Heartbreaker (28 page)

“That’s great psychology!” Camp-stick Robin’s saying with enthusiasm. “Well done!” And the doctor next to him says brightly: “You’ve tackled this like a real professional—have you done any fundraising before?” The doctor’s called Val and she’s a jolly-hockey-sticks type, plain but fun. No wedding ring. Could
she
be gay? Nah. Too nice, too normal. Impossible to think of her itching to finger-creep someone like bloody awful Norah.

“No, I’m a novice here,” I tell her modestly, awash with relief that everyone’s much too Christian even to think of the sex details, let alone ask about them. “But I admit I’ve found fundraising rewarding. It’s been sort of, you know, a challenge, know-what-I-mean, something worthwhile.”

“I think you’ve shown a real talent!” says my loyal and extra-special friend Carta. “In fact I think you’re much more talented at fundraising than I am. I’m just a hard worker with good connections.”

I give her my best shy smile. “Suppose that depends how you define talent,” I murmur, but the next moment the smile’s wiped off my face as the old cleric in the corner jumps into the conversation.

“A talent’s a gift from God,” he announces, and his voice startles me because it’s so like my father’s. As the old boy said nothing when we were introduced this is the first time I’ve heard him speak. “A talent,” he adds, “enables us to work hard at a task and not only enjoy it but find it uniquely fulfilling.” And he gives me a look as if his favourite hobby’s blasting through bullshit.

But Mr. Charisma spins the conversation into a different channel, like a sailor tacking to avoid a buoy in the water. “Talking of your talent, Gavin,” he says, “can you tell us more about the donation in the pipeline?”

My heart sinks. I really have decided that it’s just too dangerous to milk Colin. Best to switch off this line of enquiry and let everyone down gently later.

“I’d rather not go into detail right at this moment,” I say glibly. “Don’t want to jinx the project by talking too much about it! Specially as negotiations are at such an early stage.” The words are out of my mouth before I realise I’ve slipped up. I’ve almost invited them to ask what the word “negotiations” means in this context, but even as I hope feverishly that everyone will be too Christian to push me further, the old bloke in the corner dives back into the conversation with the impact of a ton of bricks landing on glass.

“I’d like to hear a little more about these negotiations you’re conducting,” he says in his old-fashioned public-school voice. “I think there’s a dimension to all this you haven’t mentioned, Mr. Blake.”

I’m aware of Carta freezing as Mr. Charisma shifts slightly in his chair. I glance at Robin but he’s just looking blandly attentive. I glance at Val but she’s busy adjusting one of her earrings. Shit! They’re all hanging tough. Forget that delusion about Christians being pure-minded pushovers—it’s showdown time at St. Benet’s for leisure-workers and no one’s riding to my rescue. What the triple-fuck do I say next?

“It’s okay,” says Carta rapidly in a low voice. “But we’ve got to know about the bad stuff as well as the good stuff in order to figure out how we can best help.”

Only one answer’s possible. “What bad stuff?”

“We’re talking about the way you earn your living, Mr. Blake,” says the Reverend Lewis Hall, sex-fixated old creep.

“Oh that!” I say airily. “You mean my business as a leisure-worker, performing a much-needed and much-appreciated service to stressed-out high flyers.”

There’s an absolute silence.

I can’t explain just how terrible that silence is. I only know I can’t stand it. I want them to go back to talking about my talent as a fundraiser and saying how amazing I am.

At last I realise everyone’s looking at Robin. This is where the psychologist has to be wheeled on to handle me with kid gloves. Shit, how humiliating. Sod these people, sod them—

“It’s often difficult to talk about sex, isn’t it?” Robin’s stopped putting words in italics. His voice sounds smoother, quieter, far more subtly sympathetic. “I expect even leisure-workers find it difficult sometimes.”

Screw him. “I’ll talk about any kind of sex you like!” I slam back. “It doesn’t bother me one fucking bit!” But no one gasps at my language. No one squirms.

Robin just says: “I’m sure we all appreciate your offer to be frank. I wonder if I could just ask this: do you take special trouble—professionally, I mean—with someone you’ve marked as a donor?”

At once I see how I can counter-attack. Top leisure-workers don’t discuss their clients. Who do these St. Benet’s people think I am, for God’s sake? Some cheap rent boy smirking in Leicester Square?

“Do you seriously believe,” I say scandalised, “that I’m going to breach my clients’ trust by talking in detail about the exact nature of their transactions with me? Well, forget it! I’ve built my reputation on total discretion. I observe strict protocol here.” I love that word protocol. I’m talking style now, I’m talking class, and the conversation’s soared upmarket. I’m winning.

“Let me reassure you that we don’t need to know the details of the transactions,” says Robin in a mild voice as he cuts the ground from beneath my feet. “We only want to know if the donors get free benefits in return for their generosity.”

“Certainly not!” I say indignantly, but Old Toughie now crashes back into the conversation.

“Mr. Blake,” he says, “are you trying to tell us that these donors received no special sexual favours from you in return for their donations?”

I raise an eyebrow. “You got a problem with that?”

“Yes, I find it implausible. If I were to donate thousands of pounds to a good cause promoted by the person I was paying for sex, I’d certainly expect some gilt on the gingerbread!”

You’ve got to hand it to him. Isn’t he a love? There’s something brilliantly unstuffy about this murderous determination to call a spade a spade, and the nickname “Old Toughie” doesn’t even begin to do him justice. This bloke’s nothing less than an Exocet missile in a clerical collar.

“My clients always get gilt on the gingerbread!” I snarl. “They don’t have to give to the charity of their choice in order to get that—total satisfaction’s always built into the deal!”

Mr. Charisma intervenes. He says calmly: “Let’s get one thing quite clear: we accept and welcome your talent for fundraising, Gavin. Be in no doubt of that. But the problem for us is that your talent for fundraising is set in the context of one of your other talents, and this other talent is a talent you abuse.”

I stare at him. “What other talent?”

“Didn’t you tell me at Richard’s funeral that you had a talent for sex?”

He’s bowled me a googly. I can’t deny I said this (and what a bloody stupid thing it was to say to a clergyman!) but if I admit it, he’ll start to work his way around to saying that my business as a leisure-worker taints the talent for sex which in turn taints the talent for fundraising which in turn taints the donations and makes them unacceptable—and this brutal Christian logic, I now see so clearly, is what this fucking charade’s all about: they praise me to the skies for being so wonderful but then they say up yours, mate, stuff it, it’s dirty money and we’re sending it back to the donors. But that’s not fair, that’s not right, that’s not—

“We want to be fair about this,” says Mr. Charisma calmly, cutting across my agonised thoughts. “We want to get this right. We can’t condone the abuse of a talent. But we want to affirm the talent itself and also affirm you for all your hard work on our behalf.”

I struggle to understand. “You mean—what you’re saying is—”

“What I’m saying is we want to encourage every God-given talent you have and the good results they produce. But you see our dilemma, don’t you? We can’t sanction any fundraising that exploits the donors, but we do admire your imaginative use of your interpersonal skills in working for a good cause—it’s a real challenge for us, I promise you, to work out a way forward here which does you justice without doing violence to what we believe to be right for St. Benet’s.”

I get a grip on my fury and frustration. I get a grip because I can see he really is trying to be fair. The leisure-working’s shit but I’m not necessarily shit too—that’s what he’s saying. If I can convince him there was no exploitation, just me and my talents trying to serve St. Benet’s as honestly as I could despite the dodginess of the context—

I say firmly: “There was no exploitation.” And as I speak I know this is true. “These blokes are tough,” I insist. “They make up their own minds. If I put pressure on them to donate, they’d soon come to resent it and then I’d be minus a client. All I can do is offer them a window of opportunity, but I make sure the view they see through that window is as attractive as I can possibly make it.”

I pause. Mr. Charisma nods. He’s sympathetic, still willing to listen.

“Okay, so this is where the talent for sex comes in,” I say, skating in a muck sweat across the thin moral ice. “Okay, so a lot of people would think a talent for sex is a pretty paltry kind of talent whether it’s being abused or not. And okay, so leisure-working’s not the ideal context for that talent to be exercised. But it was the only talent and the only context I had when I started fundraising, and you can only work with what you have.” A memory hits me and I grab it. It’s as if someone’s thrown me a lifeline.

“My mother raised money for a cancer charity after my brother died,” I say rapidly, and there’s no role-playing now, I’ve no energy to spare, it’s all focused on putting across this deep truth and saving the donations. “My father said to her: ‘How do you know you’ve got any talent for fundraising?’ and she said: ‘I don’t. But I know I’ve got a talent for being sociable.’ And she organised coffee mornings and drinks parties and bridge drives—all very ordinary stuff, but she planned every detail so carefully that each event was a big success and the money came flowing in . . . Yet a talent for being sociable’s not much, is it? And the context she had to work in was very ordinary—I mean, she didn’t have a career or an upper-crust social life. It was so easy for my father to look down on her longing to raise money, but in the end she reached the target she’d set herself and the cancer charity wrote a special letter to say how grateful they were. So even a paltry talent in a non-ideal context can be a force for the good, can’t it? And why should a non-ideal context mean you can’t offer up the paltry talent, specially if the paltry talent’s all you’ve got to offer? Surely a good intention’s got to be worth
something
! That’s only right! That’s only fair!”

I stop. No one says a word. They just look. Mr. Charisma’s eyes are luminous. Dr. Val’s high-gloss lush-lips are slightly parted as if she’s caught her breath at the sight of something startling. Mr. Pass-for-Gay Robin takes off his glasses as if he no longer trusts them and gazes at me wide-eyed. And Carta? Carta’s smiling at me as if I’m truly special. Obviously I’ve hit some kind of jackpot but the stupid thing is I’m not sure how I’ve done it. Could it really just be by talking about Mum? I was hoping for at best a grudgingly conceded victory. I never visualised a knock-out triumph.

“That’s a splendid story!” exclaims Mr. Charisma at last, but the word “story” rings alarm bells in my head. Frantically I protest: “It was all true!”

“Yes, I know. It’s hard not to recognise the ring of truth when it arrives with a deafening peal of bells. Now listen, Gavin, I want to make you an offer which I hope you’ll consider very seriously. How would you like to work part-time for us at the Healing Centre?”

I nearly plummet right off my chair.

“The thing is,” Mr. Charisma’s saying as I take time out to marvel that I’m still upright, “we’d like you to go on fundraising for us. Of course we’d have to change the context where you do the work, but that wouldn’t be a problem if you came here as one of our volunteer helpers.”

At first all I can think is: he’s joking. Then I realise no one’s laughing. Wondering if I’m going mental I manage to mutter something which reveals total non-comprehension.

“We have a number of volunteers like Carta who work here, offering their special talents to St. Benet’s,” explains Mr. Charisma placidly. “Now, we can’t use your talent for sex—” He slips me a smile “—but we can certainly use your talent for fundraising. Think what you have to offer! A willingness to work hard and take trouble, an ability to be good with people, clever at sussing them out and winning their liking, a tenacity which enables you to keep going when the going gets tough—all admirable qualities! So if you could spare us a few hours a week we’d be more than happy to have you on board.”

I swallow, clear my throat. Words eventually come out of my mouth. I say: “You don’t really want me here. You couldn’t. You just want to— quote—‘save’ me to make yourself look good, but what makes you think I want to be ‘saved,’ Mr. Taking-one-hell-of-a-lot-for-granted Darrow?”

Mr. Charisma nods gravely as if he knows he sometimes takes one hell of a lot for granted and isn’t this an aggravating fault to have, he knows he really should be able to do better. Then having somehow permeated the air with an apology without even opening his mouth, he says with a kind of knock-out seriousness: “I’m not sure how you’re using that word ‘saved,’ but I’ll say this: I don’t like seeing people’s talents blighted. I don’t like seeing people fail to realise their potential. And yes, I do want these people to be saved—saved from frustration and despair—but I wouldn’t use the word ‘save’ here. I’d say I want them to be
liberated
to become the people God designed them to be. I’d say I want them to be
empowered
to achieve fulfilment and a lasting happiness.”

Panic nibbles the pit of my stomach. In a fuck-you voice I insist obstinately: “I’m liberated and empowered already, thanks very much! And anyway as far as your job offer goes, my manager wouldn’t let me work for anyone but her, she’d forbid it right away.”

Oh my God, I’ve blown it. I tell him I don’t need liberation and a second later I’m admitting my manager calls the shots. And now that silence is back again, the terrible silence which I know I’ve just got to break.