Getting It Right (36 page)

So why was he so fed up? Because – apart from the night with Joan – it had been seriously suggested (by Marge) that he should consider marrying Muriel Sutton. It had been more
pressingly suggested (by Sir Gordon) that he should marry Minnie and become an industrial stooge.
That
was what the week had consisted of (apart from the night with Joan). And it was
typical of Life that
she
had immediately gone off to another country. He might never hear from her again, and if one sexual (and romantic) encounter in thirty-one years was his ration, he
was just about due for one more night before he dropped dead . . .

‘Sorry to be so long – one of the jars cracked – made a terrible mess – hey, what’s up?’

He took his head out of his hands: ‘Nothing much.’

Harry put the tea tray on the floor and started to clear off the lunch plates. ‘I know what that means.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘It means, “I’m not going to tell you unless you take me seriously.”’ He took the dirty plates into the kitchen, and came back with a J-cloth. ‘Can’t
have all these crumbs. Winthrop will make crumbs of
anything
.’

‘Oh, do
shut up
about Winthrop!’

‘Okay,’ said Harry equably. ‘Let’s have a serious conversation about Gavin.’ He poured tea into two mugs that Gavin noted irritably as being highbrow pottery, and
started opening a packet of biscuits.

‘Now you’re probably having a panic about how much to tell me,’ he observed. ‘Well, I’ll tell you one thing. Everything you say here to me will be strictly private.
I’m very discreet. And you’d be surprised at what people do tell me.’

Gavin felt himself blushing: Harry was dead right; he
had
been trying to decide whether to tell him or not about Joan, and had just about decided not to. ‘I’m not sure where
to begin,’ he said. ‘It’s not exactly just what’s been happening – it’s how what’s been happening has made me feel. I’ve been thinking about it,
while you were in the kitchen, and I suppose it all started with that party. It seems ages ago, but it was only last week. You know I’m not much good at parties.’ Then he remembered how
Harry had been feeling by the end of it. ‘Perhaps you don’t want to think about the party,’ he said.

‘I don’t mind. It had its awkward moments, I admit, but otherwise it seemed to me more or less what they’re usually like.’

‘You mean Joan’s parties?’

‘I mean large unknown parties. They’re always a bit of a risk. That’s what most people like about them.’

‘Oh.’

‘Not you – I can see that. You’re not one of the world’s risk-takers, are you?’ He said it so nicely, that Gavin found that he didn’t mind someone else
knowing that about him.

‘I suppose not.’

‘Anyway – you were at the party.’

‘Yes. Well, I don’t know whether you remember but when we went down in the lift there was a girl with me? She was wearing a red dress.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Well, I could
not
get rid of her! She gave me a lift in her car – I thought she was just taking me to the station, but she took me all the way to here – where
I’d left my bike – and
then
she followed me all the way home. Said she had nowhere to sleep.’

‘Your mother must have had something to say about that.’

‘She didn’t know till next morning.’ He could tell Harry this bit; Harry understood about mothers. ‘At breakfast she pretended to be the daughter of an Earl or a Duke or
something and Mum enjoyed that. Anyway, after breakfast I got rid of her, and I thought, “That’s that.” Not a bit of it. She turned up at the salon . . .’ And he told Harry
all about
that
bit: the basement flat in Chalk Farm and the silly picture she’d made. ‘But that’s not the worst of it.’ And he told Harry all about going to
Weybridge and the awful house – Harry was fascinated by that and kept asking for more detail – and the lunch and then Sir Gordon’s duologue with him in his study (which also
didn’t have a single book in it, he remembered, except for the telephone directories in mock leather folders), and finally about his running away. When he had finished, he waited for Harry to
say something. Eventually, Harry said: ‘And then what?’

‘That’s all.’

‘What’s worrying you then, Gavin?’

‘Well – ’ he felt himself beginning to flounder. ‘I mean, there’s obviously something wrong with her; I mean, look at all those lies! Telling her father we were
engaged without even mentioning it to me!’

‘She sounds demented. So what’s your problem?’

‘You sound as though you think I haven’t got one.’

‘No, I don’t. I just sound as though I want to know what it is.’

‘Well – apart from the fact that I bet that’s not the last of her, I feel – sort of – well, responsible in a way.’

‘What way?’

‘Well, she’s sick, isn’t she? I mean, it’s not only the lies – she looks ill. And she never seems to eat anything. And she’s always trying to shock
people.’

‘Trying to get attention, I expect. Wouldn’t you, with parents like that?’

‘Yes, but so what? Those are the parents she’s got. I can’t help feeling she needs help.’

‘Do you want to help her?’

‘I’ve told you, I don’t want anything to do with her . . .’

‘Well, there you are then.’

‘No – I’m
not
! I’m sure there isn’t anybody else to help her, and she needs help.’

‘But you wouldn’t be any good at it, if you really don’t want anything to do with her. You can’t help people you don’t like. It doesn’t work.’

‘I can’t just abandon her. One reason I’m feeling so bad now is because I ran away from her this afternoon. Just left her to it.’

‘Listen, Gavin, I won’t pry, but you sound as though you’ve been to bed with this girl and that’s made you feel guilty about her.’

‘Oh no! Nothing like that!’

‘All right. If you’re really feeling bad about her, you’d better see her when she’s in London. Tell her it’s no go with you – absolutely nix – but tell
her she ought to get some help because she’s screwed up, and after meeting her parents you don’t blame her. She might take that from you.’

‘And she might not.’

‘Well, that’s up to her, isn’t it? You’ll have done your bit.’

‘It seems a pretty feeble bit.’

‘Well, your feelings for her are on the frail side, aren’t they? For God’s sake, Gavin, you’re not Jesus Christ. It’s difficult enough to give the right things to
one person if you
love
them; don’t think you can do the right thing by anyone you meet. You live in a dream world, dear boy.’

‘I don’t think waiting for the right person to turn up is living in a dream world.’

‘How
right
they are is relative, isn’t it? You think someone completely
perfect
will one day put in an appearance and that’ll be it. They won’t. And it
wouldn’t be if they did. Because they wouldn’t stay like that. Nobody ever stays like anything. The most you can hope for is that with any luck you’ll both want to move in
approximately the same direction.’

There was a short silence. Harry drank tea.

‘But, on your basis, how do you ever find anyone? I mean, why would one person be any better than another?’

Harry gave his sly smile. ‘Chemistry, dear child. That’s always working for you – you just have to keep tuned.’ He tried the teapot but it was empty. ‘I expect
you’re still suffering the after-effects of her father’s proposition.’

‘I don’t think so. I mean, I didn’t have any doubts about turning that down.’

‘No – but it’s always a trifle unsettling to be presented with an entirely different way of life. It presents one with a choice which one would like to think one didn’t
have.’

‘Why wouldn’t one like having a choice?’

‘One might
like
having one from time to time, I suppose, but broadly speaking one likes to feel that one enjoys one’s work, or that one
has
to do it. In the latter
respect, a choice is rather undermining. Mark you. I’m speaking from Number One the groove.’

‘You mean, however awful an alternative seems, you go on feeling that it might have been better than you thought it would be when you turned it down.’

‘Right. Want more tea?’

Gavin shook his head. ‘I think being offered something like that does make me look at how things are,’ he said. ‘I mean, things like my still living at home.’

‘Ah! I agree with you there. I think that is something you should possibly review . . .’

He was interrupted by hearing the key in the door, and a moment later Winthrop appeared.

‘Oh hullo, Gavin,’ he said, amiably enough. ‘Just the person I wanted to see.’ He unzipped his windcheater on the black leather chesterfield. ‘There’s a fair
pong in here.’

‘I told you, I was making the chutney. He wants you to cut his hair,’ Harry added, as Winthrop went into the kitchen.

‘I haven’t got my scissors.’

‘We’ve got some.’

People never understood, Gavin thought, resigned to it, that you didn’t cut hair with any old scissors. Still . . .

‘How was your mother?’ Harry called to the kitchen.

‘She was very low.’ Winthrop appeared at the door; he was stirring Nescafé and milk together in a mug. ‘That place gets worse and worse, and none of the old bags in it
dares to complain. I saw the supper trays as I was leaving. I had to ask one of the staff what the hell it was. And do you know what it
was
?’

‘What was it then?’

‘A
nut
cutlet! And some tinned Russian salad. “You’ve got a nerve giving them that,” I told them. Full of nourishment, they said. My mum’s not interested
in nourishment, she wants something she can fancy. But I didn’t like to make too much trouble.’ He disappeared as the kettle whistled and returned with a steaming mug. ‘Those
places would get anyone down. The television’s lousy – always going off and it’s not even colour. She liked the Black Magic. Scoffed the lot. Said she didn’t want to hand
them round. I took her a miniature Drambuie as well. She liked that all right. She says they can’t even make a decent cup of tea. She asked me to take her to the pub.’ He looked really
sad, Gavin realized. ‘I couldn’t,’ he said. ‘She’s still got that ulcer on her leg and she’s on antibiotics. “I’ve had more men than I’ve had
hot dinners in this place,” she said; she couldn’t keep off the food and how awful it was – nothing else to think about, and she says all the others do is talk about all the
things they used to do in their past lives.
She
can’t do that. “You should have sold your story to a Sunday newspaper,” I told her – that made her smile, but she
said she has her pride.’

‘I expect she was very pleased to see you,’ Harry said gently.

‘It’s not much, though, is it? An hour or so once a fortnight.’ He yawned. ‘Christ! It’s no good being old. I’m just not going in for it.’

‘You’ll have me.’

‘
You!
You’ll be old too! Even older!’ Gavin didn’t know whether Winthrop noticed the look on Harry’s face or not because he was on his way to the kitchen
again. ‘Chutney’s good – fucking hot, though.’ He came back sucking his finger. Then, with unexpected, and therefore even more charming, charm, he asked Gavin if he would
give his hair a bit of a tidy-up, and Gavin, more to please Harry than anything else, said that he would. It was agreed that it should be cut wet, and Winthrop retired to have a bath. He was a long
time having it, and Gavin helped Harry wash up the chutney-making apparatus; they talked about music and everything got calmer.

Winthrop finally emerged with a scarlet towel wrapped round his waist, his auburn curls standing out all over his head in glistening corkscrews. Harry fetched a dust-sheet, and the scissors,
which were not good, but not impossible, and Gavin seated his client on a kitchen stool which was just about the right height.

‘Don’t want too much off, but it’s too long at the back.’ His shoulders were milk white, and smooth as silk.

‘I need a comb.’

‘Fetch him a comb.’

‘You two going to have a nice highbrow evening?’ he inquired when Harry came back with it.

‘We hadn’t made any particular plan. Why don’t you change your mind and join us? We could find a good movie. Have some curry at the Standard.’

‘I told you – I’m off to Heaven.’

‘I know you told me – I just thought you might change your mind.’

‘Well, you just thought – wrong. I’m off for a little bleeding
fun
.’

‘Okay, Winthrop – I only asked.’

‘It’s when you
only
do things that you get on my wick.’

‘What’s Heaven like?’ Gavin asked, to fill a rather black silence.

‘It’s just a disco.’ Gavin had realized that. After a pause, Winthrop added: ‘It’s where you meet people; it’s very good for that – isn’t it,
Harry?’

‘If you
want
to meet people, yes, it is. Some of us do, some of us don’t.’

‘Oh – fascinating! The trouble with you is you’re jealous!’

Harry said steadily: ‘That’s what it is.’

Winthrop seemed slightly taken aback at this because he was silent for a bit before repeating, more or less to himself: ‘That’s it. You’re jealous.’

It was almost, Gavin thought, as though they had found a solution. The atmosphere lightened; Harry said he was going to write the chutney labels and went to find them in the kitchen. Winthrop in
tones of affection said: ‘He’s never liked cruising – I can’t think why not. After all, that’s how he met me.’

Gavin said: ‘He’s very fond of you.’ He had wanted to say ‘loves you’ but felt a bit shy.

‘I’m fond of him. He knows that, really. But Harry believes in love, you know – it makes him narrow-minded. He has fixed ideas.’

‘I think that’s the lot.’ He brushed the loose hair from Winthrop’s shoulders. He didn’t want to go on talking about Harry when he was only in the kitchen.

Winthrop went to get dressed and Harry painstakingly wrote out Mango Chutney on twelve labels. Gavin had a look at
Time Out
to see whether there were any enticing films, but he
couldn’t find one that they both wanted to see. When Winthrop emerged in his white jeans and a black T-shirt, Harry started talking about Truffaut to Gavin while Winthrop got into his
windcheater, and in the end it was he who went over to Harry and kissed him. ‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘Thanks for doing my barnet, Gavin. Have a highbrow old time. Don’t do
anything I wouldn’t do.’ And he went.