by Marina Ford
“Ah, I didn’t.”
I expected an awkward moment, but she didn’t wait for it to even start.
“No? Well, too many people do, if you ask me.” She changed the subject. “Frank showed me some of your work. It was breathtaking. I mean it. I literally held my breath, and he had to tell me, he said, ‘Gabriella, lass, breathe!’”
I liked her. She was bubbly and sweet, and much less scary than what Frank had, inadvertently, made her out to be.
Chatting to her took the edge off for me, because the nearer we got to the party, the tenser I felt. I hadn’t seen Harry for two weeks. What if he’d stopped fancying me since then?
The venue appeared modest from the outside—a narrow Victorian building on Bateman Street. We stumbled out of the cab; Chloe and Frank argued about who’d pay, and Gabriella took my arm, gazed up at the sky, and said, “Isn’t it romantic, Joe? The moon is like a pearl on a canvas of satin . . .”
I looked up, surprised to find that her description was accurate. The night did feel . . . momentous?
“That was beautiful,” I said to her.
We rang the door and moments later were let inside by a smiling waitress whose crimson lipstick contrasted with the geisha-white of her foundation.
“Tickets please?” she said.
I showed her the tickets on my phone. She nodded and smiled and said, “Follow me.”
Inside, the space was rather more up-market than the outside led us to believe, with pillars set in the walls and decorative mouldings. Chandeliers cast the rooms in a magnificent, flattering light. As everybody had taken Harry’s order of “casual party” attire to mean “meeting the Queen,” my friends and I were the only people there not dressed to the nines. Well, except for Chloe, who did, as usual, look like she’d escaped from the set of Sunset Boulevard.
We were first spotted by Maya, who was very chic in a frilly, floor-length dress of dark purple, with a black hijab. She beamed when she saw me.
“Joseph, you naughty boy,” she said. “You’re late, you missed the big speech!”
“Okay, I should have known better than to think Harry would ever have a simple party,” I said. “What speech? Are we receiving the Pope? Why is everybody so formal?”
“Don’t you know”—her eyes twinkled up at me—“we are in very exalted company.”
“I knew it. He did invite the Pope.”
She laughed. “Not quite. But you’ll recognize a few faces for sure. Who’d you bring?”
I introduced my rather ramshackle entourage, but Maya didn’t seem to notice anything amiss with them.
“Here, there’s a waiter with a tray,” she said, waving at a handsome young Spanish man who floated about the place gracefully, with long champagne glasses reflecting the tasteful lighting. We all received a glass, and Maya offered to introduce us to anybody we liked.
“Most of these are our clients, some are contacts Harry has in the mayor’s office,” she explained. Then, in a conspiratorial whisper, she added, “The strange ones are Malcolm’s family. You be nice to them, you hear?”
“I’m always nice!”
“Oi, Joe.” Frank elbowed me. “So, which one’s your chap?”
“Over there,” Chloe said, tipping the champagne glass up and downing it in one gulp. “Where’s Enrique Iglesias? I’m out of tipple.”
There was Harry. My heart lifted. He was standing slightly turned away from me, talking with great animation to a distinguished Indian couple. One of his colleagues saw me, stood in Harry’s field of vision, gave him a sign that I was there, and he turned, eyebrows raised, eyes peeled. Chloe had coached me about how to play it cool when I saw him again. I wished this were a movie where everything suddenly goes into slow motion in moments like this. Instead, everything went too quickly. There I was, staring and grinning at him.
He smiled. It was the smile of long familiarity, a sort of ah, there you are smile.
Frank said something to me, but I didn’t hear. Chloe was pulling on my sleeve, but it was like she was in another room. I just wanted to say something to Harry. I wanted to hear his voice.
But then his eyes didn’t really meet mine. I only noticed it when the figure he had actually been waiting for moved past me and towards him. A large, suited figure. The figure of Kieran Jones.
It was like watching someone slip in front of a racing bus. Stunned, I could do nothing as the horror unfolded before me.
They greeted each other. Harry approached him like he wanted to hug, but seemed to instead stretch his hand out for a shake and then decide against it. Kieran patted his shoulder. Nice one, Kieran, I thought, bitterly. Why not pat him on the head, while you’re at it? Moron.
I became suddenly aware of how far away Harry actually was from me—at the other end of a very crowded room. It felt like a greater distance than that. Like he was in another country. I swallowed something hard that had lodged in my throat.
“Joe?”
I stirred, at last, and blinked.
“Yeah?” I turned to Frank.
“I know the DJ,” Frank said. “Want to see if we can get her to bring this zombie fest to life?”
I barely registered him, but yes, I did want to move away from where I was and do something, anything, other than stand here and watch Harry gaze at Kieran like that.
Maya and Gabriella were engaged deep in conversation, and Chloe had been recognized by one of her admirers and was allowing him to gush over how well she looked. Frank and I walked through a doorless opening to where the DJ stood on a little podium. Her name was Verena, and moments later Frank was kissing her cheeks and they were reminiscing about that time when they performed together at the Ultra Europe festival in Croatia. Frank’s not musical in the slightest, but he’d been drunk at the time and somebody’d dared him, and he’d done much more for far less.
“That was the first time I crowd-surfed!” He laughed, while Verena brayed like a horse, crying, “Crowd-surfed? You were butt naked and they were carrying you away from security!”
Frank puffed out his chest.
“Would have got away, too, if they hadn’t pulled my leg off.”
“Stupid,” Verena said, ruffling Frank’s head.
I needed something to eat. Not really because I was hungry, but to get a moment away, to be by myself. A waitress in a Janelle Monáe suit floated past with canapés. I followed.
“Is that beef?” I asked, trying to discern something of the tiny little collections of crumbs on the tray.
“Joe?”
I looked up from the silver platter, astonished at this directness, and then recognized the waitress. The room suddenly felt very small, and the doors very far away. I forced my chest to expand to breathe.
“Amy.”
Last time I’d seen her, my mum and I had just been D-ed, and she and her sister ignored my mum’s “good morning” and crossed the street. My mum had looked as if she’d been slapped.
“Oh my God!” she said, feeling none of my reserve apparently. “You look amazing! How have you been?”
Fear hooked my stomach. An old feeling, like I’d just remembered an exam I hadn’t prepared for. I found myself scanning the room for my other “brothers” and “sisters.”
Amy seemed to be the only one, and she was smiling at me, waiting for a response.
“Good?” I ventured.
“Is it true what they say?” she said, leaning in, as if sharing a secret.
Considering the sort of stuff I’d heard my “brothers” and “sisters” say about those who’d become “worldly” I couldn’t imagine what she meant, but it couldn’t have been anything nice.
“That depends, I suppose.”
She smiled conspiratorially. “They said you left to find your family in Africa and became a prince in Nigeria.”
I bit my lip. She seemed absolutely serious, and I didn’t want to guffaw in her face.
“No, I’m not a Nigerian prince,” I said. “But thanks for checking.”
She coloured, leaned back. “Oh, sorry. I thought— There was this woman who came by the Kingdom Hall once, looking for you. I thought—”
Someone waved for the canapés, and she reached for my arm, pressed it, and said, “Catch you later, yeah?”
What woman? Frowning, I watched her go.
“Pst.”
Someone touched my elbow. Brown hair in a carefully crafted disorder, a crooked smile on his lips, and a glint of a dirty memory in his silver eyes. “Hey, stranger,” Harry said. “Hiding, are we?”
“Hunting for food, actually.”
I got to play it cool after all, even though all my senses were heightened and I really wanted to kiss the corner of his smirk.
“Ah, I’ve got something for you,” he said with no small sense of satisfaction. He took my hand in a warm, firm clasp and throwing, “Come, let me show you,” over his shoulder, he walked me through to the other end of the room. There was a door, painted the same fashionable dark grey as the wall, and he opened it only slightly to let us through. On the other side, there was nothing but a staircase in semidarkness. He closed the door behind us, making it darker still.
“What are we—” I began, but he reached for the front of my shirt and pulled me to him in one smooth move, placing a kiss on my lips. The kissing. It was like the sun came up again, bursting into the sky in shades of blood orange and gold.
I tugged on his belt.
“No, not here,” he said, stopping me. “That’s not what I wanted to show you. I just—I just haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Not my fault. I never went anywhere.”
“Well, I missed—” He stopped, shook his head, and seemed to laugh at himself. “Never mind. Can I show it to you now?”
“You just said not here!”
“Not that, you perv. It’s downstairs.”
We went down two flights of stairs, to a cooler basement area, and through a big, heavy door into a professional kitchen.
“What’s this?”
“I remembered how hungry you got, so I prepared,” he said, grinning at me over his shoulder. “Wouldn’t want to find you gnawing on my thigh later this evening.”
“You sure about that?”
He chuckled, and then crossed the long silver cooking range to the oven and pulled out a foil-covered plate. He unwound it delicately, ceremoniously. A plate of fish and chips.
“I made it myself,” he said, scratching the back of his head, a little redder about the cheeks. “It’s a special recipe of mine.”
“A special— Mate, this is—” I didn’t know what to say. I looked about me—he’d clearly only cooked that one meal. There were potato peels on a small part of the surface, and bread crumbs, and he’d clearly used the deep fryer, because the basket had been washed and was lying, still dripping, upside down on a rack.
“Are you going to eat it?” he asked.
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Right. Eating. I had to make my mouth stop smiling first. “Thank you.”
We shared the chips, and I asked him how he’d found the time to cook.
“I was a little nervous before it started,” he said with a humble shrug. “So I thought I’d do something with my hands. What do you think?”
They were the best fish and chips I’d ever eaten. They tasted of someone making a meal just for you. Sweet and warm and like home.
“Marry me,” I said, putting my hand dramatically to my heart.
He shoved my shoulder, laughing. “Idiot. Eat your fish.”
While I ate, he told me of his trip to Berlin. He’d gone there to meet a young Russian activist who’d been imprisoned and now, released, was publishing a sort of memoir or call to action.
“I really want it,” he told me. “But she’s justifiably scared of publicity.”
“And publicity is what you do.”
He nodded. “Hell yeah. I want that book in every house in the country. We are so bloody oblivious to the world around us and my job is so—” He sighed with frustration. “Well, there’s something I can do, something we’re good at, and I want to do it.”
“What does Malcolm say?”
“He thinks it’s stupid. But if I host parties like these, and he can invite his aunts and uncles and have them meet the mayor or someone they’ve seen on TV, then I can keep him happy and go after my own things. Things that matter, you know?”
He was hot when he was righteous.
“I can help you,” I said. “I can do book covers or posters, if you like.”
“Thank you, but it will be a modest undertaking, if I get it at all—”
“I mean it,” I said. “I’d be honoured to do something. You can pay me in shags. I warn you, though, I’m expensive.”
Laughingly, he grabbed my collar again and kissed me.
He could not hide from his own party for long. I’d have stayed there with him all evening, and he seemed inclined to linger, but his phone was buzzing in his pocket, and we knew someone upstairs needed him.
I finished the whole plate and then washed it up, and then we went back upstairs together. Once back in the crowd, he had to attend his business, and I searched for my friends.
Frank had convinced Verena to play funk, and he and Gabriella were now leading the dance floor. Chloe was already tipsy. She was sitting on a tall barstool, and had acquired three more men in her entourage. She was entertaining them with stories of how she’d inspired Kurt Schwitters in the sixties, and how she’d hung out with Francis Bacon and David Hockney.
It was amusing to me how self-important she became when surrounded by those fawning idiots.
“She’s like—like Jeanne Duval!” one of her acolytes told me, his ashen complexion positively shining in a blush of admiration.
“Didn’t Duval give Baudelaire syphilis?” I asked.
“Kiki De Montparnasse!”
“Drugs and alcohol,” I recollected. “Neal Cassady, perhaps?”
He shot me a poisonous glare, and I left, amused. The party seemed to be swinging now. Frank’s music choices (or Verena’s desire to impress him with hers) were waking these people up, and in the dancing room, the crowd was going steadily wilder.
In the first room, though, everything was still pretty staid and dignified. I went around, in search of Harry, to see if I could lend a hand with anything. As I moved across the room, I suddenly found myself almost at Kieran’s elbow. Shit. Better turn around. He was engaged in a low-voiced conversation with a handsome old gentleman in a velvet suit jacket. I didn’t want them to notice me, so I turned back, only to nearly trip into another man.
This one wore glasses, and his grey-brown hair was licked back from his forehead with something very flat.
“Oh! You’re the gay, aren’t you?” he said, very pleased to see me, apparently.
I stared at him. He was looking right at me, but I still hoped he might have meant someone else. He laughed. “I’m Paul! You work for my nephew Malcolm, don’t you?”
“Ah, yes?”
I could feel Kieran turning beside me. The older gentleman he was with was observing me with stormy-grey eyes.
“No, no, don’t worry,” Paul said and then, winking, he added, “I’m awake, as you young people say. I know what’s what, and all that, eh?”
Eh indeed, was my first thought. But having had experience with networking, I knew better than to say anything. What would Harry do in this situation? Probably smile and nod and find a way out with a smooth word.
“Sure,” I said.
“Want one?” he asked, taking out a box of Marlboro Lights.
“I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to smoke in here.”
“Let me ask you something,” he said, sticking the cigarette behind his ear. “How difficult is it to be gay? I mean, on a scale of one to being married to a greedy arsehole, how terrible is it?”
I blinked, surprised. “Excuse me?”
“I was married, you know,” he said. “Twenty years. Can you tell?”
He looked
exactly like someone who’d been married twenty years, but trying to be polite I shook my head.
“She took me for everything. Just one day upped sticks and left, and took half my bank account with her. All the women I meet now, all they want to know is how much I earn and how big my house is. And when you tell them that you live with your mother and that you have the kids with you half the week, they lose interest at once. So, I’ve been thinking. I’d bloody love to have a boyfriend. Not the sex part, but all the rest. You could go out and see the footie together. He could pay the bloody bill once in a while. Nobody to nag at you. You could fart in front of each other. Heaven, if you ask me.”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Gosh, I don’t know where to begin.”
“How well would I do on your gay Tindr or Tumblr or what have you?” he asked, leaning back a little and presenting himself to me with his hand. His nose had the colour of smoked trout, his shirt stretched over the gut of a woman in her second trimester.
“I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“Be honest. I’m okay with cuddling. And we could have an open sort of relationship, so he can go and get his rocks off with some other bloke and then come back to me. It’s unusual, I grant you, but surely there must be somebody . . .”
“I—I really don’t think a gay cuddler is what you want,” I said, diplomatically. “Dating is hard for everybody, regardless. I’d say it’s sort of harder for gay men, anyway.”
“You’re having me on!” he cried. “I thought you guys . . . you know . . . like rabbits!”
It’s at this moment that Harry glided in, laughing nervously. “Mr. Peppard! How are you? I thought I missed you coming in. Has Maya shown you our canapés yet?”
He moved the old weirdo away from me and into Maya’s direction. Kieran lifted his glass at me in a gesture of congratulations. “I think you’ve pulled, mate.”
Harry turned to me with a surprised tilt to his head.
The old man, who’d been standing by watching the scene with a disgusted frown, sniffed.
“Malcolm had better keep his family under control,” he grumbled. “One of his aunts arrived drunk and is sleeping under that table.”
“Yes, thanks, Dad,” Harry said. “You could give me a hand, you know.”