The chain couldn’t have slipped off, whatever they were doing; it was too tight, and the pale stone mounted in the little pendant hung high on his chest. The reddish gold could simply have snapped, but it seemed unlikely, old and fine though it was. Looking at the night in which he had lost both his job and his lover’s antique gift he had a sense of himself as a person in a fable, caught up in a sequence of symbolic actions. He remembered inconclusively a story in which a fish swallowed a wedding-ring. And then he knew that that was what had happened. Luis had bitten through the chain, and swallowed it. All the kissing and biting of Danny’s neck had been a preparation for the theft, he could have made a dozen unsuspected attempts at it. Danny saw the glimpses of gold through saliva when he smiled, and recalled one odd po-faced stare when perhaps he already had it in his mouth and didn’t know if his action had been noticed. It made Danny shiver again, and then wonder if it could possibly be true.
TWELVE
The phone rang. “Alex, it’s Robin here.”
Alex was at work, and for a moment he thought it must be someone in the building. “Oh…”
“Robin Woodfield”
“Oh, Robin. I’m so sorry. Yes!” And he heard himself coming vocally to attention to meet the challenge of Robin and sustain himself at the right pitch of pretended friendliness.
“I hope it’s all right ringing you at the office. I can’t get through on Dan’s mobile.”
“Of course. I probably won’t be able to talk for long,” said Alex, proud and embarrassed at the same time to be coupled with Danny by his father.
“I’ll keep it short. It’s simply that we’ve got to spend the next two weeks or so in town, and we wondered if you and Dan would like to use the cottage for some of that time – all of it, even. I don’t know what your holiday arrangements are.”
“Gosh.” He hadn’t heard that smoothly unanimous “we” before, and felt the force of it like the buffeting air of a passing limousine. He said, with a critical kind of modesty, “Well, I can’t speak for Danny. But it sounds a lovely idea.” He glanced at his secretary – it was the first time he’d mentioned his new boyfriend in the office – but she seemed unshaken by it; though she must have noticed, he certainly hoped she’d noticed, his general rejuvenation and hip new taste for life. “I’ll ask him later. And one or other of us will give you a ring.”
“Fine.” There was a pause, in which Alex flicked through various pointless possible topics. All he said was,
“It’s very kind of you,” with a certain suggestion that he didn’t expect kindness. But Robin was saying,
“And again, I’m very sorry about what I said at the party. I wasn’t in my right mind, I’m afraid.”
“Well, none of us were.”
“No…You must have thought I was mad. I think I am going a bit mad,” said Robin, with such candour that Alex felt it must be an act.
“I’m sure you’re not,” he said firmly; he did think Robin’s behaviour worryingly erratic, every time he saw him he did something you might call mad, but he didn’t want to give him that excuse. “Don’t worry, I can hardly remember it myself.” What Robin had said was, “Christ, Dan, you can’t be serious.”
Alex thought again about that “we” when he got home. For a long time the idea of Justin’s being half of another couple had been so painful to him that he shut it out with a heavy black drop, like the curtain that comes down in the interval with “For thine especial safety” written on it. Things had slowly improved, although the moment of turning back the duvet retained its charge of inadmissible misery; he took to sleeping diagonally, so as to occupy both sides of the bed. That first weekend in Dorset had made him almost hate his own loyal, retrospective nature. But since the night at Chateau so much had changed, change itself became beautiful to him, and he looked at Justin’s new life with casual fondness and scepticism.
Even so, the “we” had lightly winded him. He changed out of his suit into shorts and a T-shirt, put on the washing-machine, which he thought Danny could well have done earlier, opened a bottle of Sauvignon and went to sit in the garden. The palette-pricking gooseberry of the wine was a phenomenon, and he commented on it in an undertone, in a knowing day-dream that Danny was also there. And that, he supposed, was the point: how much Danny wasn’t there, and how far he was from the legitimate use of a “we” himself. Danny needed air and distraction. Alex groaned with wonder at the thought of a week with him in the country, but he hardly dared put the plan to him.
This evening Danny was seeing his friend Bob, a handsome Jamaican who had shocked Alex at the party with his assertion that at thirty-one he had never been in love. Alex had cross-questioned him in a coke-fuelled harangue and clutched at his arm until Bob clearly thought he’d fallen in love with him. “We young ones don’t fall in love,” he said, with a large emotionless smile. “Oh yes we do,” said Alex gamely. Bob’s auntie was an air stewardess, and often swallowed fifty or sixty small packets of cocaine before a flight back from Kingston. Danny was supposed to come home with something tonight, and Alex was so excited by the idea, and by the matter-of-fact criminality to which Danny had introduced him, that he persuaded himself it wouldn’t happen.
Of course it was difficult for young people – really young ones. Nobody could quite explain it, but it seemed to be impossible for Danny to have a proper job. Robin didn’t help him much – there was surprisingly little family money. Alex thought Danny’s whole upbringing had been so dispersed, back and forth between schools and colleges in England and America, that it had somehow affected his powers of concentration; or maybe it was an early diet of Class A drugs that was responsible. There was something almost self-mortifying in the jobs he did take on; and he had left two of those since Alex had met him, and was moodily disinclined to explain why. The phone was ringing and Alex hurried inside.
“Darling, it’s your erstwhile lover,” said Justin.
“Um…who would that be?” said Alex vaguely.
“Very funny, darling. Now look, have you heard from Robin?”
“Yes.”
“And are you going to go down to Hinton Gumboil and mow the lawn?”
“I don’t know yet. Is mowing the lawn part of it?”
“It’s the essential part, darling. I’m amazed he didn’t mention it. There will be a list on the draining board – hedging and ditching, topping and tailing, mopping and mowing…”
Alex laughed tolerantly. “I don’t mind all that.”
“Because as you’ll have gathered we’re going to be away for a couple of weeks, and frankly without my incessant attention the garden will become a mess.”
“Yes of course. I can see that. You’ll be in Clapham, will you?”
“Well, he will. I’m in the Musgrove.”
“How do you mean?”
Justin paused. “Ah. He didn’t tell you.”
“We only spoke for a moment.”
“We’re having a trial separation, darling.”
“Good god…Are you all right?”
“Things have been hopeless lately, as you can’t have failed to notice.” There was a large swallowing noise – not emotion, Alex realised, but gin. “Frankly, I think it’s over. But I’ve agreed to have a further think. So I’m doing it in the Musgrove, which is marvellous. He doesn’t know where I am, by the way. I’m just having a pre-dinner drink.”
“Where is the Musgrove?”
“Don’t you know it? It’s just next to Harrods. I’m the youngest person here by about forty years. It’s where old lady dons stay. They all wear brown felt hats in the dining-room. I think a lot of them are lesbians. I mean real lesbians – you know, female ones.”
“Well, I don’t know what to say.” Alex was surprised to find his scepticism so quickly vindicated, and surprised at how he felt for his old friend, when it should have been Robin he identified with. Justin was clearly quite drunk; he pictured him in this funny hotel – the elderly side of his character. He thought he must want company.