Goodmans Hotel - 14. Chapter 14

One effect of the assault was that my work on the Dunblane Spa project came to an end. Some figure work already in hand could be finished on the computer at Goodmans Hotel and relayed via the internet to Vincent’s office. My multicoloured wounds were a good excuse to drop out of the face to face meetings arranged for the coming weeks with the US client. Vincent, typically, was kind and considerate. He said he hoped we might work together on another project in the future, that anyway we would be seeing each other socially before long, and that if I needed help he could send one of his people down to the hotel for an hour or two, though with Darren, Tom and the garden centre staff nearby there was no need for me to take up the offer.

The ugliness of my injuries was not the sole reason for quitting the project. With the end of the tax year looming there was plenty of paperwork for me to do at the hotel, and I wanted time with Tom to re-establish the old feeling of closeness we had known before our break-up. I skulked around in the background keeping out of sight of the guests as far as possible, and at the garden centre everyone followed the manager’s lead in making a fuss of me. He felt responsible for the mugging, and sent over three huge flower arrangements for the hotel with a card signed by all the staff. A well intentioned lady from the local Victim Support Group rang to offer sympathy and asked if she could do anything, but of Jamie and the two thugs who had attacked me we heard nothing more.

Tom rang his employer in Portsmouth with a story about having to stay at home because his mother was seriously ill. Within a few days he was working for local householders again. The old reassuring routines of our lives reasserted themselves, although having come so close to permanent break-up we were very careful to be considerate towards one other. My sense of having been wronged by him had completely gone. If he had hurt me by keeping his past a secret, my putting the ’phone down on him when he rang from Portsmouth with those pompous dismissive words ‘I have nothing at all to say to you’ must have hurt him; and on my part the hurt had been intentional.

He showed no sign of resentment, and was as helpful as ever with fixing things in the hotel. When Darren mentioned a patch of damp in the little bathroom under the roof, he went up to investigate and concluded that rain-water was seeping in. The pain in my leg had more or less gone by then and we took a step ladder and some tools up so that he could look for the leak from inside the loft. He hauled himself up through the hatch and I handed up a torch, trying to protect my eyes from the falling smuts. A trap door led out onto the flat roof above the bathroom and when he opened it daylight came streaming into the roof space. ‘Come and have a look,’ he called down.

Always nervous of ladders, I climbed another step up and peered into the loft. A layer of black dust coated the fibre-glass insulation between the joists. ‘Shouldn’t you be wearing a face mask?’

‘Come on,’ he said, ignoring my question, forcefully grasping my left arm and pulling me upwards, giving me no choice but to scramble after him, using my free hand to grab joists and rafters to steady myself. ‘What about my leg?’

‘You’ll be all right.’ He gripped my hand firmly to help steady me and guided me towards the hatch. ‘Come and look over here, you can see for miles. Stand on the joists, not the insulation, otherwise you’ll make a hole in the ceiling.’

‘I have been inside a loft before. All this dust is awful.’ The trap door was set in the slope of the roof, about a yard above the flat metal-covered area above the bathroom. He stepped out backwards, holding onto the sides of the hatchway as he lowered himself down over the slope. Balancing with difficulty on the joists I began to follow, but when I backed out of the opening my foot did not reach down far enough for me to stand on the flat surface below, and fear of falling made me freeze. He grabbed my legs. ‘Come on, I’ve got you, let yourself slide down, you won’t fall.’

Somehow or other I slithered down. He left me kneeling terrified by the hatch and went to the edge of the roof, where he stood like a mountaineer looking out from a rocky crag. Recovering my nerve with a few deep breaths, I stood up and took cautious steps towards him, and looked down into the Mews and the row of long thin gardens behind the terraced houses. We were no more than four or five feet higher up than if we had been in Darren’s room, but that extra height was enough for us to see over the top of the nearby roofs. Row upon row of grey slate showed the extent of the Victorian suburb, and in the distance we could see the dome of the Royal Albert Hall and the Imperial College Tower.

This panorama, not visible from any of the windows of the rooms below, was completely new to me. The view was not one of London’s finest, the City’s office towers being hidden by a block of flats. Expanses of grey slate roof predominated in other directions, but the escapade of climbing out there was a good example of how much fun life could be when Tom was around. Without him I would probably never have gone up there to look.

Had anyone at street level seen us, standing with our arms around one another, they would have thought us oddly affectionate for two workmen up on a roof. A car turned under the arch at the end of the mews; it stopped at a doorway and a couple emerged to unload shopping from the back, absorbed in what they were doing, unaware of us watching from above.

He turned to examine the roof. ‘You can see where the water’s been coming in. Over here, look.’ He pointed to where the edge of a metal sheet covering the flat roof on which we stood had lifted to make a small gap.

‘Doesn’t look much. Are you sure that’s it?’

‘Pretty sure. Can’t see anything else that might be causing the leak. I’ll flatten it, stick it down, and we’ll see if that sorts it.’

We had yet to talk about his car thefts, but we both knew that the subject was too important to ignore. In the early days of our relationship, in the pub, over meals, lying together after sex, we had told each other all the significant events of our lives. Now whenever we passed a Mercedes, a Jaguar or another expensive car in the street we were reminded that part of his life remained secret from me. We would glance sideways at one another, knowing that we could not put off discussing the subject for much longer. However difficult talking might be for him, until we did my not knowing would remain a barrier between us.

Understanding one another completely, absorbing everything we possibly could about each other, was essential. More than once, after listening to part of my life story, he had said, ‘I know how that must have made you feel. Sometimes it’s as though what’s happened to you has happened to me.’ I felt the same about his experiences; sharing our pasts was as important as the physical pleasure of making love. How could we be truly close, think of ourselves as a couple, or expect to know what the other would want even when we were physically apart, until the gap was closed?

The subject raised itself when the hotel guest Andrew had told me about, the one who had visited his son in the same prison as Tom, reserved a room again. In a quiet voice I mentioned the booking to him. He was silent for perhaps half a minute. ‘Probably turn out he won’t even recognise me. Just coincidence that he saw me at all in the visiting room, we never spoke.’

‘If you’d rather, I could cancel, say we’ve had a flood or something and suggest he tries Housmans Hotel. If you’re unhappy about him coming.’

‘No, there’s no reason to do that. Wasn’t exactly my finest hour, you can understand me not wanting to be reminded of it.’

‘You don’t want to tell me about it?’

‘It might have been worse than you think. You’ve probably got enough of an idea of what that kind of life is about from what you read in the papers. ’

‘It’s part of you. But if talking about it is too difficult...’

‘All right.’ We took beers into the empty breakfast room and sat opposite each other in the bright light of the bay window. We were committed now, but for perhaps a minute he sighed and shuffled in his chair.

‘We’re not talking about a one-off mistake here. There’s things I’ve done that even Andrew doesn’t know about.’

‘Trust me.’

‘The start of it all was way back, when I was still at school. I haven’t spent all my life thieving, and what there was is all behind me. It was another life.’

‘You got into trouble when you were a kid?’

‘We got away with it. Maybe it would have been better if we hadn’t – might have put us off.’ He and a school friend had begun stealing when he was fourteen. They used to go out trying the door handles of parked cars and taking things from inside any that had been left unlocked. They took cigarettes, sweets, and small change which they spent in amusement arcades. One day they saw a leather jacket on the back seat of a car and broke a side window to get it; it was too big for either of them and they sold it for a few pounds to a friend’s brother. They became more determined, made forays into new areas, and by smashing car windows greatly increased their haul. The first time a car alarm went off they ran off in opposite directions, but after triggering two or three they realised that nobody took much notice and that the best way to avoid attracting attention was to cross the street and walk calmly away.

Later they began joy riding, forcing or breaking windows to get into older cars that were less well secured, driving them for a few miles, and ripping out the car stereo systems. They went out at night, wore dark clothing and gloves to make themselves less noticeable and varied the times and the places they targeted. They were twice spotted by someone who gave chase, but they ran fast enough not to be caught.

‘Didn’t your parents ask what you were doing?’

‘They thought I was out with my mates. In a way I suppose I was. Why should they worry? I wasn’t pestering them.’

‘They must have wondered where your money was coming from.’

‘A couple of times I said I was doing jobs for a friend’s uncle, someone they didn’t know, clearing out the garage or helping in the garden.’

‘They should have taken more of an interest in what you were getting up to.’

‘I ain’t blaming them for what happened. They brought me up to know the difference between right and wrong. What I did was down to me. They don’t even know I was sent down. My Mum and Dad never had any trouble with the law, nor has my brother. They’d be ashamed if they ever found out.’

‘You kept everything to yourself, even from your brother?’

‘He may have suspected something, but he’s the last one to tell about anything like that. You’d never hear the end of it. He might look like a hard case, but he’s completely straight. In some ways you’ve got lot in common with him.’

‘Thanks a lot.’ The comparison was, I guessed, meant to be teasing. It lightened the mood, and I was glad he felt comfortable enough for a little humour. What I wanted was an understanding of that part of his life, not some sort of confession. ‘I meant to tell you about him coming up to me outside the newsagent’s a week or so ago asking what you were doing in Portsmouth. I just told him that we’d split up, nothing else.’

‘Good, thanks for keeping it quiet. Anyway to account to my family for my time inside I made up a story about finding some work up north. Because Andrew helped me by letting me have the flat above the garden centre and giving me work when I got out I didn’t have to go crawling back to them for help.’

‘So, you were stealing from cars and joy riding when you were a kid.’

‘We weren’t that bad, not compared to some kids who smash up cars and set fire to them. Me and my mate never did serious damage. Joy riding was a fantastic thrill. When the most you’d ever done is drive a few hundred yards round the back of some flats in the family motor, jump-starting one that you’d broken into and whizzing it round the streets was terrific. We never went far in them, the owners would’ve got their car back in a day or two. All they had to do was replace the glass and fix the wires back in the ignition. We were kids, we were just messing about.’

He and his friend fell out a couple of times over money, but want of cash and hunger for excitement brought them back together again. When they left school Tom found a job as a trainee electrician and his adolescent spate of law breaking came to an end. He took driving lessons, saved up enough to buy his own car and lost touch with the boy he used to go stealing with. Gay pubs, clubs, and sex provided him with thrills of a different kind.

He had shown me photographs taken after he first started work, including images of him with his first boyfriend, a lad as thin as Darren who worked in a department store. Tom told his family he was gay and took the boy home several times, but after four or five months they split up. His parents and brother tried put pressure on him, saying that he was not really gay and would forget about men if he made a proper effort with a steady girlfriend. Dejected and mistrusting his own feelings, he followed their advice and found a girl whose company he enjoyed, but in bed he could perform only by imagining he was with a man. In a supermarket where he had gone alone one day an attractive man looked at him a few times as they passed in the aisles. He responded, they spoke and went back to the man’s flat. Holding a male body in his arms again made it obvious to him that with the girl he was merely pretending. He told her he had found someone else and escaped his family’s influence by moving out to a flat of his own.

For a while he indulged in a life of one-night stands. One of his pick-ups took him home to an enormous room packed with all sorts of goods: cameras, laptop computers, portable phones, records and stereo equipment. The property was stuffed into bags and suitcases, piled up on the floor and poking out from under the furniture. The explanation given, that all these goods had been bought cheap from car boot sales and charity shops for resale at a profit, was not convincing and Tom rightly assumed they were stolen. He saw the man again by chance; this time was with friends, in a gay pub in the West End. They were guarded in what they said initially, but more alcohol made them incautious and they soon revealed that they were all living outside the law – thieving, buying and selling stolen property, or supplying drugs.

Through them Tom met a car thief who was heterosexual but who used the group to help dispose of property he had stolen from cars. Tom told him about his schoolboy activities, was impressed by the man’s tales of stealing cars to order for wealthy villains, and fascinated to hear about new gadgets for overcoming the latest locks and alarms. He learned about falsifying documents, and of a garage workshop under a railway arch where number plates were changed, chassis numbers removed, and vehicles re-sprayed. Wiring houses seemed dull in comparison, and when the man invited him to go along one night to see him in action Tom could not resist. New cars might come with better locks and security devices than before, but inventive thieves quickly developed ways to overcome them.

‘But you didn’t go only the once?’

‘You get sucked into these things. Eventually I gave in my notice at work. That little crowd of thieves thought doing a regular job was pathetic, that slaving away day after day made you a loser. They were full of excuses for themselves. The truth was most of them didn’t have the mentality to hold down a job. Looking back the thing that attracted me was not that they lived by thieving, but that they were fun to go out with. If I’d stuck to having a drink and a laugh with them, no harm would have come out of it.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ I asked softly.

‘If you’ve developed a knack of some kind you like to make use of it, especially if you get a thrill out of doing it. There was one day we went out looking for a particular motor, and we found one in this pub car park, no surveillance, no one about. My mate asked me to try to open it, first one I’d tried since I was a kid. I was into it and driving away in about two minutes. The alarm went off, but the music in the pub was so loud they wouldn’t have heard it. The adrenaline was pumping, the old excitement was back. It was as though that motor wanted me to have it.’

A bragging edge had come into his voice, but hindsight reminded him of reality. ‘After I was nicked, the police talked about reducing the charges against me to “being an accessory” if I told them who we’d been supplying the cars to, but I couldn’t turn in people who’d trusted me. Anyway, my share from that first motor was more than I could earn in a month at work, even with maximum overtime. Things went on from there. What happens is once you start thieving you want to save all your energy and concentration for the next time you go out after a motor. A straight job gets in the way. How much more do you want to hear?’

‘I’m not sure. Was there anything particularly important? Any highlights?’

‘Highlights! Low lights and low life, more like. There was one that stood out, since you ask. Once we were looking for a Jaguar and spotted the right model being driven into a large car park near a shopping centre. Two attendants in a hut were collecting parking fees and raising and lowering the barriers as cars came in and out. I jumped out of the van, followed the driver of the Jaguar on foot into the shopping centre, and saw him join up with a group of people at a pub for lunch.

Meanwhile my mate parked the van in a street about half a mile away, found an old car nearby that was easy to steal and drove it into the car park, collecting a timed ticket on his way in. He joined me in the shopping centre, we checked that the owner of the Jaguar had sat down to his meal, and made sure there were no police or other security to worry about. We returned to the car park and my mate gave me the ticket he had collected when he parked the old car. Next, as a diversion, we set off two car alarms on the other side of the attendants’ hut to where the Jaguar was. My mate walked out of the car park and back to the van. While the attendants were still busy on the other side of the car park, I cracked the electronic code for the Jaguar’s locking system and got the car started. A few minutes later when one of the attendants returned to the hut I drove up to the barrier, showed the parking ticket, paid the fee and drove out.’

The exhilaration of exploits like this came to an end when he was caught with stolen property. When the demand from the garage for cars dried up, as it did from time to time, Tom and his partner resorted to taking goods from vehicles. They once raided a beauty spot in the Yorkshire Dales where ramblers parked before setting off on a popular country walk. Twenty or thirty cars stood on a wide grass verge, and left behind in them absent-mindedly or because the walkers decided they had too much to carry, were items of clothing, camping equipment, tools, maps, books, and in the boot of one car, a holdall full of erotic women’s underwear.

They sold off this loot to people who ran car boot stalls, friends of friends, anyone they thought they could trust, usually for about a tenth of what the items would have cost to buy new. Despite shifting all they could through their contacts and giving away or dumping unsaleable items, the volume of goods grew and grew until two lock-up garages they rented were cluttered with male and female clothing in all sizes, with luggage, stereos, records, a comprehensive collection of road atlases, and all sorts of junk.

His associate was caught in a BMW he stole from outside an empty office block in Ealing, unaware that it had been stolen four days earlier by another thief who abandoned it when he realised it was running out of petrol. Searching the flat where Tom’s associate lived, the police found an old receipt for rent for the two lock-up garages and decided to have a look at them. They found Tom packing a video camera, a dozen Ordnance Survey maps and several items of clothing into a holdall. They took him to the police station, questioned him and charged him.

‘You could have said you didn’t know where the stuff came from, that all you did was help to sell it second-hand.’

‘Who knows what he might have told them about me? The best thing you can do at the police station is to keep quiet. Looking back on it, lifting all that gear was a mistake. If they hadn’t found the lock-ups all they could have done him for was taking and driving away one motor. They wouldn’t have had nothing on me. The money we got for all that stuff was hardly anything, and finding buyers for it was a lot of hassle. Our real money came from the cars. All that bloody junk made it obvious how much thieving we’d been doing. They made it sound as bad as they could at the trial, said we were habitual criminals, had refused to co-operate with the police, made us out to be a couple of real villains. Basically that is the job of the prosecution isn’t it, to paint you as black as they can? We were guilty after all. We both got sent down. He came off worse because of previous convictions.’

‘Is he out yet?’

‘He must be out by now. He wrote to me once from prison. I wrote back, said I was working again and was going completely straight... permanently. Wished him all the best obviously. The one good thing to come out of the whole bloody mess was that the police brought Andrew to the station to see if he’d recognise either of us. His car had been stolen a couple of days earlier and he’d seen someone hanging around at Biddulph Mansions. We weren’t responsible, but Andrew did recognise me, we’d met a couple of times in the Beckford Arms. He asked the police about my trial and wrote to me in prison suggesting I got in touch with him when I came out if I needed any help. After all he did for me I wouldn’t ever do anything bent again. It would be like throwing it all back in his face. I wouldn’t want to anyway, it’s not part of my life that I’m proud of.’ He stopped and sat back in his chair.

‘Is there any more?’ I asked.

‘Details, if you want if you want to hear them. That friend of mine from school I told you about has been in loads of trouble since. I’ve told you how it was. You’re shocked, aren’t you?’

‘A bit. By how much and how long... No, that isn’t what I wanted to say. I’m glad you’ve told me. Thanks for making yourself go over it all again. What matters is that you’re here. I missed you, you know, really missed you.’ I went over to his side of the table, leant over him, stroked his head and kissed him, reassuring him that my feelings for him had not weakened.

CHAPTER 15

Telling Andrew of my reconciliation with Tom when he next rang was so great a pleasure that, after putting down the ’phone, I was a little saddened by the thought that such intense feelings of happiness could not be sustained for ever. Not wanting to detract from the good news I said nothing about the mugging. A comment he made, that the spell in prison had completely demoralised Tom, did not affect my elation at the time, but remembering it later made me aware there was still one corner of Tom’s life he had kept from me. Eager still for complete disclosure of everything, I raised it the next time we were alone together. At first he tried to laugh the subject off by saying the trouble with Wormwood Scrubs was that it was full of villains, but I persisted: ‘Would you simply rather not talk about it?’

‘You might have something there. Prisons are places where all sorts of horrible things go on, Mark. You don’t want to hear about all that.’

‘Not if you find it too difficult to talk about.’

He looked at my expectant face and shook his head. ‘All right, if you must know, I was banged up on this wing with hundreds of men, two to a cell, with a lot more experience of being inside than I had. There’s all sorts in there, but not many you’d choose as friends. Don’t know why but for some reason this screw decided to give me a job mopping a landing and staircase. If you’re lucky you get rewarded with a little bit of money you can spend in the prison shop, extra underwear and socks, and a chance to take a shower when the bathroom’s not crowded. Little things, like being able to use the pay ’phone and buy tobacco, are really important in there, when all you’ve got day after day is the same faces, the same walls, the same horrible cheap food, your limited little routines week after week. A lot of the other cons don’t like it though, they think you’re collaborating with the screws doing a job like that, demeaning yourself, becoming part of the system, so you get snide little remarks from them as you pass by.

You have to put up with that, but there was a lot of drug dealing going on in the jail. I kept clear of it, but there was an evil bastard called Stomper. Stomper was his nickname, he had a reputation for using his boots on anyone who crossed him. To him ordinary cons like me were there to be used. First of all he tried to pressure me into having stuff brought in by a visitor, threatened to put me in the hospital wing otherwise. I faced him out. He threatened all sorts of things, planting stuff on me and tipping off the screws, having me beaten up, having someone with AIDS stab me with a hypodermic. He was determined to get something out of me, one way or another, probably more to show his own importance than anything else.

One day he cornered me in this quiet little area in front of the bedding store where there was no surveillance. He had one of his gang with him holding a broom handle sharpened at the end. They looked like a couple of overgrown school kids, pair of fucking twats. People like him are evil, they could do any sort of damage to you and walk away happy, whistling to themselves. He gave me three choices, have my eyes and god knows what gouged out with the fucking sawn-off broom handle, get him some drugs, or suck him off.

To some extent I felt it didn’t matter what happened to me any more, and part of me was shit scared. So I sucked him off. Three times he cornered me, the fucking cunt. Anything else you want to know?’

The intensity of his voice told how bitter these memories were. I gently patted his lips with two of my fingers, and lightly kissed the corners of his mouth. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have...’

‘Maybe I should have taken the beating. Humiliating myself like that.’

‘Whatever you did it would have been awful. At least you still have two eyes to see the world with. Did he know you were gay?’

‘It’s hard to keep secrets when you’re with other cons who are watching you twenty-four hours a day. They notice how you react when a big pair of boobs turns up on the TV. There’s such a close atmosphere in there. Everyone is looking for some way of scoring little advantages over everyone else, sometimes you get the impression people are talking about you, but maybe they’re not. They probably all thought of me as another small time con doing his bird, another loser. Trouble is if you cross someone like Stomper, you’re the one who’s going to end up worse off. He’s got too many people who owe him favours or are scared of him. If you want full remission you have to keep yourself away from trouble and put up with being treated like dirt.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t want to make you relive the worst moments of your life.’

‘You’re the only person I’ve ever told about Stomper. For a while I used to dream about tracking him down and causing him serious injury, but something like that will take over your life and ruin you if you let it. In the end the best thing to do is to force yourself to forget about it.’

His experience of the criminal ‘justice’ system appalled me. What right had a judge or magistrate at his trial to inflict punishment of that kind on him? Was being forced to have sex with a man like Stomper regarded as fair redress for the crime of stealing cars? If I had known him then, been to visit him in jail, and he had told me what was going on perhaps I could have done something to stop it, or more likely like Tom himself would have been powerless against a system governed by rules and customs that were strange to me.

What purpose had been served by delving into that awful time in his life? What we needed to do was to forget old miseries and think about future happiness. The hotel would soon have been open for business for a full year, and a party to celebrate would give us a positive event to plan for and look forward to.

When the boisterous Newcastle group who had come down to London last May rang to make another booking, the Saturday night of their stay seemed a good time to hold it. Their last visit might have ended awkwardly, but they had intended no harm, and with the six of them present a party would never be dull. Andrew, having at last decided he had spent enough time looking up family members in New Zealand, was due back. He would probably not want to stay to the end of the kind of party I had in mind, but was certain to enjoy getting together with all his friends for the first hour or so. His return journey was to begin with a flight to Thailand, not so much because of the country’s sexual enticements, but with the intention of visiting some of the famous temples.

The sort of party I wanted was one that would fill the house with clamour, a huge mêlée of people all talking energetically, drinking, dancing, attacking the food like a flock of starlings, flirting, acting the fool, and being found in dark corners in the embrace of someone they had met only half an hour before; the sort of gathering at which people forget who was drinking from which glass, mislay items of clothing, and when they want to leave have difficulty locating whoever they came with; the sort of Saturday night party from which it takes most of Sunday to recover.

Tom and Darren were keen, and we compiled an invitation list, including everyone working at Ferns and Foliage, friends from the Beckford Arms, and a few of Darren and Cheung’s friends from the club. Assuming that some of those invited would not come, but that others would bring a partner or a friend, we planned to cater for around fifty people. Coping with a hotel full of guests at the same time would have been difficult and I turned down further requests for bookings for that weekend.

Darren suggested making the Far East a theme for the evening, and Cheung offered to borrow Chinese lanterns and other decorations from his family and friends. A week before the party, he and Tom went off to the West End together and returned with a van full of coloured paper lanterns, decorative banners and film posters depicting martial arts stars flying through the air. Cheung also knew of a wholesaler where we could buy South-East Asian food and drink, and with his help we stocked the hotel freezers with satay, pancake rolls and stir-fries to enable us to provide everyone with hot food from the hotel kitchen. He took all three of us to a shop in Soho where we bought richly coloured silk shirts and trousers of lightweight cotton in a style that was fashionable in Hong Kong at the time.

On the Thursday we began to prepare the ground floor and basement, which would provide ample space for fifty or so guests to mix freely without being cramped. To avoid trouble developing behind locked doors and the risk of damage to the hotel rooms Tom constructed a temporary barrier at the top of the stairs to the first floor with an improvised chipboard door allowing only those with a key to reach the rooms above.

Unwanted chairs, tables and breakables were carried up to safety beyond this barrier, and the hotel lounge was cleared for dancing; a sound system for the evening was put together by combining some of Darren’s stereo equipment with some of mine, enabling him to switch seamlessly from one music track to another. An eight-foot long banner depicting a monstrous serpent-like dragon hung down into the hall from the bannisters at the top of the stairs. Four enormous waist-high pots with lids, decorated with an elaborate floral pattern in soft pink on a white background, stood in the hall, looking alarmingly fragile but actually fakes made of tough plastic, so light they could be picked up in one hand. Cheung took the lid off one, lifted it up to reveal that it had no bottom, put it over his head and pretended it was stuck. Darren, of course, had to follow his example, and the two of them staggered around calling, ‘Let me out! Let me out!’

The Newcastle visitors arrived on time on Friday afternoon, and as on their last visit created a rumpus in the hall by bolting for the table where the hotel register lay. They defaced a page and a half with comments such as: Open a whole year and still a virgin; I hope you’ve changed the sheets this time; and Full massage available in basement, cheap rates. In revenge, instead of showing them to their first floor-rooms I took them up to the second floor, stacked with furnishings from downstairs, and pretended they were to sleep there, only relenting after they began reorganising some of the clutter so they could get to the beds.

Later in a more sensible mood they asked how business was doing and about Darren, and one of the quietest of the group told me he had been offered a better job at his firm’s warehouse near Heathrow Airport and might be moving to London. He came down to the office while the others settled in upstairs wanting to talk about finding somewhere to live. I had a software package with detailed street maps and printed out some pages for areas near Heathrow, and accessed some internet sites advertising property for sale and to rent, showing him how much higher prices were in Chiswick and Richmond than in districts closer to the airport. He thought his employer would help with the cost of his move, but not with the cost of accommodation, and was worried that high prices would leave him worse off than he was in Newcastle. He was uncertain too about how he would fit in at the Heathrow warehouse.

I printed out several pages of property details for him, and for a few minutes we chatted about his firm. Then he said, ‘By the way, thanks for sending on to us that letter from the Chinese lad last year. I was the culprit who fobbed him off with a mini-cab firm’s telephone number. Bit of a mean trick, I admit. Can’t speak for the others, but with me it’s not just the sex. I really liked him. The others have been teasing me about it ever since. I would have written back to him if I’d known there was a prospect of me moving down here, but at the time there seemed no point in encouraging him. You can make your life a misery, pining away in Newcastle for someone who’s living down South. The others take the piss out of me for being too romantic. It is stupid, when you think about it.’

‘Don’t you have Chinese men in Newcastle?’

‘Yes, but none that are interested in me.’

‘When Cheung came to the hotel after your last visit I wasn’t sure who it was he wanted to get in touch with, but he was obviously smitten by one of you. He’s Darren’s boyfriend now, has been for quite a while.’

‘Missed my chance then.’

‘Seems like it.’

An e-mail from Southern France arrived with the disappointing information that Andrew, who the last time he rang had progressed as far as Tunisia, would not after all be back for the party. He was not a fan of e-mail, and must have persuaded someone at his hotel in France to send it for him.

On Saturday afternoon and evening we prepared the food, covered it, and laid it out in the dining room. We put out wine, spirits and cans of beer and cleared the few remaining furnishings from the lounge to make it ready for dancing. Breakables and my personal papers from downstairs were locked away or moved to the second floor for safety, making the basement rooms a quiet area for people to escape to or use as a route to the garden and fresh air.

Cheung took Darren off to visit one of his female cousins who made him look amazingly Chinese by dying his hair jet black and making up his face with mascara, eye shadow and gentle touches of colour. By seven o’clock everything in the hotel was ready and the four of us hung around in the kitchen waiting for the first guests to arrive. Fascinated by Darren’s changed appearance, Tom and I could not stop looking at him.

The Geordies came down wearing oriental-style straw hats in the shape of flattened cones, each of a different colour. This was a fairly minimal amount of fancy dress, but seeing all six of them together the effect was striking. When they saw Darren in his make-up, wearing his silk shirt, they could not resist the urge to touch him and he had to slip behind Tom and me to escape.

The first party guests came shortly after eight, and at around ten o’clock they were arriving in numbers. While Tom and I cooked the hot food, the Geordies, wanting to help, volunteered to answer the front door bell. Unfortunately they had not previously met most of the people on our list of guests and let everyone in. Tom and I tackled several little groups neither of us recognised who were helping themselves to food from the dining room, but the first lot claimed to be friends of Darren and Cheung from the club and the others said they had been invited by someone they knew at the Beckford Arms. The impression seemed to have gone around both places that everyone who turned up would be welcome.

A quick head count revealed that about seventy people were there, and more were arriving. To try to get the intruders to leave would probably have caused mayhem, and a lot of people had brought food or drink with them; rather than get into arguments about who had a valid invitation and who did not, we decided to do our best to cope with all comers.

The dining room, kitchen and lounge were soon congested and the din grew louder and louder as everyone competed to be heard over the voices of those around them. People standing in the hall were constantly being jostled this way and that by others who were passing through. We encouraged them to go downstairs where there was more space. By half past twelve more than a hundred people must have been present. Fortunately no more were arriving, and one or two who planned to be up the next morning had left. The food had all gone, and the manager of the garden centre volunteered to go to an all-night supermarket to buy more. Tom and I raided the hotel’s stocks of bacon and sausages, and when the bread, crisps and cheese from the supermarket arrived we put everything out on trays and were mobbed when we carried them through to the dining room.

On the ground floor the air had become heavy with a complex and suffocating odour, a mixture of cooking smells, sweat, deodorants, cigarette smoke and a hint of cannabis. Going into the lounge to open a window I saw that a couple of dancers had lowered two of the big imitation Chinese pots from the hall over their heads and shoulders. My guess was that a couple of Cheung and Darren’s friends from the club were playing this prank. Unable to see where they were going they were inevitably bumping into one another and into others on the dance floor. The decorative surface of the pots was almost certain to be scratched, but even if I had to pay for them the sight of two enormous rose-on-white pots dancing together was probably worth the money.

After opening the window I noticed Darren standing beside the stereo equipment looking intently through the dancers to the back of the room. Following his gaze I saw Cheung and the Geordie who was thinking of moving down to London wrapped around each other. Darren saw me looking and hurried from the room. I followed him into the hall, down the basement stairs and out into the garden. The air was cool and fresh after the pungent smells of the house. Breathing deeply I walked down the path looking for him. The flower borders and the grass of the lawn were easily visible in the lights of the side street, but I could not see him anywhere. A sweet smell of oranges was coming from the white flowers of one of the shrubs he had planted. An area at the side of the garage lay in deep shade; was he hiding from me there in the gloom, wanting to be left alone?

The tinkle of breaking glass made me look back towards the house. Someone leant out of the kitchen window to look at the broken fragments of a wine glass on the concrete below, then turned back inside. I made my way over to pick up the shards. As I was about to go in to get a dustpan and brush I heard Darren’s voice coming from above me on the metal fire escape. ‘I’m up here.’ He hurried down the steps. ‘Well, you saw.’

Not sure how to respond, I said: ‘I wanted a breath of air. The room was so stuffy.’

‘We both saw who Cheung was having sex with.’

‘They weren’t “having sex”.’

‘I don’t care. He can have all six of them, if that’s what he wants.’

‘Things aren’t as bad as that. Maybe it’s my fault. I thought the Geordies would help to liven up the party, I shouldn’t have let them book...’

‘What are you talking about? You accepting a booking from the Geordies is not the problem. If you’re serious about someone, you don’t abandon them when you’re out together because you see someone else you fancy, do you? He’s not serious about me. He’s never introduced me to his parents, not even as a friend. We see each other here or at the club, never on his home territory.’

‘He helped us with all the decorations for the party. He got his cousin to make up your face. You need to make allowances, you have to give it a chance to come good.’

‘“Give it a chance to come good”, you’re starting to talk like Tom. It’s up to Cheung, isn’t it? You saw in the lounge how much he thinks of me.’

‘What do you want?’

‘What I can’t have. Let’s go back inside. This is a celebration of the hotel’s first year, remember? Many happy returns. Sincerely, I’m not being ironic, many well deserved happy returns.’

‘Thanks. Shame that Andrew’s not here.’

‘He wouldn’t have stayed long, not with the place packed out and all the noise.’

When we re-entered the house there was no sign of Cheung or the Geordie. Darren and I joined the dancers, but his energy made me feel lumbering, and when a friend nearer his age from the Beckford Arms came over I left them to dance together. A little later Tom found me putting empty bottles into a rubbish sack in the kitchen, and putting an arm around my shoulders said, ‘Come on, you’re wanted in the dining room.’

‘Trouble?’

‘No, but be ready for anything.’ We squeezed through the crush of people in the hall, and as we entered the room, which was dimly lit by a single table lamp, I was met by all six of the Geordies who were standing just inside the room. ‘Here you are at last, pet. We’ve a little treat for you.’

They switched the dining room lights full on. The remains of the food had been cleared away and the tables rearranged into a block in the centre. The party goers, rounded up by the Geordies, lined up in rows three deep at one side of the room, and when everyone had found a place two young men of about Darren’s age emerged from behind an improvised curtain at the far end, completely naked, each holding a roll of coloured paper. They began their performance by lodging the rolls of coloured paper between their buttocks and carefully setting light to the opposite ends with a cigarette lighter. Once the flames had caught they dropped the lighter and ran around the tables, flames and smoke trailing after them. They had to run fast enough to prevent the flames singing their flesh whilst maintaining a grip on the end of the roll of paper, but managed this feat without apparent difficulty. They laughed and called out to each other, ‘Help, my bum’s on fire.’

I was handed a bucket of water with which to chase after them, and I played my part as well as I could, splashing at their backs to put out the flames and occasionally flinging a few drops of water at people in the audience. The crowd cheered, whistled and shouted as cameras flashed all around us. After five or six circuits of the tables the boys slowed down, allowing me to catch them and extinguish the smouldering paper. We discarded the charred remnants and they embraced and caressed me, sandwiching me between them, while the audience clapped, whistled and called for an encore. Seeing Darren watching from the doorway, I broke away from them and pulled him into their embraces. After a few moments I waved Tom over, and we kissed and held each other, leaving the two boys with Darren.

After that climax the party slowly wound down. At half past three we began to ask people if they would like to share taxis home with other guests, and arranged cabs for those who did. Others took the hint that the time had come to leave, and by half past four less than a dozen determined revellers remained. We stopped the music. The garden centre manager volunteered to stay until the last of the hangers on departed, allowing Tom and me to go to bed, and we tiptoed up past the Geordies’ rooms to the second floor for a few hours’ sleep among the clutter of furniture, too exhausted to make love.

Two weeks after the party a letter arrived from France with the news that Andrew’s travels had been curtailed by another subarachnoid haemorrhage. He had been admitted to hospital in Montpelier and, following treatment, transferred to the Grand Hotel de Luzenac in the Pyrenees, one of those French spa establishments that is a mixture of hotel, nursing home and medical centre.

When, on my fourth attempt, the staff allowed me to speak to him by ’phone, in a frail voice he told me he was feeling much better but was not fit to travel. The hotel had a fine conservatory where he spent much of the day, and he said he would love to see us if there was any possibility of our getting away.

Arranging cover at the hotel for a few days was not too difficult, but flights to Toulouse were fully booked and we had to fly to Marseille, where we would have to hire a car to drive to the Grand Hotel de Luzenac.

After we landed, going through the airport checks and picking up the car took over an hour and a half. I drove us out of the airport, but Tom was soon keen to experience the novelty of driving on the right and going anti-clockwise around roundabouts and took over the driving.

Our plan was to break the journey with an overnight stay in Montpelier, and on the way passed vineyards and shallow expanses of water where pink flamingoes waded. When we arrived we found a regional trade fair in progress and most of the hotels were full. The Tourist Information Office eventually located a large room with three beds in a hotel three kilometres from the centre, and we let ourselves be persuaded that three of us sharing a hotel room for one night would not be too great a hardship.

After freshening up we drove the three kilometres back into town, parked the car in an underground car park and joined the crowd strolling around, absorbing the atmosphere of Montpellier’s busy streets and admiring attractive well-made goods in shop windows. We sat down for a drink at a café with a great block of tables spreading out into the main square. Smartly dressed people, strolling or hurrying, made their way across in all directions, and we slipped briefly into a holiday mood. Neither Tom nor I wanted to abstain from alcohol that evening and in order to have aperitifs and drink wine with our meal we drove back to the hotel to eat.

Madame made a fuss about us not having reserved a table for dinner, having said nothing about the need to do so when we took the room. When I shrugged and said we would go back into town her attitude changed immediately and she showed us to one of two unoccupied tables at the far end of the restaurant. Another table remained vacant all evening; she must have been one of those people who enjoys being difficult.

Our waiter was an elegant young Latin type. Darren was keen to try out his school French, and asked me to confirm that it was right to say c’était trés bon to him when he took our plates away after the starter. Subsequently he said merci beaucoup at every opportunity, and the waiter began smiling and paying him unnecessary attention. We all had cheese after the main course, and after having hurriedly served Tom and me, he took great trouble over serving Darren, saying a little about each of the half dozen different cheeses available. Darren could not understand him and I had to translate, but they continued to smile at each other, hardly noticing Tom or me.

‘He’s gorgeous,’ Darren said when the waiter had finally served him.

‘Never mind “He’s gorgeous,” have you forgotten why we’re...?’ I stopped short because Tom gripped my right leg forcibly just behind the knee, causing a sharp pain.

‘You be careful,’ he said to Darren softly. ‘We don’t want you catching no French diseases.’

‘I’m not stupid.’

There were more meaningful little smiles when the waiter returned with coffee. Strong though it was, Darren downed his in two gulps and left us to go to look at a map of France on the wall near the restaurant door. After a minute or two our waiter went over to him and began pointing to places on the map, casually resting a hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s my boy,’ Tom said.

‘He’s not your boy. You shouldn’t be encouraging him. We’re supposed to be here to visit Andrew, not to sample the local talent.’

‘What about you leaving him with those two nude lads at the party?’

‘That was all part of their act. It didn’t lead to anything.’ ‘Let him have his chance. He ain’t got nobody now Cheung’s took up with that Geordie again.’

He was, of course, right. Darren must have been undergoing that torment of sexual frustration that comes from being suddenly deprived of a regular lover. He and the waiter arranged to meet after the restaurant closed at a café nearby called Le Sportif, and when he returned to the table to tell us where he was going all I could do was to repeat Tom’s advice to be careful, and to make sure he had enough money to pay for a couple of drinks.

Tom and I had beers in the hotel bar before going up to the room. After some rather uninspired sex, he fell asleep immediately, but I lay awake worrying about Darren. A couple of hours later he crept in and undressed, scarcely making a sound, while I pretended to be asleep. Over breakfast Tom was certain to ask him how he had got on, and I would sit there squirming with embarrassment, hoping Darren would answer as briefly and vaguely as possible, wanting to give him all kinds of advice about the dangers, muddle and disappointments of life, but having to keep my paternalistic thoughts to myself.

In the morning, to my relief, when Tom asked, ‘Get on all right last night?’ he answered ‘Okay,’ with a shy smile, and that was all that was said. After breakfast I telephoned the Grand Hotel de Luzenac to confirm that we were on our way. They left me holding the line for more than five minutes, then asked me to report to the medical reception desk at exactly two o’clock. Irritated at being required to keep to such a precise time I asked what would happen if we arrived on our visit after two, only to be told that we could visit at any time but an appointment had been made for us at two with a doctor who spoke very good English.

We drove through vineyards in hilly terrain for an hour, staying with the motorway which took us up towards the Pyrenees until we turned off near the town of Carcassonne to climb into the mountains. As we followed the directions given to me earlier, the territory looked increasingly unpopulated and remote, until suddenly the imposing facade of the Grand Hotel appeared as we swung round a steep bend, the road continuing up to Luzenac to the right. To the left of the hotel an energetic river rushed down a narrow gorge.

The doctor was mainly concerned that we should not try to persuade Andrew to travel back with us. She said that his last seizure had been severe, causing paralysis on his left side, and that although out of hospital he was still in need of special care. In time he might improve sufficiently to return to London, but given his age we should not expect too much. The best thing for the present was for him to stay where he was; they understood his medical needs and were able to call in specialists if they were needed.

At last we were shown into the salon, a large communal sitting room on the first floor, where Andrew was waiting for us. He sat in a wheel chair and looked terribly thin and fragile. A broad smile reassured us that the illness had not left him dispirited. He put out his hands towards us in greeting. ‘You all look so well! How good to see you!’

We went over to him, touched his hands, and kissed him very gently on his cheeks. Tom rather clumsily asked, ‘How are you Andrew?’

‘How am I?’ He paused, shook his head, and said, ‘I’m like an old wreck held together by lengths of thin twine. Not beaten yet though. How was the drive up here?’

He told us to help ourselves to soft drinks from a sideboard. Behind the hotel, in the extensive gardens, the river had been dammed and diverted to form pools for bathing. ‘After we’ve had our drinks perhaps we could take a walk,’ he suggested, ‘if you don’t mind pushing my chair. The native flora is interesting, you probably saw something of it from the car, and of course there is the river. The water has a high mineral content and is supposed to contain a special type of algae that cures skin diseases. Nothing that will do me any good, unfortunately. Having the conservatory and the gardens to sit in is the great benefit of this place for me.’

We showed him photographs from the party, and he asked us about his staff and friends from the Beckford Arms. We said nothing of Jamie or about me being mugged, and noticing that we avoided mentioning any problems he said doubtfully, ‘Wonderful how smoothly everything runs when I’m not there.’

‘There’s nothing that’s worth worrying you about, really. They miss you at the garden centre, naturally, but they’ve got used to me and my naivety about horticulture. They didn’t have much option. The garden centre manager was a bit resentful of my interference at first, but we’re friends now.’

After we had talked for perhaps an hour we all went outside for some air. I wheeled Andrew to the lift, through the conservatory, down a ramp and into the gardens. Tom and Darren went off to look at a tributary stream that tumbled over rocks down a gully under the road, leaving Andrew and me on the broad central path. ‘Sit down here for a while,’ he said as we approached a bench. ‘Let’s talk now we have a few minutes to ourselves.’

The gardens were quiet and deserted. ‘Do they still use these pools?’

‘Yes, they have two or three sessions a week when little groups come to immerse themselves in the water. You must tell me honestly now, how do you feel about the hotel? Are you sorry you left your career in the City?’

‘No, I never belonged there. If the hotel had not provided a way out, something else would. The only question was when and how.’

‘And you and Tom?’

‘We’re fine. We know the worst about each other now, and we’ve never been better.’

‘The relationship has survived, then, despite everything, you’re still a couple. Not having known that kind of closeness to someone is one of the things in life I regret. That and not having children maybe.’ He spoke softly, his eyes sharp and clear under his fine white hair.

‘You would have made a terrific father.’

‘Families are just the result of basic animal instinct, aren’t they, dressed up as some kind of morally sound purpose in life? Of all the family groups you’ve encountered, how many would you volunteer to join, assuming that you could? Not many, I’m sure. Better like this, with friends with whom you have things in common, not stuck with people you don’t get on with because you happen to be related. Tom was always so sure you were exactly what he wanted. I’m enormously glad that you’re together again.’

‘And he’s what I want. Our being so different is part of the attraction. Our personalities complement one another.’

‘Good. That’s how it should be.’

‘You must have felt drawn to him, to have helped him when he came out of prison.’

‘There’s a sort of honesty about Tom, despite the car thefts. He’s practical, suspicious of things that seem too clever or too good to be true. He sees the quality of the joinery when we’re admiring our own reflections in the gloss paint.’

‘Yes. Doesn’t stop him picking up other men from time to time though, does it?’

‘Does that make you unhappy?’

‘No. It’s part of his nature. I don’t think about it. Actually I am a bit worried about Darren. You know he’s split up with Cheung. Last night he picked up the waiter in the hotel. I’m not saying he shouldn’t have, but...’

‘Difficult time for him, you’re right. Not sure what you or I can do about it though.’

‘He might listen to you.’

‘But what is there I can say? He’s grown up so much since I last saw him, not that many months ago, but he has grown up. It may have been selfish of me to get you to bring him here. This isn’t a place for someone of his age. I wanted to see him, once more. If you and Tom were able to come again that would be nice, but maybe choose a date when he’s otherwise engaged, sitting his exams or something.’

‘Of course we’ll come. What’s it like for you here? Can you talk to anyone?’

‘Oh I have a phrase book, and quite a few of the people speak some English, one or two are very good. We get by. I watch the gardeners from the conservatory and exchange the occasional word with them. There’s even a male nurse who flirts with me a little, at least, that’s what I like to think he’s doing. In one way my luck has held out, the holiday insurance is paying for all this. Everything I need is here. Take my advice, if your going to be ill, come to France. I’ve been lucky in life really – yes it would’ve been nice to see through another expansion of the business, but you have to let go at some stage. Remembering all the good people I’ve worked with at the garden centre and Ferns and Foliage gives me a lot of satisfaction, and for the future you and Tom will be there to steady things and keep the businesses running properly.’ He looked away from me, back towards the conservatory. ‘You know what I tell my fellow patients here when they brag about their relatives? I tell them I have good people in London to take over from me, that’s what I say to them.’

We talked about his travels until Darren and Tom joined us, when all four of us set off again down the path, Tom pushing Andrew this time, while Darren and I hung back to let them talk privately. At the end of the garden Tom and Andrew stopped to wait for us; when we caught up Darren produced his camera and had us pose for photographs, balancing it on a rock and using the time delay to take one with himself standing behind Andrew, and Tom and me at either side of his chair.

We took a more winding path back, and by the time we were approaching the conservatory Andrew was beginning to look tired. We passed a round pond with a raised stone edge where golden carp swam among water lilies. ‘This is one of the places I like to sit during the afternoons, here or in the conservatory, depending on the weather. There’s a little patch of waste ground over there covered in wild flowers that I’d like to show Darren, if you wouldn’t mind waiting for us for a few minutes in the salon on the first floor.’

Tom and I did as he asked. In the salon we watched a nurse help an old lady with a stick make her way very slowly, careful step by careful step, to a chair by a window. We had spent little more than two hours with Andrew, but we sensed that our intrusion into the quiet closed world of the Grand Hotel de Luzenac was drawing to an end. The major purpose of the place was obvious. The reason we had seen so few of the patients was that frailty kept them to their rooms. No doubt, as Andrew had said, a few people came in the belief that the waters had curative powers, and a few perhaps came for a period of convalescence, but when the time for the majority of patients to leave the establishment came, they would not be going because their health had been restored.

Tom and I went to the window at the other end of the room and looked out over the roof of the conservatory. Darren was wheeling Andrew back from the patch of wild flowers, and they stopped near the pond. He positioned Andrew’s chair so that when he sat on the stone edge they faced each other. They talked, unaware of us looking down on them. Tom put an arm across my shoulders and pulled me closer. In the garden below us Andrew was saying goodbye to his protégé for the last time.