by Patrick Gale
The bell rang before he had time to do anything with food.
‘Hi.’
‘Hello,’ said Hilary.
‘Come on up.’ He looked terrible. His eyes were dark-stained beneath, and still tear-puffed. His face was drawn, tension creased into his forehead. His tread on the stairs ahead of Rufus was heavy, hesitant. ‘Sorry, I haven’t had time to cook anything much, but …’
‘Oh, you needn’t do …’
‘No, it won’t take twenty minutes. All pre-done. Drink?’
‘Thanks.’ He wanted to hug him, but Hilary was all at the wrong angle somehow; all elbow and bicycle pump. Rufus made him a gin and tonic and refreshed his own gin and French. Hilary had sat in an armchair rather than on the sofa and had crossed his legs. ‘Thanks,’ he said to the gin, then, ‘don’t bother to cook, Roof.’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s no trouble.’ Hilary sighed and gulped some gin as Rufus pulled the packaging off the chicken. ‘Look,’ he went on, ‘I’m really sorry about what I said earlier.’
‘No. For God’s sake, don’t be. You were right.’
‘What?’ Oh Christ. He dumped the chicken. Hilary turned.
‘You were right.’ He was on the verge of tears, his voice harsh and uneven. ‘We should “let it go”.’ Rufus could only stare. ‘It’s all wrong. I’m all wrong. We both want different things and neither of us is prepared to …’
‘It’s my fault,’ Rufus interrupted. ‘I don’t think properly before I …’
‘No. Please, Rufus, just let me … I mean … Earlier tonight. I knew you were right. It’s just that you were braver than me and faced up to it first.’ Hilary stood. His voice was evening out; he was in control. He might even be relieved to be saying all this. ‘Look,’ he walked over and took Rufus’ hands in his. His fingers were frozen. Cue the Puccini. ‘I need a spouse and you … well, you need a lover.’ He choked on his words and Rufus felt his eyes prick and his throat tauten. Hilary fell forward and hugged him hard, rubbing a hand on his back as to a frightened child. ‘It just won’t work.’ Rufus raised his hands and crushed his arms against Hilary’s back. ‘It would be unfair of me to make you even try and if we …’ Here he sniffed heavily, his voice almost deafening by Rufus’ ear. ‘If we stop now, then at least we won’t end up loathing each other.’
‘I blew it,’ Rufus managed to mumble. The verb seemed fatuous all of a sudden. Balloons. Feathers. Toy trumpets. Party poopers. ‘It’s me. I blew it.’
‘No.’ Hilary pulled back and took Rufus’ face in his hands.
‘Christ, this is all so corny,’ thought Rufus. ‘If he says he blew it too, I’ll laugh.’
‘We both blew it.’ Rufus’ snigger came out as a strangled cough. ‘It was heaven sometimes, but usually it was hell on earth. You know that’s true.’
By a supreme effort, Rufus forced himself not to cry. He sought a role and found it by taking up his gin. The action of swallowing the bitter iced liquid released the tension in his throat. He sighed and walked past Hilary into the sitting room. He picked up Hilary’s bike pump where it lay by the young man’s barely touched gin and tonic. It was black with a blue stripe; it said ‘Kingfisher’ on it, but the kingfisher transfer had rubbed off, leaving only the bird’s head and a snapped-off beak.
‘Can I see you again?’ Rufus asked. A street-lamp was falling sick, turning on for seven seconds and off for five, then on for ten and off for three, then on for four and off again.
‘Let’s wait and see. I’m not sure it’s a good idea. We might …’ Hilary’s voice petered out. He walked up beside him. ‘We’re both very weak. Let’s just see.’ Gently he took the pump from Rufus’ grasp. He touched his chilly fingers across his stubbled cheek then laid a hand briefly on his shoulder, squeezed, and walked quietly from the flat.
Off for eight, then on for five and off for five. A faint drizzle was starting to fall. When the light was on it lit the haze of droplets. Down below, Hilary’s padlock chain clanked as he slung it over one shoulder. His dynamo sighed into action as he rode off towards Baker Street. Rufus finished his drink, then picked up Hilary’s glass and drained it in several gulps. He stood for a moment, two glasses in hand, and belched up the tonic bubbles. Absently he slipped the slice of lime into his mouth and chewed on it.
It would take all of forty minutes to reach Hammersmith. He had to set out at once. He threw the Chicken Kiev to join the neglected sausages in the fridge and, taking the ice cream in one hand and an overcoat in the other, he followed Hilary from the flat, telephoning Sandy from the pay-phone in the hall.
He had to change bus en route, getting soaked and steadily angrier as he stood in the penetrating drizzle on Notting Hill Gate. Had he made no second call to White City there would still have been tears, though Hilary usually drove his misery into housework or frenetic washing of hair. The engaged line had meant that he was calling queeny Richard or that drama cow Bridget, telling all. South Pacific or something suitably tasteless would have blasted out while Hilary bathed and pulled on tarty clothes; old jeans and a leather jacket. He would have got drunk with Bridget, picking lugubriously over a wasted eighteen months, then gone dancing with Richard to celebrate freedom regained. Rufus reflected with considerable bitterness that Hilary had dressed down in advance and was probably off to drink and dance in any case, which was why he couldn’t stay to eat. For his part, he had been ‘dancing’ without Hilary for the past eighteen months, and always drank his gloom in solitude.
By the time Sandy’s video entryphone was shining in his face, he had beaten himself into a fury. Her Martinis had gone unquaffed.
‘It’s my wife, you see,’ he muttered, shamefaced. ‘She’s always domineering, always in control. I … I need an outlet.’
‘Ssh. I don’t need to know.’
‘But I don’t want you to think it’s because I don’t like you. It’s because I … I could like you so much.’
At last she swung her head on the pillow and turned her gaze full upon him. One eye was in shadow, the other glistened.
‘It’s strange,’ she murmured, ‘but I find it sort of helps.’
‘How?’
‘Because of her – your wife. I know so little about her and you and … what you did just now helped me to feel I was yours.’
‘You’re mine,’ he said. ‘Please. You’re mine.’
He slipped a hand over the deepening bruise on her neck and brushed her lips with his. It was a trick of the light, of course, but for a moment she reminded him curiously of Hilary.
Chapter seventeen
Fed and changed, Dan was sleeping once more in his cot. Hilary had woken from a night broken alternately by guilt and spasms of liberated joy to a morning of supportive blue clarity. Inspired by this reminder of what Spring would be like when it chose to arrive, he had donned his tracksuit and, feet under the armchair, was grunting through fifty sit-ups. Overheated, he was beginning to feel fairly sick around the mid-thirties, when Mrs Sharma called up from his hall. She was agitated. She rounded the stairs and met him on the landing.
‘Your doorbell is broken, so I had to let him in,’ she puffed.
‘Who?’ asked Hilary.
‘He’s come to take the baby. I know he has.’
At that moment the man came round the stairs behind her.
‘Hello,’ said Hilary. ‘Sorry about the bell. Thanks, Mrs Sharma.’
She threw him a glance that bordered on the despairing, then shuffled downstairs.
‘Mr Metcalfe?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Neville Cutts, your area health visitor.’
‘Hello,’ said Hilary again, shaking hands and leading him into the living room. ‘My sister sent you?’
‘Your sister?’ He was stocky, with short blond hair and scarcely any lip. A thick Norwegian jersey and leather bomber jacket accentuated the ‘aggressive look’.
‘Yes. Doctor Metcalfe up at Princess Marina’s. She said she would send for someone.’
&n
bsp; ‘Could be. I only received a memo. I gather we owe you an apology.’
‘Oh, well. I’d hardly say …’
‘It should have been a routine matter. Matron Parsons at the clinic misunderstood. Of course, if you’d like to make a note of any expenses, we’ll refund what we can.’ He glanced around the room at the nappies, the bucket, the cot, the anorak. ‘You seem to have …’
‘Oh no,’ Hilary laughed. ‘My landlady sent me all this. Except for the carrycot, of course. He came in that.’
‘Came?’
‘I mean that was how I found him. Under the flyover, in the carrycot.’ Hilary remembered the drifting snow, the thin wail in the dark and his bitterness when Rufus was not on the train. Neville Cutts strode over to the cot. No briefcase. No identification. He might be anyone.
‘Ah. Asian,’ he said. ‘They didn’t tell me that. No illnesses of any kind?’ He opened out the carrycot and was pulling back Dan’s bedding.
‘No. But there’s no need now.’ Hilary hurried over, irritated that Mrs Sharma had ever let the man in. ‘You see, there’s no need to take him away. I’m filing for an adoption.’
‘Yes, well, that’s why I’m here. We think we’ve found a suitable family. Of course he’ll have to go to a home in the interim. Asian … they should have told me.’
‘No, you don’t understand. I mean that I’m going to adopt him myself. I’ll keep him. You shouldn’t have been called, really. Another misunderstanding. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.’ It was only as he tried to shrug that Hilary felt how tense he was.
‘Have you filled in an AD783?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘You have to do these things through the right channels.’
‘Well, perhaps you’d be so kind as to have one sent to me.’
Neville Cutts turned and leaned on the end of the cot, an eyebrow raised. ‘And how would you propose to support your child?’
‘I work. I’m a teacher. I earn enough for two. Just about.’
‘And during the day?’
‘I rarely work a full day, and when I do Mrs Sharma from downstairs has offered to babysit.’
‘Has she now?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what about that?’ He pointed a hairy hand at the bedside table. In their Durham days, Bridget had smuggled him a copy of The Joy of Gay Sex from America. He had never been so unspontaneous as to consult the thing in media res, but it was a fascinating read on lonely nights. Now he wished he had got around to making a brown paper binding.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that.’
‘You’re gay, I take it?’
Hilary snatched wildly at red herrings. My artistic cousin from Iowa City, Iowa? The previous tenant? Idle curiosity?
‘Yes,’ he confessed, ‘but that’s irrelevant at the moment because I’m single.’
‘But how long for? According to our research, homosexuals are never single for as long as heterosexual men.’
‘Aren’t we lucky?’ Hilary’s blood was up and he could hear his voice rising in pitch. ‘Maybe we’re more lovable. Maybe we’re just more honest with questionnaires.’
‘Surely you don’t think two blokes could bring up a kid properly? If they managed to stay together, that is.’
‘Why ever not? Did your mother bring you up “properly”?’
‘Well … I’
‘You can’t give an unequivocal yes?’
‘But a baby needs a mother.’
‘Like a monkey needs a pressure cooker.’
‘It’s only natural.’
‘So are wasps, Mr Cutts, and bilharzia.’
‘I don’t need this, Mr Metcalfe. I don’t have time or, to be quite frank, much interest.’
So saying, Neville Cutts plucked the protesting Daniel from his cot and swung him into the carrycot. That was too much.
‘Don’t you dare touch my baby!’ Hilary heard himself spit. He snatched the carrycot and gave Cutts a shove towards the landing. He had forgotten his height. As the intruder beat a hasty retreat to the stairs, Hilary felt a surge of surprised triumph. Cutts all but shook a fist.
‘You’ll be hearing from us, Metcalfe,’ he blurted, impotent. ‘Your sort don’t stand a chance.’
‘Bye,’ Hilary returned sweetly, hugging the bellowing carry-cot to his chest and wondering if he were perhaps a little hysterical. Within minutes of the front door’s slamming it reopened. There was a thunder of wellington boots on the stairs and Mrs Sharma, transformed by the scent of battle, was at his side.
‘You keep him, then?’ she asked, eyes bright. ‘Will you keep the charulata?’
‘I’ll try, Shrimati Sharma,’ he said, baby in his arms. ‘With your help, I’ll try.’
In recent years Hilary’s godmother Evelyn had become a lonely do-gooder. With the speed of a Jacobean last act, her life had been stripped of its familiar trappings. There had been a scandal involving her husband’s criminal insanity and eventual suicide (in police custody), which had won her sympathy but lost her several friends. Her daughter had finished at Cambridge and moved to America. Her son – a violinist whom Rufus had met once or twice and declared insufferable – lived off Ladbroke Grove with a curiously dull sculptor. Six years ago the school she ran for deaf children had been closed after the withdrawal of its local government grant. Evelyn had announced herself to be too old for a new post and had sold both school and house, retiring to a pretty cottage off the top of Hampstead High Street. She had bought a springer spaniel, called Bids, to replace the children in her life and, between strenuous walks on the Heath, devoted her free time to unpopular causes and the Citizens’ Advice Bureau. She was a second cousin of Hilary’s father. Since the latter’s removal to Paris, she had taken her godmotherly duties seriously. She had met Rufus and, shared musical passions notwithstanding, had disapproved of him wholeheartedly. Evelyn knew all. Well, most.
Hilary’s school duties finished at two today, and he spent the next hour crossing West London to Baker Street and riding thence, via Regent’s Park, to Swiss Cottage and Haverstock Hill. Evelyn opened the front door while he was locking his bicycle to the railings; she and Bids greeted him warmly and led him through to the little sitting room at the rear. The back of the house, which looked on to a miniature garden, was masked by an old magnolia grandiflora which reached almost to the tiles. The wind caused its horny leaves to scratch on the windows like a storm-shocked cat.
Though little of her furniture had changed, the feeling of the place was in poignant contrast to the atmosphere of the old house in Keats Grove. Where she had once been active within an ordered space, now she seemed still amid clutter. The sitting room in particular had a strong grandmotherly flavour. She had bought him his favourite walnut cake, and had even made some sandwiches. As he sat on the sofa, he was moved to see that she now kept the kettle and tea-caddy beside her desk to save herself the walk to the kitchen. He asked for news of her children, Venetia and Seth, and smiled to hear her pride in their doings and her proud hiding of the fact that they neglected her. Finally, having poured them both tea, she sank into the sofa too and fixed him with her startling green stare.
‘Tell me about this baby,’ she demanded.
He told all; far more than he had told his sister. He told her of the carrycot in the subway, his rebuffal at the clinic, Mrs Sharma’s unlooked-for kindness and Dan’s many charms. Then he paused to call Bids in from chasing sparrows in the garden and to cut them both slices of cake. At her prompting he told her of Henry’s possible envy, of Neville Cutt’s wounding insinuations, and of his own desire – which had hit him with the force of an epiphany – to become the boy’s adoptive parent. Evelyn poured herself another cup of tea, pushed Bids off her lap and walked to the window. The chilly sunlight caught the silver bun of her hair.
‘You’re not really happy as a teacher, are you, Hil?’ It was more statement than inquiry.
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I think I’m enjoying it more than I did, though. I expect
less, so I tend to get pleasantly surprised.’
‘How about acting?’
‘Well,’ he faltered. She was playing her old game of cutting straight to the heart of his pain. He complied; one couldn’t lie to those eyes. ‘There’s not really enough time. It’s embarrassing getting time off for auditions, and I’m too exhausted for many dance classes – for any, in fact.’
‘You’ve lost your sense of vocation?’
‘Yup. I still practise now and then, and sure, if a man wound down his window and said, “Hey kid, you wanna be in movies?” I’d come running, but …’
‘But you’ve … ?’
‘Yup.’
He took another slice of cake and felt miserable.
‘How’s Rufus?’
‘Fine. I think. Still teaching. I was going to see him last night but … well … with Dan and everything.’ He experienced anew a dizzying sense of his new liberty and a twinge of the pain it was causing him. Now was not the time to tell her.
‘Hilary, children make hopeless cement. If things are going to fall apart, they will; babies are just one more thing to hold above the wreckage. You’ve just admitted to hating your job, having no future and a lousy love life. Why in God’s name do you want a baby?’
‘I feel sorry for him.’
‘He won’t thank you for that.’
‘Yes, but other people’s problems …’
‘Make one’s own seem small. I know, but once you adopt him he won’t have any problems and you’ll just have another one, big and growing.’ She smiled at his gloomy face and came to sit beside him again, resting a firm hand on his arm. ‘I’m being vile. It’s only because you’ve got no real mother. I don’t count dear Marie-Claude, and Henrietta has so obviously got something else on her mind. I’m just trying to make you decide what you think. Do you truly care what happens to Dan?’
‘Yes.’
‘More than teaching?’
‘Certainly.’
‘What do you earn?’ He told her. She hid her shock well. ‘Could you live on half that, if your rent were paid?’ she asked.
