Love and Robotics (56 page)

Shame

The night of Josh’s wedding was one of sweltering heat, thunder and lightning. Alfred wished the girls goodnight before sneaking from the house. Nobody knew his errand. He caught the last keli, avoiding the curious eye of other passengers.

They would have arrived around thirteen, Puta time. A desert island paradise. He couldn’t imagine anything more boring. Though being marooned with Josh made up for any shortcomings -

He’d nearly missed his stop.
Pull yourself together
. Straightening his collar, smoothing his trousers, he stepped onto the platform. Anything that followed was strictly off the record.

It looked like an ordinary house from the street. Even the hall gave nothing away; you’d think it was an exclusive clinic for neurotics. It was only when you passed through into the assembly room you divined its true nature.

A kidney shaped bar manned by all male staff. Men congregated on the pink and white crush floor, sized each other up. Negotiations never went above a murmur. When these were settled to everyone’s satisfaction, couples were given keys and sent upstairs. A lewdly shaped conch gushed water.

“Henry! Long time no see! Whisky on the rocks?”

Alfred went over. For obvious reasons he didn’t use his real name. He’d never been a regular, five times a year at most, but Sergei prided himself on his memory.

“Ready to dip a toe in the morass?” Sergei twinkled.

“Depends.”

The bartender abused his most recent ex, an Arkan called Maurice. (“Took me for
everything
, even the cat.”) Alfred made all the right noises. They weren’t there to catch up. In time their eyes drifted to the main floor.

Most of the attention was focused upon a lad wearing horns, gold shorts and little else. He careened around the room, buttocky buttocky. Five older men pursued him to the fountain. The lad sucked each of them off, his hat askew.

Alfred turned his back. “I’m too old for this.”

“Total slut, that one. Fancy looking at our upstairs range?” Sergei slid the brochure across the counter.

Alfred tapped a page he’d never seen before. “What’s this?” It was bordered by a cog design. A blond man with a look of Josh lay on silk sheets, stroking himself.

“Since everyone and his dog fancies Josh Foster, we thought we’d target a niche market. He does a dead on impression.”

“How much?”

“Never had
you
down as a robo. Depends what you want.”

Tomorrow he’d despise himself. “Everything.”

“I’ll check.” After a minute the keys skidded across the counter. “Give him one from me.”

Alfred stood outside number 72, heaving deep breaths. A fine thing if he keeled over in the corridor. He rapped at the door, waited. “Can I help you?” a voice asked within.

A dead on impression, Serge said. Not exactly - but only he had heard Josh in every mood, including
that
one. He swallowed and crossed the threshold.

A gilded mirror, too large for the room. Peacock fans, lithe golden boys lifting globes. A tasteless bed with plum sheets. A milk white body posed on top.

“My name’s Henry,” Alfred stuttered.

“Hello, Henry.” He was shorter than Josh, stockier. Any resemblance was superficial: hair a different blond, coarser features. Yet he was here while Josh wasn’t, available while Josh wasn’t.

“Could you bite me?” Alfred asked.

“If you want.”

As he lifted his shirt over his head, the boy nipped his shoulder. It barely left a mark. He tried not to think of the sweet sharp pain made by other teeth. “Never mind.” There was the usual pause when he saw Alfred naked. At least he didn’t gape or demand he left. He shrugged; the boy shrugged back.

One of his hands could encompass his waist. He felt huge, a corrupter of innocents. But the boy had rosebud nipples and dimples in the same place as Josh.

“Can I touch you?” the boy asked.

“Do what you like.”

His mouth fastened on Alfred’s cock. He couldn’t take it all the way in, he’d never met anyone who could, but gulped it as though it was mother’s milk. He gasped as Alfred coaxed him to lie down and did the same to him.

No kissing. He wouldn’t kiss a Silver’s boy. He sat him on his lap and brought him off. As he felt ready to burst, Alfred said, “Turn over.” Only then, eyes shut, fucking him with a terrible sense of emptiness, could he kid himself it was Josh.

He hadn’t had sex in years; he worried he’d lost the knack. At one point the lad primed his own cock and asked if he wanted him to. It had meant something with Josh. He couldn’t do it with a stranger.

It was swift, hard and meaningless. He had lovely creamy skin, a cute bum and a northern accent. Maybe he’d use him again.

The third time it went wrong. Drowsily reaching for a naked form, bright hair, Alfred became confused. It didn’t help the lad put his arms around his neck and kissed beneath his ear.

Gently this time, tenderly. Lost in memory. Josh in many moods and guises - his mercurial, maddening love. He laid his head on the boy’s shoulder and cried.

“Lord Langton?”

Alfred dressed hurriedly, shaken, sick. If this came out, if the kid blackmailed -

“Wait!”

He shook his head, counting the bills. He only had himself to blame. If he’d go foraging in any muck heap -

“You’ve forgotten your shoes.”

Gathering his things, he crept downstairs and quit Silver’s forever.

He spent the next few days waiting, examining the girls’ faces. Nanny wouldn’t care -
boys will be boys
- but he imagined the disgust on Gwyn’s. Nothing. Perhaps the kid was biding his time. He hadn’t seemed the sort, but what could he base this on? He might be a honey trap. There was no telling, and he had everything to lose.

At the end of the week it was dashed from his mind. Normally he judged small crimes at the Assizes; now there was a murder. Alice Patten, a pretty teenager who worked in the bakery, had set off home from the town’s only club. She never arrived. Her mother reported her missing the next day. The police combed the woods. Just as they were going to call the search off, they received a package. It contained an ear, a tongue and a woman’s right hand.

A day later Alice washed up on the river bank. As well as the mutilations, she had been raped and strangled. From the start there was only one suspect: her stepfather. Alfred sat opposite him and
knew
. It was in the sly eyes, the hands that couldn’t keep still. He had to stop himself from leaping the bar and throttling him.

This wasn’t the Langton he knew. It was bonfires and summer fetes, harvests and beer festivals. It had the lowest crime rate in the country. He knew every woman, man and child. Yet evil had walked the fields - evil in the form of a scruffy, sunburned grocer. He couldn’t even gloat when he was convicted.

He went home the long way. His usual route passed the field where Alice was killed - he would never use it again. He heard kids in the distance, playing football. Familiar sounds of an evening in the country, tainted by the darker forces out there. He came across Nanny in the grounds, filling a pail at the pump. He doused himself in water.

“The Patten girl?”

He didn’t ask how she knew. Nanny knew everybody. Births, deaths, scandals - a one woman grapevine.

“Should hang. The world’s gone topsy turvy. Too soft on murderers, too hard on -”

“Transgressors?”

“That’s not what I was saying.”

“I believe you. Millions wouldn’t.”

“Madeline’s nephew’s in the library. Something about a job.”

“I didn’t know we were hiring.”

“We’re not, but she’s my best friend, so -?”

Alfred headed for the library. He tried to whistle but couldn’t recall a single tune. Giving it up as a bad job, he walked in. The boy from Silver’s was standing in the middle of the rug. He pulled the door to and strode over to him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I had to see you.”

“Money? Is that what you’re after?”

“No -”

“Madeline Kadezby’s nephew? I take it your family doesn’t know?”

“I can’t expose you without incriminating myself.”

That made sense, though it didn’t explain why he was there. “Sit down. I’ll get you a drink. What do you like?”

“Water’s fine.” He took the glass and drained it. He kept gazing around, not the acquisitiveness of a tart but childish delight in luxury.

Alfred sat on the couch, keeping his distance. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Eighteen?”

“I used to sing in the temple choir. You wrote me a letter of recommendation.”

Alfred remembered. An angelic boy doing all the solos, the first Langton boy to go to private school. Six years later he was blowing sleazy old farts for money. “What happened?”

“My voice broke. And then - the minister-”

Alfred knew before he said it. “Cedric Donnelly. Gods, Christopher.”

“You know my name?”

“Your auntie’s always talking about you. She thinks you have a high paying job in the city.”

“Well, it
does
pay well. And it
is
in the city.”

“Why didn’t you tell somebody?”

“Why would I do that? I enjoyed it.”

Alfred shuddered. “Christopher, he committed a terrible crime. He was an adult, you were a child -”

“I was sixteen. Old enough.”

Donnelly wouldn’t get away with this. Perversion Prevention had turned a blind eye for too long. “How did you -”

“He had other boys on the go. We confronted him; we were expelled. I didn’t have any skills, so -” He shrugged. “Somebody said I looked like Josh Foster and I thought, why not?”

“There’s every reason why not. You could go to college, have a career -”

“
You
didn’t think it was so improper.”

“That’s different.”

“How? It isn’t hard. I just bend over and let some old guy think he’s a sex god.” He blushed. “Present company excepted.”

“Why are you here?”

“Like Auntie Lulu said. I need a job.”

“There might be vacancies later in the year -”

He sat at Alfred’s feet and stroked his knee. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

Alfred pushed the boy away. “Absolutely not.”

“You went with me before. I could be your -”

“Whore?”

“There’s no need to be rude.”

“That’s what you’re asking, isn’t it? The answer’s no.”

“I don’t see why.”

Alfred sighed. “How old do you think I am?”

“Forty something?”

“Fifty two.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Look, I’m not your boyfriend. It was just sex.”

Christopher looked as though he was going to cry. “You made me come. You
cared
that I did.”

“There’s more to relationships than that.”

“You must think I’m so stupid.”

“Misguided, perhaps.”

“Like being in love with an artie?” A tight smile at his surprise. “You called me Josh, and said - other things. He’s hardly going to look at
you
.”

That’s what you think.
But the situation was crazy enough; he should never have agreed to see him. Alfred went to his desk and rummaged through its compartments. “How did you get here?”

“Keli. I quit yesterday.”

“Sure of yourself, weren’t you?” Alfred located his cashtot book and flipped it open. “Did you have a backup?”

“I didn’t plan that far ahead.”

“Thought as much.” He wrote on the bronze strip and held the tot out.

“Is this a trick?”

“I’m giving it on two conditions. First, don’t come here again. Second, you’re not going back to renting. You’ve a decent brain. Use it.”

“Really?”

“Really. Now do one, as Lulu would say.”

The boy stood on tip toe, lips puckered. “May I?”

“A handshake’s more in order.”

Alfred waited for Christopher’s footsteps to disappear down the passage and let Puss in. She settled sleepily around his feet, gorging on a ham bone.

This was the rest of his life. He couldn’t be angry; he was an idiot to suppose Josh could want him. Claire and Josh looked so natural together, like bride and groom cake toppers. He and Josh were a monstrous, mismatched joke. Youth and age, beauty and the beast.

He’d stay here and sort through his papers. The first thing he found was his notes on Josh. He chucked them on the fire. He swept two drawers clean and tipped a pile of unanswered letters into the basket. His hand brushed a small bottle of cognac -