by Caro Fraser
‘And now,’ said Gideon, drinking back another Calvados, apparently unperturbed by his losses, ‘I’m going to take you somewhere I think you’ll rather like.’ His smile was one of impish debauchery, at once repellent and strangely attractive.
Leo shrugged. ‘Whatever you say.’ It was only a little after midnight, and he was intrigued to see what novel forms of entertainment Gideon might come up with.
Leo didn’t catch the address which Gideon gave the cab driver, but was mildly surprised when they left the lights of Mayfair behind and travelled up through Holland Park and into the seedier reaches of Notting Hill. They stopped in a crescent in front of a large, shabby Victorian villa.
Gideon led the way up the steps and pressed a bell, then murmured something into the intercom. After a few seconds a buzzer sounded, and Gideon pushed the door open. They were in a small vestibule, beyond which lay a second, glass-panelled door, and when they passed through this they were in a long, dimly lit hallway painted dark red, a velvet chaise longue on one side, a series of framed prints on the wall above, and an ornate, narrow table running the length of the opposite wall. From the staircase ahead there drifted the scent of incense, instantly evocative to Leo of student days, and a little sickening. Despite the connection with his youth, the word ‘brothel’ came to his mind. He glanced at Gideon, who gave him a rakish smile.
‘Come and see what pleasures await,’ said Gideon, and mounted the stairs ahead. There were several doors on the first landing, some closed, some slightly ajar. Gideon went through the one which lay straight ahead and Leo found himself in a large, opulently furnished room, even more dimly lit than the hallway below, with lamps casting a muted pink glow on the proceedings. Sofas and chairs were positioned about the room, which seemed to be busy with people, although the entire scene had an air of slow motion about it. There were no women there, only men, mostly of middle age, some elderly, some in lounge suits, some in evening dress, but all more or less formally attired, and among them, or coupled with them, Leo saw boys. As he and Gideon threaded their way through the room, some of the boys smiled at them, and he saw that some wore subtle make-up, so that their features were enchanting, beguiling. Some of them were clad in jeans and singlets, some were stripped to the waist. All of them moved with self-conscious sensuality, like well-muscled girls. Leo could tell instantly that a few of them were high on some drug or other, for the curve of their smiles was senseless, and the light in their eyes luminous and blurry.
There was no sexual activity of any kind. Some of the boys had an arm intertwined with that of an older man, and some were seated on middle-aged laps, but nothing more. Gideon led Leo to a small bar at the back of the room, where he helped himself to Scotch.
‘Have a drink,’ he said to Leo, ‘and take your pick. This part of the evening’s on me.’
Leo declined the drink, and turned and surveyed the room. ‘Jesus, Gideon,’ he muttered, ‘most of them are just children.’
Gideon shrugged. ‘I thought you liked young men, Leo. Or perhaps my sources aren’t as reliable as I thought they were.’ He smiled at Leo over his drink, and Leo found himself disliking the expression in those dark eyes very much. What had Gideon found out about him, and how? ‘Besides,’ went on Gideon, ‘soon it’ll all be above board, and you can have as many sixteen-year-olds as you want, perfectly legally. Until then—’ A boy passed them, one who seemed to know Gideon, and he squirmed and smiled as Gideon lightly smacked him, ‘—feel free to enjoy yourself. Charlie—’ He beckoned the boy back, ‘—say hello to my friend, Leo.’ Charlie took Leo by surprise by reaching up with one hand and kissing him gently, full on the mouth. ‘There are rooms down the hallway, and on the floors above,’ added Gideon.
Leo let Charlie drift away. He glanced round the room again and suddenly, with a shock that was instant and physical, caught sight of one boy with curling, reddish hair combed back from his face, bending to whisper something in the ear of a fat, eager man in his sixties sitting on a sofa. Joshua, he thought. Please don’t let it be, he prayed. The boy turned his head slightly to catch the fat man’s reply, and to Leo’s utter relief and extraordinary disappointment, his profile was nothing like Joshua’s, with none of its beauty and strength. It was just the insipid face of a painted child, playing a part. Something in Leo stalled, bringing him to earth. ‘I can’t stay,’ he said abruptly.
‘Why, Leo,’ said Gideon, ‘don’t tell me you’ve suddenly found some scruples? From what I’ve heard, I didn’t think they were part of the package.’
Leo didn’t know whether he was more angry with Gideon for his insinuations and presumptions, or with the fact that the man seemed to know parts of his background which he’d hoped were hidden – or with himself, for being helplessly aroused by the sight of some of these youths as they cavorted and simpered with their customers. He looked at the faces of the various middle-aged men, the lechery, cynicism and tired dissolution etched into their features. By the time he is fifty, each man has the face he deserves. Orwell was right. If I don’t stop, thought Leo, I’ll become like them. It was a wild and horrible truth, and it hit home hard.
‘I’m leaving. I wish you hadn’t brought me here.’
Leo made his way through the room to the door, and as he went quickly down the stairs to the hallway, he thought he could hear the sound of Gideon’s laughter, like that of some devil, even though he knew no such sound could carry that far.
The crescent was deserted, and Leo walked back in the direction from which the cab had brought them. He could hear the roar of traffic on the Westway not far off, and knew he would come to a main road and the lights of taxis in a few minutes. As he walked he tried to make sense of his feelings about the villa and its human contents. Why had his reaction been one of such revulsion, when for years he had led his own life of carefully controlled debauchery? Because, he knew, something had happened to him since the birth of Oliver, something slow and inevitable. He could no longer look on the world as it was, or on worlds such as the one he had just visited, and pretend that people could behave just as their wills and appetites directed, and no harm come of it. For whatever he wanted Oliver to be, it was not the kind of person he was, or had been, that much he knew.
He reached a main road, and scanned the cars for a taxi. He thought back to that revelatory moment of fifteen minutes ago, when he had looked at the faces of the men around him and faced certainty. For Oliver’s sake, he never wanted to be like that. He thought suddenly of Camilla, and it was like a swift, yet gentle descent into something safe and uncorrupted, something he suspected he did not deserve. When at last a cab drew to a halt, Leo gave him Camilla’s address, and got in.
Jane had gone to bed early with a headache, but Camilla was still up, wearing tartan pyjamas and watching a late film with the sound turned low so that it wouldn’t disturb Jane. She kept thinking of Leo, touching her happiness to check it was real, telling herself that she should go to bed and get some sleep so she wouldn’t look washed out for him tomorrow.
The sound of the doorbell startled her, but the sound of Leo’s voice on the intercom startled her even more.
‘Of course. Come up,’ she said, delighted, yet horrified. She gazed around wildly, wondering if she should tidy up, wishing the place looked a little more elegant. It was decently furnished and cosy enough, but pretty basic compared to Leo’s fabulous flat. They didn’t even have any drink in the house and – oh God, she was wearing these awful pyjamas! Too late to change. She grabbed a hairbrush and pulled it a few times through her hair, then went to answer the gentle knock at the door.
Leo came in, kissed her briefly, then flopped down on the sofa as though he had been here often before. He didn’t even glance at his surroundings, just leant his head back and closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them and looked at Camilla.
‘Thank God you’re still up. I was afraid you might have gone to bed.’
She came and sat next to him, and he drew her into the crook of his arm an
d kissed her forehead. He smelt of brandy and cigars, scents which were to her, at twenty-two, evocative of sophisticated and masculine pleasures.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked.
‘Dining with a friend. That is to say, a man I know. A man I’m beginning to wish I didn’t know.’
‘It’s very late to have dinner.’
‘We went on to a couple of places afterwards. One of them wasn’t quite my scene.’ He looked at Camilla from head to foot and smiled. ‘Is that what you always wear to bed?’
‘Don’t. Don’t look at my pyjamas.’
‘I have to, if I want to look at you. Which I do.’ He marvelled at her expression, at its openness and beauty, and at the young softness of her skin, the shine of her hair. So perfect and familiar. He buried his face in the nape of her neck and drank in the smell of her, unbuttoning her pyjamas, running his hand over her breasts and enjoying the shudder that passed through her. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ murmured Leo. ‘Take your pyjamas off now, and tomorrow I’ll take you shopping and buy you some wonderful and expensive things to wear to bed.’
‘It’s a deal,’ sighed Camilla, giddy with desire. ‘Only not in here, in case we wake up Jane.’
Leo wondered, with an inward sigh, how he came to be back in a world of flatmates and pyjamas. He hoped to God she didn’t sleep in a single bed.
Camilla, as she led Leo through to her room and closed the door, wondered what Jane would make of Leo when they met in the morning. And her parents – what about her parents, if they were ever to meet him? But at that moment Leo was slipping her legs out of her pyjama bottoms and laying her down upon the pillows, and her thoughts moved somewhere else entirely.
Gideon did not stay long after Leo’s abrupt departure. He left the Notting Hill house and took a cab to a club in Ealing. From there, two hours later, he and a companion took another taxi, this time to a flat not far away, on the fourth floor of a nondescript building, with two bedrooms and views of a sorting office and a dairy yard. No one knew about this flat, not Gideon’s friends, nor Lady Henrietta. It amused Gideon to think of it as his weekend retreat.
Leo left the next morning very early, before either Camilla or Jane was awake, and went back to Belgravia to shave and shower. He had slept badly, missing the comfort of his own custom-made bed, and his back was playing up. Moreover, he had no wish to make the acquaintance of Camilla’s flatmate over her Saturday-morning cornflakes. He sensed the lack of dignity in a forty-six-year-old man emerging at breakfast in the flat of two twenty-something girls.
He had scribbled a note on a piece of paper and left it lying on Camilla’s bedside table, telling her he would call for her at twelve. She would enjoy lunch at San Lorenzo, where Leo was well-known enough to be sure of getting a table, and then he would take her shopping, as promised. He wondered whether women of her age minded having money spent on them, whether it offended their feminist principles. Rachel had never disliked it, he recalled.
When Camilla woke up and found Leo gone, she felt utterly bereft – until she saw the note. Then she spent the rest of the morning in a frenzy of indecision over what to wear. In the end, she opted for her standard weekend wear of jeans and a Gap top, on the basis that Leo had to take her as she was. She was relieved, when he came round, to see that he was similarly casually dressed. Only on Leo, any clothes, old or new, casual or smart, always looked expensive and wonderful.
For Camilla, the day was perfect. They had lunch at San Lorenzo – just another Italian place, as far as Camilla was concerned, so Leo realised he had scored no points there, which was something he rather liked. Then he took her to Harvey Nichols and chose simple, but ridiculously beautiful and very expensive, silk pyjamas for her. Camilla made only a mild protest when Leo insisted on paying for them, her main objection being that they had to be hand-washed. She refused to allow Leo to buy anything else for her, though he wanted to. Dressing women had long been one of his pleasures. It became clear to him, however, as they went around the shop, that she was too young, that he wouldn’t have known what to buy for her. She was not, like Rachel, a classically feminine dresser.
‘What now?’ asked Leo at four o’clock, when they had exhausted the pleasures of the Knightsbridge shops. He was feeling distinctly jaded.
‘Let’s go to a film,’ said Camilla.
At Leo’s suggestion they took a cab to the Curzon cinema, where they watched a long and over produced adaptation of yet another Edith Wharton novel. Or rather, Camilla watched, while Leo slept through most of it. When she asked Leo afterwards why he’d chosen that film, he had to confess the film had had nothing to do with it. ‘I happen to know that, of all London cinemas, it has the comfiest seats. I felt like a nap.’
‘That’s so middle-aged.’
‘It is, isn’t it? Let’s go home and do more middle-aged things.’
While Camilla, at Leo’s request, put on her silk pyjamas, Leo took a bottle of champagne from the stock in the fridge and brought it to bed with two glasses.
‘This is like a film,’ said Camilla.
Leo handed her a glass of champagne, which she drank, and then poured her another. ‘Two glasses – the perfect aphrodisiac,’ remarked Leo.
‘I don’t need one,’ replied Camilla. ‘Do you like me in my pyjamas?’
‘I love you in them, but probably more so out of them …’ Leo leant across and kissed her, and for some time all sensible conversation ceased.
‘Don’t you think you’re being a bit unreasonable?’ Charles asked Rachel. They were sprawled together on the high-backed sofa in the drawing room of Charles’s house, discussing the sudden intrusion of Melissa Angelicos into their lives. Oliver was fast asleep upstairs.
‘In what way?’
‘Not allowing Leo to see Oliver. He adores the kid. It must be pretty hard for him.’
‘Charles, until I’m sure that this dreadful woman is definitely going to stay away from my son, and stops sending him things. I want him here, where I know he’s safe.’
‘Well, she knows where Leo lives, obviously, and she knows where we live, so I don’t see why Oliver’s in any greater danger with Leo than he is here. Besides,’ pointed out Charles, ‘he’s taken out an injunction against her.’
‘He’s gone as far as instructing his solicitor. He hasn’t got the injunction yet.’
‘Fair enough. But I really think you should let Leo see as much of Oliver as possible in the coming months – let him come here to see him, if necessary.’
‘I am going to. We’ve already discussed it. Only this weekend’s not convenient, as you know.’ Rachel turned to give Charles a quizzical stare. ‘What d’you mean – in the coming months? I don’t get it.’
‘The thing is – I wasn’t going to tell you till it was all in the bag—’ Charles huffed and puffed for a moment, brooding on whether to get himself a drink, how best to put it.
‘What? Tell me what?’ Charles really could be incredibly exasperating at times.
‘That—’ said Charles, bringing the words out slowly, one by one, ‘—I have been asked to go to the States to make a series of documentaries.’ Rachel said nothing. ‘As of September. The documentaries may be some time in the making. They’re to be about the relationship between Britain and America down the centuries—’
‘Don’t bother with all that at the moment,’ interrupted Rachel. ‘How long will it take?’
‘A year. Maybe eighteen months. Maybe more. I have to move out there to get it done. I can’t go on flying backwards and forwards the way I have on this recent project. I want you and Oliver to move out there with me while I’m working.’
‘But … Charles, there’s my job … I’m a partner. What about my clients, my cases? I can’t just suddenly go off and live in the United States.’
‘There are always jobs. You’re not tied to Nichols for life. You’re a good lawyer. You’ll get work anywhere.’
‘Not in the States, I won’t! I’m not qualified to practice there. An
d even if there was work I could do there, I’d have to find it first, and then go through all the rigmarole of getting a permit – it would all take a very long time.’
‘Then don’t work. Simply take a year or two out, and come and enjoy yourself in California.’
‘Charles, it’s not that simple … I like my work. I’m not good at doing nothing, especially in a place where I don’t know anyone, or anything … Anyway, what about Leo?’
‘That was why I said you should let him see as much of Oliver as possible until September, before we go to California. After that, he can come regularly and visit him. He’s got enough money to do that.’
It wasn’t that straightforward for Rachel. Although she was divorced from Leo, his presence in her life was necessary to her. To know that they moved in the same world, that work would occasionally bring them into contact, as well as those times when he came to pick up or drop off Oliver, was vital to her. She could tell Charles none of this.
‘It seems so unfair. He’s used to seeing Oliver every other week. It wouldn’t be that easy for Leo to fly backwards and forwards to visit him in the States. You know yourself how tiring and time consuming it is.’
‘Rachel, you’re the one who’s preventing Leo from having Oliver at the moment, and suddenly you’re telling me how vital it is that he sees him regularly.’ Realising that the conversation was in danger of becoming antagonistic, Charles put his arms around Rachel and drew her against him. ‘It’ll work out fine, you know. And it’s not as though it’s forever. Just look on it as a long holiday. When you come back here, you’ll be able to find a partnership with some other firm, if not with Nichols. Anyway, you’ve always complained about what a bastion of chauvinism the place is. Maybe you need a change. Please say you’ll come with me. It’ll be bloody lonely without both of you.’
