Dorian (32 page)

He recognised her immediately, although age had most certainly withered her. Withered her, and her hips had swelled with childbearing, inflating the puckered bag of her skin. The Eton crop Dorian remembered from fifteen years before had long since grown out, been dyed, spiked, teased, crimped and then lopped anew. Now it was a scraggy, lank pelt, with a curious lumpy, beige deposit in its fringe, the work of the baby in the buggy she was pushing, a boy of about ten months who liked to make free with his cereal.

Her eyes – red-rimmed with insomnia, the ducts cluttered with gunk – took in Dorian’s trim figure in its silky black trews and silkier black jacket, then moved leadenly on to the next Judd. Not knowing quite why – except that even from the most intrinsically perverse and unpleasant experiences there was still
something
to be gained – he allowed his golden lashes to part and his clear orbs to beam recognition. His pink lips parted over flawless pearly teeth and he said, Helen, do you remember me? She took a while to answer; then her cracked lips broke over plaque-painted teeth and she said – as if pained by the recognition of him – Dorian Gray?

Helen was so fucking tired that she didn’t notice the anachronism that was Dorian. Sure, he looked good, but gay men always looked after themselves. Yes, he looked rested, but everyone got enough sleep compared with her, who had a hyperactive baby both to care for
and
to support financially, with no assistance from his father or her wider family. And besides, he was rich, unlike her, who, with an inertia that defied the surrounding feel-good spend-now culture, had slid inexorably down all of the major economic indices.

Dorian Gray had solar charm, although the only people who ever experienced its full radiance were those about to die from a thrust of his short sword. He could turn on and off his capacity to beguile the way others employed light switches. It made Dorian feel as if, in a world of instinctual darkness, he was the only possessor of an intentional torch.

He complimented her on the baby, who was of mixed race.

—I should be running the fucking gymkhana, Helen said bitterly; instead I’m some Jamaican gangster’s baby-mother.

—Come now – Dorian squatted, cupped the baby’s cheek – it can’t be that bad.

—Believe me, it bloody is. The best thing about him is that he leaves us well alone.

Dorian wouldn’t leave them alone; he took them both for lunch in the café at the National Film Theatre. He assumed that with the baby she’d prefer a less formal atmosphere. He was right. He fed the baby his gloop and didn’t flinch when it got on his Kenzo jacket. She surmised that he was one of those gay men who was broody, and who would make an excellent father if only given the opportunity. How affecting it was to watch him.

Dorian bought her coffees to keep her awake, and glasses of white wine to loosen her tongue. He collected her grievances up. Pass me the changing bag, he said.

—Why? She was aghast, she didn’t even imagine he would know what one was.

—I want to change all the things that are bad about your life into good ones, he said, and then laughed, Seriously, I’ll change him. He lifted the baby up and bore him off before she could protest. He was back in five minutes, the baby burbling and giggling and snapping Dorian’s bottom lip with his chubby mitt.

Discovering that she lived in Turnham Green, Dorian was able to suggest a shared cab. He did the hailing, he did the loading, he did the directing. When they were passing Gloucester Road he proposed tea. Helen demurred – the baby, the routine… He pointed out that the baby was asleep.

At the entrance to the mews, a pudgy, middle-aged man sat in a car, noting comings and goings. It had become Ginger’s Sunday-afternoon hobby – this Dorian-watching. He didn’t know exactly what he was going to do, or when he was going to do it, but he felt confident that if the opportunity presented itself he would recognise it for what it was.

Inside the mews house Dorian fashioned a cot out of bolsters and laid the baby on the leather settee so gently he didn’t wake. Helen looked about her at the conservative furniture and then at him. You’re so youthful, Dorian, but this stuff is so middle-aged.

—Oh well – he was dismissive – most of it was inherited. I’m not here much; I never bothered to change it.

They had tea and delicatessen cheesecake and more wine. Helen giggled – a convulsion she couldn’t remember having in months. This is, she thought, what I’ve needed. Old friends – stupid to have lost touch with so many; funny to think it should be Dorian – whom I thought so cruel at the time – who should turn out to be so kind. He dripped wine into her as dusk fell, and the baby slumbered on as if the claustrophobic little house affected him with some subtle soporific. In the dim yellow light of a table lamp the sight of Dorian’s smooth, pale hand on her red careworn one wasn’t that outrageous. What’re you doing? she chuckled.

—I’m kissing you, he replied.

—Don’t be absurd, she guffawed, I’m not to your taste at all.

—You are what you eat, he said, and tucked her bottom lip between his.

She whimpered – it’d been that long – and grabbed for his shoulders. So strong, so secure… His litheness coiled about her.

And as he pulled the chunky roll-neck sweater over her head, as he removed damp layers of T-shirt and baby-stained leggings, as he unsnapped the three poppers of her body – which was so like her little son’s undergarment – how Dorian revelled in the disgust he felt for her. Her underwear was flesh-coloured, but alas, it wasn’t the same colour as her flesh, which, he noted fastidiously, had the alarming, greasy hue of uncooked veal, to go with the kitchen smell of her favours.

She insisted they go somewhere else in case the baby woke up, and rather than interrupt work in progress he acceded. Besides, in the sparsely furnished bedroom, with its solid-oak platform, he could assay the situation still better and decide how best to infect Helen. Performing in excess of a thousand thousand HIV impregnations had given Dorian the forensic attitude of a virologist injecting an attenuated virus into experimental cohorts. But Dorian didn’t stick around to see how his guinea-pigs fared, so he had only his intuitions to trust when it came to deciding where he should put his tainted love, and how often, to ensure the experiment had a successful result.

With playmates who had no scruples about proscribed practices the whole business was so much easier, but needless to say these were not the playmates Dorian preferred. Indeed, he relished it when the condoms were brought out; there was nothing that excited him more than a challenge. Helen was going to be one of those; despite its being muzzy she kept her head at first, insisting on a cordon sanitaire. He gave it to her straight and feigned ordinary affection with the ease of a cowed, frigid wife faking orgasm. He gave it to her again. The baby woke and they dressed him, fed him and played with him. When he slept they did it a third time. Helen needed no persuasion to stay. Later, when he woke again, they bathed the baby in the black-tiled bathroom, lathering his proletarian limbs with Imperial Leather. Then they all ate supper. Then they put the baby to bed for the night. It was all so
gemütlich
at Dorian’s; surely Helen could be forgiven for collaborating with the Nazi regime.

It wasn’t until the small hours that he shed his rubber foreskin and downpoured her with death. It wasn’t until later still that, stoned and drunk, she felt her sphincter crack like her lips, despite the Vaseline that had been rubbed every which way. When eventually she slept, Dorian went upstairs, and he spent long hours that night marvelling at the contrast between the red, careworn claws of the cathode Narcissi and his own delightful digits.

The next day Dorian effected introductions. Batface – Helen; Helen – Batface. He’d decided to keep Helen around, like a kind of trophy wife, the prize being death or its avoidance.

Batface had walked across from Chelsea. It g-g-gives me time to think about L-Lou Andreas-Salomé, she said.

Helen enquired, Nietzsche’s mistress?

—I-I-I d-don’t think they ever c-consummated their relationship. Batface blushed even at this, which Helen found endearing.

—Are you writing a book about her? Helen jiggled the baby, and Batface absent-mindedly twined her fingers in his curls.

—Yes, I’m interested in women not of their time, she explained. I’m a historian.

—I know, Helen said; I’ve heard of you.

—I don’t want to be a man not of
his
time, Dorian intervened. We should go, Batface, or we’ll be late.

He gave Helen the spare key and told her to stay if she wanted, make use of the contents of the fridge if she felt so inclined. What was his was hers – even if she didn’t know it. Recently, Dorian had felt the angry emanations he associated with his nemesis clustering on the cobbles of the mews. He thought that maybe the presence of an older woman and a baby in the house would confuse his tormentor. It was worth a try.

In Narberton, Dorian stopped the MG so that they could buy presents for their hostess in one of the gift shops that cluttered the pretty Cotswold village.

—I say, Dorian, said Batface, it’s uncommonly late for w-wistaria to be flowering, don’t you think?

—Oh I s’pose so, but this place is so bloody obsessed with winning the Best-Kept Village award year on year that they’ve probably installed under-floor heating. Dorian bought a fake milk churn full of fudge, Batface some lavender bath cubes. It never ceased to amaze Dorian, who had been raised abroad, how the English rich would accept the cheapest, most useless trifles as house presents. Even Jane Narborough, who – as Dorian knew full well, courtesy of Henry – would shortly be bankrupt if she kept on bankrolling so many swamis, gurus and lamas. They soon won’t have the wherewithal to keep up a hanging basket, he muttered.

—What?

—The Narboroughs – I said they soon won’t have the wherewithal to keep up a hanging basket.

—You sound like H-Henry, Batface hiccuped, and then, Oh dear, Dorian, I told you you shouldn’t leave your car there.

An irate village elder, complete with Rotary Club pin and check waistcoat, was indigesting on the edible verge. He gave them a row as they climbed in and reversed leaving chocolate furrows in his green cake. He made a show of noting down Dorian’s car number. When Ginger pulled up in his Ford Sierra a couple of minutes later the old man was still fulminating. Ginger, who did deferential very well, calmed him down and then pleased him mightily by booking an off-season room in his bed and breakfast.

Lunch at Narborough, especially on the days when there was a shoot, was a most peculiar repast. It was held in a two-storey dining room, which was arrayed with the tattered ensigns of the male Narboroughs’ regiments and the family’s gruesome coat of arms (severed arms crossed against a field of white poppies; motto:
Semper irati numquam dormimus
), and the shifting company, who never numbered fewer than twenty-five, were on this occasion about a third oriental mystics, a third occidental huntsmen, and a third the miscellaneous hangers-on who would pitch up for any country-house weekend, no matter how strange.

Sir David Hall and his wife, Angela Brownrigg and Chloë Lambert, the Ferret and Dorian, Batface and Phoebe Wotton, all of them were gathered at one end of the cricket-pitch-sized slab of mahogany, pitchforking down, great mounds of herbage in deference to their hostess. Jane Narborough sat a few yards off, together with her Buddhist pals, who were slyly sipping dal soup from wooden bowls. Henry Wotton, whose wheelchair stood at an angle from the table, and who had dispensed at last with even making a show of eating, whispered in Dorian’s ear, ‘Of course she’s a complete cow, but fortunately I’m an enthusiastic supporter of Compassion in World Farming.’

His familiar tittered at this and asked, ‘D’you want some wine, Henry? I think they’ve still got some passable claret.’

‘I used to drink to forget,’ Wotton observed, ‘but now I forget to drink.’

Dorian went in search of the decanter.

At the sideboard stood a number of heavyset stereotypes of Edwardian gentlemen. They were so uniform, these men, in their tweed plus-fours and Norfolk jackets, with their roast-beef complexions and their piggy little eyes, that they could have gone on the road as a tribute band called Ninety Years After, playing their Purdey shotguns instead of Fender Stratocasters. These big guns were piling up plates with wooden sausages, slabs of ham as thickly pink as industrial floor covering, slices of game pie the size of tractor tyres. They all laughed a lot, they all swigged claret, they were all utterly revolting.

Around the Gillray calves of these characters darted the Duke himself, a peculiar figure no more than five feet in height, his bald pate fringed by wisps of white hair, his Donegal tweeds as skimpy and tight as a hairy leotard. Anyone who troubled to look down at his pate was gifted an impression of a red, throbbing depression in the middle of the ducal skull, the result of his wife’s mystical manipulation of a power drill. Although the skin had long since healed over the wound, the operation had undoubtedly changed Binky Narborough. Before it he had been eccentric, but now he was flagrantly insane. ‘Bip-bip-bip!’ he exclaimed as he flitted hither and thither, bringing his guests odd titbits of lettuce, or a single potato, and laying these on their plates with a ‘Very good! Very very good!’ exclamation. ‘Ta very much, Binky,’ said the guns; ‘most kind – lovely-looking potato.’ Of course the chap was bonkers, and the wife wasn’t much better. As for the son, there seemed little likelihood of the dukedom’s surviving far into the next millennium. But for now, the shoot was the finest in England, and if it required a little indulgence for them to enjoy it, then so be it – they’d indulge.

Wotton, like a bitter Tiresias, was now almost entirely blind, apart from a grey aperture through which he wildly aimed his aperçus at the world. Hester Hall came over to say hello, drawing up a chair by one of his wheels. ‘How are you feeling, Henry?’ she asked, conscious that while he was probably pricklier than ever, it behove her not to be thin-skinned.