by Paul Magrs
All that afternoon the band played hard. Their noise levels were higher than usual and Mark worried about the neighbours sending the coppers round, and the coppers finding the dope they occasionally broke off to roll into messy, powerful spliffs. The drummer launched into his strained rendition of ‘Wild Thing’ and it took hours to get through, with elongated passages of drum solos and guitar licks that howled needlessly through the middle of the piece. Mistakes were made and, laughing, the boys stripped off articles of clothing, which were dumped unceremoniously in a pile in the middle of the black cabling.
Tony was in his element. Mark could see him feeding off the slick electricity of the atmosphere. He watched him look up abstractedly from his playing—the best playing he’d ever done, they knew—and stare at the bass player, who was nonchalantly down to socks and underpants. Mark continued smoking, and was asked to sing a Banshees song, which he did, quickly, with only one lyrical mistake, for which he was told to take off his cardigan. The drummer insisted, laughing; starkers behind his kit, fat and sweating. Tony started to make mistakes that Mark knew were false until he was playing with his guitar alone covering him. Mark wondered if the others realised what was going on. He started to feel ashamed by the whole business. It was as if Tony were exposing the games that they played together in private to everyone. Tony had an erection, which they could see as he played, and which they would put down to rock and roll. No different from them getting out Pussy Talk on video, on a different Saturday afternoon, sitting with the cans and their cocks out, passing the Kleenex around and concentrating on the screen.
Mark left them to it and went to talk to Pauline. She was reading Smash Hits at the kitchen table. They talked about the drummer, Simon, and she said they were engaged. He wasn’t everything Pauline had dreamed of, but what the fuck else was she meant to expect? It was exotic enough that they had been to different comprehensives.
Just after six the rehearsal finished and Tony led the others out, to find Mark snogging with Pauline over the sink.
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT WAS ABOUT,” MARK PROTESTED THAT NIGHT in Tony’s squalid bathroom. Music was playing quietly, the tape of that afternoon’s better-than-usual session. The mattress was on the floor, strewn in dirty sheets. Album covers were scattered and there were envelopes everywhere with bits of new lyrics scrawled. “I just asked if she minded if I kissed her.”
“You asked her?”
“I don’t know why. She looked sad.”
“How do you think she feels now. Her and Simon are engaged, you know?”
“I just wanted to get out of that room for a bit. It was too smoky. It smelled, as well, sweaty.”
Tony stripped off again, waded through the mess past Mark and clambered under the sheets.
“What made you ask them to do that?”
“It was the best rehearsal we’ve had in weeks.”
“It was risky, Tony. What if they figured out you’re queer?”
“It was just lads, Mark. They never thought anything about it.”
“Yeah, right,” Mark said, though he knew Tony was right. “But you got a real thrill out of it, didn’t you?”
Tony lay back under the thin covering and considered. “Yes, actually, I did. And listen, I played better than ever, didn’t I? You know I did. It does me good to have naked men around me.” He tugged at Mark’s shirt.
“I don’t think I can sit around and watch it every Saturday,” Mark said, undressing.
“All right. You and the girls can just enjoy yourselves in the kitchen. And, as for them finding out I’m queer, what about me finding out that you’re straight, Mark? How do you think that makes me feel?”
Mark slipped out of his shoes, sitting on the corner of the mattress. “I’m not straight, Tony. I’ve already told you, I don’t know why I kissed her.”
“You were just keeping your options open? And letting me know that?”
I could say yes, agree with him, Mark thought. Let him carry that one about with him. “I don’t know how my life will turn out,” he said truthfully. “I can’t see the shape of it at all.”
“So you’re saying you’re not ruling out going straight?”
Mark slid off his jeans and lay down beside Tony. “I honestly can’t say, Tone. It’s so difficult.”
“Did you fancy her?”
“Who? Pauline?”
“Could you have got it up for her?”
“I suppose so. I—”
“What are you after, Mark?” Tony burst out suddenly. Beside them the tape ran out on the recorder and the silence fell hard on them. “What do you want me to give you?” He looked at him squarely. “You’re mine. You know that.”
Not for the first time Mark felt unnerved by Tony’s voice. Strip away all the rest of him, his voice was the strength, the hard core of him.
“I can give you anything any woman could. You don’t have to go straight to get back at me.” Tony slapped the pillow. “Jesus, I would’ve been less bothered if you took John upstairs and fucked him.”
John was the bass player. Mark snorted. “I can’t see that happening.”
“Did you see him, though? Was he naked while you were there? The size of him, Jesus!”
“Just stop talking about it.”
“What is it, Mark? Are you ashamed of yourself? This is what it’s like, love.”
“I want to sleep.”
“What do you talk to the girls about? Having babies? Is that what you and Pauline were on about How you could have babies and we couldn’t?”
“This is stupid.”
“Is that what you want, Mark? Do you want children? Is that why you want to keep your options open?”
“Yeah, right.”
They curled up under the sheet. Tony lay behind Mark, coiling one arm into his chest, gripping him lightly. Mark still had his shorts on; they separated them even though their bodies were clenched as close as they could go. Suddenly Tony felt stupid, vulnerable in his nakedness, with his dick pressed uselessly at Mark’s back, his arse in the breeze under the rucked sheet. “I’m going to put some things on,” he whispered hoarsely. Seeing to it, he was blushing, as if he ought to be ashamed of himself.
Propping himself on one elbow, Mark said, “Don’t bother,” and pulled his shorts off, slinging them into the detritus of Tony’s room. He held the sheet for Tony to get back in and curled around him fiercely when he did. This time the closeness was right; they were both relieved, erect and grateful for each other. “I’ll always have you and nothing’ll stop that. Your body is mine. I know what I’m getting from it.”
IN LEEDS THAT NIGHT IT WAS SNOWING. HE DIDN’T HAVE MUCH MONEY with him. None of them had thought about the expense of all this. What if Tony wanted money? Wanted buying off? I should be keeping what I’ve got, Mark thought, but as he passed out of the station he went straight to the taxi rank. He wanted to go as fast as possible to the address Tony had given him. Once had had seen Sally safe again, the rest could be negotiated afterwards.
It was such a relief to be in the back seat of the taxi, borne along through the city centre with tall buildings about him, hearing the wheels slash through the build-up of snow. The driver was quiet, too; resentful of working on a holiday. The city was still. Seventies disco played on the radio, as if they had slipped back in time, as if he were in an American city.
This was how cities always struck him, wherever they were. He felt dwarfed and exhilarated, pressed back in his seat and looking up out of the corners of windows.
Soon they were passing through subways and looping main roads, out past the tallest buildings and into the suburbs. Here the shops were less frequent and rougher, their windows barred for the night. They slid through one concrete estate and Mark shuddered. He locked his door just in case. It was probably no worse here than it was on his own estate, but he was taking no chances.
They found Headingley. The houses were older, taller, and built of an orange brick that looked dirty in the night and the snow.
Packs of students were wandering around, congregating outside off-licenses and cinemas. White men and women in dreadlocks were drifting through the sleet with battered pushchairs and Alsatians on pieces of string, past gangs of Indian kids who were playing outside the gleaming windows of their parents’ shops, kept open all through Christmas. There were more trees here, more open spaces, but the houses were cramped in closer confinement, as if they had been built piecemeal and were collapsing in on themselves with age.
Abruptly the taxi slewed round one final corner and pulled to a halt before a tall, narrow house with black iron gates and unkempt hedges. “This is it,” the driver growled and quoted an exorbitant price.
Then Mark was left with his bag on the icy road. Thoughtlessly he rubbed his chin. As he felt the stubble growing through foundation, he realised he must have smeared away parts of his disguise. The tattoos would be showing through. He’d look as if he had a skin disease. He opened the gate and hurried up the slippery path to the door before he got a chance to change his mind about this.
Now that he was here, it all seemed horribly normal. Here he was paying a social call. Was this how kidnappings usually worked? He felt out of his depth.
Grand and lifeless, the house was like a modest slice of cake. In that dark suburban terrace it somehow stood alone, its icing sugar flaking off. An old man answered his knock, fumbling with catches on the double doors. It was like getting into a high-security prison, but the air that met Mark was warm and lit duskily by candles. The décor and furnishings he could see as he shuffled into the hallway behind the old man were rich; opulent, even. A chandelier hung at the mouth of the staircase, its crystal droplets tipped with nicotine stains.
The old man was silent; he nodded to Mark to wait there in the hallway, standing awkwardly by a large glass vase of irises. The man was almost bent double with age. His hands were the colour of corned beef with the jelly left on. He was obviously ready to go home: he wore a long coat and a beret and his hi-tech trainers were laced securely for a walk through the snow. Mark wondered who he was. The sight of those painfully watering eyes when the door first creaked open had caught him off guard. “Tony?” he had asked, so wound up that he would have asked the same thing no matter who had opened the door.
“He said you have to wait,” the old man had gasped. He took Mark’s bag and his fingers were freezing when they brushed Mark’s. Mark was about to say he could manage it himself, but with an inexplicable burst of speed, the hi-tech trainers had carried the old man to the top of the stairs. His voice quavered down behind him. “You’re to go and sit in the living room. There’s a fire.”
Only one door was open downstairs, so Mark took it. The carpet was thick under the soles of his shoes and the ceilings were high. He didn’t shout anything up the stairs in reply. He wasn’t sure of his voice at all.
The living room was sparsely furnished but warm. A single armchair sat before the fireplace. He sat right on its edge, as if demonstrating that he didn’t intend to stay.
Tony had done well for himself. Mark was amazed. A wide ornately framed mirror hung above the mantelpiece, complemented with soft lighting. Raising himself to see his face, Mark thought he looked dreadful. On the mantelpiece there was a single avocado resting in a yellow eggcup, a silver teapot and a pile of old hardbacked books.
He couldn’t quite work out what was odd about the house, aside from the fact it wasn’t how he had imagined Tony living. The silence? The fire crackled and sparked companionably. He noticed a connecting door in one of the room’s shadowed corners, and crept over to have a look. Beyond there was a deep-blue dining room. Its windows were tall, Georgian, an extravagant candelabra alight on the whitewashed sill. But on the floor the scarlet carpet was half rolled up, and dominating the unswept floorboards there was a jumbled hoard of objects. The candlelight glittered on teapots, saucers, cups, bits of statues. They looked like antiques: small, tasteful, and just showy enough to be valuable. They looked as if they had just arrived, or were about to be scooped up in a sheet to be flogged somewhere.
That was the look of the house, half assembled or half disassembled. The house was a luxurious stopover point for the accoutrements of whatever life Tony had invented for himself. The whole house exuded both largesse and abandonment, as if it were a bargain basement that declared to its hushed, private guests that this was their last chance to gather what they desired, and run.
Then the old man was at his shoulder. “I’ve done out your room and put your things there,” he said.
Mark had had enough. “Where’s Tony? I want to see him now. Has he got Sally here?”
Then the old man really unnerved him by looking him straight in the eye again. Except he didn’t; there was something gleaming yellow behind those eyes that made them look directed elsewhere the whole time he spoke. They gleamed with a manic distraction which, had Mark seen it on the telly, would have made him laugh, but here, in a strange house in a strange town, shocked him. He had no idea that eyes really did look like that in the faces of creepy old butlers of old houses. “I’m to make you a cup of tea in the scullery,” he said.
“Are you a butler?” Mark asked.
The old man, still in his beret and trainers and obviously wanting to goad him, simply tutted with disgust. He hobbled to the connecting door, saw that Mark had already peeked, tutted again, and led him through that dining room. They went down a few stone steps to a dim kitchen. More candles, more stranded avocados. On the kitchen table there was the most comprehensive canteen of cutlery Mark had ever seen, and five teapots, three of them smashed in unnervingly clean breaks.
The Aga was reassuringly warm. The old man busied himself while Mark went to look out of the window. He couldn’t see much of the garden; it looked bricked over, or churned up in the search for archaeological treasures. Stark branches slapped and snagged at the dirty panes.
“I’m Simmonds,” the man said at last, having, with some effort, slid the heavy teapot onto the ring. The scraping noise went right through Mark. “I’ve got some fruitcake somewhere.”
“That’s all right,” Mark said.
“Yes, fruitcake, somewhere. I think it’s dry.”
“Tea will be fine.”
“No, I shall find it for you. I shall.”
“Do you have a phone?” Mark asked suddenly, and in that moment noticed the fifties-style phone at the other end of the table. He had to get in touch with Peggy and Iris, though he wasn’t sure what there was to tell them yet.
Simmons thrust an opened cake tin in his face. “There.” The smell of stale cake assailed him. “You’ll have some.”
“Would Tony mind if I phoned someone?”
Simmonds shrugged, looking for a plate in a pile of pale-blue saucers. Now he could barely bring himself to look at Mark; it was all or nothing with him. “It’s his phone.”
“Is he here?”
“Take it up with him. He pays the phone bill. Nothing to do with me any more. Here.” He thrust at Mark a saucer with the whole half-finished cake upturned on it. Mark took a bite and found it was dried through. The boiling kettle distracted Simmonds.
“It’ll be tea then,” said Simmonds vaguely, staring at the teapots.
Suddenly Mark felt something clutch at his gut. Where the fuck was Sally in all this? He felt hoodwinked; this wasn’t what he had expected at all. But then the kitchen door screeched open and black freezing air rushed in. A bulky Labrador stampeded into the kitchen, pulling on his lead at a young man in a leather jacket. And behind the dog owner, clutching his cold-reddened hand, Sally, looking breathless, laughing, exhilarated by snow.
Mark grabbed at her. He had time to register the alarm in her eyes, the change from laughter to shock, before he had her lifted to his chest, his face buried in her hair, and he was sobbing with relief.
“Cups,” Simmonds muttered, rattling through a cracked multitude.
“Sally, Sally,” Mark whispered. He had shocked her into tears of her own and now he had to co
nsole her. “It’s all right, pet. All right.” He looked up over her shoulder; on her coat snowflakes were just turning to drops of water from the heat of the Aga. A fine haze of steam was rising from her, the young man and the dog. The young man was giving Mark a slow, appraising look, removing his jacket and putting on an apron. He was younger than Mark had at first thought, white-haired and grinning laconically. Tony’s houseboy, Mark thought; it had to be. Christ, he’s got what he said we’d have at fourteen. The dog lay beneath the table, growling good-naturedly, head between its paws.
“The dog’s Duke,” Sally said at last, between heaves.
“I’m Richard,” said the young man in the apron. “I work for Tony. I have to get dinner on.”
“Where’s Tony?” Mark asked.
“Richard’s nice, Dad,” Sally said.
“He won’t be in till late,” Richard said.
It was a relief to talk to someone who seemed to be sensible.
“He’s out working a market somewhere.”
Simmonds had his head in a tall, narrow fridge, sniffing cartons of milk suspiciously. “Antiques,” he murmured.
“I guessed,” Mark said. He and Richard exchanged glance. “What’s happening?” Mark asked impulsively. He couldn’t now imagine calling the police.
Richard shrugged. He said, almost whispering, “I thought you knew Sally was here. The first I knew different was when Tony phoned you today. I overheard. We fought about it. But, hey—I’m only an employee.”
Mark hated anyone who slipped ‘but, hey’ into conversation, yet he decided that Richard was all right, really. He turned instead to Simmonds, who was pouring tea, and who had been evasive enough earlier to deserve Mark’s asking, “And are you an employee too?”
Immediately Mark saw Richard cringe, he knew he had made a mistake. Simmonds looked up very slowly. “I built this business. Tony helped a bit, later on. Bit by bit he took it off me. I’d’ve given him everything at one time. We bought things for this house together. He had a half share. Eight hundred thousand he’s had off me. I totted it up all last night. At least he’s still here. At least he’s not gone yet. At least he’s still selling things with me. Even if he’s giving it away to somebody else.”