EIGHT

‘TERROR GRANNY HALTS THE EYE’ – Guardian

‘KNITWIT NEEDLES LONDON’ – Daily Mail

‘GREAT BALLS OF WOOL!’ – Sun

I spread the papers over the breakfast table. Elspeth’s coverage was quite extensive. If she’d left her knitting outside Tesco on Heath Street she’d have got a small para on Page 12, but she’d gone for an iconic target on her first time out. You had to hand it to her.

I wasn’t sure whether to show her or not. She’d refused to have a telly in her wee flat. A cesspit of stupidity she’d called it, an insult to the genius of John Logie Baird. But she was addicted to what she called the Home Service, so I imagined she’d have heard at least some of the fuss. Her first night out in London had been quite something; causing a major bomb scare, waltzing with the King Of Croon. I’d pop over later and see if she was okay.

Though it was past ten, I was breakfasting alone. Faisal, usually up with the rooks, hadn’t yet emerged from the spare room. I’d heard him come in at god-knows-when, soon followed by the retching, honking and flushing. So how was I going to deal with last night then? I considered the options over my salty porridge. Option One was to delete it from my memory and go forward as if nothing had happened. Option Two was the wounded fawn rou-tine. Option Three was the all-guns-blazing, tits-out row. Which road would the well-balanced, anger-managed person have taken, the one Ms Prada would have applauded? Probably Option One, realizing that the other party is as flawed as oneself and forgiving them. Except hang on, Faisal was Mother Teresa wasn’t he? He wasn’t supposed to have flaws; his job was to point out mine. Option Two, the sad victim number, exposed your vulnerability, letting them know they had the power to hurt you. A dodgy strategy but with the possible advantage of speeding the healing process and walking into the sunset hand in hand. Or there was Option Three, which could make things infinitely worse, the immature, pointless and stupid option. I just loved Option Three.

‘About a thousand quid, give or take a tenner.’

‘Sorry?’ said Faisal, who’d just crept up the glass staircase and headed for the Douwe Egberts.

‘The invoice from the London Eye. What your birthday shindig cost me last night.’

‘Wow,’ he said, his eyes half-shuttered against the morning sun. ‘Big hug. Very grateful.’

‘Really? Then why did you fuck off?’

He grimaced; but there was resignation in it. Like when the dentist finally hits the nerve; you know it’s coming but it still hurts.

‘Don’t put it like that, Rory. The evening had been a bit spoiled for everyone, so when Ruby suggested going on somewhere, I felt I had to go.’

‘I realized your dilemma, Faisal,’ I said, ‘but the nasty truth is that your buddies didn’t want me, or any of the other oldies, along. It was hanging in the air like one of Vic’s farts. And you smelt it didn’t you? Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m wrong. You had a choice to make. Right there, right that second. And you chose to go with them.’

He came over to the table with the cafetière and his bowl of organic muesli.

‘Yes I know,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve been lying awake half the night.’

‘Bollocks. You’ve been snoring half the night,’ I said. ‘Look Faisal, if you’re going to dump me sooner or later, because of the age thing or any of my other inadequacies, then do it sooner and let’s get it over with.’

‘Oh Rory, stop over-reacting. I don’t care about the age thing.’

‘Well you let it separate us last night, a night when we should have been together. Was that fat cow Ruby behind it then?’

‘Hey, that’s not fair.’

‘Fair? She wasn’t very fair to me. Before she’d even met me, she’d decided I wasn’t right for you. Is that the vibe the others were giving you too? Last night, I felt like a poodle on parade at Crufts. I obviously didn’t get very good marks either.’

Faisal sprinted from the table and deposited his organic muesli into the sink. I flung open a window. I knew I should probably stop there but I also knew I couldn’t.

‘I’ve committed myself to you Faisal,’ I yelled at his heaving back. ‘Do you have any idea how long it is since I did that?’

He pulled his head from the sink and dabbed his beard with kitchen roll.

‘Committed? Really? So what about that night last month when you came home smelling of piss? And … and … if you’re so committed to me, how come your profile is still on fucking Dinkydudes?’

Oh dear. Faisal never ever swore.

‘I forgot to take it off. And why were you on there anyway?’

‘Checking to see if you were, and yes, there you still are! “Scotstud. Age Forty.” Ha! “Looking to play with like-minded guys. No holes barred. I don’t bite unless you want me to.” I know it by heart. And don’t tell me you forgot to remove it. That site shows when the user last logged on. You were there three days ago.’

He was glaring up at me, tugging at his beard, oblivious to the bits of sick still nesting there.

‘You walked away from me last night Faisal,’ I blustered back. ‘You walked away.’

I swept the cafetière off the table; I’d always been one for the grand gesture. Unfortunately, the contents sprayed all over a Berber rug that Faisal had owned for years and was very fond of. But I didn’t care. No, that’s not honest. At that moment, I was happy to be causing him pain.

I flew out into the East Court, slamming the door with such force that some dozy doves having a lie-in came wheeling out of the Clock Tower and precision-bombed the Merc. I tripped over a reel of cable an electrician had left there days ago. I snatched it up, tracked him down in the Gilded Hall and flung it at him. He walked off the job on the spot. Fine. Fuck him. I roamed the house, looking for people to growl at. Robin Bradbury-Ross was up a ladder in the Chapel cleaning one of the fat marble putti on the reredos. A pile of mucky tissues was scattered on the floor, as if he’d been changing its nappy.

‘We need to talk about the lift my sweet,’ he called down. ‘English Heritage has more issues.’

‘I thought we’d resolved all those,’ I shouted up. ‘Over that desk in the Library? Don’t you remember?’

‘I remember all right,’ he smiled, ‘but Simon Jenkins has written a letter.’

‘Fuck Simon Jenkins.’

‘Who’s a grumpy girl today then?’ he yelled at my back.

I strode outside to the Great Fountain and threw pebbles at my new Koi carp till it struck me that they might be traumatized; they’d cost an arm and a leg. I sat down on a bench and did one of Ms Prada’s relaxation exercises. I had to imagine all my troubles trapped inside a cheery yellow balloon which I could then release and watch disappear into space. It didn’t work very well today, but the peace of the gardens helped. The re-seeded lawns were sprouting fast and the giant urns dotted across them were now inhabited by pyramids of box, fringed with purple pansies and white tulips. Along the perimeter walls, the lines of small topiary yews, sitting it out like matrons at a ball, had had their crinolines clipped and spruced up. Dolores Potts had made order out of chaos in an amazingly short time. Perhaps she could teach me the principles so I could apply them to my life.

‘Would you fancy a wee walk out on the Heath?’ asked a voice just behind me. That had always been one of Elspeth’s tricks; materializing suddenly beside you like Mrs Danvers in Rebecca.

But Elspeth’s wee walk turned into a marathon. After a lifetime of climbing hillsides up to her arse in heather, she took the pathetic undulations of Hampstead in her steely stride. It had warmed up into a lovely May morning and the place was knee-deep in psychotic roller-bladers and Filipino nannies with screaming brats. For a while we trekked along without talking. I didn’t feel much like chatting and she seemed to sense that, just like she’d always done.

I carelessly led her to the brim of Parliament Hill to take in the view. A mistake really, because it was impossible to miss the bloody London Eye. I asked how she was feeling this morning. She sighed. She’d heard the radio she said, but she’d already apologized to the ‘top brass’ before getting into bed and it seemed superfluous to repeat it to anyone of lesser rank like the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. She wondered if there was any way of getting her knitting back. I said I thought it best to let sleeping balaclavas lie.

We turned and wandered up the east side of the Heath to the wedding-cake walls of Kenwood. The only empty bench was engraved with the words ‘In fond memory of Augustus and Mollie Parker-Smith. They loved this view.’ It felt impertinent to sit down and block it, but I was tired, I’d not slept well. Elspeth announced an urge for ‘a wee pokey hat’, so I bought two small but outrageously expensive ice-creams. We licked in silence, contemplating the lake with its daft fake bridge. Past us paraded the matrons of Hampstead and Highgate, the ladies who strolled then lunched; huge hair, high heels, make-up you’d need to sand-blast off. I saw Elspeth eyeing them and wondered if, deep inside the soul of the spinster, there was a yearning for a facial, a mud-wrap and a couple of hours in Harvey Nicks with an Amex Platinum.

If I glanced over my shoulder I could see into Robert Adam’s sensational Library. At Mount Royal, only the Gilded Hall and the Saloon were in its league. But everything here seemed lifeless, a great dead house lying on a slab of grass. At least, I was saving Mount Royal from the cafés, the litter-bins and the ghosts of Augustus and Mollie Parker-Smith.

‘You’ve not had a good day so far, I’m thinking,’ Elspeth said eventually. Her flat was at right angles to ours and her windows were often open. She’d probably heard most of the row.

‘Well Rory Blaine, it’s not my place to comment so I will let the Lord do it for me. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And you’re not without trespasses I’d imagine.’

‘No, Miss Wishart.’

She could see I didn’t want to discuss it. She was an odd mixture old Elspeth; briskly insensitive one minute, the antennae of a Lakeland poet the next.

‘Tell me more about the last thirty years then,’ she said, changing the subject with a great crashing of gears. ‘I know the outline of course, but there’s not much room on a Christmas card is there?’

So I found myself on an unexpected canter across my five years in Australia, making a name as a hot kid-copywriter, winning every award going, then getting an offer I couldn’t refuse from a big agency back in London, at that time the world capital of creative advertising. I told her about starting up Blaine Rampling and gradually becoming a big cheese in the business. Elspeth listened with slightly baffled attention.

‘And did all that make you happy?’ she asked. Calvinists always cut to the chase.

‘When I was younger it was fun, glamorous even. Sometimes you even think it matters, then it dawns that it’s not much of a job for a grown-man.’ 

‘Well at least you made your own way,’ she said. ‘Most lads who left Glenlyon had it all mapped-out for them. Not you though. I used to worry whether you’d sink or swim.’

‘Oh I soon became a swimmer, Miss Wishart.’

‘A lonely thing though, swimming on your own, is it not?’

‘No need to weep for me Miss Wishart,’ I smiled. ‘I had a nice lawyer who administered my trust fund. And you’d always been kind to me too. I’ve not forgotten that.’

‘Och that was just my job.’

‘Well you did a good job for me,’ I said. We were both awkward now, neither of us much use at this sort of stuff, our eyes fixed firmly on the pampered pooches with private medical insurance skittering around fetching balls. Elspeth broke the silence.

‘And what happened to you becoming a real writer? That was your dream was it not?’

‘I got waylaid,’ I said, a tad sharply, the old self-loathing kicking in. Nobody had ever asked me that before. Nobody else knew of course.

‘A question in return?’ I said ‘I’ve always wanted to ask it. What happened to you becoming a real mother?’

I froze. Fuck. The censorship mechanism between thought and word had crashed totally. Miss Wishart had never tolerated the smallest impertinence and this was off the scale. I tensed myself to take the blow, but none came.

‘I wasn’t able to have children,’ she said. ‘I had an illness as a lass which put paid to that. In those days, that was a cause of shame. It put men off you.’

‘I’m really sorry. Was there never anyone who didn’t mind that?’

‘My list of suitors was hardly extensive,’ she replied. ‘Lana Turner I was not. Anyway, my misfortune was common knowledge on the island. My father had seen to that. With my mother gone, he wanted to keep me at home.’

‘Bastard,’ I said.

‘Language, Rory Blaine,’ she clucked ‘No, he wasn’t really. My looking after him, supporting him in his ministry, he just never thought that might be less than totally fulfilling.’

She told me about an American sailor from the Polaris base on the Holy Loch. He’d come to her father’s kirk one Sunday on a big motorbike, then every Sunday after that. Charlie was his name. He’d been tubby, funny, kind. Once he’d brought a spare crash helmet and they’d zoomed all over the island. Aged twenty, Elspeth had fallen in love. It had probably shown in her face, she said. The Reverend Wishart had taken Charlie to one side. But Charlie had told him he didn’t care that Elspeth couldn’t have children because he’d no intention of proposing to her or anyone. Then he’d taken her for a long ramble, explained that he respected her very much and would always be her friend but that he wasn’t the marrying kind. Soon after, he’d been sent back to Georgia. He’d written regularly for a while, then it had stopped. Eventually a letter had arrived from Charlie’s sister. Charlie was dead. They’d found him in a park in a seedy quarter of Atlanta, far from where he lived. Beaten to a pulp. Nobody among his family or friends could figure out what he’d been doing there.

Soon afterwards, Elspeth had seen the small ad in The Lady and Glenlyon had become her true home for the next forty years. Her father had never quite forgiven her.

‘In short, I’ve not been a person very much has happened to. As I told Mr d’Orsay last night by the river, I’m just Miss Wishart, school matron, retired. Not a lot else to say.’

We returned their eternal view to Augustus and Mollie Parker-Smith. Outside the gates of Kenwood, the sun was surpassing itself for mid-May and only the shyest of breezes dared ripple the blossom in the house-trained gardens of the stockbroker villas. After we’d passed The Spaniards pub Elspeth, without warning, veered off into the West Heath. Come on, she said. She loved the woods, just like a fairy tale. She never spoke a truer word. On a fat old Falstaff of an oak somebody had spray-painted the word ‘cock’ underlined by a helpful arrow.

The woods were quite dense here, the treetops wrapped round each other in a tangled skein of branches, grasping for the light. Down below, the sun, diffused by the foliage, was no more than a hazy yellow wash. But if Elspeth had been seeking a sylvan idyll, she’d been mistaken. There were just as many bodies here as at Kenwood and all of them better toned. A West Highland terrier raced up to our ankles, stumpy tail throbbing.

‘Och, it’s a wee Westie,’ beamed Elspeth. ‘What’s that in his mouth?’

The dog obediently dropped his grubby trophy for our inspection; a pair of top of the range Calvin Klein underpants. 

‘Dearie me,’ said Elspeth. ‘Why would anybody leave those here?’

‘Shall we turn back?’ I asked hopefully.

‘Jings no, come on.’

The pathways of the West Heath interlaced like a bucolic Spaghetti Junction where men circled endlessly without any interest in finding an exit. Some, with the confidence to present themselves for more considered perusal, might create a tableau in the style of Manet or Seurat, lolling under a tree, pin-spotted by a shaft of sunlight, with a Pret A Manger baguette and decaf latte, perhaps even a slim volume of romantic verse. Though it wasn’t quite sun-bathing weather yet, most had their shirts off and I wondered how long it’d take Elspeth to register the infinitely higher concentration of nipple-rings than at Kenwood. As we ploughed deeper into the wood, it became necessary to tread with more caution. Among the long-dead leaves were used condoms, torn sachets of lube and tissues crumpled up like dirty snowballs. I saw Elspeth blushing, so I did too.

And it was then that I saw him.

Hanging by his arms from the low branch of a beech was a tall, thin, crop-headed man in aviator shades, naked but for a microscopic pair of cut-off denim shorts. I told myself it couldn’t possibly be but, shades or not, I knew instantly that it was. The same body, the same tilt of the head, maybe even the same cut-offs. Jesus Christ. Across nearly thirty years and several oceans, it was my Lancelot, my Cruel Deceiver, my Man That Got Away. It was Matty Rice. Of all the cruising-grounds in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine. The gastric reflux awoke from its slumbers. What did I do now? Grab Elspeth’s elbow and force her to change course or seize the opportunity to face up to the past, metabolize the pain and move forward as Ms Prada would wish me to do? I saw her serene fleshy face with one eyebrow lifted, challenging me to rise to the occasion.

I asked Elspeth to wait and walked over to the tree.

‘Hi Matty. How’s life?’

He dropped to the ground and smiled carelessly from behind the shades.

‘Hey mate. Where do I know you from? Here the other night?’

‘Sydney, 1982,’ I replied.

‘Cripes,’ said Matty. ‘Long time no see then. Lost your name I’m afraid.’

Even this close up, Matty looked pretty much as he’d done thirty years ago. Lean as a whippet, cheekbones you could hang your laundry on. But then he took off the shades to get a better look at me. That blew it. All those Joan Rivers jokes sprang to terrifying life. Matty had been under the knife. The grin was now a vaguely chilling version of the original. The lips I’d kissed so fiercely were plumper than before. He made Joan look like a Great Dane. He had to be pushing sixty by now.

‘It’s Rory Blaine,’ I said.

‘Ah yeah, that’s right,’ said Matty.

‘What are you doing in London?’

‘Just here for some fun and to check out a few rellies. Make sure I’m still in the will, you know? What you up to these days?’

‘Oh this and that.’

‘Sounds good mate.’

I couldn’t think what to say next. What do you say to a ghost? The morning on the beach when I’d first laid eyes on Matty Rice had been in another lifetime. He’d come trotting out of a sea-mist on a black horse, bare-chested, tanned as his saddle, a bandana round his shaven skull, in ripped white jeans. Honestly, no joke. I’d just turned nineteen, how was I supposed to resist? You don’t often get that in Perthshire.

I’d not long been in Sydney, the ultimate destination in my year-long whizz round the globe after I’d left Glenlyon. The money my parents hadn’t pissed or gambled away by the time they’d sunk to the bottom of Mallaig harbour had gone into a trust. It hadn’t been huge but big enough to let me wander off in search of fuck-knows-what. I’d not really known where I was going; only that the world was my oyster and that, in one context or another, I must make myself into some sort of pearl. I’d had no interest in university; I’d had enough of institutions. Anyway, I’d been average academically. Few subjects had made much impression, only the joy to be found in words had branded itself onto me. I guess it had started with Rory Blaine schoolboy comedian, polishing my arrows, and gone on from there. I became a junkie; books, plays, poetry, anything. But any vague notions of being a writer were just that; something to be thought about later. In the meantime, I’d ached for a new place to be. And I’d been dazzled by Australia. Not just by the light, the colour, the size, but by the roughness of it, the whole ‘Ocker’ thing. They were direct, unfiltered people, not unlike the Scots with class consciousness removed, and that had helped me feel at home. I’d taken to it like the proverbial duck. Then Matty’s black horse had come out of the mist.

On the surface, you’d have taken him for a one brain-cell beach-boy, but he’d turned out to be a teacher of backward kids, living in a small flat with a tortoise called Joan Sutherland. He used to cook me dinner and talk about his dream of opening his own school. The walls had been lined with photos of his family in Brisbane; though his father had beaten him up when he’d discovered his only son was a poofter. I could still see their faces. I could still see clothes Matty had worn back then. I could still see the bedroom where I’d been screwed for the first time. I remembered all this because I’d loved him.

During our time together, the places and people I’d come from had been airbrushed from my consciousness. Matty was my present and my future. He’d introduced me to the guy who gave me my first job as a copywriter. The pay had been about ten dollars but I’d turned out to be good at it, very good. It had been my start in the business, the start of my life proper as I saw it. The pearl had begun to form.

I’d have done anything for Matty Rice. Danced naked on top of the Opera House. Sheared a sheep. Moved into the wee flat with him and Joan Sutherland. But he’d never suggested that. When Matty wasn’t in the classroom or on the beach, he was in the bars. After about three months, the excuses had started, the calls not returned, then the fibs, then the rows. From Matty the anger, from me the tears. Back then it had seemed like a tragedy, now I knew it was just the usual farce.

‘Cripes, is it the custom here to bring your mum to these places?’ he asked, seeing Elspeth hovering behind me. ‘That’s kinda nice.’

She shook his hand cautiously with the expression she’d had when skirting the Durex Extra Strength. Matty explained he had a dodgy back and that his physio wanted him to hang vertically as much as possible to stretch the spine.

‘So I thought, why not do it where there’s fresh air and the chance to meet some like-minded people. It’s amazing who comes up to chat.’

I said our goodbyes as quickly as possible, Matty clearly unbothered about whether we bumped into each other tomorrow or never in this lifetime. I prayed it would be the latter. He trotted back to his branch and hung from it again, a sagging Tarzan.

‘By the way, did you ever open your school?’ I called.

‘I’m in real estate mate, have been for twenty years.’

‘The school for backward kids?’

Matty dropped back to the ground and peered at me again.

‘Christ, how did you know about that?’

It was like a punch in the face. I took Elspeth tightly by the arm and hurried her away. There was a shout.

‘Hey shit, I’ve remembered you now!’ he yelled, grinning the rictus grin. ‘All the best mate.’

I knew Elspeth could see something was wrong, but she didn’t ask. We walked on a short way then sadly, like Eurydice, she made the mistake of looking back.

‘Good Gordon Highlanders,’ she said.

Matty, hanging from his branch, head flung back, was enjoying a vigorous blowjob from a young guy in running gear. He’d not even bothered to wait till we were out of sight. But the young guy suddenly glanced in my direction. It was the Caravaggio boy, the kid crying under the lamp post that night I’d left the Soho bar. He stilled his bobbing head and held my gaze. I heard Matty demanding what his problem was, then Elspeth’s voice behind me.

‘Let’s get away from here.’

The beams of sunlight had melted away; the woods seemed drab and dank now. I saw Elspeth shiver. Neither of us spoke till we reached Whitestone Pond.

‘I suppose it’s the unfortunates who go there?’ she asked. ‘The ones who’ve not found anybody?’

I shrugged as if I didn’t know. I didn’t want to disabuse her of that notion, to tell her that lots of nice respectable people found places like this unbelievably exciting, a brief liberation from lives inhibited by conscience, religion, partners or wives. Nor was I going to tell her that some regarded it as an untouchable part of their human rights, a grubby Mecca to which every self-respecting gay had to make at least one pilgrimage. I wasn’t sure she’d be able to grasp the sophistication of that argument just after she’d had, presumably, her first glimpse of fellatio and been up to her knees in used johnnies.

‘Well I’m glad you’ve got a special friend,’ she said, ‘A good person I’m thinking. Worth holding onto.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Things are going pretty well on the whole.’

As we turned into Spaniards Road, Elspeth looked back towards the West Heath.

‘There’s work to be done here,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Work to be done.’

She was walking slowly now, not at her usual cracking pace, her gaze on the pavement. She said nothing more till we reached the East Court.

‘When Charlie’s sister wrote from America to tell me he was dead, the letter said they’d no idea why he’d been attacked. But I did. I knew. That was why I never wanted you, or any of the others, to follow in those footsteps. I thought maybe you could be stopped and re-directed along the right road.’

‘The Morag Proudie Plan?’

‘Aye,’ she sighed. ‘Didn’t work though, did it?’

‘I wanted it to work even more than you did, Miss Wishart,’ I said ‘But it never could. Life’s not always a matter of choice, you know.’

‘I’ve learned that now,’ she said. ‘The People’s Friend is getting quite progressive these days. But there’s still a choice in the way you lead that life, is there not Rory Blaine? I’d not want to think of you being like that man back there in the woods, being like an animal.’

She fumbled in her bag for her keys.

‘They could only identify him by dental records,’ she said without looking at me. ‘Och, it was such a nice face.’

*

Back in our flat, there was no sign of Faisal. I made myself a coffee and sat down by the big picture window. Alma the cat was curled up on the Berber rug. Faisal had tried to clean the stains and only made it worse. Where was he then? I wondered if I should go and see if his stuff was still in the wardrobes, but that seemed melodramatic. It was quiet in the flat. Not a sound from outside either. It was the workmen’s half-day. Elspeth would be preparing her frugal lunch, Vic taking his midday nap. Big Frankie had zoomed off to Brighton with the Gay Scooter Group. I could just see Dolores Potts digging in a distant flower-bed. I stuck my iPod in my ears; I’d been struggling to update my musical tastes so Faisal would stop mocking me. I was working on Kanye West and Lady Gaga at the moment. God, it was shite.

I wondered if Matty Rice was still hanging from his tree, just half a mile away. I let myself fantasize that tonight, in some hotel room, he might think of me, letting memories drift back, maybe even a regret or two? Yeah sure. He’d be in a club, cocaine up his nostrils, dancing his tired old tits off, clinging to that damned carousel. And why should I care anyway? It was all history. I’d long since vaccinated myself against the Matty Rices of this world by absorbing some elements of them into myself. Just like a flu jab. From then on, I’d been immune. I might decide to use them but they’d not been able to hurt me any more. Let them walk away if they wanted, let anyone walk away.

The Rory Blaine who’d flown first-class out of Sydney back to London wasn’t the one who’d sailed in five years earlier. By my early twenties, there were few traces of either the shy orphan from Kelvinside or the abandoned grandson from Mount Royal.; I’d shed them both like a snake-skin, drained their bruised blood and replaced it with something of a stronger proof. By then, the performance first sketched out at Glenlyon, the walk, the talk, the jokes, the costumes, had solidified into the role of a lifetime. The accent had been retained of course, more refined again now but still a crowd-pleaser on all continents. Amazing how, in the perceptions of many, the queer Scotsman remained an oxymoron. The Braemar Gathering had a lot to answer for.

Naturally, the great fucking irony was that by the time I’d perfected the performance, it was no longer necessary. Times had changed. The pretence had become pointless, shameful even, and there had been no denying the sheer relief of that. Gradually, I’d delivered my soliloquies of confession to the punters and found it made no difference. They still enjoyed the character and I’d seen no reason why I couldn’t play him forever. So the fear had begun to lift, slowly at first then more and more quickly till it had almost gone.

But the anger had never left me. That outrage at the dealing of the cards. The worst times were when, as happened now while I stared out of the window, the anger spun round and turned on me. Why, in the deepest part of me, could I still not manage to accept the damn thing? Like the world assumed I did and as everybody else seemed able to? Like Matty Rice always had, even all those years ago. Like Faisal had succeeded in doing, despite the greater taboos in his culture. Like Vic appeared to, despite the lavender marriage and the wiles of Lauren Bacall. Why couldn’t I even bring myself to discuss it with Ms Prada and make the bitch earn her money? She knew all about what happened with Granny, she’d got that out of me quickly, triumphantly almost, like a surgeon with a tumour. But I hadn’t let her get to the root of me yet. To the rogue and shameful cell. Once, I’d hoped that time itself might be a sufficient healer but the bad stuff was still in there. I knew it. Yet I allowed it to remain. What sort of tosser was that?

A wave of irritation rose and choked me. I considered throwing my coffee against the wall, but I’d already ruined the Berber rug today and the place would be a wreck at this rate. So I ripped off the iPod and threw Kanye West and Lady Gaga instead. It buggered the iPod but it did the business. I fetched the guitar from under the bed and treated Alma to my cover of A Man’s A Man For A’ That.

Faisal appeared at the top of the glass staircase, holding a big plastic container.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘You all right? Where have you been?’

‘Went for a walk with Elspeth,’ I said. ‘What’s that you’ve got?’

‘Heavy-duty carpet cleaner. Been to Homebase.’

We looked down at the Berber rug, like policemen examining a corpse.

‘Really sorry about that,’ I said. ‘Let me give you a hand.’

Faisal mixed the stuff into a basin of water and found two sponges. We got down on our hands and knees and began to scrub gently. We worked in silence for a few minutes, then he stopped and looked up at me.

‘Look, I just made a mistake. A bad one I know, but still just a mistake,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve so little experience of these things.’

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s see if we can sort this.’

And the two of us bent our heads again and kept on scrubbing.