by Alan Keslian
‘You know what I mean. This isn’t easy for me.’
‘Do you think it’s easy for me?’
‘You don’t know, Mark, you don’t know half of it.’
‘Half of what?’
The estate agent’s arrival brought this awkward exchange to an end. We went down to the car, and I sat in the passenger seat to avoid being next to Tom, with whom I now felt absolutely furious. Had he ditched me over some stupid misunderstanding? A lack of shared interests was something we could have done something about. We could have increased the stock of things that we had in common by going to new places and finding new interests together.
When we reached Goodmans Villa and walked up to the front door he hung back. In the hall a scattering of advertising pamphlets littered the floor. The agent, Andrew and I stepped over them, but he stopped to pick them up. I watched him, thinking: you fool, what are you doing that for, picking up other people’s rubbish?
He straightened up abruptly, almost as though he had heard my thoughts, and returned my gaze, making me ashamed of thinking of him so sneeringly. What good would come from being angry with him? If there had been a failing it was probably mine. Why had I not talked to him about finding more activities we could share, rather than complaining to Andrew about us not having enough in common? For all the differences between us, Tom was in every way my sort of person, and should never have been allowed to doubt it.
He was looking around the empty hall wondering where to put the papers he had collected. I went over to him, took them from him, tidied them into a neat bundle and put them at the side of one of the stairs.
He avoided looking at me, but my eyes were now constantly drawn towards him. He must have showered and shaved immediately before coming out. His black curly hair seemed light and fluffy, and his denim shirt curved over the contours of his muscular shoulders. He wore new jeans, and my fingertips could almost sense the rough texture of the dark material.
I turned away from him, reminding myself we were there to look at the house, and tried to act calmly and sensibly. My hunger for him had become too strong; it engulfed me. Standing close to him made me sweat and tingle inwardly. My hands seemed to develop a will of their own and wanted to reach out to touch him. Paying attention to what Andrew and the estate agent were saying was impossible.
After a brief look around the ground floor, where the tenant was out, we descended the dark staircase to the basement. The ‘garden’ flat remained unoccupied and had deteriorated since our last visit. When the agent opened the door at the top of the stairs the smell was awful, much worse than before. In a corner of the back room were a twisted pile of bedding, two large holdalls packed to bursting, an orangeade bottle half full of dubious liquid and some festering take-away food cartons. The lock and security bolts of the door to the garden had been forced, bare wood showing where the frame had split apart. The person who had been dossing in the room was absent.
‘You’d think one of the tenants would have let me know about this. One of them must have seen or heard something. I suppose now I’ll have to call the police.’
Tom said: ‘No, don’t do that, what harm’s he done? There’s no call for that.’
Andrew agreed: ‘He’s right, what are the police going do about it? They can hardly put a twenty-four hour watch on the place.’
The agent shook his head. ‘I’m thinking about insurance. If there’s any damage, if he – or they – cause a fire or steal anything from upstairs, the insurers will want to know that the police were informed straight away.’
‘The insurers will know only what you tell them. Tom will put the man’s things outside and board up the door; we’ll check tomorrow to see if he’s moved on. If not we’ll let you know and you can call the police.’
The agent shrugged. ‘If you’re volunteering to do the work… ’
‘Yes,’ Tom confirmed, ‘you forget about it. I’ll bring some polythene sheeting, put the bedding and the holdalls outside and cover them up, and I’ll make the garden door secure. That’ll be the last of him.’
We moved on to the front basement room where black mould had spread extensively over the walls. ‘Is anything being done about the damp?’ Andrew asked.
‘No. To tell you the truth I’ve been meaning to sort this garden flat out but haven’t got round to it. The damp proofing specialists are pretty good these days. They’d have a damp course put in and the replastering done in two or three weeks.’
Tom disagreed: ‘We’re not talking damp courses here. The soil at street level must come up four or five feet on the other side of that wall. Depending on how bad it is they might have to dig a trench outside, install a waterproof membrane and improve the drainage.’
‘There isn’t a problem here. We can get a free quote for the work from a specialist who’ll provide a twenty-year guarantee. Damp proofing is routine these days.’
We returned to the less sticky air of the ground floor and continued upwards. On the first floor, as with the ground floor rooms, having furniture in place gave a much better idea of their size. Each of the main rooms was big enough to divide into two twin-bedded hotel rooms with en suite facilities.
On the next floor up we met the tenant, a middle-aged woman who showed us her flat and talked all the time. She ushered us into the bathroom and said to the agent, ‘I know I mentioned it last time you came, but I’m sure the toilet is leaking. I’ve put a mat around the base but it’s always wet.’
‘As I told you, someone will be coming to look at it.’
Looking at the lavatory I thought I could see a fine crack running down the pedestal beneath the glaze, and bent down to look more closely. A few drops of moisture were visible. Tom came up beside me, standing so close that his hips were a couple of inches from my face. Turning my head slightly I could see the brown leather belt threaded through the loops of his jeans, and his shirt creasing where it disappeared into the waistband. My pulse quickened and my face flushed. The others had moved out into the hall.
After straightening up I felt dizzy. The very molecules of the air around me seemed energised by his presence. My state of arousal must have been visible. He said hoarsely but softly: ‘I think something’s give way.’
‘What?’
‘The toilet bowl or the connection with the drain. Something’s give way.’
‘Oh… Not very nice.’
‘It’s not healthy. That estate agent wants shooting.’
Going in front of him on our way out of the room I paused deliberately, making him bump into me. ‘Sorry.’
‘S’okay,’ he said softly. The smile he gave me, my first for so long, told me that his mood too had lifted. We followed Andrew and the agent back out onto the landing, where we paused at the foot of the narrow twisting staircase leading to the attic. From above came a familiar old piano tune from the twenties or thirties. ‘Sounds like they’re in. Do we need to bother with the attic rooms?’ the agent asked.
‘A quick look,’ Andrew decided. Tom and I followed, and I could not resist putting my hand on top of his on the stair rail as we went up. He looked back and smiled again. How desperately I hoped his desire for me had rekindled. Halfway up the bare wooden stairs was a tiny bathroom somehow squeezed into an area below part of the roof. At the top was a small square of landing barely big enough for two to stand, with the doors of two bedsits on either side of it. The agent knocked at the one on the left, but the sound reverberated so much that the doors on both sides opened in answer. On the right was a Middle-Eastern looking man of about thirty with a thin line of black moustache, and at the door on the left stood a boy who looked too young to be living on his own.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you, lads, can we just have a quick look, if it’s not too inconvenient?’
The boy went back into his room and the music ceased abruptly; Andrew and the agent followed him, while Tom and I accepted a gesture of invitation into the room opposite. Text books with scientific diagrams were strewn around the table
and bed, and on a cabinet was a partly disassembled computer. The tenant was unsmiling, resentful of our intrusion, and we glanced quickly around, directing our eyes upwards towards the ceiling as though checking for damp.
‘Something wrong with the computer?’ I asked.
‘I’m studying computers and electronics. Imperial College.’ After a pause he added ‘Darren has been playing his music very loud, sometimes in the night.’
‘Darren?’ He must have assumed I was someone to whom he could make a complaint. ‘Very late? Did it keep you awake?’
‘It makes it hard for me to study.’
‘Did you ask him to turn it down?’
He didn’t reply, but stood looking at us, obviously wanting us to go. ‘Sorry for disturbing you.’ Tom followed me out onto the landing.
The room opposite was smaller, perhaps only half as big. We could see Andrew sitting on the bed talking to the boy. The ceiling sloped down so much that he would have banged his head if he had sat up in bed suddenly in the night. The bed and a small bedside cabinet took up about half the floor space, and against the opposite wall was an ugly old fashioned wardrobe. In between was a little corridor of carpet. A chair, a wash basin and a small table with an electric kettle and a cooking ring occupied the space under the window. The boy had covered the walls of the room with posters, mostly of rock stars, but there were a few of American blues singers, Elmore James, John Lee Hooker and Bessie Smith. The indicator lights on his compact stereo system flickered to music that we could no longer hear. Andrew was interviewing him.
‘I think I know where you mean, a hamburger bar on the corner near the Underground station isn’t it? How long have you been there?’
‘Since I came to London; about four months.’
‘And before the hamburger place, where were you?’
‘I was at a school.’
‘Did you finish your exams?’
‘No, I left.’
‘Ah – and where was this?’
Tom and I glanced at each other, and then at the estate agent who raised his eyebrows. We all three stared in concert at Andrew trying to make him look round. He ignored us for several minutes before raising a hand in our direction, palm open, as though trying to deflect our collective gaze.
‘And how have you found the big city?’
‘It’s great. I could make some tea or coffee if you like. I’ve only got paper cups though.’
‘From work? Paper cups are fine by me,’ Andrew said.
The estate agent looked at his watch. ‘Sorry, Andrew, I have to go back to the office. Darren, what’s that I can see moving about over there?’ He nodded towards a small aquarium that stood on the bedside cabinet.
‘They’re my terrapins.’
‘You’re not allowed pets. You’ve been told.’
‘They don’t disturb anyone. Nobody knows they’re there.’
‘They’re against the rules. They’ll grow too big for that tank. Then what’s going to happen? You’ll have to—’
Andrew interrupted him. ‘Oh, if need be I expect I could find a place for them at the garden centre.’ He turned to the boy. ‘You could come in to feed them. Surely there’s no harm in them staying where they are for the moment. You’re right, we ought to get moving. Thanks for letting us see your room. Can’t say I eat a lot of burgers, but I hope we’ll see each other again sometime.’
At the estate agent’s office we had coffee while we looked at architects’ drawings of the house and at a file containing various leasing agreements and other papers. Andrew asked if there had been any more interest from the property company.
‘As before they seem to be stalled. They own the terrace and most of the mews, which have all been converted into modern flats, but if they could develop the whole site including Goodmans Villa and the adjoining house, with some new building at the back, they might have another thirty or forty units. The owner’s stubborn, they’ve offered the old lady well over the market value, but she won’t let them gut the place for sentimental reasons. You stand to do very nicely out of a lease if she’ll agree to one. When she dies, the heirs will probably want to sell up. They might buy the lease back from you at a premium, but whatever happens you should get a good return on your investment. You can’t lose.’
‘We’ve been thinking of turning it into a guest house. Renovation costs will be substantial, the place has been neglected for years. We need to have a shot at a business plan… ’
When we were nearly ready to leave Andrew rang the garden centre to ask one of his staff to collect us. He had himself dropped off first at Biddulph Mansions, reminding Tom as he got out of the van of his promise to board up the basement of Goodmans Villa. We continued on to Tom’s flat, not needing to tell one another in words that we were impatient to make love. As soon as we were through the front door I wrapped myself around him. He pushed it shut and pressed me against the wall, leaning his weight against me and holding me tightly as though to stop me getting away. When he released me a little I edged sideways towards the bedroom; he weighed down on me again, rubbing himself against me but keeping me trapped against the wall, as though I had been trying to escape. After two more of these pretend captures and releases we reached the bedroom doorway.
As I stepped backwards into the room he pushed me onto the bed and lay on top of me. A minute later he left me briefly to relieve himself. Longing for his return I rocked myself slowly from side to side, this latest brief absence, after so many weeks apart and the hours of anticipation while we looked over the house, an agony. My desire for him was so intense that if he had spread his shirt and jeans out on the bed for me I could probably have made love to them.
Chapter 8
Having warned me of the trend towards buying in computer services from specialist companies, Peter expected me to resist any attempt to close down my unit should one of the younger more forward looking partners, or even one of the old codgers who had been tipped off about the trend by a friend at his club or on the golf course, suggest it.
He knew nothing of Goodmans Villa or Andrew’s ideas for a gay hotel. That I might want to relinquish the income and status of my position in the firm to set up a small business had probably not crossed his mind. The happiness brought me by Tom’s return helped my decision. Giving up Lindler & Haliburton for Andrew’s world of small independent gay businesses would surely show that there was not some other social group who were ‘more my sort of people’, prove the depth of my commitment and strengthen the bond between us.
A software supplier I regularly dealt with was also in the business of running computer facilities for other City institutions. I told my contact there that one of the younger Lindler & Haliburton partners was rumoured to be thinking about contracting out the work of my unit. This was untrue, but he passed the rumour on to his colleagues, and before long they began lobbying several of the partners to be allowed to bid for the work. Peter need never know that his warnings had helped contrive my exit from the firm.
In return for my co-operation in the process that would bring about my redundancy – and for anyone to take over the work without my help would have been extremely difficult – I was promised a substantial ‘severance’ payment and a huge bonus based on anticipated cost savings over the first five years of the change. The partners may have genuinely believed that the savings dangled before them by the company hoping to take over the work were realistic, or in the increasingly bitter internal politics at Lindler & Haliburton, Peter’s enemies may simply have thought it worth paying a substantial sum in order to be rid of me, one of his main supporters. Had he been present he might have prevented the change, but since he was in exile, other than harrying me by telephone and e-mail to put forward the arguments for keeping the IT Unit as it was, there was little he could do. I pretended more and more to be disillusioned because, after all my work over the years, the partners wanted to call in outsiders to replace me and my carefully selected team. Misleading Peter in this way might be disloyal
, but he had had my past hard work and support by way of repayment for the help he had given my career. The time had come for the account to be closed.
My disillusion with Lindler & Haliburton and work in the City increased by the day. Things that had once impressed me, the huge sums of money appearing on balance sheets, the senior staff meetings and conferences in prestigious office buildings, the business lunches, all the outward show of City affluence, ceased to attract me. My hopes and ambitions lay elsewhere. My years of work there came to appear as a necessary period of labour undertaken in order to win my independence.
Having recently invested in the Buckinghamshire nursery, Andrew had no capital available to invest in Goodmans Villa, but he played a major role in obtaining the lease. The old lady who owned it depended on income from the flats to pay her nursing home fees. The flats were deteriorating and becoming more and more difficult to let, and she could not afford extensive renovations. He went to see her, and she welcomed the proposal to take the house over for use as a hotel. Her solicitor was in favour, and the hotel, or rather guest house, that had for so long been a vague possibility became the subject of contract negotiations. After several meetings we agreed on a lease for ten years with options for two five-year extensions.
The draft business plan for the first year, drawn up with Andrew’s help, was guesswork. We estimated the likely charge for a night’s stay using advertised prices at other hotels and guest houses nearby, calculated potential annual takings and set them against running costs. Profit or loss depended on our assumptions about the level of bookings, something we would not really know until the hotel had been open for a year or more. Lizetta’s boyfriend, Vincent, helped us with the figures and encouraged us with statistics about rising demand for hotel rooms in London.
Arrangements to take out the lease on Goodmans Villa, like the contracting out of my work at Lindler & Haliburton, went on for month after month. As the opening of the hotel came closer, going into the office every day became an agony. The snobbery, the competitiveness, the hand-stitched suits, ostentatious motor cars and business lunches were now loathsome to me. That world, in which general social good meant nothing, where men were ranked entirely according to money and position, now seemed horribly obsessed with the superfluous and pretentious.