King of the Badgers

by Philip Hensher

  ‘I suppose,’ Harry said, ‘I suppose we’ve rather committed ourselves now.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Sam said, picking up the last remaining mug, a cracked and rather dirty World’s Greatest Cousin left by someone or other, and shaking the pot to see if there was anything left in it. ‘I’ll make a shepherd’s pie, shall I?’

  17.

  The doorbell went deep into Mauro’s dream like a sword, withdrew, then plummeted deep again. He pulled his duvet into a ball, then rolled himself around it, cursing. He could not think what day it was, or what the noise of the bell signified; then, stretching backwards, pulling his arms above his head, he remembered. He yawned violently, shook himself, and leapt to his feet. He did some rudimentary exercises, flinging himself into an X shape, then back again, four or five times. Then he went to the window in his pants, looked through the curtains at the street below. There was Mr Poppers on the pavement, car keys in hand. Mauro looked down at him; at the same moment, Mr Poppers looked up at Mauro, and their gazes locked. Mauro gave his most brilliant smile, and a gesture that meant I’m coming down, or You’re down there, or Hold on, or something similar. He threw on a dressing-gown and went to let Mr Poppers in.

  Mr Poppers had come into Mauro’s life at a convenient moment. Mauro had left Rome when he couldn’t see very much alternative. The job as a waiter in the terrible restaurant by the Colosseum had come to an end. The restaurant existed solely to serve tourists—no one had ever come twice to the Incantevole, with its blue plastic sign, the image of a beckoning mermaid on the fascia. It had made a sort of living taking orders for, say, bruschetta and a plate of spaghetti, then delivering to the table unrequested great bowls of risotto, oysters buried in ice on steel salvers, grigliata mista and elaborate salads with egg quarters forming floral designs on top. If they ate them, thinking that they were on the house, so much the better; if they turned them away, you gave them untouched to the next customer. Either way you gave them a bill for 600 euros at the end.

  The Incantevole’s owner was Paolo Crichetti, a dry, professorial man with a shaved head and accurately assessing eyes, only thirty, but looking older. The restaurant did not have a long future ahead of it. Mauro’s career with the Incantevole had been still shorter. He had observed that two out of three customers disputed the bill, some demanding the attendance of the carabinieri, and eventually the bill was reduced to, say, 120 euros. Four days a week Crichetti was away from the restaurant during lunch, leaving Mauro more or less in charge. When he returned, Mauro was trusted to tell Crichetti how many customers had paid the full amount, and how many had insisted on an informal rebate. It worked quite well for a few weeks. Then Crichetti turned up unexpectedly; he had discovered that Mauro was pocketing an extra 400 or 800 euros every lunchtime service, and he should get out and think himself lucky nothing worse was coming to him. Mauro never found out who had informed on him; it must have been the Ghanaian chef, working on the side, undeclared to the authorities, who had observed, recorded, passed it all along to Crichetti, and good luck to him. Mauro left the same day, and dropped a small unsigned note to the immigration authorities that evening, suggesting they pay a visit to the Ghanaian chef and his illegal employer.

  Quite soon afterwards, Mauro’s parents asked him to leave their flat; they didn’t have money to spare, they said. It didn’t cost them any money, having him there, Mauro pointed out, only the cost of a cup of coffee in the morning, or were they talking about the cost of the bathwater? No, they said patiently, they weren’t talking about any of that. Mauro knew what they were talking about, they said, and it wasn’t pleasant to think that they couldn’t leave their wallets and purses lying about in case their own son … and it wasn’t pleasant to worry about their own son taking drugs in the house, they said.

  His friends melted away like ice in coffee—he had thought them his friends, all those people picked up, danced with, lent spliffs to, introduced to, kissed, taken to an Ostia open-air club on the back of a borrowed Vespa, given secrets to and listened to in the small hours in the back bedroom of a seventh-floor apartment in EUR. All those people had, on investigation, something against Mauro; they had heard some bad story about him; he owed them 500 euros, or fifty, or—they said, but it couldn’t be true—5,000; they wouldn’t trust him; they couldn’t help him; they wouldn’t answer his calls if they recognized the number he was calling from. He’d forgotten that Paolo Crichetti was the brother of a boy he’d been inseparable from one summer, had hugged and kissed and driven to Ostia on the back of a borrowed sky-blue Vespa; that that was how he had met Paolo Crichetti and got the job in the first place. Paolo Crichetti had spread the word. No one would give him a job or a room at their place, no, not even if he paid them back the fifty or 500 or—this one couldn’t be true—5,000. ‘This is a small town,’ Marco Crichetti had said; he was now serious, twenty and studying at a business academy with his twin sister Su-Ellen. ‘Everyone knows you, Mauro. You have to go somewhere else.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ Mauro said. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘Just go somewhere else,’ Marco said.

  Sometimes, Mauro thought, you could get on a plane, and make a decision on the plane, and two hours later get off and be a different and a better person. That was what had happened to him on the plane from London to Rome. The other people on the plane, accepting the harassed stewardesses’ offers of hot and cold drinks, half watching the safety demonstrations—they did not notice what had happened to Mauro, but the decision should have shuddered the blue skies above the clouds. He would be a good person; he would be a good friend. To the friends he had not made yet. He would not judge people; he would not take drugs. He would be honest, even if temptation presented itself. He would not do anything with which anyone could reasonably rebuke him afterwards. He would not do anything with which he would be at all likely to rebuke himself afterwards—because, of all things, what pained Mauro most was when he had stolen money was not that they shouted at him and told him what an awful person he was. (Paolo Crichetti and his mother and some other people had said that.) The thing that pained him most was the inner voice, saying to them, ‘Yes, you’re right, yes, I am, yes, I know.’

  For those first weeks in London, his resolution had held. He stayed in a cheap hotel in King’s Cross, and when he left, he did not leave surreptitiously, but with his debt paid—in fact, they had insisted that he pay day by day, in advance, but that was the sort of person he now was. He had quickly found a short-term job in a restaurant run by Sicilians: the sort of English he had spoken to the American tourists who were the one-time clients of the Incantevole was, it seemed, good enough for a London restaurant too, if you asked the customers to point as well as speak their order. He found a room in a flat with four other boys, all gay, all foreigners, and they took him out to a bar in Soho, then another one, then a club. Mauro did not drink very much, and you only ever had to buy yourself a first drink, after which men would buy you drinks, as many as you wanted. At clubs, there was always someone who would let you in on the guest list. After two months, Mauro knew all the clubs, and people were starting to know him. Twice a week, sometimes three times a week, he would go back to a man’s house, with one man, or sometimes two. His resolution was holding; it was as if the old Mauro had been left behind, and here he had nothing but good new friends. He could be whoever he chose here.

  Mr Poppers was an oddity. There were always people like that in clubs, fat men, bald men, old men, men who smelt and did not seem to realize why they were not so popular as fit men, men with hair, men who smelt good and looked good. By this time Mauro was living in a flat over a tanning salon in Clapham with Christian, a dark German-Brazilian boy with a firm, square jaw and a startling swivelling tic of the head, underlying unexpected words as he spoke, somewhere between every twenty seconds and every two minutes. They both worked as waiters at the chic Brazilian churrascaria in Gloucester Road, mastering the art of slicing beef off a vertical spit. They had fool
ed around together once, had shared an English boy once, but were mostly just flatmates, these days. Mauro had been with Christian the night Mr Poppers—David, properly—had turned up. It had been a heavy weekend. The night before, they’d all gone to the opening of Sister, a club night in Vauxhall, but it had not been much good: the promoter had relied on his friends spreading the word, and he hadn’t had enough friends. To make up for it, they’d all gone out the next night in Vauxhall. By two, nobody had found any drugs—the dealers had been cleared out the week before by the police, people were saying. Mauro had shared half a pill with Christian and a line with some boy he’d met, but that was it. They’d all spotted Mr Poppers with his little bottle. ‘I don’t care,’ Mauro said, and he went right up to him, saying how much he loved poppers. And Mr Poppers turned out to be a lucky charm, because five minutes after that, three dealers, one after the other, arrived, and started selling. It was one of the best nights ever, and to top it off, it was the funniest thing ever, the one Mauro ended up going home with was, yes, a boy who fell asleep, him as well, that wasn’t the funniest thing, but Mr Poppers had been the one to come home with Mauro. God knows how that happened.

  There was a misunderstanding a couple of months later. At the end of the month, neither Mauro nor Christian had enough money to pay the rent. Christian shrugged and said, well, the agency, they’ll have to take it out of the deposit, the two months’ deposit we gave them when we moved in. ‘Can you do that?’ Mauro said.

  ‘For this shit-hole, I think, yes, we can,’ Christian said, poking with his finger at a hole in the plywood door. But the agency did not take the same attitude. When, at the end of the next month, Christian and Mauro found that they didn’t have money to pay that month either, the agency said, quite brutally, that they could either pay two months’ rent and leave at the end of that month, or they could leave within five days, to be pursued by the law. Mauro had heard about a room going round the corner, in a smart mansion block, a brick 1930s building with painted iron windows like an ocean liner. He knew one of the boys, and in fact had spent a night there with him. Christian pulled a face and said, well, he could move back to north London, this place looked like it had come to the end of its natural life.

  The only trouble was that the new place was asking for two months’ deposit as well, £1,200—Mauro argued and promised and tried to get them to take just one month, but they refused. Mauro didn’t have £1,200. ‘Ask Mr Poppers,’ Christian said. ‘You’ll only have to do it with him once or twice. How bad could it be?’

  ‘Don’t talk about David like that,’ Mauro said. He didn’t like to think of himself as exploiting David. David was his friend. When he thought of their outings, he grew quite sentimental, regarding himself with some warmth. He was helping David to establish himself, to come to terms with the modern world, and to lose some weight. He did not mock David when he was not in the room; he defended him; his kindliness had spread to other friends Mauro had thought could be introduced to him. But Mauro did not have £1,200, and, as it turned out, Mr Poppers did, and then another £1,200 on top that Mauro thought to include at the last moment. There was, of course, a price to pay for the money, which Mauro paid with a straight face. At some point, he felt, David would let him off the debt if he went on promising he would pay it, and letting people think he was David’s boyfriend. He agreed—he was happy that the price was no more than this—he agreed to get into David’s car and go to visit his parents in the English country. He had done much worse than that in the past.

  18.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ Mauro said, lifting the latch. From the other side, a good kick came. The internal fittings of the block were stylish-looking, but most of the interiors and the communal spaces had not been replaced since the block was built, and the panelled doors and the white-painted iron windows all tended to stick. David had been here before, and knew what to do. He kicked again, and it opened. ‘I’m not ready at all,’ Mauro said, gesturing downwards at his bare chest and the white towel about his middle.

  ‘I can see that,’ David said, and they kissed, once on each cheek, leaning forward so that nothing but their cheeks would touch. ‘Is everyone asleep?’

  ‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ Mauro said, smiling brilliantly at his brilliant new idiom, learnt from David the week before. ‘I think they must be. Come and sit in my room while I get ready.’

  What was once the sitting room of the flat had been given over to one of the flat-sharers, so there was nowhere else to sit but in Mauro’s room. Mauro took a pile of his clothes with him to the bathroom. Not for the first time, David wondered about the paucity of Mauro’s possessions. David’s house was encrusted, laden with acquisitions, few of which he liked, needed or could remember getting; his house was like a gift shop, a curiosity emporium, and on every surface there might be a toy policeman, uttering a harmless obscenity, or a dusty vase of whimsical appearance. One of these days he was going to put all that crap in a big sack and throw it out. Mauro’s room, on the other hand, was like a hotel room that the same person had lived in for six days, no more than that. He must have a flat back in Rome, or a room kept for him, sacrosanct, by his parents. Nobody could live with so little.

  Presently Mauro came back, his hair wet, black and smoothed down, wearing a clean yellow T-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans; David marvelled at the luck he had, even knowing someone like this, even having someone like this as his friend. Mauro went on talking about a thief in the restaurant, someone taking tips meant for others, whenever cash was in a saucer; they thought one of the staff was lifting it quietly and keeping it. Nobody knew who it was, though Mauro had his idea. ‘Yeah, I know who that fucker is,’ he said. ‘I hate people who steal. That’s the one thing I hate, they’re scum.’ As he went on explaining, David suppressing the yawn of his interrupted and frustrated sleep, Mauro went on picking pants, socks, a spare shirt, a sweatshirt out of his wardrobe and drawers. ‘Will I need a jacket?’ Mauro said, and David thought he might. Mauro shrugged, and then, surprisingly, there was a tweedy sort of jacket, more yellow than an English tweed jacket would be.

  ‘I’ve never seen you wear that,’ David said.

  ‘And a tie? Maybe a tie?’ Mauro said.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t go that far,’ David said. ‘You ought to wear that more often. It suits you.’

  ‘Not my choice,’ Mauro said.

  ‘Was it a present?’ David said. ‘The jacket, I mean.’ There seemed to be an assent. ‘Yes, I can imagine that. I bet I know—I bet it was your parents, giving it to you for, what, your twenty-first?’ because it looked both slightly old and pristine, as if its few wearings had been spread out over the seven years since Mauro had been twenty-one. ‘It’s nice, though. You always find the best things tucked away in your own wardrobe.’

  ‘Not a tie,’ Mauro said. ‘I thought you wore a tie when you go see someone’s mum, someone’s dad.’

  ‘It’s only Devon,’ David said. ‘There won’t be anyone smart to meet. But they said they were having a drinks party, or something. You might feel better with your tweed jacket on.’

  ‘I don’t know if it still fits,’ Mauro said, but it was difficult to see where Mauro would have gained weight; his sinewy torso must have been much the same a decade ago, and sure enough, when he slipped it on, over the T-shirt and jeans, he looked perfect, the yellow in the cloth making his dark face glow, just as the brighter, blanker yellow in the T-shirt did. Strikingly, his trousers made a smooth surface against his upper thigh, and there was nothing in his pocket to bulge; David was aware that his own pockets were capacious bags, filled with wallets, keys, handkerchiefs, odd bits of acquired goods. He wondered where Mauro put all that necessary stuff.

  ‘You’ll do,’ David said. Mauro bundled the jacket up and folded it into his brown leather hold-all, on top of his other clothes. It was a more elegant bag for Mauro than David would have anticipated; he caught himself wondering who had given the bag, as well as the jacket, to Mauro. They went.
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br />   When they were in the car—David felt almost more of an erotic, a marital thrill at placing Mauro’s suitcase next to his own in the boot of the silver Peugeot than he did at Mauro’s slipping into the passenger seat with a natural sigh—Mauro began to talk. David had wondered about this: their usual meetings were lubricated with company, alcohol, the hour of the evening and, sometimes, drugs. There, silence or conversation seemed to matter less. He couldn’t remember having struggled for something to say, to have filled in space. Now they had to drive, sober, in daylight, for hours into the deepest west, to a place he’d hardly been, to introduce Mauro to his parents, who would have to talk, sober, to him for two whole days.

  ‘Have you ever been outside London?’ David said, when they were out of Clapham.

  ‘I went to Brighton once,’ Mauro said. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Did you like Brighton?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It was cold, it rained, we stayed in the bars, we came home again. I don’t know why we went—Christian had a day off and I called in sick. He said we should go somewhere. He’d heard Brighton was nice.’