King of the Badgers

by Philip Hensher

  Considering that it was in those ways of generosity and indiscrimination that they had met each other in the first place, it was strange that this contract took eight months to collapse of old age. When they talked about the early months of their relationship, Sam and Harry laughed about it, these days. They had met, after all, in a bar in Bideford—not a gay bar, since Bideford had never had such a thing, but a bar that had been declared gay for the afternoon and evening, to accommodate the attendees of the one-time-only Devon Gay Pride. (Sixty-three men and nine women had turned up, marched from one end of Bideford high street to the other, retired to the well-intentioned Crown, which, despite the non-recurrence of Devon Pride, would be known for ever more to the awestruck youth of a county and a half as a gay bar and the object of yokel dares and forfeits.) They had laughed and laughed about Bideford Pride, the one trundling lorry festooned with borrowed tinsel, the parade that had lasted all of eleven minutes. After half a dozen beers and a dozen ten-minute snogs in between—you could tell, Sam firmly believed, you could absolutely tell about a person from whether you wanted to go on kissing them and if they wanted to go on kissing you too, and on those grounds he’d never for one moment had a doubt about Lord What-a-Waste—they’d taken it further, had gone into the pub toilet, where Harry had proved himself made of sterling stuff by producing two grams of top-class cocaine—in Bideford!—and then giving Sam the shag of a lifetime. Sam remembered everything, every fixture and fitting within the cubicle rattling like a shed in a tornado as Sam rested his foot on the toilet bowl, the top of the paper holder, and finally the cistern. And then the faces turning to them in awe, amusement or disapproval when they came back to the bar, twenty-five minutes later.

  It was not very likely that, meeting in this way, either of them believed in the other’s innate fidelity and monogamy. It was not likely that, as they said, the moment they laid eyes and hands on each other was the moment that a change, not just in their habits but in their nature, took place. So it was only eight months later that, at Adam and Blaise’s for dinner, they’d admitted that an alteration into monogamy hadn’t happened, that it wasn’t going to happen, that it didn’t make any difference to the way they were to each other.

  They were mostly Sam’s friends, though in years to come, Harry would introduce a couple of his old friends to the group. The son of his father’s old gardener, a London couple from Harry’s misspent youth who had moved down here to take to furniture-making, a Spanish waiter found in a pub in the middle of Dartmoor, inexplicably; those were Harry’s finds. Sam’s friends were people he had been at school with, had known over the years without being able to say how or where they’d first met, people who had always been some part of Sam’s life, bringing boyfriends from time to time with them. Mick and Ali; Peter in Bideford; Phil and Steve, who ran the garage in Barnstaple. There was Andy, and Adam, who’d wanted to come into the business with Sam, being keen on all things African, and Blaise, whom he’d met in Senegal on the beach on holiday. Adam had gone back five times in one year to see Blaise, the fifth time bringing Blaise back with him, starry-eyed and dead set against the warning of all his friends. But they’d been wrong and Adam had been right, because Blaise had got a degree and British citizenship and now, twelve years on, did very well in the estate-agent business. It had been at their place that the moment of honesty, or the breakdown in Harry and Sam’s temporary monogamy, had happened.

  Since then, they had been going round the houses, once a month or so, sometimes more frequently, sometimes a little less often. They were all middle-aged, mostly fairly hairy, mostly bearded, and comfortably a touch overweight, or a little more than that. (Most of them went from fourteen stone upwards, to be honest.) The Bears met, dined, turned from booze to coke, speed, a pill or two, and then someone would start groping another, a snog would start someone else off, someone would enhance a snog with a snort off a bottle of poppers, a grope would turn into a blow-job, and then someone, overheated with a line of coke, would rip his shirt off, and it would go on from there. That first night, at Adam and Blaise’s, the pair of them had disappeared in an expectant mood neither Harry nor Sam could account for, and reappeared five minutes later with a little tray of the narcotic goods, and both of them naked with (in Blaise’s case) a remarkable lolling erection like a mast in a stiff breeze. That had been for the sake of the newcomers, and something similar had happened to welcome the gardener’s son and the Spanish waiter to the group since then. Normally they just got on with it.

  It was not a regular appointment, like Miranda’s book club, every first Thursday of the month. At some point, two weeks or eighteen days after the previous encounter, a Bear would phone another. ‘What’s up?’ they would begin, and after a bit of negotiation with the diary, a Bear would offer his and his Bear’s house in a week or ten days’ time. The word would spread: the date would be delayed a few days to fit in with some stragglers and busy Bears; the dinner menu would be set—nothing too elaborate, usually a roast and some roasted root vegetables, at the least an elegantly refined imitation of a shepherd’s pie with Italian ragù and celeriac in the mash. A couple of fresh bottles of poppers would be ordered, and a couple of dozen condoms to have lying around—the Bears generally brought their own drugs. Bears drank white wine, vodka, Negronis (Sam), some bottled beer afterwards, and, to a surprising extent, sweet American fizzy drinks. Some of them were more fought over than others—you rather had to get to Harry’s gardener’s boy and Harry’s Spanish waiter before they got to each other, and it was only a matter of time before they were going to withdraw from the group altogether, and permanently. There was a bit of a well-mannered shuffling not to find yourself next to Peter from Bideford, with his soft open mouth, baby-pink smooth belly, fluffy, patchy pubic hair and long, thin, dispiriting penis with its foreskin dribbling on unnecessarily for half an undecided inch. But everyone had had everyone else within the group, and it made a change, politely going round the group, from your usual husband or partner, and for Peter, a nice once-a-month opportunity to get some sex. Or at least they supposed so.

  ‘I really don’t want to go to Peter’s,’ Harry said. ‘I’m sorry, but there it is. I’m sure he’s perfectly nice, really. I just don’t want him feeling that he can stick his tongue down my throat because he’s cooked me a roast dinner.’

  ‘If it were just the tongue he shoves down your throat… I know what you mean,’ Sam said. ‘He’s not going to go for you, though. He’s going to go for me.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got yourself to blame for that,’ Harry said. The last time they had been at a gathering, three months before, Sam had actually let Peter fuck him, out of the general goodness of his heart. Peter had phoned the next day; Harry had answered the phone, and said briefly and civilly that Sam was in the shower and would call him back. He had said the same the next day, and the day after that. After that, the phone calls had become more sporadic, and Sam and Harry had made excuses for the next two or three gatherings.

  ‘I bet we’re not the only ones,’ Sam said.

  ‘The only ones what?’ Harry said. ‘Oh, I see—you think no one else will be wanting to go round there. No, I dare say not.’

  ‘Sit it out again, do you reckon?’

  ‘If we carry on sitting it out—’ a girl and a boy came into the shop ‘—they’ll stop asking us altogether before much longer.’

  Sam desisted. Pairs of schoolchildren were the bane of his life. They never bought any cheese: they were only ever interested in the knick-knacks and cheese-related gifts. This pair went from object to object, picking one up and setting it down, lifting the lids of one cheese dish after another as if there might be something inside just one of them, showing each other the comic cheese-worm-handled knife and giggling. This pair seemed completely lost in each other. Sam recognized Miranda’s Hettie, and the boy seemed familiar too; it was the American’s boy, the one who had gone upstairs with Hettie in a grump, and come down with her in a perfect erotic glow. It had taken Sam a mome
nt to recognize Hettie, surprisingly; it must have been the perfect erotic glow, which was coating her in an implausible and unprecedented glamour.

  ‘Hello, Hettie,’ Sam said.

  ‘Hello,’ Hettie said, not obviously abashed. The conversation lapsed there.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Sam said.

  ‘Have you got any cheese?’ Hettie said.

  ‘Well, what would you like?’ Sam said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Hettie said, and giggled. ‘Have you seen my new bracelet?’ She showed him an Oriental bracelet, fishing it out of a grubby paper bag; perhaps a love-gift from the American from the shop next door.

  ‘Is your mother at home?’ Harry called from the back room.

  ‘Is that your boyfriend?’ Hettie said.

  ‘You know Harry,’ Sam said. ‘He came for New Year’s Eve at your house, don’t you remember?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Hettie said. ‘I know his name’s Harry. I just didn’t know he was your boyfriend.’

  The American boy stood by her, so wide-eyed it was clear this was some dare cooked up in advance.

  ‘Well,’ Harry said, coming out into the shop holding the remnants of his much-read and scribbled-over Guardian. ‘I think I might be a little bit old for anyone to call me their boyfriend, these days. But I suppose that’s the word.’

  ‘Is this your boyfriend, Hettie?’ Sam said, not letting her get away with this. ‘No one would say he’s too old to be a boyfriend.’

  Hettie left off struggling to get the single bracelet over her wrist; it had been made for small Indian women and their tiny joints, not Hettie’s robustness, or her fat hands. ‘I hate you,’ she said. ‘Never, ever, come over to our house again. If you come, I’ll slam the door in your face and say, “That was nobody,” or “It was carol singers,” if my mum asks. I hate you.’

  ‘’Bye, Hettie,’ Sam said, not reacting to this at all. The American boy followed, plum-faced and sheepish, behind Hettie. ‘I’d love to be that age again, to say, “I hate you.” When was the last time you told someone you hated them?’

  ‘God knows,’ Harry said.

  Harry went back into the back room. Sam put on a different CD, mildly bored with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, or whatever he was called; he put on the soundtrack to Dil Se. He went over to rearrange the ceramic dishes in the cabinet, thinking that he might replace the present small-at-the-front, big-at-the-back arrangement with a series of small at left to big at right. After five minutes he stood back to admire the initial effect: he did not admire the initial effect. Sam went over to the CD player, realizing as he always did that the soundtrack to Dil Se misled him, since he only really liked the first number, the one in the film with all the dancers on top of the train. He took it off, and put on the Scissor Sisters.

  ‘About Peter, though,’ Harry said, coming out of the back room again.

  ‘About Peter.’

  ‘I don’t honestly see us going over there.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And if we don’t?’

  ‘They’re going to stop asking us altogether.’

  ‘I suppose so. Why don’t we phone everyone and ask them round to ours, then?’

  ‘To ours? Saturday?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Harry said. ‘I’m sure if we just phoned everyone and said, “Look, we don’t want to go to Peter’s, it’s our turn, come round to ours.” If we said that, everyone would come.’

  ‘Even Peter?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure. It must have been ages since—Christ—’

  Christ was Harry’s response to a figure falling heavily outside.

  15.

  It was a beautiful day, and Catherine had decided to go for a walk. The numbers of unfamiliar figures walking the streets of Hanmouth had somewhat diminished but not fallen off altogether. The girl who was kidnapped had encouraged the visitors for a while, and then they had gone away. Alec said they naturally wouldn’t be as interested now, but Catherine didn’t see that. The woman herself had been arrested, though it didn’t seem as if they knew any better than they ever had what had happened to the little girl. The newspapers were confused and confusing, and given to making peremptory demands on their front pages, of whom it was not clear: TELL US, they began. The numbers in the streets had fallen off, and the day-tripper quality had diminished, even though it was half-term this week. But there were still unfamiliar faces walking the streets of Hanmouth. They had a more professional quality now. They were in pairs and single. They stopped dead at the corners of streets, looking upwards. They took photographs of corners, of buildings, of individuals, in surprising ways that were not those of the ordinary person. They lay on their backs in the street, a camera to their faces; they pushed the lens right up into your terrified eyes. Sometimes these people acknowledged each other, gave each other a small, suspicious nod. They clearly did not care, and they clearly had some kind of job to do. Where these photographs would appear, accompanied by what commentary, Catherine did not know and would not enquire. A spirit of investigation had taken over the town, replacing the spirit of vulgar curiosity, and there was nothing festive about it.

  Mr Calvin was coming out of the yellow-painted door, sunk below the level of the pavement, at the same time as Catherine was passing. He was wearing a light, sand-coloured suit with a blue shirt and a paisley silk flourish in his top pocket—a piece of bravado, perhaps. ‘Good morning,’ Catherine said and, with a short hesitation, John Calvin said hello back. Did he live on his own? He shut the door, and began to walk in the same direction as her. Catherine was about to make a further observation—she would not have mentioned anything about the investigation, or about the development with regards to Calvin’s friend, client, whatever she was, being arrested. She would have made it less awkward, the walking next to each other by chance; no more than two hundred yards, it would have been, before she went into a shop. She might have talked about David and his friend coming up to stay for the weekend, for instance, and reminded Mr Calvin that she had invited him to their little drinks on the Saturday evening. ‘It’s…’ she began to say, but probably a little bit uncertain. You could have mistaken it, she supposed, for a cough or a meaningless noise. In any case, Mr Calvin performed a small pantomime of forgetting, slapping his forehead, tutting, shrugging, before turning without saying anything further to rescue from the house whatever it was he was pretending to have forgotten for his morning outing. They had hardly greeted, and Catherine did not think herself justified in waiting for him to come out with his handkerchief, wallet, or Panama, whatever it was. In any case, the pantomime was clearly meant to give her the chance to walk on ahead and give him the chance to walk in solitude. Catherine did think that a bit rude. Perhaps he didn’t want to go over his role in supporting the awful family with someone he didn’t really know.

  ‘Do you want to come out?’ Tony said to Sylvie, in Sylvie’s kitchen. In the past, they had, independently, taken the opportunity to go away at half-term. Now, the closure of the school for a week had let them both sit around. Sylvie had been getting on with her work; Tony had been talking to divorce lawyers. ‘It’s my sister’s birthday next week. I never know what to buy her for a present.’

  ‘Buy her bath salts,’ Sylvie said, engrossed in a newspaper story. ‘Do you know, this disease, here in the paper, it can strike you down without any warning, and you feel perfectly normal, there’s no way you can tell you have it?’

  ‘What—you feel normal before you get it?’ Tony said.

  ‘No, afterwards. After you’ve got it, you still feel totally normal. That’s the scary thing.’

  ‘Does it kill you?’

  ‘No, it just lies in your system, and you have to have a test to know that you’ve got it—you’d never know otherwise. It can stay there for years, and you don’t know you’re ill at all. There’s no symptoms.’

  ‘Terrifying,’ Tony said. ‘But my sister.’

  ‘Bath salts,’ Sylvie said. ‘I’ve bought my mother bath salts every year since I
was fourteen. I don’t think she likes them, but she sort of expects them now.’

  ‘My sister’s only twenty-nine,’ Tony said. ‘I can’t buy her bath salts.’

  ‘Buy her a PlayStation then,’ Sylvie said. ‘That’s unusual. Are you full brother and sister, or did your dad remarry?’

  ‘I’m only forty-four,’ Tony protested. ‘There’s a difference, I know. I don’t suppose she was planned. I remember my mother telling me I was going to have a little brother or sister. It was really pretty embarrassing.’

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose your mother and father thought about whether she was going to embarrass you before they decided to have another baby,’ Sylvie said.

  Tony paused. That was, in fact, exactly what he had always supposed, that everything in the family was planned with first regard for what he would think about it. ‘I was a single child,’ he said. ‘Until I was fifteen. It forms your sense of self.’

  ‘Well, there you go,’ Sylvie said, poring over her sickness special.

  ‘Are you coming out, then?’ Tony said.

  Sylvie looked up at him, a wedge of teeth-torn toast in her left hand, a red smear of jam on the lenses of her big man’s spectacles. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I was hoping to spend my morning pasting erect penises onto paper. I’m way behind.’ She paused: there was no response from Tony. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what’s going down.’