The Heartbreaker

by Susan Howatch

  But where’s your freedom to be yourself, chum? And where’s your liberation and empowerment now?

  Oh, shit, shit, shit . . .

  But it’s no use cursing. What I have to do is pull myself together before I make a fatal slip, and that means no more double-life as a fundraiser and no more visits to St. Benet’s.

  And Carta? Well, if I know what’s good for me I’ll give her up too, and I know what’s good for me, don’t I?

  Punching off the Verdi I drive the last mile home in the deadest of dead silences.

  Earlier in the day, to cover up my visit to St. Benet’s, I left a message for Elizabeth with Susanne to say that I was having a drink after work with Serena. I figured Elizabeth wouldn’t mind if I spent an hour after work with the approved girlfriend, but when I get home she’s irritated.

  “Serena’s for weekends, pet,” she says. “I don’t want you wearing yourself out during the week with after-work activities.” But then she relents and says she’s glad I’m getting on well with Serena, such a nice girl and such good quality. She makes Serena sound like a stack of expensive bed linen.

  By this time I’m exhausted but as soon as I’m upstairs I take the time to memorise Carta’s home and mobile numbers until I’m confident enough to tear up her business card and flush it down the bog. (The office number’s already memorised, and anyway that’s recoverable from the Telecom totty.) Even though I’ve taken the sane, rational decision that it’s too risky to see anyone from lifestyle-threatening, brain-blitzing St. Benet’s again I still can’t bear to pass up Carta’s personal numbers. I tell myself I just want them engraved on my heart as a souvenir. Am I nuts? No, I can argue that this move to memorise is actually crafty psychology. If I bin the numbers I’ll immediately want to call her, but if I have the numbers available I won’t feel so driven to do something risky. I can just live with the option to get in touch until the urge to call has faded.

  Well anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

  I flop into bed and crash out.

  Despite the stress I wake the next morning feeling ready for anything— until I remember that at eight o’clock I have to screw Gilbert Tucker. Elizabeth even reminds me about this before I leave the house.

  “Try and get some good angles for the cameras, pet, and make sure the full trick’s turned. Asherton wants to see more than just you and Mr. Tucker playing with each other’s equipment.”

  I drive to the City in a black mood which gets blacker when I arrive. I’ve forgotten that I didn’t clean up before leaving the flat yesterday, and now I have to rush around at top speed because I haven’t allowed extra time for the chores.

  When Gil arrives he asks for coffee, which is an unusual request for a client at that hour. I always do have coffee available for the early shift, but most of the time I’m the only one who takes a sip—in the intervals between appointments. The clients don’t like to waste time coffee-drinking when they’re paying big money for something else, but this lost clerical innocent actually expects to sit on the kitchen barstool and socialise! He says he “just wants to talk” because “sex isn’t so important as building a relationship.” Why he can’t admit he wants to fuck I don’t know, but perhaps he feels he has to go through the motions of “saving me” before he lets it all hang out.

  “Look, mate,” I say good-naturedly, knowing we have to get a move on, “I’m not an escort, paid to chat with you! You’ll have to go elsewhere if you want one of those.”

  “I’ve bought the time,” he says. “Can’t I do what I like with it?”

  He’s got to be seduced—and at eight o’clock in the bloody morning when I’m supposed to be doing routine stuff on automatic pilot! I want to opt out but when I think of Asherton’s face if I wind up with no viewable tape I set to work. It takes less than five minutes to get Gil upstairs but I grudge every second of them.

  At the top of the stairs outside the door of the main bedroom I pause, just as I always do, to usher the client across the threshold ahead of me. Then as Gil passes by I flick the switch that turns on the hidden cameras. It looks like a light switch. Nobody ever glances twice at it and nobody ever sees me turn it on. Although at the beginning of my career I recorded every session in case a client turned violent, nowadays I pick and choose. There’s no point in recording if the client’s a sexual non-event (no market for our porn sideline) and if we already have a performance of his on tape to protect ourselves if he ever tries to make trouble, so I suppose on average I film no more than half the sessions a day. There’s a camera hidden in the fake smoke alarm, a camera hidden behind the collage of nude photos along one wall and, sneakiest of all, a camera tucked into one of the metal knobs on the ornate iron bedframe. That’s for close-ups. The cameras are wired to transmit pictures directly onto videotape which is activated by the electronic equipment in the second bedroom. Tommy has a great time cutting and splicing the film from the three cameras so that the viewer gets a jolt every twelve minutes, just as the porn industry recommends. Porn’s very scientific and well researched nowadays. Boring.

  I’m not expecting much from Gil. When we did the freebie he was kind of pathetic as he was so out of practice, and this time he’s not much better but I can see he’s got some kind of mild potential. It helps that I’ve done him before and know that provided I take care he’s not going to seize up at the crucial moment, but I must say I’m relieved when I get past the tricky zone.

  I glance at my watch but surreptitiously so that the gesture doesn’t show on camera. The fuck’s going to be a quickie but I can’t coast home, I’ve got to build to an erotic designer climax in three minutes flat. And all this before eight-thirty in the morning! God, I don’t know how those downmarket leisure-workers can do it for peanuts. At least I get well paid.

  We finish at eight-twenty sharp. That gives him five minutes to clean up before leaving and it gives me five minutes on my own to prepare for the next client. Gil knows he’s allowed a shower provided he takes no more than two minutes, but he shyly asks if I’ll have a shower with him. No way, mate! You just want another jolt but time’s up and out you go. I don’t put it to him as frankly as that, of course. I’m all rueful regret but I don’t back down. Why am I being so brutally professional with this nice bloke? Because I can’t afford to get involved. Because I don’t like to think I’m shafting him towards Asherton. Because this session’s a nightmare, that’s the truth of it, and I’ve got to stay detached to keep sane.

  “Hey, listen!” I say casually, following my instructions from Elizabeth as I lead the way downstairs. “I know I’m out of your price range, but I like you a hell of a lot and I’m sure now we could have a great time together. Why don’t I fix it with my manager so that you get a big discount? She always allows me one client I see just for pleasure.”

  I wonder if he can possibly be stupid enough to swallow this, but he does. It’s all that romantic idealism which is slopping around in his head—plus his recent eighteen months on a no-sex diet which is enough to drive any normal man up the wall. Gil may be a clergyman but he wasn’t designed to be a celibate saint. He was designed to be a good man in a one-to-one committed relationship with the companion of his dreams. It’s just his bad luck that his dreams are the Church’s nightmares, but I suppose these gay clergymen hope the Church will redefine the term “unnatural sex” so that everyone can live happily ever after. Well, a new definition’s certainly needed, considering that we now know men have an erogenous zone by the prostate which can only be accessed via the anus. What can be more natural than wanting to tickle an erogenous zone? But I can’t quite see the dog-collared straights ever debating that one in the Church of England’s General Synod.

  I suddenly realise Gil’s saying: “I really shouldn’t see you any more.”

  Shit, I have to run the seduction line again and we’re clean out of time.

  I do my best. Physical contact. Gooey words. A real melting moment. He backs down, says he’ll call Elizabeth.


  “You’ll find her very understanding!” I say, smiling, as I open the front door wide, but still he doesn’t go. He’s giving me a flyer—something about gay Christians and how they all need to look after one another.

  Big deal! Who’s looking after Gil?

  “I thought the Christian view was that all human beings should look after one another,” I say, somehow keeping my voice casual although I’m ripe to yell with impatience. “Why should caring be allocated according to what people get up to in bed?” And as he opens his mouth to deliver some pathetic activist spiel I say with a laugh: “No, don’t tell me! We’ll talk about it next time.”

  I finally succeed in shoehorning him out of the flat. Then I go to the kitchen and toss the flyer in the garbage.

  “That was very nice, dear,” says Elizabeth to me that evening after viewing the take of the third camera. Following orders I’ve brought back the tapes myself instead of leaving them to be collected by Tommy. “Very professional.” She glances at Asherton who’s looking like a food junkie after a thousand-calorie hit: all wet lips and bright eyes and a tongue that can’t stay still. “But personally,” she adds, “I’m still not with you on this one, Ash. Tucker’s looks are pretty run-of-the-mill if you ask me, and Gavin had to work ever so hard to make him look interesting.”

  “I’m sure Gavin can help Gilbert become more accomplished! How long do you think it would take, Gavin my dear, to buff him to a high lustre?”

  Asherton’s insisted that I should be present while the tapes are being played so that I can see for myself what improvements need to be made. I’m loathing every minute of this scene, although I keep my face expressionless. I don’t mind seeing myself on tape. I stopped being self-conscious about my performances a long time ago and in fact it does me good to see how professional I am at my job. But I just hate to see that mega-perv drooling over Gil.

  Answering his question I say: “If I could see him a couple of times a week for a month, I’m sure I could produce a big improvement. Basically he just needs practice.”

  “Plus a little instruction, I think . . .” Asherton gets technical. I’m handed paper and a pen and told to take notes.

  Eventually Elizabeth reins him in. “My boy doesn’t do SM, as you well know.”

  “But this is merely exploring the boundaries!”

  “Yes, but your boundaries are on bloody roller skates!”

  They haggle away about pervy sex and I listen like a zombie as I wait for the chance to escape.

  “. . . all right, my boy’ll do that but he won’t do . . .”

  “. . . yes, yes, of course I want to keep the boy happy, but I don’t see why he can’t get Gilbert to—”

  I suddenly remember Nicholas offering me a job as if I counted, I mattered, I was special, and the next moment my voice says: “I’m nobody’s ‘boy.’ I’m a twenty-nine-year-old man.”

  Neither of them takes any notice. I’m not a person to them at that moment. I’m just interactive bait for the fish.

  Finally Elizabeth says: “What exactly are you after here, Ash? I don’t see how we can discuss Tucker’s training properly if you don’t tell me what you plan to do with him at the GOLD meeting.”

  “Pas devant le garçon, ma chère.”

  This is a power-play. Elizabeth doesn’t speak French though she does speak German, the result of working for a year in Bonn when she was young. (Something to do with providing British girls for the army of occupation, but the Germans got very pissed off and Elizabeth’s been xenophobic ever since.) However, when Asherton spouts his French she outmanoeuvres him by guessing what he wants. In-depth discussions about GOLD are always top secret. “Gavin,” she says colourlessly, and jerks her head towards the door.

  Obediently I jump to my feet, but seconds later I’m hiding behind the half-open door of the office across the hall. It’s evening. Susanne’s gone. The room’s in darkness. I peer through the space between the hinges, and sure enough Asherton opens the living-room door to check that I’m not eavesdropping. When it closes again I give him another twenty seconds either to resettle himself or to be paranoid enough to take a second peep, and then I’m gliding back across the hall to put my ear to the panel.

  Elizabeth’s exclaiming: “You’re joking! A tableau? If you’re worried about the members getting jaded, the answer is to overhaul the standard rituals, not to stage a weird one-off where people stand around like statues!”

  “You’re making too narrow an interpretation of the word ‘tableau,’ my love. Naturally what I have in mind is a tableau vivant—”

  “Oh, stop showing off your bloody French!”

  “—by which I mean an exciting happening (as we used to say in the sixties) with minimal dialogue. We lead up to it by putting on a full-blooded version of the black mass to get everyone in the mood—all the trimmings, lots of incense, Gilbert swathed in yards of heavenly Anglo-Catholic lace—”

  “Well, pardon my laughter, I’m sure! As I said only the other day, this is just so old hat—”

  “Do you want to know my plan or don’t you?”

  “All right, dear, go on. You do ever such a nice version of the black mass for a warm-up. And then?”

  “Then we stage the first tableau. I’m designing a graded series of four, each one more stimulating than the last and all of them on the theme of the dominator dominated.” Asherton hesitates for a second before adding smoothly: “Of course I would have consulted you at the start about the tableaux, but they don’t involve any occult practice. I was hoping you’d design the black mass, but if you now feel such a rite’s beneath you—”

  “You can rejig the last one I designed. What happens in the first tableau?”

  “Gilbert, who of course has dominated the mass, now becomes the victim on the altar table. The girl who played the quasi-deflowered pseudo-virgin in the mass is temporarily set aside, and—”

  “Wait a mo, you’ve lost me. How do you get Tucker to fuck the girl in the mass?” Elizabeth’s gone into professional mode. This is Business with a capital B. “You can’t get away with fakery!” she says. “The audience would never stand for it, and anyway Tucker’s not an actor, he’d never be convincing.”

  “This is where Gavin comes in.”

  “Oh no he doesn’t!”

  “Let me explain. In the mass Gavin is the acolyte, doing the deflowering on Gilbert’s behalf. Then in the first tableau he has a struggle with Gilbert and emerges dominant. The struggle, of course, can be made to look deliciously stimulating, particularly if Gilbert’s taught the right wrestling moves.”

  “And what happens next?”

  “Gavin then fucks Gilbert while the girl watches, and after that, in the second tableau, the girl adopts the role of dominatrix and we can have a most thought-provoking threesome in which—”

  “You’re trying to cram in too much, and if you take my advice you’ll simplify—cut out the straight stuff and make the whole show one hundred per cent gay. Don’t worry about the straights in the audience—work in a lesbian duet somewhere and both sexes’ll be more than happy. In fact if the choreography’s done right even an all-male duet will have everyone panting to join in.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Get the Big Boys to pick up a rent boy to play the virgin at the mass—or better still a resting actor who can ham it up. The acolyte can still do the mock-deflowering—I can’t see Tucker playing the lead there even when the pseudo-virgin’s a man—but make sure the acolyte’s attractive and competent, and no, you’re not using Gavin! My boy doesn’t do party work, he doesn’t do any stuff which strays across criminal boundaries and he certainly doesn’t go poncing around in a series of fucking tableaus!”

  “The word is ‘tableaux,’ my love. There’s no ‘s’—the French put an ‘x’ on the end and pronounce the word as if it were still in the singular.”

  “Oh, bugger the frigging French! Ash, I mean what I say about Gavin.”

  “But he’ll only be required for the
mass and the first two tableaux! He won’t feature in the last two when the Big Boys take over and stage the hard stuff!”

  “How hard is hard?”

  “Well, if you bear in mind dear Gilbert’s calling, what could be more wondrously compelling than a climax involving a high, wide, wooden cross?”

  “Something that doesn’t run the risk of you being banged up for murder! Supposing he dies?”

  “Of course he won’t die! It takes hours to kill someone that way!”

  “But he could go into shock, have a stroke—”

  “My dear, I know exactly what I’m doing and I assure you Gilbert will survive!”

  “Yes—to tell the police everything! Ash, you simply haven’t thought this through!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t have enough leverage to shut him up. I agree you probably have enough leverage to get him to perform the mass—a video of him with Gavin ought to do the trick, no problem. But if he’s a victim on the scale you have in mind he’s going to need more than the threat of embarrassment and humiliation to stop him talking. Don’t forget that according to Gavin, Tucker’s an activist. In other words, it’s no secret that he’s gay, and to get blackmail to act as a gobstopper where GBH is involved you must be able to expose a secret, preferably a criminal act which is more than just a run-of-the-mill party threesome and preferably a criminal act which doesn’t incriminate anyone else—”

  “My dear, I’m finding your relentless scepticism distinctly tiresome. Did you seriously think I hadn’t thought of all that?”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “In the third tableau he’ll take part in a criminal act in which no other people are involved. Do you remember Bugsy, Bonzo’s Great Dane?”

  “Oh God, not that silly mutt who tried to eat Norah’s chihuahuas!” Elizabeth’s laughing. She’s actually laughing. Then before Asherton can finally lose his temper with her she says pleasantly: “Well, you’re certainly doing your best to ginger up GOLD, dear, and you can be sure I wish you well—if I’m giving you a hard time it’s only because I’m worried about what would happen to you if anything went wrong.”