The Aerodynamics of Pork

by Patrick Gale

  ‘Bravo!’ They had come straight from the church, to avoid the crowds. J clapped.

  ‘Well done, darling!’ Mother rushed forward and held his head in her hands, taking him in. Jemima laughed.

  ‘The great wet blanket. D’you know, she got through two of her hankies and my one, to boot, during that?’ Seth laughed. Mother’s eyes were still pink.

  ‘You great ninny,’ he said, ‘I made so many boobs. Grigor coped wonderfully.’

  ‘Probably didn’t notice. He rarely does, it’s part of his job.’

  ‘And well done, Godmother Beale,’ Seth went on. ‘You’ve no idea how hard it was going on after your Beethoven.’

  ‘Oh, bilge. You’re a very clever boy and we’re both proud of you, ain’t we, Mum? Now I could do with a good stiff gin.’

  ‘Get you in the mood for Bartok?’ asked Seth.

  ‘Hole in one. As performers and family, we should be able to jump a few queues. Come on.’

  The sun was half-way below the horizon and had suffused the few clouds with a deep pink.

  ‘Lovely,’ pronounced Evelyn, as they scaled the wooden steps placed over the wall for the evening, and rounded the church.

  A drinks tent had been erected outside the porch. The grass around it buzzed with a well-behaved audience rewarding its virtue. Most of the crowd were in evening dress. First timers and a few one-off visitors stood awkwardly out from the mass, declared by their leisurely holiday appearance and the interest they were taking in the church and surrounding coastline. A few practised Friends of the Festival were wolfing picnics around their cars or against walls. Guilty Glyndebourne. Grigor emerged from the back of the tent beaming, with a trayful of Martinis.

  ‘Bless your cotton bedsocks, darling!’ said Jemima, as he presented the cocktails.

  ‘Grigor, that was marvellous. Thank you,’ said Seth. He still felt touched and embarrassed at the man’s refusal to share the limelight.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know …’ he grinned. ‘You were not so bad yourself.’ Then he laughed aloud at his wit.

  The four of them had no need to circulate. The people they wanted to see came to them. Seth tripped up increasingly in his attempts to swing the praise on to Grigor and Jemima. He glowed as he saw heads turning in the crowd outside the tent, and as strangers smiled shyly at him on their way back to their seats. J and Grigor hurried back to the vestry, Martinis in hand, leaving mother and son together by the cliff-top walk.

  ‘Did I come up to scratch?’

  ‘I’ll say. Jane was sitting by me and she was a perfect brute, trying to embarrass me in front of the others by making loud references to my being your mother. By the time you came on I was almost as nervous as you.’

  ‘How did you know I was nervous?’

  ‘Your shirt collar had jumped up on one side and you hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Seth gasped as his hand flew up and turned the flap down. ‘It must have been when I put my jacket on in the vestry. Did it look very obvious?’

  ‘Yes. Well, rather. But it made you look sweet and vulnerable. Look. Everyone’s going back in. Drink up.’

  ‘I’ll put your glass back for you and join you in there.’

  ‘OK. But don’t be late in.’ She handed him her glass and strode over to join the stragglers by the porch. Seth drained his glass and, chewing Mother’s olive, walked back into the tent. As he handed over the glasses to the waiter behind the tables, there was a voice behind him.

  ‘Now it’s my turn to be admiring.’

  ‘Roly. Were you in there?’ Seth darted a helpless eye over his evening dress.

  ‘It was brilliant.’

  ‘Where were you sitting? I never dare look.’

  ‘Up in the gallery so I could sniff in peace.’

  ‘You don’t mean I managed to pierce that stony heart?’

  ‘Well Brahms did, but he had a little help.’

  Seth started towards the porch. Everyone else had gone in.

  ‘You aren’t going back in, are you?’

  ‘Yes. I think I ought to hear the rest of Jemima’s stuff. It’s thanks to her that I got the spot at all.’

  ‘Well I know, but you’ll have to stand at the back.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s packed out. If your mother kept a place, someone will have taken it by now. And there’s absolutely no room left upstairs.’

  ‘Oh God! Ma said she’d see me in there.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘She’ll be furious. Things like that are so important to her.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. Just write her a note and put it under her wiper or something.’

  Seth hesitated. He felt he should pay Jemima the courtesy of hearing her out, yet he wanted to see Roly more. It would be slightly anticlimactic to sit out in the audience after standing before it.

  ‘All right. I don’t really want to go back in anyway. Have you got some paper?’

  ‘Yup. Have a bit of diary.’

  The living quarters had been transformed. The bed was neatly made and hidden beneath a counterpane and cushions. Dirty clothes had vanished, as had the pile of washing up. Records were back in their sleeves, books on their shelves, and a bunch of yellow roses stood in a milk bottle on the table.

  ‘Well!’ teased Seth, setting down his violin. ‘And what happened in here?’

  ‘It was getting a little too sordid even for me. I nicked the roses from Jane’s garden. She’s got plenty to spare.’

  They stood side by side for a few seconds. Seth wanted them to roll around on the sofa but they didn’t. Instead, Roly asked if he was hungry.

  ‘I’m ravenous.’

  ‘Watercress soup, chops, spuds and ice-cream do you?’

  ‘You can’t …’

  ‘I’m not a starving artist. Not yet. I’m still their guest, even if I’m not especially welcome under their roof.’

  ‘Then – yes, please.’

  ‘I’d do something more inspired, but I’m not very adventurous yet.’

  ‘It sounds lovely.’

  ‘Better than taramasalata and quiche?’

  ‘Leave poor NW3 alone.’

  ‘Pax.’

  Seth made himself comfortable on the sofa, and admired Roly’s back. The cook called out from the sink,

  ‘Not over there. Chuck a record on then come and sit on the bed, where I can keep an eye on you.’ He ground a blenderful of watercress while Seth looked through the records.

  ‘I hope Ma won’t be too cross about my shirking the second half.’

  ‘I saw her face in the interval; you’re infallible for the next fortnight.’

  Seth found the Chopin Préludes and put them on. He sat on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes because they pinched, then curled up against a mound of cushions in the corner by the window.

  ‘That’s better,’ Roly said.

  Seth found his smile too much, and turned his face to the waves. The sun had vanished and the night was clear.

  ‘Know anything about stars?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘I wondered if I could see Leo up there. It’s the right time of month. The trouble is I can only make out constellations when someone draws a sort of dot-to-dot on top of them.’

  ‘Do you believe in horoscopes?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’m very bad at disbelieving anything. I certainly read them, and if they’re good I get excited. I suppose that means I believe.’

  ‘Well, Aquarians are meant to hold the keys to the New Society. I haven’t found mine yet.’

  ‘What about that table-load upstairs?’

  ‘It’s not exactly permeated with social relevance.’

  ‘How would you define “social relevance”?’

  ‘You are feeling confident tonight, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course. I’ve shown you I can do something.’

  ‘Indeed you have.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘Leave me alon
e. I’m trying to cook.’

  ‘Round one to Peake. Anyway, who says that art has to contain some reference to society? I thought art was a social event in itself, like tea-drinking.’

  Roly just grinned, threw his dinner jacket on the sofa and continued arranging chops in the grill pan.

  ‘Aquarius is a very gay sign,’ said Seth.

  ‘And what do you mean by that?’

  ‘Well, it’s detached yet gregarious, obsessed with individuality, yet eager to be popular. Most Aquarians are idealistic, too.’

  ‘Who says idealism goes with being a fag?’

  ‘It’s fairly hard to be a fag without nursing some hope that the social structure will change. Any outcast who wants to be accepted is an idealist.’

  ‘Are you an outcast?’

  ‘Until I tell people I’m crazy about you, I’m not properly gay, I suppose-just an unknown quantity. Once I do tell them, then I run a fairly high risk of being treated differently. I know my mother won’t throw me out on to the streets, because she’s Protestant and can take me up as a cross to bear. I’ll be another cause for her collection, and you don’t get that kind of pity from people when you’re considered socially dead-centre.’

  ‘And I’m shoved out on a lighthouse.’

  ‘Quite. But being Aquarian you don’t care, in fact it makes you pleasantly different. And when you move to London you’ll enjoy becoming part of a lighthouse community. Joe Bloggs’ll think you’re all sad outcasts, but your idealism will transform your circle into a high-minded élite.’

  ‘I know someone who’s been reading one of those trashy star sign profiles …’

  ‘Well,’ confessed Seth, ‘I did dip. But it’s all true, isn’t it?’

  ‘Hang on.’ There was a pause while Roly turned over the chops and smeared some more butter on to them. ‘Christ! They’re almost done,’ he said. ‘Have your soup.’ He lifted two bowlfuls out of the fridge and put some sour cream into them. Seth joined him at the table as he poured out some Chianti. It was warm from standing near the stove.

  ‘Looks marvellous.’

  ‘You haven’t tasted it yet.’

  Seth tasted it. ‘It is. Clever boy.’

  ‘Thanks, kiddo.’

  ‘So you don’t think we’re the new super-race?’

  ‘It’s a romantic thought, but I don’t see why we should be. Quite apart from the fact that we can’t reproduce, we’ve been around so long.’

  ‘Well, so have the ants, but they’ve never had a nuclear holocaust to clear away the opposition; we’ve never had a Gay Movement to consolidate our forces and beliefs.’

  ‘We’re not a religious army!’

  Seth smiled across the roses. ‘Round two to MacGuire,’ he said. ‘How did you get branded the black sheep?’

  ‘It was so stupid of me. I’d just finished my first term at art school – just like you, talking about my sexuality ad nauseam as it was the first chance I’d had …’

  ‘Well, I’m only young.’

  ‘And how! Anyway, first term over and I was madly in love for the first time, all starry-eyed, and I brought him to stay at Trenellion with no explanation.’

  ‘Was it so obvious, then?’

  ‘We touched rather a lot, and then Jane was out walking one evening when bloody Hera tracked us down in the long grass.’

  ‘How dreadful!’

  ‘You had to look at the funny side. She just wouldn’t stop barking. Jane was standing several yards away from her. When she still wouldn’t shut up or heel, she got worried in case she’d sniffed out a body or something, so she ran over, green wellies and all. Her poor face was indescribable.’

  ‘Poor … er.’

  ‘Jimmy. Yes. I think it was worse for him. They’d been treating him as an alien from the start anyway, ever since he announced to Lachlan that he’d been reared in a bed-sit in the Gorbals. We left the next day under a cloud.’

  ‘Is this the first time you’ve been back?’

  ‘Yes. You have to hand it to them, they were very kind. They didn’t kick us out. We left because Jimmy was feeling so embarrassed. Then, after Nanny died, they sent a sweet letter making no mention of the ugly incident, but saying that the lighthouse was at my disposal whenever I felt like getting away. Lachlan wrote again a few weeks later with the idea of restoring the angels. He’d just heard through some grapevine that I wasn’t a total dilettante, and reckoned he might as well get them done for love by an up-and-coming, than for a fortune by a “name”.’

  ‘So carrying on the family tradition of patronage.’

  ‘Exactly. Do your parents really have no idea yet?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why should they? I’ve been away at school for almost half my life, and I’m only sixteen. Well, nearly.’

  ‘Straight boys are dating by sixteen. Some even have jobs.’

  ‘Do they really? I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose you would. You know about the bill, though?’

  ‘What bill?’

  ‘Where’ve you been all the past year?’

  ‘Under lock and ruddy key. What bill?’

  ‘There’s one about homosexual ages of consent trying to squeeze through the Lords today. If only I had a radio we could find the result.’

  ‘You mean, lowering it to the same age as the straights?’

  Roly took away the soup bowls and brought over the chops.

  ‘They could hardly raise it any higher. Yes. The Europeans have put us all to shame at last, and sanity may be about to blossom forth. In one quarter, at least, but it’s a start.’

  ‘It hasn’t got a chance, though. Mmm, this smells good.’

  ‘It hasn’t got a chance now, but there hasn’t been enough preparation. The shoot-em-all-at-birth lobby have to be educated first, and one of the best ways of doing that is to show that someone who went to the same schools, has two parents, two arms, a wife, children, and a title, who isn’t even gay, has the humanity to support the bill.’

  As the meal carried on they spoke of schools, families, dreams, food, aspiration – anything that arose from the topic before. By the time a third record had been chosen and the washing-up was piled up once more, Seth had lost his self-consciousness and could say whatever came into his head. He didn’t feel especially drunk.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Please. Actually, no thanks. I rather like feeling well-fed and woozy. That was delicious. Thank you. What’s the time?’

  ‘You’re the one with a watch.’

  ‘Oh hell! I completely forgot.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mummy gave me this tonight just before I went to get tuned up, and I forgot to thank her in the interval. And it’s three minutes to twelve.’

  ‘Quick, then! Upstairs so I can give you your present.’

  ‘You haven’t …?’

  ‘Upstairs. Hurry. I’ll follow you.’ They started up the winding staircase to the studio. ‘Bronwen told me – that’s how I knew.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Roly had flicked the appropriate switch and the Schubert quartet preceded them.

  ‘Now sit down, close your eyes and open your hands.’ Seth did as he was told. He smiled broadly in expectation. There was a squeak as Roly pushed forward the other armchair to retrieve whatever it was. Then something heavy and wrapped in cotton was lowered into his upturned palms.

  ‘Careful not to drop it.’

  ‘Can I open my eyes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Seth found he was holding something wrapped in a pillowcase. Roly sat on the dhurrie in front of him, faintly embarrassed. Seth smiled down at his frown.

  ‘Go on. Open the thing. Your birthday’s any second. Sorry I didn’t wrap it properly, but the papers were hideous.’

  ‘I’m too excited. What is it?’

  ‘Go on, you nit.’

  Seth pulled off the dressing-gown cord that was tied around the bundle then, slowly, he slipped his hand inside the pillowcase. It met cold stone. />
  ‘Oh Roly, you haven’t!’ he gasped as he pulled out the sculpture.

  It was about a foot high, and just small enough to be held. It was a figure, possibly an angel, with one arm held protectively across the top of its forehead and the other clutching a book or a tablet of rock to its chest. By the same technique that had suggested distorted cloth in the other pieces, Roly had made it seem as if the figure were flying upwards through a thin sheet. Arms, hair, torso and features were conveyed through the folds.

  Seth ran his fingers across the surfaces, feeling the whorls made by the chisel in the clean, almost soapy stone.

  ‘Well?’ asked Roly, at last.

  ‘You know it’s beautiful, damn you. Thank you and thank you.’ He smiled briefly then looked at the figure once more and said more solemnly, ‘And I promise it’ll stay in my room and I won’t let her shove it in her garden or have it in the drawing room. And when you start having exhibitions, I’ll send it to the galleries, carefully packaged with a small card, “From the intimate collection of …”’ He twisted round and laid it behind him in the chair, then turned back to the creator and reached for him. ‘Thank you.’

  The kiss was sudden, the harder and greedier for having been broken off the night before. Seth slipped down into Roly’s arms, feeling his suit jacket crumple up beneath him. He stretched back his head on the rug and sighed as his lover fed off his ears, his jaw, his neck and began to nose his way beneath the loosened fabric of his shirt. Allowing his hands to stray across Roly’s hair and the back of his neck, listening to the music, he began to sense that he was almost incapacitated by alcohol. Lying down so fast had made him hopelessly dizzy. As Roly sought his mouth again, he clung to him tightly in an effort to rouse himself with the pressure, but his blood only sang the more.