by Patrick Gale
‘I love you back,’ he returned and pressed his lips to the pale inside of her nearest wrist.
‘Child of nature, huh?’
‘More. Much more,’ he said and smiled at himself in the mirror. She took his left hand from the wheel and bit lightly at the fleshy part of its thumb.
‘My candy-coated conversion,’ she said and nibbled. ‘What have you told Lydia and Clive about their future in-laws?’
‘Not a lot,’ he replied. There was a pause before a grin laid bare his teeth. ‘They don’t even know about you.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ she murmured.
‘This is a surprise visit,’ he went on.
Gloire laughed, then threw back her head and yelled into the motorway wind.
She had strolled into his shop in Marylebone two months ago and ordered a white evening dress.
‘I trust the design entirely to you,’ she said, leaning an elbow on the anatomy textbook she had been clutching, ‘but it has to be easy to pee in.’
She left her improbably Hollywood name and a Chelsea phone number then walked out. Somehow she had found out his home number and rang him there the following night at eleven.
‘Good evening to you too,’ she said. ‘Tell me about my new dress.’ Her voice was softly American.
‘I think it should have a slit in it to show off your spine,’ he said, lolling on the carpet and remembering her languid good looks.
‘When can I have a fitting?’
‘I’ll ring you.’
‘When can I have a fitting, Tobit?’
‘Tuesday at five-thirty, Gloire.’
‘Perfect.’
‘Is that really your name?’
She arrived on Tuesday at five-thirty and stripped to ivory bra and panties as soon as they were in the fitting room. He stood her on a footstool and sheathed her in white silk and net.
‘This isn’t a ball gown,’ she complained.
‘It’s better. There are pins,’ he threatened her, ‘so don’t move or you’ll bleed and wreck it.’
It clung to her almost immodestly low then flung out a skirt that would lift out at the slightest turn of her hips. He walked slowly round her, scowling with concentration and making adjustments with a needle and thread while she gazed angelic into the middle distance. As he worked his way down the back, arranging the fabric window so that her vertebrae were teasingly framed, he found ‘kiss me here’ and an X written small with eye pencil on her skin. He stooped and kissed the X where a light down marked the descent to her buttocks, then crouched to pin up the hem.
‘How does it look?’ she asked.
‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘Come by tomorrow at six and it’ll be ready.’
‘Do you take American Express?’
‘No. But it’s yours if you’ll buy me dinner and meet my parents.’
‘I bet you say that to all the broads.’ She twitched her narrow shoulders and sent the half-made garment rustling around the stool at her feet.
‘Funnily enough,’ he said, handing her down, ‘you’d be the first.’
She kicked the fitting room door shut, he pulled down the blind, and they got to know each other at length on a mound of taffeta.
Tobit was officially gay, insofar as that is what his parents, friends, acquaintance and colleagues assumed him to be. As far as he was concerned, his sex life had bordered on the non-existent for so long that he was not anything. His friend, Seth, could argue till his head fell off that sexuality was defined by desire and not its fulfilment, Tobit remained unconvinced.
He had first fallen in lust with the carpentry master at school. As part of a last-year project, a group of pupils, Tobit included, had built a pavilion. Tim Tunning had supervised them and on the first day of work, when Tim was correcting the angle of his saw, Tobit’s humdrum adolescent vision focused itself in an unexpected direction. Encouraged by the school philosophy of free thinking and open discussion, he had run around telling everyone of his new discovery, delighted at last to have found something interesting about himself. Word reached Tim Tunning in no time and he invited Tobit to his cottage for a glass of home-brewed beer and had explained that, while he was just an ordinary heterosexual carpenter with a wife and two kids, he really appreciated Tobit’s affection and hoped they could be friends. Tobit was overjoyed at this paltry reciprocation but, as intended, the earnest pursuit of friendship stifled physical desire. By the end of the year, his interest in the carpentry teacher was several degrees cooler than the carpentry teacher’s growing, confused interest in him.
At art school he had shared a bed with his flatmate. They were too poor to afford the rent on a two-bedroom flat, they were good friends and it was pleasant to share a bed because they could talk for hours without either of them freezing his feet or having to say goodnight. When his parents came to visit and had overinterpreted the situation, Tobit did not disillusion them. He assumed he would have a lover sooner or later and it was convenient to get the parental enlightenment ordeal over and done with. Five or so years later, however, a lover had not yet come his way. Several had tried to, but they had proved so unsatisfactory, had come and gone so rapidly that none of them had counted. With each man who was rejected as too insipid, dull, pig-headed or highbrow, Tobit’s romantic standards became more difficult to satisfy and the intervals between disappointments grew increasingly lengthy. By the time that the first AIDS tremors were hitting London, bringing with them the much-vaunted death of promiscuity and soi-disant return of drawing room introductions and old-fashioned courtship, Tobit was joking with a trace of rancour that he was a founder member of the swelling league of Born-again Virgins. Thanks to his mother’s loan and the contacts she pushed his way, celibacy was easy. The more he stayed in the more he earned, and the more he earned the easier it was to entertain at home and so avoid the nightclub snare.
Then came Gloire. The extraordinary resurgence of lust that came in her wake could hardly be explained away by the purity of the months preceding her arrival since what she offered was so far removed from the objects of his abstention. As she teased, he had not had biblical knowledge of what he was missing. From what he had overheard and from what he had seen in films (for Tobit never read) the essential quality of the female body was softness and this had always repelled him as carrying distastefully maternal overtones. Gloire’s body was firm to the point of rigidity. She was a keen athlete and the only thing in her bedroom besides her bed was a sleekly challenging rowing machine. Even her buttocks were hard. Tobit swam in the summer and occasionally played tennis, but he felt flabby by comparison. Since he had read little, he assumed that this was how most heterosexual men must feel all the time. The first thing he had seen as they left his shop to go back to her flat and try it again was an attractive man so, however loudly bells had rung, he had no illusions about being converted. While Gloire was the exception that proved the rule, she was yet sufficiently exceptional for the rule to be waived indefinitely.
After the second, even more bell-ridden round of love-making, she had gazed at him as he lay slowly panting and laughed.
‘You could grow to like this, huh?’ and he thought he had detected a tone of pride and was glad to be as exceptional for her as she for him. Then she had peeled them a post-coital orange because neither of them smoked. ‘Jesus, I’m foolish,’ she had sighed.
‘What?’
‘I’m gonna have to do better than this.’
‘What? Tell me.’ He grinned then saw that she was serious.
‘When did you last … like … lay a guy? she asked.
‘God. I don’t know.’
‘Think, Tobit.’
‘Er …’ He had no idea. Yes he had. Four or five months ago there had been that dreary model from Los Angeles. Not a very wise choice. Oh God. Suddenly he saw what she was driving at and lied. ‘If you’re worrying about that, don’t. I had the test three months ago and the results were negative.’
‘Where did you go?’ she pursued, still serious, and he was r
eminded that she was a professional. He thought fast.
‘That clap clinic off Charlotte Street.’
‘Thank Christ for that,’ she said, relieved. ‘Am I dumb or am I dumb? But that’s a great relief.’
‘Why.’
She popped the last segment of orange into his mouth and tweaked the end of his nose.
‘Because the lady is not partial to latex.’
He had dumbly sworn then and there to hasten to said clinic the next morning to make a half-truth of his lie. He had put off having the AIDS test ever since his friends had started to take it. The more he had heard them bragging that they had been proved ‘safe’ the more likely it had seemed that he would be the one person they all knew who won the booby prize. Every day for a week after his test he came to Gloire or she came to him and they made extensive love. They hardly talked but when they did he found that she was far, far brighter than he and this seemed to please them both. He was also disturbed to find that the result of his lie – that he seemed a little more her murderer every time he entered her – seemed to lend a sharper edge to his pleasure. Then he opened a plain brown envelope one morning that requested he return to the clinic as soon as possible.
Tobit was not courageous. He had given the clinic a false name and told them he had lost his medical card. He had known as soon as he opened the envelope that he would not be going back there. Why bother? They would sit him in a little room with a cactus on the table, and a well-trained social worker would say that his blood showed signs of contamination by the HTLVII virus and would he please stay calm and give them his complete sex history so that they could call in the relevant people for tests.
‘I’ll tell Gloire when I see her tonight,’ he thought, but it took courage to tell someone you think you are beginning to love and who you hope is beginning to love you that you are almost certain to develop symptoms of an almost certainly fatal disease and that, thanks to your cowardice so, almost certainly, are they. That night she drove round to his flat. He kissed her. She kissed him. They fell on to his bed chewing at each other’s lips and tearing off each other’s clothes; he was now not surprised to find the experience even more pleasurable. ‘Maybe I’ll tell her tomorrow,’ he thought but tomorrow she had spoken first.
‘You know I said I was worried about us and AIDS,’ she murmured and for a moment he thought she was going to say she had had the test too. She would be the first woman to announce that she had AIDS-infected blood and be greeted by cheers.
‘Yes?’ he said.
‘Well I was reading a report today and it was even more depressing than most. It said that they weren’t sure now how accurate the blood tests are. It said that a researcher in London had taken eight different tests in two weeks and come out negative in six and positive in two.’
‘No!’ exclaimed Tobit, not understanding.
‘That means,’ she continued, seeing that he didn’t, ‘that your test could well have been wrong and that we’re both infected.’ He understood now and said nothing. ‘Curiously,’ she said and played with one of his hands, ‘I’m not all that sure that I care any more. I mean, it’s too late. If we die now we die; as long as we don’t fool around, we can’t load the dice against us any more than they already are.’
‘We could always … er.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No latex. That risk I’m prepared to take.’
And they laughed because they might be going to die and began to make love again because they were both so glad that she hated latex.
‘Would you marry me?’ she asked suddenly, pulling back from him. ‘If I asked you, that is.’
‘Why?’ he demanded, running a finger up and down one of her collar bones.
‘That’s not a very flattering reaction.’
‘No. But why?’
‘Well,’ she grabbed his hand to stop him tickling her and started to play with it again. It reminded him of being small and having his fingernails cut; the only action of hers that recalled his mother. Possibly this was because his mother was not black. ‘Well to be honest it’s partly because I’d like to marry someone over here because I’d like to become a UK citizen for work.’
‘I thought you said there was more money for research over there.’
‘There is but I don’t want to research; I want to be a doctor. I’m just a nurse at heart, with an extra qualification or two to cover up.’ She paused. ‘And the other reason is altogether less straightforward.’
‘What?’
‘What what what,’ she mimicked, giggling.
‘What?’ he pursued, serious in his turn.
‘I’d like it to be you I marry.’
‘But I’m gay.’
‘Not any more, you’re not.’
‘Yes I am. At least, I’m fairly sure.’
‘Not with me you’re not and if you laid a finger on anyone else, man or woman, once we were married, I’d inject you with something lethal.’
‘Ah.’
‘Besides, I hate categories. We’re not gay or straight; we’re just Tobit and Gloire who fancy each other.’
‘Clever Dick.’
‘I know,’ she said. He kissed her ear. She held him away. ‘Well?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll marry me?’
‘Yes. And soon.’
‘How about this month. Flowers are cheap and my parents are in Europe.’
Her parents had been telephoned over champagne within an hour of his acceptance. As they sped on to break the glad news to his, Tobit swung sickened between wild delight at having a perfect, loving creature beside him and blank-eyed panic at what he was doing. He had become a much faster driver since he met Gloire. Sometimes, when she urged him on and he slammed down the accelerator, he was tempted, with one easy swing of the steering wheel, to destroy them both. They would be torn, crushed, possibly burned beyond recognition, but at least it would be quick. At least it would be now.
10
It was barely seven-thirty on his first morning in Barrowcester when Evan was roused by the growls of crawling cars and an ensemble clicking of well-heeled feet. He pulled on his dressing gown and bleary-eyed his way through both the sliding doors to the kitchenette. He tweaked aside the net curtain to find both pavements full of Barrowers in their Sunday best heading towards the Close, and dropped it in a hurry when he caught the giggling eye of some behatted females passing three abreast. He was on the point of returning to check that his alarm clock had not stopped when there was a knock at the granny flat door and Mrs Merluza called out,
‘Professor?’
‘Good morning.’
‘How did you sleep?’
‘Very well, thanks. How about you?’
She opened the door a crack but kept her face turned firmly away, twisted by modesty. She had on a small, pearly-pink hat that matched her jacket.
‘I quite forgot that there’s an earlier service today,’ she said, raising her voice to compensate for having her back turned to him. ‘They’re digging up Saint Boniface, but there’s fresh coffee on the stove and I’ve just made you breakfast which is keeping hot on the hot plate.’
‘Fantastic. What was that you said?’
‘Are you out straight away?’
Evan rubbed at his white hair, which was still wild from sleep. He frowned from the effort of forming words so early.
‘Ah. Yes. I aim to be at the cathedral library at nine.’
‘Well I’ll see you this evening then.’
She closed the door. He heard a sudden rise and fall in the sound of excited chatter and feet as she let herself out of the house, then he set a bath running and left the granny flat to totter to what he had already rechristened The Little Boys’ Bowling Alley.
Bathed, shaved and discreetly scented, he came in search of breakfast half an hour later, an unaccustomed tie wrenching at his Adam’s apple. A slight, thin woman was polishing the hall mirror. As far as he could see, she had nothing on but a sea-green nylon housecoat th
ing. Her extraordinarily good legs ended in the sheepskin slippers that he could have sworn he saw Mrs Merluza wearing the night before.
‘Hello,’ said Evan. She stared at him in the mirror from a face like Old Father Time.
‘You must be her new lodger,’ she said and continued to polish.
‘Yes. I’m here for a couple of weeks, maybe less. To do some research in the libraries.’
‘I’m the slave. Two mornings’ cleaning a week and occasional gardening. Dawn Harper.’
‘Hello.’
‘You’ve said that once. She’s left breakfast on the hot plate for you.’
‘Smells … er … great’.
‘She makes the fried bread with olive oil. You do that in America?’
‘Er … no.’
He walked past her into the kitchen, where the air was already thick with the scents of frying. On the hot plate, under a Pyrex cover, lay a plate bearing fried bread, glistening pink bacon, a halved, blackened tomato and a fried egg whose yolk looked firm to dryness.
‘I’m not sure I can, first thing.’
‘Chuck it,’ she said, standing in the doorway to watch him.
‘Could I?’
‘I won’t tell. Here, let me.’
She scooped up the plate, using her duster as protection from its heat, and sloshed his breakfast into the pedal bin.
‘I’ll have this emptied before she gets back,’ she said, and watched him as he filled a mug with coffee. His hand shook slightly.
‘What did you say your name was?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t,’ he said, setting down his mug and spooning in several sugars, and saw that he had left his wedding ring in the bathroom. ‘It’s Evan. Evan Kirby.’
‘I thought you looked familiar,’ she said. ‘Can I have one of those?’
‘Be my guest.’
‘Thanks.’ She poured herself a coffee and stood sipping it, staring at him. He smiled briefly up at her, unnerved, and cast a glance around for a newspaper. There was a Telegraph but he would have had to get up and pass close by her to fetch it so he stayed put. ‘I’ve read your book,’ she said at last.