Call Me (13 page)

He got very excited very quickly. His breathing seemed to stutter, he was gagging.

“Oh! You actually wear them!”

“Not now. It was just a phase I was going through.”

“Did they turn you on? Wearing them, you know. Being out in them.”

“I liked the way they altered my posture. The stiffness around the neck. Heads turned as I made an entrance, usually with a group of lads from university out for the night somewhere, knocking back bottles of champagne at Kettners or some such place.”

“Wonderful. I mean, I never dreamed when you answered my ad that you would like them as well. In fact I've had to explain to a few what they are. My favourites are Edwardian, the round-edged ones. What size are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“Oh, you are small, aren't you! I'm fifteen and a half. Anyway, I've got these Edwardian ones, they're a full three and a half inches. Picked 'em up down Portobello Market. Well … the collars were yellow. I got them starched twice and they come up beautiful shining white and so stiff, absolutely marvellous. Cut the neck off me. I adore them.”

He laughed, tossing back that shiny head, catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror. (A round, gilt-edged mirror.)

“Now listen, I've got an antique starched shirt I can't get into anymore but you certainly could. It's a fourteen and a half. Know the type? You've got to pull it over your head.”

“Uh huh.”

“Perhaps you'd like it. Well, I'd love to meet you. Maybe a Tuesday. I go to the gym Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Or perhaps a Thursday? Yeah. No. Let's say Tuesday. Six okay? And what do you look like? Oh, and where?”

“The shop?”

“Um, how about…”

“How about the Barbican Centre, by the fountains?”

“I know the spot you mean. Opposite City of London School for Girls. I think there's a statue there, isn't there? A running man or a black horse or something.”

“Something like that.”

Nothing like that in fact and far too symbolic to mention to the man. Hamish landed on my shoulder and said, “Piss off!” in Jessie's tone of voice unusually loudly. This went unheard as Graeme said:

“Okay. Six, on the dot. So, John, what do you look like?”

“Do you want the full turn-on description or just the edited highlights?”

He chortled, perhaps wanting the turn-on edited highlights.

“I'm tall, just over six foot. Short, dark, well-groomed hair. I stick a bit of oil on it.”

“Oh, I love greased hair. Don't like that gel stuff on a man, can't run your fingers through it. Go on.”

“Clean shaven. Slim, always have been. Public School education. An all boys establishment in West London.”

There was a long slow mmm-ing sound over the phone. An escort agency would have given full marks for attitude.

“Thought so, you speak so nicely. Did you have stiff collars there?”

I paused, letting him imagine the white lines of a sports pitch, ropes swinging in the gym, a locker room, sound of the showers. Woody smell, boy smell. Benediction on bended knees, incense. Italic nibs, swoosh of the cane.

“Not when I attended, Graeme.”

“I've had this fetish since I was sixteen, you know. I used to think I was the only one. Then I did the ad and there are others. Loads. I even wrote to Millivres asking them to do a pin-up peel off, dressed formally, in one of their magazines. Got a very sniffy letter back. It took years before I told my friends, you know, cos my friends are much younger than me. And when I told them they said okay. Fine. You know, like it wasn't such a big deal. I was quite closetty about it, see? I felt a bit embarrassed.”

I didn't answer this, absorbed with Hamish who'd returned to my shoulder, straining forward in the hope I'd allow him to stick his little head inside my mouth to delicately drink warm saliva.

“Have you ever answered an ad before?”

“Never ever. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Ever placed one?”

“No, but it's worth considering.”

Hamish winked at me, then flew off, landing on the Yamaha to look out at sky.

*   *   *

Some dog had a good bark for the duration of our brief rendezvous the following Tuesday. The dog belonged to a Swiss girl called Elizabeth who I'd got chatting to when I arrived. She was a little distressed, crying on the bench farthest from the crowds, by the last fountain which had weak water pressure and spluttered. I asked if I could help. She asked for a cigarette. I bought her a pack. I didn't dare tell her everything would be alright.

She was ignored when Graeme arrived, five minutes late, wearing jeans, a Polo open neck, carrying a soft grey leather jacket under his arm. He dragged along a certain mood with him, like he'd just received results of a blood sample taken two weeks back. There was quite a shine on his brogues and bald head. No smile. Perhaps he'd seen me talking to the girl, had spotted the bubble around us. Maybe he'd even caught a glimpse of her reddened eyes and was suspicious. We both stared across green water at a church covered with plastic sheeting the colour of pale, frosted glass.

We shook hands, but it was the hello-goodbye contact of an executioner. I wore a plain, single-breasted suit. Silver grey. Ox blood brogues. Graeme looked at my blue cotton Oxford button-down shirt collar like it was a passage of air into which he could make a deep deep dive, but wouldn't. It had been Ray's favourite shirt, the one he'd been wearing when we first met.

The unfashionably tight clothing revealed the well-defined body he was fighting to preserve. Maybe he hadn't expected me to turn up. He certainly didn't have much to say, he'd burned himself out on the phone. As a body I think I was quite acceptable, but he didn't go much on my soul.

“Graeme, you mentioned that you'd like a step-by-step striptease spread in a wank magazine. Who'd be your ideal model. Richard Gere? Keanu Reeves?”

He could have punched me on the nose. He gathered up his jacket: “I'd love to dress Bruce Willis formally—top hat and tails, white gloves—and photograph him before a full-length mirror peeling off, going ever so slowly on the studs, braces, laces and buttons.”

Even this failed to get smiling eye contact from me, though I was curious about the look on his face as he said, “Then I'd thrash his arse until it bled. I hope you find what you're looking for young man.”

He seemed to be clenching his buttocks very tightly as he walked away. I wonder if he watched from a distance to see what I did once he'd evacuated the meeting point. He wouldn't have liked what he saw. Wiping my brow, I returned to the space beside the Swiss girl and one stroke of her cross-breed dog's neck quietened it like he was mine. We looked more like lovers than strangers meeting for the second time in half an hour. She lived in Cricklewood and was an estimated nine weeks pregnant. If she had she told me that earlier I wouldn't have bought her the cigarettes.

*   *   *

Before he burst into my ear there was some late-night, long-distance static which came to be a tell-tale sign of his calls. These calls also ended with that long-distance pip, probably something he wasn't aware of. The pip can be soothing and sweet sometimes, a cute fullstop to a conversation. Not with this caller though. Through the crackle and grit, more suited to Tierra del Fuego than Cambridgeshire, he had access. Dai was his name (pronounced die, as in Die bitch!) but he preferred to be called David.

He'd been careful, years back, to swap that Welsh accent of his for a nondescript educational drone. Only when excited or angry did it thicken his voice. Just one look at the man's handwriting would have steered me clear of that closet case.

“Is that Owen?”

Though my eyes scanned the sheet above the phone, I guessed it was the Welsh Chap who'd advertised in
The Pink Paper.
I smiled very wide. “Yes.”

“Ah, my name's David. I'm calling from March in Cambridgeshire. I had a card off you yesterday in reply to my ad in
The Pink.
Does this mean anything to you?”

“Oh, yes. Hi. Thanks for phoning.”

“How are you?”

For some daft reason I turned a blind eye to the edginess lurking beneath his well-practiced cheery voice, his shortness of breath, the close proximity of his teeth to the mouthpiece.

“Right then lad, what can I say to you? I'll be coming down to London every Wednesday for a year as from July. Starts in July, the course does. Um, I just wanted to meet people from London, really. I'll finish round four, see. As my expenses are paid I thought I could see a bit of London. Now then, what I've got is … I've a week's holiday next week and I'm coming to London one day but I can't stay too late as I'll have to get the eight thirty to get the Peterborough connection at nine fifty. When can we meet?” he asked.

“Perhaps next week some time, for tea.”

“Where? Wednesday alright with you? I'll be up Gower Street way filling out forms and gettin' things sorted. Finding out where everything is, taking a look about like. Maybe we could meet at Kings Cross station. Wednesday?”

“Wednesday's fine, but Kings Cross is not the best place to get a cuppa. How about the base of Nelson's column?”

“How will I recognise you?”

“I'll be all in white on a mountain bike. I'm 22, tall, with slicked-back dark hair.”

“Rather a dramatic meeting place,” he said, excited and imagining. “But … oh no,” he continued, “… that'll do. Right then. What time on Wednesday?”

“Four thirty. By the lions, right at the base.”

“You will turn up? You are genuine?”

“You can trust me.”

“I'll be wearing…”

“Don't say. If you don't like the look of me and want to forget it, you can. I'll wait up to half an hour, then be off.”

“That's … I know what you mean … that's kind but … We could go for a meal, my treat.”

“Let's just call it tea for the moment, eh? What's your line? I guess it has to be Medicine or Education if you're going to be over in Gower Street.”

“Education. I'm a school inspector for Humanities and the National Curriculum is doing my head in!”

It was more than the National Curriculum that was doing the man's head in. We met as arranged. He wore a raincoat on what turned out to be a sweltering day. If there is such a thing as a God and if s/he gives merit marks, then there should be half a dozen gold stars on my page for befriending the Welsh lonely heart of D fucking Parry. What my mum would call a really nice man. His neighbours would probably agree. A nicely clipped lawn, washing out on a Monday, lights out by eleven. A man who keeps himself to himself. The sort of description given by neighbours framed in their hallways speaking to news crews after the discovery of the latest serial killer or schoolroom mass murderer.

There's a refreshment hut in St James' Park, opposite the ICA. We had tea there. His eyes studied the male torso printed on my white teeshirt promoting The Smiths' first release. The rolled-up sock down the front of my white Levi's also gained eye-popping attention.

His blushing was close to haemorrhage, his breathing a concern, his skin a heavy challenge to deodorant spray. All this was made less repulsive by the taste and soft fleshy texture of sweet sultanas in my Danish.

I gave him my name, not sure why. My real name, my full name. Being ex-directory, it felt safe. I didn't give him my address, but careful questioning let me slip out mention of Camden Passage, just up the road next to Angel tube. There aren't a lot of Hanmores in Ealing, either. I let too many details slip. When he asked about my parents I told a lot of horrible truths.

He'd had the usual quota of heartbreaks which he sketched at low volume as I walked him around the Photographers' Gallery. He seemed harmless, easy enough to swat away. I waved him goodbye at Leicester Square tube and forgot about him as I browsed in Dillons. He'd been in search of someone to love (or hate) for a long time.

*   *   *

Interflora guarantees satisfaction with their vast selection of beautifully arranged flowers, same-day delivery if the order's placed before one pm. At four the delivery man looked embarrassed as he handed over a large, cellophane-wrapped apricot card with a floral display of creams, yellows and pinks bursting through its oval front window.
Living Card.

It felt like a fuse wire had been lit and the hissing had begun. It had been three days since I'd met Dai. The card read:

D

(Dai/David)

Remember me?

Letter to follow.

The letter came the following day.

–,–––– Rd,

March,

Cambridgeshire

Tel: 01354 –––

Liam,

Surprise! Surprise!

Just a short note to let you know what I felt following our first meeting. The very fundamental thing is to say YES, I did enjoy it very much. I couldn't go through it all again so when I got home I destroyed the other seven replies to my ad. My name is Dai as you know, but please call me David. I'd be delighted to hear from you very soon and look forward to it. For two people to meet for the first time ever is quite an ordeal, I suppose, but I must say that as soon as I saw you I felt some warmth. Believe you me, if you had been otherwise you would probably still be cycling round Nelson's Column. You handled the tour very well. I'd never been to that photographic gallery.

Tomorrow I am going to Wales for the weekend to stay with my sister. Anyway, I have waffled on enough and all I really wanted to say was thanks for your kindness and I hope that we can do it again. It was kind of you to treat me to tea. My treat next time. Dinner, on me. (If you want a next time, that is.) Hope you like the flowers.

Look after yourself now lad.

(I do hope you'll phone.)

All the very best.