All the Beauty of the Sun

by Marion Husband

Paul had taken some persuading, but he had persuaded him, cajoled and teased him into coming to this club – he supposed he could call it that: a room above a warehouse with a bar and a dance floor, a discreet, half-guarded staircase leading up, barely lit, barely noticeable. Edmund knew about this place because he knew; knowing came from looking and listening, from walking the streets at night alone; he didn’t have to go that far, a few streets, that was all, and he would be hanging about outside the door, watching the men come and go, afraid to go in because what would he do once he was inside? Now he was inside, all he wanted to do was leave, to take Paul home with him.

  To take Paul home with him, to have him follow him up the stairs to his room, to stand back to allow him in first when he opened the door, to say, this is where I live – these are my pictures, my books, this is where I sleep alone – no one else has ever been here with me. He would make him tea on the gas ring. Perhaps the baby upstairs would not, for once, be crying and his downstairs neighbours would not be having one of their alarming fights. His room was neat and clean, he always kept it so, and perhaps Paul would take him seriously if he saw that he lived in this self-contained way.

  He imagined showing him some of his drawings, how Paul would stand beside him, some careful expression on his face; how Paul might say this is not quite right or this could be improved if you did this, changed that. He might say nothing at all and there would be an awkwardness between them unlike any other, because Paul would know that there was some pretence going on, that he was seeking the opinion of a man whose work he didn’t respect, and what was the point in that, other than a desperate kind of showing off?

  Edmund glanced at Paul, who was watching the dancers on the tightly packed floor, his face wreathed in smoke so that he could barely be seen. The lights were very dim – although there were many: lamps on the table in front of them, on every table, all darkly shaded in purple and trimmed with silky bobbles that frayed and unravelled to show dull brown cork. Cigarette smoke seemed to rise from these lamps as though they were chimneys, a trick of the light because the smoke was everywhere; every man in the place seemed to be smoking except him. Behind the bar a row of Tiffany lamps, their purple dragonflies spreading their glass wings wide, was reflected in a wall of mirrors. He could watch the two young barmen both front and back as they moved deftly, gracefully, stepping around each other like dancers, the only dancers not touching, not so close that they seemed to be melding into each other’s bodies, their hands down and down one another’s backs so that they moved still closer, grinding close, crushing close in the heat of pressed tight bodies. Not dancers, then, not truly, nothing so decorous. He watched Paul watching them behind his smoke screen.

  Paul had said, ‘I’ve been to those types of clubs, Edmund. They’re places you go to find sex. We’ve no need –’

  He repeated, ‘I want to be seen with you.’

  ‘Why? Besides, in those places no one looks at anyone except themselves and their victim.’

  ‘Victim?’

  ‘Target, then. You know what I mean.’ Exasperated he’d said, ‘I’m surprised at you.’

  But Edmund had persuaded him, and here they were, and Paul had been right when he’d talked of victims and targets; there were men sitting at the bar who stared at him or smiled at him or pursed their mouths and blew kisses at him; men who wore lipstick and eye liner, who made Paul smile and whisper, ‘I’d have that one on a charge: gross misuse of the powder compact,’ Paul’s lips so close to his ear sending a shock through him so that he’d actually jerked away – this was too much intimacy in such a public place, even a place like this, even especially in a place like this that was so serious with intent. He’d realised that Paul was very comfortable here, despite his earlier protestations. Paul would grope and be groped on the dance floor; Paul would grasp another man’s head and shove his tongue down his throat, backing him against the wall, just like the pair they had passed on the stairs; they’d had to edge past them sideways; Paul had grinned at him over his shoulder. He had wanted to go home from that moment.

  Paul turned to him. ‘Don’t you like your cocktail?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Vodka, mainly.’ Paul smiled slowly, and again his lips were close to Edmund’s ear as he said, ‘Thought I’d get you drunk.’ The smile in his voice, the warmth of his breath, sent that same shock through Edmund, and this time he didn’t jerk away, the dancers had had their effect on him, and Paul could be as intimate as he liked, press his hand to his erection and unbutton his flies if he wished. But Paul only took his hand and squeezed it tightly. ‘Would you like to go back to my hotel?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘Not seen enough?’

  ‘We could dance.’

  Paul gazed at him, such a long, long look, his expression softening his features so that he almost seemed like someone else; no, not someone else, only Paul without Paul’s experience, as though a kinder hand had written his fate. Edmund felt himself unable to look away, he wanted to touch his face and feel this transformation, but he thought how that might disrupt the process and bring the other Paul back, the man who should go away for a while.

  He was about to speak, to explain more convincingly than he had before how much he loved him, when Paul stood up and led him on to the floor.

  And the little band plays, and the singer sings some forlorn chanson, and he is held in the boy’s awkward embrace because he is too tall for him, just as Patrick is too tall, and he shouldn’t think of Patrick, not here, not as he rests his head on the boy’s shoulder and feels his arms tighten around him, feels the smooth, fine wool of his jacket against his cheek and thinks of the body beneath it, beneath the evening shirt and vest, the pale, smooth firm skin of him, the soft belly and gold-blond hair tapering from his navel to become luxurious again. He had taken the boy in his mouth and he didn’t believe that anyone else had ever done this for him because he had bucked and groaned so extravagantly, his big hand too heavy on his head as if he might not ever let him go: he would suffocate him in that lush gold hair. Such a memory this one’s becoming, one that will stay with him until death, the smell of him too, the taste and the silkiness of him, and the way he’d cried Oh Christ, my God, sweet Christ, like a martyr in the flames. He’d had to swallow and swallow, held down, all of his mouth, his throat, his sinuses, all his soft tissues, all full of the scent and taste and feel of him, his ears full of blasphemy.

  He hadn’t realised he was such an accomplished cock sucker.

  Now, why have such a thought? Why not concentrate, keep the memory sweet: no irony, no bitterness or distrust – no thinking that the boy is someone other than he is: guileless and innocent, like a child really. No, not a child, an adolescent. Old enough, just. Older than he was when he’d first … Concentrate now, on the shuffling steps, on his warmth, the tenderness of his embrace. The singer is singing about love; the singer is a man dressed as a woman, convincingly: he is fine boned and slim as a girl in his lovely satin dress, but singing about love in an experienced woman’s voice; how strange this is, complicated, he needs to concentrate to make sense of it; the vodka has gone to his head. The boy is stroking his hair. Edmund. Use his name; he hates it when he is boy.

  Bodies nudge them, deliberately he thinks; there may be hands other than Edmund’s on him, quick, speculative, nothing-ventured-nothing-gained hands. He keeps his eyes closed and pictures Edmund’s face, tries to, but it’s elusive; there is only this warmth and tenderness and that’s enough. His smile is extraordinarily warm, strong in his memory, a light he can turn on when other memories crowd him; those memories scuttle back into the dark when he thinks of Edmund’s smile. Sunny boy, sunny and untroubled and fine. Edmund has told him he loves him; he should be troubled by this, but not now. Not as Edmund is stroking his hair, not when he is being soothed. He needs to be soothed, smoothed out, straightened and put right by this boy. Edmund. Edmund. He has an old, old name, the name of a Dark Age king, one that brought light to the nation, peace
and goodwill; a king that lived to a great, great age. In fifty years’ time, Edmund said; if they aren’t dead; they may not be. They may not be. Edmund is an optimist; the sun rises day after day, and he won’t think of Matthew, who is not a prophet, only a deranged man, a sick man; he won’t think of Jenkins weeping; most of all he won’t think of Patrick, who deserves more from him, that faithfulness he hasn’t until now been able to find in his heart; he imagines being faithful to Edmund; yes, he must think only of Edmund, who is nowhere in his past, only in his future.

  The song ends and segues into another; the man/girl/woman hardly pauses for breath. Edmund steps away from him a little and says softly, ‘Come back with me. Not to the hotel …’

  He nods; this is the right thing to do; he is brittle in that hotel room, a man he loathes but can’t help being. In Edmund’s room he will be someone else; he will keep his temper, his impatience and brittleness to himself. Edmund kisses him, long and deep and slow, grasping his head with both his hands. When he breaks from this kiss, Edmund touches his mouth so that he can’t answer back when he says, ‘I love you.’

  Edmund fumbled with his key in the lock; the lock had always been awkward and there was a knack to it – lifting the key a little and turning it sharply; sometimes he can do this easily and the spring of the yielding lock is satisfying, but not now. Paul was too quiet beside him, like a child woken from a deep sleep and made to walk to another room. Perhaps he had drunk too much, although he didn’t think so. He was tired, perhaps. They both were. He imagined Paul falling asleep on his feet, heavy against his shoulder as he struggled with the lock. But the key turned at last; he opened the door and his voice was much too bright and loud as he said, ‘Here we are, then,’ like the sleepy child’s older, braver brother.

  He lit a lamp and his enormous shadow played on the wall. He turned to Paul. ‘Would you like some tea? Or cocoa? I’ve nothing stronger, I’m afraid.’

  Paul sat down on his bed; he seemed not to have heard him. A print of Canaletto’s Return of the Bucintoro to the Molo on Ascension Day was on the wall in Paul’s eye line, a picture Edmund had bought on the Portobello Road, one of his first buys after leaving home, a picture that he had thought serious, full of detailed life. Now he hardly saw it at all, its busyness lost amongst all his other pictures.

  Looking at this print, Paul said absently, ‘I’ve been to Venice. We stayed for a day and a night, in winter … January, I think, cold and damp – we didn’t think Italy could be so cold.’

  He didn’t want to ask whom he was with in Venice; that we: said twice, so painfully, as though a confession was being tortured from him. Perhaps he was referring to his father, the nice, courteous man who had looked at Paul with such a mixture of concern and exasperation, the same expression he saw too often on Paul’s face. In his heart, though, he knew that he was talking about a lover; he suspected the man Paul had painted naked on a bed, the painting many of the men at the exhibition had gathered around as though under some compulsion; there was something in the man’s face they recognised, something he himself had recognised; he remembered how he had avoided that portrait, and how he had looked with such contempt at the man who had bought it. Now his contempt seemed extraordinary in its arrogance, an adolescent ignorance.

  Edmund turned back to the lamp, the kettle beside it on the gas ring; he had filled the kettle earlier in anticipation, not wanting to have to leave Paul alone even for the little time this took, hoping that such foresight wasn’t tempting fate. He shouldn’t be superstitious, although it was hard not to be since he’d met Paul; he needed to touch wood, to cross his fingers, to not walk under ladders or on cracks in the pavement because Paul-who-was-sometimes-called-Francis was unreliable, he knew this in his heart, too. Paul would go away to be Francis, never to be seen again. He tried to ignore this knowledge; it wasn’t certain, after all, and he was doing away with certainties.

  He made tea, sweetening Paul’s without asking because he had noticed how Paul spooned sugar into his tea, how he always seemed to have sweets in his pocket, humbugs and mint imperials, so that the taste of mint had become erotic for him over the last few days. He handed Paul his cup and sat down beside him, keeping a little distance, not wanting to proceed too quickly as they always seemed to. They should drink their tea, talk about nothing very much, like normal people. He thought that perhaps he should have sat on the chair – his only chair – but couldn’t bring himself to; it was always difficult not to touch him, not to keep touching him, and that was not how a normal person behaved.

  Paul sipped his tea then placed the cup and saucer on the floor and took out his cigarettes. Edmund had the idea that he should ask him not to smoke – he didn’t smoke in his room, didn’t like the smell that lingered and stained the walls and ceiling. But he hardly ever saw Paul without a cigarette; his fingers were yellow from tobacco, the only thing about him that he found disgusting – an admission that seemed to him should have the correlation he would inevitably find him disgusting because of what they did together, acts he had never, ever done before. His life could be said to be divided in two, now: BP and AP. He smiled to himself and Paul caught his eye as he lit his cigarette.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’

  ‘You, I think.’

  Paul winced against the smoke as he inhaled. ‘Always smiling isn’t natural. They might put you away.’

  ‘If they caught me.’

  Paul looked down; he seemed to be making a decision about whether he could be bothered to pick up his cup or not. He did, saying, ‘Do you have an ashtray?’

  ‘No. Use your saucer.’

  ‘I don’t like to.’

  ‘I don’t smoke, Paul. Not really. I don’t have all the accoutrements.’

  Paul snorted, an odd, dismissive sound he wouldn’t have thought him capable of, giving him the uncomfortable insight that he really, truly didn’t know him very well at all. Afraid that this mood Paul seemed to be slipping into would make him even more of a stranger, he got up and fetched one of his most crazed and chipped plates. ‘Use this.’

  ‘I’m sorry I smoke so much.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Then you’re the only one who hasn’t minded so far.’

  ‘In that case you don’t have to go any further – you can stop with me and no one will have to mind ever again.’

  He was still standing in front of him, holding out the plate, and Paul looked up at him, frowning. ‘It’s tempting.’

  ‘Be tempted.’

  ‘Why do you like me?’

  Edmund laughed, dismayed at the self-pity in his voice: this wasn’t Paul; perhaps it was Francis. He was sure the man in the portrait had called him Francis. ‘What kind of question is that?’

  ‘A bad one.’ He looked down at his cup. ‘You’re right to look at me in that way. Edmund …’ He looked up at him again. ‘Sit down, don’t tower over me.’

  They sat in silence, a little space between them that caused Edmund’s whole side to ache with the strain of not touching Paul. The Canaletto was directly in his line of vision now, too, and he stared at it, thinking of Paul in a wintery Venice with someone else.

  His room was taking on the alien smell of cigarette smoke, and although the cigarettes Paul smoked were particularly expensive and not as disgusting as they might be, he got up and opened the window a crack. As he sat down again Paul said, ‘I got lost in Venice. I walked out of the hotel and couldn’t find my way back. There was a mist from the sea, you could hardly see a thing, and I couldn’t remember the name of the hotel to ask directions … I panicked, I was so frightened. He found me. I hadn’t gone so far. I was crying my eyes out, like a baby …’ He laughed brokenly and looked down at his cup.

  Edmund waited. He waited and swore to himself he wouldn’t speak until Paul spoke, Paul or Francis or whoever this person was who seemed to want to confess so much. He waited, he even sipped his tea, he even thought about the Canaletto, how he had knocked down the seller’s price a little.
He wouldn’t think about Paul crying so pathetically.

  At last, flicking cigarette ash on to the plate, Paul glanced at him. He said, ‘His name is Patrick, Edmund. We have been together for a long time. We met during the last few months of the war; he was my sergeant …’ he laughed, the same broken, self-conscious noise he had made a moment ago. ‘My sergeant. My rock. He did everything, ran everything, but he had to call me sir. He used to make sir sound like an endearment. Sir, are you all right?’ He laughed again. ‘I was, until I met him, but then there was Patrick, asking if I was all right and I realised I wasn’t all right any more and I couldn’t cope any more, not without him. So I gave up. Caved in. And I know I was weak and cowardly but I just couldn’t seem to help myself.’

  Paul had returned his gaze to the Return of the Bucintoro. For once his cigarette was ignored between his fingers, his lips parted as if he was about to say something else, something he couldn’t quite find the right words for; he blinked and his hand went to his eye, and it seemed that the right words still eluded him because he turned to Edmund and frowned, as if they were schoolboys asked some tricky question. Edmund felt that he should say something. But the only words that occurred to him were, ‘Buck up, old man.’ He would sound like an idiot. Floundering he said, ‘You don’t have to tell me any of this – none of my business, after all,’ and his voice sounded false to him, a bad imitation of his father’s.

  Searching his face, Paul said, ‘I should have kept quiet, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘No!’ He was blustering now, and he laughed, a harsh, desperate noise that had him getting to his feet in a rush of cringing embarrassment. ‘No, of course not – you can tell me anything –’

  ‘I’ve said enough, I think.’ On a rush he added, ‘I’ve been thinking about staying in London. How would that be, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know –’

  ‘I could start again. I could find a place to live, a studio to work in … And if we were discreet and careful … And now you look horrified.’