The stars above Mount Royal, re-arranged by the Poor Clares, continued to shine down benignly upon us. All Vic’s press notices were excellent. In the Guardian, Polly Toynbee said she’d wanted to marry him since she was twelve and saw no reason to change her mind now. Countless bouquets arrived at the gates; Dolores turned his rooms into Kew Gardens and Big Frankie produced an Afro-Caribbean breakfast that occupied three trays.
At lunchtime, a statement was issued from Lambeth Palace and a copy hand-delivered to Mount Royal. The newly-appointed Primate Of All England, the youngest-ever incumbent, said that he ‘understood where his African brother was coming from’ and empathized with ‘the struggle to reconcile traditional values in a “whatever” world.’ He wanted to stress however that his brother’s views on chemical castration might be at odds with the Church of England’s policies on inclusiveness. He added that, though he and his wife were die-hard Spandau Ballet fans, he was sure they had a Vic d’Orsay CD somewhere in their collection. Vic was delighted and within the hour Big Frankie and the lilac scooter were roaring across Lambeth Bridge with Vic’s entire recorded oeuvre tied up with a pretty red ribbon.
I rang Ms Prada to tell her that I’d cried in Elspeth’s lap. Well I didn’t mention the lap actually in case she went careering off down the wrong track. She’d seen the media coverage and had been expecting a call.
‘Things are really moving,’ she said. ‘Come in tomorrow.’
Then, at last, Faisal phoned from Wales. He’d been shut up in his conference centre discussing lipoproteins and running up mountains. But now he knew what had happened. He spoke very softly, even for Faisal. He wanted to know why I’d not been in touch. Was I okay? I told him things were fine and not to worry.
‘It was my parents who told me,’ he said. ‘They’d seen the papers.’
‘Ah. What’s the reaction?’
‘Oh, they’re thrilled to bits. Just a bit disappointed that my name wasn’t mentioned.’
‘Seriously? Hey, that’s progress.’
I heard a long ironic exhalation, which was unusual because Faisal didn’t really do irony any more than he did jokes.
‘They’re hysterical, Rory. I’ve been summoned back to Slough. I’m just setting off now.’
‘Shite, what did your father say?’
‘A lot of stuff. None of it very nice and most of it at a high volume. He’s given me an ultimatum.’
There was a pause.
‘If I don’t leave Mount Royal, and you, he won’t ever speak to me again.’
*
There’s a glaring omission in The Man-Love Manual. Where’s the chapter on ‘Meeting His Mother’? Not a bloody word. Surely it’s more important than all the stuff on tantric massage, sharing a bathroom and the symptoms of syphilis rolled into one? I mean it’s a difficult area, right? Not only are you responsible for shat-tering the poor woman’s dream of grandchildren, but the chances of shopping together for a bra are minimal. The omission was regrettable because Mrs Khan had been my first ‘mother’ and I’d screwed it up good and proper.
The setting itself had not been conducive to success, a cramped corner table in a coffee-shop near Baker Street tube. I’d suggested the bar of the Groucho, which I always proposed when I couldn’t be bothered to think. Faisal had shaken his head in disbelief and also nixed tea at The Landmark. His mother would be more comfortable in a place she knew. The coffee-shop was where they met every Wednesday, on his afternoon off from the hospital. His father didn’t know, believing she was with a housebound friend. So there we were, surrounded by intense people jabbing at laptops and school-kids giggling into mobiles.
Faisal had told her about his new friend and she’d said she’d like to meet me. She’d been a sad-looking wee woman, dressed in a drab full-length Muslim thing with the headscarf to match. Not unlike a version of Elspeth in fact. But I’d been as nervous as she was and I’d over-compensated. I’d tried to kiss her hand, which was a major boo-boo. When the coffees arrived, I’d wit-tered on about my brief spell working on a Peruvian plantation and the subtleties of growing the arabica bean. Basically I’d given her the full charm offensive and it’d had the opposite effect. Her face had gradually frosted over like a car windscreen on a winter afternoon. Then, when she’d spilt her coffee, I’d made a loud fuss because the waitress had been slow in bringing a cloth and that had only made things worse.
I’d watched Faisal trying to dredge up subjects we might have in common, but the conversation had eventually floundered, gasped for breath and then expired. I’d ended up ogling a guy on the next table, while Mrs Khan gave Faisal the gruesome details of his Auntie Shazia’s radical mastectomy. She’d refused a second cup of coffee. She’d had to be getting back because Khan’s Tools & Hardware was having a sale of paints and Faisal’s father was coping on his own. We’d walked her across to the tube, her arm slipped through Faisal’s. She’d kissed him and shaken my hand from as far away as possible in case I’d tried any further intimacy. That was when she’d bowled the googly.
‘Are you a good man, Mr Blaine?’
‘Um, well, a work in progress at least.’
‘Will you be a good man to my boy?’ the little woman had asked as the commuters heaved around us. ‘I need to know that he has someone in his life who will look out for him. He tells me that it’s you. So I thank you for that. And you have a nice head of hair. That will stand you in good stead.’
Then she’d evaporated into the Circle Line.
‘Mum lives in a very small world,’ Faisal had said as we’d walked back to the car. ‘Just Dad, the family, the store. Today was a big step for her.’
‘And I messed it up.’
‘Next time try Force 2 instead of Force 8. She’ll cope a lot better.’
Faisal had come out to his parents about a year before we’d met. His precious father had said nothing, just got up and left the room. Then a letter had arrived at the hospital asking Faisal not to come home for the time being. The photo of their son the Oxford graduate had been taken down from its position above the shop counter. A few days later, Mr Khan had taken a swig from a bottle of white spirit instead of the mineral water standing right beside it on the counter. The white spirit had been on special offer. An unfortunate accident, the police said. For a few hours, it’d been touch and go. When Mr Khan had surfaced from the painkillers, his son was by his bedside. After that, it had never again been suggested that Faisal shouldn’t darken their door. Since then, he’d made a pilgrimage to Slough for Sunday lunch. While his mother washed up, he and his father would discuss the cricket. Faisal hated cricket, but every week he mugged up on it so he could debate the latest triumphs or disasters at Lord’s or Edgbaston.
‘That’s all we can talk about now,’ he’d told me. ‘Or what’s happening in the store or at the hospital. The rest of my life is firmly out of frame. There will never be any questions.’
Tonight, he’d texted me to pick him up off the Slough train at Paddington. He’d never done that before; Faisal rarely asked anybody for anything. I found him on the concourse, sitting on his suitcase. His hair and beard looked uncombed, the black Moschino jeans I’d bought him were crusted with Welsh mud. Instead of the usual bear-hug there was a tepid pat on the arm.
I suggested dinner at a gastro-pub nearby, but he wanted to go to Mamma Rosa’s. I hated Mamma Rosa’s. He’d taken me there a few times in our early days. In a parade of scruffy laun-drettes and mini-markets in Tufnell Park, it was a basic Italian joint; chequered table-cloths, faded prints of the Amalfi coast and a menu that Mussolini would have recognized. The only frills were on the cheesy shirts of the paunchy, middle-aged waiters. Its charm was totally lost on me, but Faisal had been coming here since he first went to the Whittington.
Tonight though, he could scarcely raise a smile when Mamma Rosa herself, an obese old biddy with a spiv’s moustache, pumped his hand and welcomed ‘Il Dottore’. He asked me to order for him and sat looking around at the other tables; mostly students or hen nights getting ratted on Lambrusco. It was bloody noisy. He watched me toying with an avocado that was as dry as the tits on an Egyptian mummy.
‘If a restaurant’s not been reviewed by Michael Winner, your swallow reflex just shuts down doesn’t it?’ he said.
‘Hey, that was in the foothills of being a joke, Faisal,’ I replied. ‘You must be really stressed.’
Questions about Wales got monosyllables in return. After he’d abandoned his saltimbocca half-eaten, I asked after his mother. He’d not seen his mother; not to speak to anyway. His father had ordered her to stay in her bedroom. Faisal had only glimpsed her peeking out from behind a curtain as he’d left the house.
‘But why wouldn’t he let you see her?’
‘It was Mum who saw the stuff in the paper about Mount Royal. I imagine she must have choked on her Rice Krispies and he wormed the whole thing out of her. I think he suspected I lived with someone, but he’d no idea where or with whom. Then she confessed she’d even met you as well. When I got there today, he went berserk, screaming abuse. He was shouting at Mum too, through the bedroom door. Said she’d betrayed him and the family.’
Mamma Rosa waddled up to our table with the pudding trolley and spent two full minutes describing the joys on offer. When we turned her down, her wee moustache pouted in disappointment.
‘So now it’s me or them?’
‘Basically,’ Faisal sighed. ‘The person my Dad assumed me to be was his achievement in life, his reward from Allah for decades of hard work and self-sacrifice. My son, the doctor. When I came out, it was like I’d stripped him of his medal. They could at least keep it from the rest of the family though. But any chance of my name getting in the news like this, well, shame, dishonour, the usual mantra.’
‘This ultimatum then …’ I said. ‘I assume you’ll tell them where to shove it.’
Faisal suddenly found the pattern on the floor tiles of consuming interest. On the next table was a trio of tarty women, huddling over bowls of steaming risotto like the Three Witches in Macbeth. Well past fifty, they all had long dyed blonde hair and dresses showing things that should no longer have been revealed. They’d just started a hellish rendition of Three Coins In The Fountain, but all I could hear was the silence coming from the rickety wooden chair beside me.
‘It’s not that simple,’ he said at last.
‘Of course it fucking is.’
Faisal gripped my forearm in his hairy wee fist and leaned forward till his face was inches from mine.
‘Rory, I love my Mum. I love my Dad too, in a messy sort of way. And he loves me; even though he’s behaving like a monster right now. You just don’t know what a family is. That’s why you’ve led a rudderless life.’
With Faisal, despite his saintliness, there were never any spoonfuls of sugar. And sometimes you need those. I’d have chosen somebody else to tell me I had three weeks to live.
‘You don’t know anything about my family,’ I snapped.
‘That’s because you’ve never chosen to share much of it with me.’
I couldn’t deny that. I’d only ever given him the settings and chief characters of my life; I’d always stonewalled on the twists and turns of the plot. So, as the Three Witches sequed into Arrivederci Roma, I told him everything there was to tell. The grip on my arm slowly relaxed then turned into a gentle stroking motion with the tips of his fingers. The Three Witches nudged each other and we became an object of interest.
‘Then you, of all people, can understand what losing them would mean to me?’ he said.
‘Listen Faisal, if you’re thrown over the cliff, you can either fall or fly. I flew. And the more you fly, the stronger you get.’
‘Ha! Is that really how you see yourself?’ said Faisal, giving me his first real smile of the evening. ‘Remember my friend Ruby? She just couldn’t understand why I was interested in you. The answer is that, underneath all the jokes and the cool guy bullshit, I thought there was a person worth knowing. I thought I might try giving him some affection and see if I could get through to him. But if you’re sitting here implying that you can get along quite well without love in your life, then I’m wasting my time, surely?’
I couldn’t think of an answer. Faisal looked at me for a long moment.
‘You’re not much of an advertisement for being an orphan, Rory, so please don’t try forcing it onto me.’
The Three Witches had stopped singing and were sipping their drinks, pretending not to listen in.
‘So do you love me, Rory?’ he asked.
One of the women leaned across to me, her lipstick smeared, her breath smelling of cheap wine.
‘Go on darlin’. Tell him you love him. There’s not enough of it in this world.’
‘Would you mind your own fucking business?’ I said, as amiably as I could. ‘Just piss off and treat us all to another song. I’m not answering the question until you do.’
I sat back, folded my arms and waited. There was a brief discussion of repertoire, so it was a minute or two before they got going on The Wind Beneath My Wings.
‘Well, Rory?’
‘I don’t honestly know. But I know that I want to.’
‘Okay,’ said Faisal.
‘Do you love me?’
‘As I just said, I want to give you love,’ he replied.
‘That’s not the same thing, Faisal.’
‘I know it’s not.’
‘Where do we go from here, then?’
There was a sudden commotion at the top of the stairs leading down to the kitchen. A waiter rushed over and begged ‘Il Dottore’ to come quickly; Mamma Rosa had collapsed. The waiters went round apologizing that no more food could be served. People moaned and groaned; a few left, the others grabbed at their compensatory bottles of wine. Flashing lights appeared outside; paramedics dived below. Then a stretcher, at an angle of about 60 degrees, was negotiated up the narrow stairs bearing Mamma Rosa. It looked like removal men dealing with an awkward sofa. Faisal came over, his brow damp with sweat.
‘Heart attack. A big one. I’m going in the ambulance.’
‘You have to?’
‘Not really, but I want to,’ he said. ‘She’s a nice old girl. Baked me a birthday cake once.’
‘Shame. We were having a pretty important discussion,’ I said, walking out with him to the ambulance. ‘But I understand.’
‘Oh yeah?’ he said.
Any answer to that was impossible. The sirens had started to scream and Faisal leaped into the ambulance like John Wayne into the saddle. In ten seconds it had vanished towards Archway, as if it had never been there at all.
Back inside the waiters, some of them tearful, busied themselves giving out more wine to people who didn’t care. I went back to our table and waited for the bill. The Three Witches took pity.
‘Gone off, has he, darlin’?’ asked the one with the smeared lipstick. ‘Come and have a glass with us. We’re in need of a handsome man at this table, even if he ain’t going to give us what we old girls need.’
The others cackled and made way for me to pull my chair in. Oh, what the hell.
‘He’s a doctor then, your boyfriend?’ said one. ‘Those dark lads usually are though, aren’t they? In their blood, like being able to dance, innit?’
‘I think you’re confusing Asians with people from the Caribbean,’ I said.
The Three Witches called for yet another bottle. During its consumption they mused on the origins of love; rejoicing in its ecstasies, bemoaning its pitfalls and illustrating their theses with lurid episodes from their past lives, much of which seemed to have been spent horizontally.
To my surprise, I heard myself telling them about the Khans and their ultimatum to their son. The Three Witches were disgusted. Live and let live, they said. One had a mother who’d been a dresser for Danny La Rue. Another had a brother in the Merchant Navy, who now lived with his friend on Hayling Island. The third lived next door to Asians who’d never even heard of Vera Lynn. Fuck the Khans, she said. We clinked glasses to that. The consensus though was that I should try to make a go of things with Faisal because, as they bluntly put it, he was a looker, had a well-paid job and at my time of life I’d be lucky to do much better. Besides, I’d be amazed how soon the day would come when I’d be glad of somebody to look after me. When I got up to leave, they took my pic on their mobiles.
Like a fool, I drove the Merc back to Mount Royal but I wasn’t leaving it in Tufnell Park. As I parked in the East Court, the bell in the Clock Tower struck midnight and I saw a shadowy figure coming through the archway beneath. It was Elspeth. She was clutching a carrier-bag which seemed to be quite heavy. She’d just been out for a wee breath of air, she said.
‘For goodness’ sake Miss Wishart, you’ll get mugged or worse,’ I said. ‘This isn’t the Isle of Bute. Where on earth have you been at this time of night?’
‘I’m over twenty-one Rory Blaine, so I’ll thank you to mind your own concerns,’ she said, fumbling for her keys. ‘Cheery-bye to you now.’
The door was firmly closed in my face. As she’d pulled her keys from her pocket, I’d noticed something fall onto the gravel. It was a packet of Mates Endurance.
A note was lying at the bottom of the glass staircase. Faisal had gone to sleep in the spare room, as he didn’t want to disturb me. He was wiped out and wanted to lie-in. Mamma Rosa hadn’t made it. He’d see me when he surfaced. There was a big X.
*
Window-cleaners perched on precarious ledges whistling cheerful ditties. Florists scampered up the front steps submerged in armfuls of gladioli. Wine-merchants and caterers lugged their wares to the cellars and the kitchens. A few milkmaids and chimney-sweeps and we could’ve done the Act Two opening of Oliver! Tomorrow was Preview Day at Mount Royal and our prospective residents were coming en masse. After nearly three years, we still had lots of dotted lines but not a single signature.
Through the open basement windows, I could hear Big Frankie thundering at the delivery people; he wasn’t always camp and docile, he could be camp and fierce too. Elspeth was striding about, hectoring a squad of cleaners and polishers. Dolores Potts and her gardeners were raking gravel and deporting even the tiniest weed that had dared to immigrate to her flowerbeds. Vic and I toured around like ‘nice’ and ‘nasty’ policemen; I created troubled waters, Vic poured the oil. He said he told them I was at an awkward time of life. Hot flushes, that kind of thing.
It was a knackering day but some sort of Dunkirk spirit carried us through to the end. In the evening, when all the vans had gone, Dolores Potts strolled into the office. But she’d not come for her usual chat, she had a treat for Vic and me in the Italian Garden.
‘Stand there,’ she ordered. ‘The engineers finished this afternoon.’
Dolores disappeared down the horseshoe staircase into the gardens. Behind the steps were some electrical junction boxes; machinery could be heard to whirr and whine. From the direction of the Great Fountain there was gurgling and burping and then, with a violent hiss, a plume of water shot thirty feet into the air, a sight I’d not seen for more than half a lifetime. From the height of the terrace, we could see right down across the Italian Garden to the Orangery and, beyond that, out over the tops of the trees to the city skyline. Dolores had emphasized it would be several years before the gardens looked as good as they once had. But they seemed pretty fine to me. I found myself wishing that Granny could have seen them.
‘Enjoy!’ shouted Dolores and disappeared. I wanted to yell that the verb was transitive, but doubted she’d have a clue what I meant. Vic and I went down and rubbernecked the fountain. The Koi carp had vanished under the lily-pads, sheltering from the sudden downpour. A light breeze skittered the spray beyond the rim of the basin, showering our faces and hair. The evening sun was slowly dropping away behind the plume, lighting it up like some gigantic watery sparkler. We sat on a safely dry bench.
‘Personal question?’ I asked after a while. ‘You know what you were saying on TV, about your love songs, all that stuff. I’ve been wondering. Did you never find anybody?’
‘Not really. Ironic, isn’t it?’ he replied. ‘Though I loved my ex-wife actually, in a funny sort of way. We were good chums and without that things never work out. But in the end she wanted the full monty. Otherwise, most of my relationships have been, well, casual. Early on, that was to do with the times. Later, when it was all a bit easier, some nice people hung around for a while. A few star-fuckers of course, but others seemed to like me for me. But I found I always wanted to move on. Part of it was the old cliché of being in love with the audience. It’s quite true, all that, you know; hard for any one person to compete with. But maybe part of it was being scared I’d lose them, like I’d lost my folks. I suspect you can relate to that.’
He glanced at me for an answer but I didn’t give him one.
‘And besides, I was waiting for the trumpets,’ he said. ‘My old buddy Stevie Sondheim once wrote a song about how, when lurve comes along, there won’t be trumpets, choirs of angels, thunder-claps. It’ll just be kind of ordinary, creep up on you like a cold. But Stevie and I differ on that one.’
‘You heard the trumpets?’
‘Oh yes, just the once. The whole goddam regimental band,’ he smiled.
‘And the other party?’
‘Sadly not,’ he replied. ‘I guess you’ve heard them loud and clear though. With Faisal?’
‘Oh yeah, sure,’ I said. I wondered whether to tell him about the Khan’s ultimatum, the freeze-frame life I was living in the flat. But I didn’t. There had been so many confessions lately, to Elspeth, to Faisal and to Ms Prada as always. I didn’t want to become an emotional incontinent.
‘That’s nice. I’m sure it’s not always easy though,’ he said. Had he sensed something? His antennae were as sharp as Elspeth’s.
‘So there’s never been anybody else?’ I asked ‘Where there’s life there’s hope.’
‘No toots, never anybody else,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Never will be now.’
I looked at his face for evidence of lying, but found none. I guessed I’d been mistaken and that Big Frankie hadn’t yet declared himself after all. I felt a wee surge of pleasure at what lay in store for Vic; like a parent before Christmas with the Playstation wrapped and hidden under the bed.
The plume of water suddenly faltered and collapsed. Dolores shouted her apologies, explaining that she had to run it in gently, like a Volvo. As the ripples in the basin were soothed away, the Koi carp began to re-emerge from beneath the lily-pads. The biggest one appeared first, like a scout, followed by his smaller, more timid cohabitants. Silence fell on the garden again.
‘You remember that day in the Reform Club?’ I asked, ‘With Marcus Leigh and those photos of his dead Italian boy? You said everything was worth it for the chance of the joy.’
‘And I believe it,’ said Vic. ‘How about you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said.
‘An early night I think toots,’ said Vic. ‘Showtime tomorrow.’
‘Showtime,’ I said.
I headed back to the flat. I’d no idea whether Faisal would be there or not. There were staff shortages at the hospital he’d said; he had to do extra shifts. During the brief periods he’d been around, I’d felt he was keeping his distance, only talking about trivia, not something that came naturally to him at all. In bed though, he’d clung to me fiercely, his bearded face on my shoulder, his hairy bicep across my chest. There had been no actual sex, no reaching for the doctor’s bag with the ropes and straps. I’d been quite glad of the break from all that, it wasn’t great for my back and had now become just a wee bit boring. Maybe it was because it felt like his ghastly father was in bed with us, though there had been no further mention of the old bastard or the ultimatum. I certainly wasn’t going to ask what decision he’d come to, it was up to him to tell me. Besides, I was pretty sure he’d not reached one. He was constantly restless, no longer seeming interested in what was happening with the house. He remembered to ask an occasional polite question but the days when the project thrilled and inspired him appeared to be gone. He’d not mentioned The Lazarus Programme in weeks.
As always, he was amiable enough with everyone; but he’d formed no friendships here, never really connected with any of them. I’d watched Vic, Elspeth, Big Frankie and others reach out to him then slowly retreat back into the necessary civilities and no more. He’d promised to be on parade tomorrow but I’d had to more or less go on my hands and knees.
While the rest of Mount Royal pulsated around us, our life in the flat was holding its breath. Maybe my pedestal had crumbled from under me when I’d not been looking.