Justin said, “I’ll probably buy a house.”
“Right…”
“They’ve finally sold Daddy’s place, so I’m swilling in money. There’s no rush, of course. I’ll have a look round while I’m here.”
Alex couldn’t imagine him doing anything so practical. The mention of Justin’s father lit a fuse, which he tried to stamp out, to the muffled explosion of a year ago, the awful week of his death and the funeral. “Where were you thinking of?”
“What’s Hammersmith like these days?”
Alex said, “I think you need somewhere more central,” rather quickly and frigidly.
“Anyway, we’ll see.” And Justin passed suavely to another question. “So how are things with Miss Daisy?”
“Fine.” Alex found that despite the openness about Robin there was something impolite and even treacherous in discussing his own new affair with his ex.
“Mmm?”
“It’s fine. I hope he’ll like the Dorset idea.”
“I should warn you that we’re hideously unpopular down there.”
“Since the party?”
“They weren’t mad about us before, but they loathe us now. There were formal complaints. PC Bertram Burglar came round and gave us a wigging.”
“Did he darling?” Alex was sorry to have missed that. “It was only noise, wasn’t it?”
“It was homosexual noise. That’s what they don’t like.”
“We were very tidy.” Alex remembered the time, about 4 a.m., the sky already paling, when they had all started clearing up obsessively; apparently it was an effect of the cocaine. Glasses were gathered and washed, bottles collected; disco-queens darted round with dusters and damp cloths, furniture was swiftly and exactly rearranged; he had found Danny in the lavatory, putting all the back-numbers of the Architectural Review into chronological order.
Justin said, “They don’t really know you, so you should escape the worst of the contumely.”
“I certainly hope so,” said Alex, tickled, lightly haunted, to hear that word again, which Justin had learned in an audition piece and kept on using with a variety of meanings.
“Mrs Dodgett is still with us, of course, and the Halls. The Halls are virtually outcasts too, but they only play Gregorian chant.” And following a clear process of suggestion Justin paused to refill his glass – Alex heard the clink of the ice and the joggling noise as it rose in the fizz of the tonic. “So you’re in love, are you?”
“Yes, I think so. I mean, I am. He does seem pretty keen.”
“Don’t keep too tight a rein on him,” Justin said impatiently, as if this was something he’d meant to get off his chest a year or more ago.
“No, darling.”
“Did Robin say anything about it?”
“He apologised again for what he’d said before.”
Justin seemed satisfied by that. “It came as a bit of a shock to us,” he said, in his parental mode. Then, “Is it an open marriage?”
“Certainly not. No, we’re living together. You know I’m incapable of an open marriage. He has every opportunity, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mess around.”
“He’s fully settled in at Brassica Road, then.”
Alex was a little exasperated by this. “Well, he has his own place, but mostly he’s here.”
“I’m just trying to picture it, darling. I’m rather jealous.”
“You don’t need to picture it, it’s nothing to do with you. Jealous of whom?”
But Justin laughed tremendously at that.
Afterwards Alex saw that he should be flattered by this vicarious interest. He had a quite pleasant sense of himself going up as Justin went down, and of being recharged in Justin’s eyes by his success with Danny. But then he saw that if Justin left Robin he would be on the loose again, and he felt a feebly possessive instinct realerted. He also thought wistfully how nice it would be, on top of all his other perfections, his sulky beauty and manic energy, those breathtaking sprints and tranced lulls, if Danny made him laugh like Justin did.
They didn’t travel down together. Danny, who was free to do so, went down the day before on the train, and had arranged to be met at Crewkerne by Terry; Alex wasn’t sure if he was paying him. He went disconsolately to a straight dinner-party in Wandsworth, in the house of contemporaries who seemed to him already middle-aged; he felt he had dropped a decade. He wanted to tell them about his new impromptu life, so remote from these pleasant predictable evenings, and he noted their nostalgia and worry when the talk touched on what their teenage children did, but he kept it to himself. He always took the young people’s side, which was droll for someone who worked in pensions. His last dinner-party had been a takeaway at Danny’s friend Carlton’s, where they sat on the floor and listened to techno. Techno was like house, but “harder,” as Danny said, and seemed to have no words or tunes in it; you could only have it on very loud. It wasn’t the perfect Tafel-musik, but Alex had loved crouching there and bawling his head off.
Danny rang early next morning, as excited as a child. “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” he said. “It’s fantastic down here. I’ve been up since six. It’s a fantastic day!”
“I’m just on my way, darling.”
“Good. I can’t wait to see you.”
“I’m longing to see you.” Alex laughed. “I do adore you, Danny.”
“Oh I love you so much,” said Danny, and rang off as if too elated to say anything else. Alex gazed at the phone with tears running down his cheeks and an aching erection.
He hardly noticed the three hours of the journey, they were eaten up by his thoughts and feelings. It was a hazy morning which clarified into stunning heat, and he roared along with the roof down in a private vortex of wind and sunlight. He sensed there were comparisons to be made between this journey to Dorset and the earlier two, but he left them luxuriously unexamined. The points on the route, turn-offs, sudden views, an ugly garage, cropped up with the stumbling fluency of something almost learnt, expected as soon as seen. When he came to the junction where an old white finger-post made the first reference to Litton Gambril his heart raced with proprietary emotion. He had to remind himself that the villagers were all against him; though when he drove past the church and the cottage gardens with their pink rose arches and the early lunch-time groups outside the Crooked Billet, he knew the place was nothing more than indifferent to him.
The gate was open and he ran the car in on to the bricks. Any moment he would have his first sight of Danny, perhaps leaping up through the garden to meet him – he jerked his bag out of the boot with a smothered smile as if already being watched. But there was no sign of him yet, there would be a tiny delay, which seemed worse, now Alex was here, than all the solitary hours before. Danny’s faded pink tank-top was hanging from the back of a deck-chair, a casual flag of occupancy.
The front door was locked, and Alex went round to the back; he heard Danny’s voice before he saw him and the knowledge that he wasn’t alone was like the small black cloud that briefly cheats a sunlover. He scowled to think some terrible bore had called in, to complain perhaps; or even that Danny had asked someone else to stay – he was startled at how his mind ran to that unlikely possibility. But it was only Mrs Badgett. She had her back to Alex, but Danny saw him and lost the thread of the talk as he looked past her and started smiling. “You remember Alex…”
“Hello Mrs Badgett.” For the moment he just nodded amiably at Danny, as if he knew all about him but hadn’t yet been introduced.
“Ah, there he is! I was just saying to Danny how you couldn’t keep away.”
“Not possibly,” said Alex rather archly.