One night Smiles turned up at Toby’s South London club. By this time the faces of many of the regulars were familiar to me, though I seldom spoke to any of them. Smiles, out of his usual haunt, was relieved to see someone he knew. ‘So this is where you’ve been choosing to spend your time – and money,’ he said.
Hanging round as usual waiting for Toby, I was glad to see him. ‘Toby’s choice. This place is his playing field.’
‘Playing the field, more like?’ He nodded towards my boyfriend, who was dancing with a sweet-faced girl I had never seen before. People mostly danced without touching, in whatever little free space they could find, but Toby and the girl were holding each other close, rubbing their bodies suggestively against one another. In that place, jealousy over a bit of flirtatious showing off would be bizarrely possessive.
‘He knows all the regulars. At times it’s as if he knows the whole of London. A change for you, coming here.’
To talk more easily we walked past the toilets to the open area outside. He had come because the owners of the Give and Take were planning a new late night venue, and wanted him to investigate the competition.
‘This place always fills up,’ I said. ‘It’s buzzing, I’ll say that for it, but how to go about creating the buzz to start with… The scene is not really for me, too frenetic, I’m not the right person to talk to about what draws people in.’
‘I expect they’re making money though, takings on the door are probably good…wonder what the drink sales are like. High prices. You see people come in, meet friends, dance, some of them go to the bar, some not. A venue like this becomes the place to be seen, but it won’t necessarily last, a new club opens and people go there instead… or troublemakers drive away the decent customers. Late night clubs are so different to the Give and Take, where it’s a friendly bar and there’s hardly ever any trouble. Bet the Gay Symphony Orchestra are not coming in here to rehearse. No prospect of toying with a trombonist tonight.’
‘You’ve moved on from the clarinettist, then.’
‘There’s a whole orchestra for me to play with, remember.’
‘You’re as bad as Toby.’
‘I’d forgotten how you always take everything literally. What I’d really like now is someone steady in my life. Working at the Give and Take there’s too much temptation.’
We went back inside to find the club busier than before. ‘I wonder how many are crammed in tonight. Bet there are more than health and safety rules permit,’ he said. ‘Don’t look round, but a woman over there has just pointed at you. Now she’s heading this way. Boy with her is not bad.’
That the Jays should turn up was no surprise. The club was mixed straight and gay, and their type of place. I introduced them to Smiles as ‘the couple with the music system’. He asked them if they missed having me as a neighbour.
Jayde said, ‘He still comes round to his old flat sometimes, but he doesn’t come up to see us. We get told plenty though.’ She turned to me. ‘No use you thinking you’ve got away from us that easy. Does Toby know you’re here at his club with your friend?’
‘He’s over there,’ I said, waving towards him.
‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘Busy as usual.’
‘Why don’t we all dance?’ Jake suggested.
We found enough space on the floor for the four of us. After a couple of minutes Smiles danced up close to me. Speaking loudly in order to be heard, he said in my ear, ‘I wouldn’t mind finding myself in a dark corner with your friend Jake. Bet she keeps him on a short lead. Guess I’ve seen enough of the club. Would it be okay if I leave you to it? I gave him a thumbs up and mouthed ‘Yes.’ The Jays were making regular eye contact with me and smiling. Even after he had gone, with them for company I felt more at ease in that place than usual. Toby, at the other end of the room, waved to us, but made off in another direction to see one of his regular contacts.
The club was always hot, and dancing made us hotter still. The Jays followed me to the bar to get drinks, and I leaned forwards so the barman could hear me. Jake was so close behind me I could feel him against my back. He reached out an arm to take his drink from the bar and leaned firmly on me. A lot of straight men think that to act a bit gay now and again shows how cool they are, so I ignored him. No one took much notice, not even Jayde who was right next to us. I turned around to face him. ‘How you doing, mate?’ he asked, looking me in the eye. He put his hands on either side of me on the bar surface, pinning me to the spot.
She regarded us calmly and said, ‘Good in here, isn’t it Ben? Like, it’s a nice free and easy type of place.’
His face was two inches from mine. He said, ‘You come here because Toby drags you along, don’t you? Ever thought it was time to let him know he shouldn’t take you for granted?’
‘He’s right, isn’t he?’ she said, putting a hand on my shoulder.
As she spoke, Toby came up behind him and startled him by saying, ‘Put him down, you don’t know where he’s been.’
Jayde was ready with a riposte. ‘You’re lucky he’s still here, the way you go off and leave him lying around. Serve you right if somebody took him home with them. We’re not the only ones who’ve been eyeing him up.’
‘He’s saving himself for me. He’s a good boy, aren’t you Ben?’ He enjoyed making me out to be gullible. What did the three of them really think of me? That I was too dim to keep up in their game of grab-every-thrill-that’s-going?
Jake, suddenly serious, said in my ear, ‘I know what you’re thinking. We’re crap, aren’t we? You think us turning up is like finding you’ve got some dog shit stuck on your shoe.’ Jayde and Toby, not able to make out fully what he said in the general din, laughed uncertainly.
His speculation about my thoughts surprised me, particularly on a night when, for the first time, their company had actually been welcome. ‘No… why do you say that? I’m glad you’re here.’
Toby cut in, ‘That’s enough. No more taking advantage of him, you two, not without my say so, anyway.’ To me he said. ‘Come on, we can go now, if you’re ready.’
Despite feeling a wimp for doing so, I obediently followed him out.
Having left the hot stale air of the club we walked to a corner where it was easy to hail a taxi. For something to say I asked him about the woman he had been dancing with. ‘Not going to be jealous because of that, are you? Who am I with now?’ Then, as an afterthought, he added, ‘Besides, I am bisexual, you know.’
I did not know, and thought it highly unlikely. He was no more bi than I was. He had said that to worry me, to make clear to me that he was the top dog. ‘I only asked who she was,’ I said sharply.
‘Don’t worry about her,’ Toby replied. ‘Her boyfriend wasn’t far away. He’s not someone you cross. You can forget about her.’
How sure of himself he was, thinking that seeing him with the girl had made me jealous. A denial, though, would have sounded hollow, so I said coolly, ‘You never told me you were bi. Do you have a girlfriend at the moment?’
‘What?’
‘Do you have a girlfriend at the moment?’
He waggled his hand in a maybe, maybe not gesture, unable to think of a smart answer. The topic was evidently closed. This was how he was all the time. Scoring points was the closest he came to meaningful conversation. When we were back at his flat we shagged without much enthusiasm; more than ever we seemed to share nothing except sex. Being with him was, I supposed, better than having no boyfriend at all.
During the last few weeks there had been odd mornings when Dale had not been around, a sign he was staying overnight with pick-ups, or possibly that he too had found a boyfriend. He had not volunteered any information, but why should he, since I never talked to him about my relationship with Toby? We had other things to talk about; he was interested in my progress with the Effingham and Meadowgoose International Short Story Competition, at times making me feel as though he was supervising, as if it was one of his projects at work. Hearing that Loyd had told me by phone to ‘shuffle through and find a dozen stories that weren’t bad,’ he let me know he did not approve. All of the stories, he said, ought to be read through by several people and assessed against an agreed list of criteria.
This idea was reasonable, but it would have taken lots more time than Loyd, who clearly wanted only minimum effort, had allowed. If Dale had been organizing the competition from the start he might have argued for a fairer system and talked Loyd round, but to change the process now would be impracticable.
He must have guessed what was going through my mind, for he said: ‘Always so easy to tell someone else how they should do things, but nothing I have to deal with myself is ever simple. The way you’re doing it is more spontaneous, perhaps it’s right for the competition. The thing is… you know if you want a bit of help with anything, or just to talk to someone, do ask me if I can help, I will. Have you found any more stories with a gay theme?’
‘Yes, one. And it’s one of the better ones. Good enough for the shortlist, I think.’ ‘Changing the subject, there is something I wanted to ask you, as a favour.’
‘Go on.’
‘You know my aunt, the one in the nursing home whose books you sorted out? I’ve mentioned
having a new flatmate a couple of times, and that we’re friends. Well, last time I went to see her she said, if you could find time one day, she would like to meet you. I know you’re busy with the competition now, and going to a nursing home to see an elderly relative of mine is lot to ask. You don’t have to, I’ll understand if you’d rather not.’
He must have said nice things to her about me, and of course I said yes. He took me down to the home, near Kingston-upon-Thames, on a Thursday afternoon. On our way to the front door, through the windows we could see in the sitting room several old ladies in big armchairs watching television, and others staring through the windows at the world outside. To my eyes they were not noticeably older than Loyd Larcher, who went on lecture tours in the US, had his omnibus edition coming out and was judge of a short story competition. The home’s residents had, apparently, settled into a much more limited kind of existence.
Dale’s aunt had her own room, on the first floor. She got up slowly from her chair to welcome us. Her hair was iron-grey and her skin sallow, but she took my hand firmly and smiled, putting me at ease. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said, ‘it’s lovely to have visitors.’ She had an electric kettle and some cups on a tray, and made us tea. When she sat down again she said to Dale, ‘Show Ben that picture of you, over there.’ On a small sideboard she had half a dozen framed family photographs, and he handed me one taken of him when he was in school uniform. ‘He was in the fifth form then,’ she said.
He was a good-looking boy, his eyes clear and bright, his youthful skin free of blemishes. Seeing him day after day his appearance had become familiar, unremarkable, but the photo reminded me that he was attractive, and given his personality he would surely, one day, make someone a good boyfriend. Had we not started off as friends and moved on to being flatmates, perhaps he and I might have had a fling. People you come to know as friends tend to remain friends; you think of going out somewhere together, not of having sex. Only later, on the way home, did the thought come into my mind that, should Dale one day find a boyfriend, he might no longer want me as a flatmate.
His aunt asked me about the bookshop and if many of the books from her house had been sold. She also told me of the lady in the next room, who had been headmistress of an infants’ school. This heavily built woman had fallen over the day before, and three of the staff were needed to help her back on her feet. Then she asked Dale to check at reception to see if the postman had brought any letters for her, a rather obvious contrivance to enable her to talk to me alone.
‘I’m so pleased that Dale has someone reliable to share with,’ she began. ‘He was never one for being on his own. He has always been good-natured, and the trouble with being good-natured is that people take advantage of you. The world has so many people who are of the opposite kind. You moving in with him has cheered him up, you know. He needed that.’
‘It’s very nice of you to say that. Sharing with him has been good for me too.’‘You know I’m a great fan of crime fiction. Are you two going to be like Sherlock Holmes and Dr
Watson?’ she asked, laughing.
‘I don’t think we’ll ever be as famous as that.’
‘Probably better not to live so dangerously.’
Dale returned with a white envelope which he handed to her. ‘Oh, that’s just the bank,’ she said.
‘Ben was telling me how much he likes the flat. Do you know, I’ve never seen it. Why don’t you bring me a photo of it, with the two of you, of course?’
‘I’m not sure if we have one,’ he said.
‘Well, you could take one, couldn’t you?’
He promised he would, and when she began to tire, we left. As we walked to the station I said, ‘She’s really nice. She cares a lot about you, doesn’t she? That photograph of you she has …’ I almost said you looked gorgeous, but realized how the comment would sound and stopped myself, embarrassed. He regarded me quizzically, but at that moment my phone rang and saved me from having to end the sentence.
Loyd enjoyed his US lecture tour, and returned in good spirits. A week later, after accepting my competition shortlist without question, he had chosen the winner. He invited me to call at his flat to thank me for my help and, as he put it, to settle my account. I was worried about leaving Jeremy on his own in the shop because in the wet and windy weather of the last few days he had caught flu. He was very sensitive to draughts, and not wanting to face customers sat all morning in the office trying to do paperwork. He had swathed himself in a thick pullover, a tweed jacket, and what Smiles calls his Sherlock Holmes cape. I made him frequent hot drinks and persuaded him to let me shut the shop for a couple of hours in the afternoon while I went to see Loyd, who lived a bus ride away in a building near Regent’s Park.
‘Dear boy, delighted to see you,’ he said, with his customary old world charm. He left me for a few minutes to bring refreshments. I admired his Sheraton furniture and Dutch landscapes until he came back carrying a laden silver tray. He said he hoped the Effingham and Meadowgoose work had not been too onerous, and I asked him what he had thought of the story about a gay couple quarrelling all the time when they were on holiday, but beginning to behave normally towards each other during their journey home.
‘Oh yes, definitely one of the better ones. Had to rule it out, of course. Have to remember the political climate at the Effingham and Meadowgoose. A story with a positive attitude to gay men would never be accepted by the Committee.
‘What political climate?’
‘A very fundamentalist conservative group has taken over the competition. It used to be the plain old Effingham Wayzgoose Prize for Writers, run by the owner of the nearby print works. A wayzgoose, as I’m sure you know, is the print workers’ Christmas festive dinner. When the works closed down the competition was taken over by the right-wing parish council and renamed. They added International to make it sound more important, and Meadowgoose after the nearby Goose Meadow. Not being political myself, I was in two minds about being this year’s judge, but the fee is not bad and frankly, quite a few years have gone by since my last book, so a little extra money helps… well, let’s say helps me pay my tailor’s bills. Of course my books provided a good living for me in their day, but thrift was never one of my strong points.’ He glanced around at his expensive furnishings. ‘Perhaps I should be more principled, and insist on awarding the prize to the story about the same-sex couple, but at my age the enthusiasm for fighting battles… ’
‘Talking of your success,’ I said, ‘can I ask you something? You know I’m working for Jeremy in his bookshop, and obviously the job is fine, but sometimes I do wonder if it is going to be my lifelong career. Trouble is I still haven’t really worked out what I want to do in life. Your novels did so brilliantly well. Did you always know that writing was the thing for you?’
‘Not really. My first taste of being published was in a local newspaper. I was a journalist for some years before my first book came out. Don’t ask me why it should be, but, for me, the titles have been the key to success. Incredible, but a particular form of words proved vital. You may have noticed nearly all my books are called Not a something more, not a something less, with the “something” always a word ending in enny. Enny or eny, it didn’t matter. So long as the title conformed to that pattern, the books were successful, from Not a Progeny More, Not a Progeny Less to Not an Abergavenny More, Not an Abergavenny Less. If I strayed from that format even a little, they didn’t sell. For instance, my novel about slanderous accusations raised against a peer of the realm, Never a Calumny More, Never a Calumny Less, was a complete flop. That is why I dried up. If you think about it, not all that many words do end in enny or eny.
‘Afraid you won’t find what I’m saying a lot of help, but whatever field you’re hoping to make your fortune in, you simply have to find something that will work for you, not necessarily a catchphrase, but some memorable, striking little thing that people will remember you by, a sort of key that will open up the gate to success. You have to open your mind to the possibilities.’
He was surely well-intentioned, but his advice was rather like telling me that the secret of success was to find something or other that would help me do well. Undeniable, but not specific enough to be any use. ‘Well, thanks, have to keep hunting for that key, I suppose. By the way, you didn’t ever, did you, write a novel called Not a Halfpenny More, Not a Halfpenny Less?’
‘Good Lord, never thought of that! Not a Ha’penny More, Not a Ha’penny Less.’ He gestured oddly with his right hand as though spotting paint onto a canvas. ‘Potential! It has definite potential!’ A creative gleam came into his eye. ‘Well, mustn’t keep you, dear boy, know how busy you are.’ He got up and from his desk fetched an envelope with my name on it, and a thick book wrapped in brown paper. ‘What we agreed, plus a little bonus for diligence, thought you deserved it. Also advance orders for the omnibus edition of my novels are coming in well, and here you are, you’re welcome to a signed copy, well done. Perhaps you and I will co-operate again on another project in the future, you never know what will come up. Not a Ha’penny More, Not a Ha’penny Less. Never thought of it, I’ll be damned!’
On the bus home I unwrapped the book and found that above his signature he had written the message To Ben, may he find happiness and fulfilment in his life’s Odyssey. Then I read the long list of his novels on the dust jacket:
Not a Progeny More, Not a Progeny Less
Aristocratic Giles is heir to the family estates, but to receive his inheritance he must have exactly seven children…
Ruthless competition between fishermen for the biggest catch leads to tragedy in the North Sea…
Not a Jenny More, Not a Jenny Less
Jenny believes she has found happiness with the man of her dreams, until her cousin, also called Jenny, comes to stay…
So Very Many More, Not So Many Less
As the population rises, the government introduces restrictions on numbers of offspring. The result is turmoil on the streets…
Not a Benny More, Not a Benny Less
Emerging amphetamine addiction in the ninteen-fifties leads a fashionable Harley Street psychiatrist to the depths of depravity…
Not a Kilkenny More, Not a Kilkenny Less
An Irish emigréin the US causes consternation in the city of his ancestors when he proposes to name a suburb of Pittsburgh after his home town…
Not a Rennie More, Not a Rennie Less
Giants of the pharmaceutical industry engage in a ruthless war for dominance in an effervescent market sector…
Not a Villainy More, Not a Villainy Less
In the second of the author’s much praised crime fiction novels, veteran burglar Chalky Fawcentry plans to go straight after a last raid, his hundredth robbery of a stately home…
Never a Calumny More, Never a Calumny Less
Ace detective Rhombus foils a malicious plot to undermine a noble and honourable Lord of The Realm with outlandish and unfounded scandal…
Not a Fennimore, Not a Fenniless
A spoof Wild West saga. In a gold rush town pillaged by Indians and lawless gunmen, two hairdressers feud over who will tend the prospectors’ coiffure, until they have to join forces to avoid losing their own scalps…
Worthies of the town are astonished when a delegation arrives from South America claiming to be from a thriving Welsh colony founded over a century ago in the rain forest…