Box Hill

by Adam Mars-Jones

  If I’d wanted to delve into Ray’s belongings, I could easily have done that on a Saturday morning. His bike-cleaning routine was so unvarying and protracted. And yet my feeling for him didn’t include curiosity. I felt it was right that I should have no privacy, since I had no secrets from him. And I needed him to have his privacy, because I needed him to have secrets. His central secret for me, of course, being not why he didn’t give me a key, but why he let me stay at all. It was a question I didn’t want answered. It couldn’t be good for me to know.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t have ordinary curiosity about ordinary things. When I was working in the chemist’s and I was alone for a bit, I’d work methodically through the photos waiting to be collected. I’d hold them carefully by the edges, anxious not to take the bloom off the emulsion. I don’t know what I was looking for, exactly, but it seems to be true that other people’s holidays are a blur of happiness, and the sun follows them wherever they go.

  So if I wasn’t curious about Ray, there was a bit of philosophy behind it. In fairy stories, I know you’re supposed to sympathise with the person who can’t resist asking the fatal question, make the fatal discovery, but I never did. I mean, Mrs Bluebeard wasn’t really on the ball, if she thought she’d settled down with a man who had no secrets. If all the doors in the spooky castle had been unlocked, if she could wander wherever she wished, her husband would never have appealed to her. He would have been just another smoothie she met at a party. Another smooth duke with a house too big for two people, hard to keep warm in the wintertime.

  When a year had gone by and I was about to be nineteen, I realised that Ray must have had a birthday of his own somewhere along the way, without letting on. He wouldn’t even own up to a definite age, a birth year, and he didn’t enjoy those sorts of questions. So I decided that my birthday would have to be his official birthday as well. In fact we needed to crowd three celebrations into a single day, since it was our anniversary to boot. I always played safe with my presents. I usually gave him a book, once I was confident that I knew his tastes. We spent some of our happiest times at the flat in Cardinals Paddock just sitting there, both of us reading. He even asked for a particular book about jewellery once, a big and expensive book, and it was a surprise because he never wore any. You couldn’t count the sort of half-bangles he had in summer, a band of tan on the upper part of each wrist, where the sun fell on the skin between glove-edge and jacket-cuff. He didn’t wear gauntlets — not even in winter. There’s always something overdone about bike gauntlets, they’re too obvious an armour, they make you look feeble somehow.

  He’d have his feet up on a stool, and I would sit between his legs, knowing not to annoy him by propping my book on his boots. The creak of his leathers, so close, was like the creak of a ship’s rigging, so that I could believe I was on a journey. He’d squeeze my neck with those mighty legs of his just hard enough to keep me thinking of him.

  There’d be music on the stereo, more often one of his big tapes rather than an LP. The sound quality wasn’t so good but he didn’t have to get up so often to change it. I didn’t know much about classical music before Ray, but thanks to him I broadened out quite a bit. Thanks to him I learned that the pretty tune I always thought went with the words I’ve Got A Ferret Sticking Up My Nose is actually the middle section of the Slow Movement of Chopin’s Piano Sonata in B flat. Part of the funeral march.

  I even learned to tolerate jazz, of the moody sort Ray liked so much, though it always bothered me that a nice little tune like ‘My Favourite Things’ out of The Sound of Music could last half an hour, if it fell into the wrong hands.

  And what did I give him in return? Well, I taught him not to take books for granted, the outsides of books as well as the insides, their bindings. It was his only real bit of untidiness, and I schooled him out of it, just by example, not by saying anything. When I met him he would leave books open and face down, but inside a couple of years he was a reformed character.

  I didn’t tell him how I learned to be so scrupulous with objects. It wasn’t from records, from my ‘collection’, and he didn’t let me touch his. What LPs did I have to protect from sticky marks except School’s Out and Nursery Cryme? I got into the habit of holding books gently, opening them only a little way, peering at the text as if I had no right, from sneaking peeks at people’s snaps at the chemist’s in Isleworth, knowing better than to leave smudges on their memories.

  Every now and then Ray would step up the pressure, crossing his ankles to get more leverage, until my ears roared and the print faded from in front of my eyes. That was exciting. If it didn’t happen for a while, I’d find myself pressing backwards against his groin, knowing that he might just get annoyed with me, but unable to stop myself trying for a reaction. I think Ray was proud of my endurance. There was one time he was a bit relentless and I started to pass out, and after that maybe I’d built up the strength of my neck and maybe he was a little bit easier on me. But not so much easier that I felt disappointed.

  On my twentieth birthday I gave him his present, saying, ‘Happy Official Birthday, Raymond,’ and he didn’t exactly scowl, but he was a long way from smiling, and he said, ‘What makes you think my name is Raymond? Maybe it’s just Ray.’ It may have been that he was just being gruff because he’d planned a birthday surprise, Carmen. Not my top favourite opera — I like all the business about fate, but if you’ve actually known someone who changes her mind and won’t change it back, had one in the family, then you don’t find it all that thrilling to see the same thing up on stage. So not my top favourite opera, but still a huge treat.

  I was wearing a nice suit, jangling coins in my pocket very happily, when Ray came out of the bedroom wearing his idea of evening dress suitable for a night at the opera. It was exactly what he would wear on a bike run, except that instead of a black leather shirt he wore one in tan leather, which laced up to the neck. That was the fashion then. For once I felt so very much the birthday boy that without thinking of the risk I was taking I blurted out, ‘You’re not taking me to the opera dressed like that!’ I know. Like the mother in a sitcom. Big risk to be taking.

  I’m not a snoop and I don’t pry, unless you count the holiday snaps of strangers, but in the wardrobe in Ray’s bedroom in full view hung five beautiful suits — two grey, two cream, one brown. Was it asking so much to want him to dress down for me?

  He gave me a truly poisonous look, but no, apparently it wasn’t so very much to ask. He slammed the bedroom door behind him, mind you, and he made me wait. He wanted me to think he was pulling a huge sulk, that he wasn’t ever coming out. But by then I felt I had the measure of the man. And sure enough, he came out all nonchalant in one of the creams. Looking absolutely fantastic. Before he phoned for the cab he said, ‘You know you’ll pay for this later,’ and by then I knew him well enough to say, ‘I’ll remind you.’ On the night of my birthday, of our birthday, Ray let me sleep in the bed, so I really was taking a risk, though all in all I slept better on the floor.

  There were other surprises that took more getting used to than opera tickets on my birthday. One Saturday night while the poker club was in session, I was sitting there cross-legged reading my book when I looked up. I was trying to make sense of the Thirty Years’ War, which wasn’t that easy even during the thirty years that the war lasted. It took me a little moment to find my bearings in the present day, and to focus on what was in front of me.

  In front of me was a pair of boots, but they weren’t Ray’s. Ray wore Gold Tops, the sort motorcycle policemen wear — he was very proud of them — and these were Doc Martens, which weren’t acceptable on a bike run but passed muster on a Saturday night. And if the boots weren’t Ray’s, then it followed that the cock sticking out of the jeans a little above my eye level wasn’t Ray’s either. Not Ray’s at all. It had a different shape and a different size and a different slant. Different animal altogether.

  Paul stood there as if h
e was waiting for me to service him, staring flatly down at me in a way that I suppose was an imitation of Ray, and I honestly didn’t know what to do. I looked over to Ray, but he was concentrating on his poker hand and didn’t look up. Of course it was just me-in-the-window, him-cleaning-the-bike all over again. He knew perfectly well that I wanted some guidance, and he was letting me know that I’d have to make the decision without his help. I was on my own. I was standing at a crossroads where there were no signposts.

  I just didn’t know what was the right thing to do. Ray was entitled to use me as and when he pleased, and if his poker hand folded and he wanted me to suck his cock until the next hand was dealt, then that was his privilege. I was well used to that. But didn’t I belong to him and him only? Wasn’t that the bargain that was struck the first night I spent with Ray, the night he took possession? The trouble with contracts made without a word being said is that you never have a chance to read the small print.

  I was afraid that if I opened my mouth and got to work on Paul, the way he so obviously expected me to, I’d spoil things between me and Ray forever, and all for something I didn’t especially want to do. But if Ray had told Paul that he could help himself, then I would make him look bad in front of the club.

  I didn’t refuse Paul, but it was obvious that I was unsure and hesitating. He called over to the poker table, ‘Ray?’ Ray didn’t look up, and his tone of voice when he drawled ‘Yeah?’ was somehow silky, which I took to be a bad sign. Right there and then I had the sinking feeling that I had made the wrong choice. I was already moving past the unsignposted crossroads, on a conveyor belt of indecision. I was already heading down the wrong road.

  Paul’s cock was still jutting there in front of me while he carried on a little conversation with the group behind his back. He waggled his hips slightly, so that his cock waggled also, either with the idea of tempting me, or the way that some people wag a finger to mean naughty naughty. Paul said, ‘Ray, is this boy of yours on strike?’

  And Ray said, lazily, drawling the words, ‘Not that I know of.’ Letting a little silence form. ‘Not unless he joined the union since this morning.’ Still he kept his eyes on the cards in his hand. So of course I had to open up to Paul, which was suddenly a relief since it meant that I didn’t have to look at the stupid grin of triumph on his face.

  And that was how I learned that if this was some sort of commune, then I was part of what it shared in common. All for one, and Colin for everybody. Colin on demand. The crack about unions was definitely a punishment, I thought, for my wavering. A bit of a low blow. There was a lot of union-bashing around in the late seventies, before Thatcher came in. You could hardly open a paper without reading about how the unions were bringing the country to its knees with their lunatic demands — only I never thought so.

  Ray knew full well I was a union man, and he’d heard me say time and time again that a strike was a measure of last resort and not what the trades union movement was really about. He even knew that the thing I liked least about Saturday nights was hearing the members of the poker club make ill-informed comments on that sort of subject, and not be able to put my point of view. It was a real test of character for me, curled up on the floor, trying to concentrate on my book, and of course not allowed to speak unless spoken to by a member. So Ray was really hitting me where it hurt, hitting below the belt, when he made that remark.

  It was a bad moment. Of course I’d let Ray down in public — my hesitation had damaged him momentarily in the eyes of the group — so he was only retaliating, really. And after that I knew not to hesitate, and I made sure he never needed to feel ashamed of me again.

  In practice, the fellows only wanted to make use of me if they’d folded in the game, until the next deal, so it wasn’t hard work. Nobody worried in those days where come went or didn’t go, but usually they saved themselves for later on. Sometimes a fellow would want his arse licked instead of a blow job, and I’d be lying if I said I was always raring to go. But even when things got tedious, and I was basically waiting for bluffs to be called, debts settled, and the arrival of the next deal, wanting only to get back to my book, it was still better than Wolf Cubs.

  In about two years, I got some company. I don’t mean to say that Ray wasn’t company. I mean company on Saturday nights. Bob got himself a boy of his own. Kevin. Bob used to say, ‘I saw him advertised in a magazine. I sent for him by mail order’ — the same way Ray used to say, ‘Colin didn’t fall for me, he fell over me.’

  What Bob said was even pretty much true. None of the club members read the gay press, such as it was in those days, but you could get away with an amazing amount in the Personals column of Motor Cycle News.

  There were a lot of paradoxes like that in those days, bits of latitude in the system. So you couldn’t get porn, however soft — or that’s what people said — but you hardly needed to, when Films and Filming was there in stacks in every newsagent, with bare chests on every page and a few bottoms thrown in for luck. Hardly a woman to be seen. Someone on the staff must have had a real thing about one particular actor, someone called Jan-Michael Vincent. I’ve never heard of any of the films he starred in, perhaps they were made up, but he starred in a lot of people’s teenage dreams, thank to Films and Filming. Shirts and Shirtlifters, people called it. It was so blatant.

  Somebody at Motor Cycle News must have turned a blind eye to the Personals. There was a sort of code involved, but it wasn’t like the code that won the war. No maths required. It was perfectly obvious if you were looking for it. Dominant, submissive: they weren’t personality profiles, exactly. They meant something a little different from extrovert, introvert.

  A year or two later MCN cracked down on the code, but you could still read that confident blokes were looking for shy mates and so on. The strong-minded were still looking for the suggestible. Ray was funny about it, imagining a time when you’d have to say, ‘Decisive biker seeks vague pillion’. But the message would still get across, one way or another. People will always find each other.

  At first I didn’t take to Kevin, I’m ashamed to say, because he was an absolute sweetheart. The reason I didn’t take to him was I suppose because he was even younger than me, and I suppose pretty. In fact definitely pretty. I was bound to worry if he was going to become the favourite. And Kevin had ribs. The only way anybody’s ever going to see my ribs is with an X-ray machine. You have to take my ribs on trust, but Kevin’s were there for the world to see.

  I was confident that Ray wasn’t going to transfer his interest to someone new, but I also knew he had two sides to him, the private citizen and the unofficial club president, and he would hardly take kindly to the eclipse of his own mascot.

  There was a bit more to it, if I’m honest. Kevin was a punk, and he had one of those very elaborate punky hairstyles, covering only a stripe of his head like what’s called a mohican, only dyed red and formed into spikes. This was a style called a cockatoo.

  It just seemed unfair that he was allowed to keep that fancy hairstyle. I’d spent two years of Saturday nights down there on the floor, and just when someone was supposed to be joining me there, it turned out he had special privileges from the word go. We weren’t being treated equally. When you’re naked and on display, and one of you has hair and the other doesn’t — any hair, let alone an eye-catching set of scarlet spokes — that’s a clear advantage. You could say that the one with the cockatoo hairstyle is still secretly wearing something. Not being truly naked.

  Ray cut my hair short the week after I moved in, cut it all off more or less, which was an improvement in some ways, I expect, or he wouldn’t have done it. But I always felt that having super-short hair, more like scalp-stubble really, made my ears look sticky-out, and I never quite got used to the bumps I felt when I put my hand up above the hairline. My little Mum was always pleading with me to grow it back, even just a bit, and I couldn’t really explain that it wasn’t up to me. It was som
ething that my little Dad agreed with her about, and they couldn’t see why I was being so stubborn. They both saw Ray as a good influence, and it wouldn’t have been right to let them know that he was responsible for the only change in me they didn’t like.

  So I felt quite resentful of Kevin. I mean, it’s one thing to make things easier for a newcomer to the group, but shouldn’t Bob have made it clear that the hair had to go? And failing that, shouldn’t Ray have made a ruling? Bob would hardly have put up a fight if Ray had laid down the law.

  And it didn’t stop there. From the very first Saturday night, Kevin had his say in choosing some of the music. Of course his choice was punky stuff, but that wasn’t the bit that upset me. When punks first appeared I was scared of them, but that soon passed, even if I don’t remember ever actually thinking they were sexy. In any case, after a while his taste changed and he began to fit in more with the group. He brought along heavy metal. Which I didn’t like much better, I have to say. But the thing was, nobody ever asked me if there was music I wanted to choose for Saturday nights. And I understood why, but it still bothered me that Kevin seemed to have such a smooth ride.

  Ray liked chamber music, Ray liked arty songs as well as jazz of the moody sort. But when he listened to music, he liked to give it his full attention. He didn’t want to be doing anything else, unless it was music he knew well and he was reading a book. So he never exercised his right to choose poker-club music, which meant that there was no chance of me getting a look in. My refusal was taken for granted, it went along automatically with his. Yes, of course, I might have embarrassed myself. Certainly there were some disco songs I liked at the time, and a little gentle reggae, that might not have gone down too well. And if I’d had my choices, I might have cringed looking back on them now. But I couldn’t help feeling I had the right to give it a go.