by Patrick Gale
The poignancy of removing carefully chosen underwear in solitude, however, was insufferable.
Three nights later, Hilary was jolted awake in the small hours by the doorbell. There was Rufus saying words to the effect of, ‘Erm … ah … I’ve just split up with Julie.’ And there was Hilary saying words to the effect of ‘What you need, Rufus Barbour, is some tender loving Scotch,’ and here was Mr Metcalfe nearly two years on, chaining up his bicycle in the music block and thanking the Lord above for chime bars.
Chapter eleven
As she started to make breakfast, he had remembered that it was his day to sign on and that his UB40 was under his mattress at home. He disliked having to leave her so abruptly; from something in her manner towards him, he divined that this temporary desertion was what she desired. Naturally passive, he was perturbed by the aggression she brought out in him. As a rule sex presented a foregone conclusion of plus and minus – plus being someone else. Her behaviour challenged him to a tourney of wills. The more she had played the prying mistress, the more he had felt compelled to postures of mastery. On returning to her flat last night, he had intended to come clean, but it was as though her fantasy formed a clinging, inhibiting mould. His angry lovemaking had been a wild attempt to demonstrate his independence as she built him up into something he was not. He lacked the imagination to construct complicated fictions of mousy wives and official missions, but so palpable were her conjectures that none were needed.
‘Don’t you normally sign on on a Tuesday?’
Like so many of the dole clerks, this one’s appearance was deceitful; close-cropped hair, earring, stubble, Nicaraguan liberation tee-shirt and doubtless – could one see – Doc Martens. The idea was to lure one into a false sense of camaraderie, to make one forget that he was not claiming illegal benefit too, but was paid a Civil Service salary.
‘Yes,’ said Rufus, ‘but last time I came I was given a new signing day and time.’
‘Are you sure of that?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘Because I’ve got you down as having missed a signing yesterday.’
‘There must have been a mistake, then.’ Rufus shrugged.
‘You’ve done no work at all?’ pursued the clerk.
‘No. None.’ He no longer blanched at the question. The sourness in the air here was enough to bring on a spasm of gagging. Rancid hair. Unwashed groin. Stale towel.
‘Well, for today you’ll have to go over to that queue there, where it says “Tuesday Enquiries”. Explain what’s happened. They’ll have your claim file.’
Rufus apologized and grunted his way through the nine queues to join the one for the most hard-bitten fraudmongers. His was an easy secret to keep. He lived alone among strangers, worked for cash and had no friends. Hilary had no suspicion, being typically naive about the cost of piano lessons, and deceived as to the extent and demands of Rufus’ clientele.
Later he would lie in the bath, soaking off the sweat of the night and the smell of his fellow claimants. He would stare at his toes as they blocked off the icy draught from the overflow opening and wonder, in the state of semi-trance brought on by water that is slightly too hot, if he would be signing on for ever.
The flat – a shabbily attractive one in Spanish Place, behind the Wallace Collection – represented the chief spoil of a youthful war of charm against his maternal grandmother. Estranged from his elderly parents soon after A-levels and the first attempt on his life, he had come to lodge with her while studying music at the Guildhall School. The old woman had sustained no more than a Christmas card relationship with her daughter since an unbridled altercation over the latter’s marriage, and took defiant pleasure in adopting the sole fruit of the same, never less so than when she died leaving him her property. What money remained outstanding went, in a post-humous coup, to a home for old donkeys in Kent.
Not least in the apartment’s charms were its venerable Blüthner grand, and a proximity to the Wigmore Hall which, Rufus was sure, were persuasive points when advertising for pupils. While she had succumbed to electricity and a gas water-heater over the bath, his grandmother had held out staunchly against the conspiracies of central heating and Alexander Bell. A gas-fire provided the sole source of warmth, and there was a payphone in the hall which Rufus shared with visitors to the parsimonious freeholder who lived on the ground floor. He had never redecorated the place. The walls had faded to a pleasing antique cream and were still hung with the inferior paintings amassed by the old woman and her late banker husband. The oil of these had darkened with age, abstracting their sentimental subjects further with each passing year. Rufus’ influence was shown only in small ways: a frying-pan permanently on the stove, the removal of all net curtains, and the contemporary fiction which gradually ousted her collected editions of Walter Scott, Dumas fils and Angela Thirkell. When in especially dire financial straits, he would carry another handful of her books to a nearby dealer. He had left untouched his grandmother’s drapes over the bed: a baroque confection of gilt hoops and dusty silk which amused him. When disturbed, these hangings gave off a smell instantly recognizable by anyone who has ever emptied the wastepaper basket in their grandmother’s bedroom; an evocative blend of nylon stocking, hair spray and slightly stale scent. Rufus often reflected, not without a little sadness, that he would appreciate his grandmother more now than in the unlovely years of his late adolescent preoccupation.
Dry now, smelling faintly of baby powder, he wandered naked in search of clothes. His grandmother’s pride and joy had been a full-length looking glass given her on her twentieth birthday, which she had arranged so as to multiply her severe reflection in a second glass built into a tallboy door. An arching infinity of grandsons now crouched to a plastic basket of clean boxer shorts, now stood on tip-toe to select a well-ironed shirt. While not of theatrical proportions, his wardrobe was unconsciously assembled an outfit at a time, each ensemble so different from the last as to present a second, seventh, sixteenth character. For Mrs Phillips, the army wife, he dressed down in jeans but with a good jacket to show that he could dress up should the need arise. For the brats at school he dressed as wholesome youth – deck shoes, bright shirt, soft jersey. He dressed for Gibley as for a prince – his best suit, Hilditch and Key shirting, an exquisite tie an Italian friend had once left behind.
Gavin Gibley was twelve. His mother had evidently booked him in with Rufus under some misapprehension. Every week the mournfully talentless child was let off school for the morning to be dressed in his best flannel suit and clip-on bow tie, and put on the bus from Mill Hill. Gibley would be here in twenty minutes. As he walked his way into his best shoes, Rufus set a bowl of potpourri on the piano; Gibley reeked of piss.
Rufus dabbed on his strongest cologne as further protection, adjusted the stool and launched into his scales. He would never be a soloist, but he would never admit the same by letting his standards slip. When he made a mistake he barely frowned, but briefly withdrew his hands, paused for recollection and then returned to the beginning of the blemished run. The gamut of scales complete, he stretched, then took down a book of masochistic but effective nineteenth-century studies. He chose the twenty-fifth. For the Development of the Power in the Fifth Fingers, and a Facility in Hand-crossing.
Clinically examined, the Metcalfe affair could be seen as an out-of-hand experiment. Hilary was the only man with whom he had ever, could ever have been involved. When they first met he had been perfectly happy with a Canadian flautist from Guildhall called Julie who was blonde and absurdly pretty. She was also successful. His only professional engagements since leaving college had been as her accompanist at three lunchtime concerts in the Barbican foyer.
‘Invite him round, why don’t you?’ she had suggested when he told her about the young, lonely-seeming teacher encountered at school. ‘I’m off for the weekend, but you could cook him your lasagne. You need some friends of your own.’
With the arrogance natural in the perennially popular, she had alw
ays assumed that his marked lack of acquaintance was due to some fault, rather than any desire on his part. He understood this and let her pity him accordingly. Though he had already invited Hilary Metcalfe, he let her assume that he now did so at her behest. She stayed long enough to patronize the happy spectacle of ‘Rufus making friends’, then swanned off, quite lovely, to Victoria.
The amusing thing was that as the evening drew on, he found that he really was making friends. With ingenuous brutality, Hilary clambered into his closest chested concerns – asking politely about his parents, then their rift with his grandmother, then his rift with them and on to his ambitions and the slowness of getting his career off the ground. Once he started to confide it was surprisingly easy, but with each unbuttoning came a stab of panic as this young stranger calmly opened another pocket of his history. Hilary had confided in his turn and reversed the process, which was still more alarming. The confessions of his failure in love, his lack of professional motivation and his undying romantic optimism trapped Rufus as firmly as if his guest had been repeatedly seizing him by the hand and pressing his fingers on portions of a wounded anatomy.
‘Feel here,’ he was demanding. ‘And here. Look. Touch. Feel the damage.’
The thinly masked suggestion that they make love was the logical conclusion to a conversation that could only become increasingly personal. Although Rufus refused, with the instinctive flinching which could subsequently be shrugged off as disgust, he could register no convincing astonishment. When Hilary released him by riding away, Rufus had felt the high-charged guilt appropriate to a conceptual adultery.
‘Hi there,’ Julie laughed after she had pushed him on to the sofa and kissed him thoroughly as a reward for being a good boy all solitary weekend. ‘And how was your new friend?’
‘Fine,’ he told her. ‘We made love.’
She failed to understand. He had always been most accommodating when she buried her shame in his shoulder and stuttered out the latest peccadillo, but it seemed that the rules were different for him. He said as much to her telephone answering machine, trying to make her see that she was being unreasonable. He went around to her flat and made a shortish speech into her entryphone on the subject of conjugal equality and rational behaviour.
‘It wasn’t as though I’d fooled around with another woman,’ he told her, but she seemed to think it was worse. On reflection, guilty in thought if not yet in deed, he was inclined to agree with her. After twenty-four hours of exhausting theory, he had caught the first of many taxis to the North Pole and claimed the late-night practice that seemed by now to be his due.
The study ended with a frivolous flourish, banal after the dogged hard work of the previous three pages. He shook the tensions from his hands, rubbed his palms on his trouser legs and took out a Debussy prelude. Feuilles Mortes.
Doubtless Hilary analysed the painful scenes of several months past and decided with characteristic Broadway ham humility that he was being punished for being over-affectionate. This was not the case. Rufus needed all or nothing; smothering or total liberty. If Hilary had turned up one day with a car instead of that ridiculous bicycle and said, ‘We’re going to a cottage in Drumnadrochit and never coming back,’ he would have leapt in beside him. It was Hilary’s hesitation that did the damage, the self-effacing guilt he felt for showing affection. If he pulled back, Rufus pulled back also. If he tried not to sit up waiting, Rufus felt compelled to oblige him by not being there for breakfast the next morning. Hilary assumed that Rufus had a promiscuous appetite for other men and here he did himself a gross injustice. He was and would ever be the only man in Rufus’ life.
Half-way through he was interrupted by the doorbell. He hurled a damp towel into the bathroom and loped down to the hall. In a new sky-blue bow-tie, Gibley waited on the doorstep, joyless and sulphurous as ever.
‘Hello,’ said Gibley.
‘Hello, Gavin,’ said Rufus and they walked upstairs. Rufus took his coat and hung it on the hatstand. ‘Coffee? A glass of milk?’
‘No, thank you.’ Nothing was ever seen to pass Gibley’s lips. Were it not for the smell, the boy could be an android.
‘Sure?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
Gibley had sat down and was solemnly adjusting the height of the piano stool so that his feet could reach the pedals.
‘Right then,’ said Rufus once he had finished. ‘Let’s hear your scales. E flat major and D sharp minor this week, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Off you go then.’
Off went Gibley. Rufus stood behind him and stared down to the street where two cats were failing to couple on the soft top of a Jaguar.
The medical officer at Bishop Chandler’s School for Boys had relieved him of his virginity while tending a rugby injury. He had reported the incident and she had abruptly left the staff. Sandy had the same hands. For that matter, so did Hilary. Rufus turned.
‘No. Look. Stop,’ he said. Gibley stopped.
‘What?’ said Gibley.
‘You’re bringing your thumb under as though it was a club foot. It should happen smoothly, otherwise you’ll be in real trouble when you try to speed it up. Let me show you.’
He pushed Gibley lightly on the shoulder and took his place on the piano stool. As he ran his fingers back and forth over the same six notes to demonstrate a smoother thumb action, he decided to see Hilary tonight instead of Sandy. Evenings with Hilary were fraught, but they were oddly necessary.
Chapter twelve
It was already dark as Henry trudged across the central courtyard where the cars were parked. The slushed snow had frozen into rocky ridges and a cruel wind was whipping fresh flakes into her face and hair. As she burrowed in her bag to find the key, someone thrust a revolver into the small of her back and a man’s voice said, ‘Open the passenger door first, then drive me to Chester Square.’
She froze, one hand still in the depths of her bag and, with just the tip of her thumb, pressed her radio alarm.
‘That’s not a gun,’ she said. ‘It’s a piece of hot-water piping and we both know that if you hit me over the head and steal the car you won’t get past the gates.’ The piping was jerked hard into her back. She gasped and bit her upper lip.
‘Unlock the door,’ the man repeated. There was a faint Lancashire accent. She failed to recognize the voice, which could mean that he was a high security patient who had still to be relocated. She was breathing fast and shallowly.
‘I won’t scream,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I won’t try to run away. Just drop the piping so that I can trust you, then I’ll let you into the car and we can talk.’ The piping remained against her spine. ‘Go on,’ she urged, wishing there was someone else in the courtyard. ‘I promise I won’t snatch it.’
‘I’m a fool. That’s what I am, a fucking fool,’ he said and she heard the piping fall. It fell surprisingly heavily.
She sighed and unlocked her door. Without turning she said, ‘Go round. I’ll let you in,’ and climbed inside, shutting the door beside her. She could have driven away at once, but she was so relieved that he had done as she asked, and his voice had sounded so apologetic that she lifted the catch on the passenger door and opened it. He sat beside her, breathing rapidly. The yard was ill-lit and she could see only his profile, black against the great, glaring kitchen windows several yards away. Suddenly he turned with an impatient smack of hand on knee.
‘Just drive, won’t you, woman?’
‘Where to?’
‘I told you just now; Chester Square.’
‘Why there?’
‘There’s no time to explain. Just drive, for fuck’s sake, and I’ll talk as we go along.’
The ignition key stayed unturned in its slot. She rested her hands on the worn suede of the wheel cover.
‘Not unless you tell me why you’re so frightened.’
‘Please hurry. They’ll be on to me soon, you little git. It’s the third time I’ve tried.’
&n
bsp; ‘I’m Dr Metcalfe,’ she said. ‘I think I can help you if you’ll just talk.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Fuck off yourself.’
He grabbed the lapels of her overcoat and shook her. Her hands flew to his wrists and found them thick with muscle and vein.
‘I’m not ill.’ His terror was hot on her face. ‘I’m here under false pretences. I’m as sane as you, probably saner.’
‘Then why are you here? What motive could anyone have for sending you?’
‘I cheated them. For three years I was signing on as unemployed. They paid me supplementary benefit, housing benefit, heating allowance, child allowance, my wife and two children had free dental treatment, I had free glasses, the kids had free milk and all the bleeding while,’ here he shook her again for emphasis, ‘I was raking in a small fortune as a fixer.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Boilers, windows, cars – anything wrong, they’d call me and I’d come round and fix it for them. Cash in hand. No questions asked. Then someone grassed on me. They spied on my wife to make sure we were living together. They followed my children to school to watch how much they spent on sweets. Eventually they started following me. I tried to protect us. We drove to London and rented a flat. I nailed up the windows and put extra chains on the door but …’ He seemed about to weep. ‘They brought me here just the same.’
His grip on her lapels had weakened. Gently she lifted his hands off and lowered them, wrapped in hers, to her lap.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I sounded the alarm when you attacked me because I didn’t know who you were. Now that I do, I can send them away. Stay here.’ So saying, she started to open the door.
‘Don’t leave me,’ he whimpered. ‘They’ll give me electric shock treatment.’
‘It’s OK,’ she said, hating her well-worn sincerity of tone. ‘Trust me.’