On Chasing Brad Through Purgatory (9 page)

He said, “Then will you take it back. And apologize.”

“Oh God. Must I?”

“Please?”

Amazingly the boy was still there. Why hadn't he gone leaping off to celebrate his windfall? He looked just as blank when I returned the card as he had when I had snatched it from him.

Perhaps he was so stoned he didn't remember me.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I had no right.” And then, scared he hadn't heard, I repeated this more loudly. I dipped into my pocket, gave him all the change in it, luckily only a pound coin, a twenty-pence piece and some pennies (not that I thought he either needed or deserved it), taking good care as I did so not to touch contaminating fingers. Wondered if Brad had come to the entrance of the garden; might be watching.

He was still where I had left him, facing the shiny black bulk of the Odeon. (But perhaps, neck swivelled, he could still have seen from there?) “Thank you for that,” he said. “And thank you for wanting to protect me. I'd like you to realize I appreciate the thought.”

“So
are
we still friends?”

“Maybe better than ever. Yes?”

That was the first time we had kissed—full on the lips albeit very briefly—and right in the middle of Leicester Square in broad daylight in the very heart of London's tourist-thronged West End. Under the watchful though inscrutable eye of William Shakespeare; under the watchful though inscrutable eye of Charlie Chaplin too.

“And is it really a wretched film?” I said. “And is it true it's only me, not you, who wants to see it?”

“I'll tell you what:
you
could practise being a little more saintly—if part of that means not referring to the very foolish things a person may come up with in the heat of the moment.”

Anyway. I didn't tell Richard or Hermione about Katy.

(And soon, indeed, couldn't have told them about her. My memory of the whole experience grew as hazy as a dream. I've seldom been good at reliving my dreams.)

So you see Brad what a shining influence you are. And always have been. My God, Judgment Day for you should be a doddle—I mean if you were being accurately assessed as you went along as I hope and imagine that you were. Despite all the crap you handed out about the falsity of overall impressions.

No wonder you didn't have to hang around.

The only thing is now: how the bloody hell am I myself ever going to manage? You in, me out. I don't think I could endure that any more than the other way about—or certainly not
much
more; I'm clearly still as selfish as I've ever been, notwithstanding your excellent example. Somehow you're going to have to pull me through, show how conniving you can be as well as merely good. Otherwise I start to feel I haven't got a chance.

10

I had a late lunch. A late lunch with my late grandmother. Of course I kept forgetting that I myself was late. I also kept forgetting that Isabella—she repeatedly asked me to call her Isabella—was my grandmother. Not altogether surprising. She looked thirty-five.

We sat alone in the dining room at a table by the window with that view across the Downs to the Channel. Richard hadn't introduced us or even told me I'd see anyone I knew. He'd simply sent me in to get some lunch and she'd got up from the table and advanced smilingly to meet me. And the strange thing is I'd known who she was. Even before she'd said anything.

Halfway across the room she came to a halt and held her arms out.

“Hello my love. And welcome—welcome! Can you believe it: you were fifteen when I saw you last? It feels like yesterday!”

She didn't exactly talk like a twenty- or thirtysomething. But then neither did she talk much like the eightysomething I had chiefly known.

“And just look at you now! Didn't I always say you'd leave a trail of broken hearts?”

I did remember that she'd said it once. I suppose it hadn't
always
been a case of reprimands and negatives. But in the past I would never have described her as a gusher. Never.

She threw her arms about me and kissed me warmly on both cheeks.

“Though in my great unworldliness I think I vaguely assumed those hearts would all be female!”

No, definitely. This was not the grandmother I had thought I knew. This was a grandmother I might really have cried about when they told me she was dead.

“Oh Lord!”

“What is it dear?”

“Does that mean everyone's aware I'm gay?”

She laughed and took my hand and led me back to the table; but didn't attempt to answer that question until we were settled and had our napkins in our laps and had started on our soup.

“Well yes I suppose it does—anyone, I mean, who's been interested and looking out for you. But they don't give that much for it!” She snapped her fingers; I'm sure in life I'd never seen her snap her fingers.

I said: “I'm sorry that I didn't cry at your funeral.”

“Oh for heaven's sake!
I
wouldn't have cried at my funeral. And whatever else you have or haven't been young Danny at least you were never a hypocrite.”

“And I'm sorry that I used to mimic you.”

“I'm not. You gave us lots of laughs. I always said you'd have a future on the stage.”

“Clearly I didn't know you.”

“Who did? Who did? Other of course than those who'd gone ahead and were busy keeping tabs on
me
.”

“Yes that's what's worrying. That's why I said Oh Lord.”

“You mean were we hot on your tail each time you went into the lavatory? Or at bedtime? Or quite often not at bedtime and not even in the bedroom?”

“Something like that—yes.”

“What can I say? I'm sure you'll soon find out yourself. We're not
voyeurs
; I'd call us interested observers of the human heart and human condition. And intensely sympathetic ones. We may sometimes laugh a little at the sheer absurdity of so much of it—people's lives seem just so
serious
to themselves don't you know—but the laughter will never be unkind; we've all been there ourselves, remember, we were all a part of it.”

As she said that, Hermione arrived with the omelettes and salad which we'd asked for, and with the bottle of white wine. All of them—they were the best I'd ever tasted; just like the soup had been. But I could so easily have got distracted from the quality of both the food and the wine. My grandmother had unexpectedly become grave.

“Darling, although the human
condition
is the phrase I may have used I want you to understand I've been prattling on only about the human
comedy
. Obviously there are many times when people can't laugh at all, not remotely, and then the only thing they
can
do is call upon the rest of us—or anyway a large enough group of us—to back them in their prayers and tell them it's all right to shake their fists in fury.”

She continued in this far more sober vein. Only a short while later she told me about the wholesale grief of my parents and family. While relating it she didn't sound judgmental and yet I guessed something of what lay beneath her neutral tone, and had the grace for the first time since roughly half-past-eight that morning to feel seriously shaken by the thing I'd done. But then I reminded myself (defiantly) that my parents still had themselves and five other children to invest their futures in while Brad and I merely had each other. Nevertheless—with Isabella's keen participation—I offered up a short but fervent prayer both for my own parents and for Brad's. Also for the rest of our respective families. Then for myself as well. I asked them to forgive me.

After that we spoke of my immediate future.

“Do I get to have a say in it?”

“Oh yes. Make any suggestion you feel you'd like to.”

“Only one suggestion. That I be allowed to catch up with Brad. And fast!”

“Now how did I know you were going to say that?”

But I didn't return her smile. I felt sure it was about to be followed by a negative.

“Though I'm afraid it isn't that straightforward.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

Now with just one word she did sound a little more like the grandmother I remembered. She had said it half-humorously but her humour had misfired. She must have sensed this.

“Darling I'm sorry. But there are some things you simply can't be permitted to know yet. And one of those is why Brad was moved on from here before you yourself arrived.”

“Had they let him know I was arriving?”

I think the urgency in my tone was what made her put down her spoon—we were by then eating our ice cream—what made her briefly touch my hand.

“Believe me if I could tell you I would.”

So they hadn't let him know. For, if they had, no way could he have been prevailed upon to leave. I felt both cheated by what I was picking up and reassured by it.

“Now to get back to the future,” said Isabella, “the immediate future, this is how it's going to be.” She had withdrawn her hand and suddenly seemed more businesslike. “When the day of your funeral arrives—and, I have to warn you, time in The Halfway House appears almost to be telescoped—it wouldn't be a bad idea for you to go to the reception … or wake or whatever you want to call it. Invisibly of course. And in the meanwhile you can just spend a very peaceful time resting here and walking in the gardens: generally recharging your batteries and mulling things over. Think of this as being the perfect place for a retreat.”

“In other words somewhere for me to twiddle my thumbs and kick my heels?”

“Or in still other words my darling”—she smiled at me sweetly—“to make the very most of a spot of enforced idleness.”

“But can't you see this is just the time I need to be
doing
things? Moving forward? Getting rid of my frustrations?” Yes ‘retreat' summed it up all right; I wanted to advance, to be pressing onwards and upwards,
per ardua ad astra
. It might have been different if I was old and worn out—I could appreciate that. But I was young and energetic; and that's what they were failing to understand, they the powers that be. I tried to put this into words but Isabella gently overrode me.

“And you can read books and watch television,” she said—my grandmother the arch-temptress; she must have been attending workshops run by Eve. “Just regard it as a mini-break, a bonus, an unexpected chance to recharge.”

Again. I didn't need to recharge. I needed to charge. “Television?” I repeated. On a note of disbelief.

“The Fantasy Channel.”

“Oh great! Wizards and witches and dragons! Just what I always dreamed of: to go to heaven and hope to meet a few wizards and witches and dragons on the way.” But at least I smiled a little as I said it. I wasn't being totally curmudgeonly—I mean not
totally
.

“Wizards and witches and dragons? Oh my love! No it isn't like that at all.”

She explained to me then what it was like. In the right mood I might have found it more seductive.

It seemed that on the Fantasy Channel I could become the strongest man in the world if I felt like it, or the cleverest, or the richest; I could become the greatest lover, the best tennis player; yachtsman, golfer, fencer, skater—jockey—well you only have to name it, the possibilities appeared to be endless.

I could star with Leonardo DiCaprio, Brendan Fraser, Brad Pitt—whoever—and still be assured of top billing.

I could make love to Ingrid Bergman in
Casablanca
if I wanted. I could make love to Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca
if I wanted.

Like that lyric in
A Chorus Line
had put it, I could dig right down to the bottom of my soul and just see what the screenwriter in residence came up with. It could be fun. It could be magical. It could be Hollywood at its most richly glamorous and its most extravagantly escapist.

Brad
Pitt
? Hell no. What was I thinking of? I could direct and co-star with his namesake: a feel-good movie par excellence equipped with a quite shamelessly romantic ending.

Yet hold on a tick. Escapist? That meant, didn't it, you came out of
The Sound of Music
or
My Fair Lady
or
An American in Paris
and woke up to the fact it was five o'clock on a cold wet evening in the suburbs and there was a note on the table telling you to get your own tea since everybody else would be back late; and you found the cat had spewed up copiously across the kitchen floor?

So maybe it was better to try to temper the escapist bit. I didn't want to return into a world where it was a cold wet evening in the suburbs—dark too—and people jostled you with their umbrellas and seemed thoroughly bad-tempered and it came back with a jolt that Brad wasn't with you nor was he anywhere around.

Nothing too feel-good therefore. No. Though I wasn't quite sure what that left.

11

I thought at first that I might get to be John Wayne (perhaps circa the time of
Stagecoach
) and in a typical John Wayne movie.

But …

It was a small square cell from which through the bars I could see my jailer—the sheriff—leaning comfortably back in his chair with both boots on the desk and a straw stuck in his mouth.

“Though why am I here?” I was the only prisoner. I spoke from my hard cot in a dark corner.

The sheriff removed the straw from between his yellowed teeth and after a moment's amassing preparation spat into a nearby receptacle which was clearly made of metal—we heard a small but self-important clang.

He was an old man: weather-beaten and grizzled and ruminative.

“Aw,” he said. “That's for you to say.” Back went the straw.

“What?”

He plainly didn't feel it had to be repeated.

“I mean—what have I been charged with?” I tried to think back. I wondered whether it was something to do with gambling; perhaps I'd been drunk; perhaps I'd been in some whorehouse or saloon where quarrels got picked—and fast guns drawn—all on the turn of a questionable quicksilver card.