Finer Things

by David Wharton

  Despite himself, Jimmy felt disappointed at this news. Perhaps if he hadn’t talked about overdosing the doctor might have sent him home with a bottle of Drinamyl. Others had done so before. He liked Drinamyl.

  ‘Are you saying it’s not curable?’

  ‘It can be cured if we can get to the causes. It might take a specialist. But I think I can already see a possible approach.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Let’s not rush into this, though. Perhaps we can build up a little more information? Could you tell me why you decided to come here today in particular?’

  So I told him about the roof.

  ‘It was steep up there, and pretty slippery – wet moss all over the place. Also, some of the slates were loose. I was in my pyjamas and slippers, making my way down to the edge quite gingerly, but at the same time, feeling more and more committed to what I was going to do. I’d told myself if I could get all the way there and stand up, I wouldn’t have the option of chickening out.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’d be there. Of course, I can’t say for sure now if I’d actually have had the guts to go through with it. Probably not. Anyway, about a third of the way down, I lost my footing, and found myself sliding out of control towards the edge. It’s funny how your intentions can change.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘It wasn’t a decision anymore. At first I didn’t want it happening by accident, then I didn’t want it happening at all. When I’d crawled out I’d been dead set on chucking myself down at the ground, trying to smash my head in on the flagstones. Now I was flailing around, trying to grab at anything that would save me. I’d realised I didn’t actually want to die.’

  ‘And you managed to stop yourself. Obviously.’

  ‘That’s right. When I got to the bottom I rammed my heels into the gutter. The metal came away from the wall a bit, and that sort of dampened the impact, brought me to a stop. I lay there for a while, on my back, crying. Glad to be alive, miserable I wasn’t dead. Then, once I’d calmed down, I turned over and crawled back up to my window. That was pretty terrifying in itself. I scrambled back into my bedroom. Next morning, I was feeling a lot more sensible, and I decided I needed some sort of help. Which is why I’m here.’

  Dr Malvern smiled generously. His confidence made it seem almost possible Jimmy really could feel better. After all these years.

  ‘I’m very glad you came here today,’ Malvern said.

  ‘You think you can—’

  ‘Perhaps. Yes. I know of several treatments that have had efficacy in cases of this sort. The trick is to get at the root cause.’

  He stopped talking and waited. But something about that phrase ‘the root cause’ seemed wrong to me. It set off an alarm in my head, almost too late.

  ‘It’s your impulses making you unhappy,’ he said. ‘You need to understand that suicide is an unnatural desire, and one unnatural desire is usually connected to another.’

  Unnatural desire. That was what he saw in me. I’d fallen for what I’d thought was his kindness, but he was just a slippery evangelist, luring me in, building my trust, trying to win me over. And with people of that sort, there always comes the moment when they have to show their true colours. Thank Christ he’d mistimed his!

  He kept talking, even though he must have seen in my face how horrified I was. I suppose he thought he might as well make sure I got the message.

  ‘I think you understand what I’m referring to,’ he said. ‘It’s not just a moral issue, it’s a legal one. As a doctor, I have a responsibility to help you correct yourself.’

  He didn’t say, because he wouldn’t want to spook me, but I knew what he had in mind. It’s a kind of treatment they call ‘aversion therapy’. Electric shocks to the testicles every time you get an erection, hallucinogenic drugs, sleep deprivation, starvation and so on. I’ve met men who’ve had it. If you get caught importuning in a gents’ lavatory the judge sometimes gives you the choice – imprisonment or therapy. Given the sort of thing that happens to queers in jail, I can see why any alternative might look better. Also, I suppose, the idea of becoming ‘normal’ could be attractive to some.

  In case you’re wondering, the torture treatment doesn’t work. At best, you end up a self-hating homosexual, and I’m already pretty good at all that. I don’t hate the homosexual part of me. I’m just a homosexual who also happens to be exceptionally gifted in the self-hating department. Malvern’s big mistake was trying to make a connection between those aspects of my character.

  I let him finish what he was saying and told him I’d give it some thought. Then I left, shaking with fear and cursing myself for my stupidity. If only I’d given a false name and address at the surgery! Like a bloody idiot, I’d sat and confessed to a suicide attempt. At least that’s not grounds for prosecution in itself anymore. But I’d still given that man all the evidence he needed to certify me mentally unfit.

  I looked it up in a law book afterwards. Once a doctor’s given you the label of ‘lunatic’ you’ve no rights at all. They can lock you up for as long as they like, and subject you to whatever treatment they see fit. My ‘perversion’ can be classified as a psychological illness, of course, and with the admission of a suicide attempt on top . . .

  After that things got a bit deranged. More than likely, the man forgot about me as soon as I left his office – also he had no proof of anything I’d told him, and the part about my inclinations was all just guesswork as far as he was concerned. But I became obsessed with the idea that he was now determined to track me down and have me dragged off to an asylum. I spent those days in a kind of terrified fog, expecting the men in white coats to turn up at any moment.

  Perversely, the anti-apartheid stuff helped a lot: going to meetings, reading all those grim pamphlets and newspaper stories. It gave me something to focus on other than myself. And then, when we were on the march itself, I felt joyous. I expect I looked quite the fanatic out there. I was drunk on it. Honestly, I can’t remember a time when I’ve been happier.

  Then, of course, we had to run into Shearsby. I didn’t want to go anywhere near him, but you insisted. It was just awful. It brought back that night at the Gaudi, and everything that followed it. You and I had that stupid argument afterwards, of course, which I think was more to do with my feeling there was nothing to look forward to now the march was over. Anyway, by the time I got home to my digs I knew I needed to go back to my dad’s for a while.

  My train’s pulling in to Trencham station now. So I’ll leave this, except to say I’m feeling a great deal better already, and I’m sure that getting out of the hothouse of Moncourt for a while is the right decision.

  Before I sign off, I want you to know that, apart from the old couple I live with, you’re about the only person in London I really trust. You’re my truest friend, Tess, and I don’t want to lose you. I’m so very sorry I haven’t talked about any of this before. If I’ve been difficult recently I hope you can understand why.

  What an idiot I am! I’ve just realised, I don’t know your address in Camden. I’ll have to send this letter to you care of Moncourt and hope they pass it on to you.

  Please write back if you get this.

  J.

  After she finished the letter, it occurred to Tess that in the three weeks since Jimmy had posted it, he might have tried writing to her again. She checked carefully through the pile of papers, lifting up each copy of The Moncourt Review by its front cover and shaking it in case anything should have been trapped between its pages. There was nothing more.

  Footfalls and chatter approached from outside. Lunchtime was over. As soon as the rest of the class had arrived back at the studio, Roger must have sent them all on the same errand as her. Now they were on their way down towards the pigeonholes. She put Jimmy’s letter in a trouser pocket and dumped everything else from her pigeonhole in the bin.

  She found the stairwell choked with a noisy queue of her classmates. It was difficult shoving her way back up
through the crowd. At the top, she squeezed out between two of them into the corridor, and stood for a few moments listening to the retreating hubbub, then, rather than returning to the studio, she headed directly for Benedict Garvey’s office.

  15

  Delia stood in the bedroom she used as her walk-in wardrobe, surrounded by rails of coats and dresses, by uncountable shoes, by boxes and boxes of underwear. Most of it, she hadn’t touched for years. She wondered why she’d bothered. There were only a few of these things she could even remember hoisting.

  She had already dragged her suitcase out from under her bed, and found it heavier than expected, being already full of enough neatly folded clothes for several days. She must have packed it long ago, thinking that one day she’d have to be ready to go quickly and leave everything else behind. Now that day had arrived.

  Last night, before Delia had left the Lamplighters, Stella told her the rest of the story. The driver of the car that ran Finlay over had not stopped to find out what harm he’d done, but had vanished into the night, and so had Pete. The police found the vehicle next morning, abandoned near Charing Cross, its radiator grille still covered in blood, and they had tracked down its owner from the registration. It had been stolen eight weeks previously from the driveway of a Bexhill bank manager. Pete’s whereabouts, however, remained mysterious.

  The Krays, who had been behind the whole thing, were twin brothers from Hoxton. For the last couple of years, they’d been doing well in protection and other criminal enterprises around the Mile End area, and now it seemed they had ambitions in Soho. Kray men had taken over all three of Finlay’s clubs before his ambulance even reached the hospital. The Richardsons, to whom he had been coughing up protection money all those years, hadn’t got there in time to do anything about it.

  There probably wouldn’t be a war. Not yet, anyway. One was going to be inevitable eventually, but not over Finlay. Delia’s guess was that the two sides would reach some kind of settlement that saved either of them from losing face. If Finlay had died, things would have been simpler. As it stood, the reputation the Richardsons were building for themselves would demand they provide him with the protection he’d been paying for, and take action to return his property to him. There would need to be revenge too. Scapegoats and sacrifices. Itchy Pete would be tidied away soon, if it hadn’t happened already.

  That was why Stella was frightened. Pete had been one of her boys, so the Richardsons would assume she’d been involved in the plan. She’d been in business with Finlay, so the Krays would consider her a danger. Whoever won this, Stella was likely to lose, and anyone connected with her was at risk too. That was why Lulu had been striding so determinedly away from the Lamplighters last night. The old bird knew it was time to disappear. She’d done it plenty of times before.

  Thinking she should at least say goodbye to Maureen, Delia went and knocked at her neighbour’s door. When she saw the suitcase, the damage to the girl’s face amplified her obvious despondency.

  ‘You’re going, ain’t you, Dee?’

  ‘It’s not safe.’

  ‘Everyone’s leaving,’ Maureen said miserably. ‘I heard Maggie Chisholm got her kids back off her sister and took them to the seaside somewhere. Rita and all that lot have scarpered as well.’

  ‘I’m going to try and stay with a friend in Clapham,’ Delia said.

  ‘Do you mean that writer bloke you’ve been seeing?’

  ‘Jesus. Does everyone know? Yes. You should leave too.’

  ‘Ain’t got anywhere, Dee. I’m not going back to my mum and dad.’

  ‘Just get a room.’

  ‘Haven’t got any money for rent.’

  ‘If you come with me, I can give you some,’ Delia said. ‘I’ve got plenty put away.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’ll be all right here. Anyway, I owe Stella for looking after me.’

  Something about Maureen’s implacable loyalty filled Delia with anger. ‘Don’t be an idiot, girl,’ she snapped. ‘Stella couldn’t give a shit about you. You’re a lightning rod, that’s all. We kept you around so all the bad luck would fall your way instead of ours. And it turns out you haven’t even managed that, have you?’

  The girl’s lower lip began to tremble. Delia didn’t have time to try and make her feel better. She softened her tone, though there was no taking back what she’d said.

  ‘Listen, Maureen. You mustn’t stay around here. I don’t know much about these Krays and Richardsons, but I’ve seen how Stella is. If she’s scared, you should be too.’

  ‘I’ve been happy here,’ the girl told her, swallowing down a sob. ‘I’m not going.’

  To start with, as Delia headed down Doddington Road, she felt unburdened. She’d done her best for Maureen, who would just have to be responsible for herself now. But the journey from Fenfield to Clapham took four different buses, and each time she lifted her suitcase on or off a luggage rack, it seemed heavier than before, as if the further she got away the less she was leaving behind.

  This was how it had always been for her. During the war, on the first day of her evacuation, she’d hiked up a hill to the farm gate with a suitcase just like this one weighing her down. Later, on the day she returned to London, she had sat on that case outside a pub, waiting for her father to come out and show her where she’d be living, now their old house had been bombed out in the Blitz. To have nothing, to depend on the whims of others, that was reality. She’d spent her whole life waiting to be homeless again.

  She disembarked near Clapham Common. After asking directions from an old woman who had left the bus at the same time, she found she should have stayed on for two more stops. The street she wanted was fifteen minutes away on foot.

  ‘I should just wait here for the next one if I were you,’ the woman said, with a meaningful glance at Delia’s suitcase. ‘They’re every half an hour.’ But Delia decided to walk anyway. She’d had enough of buses and enough of waiting.

  Bill’s street surprised her. Whenever he’d talked about where he lived, he’d implied it was a kind of artistic locale, a place where people had no time for traditional moralities or hypocrisies. So, without really thinking about it, she’d envisaged something modernist, like those new concrete blocks of flats that were springing up where the bombs had cleared the slums. She had certainly not anticipated a prissy red-brick terrace, with white-rendered curlicues framing the bay windows and mock-classical columns flanking every porch. This street had been built at the turn of the century for the aspiring middle class. Through each tiny front garden, a chessboard-tiled path led from door to gate. A reminder to the inhabitants as they left for work every morning that they were pawns en route to promotion.

  Bill’s was number twelve. Leaving her suitcase on the street behind the garden wall, Delia walked up to the door and rang the bell. After a minute, she saw a shape approaching on the other side of the frosted glass. Female. There was no time to run off, but at least she had a few moments to prepare herself before the door opened.

  The woman was thirty or so, in a Japanese silk dressing gown – printed with splashy red chrysanthemums on a black background – under which she was obviously naked. She pulled it a little more tightly around herself and gave Delia a shrewd look.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  She was glad she had left the suitcase out of sight; that she would not have to make things any more embarrassing by having to account for it. ‘My name’s Delia. I’m a friend of Bill’s. I just need a quick word. Would that be all right?’

  ‘Mhm. Very well,’ the woman said, and without inviting Delia in, she disappeared into the house.

  A few minutes later, Bill hurried to the door, barefoot, in denim trousers and a shirt with the buttons done up wrong.

  ‘Delia,’ he said, too enthusiastically. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  ‘Sorry to turn up unannounced,’ Delia said. ‘Actress, is she?’

  He shrugged an apology, had the good grace to look ashamed. ‘Zoe’s a writer. We’re working
together on an idea for a script about Sharpeville.’ He glanced over his shoulder, into the house. ‘Delia. I mean, it’s not like Zoe’s my— That is, she’s got a husband.’

  ‘None of my business. I just came by to tell you, things have got a bit dangerous in Fenfield, so I’ve left for a while. Might not go back, actually. So I didn’t want you going there looking for me.’

  ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘I wish you’d— Do you have somewhere to stay? I can put you up here. I mean, you might need to give me half an hour to explain things to Zoe.’

  She felt sorry for Bill, sorry for having caused this embarrassment. His concern was genuine, she could see that – she hadn’t misjudged everything about him. And after all, it wasn’t as if she had been entirely honest herself. He had the right to know, she decided; to forgive her or not, as he chose.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘I’ve got a place sorted out. But there’s something I need to tell you before I go. Maybe I could come inside for a while?’

  He took her into the room he called his study. At one time it would have been the parlour. Now it was empty apart from a couple of office chairs and a cheap modern desk on which stood a typewriter and two orderly stacks of paper: one clean, one typed-on. Perhaps he really had been writing a script with that Zoe woman.

  Delia sat by the window and told him all about Itchy Pete, about Stella and Finlay, about the Richardsons and Johannesburg. How she, Delia, had done her best to keep him, Bill, safe.

  ‘God,’ he said, when she’d finished. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Sorry about all the lies,’ she said. She’d missed out the part where she’d tried to sell him to the boss the previous afternoon. ‘I really did like you, Bill. Still do.’

  But he was already distracted, rummaging in a desk drawer. ‘And Stella told you this was all about a letter I sent? I wonder if she can have meant—’ Then he must have realised what she’d just said, because he looked at her again, and said, ‘Oh, it sounds like you only did what you had to. No need to feel guilty about it, Delia. I doubt you’ve done any harm.’