He led him through to a tall room at the back of the house, with a window open above the garden. It still had the built-in cupboards and corner washbasin of its hotel days and an overwhelming wallpaper of bunched pink roses on a pale yellow ground. There were various house-plants, some thrusting and barbed, others droopy and sprawling, like conflicting moods. “I’ve just got to get ready,” Danny said, half-unbuttoning his shirt and pulling it over his head like a kid rushing for games. Alex smiled at him, and tried to look casually at his lean hairless torso, the surprisingly fleshy brown nipples. He immediately loved the ordinariness of him as well as the oddity. When Danny turned and stooped to splash water from the basin on his face and neck Alex saw the small blue knot, like something from a scouting manual, tattooed on his left shoulder-blade. He felt abashed that Danny had already marked himself for life; he turned away and slouched about the room in such a relaxed fashion that he looked as if he might fall over.
He took in the jumble on the mantelpiece, but didn’t study the curling snapshots too closely for fear of cutting himself on the grins and glints of Danny’s world. He had an impression of life as a party, as a parade of flash-lit hugs and kisses, in a magic zone where everyone was young and found to be beautiful. He drifted over to the bed, which was wide and low, with a red cotton bedspread neatly pulled up. Danny’s phrase about “shagging” Aubrey and Hector came back to him.
“Now what shall I wear?” Danny said, towelling his head and coming over to Alex with half a smile and the peculiar promise he seemed to give off that there was going to be fun.
“I’m not the person to ask,” Alex said, uncertain whether to admit to his own dress anxieties, his desire to fit in while still somehow being himself. He saw that since Justin had gone he was in tatters as a social being; he didn’t know what effect to make, or how to make it.
“You look great,” said Danny, with an emphasis on each word, as if contradicting someone else. He crouched to undo his shoes, then stood and unbuttoned his trousers and wiggled his hips to make them fall down. Alex felt a bit breathless.
“Oh yes,” he said inside his head, with a split-second glance at the leftward tumble in Danny’s black boxer-shorts. He wondered if he was meant to make a move on him now, and if he would always regret not doing so, but Danny turned and opened the big cupboard, in which clothes were hung or folded in a way which suggested discipline and self-respect. And in a couple of minutes he was dressed, in green and beige gingham bags that might have been made from the curtains of a holiday caravan, and a loose pink tank-top and a white sleeveless shirt left open and hanging out; he sat on the bed to pull on black trainers with soles suggestive of a specialised orthopaedic need.
“Do you want some white wine?”
Alex said yes, and Danny went out to the kitchen, leaving the door open – he could hear him talking to someone. He went to the window, so as to be somewhere when Danny returned, and gazed out at the tangled garden and at other figures getting dressed and undressed and pouring themselves drinks in the tall back windows of the next terrace. That brief routine, the stripping, the picking out of different clothes, had moved Alex and confused him. He saw how long it was since he had shared such unselfconscious moments with another man, or even allowed himself to think in terms of his own happiness. He had a sense of the danger of it, like the neglected reminder of an old injury, as well as an amazed absorption in Danny; he found himself forgetting that Danny was fourteen years younger – or half-forgetting: the clothes he had finally chosen were a cheery signal of the distance between them.
Danny came back in still talking unencouragingly to the man from the kitchen, who had a black pony-tail and bare feet and looked as if he had just got up. “Yeah…great…okay…I’ll let you know…”
“I’m Dobbin,” said the man, leaning in the doorway and scratching himself.
“Hi,” said Alex cautiously. “Alex.”
“Alex. Nice one.” Dobbin winced. “That was some fierce gear,” he went on, as if Alex knew what he was talking about. They both looked vaguely at Danny’s trousers.
“We’ve got some stuff to do,” said Danny. “I’ll catch you later.”
“Okay, man.” Dobbin winked a gummy eye and wandered away, maybe hoping to be reminded where he was or what he was supposed to be doing.
“Dobbin’s had a little bit of a heavy night on Special K,” said Danny, in the tolerant sotto voce of a well-paid nurse.
“Oh…” said Alex, who had a sympathetic regard for bowel troubles. “He probably needed something stronger.”
Danny smiled at him narrowly and Alex felt he had missed an allusion. And then how could Dobbin’s night be finishing at 8.30 p.m.? They raised their glasses and began to drink.
By the time they left the house they were both a little hectic from the wine, though Alex began talking responsibly about dinner. There was a harmless tension between them as to who was in charge. Alex kept glancing over his shoulder for a taxi, and gave amusing descriptions of various expensive restaurants that he liked, in each of which he had already pictured the two of them dining in old-world gloom or unsparing post-modern glamour. Danny bounced along the pavement saying “Yeah” and “Sounds great” with indiscriminate enthusiasm. One or two of the places Alex listed had strong associations with Justin and with nights of memorable happiness or misery, and in either case seemed to offer the furtive prospect of an exorcism. Alex longed to reinhabit the disused wings of his life. He felt the tingle of benign power in having someone to pay for again.
In the taxi his hand lay on the seat in the early dusk between them; when he glanced forward he saw the wild pink aftermath of the sunset reflected in the wing-mirrors. The cab rattled along the length of the Park, with the windows down and a cool draught that took away the need to say anything much. At the lights they felt the brief proximity of roller-bladers under the trees, and the evening’s ordinary flux of pent-up energy and fatigue. When Alex looked quickly at Danny he saw something mischievous and self-absorbed in him that he hadn’t noticed in Dorset; the half-bottle of wine had freed him up surprisingly and in the running shadow and glare his face seemed coloured by suppressed or anticipated amusement.
They got out in Soho, where the cab was immediately taken by someone else and whisked off, leaving Alex with an odd subliminal feeling of no return. He’d forgotten how crowded the streets were, and wondered if in fact they had been quite so busy in the old days. Danny’s mobile phone rang, and he turned away to laugh and jabber into it, while Alex stood and was bumped into. There was something festive about the streams of people; but he felt he hadn’t yet entered the fun. He thought of his usual Saturday nights in Hammersmith, with only the noise of dinner-parties breaking up, and then the distant rumble of the Great West Road; and the weekend, once a month or so, with his parents near Chelmsford – the firm sympathetic grip they had on him since Justin had left.
“Come on,” said Danny. “Day-dreaming.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’ve got to try and find someone.” He took Alex’s hand, but people barged between them and he let go. He followed on, caught up with him, then was suddenly alone when Danny stopped to hug and kiss someone. Which was how it continued. He began to think they would never get to the end of Old Compton Street. Danny knew every beautiful or interesting-looking person who came towards them, and those he didn’t know were registered, with a raised eyebrow or turn of the head, for future investigation. A bar or cafe with its tables out on the street could take five minutes to get past while he squeezed in between the chairs, bestowed stooping embraces, sat briefly on people’s laps and uttered bursts of mildly hilarious nonsense, underpinned by casual hand-holdings and caresses. Alex couldn’t tell if he was a star or a mascot. “This is my friend Alex,” he said punctiliously to everyone, and several of them found the time to say “Hello,” or at least “Hi,” and give him a cursory upward glance, before getting on with their chat, during which Alex stood about with a distant but forgiving expression. He felt somehow provincial, and afraid of showing his ignorance. Words like Trade, Miss Pamela and Guest-list were produced and received with the gratified ennui accorded to a well-established ritual. Anecdotes of excess got the most laughs, and Danny himself carried one or two that he heard to the next little group, in an easy pollination of gossip. When he moved on he waved impatiently as if it was Alex who was keeping him waiting. “Come on,” he said. Alex knew already he would do whatever he said. He thought he was showing off by marking his place in this world so insistently, it was really quite childish. But then he saw his own childish longing to be known and greeted in a world other than a third-floor corridor in Whitehall.