At the bar later on there was a huge fat man who could well have been in his fifties, in a blue shirt hanging out all round like a sheet; he was joking to the barman over the heads of the people in front. Johnny and Ivan had to squeeze round him. ‘Ooh, hello, mischief!’ the man said.
‘Hello, Bradley,’ said Ivan, and leant in and up over the broad frontage to kiss him on the cheek. ‘This is my friend Johnny Sparsholt.’
Happily Bradley didn’t hear. ‘Are we all going to dance?’ he said. It turned out a skinny boy, under-age almost, with dyed blond hair, was with him, and had got them drinks.
‘Hello, I’m Jeff,’ he said, rather tartly. They all seemed to consider the prospect of Bradley on the dance floor, and the exodus of other dancers it would require.
‘I love dancing,’ said Bradley, and raising his glass he moved his hips in circles, nodded and bit his lip. He leant forward and said to Johnny, ‘They all know me here, darling. I’ve been coming for years.’
‘Oh, right, I see,’ said Johnny.
‘I don’t think I’ve come across you before, though!’
‘Oh . . . no’ – Johnny feeling that Bradley was an act and he would have to play along, while the others watched, amused or pitying, he wasn’t sure. ‘I’ve not been here before.’
‘Oh, I’ve been coming here for years. They all know me.’
‘How do you know Ivan?’
Bradley hesitated, put his arm through Johnny’s and pulled him slightly aside. ‘I’ve got a cock, darling.’
‘Oh . . . yes.’
‘I haven’t seen it for years and years, but I know it’s down there. And do you know how I know?’ Johnny simply shook his head. ‘Because I could feel it being teased, darling – teased and teased beyond endurance by Miss Ivy Goyle. Terrible name, isn’t it, Goyle, sort of goitres and piles, which I don’t have by the way, and never have had.’ He looked sharply at Johnny, who shook his head again—
‘No, nor have—’
‘She’s the queen of the cock-teasers, is all I’m saying.’ Johnny understood at once, and felt he should defend his friend, even so, and at the same time conceal the humiliating fact that he hadn’t known this all along.
‘Come on, Bradley, behave yourself,’ said Jeff, and led him off towards the further room.
Half an hour later Tony was bumping his bum against Johnny’s as he danced with Francesca, and then when Johnny got out of the way turning round and pulling him in with a long muscular arm. Tony grinned all the time, it made you look a prude or a bore if you took exception to him. Also he was a friend, of some sort, of Franny’s, Francesca’s. The three of them danced together, while beyond them, with all the energy and determination of a normal-sized person, Bradley was bopping and thrusting his arms in the air. It seemed in fact everyone did know him, he was a star as well as a fool, and little Jeff pranced round him in delighted orbits. Johnny smiled at the spectacle, fell in with the mood of the club. Now Tony was getting behind him again, he felt him tugging his hair, and Franny too, very drunk as she helped him – it didn’t matter to him, he let them pull off the band and shook his hair out, shook it in Tony’s face. ‘Wow!’ said Tony. ‘You look amazing.’ With a strange wise pissed look Franny moved away.
He didn’t like being pestered, but then wondered why not, the feel of Tony’s body, as they danced with their arms round each other’s waists, was beautiful, warm hard muscle under the thin T-shirt, Johnny mostly avoiding his gaze, and when Tony pulled him in tighter and his hand slid down over his arse he found he was hard in spite of himself. ‘There you are . . .’ said Tony, but didn’t press his advantage. ‘You’re a great dancer!’
‘Oh, thank you,’ said Johnny, very gratified but wary of Tony getting round him.
‘I can’t believe I’m dancing with you.’
‘Oh . . .’ said Johnny.
‘It’s so cool.’
Johnny shrugged, he saw what was happening.
Tony smiled at him more narrowly, pushed his right hand through Johnny’s hair and said in his ear, as if it wouldn’t have struck him before, ‘David Sparsholt’s son’s gay!’
‘Well, there you are . . .’ said Johnny, pushing back.
‘I mean, what does he say about that? Could be interesting!’
‘I’m sure it could,’ said Johnny. He looked away, at the floor between the dancers’ feet, the lights changing in their not quite followable sequence. ‘I’ve got to go to the gents,’ he said, Tony holding his forearms now, just above the wrist, keeping him captive and certain of success. He held on longer, quelling resistance, and grinned still as Johnny jerked his hands away—
‘Hurry back . . . !’
Johnny took his time, roamed back afterwards to the bar, in a growing childish feeling that he wasn’t enjoying himself. When he’d bought a beer he had £1.05 left. He went and danced by himself, on the edge of the dance floor, looking round for Ivan. Tony was dancing with another man, dark-skinned, curly-headed, older and more attuned to his game. He looked over and touched Johnny on the shoulder. ‘No problem, by the way.’
‘That’s what you think,’ said Johnny, not loud enough to be heard over the music, and taken by Tony perhaps as some kind of gratitude. It was ‘Living for the City’, it brought everyone out, playing up, friends shouting along with the words, which Johnny construed in his own way. Una and Fran were locked together, Johnny didn’t like to look at them, in their closeness, though they were sealed up too in the obliviousness of drink. He danced beside them, Fran reached out to him, and staggered as she did. ‘Have you seen Ivan?’ he said. She looked down solemnly as if weighing some much larger question; it was Una who said, ‘He’s gone.’ ‘Gone where?’ Una looked round rather vaguely, as if she might still find him. Fran leant on him, said in his ear, ‘He said to say goodbye, you were tied up with Tony at the time, darling, he said he didn’t want to barge in.’ It was hard to judge her own feelings about this news, though she seemed, quite promptly, to understand his. She brought him close to her, they danced willy-nilly, bumping each other, and in a minute he felt the almost impersonal weight of Una’s arm on his shoulder, and the scented warmth of her as the girls, saying nothing more, pulled him in.
8
‘You’re not a bad driver,’ said Ivan.
‘Oh, thanks very much!’ said Johnny, and wondered mildly why it had taken him two hours to say so.
‘I should really learn to drive.’
‘I’ll teach you if you like . . .’ – Johnny put his foot down as he shifted into the outside lane, and was aware of Ivan glancing at the speedometer.
‘It can’t be all that difficult,’ he said.
‘You mean, if I can do it?’
‘No, silly’ – Ivan tutted and twitched back his fringe as he looked away.
‘It’s best to start when you’re young, obviously.’
‘No time to lose, then.’
‘Ha, ha. I mean, I was driving when I was about fourteen.’
Ivan thought and said, ‘Did your father teach you, I suppose?’
‘He certainly did.’
‘But how could you drive when you were fourteen?’
‘Dad had permission to go on this old aerodrome near us, you could do what you liked.’
‘You were lucky, then,’ said Ivan, in a tone Johnny’d noted before – of pathos about his own father mixed with hidden curiosity about Johnny’s. ‘I expect your dad’s a fantastic driver.’
‘For god’s sake. He was a fighter pilot, wasn’t he,’ said Johnny and not wanting the questions about him to start up again he pressed the black knob of the radio, turned it up. It was something he felt at once that he knew, massive, thickly scored, aerated by the wireless’s warbles of distance and dense crunches of distortion. He edged the tuning dial very slightly into someone talking, and back more slightly still, and it focused and held for ten seconds, a quiet passage, hard to hear through the racket of the engine, Johnny pushing his head forward, staring down the fast lane as if at the not quite catchable name of the piece. Prokofiev . . . but he wanted to get it right, in front of Ivan. Now the heavy brass came tramping back, with battering timps and a bass drum too that jammed into a rattling fuzz of sound. He turned it down. And again it cleared, as they cleared the brow of a hill, the march stamped gleefully through to its slamming end, and applause burst out, fuzzy washes of sound, the ineffably judged pause before the announcer said, ‘The Sixth Symphony by Sergei—’