The Spell (7 page)

“Anyone for coffee?” said Robin loudly. “Or homegrown borage tea…?”

“Come and sit on my knee,” said Justin, pawing vaguely at Danny’s passing leg.

“I’m a bit busy at the moment, Justin. Doing the clearing up.”

Justin mulled this over for a moment. “Well it’s awfully good of you to do that,” he said.

Alex reached across to top up people’s water-glasses. “Have you got Justin to do any housework or things like that yet?” he asked Robin.

“Oh no,” said Robin hastily. “I sometimes wonder if he’d like to. He watches
me
doing housework with what seems to be genuine interest, but I think without any real confidence that he could ever learn to do it himself.”

Justin smiled past them forgivingly. He didn’t know at the time why he had invited Alex down, except out of restlessness and a loose desire for trouble. But it was satisfactory to bring the two main men in his life together, and watch them politely squaring up and backing off, Alex with his Scottish dryness and hot hurt feelings, Robin with his well-bred charm and hints of sexual ruthlessness. He liked the power he had in knowing these two men as he did, the faces under their faces that were only visible in the light of their desire for him. There was a surplus of power, with its delicious tendency to corrupt. He looked at Danny, stooping to stack the dishwasher, the loose singlet hanging off his lean young shoulders. “Hey-ho,” he said, lifting up his glass. “Country life.” “Country life,” said Robin, taking it defiantly as a toast; while Alex looked on with the old anxiety at Justin’s menacing changes of tack and private ironies.

“There’s the most marvellous pig in the village,” Justin said to him. “I must take you to see it. It’s probably the most interesting thing
in
the village. It’s an enormous great big pig.”

“Really.”

“Of course. You’ve seen it, haven’t you, Danny?”

“I’m too busy for that sort of thing” remained Danny’s line, and Justin saw him glow when it drew a mild laugh. Well of course the other two were going to look after the boy.

“We could go and see it now, but it’s probably got its pyjamas on,” Justin said, as if dealing with a very young person indeed.

“Let’s just stay here,” said Robin quietly.

But Justin got up anyway, and wandered out through the open back door to have a pee under the remote supervision of the stars.

It was a night blacker and more brilliant than any you ever got in London, even up on the Heath; and there there were warmer, moving shadows. Justin shivered, in the faint chill of nearly midnight. He longed for crowds and the purposeful confusion of the city; he wanted shops where you could get what you wanted, and deafening bars so full of men seeking pleasure and oblivion that you could hardly move through them. It was deadly still here, apart from the dark chattering of the stream. A bat or something flickered overhead. He thought there were the great high times, the moments of initiation, new men, new excitements; and then there was all the rest. He turned back towards the lighted door. Only candlelight, but a subtle glare across grass and path. He thought resentfully of how this wasn’t his house; it had been patched and roofed and furnished to please or tame another partner.

His new thing of fancying Danny was rather the revelation of this evening, and he had let his imagination run all over him while his two lovers trailed through their protracted routine of shared sarcasms about himself. He still found it uncomfortable that his boyfriend had a son, as though it showed a weakness of character in him. Justin hated weakness of character. He needed his lovers to be as steady in the world as they were in their devotion to him. He found himself apologising that Robin was not a more famous or original architect. And Danny himself was rudderless, doing bits of work here and there, sharing a house that smelt of smoke and semen with various other young pill-poppers and no-hopers; and yet always giving off an irritating sense that he knew where he was going. But tonight the freshness of him was abruptly arousing, the blue-veined upper arms, the fat sulky mouth with its challenge to make it smile and the little blond imperial under it, and the crotch thing, of course, the packet, which was the first and final arbiter with Justin, and qualified and overrode all other feelings and judgements. “Like father, like son,” he said, with evident if uncertain meaning, as he thumped back into his seat.

“Now who wants to play Scrabble?” said Robin. He swept the crumbs from the table in front of him and smiled irresponsibly.

Alex looked ready to play, but ready too for Justin to say, “You lot have a game. I’m far too dyslexic tonight.” In fact he could read and write perfectly well, even though certain words were liable to slippage: shopfitter, for instance, he always saw as shoplifter, and topics as optics, and betrothal as brothel. Last week, in a glance at one of Robin’s plans, he had seen the words MASTER BOREDOM.

“I’m not playing,” said Danny, with anxious firmness, and wiped the draining-board and plugged in the kettle.

Justin said, “Why don’t we play Alex’s Encyclopaedia game? Alex invented it, it’s marvellous.”

“Okay,” said Robin, in a tone of fair-mindedness tinged with pique that his own game had not been preferred. “What is it?”

Justin bowed his head to Alex, who gave a tentative explanation of the rules. “It’s based on the idea of a multi-volume dictionary, like the
OED
or something. You have to make up the names of the volumes, like “Aardvark to Bagel,” that sort of thing. Except that they have to describe the other people you’re playing with. Then they’re all read out, and you have to guess who they are. It’s not a game anyone can win, it’s just a bit of fun.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Justin said, and watched Robin’s rapid competitive assessment of the idea.

“You could get two points if you guess right,” Robin said, “and one point if you wrote the definition.”

“I suppose so,” said Alex.

“Actually it’s not fair on Alex,” Danny said, “as he only really knows Justin.”

Justin said, “It doesn’t matter, because he’ll be nice about everybody.”

Robin went to a drawer for scrap paper and a handful of chewed pencils and biros, and picked up a fine Rotring pen for himself. Alex said, “Okay, so you can only go two letters ahead. You can have “Awkward to Cuddle,” say, but not…”

“But not “Back to Front,”” said Justin. “Or “Bad to Worse.””

“Oh, I get…” said Danny.

Robin looked round at them all. “Presumably one also does oneself?” And then smiled secretively.

Justin watched them as they pondered and scribbled and crossed things out. Occasionally one of them would catch the eye of another. Alex coloured slightly when Danny caught him looking at him; but Robin held Danny’s gaze for several seconds and then looked away impassively – it was the bridge training that made even a game of Scrabble so steely, and filled Justin with an urge to cheat or deliberately misunderstand the rules. Danny frowned touchingly over his piece of paper, and when he had written something down looked at it sideways to judge the effect. Robin was already tearing his paper into separate strips, while Alex sighed and smiled weakly, and wrote nothing down at all, as if stumped by politeness and anxious responsibility for the game.

When they were all ready they put their efforts into a bowl, and Robin drew a grid to record the marks according to his own system. Justin felt confident of winning, and knew the mixture of vanity and acuity required. He wasn’t sure how the Woodfields would play; as it happened the first two entries read out, “Devoted to Drink” and “Architect to Aristos,” were by Danny, and showed a rather bald approach. Justin took a chance on “Homage to Industry” being a gibe at himself, and had no doubts about “Beautiful to Behold,” since he had written it, though Alex incautiously said he thought it referred to Danny. Overall Alex’s contributions were embarrassingly candid: “Irresistible to Justin” (Robin), “Slow to Understand” (himself) and “Hard to Improve (on”), which sweetly turned out to allude to Justin; “Born to Disco” presumably encapsulated the one thing he had yet found out for sure about Danny. He looked a little crestfallen at Danny’s tepid compliment, “Interesting to Know,” and thought that “Far to Go” must be about himself (it was Danny’s lonely self-description); it chimed somehow with Robin’s blandly distant attempt at Alex, “Ready to Travel.”

The mischief was short-lived but left them all feeling tender and stupid. They sat for a while picking through the discarded papers, wondering what Justin had been getting at with his palm-reader’s “Prelude to Romance” (for Danny) and his inscrutable “Made to Measure” (for Alex). Robin did a recount of the scores, because Justin had won by such a large margin, while he had tied annoyingly with Alex. “I thought my “Pillar to Post” was rather good,” he said. He doodled heavily over the grid, until it looked like the plan of a herb-garden.

“That’s enough games,” said Danny, and stood up to do something.

“Have you got a boyfriend at the moment, darling?” asked Justin.

Danny turned and looked at him, with hands on hips. “I’ve got quite enough trouble with my dad’s boyfriend, without getting one of my own, thanks very much,” he said; though as he came past he leant over Justin and gave him a squeeze, hand into shirt-front – and Justin thought he had a nice cosy way with him after all, with his unplanned, almost meaningless little clinches. He reached up to him as he slipped away, and again caught something more than mere noticing on Alex’s face, an involuntary interest, a protesting glance. He said,

“Alex would make you a super boyfriend.”

“I’m sure he would,” said Danny, breezily but not impolitely.

“You’re like me, darling, you need someone older to look after you. I know Alex is rather shy and sensitive, but he’s got plenty of money and a comfortable house and a sports car -and in bed…well-”

“Please!” murmured Alex.

“It’s the leverage he gets with those long legs…”

There was a knock at the door-frame. “Am I interrupting?” A broad-faced young man with slicked-back dark hair came hesitantly out of the night. He wore painter’s dungarees over a blue T-shirt, with the bib unbuttoned on one side, and scruffy old gym-shoes. The effect was authentic, but you felt he was exploiting it. “I’m just on my way to my mum’s,” he said, with the distinctive vowels of the place.

“Come in, Terry,” said Robin; and Danny ambled over to him and squeezed his arm.

“Have a drink, Terry,” said Justin gruffly. And so a chair was found for him and a glass, and the bottles were lifted to the light and tilted to see if any wine was left.

“I’m surprised you’re not busy on a Saturday night,” said Robin, in what seemed to Justin an equivocal way. Terry was a local factotum and Romeo, with a family interest in the Broad Down caravan park, a famous eyesore on the other side of Bridport, as well as a vaguer association with the pretentious Bride Mill Hotel.

“I’ve been doing some work for Bernie Barton,” said Terry. “Papering his back room.”

“Do you mean PC Barton Burton?” Justin enquired.

Terry was uneasy with Justin’s humour, and said merely, “Whatever you say,” and grinned at the others for solidarity.

“Been over to the Mill lately?” asked Robin, in a tone that irritated Justin. “How are the prices doing? Still £35 for fish and chips?”

“Something like that,” said Terry. “Cheers” – taking a cautious drink and then laughing retrospectively. “Or it may have gone up.”

What was annoying was the slightly roguish joviality, the way Robin’s own vowels became ambiguous, half-rusticated, a sort of verbal slouch as if to disclaim their differences in age and class. He should be what he is, thought Justin, who was not too drunk to know that his annoyance was sharpened by guilt. The present impromptu occasion was a test for Terry as much as himself. He didn’t know how practised Terry would be at deceit, and it was perhaps his own snobbery to assume that a Londoner would do better at concealing a transaction like theirs. He was far cheaper than the London boys too, and Justin believed in general that what you paid more for must be better. He should have given him a larger tip. Glancing at him now, with his forearms and broad brow already pinky-brown from the sun, Justin felt the sweet bite of his addictive nature, and looked forward to other mornings when Robin had gone to Tytherbury and left him in the waking surge of hangover lust.

“This is Alex, by the way,” said Danny.

“How do you do?” said Terry, half getting up to shake his hand across the table.

“Do you live near by?” said Alex feebly.

“Very near by,” said Terry, with a genial laugh at his ignorance. “No, my mum lives up here, in the back lane.” He tipped his head backwards. “I can slip in through the back gate.”

Justin wondered how artless all this talk of back bedrooms and back lanes was. He said, “Mrs Doggett grows marvellous delphinia.”

Terry frowned at this, in the suspicion that it was another joke. “She’s won some prizes,” he said. “It’s Badgett.”

Justin himself was slow on the uptake – it was a genuine confusion, arising perhaps from Doggett’s Coat and Badge, a pub on Blackfriars Bridge where he had lost several evenings with a randy young sub from the
Sunday Express
. He thought there was no point in apologising.

“You don’t need any jobs doing?” Terry asked with a vague head-shake.

Justin said, “Robin’s famous for doing all his jobs himself.”

There was a little pause. “Are you running the disco this year?” said Robin, as though it was an event he especially looked forward to.

“Yeah, I expect so, come the holidays, come July,” said Terry quietly, and continued to nod at the difficulty of the task and his readiness to perform it. Justin could see his blue briefs through the side-pocket of the dungarees. Nothing else underneath then.

“We’ll have some great music for my party,” said Danny, leaning forward from the other side and resting a hand on Terry’s thigh in a split-second enactment of Justin’s own fantasy. “You’re all invited,” he went on, apparently making it up on the spot. “Two weeks’ time, right here. That’s cool, isn’t it, Dad?”