The Folding Star

by Alan Hollinghurst

  Chapter 18

  "I'm afraid he's not back yet. But come in."

  "Oh." I was a few minutes late myself, delayed perhaps by unease about this meeting as much as by tiredness and a light hangover and the magnificent shock of last night. It made me feel like a kid again, going to call on Dawn's parents, when the outrageous fact of what we did together seemed to bulge upwards like some monstrous erection under the tea-table—one saw the cups begin to tilt . . . I was imagining the weeks to come, the shabby little subterfuges Luc and I would be put to. I thought he'd probably be better at it than me: it was part of his daily reckonings with his mother, whereas I flinched guiltily from cheating her.

  I followed her into the kitchen. "Where has he gone?" I asked. I'd wanted him to be there as I arrived, very much.

  "He stayed overnight with the Dhondts, their boy Patrick is a great friend of Luc's from school." A capable subterfuge already.

  "Oh yes, I've met him. I ran into them at the Town Baths one morning."

  "It was a rare chance, then. Luc normally hates swimming. He doesn't like anything where you have to take your clothes off. He was so tall as a little boy, and ashamed of being skinny."

  "I hadn't thought of him as being skinny," I said, as if willing to entertain the idea, still feeling his warm dips and curves in my palms. It was clear to me the whole preoccupation with fatness and weight was the mother's not the son's.

  "I'm making some coffee, just as usual," she said. Then, "So are you pleased with his progress?"

  "Oh, he's terribly good," I said. "I'm sure he's right just to concentrate on the Dorset English exam—I know you were worried about it, but I can promise you he'll do well. He's going to do his first big essay for me this week, on Wordsworth and childhood." I beheld its careful pages already, and myself correcting them firmly, reluctantly.

  "He's so wild sometimes." She had her lost look. "He's crazy keen to get away from here. And I suppose I must. . . help him to escape! Of course I love the old town. You know his family have lived here since the twelfth century?"

  "I knew they went back quite some way."

  "I wish he showed more interest in the church. I don't think young Patrick Dhondt is a very good influence, he's quite a rough noisy boy with a terrifying little car which I'm always afraid he will crash and kill them both. Luc seems to be devoted to him. I think it must be a sort of hero-worship, you must have come across it. He spends as much time with Patrick Dhondt as possible."

  "I see."

  " Of course the father, Roger Dhondt, is a famous ornithologist. But he's always stalking about with his binoculars. I don't think he's got much time for anything that can be seen with the naked eye."

  I laughed and saw how it warmed her on this dark November morning to call up her worries. It seemed I might be able to help by keeping Luc out of Patrick's clutches. "I'll do what I can," I said.

  She put me in the dining-room, just as usual, and I sat and stared at "Tintern Abbey". Luc was always punctual, so this seemed a kind of test. He'd left me in the cold of the dawn, nervy and hurried, a bit embarrassed, with a tense smile as he slipped out of my arms, and something about getting back while his mother was at early mass. But maybe he hadn't been home. He was doing something that was painfully hidden from me. And then his timing must have gone wrong, there having been no rehearsal. He would come in panting, with a light, unelaborated excuse, grinning at me as he entered the room, calling back reassuringly to his mother. I sipped the coffee, my hand shaking. It dropped into my mind that he was avoiding me.

  "It's very odd," said Mrs Altidore, popping in five minutes later. "I've just telephoned Celeste Dhondt, she's French and always quite rude. She says Luc didn't stay there last night. She says Patrick got home very late by himself, she thinks about one o'clock. This morning he said Luc had made other plans."

  "How curious . . . " My pulse was thudding in my neck.

  "You see what I mean, he's so wild. It truly frightens me at times, Mr Manners. I don't want to drag out his whole history in front of you, I've always wanted you to see him at his very clever and gifted best, but I think you will know anyway that there have been catastrophes before."

  "I'm sure he'll be fine. There's no reason to think anything . . . untoward has happened to him."

  She wandered over to the window—I saw for the first time a haunting fore-echo of the son's lazy stride in her gangling actions. My mind was slamming round the maze of alibis and explanations. I found myself impotently concentrating on the fact that Patrick hadn't got home till one o'clock.

  "The awful business of the boy last month, found in the sea-canal," she said. It seemed cruel not to tell her the happier truth about her son. I dismissed her fears quite brusquely, burdened by the familiar glimpse I'd had of a mother's forebodings, a video nasty of the threatening world.

  "He was a drug-addict and a, a gigolo," I said, and saw that I'd only conjured up two further dangers and brought them dripping into her house.

  I went out to find her a few minutes later. I felt sure Luc must have gone to my rooms, this once, through some simple misunderstanding, a glitch in our polyglot pillow-talk. I wandered softly along the passage to the kitchen and came to a halt when I saw her through the open door. She was half turned away from me, standing by the stove, eyes fixed, I thought, on the teeming emptiness under the table. Behind her hung copper pans, far more than could ever be used at one time, and in front of her were spread potatoes, curly red cabbage, fretty French parsley, a lemon, a mortar, a bottle of oil and a huge mauve, bearded, festive fish.

  I scuttled across town through a vapoury drizzle, running for a few yards and then dropping back into a winded walk; I was muttering with anxiety, Luc fouling up on this morning when everything needed to run sleekly and deceptively. I sensed it as a protest or a tease, it seemed to register in my body, the dull ache in my thighs and back after the rigours of that particular exercise. My yearning for his lean, fit body became a flustered envy of it, a hopeless need simply to be seventeen, to be half my age, at the wondering outset . . .

  Cherif was sitting at the top of the stairs like love locked out, or as if he'd come himself for a lesson. "Are you ready for me?" he said.

  "Baby, shouldn't you be at work?"

  He looked at me indulgently. "I've got to get my clothes first. I can't go in my best coat."

  I unlocked the door with the fear that last night had been a hallucination, and that normality had come back, noiseless and solid. But then I saw how he went through the room, only half-disguising his suspicions; and I must admit I had cleaned up as if after a crime. There was sick worry and accusation in his face and way of speaking, inexpertly and bravely and cloyingly covered up. When I explained about Luc going missing he brightened and mimicked frowning concern.

  So we went hunting for him together. Cherif was to be my partner on this one, he didn't want this drama between me and Luc ranging round town unchecked; and I let him come because I had no idea where to look and didn't expect to be successful. It was like a task set in a dream, you went busily around, you were pointlessly systematic, your eye searched through shopwindows and cruised the crowd till you felt giddy, as if you were trying to count them. You saw a blond boy and ran to the street corner, caught up with him, as you might have wanted to anyway, and felt licensed to scrutinise him and turn him down. Cherif was useless, never having seen Luc: it was a charade for him in his high-collared coat like an old film gumshoe, more watchful for me than for the kid. He cursed him a lot, and criticised him as a truant and a trouble-maker.

  We checked out one or two cafes and bars, though it seemed likely to me Luc would be at a friend's house, or else just walking in one of the tree-lined streets at the town's edge. As the morning lengthened he became more poignant—suffering and confused after our night together, needing confidence and love. I contrived to come past the Cassette, and ran in for a pee, drifting back by the deserted tables and booths, the bare bar-stools where we'd sat. It didn't seem impossible
he'd be there, waiting for me, as if he had a bet on it.

  In the main shopping-streets the hateful advance parties of Christmas were out, wiring up tinny speakers from shop-front to shop-front: mechanical music was heard in the distance, even worse than the carillons, with none of their lofty resonance. I thought hysterically how I would have to go back to England and leave all this behind, give up the search with the boy still unfound. And a winter of Cherif’s bickering and disappointment. The rain spotted and blurred my glasses. I said, "I'd better get over to Luc's mother—he may have turned up."

  When we came out into the Grote Markt the low cloud seemed to buckle and bruise above the gilded gables, the belfry-top was lost, there was a sense of steeply heightened concentration. The rain was suddenly audible and swelled in a few seconds to a steady fizzing racket on the stones; it came down on us and up at us, intent and oblivious at once—I turned up my jacket collar and started to run and Cherif was splashing along beside me, shouting and laughing. There was nowhere in particular to hide: it was like being caught on a shingle beach or even out at sea. I took off my glasses and ran with them clutched in my pocket. It was a chaos of jumping, vague forms and watery obliteration—I headed for Long Street, drenched and gasping, ready to surrender: on top of all the anxieties it was oddly hilarious. I ran up to the steps and slammed the bell with my palm, and Cherif, dripping but protected by his coat, came after me and was swearing rowdily when Luc's mother opened the door.

  We stood panting and bedraggled in the hall, like two truants ourselves, with nothing to say. Mrs Altidore was clearly alarmed by the sight of Cherif, in his filthy boots, ambling round the room as she spoke to me. The whole day was so odd it hardly surprised me to see him in this least likely place, with the water still sparkling in his curly hair, looking critically at the hangings.

  "He's left town," she said. "I'm sure he has." I longed to say no, he's here, he was with me all night—it was all a bother, with my clothes wet and clinging and cold, though I was hot from running and red-faced in the dark old mirror opposite. She groped in the pockets of the purple knitted house-coat she had on, and brought out a letter. "This has just come. It's from Luc's friend Arnold, who is a very responsible young man. He's like an older brother to Luc. He's brilliant. He's at the university of Leuven."

  "Yes, Luc's told me . . ."

  "He says . . . 'I thought I should tell you that I have had a long letter from Luc . . . much of it is very personal but he does say how much he wants to leave home . . . You probably know he has been very upset lately, affairs of the heart have not turned out well for him . . . I have tried to calm him down but I thought you should be prepared for him to do something unexpected, as he has before.' " She held the letter out to me with the stare of someone demanding help. I read it quickly and resentfully, as evidence of an older intimacy, a more disinterested care. My hair dripped on to it and made the inky tendrils float.

  "I don't know," I said. It was priggish, wasn't it, and sneaky? But then Arnold didn't know about me, about us. Nobody did.

  "I want you to find him," she said in her cracked, imperious way.

  "Well, of course I'd love to, but I've just been searching . . ."

  "I think I know where he's gone. There's no point in my following him, alas—it wouldn't help. It's not easy for a mother to look after a seventeen-year-old boy alone. He misses his father, it's quite natural."

  "You think he's gone to his father, gone to Brussels?" I was alarmed that he might blurt out about last night.

  She chewed her cheek. "Can you drive?"

  "Yes . . ."

  "Then take my car; I'm sure you should go straight after him. He trusts you and likes you and you're . . . disinterested — you could get him back before he does anything stupid."

  I saw myself boarding a ship in disguise and infiltrating a tense strip-poker game deep below decks. It was going to be a test of initiative, like one of our mad field-days at school. It still seemed to me somehow beside the point, but I began to catch the mother's agitation, her dread not only of where he was going but of having driven him out. "I don't want him falling into rough hands," she said, glancing narrowly at Cherif as if he were himself a manifestation, a messenger, of the underworld (long ignored, long suspected and feared) that was waiting to receive her son.

  "I'll do whatever you like," I said. "But first I really must change, I'm soaked to the skin." It was clear she hadn't noticed this till now.

  She tugged open drawers, and chopped through the clustered hangers on the cupboard rail. I wasn't sure if she was looking for old things that didn't matter or for something good enough and suitable. She didn't know the leather me, only the sports-coat and tie me. She laid out a couple of shirts. "A vest?" I nodded. "Underpants? Well, you can help yourself—thank you, I will. "But can you get into his trousers?" I said I'd try them and see.

  "The two of you are the same height, but you of course are much fatter." She lifted out some dreary flannels which none the less had a beauty when you imagined them ironised by Luc's long legs.

  I couldn't really start changing till she'd left; I squatted to untie a shoe, and she watched me interestedly, as if to say it was years since she'd seen a man undress even so much as that. "I'll give you the keys to the car," she said, "and to the Pavillon de l'Aurore."

  "Thanks very much," I said, thinking of it still as a treat, whose magic might be broken if I protested or asked questions. For the past twelve hours or more life was living itself with a logic and fluency of its own, everyone else was in a state of crisis, but I had become calm, I knew it couldn't be resisted.

  When she had gone I pushed the door quietly to and dragged off my wet clothes. I still had the sensation of being chilled and hot at once, like a neo-classical description of passion. A pile of heavy unlovely garments grew in the middle of the floor, as if placed by an orderly suicide. I stood in my damp jockey-shorts and slowly dried myself with Luc's face-towel; then wandered about, looking at his pictures, the muddle on his desk. I read some notes on a pad—"W. born at Cockermouth(!)", "Fostered alike by beauty and by fear", various other quotations and "Ask Edward about" followed by nothing. Well, I'd certainly have told him if I could.

  The framed school photo was four years old—one might have expected Luc to be cross-legged at the front, with the cups, but because of his height he was standing with boys who were evidently older—he looked vulnerable among them, his smile anxious and pre-sexual beside their thinly nonconformist grins and sneers. There were some beauties at St Narcissus, those Benelux blonds—and there, at the headmaster's feet, was a dark Puck, round-faced young Patrick, holding a polished heraldic shield between his knees and leering as though to say, if you could see what's behind this . . .

  I thought of the day I'd found Patrick in this room—sprawled just there, scuffed school shoes on Mrs Altidore's richly worked bedspread. And the first visit—my secret excitement, the yearning I'd stifled under a kind of snootiness, it seemed to me now, as of someone only just out of his own Airfix-trophied den. And this third visit, how young it all still looked, and how unguarded, and hence reproachful.

  The flannels were too tight to get the zip up; I flicked through the other trousers and found a baggy old pair that looked possible, made of thick navy drill with carpenter's pockets, faintly musty from a season's neglect, with chalky lines at the knees from the oxidised hanger. On me they weren't so baggy after all, but they could just be buttoned unflatteringly at the waist. I drew on Luc's socks, I went to the mirror and buttoned his shirt over his cotton vest, I climbed into his russet sweater—all these things mothered and fabric-conditioned and freshly stored. I looked at myself with eerie satisfaction.

  The light wasn't good, the rain still thrashed into the street below, and I stepped forward to see myself in the mirror, the flushed impersonator. There were long gold strands in the teeth of Luc's comb, which must have come out as I drew it through my rain-sleeked hair and stayed there, like the first fine threads of age among t
he black. His clothes hugged me tightly, exactingly, like sports gear; I felt the little heart-weight of dread that preceded sports at school, looking out down the relentless track. And yet it didn't seem to matter—I stroked my thighs and somehow they were his, this was what it felt like to have a medallist's legs, to carry the tape with you and have it flutter down about your waist as you reined and jogged loosely on. The churches were striking noon, but in the glass it was dusk. I hovered and peered and glowed there, his inhabitant.

  Then I saw I had accepted his mother's intuition—I wasn't expecting him to come springing up the stairs and catch me in his things. I saw my own face sicken in the mirror. Each second that I gave up to becoming him only took him further from me. I pictured him hurtling away through the rain, faster than any runner, in a car hidden from pursuers by a twirling wall of spray, or in a train that seemed to cross in seconds from one side of this little country to the other. And why stop there? He disappeared into France, or Holland, or Germany, he was among the youthful detritus of Paris or Hamburg. And then the questions were asked. Patrick and Sibylle said how they'd left him in my care, a red-eyed slanderous snapshot, like that of Rose, was passed around the bar. No one from among the stooped churchgoers and cleaners of the winter daybreak came forward to remember him in the street, after he left me. I was the last person to have seen him alive.

  There was a knock and his mother came straight in. I saw her troubled for a moment by my rueful grimace. "I've just had a phone-call", she said, "from Kristien de Taeye, the wife of the Minister of Culture." And already it had happened. I felt the accusing finger quiver and jab and fence me back—the finger was an epee—shielding my face into the corner of the room.