by Alexis Hall
“Luc,” she cried, “that’s not true.” Then she gave a weird hiccough. “I mean, he’s not an uptight person. He’s very… He always wants to do the right thing. And, honestly, I think he’s quite lonely.”
“I increasingly think some people are meant to be lonely. I’m lonely because I’m a wreck and nobody wants me. He’s lonely because he’s awful and nobody wants him.”
“See. You do have something in common.”
“Not funny, Bridge.”
“Are you seriously telling me there was nothing about the date that went well? Nothing you liked or connected with?”
Well, there was no denying the man had excellent taste in fish sandwiches. And lemon posset. And there was that hidden softness in his eyes sometimes. And his rare smile. And the way he said Lucien, like it was just for me. “No,” I said firmly. “Absolutely not.”
“I don’t believe you. You only make such a big deal about hating people when you’re secretly into them.”
“Look. Can you come to terms with the idea that you know two gay people who wouldn’t be good together?”
“I would, except”—her voice lifted plaintively—“you’d be sooo good together.”
“Okay, I know you can’t see it, but I’m holding up the fetishisation card.”
“What does that card even look like?”
“It looks like two adorable men in sweaters holding hands under a rainbow.”
“I thought you wanted to hold hands with an adorable man under a rainbow.”
“I do, but the fact you want it almost as much as I do is what makes it creepy.”
She let out a melancholy sigh. “I just want you to be happy. Especially after I stole Tom.”
“You didn’t steal him. He just liked you better.” If I said it enough, hopefully one of us would start to believe it.
“Anyway,” she went on briskly, “I’ve got to go. One of our authors emailed to say he had his entire manuscript on a USB stick that was swallowed by a duck.”
“Who the fuck is still using USB sticks?”
“Really have to deal with this. Love you. Bye.”
I’d got as far as “buh” before the line went dead. To be honest, it was probably about time I started doing my job anyway. Now that Operation Fake Respectable Boyfriend was a go, I was potentially in a position to try to salvage the Beetle Drive. Which, in practice, would mean begging forgiveness from people I didn’t think had anything to forgive me for and who wouldn’t admit that they thought I needed to be forgiven. The first step would be reaching out and saying “Hi, I know you all think I’m a dirty, junkie pervert, but I’ve cleaned up my act and renewed my commitment to living my life by a set of standards that you made up for me in your heads. Now please, for the love of God, give us some money so we can save the bugs that eat shit.” Except, y’know, without using any of those words. Or ideas. Or sentiments.
After a long afternoon, six cups of Fairclough standard coffee, twenty-three drafts, and three breaks—in each of which I had to give the same explanation to Rhys Jones Bowen about how to do double-sided photocopies—I’d composed an appropriately diplomatic email and sent it off. To be honest, I probably wasn’t going to get any replies. Then again, it’s amazing what rich people will do for free food. So, if I was lucky, I could probably convince at least a couple of them to be less busy on the night of the Beetle Drive than their diaries had hitherto suggested.
Giddy from a rare sense of accomplishment, and swept along by a rush of something that was either optimism or masochism, I unlocked my phone and pinged a message to Oliver: do fake boyfriends fake text
I’m not sure what I was expecting in return, but what I got was Not when one of them is due in court. Including the punctuation. Which was mildly better than no reply at all, but mildly worse than a flat no since he’d basically said “No, thanks, also don’t forget I’ve got a better job than you.”
It was close to nine that evening, and I was eating kung po chicken in my socks, when he followed it up with Sorry to keep you waiting. I’ve thought about it and we probably should text each other for the sake of verisimilitude.
I left him hanging for a while to show that I, also, had important life stuff to be getting on with. Never mind that I actually watched four episodes of Bojack Horseman and had a vindictive wank before replying Sorry to keep you waiting and no wonder you’re single if the second text you send a guy includes the word verisimilitude
There was no reply. Even though I sat around ’til half one definitely not caring. I was unexpectedly de-sleeped by a buzzing from my phone at 5:00 a.m.: My apologies. Next time, I’ll send a photograph of my penis. And then several further buzzings.
That was a joke.
I should probably make it clear that I’m not intending to send you any pictures.
I’ve never sent that sort of thing to anybody.
As a lawyer, it’s hard not to be aware of the potential consequences.
I was awake now, which normally I’d have found profoundly objectionable. But you’d have to be a way better person than me not to enjoy the hell out of Oliver losing his shit over a purely hypothetical dick pic.
I also realise you’re probably asleep at the moment. So perhaps if you could just delete the previous five messages when you wake up.
Of course, I should emphasise that I am not meaning to imply any judgment about people who do choose to send intimate photographs to one another.
It’s just not something I’m comfortable with.
Of course if it is something you’re comfortable with, I understand.
Not that I’m suggesting you have to send me a picture of your penis.
Oh God, can you please delete every text I’ve ever sent you.
The influx of messages paused just long enough that I could pop off a reply. Sorry I’m confused am I getting a dick pic or what
No!
There was another pause. Then, I’m very embarrassed, Lucien. Please don’t make it worse.
I honestly don’t know what possessed me. Maybe I felt sorry for him. But he had kind of, admittedly accidentally, made my morning? I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow
Thank you.
Okay, now I wish I hadn’t bothered. Except a second or two later, I got, I’m looking forward to seeing you too.
And while that felt better, it was, if anything, even more confusing.
Chapter 10
It was pretty typical for my life that when I finally had a brunch date with an attractive, only slightly annoying man, my mum rang.
“A bit busy right now.” Busy, in this case, was code for standing in my underpants, trying to find an outfit that said “I’m sexy, yet respectable, and I promise I won’t randomly try to kiss you again, but if you change your mind, I’d be up for it.” Maybe something in the jumper family? Cuddly, but with a touch of sensuality.
“Luc”—there was an edge of concern in her voice that I really wanted to ignore—“I need you to come right away.”
“How right away is right away?” Did I, for example, have time for a couple of rounds of French toast and an eggs Benedict with a hot barrister?
“Please, mon caneton. It is important.”
Okay, she had my attention. The thing is, Mum has a crisis every half hour, but she’s usually pretty good at signalling the difference between “Judy’s lost her watch in a cow” and “There’s water coming through the ceiling.” I flumped down onto the edge of the bed. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to say over the phone.”
“Mum,” I asked, “have you been kidnapped?”
“No. Then I would be saying, Help, I have been kidnapped.”
“But you couldn’t say that, because the kidnappers wouldn’t let you.”
She made an exasperated noise. “Don’t be silly. The kidnappers would have to
let me tell you I’d been kidnapped; otherwise what would be the point of kidnapping me in the first place?” A brief pause. “What you should have asked is, Have you been replaced by a robot policeman from the future who wants to murder me?”
I blinked. “Have you?”
“No, but that is what I would say if I had been replaced by a robot policeman from the future who wants to murder you.”
“You do know I have an actual date. With an actual man.”
“And I’m very happy for you, but this cannot wait.”
“Mum,” I said firmly, “this is getting weird. What’s going on?”
There was a pause, which a paranoid part of me did think felt like the kind of pause you’d leave if you had to nonverbally ask a kidnapper for instructions. “Listen to me, Luc. This is not the same as when I said you had to come immediately because my life was in danger, and it turned out that I just needed you to replace the battery in my smoke alarm. Although I do maintain that I could have died. I am old and I am French. I fall asleep with a cigarette all the time. Also it was making a very annoying noise. It was like Guantanamo Bay.”
“How was it like Guant… Actually, never mind.”
“Please come over. I’m sorry to do this, but I am playing the ‘You have to trust me’ card. Because you have to trust me.”
Well. That was that. When it came down to it, there was me and Mum, and then there was everybody else. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I knew the decent thing to do was ring Oliver and try to explain. But I didn’t know how—what was I going to say: “Hi, I have this really intense relationship with my mother that probably looks creepy and codependent from the outside so I’m calling off the date I basically begged you to go on with me”? Also, I was a coward. So I texted instead: Can’t make it. Can’t explain why. Sorry. Enjoy brunch!
Then I hastily revised my sartorial choices from “I am going on a date and trying to salvage my reputation” to “I might have to deal with anything from a death in the family to an exploding toilet” and pegged it to the station. While I was on the train, Oliver called and I winced, before nobly diverting him to voicemail. He left one too. Who the fuck does that?
Judy was waiting for me at Epsom in her rickety, green Lotus Seven. I coerced two spaniels into the footwell and slid in underneath the third.
She snapped her goggles into place. “All aboard?”
I’d long since given up expecting her to care either way. And today was no exception. She slammed her foot down with an enthusiasm that, had I not been fully aboard, would have left me smeared all over the road.
“How’s Mum?” I yelled, over the rush of the wind and the rattle of the engine and the excitement of the spaniels.
“Bloody distraught.”
I nearly threw up my own heart. “Fuck. What’s happened?”
“Yara Sofia had a complete breakdown in the lip-synch. And she’d hitherto been so sickeningly fierce.”
“And in the real world?”
“Oh, Odile’s fine. Fighting fit. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, wet nose, glossy coat, all that.”
“Then why did she sound upset on the phone?”
“Well, bit of a shock. But you’ll find out.”
I extricated one of the spaniels from my crotch. “Look, I’m kind of freaking out here. And it would be really helpful if you’d tell me what was going on.”
“Nil freakerandum, old thing. But I’m afraid I absolutely have to be like Dad on this one.”
“Whose dad?”
“Anybody’s dad. You know, Be like dad, keep mum.”
“What?” To give Judy her due, she had managed to distract me from the imminent mysterious disaster.
“Sorry. Probably not PC anymore. Probably now you have to say: Be like dad, keep in touch with your feelings, or something.” She thought for a moment. “Or I suppose for you homosexuals it’s Be like dad, keep dad. Which is just bally confusing for everybody.”
“Yeah, that’s what they put on our T-shirts. Some people are just bally confusing for everybody. Get over it.”
“Anyway. I know it’s all a bit wobble-inducing, but stiff upper lip, I’ll have you there in no time.”
“Honestly, it’s fine. Take your—”
The sudden jolt of acceleration ripped away the remains of my protestation. And I spent the next ten minutes trying not to die, juggling spaniels, and clinging to the sides of the vehicle as we careened up hill and down dale, through twisty country lanes and villages that, prior to our passing through them, I’d have characterised as sleepy.
We screeched to a halt outside Mum’s, which had once been the village post office, and was now a pretty little detached house called “The Old Post Office” that sat at the end of a road called “Old Post Office Road.” That seemed to be how names worked around here. Old Post Office Road was off Main Road, which turned variously into Mill Road, Rectory Road, and Three Fields Road.
“I’ll just shove off,” announced Judy. “Got to see a chap about his bullocks. Rather fancy them, to be honest.”
And, with that, she roared away into the distance, spaniels barking.
Unlatching the gate, I made my way through the slightly overgrown front garden and let myself into the house. I’m not entirely sure what I’d been expecting.
But it definitely wasn’t Jon Fleming.
At first, I thought I was having some kind of hallucination. He’d been around when I was very young, but I had no memory of him. So this was effectively the first time I’d seen my, you know, father in person. And I had no way of processing it—just a vague sense of a man wearing a scarf indoors and getting away with it. He and Mum were sitting at the opposite ends of the living room, looking like two people who ran out of things to say a very long time ago.
“What the fuck,” I said.
“Luc…” Mum stood, actually wringing her hands. “I know you won’t remember him very well, but this is your father.”
“I know who he is. What I don’t know is why he’s here.”
“Well, that’s why I called. He has something to tell you.”
I folded my arms. “If it’s ‘sorry,’ or ‘I’ve always loved you,’ or some bullshit like that, he’s about twenty-five years too late.”
At this, Jon Fleming also got to his feet. As the saying goes, nothing says family like everyone standing around, staring awkwardly at each other. “Lucien,” he said. “Or, you prefer Luc, is that right?”
I would have been happy to live my entire life without having to look my dad in the face. Unfortunately—as with so much else—he wasn’t giving me the choice. And I will tell you now, it was the weirdest fucking thing. Because the way someone seems in a photograph and the way they really are is this horrible uncanny valley of recognition and strangeness. And it’s even worse when you can see bits of yourself in them. My eyes looking back at me. That strange not-quite-blue, not-quite-green.
There was an opportunity here to take the high road. I chose not to. “I’d prefer you didn’t talk to me at all.”
He sighed, sad and noble in a way he had no right being. That was the problem with being old and having good bone structure. You got this giant whack of unearned dignity. “Luc,” he tried again. “I’ve got cancer.”
Of course he did. “So?”
“So it’s made me realise some things. Made me think about what’s important.”
“What, you mean the people you abandoned?”
Mum put a hand on my arm. “Mon cher, I would be the first to agree that your father is a shady caca boudin, but he could die.”
“Sorry to repeat myself but so?” On some level, I was aware that there was a difference between “not taking the high road” and “taking a road so low that it involved tunnelling straight to hell,” but right then, nothing felt even 2 percent real.
“I’m you
r father,” said Jon Fleming. Which his gravelly rock-legend voice somehow transformed from a meaningless platitude into a profound statement of mutual connectedness. “This is my last chance to know you.”
There was a buzzing in my head like I’d snorted bees. A lifetime of manipulative movie bullshit had taught me exactly how I was supposed to behave here. I was allowed a brief flash of unconvincing anger, then I’d cry, then he’d cry, then we’d hug, then the camera would pan out and all would be forgiven. I looked him straight in those wise, sorrowful, too-familiar eyes. “Oh, fuck off and die. I mean, fuck off and literally die. You could have done this at any time in the last two decades. You don’t get to do it now.”
“I know I’ve let you down.” He was nodding sincerely, as though he was trying to tell me he understood what I was saying better than I understood it myself. “But it’s taken me a long time to get to where I always should have been.”
“Then write a fucking song about it, you arrogant, narcissistic, manipulative, bald wanker.”
Then I got the hell out of there. As the door swung closed behind me, I caught Mum’s voice saying, “Well, I think that could have gone a lot worse.” Which was her all over really.
Pucklethroop-in-the-Wold did, technically, have a taxi service—or at least it had a bloke called Gavin who you could call, and he’d come and pick you up in his car, and charge you about a fiver to take you to one of the three places he was willing to go. But it was actually only a forty-minute walk across the fields to the station. And I was having the sort of hot-ragey-cryey feelings that made avoiding other humans a pretty high priority for me.
I was very slightly calmer by the time I was on a train, whooshing back to London. And, for some reason, I decided that would be a good moment to pick up Oliver’s voicemail.
“Lucien,” he said, “I don’t know what I was expecting, but this clearly isn’t going to work. There isn’t going to be an ‘in future’ but if, in some imaginary future, you were thinking of standing me up again, at least do me the courtesy of inventing a decent excuse. And I’m sure you’re finding all this very funny, but it isn’t something I need in my life right now.”