Lost Lad (25 page)

           
"Why not?  We're as good as the next guy!  Let's live a little.  Let's poke around and see what we can turn up.  You've always wanted to show me Derbyshire."

During July and August, typically, Gary would allocate three or four weeks for UK touring with his friend, but this had never included the Peak District.  London usually received the lion's share, and most of that in nocturnal adventures on Hampstead Heath which animated and exhilarated the over sexed taxi driver - but left the respectable schoolmaster a nervous wreck!  Notwithstanding, the latter honestly admitting being pleasurably drained by a great time, but, at the unacceptable cost of a good night's sleep, dodging the CID and any marauding homophobic yobs.   

            During the balance of the summer recess, Gary would 'tear up' The Continent and, as usual, Simeon Hogg based himself in 'the sticks' with his Aunty Joyce at Bog Hole in Horsley Woodhouse.  This he had done nearly every year since 1965.  After the excitement and sophistication of Gary and London, the humble rustic village of Simeon's coal mining heritage was comfortable and safe.  Here in this quiet old fashioned backwater of southern Derbyshire, where stress was apparently unknown, he recharged his batteries in order to face the fast moving United States and the students and staff of Dwight D Eisenhower High School in September. 

By 1965, Joyce Hogg, a maiden lady, was alone, very much alone having lost her aged parents.  Simeon's visits to Grandma and Granddad in the 1950's were a form of sanctuary in the gentle company of a primeval trio.  In this cosy, kind, contented narrow habitat he was, for a time, safe: safe from the ongoing cruelties and horrors of Mundy Street Boys School to which, eventually, he would have to return.

            Grandma's face under her grizzled hair was deeply etched in leathery wrinkles, rather like the wizened apples she occasionally offered.  Granddad was affectionately recalled as a great ancient man, deeply settled in a shapeless comfortable easy chair, amid a haze of blue smoke emitting a nostalgic smell from that old pipe.  A well earned rest following a lifetime labouring in the bowels of the earth.  After a smile of greeting he had very little to say to his young visitor.

            At 78, Joyce Hogg was very old, but then she had always been old.  Back in 1955 at the age of 30, she was old.  Never seen with make-up, dressed in a dowdy old fashioned style, she absorbed the influences and old thinking of her parents, spoke and moved slowly with a slight stoop.  Not actually stupid, but her mind had never been challenged having such limited experiences of people, travel and the wider world.  Apart from an annual holiday with her parents to Skegness or Blackpool, perhaps an odd Saturday afternoon in Derby, Joyce Hogg had hardly been out of Horsley Woodhouse - indeed she had hardly been outside of Bog Hole.  Joyce was old, but Joyce was loved by her grateful nephew.  He had been generously provided with an annual comfortable summer home for the previous thirty eight years.  The back bedroom, once occupied by her beloved parents, was now referred to as
'Arr Simeon's Room'
, and had a pleasant view over to the village of Denby and beyond to the more distant hills of the north.       

            Bog Hole or Bog 'ole, (as it was called locally) sounded like a slum, but it was not a slum.  It was a row of six terraced houses just to the north of the village centre which had always been dominated by the Hogg family.  The accommodation was a simple Victorian 'two up, two down' design, purpose built by a coal owner for his colliers.

Gary's desire to take an early vacation with a view to solving a 43 year old enigma appealed to the newly liberated teacher.  Simeon was genuinely fond of his energetic, permanently over-wound friend and was touched by this sudden demonstration of affection.  However, the staid old schoolmaster was not too naive to recognise within himself, elements of the mischievous schoolboy.  Like the evil scientist, he desired to bring together dissimilar substances to enjoy an explosive effect.  The outgoing, forward-looking, forward-thinking Gary Mackenzie, eager to grasp the 21st century, could not have been more different from the insular, backward-looking, backward-thinking inhabitants of Bog Hole, eager to cling onto the values of the 19th century.  Inwardly, Simeon rubbed his hands with malicious pleasure at the prospect of Gary meeting such types as Aunty Joyce, Uncle Wilf and Aunty Nelly and, best of all ... the Ducks!

This impish streak had long since existed in the relationship between the two.  Gary had a horror of outrageous effeminate men which, in turn, tempted Simeon to engineer roguish methods to bring his intolerant companion into the camp of the camp.  The Saugatuck incident was a good example.  At this well known very active resort, near Chicago on the east side of Lake Michigan, somewhere in the dunes, Simeon fished out, as Gary would term -
" ... one of your freaks."

            This turned out to be a screaming little black queen known as 'Bun Bun' who frequently referred to herself as
'This Lady!'
  From Simeon's point of view, shaking with laughter, the introduction was a huge success.  There was poor Gary, of stony countenance, sitting on his towel on the main beach, helplessly watching this 'attention grabbing' hullabaloo - a one queen mini circus.  Bun Bun danced and pranced around him, wriggling her back side, thrusting out her already prominent begging buttocks, yelling out in a thick Negroid accent -

           
"Yea Babe!  You is some sweet meat!  Ooo oo oo!  Hunky honky.  Tasty honky.  Ooo, This Lady - she hungry - yeah.  This Lady is one hot slut!  Bun Bun ready for
action
.  She want fillin' - yeah!  Ooo oo oo!!"

The outrageous trollop continued to caper and orbited Gary's towel about three more times in her bizarre war-dance-come-love-dance, pre-sex ritual.  Diplomacy was the only defence.  Bun Bun was thanked for her kind interest but this particular 'hunk' was resting after a busy morning combing the dunes -

           
"Perhaps some other time?"
 

The retreating figure of a disappointed little Bun Bun, moving just ahead of her eye-catching, protrusive, rhythmic rump, minced across the sand and disappeared into the deep shadows of a thicket of coarse shrubbery - ever onwards, ever hunting, ever hopeful to find Prince Charming.  This is when the volcano erupted.

           
"How dare you!  How dare you bring that vile excrescence near my person."
  Gary had heard the word 'excrescence' for the first time just an hour before.  It was used by a cultured gentleman he had come across during his wanderings around the dunes.  The bawling-out continued -

           
"Look at that butch number over there."

Simeon took note of a very desirable sculpture of deeply tanned muscles, apparently indifferent to their presence, languidly soaking up the sun, looking out over the water, reposing and posing on a nearby towel.

           
"Thanks a bunch!  You've screwed that up real good!  Well done!  Ten minutes ago he was looking in
my
direction.  I was in with a chance.  Having witnessed that grotesque spectacle, he now looks at the lake - no chance, kaput!  I hope you're satisfied."
 

This underlined the main difference in taste.  Gary despised the effeminate, the fat, the ugly, the sick, the old, the poor, the narrow, the parochial, the ignorant, the untravelled, the uncultured, the unsuccessful and the stupid.  Only the young, the butch, the beautiful, the intelligent, the rich and the sophisticated need apply.  He hated Simeon's -

           
" ... weird and wacky menagerie of creeps.  What's wrong with normal people?  How could you possibly have become bored with a
gorgeous guy like Earl Vandenburg?  He looks like Rambo for Christ's sake!  And lives at the top of The Jeffersonian Building: a view to die for!"

But Simeon Hogg had become bored with Earl Vandenburg who held forth at length on an erudite assessment of the merits of Weber.  Just to make it even more difficult this obscure composer was pronounced 'Vaber'.  The good-looking and trendy 'thirty-something' year old professional, insisted on describing in detail how Carl Maria von Weber skilfully steered German music from the Classical to the Romantic and how he made such an impact on Wagner.  As the pedant rambled on and on, the superb view across the Detroit River over to Canada was a pleasant distraction for his dinner guest who would have much preferred to hear about the genius of Phil Spector - a name spelt just as it sounded.   

            No.  Simeon did not wish to hear about Weber.  He preferred the company of dear old Hubert, an uncomplicated man of simple taste who enjoyed retailing the latest gossip from the Detroit bars.  In Hubert's seedy apartment on the East Side, Simeon laughed until he cried listening to frequent accounts of that -

           
" ... bitchy queen Marie.  Boy is she ever pure acid!  There we are, me and Bill Scruggs, minding our own business, having a quiet drink.  She spots us on the far side of the room and the next thing, she screams out for the whole bar to hear -

           
'Miss Scruggs!  There ya are!  Honey am a comin' over.  Here comes my body ... '

           
Then she sails over to us and we nearly died of embarrassment,  especially for poor Bill who'd just had a toupee fitted.

           
'Why, Miss Scruggs - what is
that!
  A rug on ya head arr perceive.  Honey - you aint a foolin' nobody - an arr love to pull hair.' 

           
To my horror she gave me a big hug like I was a long lost friend and shouted -

           
'Ooo so cuddly - that nice big fat belly!  Look everybody it's Hubert.  Poor Hubert, that evil cretin Danny should not be referrin' to you as 'The Lady of the Vapours'.  Not true.  You don't go to the Club Baths seven days a week, no, you take Mondays off don't you?  But be careful baby, you've
had three re-treads on ya tongue this year to date.  Yeah, an those teeth 'll need scrapin' again soon.  That cum just builds up and up.  Well it's true!  It is.  When I go to the Club Baths they hand me a towel.  When you go, Hubert, they hand you knee pads!'"
   

Gary, who hated such tittle-tattle from the low life of Simeon's quirky collection of friends, had no time at all for any of this nonsense.  He viewed old fashioned Hubert as one of the dregs of Detroit, a shabbily dressed overweight beer belly who broke wind too often -

           
"For God's sake don't suggest another meeting - I can't take the BO.  He doesn't like me and I don't like him.  Have a good look at him.  Hubert
is
'The Depression'.  He gets his clothes from the Good Will.  He belongs to the 1930's.  He should have stayed there.  And don't - PLEASE don't keep talking about Marie.  She may be funny to you but, anybody who is anybody, avoids her like the plague.  A vicious mixture of show-off, spite, chiffon and cheap make-up.  As for Scruggs, well, he's just a complete waste of space."

Gary Mackenzie was utterly frustrated by the social gay scene.  His reasoning was simple.  If a man wants to attract another man then -

           
" ... why in hell's name do they behave like a woman?  Why turn themselves into freaks.  For God's sake that's just what they are - freaks!  I'd like to punch their stupid faces!  I really would ... are you listening to me?  I'm at my wits end just trying to find one - single - real - macho man!!"

Two old friends sat facing each other.  One was thinking about the novel challenge of becoming a detective.  The other was relishing his sudden release from educational bondage and now contemplated the naughty pleasures of introducing his avant-garde friend to the reactionary delights of Bog Hole which was already half a continent and an ocean away from Detroit, but culturally, may as well have been on the other side of the moon.

Chapter 22

Babbacombe to Horsley Woodhouse

Having left America and all matters in the hands of his lawyer, Simeon Hogg went to enjoy a few days relaxing in Babbacombe, a very pleasant old fashioned sleepy resort near Torquay.  In those same few days, Gary Mackenzie made the most of London and, having had his fill, joined Simeon at the Exmouth View Hotel with the intention of spending another few days.  Exmouth was indeed in clear view, over the sea, looking north from Simeon's balcony just before breakfast on that last sunny morning of Sunday, April 27th 2003. 

Babbacombe had been necessary.  After the stress of the previous months it was important to have had a neutral place of sanctuary to mentally re-group, to collect his thoughts, to lick his emotional wounds.  The weather had been very kind.  Day after day he had been able to enjoy familiar wooded paths and to discover new ones around that beautiful coast.  He drifted around exploring tiny hidden coves.  He was mesmerised and soothed by an angry sea delivering giant splashes creating a boil of a million bubbles, flows and runs in all directions.  He was fascinated by deep plops and the sun seeking out the shallow bottoms.  A dance of sun-lit mottles played across a shallow screen of light grey pebbles and then deeper, across alien foliage of dark green and brown.  Rocks galore, some speckled and scarred with barnacles.  Rocks everywhere, rocks bare, rocks bald and rocks growing hair of brilliant green sea moss.  Leisurely, Simeon investigated headlands and rested frequently, soaking up the warm early springtime sunshine in sheltered nooks and crannies.  Getting as close as possible to the swelling clear green water, the crashing waves, tasting the spray, hearing the cry of gulls - were all part of the healing process which he considered reasonably complete on that Sunday morning.