Chapter Twelve
The
church of St Bartholomew Riverside was quiet in the morning sun. A
small Victorian masterpiece, it glowed with colours from its
pre-Raph stained windows. The scent of beeswax arose from its
stiff, formal pews. After making one last tour of the porch and
aisles, Sasha sat down in the back row.
He was
alone. The day was hot, London breaking on the anvil of July. Faint
sounds of water filtered up from the Thames, cooling Sasha's
thoughts, and he took a deep breath and then another. The headache
pounding at the base of his skull did not recede. Impatiently he
dry-swallowed a pill from the last of Olivia's prescription. He
didn't have time for pain today.
The
flowers smelled wonderful. Sasha had volunteered to get here early
and supervise their delivery and arrangement, not only Mrs G's
modest carnations but the huge consignment of lilies and roses
Laurie had added to the order. Sasha was no expert, but the
luxuriant spring of blossoms from stonework and vases in every
corner of the church looked good to him. Out in the porch, a single
rose was ready for each guest as they arrived, stems taped for
buttonholes and a supply of child-friendly safety pins at the
ready. Once reminded of the event, Laurie had thrown himself into
it with feverish enthusiasm, consulting secretly with Charlie for a
list of things he and Sasha could do to help set the cherry on Mrs
G's cake. Between them they'd magicked the reception at the local
pub into a marquee on Bartholomew's Green, hired a Victorian landau
complete with driver and glossy chestnut horse to trot the
newlyweds there in style, and arranged for the bride's favourite
boy-band, rejects from a recent talent-show TV series, to come and
play live in the evening.
He and
Laurie had carried out most of their tasks separately. The week had
been one of the worst of Sasha's life, including his time on the
streets. It was one thing to be alone among strangers, but the
aching shell of isolation that had formed around him in his own
flat, with Laurie in the next room or even on the sofa at his side,
was new to him. He hadn't thought the universe could hold such a
cruel pain.
They
hadn't fought, not after that first explosion. If they had, the
shell might have shattered. But Sasha, who had never picked an
argument in his life, hadn't known how to start one, and Laurie was
five miles out, blue eyes fixed on some horizon Sasha couldn't
reach or share. Their lives afforded plenty of opportunities for
them to escape one another if they so desired. Until now they'd
stuck like glue. But Sasha could work late every night and still
have caseload left over to occupy him the next day, and Laurie had
been spending long hours over in Ealing, where he'd said the Ivory
Gate studios were. Their mealtimes didn't have to coincide. The
flat had only one bedroom but they could stagger their routine so
that one of them could always be asleep, or doing a creditable
fake, by the time the other came to bed.
They
were civil to one another, of course. They each had their personal
credo about that and could probably have murdered one another
without too much in the way of raised voices or discourtesy. For
Sasha each quiet, forced conversation about the weather or their
daily business had been an exquisite torture. He'd rather have
stuck knives into himself. But he hadn't known what else to
do.
Sasha's
head spun as the pill he'd swallowed hit him too hard and too soon:
he couldn't recall when he'd last eaten. His throat was tight, no
room in it for anything other than the giant lump that lived there
these days. He swiped a thumb beneath his eyes, surreptitiously
even though he was alone. He lived in fear that the lump would
dissolve into infantile grief at any second. But the skin beneath
his eyes was dry, papery and hot.
He
wasn't well, he supposed. He would have held out almost
indefinitely without admitting it, but maybe it was getting to the
point where something would have to be done. Perhaps he was now at
the stage where, for the first time in his life, he actually needed
the services Laurie had so kindly bought for him—Olivia's, and
those of the imaginary rape counsellor he felt he knew quite well
after creating him for Laurie. Nightmares were one thing, but now
he was encountering their denizens by broad daylight. The grey
ghost of a figure at once familiar to him and long lost, beyond his
memory's reach. And, once only, vivid as a raw wound among the
Camden market stalls, his father's face—thrust leering towards his
and then gone.
An
imaginary doctor and two ghosts. That was quite an inner life,
carefully adjusted or concealed for his lover's benefit. Perhaps he
need not have been quite so hard on Laurie for his own hidden
adventures. In fact when Sasha thought about what he'd said to him,
the bewildered pain he'd called into those night-blue eyes, he
wanted to curl up and weep.
But it
was Mrs Gibson's wedding day. She and Sasha were fast friends. He
remembered the first dinner he'd sat down to in the Mayfair
house—Sir William dead, not even a ghost at the feast, Marielle
performing her duties as host with an unsteady brilliance. Clara in
high glee at having her brother and her secret prince together at
the family table—and at being allowed to stay up so late to join
them—and Mrs G, beaming and shedding blessings with every glance as
she served the meal, because not only did she have her missing girl
back under her wing, but her boy had found someone to
love.
Sasha
sat upright in the pew, hands folded on his lap. He couldn't bear
this gouging emptiness. How did other couples stand it—the ones who
rowed and reconciled three times a week? The worst of it was that,
if Sasha had little experience of quarrelling, he had still less of
making up. He had no store of playful, surrendering gestures or
looks to signal that he was ready to back down.
Anyway,
he wasn't. How could he be? Laurie was, as far as he could see,
making a move that would terminate everything he loved best about
his career. And he expected Sasha to accept this professional
suicide, assist with it. Follow him meekly into the
dark...
The
north door of the church creaked open, admitting sunlight and a
breeze from the Thames. Sasha got up, plastering on a smile. It was
early for a guest to be arriving, but he had volunteered to act as
usher for the Dagenham contingent. He wanted to do a good
job.
Laurie
stepped into a patch of golden light. He was half-hidden behind the
enormous trellis of jasmine he was carrying. Setting it down
carefully, he looked around him, dazzled from the brilliance
outside. “Sasha?”
He was
dressed in his pale grey suit, the one that looked as if the tailor
had died of love for him during its creation. Beneath it was a
white linen shirt. His tie was crumpled in his pocket, because only
Sasha knew how to knot it for full-dress occasions. He'd tucked a
yellow rose into his buttonhole, and its petals cast reflected
saffron lights into his face. For a long moment, Sasha couldn't
speak at all. Then he managed, dryly, hands clenched in his
pockets, “I've heard it's bad form to outshine the
bride.”
“That's just what I was going to say to you. Your new suit fits
okay, then?”
“Yes.” Sasha had woken alone, filled with grief that Laurie had
slipped away in silence once again. Then he had seen the beautiful
jacket and trousers, the colour of old ivory, laid out on the end
of the bed. “I didn't know what to wear this morning, but some
fairy had left these.”
“Some fairy? All those Pride marches and demos for gay rights,
and I get called some
fairy?”
Sasha
chuckled, and it turned into a sob. “Oh, Laurie. If this Hollywood
thing means so much to you, I'll come with you. Okay? I'll
come.”
“Oh, thank God.” Laurie took a step towards him, fell over the
trellis and shoved it unseeing off to one side. He held out his
arms. “Thank God.”
Sasha
met him with passionate force. He laid his brow on Laurie's
shoulder, let go the cry that had been waiting, briefly allowed
himself to burst into tears. He hauled in one breath. “These last
few days—feeling so far from you when you were right there... I
couldn't bear that, let alone having you five thousand miles away
for months.”
“But your job.”
“I'll go on sick leave.” Maybe he needed to. He felt like
scalding water in Laurie's embrace, ready to evaporate. “Don't
worry. I'll get round it.”
Laurie
buried his face in Sasha's hair, gratefully breathing its fresh
familiar scent. He'd spent part of his morning tearing about
between florists, but he'd also attended a nerve-racking meeting in
Ealing between Douglas Brett and a financial representative from
Ivory Gate. So far he'd had to walk out twice in order to gain his
objectives. Both times he'd been run after with satisfactory speed.
In return, and to keep Brett sweet, he'd offered an extra scene for
Devlin, one that glued several of the others into making sense.
He'd set everything up exactly as if Sasha had been coming too. Not
for one second had he believed it would happen. “Thank God,” he
said again, voice cracking.
Sasha
felt the heat of his tears. He wanted to look up but his ears were
buzzing, grey rags fluttering across his field of vision. “Why's it
so important to you, love?” he asked, muffled against Laurie's
shoulder. “That I be there?”
“Why do you think? That I want you as some kind of trophy for
my arm? I can't act without you. I can't be without you.”
But you'd still have gone. Sasha let
the thought go—let everything go, dissolving and falling at last.
He was in Laurie's arms. Nothing else mattered. “Is it hot in
here?”
“No. But you're white as a sheet. Come with me.”
They
stumbled out together into the churchyard, where a dancing breeze
and honeysuckle were combining to make the graves look festive.