The Swimming-Pool Library

by Alan Hollinghurst

  I have omitted to mention the smell, which as soon as the ship docked & the wind it made was stilled, rose to the nostrils from the land. ‘Ah, the East!’ Harrap had said connoisseurially. It is not a smell one could anticipate, or even much care for in itself, but I relished its authenticity at once—a dusty dryness, & a sweetness, a foetor, as it might be near some perpetual meat-market, a smell utterly unhygienic and inevitable.

  The other streets here might have borne exploring, but I was thirsty & went to sit in the shade of the tea-terrace. The tea, served impractically in a glass, was refreshing, somehow muddy & more sustaining than tea I am used to. All the while there was Sinai, very hazily apparent in the distance, & near to the spectacle of the ship being refuelled, which is done by an endless chain of Egyptians, some in blue or white djellabas, others naked but for a knotted nappy around the loins, lean, by & large, & sinewy. All the while they pass on baskets of coal, their foreman leading them in monotonous chanting, a call raised, a general echoing response, the words, indistinguishable to my Oxford Arabic, intensifying the impression of changeless pharaonic labour. Meanwhile on the quay, & even for a while from the bows of the ship until an official stopped them, three or four youths, virtually naked & entrancingly wild & fearless, were diving for coins.

  As I sat & watched them, my pleasure & fascination evident perhaps in my gaze, a handsome young man with the immemorial flat, broad features of the Egyptian, a blue djellaba & a circular embroidered hat that made him look like an exotic afterthought of Tiepolo, sidled among the tables towards me, half-concealing behind him a battered valise. I had been thoroughly trained to expect him & his inevitable offers of fake antiquities, but as I was still alone—the others not yet having arrived at the rendezvous—& in my mood of exultant curiosity & celebration, I let him approach. The major-domo, I noticed, kept an eye out for my reaction, & when I did not object, looked at the youth in a way which suggested some sinister understanding between them, as if, the protocol of deference having been observed, I was now a legitimate victim of their antique trade.

  ‘You see Lesseps statue, m’sieu,’ he said, standing over me solicitously.

  ‘No, no,’ I replied tolerantly.

  ‘Is very good, m’sieu. You like. You like, I take you. Only 50 piastres. Is most instructive.’

  ‘No thank you,’ I said firmly, but with an amused look, I suppose, which may have encouraged him—if encouragement were needed—to carry on. He hoisted his case up then on to the table, although I raised a hand to promise him it was no use.

  ‘Here is postcard picture of statue of Lesseps, m’sieu. Is most instructive & also relaxing. Also is only ten piastres.’ I bought one of these &, since we wd not go there, one of the Pharos & one of Pompey’s Pillar. Encouraged, he rummaged inside a cloth bag, & produced a small brown bottle, taking the opportunity too to pull a chair up beside me & sit down. He had a strong, not particularly pleasant smell. ‘Here is very special drink, m’sieu. Very good for you & for your lady.’ He looked at me keenly & I felt myself colour. ‘Is the cocktail of love, m’sieu. Is the wine of Cleopatra.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ I said, flustered. To my surprise he was sensitive to this & put the bottle away. He seemed prepared already to give me up, afraid to overstep the mark, & packed up his case again; some other Europeans approached an adjacent table, & I was glad to be seen successfully repulsing this mountebank, fascinating & confidential though he was. Leaning forwards as though to rise, & so hiding what he did from our neighbours, he produced, almost prestidigitated, from inside his robe, from somewhere mysterious about his person, a hand of postcards which he quickly fanned & as quickly swept together again & covered. It should not have surprised me that there was a market for such things here. He may only have been taking an inspired commercial guess in showing them to me. But I was keenly dismayed, humiliated, feeling that he had read me like a book & I, in the glimpse I caught of naked poses—all male, young boys, fantastically proportioned adults, sepia faces smiling, winking—had confusedly admitted as much. I declined him sternly, & with an amiable, philosophical bow he withdrew to pester the newly arrived party.

  Tonight we travel south along the Canal. I have just walked on deck under stars; it was quite bracingly cold. Beyond the sheer canal walls there are occasional lights & fires: otherwise featurelessness & a distant horizon of hills to the east, and plain to the west, just perceptible as darker than the sky. Like a child I feel far too excited to sleep through my first night in Africa.

  A couple of weeks later Charles rang me. As usual he was already talking when I raised the apparatus to my ear: ‘… my dear, and too appalled to hear that you’ve been vandalised.’

  ‘Charles! I’m much better now. I’ve got a false tooth very cleverly sort of welded on at the front …’

  ‘I’ve only just heard about it from our friend Bill.’

  ‘I didn’t know he knew.’

  ‘I was most dismayed. I went for a swim, you see. I hoped I might find you there. But I suppose …’

  ‘I haven’t been going in while I’ve been looking so hideous, but I hope to make an appearance in the next few days.’

  ‘Were you badly hurt?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got some cracked ribs, and there’s not much you can do about them, you just have to let them mend. The only permanent defect is a broken nose.’

  ‘Oh dear …’

  ‘It gives me a sort of pugilistic look—quite like one of Bill’s boys.’

  ‘Even so … Who’s been looking after you? Can I send you bouquets?’

  ‘I have a wonderful doctor, and a very sweet friend. I’m fine.’

  There followed a typical Nantwich pause, which, heard over the telephone, was more disconcerting than when one was with him. I stood expectantly by. Suddenly he was on the air again. ‘Come over to Staines’s tomorrow, if you want to see something really extraordinary.’

  ‘I had a fairly extraordinary time there a few weeks ago.’

  ‘It may be a bit vulgar. About seven o’clock.’ There were a few seconds of reedy respiration, and then he hung up.

  I remembered from something he had said before—about Otto Henderson’s cartoons being ‘vulgar’—that this was a word Charles used, as I had used it when a little boy, to mean indecent, in the manner of, say, a rude joke. Of course, anything remoter from the vulgus than the arty pornography of Henderson and Staines would have been hard to imagine; but it was telling that in his euphemism Charles made the connection, as though his taste for them somehow joined him with the crowd.

  It was the crowd in the sense of the little clan, the gathering of half a dozen queens, that I joined when I went to Ronald Staines’s, feeling for the first time restored and randy, and enjoying the breeze that set the chestnuts and cherry trees along the pavements sighing.

  Bobby answered the bell. ‘Jolly good,’ he said, letting me in and then conducting me across the hall with a heavy arm around my shoulder, a kind of gentlemanly muffling of eroticism which also disguised his need for support: he was already extravagant and slow with drink. ‘Jolly glad you could come,’ he said. ‘Not brought your little friend this time, then?’

  ‘I’m not sure he has a career as a model.’

  Bobby laughed tremendously at this. ‘I liked him, I must say,’ he confessed, as if discussing with colleagues an underqualified applicant for a job.

  In the white, selfconscious drawing-room Staines sprang up when I entered. He had on blue, baggy workman’s trousers but with a very high, belted waist that gave him the look of someone in a Forties film; a checked camp shirt, the sleeves tightly rolled up around wiry biceps, the pale hairless arms somehow improperly revealed; and blue, rubber-soled sailing shoes, which completed the fantasy image of the man prepared for action.

  ‘My dear, how perfectly perfect of you to come,’ he welcomed me. ‘We’re all so relieved that you’re better.’ I came forward sheepishly but proudly, like an injured games hero at school, almost expecting sporting applause. Bo
bby only let go of me to move towards the drinks table.

  There was a perceptible conflict of claims on me as Charles, seated monumentally on the sofa, slower on the uptake, half turned to see me and then reached out his left hand for his unconventional and friendly greeting. ‘Ah, William. Let me see the worst. Let me see what they’ve done to my Boswell.’ He wore an elderly, Aschenbachish cream linen suit, not unstained.

  I went and sat beside him, and he took my hand again as he searched my face, appraised it as he had before. He offered no verdict, except ‘Well, at least I saw it before they spoilt it.’

  ‘Is it really so bad?’

  But he only patted my hand and then threw it away. ‘How’s the great work?’ he wanted to know.

  Staines, unprepared for Charles’s possessiveness, cut in here with instructions that we must drink. ‘And then there’s Aldo,’ he said, swivelling with extended hand and producing a small, curly-haired young man in graphic jeans from behind his armchair. As I walked round I saw that he had been looking through a pile of photographs on the floor. I shook his surprisingly large red hand, and he gave a privileged sort of smirk. ‘Aldo’s my bummaree,’ said Staines, ‘my John the Baptist.’ He had a nice, alert little body, and I realised he must be a part of the planned vulgarity.

  The martinis were extremely, almost disagreeably, strong on an empty stomach, and gave me a light head at once. We talked frothily for a while—Aldo, however, saying nothing at all, although Staines spoke for him in a supercilious way: ‘Oh Aldo doesn’t care for that, do you, Aldo?’ or, to suggest that under other circumstances the Italian might be a desirable conversationalist, ‘That’s what Aldo always says.’ Then Staines would touch some part of him and Bobby would nod and raise his eyebrows, as if to say there was no limit to what these queens would do.

  I was some way through my second drink when Staines asked us all to go through—not to the dining-room (‘We will have a special meal later’) but to the studio. I got an unpleasant feeling that we were all going to watch a sex film, and that with this company it would be most embarrassing and anaphrodisiac. Charles took my arm, more to connect me to himself than as a prop: he was clipping us together and hardly leant on me at all. There was an odd and rather revolting attitude of suppressed expectancy on everyone’s face, and I saw that I was the only one who did not know for sure what was going on.

  I was more confused in the studio, where there was a noise of other people, and we hovered for a while as our host rushed off with a great air of professionalism and urgency. The romantic Edwardian backdrop, with its balustrade and overhanging cloudy branches, was in position, and in front of it the fat-cushioned chaise-longue from the garden. A couple of blond teenagers in wing-collars and tight, striped pants were sitting there, passing what was left of a thick joint back and forth, cupped under the hand, as doormen keep their illicit fag from view or from the rain. Lights and reflectors in an arc defined a kind of acting area, divided from us by a clutter of chairs. ‘Everybody got a drink?’ said Bobby, very heartily. ‘For God’s sake sit down. This could take hours.’

  Charles seated himself on a creaking old carver, and looked around a bit fussily for me to pull up a chair beside him. Aldo sat down neatly on my other side, and drew protectively on his long drink. Beyond him Bobby extended his legs from one chair to another. My ignorance and foreboding added to the social discomfort and I leant over to whisper to Charles: ‘Who are these boys?’

  He looked startled. ‘What, these boys? But … you don’t know them? I thought …’ He tugged out a handkerchief from his breast pocket and ran it back and forth under his nose. ‘Most naughty and wicked boys.’ He coughed, as if discretion forbade him to say more, and then tucked the hanky away.

  ‘More important, what are they going to do?’

  ‘Oh …’

  I felt foolish, reddened a little; was annoyed too, but really peculiarly drunk. One of the boys, better-looking, I thought, was flicking at the other’s fringe with his fingertips. The other smiled woozily, and gripped himself between the legs. There was something familiar about him, some faint blur on the screen of memory. Then they turned to look into the shadows beyond, where a figure was moving, in and out of my view, dark—black. I couldn’t see him when his quiet but resonant voice was heard: ‘How’s you boys feelin’?’

  ‘Want a bit?’ said the looker, with tartish expressionlessness, holding up the joint.

  ‘I’m stoned, baby,’ was the reply, melodious, rather stern. When he came forward nonetheless to have a pull on the last papery thumbnail’s length of the joint I knew his handsome, lined face at once, the huge, challenging, mobile eyes, the pink of his inner lips, as if at any second he would lick them clean of raspberry fool. And then of course I knew the boys.

  ‘Oh Abdul, Abdul,’ Charles was calling, in his most invocative and hammy voice. The chef came over, not now with the serious, solicitous manner of the Club dining-room but with a kind of flirtatious nonchalance, as if he were a fellow member. They shook hands, Charles hanging on as Abdul withdrew his long, powerful fingers.

  ‘All right, Charlie?’ said the black man genially, amazingly.

  ‘You remember my young friend William.’

  ‘How are you, William.’ He shook my hand too, in a casual fashion, and gave a drugged grin. ‘Come to see the show.’ He looked along to Aldo and Bobby, who clearly needed no introduction, and closing his eyes and biting his lower lip ground his hips around slowly, as if dancing to some very sexy music in his head.

  I was nearly shocked by this, and dazed and gulping like an innocent. Though he was twice my age I fancied Abdul crazily, was seriously moved by him. I remembered how I had watched those places where his black, black skin disappeared into his white chef’s uniform, the wrists and the long, thick neck, and the awareness I had of his body. As he turned away I followed him with what was probably a look of stricken devotion. It was the high, haunted African brow, and the high, rolling African ass, and the long, dangling, fishing, musical hands.

  Staines came rattling back in at this point, carrying a camera on a tripod, its legs unsplayed making it tall and unwieldy. I suppose it was inevitable that it would be a film, that this swaying, powerful chef, with all his virile elegance, would be doing something with these common little waiters. I was surprised to remember that Charles had told me there was no dining at Wicks’s on a Sunday evening. But I was staggered to think that he—and Staines—could actually lure the staff elsewhere and make them act out those fantasies which they must have fathered in sly glances over their fatty beef, soapy veg and boiled school puddings. What bizarre transactions and transitions must have taken place. The whole thing had that achieved bizarrerie which made it normal to the participants, demonic to the outsider.

  Staines’s hand was on my shoulder. ‘It’s the very last bit, dear,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be the most wonderful film ever. We’ve been doing it for months now—a cast of tens … I thought you’d like to see us polish it off in this sensationally sensational scene.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I hesitated. The backdrop, cracked in places where it had been rolled up, took on an air of redundant charm as the lights were switched on, isolating an area of tawdry small-ness in which the action was clearly to unfold.

  Aldo grew confidential. ‘Is very old-fashion,’ he explained. ‘I am in another part, in the garden. There I met the young milordo, and we do all sort of thing, and up a ladder too. Now he is on holiday, and the servant is left—just Derek and Raymond and Abdul.’ Aldo fluttered his lashes at me, restoring an illusion of gentility, as if we had been discussing the new vicar, and whether or not he favoured the Series III communion. I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t wondered what it would be like to make a porn film. I had cast my own on parched, electric mornings after, putting the boys through their paces; but those were unstable little loops, that oxidised and decomposed in the light of day. I wasn’t sure it would be possible to watch these acts, fearing to be aroused, fearing not t
o be.

  Charles laid his hand on my forearm. ‘Isn’t our chef a splendid fellow? He’s devoted to me, you know. Utterly devoted.’

  The camera had not yet begun to run, but Abdul, seemingly careless of whether or not he started, strolled back on to the set. He wore a sumptuous calf-length fur coat, and, as one saw when he sat back on the bed and it fell open, nothing else. His flat stomach was crossed by the longest scars I had ever seen, as though long ago, and with the crudest means, someone had removed all his insides. With his scarred black skin inside the thick black fur he struck me, who adored him for a moment, like some exquisite game animal, partly skinned and then thrown aside still breathing. I excused myself for the lavatory, tiptoed to the front door; but then slammed it behind me.

  9

  No headaches; painless breathing; bruises, with all their touchy, indwelling tenderness, mysteriously fading out: I felt well again, whole, and wholesome. I didn’t need the decadent secrecy of Charles and his pals—and as I had left Staines’s house I had thought of putting the whole thing behind me. Why be encumbered with the furtive peccadilloes of the past, and all the courteous artifice of writing them up? I wasn’t playing the same game as that lot. I looked forward to clear July days, days of no secrets, of nothing but exercise and sun, and the company of Phil. I was enthralled, almost breathless, at the very idea of men, the mythological beauty of them running under trees and sunlight in the Avenue or in the long perspectives of Kensington Gardens. But I was pure and concentrated as well. No longer loathing myself I was once again in love, and turning the full beam of my devotion upon Phil. I dreaded somehow to find that he had grown complicated, that my hatefulness of the past few weeks had left a stain on him, or eroded that ingenuousness which struck me almost as a property of his body, residing speechlessly in his palms and wrists, in his strong calves and ridged stomach, in the crisp hair above his cock, in the pumping heart I laid my ear to, the neck I kissed and bit, the glossy, speckled darkness of his pupils in which I looked and looked and saw myself, miniature, as if engraved on a gemstone, looking.