The Heartbreaker

by Susan Howatch

  “Gavin?”

  “Yes, Carta. Of course I understand—you’ve got to take time out to consult. When can I see you again to get an update on the situation?” We’re two businesspeople now, discussing an important project. The conversation’s acquired class, style, gravitas.

  “I’ll call you,” she says, and downs some more champagne.

  “Before you rush off,” I say, hoping to spin out the date a little longer, “how’s that nice bloke I met at your house, the one who turned out to be Eric’s brother?”

  “Gil? I haven’t actually seen him since that weekend. His work keeps him very busy.”

  Innocently I ask what he does and she offers up his CV as a turbulent priest: the Church authorities had put him in a place where they thought he’d cause the minimum trouble as a gay activist, but he’d promptly raised St. Eadred’s Fleetside from the dead by deciding it would have a special ministry to AIDS victims, a move guaranteed to give his work a high profile. Carta chats on, but I soon get tired of hearing about Gilbert Tucker, plaster-cast saint, who’s nowhere near as interesting as the Mr. Valiant-for-Truth who’s panting to be my client.

  “Got a partner, has he?” I enquire blandly.

  “He did have one but they broke up eighteen months ago and Gil’s determined that he’s going to be celibate till he finds another Mr. Right . . . It’s very hard to be a gay clergyman.”

  “I bet! Personally I think that if you work for an organisation and take their pay cheques you should stick to their rules or quit.”

  “The situation’s more complicated than you think,” she says quickly, more serious than ever now and dripping with that kind of moist-eyed sentimental liberalism that always manages to transform me from a tolerant bloke into a butt-kicking bastard. “There’s no bar to homosexuals becoming clergymen, but they’re supposed to be celibate. Well, in the old days they were celibate, but nowadays when we live in such a very different culture—”

  “If they did it in the old days they can do it now—or are they on some kind of decaying evolutionary trip the scientists don’t know about?”

  “Okay, sneer away! But let me just make it clear that Gil’s totally opposed to promiscuity. He’s in favour of long-term monogamous relationships, and he’s campaigning for gays to be allowed to have a sanctified contract on a par with marriage so that they have something good to aim for, just as straights do.”

  “Oh, puh-leeze! Has it never occurred to you and the saintly Mr. Tucker and all the other wet liberals who want to slobber over gays that a whole load of these blokes have no desire whatsoever to ape hetero relationships? They want to carve out their own special gay ones—and that needn’t include anything long-term or monogamous at all!”

  “And has it never occurred to you,” storms Carta, zipping into her role of the Shredder, “that people who pay for gay sex aren’t exactly the dead norm of the homosexual community? How much do you really know about homosexuals, Gavin Blake?”

  “More than you’d ever want to know, that’s for sure! But I admire the idealistic Mr. Tucker’s commitment to do without sex. Nice to know there’s at least one gay out there who’s not balling around begging for buggery.”

  She’s truly shocked by my relentless political incorrectness. These bleeding-heart liberals are amazing! Do they really have no idea that political correctness is the fashionable fascism peddled by the new thought-police, the I-believe-in-free-speech-and-if-you-don’t-agree-with-me-I’ll-kill-you loonies?

  “Gavin!”

  “Look, dream-crumpet. I’ve actually got a lot of sympathy for gays, specially the good blokes like Gilbert Tucker. But my sympathy has its limits and I refuse—refuse—to view them through rose-tinted spectacles. They’re just ordinary human beings like us straights and they get into messes and do shitty things just as we do. I mean, would you make it a point of honour always to view straights through rose-tints? Of course you wouldn’t! It’s a question of truth, isn’t it—or at least it should be, but what does political correctness know of truth? Fuck all!”

  But she can’t take this. Funny how today’s liberals have so efficiently developed the art of preserving a closed mind that they now seem more bigoted than any conservative.

  “What do you know of truth?” she flashes back, all the shredder blades whirling at full speed. “Your whole life’s a lie!”

  “How can it be,” I flash back, “when I’m busting a gut working for a Christian cause?”

  Brilliant! I’ve decked her. This time, thanks to St. Benet’s, I’ve managed to smash the shredding machine.

  Draining her glass she says flatly: “I’ll call you once I’ve talked to Nicholas,” and she scoops some money from her bag to hurl upon the table.

  I give her my special smile, the one which never fails to make the chicks cheep. “Thanks for the drink, sweetheart!” I purr, but she just rolls her eyes in exasperation and stalks off without looking back.

  I’m not at all unhappy with this conversation despite the verbal punch-ups. The important thing is that she’s overcome with admiration for my fundraising. She’ll be back in touch, just as she promised, and sooner rather than later. I’m a real person to her now, not just testosterone sludge in designer clothes, and we’re the kind of friends who have meetings and important business discussions and even debates on fashionable issues. In other words I’m the sort of person a golden girl would go to bed with, and I’m on course to hit the jackpot.

  “More champagne?” says the waitperson, batting its eyelashes at me, but I flick it away and leave. I’m not a big fan of wine bars. Too full of slags of both sexes, and now I’m nearly thirty I’m bored with slags. Which reminds me: can I really be bothered to see escort girl Serena tomorrow night? Yes, I must. If I don’t, Elizabeth will start getting suspicious about what I might be getting up to, and as I sweat at the thought of Elizabeth making more clever guesses about a mysterious blonde, I’m reminded of something that happened on the day of the funeral: Carta’s weird, ESP-like nailing of the word “Elizabeth,” uttered by me without a second thought, to “Elizabeth Mayfield,” Elizabeth’s long-running healer’s identity which she junked after the Betz fiasco. How I survived Carta’s knock-out response, I’ll never know. Thank God I’m a good actor and bloody quick on the draw.

  As I pad back to my car I puzzle over this incident again but can only reach the same conclusion I did before. My explanation runs like this: (1) the Betz fiasco is still talked about at St. Benet’s, and new employee Carta soon hears all about wicked Elizabeth Mayfield, the psychic healer who showed how healing should never be done. (2) Carta reasons that my Elizabeth must also be wicked since she’s managing a successful leisure-worker. Therefore (3) my Elizabeth and Elizabeth Mayfield (Carta deduces in the wildest of wild deductions) could well be one and the same person.

  I don’t think this explanation’s the last word in plausibility—unless I start believing in ESP—and I feel I’ve got to be missing big chunks of information which would show why Carta’s behaving like someone with an idée fixe. Does Carta automatically think: Mayfield! whenever anyone mentions the word “Elizabeth”? If so she’s more nuts than Pavlov’s mutt. Weird.

  I want to get to the bottom of this mystery but I can’t. Too dangerous. I’m safe at the moment—there’s no way Carta could prove my Elizabeth was the wicked lady in the Betz fiasco—and I’ve got to stay safe by keeping right away from the subject.

  My thoughts move on to another potentially dangerous subject as I get into my car and drive out of the garage. I’m remembering Gil Tucker with his lethal St. Benet’s connections, and I know I’ve got to make sure he doesn’t get taken on as a client. Susanne said she’d switch him off, but she might choose to annoy me by letting him scrape into the wake-up slot after all. And talking of people annoying me, how do I present to Elizabeth Colin’s invitation to the opera? As I hate escort work I can’t appear too keen or Elizabeth’ll smell a rat.

  What a life! I loved every second of that time with
Carta, but working undercover for St. Benet’s doesn’t exactly guarantee a stress-free existence.

  Back in Lambeth at last I open the front door and immediately hear Elizabeth’s voice in the living-room. With a shudder I think Asherton’s visiting again, but no, she’s just talking on the phone.

  “. . . oh, here he is now, dear—hang on!” She waves the receiver at me. “It’s Serena!”

  I take care to hurry to the phone. “Serena? I was just thinking of you! Dinner tomorrow night?”

  “Mmmm! Where?”

  I’m in such a plugged-out state after my complicated day that I can’t think of a single restaurant in the West End. “I’ll surprise you!” I say gallantly. “Pick you up at seven, Gorgeous—big love—” I drop the phone back in its cradle and stoop to kiss Elizabeth. “Darling! Sorry I’m back late.”

  “Where were you?”

  I trot out an explanation about bumping into the One-for-the-Money CEO in the street and getting offered a drink at the new branch, but Elizabeth says severely I should have checked with her first. “Clients should pay if they want to socialise with you,” she says. “Oh, and talking of clients—” She names the Grunter and says he’s dropped out of Tuesday’s eight o’clock slot. Then she adds: “I’m thinking of offering it to this social worker, Gilbert Tucker.”

  “Oh, forget him, darling, he’s just a time-waster!”

  “But is he? And what’s all this about you meeting him at Richard Slaney’s funeral? I gave you strict instructions not to talk to anyone there!”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have done but this bloke Gilbert spoke to me. He said he recognised me because some client (he wouldn’t say who) had shown him a bunch of my pics and he wanted to introduce himself.”

  “But he must move in moneyed circles if he was at the Slaney funeral and knows one of your clients! Maybe he has a private income.”

  “No, no—you should have seen his clothes!”

  “Just because he wasn’t wearing an Armani suit doesn’t mean he couldn’t afford a wake-up slot! How old is he? I suppose as his name’s Gilbert he must be around sixty or more.”

  “Yeah, totally over the hill.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Short, bald, spectacles, paunch.”

  “Well, obviously there’s no long-distance mileage in it for us if he wouldn’t look good on video, but we could still use him next week as a one-off.”

  “True, but—”

  Elizabeth suddenly swivels to face me. “Why don’t you want to do this man?”

  “Well—”

  “Are you keeping something back from me?”

  “Elizabeth, you know I’d never—”

  “What the hell really happened at Richard Slaney’s funeral?”

  “Nothing! I told you!”

  “You didn’t tell me about this man Tucker!”

  “That was only because I felt guilty that I’d talked to someone despite your instructions!”

  Elizabeth stares at me. “I think you’ve become rather slippery lately, Gavin, and I don’t like that at all. Jason and Tony both became slippery when they started failing to make the grade, and I don’t want you going the same way as Jason and Tony.”

  I’m shocked to be compared with my predecessors, the blokes who got fired. I’ve always been told I’m in a different league from those two. In panic I blurt out: “Darling, I’ll do whatever you want, I swear I will.”

  “Then you’ll see Gilbert Tucker at eight o’clock on Tuesday morning—and don’t you forget to switch on the bloody cameras! I want to see for myself what this man looks like.”

  Disaster. “Fine, no problem,” I mutter, heart sinking as fast as a boulder hurtling down a cliff.

  Elizabeth relaxes. She pats her immaculately dyed golden hair which is swept up into a topknot today and allowed to trail elegantly at the sides in tendrils. Her eyes, flounced up by false lashes, are a pale baby-blue.

  “All right, pet,” she says, smiling at me. “Run along upstairs and have your supper.”

  Without another word I do as I’m told.

  Nigel has a beef casserole waiting and he serves it with a baked potato and green salad, but I’m too shell-shocked to eat much. Staring down into my lager I wonder when I should confess to Elizabeth that Gil isn’t a wrinkled creep of sixty-plus but a nice-looking bloke of around forty.

  Nigel looks in to see if I’m ready for dessert. “You okay, mate? Some tosser upset you?”

  “Nah, life’s just a bit complicated right now, that’s all.” I never tell Nigel too much. It’s very tempting to confide sometimes, but it’s safer not to. Then I don’t have to worry about him.

  “Want to watch telly with me tonight?” he’s saying hopefully, but I shake my head and he drifts away.

  By midnight I’ve reasoned myself into a better frame of mind. My trump card, I soon realise, is that I’ve obtained the crucial information for Asherton about Colin’s religious interests, and once Elizabeth knows that, she’ll forgive me for being “slippery” over Gil Tucker. So what I’ve got to do is withhold this trump card until I have to confess I lied about Gil’s age and appearance. When do I do the big confession? Best to leave it as long as possible to give Elizabeth time to cool down, so . . . yes, I see how to do this. Colin’s next appointment is on Tuesday, the day Gil gets the wake-up slot, and I can claim that this is the day when Colin comes clean about his religious interests. It’ll all dovetail, I’m sure of it. Happy ending.

  At that point I hope I may be able to sleep but no, my thoughts are still racing around producing insomnia. I’m thinking of Carta now, rerunning every word of our conversation. How I wish I was taking Carta out tomorrow night instead of Serena, that college-educated tramp who’s dumb enough to think escort work’s a dead easy way to earn a buck. Just wait till Norah propositions you, jingle-bells, after softening you up with all this free accommodation, free health club vouchers, free manicures and free kisses from those spooky chihuahuas! If you flunk it at payback time, Norah will sack you and withhold as much of your earnings as she can, and if you object she’ll just say: “Sue me!” and mail your nude glamour-pics to Mum and Dad in Goring, that arch-respectable seaside town they’ve picked for their retirement. But if you go down the payback route what have you got to look forward to? Money? Sure, but not as much as you’ve been led to think, and meanwhile it’ll be all Sapphic frolics in between the shags with the old men and the pervy foreigners and the drunken businessmen and the sickos who don’t give a shit. And after a while it’ll become a bit stressful, not much, just a bit, so you’ll start boosting your alcohol intake and doing a line of coke every now and then, but very soon the drink will escalate and the coke lines will multiply and gradually your prized bank account will get a moth-eaten look until in the end you’re in debt with a dud liver and a duff nose and you’ll have a nervous breakdown because no escort agency will take you on and you can’t face selling out of your pants on the street. Believe me, Serena sweet pea, the leisure industry’s not for wimps and you haven’t got what it takes! Stop trying to hit back at Mum and Dad in Boring Goring and get yourself out of Norah’s world PDQ . . .

  At last I manage to sink into a stupor which has a good chance of ending in unconsciousness, and as the images begin to flicker surreally before my eyes I see the shepherd in fancy dress looking out over the Needles. But the little sheep’s not tucked up on his shoulder. I think: where’s that little lost sheep that was found? And the next moment I realise I’m covered in white fleece. Then I hear Asherton whisper as he fingers his long knife: “Time for your shearing, my dear!” and as it dawns on me that he wants to take off not just my fleece but every inch of my skin, the world ends and the sun blacks out and I yell and yell and yell for the help that’s never going to come . . .

  A thousand miles away Nigel urges: “Gav, wake up!”

  I sit bolt upright, sweating and gasping. “I was being skinned by Asherton—”

  “It was a dream, mate, only a dream. A
sherton doesn’t do snuff movies . . .”

  I realise I’ve been yelling loud enough to bring Nigel down from the attic but I’m too traumatised to be embarrassed. Shuddering from head to toe I grab his hand and whisper: “Dear old friend.”

  Then a very strange conversation takes place. Later I dismiss it as a conundrum, but I don’t forget what was said. I think I do but I don’t.

  It starts with Nigel saying: “Gav, you know I’d do anything for you, don’t you? I mean that. I love you.”

  I think automatically: yeah, yeah. But I’m so shaken up that I say something else. I mumble: “Thought you only went for kids.”

  “That had to stop. I faced up to it in the end. In the programme I was on in prison the psychiatrist called it ‘coming out of denial.’ ”

  “Didn’t think those programmes cured kiddie-fiddlers.”

  “You don’t get cured but you can get healed, like an alcoholic who makes it in AA. But I had to come out of denial, see, before any of that could happen. I used to say I was doing nothing bad, but finally I was able to stand up before the group and say: ‘I’m a paedophile and what I did was wrong.’ ”

  “Cool.”

  “No, just truthful. It’s the truth that heals, you see, not the lies you tell yourself to keep going. Denial’s like a jail, keeping you locked up in a bad place.”

  “Uh-huh.” I decide it’s time to get him out of my bedroom. “Okay, leave off now, Nige, there’s a good bloke—I can see you’re some kind of hero, but I can’t take ‘Thought for the Day’ in the middle of the night.”

  Nigel patters obediently away.

  Four hours later I’m celebrating Saturday by arriving in Elizabeth’s bedroom with the early morning tea. I’m nervous in case she’s still displeased with me, but after I’ve apologised again she says I’m forgiven.

  “You do love me, don’t you?” my voice says.

  “Of course I do, pet! You’re very handsome, very sexy and wonderfully amusing and clever,” says Elizabeth indulgently, kissing the tip of my nose. “Now let’s do something really fun today! I feel in the mood for—”