Rory's Boys

by Alan Clark

  ‘You know, it’s a funny thing,’ he murmured from the shadows of the winged chair. ‘Every night, my bed seems to get bigger and bigger and I lie there getting smaller and smaller. Shrinking like Alice. Maybe one morning, I’ll just be gone altogether.’

  Big Frankie reappeared, carrying a long chef’s apron. He was sorry but it was the only thing he could find. It was bright yellow with an illustration of an open sack of small potatoes. ‘Jersey Royals. Smooth and succulent from the sun-kissed soil. It’s the way our farmers grow ’em!’

  He knelt down and laid it delicately across Caravaggio’s face, the olive complexion now bleached to a papery-white. For a few moments Frankie stayed on the floor, head lowered, eyes closed. When he got up again, Vic reached for the big hand and kissed it. Briefly, Frankie let his fingers rest against Vic’s cheek then he pulled them away.

  *

  ‘Well Beaumont, our first week living in a great English mansion and now there’s a body in the Library,’ I heard Professor Curtis Powell murmur as everyone filed into the State Dining-Room. ‘I die of pleasure.’

  The trial of Rory Blaine, for in a way that’s what it was, took place around the long walnut table at which Queen Victoria herself had once stuffed her already podgy wee frame. It had been laid for our first formal Mount Royal dinner, but this meal was going to have to wait. Perhaps it might never happen at all.

  They’d gathered in the Saloon at the appointed time; everyone in dinner jackets except for Lord Billy Vale, a bird of paradise among penguins, glittering in a thousand-watt djellabah. I’d just thrown on a clean shirt above my jeans; the one stained in Caravaggio’s blood had been safely disposed of.

  A few of the Chamber-Laddies had been circulating with the Sancerre. Elspeth had chosen well and I’d rather taken to the whole gang of them. They were young, fresh and unreserved, with a sunny openness about them which my generation had never been relaxed enough to achieve and the familiar burr floating round the house was oddly comforting, like being back in the dorm at Glenlyon. But tonight I’d ordered them from the room and called for everybody’s attention. I’d announced briefly that a visitor to the house had met with a fatal accident, that the body now lay in the Library, but that the emergency services hadn’t yet been summoned. There would now be an urgent meeting of the residents of Mount Royal. They could bring their drinks with them. Beau had asked if they could take the nibbles too; he was so hungry he could eat a whole baby.

  I sat at the head of the table with Faisal at the opposite end; everyone else took the seats allocated to them by the crisp cards which stood on the white plates like little tents in the Antarctic. Big Frankie had put his kitchen into suspend mode and was sitting behind me on a small gilt chair which had certainly not been passed for his usage. Elspeth was in another. Vic, still shaky and silent, had draped himself over a chaise-longue by the window like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The one missing person was Dolores. I’d wanted her to be here tonight, sitting on my right, her status unacknowledged but beside me nonetheless. But she’d rumbled me on that one and wasn’t playing. She was going out to hear some girl-band called Manic Vagina. I was glad of that now.

  I stood up and outlined what had occurred.

  ‘The last embers of lust,’ said Lord Billy, shaking his head. ‘How often they can cause a conflagration.’

  As I presented the options, Marcus Leigh buried his head in his hands. I asked for a communal decision on how to proceed.

  ‘But there is no decision to make,’ interrupted Marcus, his voice rising so high that the last syllables were more like squeaks. ‘If we sanction your ludicrous idea of concealing this death, every one of us becomes a criminal.’

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ said wee Jacob Trevelyan, twisting his tiny wrinkled fingers.

  ‘Criminals?’ asked Beau. ‘As in jail? As in Shawshank Redemption? Holy shit.’

  ‘Calm yourselves,’ said Jasper, bowling his twin a contemptuous glance. ‘Let’s stop flapping around like a flock of old nancies.’

  ‘But my dear, we are a flock of old nancies,’ said Lord Billy.

  ‘Actually, Marcus is right,’ I said. ‘So if anyone wishes, they are free to leave the table now.’

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ said Marcus. His left hand was trembling, the ice-cubes rattling in his gin and tonic. ‘If your crazy scheme is implemented then even those who reject it will be accessories after the fact.’

  ‘I’m just asking you to examine the option,’ I said. ‘No real moral crime would be committed, simply an act which would be against the law.’

  ‘Oh well, babe, that’s different,’ said Beau, grabbing another fat fistful of peanuts. ‘I started doing those aged twelve with the kid from the next trailer.’

  ‘Anyway, the little bastard got what he deserved,’ said Jasper Trevelyan. ‘I vote we plant him out.’

  There were vociferous objections to this remark and it lit the fuse of an ethical debate that would not have disgraced the General Synod or Radio 4. I was now joined in the dock by the deceased. Various witnesses were called on both sides. The Archdeacon summoned God of course. Faisal summoned Allah and Elspeth called John Knox. Somebody spoke of the playing fields of Eton and Beau recalled a similar storyline in an episode of Perry Mason in which he’d been an extra: The Case of The Unhappy Hooker. I noticed Marcus Leigh’s hand still trembling and his face getting redder just like it had before he’d passed out on the floor of the Reform Club. Then amazingly, he undid the top button of his starched shirt and pulled off his bow-tie. Maybe he felt that if civilized values were about to collapse, it just didn’t matter any more.

  Like Vic, Lord Billy had said nothing. He’d counted out the tablets from his mother-of-pearl box and swigged them down with white wine. His hook nose was tilted up towards the ceiling, to the alternative gathering of nymphs and satyrs, no doubt thinking it looked a lot more fun.

  ‘I’m frightfully sorry Mr Blaine, but I’m quite lost,’ he said eventually, stretching the final vowel like it was on a rack and making it rhyme with ‘toast’. ‘What exactly have you done wrong?’

  ‘Well nothing really,’ I replied. ‘Not deliberately anyway.’

  ‘Then what on earth are you afraid of?’

  ‘Dragging you all through it. Dragging Mount Royal through it.’

  ‘Do you imagine that if there’s trouble we’ll not stand by you?’ asked Lord Billy. ‘That we’d pack our valises and run for the hills?’

  ‘Yeah babe,’ said Beau, ‘what sort of guys do you take us for?’

  I realized I didn’t know the answer to that question. Up till now I’d not been very interested in finding out. I suppose I’d decided that though they were all gay they were all pretty straight as well; that they’d been used to lives that ran smoothly, used to putting themselves first. Just like I always had. I certainly couldn’t imagine any of them in Ford Open Prison. Not many touring opera companies out there.

  ‘Well yes, I thought you all might vote with your feet,’ I replied. ‘I’m sure none of you want to go through a scandal.’

  ‘My dear, how many gentlemen of our age get even a sniff of scandal?’ said Lord Billy. ‘I’ve not been near one since I was in Mustique with Margaret and Roddy. I was so cross to be cut out of that picture. And this one has everything; sex, violent death, lovely interiors. I believe the modern expression is “bring it on.”’

  Curtis Powell reminded us yet again about having been at the Stonewall riots in ’69. The Archdeacon mentioned he’d been a friend of Jeremy Thorpe and would always remain so, dead dog or no dead dog. Beau wondered if there might eventually be a TV movie. He thought that Daniel Craig could play me; though he’d need to grow his hair and Beau reckoned Daniel’s was thinning so a wig might be necessary.

  A shy hand rose from the ranks. The big lumbering man beside Lord Billy asked if he could speak. His name was Jim McLatchie, once an admired New Zealand cricketer, known as Gentleman Jim because of his courtesy on the pitch. Decades back, he’d got caught
with another player in the showers at Lord’s. All over the papers. Kicked off the squad. The other guy had hanged himself. But afterwards, Jim had stayed in the UK, gone into property and made a fortune. He’d given lots to charity, got a gong. Now he stood up, his knuckles gripping the edge of the table.

  ‘Rory mate, not a great one for public speaking but hear me out. Long time back, when I got myself into big-league trouble, the folks I thought would support me buckled under the strain. Somewhere on the other side of the world, I’ve got an ex-wife and grown-up kids. Grandkids too I guess; I don’t really know. I’ve sent a thousand letters and never had a reply. Not even now, in the brave new world blokes like us are supposed to inhabit. It’s like a bloody great hole was punched in my belly, excuse my language Miss Wishart, and I’ve never really managed to fill it.’

  Gentleman Jim took a gulp from a glass of water.

  ‘Well I came to your beautiful house to see if that hole might somehow shrink and maybe even heal, while that’s still just possible. There’s no way I’m going to pack my bags and leave now. I want to stay and get to know you all, care for you maybe. Even when you’re seventy-five, you need possibilities. Otherwise, you just feel that it’s all over bar the shouting. Rory, what happened to this poor kid tonight is a tragedy, but let’s not allow it to be ours too. What you did you did from the best motives right? Even if it’s got you in the shit, you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, unlike that daft old arsehole lolling over there, begging your pardon again Miss Wishart. So come on mate, let’s call the cops. Most of us old nancies, as Lord Bill here calls us, have been through a lot worse in our day. None of us is going anywhere and Mount Royal isn’t going down the gurgler.’

  Gentleman Jim sat down awkwardly and stared at his empty soup-bowl. In the neighbouring bowl was a droplet of bright red blood from Lord Billy’s finger. He’d been toying with his big ruby ring and had twisted it till the skin had broken.

  ‘You’re quite delightful aren’t you my dear?’ he said, patting Gentleman Jim on the arm. ‘Where have you been all my life?’

  Vic, looking cowed and still a bit dazed, rose from his chaise-longue and shuffled over to my chair.

  ‘Hear that, toots? Nobody’s walking away,’ he murmured in my ear. ‘Not this time.’

  Faisal looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I nodded. He flicked open his mobile. Marcus Leigh patted his face with his hanky and slowly retied his tie.

  ‘For Chrissakes,’ said Beau. ‘Are we ever going to eat?’

  *

  ‘It’s all go here, innit guv?’ said the paramedic. They were the same guys who’d come when Dolores fell off the ladder. ‘What’s it gonna be next week? Mass ritual suicide?’

  It was past ten now. The police had finished for the night though they’d be back in the morning to take detailed statements, fingerprints, photographs. Before they’d arrived, Vic had finally agreed not to hide the fact he’d brought Caravaggio into the house. For a while he’d wriggled on the hook, but Elspeth had reeled him in. It would be disgraceful to pretend the boy was just a burglar, unknown to any of us. At least we could show him that small mark of respect. She’d not be party to it anyway; she’d tell the police exactly who he was and what he did for a living. So that was that. And I sensed Vic was glad of it really; confession being the first step on his road to forgiveness.

  As Faisal feared, the police had raised their eyebrows at the moving of the corpse. I’d taken the blame, saying I’d not wanted our elderly residents upset by the sight of it. Faisal, used to dealing with the police, had been his crisp professional self, but he’d tugged at his beard like it was on fire. One of the policemen had recognized Vic; his mum was a huge fan and had a signed photo in her guest loo. Vic had offered him a CD but the man said it wouldn’t be appropriate to accept it at this point.

  Faisal had given Vic some painkillers and ordered him upstairs. Elspeth, grumpier than I’d ever seen her, had taken charge of getting him undressed and into bed. I doubted if the drugs would help much against the onslaught of full-blown Calvinist outrage.

  A late supper was eventually served in the State Dining-Room. It was hardly the celebration planned; quite a few had already disappeared to their rooms. Faisal had returned to the flat; he’d be going back to Slough first thing. In contrast to the turbulence of the earlier sitting, small talk now becalmed the long walnut table. Lord Billy was reminiscing about his youthful stint as an extra in Hollywood; James Dean had once invited him to stub out a Marlboro in his navel. But Billy had fled Tinseltown due to an unrequited passion for Tab Hunter; he was still unable to watch any of Tab’s movies; not, he said, that any were worth watching in the first place. Beau, not to be outdone, talked about being in the chorus of Mame with Angela Lansbury. He’d walked Angela’s little dog between shows on matinee days. When the pooch had passed away, she’d named its successor after him. They still exchanged cards at Christmas.

  But as the booze took effect, the tales got darker. Lord Billy pushed back the candy-floss hair from his temple to reveal a large pinkish scar from the day his father’s doctors overdid the electric shocks. There was a collective intake of breath, a sympathetic silence, then Archdeacon Brownlow silently displayed a matching wound. Well pissed by now, he started apologizing for his halitosis; no doctor or dentist had ever been able to pin down the cause, probably just nerves they’d all said. Wee Mr Lim patted his hand and said he knew a very good man in Queen Anne Street; he’d be happy to take the Archdeacon there himself. Mr Lim didn’t say much as a rule but tonight he talked about escaping from communist China in 1948 with, naturally, only a toothbrush. He was an odd, intangible creature. He’d probably been quite cute once, but now his little rosebud lips were beginning to crinkle with age. I wondered if they’d ever said anything more intimate than ‘next Tuesday at three suit you?’ Then Gentleman Jim spoke about his friend who’d hanged himself. It was sobering stuff, so more port was poured.

  The conversation doubled back to Vic and his rent-boy. Liberated by the temporary absence of his twin, Jasper Trevelyan regaled us with tales of similar encounters; he’d never been with anyone without paying for it he said quite proudly. So much simpler that way; let you get on with what mattered in life, like making toffee better than anyone else. Marcus Leigh failed to cloak his sadness at such a point of view. Shyly, he introduced Ricardo and their life together. The wallet was opened, the dog-eared Polaroids passed around.

  Somebody began to moan about getting older, about the invisibility that was descending over them all like a mist. Let loose by alcohol, anger now stalked round the long walnut table, only thinly veiled by humour. Stories were told of discrimination, insults, condescension.

  ‘Well of course the world no longer looks one in the eye,’ said Lord Billy. ‘It’s much too scary for them. If they do deign to notice one, one is expected to be two-dimensional; a cardboard cut-out of a nice old soul. As if one is expected to shed one’s complexities along with one’s hair and teeth. Well, bugger that, as ghastly old George V would have said.’

  Beau confessed his terror of farting now; in case it turned out to be something slightly more substantial. There was laughter, but Lord Billy turned on him.

  ‘If that is true my dear, then keep quiet about it,’ he said ‘Don’t make yourself into a music-hall joke. There is nothing funny about one’s physical decline. Nothing.’

  ‘But surely that’s a fair way of coping with it?’ I asked.

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Lord Billy. ‘Ageism is at its most terrible when one turns it against oneself. We have earned dignity through our achievements and the kindnesses we have shown to others. We may be old men but we are still men. Forget that and one might as well turn one’s face to the wall.’

  The shy gavotte of Preview Day had come to an end; they were looking at each other now.

  ‘In the depths of winter, I found within myself an invincible summer,’ said Gentleman Jim. ‘I think that’s Albert Camus.’

  ‘Indeed it is my dear and in
saying so you prove my point,’ said Lord Billy ‘Who’d have thought a great lumping cricketer would have read Camus? We are each of us surprising and fascinating till our last breath. You really are quite adorable.’

  The bell out in the Clock Tower struck one; eyelids were drooping, the party broke up. I hoped they’d all be okay. They were old guys after all. This sort of evening hadn’t been in the brochure.

  I was tired too but knew I’d not sleep. I headed for the Coach House and the Morag Proudie Memorial Jacuzzi, as I quite often did these days. ‘Going for a Morag’ had now entered the phraseology of the household; it seemed fitting that she should bring me comfort in later life when she’d caused so much trauma in days gone by. But the lights were already on, the windows steamed over. Faisal lay immersed, head flung back. He smiled but said nothing as I undressed and slid into the froth. This was the first time we’d been alone since the morning he’d driven his father away; the first time since I’d discovered I had a daughter. I’d have to tell him soon. He had the right to know. But not tonight. I asked about Slough.

  ‘Dad’s still in a hospital bed with drugged-up eyeballs.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Drugged up too. Terrified. Above all, ashamed. She keeps apologizing to me. And to you, come to that. There’s a bunch of straggly roses waiting for you in the kitchen.’

  He was trying to get counselling for them both when the worst had passed. He’d not found anybody yet to run the hardware shop so he’d be taking more leave from the hospital. His parents needed the income.

  ‘So much hurt, Rory,’ he said. ‘And the big irony is that it’s all supposed to be about love isn’t it? Dad loving me, Mum loving us both, me loving you.’

  ‘You’d decided you did then?’