Hismother, for once, shifted in her seat and turned her deep sapphiregaze on Laurie.Laurie could read compassion there, sorrow, and abitter amusement.She used to defend him a lot, he remembered,perhaps while he was still young enough to be defensible.“William,” she said in her pretty French accent, laying a hand onher husband’s arm, “leave him be.”Her face lit up with ahalf-sardonic, half-appeasing smile Laurie seldom saw nowadays.“It’s only the moral absolutism of youth.Not worth your time.Itwill wear off soon enough.”
SirWilliam glanced from one to the other of them.For a moment, helooked almost bewildered.Laurie wondered if it was hard for him,to see nothing of his own face and everything of hers whenever helaid eyes on his son.He gave a kind of snarl.“Don’t get into hiscorner, my lady Marielle.Not unless you’re willing to fightthere.”
Her eyeswent blank.After a moment, she returned her attention to the nightoutside.Sir William, without looking, banged his fist against theglass divider behind him.Laurie saw Charlie reach obediently toopen the intercom.“Get your bloody foot down, Wilson.I need adrink.”
* **
Back atthe enormous six-floored Mayfair house, where the family rattledaround like peas in a barrel and the staff outnumbered theiremployers, Laurie did his best to creep to bed.But he and hiseight-year-old sister shared the same far-flung corridor on the topfloor, and she knew every creak of the boards.
“Laurie!”
Hefroze, then let the shoes he was carrying drop to the floor with athump since the jig was up.Reluctantly he pushed open her bedroomdoor.She was bolt upright in the bed, a shawl arranged primlyaround her shoulders like a little old woman expecting grandcompany.“God,” he said tiredly, “are you undead?Do you neversleep?It’s nearly one in the morning.”
“I know.You’re much later than you promised.”
Laurielooked at her.Like him, she was a carbon copy of her mother, andhe wondered at the weird genetic selectivity that seemed to havewinnowed out the old man’s contribution to the way his offspringlooked, moved, functioned.She was quite composed, but there wereshadows in her eyes, and when he stopped to listen, he understoodwhy.Muffled yelling rose up from the floor below, sometimes bass,occasionally a brief, high-pitched response.It turned the air inthe child’s room static with unease.Carefully Laurie shut the doorbehind him.He sat on the bed.“There was traffic,” he said.“I’msorry.Did you have a good day?”
“No.Eleanor Browne’s boring party was bad enough.Then you gettaken to the opera and I’m left here with Mrs.Gibson.And opera’swasted on you, Laurie.You know it is.”
“Yes, I do,” Laurie agreed.“You’d be much better at it.”Hepaused, long enough to hear continued sounds of conflict frombelow, a hiss and a vibration that had made his heart contract withfear at Clara’s age.“Do you want to know what happened?I think Itook some of it in.”
Heshoved a pillow down his shirt and morphed into the lucklessheroine, bouncing back and forth across the room with handsclutched to his makeshift bosom, belting out an aria whose Italianlibretto consisted of improvised English with an extra vowel tackedon to every noun.The villain of the piece arrived, pulling himoffstage from behind Clara’s wardrobe by his own hair, whence heemerged basso profundo and hunchbacked, prowling around thesquealing child’s bed with dire, mostly culinary threats concerninghis intentions for poor Helga.At the climactic moment, Helgaemerged once again, feminine attributes enhanced this time with asecond pillow, which provided useful cushioning when she plunged toher death over the cliff between the two beds.By this time Clarawas doubled up and threatening to wet the bed with a sincerityLaurie knew was real, so he laid off, resurrected himself, gave herback her pillows, and kissed her good night.The sounds fromdownstairs had ceased.With a kindly firmness he had learned in theyears since he’d become more of a father to her than an elderbrother, he directed Clara to lie down and sleep, switched herlight off, and padded down the corridor to his own room.
* **
Thetrouble with Sir William’s outbursts was that they always containedenough of a grain of truth that his son could not dismiss themoutright.The poison grain would find its soil in Laurie’s mind andput out shoots, always holding Laurie back from outright rebellionagainst him.In the morning’s bleakest early hours, Laurie sat upin the bed that had been his since he’d outgrown his nursery cot,in the big, shabby room he had always occupied.He laced his armsaround his knees.He thought about the grand bedrooms on the floorbelow, any of which were his for the asking.But, putting aside hisneed to keep distance from parental rows, Laurie knew he did notfeel enough like the young heir to the place to take on even thatmuch of the trappings of the role.
In whichcase, what was he doing here at all?If he shared his parents’ideals for his future, it would have been fine—acceptable,anyway—for him to get sent down from Oxford in disgrace afterfailing his midterm exams, to agree to the month of tutoring andcramming his father had paid for, to creep back under the parentalroof and work for the second chance he suspected Sir William hadmore or less bought for him.
But thetruth was that he scarcely cared.He couldn’t imagine making theeffort it would take to focus his wandering, dream-filled brain onthe maths and politics that his father, more fancifully still, wasconvinced would carve out a respectable career for him.He couldn’teven manage trig, and the political world seemed a swamp to him, amiasma, a chamber of horrors where unimaginable superpowers playedout apocalyptic games beyond the reach of any normal humaninfluence.He knew he had no real intention to try, and on thoseterms, it was wrong of him to stay.He should stand up to hisfather and tell him the deal was off.That he would make his ownway, as hundreds of thousands of young men so much less privilegedthan he managed to do.
Christ,as even a homeless kid on the Strand was doing, after hisfashion.
Laurieenvisaged the scene in which he had this conversation with hisfather and ran a hand into his hair, shivering.If the old man hadbeen an unrelenting brute to him, it would have been easy.Hispowers would have evaporated along with Laurie’s childhood, leavinghim free.But, until his only son had developed a mind of his own,Sir William had been a decent dad.Domineering, intolerant ofinfantile vagaries—always ready though with rough fun, a leg uponto the horse he’d bought, way too big for his ten-year-old, butLaurie had known better by then than to show fear and had masteredthe animal on a do-or-die basis that the old man plainly stillhoped for and expected from him now.It was only since Laurie hadbegun to question the gold-plated world in which he lived thattheir ways had diverged violently.At every confrontation,something inside Laurie would tangle up in memories of love andauthority, and his strength would dissolve.The old man was muchworse now, his temper heating up in proportion with hisdisappointments, but even the worst, most vituperative rants Lauriecould not quite bring himself to dismiss.What if he had simply putmoney into a lost soul’s hands tonight for him to go and hurthimself some more?
Well, ifhe had, Laurie hoped his toxin of choice was keeping Sasha warm.Laurie got out of bed, suddenly sure that sleep would evade himtonight.He grabbed a quilt off the bed and went to huddle on theattic’s broad window ledge, where he could look out over theice-glimmered rooftops.His own sole experience of hard drugs wasthat they could indeed pull down the night into a starry blanketthat would wrap around him and drive off cold and painforever—which was why, after that, he had touched nothing strongerthan the occasional snitched handful of his mother’s ample sedativeprescriptions.Which was bad enough, he supposed, but did the trickon the warfare nights, when the roar of his parents’ disputes creptthrough every floorboard and there was no one to drown them outwith amateur theatricals for him.Drawing up his knees, inhalingthe quilt’s faint scent of cedar chests and dust, Laurie hopedSasha was warm—or believed himself so—and free.
* **
Sasha.Black hair, brown eyes—a face which was, in its own way, asaristocratic as the one Laurie saw in the mirror.He wasn’t surewhy he couldn’t shake the image from his mind.The tutor who’d beencharged with knocking him into shape for resitting his exams wasnot due for another two days, and Laurie had time on hishands.
At leastit was London time, which meant he had resources.There was ascatter of small playhouses in the area, around whose backstageareas and greenrooms he had made himself familiar over past schoolholidays—never doing more than helping shift scenery and runerrands, but buying himself contented hours in the one environmentwhere he felt really at home.He’d been asked a couple of times toundertake extra and bit work but had never dared accept.He held adeep conviction that some kind of alarm would go off in hisfather’s study the second his foot touched the boards.A greatadmirer of drama was Sir William, but not as a career for his boy.Laurie might as well have announced at once that he was going tobecome a prostitute or join the Chippendales.He made his way downthe Strand toward the Twilight without allowing himself to lookinto doorways.
It wasanother world anyway at bright December noon.Laurie found himselfwondering if he had imagined his encounter of the night before.Theentrance to Lindley’s was washed, gleaming, thronged with Christmasshoppers.No traces of the night and the shadow people who belongedto it.For a few minutes, walking briskly down the Strand, warm inhis sheepskin jacket, Laurie tried on the idea that this was thereal and only world, the day side, where everyone he saw lookedrosy and well-heeled.It was a nice thought.Experimentally hefitted himself into it, straightened his shoulders, and lookedaround.He was a wealthy young man of good family.In his walletwas a credit card of unspecified limit.He had nothing to worryabout, really.If he closed his eyes, shut down those inconvenientparts of himself his mother assured him were mere youthfulsentiment anyway, ready to burn off in the arid light ofadulthood…
No waythat he could find Sasha again in that bright world, even had hewanted to.Laurie pushed open the backstage door of the Twilight,the warm gust of air that greeted him a reminder of contrasts fromthe night before.He slipped into the shadows, quietly greeting thestagehands who remembered him.
Notquietly enough.Two racks of costumes down at the end of a corridorgave a warning shudder and broke apart, expelling a plump shape inpink cashmere.Dora, the Twilight’s talented and faithful dresser,paused for a moment as if scenting the air, then got a fix on himand came cannoning down the corridor to intercept.“Laurie!Darling!”She hadn’t learned the art of air kissing, and he stood,resigned, while she planted a lip-glossed smacker on each of hischeeks.“God, I swear.You get more knicker-dampeningly gorgeousevery time I see you.Are you of legal age yet?Please sayyes.”
Laurielooked at her—her nice smile, her luminous eyes.Soft, fragranthair, a body as generous and easygoing as her nature.She had madea massive, unsubtle pass at Laurie every year since he was fifteen.It was almost a festive tradition.He smiled at her.“Hi, Dora.More or less, I think.But…”
“I know, I know.Don’t tell me.”She raised her hands in mocksurrender.“You’re gay.It’s always the same.They come throughhere year after year, these gorgeous boys, and then the secondthey’re legal—boom—they’re after cock.Don’t you worry, darling.”She deposited a third noisy kiss, this time on his brow.“Dora’sused to it.I tell you what.Before someone comes and nabs you forset painting, you come down here and help me steam press a fewcloaks.I don’t know what they think I’m made of here, but I canscarcely lift the bloody things.”
Dazed,Laurie followed her.She set him a load of industrial ironing andwandered around him chattering, requiring little by way of reply.Laurie liked her a lot.She was kind, and her offers of ano-strings roll on the trapdoor mattress were quite sincere.Butwhen he tried to imagine going through with it, all he couldenvisage was Sasha and a pair of dark-lashed brown eyes.
The onething he dared look at even less than his love of the theatre andreasons for remaining at home was his sexuality.He had sealed itup, set it determinedly aside.In public school, you either leapedfor the safe moral high ground of loudly stated straightness, toinclude lurid tales of weekend conquests with Roedean girls andcutouts of topless tabloid models stuck to the inside of yourlocker.Or you drowned among the rest of them—boys who hadn’tlearned to conceal the fact that a natural consequence of beingtrapped for years in a single-sex school was to fall in love,however temporarily, with other boys.Life for this second group,this underclass, Laurie had soon seen, was barely worth living.Youmoved from being an older boy’s fag to being his or someone else’sfaggot, and these two terms might as well have been seared on yourbrow.You went from polishing shoes to being buggered in the lockerroom.Every single boys’ school cliché was true and had not alteredfrom the eighteenth century to the twenty-first.Laurie was notsure how he had walked the line between these two extremes.Thepressure to be one thing or the other was incredible, and he hadn’teven been bright enough to clamber into an ivory tower and raise aflag of frigid intellectualism.He’d had a couple of girlfriends,carefully selected scions of other good families, and enjoyed theircompany with ill-defined longings for touch.If ever he dreamed ofgreener grass and the other side of the fence, he took ferventprecautions to hide the fact from himself and anyone else.If SirWilliam had a thing about foreigners and Jews, you should see howhe could make himself pleasant on the subject ofhomosexuals.
Probably Laurie should come down off his stepladder and takehold of Dora’s warm hand.He had been rescued from the steam pressby the set builder’s assistant, who had put him to work on a giantfantasy background for the Twilight’s Christmas satire of Narnia.Laurie looked at his paint-stained hands and tried to imagine themclosing on soft, white female flesh.Why not?She was sweet, andshe’d given plenty of his fellow backstage lads a useful sexualinitiation.He could hardly take her home, but Sir William would bedelighted to hear of his prowess.Youyoung dog, Laurence.
