He finishes, and then thinks of something else. Finding that he has run out of space, he turns the piece of notepaper over, and scrawls something across the back of it. He puts down the pen, and rubs at the smudge of ink on the first joint of his index finger. Now that he has done it — said what he wanted to say — he doesn’t want to read it through, not even once; he folds the paper, licks the envelope and seals it down with a thump of his fist. Now what? He doesn’t have an address to send it to — but of course that doesn’t really matter, because this letter was never meant for sending anyway. He leaves the envelope lying on the kitchen table — he’ll think about what to do with it in the morning. Now that his mind is cleared of some of its angry rubbish, he thinks he deserves to sleep. So he goes into the bedroom, and climbs under the sheet; he thinks he might as well try. As he lies there, he doesn’t think about his dream, or any of its pictures, because it’s too hot for any of that nonsense. And anyway, it’s been so long since it last bothered him, he can hardly remember what happens any more.
ten
Some nights, the air itself seems to thicken. All across London, people leave their bedroom windows open; their sheets grow damp, and their dreams play themselves out with heavy, sweat-stained slowness. Mr F’s was no exception.
As if conserving their energy, the sickeningly familiar images prowled around him in the dark, taunting him with their power over him by making him wait — it had been a long time, after all. Helpless in the heat, he had to lie there on his back and wait; wait for the key; wait for the light-switch: wait for the slow swinging open of the bathroom door. And then, when the dream had finally had enough of toying with him, and took him — when the proceedings reached their climactic moment, and his neck arched back and his throat opened to emit its terrible, helpless, howling scream — it left him hanging. The sound in his throat died away in a series of obscene gasps and pleas for mercy, and, horribly, he didn’t wake up. There was no release; no return to the relative safety of his darkened bedroom. He opened his eyes, and discovered that he was still in the bathroom, slumped on the floor with his back to the door, bathed in sweat, his mouth hanging open and tears pricking his eyes. And the body was still there, too.
He didn’t dare move. This had never happened before. What was it waiting for?
Was the next move up to him?
Using the door to support himself, he slowly got to his feet. Nothing in the bathroom appeared to have changed. The light from the bare bulb still picked out every detail. Holding his breath as much as he could — he could hear too much of himself, and he wanted there to be silence — he checked. He looked again from the defenceless hands to the perfect, hairless chest; from the spread, tangled locks to the limp meat of the upside-down genitals. Nothing had been disturbed; everything was as it should be. At least he looks peaceful, thought Mr F. He moved one pace closer to the bath, steeled himself, and looked down at his face — at Beauty, lying there looking more asleep than dead, his pale features resting on the hard pillow of that cool white enamel. Best place to be on a night like this, thought Mr F.
Then he saw it.
The pulse, beating in the side of the boy’s neck.
His first thought was that this was not possible; that it was just his fear, making him imagine things. And it was true, he could feel something very cold taking hold of the pit of his stomach. Without taking his eyes off the boy’s neck or off the vein he thought he could see ticking there, he slowly reached out towards the hand-towel on the rail at the side of the washbasin, ready to whip it to his mouth if he started to vomit. But his reaching hand stopped in mid-air, because
He knew it was coming, and it did.
Beauty stirred; gently, as if the enamel of the bathtub was indeed the linen of a pillow, and he wanted to nestle his cheek deeper into its softness. His right eyelid trembled, and then, without warning, both his eyes flew wide open. Both pupils staring straight at Mr F.
Of course.
The boy’s eyes had never been this black — jet-black — and in this bright light, they blazed. They held Mr F firmly; he could look at nothing else. He tried doing the usual — tried to find the familiar shape of the door-handle behind him, to turn it, to get out — but as his fingers scrabbled at the smooth gloss paint, he knew it was going to get him nowhere. Helplessly, he watched, as the impossible began to happen.
Beauty rolled his head back, and looked straight up at the bathroom ceiling for a moment. Then he took a deep breath, as if he was about to execute a dive. Ribs inflated, he lifted the back of his head slightly off the enamel of the bathtub, looked at his feet, braced himself and then, in one single, astonishing movement, and in one breath, jackknifed the entire upper half of his body upwards, reaching up until he was grasping the metal brackets of the cistern with both hands. Then, bending his knees slightly, and taking all his weight on his arms, he pointed his feet like a dancer and deftly released them from the rope — which for some reason wasn’t lashed and knotted tightly around them tonight, but instead was simply tied into a sturdy single loop, the kind the trapeze artistes at the circus use when they finish their act by descending, spinning, head down, from the very crown of the big top, hanging by just the one amazing heel. At the sight of this, Mr F involuntarily looked to see if the young man’s hands and wrists were whitened with French chalk; suddenly, he thought he knew how Beauty had managed to clamber into his dreams like this, knew (at last!) exactly how and why this boy had been able to climb undetected up the fire escape and in through his bathroom window night after night — even the statue-like perfection of the boy’s physique was explained. Suddenly, it all made sense; his memory had come to his aid. This boy hadn’t been telling the whole truth when he’d told them he’d come straight to Skin Lane from school — let’s face it, he’d never have got a body like that just from playing in a school gym. No; he’d run away to join the circus. That was it. Beauty was one of the very same team of three young men (the youngest brother, perhaps, the one who climbed last and highest on the wires) who Mr F could remember being taken to see at the Battersea Park Circus by his father. Now that it came to him, he could remember it all (why had he forgotten this for so long?); the music, the gusts of hot air, the wild smell of the turf even though you were inside — and best of all, the feeling of your nine-year-old hand being held so tightly as you were led firmly through the crowd to your seat. Then the music changed, the trumpets blared, and there they were, the three black-haired brothers, all in their spangled white leotards — there they go, climbing and swinging and swinging higher and higher! And then, when they let go of their trapezes, they seemed to the astonished child to hang in mid-air — impossibly; to just hang there, for ever, suspended in mid-air above his upturned face as the music played and the beams of the search-lights caught the rhinestones on their costumes and turned them into stars, bright against the blue midnight of the canvas — to hang there for oh the longest time — hang there, and then fall again, falling so that the child wanted to cry out, cry out in delight or anguish, and then of course applaud in wonder as the youngest one was caught — caught, always, just at the last minute, by that pair of strong, outstretched, reliable, brotherly hands —
But no; Beauty’s skin was white — dead white — and his forearms were corded with muscle as he strained to keep his grip on the cast iron supports of the cistern, just like the acrobats’ had been each time they swung themselves back up onto their trapezes — but they weren’t powdered. He was still himself. He took his full weight on his arms (they trembled slightly with the effort), and then slipped his feet out from the loop of rope. Then, elegantly reversing his movement, the muscles of his stomach unclenching one by one like the fingers of a magician’s white-gloved hand as they slowly spread a pack of cards, Beauty carefully lowered his feet to the bathroom floor. Releasing his grip, he brought his arms down from over his head; then he stood there for a moment and recovered himself, ribs flaring in and out and chest lifted, his arms held straight down by his sides.
His fingers were extended, and both palms flattened a quarter of an inch from his thighs. He was standing exactly as a gymnast stands in the moment before he leans forward, breaks into a sprint across the mat, launches himself onto his hands and then springs back up, up, twisting and tucking as he goes — but of course there was no space for acrobatics of that kind in the bathroom of Mr F’s flat. The young man was preparing himself for quite a different sequence of actions. What he did next, simply, was to take two small, measured steps towards Mr F, looking him all the time in the eye (Mr F, in his dream, thinks I must look him in the eye the next time I see him). Then, standing by the washbasin, and without raising his shoulder at all — only trained dancers and gymnasts can do this — Beauty elegantly let his superb right arm rise — not locked straight, but gently bent at the wrist and elbow, just like a dancer’s when he accepts the crowd’s applause after an especially elegant leap, or like the prince at the ballet when he greets his guests in the royal ballroom, his hand held elegantly open as his arm extends in welcome. As he did this, he came one short pace closer, and then, without waiting to be asked, he reached up and placed his right hand on the back of Mr F’s neck, just where the spine enters the skull. He looked at him, exactly as he had once looked at him in the mirror in their workroom, framed and illuminated by that golden evening light. Their two pairs of
eyes met, and then — just as he had on that previous occasion — he raised one eyebrow. He held Mr F in his gaze for just a moment more, and then, without breaking it, he gently — but firmly — (and at this moment he was not a prince, or an acrobat, or a dancer, Mr F knew that; he was himself, Beauty, the very same boy who he stood next to and worked with every day; he recognised him absolutely) — he gently guided Mr F’s face towards his own, and, with a strange, sweet solemnity, did what Mr F had so longed for him to do back there in the workroom; he kissed him.
I’m sure you are familiar with the phrase He took my breath away. Well, that is exactly what he did. Because now Mr F did finally wake up, and when he woke, gasping, in the dark and drenched with sweat, his mouth was tearing at the air exactly as if he was a diver who’d wrenched himself free from some submarine obstruction at the very last minute and only just made it back to the surface in time, his lungs screaming with pain. The amount of noise he was making, you’d have said he could hardly stand it. His eyes were still screwed tightly shut; tightly shut, against all that bitterly salt water.
In great, hungry, noisy gulps, he filled his lungs. The heaving of his chest gradually subsided, and he recovered; it took a couple of minutes, but eventually he found he could breathe almost normally. He even stopped crying. He pulled the sheet up round his chest — his pyjama jacket was wet, and even on this hot night, he could feel it turning clammy. He turned the bedside light on, and then turned it out again. At last, he laid his head back down on the pillow.
Try as he might, he couldn’t get the look in Beauty’s eyes when he kissed him out of his mind.
As he lay there, he was sure that he could still feel the memory of that strange hand cupping the back of his neck; and he couldn’t believe how empty his mouth felt, now that it only had his own tongue in it.
Look at him, lying there. Why should he need me to give him strength — to watch over him, and always be worrying how he’s feeling? Surely he’ll find it himself. Isn’t that what we believe, that we do always somehow find the strength? That the path will lead out of the forest; that the riddle will be solved; that the child never dies.
eleven
He was haggard, the next morning. As he was shaving, he couldn’t help but stare, and at his mouth especially: the mouth that had been kissed in the night. The two lines under his eyes seemed to be cut a bit deeper this morning, and his expression, he thought, had changed. It wasn’t just a question of pale skin or dark circles; he was sure, from the look in his eyes (those oddly pale blue eyes of his), that you could tell they had been gazing at something terrible.
And it was true; there was something different about them this morning. Just as in some old masterpiece (one of those big dark paintings that Mr F, like most people, would always walk right past in the National Gallery), some gloomy landscape dotted with gesturing figures whose pigment has begun to fade and wear thin, so that a road or path in the Roman campagna can now be seen winding its way through the forehead (that is to say, through the mind) of some young man sitting down and wearily re-tying his sandal-strap, a path winding away between the rocks into some unknown future, bright or dark… so, now, for the first time, Mr F’s dream was beginning to make itself subtly visible in his face. It was starting to show through. His eyes had taken on an odd glitter — no one else might have been able to spot it straightaway, but he knew. He knew.
And it wasn’t just his face; his body was changing too. Buttoning himself into his shirt, he inspected himself in the wardrobe mirror. His ribs, the concave stomach, the tautening skin; he looked leaner. Hungrier. He was surprised not to see a mass of scars.
Some mornings, as he stood in his suit by the kitchen table and waited for the tea to brew, Mr F would have liked to throw back his head and howl.
He noticed that the letter he’d written to Beauty the night before was still lying where he’d left it, its envelope still unaddressed. He picked it up, screwed it into a ball, and tossed it into the enamel pail under the sink with all the other rubbish.
twelve
As I think I mentioned, arranging an actual date for the final fitting of this coat had not been exactly easy. What had happened was that Maureen, offended that she’d been made to wait so long for these bloody foxes she’d been promised, had decided to punish her boyfriend a little. No, she’d said, when he’d called her to say Cousin Morrie was finally ready for her to come and try them on, she couldn’t just pop down into town at his earliest convenience. He’d have to tell his cousin she wasn’t free until the next Friday, as it happened. No, she couldn’t just get the train in. She didn’t feel like it. Yes please, she would like him to pick her up in the car.
All of this meant that the atmosphere in the Daimler wasn’t exactly friendly even before they started their drive into town that Friday; then, to make matters worse, at the very first set of lights that stopped them (the traffic was unusually heavy, and moving like treacle), he had to go and say something unnecessary about her outfit. To be specific, he said he thought that that skirt was a little on the short side, considering it was only a fucking coat they were trying on. She countered, frostily, with the observation that in this weather she thought her new ensemble (a sleeveless Princess-line two-piece in French Navy viscose linen) was entirely appropriate. If the last time she’d been to Skin Lane was on a warm day, this one was making the leather upholstery decidedly sticky. And anyway, since he didn’t like it, it was just as well he didn’t have to wear it.
After that, they’d hardly exchanged a word the whole of the rest of the way — but then, as Maureen thought, but didn’t say. He wouldn’t, would he? He could be a real bore when he got like this — but she was determined to win. This coat was going to be her treat, not his. And anyway, she was right about this heat; sticky wasn’t the word.
She was; all the way from Northwood to Harrow and across into town, you could tell that the terrible thunderstorms which were to make all the papers ten days later were already on their way. As they laboured down the Archway Road in thick traffic, she could see the clouds piling up right across London.
It was nearly one o’clock by the time they got to Number Four. The coat had been brought down from the cutting-room, and was draped on the wooden stand in the downstairs office, ready to meet its new owner. One glimpse of the finished article was enough to dispel Maureen’s bad temper entirely; her squeal of delight mixed with lust when Mr Scheiner opened the office door for her and she saw the coat standing there, all ready and waiting, was entirely genuine — as was the girlishly breathless question she immediately turned and addressed to his cousin, eyes shining and lips parted, all though
ts of any hostility between them immediately forgotten:
“No! Is that really for me?”
His reply, though not quite so immediate, was just as sincere. That’s more like it, he thought; and now that he’d brought his woman to her senses, he couldn’t resist tipping his cousin the wink as he ushered her into the office to claim her prize.
“Go on then,” he said, brusquely. “Get it on — and now try telling me I don’t treat you like a lady.”
Of course, Maureen couldn’t wait. There was a slight tempering of her enthusiasm when she discovered that the coat was still unlined — she wasn’t sure how she felt about having all that naked skin straight on top of her, so to speak — but once it was on, her eyes got even brighter. So this is what it feels like, she thought, hugging the coat to her, turning up the collar just like Julie Christie did in the film. She’d always known red was her colour. The only problem was, there wasn’t a mirror anywhere, which was a shame. She could tell from the expression on the men’s faces what she looked like, but she would have liked to verify their evaluations for herself. Fortunately, Mr Scheiner suggested that perhaps — if she didn’t mind — they could use the old mirror in the upstairs workroom for the actual fitting, since the men wouldn’t be back from their dinner-break for nearly another half-hour. He was sorry, he said, but the mirror was too big to get down the stairs — Number Four wasn’t really set up for ladies. Not a problem, said Maureen.
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