Honestly! His ‘please’; my ‘please’. The air seemed fraught with the echoes of our pleas.
“What do you mean they’ve got to make allowances? And who are they?”
He silently shook his head and in the face of his unhappiness my questions appeared a bit beside the point. He probably meant the Fates; Frank Sinatra had spoken about those at some length in a film called Young at Heart.
“Yes you are doing it all wrong,” I told him gently. I resumed my seat and took his hand and began to stroke it almost automatically; feeling rather like a father who was having to explain things, perhaps the very facts of life, to his touchingly ignorant young son. “Brad I realize that you’re wholly new to this game and are really wanting—like you said—to make up fast for what you think’s been lost. But you need to lighten up old thing; you truly do. Otherwise it seems to me you could easily be in line for a breakdown. Which anyway after all the stresses of separating from a wife you’re clearly fond of wouldn’t come as the most surprising thing on earth … surely? Not to mention endless years of money worries, talents unrecognized and a total lack of job satisfaction. It can’t even be a lot of fun having to sign on at the Job Centre.” Incredibly I found I had to resist a strong inclination to put my arms about him. “But Brad,” I said. “But … !”
But Danny too. Why on earth had I been going down that particular road? A road which very plainly proceeded nowhere? I got back—fast—to the essentials.
“But I just can’t emphasize it enough. You must not come on so strong. That way you’ll only scare people. I promise. Whereas if you’d simply learn to relax you’d have no end of success. Probably more than you could manage. You’re far and away the best-looking man in here tonight”—I glanced about us and attempted to give him a heartening smile—“which I admit isn’t saying an awful lot but let me put it another way: I think you’re one of the best-looking men I’ve ever met and I fancy you like mad and if I walked out of here with you tonight and we ended up in bed we’d probably have a really great time and—” I had to break off abruptly. “Yet I know it would only end in trouble and in heartache; possibly more for me than for you; so you can see that in a way I’m just being very selfish …”
And patronizing I thought. Oh hell. But still. To give comfort was my overall priority. Forget about everything else.
“Just look,” I added. “All around us there are people giving you the eye, only waiting for me to get the heck out of here before they commit every foul beneath the sun to be the first to hijack my position.”
He didn’t give so much as a glance at all those supposedly wild-eyed ruthless competitors straining at their starting blocks.
“Why possibly more for you than for me?” he asked.
“What?”
“Heartache?”
“Oh. Because I’m not after casual sex. I’m after a relationship.”
“Which only means you’re not after a relationship with me?”
“No. Because you’re not yet ready. First you’ve got to sleep around. Got to get rid of that whole crazy whoosh-factor thing. It’ll take at least a year; possibly three. And believe me. You just won’t want to be tied to anyone and needing to tell lies while all of that is going on.”
Positively parental still. For the moment it wasn’t a bad feeling. Like a father I really hoped my advice was going to be truly the best advice. Like a father I keenly, almost desperately, wanted to help. All in all I might have made a fairly good dad.
“I promise you—I promise you Danny—as God is my witness I promise you—I have no desire whatever just to sleep around. You couldn’t want the right man any more than I do. And in you I know I’ve found the absolutely right man. Don’t ask me how I know. I couldn’t even begin to tell you but ours would turn out to be one of the happiest of partnerships on record. The almost perfect love affair—I know it.”
“Don’t,” I said warningly. “Stop it. Can’t you hear yourself? You’re starting to do it again.”
But anyway I went on stroking his hand to show that this time I wasn’t going to let it scare me.
“And while you’re about it you’ve got to rid yourself of one thumping great illusion. You can’t go around believing in the almost perfect love affair. Not in this world. You’re a fully fledged adult. You’re talking like some foolish and romantic kid of twenty-four.”
“Is that your age? Twenty-four?” But he spoke as if the question was wholly immaterial; anything—so long as the conversation just shouldn’t be allowed to lapse.
I nodded. “Can’t you tell? All those stars in my eyes? Not like that old cynic I’ll become by the time I get to be … around forty?”
“Forty-three. Is that too old for you?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“Oh God Brad!” I dropped his hand. I hardly knew the guy. “It isn’t that you’re too old for me. You’re just too poor for me. There! Will that do? You’d never have stood the slightest chance—because you’ve latched on to a shameless little gold-digger! So you needn’t worry that you’ve played this game all wrong; you couldn’t possibly have played it right. On the other hand, old friend, you could have been as needy as all get-out, you could have come on just as strong as ever you felt like, if only at the same time you’d had the foresight to be rich!”
This speech was to some degree calculated. It was true but it was calculated. At least it should mean that instead of regretting me—the face in the street which you remember all your life—he might see me go with something like relief, rejoicing at the narrowness of his escape.
I italicized the point, upper-cased it. “You see I’m not at all a kind person. I’m a bastard. Totally self-centred, totally money-orientated, totally on the lookout for some poor old unsuspecting meal ticket. It doesn’t sound as though your wife Hélène ever used to nag you. If we’d somehow come together—through sex—and somehow stayed together for a year or two—through sex—I know that me, I’d have become a complete shrew. I’d have nagged you incessantly; made your life pure hell.”
“I don’t believe that,” he said. He was looking shocked. He was actually looking a bit white.
“Well there was maybe a touch of exaggeration. I’m not sure I’d have nagged you incessantly. I might have needed to get some sleep on occasion.”
But he didn’t respond in kind if that’s what I’d been hoping. I really couldn’t see why he appeared so utterly forlorn: merely an hour’s encounter. And it wasn’t as though I’d said he was too short—or too fat—or had halitosis. I hadn’t even criticized his haircut. Nor was he to know that I considered his being poor as blameworthy; it was almost a requisite for an aspiring persevering undiscovered writer to suffer for his art—I hadn’t said it but that was the impression which I’d aimed to give: the ennoblement conferred by starving in a garret. I thought that in a way I’d actually been tactful. And yet … he now looked desolate.
“There! Doesn’t that make you feel any better? None of it your fault. You couldn’t have changed a bloody thing.” I picked up his hand again; gave it a quick squeeze. “I think I ought to go.”
But oddly I myself now felt quite drained; couldn’t make the effort to get up. “We’re a right pair,” I said. “When we came in, perhaps the healthiest-looking couple in the room. But look at us now.”
He appeared to pull himself together a bit. “You need that other drink,” he said. “We both do.” He stood up.
“No. You can’t afford it. I was going to get it anyway—don’t you remember?—before I forgot.” We both laughed, a little shakily. I too stood up. He pushed me back down.
“But while I’m gone I trust you not to make your getaway.”
“I won’t.”
Three minutes later he returned with two more double whiskies. “You’ll notice I didn’t even glance? You’ll notice how much confidence I had that you were going to keep your word?”
“Yes at least I can say I always keep my word. But I wish you’d let
me pay for these. You ought to bear in mind that photocopying.”
“Why would you want to pay for them when obviously there’s no way you’re going to benefit from it?”
“Oh the exception that proves the rule? And I wouldn’t want to leave you thinking as how I’m all bad.”
“Why not?”
“Because although you might never guess it I quite like you. In fact I like you quite a lot.”
“Why? When plainly I’m a loser?”
“Dunno,” I said. “And it isn’t just the way you look. There’s something about your personality. I feel that in happier circumstances—i.e. if you were loaded—we could easily have made a go of it.”
“Me too.”
“You see then: there’s a lot we have in common. And incidentally. I never said you were a loser.”
“You didn’t have to. Tell me something though. May I be serious again for one minute?”
“Oh God must you?”
I smiled—decided not to mention that if there’d been any marked letup in seriousness then obviously I’d missed it.
“Are you proud of being the way you are?” he asked. “Regarding your attitude to money?”
“No of course not. I’m faintly proud of recognizing I’m the way I am. But that’s all.”
“Meaning that to be aware of some fault is already half the battle?”
“Not really.” I shrugged then shook my head. Apologetically. “I’m not entering any battle.”
Disbelief. Disbelief and further deflation. “You’re telling me you wouldn’t want to change?”
“Would I want to change?” Clearly it wasn’t bad he should feel yet more disillusioned in me but all the same … “Yes I suppose I would. In a better world. But in this present one it seems to me a completely valid approach. Hold out for all the pleasure you can get. You need to be happy; if in the end you haven’t had plenty of sheer enjoyment you must accept the fact you’ve been a failure. And just so long as you’re always careful not to harm anybody …”
“Except yourself. What happens when finally you’ve got to answer for your own love of money? The love of money that’s the root of all evil?”
“Oh come off it Brad. If your talking about judgment—and your quoting from the Bible makes me think that you’re a Christian—then shake hands: me as well: I’m a Christian too.” (I almost set those last four words to music; my mother had once been in an amateur production of Annie Get Your Gun.) “And because of that or in spite of that I think it’s practically my duty to make the most of every minute in every way I can. Which inevitably takes money.”
“But if you’re a Christian you have to remember what Jesus himself said on the subject of riches.”
“Yes well Jesus never had to live in a bedsit in Cricklewood. He’d never been to a motor show or leafed through Homes and Gardens or dreamed of owning a Harley-Davidson. I bet he’d never heard of Georgio Armani. He wasn’t that keen on going to nightclubs or posh restaurants. Or to cinema or theatre.”
He cut me short; dejectedly. “I think you’ve made your point.”
“Not quite. Even in the Apocrypha it’s never recorded that he went to San Francisco or Sydney or Portofino. He lived in the sunshine and life was simple and he was mainly among friends. And I’m the one supposed to nag, not you.”
He ignored that last bit and went back to the sentence before it. “I wonder if he’d recognize how thoroughly easy he had it.”
“At least in the evenings he didn’t have to sit round and just twiddle his thumbs when there was nothing worth watching on the box and even going out to the pub was temporarily beyond him.”
“Maybe he went visiting the lonely and the helpless? Made them a little less lonely and a little less helpless? I shouldn’t have thought that required a vast financial outlay.”
Two could play at that ignoring game. “Perhaps he was lucky: perhaps he didn’t suffer from a low boredom threshold? For me, being bored with life is the ultimate sin but in order not to be bored with life you need to have dosh.”
We stared at one another and I gave him a slow, provocative grin.
“I admit that right now I’m not exactly bored.”
“People say the best things in life are free.” He smiled. Thankfully parody was implied; not condescension. I wanted him to acknowledge that even my present state of non-boredom had cost us the price of several whiskies. I suppose I could have said it myself; I’d forgotten that he had paid for the last lot.
But I repeat: it was such a shame. (Not to mention such a cliché.) When he smiled I felt he could have won me over in just about any foolish argument on earth. (And if we had ever got together I would have regarded that as my very first duty: to make sure he smiled a lot—to introduce a regular dosage of leavening and frivolity.)
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right. The best things in life are free. The flowers belong to everyone. So do the stars that shine. Let’s add the public libraries and some few of the museums and art galleries. Well hallelujah! In fact a great many of the flowers don’t but heaven forbid I’d ever choose to quibble. What, me?”
“Oh Danny,” he said. The smile was entirely gone. He could have been about to cry.
I clearly had a nutcase on my hands. But one I thought I might have grown fond of—perhaps extremely fond of. Though again I’m doing nothing here but repeat myself.
I felt very glad he didn’t cry.
“Don’t be sad. You’ve got everything in life to look forward to. I take it you can’t have forgotten A Hundred Years Hence, your very best work up until this present time: that masterpiece just waiting to be pounced upon?”
He shook his head, wretchedly. This wasn’t to tell me that he hadn’t forgotten it. This was simply to tell me that he’d given up hope.
“Oh Brad. Brad Brad Brad. What in heaven’s name are we to do with you?”
He didn’t answer. I stroked his hand again. It wasn’t the right move. His eyes now definitely grew swimmy. (Quite stupidly mine did as well.)
“Hey!” I said. “What ever happened to all that confidence? That certainty; defiance? That grand reaffirmation of faith?”
He looked at me. He downed the rest of his drink. A tear slipped over one eye-rim but he brushed it away with abrupt resolution. “Come on. I want to buy you supper.” He seemed a creature of seriously fast-changing moods.
“I’ve already had a sandwich.”
“Tough! I’m going to buy you supper.”
I swallowed the remainder of my own drink.
“You can’t afford it,” I told him. “For Christ’s sake you’ve got to be single-minded: think photocopying! Photocopying! But I’ll tell you what. I’ll treat us both to a McDonald’s. I’ll come with you if you’ll settle for that.”
In fact I wasn’t absolutely certain I had enough money but I thought oh well loaves and fishes—it is in a good cause. Or there again, if Jesus didn’t seem totally convinced of this, then Brad himself might have to help out. But patently I hoped not.
“Okay,” he said. “Thank you.” He said it so simply and gratefully that I somehow felt impelled to take his hand and anyone watching us leave the pub—as indeed, I noticed, several people were—would have thought we were a couple, or at the very least heading for a night of rampant sex. I noticed it with a sensation that bordered on proprietorial pride.
But I hadn’t been thinking. In the street I hastily released his hand.
The rain had stopped. We turned into Edgware Road. Neither of us said much; for the moment none too surprisingly we seemed to have talked ourselves out. But it felt companionable. We walked close without touching but again I very much wanted to touch—I should have liked for instance to place my arm around his shoulder or less obtrusively perhaps yet even more intimately slip my hand into his off-side back pocket. But this wouldn’t have been at all fair since undoubtedly it would have raised his hopes; I’d already erred in that direction. Nevertheless I really had to discipline myself. And unexpectedly to
o I felt—well not precisely happy but—yes I shall always remember this evening I thought. I shall always remember this man.
We went on therefore, mute but companionable, for maybe something over five minutes. We came to a crossing called George Street. He turned to me and said, “Danny…?” He somehow managed to inject into those two weak syllables (of which I’d never been immensely fond) so great a wealth of feeling that I might have imagined there was unalterable affection there, love and forgiveness and understanding, a huge undercurrent of need and an all-consuming plea; whatever he was about to say or ask or beseech could in no way have matched that initial astonishing intensity. He was obviously putting everything he had into the formulation of the sentence that would follow; was laying his very heart and soul on the line—his whole life (to continue in this current understated mode). It was the language of two people who were lovers and had got to know each other well; by no means the language of strangers who had just met. I could scarcely help but feel touched—a little paradoxically perhaps—and yet I was about to tell him, “Don’t …” In fact I was about to tell him, “Don’t … you don’t have to do this,” not even fully comprehending what I meant by that. But I didn’t tell him. In his preoccupation he had stepped off the pavement and right into the path of a taxi.
14
They took him to St Mary’s in Paddington and he was pretty badly hurt; at first they wondered if he’d even last the night. I said I was his partner—that way they let me sit beside his bed and keep a vigil over him and make a deal with God. Save him—please—and if you do … It was absurd, I still scarcely knew the man and yet suddenly I felt I knew him well and only wanted to be allowed to get to know him better. I should have seen him as unstable and yet instinct told me he was reliable and rocklike and the linchpin that I badly needed. I’d felt contemptuous of the twenty-year start he had on me and how little he had to show for it in hard material terms. Now? Fuck hard material terms I said to God. If he’d been rich he wouldn’t have been needy; and he almost certainly wouldn’t have been in that particular place at that particular time. It was quite a reversal but this same instinct told me that unless I was prepared to go with it I was definitely about to miss out. Instinct or sentimentality? Instinct or guilty conscience? I couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss. All I wanted was for Brad Overton to survive and be happy. No; I also wanted to apologize and to tell him it would be fun walking by his side into the future. More than fun I said to God; an absolute requirement. Come on I said insistently towards the dawn. Please save him. Please. I realize it’s for my own sake more than his but I promise I’ll never ask for anything again—I mean never anything again that’s just for me. Or very largely for me. And I’ll try to make up for past sins; it won’t be easy but I’ll really do my very best. By then I hardly knew what I was saying and when Brad eventually opened his eyes sometime after six I felt as if for every actual minute since last night’s encounter I had somehow lived through an entire day. In the best tradition of old Hollywood movies I was holding his hand at that important moment and he was practically at once in a state of full consciousness. I told him I loved him. It didn’t feel at all premature or strange. On the contrary. It felt exactly right.
On Chasing Brad Through Purgatory Page 10
