King of the Badgers

by Philip Hensher

  ‘It says play that funky music,’ Ali said to Blaise, collapsed in a two-man pile to one side. ‘Do you hear what it’s saying? It’s telling a funky music, no, it’s telling a white boy to play that funky music.’

  ‘I’m not a white boy,’ Blaise said. ‘So it ain’t be talking to me, yeah?’

  ‘I know you’re not a white boy,’ Ali was saying. ‘You’re lovely. Look at that, isn’t it lovely?’

  He ran his fingers over a part of Blaise, which responded alertly; they had finished what they were doing for the moment, but they would begin again in a second.

  ‘Oh, you,’ Blaise said. ‘I want some more charlie. Oh, it’s so good, that charlie, and I want it, some more.’

  ‘Let’s have some, then,’ Ali said, and raised himself up to the level of the sideboard, where a fat scattering of the stuff lay. He took a quilled-up ten-pound note resting there and, with a single eye closed, the better to see the coke, made vague figure-of-eight movements over the rosewood surface. He was too fucked to form the stuff into a line, and in a moment fell back onto Blaise’s thighs like a sack of potatoes.

  About Mauro everyone was busy, mouth and arse and hands and cock, and their mouths and hands and arses and cocks; he was being a considerable social success. Perhaps it was only his neat, diminutive scale that drew such attention to the parts of him that were rather remarkably out of scale. But for at least a year the Bears had mostly been making do with each other; putting up with occasionally having to endure even Peter, who wasn’t here tonight. His absence, and his two spectacular replacements, assured the success. They had heard about Spencer, whom Steve had had, twice, over the table in the back room of his garage, and had looked forward to him; they hadn’t anticipated a second gift in the shape of Mauro. The Bears feasted. They would still be talking about tonight in a year or two. Adam and Phil and Mick and Andy and the others, almost crushing each other in their eagerness, were passing nipple and cock and Mauro’s open lips from mouth to mouth, passing his arse from finger to cock to mouth to clenched and arrowed hand, filling, grazing, flicking, biting, and stuffing. Mauro was wriggling, crying out, ‘Madonna,’ opening his big eyes, grinning, flinging his neck-thick arms wide behind him, letting Adam and Phil and Mick and Andy and the others do what they wanted to him. They seemed to have a list they were working through.

  For long months now, David had had a film playing in the inside of his skull. In the film, Mauro was taken and seized and fucked, and his naked body passed of its own free will from one hairy man to another, in London at the exact moment David was lying sleeplessly, fraught, in his solitary bed in St Albans. The rubbish grumbleflick with which David’s lying brain liked to torment itself was here, in front of him, running its course. The small and tinny collection of porn David kept in St Albans, industrial fucking preserved in the shape of shiny beermats, kept by David in an envelope between two of Nabokov’s novels, that did not run on a permanent night-time loop as his thoughts of Mauro’s entertainments tended to; on the other hand, that rubbish porn had a fast-forward, had an off-switch, and there seemed no end to Mauro’s pleasures, happening here, before him. Another part of his fantasizing brain had, for long months, dwelt happily on what might happen if lovely Mauro ever came to the point of showing him his bum or even his penis—in less ambitious moods, what would happen if Mauro ever came out of the shower when he was there, his grip on his white towel weak and faltering and accidental… His weak and apologetic imagination was being fulfilled here, in a stranger’s house with twelve hairy men, none of whom Mauro had ever met before, taking turns to fuck David’s love. Did they even know Mauro’s name, all of them? David was not altogether sure he liked it and, naked, he squatted by the wall with his back against the wallpaper and his balls dangling between his heels, a drink in his hand and a mild smile on his face, as if he had been enjoying himself, were just taking a little rest, and would be returning to the fuck-wrestle in a moment or two.

  ‘The thing is, it’s telling the white boy to play that funky music,’ Ali was saying.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Blaise said.

  ‘But it doesn’t make any sense,’ Ali said.

  ‘I think it makes sense,’ Blaise said.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Ali said. ‘Because when it says that funky music, what it means is this funky music.’

  ‘No, man, I don’t get what you’re saying.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean there’s some other funky music which is, like, better than this funky music, I mean, this record, this one, going, white boy, play that funky music.’

  ‘Yeah, they’re great, these old records.’

  ‘So it’s saying, white boy, play this record, which is extremely funky, but it’s telling you this in the form of the record which is already playing, which the white boy has already started playing, because if he hadn’t, it wouldn’t be playing to tell him to play that funky music. You see what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s no good, man,’ Blaise said. ‘Because it might not have been a white boy that put the music on in the first place. It might have been a black boy. Or it might have been a black girl. Or it might have been…’ His head wavered back and forth as he focused on something. ‘That Italian bloke,’ he finished. ‘He can’t get enough, can he?’

  ‘What an arse,’ Ali said. ‘I’m having another go on that in a bit, I reckon.’

  ‘That Italian bloke,’ Blaise said. ‘He don’t like this music, does he?’

  ‘What—why do you—what—’

  ‘’Cause he keeps asking for Madonna,’ Blaise said. He was straight-faced, tremulous, his eyes on Ali’s face. In a second, Mauro called out, ‘Madonna,’ in pleasure or amazement or just because he had his mouth free for a moment, and the pair of them burst out laughing, chuckling and wheezing like two old men at a comedy rodeo.

  32.

  ‘Hi, David,’ said Sam, dropping down on his haunches, facing him. He was solid rather than fat when his clothes were off; he gave the general impression of burliness, even of stoutness, in his clothes, but naked, his chest came out like a sergeant major’s. He was a curious, cuboid sort of shape, and a curious, rather appealing animal odour came from him. Clothed, in the street or in his shop, he seemed languid, indulged, lazy, with probable areas of softness at waist and big arse. Naked, he gave the impression of compressed hairy power, as if he could fell a policeman, chop down a tree, outrun a milk float. In a friendly gesture, he reached out his big hairy right hand and weighed David’s balls where they hung. ‘All right? Having a good time?’

  ‘Yeah,’ David said. ‘Fantastic. Just taking a breather.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sam said. ‘He’s having a good time, your boyfriend.’

  ‘Yeah,’ David said. ‘Mauro. It looks like it.’

  They paused for a moment to observe the stage Mauro’s pleasures had reached.

  ‘People say that we’ve got a strange relationship,’ David offered. ‘But it seems to work quite well for us.’

  Sam burst out laughing. ‘Yeah, I know all about strange relationships,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you notice? It’s my husband who’s got his fist up your boyfriend’s bum.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ David said miserably.

  ‘You’ve got to give us your telephone numbers,’ Sam said. ‘If the two of you are going to be coming down regularly. It’s usually once a month we meet up, every six weeks or so. You want to come again.’

  ‘You mean,’ David said, ‘you want Mauro to come again.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Sam said. ‘And you said you were having a good time. You want to…’ And, boldly, he made a glib, intimate gesture with his hand; it might have been the surprise of it, or Sam’s hand, cold from gripping a bottle of beer, but David really flinched.

  ‘It’s not compulsory, you know,’ Sam said. But David said again that he was having a good time.

  ‘I was watching you earlier,’ Sam said. ‘Making your way round. Your heart just wasn’t in it, was it? First you try one, then another, but y
ou don’t go for it. You put your hand out, you touch some-one’s bum, but you do it—it’s like it’s all tentative with you, it’s like you know you’re going to be refused. That’s no good, Dave. It looks like you’re asking for their permission. Oh, please may I … and I tell you, if you waver and look nervous and think that they’re going to say no, and look as if you think they’re going to say no, they’ll think about it, and they probably will say no. I mean in real life. Not in here. They’re not going to say no, none of this lot. Slags.’

  ‘Slag yourself,’ Steve called over. ‘It’s not us who met our boyfriend in the toilet of a pub.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Sam said. ‘But they are. They’re not going to say no. Look at your boyfriend. It’s never occurred to him in his life that anyone’s going to say no, once he takes his shirt off. I bet they never have.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I know what you’re going to say. But he looks like him, and you look like you,’ Sam said. ‘It’s true. But how do you think you get to look like you? It’s not what shape you are, or the size of your nose. It’s—you know what it is—it’s that hunted expression. You really do. You have a hunted expression. When you were going round the room, you copped a feel of all of them, one after the other. Usually a pretty quick feel. You didn’t even give them a chance to say, piss off, fat boy. They aren’t going to say that, you know. It’s just that hunted expression on your face. It’s not doing it for anyone. And when you got near anyone you thought was out of your league—when you got anywhere near Spencer—it was like you were waiting until he was turned in another direction before you were going anywhere near him. You didn’t want him to realize it might be you putting your finger up his bum. I tell you, he wouldn’t care. And then you get near Mauro, and it’s like you just don’t dare come within a foot of him. That I don’t understand.’

  ‘I guess it’s embarrassment,’ David said. ‘Doing it in public.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sam said. ‘Some people are like that. When people fuck—whether there’s someone else there, or not, it’s a whole different ballgame. Some people just don’t have sex with each other, not unless there’s… Harry and me, we’re all right, we like it if there’s just the two of us, and we don’t care if there’s another one. But Ali and Mick—you know Ali and Mick?’

  ‘That’s the guy with the kilt on, yeah?’

  ‘Mick told me he hadn’t had sex with Ali, just the two of them, without someone else, or another couple, or another fourteen like tonight, for two years. Just didn’t fancy it. But it’s not like that with you and Mauro.’

  ‘I suppose we’ve just grown out of it,’ David said. ‘It’s true—we don’t have sex together any more, not much. I love him, but he does his own thing and I do mine.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sam said. ‘I can see him doing his own thing. I don’t see you doing much of yours. I see you watching your boyfriend getting fucked, and I don’t think it’s doing you much good. It’s like you’ve forgotten what it’s like to fuck with him, and you’re watching because it’s interesting, that’s all. It just doesn’t seem to be reminding you of anything. You know what I mean? Maybe it’s just that hunted look. You do have a hunted look, you know.’

  ‘I’ll do my best to do something about it,’ David said gallantly.

  ‘I tell you what,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll fuck you, if you like. I don’t mind. It would be a total pleasure.’

  ‘Sam,’ David said. ‘That’s the nicest thing anyone ever said to me. Would you really? Would you really fuck me?’

  ‘Well, of course I would,’ Sam said, who hoped that David would not take him up on the offer. ‘Do you want a line first? There’s plenty more where that came from.’

  33.

  ‘It’s such a shame you have to go back so soon,’ Catherine said. ‘We were hoping to have you for lunch, at least.’

  They were at the breakfast table, the next morning. The night before, David had had the impression that they were tottering in in the small hours; but of course they had gone to Sam and Harry’s party around eight, and the promised dinner had run its course in half an hour. Spencer had seen to the quick succession of events, like a kid at Christmas calling out, ‘Now can we? Now can we? Sam, now, please?’ So even after Sam and Harry’s party had come to an end, and Sam had graciously and smilingly done to David what he had offered and Mauro had levered himself up off the floor, wiping himself down, dizzy and limp and grinning slackly, noisy with gratitude towards Harry, who had saved himself until last and had found himself hugely appreciated—after all of that, the two of them had walked back in wavering parallels, hardly knowing how to return home, and had come quietly in to find Catherine and Alec watching the Saturday-night film. It was only eleven fifteen. They were a sight, David and Mauro, and Mauro would have happily stayed up and talked gibberish to his parents. David had no idea how he persuaded Mauro that it was time for bed. Now, in the morning, the four of them were at the table in the little dining room, with toast in the toast-rack, two boxes of cereal, and jars of jam, marmalade and honey next to the butter dish and the cafetière.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got to be back,’ Mauro said. ‘I didn’t realize—I have to work tonight.’

  ‘Such a shame,’ Alec said, and both David and Catherine looked at him with surprise. He made an amused face. Mauro had tried to steal an ornament; had been groped by a gatecrasher; had snorted coke in David’s parents’ house; had gone out to be gang-fucked by half a dozen strangers. But David had not expected his father to take a dislike to him. He had thought his father would like Mauro as much as he did.

  All over Hanmouth people were talking about Catherine’s party, and a few about Harry and Sam’s. ‘I don’t see why we should put up with that,’ John Calvin said. ‘Fancy dress is one thing, but that?’ His wife reminded him of past successes of Neighbourhood Watch. Billa told her husband about the party, omitting the conspicuous parts and concentrating on the Wallace sisters and their Bedlington. Over their breakfast honey and toast and the babyish cereal they both seemed to like, she made a funny story out of it, as she had made many funny stories out of things Tom had not got to. Isobel, coming back from a nice long walk with Poppet, made her dinner, the dog bounding and barking. She said to Marian, who was still in her dressing-gown, that they had met some interesting people last night, but all the same, they seemed to know some jolly peculiar people too, and that she had enjoyed going last night, but she was quite sure that she wouldn’t want to go again tonight. The amateur boatman thought of telephoning one of his children; he knew they worried about his isolation, and it was good to tell them when he had gone out and made some new friends. Sylvie read a three-day-old copy of the Guardian, and Tony a four-day-old one.

  ‘Christ,’ Harry said, looking at the state of the downstairs; things spilled and two glasses broken and, despite the three bins, someone had dropped and left a condom on the carpet where they had missed it last night. Stanley had followed him downstairs, after sleeping the sleep of a basset hound, and looked up at his master in an inquisitive way. ‘Not just yet, you fool,’ Harry said. Sam was still asleep upstairs; the air rippling past his tonsils supplying the house with an adorable, warm background sound. Harry was in his old dressing-gown, and the morning constitutional Stanley was about to insist on seemed inconceivable. Harry’s thundering headache must be not just down to the drink and the drugs from last night, but to an overpowering odour of feet, making the air swim. Someone had left an open bottle of poppers on the rosewood sideboard. At least they hadn’t spilt it. Harry went to the french windows and opened them wide, then to the side window to create a through-draught. ‘Go on, you fool,’ he said to Stanley, and Stanley lumbered out for his morning shit. He preferred the street, but the garden would do at a pinch.

  ‘Is there any coffee?’ Spencer said, coming down the stairs, a white guest towel round his middle.

  ‘Christ, I thought you’d gone home,’ Harry said. ‘Go home. Go home, Spencer.’

  ‘It was awfully nice,’ K
itty said to her friend Angela in Clun, over the telephone, clutching it between chin and shoulder as she went through her kitchen cupboard—she was sure she had some juniper berries, but maybe not. ‘It was vintage,’ Ali said to Blaise. ‘It was really much more fun than I expected,’ Miranda said to Hettie. ‘We ought to ask them round for dinner,’ Kenyon said, chomping hard at the muesli, thinking, not for the first time, that the way to make the stuff edible was to start soaking it the night before, as he knew the Swiss did. ‘Or maybe just have a meal at the Case Is Altered. That might be best.’ ‘One of the best nights ever,’ Steve said to Andy over the telephone. ‘I’ve got to get Spencer to come back,’ and then some miscellaneous comments about the sorts of things ex-soldiers in their early thirties with wives were always going to get up to.

  David had put their bags in the boot of the car; there was no return of that marital frisson as he placed them together. ‘Well,’ he said to his father and mother, standing in the car park of their apartment block. There was a keen wind blowing from the direction of the sea. ‘Well,’ he said.

  ‘It’s been nice to see you,’ Catherine said. ‘However briefly. And lovely to meet you, Mauro.’

  ‘It’s been lovely,’ Mauro said, and kissed her on one, both cheeks, before turning to Alec and shaking his hand. For the first time, it struck David that the normal thing to have done, surely, would have been to bring a gift of some sort. But Mauro had brought nothing. It went onto what was now becoming a long line of grievances; it was astonishing to David that an infatuation could develop into pure resentment without a conventional relationship coming in between. He wanted to divorce Mauro and to embark on an affair with him more or less equally.