Devil in Disguise (4 page)

‘I see.
You’ve changed your tune a bit. I thought you were about to get the noose out
if he didn’t answer your text.’

‘No. It
has no future. Justin has a wife and child. There’s nothing I can do about
that.’

‘Well,
the other night you were all for presenting yourself on their doorstep, intent
on breaking up a happy home.’

‘I
thought better of it,’ said Simon, pained at the memory of his dramatic,
drink-induced threats.

‘I’m
glad to hear it.’ Molly sounded relieved. ‘I was a bit worried you were going
to make an arse of yourself.’

‘I
don’t actually know where he lives, so there was little chance of that
happening.’

‘Take my
advice, hon, and give Justin a miss, eh? That way madness lies.’ She was being
gentle with him now, not pleading but softly cajoling. Perhaps she was aware
that he’d had something to drink, but the door of sobriety was still ajar and
it seemed that she wanted to get her foot through it while the going was good.

‘Hmm,’
Simon muttered.

‘Time
to move on. Agreed?’

‘I
thought he was the One…’ Simon trailed off and sighed heavily. He could feel
himself getting maudlin. Justin had been divine, a chartered accountant with a
mean streak and well-cut suits that set off his broad shoulders. He’d talked
scornfully about gays, leered at big-breasted women and said all poufs revolted
him, but he didn’t mind Simon sinking to his knees to administer the relief his
huge erection so clearly needed.

‘The
One?’ said Molly, incredulously. ‘Come on, Si, I don’t want to be mean but
let’s talk facts, shall we? If there is a “One” I think it’s highly unlikely
that you’ll meet him at two o’clock in the morning behind a clump of trees on
Clapham Common, chuck. And if you do, it might be for the best if he wasn’t
busy, in his spare time, being a loving husband and father. I’m not Claire
Rayner, but your ideal partner may well turn out to be gay.’

‘I
don’t
like
gay men!’

‘Oh,
Jesus, here we go.’ Molly sounded exasperated.

They’d
been through all this before. Molly had tried to understand, she really had,
but he knew she was still mystified by his preference for straight men — even
if the very fact that they were willing to have sex with him might indicate
that they were not really of that persuasion at all. His proclivity had been
chewed over as a curiosity and pondered as a tragedy many, many times over the
years. No solutions had so far presented themselves.

‘You
know what I’m like, Molly. I can only sleep with a man under specific
circumstances. If he’s straight!’ Simon said helplessly.

‘This
is madness, Simon!’ Molly raised her voice. ‘You’ve got to stop this or you’ll
lead a life of never-ending misery and frustration. I love you, and all I want
is for you to be happy.’

Simon
paused for a moment, then hung up.

Being an only child often
implies that one is cherished, if not a little spoilt, but this wasn’t true in
Simon’s case. His parents had married late in life, and both were in their
early forties when he was born. He had wriggled into their lives either before
they were ready or after it was too late. Whichever way you looked at it,
things were not quite right. He got the distinct impression that his mother and
father had stopped at one child because their first experience of parenthood
was so bewilderingly disappointing. They had never seemed much interested in
him or in anything he had to say. Tired smiles greeted his childish questions,
and their answers were always designed to terminate any further line of
questioning. ‘Run away and play, Simon,’ had been the refrain of his childhood.
He bored them, he realised, and the best thing he could do to please them was
go to his room and amuse himself.

His
parents were so polite and indifferent that he felt like an unwanted guest in
his own home. It had been no surprise when he was sent to boarding school at
the age of seven — there was a distinct air of relief in the house in the days
leading up to his departure. But even when he arrived home for the holidays, it
was to resentful looks, pained expressions and whispered asides. By the time he
was a teenager, it was like coming to visit two elderly strangers with whom he
had almost nothing in common. They peered at him and feigned interest in his
future, often suggesting he go back-packing.

Damaged
as he was by such a loveless upbringing, Simon was intelligent enough to feel
hard-done-by. Inevitably he looked for attention elsewhere. He had been sent to
a boys’ prep school and later to a Catholic public school deep in the country.
In the classroom, and more significantly, the dormitory, he sought and found
the popularity that was missing at home. His cruel but uncannily accurate
impersonations of the teachers had his classmates enthralled and, encouraged by
their giggles, he found ever more outrageous expressions of his subversive,
ultimately angry personality.

His
attention-seeking continued after lights out, and was not unsuccessful. Word of
his skill and compliance in the arena of darkness travelled to the bigger boys
and soon Simon’s nights were most eventful. Although sleep was a tedious
necessity, it became clear that there weren’t enough hours in the night. To
satisfy all the demands upon his services, Simon was soon keeping appointments
in the afternoons as well. When the school gardener sought to confirm the saucy
rumours, it was just a matter of time before Simon was expelled. The greenhouse
had not been a wise choice of venue.

Back
home, his parents were able to add reproach and disdain to their gallery of
expressions. Even false smiles were now a thing of the past. Simon could do
nothing right. But with the good grounding of an expensive education, he sailed
through his A levels at the local college. The morning his results arrived, and
his parents looked at him with their usual blank-eyed indifference as he
announced his three A grades, he packed his bags for London, not caring where
he went, simply keen for a great adventure. After a couple of days at King’s
Cross station, he met some other desperadoes and moved into a surprisingly
civilised squat in Waterloo. Soon he had his first job, as an usher at the Old
Vic theatre, selling programmes and ice creams from a tray in the interval. The
uniform was bottle green and Simon decided he looked particularly dashing in
it. It was not taxing work but he enjoyed it.

He sent
his parents a postcard with his new address, but didn’t phone home and heard
nothing from them. His new left-wing friends soon radicalised him, and he
became a fully paid-up member of the Socialist Workers’ Revolutionary Party,
forever going on protest marches and to sit-ins. He had his eyebrow pierced and
wore his hair so short it was only one step away from a shaved bead. Such a
look, with his lean limbs and soulful, bright blue eyes, made him a popular
addition to London’s gay scene. In fact, it was his eyes that people always
remembered. They could sparkle across a crowded dance-floor and lure
prospective lovers into his orbit. Once there, and given their full, heavenly,
mesmerising voltage, any boy or man was his for the taking, seduced by the
sadness that swam in their depths. He would take them home, have sex with them
and turf them out in the morning. More often than not, they kept coming back.
Something about Simon touched them, made them return for another look into his
soul. Even hardened gays, who’d had all the tenderness fisted out of them,
would declare themselves awash with love — who’d have thought it after all
these years? — and they would try to nurture similar feelings in Simon, who was
having none of it. He never seemed to fall in love with anyone, no matter how
much they aroused or amused him. He didn’t much mind — it was just the way he
was made.

This
was a learning period for Simon. He discovered his own powers and also his own
desires. These included gay sex but not, rather confusingly, gay men. He was
bemused by this knowledge for some considerable time and chewed it over as if
it were a particularly difficult clue in a cryptic crossword, pondering several
solutions. Could he possibly be a woman trapped in a man’s body? Was sexual
realignment the answer? This he dismissed instantly. He was perfectly happy
with what God had given him, and therefore definitely not in the wrong body.
Even if surgery and hormones were going to make him attractive to ‘real’ men,
it was too high a price to pay.

Another
option might be a life of chastity. Simon surprised himself by thinking long
and hard about this. Some of the Benedictine monks who had taught him at boarding
school had seemed genuinely serene and holy, and he would dearly have liked to
escape from the eternal discontent that followed him around like a lost puppy,
and to lose the discontent in his eyes that everyone commented on. Could it be
transformed into piety and compassion for God’s suffering on the cross? It
would be a long and unlikely journey from atheist revolutionary to the
monastery, though. He knew deep down that he didn’t have a vocation for a
spiritual life. It wouldn’t ring true.

The
final and equally unsatisfactory option was to confine his interests to
straight-acting gay men. There were plenty of those around and they were, or so
they liked to think, barely indistinguishable from their straight counterparts.
Certain bars and clubs in London were designed especially for them, done up
like a construction site with lots of corrugated iron and empty beer barrels.
These men — or MEN, as they no doubt thought of themselves — certainly looked
the part, favouring biker jackets and Dr Marten boots. They stood around in
alcoves staring into the distance, glowering at all and sundry. If he followed
them into the darker recesses at the back of the club, he could have quick,
rough sex with them and no questions asked. It was almost like the real thing —
but not quite. Simon saw straight through the posturing of these men. They were
just silly, self-deluded queens and they failed to satisfy him on any level.

The
solution to this delicate conundrum came in the shape of a lorry driver.

Simon
had taken on day work as a parcel-delivery man for a few months, and one
afternoon he had stopped at Clacket Lane service station on the M25 to stretch
his legs. He wandered aimlessly along the grassy verge until he found himself
in the section reserved for articulated lorries. A huge black truck with
several pictures of topless women stuck to the windscreen loomed before him. As
Simon approached, the driver flashed his lights three times and leant out of
his window. He felt a flutter of excitement in his stomach: here was a real
man, a lorry driver wearing a greasy T-shirt and three days’ stubble! The
driver indicated that Simon should hop in. Once inside he drew some grubby
curtains across the windscreen and, without a word, climbed between the seats
on to a small mattress area behind. By the time Simon had negotiated his way
through to him, the driver had unbuckled his belt, undone his flies, and
presented Simon with a very impressive cargo indeed. The sex was quick and
unceremonious and fulfilled all of Simon’s wildest fantasies.

The
knowledge that straight men were often not as straight as they seemed liberated
him and set him on a heady voyage of discovery, one that sometimes resulted in
the odd black eye but more often in delightful, exquisite encounters with men
whose wedding rings only added to their attraction.

Simon’s
enjoyable adventures as a sexual rover were rudely interrupted when he received
a letter from his father telling him some sad news. His mother was very sick
with cancer. ‘It’s at an advanced stage, I’m afraid, and the doctors are not at
all hopeful. Do you think you could come and see us?’ he suggested.

Simon
sighed at the inconvenience, but thought, upon reflection, that he ought to pop
home.

A small stone of misery
had resided somewhere inside Simon’s chest cavity for as long as he could
remember. It was so real and permanent he felt sure it was of tangible, solid
form. It would still be there, indestructible, after his cremation, nestling
among the silken ashes like a Fabergé egg. At a loss to explain its origin, he
had a tendency to graft reasons onto his melancholy. When, as a boy, he was
told the story of Christ’s death for our sins, he put his misery down to the
collective misery of mankind. And when the family cat died suddenly, he wept
for weeks, not out of genuine grief for the bad-tempered feline but because he
felt like crying, and here was a bona-fide reason to do so. Earthquakes
reported in the news, abducted children or even the sad state of the nation’s
economy were also declared causes for Simon’s all too apparent unhappiness.