His father had taken a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it into his hand. ‘Come now. There’s nothing to cry about. Bobby’s such a good boy, and so like you. Oh, Lord. I’m making things worse, aren’t I?’
Yes, he had made things worse, so bad in fact that Paul had to go outside. Even there, on the dark street, he couldn’t cry openly. His throat had burned with the suppression of tears. George had followed him, but at least he was silent, awkward and angry still – Paul was certain of his anger – but silent. Until, at last, George had said, ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did. I know you didn’t run away … I’m truly sorry.’
On the hotel bed, Paul pushed the heels of his hands hard into his eyes: no backbone; run away; his father’s words kept coming back to him, repeating in his head like a playground taunt.
From his pocket he took out a photograph George had given him and traced his finger around Bobby’s face. ‘I took him to Evans’s,’ his father had told him, ‘that studio on the High Street. Evans gave him that funny little toy dog to hold.’ Sitting on a child-sized wicker chair, Bobby clasped the dog to his chest and looked solemnly at the camera. Paul stared at him, trying to make out the resemblance George said was there; he couldn’t see it, try as he might.
He got up and placed Bobby’s photograph in an envelope, sealed it and put it in a pocket in his suitcase. He went into the bathroom and washed his face in cold water, avoiding his reflection in the mirror above the sink. Going to the bedroom window he lifted the curtain aside and looked out on to the street; the pavements were shiny from the London drizzle, reflecting the hazy lamplight. He wondered, without much caring, if that boy Edmund would come.
He let the curtain fall back and lay down on the bed again, the springs creaking a little. The boy’s weight would make them complain even more, quite a body he had, and tall; he had always preferred tall men: big, strong, handsome men – dark or blond but muscular, hairy, well hung. He liked it best if they hadn’t shaved for a little while so that their bristles scoured his skin. He liked it when they grasped his hair and forced his face down to their thick, impatient, greedy cocks; he liked it when they called him fucking little queer, dirty, cock-sucking little bastard. To be humiliated, to have his guts soft with lust and fear, his own cock so hard and crushed in a fist – that was what he wanted more than anything else. There was nothing he wanted more; nothing was more important, nothing. Nothing. Unbuttoning his flies, his hand grasped his flaccid cock. He closed his eyes and tears ran down his face.
Margot, his wife, had cried and shouted, ‘Why did you marry me? Why, when you knew, you knew …’ She was sobbing, hardly able to get the words out. All at once she was flailing at him with her fists. ‘You’re filthy! You’ve made me filthy! Everyone knows! They all know how filthy dirty we are!’ He had tried to hold her, but she pulled away from him furiously. ‘I hate you. You’ll never, never see Bobby again.’
On the hotel bed, he buttoned his flies and wiped his face impatiently with his fingers. No backbone. And no self-respect, his father might have added. He had got on his knees to his wife, as though that would have made any difference, and he had begged for his son. She had only been even more disgusted. Could that have been possible – could her disgust have been greater still? Her disgust had been palpable; she had quaked with it, she’d pressed the back of her hand to her lips as though her mouth had filled with spittle. He thought how if she had been anyone but Margot she would have spat in his face.
The room was becoming cold. When he’d first come in he had switched on the light, a single bulb hanging from a fraying cord in the centre of a ceiling yellow from all the thousands of cigarettes that must have been smoked on this bed. After a few minutes of this unforgiving glare he had switched it off again – the thin curtains let in enough of the streetlight. The only furniture apart from the creaking, too narrow bed was a wardrobe and a bedside table where he’d placed his glasses in their case, his cigarettes and lighter and a pile of pennies and half pennies that had seemed so shockingly foreign and heavy when he’d first arrived back in England. Only his suitcase by the door looked smart and new, a present from Patrick. ‘Leather,’ Pat told him, ‘no cardboard rubbish. And there – see – I had them emboss your initials on the side. F.L.’
F.L. He was Francis Law now, not Paul Harris any more, although sometimes he used his real name. He felt more like Paul in England. Francis belonged to Patrick, to their house in Tangiers. If he ever left Patrick, left Morocco, he would revert to being Paul and wouldn’t care if the past came back to kick him in the teeth.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, and he sat up, listening, but the footsteps carried on past his door. If the boy didn’t come he would go out; there was a likely-looking place near by, an underground public lavatory, its wide flight of steps divided by an ornate iron balustrade and lit only dimly by a streetlight a few yards away. Risky business, though. You never knew if a policeman might be watching, or even waiting inside, a smooth-faced boy used as bait, but easy enough to spot, if you weren’t too stupefied by nerves and desperation. He would go to a pub first, a shot of Dutch courage, and he might even be lucky – have no need to scuttle down those slippery-looking steps into the piss-stinking darkness because there might be the right kind of man standing at the bar. This man might catch his eye, nod, comment on the weather perhaps. Such an encounter would be unlikely but not hopelessly so.
More unlikely would be the chance of this stranger being as handsome as the boy he’d met tonight; not a boy – this Edmund wasn’t that much younger than he was; young enough, though; young enough not to have seen service, he was certain of that, relieved there was no possibility that he had ever been a fellow officer.
Very occasionally during his encounters, a man would take a guess at his likely past and ask him which regiment he’d served in. Not that there was ever that much conversation, although a few liked to talk, if the conditions allowed. One had even asked, ‘Where did you lose your eye?’
‘It popped out one morning over breakfast. Gave the wife a start, I can tell you.’
Silly bastard for asking. He supposed that if he had told him how he’d lost his eye the man would’ve had an excuse to talk about his own war wound, the ragged scar he’d glimpsed as he was tugging at his underwear. And of course a response would be expected: ‘Ypres, you say? That’s a coincidence – I got shrapnel in the thigh at Ypres. Gassed too? I know, I know. Ghastly, wasn’t it? I thought my lungs were being burnt right out of my chest!’
The only other man’s war he knew about was Patrick’s, and only the part – those last few months of 1918 – that they had survived together. He didn’t want to know about the rest of Pat’s war, couldn’t bear to think of it. Often he wondered how Patrick had survived so long, such a big man, such a difficult target to miss. ‘Christ, it’s Goliath,’ Corporal Cooper had exclaimed on seeing Sergeant Patrick Morgan for the first time. Paul remembered smiling to himself, enjoying the look of astonishment on the corporal’s face. That Patrick had joined their platoon cheered everyone; he supposed they had all forgotten Goliath’s fatal flaw.
Again, he heard footsteps in the corridor outside. These steps were more hesitant than the last; he should have recognised that those others were too brisk, too sure of their direction. These footsteps were quieter, cautious. Paul got up from the bed, catching sight of himself in the mirror set in the wardrobe door; he had been thinking about Pat and he should have looked guilty; instead he noticed how eager he looked. He paused, making an effort to appear less predatory, and tried to push Patrick from his mind as he turned from the mirror and went to open the door.
Chapter Five
THE NEXT MORNING IN the bookshop Edmund hung back in the storeroom, unwilling to show his face to the few customers who ventured in out of the rain. Occasionally, if there was more than one customer waiting, Barnes would call him in his brisk shop voice, only to make no comment when he slunk back into the storeroom after the shop had emptied again.
Pretending to catalogue books, most of the time he stared out of the storeroom window overlooking the back yard. He watched a cat stalk a fat pigeon and when his breath misted the glass he rubbed it away only for it to mist again, so he drew a smiling face in the condensation and then watched as the smile slowly trickled out of shape. He listened to Barnes moving about the shop, jumped a little each time the bell on the shop door rang, dreading Barnes’ call. Barnes was behaving with great discretion, and he was grateful for this. But it was also as if he knew what had happened last night, as though he could smell it on him; if this was so, all Barnes had been was sympathetic. But it was this sympathy he couldn’t stand: men like Barnes weren’t supposed to pity men like him.
Late morning, Barnes appeared in the storeroom doorway. ‘I’m having a cup of tea, if you’d like one?’
‘No, thank you.’
Barnes gazed at him. ‘Would you like to go home?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
The older man nodded. Touching his own eye, he said, ‘It looks painful.’ He sighed. ‘If it was down to me you could stay in here all day if you wished, and I’m sure even the customers you’ve served hardly noticed – they barely see us at the best of times – but Mr Graham is coming in this afternoon to do the banking and if he saw you with that black eye …’
‘I should go then, shouldn’t I?’
‘Yes, I think so. I’ll tell him you were taken ill.’
Edmund fetched his coat. Following him to the door, Barnes said, ‘Stay out of trouble, eh? I’d like to see you back here, when you feel you can face it.’
He went to a Lyon’s Corner House and, although the waitress looked at him sideways, no one else took any notice of him. He was a young man with a black eye, a common enough sight he supposed on a Saturday morning. He touched his eye gingerly; the swelling had gone down a little. When the waitress brought his tea he caught sight of his contorted reflection in the metal teapot and touched his face again. He had a feeling that he had become someone else; this face was not the one he was used to. This feeling had nothing to do with the black and blue bruising: his body felt changed too, as though a defter, more imaginative god had remade him.
When Paul turned to him from closing the hotel room door, even in the dim light Edmund had the impression he’d been crying. But he had been his old self then and had said nothing; besides, of course Harris hadn’t been crying and even if he had it was none of his business. He didn’t even feel concerned, only went to the bed and sat down on its edge without acknowledging Paul, without looking at him, embarrassed in every way, by everything, not least by the shabbiness of the room and of Paul himself. Without his jacket, collar and tie, without his shoes, with his braces hanging at his sides and his sleeves rolled up, Paul looked too ordinary, dishevelled, like nothing, nobody. He wasn’t beautiful – that ridiculous, over-blown word – just a skinny nonentity. Even his voice seemed to have changed, as though he didn’t have to disguise his northern accent now other pretences were done with. Here he was, in the rough, and Edmund could only feel appalled.
He had imagined standing up, walking to the door, leaving, all without looking at him, without a word. But Paul was standing over him; if he were to leave it would mean an awkward, clumsy business of stepping around him because he was standing so close, so close; he sensed Paul looking at him. He should say something, just some ordinary remark to break this silence. He suspected that Paul was smiling at him, his smile becoming strained as his silence went on, a shame because when he arrived his smile had been so welcoming, flattering because he seemed so pleased that he had come. This man had been unsure of him after all and now he seemed unsure even of himself, gauche, even; and that voice of his – not officer class, not any class at all that he could rank him by. This voice was softer, with none of its earlier, edgy irony that had made Edmund feel so ready to despise him.
Paul had walked around the bed then and lain down, taking his cigarettes from his pocket and lighting one. It was as though Paul had decided that he could stay or go and it would be just the same to him. Edmund had turned to look at him; outside the clouds had cleared the bright face of a full moon, and this uncommon light made the sculptured quality of his face even starker, like that of a statue on the new war memorials that were being erected everywhere; he thought of his paintings of soldiers and how he had made them look like wistful boys. He thought how he could go on looking at him, mesmerized by his extraordinary beauty.
Edmund lay down beside him, as close as he dared, shy as he hadn’t been since he’d left school. Paul passed him his cigarette and it went between them until all that remained could be pinched out between his finger and thumb, until there was only the taste left and the thought that in a moment he would light another … in a little while, there was no hurry. Edmund closed his eyes, and felt the bed shift beneath him as Paul began on the buttons of his shirt.
He thought about stopping him, grasping his wrist and holding it tightly, twisting his flesh, saying that he wasn’t like him, wasn’t sick and perverted like him; yet he was lying on a bed beside him, eyes closed against responsibility because he was like him, really, and he wanted him, all of him; he had never felt so greedy in his life.
* * *
Afterwards Edmund had dozed, only to be disturbed by the sound of a tap running. Naked, he had got up. Standing in the bathroom doorway, he had seen Paul holding his false eye beneath the stream of water before returning it to the socket. Catching sight of Edmund’s reflection in the mirror above the sink Paul looked down quickly and turned off the tap.
Embarrassed, Edmund had said lightly, ‘I didn’t notice your eye when we met, even in the restaurant –’
‘You’re not meant to notice.’ He had glanced at Edmund’s reflection in the mirror and it seemed as though he didn’t want him there, that he had angered him in some way. He had certainly sounded angry as he’d said, ‘But now you can’t take your eyes off it.’ Brushing past him into the bedroom, naked too and seeming to take care not to touch him at all, Paul snapped, ‘Are you staying or going?’
‘Staying, if that’s all right.’
‘Then for God’s sake get back into bed.’
In the café, Edmund remembered that it was then that Paul had seemed ordinary again, and not only ordinary but awkward and angry, his too-thin body repellent. As though he had sensed his repulsion, Paul got into bed quickly, covering himself with the sheet before reaching for his cigarettes and lighting two at once, wordlessly holding one out to him. Edmund got into bed too, taking the cigarette although he hadn’t wanted another. He allowed it to waste away between his fingers, all the time wondering what he might say to a man who seemed to him to be at turns ugly and breathtaking, as though Paul was two men and he could only see one of them at a time. Perhaps the duality was his own, a sudden schizophrenia triggered by too sudden feeling.
In the café Edmund poured his tea and wished he had ordered toast as his stomach growled hungrily, surprisingly – shouldn’t he be robbed of his appetite? Stirring sugar into his cup he remembered how Paul had turned to him, seeming to make an effort to suppress the anger that had come over him so abruptly and finally breaking the silence Edmund hadn’t known how to end.
‘Have you always lived in London, Edmund?’
Edmund had laughed; it seemed such a facile question, given the circumstances, as though they were strangers meeting at a dull party. Smiling, he turned to look at him, intending to ask if he would like a potted biography, but found that he could only look at him, and that nothing he might say could matter less. He supposed he was dumbstruck, ridiculous, because Paul laughed self-consciously as he said, ‘Don’t look at me like that.’
He had looked away at once. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s disturbing.’
‘Sorry.’
Another silence expanded between them, one that this time grew until it seemed possible he would never be abl
e to bring himself to speak to this man again, knowing what an idiot he had been with that look of his. He could imagine just how he had looked: his eyes all wide with amazement that he could want another person so badly. Desperately trying to think of something to say that would be light-hearted and not at all disturbing, he failed and so he repeated, ‘Sorry,’ and then, out of masochistic politeness, asked, ‘Would you like me to go?’
‘No. I’d like you to stay. And you didn’t answer my question. Have you always lived in London?’
‘Yes.’
Paul lit another cigarette. Exhaling smoke, he said, ‘And how old are you? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?’
Edmund laughed uncomfortably. ‘Why?’
‘Just wondering.’
Too quickly Edmund said, ‘Twenty-two next month.’
‘And what do you do? To earn a living, I mean.’
‘I work in a bookshop.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Yes. Yes, actually I do.’
‘And you walk out with Ann.’
‘Walk out?’
‘I don’t want to presume anything.’
‘Yes, we walk out.’
‘And what about your work, your painting – was she right about that? Have you given up?’
‘That’s enough.’ Agitated, Edmund had got up and begun to dress, hunting around the bed for his clothes. He sensed Paul watching him and wondered which Paul he would see if he dared to meet his gaze: a skinny, disfigured queer, he supposed, an impertinent queer who asked too many questions, one who must be some kind of magician to have made him imagine he was anything but ordinarily vile. This nasty little trickster had made him vile, too; he wondered how he would ever be able to hold his head up again.
He hadn’t been able to find his socks. In the café, as he drank his tea, he wondered what would have happened if he had found them; no doubt he would have put them on quickly, shoved his feet into his shoes, run out the door. Odd that it hadn’t occurred to him to put on his shoes without his socks. But looking for the socks had given him an excuse not to look at him, an excuse, he supposed, to be watched; it gave Paul an excuse to say something, perhaps even to ask him to stay.
All the Beauty of the Sun Page 4