Rory's Boys

by Alan Clark

  ‘I guess I had,’ he said, making patterns in the froth. ‘But then Dad and now all this tonight. I’m just so tired, you know?’

  ‘I found the papers in the desk,’ I said. ‘The partnership thing.’

  ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ he smiled.

  ‘Not any more though?’

  ‘Let’s get all this stuff over with, shall we? Then we can take a few steps back. See where we are. Okay?’

  ‘Cool,’ I said.

  We snuggled under the blanket of bubbling water. I watched him through half-closed eyes, still stirred by his beauty. I leaned across and brushed his lips. For a few minutes we held each other, lightly kissing, instinctively beginning to use the little tricks we’d learned over our time together. It was the first time we’d touched like this in ages. Then I lifted his lower body above the surface of the water. It was over in less than a minute and it was wonderful. So why did we both look so sad?

  Faisal climbed out of the jacuzzi and began to dry himself. It wasn’t the best of moments, but I needed to lance the boil.

  ‘You disappointed me tonight,’ I said, keeping my tone as careless as the circumstances made appropriate. ‘I’ve maybe killed a guy and you seemed to care more about your career than you did about me.’

  Any post-coital languor vanished in a second. He bent over, thrust his hairy arse in my direction and slapped it hard.

  ‘When you bought what you like to call my “south front”, you bought the rest of me too,’ he said sharply, fixing me with those black eyes. ‘I’ve never been quite sure you grasped that. I only know how to do what I think is right.’

  He wrapped himself in a robe. He was off to the spare room he said; he needed to get up early, give his statement to the police and get back to his mother as soon as possible. He didn’t want to disturb me. Then he turned in the doorway.

  ‘It’s who I am Rory,’ he said. ‘The work. It’s always been there. Rock solid, in the midst of whatever stuff is blowing all around. Try to understand.’

  I nodded and tried for an empathetic smile.

  ‘Like I said, let’s get all this stuff out the way,’ he repeated, ‘then see where we are.’

  ‘Cool,’ I replied, though I’d begun to wonder if our points of contact were getting fewer, like a shirt with too many buttons missing to be wearable much longer.

  ‘You really shouldn’t use that expression you know,’ said Faisal, closing the door behind him. ‘It’s a bit pathetic.’

  I switched off the Jacuzzi jets. In half a minute, the bubbles had popped and vanished and the noisy froth evaporated into a still, limpid pool. If only life could be that simple. I soaked in the calm water, trying to blot out all thoughts of what might happen when the cops came back tomorrow. And I wanted to see Dolores. Where the hell was she at this hour? She should have been home by now. I wondered who was shagging her tonight. I felt myself get grumpy and parental, then I remembered she was twenty-six and that I had no rights over her. None at all. I’d missed out on that like I’d missed out on the meningitis, the first boyfriend and the college graduation. She might have been my daughter, but she’d never be my child. Hey ho

  Since the night of the storm, Dolores had filled my mind, blotting out everything else. I’d been drunk on her or at least drunk on the idea of her. Till then, nothing had mattered to me more than the survival of Mount Royal. Not even, I realized now with a jolt, the survival of Faisal and me. My house, his career; there had always been four of us in the marriage. And now, though he didn’t know it yet, there were five.

  Tonight though, Mount Royal had asserted its dominance. As I’d watched Caravaggio tumble down the staircase, what I’d seen had been the end of it all. It would be snatched away from me again. There would be a second exile, from which there would be no return. As the boy had died at her feet, Granny had stared out at me from her frame, challenging me to do something, to prove myself worthy. And I guess I’d gone a wee bit bonkers, lost the plot. But the old men had been there. I’d not reckoned on them or on what they might be willing to give. The old men had made things all right. The old men had been titans.

  But there had been something else tonight too. I didn’t want to let it enter my mind but I knew it was already there, wormed in forever. Gentleman Jim had said that I’d done what I’d done with the best motives, that I’d nothing to be ashamed of. But that wasn’t quite true. When I’d seen Vic lying on the floor, not sure if he were dead or alive, I’d not simply wanted to catch the boy, I’d wanted to hurt him. Really hurt him. And I had, though much more than I’d ever intended. Even if it had been the fall and not the blow that killed him, even if nobody else blamed me for his death, I’d always blame myself. I’d always wonder about the road that had led him to the callous pavements of Soho, to the grubby woods of the West Heath, to the top of my staircase. And of course I’d never know. Maybe that was to be my punishment.

  ‘Is this all there is?’ he’d asked me that night outside the club.

  And I’d understood exactly what he’d meant. For most of my life, that’d been how I’d felt. But now I knew that, for me, it was no longer the case. Whatever happened when Faisal and I sat down again and looked hard at each other, when Dolores finally opened herself up, when Vic let me understand this sadness that had entered him, I’d never need to ask myself that question again.

  Back in the East Court everything was dark. The house was asleep but it was a different sleep now. Hearts were beating inside its walls again; it was sheltering them like it had sheltered this child all those years ago. And that’s what a house is for after all. Now it has a purpose.

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘We’re not finished yet.’

  Out on the blue-black abyss of the Heath, some insomniac stray was barking against the night. I took it as a sign and, whatever the morning might bring, I resolved to do the same.

  SIXTEEN

  We didn’t need the Poor Clares to get us out the shite this time, though Big Frankie had put them back on prayer alert. Our saviour was a member of the Royal Family; a minor one admittedly, but he still took paparazzi-precedence over the likes of us. On the very day the pack had gathered at our gates once more, a statement had been issued from one of the less prestigious apartments in Kensington Palace, which sent them scrambling westwards. A pair of plucky Royal Highnesses had just announced that, for the past year, their younger son had been living as woman, working on the beauty counter in Boots, cohabiting with an electrician in North Acton and was now about to undergo the surgery of no-return. His/her ducal parents were totally supportive of his/her lifestyle decisions and had been to tea with the electrician’s family. As a gay scandal we were instantly second-rate; just a couple of paras on Page Six. Beau and Lord Billy had been more than a bit disappointed.

  The morning after the accident, the police had returned to take our statements. Then an initial post-mortem revealed that Caravaggio had indeed died from the fall and not from the weight of Vic’s statuette. And since the poor lad hadn’t eaten a decent meal for a while it was harder to pinpoint the hour of death. So the lost ninety minutes before we’d called the cops would remain lost forever, soaked up into the walls of Mount Royal and never mentioned again. We’d have to appear at the inquest of course, but legally it was all over bar the rubber-stamping. So I’d not be slopping out as old lags eyed up my arse nor standing in the dock while Ms Prada, as a witness for the prosecution, told the world about my anger management issues. As predicted everybody told me not to blame myself. The policeman, the one whose mum was a fan of Vic’s, opined that if the boy hadn’t had the lousy luck to get dizzy at the head of the stairs, he’d have been right as rain by bedtime and back on the Heath by the next afternoon. The policeman now thought it acceptable to ask Vic for an autographed CD and was presented with a copy of Vic’s Smoochin’ Summer, on the cover of which Vic larked about on a beach with a surfboard and a bevy of big-breasted lovelies.

  The same morning, in an attempt to limit any damage,
we’d issued a short press statement outlining the facts and describing the boy as a fan of Vic d’Orsay who’d been invited into the house and then attempted a robbery. We deeply regretted what had happened and were making a donation in his memory to a charity set up to repatriate EU workers who’d fallen on hard times. Naturally, the idea of an Italian kid being into Vic’s music wasn’t swallowed by your average tabloid hack but they’d only just begun to sniff blood when the first case of trans-sexuality in the British Royal Family had hit the fan. And that, by and large, seemed to be that. Crisis averted. Like the truck that misses you by inches as you step off the pavement then vanishes like it had never been there at all. So you cross the road safely to get on with your life. Only later, in the chill of the night, does it roar into your mind again and you shiver for a moment. If only I’d been able to grab him before he fell. I still heard the scream in my sleep.

  But almost everyone in Mount Royal was marked by the death of Caravaggio. The shifting of gears I’d sensed that night, as the port had circled the long walnut table, hadn’t been a tipsy aberration. I heard first names being used more often. Croquet balls were scudding across Dolores’ perfectly-striped lawns. There was more chatter in the corridors and on the staircases. The old men were melting into the house. I wondered about making some gesture to thank them for their support. Maybe hire a coach and go to Brighton. They’d like that. With the exception of Beau, they weren’t exactly your kiss-me-quick types but they’d enjoy The Pavilion, The Lanes and the pretty bums on the beach. They might even like a paddle. I’d talk to Vic and see what he thought.

  Trouble was Vic wasn’t saying much at the moment. His bruised ribs were less painful now and the shiner was creeping across its usual spectrum of reds, purples and browns. But day after day he’d been holed-up in his suite looking out at the gardens and taking in whisky on a constant drip. Alma the cat never left his side, Dolores had filled the place with flowers and Elspeth bustled around doing her matronly thing and watering down the booze when his back was turned. Briefly he’d perked up when Big Frankie, having sulked for nearly a week, breezed in with a tea-tray that would have thrilled Billy Bunter and nattered away if as nothing had happened. But it had been a short renaissance.

  The old men knocked shyly on his door and tried to josh him out of it. Beau danced constant attendance; but even his filthiest showbiz stories, the ones he’d never tell in front of Curtis, hadn’t done the trick; not even the one about Tallulah Bankhead and a Yorkshire terrier. Wee Jacob delivered a regular supply of Trevelyan’s Toffees, especially Fowey Fudge, which was Vic’s favourite and, Jacob proudly told him, that of Mrs Thatcher. Mr Lim took in The Smile Album, actually whispering the celebrated identities and letting him hold the bridgework mould of the very great personage kept in the velvet-covered casket. But Vic’s own smile, he reported to the others downstairs, flickered like a candle in the wind. Everyone was worried. I called Faisal back in Slough; he faxed me a prescription for anti-depressants but Vic wouldn’t take them. Whisky would do quite well he said. Then I rang Ms Prada; she felt she should make an urgent evaluation of Vic’s mental state with a view to a long-term course of treatment, though not this week as she’d be in Lanzarote.

  I’d been looking in on him most evenings. Tonight, he had his own photo albums out, scattered across the spindly Regency armchairs. Great. Something we could talk about. But soon as he saw me he snapped them all shut. It was odd. The only photos displayed in this room were from recent years, nothing from his youth or middle age at all.

  ‘Come on Victor. Give us a look.’

  ‘No no,’ he said, ‘that’s all the past.’

  ‘Well of course,’ I said, ‘that’s what photo albums are for.’

  But they were all returned to the safety of the bookshelves. It was stifling in here, a fug of booze and sweat. I threw up one of the sashes. From the terrace below, laughter and cigar smoke clambered up into the room. I helped myself to a whisky and sat on the floor below the window to get some air.

  ‘Listen, Victor, you hear that? Everybody’s cool. You’re not a pariah. This is so unlike you and it won’t bring the boy back.’

  ‘The boy? What boy?’ he asked. ‘Oh yes. Poor kid. He’s our new resident, isn’t he? He will never leave you or me now.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ I replied.

  ‘Jeez, with all the drama, I’ve not really thanked you properly have I, toots?’ he said. ‘For racing to my aid that night.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I replied. ‘I’d have done the same for anybody.’

  He looked at me for a long moment then filled his glass again and raised it in my direction.

  ‘I guess so. But cheers anyway.’

  He turned away and ran his fingers over the red leather spines of the photo albums.

  ‘All the past,’ he muttered again. ‘Neat and tidy. On a shelf.’

  There was a great scurrying down on the terrace and the sound of closing doors. A sudden sharp shower ricocheted against the window panes. I slammed down the sash. Vic still contemplated his bookshelves. This was a waste of time.

  ‘Looks like I’m going to get drenched before I reach the flat,’ I said, draining the whisky. ‘Wash my sins away maybe.’

  ‘Oh I doubt you’ve got many worth speaking of,’ he replied, wheeling round to face me again. ‘Not beyond a short fuse, too much fucking and a few naff adverts.’

  ‘Cheers for that Victor.’ I smiled and headed for the door.

  ‘Well perhaps there’s just the one,’ he said. ‘Somewhere along the line, you laid aside some bits of yourself, didn’t you? Some of the best bits too. But that wasn’t totally your fault, was it? Luckily, I think you know it, and that’s half the battle, isn’t it, toots?’

  He shuffled over to me, took my chin in one hand and patted my cheek with the other.

  ‘You’re a fine man, Rory,’ he said. ‘Has nobody ever told you that?’

  He walked away towards the bedroom, Alma scampering ahead. I’d been called plenty of things in my time, some of them complimentary even. But no, nobody had ever used that particular word. Not Elspeth, not even Faisal. Never ‘fine’.

  *

  ‘Always the bridesmaid,’ Elspeth had said, when I’d asked if she’d be a witness, ‘But aye, all right then.’

  I’d invited Dolores to be the second, but she’d politely refused, on the grounds that Faisal would surely prefer one of his own friends. So here I sat, ponced up in my best Hugo Boss, between Elspeth and one of the wee Siamese Children who’d been on the London Eye. Her name was Soo-Yi, she said. She was in obstetrics and smelt faintly of disinfectant.

  The waiting area for those undertaking a civil partnership ceremony suffered from an identity crisis, given that Camden Council required it to multitask. Not only did it embrace gays and dykes with buttonholes and shining eyes, it also catered for newly-minted parents registering births and the recently bereaved doing the opposite. To cover all eventualities, the decorators had gone for buttermilk in a big way; walls, carpets, curtains, bowls of anaemic primroses. The same principle was followed by the teenage apparatchik behind the desk who neither smiled nor frowned, but had opted for a basilisk stare and a speak-your-weight delivery. I hated the place and wanted this over and done with as soon as possible. But as yet there was no Faisal.

  He’d been already dressed in his suit and tie when he’d come up the glass staircase and said there’d been an urgent call from the Whittington. A patient under his care had gone into a coma. He’d given me a long, tight hug. I wasn’t to worry; he’d be there in good time for our appointment at twelve. It was now five-to.

  The morning after the accident, as soon as he’d given the police his statement, he’d rushed back to Khan’s Tools & Hardware, to the serenity of the nuts and the bolts, the paints and the bath plugs. But at least from then on he’d called me most evenings. His precious father had come home again, but still sat staring at the walls. His mother had calmed down a bit but was constantly weepy. Faisal had
been running the shop, just like he’d done as a teenager. I’d offered to pop down and see him, but he’d thought it best if I didn’t. He’d hoped I’d understand.

  Then one night he’d paused, cleared his throat and mentioned the papers in the desk. What did I think? Should we give it a go maybe? He’d taken his few steps back, had been thinking hard about ‘us’. We’d been through a lot lately but perhaps it was some sort of test? Things between us had come a bit unstuck, his fault as well as mine, but he reckoned making it legal might be the glue we needed. I’d wished he’d gone for another word.

  I’d told him about Dolores. It was easier on the phone. He’d been shocked of course but, to my surprise, seemed as pleased as Vic had initially been. He liked Dolores he’d said; not the sort of girl he knew as a rule. Good fun. Did my having a daughter alter anything between us? I’d heard myself saying that it didn’t, though I’d known I was lying. Dolores had altered everything, even the strength of the morning sun.

  He’d repeated his question. Should we give it a go? I’d felt like one of those people who report being strangely drawn to the edge of Beachy Head or the railings of the Eiffel Tower. Faisal gave his life to easing people’s pain. Now the physician needed healing himself and he was self-prescribing this piece of paper. Could I deny him that? Should I jump?

  I’d jumped. Though I’d made it clear I wasn’t having any of that gay ‘marriage’ shite; morning dress, exchanging rings, calling each other husband, trying to beat the straights at their own game. Luckily, Faisal didn’t either. So one day he’d come up from Slough and we’d gone to the town hall to register our intentions. He’d written me a special ‘Partner Poem’ to mark the occasion. It’d been just as awful as the rest but I’d pretended to be deeply touched. Now, a week later, we were back to do the deed. Or at least I was.

  I’d thought it right to discuss the business implications with Vic; what would happen if I went under a bus etc. I’d asked him to come for a chat in the office. His mood still hadn’t lifted much. Big Frankie had agreed to slip the anti-depressants into Vic’s meals, but they’d not stood much chance against the amount of whisky he was swallowing too. Our meeting had been a bit bumpy. After all the money he’d put in, after all we’d been through, he wasn’t going to sit back and let anyone else wreck all that. Not Faisal, not Dolores. I was acquiring next-of-kin at an alarming rate. He’d insisted our talking to the lawyers as soon as possible. He’d wanted what he called ‘legal battlements’ around the project and he’d wanted it done right away. Only when he’d been going out of the door, had he tossed limp congratulations back over his shoulder.