Heartbreaker (58 page)

Every time Lewis and I review memories of Hugo we pray for him. We offer the memories to God, all of them, good and not so good, and we say thanks for Hugo’s life, he counted, he made a difference, the pattern he made on those early years of mine was important. I tell Lewis I’m glad I know what it was like to have a brother, and he says he envies me. He never had one. He tells me he had a weird childhood and after misbehaving on the grand scale he wound up living in a Church of England monastery run by his great-uncle. I get the impression Lewis was a teenage tearaway before the word “teenager” was invented.

“But Great-Uncle Cuthbert saved me,” says Lewis nostalgically. “Great-Uncle Cuthbert was a monastic masterpiece.”

I’m interested in this Cuthbert bloke, but right now . . .

Right now I can only think of Hugo.

We’re like archaeologists uncovering a valuable artefact. We have to expose it little by little, brushing away the earth so carefully that nothing gets damaged. And Hugo’s now emerging steadily, the Hugo who was the best of brothers, generous-natured, exuberant, fun. I used to patter along in his wake, not so clever, not so sporty, paler, more serious, more introverted. “Why can’t you be more like Hugo?” my mother would exclaim when I didn’t want to go to the neighbourhood kiddie-parties, but my father would say: “Let him be. Not everyone likes to be sociable.” My mother hated any dig he made about being sociable. “Just because you’re so dull, you can’t see why anyone should want to have a good time!” she’d cry, but he’d never argue with her, he’d just go into his study and close the door.

“It sounds as if your parents weren’t so happy even before Hugo died,” says Lewis one day, but at once I tell him how despite the age difference they were famous for being happily married.

“He was a lot older,” I add. “He’d been married before but his first wife was an invalid and they had no children. When she died he was chased by hordes of women, Granny said, because he was a doctor and good-looking and as the result of the invalid wife and the busy medical practice he had a sort of harassed, exhausted air which made women long to spoil him rotten. He didn’t mean to break hearts, Granny said, but he couldn’t seem to work out how not to. He was basically just a quiet, shy type.”

“And how did your mother capture this lethal blushing violet?”

“She was the bright extrovert who had the chutzpah to go after what she wanted and get it.”

“Did she enjoy sailing?”

“No, but Hugo and I loved it.”

“Who was the better sailor?”

“I was,” I say without hesitation. “Hugo preferred sports that involved a ball, so I became the sailor and the swimmer. That way there was no competition.”

“Your talent for sailing must have created a strong bond with your father.”

“Yes, it did. He and I liked the parts of sailing which Hugo never seemed to notice.”

This intrigues Lewis. “Such as?”

“The beauty of the seascapes. The feeling of being at one with nature . . . Dad talked about it once to me when we were sailing without Hugo—we were sailing down the Solent towards the Needles . . . You know the Needles, those spectacular cliffs at one end of the Isle of Wight?”

“I’ve seen them, yes.”

“They were looking wonderful that day. The weather was very fine, but there was a stiff breeze so we were sailing in optimum conditions, and everywhere seemed to me so beautiful. I said to Dad: ‘This is paradise—I’m so happy!’ and when he smiled at me and said: ‘So am I!’ everything was perfect, perfect, perfect . . . I remember that day because it was the last happy time I had with any member of my family. Hugo was diagnosed two days later. That was why he hadn’t come sailing with us. He was already ill.”

Lewis offered no comment, but I could feel the strength of his sympathy.

“And I’ll tell you something else,” I hear myself say, “something extraordinary. The last time I went sailing with Richard Slaney, we sailed along that same stretch of water under identical conditions, and suddenly, just for a second, I looked at Richard and saw my father looking back—and that was so unexpected because usually the person Richard reminded me of was Hugo.”

“Ah!” says Lewis as if I’ve suddenly pulled a white rabbit out of a hat, and I see I’ve dealt him a big surprise.

“We all realised Richard was special for you,” explains Lewis, “but we all fell into the trap of thinking you saw him as a father-figure. Can you tell me why he reminded you of Hugo?”

This was easy. “Richard was clever and fun with lots of style,” I say, “and so was Hugo. They didn’t look alike and Hugo certainly wasn’t gay, but there was still a resemblance in personality.” I pause to remember them both before adding: “I didn’t see the resemblance straight away. At first Richard was just another client. But when we were on his boat together the resemblance to Hugo hit me between the eyes—it was like having the old Hugo back again.”

“Was that when you started to hanker for the world you’d left behind?”

“Maybe.” I try to see the truth but I feel as if I’m standing in sunlight while peering back into a fog. “Even before I met Richard,” I say, “I used to drive down to Surrey and coast around the area where I used to live, so I suppose I was like an emigrant who gets homesick, but I never seriously thought of going back. I couldn’t imagine living without Elizabeth.”

“But after you went sailing with Richard—”

“Yeah, you’re right, that
was
when I began to want to go back even though I still couldn’t imagine living without Elizabeth.” As I pause to peer again through the fog I find it’s floating away and I can see the past more clearly. “The point about Richard,” I say finally, “is that by reminding me of Hugo—the good Hugo, not the angry Hugo in my head—he reminded me of all the happy times I’d had when I was younger, the times all the later misery had blotted out.”

“So Richard rearranged the past for you. He reminded you of a world where you didn’t have to live a life so at odds with your true self.”

I nod as I watch the last of the fog disperse. “When I was sailing with Richard it was as if I was back in that world,” I say, “and Richard saw me then as I really was. Maybe that was when he fell in love with me. Before that he’d just been infatuated.”

“But what were your feelings for Richard by then? How did you feel about having sex with someone who reminded you of your brother?”

I sigh as I search for the words which will finally bury Gavin Blake Leisure-Worker, that caring bloke who performed a valuable social service. “When I worked,” I say, “Richard wasn’t Hugo. Richard wasn’t even Richard. He was just another lump of meat on the block, someone—no, something—I could manipulate for money by doing a set of routines I’d been trained to perform. It was like being an animal. Or possibly a robot. But it wasn’t like being human and doing something called ‘making love.’ ” I run out of steam but Lewis nods and doesn’t press me with another question. I’m not being judged here. He’s still on my side, still understanding.

“Even when Richard reminded me of Hugo,” I say, “he was still just a client when we got to the bedroom. I mean, how could it have been otherwise? Fundamentally I wasn’t into gay sex and Richard wasn’t sexually attractive to me. In fact even if I’d been gay I can’t imagine him turning me on—he was overweight, he didn’t work out and he wasn’t up to much in the sack, those heavy drinkers never are. Because I liked him I did make the extra effort to give him a good time, but I was still working, still acting and performing for money. So when we were together I was never having a loving relationship with a brother. I was always just ripping off a bloke who reminded me of my brother.” I stop, feeling ready to collapse. Is there anything more exhausting than telling a string of shitty truths you’d rather not face? But the paradox is I know I’m going to feel better now. Lewis still accepts me. It’s going to be all right.

With a huge effort I drum up the energy to blurt out: “I wish Richard was still alive. I wish I could tell him how sorry I am that I hurt him.”

“That, of course, is very commendable,” says Lewis at once, “but I think you should beware of turning Richard into a Victim with a capital V.”

I look up. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it occurred to me while you were talking that my Great-Uncle Cuthbert would have taken a tough line here, and he would have taken it with Richard, not with you. He would have said that a sophisticated man who consorted with a prostitute would have known exactly what he was doing and would have deserved everything he got . . . But then Great-Uncle Cuthbert was always very severe on the subject of immorality and particularly when the immorality was homosexual.”

I’m hooked on Great-Uncle Cuthbert. I just love the way he’s so politically incorrect. “Was he a closet gay, Lewis?”

“I was never able to decide and he gave no clues, but I’m quite sure he believed that his sexual preferences were between him and God and as such were in no way a subject for general discussion. In fact he would have said that modern society’s obsession with sex was unhealthy, immature and idolatrous, and created a severe distortion of reality.”

“Wow!” I’m enthralled by the sheer subversive magnificence of this fearless alternative vision.

Lewis smiles, and prepares to tell me more.

Our talks continue with this format: we discuss me for as long as I can stand it, and then as a reward Lewis gives me another instalment of his monastic soap opera. Cool. I like hearing about all the monks Great-Uncle Cuthbert ruled with a rod of iron, and I’m spherical-eyed to learn there was no homosexuality in his all-male roost. No overt homosexuality anyway. Lewis says the main sin was gluttony. But there was no anorexia or bulimia, not in Great-Uncle Cuthbert’s monastery. Great-Uncle Cuthbert would have called them spiritual illnesses, a sign that the soul wasn’t lined up right with God and in consequence was writhing in agony. Great-Uncle Cuthbert didn’t mince his words. He lived in a less wimpish age and never pulled the punches when he was speaking about God, religion and the spiritual.

I like hearing about all these blokes who did without sex, and that’s not because I’m thinking of entering a monastery. It’s because I like hearing about a lifestyle that’s totally different from the one that’s nearly finished me. Dimly it dawns on me why Lewis is keen to spin me these stories. He’s saying you don’t have to have a sicko lifestyle selling yourself for money. You don’t even have to have a conventional mainstream lifestyle, trotting off to work each day in an office and being a couch potato with your wife in the evenings as you snooze in front of the TV. And you certainly don’t have to live an isolated-bubble lifestyle, thinking only of yourself. There are other options, other ways of living—and other ways too of looking at the things you feel you can’t do without.

“Human beings love idols,” says Lewis, “because human beings love to worship, but if you worship the wrong gods, you risk being seriously cut off from reality.”

Anything can become an idol, he says: a nation, a political party, a head of state—drink, drugs, food—football, rock music, pop stars—cars, boats, designer clothes—sex, exercise, loadsamoney—you name it. All these things may be good in themselves, but once they become an obsession you squander time and energy on illusions, your priorities get rearranged, your balanced lifestyle goes down the tubes and your true self gets stomped on. Or in other words, getting cut off from reality can make you physically, mentally and spiritually ill.

I pick out my past idols from his list, the addictions I used in order to fill the worship-space in my head. What I now have to do is fill the worship-space in my head with the right stuff, the stuff that’s codenamed God, but I’m not going to be interested in the souped-up father-figure who gets wheeled out to bore for religion, and you can forget the nursery-rhyme old man in the sky. I still like the idea of God as a fraught artist, and Lewis says fine, it’s a passable image because art is about reality and God is Ultimate Reality itself—line yourself up with Ultimate Reality, Lewis says, and you become real in your turn, playing your part in the scheme of things and feeling fulfilled as your real self has the chance to flourish. But—

“—but,”
warns Lewis, “remember that no image of God can give more than a glimpse of him, and that projecting images on to God can be very dangerous.” And he points out that God can be converted into an idol too, and when God becomes a false god bad religion breaks out. That’s why The Bloke’s so important, I see that now. He knows what the real God is and he can point the way to him.

I mosey around in all this spiritual stuff like a dog circling a deeply relevant lamp-post but finally I ask: “Why doesn’t The Bloke just fix me?”

“He’s not a magician, Gavin. He operates through love, not through a magic wand.”

“That’s all very well, but I want him to come along and—” I break off as I remember. He’s already here, working through Lewis. All I’ve got to do is work hard in return, but it’s so emotionally exhausting and I’m still so sick.

“You’ll get better,” says Lewis. “I’m sure of it.”

I don’t know whether I believe him or not. But I do know I’m being given the strength to stagger on.

Hugo’s fully excavated now and ready for a serious one-to-one talk, but we’re putting him on ice for a short while in order to excavate the surrounding areas more fully. We talk some more about my parents. We talk about my father’s own brother Hugo who was killed in the war, and about my mother’s awful sisters: Pansy, who eloped with an American soldier, and Marigold, who married a millionaire and lived at St. George’s Hill in Weybridge and looked down on my mother for getting stuck with a mere country doctor.

Then I talk about Granny, Mum’s mother, who loved to gossip and who was a colossal snob, and about Other Granny, Dad’s mother, who played Edwardian songs on the piano and whom Granny called “common” just because Other Granny had once had to earn her living teaching music. Then I talk about Grandfather, Mum’s dad, who liked cricket, and about Grandad the Other Grandfather, who grew prize tomatoes in his greenhouse, and about the various cousins, all of whom had been either snotty or weird.