Until now. Gussy and Ken might have broken up anyway, but he didn’t feel it. He’d urged Ken to call it off, meaning he was responsible for her pain. When he suggested meeting new people she gave him a look of such scorn he expected to be incinerated on the spot.
One afternoon he was walking through the college grounds, listening to the pop and fizz of the hour glasses, when he felt a vice-like grip on his arm. He didn’t need to look to know it was Ken.
“Alf. I haven’t seen you in ages.”
“We can’t talk here.”
“Where, then? You can’t expect me to run into Augusta.”
“Feeling guilty, are you?”
“You’re the one who said to end it. After we’d spent the night fucking -”
“Ssh!” Alfred pulled him behind a wall, conscious of the laughing students and chatting dons. “Couldn’t you have chosen somewhere less public?”
“And risk you getting away?”
“What do you want?”
“You. Don’t ask me why.”
“Is this your way of saying you love me? You’ve a funny way of showing it.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t do emotions easily.”
He’d planned to give Ken a piece of his mind. Instead he stared into those foggy eyes, so confused and unhappy. He took him beneath the ivy and kissed him.
Thus began a period of intense mutual preoccupation. By this time he’d moved in with Michael Derkins. Gussy floated on the periphery, wan and despondent.
When Ken called at some horrible hour to crow about a theory, Alfred was there to listen. Equally if he called in a black mood. He liked to have Alfred in the room while he worked, reaching to check he was still there. And of course, there was sex. Ken claimed it fuelled his ideas. It wasn’t unusual for him to chant formulas during or scribble breakthroughs on Alfred’s back.
He was addicted to risk. Alfred was convinced he got off on it. He was used to sex in the grounds, but Ken liked it in his department, on public transport and - on one memorable occasion - the mummy room at Lux Museum. He was a devotee of bathhouses, viewing them as vistas of erotic opportunity. Alfred balked at the thought of sex in a room full of strangers, but they were too busy screwing to notice.
He never understood how Ken was so self hating yet made no effort to tone down his behaviour. The arm slung around him, the glances beneath his eyelashes, the pet names. Catching raised eyebrows and amused faces, he didn’t know what he felt most, pity or embarrassment. He knew how they must seem. Ken looked forty at least; he looked his age. When he applied for a job at Ken’s college he posed as his nephew. Good thing he didn’t get it - they ran into the Dean in their favourite bathhouse a month later.
“Did you go with Gussy?” he asked once.
Ken scoffed. “Only poofs fuck women.”
It was as good an answer as he was likely to get.
After four months’ moping Gussy returned to life. She’d finished her course a few months early, so had plenty of leisure time. Realising she hadn’t seen Alfred for a month, she decided to visit.
“Looking for your bruv?” the porter asked. “You’ve just missed him.”
“Did he say how long he’d be?”
“Can’t say he did.”
“That’s Alfie all over. I’ll be back later.”
“Hang on.” He clicked his fingers. “His fella might’ve mentioned.”
“He’s got a fella?” she asked, amused. “He never said.”
“Oh, it’s been going on ages. Tall thin bloke. Considerably older. A professor or something.”
She froze. “What’s his name?”
“Ken, I think. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” she said, voice shaking. “It’s that fucker who won’t be.”
Gussy believed in fight, not flight. After a few hours seething, she walked to Ken’s rooms. He’d drawn the curtains but a rosy glow was visible. She almost relented, remembering evenings they’d spent working on theories. She loved the talk, loved him. Yes, they’d never done it, but she assumed he was old fashioned -
One unbidden image, that’s all it took. Ken and Alfie at it like animals on the couch. Mouth a furious stitch, she lifted the knocker.
He answered, tipsy and pleased with himself. “Augusta?”
“You bastard!” She went straight for his nose. “You slimy, brother screwing bastard!”
He batted her away. “Now isn’t a good time -”
“Oh? When would be a good time? Half way up the aisle?”
“We’re not together any more -”
“I don’t care! This was going on before, wasn’t it?”
He flipped out a handkerchief with a fastidious finger. She’d heard his nose crunch. “Please don’t make a scene.”
It was only once she followed him inside she understood. The department was congregated in the lounge, doing unconvincing impressions of women who hadn’t heard a word.
“This is Lady Augusta Wilding, my prize student.”
With his colleagues Ken was all ease and schmooze. On the tube to Alfred that evening -
“Did you tell her?”
“Hello to you too.”
“Did you tell her?”
“No, I didn’t. It was bound to come out in the end.”
“She lamped me in front of the faculty!”
“Was she very upset?”
“My nose is hanging off. What do you think?”
“I’d better go round.”
Unsurprisingly she took months to thaw. At first she wouldn’t see him, communicating via her porter. Alfred suspected she’d told him - while he didn’t say anything, there was a whiff of contempt whenever he spoke to him. Once they found themselves in the same lift in Murtagh’s, Lila’s biggest bookshop.
“Gussy -”
“I haven’t anything to say to you.”
He wondered if anything was worth this. While he loved Ken, their relationship wasn’t exclusive. He heard whispers of “favourites”, discovered lads loitering around his apartments. He wondered why he wasn’t enough. Whenever he mentioned getting married, Ken let rip his most caustic laugh. Gussy would understand.
She wasn’t just his sister, she was his best friend. He missed her. He left messages, not caring they’d be wiped.
“I know you’re angry. I don’t blame you. Yes, it started out as sex, but we fell in love. You understand, don’t you?”
Did she? It was something he’d never asked: had she been with anyone? It was different for men, everyone said. They could detach themselves from what was going on, come inside a body without it meaning anything. Alfred wondered who these respondents were, because he damn well wanted it to matter.
***
Alfred stared at the message in his hand. Five words. To anyone else they would seem terse but he knew the depth of his parents’ bond.
‘Your mother’s dead. Come home.’
He arrived at Chimera that evening. The angular figure was waiting on the drive. Even at a distance he was shocked by how stooped and grey his father was.
“Dad!”
“Alfie -”
Any control collapsed. These two men, usually so reticent, clung to each other and cried.
In the two days they spent together, Lord Arthur said more than he had in twenty three years. Naturally most of it was about Connie. Alfred heard about their engagement and honeymoon, how she’d fallen pregnant after years of trying. She insisted they went on safari anyway. “That was your mother. Bloody stubborn.” She gave birth in the wild. Once the babies were asleep, she strapped them to her back and carried on.
“She was a rare lass. Your grandfather had conniptions but there was nothing he could do. I loved her."
“When did he mellow?”
“When he held Gussy. Of course you spoilt it -” Alfred had been sick all over him - “but he was gaga over you two.”
“She was the one?”
“Alfie, if you love anyone the way I loved your mum, hold onto them. Love’s worth fight
ing for.”
He wasn’t surprised when Gussy stepped from a hired vix the next morning. What sent him reeling was Ken scrambling out after her. “What the -” he began.
“Who the devil’s this?” Lord Arthur asked.
“This is Ken,” Gussy beamed.
“I’m sorry for your loss, your lordship,” Ken said.
Lord Arthur peered down his crooked nose. “So am I.” It was the most he ever said to him.
That afternoon they held a council of war. Lord Arthur had holed himself up with his man of business. Alfred wasted no time in seizing Gussy and Ken and pulling them into the billiard room. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
A moment’s silence. He clicked the balls back and forth.
“Well, we -” Ken said.
“We thought -” from Gussy. Glaring at the table, “Stop that!”
“Any reason why you’re pretending to be love’s young dream? He’s known I’m gay for years.”
Ken leaned out of the window. “You tell him.”
“We think it’s better if we keep up the story we’re a couple.”
“What?” He tried to read Ken’s reflection, blurred by the pane. “You’re joking.”
“Do I look like a comedian?”
“What are you frightened of? Am I too much of a dickhead to be seen with?”
“No!” Gussy cried. “Well -” Ken said.
“Think of a reason fast.”
Ken’s face was unhealthy grey. “I want you both.”
“That’s the most depraved thing I’ve heard. Do you honestly think I’ll touch you if you’re porking my sister?”
“It’s not like that -”
“How do we settle this? Flip a coin?”
“Alfie, shut your trap and listen.”
Ken extended a long thin arm and draped it over his shoulder. “You know I love you. But I need Gussy as my major domo.”
“Are you sure this has nothing to do with sex? I’ll try most things once, but incest? No thanks.”
“Nothing whatsoever.”
As he twisted to look at Gussy he caught her grimace. She wasn’t ecstatic either, but what could she do? Have Ken as a friend or risk losing him?
It wasn’t until later he understood what such a sacrifice meant.
Finals came and went. Alfred earned a Second with scant effort. Of course Gussy’s marks were in the stratosphere. She was showered with grants for this, fellowships for that. She turned them all down. “Ken and I are going to build robots.”
Any objections were dismissed. “I’ve made up my mind, don’t go on,” she said. Ken was even worse. “They may laugh now, but history will vindicate us.”
Graduation was in autumn. Photo calls around the moat, flinging caps into the air, posing on the Founder’s statue. “I’m starting a theatre company,” Derkins said. “Want to join?”
Alfred had no idea what he was going to do. Go back in the army, he supposed.
Only Lord Arthur didn’t ask. They’d grown closer since Lady Constance’s death, an intimacy without words. He trembled more than Alfred remembered, walking with a stick. He treated them to dinner. Ken and Gussy told stories about the characters in their department while Lord Arthur fell asleep in his roast.
Alfred escorted his dad to the vix, holding his umbrella. “Thanks for coming.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Alfie?”
“Yes?”
“Ken’s not who I had in mind for you, but if he makes you happy -”
The vix rumbled away. Nanny had sized up the situation immediately, but he’d thought his father was blind to such undercurrents. What had he guessed?
There was no way of knowing, since that was the last time he saw him alive.
Gussy was abroad, trying to win funding for her research. Ken decreed that since he had nowhere to go, they should spend the week in bed. On the fourth day the call came.
“Get that.”
“You get it.”
Muffled, “I’ve got my mouth full.”
“I’ll make breakfast.”
“Is that a promise?” Ken stalked to the tube. “Roth 62? Oh, hello Lulu. What can I do for you?”
Watching him, Alfred knew.
“I see. Um, Alf?”
He shook his head and curled into a ball.
Ken did everything he could during Alfred’s bereavement. He drove him to Chimera and helped him through the funeral. For once he didn’t care what people thought, openly sharing his room.
It didn’t help Alfred’s feelings were so complicated. He’d felt able to grieve for his mother. With his dad there was an awkward cramp, underscored by guilt. “Was it suicide?” he asked the night he arrived.
Nanny wouldn’t meet his eye. “Well -”
“Yes or no.”
“He didn’t technically end his life, but he gave up.”
“Gave up?” he repeated. “When there’s me, Gussy, all this?”
Tradition demanded they kept the casket open so the village could pay its respects. Alfred hated the thing in the shrine. It didn’t look like his dad, more like a dummy in his clothes. Even that wasn’t the worst part. It was when the new minister, a shiny, bespectacled nerd, said ‘Lord Langton.’ Alfred peered around, even looked at the deceased, before he realised he meant him. Ken stopped him from taking a swing at him.
“I’m not Lord Langton, alright? Once this is over, I’m going back in the force.”
It might have been this altercation, might have been the body starting to smell, but the funeral was brought forward a day. Alfred didn’t know how he was going to cope until he found a pound of rowr under his bed. He smoked it and had a long slug of whisky.
He couldn’t remember a thing. He came to hours later, splashed with earth up a tree. It was the beginning of his legend: Lord Rusty, the maniacal Earl of Langton.
He couldn’t wriggle out of it. As the female first born, Gussy should have taken the title, but she refused. She was founding a new science, and what was he doing? To his surprise he found he liked being Earl. He was actually good at it.
Gussy and Ken cordoned off the north wing. Bar the occasional explosion and shout of “I rule!”, you forgot they were there. Prototypes whizzed around Chimera - they stumbled about three days before blowing up. One, Henry, proved more tenacious.
“Are people really going to give you funding?” Alfred asked.
“Haven’t you seen how many visitors we have?”
There were greater numbers of scientists flitting in and out. Toothy women with bifocals, men with comb overs. They sauntered down Philosophers’ Walk comparing theories. One of the men brought a female friend. Alfred had never seen anyone so beautiful or bored. Brassy curls, piercing eyes, a husky, sardonic voice. He went over to her.
“If you’re going to talk about robotics, spare me the sodding details,” she said.
“I can tell you where there’s a terrific bottle of brandy if you want to help empty it.”
She clutched his arm.“I don’t know who you are, but thank gods you exist.”
“Alfred Wilding.”
“Vita Alconbury.”
One bottle became five. They talked long after everyone else had gone. She was only seven years older but had seen far more of life. She smoked, drank and swore like a trooper.
“Now my divorce has come through, I’ll do whatever the hell I like.”
“And what’s that?”
“Adventure!”
“I could get behind that. A club of adventurers, going wherever their fancy takes them.”
He’d been ignoring the hand on his thigh. Now it drifted towards his groin. He laid it on the cushion beside her. “What about your boyfriend?”
“I was going to chuck him anyway.”
“Spoken for. His name’s Ken.”
“Why are all the best men woofters?”
“Rest assured, if I have a mid life crisis, I’ll have it with you.”
The more he thought about it,
the more Alfred liked the idea of the Adventurers. He got in touch with anyone who might be interested. It so happened that Vita’s network of friends included Lewis Sinclair. He thought it was fabulous and appointed himself President.
The night after the first meeting, Lewis lingered in the library. Alfred confessed his boyhood idolatry. The great man’s eyes narrowed. Once during the cheese and wine, he caught Lewis giving him that look. Surely not!
Drinking together, a hand brushed his cheek. He thought about turning Lewis down, but Ken had been so distant lately. What was sauce for the goose -
They say you should never meet your heroes. Whoever said that had never had their hero suck them off against a grandmother clock.
The Adventurers’ Club had begun in earnest.
That year Henry, rebranded My Robot Buddy, took off. Families bought them as pet substitutes, lonely children had them for friends. The jingle played incessantly.
“He’s so great, he’s so funny
My one and only Robot Buddy!”
Which didn’t even rhyme.
Uncle Bloom offered his services as patent lawyer. Alfred wished he’d kept his mouth shut, for it was in his office Gussy met Lucas.
He hated him on sight. He supposed Lucas was handsome, though he looked like a vampire that had shrunk in the wash. He had Gussy’s word for it that he was charming. But he always gave the impression of pricing everything he saw. He called the underlings at his office ‘slaves’, coughed if anybody smoked and continually asked Alfred when he was going to get a ‘proper’ job. “The army’s our nation’s solution for the unemployable,” he’d say. Arrogant gobshite.
For a man in his thirties he was queerly juvenile. He showered Gussy with extravagant presents, whisked her away for a romantic weekend when they had only been dating a month.
“Don’t let her get knocked up,” Alfred begged the universe.
The gods must have been looking the other way. She returned not only pregnant but wearing an engagement ring like a tumour.
“Do you love him?” Alfred asked that evening.
Gussy considered. “I like him. He looks after me.”
“Is that enough?”
“I’m not falling in love again. You only get hurt.”
Love and Robotics Page 60