by Alan Clark
I went back down to my room. I still slept on ‘my’ side of the bed I’d shared with Faisal; till now something had stopped me rolling over onto what had been his space. But I could still see every contour of his body and conjure up his smell. I felt a sudden sharp longing for that lost landscape, wondering if I’d ever again know the intensity of excitement and satisfaction it had brought me, even if it had never been easy terrain and in the end had proved uninhabitable.
Maybe it was the case, as he’d suggested himself, that he could only really relate to people in hospital beds who thought he was God. Maybe after the intimacy of that, all other human contact came a poor second. I knew he’d tried so hard with me, but it hadn’t quite happened. And despite the dutiful devotion to his parents, I doubted it had happened there either. Perhaps fat Ruby was the only one who’d been able to reach him entirely after all. If so, then it was hideously appropriate they’d exploded into infinity side by side. The irony of course was that though, without meaning to, I’d somehow failed him, he’d not entirely failed me. The clam had been shut for so long and he’d managed to prise it open, even just a bit. For that I’d always owe him.
I lay listening to Vic’s snoring through the wall. A new and unexpected road had opened to me. A very different road; likely to take me to places I’d never have imagined going, not for a while yet anyway. Less tempestuous places maybe, but maybe where I needed to go. Anyway, there it was. Right now. Waiting. The other day, I’d found Faisal’s dog-eared copy of The Man-Love Manual abandoned in a drawer. I’d flicked through it to see if it might be any sort of guide in my new situation but there was nothing. I’d binned it, after scribbling down the publisher’s email. He needed to be told what a useless pile of shite it had turned out to be. I guess I’ll just have to find my own way.
Outside in the East Court, I could hear the day stirring. Big Frankie’s front door slammed as he went over to start the breakfasts. Chamber-Laddies trickled under the Clock Tower and swapped endearments. Curtis Powell’s trainers scrunched the gravel on their jog towards the Heath.
I desperately wanted to sleep again. I rolled over onto Faisal’s side of the bed and dipped in and out of consciousness. For the umpteenth time in the last two hours, I saw the wee plane as it took off from the arid airstrip and climbed into the African sky. But this time it didn’t stutter and fall, it kept right on going up into the blue, taking Faisal somewhere he would give the best of himself and be happy in the knowledge of it. I watched it climb higher and higher, get smaller and smaller, till it became just a tiny speck swallowed up by the sun.
NINETEEN
‘A bit Brief Encounter this, isn’t it?’ she said. But the coffee shop, marooned in a storm of commuters on the concourse of Victoria Station, singularly lacked charm. If Celia Johnson had got grit in her eye here, nobody would’ve lifted a finger.
‘Well it’s certainly been brief,’ I replied. ‘I’ve only known you’re my kid for about two months and now you fuck off.’
She’d not even wanted me to come to the station, but I’d insisted. When they’d announced a half-hour delay on the Gatwick Express, she’d sworn under her breath. I could tell she wanted to get away.
When I’d got the email from Monte Carlo, I’d been stunned, then upset, then resigned. Nevertheless when she’d got back, just after the fire, I’d asked her to think again, told her how much her work was valued, how sad everyone would be to see her go. I’d not even pleaded our personal connection. But she’d claimed that the greater part of her job at Mount Royal, the planning and the planting, was almost done; she’d give me the name of an ace bloke who’d see it all through. Pastures new, she’d laughed; literally and metaphorically.
The guys had clubbed together and given her a bracelet from Asprey’s. There had been hugs and kisses on the front steps. Big Frankie had predictably blubbed and Vic had told her she’d always be his rose; despite everything I’d known that he meant it.
‘I’m not fucking off, I’m just moving on,’ she smiled, one sharp eye on the departure board.
‘Do you have the faintest notion what you mean to me?’ I asked. There was no time left for inhibitions.
‘Probably not,’ she said. ‘I’ve never had a child.’
‘Neither have I,’ I replied. ‘It changes everything.’
‘You shouldn’t let it change anything,’ she said, the faintest rasp of testiness in her voice. ‘Remember the feng shui thing. You’re looking the right way now. Just go for it. Then reposition me a little and we’ll all be fine.’
With its tightly crammed tables, the coffee shop wasn’t the place for an intimate conversation. On one side sat three school-boys, each on a mobile talking to somebody else. On the other, a sad-looking woman was reading Anna Karenina. Not a good choice for a railway station, you’d have thought. An ugly notion broke into my mind.
‘This isn’t some sort of twisted revenge is it?’ I asked. ‘Coming into my life, making me care, then disappearing. Like I did with your mother?’
Dolores ran her hand through her spiky hair and looked at me as if I were mad. Then she laughed and I finally looked into the canyon of disparity between her importance to me and mine to her. It should have stopped me from humbling myself before her, but it didn’t.
‘Don’t go Dolores. People have a habit of doing that to me.’
‘There you go again,’ she said, the eyes flashing. ‘Centre of the universe. Why do you always see it as people leaving you? Mightn’t they just be going where they need to go? That’s what poor little Faisal was trying to do, wasn’t it? Well me too. And anyway, if people do leave you, fuck ’em. You’ve always got yourself.’
‘That’s what Vic says,’ I replied, then decided to share my terrible secret. ‘And I’ve been seeing a shrink to find out who that is. So far, she’s not really told me.’
‘Fire the bitch,’ said Dolores crisply. ‘Anyway I’ll tell you who you are. You’re the saviour of all those pensioners up there on the hill, you’re the son Elspeth never had, you’re dear old Vic’s dream come true and you’re my Dad. Why not just make a start with that and see how you go?’
The slats on the departure board spun round and came to rest as Dolores wanted them to do. The sad woman reading Anna Karenina had been finding our conversation much more interesting. As I grabbed the suitcases, I caught her eye.
‘She throws herself in front of a train,’ I said.
I walked her to the platform.
‘I’d planned to take you on a trip you know,’ I said. ‘Show you the world and all that.’
‘Thanks, but I think I should do that for myself,’ she replied ‘And right now, you need to stay exactly where you are.’
She wrestled a large buff envelope from her shoulder-bag. ‘Hey, I meant to give you these; a few preliminary sketches for a memorial to Faisal in the Italian Garden. Vic and the guys asked me if I’d have a think. Nothing fancy. Some nice planting, a bench, a little water feature maybe. Somewhere for the smokers to go for a drag. Have a look; email me your thoughts.’
‘I miss him,’ I said. ‘I’m going to miss you too.’
‘Yeah, but we were both false trails,’ she replied.
‘In some ways maybe, but not entirely,’ I said. ‘And you come back home whenever you want. Don’t forget you’re a Blaine now, an Ashridge too.’
‘No, I told you before,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘I’m just Dolores Potts, the gardener with the funny name.’
‘And my daughter.’
‘And your daughter,’ she said. I couldn’t remember her having used that word before. It felt like winning a badge at school or being knighted by the Queen, as I’d dreamed about when Vic had first proposed his crazy idea for Mount Royal. But this was better. This was off the scale.
‘I’ll text you when I get there,’ she said, then Madonna With A Trowel picked up her cases and turned away to be vaporized by the crowd. I noticed a few men staring after her, just as I was doing. I wanted to go up to them,
tell them who she was and that she was so much more than they would ever see.
I bought The Times to read in the taxi home. Among the obituaries was Rory McCulloch, folk-singer and long-ago king of my heart. He’d died of a heart-attack while climbing in the Cairngorms with his lifelong partner Calum. He’d been seventy-one. As the cab crawled up Park Lane, the tears I’d held back at the loss of both Faisal and Dolores, I now shed for him.
*
Elton and David didn’t turn up. Fuck ’em, Vic said. They’d probably gone out with Lulu and they’d not be missed anyway. But everybody else came, nearly three hundred of them; as odd a collection as Mount Royal had ever taken under its roof, odder even than Granny’s erstwhile gang of unhinged aristos and suburban fascists.
Each of the guys had been allowed ten guests. The people they’d collected in their past lives came to wish them well in their future one. I was introduced to old school chums, bridge partners, accountants, cleaning ladies; occasionally, though not often, a brother, a sister, a godchild even. All these witnesses to whom or what they used to be started to colour in the wispy sketches. As the booze loosened tongues, portraits were painted of dissolute youths and sober achievements, of little peccadilloes and blazing strengths. Harmless confidences were whispered, deep dark secrets tipsily betrayed.
I’d invited the gay establishment too; you never knew when you might need a favour. The intense men and women who ran the charities and pressure groups, the self-righteously ‘out’ MPs with their overshadowed boyfriends, the actors who’d rejuvenated their careers by barging from the closet better late than never. And every link of the human chain which had helped in the fire had come; some dressed for the occasion, others for the Heath where they’d no doubt round off the evening by force of habit. The Lord Chancellor himself made an appearance; I’d invited the pompous prat as a surprise for Marcus and the smile had been worth it. I’d wondered about asking Ms Prada too till it dawned on me that she must never leave the eau-de-nil room with the droopy azalea. She knew too much.
I was in my full-dress kilt; the Royal Stuart tartan, the black velvet tunic with the jabot of frothing lace, the horsehair sporran, the silver dirk. Robin Bradbury-Ross said I’d made his thong as damp as the cellars at Longleat. Miss Elspeth Wishart was in a nice frock too. This morning at breakfast, Beau had looked at the tweed skirt and mauve cardie and declared that he couldn’t go on looking at her without a reduction in his rent. She’d told him to mind his cheek but within an hour she’d been bundled into a taxi heading for Knightsbridge. Tonight, the mad hair had been tamed and highlighted, the eyebrows pruned, the face lightly made-up and the body dressed in a simple but chic black frock with a pearl choker at her neck.
‘I feel like a painted hussy,’ she said, ‘though nobody can accuse me of being after a man in this place.’
It was fine September evening, summer taking one last curtain-call. Mount Royal was floodlit from stem to stern and, as the darkness crept over us, daylight was electronically prolonged across the Italian Garden. A long gazebo covered the terrace under which Big Frankie had organized the food. Out in the Orangery, Beau had set up a sound system and, after supper, took on the job of ‘spinning a few platters’. There were many strange dancing partnerships that night; the Archdeacon and the lad from the Heath who liked getting whipped, Marcus Leigh and a Brazilian drag queen, wee Jacob Trevelyan and a big dyke from Rubber Duckies. In the Lionel Ritchie segment, Big Frankie and Gentleman Jim wrapped themselves round each other like sumo wrestlers. Frankie seemed to be getting over Vic quite nicely now.
When it was nudging midnight, I thought I’d better make a speech. I stopped the music and stood on the top step of the Orangery. Then I realized that what I wanted to say couldn’t possibly be spoken; certainly not to this pissed and cheery crowd, not to Elspeth or Vic, maybe not even in the eau-de-nil room. It could only ever be said to myself, alone in the darkness of the night, this extraordinary feeling flooding through me, of never having faced the sunrise with such anticipation. I suddenly remembered the Arab boy from The Catacombs on my forty-fifth birthday. ‘It’s our time now. You’ve had yours. Get over it,’ he’d spat at me in the drizzling rain. And I’d secretly believed him. But I didn’t any more.
‘Hello campers, hi-de-hi,’ I shouted instead.
‘Ho-de-ho,’ they yelled back.
So I trotted out a few mundane words appropriate for the occasion and, by telling a lot of filthy jokes that probably weren’t, I turned it into a stand-up. Well, I’d never have a bigger audience. I looked out over the ranks of grinning heads, beyond the orange trees in their snow-white tubs, across the gardens and up to the house, pulsing with people and light. It looked both stronger and more beautiful than I’d ever seen it. The motto of Granny’s ancestors blazed out from the great stone shield below the pediment.
‘Fuck everyone but us,’ said the house in Latin.
Not a bad toast really, so I shouted it out to three hundred people and they shouted it back.
At about two in the morning, Beau announced the last dance. Vic took my hand and dragged me into the centre of the Orangery; I’d always been a crap dancer. We’d not said anything to anybody and we’d no intention of doing so. We’d not even said that much to each other. Vic lived in the flat now and that was that. The other day, he’d put a framed photo of himself out on a table; a publicity still taken in his prime, the face as it had been at that time when I’d blotted it out forever. He’d been a handsome bugger once, that bloody smile blazing out. He’d asked me if I was okay with the photo and I’d said that I was. Just yesterday he’d come across my hidden guitar and nagged me till I’d picked it up, red-faced and hesitant, and stumbled into A Man’s A Man For A’ That’. After a bit, he’d joined in, harmonizing an octave above me. It had sounded pretty good; it really had. Now tonight, as the music started, Vic smiled and slid his arm round my waist.
‘Come on, toots,’ he said, ‘just let me lead you. I’ll not hold you too tight. I promise you.’
It was past five when the last guests staggered towards their mini-cabs. I sat beside the Great Fountain with Vic, Elspeth, Big Frankie and a few of my more resilient boys. As the dawn came up, the floodlights faded and died, wrapping us in a sort of morning twilight. Marcus was miffed that the Lord Chancellor had slipped away without saying goodnight and Beau was upset because Angela Lansbury hadn’t appeared; she’d been in town and had promised to try. Apart from that, the stragglers all smelt of boozy contentment. Some had taken off their shoes and socks and were dangling their feet in the Great Fountain, dousing themselves in the spray.
Elspeth, mutely proud of her new dress, stayed well back on one of the benches.
‘You look great, Miss Wishart,’ I said. ‘We must buy you a few more like that.’
‘You’ll do no such thing Rory Blaine,’ she replied. ‘At my age, one good frock will see me out.’
‘Miss Wishart, I’ve been thinking,’ I said, plonking myself down beside her. ‘I’ve not been wearing my Glenlyon uniform for about thirty years now. Do you think I could start calling you Elspeth?’
‘Dearie me, I’ve not been called that by anyone for an awful long time’
‘I think perhaps you should be, don’t you?’
‘Aye, well all right then,’ she said hesitantly, as if I’d just suggested we swap underwear. ‘But only in private mind, and you will go on thinking of me as Miss Wishart with all the respect that entails.’
Vic and the others were drifting back towards the house. Big Frankie was going to rustle up some coffee and croissants. We said we’d be along in a minute. Elspeth gazed after them.
‘You know, Rory Blaine, I used to think that anyone of your persuasion was damaged, like the runt of the litter. But I was wrong about that and I’m sorry.’
‘I was wrong too Elspeth,’ I replied, the name sitting strangely on my tongue. ‘I guess we’re only damaged if we allow ourselves to be. Anyway, not many runts in that litter over there.’
&nb
sp; ‘No indeed,’ she said, watching the bleary group negotiate the horseshoe staircase up to the terrace. ‘A bit rowdy, but not a bad bunch of lads.’
‘And just think, you’re stuck with them forever. They’ll not be leaving you for uni at the end of term.’
‘Jings, well, there’s a thing.’
Elspeth stood up, dusted down the black dress and studied the Koi carp.
‘Her Ladyship would be pleased tonight I’m thinking,’ she said.
‘With the house maybe,’ I replied. ‘Hardly with the occupants. The people she hated most.’
‘But there was a lot of love in this house once, you told me.’
‘Once.’
‘Well maybe she’ll be glad there is again.’
‘You think there is?’
‘More as each day passes. Can you not feel it?’ said Elspeth. ‘Perhaps your grandmother will come to recognize that, wherever she is now.’
‘Actually, she’s in a cupboard in the flat,’ I said.
‘You mean the ashes?’ said Elspeth, her newly-plucked eyebrows arching in disapproval. ‘Shame on you Rory Blaine. Away and get them right this minute.’
And so, as the first pale rays were striking the easterly windows of Mount Royal, I opened Granny’s urn and threw handfuls of greyish gravel into the Great Fountain. The spray caught it, toyed with it, then scattered it across the basin, dusting the lily pads and clouding the water. Yet in just a few moments it was clear as crystal again, the fish darting around as if nothing of significance had happened. But it had. That first day I’d met him in the nursing-home, Vic had said that eventually you had to forgive everything.
‘There now,’ said Elspeth, ‘that’s better isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘it is.’
It struck me that I’d not felt angry for weeks now. Not angry at anyone. Not at Faisal or Dolores. Not at Granny. Not even at myself.
