The Make (22 page)

Chapter 49

Across town, Harry was still working. The evening had gone well; he’d escorted top corporate lawyer Becca Stanway to dinner at Langan’s; they’d had a great meal and then they’d got into a taxi to go back to her place.

She’d paid him not the usual hundred, but five hundred pounds. She’d handed it to him in a discreet white envelope over their starter of scallops, samphire and black pudding. He’d gone to the Gents mid-evening, counted out the cash, and been both amazed and a bit doleful. Extras were expected, and he was up for it, he was
always
up for it, like an Ever Ready battery, that was Harry.

Only . . . he felt numb at heart. After Emma had found out about him and her mother, ever since then, he’d felt like someone had deep-frozen his internal organs; he would perform because he
had
to, but it meant nothing. Less than nothing.

But now it was put-out time. The minute they got inside her flat, Becca – who was gorgeous, with straight long blonde hair, a perma-tanned body and beautifully French-manicured nails – led him into her bedroom, which was tricked out all in neutrals, with flowing curtains of white star-marked voile at the windows and surrounding the four-poster bed, and dense, deep cream carpet underfoot.

‘Hurry up,’ said Becca, striding off into the en suite in her strappy five-inch heels. ‘Get naked, Harry.’

Harry stood there. Now he not only
was
a tart, he truly
felt
like one. He hated this. Oh, granted, it had started out as a light-hearted jape. George in the lead, saying hey Harry, how about you and me doing this, couldn’t we use the readies? And oh, there had been readies all right.
Bags
of cash. But they’d both ignored the core message of that cheesy old Richard Gere film, hadn’t they? And the message was: Richard Gere had landed up to his neck in the shit.

And hadn’t they done that too?

Well, maybe not George. But Harry? Oh yes. Perhaps not as
badly
in the shit as the character in the film. But Harry looked at the facts and they weren’t cheering.

The
fact
was, if he hadn’t got involved in yet another of George’s mad schemes, he would never have met Jackie. And if he hadn’t met Jackie, he wouldn’t have met Emma, either. If he hadn’t done
that
, he wouldn’t be standing here now feeling like someone had scooped out his innards and left him feeling empty and bereft.

What was that stupid old saying? Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Well, that was crap. He’d been happy before all this had started. Now, he was miserable. And now . . . oh shit, here came Becca in nothing but a pair of sheer royal-blue Agent Provocateur panties, still teetering along on her five-inch heels, ready for action and holding an open jar of chocolate body paint.

Harry stared at her. Her body was gym-toned, her breasts obviously surgically enhanced; she looked truly fabulous. Yet he felt like stone. He felt
nothing.

Becca sent Harry a come-hither smile and headed for the bed. She sat down, dipped a finger into the paint in what she clearly thought was a sexy manner, and smeared a touch of the paint on to each of her erect nipples. Then she put the pot aside and leaned back on her hands and smiled at him.

‘Come and lick me, Harry,’ she said.

Well, he could do that. Maybe this was what he needed. A hot session with this gorgeous-looking woman might just shake him out of the morose mood he was in.

He took off his jacket, dropping it on to the floor, and went over to the bed. He gripped Becca’s exquisitely sculpted thighs and eased them apart. He knelt between them. Her smile widened. Then he leaned forward and kissed her. Her lips parted voraciously, her tongue shooting into his mouth so suddenly that he had to stop himself from pulling back in surprise.

It wasn’t like kissing Emma.

It was
nothing
like that.

He moved away from her mouth, annoyed with himself, thinking,
What the hell is the matter with me?
He trailed a line of light kisses down her throat, over her collarbone. Becca moaned and pushed her pneumatic breasts at him.

Well, here goes nothing
, thought Harry, and started licking at the chocolate paint. It was sickly sweet. Becca moaned louder. The paint was so sweet it was making him feel a bit nauseous, in fact. He drew back.

‘Becca . . .’ he said, about to suggest something else,
anything
else, the stuff was foul.

‘No, keep doing that,’ she said, and yanked his head back towards her breast. He hesitated. Their eyes met and she must have read the reluctance in his because hers were suddenly harder, more demanding. ‘Come
on
, Harry, it’s what I’m paying you for.’

She was right. Harry got back to the task, hating it. Hating
her.
The paint tasted disgusting, and it set a tingling at the back of his throat, a rush of strange sensations right up to the top of his head. Weird feelings stabbed downwards, hitting his groin, making his cock stir.
This
time, Harry drew back so suddenly and so forcefully that he fell back on his arse on the shag pile.

‘What the
fuck
?’ he demanded, his head spinning.

He looked up at Becca, smiling there as she bent and slipped off her panties.

‘Yeah, come on Harry. Let’s do it,’ she said, leaning back invitingly.

Harry scrambled to his feet. His head felt strange, all rushing sounds and kaleidoscopic lights. He looked at the innocent pot of body paint on the bedside table, then at Becca.

‘You put something in that,’ he said.

Becca lay back and nodded slowly. ‘Got it in one,’ she said.

‘What?’

She shrugged. ‘Just a little coke,’ she said.

Harry stared at her. Harry was the mildest-mannered, sweetest of men, but suddenly it all crashed in on him, the enormity of it all. Losing Em. Knowing he wasn’t good enough for her. Knowing he was now just a piece of meat, a cheap hooker, being paid for and pawed over by women with more money than sense.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘All right, you’re paying for my body. I get that. But now you think that gives you the right to
dope
me?’

Becca looked up at him with a tinge of irritation.
‘Look
, Harry,’ she said, ‘It’s just a couple of lines of coke I mixed in there, just a little something to mellow us out. Jesus, you certainly seem to
need
it. You’ve had a face like thunder for half the night, and is that what I pay for? I don’t think so. I just thought a little relaxation would do us both good, okay?’

‘No, actually it’s
not
okay,’ said Harry, enraged. ‘What the fuck next, Rohypnol? What sort of sad bitch are you, that you’ve got to drug a man before he’ll hump you?’

Becca’s face flooded with angry colour. She sprang up on the bed and glared at him. ‘If
that’s
how you feel, you’d better just piss off,’ she yelled.

‘Yeah. That is how I feel.’ His head whirling, he crossed the room unsteadily and picked up his jacket. He fumbled inside, found the envelope full of cash. He flung it on to the floor. ‘And here’s your full refund.’ Notes spilled out on the carpet but he didn’t give a shit. He shrugged on his jacket.

‘You useless bastard,’ shouted Becca. ‘I bet you couldn’t have got it up anyway.’

Harry strode to the door. He looked back at her, with her chocolate-smeared breasts and her face distorted and ugly with temper. ‘Night, Becca,’ he said, and left.

‘Fuck
you!’
she screamed after him.

Lefty phoned Deano. He said: ‘I found out who took Alfie, Deano.’

‘Tell me.’

‘George Doyle.’ And Lefty gave Deano all George’s details.

* * *

It was very late when he got back to the flat, but Harry was so buzzed that he knew he’d never settle down to sleep. He wanted to talk to George, just a chat, just to talk things through.

Ah, who am I kidding?
he thought.

What he wanted to say to George was that he’d had enough of the escort business. That he never wanted to have to do any of these women for cash, ever again. Even the bloody dole office and the boredom of just kicking his heels all day was better than this. He felt hurt, near tears, desperately sad over losing Emma. And more than that. Meeting Jackie and then Emma had forced him to confront things about himself that he had always shied away from. He
was
shiftless. He
was
lazy. He had no ambition. He had been wasting his life, letting it drift by – his one precious, unrepeatable life.

Why the fuck had George done this to him? He’d changed Harry from an easy-going young man about town – lazy and shiftless, true, but
happy
.

Now, he couldn’t even remember what happiness was. He was disgusted with himself. It was
good
that Emma had dumped him, because she deserved so much better than a useless waste of space like him. He would only have made her miserable. They could
never
have made a go of things, and now he could see that, could admit it to himself, even if it pained him.

He knew it was terribly late, but he had to talk to George about it all, or go off his head. He walked along the hall, still wearing his coat, and gently opened George’s door.

All right, if George was deeply asleep he wouldn’t wake him. But he
needed
to talk. The coke he’d ingested was still buzzing around his head, making him feel hyper. ‘George?’ he whispered, looking towards the bed.

And there, in the white cool moonlight spilling in from the window, was George, his arm flung around the slumbering Alfie. The musky scent of sex hung in the air.

Harry stepped back, recoiling with shock from the evidence of his own eyes.

George . . . and
Alfie
?

Harry stepped back, gently closing the door on the sleeping couple. He padded off down the hall, went into his own room, and sat on the bed for a long, long time.

Chapter 50

At breakfast next day, when Alfie nipped off to the corner shop to fetch milk, Harry took the opportunity to lay it on the line for George. He couldn’t just ignore what he’d seen. He wanted to, but he couldn’t.

‘I wanted to talk to you last night,’ he said, as George buttered toast.

‘Yeah? What about?’ George was smiling, in a good mood. In a
great
mood.

‘About the fact I’m not doing the escorting any more,’ said Harry.

George stopped buttering. ‘What? Why?’

‘Because I hate it, George. Because I feel like shit when I do it. Because I’m a fucking
whore
, and I don’t like it.’

George laid down the knife. ‘So what will you do?’

Harry shrugged unhappily. ‘God knows. Go back on the dole. Get a job. Something. I just know I can’t go on doing it, okay?’

‘Well if that’s how you feel . . .’ said George.

‘It is.’

‘Well then it’s fine.’ George started scooping marmalade on to the toast. ‘You’ve got to do your own thing, that’s okay with me.’

‘George.’

‘Un-huh?’

‘There’s something else.’

‘Shoot.’

‘I came in your room to talk to you last night.’

George paused with the toast halfway to his lips. His eyes met Harry’s. ‘Ah,’ he said.

‘“Ah”? Is that all you can say?’ Harry looked outraged. ‘Jesus H Christ in a sidecar, George, I didn’t have a clue. I mean . . . you . . . and Alfie.’

George put the toast down, his smile fading to nothing. ‘You’re pig-sick, right? You think it’s the most disgusting thing you ever saw.’

‘
No
,’ said Harry hastily. ‘Well yes.
No.
Fuck it, George, you might have given me a bit of warning. I just . . . couldn’t believe it, that’s all. You and Alfie. I always thought you were
straight
.’

George gazed at Harry sadly. ‘I always thought I was straight too. You think I’m not just as shocked as you are? Think again. I tried hard enough to be that. But now I can see it was just that – trying to be something, trying so hard; and finally, I just failed.’

‘Jesus, it’s not a
failure
, George,’ said Harry, desperately praying that the right words were going to come out of his mouth somehow. He felt like his whole world was spinning out of control. George was somehow not George at all; George was . . . well, they’d laughed light-heartedly and yes, a bit cruelly, about homosexuals together in the past. Called them shirt-lifters. Benders. And all the time, George must have been just
pretending.
George wasn’t the George he’d always known, not at all.

‘I just . . .’ Harry hesitated. ‘Well,
Alfie.
You and him. And he looks so bloody young.’

‘He’s seventeen,’ said George.

‘He looks a lot younger.’

‘I know that. But he isn’t. I’m not a fucking paedo, Harry. I would
never
do a thing like that – bed anyone underage. You know that.’

‘Yeah. I do.’ Harry ran his hands over his face, up into his hair. ‘Jesus, George, it’s just such a
shock
.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m gonna have to get used to it,’ said Harry. He looked at the tablecloth for long moments. ‘Anyway, I’ve decided I’m going to quit the escort stuff, and I’m going to move out, give you and Alfie a bit of space.’

‘
Shit,
Harry,’ groaned George. ‘You’re disgusted. I was right, wasn’t I? You can’t stand to be around two raging faggots like me and Alf.’

Harry shook his head. ‘Don’t be stupid. I love you man, you know I do. And Alfie, I got no problem with him, he’s great. You and Alfie? Well, it’s a shock but . . . it’s cool. Although Mum’s gonna go completely apeshit, no grandkids, she is gonna
flip
, you do realize that?’

George sat back in the chair. He
hadn’t
thought of that. But he knew Harry was right.

‘I’m going to have to tell her,’ said George. ‘Get it out in the open. Sooner the better.’

Harry tilted his head and looked at George. ‘You think it’s serious then, you and Alf? Not just a fling?’

‘I love him to bits, Harry. I really do.’

‘Oh shit,’ said Harry with a wry smile. ‘Not you too.’

George’s attention sharpened. ‘What, you mean you’ve got someone?’

Harry shook his head. ‘I haven’t got her. Not at all. But I’m in love with her, that’s for sure.’

‘She feel the same?’

‘She hates my guts. I slept with her mother. The cougar.’

‘And she found out.’ George stared at Harry’s face in concern. He had never seen his younger brother looking so downcast, and he felt bad for him.

‘Got it in one,’ said Harry, trying to smile but not succeeding.

‘That would be sort of hard to take.’

‘I know. But since the thing with Em . . . well, I don’t think I care whether I boff another woman as long as I live right now.’

‘Hey, boy, boffing’s what you
do
,’ said George, trying to inject a little lightness.

Harry had to smile at that. ‘Well,
sensei
, I am just gonna have to do something else, okay? Something different.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said George, meaning it, his eyes on Harry’s miserable face. ‘I’m
really
sorry it didn’t work out for you. What will you do, then?’

‘Get a proper job?’

‘That could be on the cards.’ Harry stood up. A proper job doing what? He had no qualifications. He’d never cared about that before, but he did now. He looked down at George and his face was very serious. ‘I’m going out,’ he said. ‘Got a booking at lunchtime, I’ll go straight on to that. But it’s the last one, okay George? The very last.’

Alfie came back in, bringing a gust of cold winter air and a litre plastic bottle of semi-skimmed. Harry was already at the door, shrugging on his jacket. Alfie beamed at him. Harry nodded, straight-faced, and passed on by.

Alfie came to the table where George was sitting, looking morose. Alfie put the milk down. ‘You told him? Already?’ he asked.

George looked up. ‘Didn’t have to. He came into my room to talk during the night. Saw us.’

‘Ah.’ Alfie sat down and looked across at George. There was a brief silence. ‘So . . . how’d he take it?’

George blew out his cheeks and sat back. ‘Pretty good, really. Harry’s a diamond.’

‘It must have been a shock for him.’

‘Yeah. But it’ll be cool. And anyway, Harry’s got troubles of his own without worrying about mine.’

Alfie didn’t ask what Harry’s troubles were. He was aware that they were all treading on new and dangerous ground; he didn’t want to upset anyone by intruding where he shouldn’t.

‘So . . . what’s happening today?’ he asked George. He felt anxious now. Maybe George had decided last night was a mistake, who knew?

George looked at Alf. He said as gently as he could: ‘Look, Alfie, give me a break, will you? All this . . . it’s a lot to take in. A hell of a lot.’

‘No it isn’t,’ said Alfie, feeling a spasm of fear. George was regretting last night. ‘I love you, you love me . . .’

‘Alf!’ snapped George, standing up. ‘For fuck’s sake, can’t you see? This is
huge
for me. I need some space, okay?’

And he snatched up his coat and followed Harry out the door. The silence of the flat settled around Alfie. He stared at the closed door and hoped that everything was going to work out. Right now, he doubted it.

George went round to see Suze later in the day. He often popped in on her – being careful to avoid the times when he knew that creep Claude was going to be there – and today he had something really important to tell her, and he also really wanted to get out of the flat, give himself a little space in which to think.

He’d spent the night with Alfie.

The night just gone kept replaying in his mind. He still couldn’t quite believe it. But it had been the most thrillingly exquisite night of his entire life. Waking up to see Alfie’s corn-gold head lying beside his on the pillow had seemed entirely natural and right.

And wasn’t that ironic? He had gone into the escort biz as a wide boy on the make, determined to screw a good wedge out of a legion of grateful women – and had stumbled across Alfie, who meant more to him than any woman ever had.

He thought about Harry, who was planning to move out. George didn’t want that. He didn’t want Harry made to feel awkward – it was his home, after all. And Suze was going to go ballistic. Harry was dead right about that.

London buzzed all around him as the dark afternoon faded into black night. Lights twinkled on and he ambled along the Embankment; the river police had divers down under London Bridge. They were hoisting something big – it looked like a cab – out of the water with a crane.

He was in love. It wasn’t a cause for concern, a reason to be fucking miserable. It was the best thing that had ever happened to him. It was going to be the best Christmas
ever.
When at last he reached Suze’s gate, someone called his name. It was the last thing he remembered.

Two hours later, Suze came to put out the bins in the dark and saw something on the pavement outside the gate. Probably a wino. She stepped a little closer, not really wanting to get involved, and found that the wino looked sort of bulky and . . . oh
shit
, there was George sprawled face-down on the pavement and people – the
fuckers! –
were stepping around him, thinking he was just a drunk, just a waster.

‘George!’ she shrieked, and that brought Claude haring out of the half-open front door to stare down at Suze’s eldest son, her beloved boy, lying there on the cold ground with the side of his head a bloody mess. It was Claude who called for the ambulance.

Once Harry was out in the street he walked and walked, trying to take in all that was happening before his date with Rosie May, his latest – and his last – client.

She’d only booked this morning, it was a bit of a rush job, but Harry was okay with that. Sick as he was of the escorting now, he wasn’t about to let the poor woman down. He took the tube over to Soho where she had asked that they meet, at a club there
.
She’d said she’d meet him at the bar inside, and that she had long dark curly hair and olive skin. She’d know
him
straight away, anyway, she’d said in her email, from the gorgeous pics on the website, it wasn’t a problem.

Harry was a bit surprised to find himself pitching up outside the door of a fetish club. All right, live and let live, but she hadn’t said in her emails that it was one of those. She was celebrating the opening of her new Soho sex shop and she wanted a nice-looking escort to show off to her staff and her friends, earn herself a bit of kudos.

What the hell, he thought, and went in. The bouncers on the door frisked him, and then he walked on in to the club where the volume of the sound system nearly peeled the skin from inside his ears. It was hot in here, and there were even lunchtime punters in the place, jigging around on the dance floor.

Harry crossed to the long spotlit bar area and looked around. Jeez, the freak show in here. Plastic everywhere – chains, whips, thongs . . . and there was a pretty woman sitting alone at the bar, a woman with dark curly hair and
café-au-lait
skin. He made his way over to her.

‘Rosie May?’ He glanced at his watch. He wasn’t early, so where were her staff, her friends?

She smiled, but it had an edge of unease to it. Well, that was the norm.
Lots
of ladies felt apprehensive when they’d hired an escort. He smiled too, held out a hand.

‘Hi, I’m Harry Doyle,’ he said. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ He noted she didn’t have one in front of her.

Rosie shook her head and jumped down off her stool. Her movements were quick, lithe, nervous. ‘No thanks. The guys are all downstairs waiting, come on.’

Harry followed her across the room. It tickled him to think that regular people,
respectable
people, executives and bankers and stuff, would come here in their lunch hour, pull on the old plastic suit, fasten the nipple clamps and zip up the bondage boots, and rave it up. Well, who was he to judge?

Rosie was going down a flight of steep stairs, Harry close at her heels. They came out into a room that looked . . . well, there were red-painted walls, and there were chains and manacles on two of them. There were two men there, big bruisers like the ones on the door. Harry had a momentary stab of unease and he took a step back, towards the stairs.

The two men eyed him like they were about to
eat
him and spit out the bits.

Harry looked at Rosie. ‘What is this?’ he asked, half smiling, wondering if it was a prank, some sort of a set-up; maybe George was playing a practical joke. But . . . this one didn’t look very funny.

Rosie didn’t answer. She was stepping back, flattening herself against the wall where the chains dangled. Her gaze was downcast; she was looking anywhere but at Harry’s face.

‘Rosie?’ he asked faintly.

There was someone else coming down the stairs with a heavy tread. A big man emerged and stood there smiling at Harry. He was bulky, almost spherical. He had a bald, highly polished head, cold black beads for eyes and a neat little goatee beard. He was wearing a camel-hair coat with a brown velvet collar. He looked at Rosie.

‘You done good, girl,’ he said. ‘I seen you here, ain’t I? In the club? What’s your name?’

To Harry it looked as if Rosie was going to sink back into the wall until it opened and swallowed her up. She glanced up at the huge man and instantly looked away. ‘Mona,’ she whispered.

Mona?

Now Harry
knew
this was a set-up. Another man came down the stairs; a tall skinny black man with a greyish pallor, wearing a long black leather coat. He was breathing hard, like an asthmatic. He looked at Harry and started to grin. All these people, smiling at him. Harry knew this was not good news.

‘I won’t forget this, girl,’ said the big man and, with one last glance at Harry, ‘Rosie’ scuttled away up the stairs.

‘This is his brother, Deano,’ the black man was saying to the big one. ‘This is Harry Doyle.’