He struggled to find an appropriate response. This was the man he had met on his return from Paris, the first love that tainted all later ones by its loss. This was the man with whom he had lived for five years, only to find, while painting their anniversary portrait, that he should have been painting a group. This was the man he was convinced had infected him when they gave up using condoms as a token of trust. He was lashed by waves of violent emotion, as anger, bitterness, curiosity and excitement surged through his head, along with a reflex sexual tingle in his groin.
‘Do you hate me?’
‘What? No, of course not.’
‘Well then?’ He held out his arms. ‘Kiss and make up?’
Wary of his easy charm and needing greater proof of transformation than a name, Clement compromised with a hug. The familiar contours of Oliver’s body confused him and he felt faint.
‘I need to sit down.’
‘It must be my fatal charisma.’ The epithet revived all Clement’s suspicions. ‘Would you like some air?’
‘I’ll be fine, thank you.’
Oliver opened the door. ‘It’s a beautiful night. Let’s take a walk. Don’t worry, I’m quite harmless.’
‘I doubt that, but I’m strong.’
‘You always were.’
‘No. Then I was just single-minded. Still, I could do with stretching my legs. I’ve been sitting all day.’
‘Do you mind if I tag along? I’d like to talk.’
‘You can’t expect me to welcome you with open arms, Oliver.’
‘Newsom… But there’s no call to keep me at arm’s length either. It’s been twelve years.’
‘I can count.’ Clement was shocked to find the memory of his betrayal so raw. Resentment of Oliver vied with anger at his own vulnerability. He was determined to rise above both. With Blossom’s equation of disease and dis-ease fresh in his mind, he refused to let Oliver compromise his health a second time.
‘Come if you like. I’ll just tell Mike.’
‘Do we have to ask our leaders’ permission?’
Clement smiled as the misapprehension empowered him. Seeing no sign of Mike, whom he took to be conferring with his fellow facilitators, he joined Oliver for a walk through the grounds. Stinging branches hung above stony paths and, although his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he was reluctant to venture far.
‘So when did you change your name?’ he asked, as they stood gazing into a shadowy paddock.
‘I’ve been Newsom for six years.’
‘Why? Were you wanted by the police or were several ex-lovers after your blood. That is if the blood weren’t…’ Clement could not bring himself to finish the sentence.
‘I never had you down as a vindictive man.’
‘I wasn’t… I’m not.’
‘I went to see a numerologist. I wanted to change my life.’
‘Is it that easy? Jacob becomes Israel. Ba-boom!’
‘No, but it’s a start. Oliver has a three vibration, which was fine when I was young. It’s a warm name that allowed me to harness my sexual and spiritual energy, but it left me in danger of spreading myself too thin. I needed a new vibration for the next stage of my journey. Newsom’s a seven – a mystical number – which helps me on my chosen path.’
Clement recalled Oliver’s lifelong quest for an inner child that had never seemed so close to the surface. ‘What about boyfriends?’
‘One or two. No one permanent. I have a dog.’
‘I’d like one but Mike’s phobic. He broke into the Acropolis as a student and an Alsatian bit his leg.’
‘Mike?’
‘The facilitator. We’re an item.’
‘Of course! Camden and Regent’s Park. I thought they were two different places.’
‘Just two different states of mind.’
‘Congratulations! He’s a hunk.’ Clement frowned. ‘You’re lucky to have found someone.’
‘What? You mean now that I’m damaged goods? Don’t think just because Mike volunteers for this that his whole life is a charity!’
‘I wasn’t thinking that at all.’
His genuine bewilderment forced Clement to acknowledge that the only one who had such thoughts was him. ‘I trusted you. Stupid, sure! Naïve, sure! But I felt what we had was good. I never supposed you were grabbing every opportunity to screw around.’
‘Screwing up, more like.’
‘That’s easy to say.’
‘Do you think I haven’t looked back… wanted to make contact?’
‘Don’t tell me you were scared!’
‘Yes I was, of hurting you… of bringing back too many memories.’
‘So why come here now?’
‘It’s not a private view, Clem! Your name wasn’t on the leaflet. Whatever you…’ Oliver’s voice was lost in a hacking cough.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ Clement asked, resentment replaced by alarm.
Oliver shook his head until a few words broke through the wheezes. ‘I’m fine… no… used to it… go back.’
Guiding him along the path, Clement was shocked by the erosion of his once muscular biceps. Any qualms about touching him vanished, and his one thought was to see him safely inside. Progress was slow, but they finally made it to the lounge where, with a quick nod to Dembe and Augustus, sole survivors of the general exodus, he helped Oliver up the stairs to his room.
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right? Do you want me to help you undress?’
‘Funny. I’ve often pictured you saying that again. Just not like this.’
Clement felt a disconcerting rush of tenderness. ‘I’m in Room 12 if you need me.’
‘I’m fine now, Clem. Just go.’
‘You asked for a kiss,’ Clement said, unwilling to leave him alone.
‘What was it you said about charity? Just go. Please!’
‘Of course.’
Clement walked down a corridor lined with grainy prints of Victorian miners and entered his room. Finding Mike in his underpants at the washbasin, he made straight for him and stroked the warmth of his back.
‘Is that a tall, fair and handsome man?’ Mike asked without turning.
‘That’s for you to tell me.’ He wrapped his arms around Mike’s chest.
‘I’m sorry for being so cunty in the car. I had the day from hell.’ Clement smiled as he wondered what Blossom would make of the language. ‘Forgiven?’
‘Don’t be silly!’ He relished Mike’s toothpaste-tinged kiss. ‘Oddly enough, that’s the second time tonight I’ve been asked the question.’
‘Really?’
‘I’ve just been talking to Oliver… Oliver, my ex.’
‘There’s no Oliver on the list.’
‘He’s changed his name to Newsom. He swears he’s changed everything else. Funny but there are some things I wouldn’t want him to change. I didn’t realise until I saw him there.’
‘Are you OK, Clem?’
‘Sure. Fine. Just a little taken aback, that’s all. Believe me, that chapter of my life is well and truly closed.’
Mike, who knew the story too well to feel threatened, clasped him in his arms and stroked his hair. Clement basked in the restorative touch until a sense of weightlessness heralded the approach of sleep. So he gently extricated himself and, after a token wash, walked over to the clinical beds.
‘Would it be against regulations to push them together?’ he asked.
‘I’ve a better idea. Let’s make do with one.’
‘It’ll be a squeeze.’
‘I certainly hope so.’
With a gusto that prompted Mike to suggest that they come to the country more often, Clement pulled off his underpants and jumped into bed. He snuggled up close to Mike, drinking in the warm sandy smell of his skin. All the confusions of Oliver’s return were resolved when they slowly began making love. Fears and inhibitions melted away as he lost himself in Mike’s embrace.
He paid the price the next morning when he yawned through Blossom’s s
eminar on anger, although he was cheered to see that ‘I can get by on four hours a night’ Mike was equally bleary-eyed. After a lunch in which the toad in the hole and macaroni were replaced by burgers and cauliflower cheese (with a banana and crisps for the vegan), the group split into three for a workshop on living with the virus. Against best practice Clement found himself with Mike, and against his better judgement with Newsom, now fully recovered from the night before. Their fellow members were Douglas, the nervous newcomer, whose casual attitude to his infection (‘at least I no longer need to worry about catching it’) put Mike’s non-judgemental ethos to the test, and two Botswanan women, Tembi and Linda, who were so softly spoken that Clement missed large chunks of their stories, although the theme of errant husbands and credulous wives was familiar enough for him to fill in the gaps. After three years of life-saving treatment, they faced the threat of its removal, having been refused asylum in a country for which Commonwealth was merely a metaphor.
Their final member was Christine, who had exchanged her suit for a more relaxed grey woollen skirt and cardigan, but whose face and body remained rigid. With a voice that gained in confidence as her story progressed, she explained that her father was an evangelical vicar who, at the start of the aids crisis twenty years earlier, had claimed to be on a God-given mission to cure homosexuals. ‘Daddy gathered half a dozen young men… confused and damaged young men, gave them a home – my home – and set them on the path to righteousness. To start with he had some success… one or two girlfriends, even an engagement. Then, little by little, the Devil – what Daddy called the Devil – began to assert himself. The men began to break away. And not quietly. There were stories in the papers. Even a report on Points West. Daddy was worried that the publicity would threaten the funding. In the end there was only one man left, Luke. The most confused and damaged of them all. Daddy asked me to marry him.’
‘You’re kidding!’ Douglas blurted out, breaking all the rules.
‘I wish I were,’ she replied. ‘I expect you all despise me for agreeing.’
‘No one’s judging you, Christine,’ Mike said gently.
‘I’m judging myself!’ she cried, before recovering her composure. ‘But if Daddy could have such a powerful hold on strangers, imagine what it was like for us, his family. He persuaded me that the marriage was God’s will. I pictured a husband’s love as little more than the love of a younger father. Luke was thrilled… or at any rate flattered. He jumped at the chance to show that he was the number one disciple, my father’s right-hand man. And I like to think that he felt something – if not love, then a kind of affection – for me. So we married and in some ways we were happy… I don’t have to talk about bed, do I?’
‘You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want,’ Mike assured her.
‘Good. It’s just that, as you can imagine, that side of things left a lot to be desired. Well, desire for a start.’ She giggled. ‘I’m sorry. But the one thing I learnt from my mother was patience. Daddy felt vindicated. Luke was his success story. He trusted him so much that he sent him out to spread the word in bars… homosexual bars.’
‘Shit!’ Douglas said.
‘Yes, you’re right. Shit and fuck and bugger.’ She looked shocked. ‘I can’t believe I said that! Even now I expect someone – God or Daddy, it doesn’t matter which – to strike me down. At first I was pleased when Luke went out. It’ll sound selfish, but the only nights he ever tried to make love to me were when he came back from the bars. I thought he was giving thanks for what he had. But I see now that he was trying to cleanse himself for what he’d done… cleanse himself and, in the process, infect me. Although I didn’t find out about that until much later, two years after he left. He wrote a letter saying we were living a lie and he’d fallen in love with a man. Only he didn’t send it to me but to my father. I think I can forgive him everything else but that. After three years he still wrote to my father!’ She broke down, making full use of both Newsom’s handkerchief and Mike’s encouragement to take her time. ‘There’s nothing more to say. I went back to live at home and work part-time as a doctor’s receptionist. I find it helps to be around people who are sick. Meanwhile Daddy carries on with his mission, blaming every setback on Satan. He won’t hear a word about my HIV. It would be like admitting he’d failed.’
The clapping as she drew to a close was long and heartfelt. Clement felt that for once the sharpest anticlerical gibe would be justified, but Mike held back and called on Newsom to speak. He began by confessing that the retreat had stirred up painful emotions in him since he had met an old boyfriend whom he had treated badly. Clement baulked, but to his relief Newsom made no attempt to identify him. He wondered at whom the remarks were aimed, since Mike was unmoved and the rest of the group perplexed. His question was answered when Newsom described how, over the past six years, he had instituted huge changes in his life, giving up his job as a picture researcher in order to travel to Japan and study ceramics. On his return he had begun making pots. Even so he was racked by the thought of unfinished business. He had lived with the virus for at least twelve years and his T-cell count was plummeting. He had been through four different drug combinations and the doctors were running out of options. The uncertain future made him all the more anxious to settle outstanding accounts.
Clement echoed the ovation at the end of the speech, but his hands felt numb. Twelve years confirmed his worst suspicions. He failed to see why, if he were so keen to make amends, Newsom had made no attempt to contact him. Even one who believed in ‘leaving everything to the universe’ could have picked up a phone. Nonetheless he refused to brood and focused his attention on Mike, whose turn it was to speak. He opened with a graceful allusion to the accident of his not having contracted the virus and to his gratitude for everything he had learnt from his positive friends (this time Clement longed to be singled out, even though he knew that it would breach all Mike’s official boundaries). Trusting that no one would take offence, he asked for a moment to acknowledge the upside of HIV, not just the individual acts of courage, but the maturing of a community that had done so much to care for the sick, educate the vulnerable, and ensure access to drugs. He feared that a lot of what had been achieved was being lost, as the success of new treatments led to an erosion of responsibility. Short memories resulted in shortened lives.
After joining in the applause for Mike, Clement embarked on his story. On previous retreats, he had chosen to disclose as little as possible, but this new combination of people and circumstance induced him to voice thoughts he had barely articulated. Averting his eyes from Mike and Newsom, he described how his despair at his brother’s death had driven him to explore his dark side. Rather than abandon God, he had defied Him to do His worst, while doing everything in his power to help Him. It had been a miracle (a word he chose in direct response to Mike’s accident) that he had survived. On emerging from the darkness, he had attempted to disown the experience but, inevitably, he had failed. There was a part of him, however painful it was to admit it, that remained wedded to death. So, while he had always ascribed his infection to another’s betrayal, he had to acknowledge his own share of the responsibility. To bear a grudge would be to deny all that had happened, both good and bad, since his diagnosis. He was rewarded with the statutory round of applause and the respective tears and smiles of his past and present lovers.
The day sped by and, after a dinner in which the hostel fare was boosted by the cold meats and salads that Brian, sensing mutiny, had brought back from Neath, the group assembled in the lounge. Filled with newfound confidence, Clement made for the two leather-clad men who were sitting alone by the fire.
‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked.
‘Go ahead,’ Phil replied, pointing to a spare armchair.
‘You’re not using it?’ he asked Tim, who was crouching on the floor.
‘Permission to speak, sir?’ Tim asked Phil, giving Clement such a chilling insight into their relationship that he longed to esc
ape to Dembe and Augustus.
‘Granted,’ Phil replied, whereupon Tim explained that he had no right to sit at the same level as Phil. It was only as a concession to the other retreatants that he was allowed to eat off a plate rather than from his dog bowl.
‘That strikes you as sane?’ Clement asked, realising for the first time that the sexual code was as hierarchic as the religious.
‘I live to serve my master,’ Tim replied, kissing Phil’s boot.
As they continued to talk, Clement was amazed to find that not only was Tim the more articulate of the two but, unlike Phil, he was HIV negative.
‘Why should that surprise you?’ Tim asked.
‘I’m sorry. It’s none of my business,’ Clement replied, hoping that his flushed face would be attributed to the heat. His discomfort was relieved by Mike, who announced that the fire ritual was about to start in the paddock. Clement flashed him a sympathetic smile, aware of his unease at the more aggressively New Age trappings of the retreat, which were Brian’s province. For himself, he enjoyed the spectacle, while remaining dubious that his negative traits would be destroyed simply by writing them on a scrap of paper and tossing it into the flames. Making his way through the grounds, he ran into Christine.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘I looked for you after the group but you’d disappeared.’
‘I’m sorry. If I’d known…’
‘Don’t worry, I was just checking.’
‘I needed some time to myself. It was quite a lot for me to take in. You know, that’s the first time since my diagnosis I’ve discussed it with anyone except the doctor. Even now Daddy thinks I’m spending the weekend with an old friend from school.’
‘But that’s dreadful! You must feel so isolated. When we go back inside, I’ll give you my number. Feel free to ring me at any time – and I mean any time – you want to chat.’ Having stifled the impulse to invite her to stay, he was doubly embarrassed when she started to cry.
‘I’m sorry. You see, I’m a great fan of your Pier Palace Christ. Luke and I went down to London when it was in the Park.’
The Enemy of the Good Page 7