by Alan Keslian
‘No sign of him yet. He went to a club last night.’
‘He’s not working today, is he?’
‘No. He went out with the people staying on the second floor.’
I got up to show some guests to their table, hoping he would forget the subject for a while, but as soon as I sat down again he asked, ‘The people Darren was with, are they back yet?’
‘Yes, they had breakfast first thing and went up to their rooms to sleep.’
‘Have you asked them about him?’
‘Yes. He was fine the last time they saw him. There’s no reason to think he’s gone missing.’ The words ‘gone missing’ were the worse I could have chosen, sure to exacerbate Andrew’s concern.
‘What were they like, these men he went out with?’
‘Northerners down for the weekend, good company for a night out, I expect.’
‘Not those Newcastle louts that Tom told me about? You haven’t let him go off with them.’
‘I didn’t let him exactly. He doesn’t ask my permission before he goes anywhere.’
‘Well can’t you speak to them again? One of them must know something about what’s happened to him.’
Whatever I said now was probably going to worry him more. The Geordies had told Tom and me all they knew about Darren’s whereabouts earlier. As our main course arrived at the table, to appease Andrew I said, ‘They’ll be asleep now, they’ve been out all night. Let’s give them an hour or so.’
We ate in near silence, and after consuming my last few mouthfuls under Andrew’s relentless stare I went into the office to ring each of the three second-floor rooms in turn. They sounded half asleep, promised to be ready to leave on time, but as expected none of them had any additional information about Darren.
Glumly I reported back that there was no further news, adding that at least none of the Geordies had noticed anything amiss the previous night. Andrew pursed his lips but did not speak. After several minutes’ silence, Tom, unable to bear the tension any longer, said, ‘Saturday night, Andrew. The boy’s been out enjoying himself. You know what lads are like, this morning he’ll be sleeping it off somewhere.’
Andrew responded in a chillingly calm voice, his articulation so precise and controlled that he might have been intoning a prayer: ‘And this afternoon too? There is a question of responsibility here, Tom. The boy is eighteen. He should be attending school, not scraping a living in some noxious kitchen. His parents have behaved abominably toward him. The question now is what are we to do about his disappearance?’
His use of the word disappearance made me wince. Darren’s absence was spoiling the whole afternoon. Tom fed the growing air of crisis by offering to go to look for him. As he could have been anywhere in London, and only thirteen or fourteen hours had passed since the Geordies had seen him enjoying himself in the club, this seemed an extreme over-reaction. ‘He might be anywhere. While you’re chasing around looking for him he’ll probably stroll in as though nothing has happened. He’s not been gone long enough to justify making a fuss.’
Tom shrugged his shoulders. ‘If it will help the offer is there. I could go to the club, the Beckford Arms, that burger dive, anywhere he might have gone, and ask if he’s been seen.’
The suggestion of a possible course of action relaxed Andrew a little. ‘Good thinking, thank you, Tom.’ He looked reproachfully at me. ‘Perhaps I am making a fuss about nothing, let’s hope so. We’ll leave things for a little longer. Couldn’t we make a few enquiries by telephone?’ He added: ‘We don’t necessarily have to go chasing around.’
The appearance of the red-haired Geordie in the doorway enabled me to escape. In the office he settled in cash for all of the group, leaving me with what was meant as a humorous jibe: ‘We’ll maybe give you a ring next time we’re planning a weekend. We were quite happy at King’s Cross and it’s not so dear, but you probably need the custom more.’
One of the men from room four, who had also come down to settle his bill, was standing waiting his turn to pay in the hall. As the Geordie walked past him he looked as though he was struggling not to flinch. ‘Sorry to keep you,’ I apologised, ‘and sorry again about not being able to bring your breakfasts up to your room.’
‘Not at all, a misunderstanding. Don’t want to hurry you. You’re busy this afternoon,’ he said with a thin smile.
He might not be complaining, but the prospect of him and his friend coming to stay again seemed poor. Defensively I said, ‘The guest house has been particularly bustling this weekend. It’s usually quieter than this. Hope you haven’t been disturbed too much.’
‘The room was very comfortable, thanks. I suppose you can’t pick and choose your clients.’
When I returned to the dining room, Andrew was still fretting about Darren. ‘Would it be worth going up to the boy’s room to look around? There might be something that would give us a hint… ’
‘I’ve been up once to feed his terrapins. There was nothing unusual; what about his right to privacy – are you proposing that we search his things?’
‘Well what do you suggest? You seem very negative.’
‘We shouldn’t—’ over-react, I was about to say, but a loud crash in the hall followed immediately by a loud Geordie oath prevented me. Tom, Andrew and I hurried out. The orchid had tumbled from the table and lay scattered in pieces over the tiled floor, the brass container lying on its side near the front door. One of the Geordies, a heavy bag in one hand, stood by the hall table looking horrified.
‘I’m right sorry, I had my bag on my shoulder, I must have caught it as I turned round. It was a lovely plant. Before you say anything, let me pay for the damage.’
‘It wasn’t even my plant.’ I looked across at Andrew, who stood by the door looking open mouthed at the wreckage, his face alarmingly red. He waved a hand helplessly towards where the torn fragments of plant lay. ‘Oh, good god, how on earth… it can’t be? How could someone have… ?’
The couple from room four appeared at the top of the stairs with their luggage, looked askance at the scene in the hall below, and walked down at a stately pace, determined that nothing should prevent their escape from the mayhem of the hotel.
I took the Geordies into the lounge out of Andrew’s way and told them it would be best to make their way out quietly and leave us to clear things up. When their taxi arrived to take them to King’s Cross they meekly picked up their bags and left.
Tom helped pick up handfuls of soil and pieces of plant from the floor, at first shoving bits of it back into the pot anyhow. Oddly his clumsiness seemed to calm Andrew, who remonstrated mildly, ‘Not like that, Tom, you know how it should be done, the compost and rooty bits at the bottom, green leafy bits sticking out at the top,’ and he knelt down to demonstrate. ‘That’s better, good lad, you’ve got the hang of it now.’
The accident took his mind off Darren. Perhaps we are capable of worrying about only one thing at a time. Having cleared up in the hall, back at our table again we talked about plans for the coming week, and an amiable mood took hold at last despite the trials of the afternoon. Half an hour later Andrew was much more relaxed. When he was preparing to leave for home I said, ‘This has not been the happiest of afternoons at Goodmans Hotel.’
‘Oh, no, no, you’ve given us an excellent meal, and nobody could complain the afternoon was uneventful. Don’t worry about the plant, I was thinking of splitting it up anyway. You will let me know as soon as you have some news of Darren, won’t you?’
Chapter 10
By Monday morning well over twenty-four hours had passed since the Geordies had seen Darren dancing with a stranger at the club. Andrew’s accusatory words from the previous day, ‘You haven’t let him go off with them,’ came back into my mind again and again. Every time the ’phone rang I expected to hear his voice anxiously asking for news. During a lull in the morning’s activities, having got no answer from the extension in Darren’s room, I went upstairs in the unlikely hope that he might have crept ba
ck in the middle of the night and had not heard or was ignoring the call.
Of course he was not there. Guiltily I eased open the shallow top drawer of the chest of drawers where he kept personal papers. The biggest stack was correspondence from the ‘music club’ from which he sometimes bought records. There was also a bundle of assorted envelopes with handwritten addresses and Twyford postmarks, probably from his parents. They should have been the ones to worry about him being missing after a night out, not me. Nothing in the drawer was likely to reveal what had happened to him, and uncomfortable about prying into his papers I slid it shut.
Pointless speculation began to plague me. He was unlikely to have run away, abandoning his personal correspondence, a wardrobe full of clothes and his terrapins. He looked so young; what if the police had raided the club and were holding him, suspecting he was under age, or if he had become involved in some more serious offence? Yet they would have had to allow him to make a telephone call. Suppose he had been attacked, or badly injured in a road accident, perhaps even killed? How long was it sensible to wait before ringing the police and hospitals to ask about him?
In the next hour or so several people ̕phoned to book rooms, and then Tom called to say he had dropped Andrew off at the hospital for an outpatient appointment; he had already contacted the burger bar and asked for Darren, saying he was a friend, and been told that Darren was due in but had not turned up. At Andrew’s insistence he was checking with me, although he did not doubt I would have let them know if the boy had come home. His call made me more anxious than ever, and after it, whenever anyone rang, I expected to hear a nurse or a policeman giving me bad news.
The cleaner was not in that day and the morning chores kept me busy, but my concentration was poor and I absent-mindedly threw some sheets over the second floor bannisters without looking, barely missing a guest on the stairs below. A few minutes later the ̕phone rang again and to my relief I heard Darren’s voice, nervous and pleading: ‘Hello, Mark, it’s Darren.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘I’m at Turnpike Lane Underground station. I don’t think I’ve got enough money for the fare back.’
‘What happened to you?’
‘I’m sorry, I will tell you, something awful happened. Is it all right for me to come back?’
‘Yes. Get a taxi if you have to, I’ll pay for it. Are you okay? Andrew was so worried about you yesterday.’
‘Yes I’m okay, but could you ring my work to say I’m sick? I was supposed to go in this morning.’ He refused to put me to the expense of paying for a taxi, and had enough money for one bus fare which would get him as far as Housmans Hotel. To avoid him having to walk from there I rang the manager and arranged for him to lend Darren the Underground fare home.
I rang the burger palace with the old excuse for absence of an upset stomach. Andrew, presumably still at the hospital, was not answering his mobile ̓phone and I left messages on it, at the garden centre and on his answering machine at Biddulph Mansions, then rang Tom, who insisted on coming straight over. When he arrived he had worked himself into a temper and was talking about ‘teaching that boy a lesson’. His annoyance was understandable, but we had yet to hear what had happened, and even if Darren was at fault sympathy and understanding were probably called for. Punishing him in some way for going missing might drive him away completely. ‘And that’s what you’ve come here to do, is it, teach him a lesson?’
‘Andrew’s got enough on his mind with the hospital. He’s been worried sick about him. He’s not going to get away with this.’
‘We don’t know what’s happened yet. Why don’t you leave it to me to sort this out? You coming in here making threats is not going to help.’
‘Don’t you accuse me of making fucking threats. What I said was teach him a lesson.’
‘What’s the difference?’ For perhaps a minute we stood looking at each other, afraid of the angry exchange developing into a serious row. To end the stand-off I softly proffered a single syllable which could not be interpreted as antagonistic: ‘Lunch?’
‘What?’
‘Should we have some lunch?’
‘All right. Thanks,’ he said with difficulty.
We were eating in grim silence when Darren arrived, deep shadows under his eyes and a bruise on his left cheek. Tom put down his knife and fork, looked at him angrily, but said nothing.
‘What happened? Have you been fighting?’
‘No. I will tell you, but can I go and clean up first?’
‘All right. See you in twenty minutes, half an hour?’
He left the room. Across the table from me Tom was losing the struggle against his temper; under his shirt the shoulder and arm muscles were flexing as though his big hands were about to lash out, his physical strength becoming all too evident. I said, ‘We ought to let Andrew know he’s all right.’
This diversion worked momentarily. ‘He’s probably still at the hospital. You know how they keep you waiting at those clinics.’
‘I could leave another message at the Garden Centre in case he calls there first.’
He realised that the mention of Andrew was an attempt to divert him. He glared at me as, trying to appear innocent and unconcerned, I put another fork-full of food into my mouth. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll leave the boy to you, you can have him, if that’s what you want. I’m going.’
‘Don’t, please don’t.’
‘I might as well go back to work. Fuck you. I said you can have him, that’s what you want, isn’t it?’ He stood up and put on his coat. ‘Fucking bastards,’ he shouted to nobody in particular as he stomped out down the hall. This was the angriest I had ever seen him, yet despite the intensity of his feelings, he had been able to back off.
My immediate task was to find out from Darren where he had been for the past two nights, and fifteen minutes later I took a pot of coffee and his favourite snack, bacon sandwiches, up to his room. The shower was running as I passed the little bathroom under the roof and I went on up to sit and wait for him to emerge. He appeared after a few minutes, covering himself with a towel, and was drawn to the tray of food by the mouth watering smell. ‘Bacon sandwiches, thanks Mark, I’m starving.’
Uninhibited by my presence he threw the towel onto the bed and put on a pair of clean white underpants. I had seen him nearly naked before at the swimming baths; his calves were about as thick as Tom’s forearms, the flesh so scanty that the knobs and indentations of his bones were visible. As well as the bruise on his face he had another, bigger and more lurid, on his right upper arm. On his neck and stomach were half a dozen or more red scuffs and abrasions, which could have been caused by a fall or a fight. As a way of starting conversation I said: ‘I fed your terrapins. I hope they’re all right.’
He put down his sandwich and went over to them, turning his back to me and bending slightly over the tank to look at them.
‘They look fine,’ he said straightening up. ‘Thanks for feeding them. It’s time I cleaned them out.’
‘Coffee?’
‘Thanks.’ He took his mug, had another bite from the bacon sandwich, and began to dress.
‘Did someone hurt you?’
‘No, I fell over a table and banged my head. The bruise looks horrible, doesn’t it?’
‘You went back with someone?’
‘Yeah. I meant to come home straight after… I intended to come home yesterday, honestly.’
‘You’ve been away for two nights, we were worried. You don’t have to tell me what happened.’
‘I want to tell you. But it’s embarrassing.’
‘We’re friends, aren’t we? Come on, you can trust me.’
The Geordies, he said, having taken him into the club, were soon engaged with a group of young Chinese men and forgot him. For a while he simply stood against a wall and watched what was going on from the shadows, but seeing other men dancing on their own, or at least with nobody in particular, he summoned up the courage to join in. A man i
n his twenties looked across, smiled, and made his way over to him. They said hello, danced together for a while, went to the bar for drinks, chatted, then danced again.
A little later Darren offered to buy fresh drinks, but his new friend promised to get something much better than alcohol. He disappeared in the direction of the toilets for a few minutes and came back with some tablets. Darren paused and looked at me.
‘Did you take any?’
‘Only one.’
‘What was it?’
‘It was hard to tell in the lights of the disco. He told me they were speed… they looked sort of blue-grey. He said everyone was taking them. He worked as a courier with a holiday company and he said people partied all night on them, not only in London, but in Majorca and Ibiza, everywhere. He said at some places the so-called “straights” were really disgusting, much worse than gays ever were, got smashed out of their heads at beach parties, would do anything, strip off and do filthy things to each other with bottles while the others watched.’
‘He didn’t play any part in these goings-on himself, of course. What were our Newcastle friends doing while you were being offered drugs?’
‘They were there. They weren’t interested in me. They were too busy with Chinese and South-East Asian boys. Everyone down there was taking something.’
‘Not everyone. You can get a buzz from the music, the atmosphere, being with a crowd of people looking good and enjoying themselves. Anyway, so you went back to this courier man’s flat?’
‘Yeah. Not right away… everyone was having a great time, we danced and talked a bit more and – got a bit close. He asked me back to his flat, where he gave me this mug of Irish coffee that was really strong, but he’d put something in it.’ In the sludge at the bottom of the mug were the remains of two capsules. He challenged the man, but he immediately snatched the mug back and emptied the dregs down the sink. Darren was confused about what happened next. He could remember falling over and hitting his head on the table, and being helped into the bedroom where they had sex.
