Chapter XXIII Eighteen Months Later
XXIII.
Eighteen Months Later
STRETCHED OUT BY THE POOL, my hand dangling off the lounger, I feel the brush of Alexander’s fingers on mine.
I curl my thumb around his. He’s reading a carefully folded square of the Financial Times.
It’s an article about Prime Minister Richard Take’s plan to introduce VAT on public school fees.
Serena is up in arms about the policy, declaring boldly the last time we spoke that it was a form of discrimination.
‘They should be thanking us, Martin,’ she told me over an oat-milk cappuccino at her countryside private members’ retreat. ‘By taking our children out of the state system, we’re placing less pressure on it. They should be grateful. Instead they’re punishing us!’
‘Well,’ I said mildly. ‘I suppose that is a point of view.’
Alexander moves the newspaper closer to his face.
I must remind him to make an optician’s appointment.
He’s been squinting more than usual lately.
While he reads the paper, I am halfway through a Patricia Highsmith novel.
I’ve read it before and the book is spine-cracked and dog-eared in all my favourite places.
We lie like this, Alexander and I, silent but touching.
It is the closest feeling to peace I’ve ever known.
We’ve come away for a long weekend to a nice hotel in Hampshire.
The kind of place that prides itself on sustainability and therefore charges exorbitant room rates while expecting you to make your own tea from the loose-leaf camomile flowers provided in the minibar.
The staff wear uniforms designed to make them look like elevated medieval peasants: organic cotton aprons and hemp-hewn collarless shirts.
The food is organic and seasonal and grown in a kitchen garden.
The cocktails are ‘botanical’ and listed on the menu by flavour chart.
Last night, I had the temerity to ask for a gin and tonic and the barman looked at me with mild contempt.
‘You’re such a stick-in-the-mud,’ Alexander said, touching my knee. Then, to the barman: ‘I’ll try the citrus, ginger, woodsmoke, thanks so much.’
‘Very good, sir,’ the barman said, instantly won over by Alexander’s easy charm.
Alexander is nicer than I am. It’s part of what I value most about him.
His optimism makes me believe things are possible.
I feel less trapped when I’m with him, more able to experiment.
He gave me a black pleated Issey Miyake jacket for Christmas and although I can still imagine my mother’s disdain for its extravagance, the jacket is now my favourite piece of clothing.
‘I knew it would be great on you,’ Alexander said with quiet satisfaction when I put it on.
I modelled it for him in front of the tree, decorated with great care with white and gold baubles in the north London townhouse we now live in.
It was this same knowing – the calm assurance with which Alexander moved through the world – that helped me to fall in love with him.
He pursued me with studied gentleness after our first meeting at dinner at Tipworth.
We swapped numbers because he said he was going to visit Cambridge in a few weeks and would value a tour guide.
When he came, I showed him around the colleges and we walked around the city for hours.
The conversation was easy and I almost invited him back to the cottage for tea.
But I didn’t because I was nervous. An unfamiliar sensation.
After that, he kept texting and then calling and then he asked me to join him for dinner in London and, well, one thing led to another, as they say.
Now I find myself, for the first time, in a loving, committed relationship with another man.
It’s one of the most astonishing things that’s happened to me.
To my surprise, it feels so natural. Alexander is never intrusive.
He doesn’t want to know about my past or my upbringing or my previous relationships (such as they were).
My closeness to Ben and the Fitzmaurices is the only recommendation he requires.
I suppose he makes assumptions about my background based on that, which suits me fine.
We both keep our secrets. He does not suffer from the modern affliction of wanting to discuss feelings at every possible juncture – thank God.
‘My parents are Bangladeshi, are you kidding me?’ he said when I mentioned this. ‘They don’t believe in feelings. They believe in eating. And working. And then eating again.’
We are lucky to live a very comfortable life.
Alexander earns a lot of money and I handed in my notice at the University of South Anglia.
I think they were relieved to see me go after all the Jacob Malik-Edwards nonsense (he’s in his final year now – set for a First, which is infuriating).
With Alexander’s support, I’m writing a new book on the queer gaze in art.
‘The gays’ gaze,’ Alexander jokes.
I’ve got a new agent, who says the book is ‘exceptionally timely’ and will go for a large sum. I have a bit of a reputation now, as Prime Minister Take’s advisor on cultural diversity in the arts. I accepted the position with Ben’s blessing. I think he even found it amusing.
The last time I visited Ben in His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, he seemed in fairly buoyant spirits.
He was given an eight-month sentence and will be out in four.
He’s already served two of them, so the end is in sight.
Prison, dare I say it, has been positive for him.
He is more humble, more considered. He’s taken a job at the prison library and has also been teaching his fellow inmates political history.
When I visit, which I do every few weeks after consulting with Serena (she has a rota so that Ben never feels too lonely), I go through all the usual security checks and wait in a large room with tables and bright blue chairs.
Ben will appear wearing an orange tabard and a grey sweatsuit.
He will take a seat opposite me and we will talk.
There are no handcuffs or anything. No bulletproof screens or telephone receivers to pick up so we can hear each other.
I’ll admit, I was quite disappointed the first time I went.
‘I’ve decided I’m not going back to politics,’ Ben said on my last visit.
‘Really?’
‘I was only doing it because of my ego,’ he continued. Ben had been reading a lot of self-improvement books. ‘It’s what Fitzmaurices have always done. Public service, you know – military, politics, the church. Wanted to do my bit. Wanted to make my father proud. All the usual nonsense.’
He waved his hand, sweeping away the bricks of Denby like crumbs.
‘You wanted to do good,’ I said, although I didn’t think this was true. At the beginning, maybe, there had been a flicker of it.
‘I did the opposite.’
Well, at least he acknowledged it. A female prison guard announced there were ten minutes left. Above us, a strip light flickered and then popped.
‘You know, I’ve been thinking a lot of Fliss,’ he continued. ‘I’d like to do some work with addiction charities when I get out.’
‘A kind of atonement?’
He shrugged.
‘If you want to call it that.’
We sat without speaking for a moment and then he smiled and his whole face shifted with the warmth of it.
‘Cozzie came to visit me last week.’
‘Did she? I’m so glad.’
She is back from Bali and living at Tipworth. There has been a family rapprochement. She’s going to sit her A levels at the local sixth-form college and hopes to study marine biology at university.
Last month, she came to London and stayed with me and Alexander for the weekend, looking very tanned, her dark hair now streaked with blonde. She and Alexander got on well and I took her to a new play at the Almeida.
‘I’m very proud of her,’ Ben said. Then he added, ‘So. I’ve been thinking about something.’
He coughed. I noticed a shaving cut on his left cheek.
‘I know you’re already Hector’s godfather,’ Ben said. ‘But if it doesn’t seem too much of an imposition, Serena and I would love it if you considered yourself Cosima’s godparent, too. We should have asked you from the beginning.’
I hadn’t expected it. I wanted to hug him but I was aware of the beady-eyed stares of the guards.
‘I’d like that very much,’ I replied. ‘Very much indeed.’
‘She thinks so highly of you,’ Ben said. ‘We all do.’
Visiting time was called to a close and a guard came over to collect Ben, who shuffled back through the electric gates which opened with a mechanical whirring and buzzing.
He nodded his goodbye to me. I looked on as he walked back to his cell and I thought, with uncomplicated clarity: there goes my dearest friend.
Back by the pool, Alexander releases my hand.
He shuffles himself up to a seating position on the lounger and I admire the shimmer of his torso as he does so.
I like to watch him. We have a gym in our basement, which Alexander uses every day.
His body is muscular and lean: a Renaissance sculpture brought to life.
I am about to tell him this but as I open my mouth to form the words, he blurts out: ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Is that who I think it is?’ he says.
I prop myself up on one elbow to see what he’s looking at.
On the other side of the swimming pool, a man is walking out of the sauna.
Steam billows behind him. As it clears, a shape becomes recognisable.
Solid shoulders, sagging belly, sandy chest hair against flaccid skin.
The man takes a towel and starts to dry his hair, shaking his head to dislodge water from his ear.
After a few seconds, he throws the towel into a basket.
He is about to open the door to the men’s changing room but something changes his mind.
He turns back to the pool. He looks directly across the dark marble tiles and the lapping surface of the water. He sees me. I bristle.
It’s Andrew Jarvis.
He smiles.
My stomach twists.
I watch as he begins to walk over to us.
Come, now. Did you really think you’d seen the last of him?