by Patrick Gale
‘Please.’ Seth leant over the arm of the sofa and looked through the records. ‘Are these all yours?’
‘Yuh. Don’t sound so surprised.’
‘No. I’m sorry. It’s just that I hadn’t …’
‘… thought of me as the musical type? I’m not, really. At least, I have to have music around, but I’m hopeless at talking about it to people.’
‘The instinctive artist?’ Seth said, putting on a Saint-Saens piano concerto.
‘That’s right. Brand me. Muscular inarticulacy stumbling into genius.’ Seth laughed, then stopped as the wrong music began. It was on the other side. The powerful speakers, the only things in the room that stood free of the pervasive clutter, declared the jazzy surprise of the Ravel G Major concerto.
‘Oh, sorry. Wrong side,’ said Seth.
‘I was going to say, it’s not exactly nocturnal. No, don’t take it off.’ Seth was reaching for the tone-arm. ‘Just jump to the slow movement.’
‘Now who’s being cliché-ridden?’ he laughed.
‘But it’s good. It works. Here.’ He passed Seth some brandy in what looked like a cleaned-out mustard jar. Duralex. A school glass. ‘I suppose you want to see the studio.’
‘Yes please. But only if you don’t mind.’
‘I’m not that pretentious. A bit of stone’s just a bit of stone. No, let’s go up there anyway – it’s more comfortable.’
Seth knew of nothing more comfortable than sitting surrounded by the dirty laundry of the one you love, but he stood up and took a sip of brandy. It brought tears to his eyes. He had only had the stuff on Christmas pudding. Roly picked up the stove by its handle and headed towards the staircase, pausing only to flick a button on the stereo system. At once the music sprang up the stairs ahead of them. Suitably impressed, Seth followed.
Instead of a narrow walkway around a battery of revolving lights he was surprised by a circular room almost as large as the one they had left. The entire light mechanism had been removed. A floor had been laid, and was covered in rugs; the Indian kind, decorated with bold stripes of colour. The ceiling was a metal dome, supported on wooden beams and on a wall of glass and metal that ran all the way round. There were two elderly armchairs of the formless, engulfing kind. Roly hurried ahead and hid something beneath one of them as he entered.
‘It’s incredible!’ Seth exclaimed, walking around by the windows. ‘How on earth did they get the lights out?’
‘Apparently it was a terrible job. They virtually had to rebuild the top section. It was all over some architectural mag.’ He flopped into a chair, and watched in amusement as Seth stopped by the trestle table of works and works-in-progress.
The pieces were small – none more than a foot high. Carved in smooth, white stone, flecked with tiny fossils and shells, each carried reflections of the human form while maintaining an overall design that was wholly abstract.
‘Roly, they’re beautiful. Could I pick one up … if I’m very careful?’
‘Go ahead. They’re meant to be held.’
Seth took one gently in his hands. It was like a tiny curtain fashioned in stone, at least, it had gentle undulations in its form like the folds in a hanging cloth. At one point, though, the folds were disturbed by what seemed to be a part of a human face pressing from the other side. Seth felt the surface. He turned the piece in his hands to see the other side, but where he’d expected to see the back of the head that was pressing through, he found only the reverse of the folds on the front. He smiled, tricked by a conjuror.
‘What?’ asked Roly.
‘It’s like a ghost.’
‘Top marks.’ Roly sounded pleasantly surprised. ‘It’s a ghost piece. Most of them are. It was Bronwen’s idea. She drove over with me to Portland for the day to collect the rocks – she wanted to go fossil-hunting below the cliffs – and on the way home she told me that fossil stones are special because they have a memory. I thought about it when I started playing around with the stuff to see what it could do. On the first day it kept misbehaving, splitting open because of the shells and ammonites. Then I remembered seeing photographs of the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum – you know? – where they found whole bodies trapped in dust and turned into living sculptures. I thought I’d … well,’ he snorted bashfully, ‘thought I’d try to raise the memories of each stone.’
‘Don’t laugh at yourself,’ Seth said, as he set the piece down again and let his gaze trail, lingering, over the others. ‘It’s a strong idea.’ He turned, and parodied Roly’s grudging aesthetic. ‘It works …’ He walked over to the other chair and sat with a painless sigh.
‘Suppose so,’ said Roly, taking another sip of brandy and wishing it wasn’t so hard to make the next move.
Seth listened to the Ravel. The assumed naivety of the slow movement would be drawing to a close soon. He had to make a move before the finale broke in and reminded Roly to drive him home. He took a gulp of brandy, wincing until the burn had soaked down to his chest, then he stood with his eyes down and went to sit at Roly’s feet.
‘You’re better placed for the speakers. Can’t have a lopsided finale.’
Thankful for the muttered half-truth, Roly made room for Seth’s shoulders between his knees. Safe from the gaze and smile, Seth could relax. He leant his head against the leg on his left, delighting at once in the warmth of the spirit, the spirit of the music and the music of battered, slightly dusty jeans. When Roly ran a hand through his hair, he leant his head back and smiled up from the young man’s thighs.
‘Hello,’ he said.
‘Hi.’
Bending forward, Roly kissed him lightly on the top of his forehead, where the down merged into the line of his curls. He had meant to check himself, to lift his head back afterwards, but Seth quickly raised an arm, putting his fingers softly but firmly on Roly’s neck. Roly brought his lips down once more, this time between the boy’s eyebrows. Seth smelt the brandy on his breath. He put down his empty glass and twisted around into a kneeling position, taking Roly’s head between his hands, and pulled the other’s mouth against his own. They kissed, hesitant at first, then more fiercely, as Seth tightened his grip behind his lover’s neck and slowly compelled him out of his seat.
The music was now rushing along, hopelessly frisky beside such concentrated solemnity. For the first time in his life, Seth was kissing without keeping an ear open for an approaching junior, or wondering where the next breath was going to come from. The concerto crashed to an end and was replaced by the sound of the sea and the rhythmic bumping of stylus against record label. Heedless, the embrace continued. Seth had now slid away from the chair and was lying on the rugs, holding Roly tightly to him, his eyes forced shut by the keenness of sensation. He moaned to himself as the sculptor traced a line of kisses across his jaw to an earlobe.
Then Roly’s glass toppled from its perch on an arm of the chair and smashed on a small patch of bare boards beside his head. His hand rushed to Seth’s face to shield it from any splinters of glass. He laughed as he sat up. Seth smiled up at him as he picked pieces of glass from his guest’s splashed hair.
‘The world intrudes,’ he said quietly.
Roly stood and tossed the broken glass into a bin by the trestle table. Seth sat up against the chair and stared at the ring of flame inside the stove.
‘Oh shit!’ said Roly.
‘What?’
‘Look.’ He held out his watch. ‘It’s two-thirty. You’ve got to be up at sparrow’s fart.’
‘At what?’ laughed Seth.
‘Very early. I’d better drive you back. I won’t be responsible for your giving a sub-par performance.’
‘I guess not.’
‘But I want to see you. How about tomorrow night? I’ll come to the concert and we can talk afterwards.’
He turned off the stove and they started downstairs. A brisk walk from temptation.
‘I’m playing just before the interval. We can talk halfway through.’ Seth stood in the doorway and watched as Ro
ly switched off the record player and grabbed his jacket.
‘Didn’t you have a coat?’
‘No. Just this.’ Seth tugged at his jersey.
‘Pull this on.’ Seth took the cardigan and pulled it on. It was huge and well-worn. He hummed his approval.
‘That better?’ asked Roly, grinning.
‘Smells good.’
And they stood in the doorway for a final kiss before walking down to the rocks and up to the waiting car.
Evelyn had lain in bed and tried vainly to read. Her concentration strayed to the comments at dinner, and to Jemima’s jibe at her priggishness. She disliked it when contemporaries mentioned love and marriage because she could tell they were sitting there looking at her and wondering what it must be like to go through life having been to bed with no-one but one’s husband. Marriage was one thing, but love … as she brooded, uncomfortable and sad, Berlioz’s Memoirs sank neglected to her lap and the spectre of Camilla Blair rose before her once more.
Camilla had been sombre sixteen. Her back was straight as a silver birch, her arms were graceful and long, and her hair was dark and glossy as a concert grand. Together they had been sent riding because they were too tall safely to join in lacrosse. Together they had sworn vows of fidelity till death, lain in the woods reading Browning and Catullus, knelt at the altar for Confirmation, and together they had learnt the pungency of secret passion. They swore to withhold the vessels of their spirit from male desecration with due savagery but their dreams never encompassed anything beyond the bounds of the school. When they left, Camilla trotted off to the Sudan to do VSO. There had been a farewell tea in Fortnum’s and a few excited letters, then a hurtful silence. At last, after months of waiting, there had been a strained note from Commander Blair in some village near Lowestoft, explaining in bleak English that Camilla had died in a fever hospital, that the funeral had been a quiet family affair but that, as a close friend of his late daughter, would Miss Davenham care to attend a memorial service the following Saturday. Miss Davenham had never summoned the courage to go. Of course, she knew now that she was not, well, that sort of woman; she had given the matter considerable thought and had come to the conclusion that Camilla was an exception to a rule.
As she tried once again to read Berlioz’s account of his dealings with the Ministry of the Interior, she thought of Huw in some clinical Viennese library, and was perturbed, as she had been countless times before, by the gnawing suggestion that the only person for whom she had ever felt passion uncoloured by duty lay tossed across a rose-bed in a Suffolk churchyard.
A landing floorboard creaked and Venetia came in. In her hurry she had come without a dressing-gown and her once long t-shirt clung absurdly to the bloated contour of her abdomen. Evelyn was shocked – the girl was even larger than she had imagined. Venetia looked excited.
‘Mummy?’
‘Are you all right, darling?’
‘It’s Seth.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ At once the book was thrust aside.
‘Well I was woken up by this noise. And I lay there for a second and then realized that someone was throwing stones at the house. I waddled over to the window and saw that boy – the blond who was at the party, the one who talked to Seth for ages. He was throwing pebbles up at Seth’s window and the next thing I heard was Seth “tiptoeing” out to join him. They’ve driven off in his sports car.’
‘Well, I never!’ Evelyn laughed.
‘Aren’t you a bit nervous? I mean, it’s well past midnight.’
‘No, darling, it’s OK. They’ve just gone for a night drive along the coast, I expect. It was probably all pre-arranged and frightfully exciting, and we weren’t supposed to know. Don’t let him know you found out.’
‘But …’
‘Honestly, he’s perfectly safe. Roland’s rather nice, actually, a sculptor. Terribly talented. I expect he’s partly doing it to humour Seth; give him an adventure. You know what boys are.’
Until Venetia saw Seth being driven off by that pompously good-looking young man, she had never seriously entertained the possibility that he might be queer. One never did imagine it in one’s own family; rather like burglaries, or babies with spina biff. Of course she knew plenty of the creatures. Being friends with queers was one of the things that made her coterie so trendy. (Benji was one of her closest friends.) Still, one never liked to think of them doing anything; they simply were. The whole attraction was that they wanted to do nothing to her, and tended to do nothing to anyone else. At least, they kept it quiet. Men like Barnes came with all the advantages of a boyfriend and none of the squalor. She despised the titles ‘fag-hag’ and ‘fruit-fly’ since they suggested that the advantages were less mutual than they seemed, placing one in the same category as the Useful Maiden Aunt. She might not stay a maiden, but it now seemed less likely that she would ever become an aunt. Perhaps Seth was worth cultivating after all. Then she remembered that he had disappeared into the night with another man, and not simply been discovered, like Benji, in one of her ball gowns. Once one of her pet faggots hoisted the lurid fact of S.E.X. before her unwilling notice, he fell from grace, no longer sensitive but rather common. Aligning standards of chastity with those of breeding could salve a catalogue of social grazes. Breathless with the discovery therefore, she had hurried to the maternal bedside, only to find herself cast in the unenviable role of sport-spoiling sneak. Mummy was being even more Victorian than usual. Venetia tried to penetrate the moral bombazine.
‘You’d never have let me drive off into the middle of the night with dishy men when I was his age,’ she thrust.
‘Yes, but … in my former ignorance, I’d have suspected you of wanting to run off with them for more than just the sea-view by starlight.’
‘Well how do you know that that’s all there is to this little jaunt?’
‘What? Oh Venetia, really! It’s just a jolly jape.’
Her daughter gave up the attempt and wandered off to bed.
Evelyn set Berlioz back on the bedside table, turned out the light and worried like hell. At last, after wrestling with her conscience, and Camilla, she decided not to bring the matter up unless forced to do so by her son or by the production of, ye gods forfend, concrete evidence.
She fell into a fitful sleep and then was jolted awake by a terrible sound. She turned on the light and saw that it was exactly two o’clock. What had started as a scream and now broken into an hysterical laugh, was coming from Venetia’s room. She threw back the covers and ran out on to the landing. She shivered. Standing there in the dark with that girl’s helpless laughter was unnerving. Her mind lurching back to the years of nightmare-comforting in Hampstead, she pushed open her daughter’s door.
She was struck immediately by a strong scent of roses. It was almost overpowering; like walking into an overheated florist’s shop.
‘Darling, what’s …?’ she began as she turned on the light, then was stunned into silence. Venetia lay on her bed. The bedclothes were pushed aside. She was quite naked; the t-shirt had been tossed to the floor. Her face was streaming with tears, her eyes tight with mirth. Her hands were clasped to her belly which, in the seconds following Evelyn’s entry, finished the last inches of what appeared to have been a lengthy deflation. There was no blood, apparently no pain, only the laughter and that sweet, unaccountable scent of roses.
Overcome, Evelyn quickly flicked off the light, closed the door and leant for a while against the landing wall. She gazed out into the darkness beyond the banisters until her heart’s pounding stopped. Then, with the poised humility of one who has just received a reprieve from a new career as the latter day Saint Anne, she withdrew to her chamber and fell weeping to her knees.
THURSDAY one
McEnery looked up from her desk as Mo walked into the station.
‘Hello, Boss,’ she said, ‘sorry to drag you from your sickbed.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Mo, ‘just a belly bug. Either that or my Mum’s baking. Had me up half
the night. It’s worn off now. How’s our friend?’
‘He came round late last night. Medical have given him ten stitches across the scalp. No fracture, which is pretty amazing. They didn’t need to keep him in another night, although there seems to be some mild amnesia. They brought him in here after lunch. He’s in number five.’
‘What kind of amnesia?’
‘Can’t remember name, address or family.’
‘Convenient for them.’
‘Doctor Stuart said it was possibly some kind of compensation – that he might be protecting himself from the shock.’
‘Has Timson or anyone been in questioning him?’
‘No-one. He’s been asleep, but he rallied about an hour ago, when I took him some tea, so I thought it best to ring you and let you talk to him first.’
‘Good girl. I’ll go in now.’
‘It’s a bit embarrassing, really.’
‘What is?’
‘Well. I dunno. The way it’s all turned out, with chance playing into our hands.’
‘Never mind.’ Mo’s manner had hardened. ‘We’ve got him – that’s the main thing.’
McEnery raised an eyebrow and passed her the keys from a board that hung beneath the desk.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘a letter came for you this morning.’ She proffered the envelope. Mo took it, then walked aside and opened it. She recognized the rough handwriting at once.
From: The Squat, Pollock House, 123, Jackson Road, London NW1 (Behind Marylebone shunting yard). Forgive hasty departure and nasty message. This little pig says she’s sorry. Come and say it’s all right, tonight (Thursday) at tennish. Your loving Sister.
‘Happy Birthday late,’ the back said.
Feeling a rush of blood to her face, Mo folded the note as quickly as she had opened it and, thrusting it into her pocket, walked downstairs to the basement. She let herself into the corridor of the detention area and leant against the cold bricks for a few seconds to check her breathing. The surroundings soon killed her smile for her.
The detention area had recently been refurbished and was clean and impersonal as a hospital. The cells upset her. Something sinister about the way each had the essentials – bed, light, toilet and basin – and yet all adapted for the ‘safety’ of both prisoner and keeper. The toilet had no seat, its tank was inside the wall and the flush was automatic. The radiator was boxed away beneath the built-in bed and automatic. The table and chair were fixed to the floor. The light was built into the ceiling and operated from outside. The first time Mo had seen inside a new cell, she’d thought immediately of a story she’d read as a kid where a boy climbed through his washbasin mirror and found a world similar to his own in general respects, yet eerily different in detail.