty years?’

  ‘Las Vegas seventy-one. West Side Story. I was just a Shark and you were the first Jewish Tony. You still recognized me after all this time?’

  ‘Of course, though maybe now not so much a Shark as a whale?’

  ‘Well pardon me,’ replied Beau, ‘but when did you turn into the fucking Hindenburg?’

  ‘Beaumont, won’t you introduce me to your friend?’ said the small thin man, with a smile so tight you could have plucked it like a violin.

  ‘Vic, may I present my partner, Professor Curtis Powell?’

  Vic looked him up and down like he was on a butcher’s hook. Curtis’s skin was stretched taut across his cheekbones as if he’d not wanted to pay for the amount required to cover them. His slate-grey hair was pulled back into a pigtail which might have been classless in New York but in London marked you down as a mini-cab driver on the verge of retirement. Beau, despite the performance he’d just given, was a big dozy thing with an expression like an anaesthetized cow. A few remaining strands of dyed black hair were draped across his skull in a Jackie Charlton. Both were expensively dressed but with that over-pastelled golf-cart look which most American men eventually adopt.

  ‘You’re a lucky man, Professor Powell,’ said Vic. ‘I remember when the name Beau Styles made cocks twitch on every chorus-line on Broadway.’

  Curtis’s parchment-pale face reddened into a shade vaguely approaching being alive. Beau and Vic couldn’t stop hugging each other. The other introductions were made and Beau apologized for calling Faisal a Paki. He wasn’t a racist he said; he’d once had a small part on The Bill Cosby Show. He’d been the postman.

  ‘My god, that’s Grinling Gibbons over there,’ said Curtis, his eyes ricocheting round the Gilded Hall.

  ‘You wanna go say “hi”?’ asked Beau.

  ‘Grinling Gibbons was England’s greatest wood-carver,’ snapped Curtis. ‘You’ve been taught that already Beaumont. I do apologize, Mr Blaine; I went looking for Gatsby and ended up with Myrtle, the slut from the wrong side of the tracks.’

  ‘Get a life, Grampa,’ said Beau.

  Curtis Powell gazed up at Verrio’s ceiling, almost wetting himself with excitement. According to Vic’s briefing notes, he was a retired history professor who’d written a series of coffee-table books on the great houses of Europe for the posh American market. He’d once dubbed Mount Royal ‘the lost palace’.

  ‘You must be very proud today, Mr Blaine,’ he said. ‘Your restoration appears highly sympathetic, though I won’t hesitate to criticise if I find fault.’

  ‘I’d expect nothing less, Professor Powell. After lunch, everyone will be given a tour by the expert from English Heritage in charge of the work.’

  Robin Bradbury-Ross had agreed to do this wee favour. The price had been three of my jockstraps, in different colours, recently worn and unwashed.

  So here they were at last, coming through the door in ones and twos; the men Vic insisted on calling Rory’s Boys.

  So far, I’d not exactly have claimed Preview Day was in full swing; there was too much nervousness in the air for that. But maybe that wasn’t so surprising; about forty people, mostly strangers, at a party that might never end. If they decided to live here, these were the faces they’d see day in, day out, perhaps for years to come. In the Saloon, where drinks were being served, they were pacing round each other in a shy gavotte, making brief, gracious contact before wheeling away again into a different space. In this they were accompanied by the musicians of Strings Attached, a quartet of hunky gay boys on violins and cellos whose website promised that ‘When we fiddle, you’ll burn’.

  But Curtis Powell was correct. I did feel proud. Today you could stand in the Gilded Hall and look right through the Saloon out onto the terrace where the tip of the water plume from the Great Fountain was thrusting itself into a clear blue sky. In spite of Robin’s hysterical protests, I’d ordered the blinds raised on every single window and summer light was pouring into the house in a way it hadn’t done for years. The bad smells lingering on its reputation could be blown away at last.

  Today’s guests were a mixture of those on Vic’s original list who’d not fled after the publicity and the most promising of those who’d contacted us because of it. There had been no time to interview any of the latter group in person, only to check their credit-worthiness and, thanks to an old shag of mine at New Scotland Yard, their absence from the police computer. But today was critical. Maybe that was why, after his obsessive vetting of the original candidates, Vic was surprisingly relaxed about these unknown quantities. If they could hold a basic conversation about the works of Christopher Wren or the music of Perry Como, we’d not go far wrong, he said.

  When each punter arrived, he was announced by a waiter. This turned out to be none other than Dapper Stephen from the London Eye, who’d failed to get back into EasyJet and was now working freelance. As they approached one by one it felt like some bizarre beauty pageant. I should be holding a mike and declaring their vital statistics to the waiters and the string quartet. They would shyly tell me that their ambition was to travel or work with kiddies in Botswana. But I watched the parade with growing unease. These were the people I might be glimpsing daily as they passed the windows of the flat. They’d be sitting in my Red Damask Drawing-Room, reading in my Library, strolling in my Italian Garden. They’d be living under my roof. I began to wonder, really for the first time, just who they all might be.

  Marcus Leigh had arrived first, on the dot of twelve. We’d suggested smart-casual on the invitation, but Marcus was wearing a tie. He’d been highly useful with some last minute financial issues, refusing any fee, perhaps trying to make up for having wobbled in the wind of the tabloids.

  ‘The Lord Chancellor’s already here, Marcus,’ I said. ‘He’s saving you a cocktail sausage.’

  Marcus’s ruddy smile froze.

  ‘He’s just come out. Hadn’t you heard?

  ‘Most amusing, Mr Blaine.’

  After a while, the attributes of the grey-haired lovelies began to blur, but they all had the faint but unmistakeable sheen of material wealth. Not one would have kn
own the price of a pint of milk, the route of the 29 bus or how his washing-machine worked. It did my heart good to see that.

  A slight Chinese man in pebble glasses, announced simply as Mr Lim, shook my hand, peering up at me intently. I remembered he was some posh orthodontist.

  ‘That’s Roland Snape, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Your upper bridgework?’

  ‘Wow, how did you know that?’

  ‘I’d recognize Snape’s work anywhere,’ said Mr Lim. ‘He drinks, you know. That’s the problem. You really can’t go around looking like that.’

  He reached up taking my chin in one hand and pushing up my top lip with the other.

  ‘The mouth is like a magic garden from which spring the fruits of civilized thought, the words of poetry and passion, the sound of sweet music. What a shame if the garden gates are grubby, uneven or coming off their hinges. We’ll talk later.’

  To illustrate his point, Mr Lim gave me a broad smile. Not like Vic’s at all, it was slightly mechanical and bypassed the eyes altogether but in terms of wattage it was right up there with Marti Pellow’s.

  There was a sudden ripple of commotion at the front doors. Standing beside Dapper Stephen, who was failing hopelessly to suppress laughter, were two tiny identical old men. From a distance they seemed interchangeable; round as thimbles, Persil-white goatees, light brown suits and hardly more than five feet off the floor. But as I hurried over, I could see that the expressions were chalk and cheese. One of them was shy and benign, the other wasn’t. It was the latter who rounded on me.

  ‘We are Jasper and Jacob Trevelyan,’ he said, in an unexpectedly deep West Country voice. ‘A fact which this pansy here seems unable to announce. We’re not impressed so far, are we Jacob?’

  ‘Jeez, no need for any announcement of who you are,’ cried Vic with his hand outstretched. ‘Jasper & Jacob’s Fowey Fudge has been clogging my arteries for years. At least that’s what the quacks reckoned when I had my little stroke.’