Rory's Boys

by Alan Clark

  Preview Day was to end with coffee in the Orangery. A regiment of miniature orange trees in white wooden tubs guarded the tall glass doors, folded back to let in the warmth of the afternoon. The long shallow interior was now decorated with oleanders, camellias and ceiling-high palms. In the centre was a restored Edwardian aviary, newly tenanted by linnets and canaries. I was surprised to see that the Bechstein baby grand, usually in the Red Damask Drawing-Room, had been transported here too. Dapper Stephen and his team swirled around with coffee-pots while the punters cooed at the birds and Big Frankie fluttered around the punters. He’d changed out of his chef’s gear into a pair of silver satin baggies and a T-shirt reading There’s No Tool Like An Old Tool. I’d get him for that later.

  Eventually, Vic tapped his cup with his spoon, thanked everyone for coming and expressed the hope that we’d be seeing at least some of them again. We’d agreed this bit in advance, but then he moved to the piano.

  ‘Gentlemen, it’s not over till the fat man sings. It’s more than forty years since I first performed this lovely song from West Side Story. Today, I’d like to sing it again for all of you but with a special dedication to my old friend Mr Beau Styles.’

  ‘Oh babe,’ cried Beau.

  ‘And on keyboards, direct from the parish church on the lovely Isle of Bute, please welcome our very own Miss Elspeth Wishart.’

  There was a smattering of applause. Elspeth slid onto the stool, looking as if she wished the earth would swallow her, an emotion I was relating to quite strongly. Vic moulded himself into the curve of the piano.

  ‘My pal Stevie Sondheim wrote these beautiful lyrics, which encapsulate everything I feel about what’s happened here today.’

  Vic segued into that song about there being a place, somewhere, for us all. I felt my shoulders start to heave. Dolores Potts, having a ciggie in the doorway, choked on her smoke and had to slip outside. Shite, what was he like? He had his faults all right, but nobody could say he wasn’t a laugh.

  I looked around me, ready to share grins with all and sundry. But nobody else was grinning. Vic wasn’t singing the song for laughs, as an advertising jingle for the attractions of Mount Royal, he was doing it straight, meaning every soppy word, as he’d insisted that he always did. And Elspeth’s playing, hesitant at first as she tried to pin down his rhythm, soon became fluid and assured. Sundays at Glenlyon, when she’d thumped out hymns on an asthmatic organ had shown no sign of any such gift. But every eye was bolted onto Vic, even those of the smooth young waiters, at an age when I’d have thought them inoculated against sentimentality. For once in his career Vic was underplaying. Keeping it simple. No frills. And it worked a treat.

  ‘Somewhere’. The last long note hovered in the air then evaporated into the highest fronds of the palm trees. Vic lowered his head slowly and contemplated the innards of the piano.

  There was silence in the Orangery. Even the birds had stopped chirping, as if in awe of a classier act. Then somebody started the clapping, but it was almost reluctant, the sort you make when it doesn’t seem quite appropriate but is expected of you. Something had moved in the room; I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but there was a presence now which hadn’t been there before. Lord Billy was standing at my elbow.

  ‘Point made, I think,’ he said.

  I could hear gulps and sniffles from several quarters. Beau’s chubby cheeks were flooded by a confluence of sweat and tears. Marcus Leigh’s gaze was fixed on his tiny Sèvres coffee cup. And, for the second time that afternoon, Big Frankie had fallen to his knees in worshipful wonder. But it was Faisal, his features struggling to corset themselves together, who suddenly turned on his heel and vanished out into the gardens.

  THIRTEEN

  It was one of those rare but awful summer nights when London tosses and turns and gets up grumpy in the morning. The jolly for prospective residents had been the last comfortable day. For seventy-two hours, the heat had been building up, weaving itself into the pollution and thickening into one vast Twelve-Tog duvet you couldn’t kick off. There wasn’t a whisper of wind. All day, the rooks had made only the odd token caw but tonight the foxes were screaming with more than their usual hysteria. It can’t have been much fun in a fur coat.

  The windows around the East Court were thrown wide open. Lying naked on top of the bed, I could hear Big Frankie snoring in his. From our new improved security HQ in the basement of the house came the distant pulse of the Vampire’s grungy music; I’d put a stop to that tomorrow. Even the scent of the jasmine round my window seemed oppressive and unwelcome.

  Faisal, sod him, was dead to the world. Nothing ever kept him awake; the legacy of grasping at straws of sleep during a thirty-six hour shift. The blinds had been raised to tempt in some air, bathing the room in a monochrome glow from the lamps outside. Despite his wild black beard, it made Faisal look about fifteen. I reached out and stroked his hair. In this light, the back of my hand was bleached a smooth virginal white; no longer the coarse alien thing it was slowly morphing into. It was only when I noticed Faisal’s skin against mine that I ever felt like a dirty old man. We were still living in our state of suspended animation. After he’d walked out of the Orangery, I’d wondered if a decision might have been triggered. But he’d said nothing more.

  I must have drifted off eventually, because when I half-opened my eyes I was blinded by the early morning sun. There was a body on top of me and I could hardly breathe.

  ‘Get off, Faisal,’ I gasped, ‘you’re killing me.’

  I looked at the arm draped across my chest. It was clothed in a cheapish pin-striped fabric and it wasn’t Faisal’s. I twisted my head round to look into the face of a total stranger, an elderly brown-skinned man, his eyes shut, blood trickling down from a gash on his temple.

  Somehow, I hauled myself out from under him and fled to the nearest corner where I stood panting, wild-eyed and starkers. In the opposite corner was Faisal, naked too and shaking from his shiny black head to his dinky wee toes. In the open doorway was Vic, fully-dressed but slumped on the floor, as if he’d slithered down the lintel like a drunk. The three of us gaped at the rumpled bed where the man in the cheap suit was sprawled unconscious. He was small, slight man with a Psycho-sized knife clutched in his hand.

  ‘Meet my Dad,’ Faisal said.

  Vic said he’d glanced out from the house and seen a stranger peering through the windows in the East Court. He’d hurried outside in time to see the man going into our flat, followed and found him standing at the foot of our bed, the knife raised in his fist. Having once had a affair with an ex-commando and learnt some basic self-defence, Vic had flung himself at the intruder and pulled the legs from under him. The man had bumped his head on the bed post as he’d fallen. The ex-commando had been called Trevor; it had been quite an exciting relationship, Vic said.

  ‘And I’m okay by the way. Thanks for asking,’ he added.

  A low moan from the bed thawed Faisal from his spot. In a whirlwind of professionalism, he stripped the bed, checked his father’s pulse and heartbeat and cleaned his wound.

  ‘How the hell did he get past the Vampire?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s a big van inside the gates,’ said Vic, pulling himself to his feet. ‘The guys with that Jacuzzi Elspeth’s inherited. I imagine he slipped in with them.’

  At last Faisal remembered the two of us. He insisted on checking Vic over. He seemed shrivelled with embarrassment, unable to look us in the eye. There was a small knife-wound in my shoulder, sustained when the body had fallen on me. I began to realize how much worse it could have been and felt a bit sick. I wondered what the symptoms of delayed shock might be, but it seemed wimpish to ask. Faisal bandaged my cut, then took his father’s pulse for the umpteenth time. I made us all some coffee. We drank it in silence watching Mr Khan drift back towards the shores of consciousness.

  ‘Why’s he wearing a goddamned suit?’ Vic asked.

  ‘Don’t know,’ replied Faisal. ‘It’s usually just for special occasions.�
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  ‘I guess he thought a double murder qualified,’ said Vic. ‘Shame to spoil the suit though.’

  Panic flooded Faisal’s normally placid face. He stared at Vic as if he’d only just registered what had happened. Then at last Mr Khan’s eyes flickered open. He took one look at his son, turned his face into the pillow and began to weep.

  ‘Right then,’ I said, ‘we’d better call the police now.’

  Faisal leapt as if I’d nudged him with a cattle prod.

  ‘No!’ he bellowed, like a small but very mad bull. ‘There’s no need for that.’

  ‘He tried to kill us both, Faisal,’ I said, as gently as I could. ‘If it hadn’t been for Vic, it could have been Quentin Tarantino in here.’

  ‘It would finish my mother,’ he said. ‘What would be gained from it?’

  ‘Well it might dissuade some other homophobic Muslim nutter from an honour killing,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that what we’re talking about here?’

  Faisal, still kneeling by the bed, tugged violently at his beard. Just then his mobile rang and he began talking in Urdu. It was obviously his mother, hysterical. He covered the mouthpiece.

  ‘Dad left her a note,’ he said.

  At first, he seemed to be trying to calm her then gradually he buried his face in one hand and reached towards his father with the other. It was a hesitant movement like he expected to be brushed away. But the older man’s fingers wrapped themselves round Faisal’s and clung on for dear life.

  ‘Okay Mum, try to relax now,’ Faisal said in English, presumably for our benefit. ‘I’m going to bring him back home.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s entirely your decision, Faisal,’ I said quietly, when he’d closed the mobile. He didn’t reply but took his father’s pulse yet again.

  ‘Dad didn’t come to harm us,’ he said eventually. ‘He came to harm himself. His note to Mum was a suicide note. He planned to kill himself in front of us. So yes, it was to be what you call an “honour killing”, but not the sort you imagined.’

  I didn’t know what to answer. Vic clearly didn’t either, asking if Mr Khan might like a brandy. Faisal shook Vic’s hand and formally thanked him for stepping in. Then he went out to bring his car up to the front door. There had now been a definite change of gear in the group dynamic. Vic seemed to feel that Mr Khan should be treated as some sort of guest; uninvited and not exactly welcome, but a guest nonetheless.

  ‘Mr Khan? Hey, I’m Vic d’Orsay. You may have heard of me? Look buddy, sorry about the dramatics, but I got the wrong end of the stick. No offence I hope.’

  Faisal’s father turned his head away, but Vic wasn’t to be prevented from making amends.

  ‘I don’t expect you’ve had any breakfast? Or did you get it on the train? Is there anything we could tempt you with? Something light? An omelette maybe? We have an excellent chef here.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake Victor, drop it,’ I muttered. Mr Khan turned and looked straight at me for the first time. My instinct was to avoid his gaze, but I was damned if I would. He was in my bed, in my house and he had brought terror over my door. So I stared right back at him and challenged whatever it was in his eyes. Hate? Disgust? Fear? I hadn’t a clue, but he wasn’t going to see any of those in mine.

  Faisal came back and struggled to get his father onto his feet. I went to help but Mr Khan gestured me away, then Faisal did too. The old man was somehow shoehorned into Faisal’s old Peugeot.

  ‘Hope to see you again sometime,’ said Vic, leaning into the car.

  Faisal went inside once more, returning with a holdall.

  ‘Listen, I’ll see you when I see you.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about all this.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I lied, ‘you’re not to blame.’

  ‘Yes I am,’ he said. ‘The other day I posted Mum and Dad a reply to their ultimatum. I guess they got it all right.’

  It took me a moment to grasp what he was saying.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, touching his arm.

  ‘Why is it that who we are seems to cause so much pain to some other people. I’ll never understand that. Never,’ he said, in a voice clogged with despair. ‘Dad was prepared to end his life, to die for heaven’s sake. Why? Can you tell me that?’

  ‘Just take him home Faisal,’ I said.

  His father’s bandaged head lay back against the neck-rest, the eyes staring blankly ahead. Through the window, Vic was telling Mr Khan that buying a cheap suit was a false economy and that he’d send him the name of his tailor. Faisal buzzed it up; a neat little metaphor for their relationship. They could see one another quite clearly but neither was much interested in what the other had to say.

  As if he’d read my mind earlier, Faisal rattled off the symptoms of delayed shock. Then the Peugeot spluttered off under the Clock Tower and was gone.

  ‘Come on, let’s go and get Big Frankie to make us some breakfast,’ said Vic.

  ‘Nobody else needs to know about this, Victor,’ I said.

  ‘Whatever you say, toots.’

  Vic went first as we headed down the narrow kitchen staircase.

  ‘It’s not your fault, you know,’ he said, turning and blocking my path as if he could block the thought as well. ‘It really isn’t.’

  ‘So why do I feel like it is?’

  ‘Because that’s the way they programme people like us,’ he said. ‘However sorted we think we’ve become, deep down they can still make us feel we have something to apologize for. Well we fucking haven’t. So come on, I need a bacon roll. Frankie hates making anything so common and I enjoy ordering him to do it.’

  *

  By eleven o’clock, the humidity already hit you in the face like a damp, sweaty sock. The sky was a vile yellow-white and the city beneath it ached for thunder. After my bacon roll, I wandered over to the Coach House to watch the installation of the Morag Proudie Memorial Jacuzzi. Elspeth was giving out mugs of tea to Morag’s husband and his team who’d come up from Brighton bearing a bells-and-whistles number called The Cleopatra. A pale sliver of a man in his late fifties, it was hard to imagine him married to the earthy junior matron. His wife had never stopped talking about Glenlyon and the lads she’d taken care of there. I caught Elspeth’s eye and she had the grace to blush. Morag’s husband said it would mean a lot to him if I’d allow a small plaque to be attached to the wall. In fact, he’d brought it with him.

  ‘This jacuzzi is dedicated to Morag “Bubbles” Proudie. 1951–2011.’

  The wound in my shoulder was starting to nip like a terrier. I wondered what was happening in Slough. It must be pretty horrendous. Surely I should be there with him at a time like this? Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be about? But of course I’d not have been welcome, not even to Faisal. In this relationship, there were places I just couldn’t go.

  Back in the house, I was accosted by Vic, sweating in the heat like an old pug-dog. We needed to sit down urgently and draw up the short-list of residents. We couldn’t keep people on tenterhooks any longer. Our doors were due to open in a couple of weeks. Come on, it would take our minds off things. I was frogmarched to the office.

  Every single person who’d come to Preview Day wanted to move in. After all our anxieties, this was a wonderful problem, but a problem nonetheless. Vic kept wittering on about the importance of ‘the mix’ but for me the major criteria were still that they had the readies and hadn’t done time in Pentonville for flashing at wee boys. Otherwise, I wasn’t hugely bothered. I certainly wouldn’t be choosing them on their looks.

  With small variations depending on the size and position of the apartments, the financial mechanics were simple. There would be a deposit, roughly equivalent to the purchase price of a sea-front flat at Eastbourne. This would, with a hefty annual deduction, be returnable on departure or death, whichever came first. On top of this, a monthly rent would be charged to include room-cleaning, laundry, and electricity. Three gourmet meals a day would also be included, with refunds
given for absences. Bar bills would be extra, as would participation in The Lazarus Programme. And it was made clear to everyone that we weren’t a nursing home; at the onset of any serious long-term illness the unlucky resident would be expected to move on. So coming to live at Mount Royal wouldn’t be cheap, but it wasn’t a rip-off either. Vic and I had thrashed out the business plan with my old finance director from Blaine Rampling, who’d done it in return for an all-expenses-paid week in Phuket, where he went for the Thai lady-boys.

  We pored over names, faces and bank references and by lunchtime we’d whittled it down to twenty-five. In the afternoon, we phoned or emailed the acceptances or rejections. The latter were hard to do. We lied and said it was on a first-come, first-served basis. Most people were stoical but some were clearly upset, a few even offered higher fees than we’d been asking. It was tough, but Vic insisted we stuck to our original choices.

  I’d sent Faisal several texts, but by teatime there was still no word from Slough. It was hellishly humid. I took a quick shower and, as I was drying-off, I was aware of feeling massively horny. Heat always did that to me. Damn. I slapped my own wrist and went out to the Great Fountain to check that my Koi carp hadn’t fried; I loved those fish like they were my own flesh and blood. Through the open doors of the Orangery, soft piano music trickled out onto the lawns.

  ‘I’ve not thanked you properly for playing the other day, Miss Wishart,’ I said, when she’d stopped. ‘I’d no idea you had such talent.’

  ‘Dearie me, it’s only a very small talent,’ she said, rising quickly from the stool like I’d caught her at something shameful. ‘At least that’s what my father always told me.’

  ‘That’s bloody nonsense,’ I said. If there really was an afterlife, I hoped to meet the Reverend Wishart and bang his head against some celestial wall.