The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  ‘That’s all very well. But how do we know that it won’t attract the wrong sort of people?’

  ‘Like who?’ Clement asked disingenuously. ‘You might as well ban Van Gogh’s Boots on the grounds that it would attract shoe fetishists.’

  ‘Well I think that about wraps it up,’ the Dean interjected quickly. ‘Thank you all for a most interesting exchange of views. I really don’t think that we need take up any more of Mr Granville’s time. I’m sure he’s eager to return to London.’ He cited the capital with the wistful air of one who had felt his talents wither in the provinces. After shaking the committee’s hands, by turn limp, fleshy, clammy, cold and calloused, Clement took his leave of the Dean, who promised to ring him as soon as he had a result.

  Clement returned to London in an overheated train opposite a sulky ten-year-old who sucked her plaits. He had barely begun making dinner when the Dean called with the news that the majority view had prevailed and the design been accepted. Shrewd as ever, he insisted that unanimity would have been a sure sign that the image was bland. After restating his belief that the window would be a splendid addition to the cathedral, which Clement, anticipating future guidebooks, read as a splendid monument to the Dean himself, he sounded a note of caution. ‘We still have to gain approval from the Fabric Advisory Committee over which I have no – I repeat, no – control. But I trust that that won’t deter you from celebrating.’

  ‘As soon as he saw my face, my boyfriend brought out a bottle of champagne,’ Clement said, emphasising the relationship.

  ‘Quite right. Water into wine, as I always remind the Methodists,’ the Dean replied, leaving it unclear if he were diplomatic or deaf.

  Although the imminence of the meal forced them to open the champagne before it was chilled, Clement professed not to notice. Mike proposed a toast to the window, which he insisted on interpreting as an allegory of a repressed man being liberated by his bolder self and calling Coming Out.

  ‘It’s The Second Adam,’ Clement retorted.

  ‘Oh sure! And St Teresa never had an orgasm.’

  Mike’s marking and his own self-restraint meant that they drank only half the bottle, so he took the rest in his saddlebag when he made his way to Dartmouth Park the following morning. He was having lunch with Carla, ostensibly to discuss the window, but he knew that she was preoccupied with thoughts of the child. He was anxious not to leave her in suspense and reckoned that, while a full bottle might raise her hopes, a half-full or, rather, half-empty one would let them down gently. In the event he miscalculated for, as soon as he opened his bag, her face lit up.

  ‘Oh Clement, thank you.’

  ‘Please, wait a second! It’s only what’s left over from last night.’

  ‘I think it’s great news. Really great,’ she said, in a voice so flat that he was eager to fill it with bubbles.

  ‘I thought we could have it at lunch. But if you’d like a glass right now.’

  ‘No, lunch is good.’ She led him to the spacious workshop which, without his qualms about working at home and with no Crown Estate Commissioners to object, she had built in the garden. A faint odour of linseed oil hung in the air. ‘Sit anywhere,’ she said, switching on the heater. ‘I’ve laid out some samples.’

  ‘You look stressed. I’m sorry. Shall we leave the window and discuss the other matter first?’

  ‘If you think it’s appropriate.’

  ‘I think it’s essential.’ Carla paced the room, as if anticipating the worst. ‘First I want to say how touched I am – and flattered – that you should ask.’

  ‘Oh God!’

  ‘I’d do anything… anything within my power to help. But I wouldn’t be bringing you life but death.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m HIV positive.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And I have been for twelve years.’

  As Carla burst into tears, Clement knew that his instinct for secrecy had been sound. Even so, he felt an immense relief at having finally opened his heart to a member of his family. ‘There’s nothing to cry about. Truly! I’m in excellent health. God and the drug companies willing, I’ll live out my biblical span.’

  Her initial shock gave way to hurt, tempered with resentment that he had kept the truth hidden for so long. ‘And all this time you’ve said nothing? Do you trust me so little?’

  ‘Believe me, it’s not you I don’t trust but myself. Knowing I’d never manage to tailor different stories to different people, I decided that the best thing would be to tell no one.’

  ‘Not even your parents?’

  ‘Them least of all. You, more than anyone, know what they’ve suffered. I can’t put them through hell every time I catch a cold.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry. It’s very brave of you.’

  ‘Mike thinks it’s cowardly.’

  ‘Then he’s wrong!’ she said with unexpected vehemence. ‘I’ve always known you were a compassionate man, Clem. I never realised how much.’

  ‘You’ll make me blush!’

  He explained that keeping well was a routine matter of taking his pills and managing the modest side effects. The real problem lay in his mind. The sense of playing host to a deadly virus not only alienated him from his own body but threatened his intimacy with Mike. He found it increasingly hard to respond to his lovemaking, let alone take the initiative. Mike had little patience with his fears. For him, the safer sex guidelines were protection enough but, for Clement, the comparative contained a warning. So, night after night, he lay beside the love of his life, longing to give himself without restraint, tortured by thoughts of ulcerated gums and split condoms.

  ‘I think I’d like that champagne now,’ Carla said. She led the way to the kitchen, the gleaming white cabinets looking even more sterile in the aftermath of Peter’s departure. While she heated the soup, he tentatively broached the subject of using an anonymous donor.

  ‘Never!’ She shuddered.

  ‘Not even a Nobel Prize-winner?’

  ‘I want to raise a child, not breed a racehorse.’

  Fearing he had wounded her, he was doubly grateful for her keenness to return to the workshop and restore their relationship to its former footing. He showed her the sketches and ran through the budget hammered out between Gil and the Dean. He suggested that they mix different kinds of glass, something opaque, either antique or semi-antique, for the figures, and hand-blown, even streaky, for the surround.

  ‘What’s behind it? Are there any buildings we need to blot out?’

  ‘None at all. One advantage of such a backwater is that the close is completely unspoilt.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll want the figures painted?’ He nodded, knowing that she thought it old-fashioned but also that he had to carry the conservatives on the FAC.

  ‘Unless there are serious financial implications.’

  ‘It’s much of a muchness. What you save by not using flash glass, you lose by spending longer on the painting and cooking.’

  Their wariness with each other made it easier than usual to agree on a scheme, although he was aware that it left scope for future conflict. He set out a provisional timetable. He was to present a scale design to the FAC at the beginning of April. Then, provided that the glazier was prompt with the template, he hoped to have a cartoon ready for her to start work within six weeks. She in turn confirmed that, other than repairing a large art deco panel for an exiled sheik in Godalming, she was totally free. ‘After all, I shan’t have any reason to take things easy.’ Feeling as though he had been kicked in the teeth, he kissed her and cycled home.

  He spent the next two weeks in the studio. Despite having finished the drawings for The Second Adam, he asked Rafik to sit every morning. As he filled his pad with sketches of a man whose every pose was as natural as sleeping, he knew that he had found not just a model but a muse. Besides, it was clear that Rafik needed distraction as well as cash. The manager of the bar had sacked him the moment he learnt of his status,
leaving him far too much time to brood, especially after his interview at the Asylum Screening Unit in Croydon. ‘If they wish to make me feel bad to stay here, they have success. Persons are as cold and hard as building.’ Then, on the eve of the FAC meeting he arrived, wrapped in gloom, and without uttering a word held out a letter. A quick glance confirmed Clement’s worst fears; the Home Office had rejected the appeal. He longed to take him in his arms but was afraid to offend him. So, with his sunniest smile, he pointed out that it was exactly what Shortt had predicted and that the real test would come in court.

  ‘I ask who they will put in court first: Rafik or Desmond?’ Rafik said, presenting Clement with a quandary that was painfully remote from his own experience. Beyond registering the irony that Desmond’s morbid fear of losing Rafik had been self-fulfilling, he had trained himself not to think of him. He could no more conceive of the horror of being held on remand in Belmarsh than of being sent back to a country overrun by homicidal Islamists. He was forty-two years old, but the bitter reality of countless lives was merely a TV-lit flicker in his brain.

  Thinking that a trip out of London would lift his spirits, Clement invited Rafik to accompany him to Roxborough. ‘It is kind, but I am saying no. Rafik bring only bad luck.’ So the following morning he took the train alone. His anxiety about delays ensured that he arrived two hours early. Braving the drizzle, he strolled through the market square with its quaint rows of family-owned shops, their ornate signs proudly proclaiming the dates of their establishment, and at the centre a monumental allegory to monarchy over a drinking fountain that had run dry.

  With the drizzle turning to rain, he made his way to the cathedral office of works where, after a dispiriting wait, he was ushered into an oak-panelled room to find his six inquisitors sitting at one end of a walnut table that had been designed for twenty. The FAC was younger and more varied than the Chapter and he presumed that the additional layer of bureaucracy, along with its exclusively lay constitution, was intended to reflect the cathedral’s new role as a heritage site rather than a mere place of worship. The chairman, a surveyor, introduced his five fellows by profession as well as by name: archaeologist; architect; artist; accountant; and builder, which Clement construed as a pledge of their expertise. He noted wryly that the artist and builder wore charcoal grey suits and ties and the accountant a maroon rugby shirt. Past acquaintance with such bodies had taught him that, having volunteered their services, they believed themselves both obliged to speak and bound to be heard. He swapped glances with the Dean who, as though to underline his role as an observer, sat at an angle to the table with an empty chair between himself and the rest.

  The chairman dispensed the usual pleasantries, after which Clement presented his design. He began by discussing his choice of subject and its relation to the building and then unwrapped the painting, sending the Dean, who had hitherto seen only pencil sketches, into a paroxysm of delight. He sat down to a chorus of approval, which experience had taught him to distrust. Moments later the dissenting voices broke out although, unlike those in the Chapter, they were concerned less with the orthodoxy of his naked Christ (he wondered slyly whether they had failed to identify the olive tone as flesh) than with the formal qualities of the image. True to type, it was the local artist who spearheaded the attack, his trifling objections making it clear that he had earmarked the commission for himself.

  ‘It’s very bright,’ he said.

  ‘That’s because it’s two foot rather than twenty,’ Clement replied, struggling to sustain his smile. ‘It would have been very dull if I’d painted it any other way.’

  ‘I’m not sure about the blue. There’s so much blue in the building already. I prefer purple.’

  Clement stretched the silence to breaking-point. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Was that a question?’

  The artist retired hurt and the accountant took his place. ‘Any idea how it’ll reproduce on a postcard?’

  ‘No, nor on a tea towel either.’

  The Dean, unable to stomach any further attacks on his monument, rose to his feet. ‘Gentlemen… and lady –’ He bowed his head to the archaeologist, an afterthought which Clement feared might cost him dear – ‘Mr Granville is one of the most distinguished… some would say the most distinguished artist working in the field today. We’re extremely fortunate to have secured his services. It’s not for us to question his integrity.’ Although Clement was more conscious of the sparseness of the field than of his own eminence within it, the committee appeared to be chastened. The archaeologist, glaring at the Dean, raised the question of biblical authenticity and the architect of the scale of Hell, each of which Clement neatly parried. The chairman then asked him to leave the room while they deliberated. He picked up the painting and went out. The secretary looked nervous as he paced the office, examining first a set of Roxborough landscapes so bland that they might have been jigsaws and then a devotional image of Christ astride a cliff of clouds. Just as he was turning to the ledger-laden shelves, the Dean ran out and pumped his hand.

  ‘We’ve won!’

  6

  If Robert Louis Stevenson were alive today, Clement reflected, he wouldn’t use a drug to effect Dr Jekyll’s transformation but simply stick him in a traffic jam on the A4.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ Mike asked. ‘A car park?’

  ‘Don’t worry. It won’t stretch far.’

  ‘Thank you for that, Pollyanna! Do you have X-ray vision as well?’

  ‘I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘Well you’re not,’ Mike said, venting his frustration on the horn.

  They were spending the bank holiday on a retreat in the wilds of Wales. It was an offshoot of the one on which they had met, although over the years much had changed. Medical advances had reduced the participation of gay men, who preferred to take their pills and spend the weekend clubbing, and increased that of African women, who lacked peer acceptance to offset the stigma of the virus. Mike had felt honour-bound to remain as facilitator, but Clement suspected that, despite his maxim that HIV did not discriminate, there was a part of him that pined for the long-lost camaraderie of a community under siege.

  ‘If this goes on much longer, we’ll miss dinner,’ Mike said.

  ‘I’ve got some biscuits in the back.’

  ‘I’m not hungry!’ Mike snapped, and Clement knew better than to comment. Gazing out of the window, he feigned an interest in the featureless landscape, refusing to counsel the patience that would be dismissed as the easy virtue of a non-driver. He felt both cramped and useless. With a five-mile tailback and a well-signposted road, he wasn’t even called on to read the map.

  The traffic began to move and Clement was relieved to be spared a further outburst before reaching the retreat, where his praise for having made up so much time was met with a grudging grunt. They unloaded their bags and entered the hostel, whose spartan decor made him yearn for the quirks of the Scottish ‘bean’ rooms. In the hall they were greeted by Mike’s two co-facilitators, Blossom, a plump Nigerian social worker with hidden prickles, and Brian, a rebirthing practitioner with designs on Clement since he had yet to work with a twin. Bedrooms were shared and, while Brian and Blossom lamented the drop in numbers which showed how HIV had ‘slipped off the radar’, Clement was grateful that he and Mike had a room to themselves.

  At seven o’clock, they went down to a dining room which reeked of Jeyes Fluid. Having assured a nervous newcomer that any resemblance to the first day at school was deceptive, Clement was appalled to find his words belied by the food: toad in the hole, with a vegetarian option of macaroni cheese (and an apple and crisps for the solitary vegan), brusquely doled out at a hatch by two blistery cooks. After the dispiriting meal, the nineteen-strong group gathered for an introductory session in a drab lounge dominated by a poster of the solar system and a relief map of Wales. They arranged the chairs in a circle, and Blossom played several choruses of Kumbaya on a tinny upright, urging the company to sing along with the fervour of a pantomime
dame. Brian then asked them to take turns stating their names, where they lived and, in one sentence, what they were hoping to gain from the retreat: a process Clement dreaded, less for the profusion of Proustian sentences than his dire memory for names.

  He was glad to recognise three faces – and recall two names – from the previous retreat: Dembe, a forty-year-old Ugandan grandmother, with her twenty-five-year-old husband, Augustus; and Bill or Ben or Bob, a middle-aged solicitor from Liverpool, whose bittersweet fate was to have outlived all his friends. Among the fresh faces, his eye was caught by two men whose clothes (leather jacket and jeans for the one sprawled in the chair; denim jeans, black mesh T-shirt and studded collar for the one squatting at his feet) would, he felt sure, be the subject of heated debate between Mike and Blossom at the facilitators’ meeting. Two chairs away, but seeming to hail from another world, was a dumpy woman in a dun-coloured suit who looked as if she would find the Jam and Jerusalem of a W.I. meeting racy. Most unnerving of all was a man with an eerie resemblance to his former boyfriend, Oliver, even allowing for the twelve-year interval. In a voice that compounded the mystery, he gave his name as Newsom, his home as Bethnal Green, and his hope from the retreat as peace of mind.

  Newsom’s position straight opposite him provided the perfect cover for Clement’s scrutiny, while making it impossible to work out if his smile was aimed at him or just at his place in the circle. The confusion was resolved when, after Mike and Brian had outlined the structure of the retreat and Blossom had listed the three cardinal sins (aggressive behaviour; sexist, racist or homophobic language; and smoking), the session broke up. As Clement stood in line at the hot-water urn, Newsom moved to join him.

  ‘I’ve often wondered if I’d bump into you again.’

  ‘So it is you!’

  ‘Who else?’ Clement gazed at him numbly. ‘Don’t I get a kiss?’