by Caro Fraser
‘Sit down,’ he said to Anthony. Anthony fell into one of the sofas. Leo opened the creaking door of a low corner cupboard and pulled out a bottle and two glasses. Then he opened one of the windows to let the fresh night air into the room. He brought the bottle and glasses over and set them on the polished table, then poured a large measure of brandy into each. He handed a glass to Anthony.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and sipped.
‘Are you hungry?’ asked Leo. Anthony shook his head.
‘Not really, thanks. I’m just a bit tired.’
‘I’ll get you some blankets in a moment. You can make up the bed in the spare room.’ He sat down at the other end of the sofa and took a large swallow of brandy. In the silence, Anthony could feel a tension growing between them. He turned and glanced round the room.
‘It’s very different from your place in London,’ he said.
Leo took another drink and nodded. ‘It’s meant to be,’ he replied. ‘I live here. I don’t call what I do there living.’ There was a silence again. ‘Don’t think about her any more,’ he said, looking at Anthony, who was gazing into his glass.
‘I wasn’t,’ said Anthony. ‘I was thinking about you.’
Leo felt his heart miss a beat. He looked down at his drink.
‘Don’t think about me, either,’ he said firmly, quietly.
Anthony looked up at him. ‘Why not?’
Leo sighed and stood up, looking down at Anthony. He said nothing. He did not know what he was thinking, except that he could not bear to see those dark, sad, lovely eyes looking up at him. He turned to go and fetch the blankets for the spare bed, when Anthony reached up and took his hand. Leo stood there for a moment, held. Then he sat down next to Anthony, put his glass gently on the floorboards at his feet, and looked at him. Anthony dropped his hand and leant his head back, closing his eyes.
‘I’m so lost,’ he said eventually, his voice uneven. ‘I’m so confused and lost that I don’t know …’ The words trailed away. Leo lifted his hand, hesitated, and then stroked the curve of Anthony’s throat just where the pulse beat.
‘You don’t have to worry,’ he said, then bent to kiss Anthony’s cheek. Anthony turned his head and returned the kiss, gently, and Leo put his arms around him. He smelt masculine, strong, comforting. Leo held him for a moment and then pulled slowly away. He gazed directly at Anthony, his blue eyes very intent.
‘You know,’ he said quietly, ‘that if you become my lover’ – it seemed to Anthony that the word almost took shape in the air between them – ‘you cannot stay in chambers. And that if you do, there can be nothing – nothing – between us.’
Lover, thought Anthony. I don’t even know what it means, or what I want. He looked back at Leo.
‘There’s a good chance I won’t be staying, anyway,’ he replied with a smile, his voice low. ‘Maybe you should just let fate dispose of that.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Leo, never taking his eyes from Anthony’s, ‘but if you do—’
If I do, thought Anthony. If I do what? He rubbed his hands over his eyes and rose slowly, walking over to the open window. Then he turned and looked back at Leo, who was leaning back against the sofa, his face a little grim. You are so young, he was thinking, staring at Anthony. So young and so powerful.
‘It’s very precious to me,’ said Anthony, ‘that tenancy.’ Leo nodded slowly, still looking at him. ‘You could do quite a lot to prevent my getting it.’ Leo nodded again. ‘If you had to.’
‘If I had to,’ said Leo. They looked at one another for a long, long moment. Sudden, single notes of birdsong rose from the dark garden. It was the blurred hour of night just before dawn. Anthony was so tired he felt far away.
‘You don’t know what you want,’ said Leo to Anthony, still looking directly at him. ‘Do you?’
Anthony looked back at Leo, at the weary, familiar lines of his face and body.
‘I just want to be loved,’ he replied.
Anthony woke after two hours of uneasy sleep. It took a moment for him to recall where he was. His eyes felt hot and gritty with lack of sleep, his mind brittle. He rose and dressed, then padded out to the landing, his shoes in his hand. The light outside was still milky and new; it could only be about six o’clock, he guessed. He went downstairs quietly, anxious not to wake Leo, sat down on the sofa where he and Leo had talked a few hours before, and put on his shoes. The empty brandy glasses and the bottle were still standing mutely on the table. Picking up his jacket, he looked around for a moment at the place where Leo lived, then quietly let himself out. The morning was very still, bright with the beautiful promise of July, the air only just touched with new sun. Anthony crossed the gravel to the car. It was locked. His kit would just have to stay there until Monday, he supposed. Checking the money in his pocket, Anthony set off in the direction of the nearest village, whose rooftops he could see some fields away. He wondered how far it was to the nearest station, and how often the trains ran on Sundays.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was lunchtime when Anthony arrived home. His mother was spooning chicken casserole onto plates in the kitchen, and the sound of music came from Barry’s room.
‘Just in time,’ said his mother, glancing up as he came in. ‘Can you get some knives and forks out?’ She put a mat and a dish of potatoes on the table and went into the hall to call upstairs to Barry. When she returned, Anthony was putting the cutlery on the table.
‘How was your cricket match?’ she asked. ‘I thought you said you’d be back last night?’
‘Oh, things went on for a bit. Someone from chambers gave me a bed for the night.’ He sat down. ‘We won,’ he added, staring at the potatoes. Then he looked up and gave his mother a quick smile. He looked pale and tired, she thought.
After lunch, he washed up with Barry and then lay on the sofa with bits of the Sunday papers. After a while, he gave up and closed his eyes and thought of Leo. He had the curious sensation that his body was dropping through the sofa. Just as he was beginning to fall asleep, the telephone rang, jangling the fibres of his body. He lay with his eyes shut, waiting for someone to answer it, but he realised after a moment that Barry had gone out and that his mother must be in the garden. Stiff with tiredness, he got up and padded in his bare feet into the hall.
‘Hello?’ He could not keep the yawn out of his voice.
‘Anthony? Hi, it’s Chay.’
‘Dad!’ Anthony ran his fingers through his hair in surprise. ‘Where are you calling from?’
‘Well, I’m in a hotel at the moment.’
‘A hotel where? In London?’
‘Yes. Yes, it’s near Marble Arch, as a matter of fact.’ Chay was not the kind of man one associated with hotels, thought Anthony. ‘I thought we might meet, if you’d like to come over.’
‘Yes. Yes, great.’ The thought of seeing his father in his new persona was rather stimulating, and Anthony felt he needed to do something to drive away thoughts of the past twenty-four hours. He took the address of the hotel, hung up, and went to put on his shoes.
He went out to the garden, where his mother was lying in a deckchair with a book. She looked up at Anthony through her sunglasses.
‘Who was that on the phone?’
‘It was Dad, as a matter of fact.’
‘Really?’ Even Judith sounded more than usually interested.
‘Yes. He’s staying in a hotel near Marble Arch. I’m going over for tea, or something.’
‘Tea?’ Judith mused for a moment. ‘Well, have fun. I think it might be a good idea if you mentioned that painting that you stole.’
‘I didn’t steal it. He left it.’
‘Yes, well,’ said Judith, returning to her book.
The hotel was in a side street off Oxford Street, a bustling, smart affair with liveried porters carrying expensive luggage in and out, sleek cars coming and going. Anthony asked at reception for his father, and was directed to a lounge where tea was being served. Anthony couldn’t quite imagine his
father in a tea room. He made his way uncertainly through to a spacious lounge, elegantly decorated in lemon and grey, full of the tinkle and murmur of Sunday afternoon tea. He could hear quite a lot of American voices. Everyone he saw seemed to be expensively dressed, and he wished he’d worn something a bit better than his jeans and a rugby shirt.
He caught sight of his father at a table in the corner – or rather, his father caught sight of him. He rose and raised a hand, and Anthony made his way over. They greeted each other, and Anthony sat down in one of the little chintz-covered armchairs. He looked at his father, curiously pleased to see him. Chay looked quite different, he thought. His hair had grown, and although it was still short, it looked silvery and healthy. His skin was slightly tanned and his figure had filled out. He was wearing a white T-shirt under what looked to Anthony to be a very expensive soft leather jacket, trousers of a faded red, and Frye boots. Very much the successful postmodernist.
‘You’re looking well,’ said Anthony.
‘Thanks,’ replied Chay, with a diffident smile that was very much like Anthony’s. Less like a human lentil, thought Anthony.
‘So,’ said Anthony, ‘tell me about it. What’s happened about the charges, and all that stuff?’
Chay sat back, crossing his legs so that one ankle was resting on his knee. ‘I thought you’d want to know about my painting.’ Still a touch of the old, petulant vanity, thought Anthony.
‘Well, I do, but I’m more interested, for the moment, in whether or not you’re going to jail.’
Chay shook his head. At that moment, a waitress came over to their table.
‘Would you care for afternoon tea, gentlemen?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ said Chay, glancing at Anthony, who nodded, smiling. Why should he find it so amusing to see his father ordering afternoon tea? People did it every day.
‘An assortment of sandwiches and cakes?’ asked the waitress.
‘Thank you,’ said Chay, then asked, ‘Do you have any lapsang souchong?’ She nodded, writing. ‘And cream cakes, please,’ he added.
‘They’re all fresh cream, sir. What room number, sir?’ Chay gave his room number, while Anthony looked on, marvelling. The waitress whisked away.
‘No,’ resumed Chay, ‘that’s all sorted out. I had a good lawyer.’ Anthony thought briefly of Chay’s much-professed contempt for lawyers. ‘I got a bit of a stiff fine for jumping bail, and a two-month suspended sentence for possession.’
To Anthony’s surprise, Chay brought out a small packet of cigars and lit one. Anthony thought of Leo.
‘I suppose the fine didn’t worry you too much?’ asked Anthony. Chay looked faintly embarrassed. ‘With your new-found wealth, I mean,’ added Anthony, smiling. He thought of Sunday afternoons, much like this one, spent listening to Chay denounce the capitalist system, while his long fingers shredded tobacco into cigarette papers to make roll-ups. The memory was a curiously fond one.
‘It’s all been very strange,’ said Chay in a musing voice, gazing into nowhere. Anthony suddenly realised that this was true, that his father must find the change in his fortunes very peculiar. ‘Finding acceptance after spending all your life …’ Chay continued. Just then the waitress returned with a laden tray, and set down the cups, saucers, plates, teapot, milk jug, hot water, sandwiches and cakes. Anthony was looking at his father, realising that his must have been a wretched kind of life until now, devoid of any dignity save that which he had been able to scrape from his artistic pretensions. And now they were pretensions no longer.
‘Spending your life …?’ he prompted, when the waitress had left. Chay paused, holding the milk jug suspended over Anthony’s cup.
‘Getting nowhere, I suppose,’ Chay said after a moment.
‘And now you’re the toast of Santa Barbara,’ said Anthony with a smile, picking up a sandwich. Chay nodded.
‘It’s extraordinary.’ He gazed at his tea for a while, chewing a cucumber sandwich. ‘It’s fantastic how much people are prepared to pay for art out there.’
‘It’s what the market will bear, I suppose,’ replied Anthony. ‘Just think of all those really wealthy people vying with one another to add the most expensive postmodernist to their collection.’
‘It’s more than just a trend, you know,’ said Chay, with a touch of dignified resentment. ‘It’s a movement.’
‘Is it?’ asked Anthony. ‘I’m not really up on these things. Do you think you’ll go on selling?’ What he wanted to ask was whether his father really believed in his work, in its value. For some reason, he could not put the question directly.
Chay shook his head. ‘I don’t know. God knows.’
Anthony wondered whether he meant this figuratively or literally. With Chay, one never knew.
‘So, what are you going to do?’ he asked. ‘What are you doing now?’
‘I had to come back. Green card, all that stuff.’ Chay carefully selected a cream horn with a little dusting of icing sugar on the top. Anthony had never seen his father eat a cream cake before. Cream cakes would fall into the range of things that were despicably bourgeois. He supposed that his father, long ago, must have been taken to afternoon tea by his parents. He tried to imagine this. ‘It’s a nice hotel, this, don’t you think?’ Chay said, glancing up at Anthony and then around the room.
‘Yes,’ said Anthony, with mild surprise. Maybe there had been a normal person inside his father all the time, too terrified to come out. Here he was, taking afternoon tea in a nice hotel, paying for it with money which he had earned from doing something that other people seemed to want him to do. What could be more straightforward than that? Perhaps this wasn’t just another phase, another pose, after all. Maybe this was as real as Chay could get.
‘I sold one of your paintings,’ said Anthony, looking straight at his father. ‘It was one I didn’t take round to Mrs Mark’s gallery with the others, the first time. A sort of nude thing.’
‘Yes, Mrs Marks. I’ve got to go and see her tomorrow morning. She’s doing an exhibition of my work. You might like to come to the opening.’
‘Yes, thanks,’ said Anthony. ‘You’ll like Mrs Marks,’ he added, and then wondered if Chay would. ‘She’s a jolly sort of woman.’
‘So how much did you get for it?’ asked Chay, still obviously mildly amused by the amount of money that his talent could command. Then he added quickly, ‘I don’t really care. You can keep it. You probably need it. Or your mother does.’ Anthony was surprised; Chay hardly ever referred to Judith.
‘Fifty thousand,’ said Anthony. ‘Dollars,’ he added.
Chay shook his head and smiled. ‘Outrageous.’
‘You’re outrageous,’ replied Anthony. Chay looked up, still smiling.
‘Yes, I am outrageous.’ Neither was quite sure what the other really meant.
‘So,’ said Chay, ‘how’s your life? How’s the Bar?’
‘It’s good,’ said Anthony, nodding at his plate. ‘I’m doing just the kind of work I want to do. You know, commercial, shipping, that kind of thing.’ He thought of the chambers meeting that was to take place next day, and swallowed with fear. ‘I still don’t know if I’ve got a tenancy at Caper Court or not, yet.’ Chay nodded vaguely; his interest in Anthony’s career was, Anthony knew, minimal.
‘How are you off for money?’
Anthony laughed. It was the kind of paternal question he had occasionally asked Chay, but had never expected to hear from him in return.
‘So-so,’ he said. ‘Much better, if you meant what you said about the painting.’
‘Yes,’ said Chay, finishing his tea and lighting another cigar. ‘I meant it. Tell me if you need any more.’
A weight dropped from Anthony’s mind; the money from the painting, even a third of it, would be more than enough to tide him over until he began earning properly, even if he had to look for another set of chambers.
They talked on for a while about California, and about Chay’s work. Anthony was surprised at the enthusiasm w
ith which his father spoke, at the confidence and self-possession which he wore like a new set of clothes. For the first time, Anthony felt that he liked his father. It was not difficult, he supposed, to be an unlikeable person, when you had no money and the life that you lived was a mere sham, a posture struck in adolescence which you were forced to maintain. All ambition a mere pretence. Add money, success and respect, and the pretence suddenly became solid, a reality, the truth.
Anthony rose after a while. ‘I have to be getting back,’ he said. Chay nodded and got up. They walked back through the hotel together.
‘I’ll call you about the opening,’ Chay said. ‘You can reach me here, if you need to.’ He smiled, and they said farewell. Anthony watched, bemused, as his father stepped into the lift, and the doors slid smoothly shut behind him.
The chambers meeting was to take place on Monday, at four-thirty. Anthony was glad that he had to spend the afternoon with solicitors in the City and would not be back until after five. Edward had still not appeared in chambers by lunchtime.
Just after two, Anthony was scrabbling his papers together and bundling them into his briefcase. He glanced at his watch; he was going to be late. He thundered down the stairs and set off at a run, coming through Pump Court and into Middle Temple Lane, and running straight into Julia. He was too startled to say anything, but a pain grabbed at his heart.
