Rory's Boys

by Alan Clark

  ‘Don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘You’ve not garrotted a plumber all week.’

  And then she’d fallen off the ladder. Vic had been rabbiting on about the latest drama, but I’d been watching Dolores training the Hydrangea Petiolaris along the side of the Orangery. She’d only fallen about three feet, but was lying on the ground not moving. I’d screamed at Vic to call an ambulance and sprinted the length of the Italian Garden. Her eyes were open but she’d been moaning and clutching her head. She’d tried to get up but I’d made her stay still. I was already convinced she was about to need Extreme Unction and where would I find a priest in time? Vic had managed to get down on his knees and was holding her hand and cooing about his ‘poor rose’. I’d wanted to push him out the way.

  ‘Jeez, calm down,’ he’d said, as I circled Dolores like a tiger with a wounded cub. ‘She’ll be fine.’

  The paramedics had concurred, though Dolores must be put to be bed and watched for any dizziness or nausea. They’d strapped the swelling ankle and put her on a stretcher. I’d ordered her taken into my spare bedroom. Elspeth had helped her into bed and given her the painkillers the paramedics had dictated. Dolores insisted she felt okay but it was clear she was shaken. I’d left her to rest, leaving the bedroom door open, creeping down every ten minutes to check. She’d seemed to be sleeping soundly, but maybe she was slipping into a coma? Then she’d given a violent snore. Did people in comas snore? I’d called Faisal’s mobile for a second opinion but got the voicemail as usual.

  A while later there had been a soft knock at the front door. It was Vic. I’d shooed him out into the East Court, my finger to my lips.

  ‘Right then, toots,’ he’d said. ‘I think it’s time you told me.’

  ‘Told you what?’

  ‘Who is Dolores Potts?’

  I’d known at once I was going to tell him. And I’d felt really happy that he’d be the first to know. A smile had spread across my face like honey on a crumpet. For a moment, I’d savoured the three words forming on my tongue. I’d known they’d never taste this good again. So it was odd that a different three words spilled out into the warm evening air.

  ‘She’s the future’ I’d said.

  *

  ‘A bull in a china shop,’ Robin Bradbury-Ross had declared one day. ‘I don’t wish to be unkind but that is literally what you are in this house. How much do you weigh exactly?’

  ‘Twenty-five stone,’ Big Frankie had replied in a tone that was, well, bullish.

  ‘My God, is it your glands?’ asked Robin, whose hips weren’t much wider than one of Frankie’s thighs.

  ‘My glands are just fine, mister,’ Frankie had snapped. ‘It’s a lifestyle choice.’

  Robin had then taken him by the horns and tugged him round the state rooms, decreeing the chairs he must never sit in, the tables he must must never lean against, the china he must never so much as breathe on.

  The armchair in which Big Frankie now reclined had been approved for his occupation. It was a burly Victorian thing, but Frankie’s arse still landed on it like a double scoop of ice-cream on too small a cone. He’d begged me for a quick word. It was hardly the best of moments. Another flock of removal vans had arrived this morning, herded by an even worse bunch of tossers than before. The final group of residents were now in possession of their apartments; Mount Royal was full to the rafters. Most of them were upstairs taking a nap, having a bath or feeling nervous. Tonight there would be a posh dinner in the State Dining-Room. Faisal had agreed to come up from Slough specially, though he’d be going back in the morning. Big Frankie should have been in his kitchens right now, but he’d looked so troubled that I’d whisked him into the Red Damask Drawing-Room.

  He was in a state about Vic. One day Papi was his sunny self, the next diggin’ the blues, as Frankie put it. Did I think Vic might be bi-polaroid?

  I’d noticed it too though. Vic was usually the sort who swatted the glooms away like a wasp. That evening a week ago when I’d told him about Dolores he’d been gobsmacked of course but typically sweet, shaking my hand and promising to keep the secret. Since then, I’d not seen that much of him. He was normally such an emphatic presence but recently he’d almost been an absence, despite the fact we had plenty of teething troubles to wrestle with. A few times when I’d needed to track him down, they said he’d left the house telling nobody where he’d gone. When I’d eventually cornered him, he’d seemed a bit disengaged, as if these were somebody else’s problems. Once I’d seen him sitting outside the Orangery with a bottle of whisky, watching Dolores and her gardeners. He’d still been there hours later, slumped on the bench.

  But this evening I told Frankie not to worry, that we’d all been under stress. And Vic was getting on a bit; we had to remember that. I promised to keep a close eye on him and asked Frankie to do the same. The young chef’s eyes glazed over.

  ‘A close eye?’ he asked, the deep voice cracking. ‘He’s all I see boss, all I see. But he hardly seems to notice me. Twenty-five stone of lovin’ man. It’s not that I’m easy to miss, is it? I’m prop-pin’ sorrow here, boss.’

  ‘Sorry Frankie,’ I said and meant it. ‘Perhaps, with everything else, he’s just not realized how you feel. Perhaps you need to make it more obvious.’

  ‘I know boss. But I’m kinda scared of doing that in case … you know. In case he doesn’t like me.’

  ‘Come on Frankie, butch up,’ I said. ‘Faint heart never won fair geriatric.’

  ‘But I’m no shrinkin’ violet am I? It’s just that Papi’s different to all the others. There’s nobody like him, is there boss?’

  ‘You really feel he’s the one for you then?’

  ‘Oh yes. I want to give myself to him for the rest of his years. And there can’t be that many can there? That’s the shit part of being a gerontophile. It’s like livin’ in a short-term rental. You know you’ll have to move on again soon.’

  Big Frankie heaved himself up from the chair.

  ‘Oh well, even if he doesn’t want me as a lover, I’m always goin’ to be his friend.’

  ‘That’s nice, Frankie,’ I said. ‘And chins up, you’ve always got Jesus.’

  ‘The perfect life-partner in every way,’ he sighed, ‘except he never grows old. Forever thirty-three. Such an uninterestin’ age.’

  I was just about to warn him against feeding Elspeth too much marijuana, when there was an almighty crash on the ceiling.

  We were directly underneath Vic’s rooms. Within thirty seconds I was outside his door with Big Frankie puffing up behind me. The door was locked; I hammered hard. Just as I was wondering if I should kick it in, it was flung wide open and I stared into a handsome young face with tousled hair and panic in his eyes. The boy outside the club. The boy blowing Matty on the Heath. The Caravaggio boy. Over his shoulder I glimpsed Vic crumpled up on the floor at the feet of the lesbian caryatids. Oh Jesus.

  At first Caravaggio tried to struggle past me then spun round in search of another way out. I chased, we tussled, he kneed me in the balls. I yelled at Frankie to stop him but, like an oil tanker, Frankie found it difficult to change direction and the boy dodged from his reach.

  ‘Get him boss, he’s friggin gone and killed Papi.’ The big face was sweaty with terror as he rushed to where Vic still lay motionless. My own fear twisted itself into a rage.

  I grabbed at something from a table-top, a statuette, some Variety Club award of Vic’s. I lunged and struck him hard on the skull. It slowed him down but it didn’t fell him. His escape route now clear, he lurched out onto the landing. Pole-axed with the pain in my crotch, I hobbled after him. But the boy was now just standing at the head of the stairs, no longer trying to flee. For a moment he swayed like a sapling in a storm, then he began to fall. His arms flailed at the empty air, clutching at a picture-frame, tilting it to a crazy angle. Then a long high scream ricocheted round the Gilded Hall as Caravaggio rolled down the length of the staircase and came to rest below my grandmother’s portrait
.

  As I saw him lying there, I knew the scream must have stopped but I could still hear it in my ears. The pale carpet was now streaked with blood. Christ, I’d hit him much too hard. From somewhere below, a figure ran towards the broken body. It was Faisal. He felt the pulse in the neck, put his ear to the chest, then looked up at us and shook his head; just like they do in the movies.

  Big Frankie panted to my side with the news that Vic had opened his eyes. Then he looked down.

  ‘Shit boss,’ he said. ‘We got trouble in the camp.’

  There was a groan from behind us. Vic was propped up groggily against his doorway, tie askew, jacket ripped and a reddish weal blossoming under his right eye.

  ‘Did you catch the little bastard?’ he asked. ‘I found him trying to pocket my Fabergé egg.’

  ‘We caught him,’ I said.

  At the sight of Vic, Big Frankie sank to his knees as usual, trembling like a jelly just turned out of its mould.

  ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord,’ he said.

  At the foot of the staircase, the tousled head was now surrounded by a crimson halo, wide as a Japanese sun.

  FIFTEEN

  The body lay in state in the Library. Facing north with dark green walls, it was conveniently sepulchral; a mossy pond of a room where you could hide beneath some leather-bound tome like a tadpole under a rock. From the tops of the bookcases, a congregation of distinguished busts bowed their marble heads: Homer and Pliny, Spenser and Shakespeare, Dickens and Trollope. Dostoyevsky looked especially sad, but then he always did.

  Out in the Gilded Hall, peering down from the landing, I’d been paralysed till I’d known that Vic’s obituaries could snooze on undisturbed. The sight of him, battered but breathing, had pumped into me like a drug. I’d raced down and begun to lift the boy in my arms. Faisal had tried to pull me off, insisting that the body wasn’t moved till the police arrived. I’d snatched his mobile and flung it across the chequered floor.

  ‘There will be no police,’ I’d hissed, slinging the corpse over my good shoulder, feeling the bloody wetness seep into my shirt. By some miracle, nobody else had appeared in the Gilded Hall. I’d barked at Faisal to find something to cover the stained carpet. In the Library I’d spread newspapers over the floor and laid the boy down. Faisal was soon yelping at my heels. Who was this guy? What on earth was I doing? We must call the police at once. He was a doctor; he had to follow the correct procedures.

  ‘No police,’ I repeated, bending my knees to look him straight in the eye, a movement I’d perfected long ago. I knew he hated my doing it, though he’d never said so. ‘There were no police with your father, there will be no police today.’

  Big Frankie appeared, half-dragging Vic under his arm like a couple of drunks on a Saturday night. It was only now Vic realized the boy was dead. He groaned and sank into a high-winged chair. I ordered him to start talking.

  He’d been for his annual lunch at the Savoy with Wendy from Ludlow, the woman who ran his fan club. On his way back, he’d stopped the cab at Whitestone Pond and gone into the woods for a breath of air to clear away the brandies. The boy had been friendly, intelligent, a third cousin of Sophia Loren no less. He’d asked him back for coffee. He’d known it was risky, but the kid had such nice manners, offering his arm on the slope up to the road. Vic’s eyes never left the body as he spoke. Then he covered them with his hands, moaned and pulled himself deep into the shelter of the chair. Big Frankie stared down at him in desolation, shoulders slumped, looking several inches shorter than he usually did.

  I closed the half-shutters so nobody could see into the room. Faisal examined Vic but, apart from the embryonic shiner, he’d escaped with a couple of bruised ribs. Then Faisal turned to the dead boy. The neck had been broken in the fall, he said, though the blow to the skull might have been the cause of death. Only a post-mortem could confirm which. Big Frankie joined Vic in moaning and groaning; it was like the fucking Trojan Women.

  The door was thrown open. Elspeth was searching for Frankie; there was a hissy fit between two of the queens in the kitchen over a salmon mousse. Then she saw the body.

  ‘Good Gordon Highlanders!’ she said, dropping to her knees. ‘It’s the wee Italian. What on earth?’

  She took Caravaggio’s pale hand in hers and knelt there while she was given the salient facts. He was one of her regulars from the Heath; a frequent user of the Rubber Duckies product range. A nice boy she said; a religious boy; that’s how they’d got to talking beyond the usual exchanges on such occasions. He’d come to London to work as a waiter, but the jobs had dried up.

  ‘He was a second cousin of Sophia Loren,’ she added.

  ‘Third,’ said Vic.

  ‘Did I not specifically warn against gentlemen callers in my wee talk?’ she exploded. ‘And if it wasn’t for men like you, these poor lads would never stoop to such things.’

  ‘Hang on doux-doux,’ said Big Frankie. ‘It was your friend who attacked and robbed Mr d’Orsay.’

  ‘Aye well, just look at him,’ she replied. ‘Skin and bone he is. Not adjectives that could be applied to either of you. Judge not that ye may not be judged.’

  Elspeth and Frankie, usually such buddies, now even praying regularly together in the Chapel, began ping-ponging the scriptures at each other till I yelled at them to shut up. Elspeth looked at me in amazement. I’d never spoken to her like that in forty years. I went and locked the door.

  ‘Listen to me,’ I began. ‘This boy’s death was an accident, but if we call the police we’ll have photographers in the trees just like before. But this time it’ll be different. Vic’s CD sales will drop faster than a bride’s knickers and I could end up being buggered in Pentonville. Mount Royal won’t be a symbol of progress any more, it’ll be a symbol of sleaze. I don’t think our new residents will like that very much, do you?’

  Had anyone seen Vic with the boy? He didn’t think so; the cruising area had been deserted and he’d sneaked him in through a small ivy-clad gate in the perimeter wall. The CCTV company had overlooked it and there was no camera there yet. Bruce Willis was supposed to be on the case. They’d not met a single soul on their way towards his rooms.

  ‘Nobody knows he was here then?’ I asked.

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ Faisal asked, beginning to tug at his beard. ‘Planting him in the garden?’

  ‘It’s an option.’

  ‘I hope that’s one of your jokes, Rory,’ said Faisal, flicking open his mobile. ‘Every minute we delay is making this worse. And then my career will be as dead as he is.’

  ‘But you can’t go bringin’ him back Doctor Khan,’ said Big Frankie. ‘And he’s safe with Jesus now.’

  ‘And what about the people who would spend the rest of their lives wondering what happened to him?’ asked Faisal.

  ‘I’m not sure there would be any,’ said Elspeth. She spoke hesitantly, as if forming the words in spite of herself. ‘He had no close family in Italy at all. I think he’d been living in some hostel place lately. He was pretty much alone, poor bairn.’

  ‘They’re lovely gardens too,’ Vic piped up. ‘He could do a lot worse.’

  Faisal and I glared at each other across the body of the rent-boy. I wasn’t sure what I was reading in his eyes. Like me, there was panic certainly; like Elspeth, there was unaccustomed self-doubt, though not of course a lot.

  ‘Faisal if you make that call, everything here might be lost,’ I said.

  Now I saw despair creep into his gaze, weariness even. He threw his mobile across the room where it clipped Lord Byron’s marble ear.

  ‘We’re doing this all wrong,’ said Vic. ‘The five of us locked in here. We have to go to the whole house, tell them everything. This should be their decision too.’

  ‘Faisal, do you agree to this?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I certainly don’t,’ he said, ‘but for you, Rory, I won’t stop it. Which could be the worst decision I’ve ever made.’

  I heard voices going past in the
corridor. I’d almost forgotten the rest of the building existed. In half an hour everyone was gathering for drinks before the grand dinner.

  Faisal unlocked the door.

  ‘You don’t have long,’ he said, ‘In a few hours, he’ll be as stiff as yesterday’s croissants. And it might be nice if you found something to cover him up.’

  ‘I want all of you in the Saloon in thirty minutes,’ I said. ‘Frankie, go and tell your guys to hold back the meal.’

  Elspeth went too, leaving Vic and me in the dusk of the Library.

  ‘How the fuck could you have been so crazy, Victor?’ I said quietly. ‘Were you on the Benylin like last time?’

  ‘I knew it was stupid but …’ his voice trailed away.

  ‘But?’ I said, as gently as I could manage.

  ‘I just wanted somebody, toots,’ he said. ‘Somebody to touch me. Even as part of a commercial transaction.’

  ‘You could have had Big Frankie without even leaving the premises.’

  ‘Never,’ he said. ‘Frankie cares for me, I’m aware of that. But I’m afraid I don’t reciprocate. He’s a sweetheart, but no trumpets there. So I really couldn’t use him like that.’

  ‘But you’ve put everything in jeopardy,’ I said ‘And we’d only just pulled it off.’

  ‘It suddenly didn’t seem so important any more,’ he replied. ‘Not enough.’

  ‘I thought it was what you wanted more than anything,’ I said.

  Vic just sat staring down at Caravaggio’s body.

  ‘If you were feeling low, you should have told me,’ I said. ‘We’re buddies aren’t we, you old git?’

  ‘Yes, toots,’ he replied. ‘Buddies.’

  ‘So why didn’t you then?’

  ‘You’ve had other things on your mind lately,’ he said ‘I didn’t think there would be room for me as well.’

  Shite. But he’d seemed pleased for me when I’d told him about Dolores. I’d really wanted him to share my happiness and I knew he was fond of her too. I’d even confided some plans I was hatching to get to know her better. A trip to Australia where I’d met her mum, maybe round the world even. Only once the house was up and running of course. I could get a manager in to help Vic for a few months. I’d not leave him in the lurch.