by Alan Clark
There had been no further scene, no drama at all. In the morning she’d merely sent a servant to my room with a note saying I’d been booked on the noon train back to Glenlyon. I would be spending the rest of the vacation there. I’d scrawled a long, dishonest reply pleading I’d had some champagne, had never done such a thing before and never would again. There was no response. Like me, Granny had always had a temper, but her rages usually passed like summer storms. I’d waited in the Gilded Hall with my suitcases for the minicab to come. The great space had looked oddly different that morning, not quite as I recognized it. I’d glanced round at all the familiar things; the chandeliers, the tall mirrors; the faces in the portraits I’d known for so long. But at that moment they’d seemed like a jury after it had passed its verdict; shifty, uncomfortable, wishing I would go away. And I had, in a Ford Capri with seats of cracked beige leather, driven by a sweaty man with a moustache. I’d gazed back at the house till it had vanished inside the oaks. It had taken me in, protected me and I had let it down. An air freshener thing swung from the rear-view mirror, pumping out the sickly smell of lilies, appropriate for a sort of death.
I’d written another letter when I reached the dormitory at Glenlyon with the iron bedsteads and linoleum floor. Miss Wishart had been surprised to see me, asking if my grandmother had been taken ill. I wasn’t summoned south that Christmas as usual. I’d sent a card and a present, but nothing arrived in return. It had been almost a year before I’d understood that I might never see her again. The loss of belonging had begun.
ELEVEN
The stars above Mount Royal, re-arranged by the Poor Clares, continued to shine down benignly upon us. All Vic’s press notices were excellent. In the Guardian, Polly Toynbee said she’d wanted to marry him since she was twelve and saw no reason to change her mind now. Countless bouquets arrived at the gates; Dolores turned his rooms into Kew Gardens and Big Frankie produced an Afro-Caribbean breakfast that occupied three trays.
At lunchtime, a statement was issued from Lambeth Palace and a copy hand-delivered to Mount Royal. The newly-appointed Primate Of All England, the youngest-ever incumbent, said that he ‘understood where his African brother was coming from’ and empathized with ‘the struggle to reconcile traditional values in a “whatever” world.’ He wanted to stress however that his brother’s views on chemical castration might be at odds with the Church of England’s policies on inclusiveness. He added that, though he and his wife were die-hard Spandau Ballet fans, he was sure they had a Vic d’Orsay CD somewhere in their collection. Vic was delighted and within the hour Big Frankie and the lilac scooter were roaring across Lambeth Bridge with Vic’s entire recorded oeuvre tied up with a pretty red ribbon.
I rang Ms Prada to tell her that I’d cried in Elspeth’s lap. Well I didn’t mention the lap actually in case she went careering off down the wrong track. She’d seen the media coverage and had been expecting a call.
‘Things are really moving,’ she said. ‘Come in tomorrow.’
Then, at last, Faisal phoned from Wales. He’d been shut up in his conference centre discussing lipoproteins and running up mountains. But now he knew what had happened. He spoke very softly, even for Faisal. He wanted to know why I’d not been in touch. Was I okay? I told him things were fine and not to worry.
‘It was my parents who told me,’ he said. ‘They’d seen the papers.’
‘Ah. What’s the reaction?’
‘Oh, they’re thrilled to bits. Just a bit disappointed that my name wasn’t mentioned.’
‘Seriously? Hey, that’s progress.’
I heard a long ironic exhalation, which was unusual because Faisal didn’t really do irony any more than he did jokes.
‘They’re hysterical, Rory. I’ve been summoned back to Slough. I’m just setting off now.’
‘Shite, what did your father say?’
‘A lot of stuff. None of it very nice and most of it at a high volume. He’s given me an ultimatum.’
There was a pause.
‘If I don’t leave Mount Royal, and you, he won’t ever speak to me again.’
*
There’s a glaring omission in The Man-Love Manual. Where’s the chapter on ‘Meeting His Mother’? Not a bloody word. Surely it’s more important than all the stuff on tantric massage, sharing a bathroom and the symptoms of syphilis rolled into one? I mean it’s a difficult area, right? Not only are you responsible for shat-tering the poor woman’s dream of grandchildren, but the chances of shopping together for a bra are minimal. The omission was regrettable because Mrs Khan had been my first ‘mother’ and I’d screwed it up good and proper.
The setting itself had not been conducive to success, a cramped corner table in a coffee-shop near Baker Street tube. I’d suggested the bar of the Groucho, which I always proposed when I couldn’t be bothered to think. Faisal had shaken his head in disbelief and also nixed tea at The Landmark. His mother would be more comfortable in a place she knew. The coffee-shop was where they met every Wednesday, on his afternoon off from the hospital. His father didn’t know, believing she was with a housebound friend. So there we were, surrounded by intense people jabbing at laptops and school-kids giggling into mobiles.
Faisal had told her about his new friend and she’d said she’d like to meet me. She’d been a sad-looking wee woman, dressed in a drab full-length Muslim thing with the headscarf to match. Not unlike a version of Elspeth in fact. But I’d been as nervous as she was and I’d over-compensated. I’d tried to kiss her hand, which was a major boo-boo. When the coffees arrived, I’d wit-tered on about my brief spell working on a Peruvian plantation and the subtleties of growing the arabica bean. Basically I’d given her the full charm offensive and it’d had the opposite effect. Her face had gradually frosted over like a car windscreen on a winter afternoon. Then, when she’d spilt her coffee, I’d made a loud fuss because the waitress had been slow in bringing a cloth and that had only made things worse.
I’d watched Faisal trying to dredge up subjects we might have in common, but the conversation had eventually floundered, gasped for breath and then expired. I’d ended up ogling a guy on the next table, while Mrs Khan gave Faisal the gruesome details of his Auntie Shazia’s radical mastectomy. She’d refused a second cup of coffee. She’d had to be getting back because Khan’s Tools & Hardware was having a sale of paints and Faisal’s father was coping on his own. We’d walked her across to the tube, her arm slipped through Faisal’s. She’d kissed him and shaken my hand from as far away as possible in case I’d tried any further intimacy. That was when she’d bowled the googly.
‘Are you a good man, Mr Blaine?’
‘Um, well, a work in progress at least.’
‘Will you be a good man to my boy?’ the little woman had asked as the commuters heaved around us. ‘I need to know that he has someone in his life who will look out for him. He tells me that it’s you. So I thank you for that. And you have a nice head of hair. That will stand you in good stead.’
Then she’d evaporated into the Circle Line.
‘Mum lives in a very small world,’ Faisal had said as we’d walked back to the car. ‘Just Dad, the family, the store. Today was a big step for her.’
‘And I messed it up.’
‘Next time try Force 2 instead of Force 8. She’ll cope a lot better.’
Faisal had come out to his parents about a year before we’d met. His precious father had said nothing, just got up and left the room. Then a letter had arrived at the hospital asking Faisal not to come home for the time being. The photo of their son the Oxford graduate had been taken down from its position above the shop counter. A few days later, Mr Khan had taken a swig from a bottle of white spirit instead of the mineral water standing right beside it on the counter. The white spirit had been on special offer. An unfortunate accident, the police said. For a few hours, it’d been touch and go. When Mr Khan had surfaced from the painkillers, his son was by his bedside. After that, it had never again been suggested that Faisal s
houldn’t darken their door. Since then, he’d made a pilgrimage to Slough for Sunday lunch. While his mother washed up, he and his father would discuss the cricket. Faisal hated cricket, but every week he mugged up on it so he could debate the latest triumphs or disasters at Lord’s or Edgbaston.
‘That’s all we can talk about now,’ he’d told me. ‘Or what’s happening in the store or at the hospital. The rest of my life is firmly out of frame. There will never be any questions.’
Tonight, he’d texted me to pick him up off the Slough train at Paddington. He’d never done that before; Faisal rarely asked anybody for anything. I found him on the concourse, sitting on his suitcase. His hair and beard looked uncombed, the black Moschino jeans I’d bought him were crusted with Welsh mud. Instead of the usual bear-hug there was a tepid pat on the arm.
I suggested dinner at a gastro-pub nearby, but he wanted to go to Mamma Rosa’s. I hated Mamma Rosa’s. He’d taken me there a few times in our early days. In a parade of scruffy laun-drettes and mini-markets in Tufnell Park, it was a basic Italian joint; chequered table-cloths, faded prints of the Amalfi coast and a menu that Mussolini would have recognized. The only frills were on the cheesy shirts of the paunchy, middle-aged waiters. Its charm was totally lost on me, but Faisal had been coming here since he first went to the Whittington.
Tonight though, he could scarcely raise a smile when Mamma Rosa herself, an obese old biddy with a spiv’s moustache, pumped his hand and welcomed ‘Il Dottore’. He asked me to order for him and sat looking around at the other tables; mostly students or hen nights getting ratted on Lambrusco. It was bloody noisy. He watched me toying with an avocado that was as dry as the tits on an Egyptian mummy.
‘If a restaurant’s not been reviewed by Michael Winner, your swallow reflex just shuts down doesn’t it?’ he said.
‘Hey, that was in the foothills of being a joke, Faisal,’ I replied. ‘You must be really stressed.’
Questions about Wales got monosyllables in return. After he’d abandoned his saltimbocca half-eaten, I asked after his mother. He’d not seen his mother; not to speak to anyway. His father had ordered her to stay in her bedroom. Faisal had only glimpsed her peeking out from behind a curtain as he’d left the house.
‘But why wouldn’t he let you see her?’
‘It was Mum who saw the stuff in the paper about Mount Royal. I imagine she must have choked on her Rice Krispies and he wormed the whole thing out of her. I think he suspected I lived with someone, but he’d no idea where or with whom. Then she confessed she’d even met you as well. When I got there today, he went berserk, screaming abuse. He was shouting at Mum too, through the bedroom door. Said she’d betrayed him and the family.’
Mamma Rosa waddled up to our table with the pudding trolley and spent two full minutes describing the joys on offer. When we turned her down, her wee moustache pouted in disappointment.
‘So now it’s me or them?’
‘Basically,’ Faisal sighed. ‘The person my Dad assumed me to be was his achievement in life, his reward from Allah for decades of hard work and self-sacrifice. My son, the doctor. When I came out, it was like I’d stripped him of his medal. They could at least keep it from the rest of the family though. But any chance of my name getting in the news like this, well, shame, dishonour, the usual mantra.’
‘This ultimatum then …’ I said. ‘I assume you’ll tell them where to shove it.’
Faisal suddenly found the pattern on the floor tiles of consuming interest. On the next table was a trio of tarty women, huddling over bowls of steaming risotto like the Three Witches in Macbeth. Well past fifty, they all had long dyed blonde hair and dresses showing things that should no longer have been revealed. They’d just started a hellish rendition of Three Coins In The Fountain, but all I could hear was the silence coming from the rickety wooden chair beside me.
‘It’s not that simple,’ he said at last.
‘Of course it fucking is.’
Faisal gripped my forearm in his hairy wee fist and leaned forward till his face was inches from mine.
‘Rory, I love my Mum. I love my Dad too, in a messy sort of way. And he loves me; even though he’s behaving like a monster right now. You just don’t know what a family is. That’s why you’ve led a rudderless life.’
With Faisal, despite his saintliness, there were never any spoonfuls of sugar. And sometimes you need those. I’d have chosen somebody else to tell me I had three weeks to live.
‘You don’t know anything about my family,’ I snapped.
‘That’s because you’ve never chosen to share much of it with me.’
I couldn’t deny that. I’d only ever given him the settings and chief characters of my life; I’d always stonewalled on the twists and turns of the plot. So, as the Three Witches sequed into Arrivederci Roma, I told him everything there was to tell. The grip on my arm slowly relaxed then turned into a gentle stroking motion with the tips of his fingers. The Three Witches nudged each other and we became an object of interest.
‘Then you, of all people, can understand what losing them would mean to me?’ he said.
‘Listen Faisal, if you’re thrown over the cliff, you can either fall or fly. I flew. And the more you fly, the stronger you get.’
‘Ha! Is that really how you see yourself?’ said Faisal, giving me his first real smile of the evening. ‘Remember my friend Ruby? She just couldn’t understand why I was interested in you. The answer is that, underneath all the jokes and the cool guy bullshit, I thought there was a person worth knowing. I thought I might try giving him some affection and see if I could get through to him. But if you’re sitting here implying that you can get along quite well without love in your life, then I’m wasting my time, surely?’
I couldn’t think of an answer. Faisal looked at me for a long moment.
‘You’re not much of an advertisement for being an orphan, Rory, so please don’t try forcing it onto me.’
The Three Witches had stopped singing and were sipping their drinks, pretending not to listen in.
‘So do you love me, Rory?’ he asked.
One of the women leaned across to me, her lipstick smeared, her breath smelling of cheap wine.
‘Go on darlin’. Tell him you love him. There’s not enough of it in this world.’
‘Would you mind your own fucking business?’ I said, as amiably as I could. ‘Just piss off and treat us all to another song. I’m not answering the question until you do.’
I sat back, folded my arms and waited. There was a brief discussion of repertoire, so it was a minute or two before they got going on The Wind Beneath My Wings.
‘Well, Rory?’
‘I don’t honestly know. But I know that I want to.’
‘Okay,’ said Faisal.
‘Do you love me?’
‘As I just said, I want to give you love,’ he replied.
‘That’s not the same thing, Faisal.’
‘I know it’s not.’
‘Where do we go from here, then?’
There was a sudden commotion at the top of the stairs leading down to the kitchen. A waiter rushed over and begged ‘Il Dottore’ to come quickly; Mamma Rosa had collapsed. The waiters went round apologizing that no more food could be served. People moaned and groaned; a few left, the others grabbed at their compensatory bottles of wine. Flashing lights appeared outside; paramedics dived below. Then a stretcher, at an angle of about 60 degrees, was negotiated up the narrow stairs bearing Mamma Rosa. It looked like removal men dealing with an awkward sofa. Faisal came over, his brow damp with sweat.
‘Heart attack. A big one. I’m going in the ambulance.’
‘You have to?’
‘Not really, but I want to,’ he said. ‘She’s a nice old girl. Baked me a birthday cake once.’
‘Shame. We were having a pretty important discussion,’ I said, walking out with him to the ambulance. ‘But I understand.’
‘Oh yeah?’ he said.
Any answer to that
was impossible. The sirens had started to scream and Faisal leaped into the ambulance like John Wayne into the saddle. In ten seconds it had vanished towards Archway, as if it had never been there at all.
Back inside the waiters, some of them tearful, busied themselves giving out more wine to people who didn’t care. I went back to our table and waited for the bill. The Three Witches took pity.
‘Gone off, has he, darlin’?’ asked the one with the smeared lipstick. ‘Come and have a glass with us. We’re in need of a handsome man at this table, even if he ain’t going to give us what we old girls need.’
The others cackled and made way for me to pull my chair in. Oh, what the hell.
‘He’s a doctor then, your boyfriend?’ said one. ‘Those dark lads usually are though, aren’t they? In their blood, like being able to dance, innit?’
‘I think you’re confusing Asians with people from the Caribbean,’ I said.
The Three Witches called for yet another bottle. During its consumption they mused on the origins of love; rejoicing in its ecstasies, bemoaning its pitfalls and illustrating their theses with lurid episodes from their past lives, much of which seemed to have been spent horizontally.
To my surprise, I heard myself telling them about the Khans and their ultimatum to their son. The Three Witches were disgusted. Live and let live, they said. One had a mother who’d been a dresser for Danny La Rue. Another had a brother in the Merchant Navy, who now lived with his friend on Hayling Island. The third lived next door to Asians who’d never even heard of Vera Lynn. Fuck the Khans, she said. We clinked glasses to that. The consensus though was that I should try to make a go of things with Faisal because, as they bluntly put it, he was a looker, had a well-paid job and at my time of life I’d be lucky to do much better. Besides, I’d be amazed how soon the day would come when I’d be glad of somebody to look after me. When I got up to leave, they took my pic on their mobiles.