“I engaged the private detectives first thing on Monday morning so I know all about that slim blonde woman you took to Austin Friars!”
“Shit, Colin, that wasn’t Carta!”
“I know it wasn’t—my men took pictures! Obviously you’d either finished with Miss Graham or else you were running the two affairs simultaneously!”
“I’VE NEVER HAD AN AFFAIR WITH CARTA!”
“Well, what about the other girl? Don’t tell me you brought her here just to admire the view!”
“Okay, that’s my friend Serena, but it’s all platonic, I’ve known her for years, and the reason I brought her here was because I didn’t want to take her to Lambeth. Elizabeth doesn’t approve of her.”
“You mean she’s jealous! You and Mrs. Delamere are lovers, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely not! Colin, Elizabeth’s over fifty years old! If I was straight—which I’m not—I’d be into chicks, not mother hens!”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, Gavin. You’ve made the mistake of thinking that just because I don’t know as much about sex as you do I know equally little about human nature, but I know corruption when I see the evidence for it! There’s a connection, isn’t there, between Mrs. Delamere and Asherton? I’m sure now it was no coincidence that we met him at the opera that night. I think he uses you to recruit for that perverted society of his.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Give your imagination a rest!” I exclaim, but of course I’m shocked rigid and Colin takes no notice of this routine denial.
“If you’d never set eyes on Asherton before that night at the opera,” he says, “why did you look so stunned when you saw he’d turned up at the Hall? Obviously there was some kind of deep connection there, and at first I just wrote him off as one of your former clients, particularly when you told me later that he’d asked for your phone number. Refreshing his memory, I thought! But then I started to wonder. I’d already seen you looking at the woman as if you were a heterosexual, and I thought: if he could lie about the sex he could lie about anything—and now I realise you’ve told me lie after lie, but you can stop lying now because we’re finished—it’s over—I never want to see you again!”
I lose it. That’s because deep down I’m scared about how I’ve screwed up. I suppose I’m thinking something like: what the hell, since I’ve already screwed up so badly, let’s bloody well screw up all the way.
“I never want to see you again either, you ugly old fart!” I yell. “And if you ever thought I enjoyed heaving your bloated old body around, maybe you were born yesterday after all! Get the fuck out and good riddance!”
Then all hell breaks loose as he goes for me.
I curse myself for the loss of temper but it’s too late. Of course I can get the better of him in a fight, but if I hurt him he might call the police and although we’d have him on film as the aggressor, the police could be much too interested in someone who can connect Elizabeth and Asherton.
I weave and dodge—and finally decide to bolt downstairs. If I can grab a knife from the kitchen I reckon I can threaten him to his senses.
So I hurtle out of the bedroom onto the landing, but then the hell of a thing happens: the world tilts as if London’s been hit by an earthquake, and losing my balance I start to tumble down the stairs. I break my fall by clutching the rail, but in doing so I bang my head and that’s the last thing I remember for a while.
I lose consciousness.
When I open my eyes again the buzzer’s rasping above my head. Dimly I realise I’m lying in a heap on the hall floor. The clock on the wall says six-thirty, which is an odd time for a client to be arriving, but no, wait a minute, this week I’ve been fitting in bumped VIPs, so . . . no, wait again, this is Friday, one VIP was fitted in at three o’clock, the other picked up a cancellation earlier and Colin was definitely my last punter of the day.
Colin . . .
I remember, but even as I gasp the buzzer goes again—two short toots and a long blast. The noise goes right through my aching head and out the other side. Dragging myself onto my knees I reach for the receiver. “Yep?”
“Gavin! I thought you’d forgotten about me and gone home!”
It’s Carta. Can’t remember why she’s here but never mind, she can make me a cup of tea. I press the button to let her in and then I slump back into a sitting position. My brain’s still off-colour but otherwise I’m in one piece. Bruised but unbroken. I’ve been worse.
“What’s happened?” she exclaims as soon as she sees me.
“Fell downstairs. Row with client.”
“Colin?”
“Oh right, I told you he was coming, didn’t I? That’s why you’re here.” I peer into the mirror by the front door, but to my relief I find the marks left by Colin’s slam have faded. Lucky it was his palm he used and not his fist . . . I lurch against the wall as the wuzziness returns.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “Got to be horizontal. Please could you make me some tea?” I seem to be fixated on the idea of Carta making tea. It must be because tea-making’s so domestic, so absolutely the favour one friend would do for another in a crisis.
“Leave it to me,” she says, taking charge. “You go and lie down.”
I clamber upstairs and plop down on the bed as the memory of the row hits me again. Elizabeth’s going to be furious that Mr. Moneybags has gone down the drain and horrified that he’s linked us to Asherton. I start to sweat.
“Try some of this.” Carta’s arrived and she’s handing me a mug of dark tea. “I put some sugar in it to counter the effects of shock.”
“Thanks.” I hitch myself up on the pillows and take a swig while she draws up a chair, the wooden one which I scrub down after it’s been used for sex games. It’s wonderful to see her sitting on it. I feel it’s been cleansed at the deepest level, just as the cuff links were cleansed when I handed them to Nicholas.
“You should see a doctor,” she’s saying. “Shall I call Val? I’m sure you don’t want to go to hospital and wait hours in Casualty.”
It occurs to me that sending for Dr. Lush-Lips could be a wise idea. I’m still feeling floaty, keen to stay horizontal. “Okay,” I say, and Carta goes downstairs to retrieve Val’s number from her bag.
Back in the bedroom after making the call she asks: “Can you tell me about the row with Colin?”
The short answer is no, not entirely. That’s because I don’t want to tell her about Serena. However I get my battered brain to do a little editing, omit mentioning the detectives and just say Colin became suspicious after seeing how well Carta and I got on last weekend, so suspicious that he eventually decided I was a closet hetero.
“He must be paranoid!” exclaims Carta, justifiably amazed that Colin should leap to this conclusion on the strength of a couple of hot looks.
“Sure he’s paranoid!” I say. “He’s one of the misogynists who think any man who does a chick chat-up can never be trusted gay-wise.” I then tell her how I lost my temper and he lost his marbles. “So I’m afraid the donation’s gone down the tubes,” I conclude, genuinely depressed. “I blew it. I’m really sorry.”
But she’s wonderfully forgiving and good about it.
“It’s not your fault,” she says. “You’re not to blame for the fact that he’s irrational about women, and he may well have had no intention of donating anyway.”
“True. But all the same—”
“Gavin, don’t feel badly—please! You’ve still raised an amazing amount of money for us and we’re still enormously grateful.”
I feel better when she says this. In fact I even haul the extension phone out of the bedside table’s cupboard to call Elizabeth and warn her I’ll be late back.
“Did Sir Colin show up?” she demands at once.
“Yeah—I’ll tell you everything later,” I stall and hang up before the buzzer blares. Val’s been visiting a patient in Bow, just outside the Square Mile, so she hasn’t had far to come.
Carta hurries downstairs to let her in.
“The good news is there’s no serious damage,” says Val after examining my eyes with an ophthalmoscope. “You’ve got a small bump on your head where you hit the wall, but the skin’s not broken and I don’t think the blow itself could have been hard enough to make you unconscious. Did you say you felt dizzy before you fell?”
“Yes, but—” I break off. A horrific thought’s hit me. Maybe I’m ill. Maybe I’ve finally picked up HIV. Maybe in ten years’ time I’ll be dead. And as this terrible prospect erupts in my mind I want to shout: “But I haven’t had the chance to live!” and I know that has to be the real me talking, the Gavin Blake whose spirit’s been so crushed for so long that he’s not even sure what his spirit is.
“Let’s just take your blood pressure,” Val’s saying as she fishes in her medical bag for the right contraption, but even when the procedure’s finished her expression remains impassive. Nothing for me to read there, not even a flicker of sexual interest. “You a lesbian?” I demand at last in a feeble attempt to divert myself from my panic.
Val doesn’t bother to reply, just tucks the blood-pressure bondage gear back into her bag. Then she asks neutrally: “Have you been feeling unwell lately?”
“Nope.”
“Eating properly?”
My sentence of death is abruptly lifted as I realise what’s wrong with me. “Maybe not,” I mumble, so relieved I can hardly speak.
“When did you last eat?”
“I had a big breakfast mid-morning but I couldn’t keep it down. Same thing happened yesterday too.”
“Lunch?”
“Skipped it.” I smile at her. “No wonder I’m feeling wuzzy! It’s a stomach upset plus lack of food.”
But apparently Val doesn’t think this is the end of the consultation. Turning to Carta, who’s been hovering nearby like an anxious older sister, she says: “I’d better have a word with him on his own.”
Carta slips away, beautiful feet tapping on the stairs, and immediately Val turns up the heat.
“How often have you been vomiting?”
“Oh, not often at all! Just after meals.”
“How long’s this been going on for?”
“Few days.”
“Open your mouth, please.”
“My mouth? But there’s nothing wrong there—I don’t even have a sore throat!”
“I want to look at your teeth.”
I’m so astonished that I open my mouth wide without any further protest and Dr. Lush-Lips peers inside. I do recover enough to say “Aaah!” in a suggestive way, but when there’s no reaction I know she just has to be a dyke. The reason why I failed to realise this sooner is because she’s so different from Nightmare Norah.
Val snaps off the torch. “Does the vomiting take you by surprise or are you able to choose when to do it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on, Gavin!”
“I don’t know what you mean!” I protest, but I do know. And what’s more I know that she knows that I know. Okay, I think, what the hell— it’s no big deal. So long as I don’t have AIDS, what do I care?
“Well, as a matter of fact,” I say casually, “I’ve been choosing to do it. I’ve been worried about getting fat, but I’m not being neurotic here, just professional. I’ve got to look perfect for my job.”
“Sure.” To my surprise she stops playing the dominatrix and looks sympathetic. “But Gavin, you don’t want to get into the habit of throwing up, you really don’t. The stomach acids rot the teeth and it’s not good for your throat either. Maybe you need to talk this problem through with someone.”
“What problem?” I say. “It’s not a problem. I’m just temporarily off my food.”
“That’s the problem. Best to take care of it before it gets a real grip on you.”
“But it’s nothing to get excited about! I mean, blokes don’t get bulimia, do they? That kind of stuff’s just for chicks.”
Val waits for a moment before saying gently: “At the Healing Centre I keep a file of articles from medical journals about eating disorders in men.”
I make some flip remark about sexual equality having gone too far, but she just says: “Are you registered with a GP where you live?”
“No, I go to my manager’s private doctor.”
“Okay, can you ask him to test you for anaemia?”
I hesitate. Dr. Filth tells Elizabeth everything. “Can’t you yourself do the test?” I say to Val.
“I could, yes—you’re certainly in the catchment area of my practice by having this flat in Austin Friars, but I’ll need your National Health number to get you on my books.”
“Fine. I’ll dig that out and come to see you.”
“Don’t leave it too long . . . Have you got any food here?”
“Biscuits.”
“Milk?”
“Yep.”
“Have a glass of milk and some biscuits before you try to go home, and drink a glass of water too—more if you can manage it. And as a precaution don’t drive. Take a taxi home, and when you get back do please eat a good meal which goes in one end of you and in due course comes out the other.”
I say meekly: “Yes, doctor,” and wink at her as she leaves, but when I’m alone I sag back on the pillows.
I’m rattled.
“I’ll call you,” I say later to Carta when we part. After the milk, biscuits and water I’m feeling much sharper—which is just as well, since I only have the cab ride to Lambeth in which to prepare my story.
Of course Elizabeth hits the roof when she hears I’ve been dumped, but when I swear I did my best to avoid the disaster she calms down and demands the details.
I start to inch my way through the minefield. “He arrived in a filthy temper,” I say. “It turned out he’d got it into his head that I fancied Nicholas Darrow last weekend.”
“Darrow! Well, he’s certainly the type that can switch both sexes on, but I wouldn’t have pegged him as having any gay interest. How could Sir Colin have thought—”
“I’m not saying he thought Darrow was responding—he just thought I was smitten. Anyway on Monday he puts PIs on my trail, and they come up with the evidence that I’m shagging Serena—a far worse crime than melting over Darrow. So jealousy runs rampant and before you can say ‘melodrama’ he’s crashing around like a rhino on uppers. Finally he belts me across the face, yells that he never wants to see me again and stalks out. The reason why I’m late back is that I was so zapped by the whole fiasco that I just had to sit down for a while with a glass of wine to recover.”
“I’m not surprised! But maybe he’ll backtrack once he calms down.”
“No chance.” This is the truly tricky part, trickier than avoiding all mention of Carta, throwing in the Nicholas rigmarole and omitting my wimpish fall downstairs. “Colin suspects you and Asherton are connected,” I say rapidly, “and he’s guessed I recruit for GOLD.”
Elizabeth’s language slips. “Shit.” After taking a large gulp of her drink she says in her flattest voice: “Then that’s that.”
“Darling, I’m sorry—I know how disappointed you must be—”
“All that money gone to waste! But how the fuck could it have happened? Why should that bugger suspect—”
“Well, of course,” I say acidly, “this is entirely Asherton’s fault—and I’m not just referring to the way he blew the debate. On our way into dinner that night he was stupid enough to collar me for a private interrogation about Darrow, and Colin looked back and noticed. I tried to defuse Colin’s suspicions by saying Asherton’d been making a pass, but Colin’s no fool and I bet it was then he started to wonder about a conspiracy.”
“You think that was the real reason he had you watched?”
“I’m sure he was getting jealous twinges as well, but yes, basically he distrusted me on every front and wanted to know just what the hell was going on.”
Elizabeth knocks back the rest of her drink and holds out her glass. “Get me another, would you, pet?�
� she says abruptly, but although she’s still furious, the word “pet” signals the fury’s not directed at me.
I’m so relieved I nearly make a mess of refilling her glass, but luckily I have my back to her and she can’t see how unsteady my hand is. My big problem now is that Asherton’ll tell her I was the one who revealed the conspiracy by looking so horrified when I first saw him at Hellfire Hall— a dead giveaway of our secret connection, as both Nicholas and Colin instantly realised. But I’ll worry about that later. My prime task right now is to pass Elizabeth’s glass back to her without puking into it. Elizabeth has a revolting taste in drinks. It’s all sweet sherry and saccharine cocktails and treacly liqueurs, and at present she’s treating herself to that thick creamy stuff which looks like whisked sewage.
“All right,” says Elizabeth when I’m sitting down beside her again, “this is the way we’ll play it. We don’t tell Asherton that you and Sir Colin are finished. It’s just too complicated, and now that Sir Colin’s not a candidate for GOLD Asherton doesn’t need to know his latest moves anyway. And we certainly don’t tell Asherton that Sir Colin’s sussed the conspiracy. That would make Asherton a tad nervous in case Sir Colin goes to the P-O-L-I-C-E, and it’s never a good idea to give someone like Asherton extra worries, particularly when paranoia’s already his middle name.”
I’m dead relieved again. If Asherton does try to dump the responsibility for the Colin disaster on me, he’ll get nowhere because this is a subject Elizabeth no longer wants to discuss, specially as she now believes my version of who’s to blame. She’ll just write off Asherton’s attack as paranoia and move on.
However I can’t relax yet—this reference to the P-O-L-I-C-E at once has me sitting forward on the edge of my chair. “God, do you really think Colin’ll go to the police about me?”
“No, in my opinion caution will triumph and Sir Colin will do nothing that’d reveal he’s been seeing a leisure-worker. That’s why you were so clever not to punch him up. If there’d been a fight his injured pride might have lured him into doing something silly, but as it is . . . No, on that score you’re safe enough and so am I.”
I hear the unspoken “but.” “What’s the other score?”
The Heartbreaker Page 37