Murder Most Fab (36 page)

‘Another
reason is that I don’t want to live with odds and ends of your attention any
more. I don’t want a tiny piece of your life, a stolen night here and there,
with the two of us dashing about all cloak-and-dagger, trying not to be seen. I
want us to be able to do the things couples in love do: go for walks, go out
together, be proud of each other. I’m not hanging about in hotel rooms for the
rest of my life, waiting for you to tear yourself away from Vinegar Tits and
deal with my aching two-week-old stiffy before I self-combust. I want a proper
relationship, with love and respect and stability. I’ve never had one of those
and I need it now, I really do.’

‘You
shouldn’t have fallen in love with me, then.’ He reached out to me. ‘Come here.’

Instead
I walked to the window and looked out. ‘You’re very confident about my eternal
love. As you should be. But don’t be so sure about me. I see a lifetime of
snatched moments with you stretching ahead of me, and it depresses me. Sophie
gets the main course and I get the scraps.’

‘I have
responsibilities to my family,’ said Tim, pompously.

‘Forget
them!’ I begged. ‘Break off the engagement, Tim. I will be your reward. “Come
live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove.” Don’t marry
Sophie. Please.’

Tim
stared at me for a long moment. Hope sprang in my heart. Perhaps my words had
finally reached him and he had seen how fruitless, how pointless it would be to
waste his life, with a woman he didn’t —
couldn’t
— love.

‘I’m
sorry, Johnny. I owe it to them, and to Sophie.’

A
violent rush of bitterness welled inside me. This couldn’t be the way it was
going to turn out. I’d seen such a wonderful vision of our life together, and
felt so sure it would come true . I longed for it so badly and the idea that it
was to be snatched away was too much to bear. Bitterness curdled into rage.

‘Oh,
yes, you
owe
them all. That awful cold bitch of a mother, and your
respectable father who is, after all, a pillar of society. You must follow in
his footsteps. It’s your duty. Provide an heir, pontificate in the House of
Lords and keep your sordid proclivities hidden from the world. Like father,
like son.’

‘I
don’t know why you’re suddenly reacting like this. We’ve always known the
score.’

‘I
don’t think
you
know the score at all.’ For a moment I hovered on the
brink. Then, fired up with fury, I jumped — what did I have to lose, after all?
‘Suppose I told you the truth about your father?’ I turned to look at Tim,
sprawled on the bed, his glass in his hand.

He
looked at me calmly. Posh people are often too polite to respond to
provocation. He said lightly, ‘The truth? Oh, I’m always interested in that. Go
ahead, make my day.’

‘All
right,’ I said, moved over to the bed and perched on the end. I didn’t want to
miss any of his facial reactions to what I was about to say. They always
fascinated me. He would make strange puckerings with his lips when he was
nearing his orgasm, and on the few occasions I’d seen him asleep, I’d watched
his secret smiles for hours.

‘When I
first came to London,’ I began, ‘destitute and broken-hearted, thanks to you, I
was a bit of a boy about town. I survived by prostituting myself. Yes, that’s
right. I was a rent-boy, and a rather good one at that. You had taught me well.
I was rather accomplished for one so young. In demand.’ I paused to let the
full meaning of my words sink in. Tim put his empty glass on the bedside table.
He paled a little.

‘Your
father, the mighty Lord Thornchurch, was one of my regular clients.’

Tim’s
hand darted out of nowhere and slapped me hard across the face, his signet ring
crashing against my jawbone. I jumped out of his reach and went on: ‘Quite a surprise,
isn’t it? Naughty Daddy, having his cake and eating it, paying his son’s lover
for sex! Leaves quite a nasty taste in the mouth. When he smacked me, spat at
me, beat me, whipped me, fisted me, came on me and pissed on me, I often
wondered which of us was thinking about you. Now I think I know. He was.’

Tim
leapt forward and grappled with me, clearly attempting to stop the torrent of
unwelcome words flowing from my unlocked mouth. We wrestled for a while,
falling from the bed to the floor, but the tumble gave me the advantage. I
pinned his shoulders to the ground with my knees and my hands grabbed handfuls
of his lush blond hair. I held tight and pulled his head still. I hadn’t
intended to embellish the story — the facts were shocking enough. But I needed
to turn Tim against his family in order to have him for myself.

‘Your
father told me he had always been gay, or “queer”, as he termed it. He used to
cry in my arms and tell me he had wasted his life. He doesn’t love your mother
and never has. He calls her the “mare” and you the—’

I
didn’t get any further.

‘Shut
up!’ roared Tim. ‘Don’t say another word!’

With a
furious grunt, he pushed me off him. Suddenly we were both on our feet,
circling each other. He charged at me like a rugby-player and dragged me to the
floor, crashing into the table and sending the plates flying with the remains
of our food. He grabbed a lobster pick and held it to my throat. ‘Shut your
filthy trap! I would never have believed such disgusting words could come out
of your mouth!’

‘But
don’t you see, Tim? It’s all been a lie, everything you’ve ever known. Your
father’s gay, just like you. He’s had to live a sordid double life, just like
you’ll have to. Break the chain, Tim. Seize your chance of happiness.’

He
stared at me, his blue eyes as cold and hard as flint. Then he said, in a tight
voice, ‘Idiot. Do you think I could ever be with you after this? Don’t you
realize what you’ve done? You’ve destroyed everything.’

‘No,
no!’

‘Yes! I
can’t love you after this. I can’t even see you again. I wouldn’t want to! You
bloody idiot. You filthy, low, disgusting, vile …’

Each
word was a knife to my heart. ‘I wanted you to know the truth!’ I protested.
This had all gone horribly wrong.

‘No,
you didn’t. You want revenge on me and my family because we won’t do what you
want. You’re the most selfish man in the world. Well, I’m not going to let you
get away with this. I’ll make sure that everyone knows exactly what you are.’

‘You
can’t do that,’ I bleated. ‘Besides, I’m about to come out. I’m going to tell
the world I’m gay.’

‘Well,
bulky for you. Gay is fine, no doubt, in your world, if not in mine. But how
many people want to watch a former rent-boy on television? How many like the
idea of a prostitute, and all the filth he got up to for money, swanning about
getting rich and famous? Your career will be over, matey. Finished. You’ll be all
washed up.’

‘You
wouldn’t do that, Tim …

‘Why
not? I consider it my duty as an upstanding member of society.’

‘I’ll
take you and your father with me! I’ll tell everyone about how I slept with you
both, tell them what you’re really like. I mean it, Tim!’ Hysteria had gripped
me. I started to shake. ‘You don’t know what I’m capable of.’

A look
of disgust passed over Tim’s face. ‘I’m beginning to realize. God, you make me
sick. All right. Do your worst.’ He stood up and looked down at me
contemptuously. I thought of that night in the summerhouse when he had broken
my heart for the first time. ‘A bit of boy action will hardly single out my
father in the House of Lords. They’ll all be slipping him hot skater lads who
can be rogered for a very reasonable price . No one would have the bad taste
even to discuss the matter. No, it’s only you who will suffer long-term. It’s
not the kerb-crawler who disgusts society. It’s the vile whore plying her trade
on the street corner. How did I ever think I could love you? I don’t know who
you are. You’re not the sweet boy I once knew. All the fame and success has
turned you into a monster. You’re crazy! You try to ruin my career and destroy
my father, and you’ll only dig your own hole deeper. Sophie will stick by me.
She loves me, you see. But who is there for you, Johnny? Who will love you
now?’

I said
nothing. I had nothing left to say.

Five
minutes later he left, silently and with no goodbye. I had a small cut just
below my Adam’s apple and a bruise the size of a sixpence on my jaw. I didn’t
mind. I felt strangely calm. So, now I knew the truth. Tim and I would never be
together. And he was determined that I would suffer for what I had told him. My
life, as I knew it, was surely over.

A few hours earlier, I had
skipped out of the flat I shared with Catherine, believing that quite soon I’d
be leaving it to set up home in the country with Tim, my first step towards a blissful
new future.

Now I
dragged myself through the door, wilted and despairing, my dreams turned to
dust.

‘Holy
fuck, Cowboy! What’s wrong?’ Catherine came rushing over to me, concerned. ‘You
look like you’ve been run over by a wheelie-bin.’

‘Where
have you been?’ I asked. She was dressed to the nines as usual, her slender
frame showing off her beautiful black dress. It occurred to me how different
she looked from the crazy but lovable nurse I had met in the corridor outside
the bedsits in Brownhill Road.

‘Wheeling
and dealing, of course . Feathering our nest a bit more. How do you feel about
being the new face of Old Spice? Here, let me help you.’ She put an arm under
mine and supported me to the sofa where I sat down. She poured some brandy and
handed it to me. ‘Drink this. You kook like you need it.’

I
sipped, enjoying the burn as it coated my mouth and throat.

‘After
I’ve told you my news I’ll be lucky if I’m offered the face of rat poison.’

‘Come
on.’ Catherine curled up on the sofa next to me and put her hand on my arm.
‘Tell me everything, Cowboy. What’s happened?’

‘It’s
Tim.’

‘Oh.’
Her expression changed to one of boredom. ‘That dismal posh git. I thought it
was something important.’ She opened her bag and took out a nail file.

‘It is.
You don’t understand. It’s just about as important as it could be.’

‘Oh?’
Her eyes glinted and she put the nail file on the coffee-table. ‘Go on.’

I told
her about my visit to Grandma Rita and the revelation that my life had to
change. ‘I wanted to get clean, start afresh, make some changes …

‘Get
clean?’

‘No
more drugs.’

‘No
more drugs!’ she exclaimed, as if I’d told her oxygen was to be rationed or
clothes outlawed. ‘Have you had a bump on the head? And what kind of changes,
exactly?’

‘You
know — get some independence. We’ve lived together all these years and I
thought it might do us good to have a bit of space …’ I faltered a little.

‘Hmm.
How does Tim fit into this?’

I told
her about my decision to let the world know the truth about my sexuality.

‘Oh,
how fucking boring! You’re not having a good day, are you? Why don’t you just
go to bed and stay there? I don’t know how many people you thought still didn’t
know, Cowboy,’ she said rather heartlessly. ‘You might be the grannies’
favourite but everyone else who’s female and over the age of puberty isn’t
exactly sitting by the phone. What else? Are you going to reveal to the world
that you’re white, too? I wonder how they’ll take it. The Riot Squad had better
be standing by.’

‘Well—’

‘Tim,’
she said impatiently. ‘What about Tim?’

In a
few words, I painted for her the picture of my future that I had seen so
clearly: a proper relationship, a big house in Kent, a new beginning, free of
drugs and drink.

‘Sounds
like hell to me, but go on.’

‘But
Tim wouldn’t do it. He insisted he was going to go through with his marriage to
Sophie, that he owed it to his family and his heritage — all of that terrible,
life-destroying nonsense.’ As I thought of it, my eyes stung and despair welled
up in me. ‘So I lost my head. I told him something I thought would change his
mind.’