Rory's Boys Read online

  RORY’S BOYS

  Alan Clark

  For Robert and Sue, without whom …

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ONE

  I suppose I’ve never quite dealt with the fact that I owe my existence to a pimple. A spot, a zit or, as they call it in my native Scotland, a plook.

  It’s a cautionary tale. The plook had popped inwards, you see, that was the trouble. My father’s first bride, on radiant honeymoon in Kenya, couldn’t cope with the horror of a blemish and had simply squeezed too soon. Blood poisoning had sneaked in and, before anyone realized she was ill, she’d slithered down the side of an elephant and been stiff as a board by the time they’d got her to Nairobi. Thanks to this bizarre death, my eager mother had sprinted down the aisle to become the second Mrs Blaine and receive some of the most socially prestigious seed north of Hadrian’s Wall. Then, hey presto, there I was.

  ‘Let that be a wee lesson,’ Miss Elspeth Wishart had warned, when my teenage face began turning into the sebum repository of Perthshire. Miss Wishart, the school matron from whom I had few secrets, had repaid my confidence by regularly thrusting the tragic bride at me in the same way she delivered my weekly dose of syrup of figs. But the guys in my dorm took a different view.

  ‘For Christ’s sake Blaine, why don’t you just splat them like everybody else?’ they’d groaned during my nightly ritual with the Clearasil. ‘They’re like fucking fried eggs.’

  Yet I never had. Perhaps I’d felt that, in the circumstances, the least I could do was to give some of them a home. But it’s not a very edifying reason for existence, is it? Of course the act of conception is often a matter of luck: the car marooned in the snowdrift, the Babycham too many, the one feisty sperm that can swim like Esther Williams. But how can it be that the creation of Rory Blaine, gorgeous and gifted, was not part of some great celestial plan but merely the by-product of a blocked pore? As a reason for entering therapy, it’s got to be right up there with Hamlet and his dad or Oedipus and his mum. So I have.

  My therapist is a big fat chick in expensive shoes; I call her Ms Prada. The shoes imply that I, or rather BUPA, is paying her far too much and I kind of feel that people in the caring professions should look just a wee bit threadbare. But once a week I go to a room with eau-de-nil walls and a droopy azalea where she dribbles my psyche around on her shiny toe-caps. It seems I’m both clinically narcissistic and suffering from low self-esteem. This paradox appears to be very common which pissed me off because I’d assumed I’d be a pretty interesting case; a response which Ms Prada said merely proved her diagnosis. She has this weird high-pitched voice which makes you wonder if her vast shape could be due to helium ingestion and not chocolate éclairs. This week she declared that one way of dealing with emotional pain is by metabolizing it into art. So every day from now on, I’m supposed to write my thoughts onto this PC. It’s to be strictly stream-of-consciousness stuff.

  ‘Expect plenty of rocks and whirlpools,’ squeaked Ms Prada, who’s never shy of an obvious metaphor, ‘but there will also be stretches of cool translucent water which will help carry you towards the self-cognition you seek.’

  Well babe, today there was a real whopper to metabolize. Today was my forty-fifth birthday. So now I’m well and truly middle-aged, though frankly I don’t yet see that concept as a goer. Rory Blaine, middle-aged? I don’t think so, do you? Too many adjustments would be necessary, none of which I feel prepared to make. I believe in sticking to what I’m good at and I’ll be shite at getting older.

  Anyway, extensive research suggests that no such image-repositioning is yet called for. I’m still a product with a satisfied public. The whiff of Issey Miyake wafting off my dick this morning proved it. Luckily its source had done a bunk in the wee small hours, cooing something about being slotted for the first flight to Malaga. I’d met him online. He was five feet six, built like Selfridges and a stranger to the polysyllable. In short, Perfection. But Perfection had turned out to be a trolley dolly who lived in East Acton with his mum and a whippet called Bruce. He was devoted to his mum; she always put condoms in his pocket when he went out on a date. I’d opened a bottle of Chablis Premier Cru to impress him.

  ‘Ooh, it’s a bit tart,’ he’d giggled into his glass. ‘Just like me.’

  Christ, another fake. I’d binned the empty bottle along with the Post-It note with his mobile number inside the outline of a heart. This is where you’ll expect me to write how empty I felt after another disappointing and meaningless encounter. But I didn’t. Not any more. Now, it had become a bit like when the cleaning lady appeared. I was quite pleased to have the company for three hours but then, with the job done and the necessary materials put back in the cupboard, I was more than happy to see the front door close again.

  Today as usual I’d looked in The Times birthday column. I’m not there of course, which depresses me. Every year, I visualize myself in that élitist wee paragraph, sandwiched between the TV gardener and the transgender activist but sometimes a new name has shouldered its way in, someone much younger than me, which depresses me even more. I wonder how I might have been described. ‘Rory Blaine, advertising executive, 45.’ Not quite worth a fanfare on the nation’s breakfast tables, I suppose. Once, I’d dreamed that some day it might say, ‘Rory Blaine, writer’, but I’d long ago dumped my childhood sweetheart and let myself be seduced by the tawdry old slapper of advertising; all fur coat and no knickers. Now here I was, under therapist’s orders, trying to write my way towards some sort of contentment. Maybe if I’d stayed faithful way back then, it wouldn’t have been necessary.

  Oh shite, lighten up Rory. This just isn’t like you. Most people who know you would wet themselves.

  ‘You’re like the fucking Andrex puppy aren’t you?’ my secretary had once slurred at our Christmas party. ‘Nose into everything, demanding attention, doing cute little tricks. Adorable in your way, but such a relief when you trot back to your basket.’

  I waited a decent interval and down-sized her.

  So Ms Prada is my dirty wee secret and will remain so. Of course it was a bit more than the blocked pimple in my pedigree which had led me to the eau-de-nil room with the droopy azalea. As Will The Quill once wrote, lately I have, yet wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth. Well not quite all, but I’d certainly been getting more ‘Miltons’ than usual. That’s my word for feeling low, in tribute to Milton Keynes, the most miserable place on earth; endless, rain-soaked boulevards from which it seems impossible to escape. So I reckoned that maybe I needed to pull myself apart a bit, check out the inner workings, spring-clean the cogs and wheels. I’d never taken medication for it, never would; the only chemical I’d ever allow to mess with my mind came from Waitrose in pretty dark green bottles. Probably I just needed someone to talk to, which I couldn’t imagine doing with anybody I knew. Not really talk, you know? When I visualize my buddies, they’ve got a glass in one hand and a Blackberry in the other. I couldn’t really see them doing tea and sympathy. Rory Blaine and the blues? A most unlikely couple, they’d say.

  But Rory Blaine and charm would be a much more recognizable pairing. Old biddies queue up for me to help them cross the road. Bull-dyke traffic wardens nearly weep at the s
ad explanation of why my meter’s overrun. I’ve worked hard on the charm because I couldn’t, to be painfully honest here, be called handsome. My features are makeshift at best, as if God had arranged them quickly when He wanted to get to the golf course.

  But then I discovered the power of the facelift that comes from within. I long since decided I wasn’t going to be plain and so I’m not. Besides, I’ve got the hair, Rory’s famous golden mane. I wear it unfashionably long but instead of feminizing me it has, as I calculated, the opposite effect; underpinning the rugged masculinity of the complete package. Through a world of Roundheads, I stride like a Cavalier. The rest of the body’s holding up too; stomach flat as Norfolk, arse still like two new-blown balloons. No sign yet of the dreaded swagging effect that makes it look like an Austrian blind. The gym is boring, but it works. What would have happened to a generation of gay men if the fitness revolution hadn’t come along? There’s a Ph.D. in that for someone.

  Today was Saturday, thank God, and I didn’t have to go into Blaine Rampling. The rockier economy was committing GBH on our profit margin, clients were cutting budgets, I’d had to let people go, good people. I’d even wondered about re-mortgaging the flat. I’d been the main man for nearly twenty years, but now I could feel the kids at my neck, their breath stinking of ambition, more aggressive than I ever was. Thatcher’s children. Not a pretty sight. Last week, my junior partners had slammed a document on my desk; what they called a strategy for survival. They say we’re not so cool anymore and in this business that’s death. Quite often these days, they’d explain something to me, as if they didn’t expect me to still be on their planet. I didn’t like that. Smug wee shites.

  I never hung around the flat much at weekends. It’d been designed by this uber-chic Brazilian queen, everything from the tinted windows to the bog-roll holder, so that it almost felt like his place rather than mine. Before Devonshire Street, there had been a loft in Soho, a studio in Chelsea and a penthouse in St Katherine’s Dock, I think it was. Not sure; I’ve moved around a lot and they’ve all sort of blurred into one image of stripped-back brick and recessed light switches you can never find when you’re pissed. The image is furnished by various faces, a few of whom I’d even allowed to park their toothbrushes for a while. Usually it’d just been for a few weeks or months; though one time a strange brush had nestled against mine in the tumbler for a whole summer. It’d never quite looked right to me though.

  I pulled on a black T-shirt and my Versace jeans; waist thirty-two and holding. I put the sheets on the boil-wash programme and fed the cat. I couldn’t remember if I’d last done it yesterday or the day before. The cat rubbed against my ankles when it sensed I was going out again. I felt guilty about the cat. I’d stumbled into Harrods pet shop after too good a lunch and my judgement was impaired. Sod’s law dictated it was the one cat in a million searching for commitment, which I didn’t feel able to give right now. It’d just have to butch-up. There was only one card on the mat. Miss Elspeth Wishart, bless her. Nobody I know sends cards these days. No doubt my email box would be as crammed as a Primark sale, but I decided to check it later. Out in Devonshire Street, the sun pierced into the hangover like a lance. A horn tooted, a hand waved.

  ‘How’s the plumbing?’ yelled a small man in a big Maserati.

  It was my genito-urinary doctor. His name is Rod. Honestly. The other day he’d shoved steel rods down my cock to widen my urethral stricture. It needs doing about twice a year and it’s not pleasant; but Rod distracts me with gossip about his celebrity patients. Apparently the worst case of haemorrhoids ever seen resides in the arsehole of the most viciously homophobic columnist in the tabloid press. To understand is to forgive, Rod says.

  Don’t laugh, but I really moved to Marylebone to be handy for my specialists. Over the years I’ve built up a whole team so I’ve now got one for every part of my anatomy. I call them my mechanics and their job is to keep me in racing condition. I once read about the importance of listening to your body and now I’ve got the hearing of the blind. The slightest creak, gurgle or rattle and I pull myself over into the relevant consulting room to be tinkered with. So Rod looks after my stricture, my recurrent anal fissure and what he calls my ‘recreational collateral-damage’. Other mechanics have responsibility for, inter alia, my mitral valve murmur, deviated septum, gastric reflux, grumpy back and a genetic tendency towards hernias. Whilst, on the outside, my body suggests low mileage and one careful owner, it probably wouldn’t pass much of an independent inspection. It’s travelled to too many places it shouldn’t have gone. Luckily, in my world, it’s only the chassis that matters.

  I had a croissant and a decaf latte in Staff of Life, currently the coolest organic bakery on Marylebone High Street. I chatted up the cute Latino waiter I’d been cruising for weeks and flicked through the papers. War, famine, unemployment, some bimbo’s breast implants that went wrong and left her looking like Ann Widdecombe. Depressing news about depressing people. Don’t know why I bother. You’ve got to keep your distance from all that shite, create your own wee world and have one hell of a time in it. Unless of course it’s something that directly affects you; then you’ve got to gallop out over your drawbridge and give the bastards hell.

  I wondered how to fill the hours before my party tonight. I was taking a few of the gang to The Ivy. I couldn’t really afford it, but it wouldn’t have been wise to let them know that. Unfortunately, the usual time-killing notion now broke in, squatted and couldn’t be shifted. I told myself I shouldn’t, then reminded myself it was my birthday after all. Half an hour later my Merc was parked by a row of seedy railway arches in east London. A sign depicted two thonged gladiators locked in sweaty combat. Lose yourself in The Catacombs it suggested; advice which I confess to taking at least once a week. I’d confessed it to Ms Prada in fact and she’d suggested I might consider adding the sex addiction module to our therapy structure. It would cost extra of course.

  In the steam room I cast myself out along the tiled bench and waited for a nibble. Though it was a bit early, there was a steady traffic moving between the steam, the sauna, and the jacuzzis. Some of the regulars were in. The furtive, pot-bellied ones were often married and would be safely back in Pinner by tea-time. I always gave them a wide berth or you’d find yourself trapped in a conversation about decking. I avoided the screamers too, who tended to be rent or silly shop-girls. I looked for the relaxed, blokeish sort, the ones who didn’t need to be defined by their sexuality. The sort I consider myself to be.

  I was on nodding terms with several of today’s selection; in fact I’d had a few of them. The young black barrister was in; the one with the cock like an ebony table leg who’d started shouting ‘Fuck me Your Honour’ at our climactic moment. I was half-wondering about a second round, something I usually steered clear of, when I saw him disappear with a John Prescott lookalike. I always felt a bit miffed when an ‘ex’ went off with a real minger; it somehow sullied what we’d had together, however brief that might have been.

  You can’t see very clearly in the steam room. A forty-watt bulb struggles like a candle in a fog. When the door opens, you can maybe judge somebody’s age and condition by their silhouette against the brighter light outside. If the steam thins out, you might get sharper definition, a bit more detail. But facial features usually stay as smudgy as an Impressionist; which of course doesn’t always matter, depending on what you have in mind. The door opened now and a Saggy came in. I cursed myself for getting here too early. The younger guys mostly came in the late afternoon; till then their granddads colonized the place. Tits to their knees, bellies like concertinas but libidos tragically unimpaired. I’d sworn to myself that I’d never be a Saggy. At some point in the dim and distant, I’d know when to walk away from all this. I’d know when I’d become like milk on the turn and I’d deal with it, no problem. The Saggy leaned on a stick, flopped down near me and started to play with himself. I reeled in my body and closed my eyes. The stick tapped on the tiles as he abandoned
hope and hobbled out.

  When I looked again there was a new presence in the vacated spot. Well-built, hairy. Mediterranean or Arabic maybe. I stretched out along the bench again, letting one leg dangle onto the floor. In a few seconds, other toes brushed mine. I twitched them in reply. A hand reached out and pinched one of my nipples.

  ‘Great nips, mate,’ said an estuary voice, young, unabashed. I’d tried dropping my own glottal stops for a while but it doesn’t really work with a Scottish accent.

  ‘Like them?’ I asked. ‘Go for it then.’

  Soft lips started moving expertly across my chest. The breath was sweet but the skin smelt of fucking Issey Miyake yet again. I let out a slow sigh. This was what I came here for, to this grubby armpit of London, to this clinical place. The young guy nuzzled my ear and stroked my hair but even this close the face remained featureless. Three or four intruders had drifted in.

  ‘You wanna go play downstairs?’ he said.

  I hesitated. The Catacombs is a fast-sex establishment where you can either eat in or take-away. I always prefer the latter, on the same snobbish basis that I’d never actually sit down in a McDonalds. But I had the party tonight.

  ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘I’m a bit tight for time though.’

  ‘I’m a bit tight too,’ purred the brazen voice, rising from the bench. ‘See you down there, stud.’

  I took a long slow shower then headed to the top of the staircase leading to the basement floor. They were steep, slippery stairs, as if designed to make you think twice. This was the moment when my gastric reflux problem usually kicked in. Down below, in stygian gloom, were your actual catacombs, a maze of corridors lined with ironically-dubbed ‘rest rooms’. Some doors were firmly shut; from behind them came cries and whispers, shouts and exhortations. Others rooms, though occupied, had doors left open at varying angles of provocation. Some sat with hands clasped, knees together, eyes lowered, demure as a wallflower at a dance. Others displayed themselves sensuously, lewdly even, their positions indicating what sort of pleasures they were willing to provide. The catacombs were a stuffy place, heavy with sweat and amyl nitrate, a sort of perverse catwalk where approval was gained by your lack of clothing; your audience lined up along the walls or peering out from the wee rooms. I’d learnt not to be daunted by an impassive reception. Only the old or the ugly, who had nothing to lose, took the risk of revealing admiration. But it wasn’t until I caught an eye whose brow was raised in a question mark, when I noticed a spine straighten or felt a hand brush against my passing thigh that I could be sure today’s appearance had wowed the punters yet again and my intestines would finish their salsa and leave the floor. Today though, at forty-five no less, I strolled along the catwalk with the carefree arrogance of a man who can still pull a real cutie. A dark-skinned arm waved at me from a few doors along. Today there was no need to feel lonely.