The Heartbreaker

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The Heartbreaker Page 14

by Susan Howatch


  “What’s the matter?” demanded Nicholas at once.

  “Gavin. He’s still here—I thought he’d gone.” To my relief my voice sounded only mildly harassed, and as Nicholas glanced across the churchyard I felt thankful that he was present. Bridget Slaney had begged him to come, Moira too had added a plea, and finally he had given way, deciding that the funeral should somehow be wedged into his overcrowded schedule.

  “Give me a couple of minutes,” I heard him say as he looked at Gavin, “and then join us.”

  “You can’t mean you’re going to talk to him!”

  Nicholas raised an eyebrow. “It’s my job. The bereaved need support at funerals.”

  “Bereaved? But Richard was just a walking chequebook to that man!”

  “Then why’s he here? No one’s paying him to attend.”

  “But—”

  “Two minutes,” said Nicholas firmly. “Then join us. Be polite and low-key. If you’re angry and snub him he’ll stalk you harder than ever.”

  I felt like bursting into tears, but this feeble behaviour was not fundamentally because of Gavin’s presence and my mindless reaction to it. It was because the service had reminded me of my father who had died the previous year. I had been making a new effort to help him conquer his gambling addiction, but he had died with the problem unsolved, and amidst the grief I had also been aware of relief. “At least you succeeded in having a reconciliation with him before he died,” my mentor Lewis had said when I had admitted how guilty my relief made me feel, “and at least his life had altered for the better.” This was true, but Richard’s funeral had still stirred up my muddled emotions with the result that I was less capable than ever of dealing with Gavin. I was sure he had been unaffected by the service, just as I was sure he had turned up primarily to make a nuisance of himself.

  I was too far away to hear what was said when Nicholas reached his target but I saw Gavin jump as if he’d been shot and spin to face him. I went on watching, certain that Gavin would look in my direction, but he never gave me a glance. Indeed as a conversation began to unfold he no longer even looked at Nicholas. He looked at a nearby tomb, at the ground, at the mourners who were drifting away from the grave, and once or twice he dug a heel into the soft turf in a fidgety gesture, but he made no effort to escape, and in the end, driven on not just by the order from my boss but by my curiosity to know how the monster had been tamed, I began to thread my way in and out among the grassy graves towards him.

  II

  “Ah, there you are, Carta!” said Nicholas casually. “We were just discussing the funeral service. Gavin feels Richard would have approved of it.”

  Avoiding all comment I said in a laid-back voice which rang repellently false in my ears: “Hi, Gavin.”

  “Hullo, Carta,” he said, very well-behaved, very Home Counties. “How are you?”

  I knew he was playing a carefully chosen role but he was so convincing that I even wondered if I had been paranoid in seeing him as a stalker. Meanwhile Nicholas seemed wholly focused on making small-talk. “I hear you went sailing with Richard this summer,” he said to Gavin.

  “Right. Hey, Carta—I’m really sorry about that scene last weekend! I tried calling your office to apologise but I only got the granny-gizmo.”

  “The what?”

  “I used to know a man who kept a boat at Bosham,” Nicholas pursued, uninterested in granny-gizmos. “But that was a long time ago. When did you start to sail, Gavin?”

  “1969.”

  “You must have been very young.”

  “My brother was even younger when he started.”

  “I had a brother once,” said Nicholas vaguely. “He was a lot older than me and he’s been dead now for some years, but I often think of him—I was thinking of him just now in church, but that’s natural, isn’t it? Funerals remind us of those we love who are no longer with us.”

  There was a dead silence. Gavin was motionless, staring at the ground. His long lashes seemed very dark against the skin which was stretched tightly over his prominent cheekbones, and his mouth was clamped shut in a hard straight line. To my astonishment I realised he was struggling with grief.

  “I’m sorry,” I heard Nicholas say. “Is your brother dead too?”

  Gavin nodded, and somehow Nicholas altered the quality of his silence. It was now intensely sympathetic without being in any way cloying or sentimental, and a second later I realised that in this context any word would have been a mistake.

  “He was seventeen,” said Gavin flatly to the ground. “He’d been ill for two years with leukaemia and your God didn’t save him.” As an afterthought he added, abruptly jettisoning the Home Counties persona and looking straight at Nicholas: “Your God’s a shit.”

  Clamping my mouth shut I prepared to move away, sure that the conversation had ended. But it continued. Nicholas was talking in silences, and in the silence which he designed I felt the emotional space created by his compassion. Gavin could say anything he liked but the emotional space would always be large enough to contain it.

  His next words were: “Why the fuck don’t you say something?”

  “I wanted you to be ready to hear what I have to say, and it’s this: you have a right to be angry. Rage at God as much as you like—he’s big enough, he can take it. It’s the repressed anger that’s dangerous because the road to healing doesn’t lie in denying what you feel.”

  “I can’t rage at God. I don’t believe in him.”

  “I thought you said just now he was a shit?”

  Yet another silence fell, but this one was full of tension. Then Gavin turned his back on Nicholas and gave me a brilliant smile. “You’re looking really cool!” he breathed. “You ought to wear black every day!”

  “Think so?” I murmured, mild as milk. “Thanks.”

  “So am I forgiven for that scene last Saturday?”

  “Well—”

  “Great! Of course it would never have happened if Eric had treated me with the respect due to a friend of Richard’s, but don’t worry, you can tell Eric I’ve decided to be forgiving—almost Christian, in fact!” he added laughing, and suddenly gave Nicholas such an erotic look that I flinched.

  But Nicholas betrayed no emotion. In the empty silence which followed, his eyes were luminously clear.

  I was just about to ignore my orders and tell Gavin what I thought of his loathsome posturing when there was an interruption. A woman called: “Nick! I’m so glad you were able to come!” and swinging round I saw that Moira Slaney was hurrying across the churchyard towards us.

  III

  Realising that Gavin might well have no idea who she was, I said to him urgently: “It’s Moira.”

  “Yeah. I’ve seen a photo.”

  “Well, go on—disappear, for God’s sake!”

  “I was a friend of Richard’s! Why shouldn’t I get to meet his wife?”

  “Moira!” said Nicholas, ignoring this muttered exchange, and moved towards her as she tiptoed over the soft ground.

  She was in her mid-forties but looked younger because she was so well-dressed and well-groomed. I admired this talent for capitalising on her assets. Yet she was not my kind of person. There was a class gap between us, and there was also a generation gap even though she was barely ten years my senior. Feminism had passed her by; she seemed to believe that a woman’s place was in the home, and although she had never displayed hostility when I had talked of my past career as a partner in Curtis, Towers, I felt she had hardly listened. Unable to conceive of why a woman should want such a life, she was also unable to be interested in it. I had no doubt that she privately pitied me for my childlessness and current lack of a husband.

  Since my discovery of Richard’s homosexuality I had, of course, tried to reassess her private life but had only found it more baffling than ever. What could have kept her in that marriage? I was unable to decide and Moira herself gave nothing away.

  “The service went well, didn’t it?” she was exclaiming to Nic
holas after their brief embrace. “Thanks so much for all those helpful suggestions . . . Carta! How nice to see you!”

  As I murmured a suitably warm response I noticed that her make-up was intact. No trace of tears there.

  “Mrs. Slaney,” said Gavin without waiting to be introduced, “I’m so sorry about Richard. I’m one of his friends from the City. My name’s Gavin Blake.”

  “Ah yes,” she said, still smiling. “You’re the lover.” And barely pausing to draw breath she added carelessly to him: “Nicholas and Carta will be coming back to the house—why don’t you come with them? After all, you probably knew Richard as well as anyone in that church just now.”

  She didn’t wait for a reply, and as we all stood staring after her she walked serenely down the churchyard path towards the black Daimler which was waiting to take her home.

  IV

  The oddest effect of this odd little scene was that it temporarily bonded me with Gavin. Ignoring Nicholas, who appeared unsurprised by Moira’s behaviour, we stared at each other in amazement.

  “She obviously knew your name,” I said, “but who mentioned it to her?”

  “You mean it wasn’t you?”

  “Don’t be stupid! Richard told me about you in confidence!”

  “No doubt Richard himself told her,” said Nicholas.

  I said: “You’re joking!” at the exact moment Gavin exclaimed: “No way!” He added: “She knew he was gay, of course she did, but he never told her any details about what he got up to,” and I supported this statement by saying: “When I had dinner with him the night before that first coronary, I definitely got the impression that I was the only person he’d talked to about Gavin.”

  Nicholas sighed, magnificently controlling his middle-aged impatience with all this dumb dogmatism from the under-forties. “I think we have to acknowledge that Richard and Moira were married for over twenty years and she was with him when he died,” he said. “Is it really so unlikely that he finally confided in her? He’d have been shocked and frightened by the coronary, and there was Moira, signalling by her presence that she still cared what happened to him.”

  Reluctantly I saw the logic. “Okay, fair enough. But why invite Gavin to the house?”

  “Obviously she was acknowledging that Gavin was Richard’s friend. Gavin, can we offer you a lift to the house, or would you prefer to go in your own car?”

  “No need for cars, sir,” said Gavin, very friendly now that Nicholas had confirmed his status. “The house is just down that lane past the green.”

  “How convenient! And by the way, you can call me Nicholas or Nick. I appreciate the respect you’re showing but I don’t think a post-funeral gathering is a time to stand on ceremony.”

  Gavin made no reply as we headed out of the churchyard but in the road beyond he said to me: “I’m going to ask Moira if I can have that photo of Richard, the one we saw in the flat.”

  I was annoyed. “You can’t possibly!”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for starters Moira doesn’t know you’ve ever been in that flat. If you go asking her about a photo you couldn’t have seen—”

  “I’ll say Richard took me to the flat once.”

  “But you can’t demand a gift on the day of the funeral! Can’t you see how naff you’re being?”

  “What’s so naff about wanting a pic of my friend to remember him by?”

  “Talking of Richard,” said Nicholas, overriding this scratchy exchange, “did he tell you about my church, Gavin? It’s St. Benet’s-by-the -Wall in Egg Street, the Guild church with the Healing Centre in the crypt.”

  “Never mentioned it.”

  “Oh yes, he did!” I exclaimed, scandalised not only by the lie but by this offensively abrupt response. “ ‘You work for the bloke who’s fixing Bridget,’ you said to me when we first met—”

  “The church itself is open from eight in the morning till six at night,” interrupted Nicholas, ignoring Gavin’s sudden change of mood, “except on Thursdays when it’s open until eight. In a powerhouse like the City it’s good to have a quiet space where people can meditate or simply be themselves with no one hassling them . . . You became interested in meditation recently, didn’t you, Carta?”

  I finally remembered I was supposed to be exuding a laid-back courtesy. “Right,” I said, “but I came to the conclusion I had no gift for it.”

  “Carta’s a lawyer,” said Nicholas to Gavin, “and her special gift for rational analysis isn’t easy to integrate with a mystical approach to religion. What would you say your special gift is, Gavin?”

  Gavin suddenly flipped out. Like a disruptive child fixated on exploring the boundaries of acceptable behaviour he said: “Fucking.”

  “Oh yes?” said Nicholas politely. “But you’re straight, aren’t you? So why are you abusing this talent of yours by misdirecting it?”

  “Oh, piss off! God, no wonder my manager told me not to go near anyone in a dog collar today!”

  “What unusual advice! Why the dog collar phobia?”

  “It’s no phobia! She just wanted to save me from being persecuted, that’s all!”

  “Persecuting people isn’t actually part of the Christian gospel.”

  “Fuck the Christian gospel!” shouted Gavin, and walked on at such a rapid pace that Nicholas and I were soon left behind.

  “Sorry, boss,” I muttered. “If I hadn’t put him in a bad mood by calling him naff—”

  “That wasn’t the remark which yanked his chain. The problem seemed to be me talking about St. Benet’s . . . This female pimp of his sounds quite a character, doesn’t she?”

  “He denied she was his pimp.”

  “Probably didn’t want to admit to you he was under some woman’s thumb. But do we seriously think he started his very upmarket business all on his own and then advertised in The Times for a manager? No, you can bet the manager came first and that she had a handful of useful contacts to get him going.”

  “A lady with an eye for the main chance . . . Hold on, Gavin’s lingering—”

  “Maybe he’s managed to solve the baffling social dilemma of how to turn me right off while simultaneously turning you right on. I foresee a dazzling display of apologies, charm and immaculate good manners.”

  I groaned. “If you weren’t here I’d run away.”

  “Don’t you even want to try to be kind to this messed-up kid who’s so pathetically proud of his friendship with Richard?”

  I was silenced.

  Gavin was waiting for us at the start of the lane which led from the village green to Richard’s house, and as we drew closer he gave us a rueful smile. “Sorry I lost it just now,” he said, wide-eyed with sincerity. “Post-Funeral Stress Syndrome.”

  Nicholas merely said: “It’s good of you to apologise . . . How far did you say it was to the house?”

  “It’s just round the next bend. I was here recently,” said Gavin, and I heard the pride in his voice. “Moira was away and Richard wanted to show me his home. He showed me all over the house and garden and later we went down to the pub for a drink.”

  After a pause Nicholas said gently: “He was a good man, wasn’t he?” and Gavin nodded, averting his face. I tried to answer for him, but I too found the words refused to come. In silence we walked on, and a minute later we reached the gates of Richard’s manor house.

  I started dredging up the will to be sociable.

  V

  On our arrival I soon lost sight of Nicholas. Bridget Slaney, still ghost-thin but no longer looking terminal, led him away to some secluded corner where she could pour out her heart to him in peace, and Gavin promptly appointed himself my escort. At first this made me very nervous, so nervous that I spent most of the time refusing to look at him in case my stomach should start to lurch again, but as the minutes passed and he conversed sociably with others I was able to glance at him without fear of behaving like an office fluffette. The truth was he had no time to pay me much attention; he was too busy prom
oting the fable that he was a salesman who supplied equipment to health clubs.

  As usual at a wake, everyone was drinking hard to soothe their nerves after being reminded so forcefully that the gods of money, power and sex, no matter how avidly worshipped, offered no one an escape from the coffin. Moira had extravagantly ordered Krug for the occasion, but after the first half-hour I noticed that the catering staff were pouring non-vintage Moët instead; no doubt she felt that if people were determined to get drunk they might as well do it economically. As I was there not only as a friend of Richard’s but as a fundraiser who always needed the chance to meet potential donors, no matter what the occasion, I had taken care to switch to orange juice after one celestial glass of Krug, and now, as everyone became steadily noisier, I paused to congratulate myself on my enormous self-restraint. Glumly I supposed that one really did become more sensible about drink once one was past thirty-five. I even wondered if I would be a teetotaller by the time I was forty, but I cheered myself up by reflecting that this was most unlikely.

  Eventually Nicholas resurfaced after his tête-à-tête with Bridget, but at once he was kidnapped by Moira who wanted him to talk to her son. Philip, skulking in a corner, was looking as if his coke dealer had failed to deliver the goods.

  I was just feeling sorry for Nicholas, compelled to work overtime when everyone else was seizing the chance to unwind, when to my surprise Moira reappeared and made a beeline for Gavin, who was earnestly discussing the pros and cons of personal trainers with the enraptured wife of an investment banker. Becoming aware of Moira’s attention he broke off in mid-sentence, but before he could speak she said: “Could I have a word with you, please?” and led the way from the room.

  I was so startled by this move that after a moment I wandered after them. I told myself I was toilet-hunting, but in fact I was just giving way to an acute curiosity, and feeling vaguely like a detective in a country-house murder mystery I began to prowl around the ground floor.

 

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