The Intimates (12 page)

I watch him rush outside to lift the train of her dress. Barbara kicks off her heels, preparing herself for the chill of the water. I walk out behind him, contemplating how happy he now looks despite what he has just told me. Graham joins me at my side, and we watch the two of them. Since I last saw Graham he's wrapped one of Francoise's scarves around his neck and his eyelids are now smeared with glitter. He looks as if he is finally beginning to relax in the company of his friends.

“There's something so messy about Franz's self-pity,” he says, exhaling smoke. “And his recent solo work.”

I laugh, as if mock-annoyed at this slight. His face breaks open in a knowing laugh. “It's good to see you. Finally, we are given the opportunity to speak.”

“I've had some pretty unusual conversations this evening. And it doesn't seem right that a chat with a transvestite will come as light relief.”

“Jesus, that does throw your evening into perspective. How was James this evening? Does he still turn into a bunny-boiler at the mere mention of Carina's name?”

“Very much so, yes,” I say with a laugh. “But whenever I try to defend her, a little voice tells me to be very careful not to let on how I feel about her.”

“He still has no idea?”

“He doesn't want to have any idea Graham.”

“He must be the only one of us still in denial about that situation then. Has Elise picked up on anything?”

“I think she might have done.”

“She was bound to sooner or later. How has she handled everything this evening?”

“Like everyone else, she's acted in a manner that I could not possibly have predicted.”

“I want to see this mini health spa Francoise has built herself. Shall we?” The two of us trail into the pool room, looking around us to make sure no-one is to disturb our conversation. Puffing his cigarette Graham reaches down to untie his shoes, before rolling up his trousers and dipping his feet into the pool. As he turns round to look at me the streak of glitter on his cheek illuminates. I crouch down next to him, watching the artificial blue of the water move under the dipped lamps on the wall. Franz and Barbara's excited screams are audible behind us.

Perhaps it is my drunkenness, but there seems to be something very beautiful about the plastic sheen of the water, mixed carefully to look natural when inspection reveals it to be anything but. I think of James' enrapture for the books in the library, and the way this turquoise water similarly enchants me. I wonder if people who own houses like this ever consider them from the perspective of others. What may seem shabby and incidental on the surface through fresh eyes can reveal an essence they might otherwise neglect. Catching these half-formed thoughts, Graham meets my eye.

“Francoise wants us all to take a long hard look at ourselves, doesn't she?” he says. “I think that's the intention behind this evening.”

“I think so. She's appointed herself as our moral guardian, or something.”

“Like a sort of Gallic Jiminy Cricket?”

“Something like that. She means well though. I think.”

We fall quiet. I notice that swirling around our pale feet is a spiral of rose petals, caught in a whirlpool made by their motion. We both move our feet in time, our eyes fixed on those dancing red curls. For a while they stay in that slipstream but then spin out of our control, floating back into the body of water.

“The last thing I need is another parent figure,” he says. “Trying to make me fit their requirements of how I should be. My father is 70, but he's still struggling with the idea of a son who's a surgeon but also a transvestite.” He laughs and looks over my shoulder at the fountain. Glancing at his profile his seeming contradictions make perfect sense to me. There's the tightness in his jaw line and the high set eyes which are precise and surgical. Yet the makeup under his eyes and the ruffle of his scarf fit with the effeminacy an altruistic role sometimes implies.

“Do you also see yourself as a transvestite now then?”

He considers the question with a look that's very childlike, given what has been asked.

“I think I always have been Vincent. I think it's just that I've become more confident about it. Some of my happiest memories are of being temporarily left alone at home by my parents. Within seconds I'd be at my mother's dresser, clumping about in oversized heels with ridiculous clouds of rouge on my cheeks. I must have looked like a Victorian toy soldier. Had my father returned home at that moment, I would have been beaten to within an inch of my life.

“I remember the ecstasy of first going to a nightclub wearing eyeliner. Drenched in hairspray and glitter, dancing to Lou Reed records. I felt as if I was living on the outside, in a realm that most people could never enter. For so long I had felt completely alone, but makeup made my isolation feel special. The world came to life – the streets were no longer grey and cold, they sparkled with sordid possibility. But the most resonant pleasures in our lives are always individually defined. When you expect the world to appreciate them they simply expose their own bland uniformity. I learnt that the more unusual you are, the more personalised pleasures the world reveals to you.”

“I remember when we used to climb trees in the summer holidays,” I say. “You were the biggest risk taker of all. But when the evening came you'd always start suggesting that we play fancy dress. That would be the point at which I'd start to think about going home.”

“Poor you,” he laughs. “Having a perfectly innocent day, and then having me suggest something truly subversive at the end of it. I wasn't the only daredevil amongst us though, was I? Do you remember the time you climbed the one tree in your garden that your father had forbidden us to go near?”

The memory of that afternoon, still painful, flashes before my eyes. Perhaps reacting to my expression, Graham lowers his voice. “It was his favourite tree, the great sycamore at the foot of the garden, the one he watched from his top floor study when he was writing. And he said that it was the only tree that you shouldn't climb, and that if you did you would be very sorry. So you did what any schoolboy would have done under the circumstances.”

“I still feel guilty about that Graham,” I laugh. “I'm so sorry. I thought he was out. I wanted so badly to get back at him for ignoring me. But I was cowardly, so I got back at him in a way that I hoped he would never know. By climbing that stupid, sacred tree of his. But I soon learnt that he wasn't out at all – he'd just left his study for a few moments. He came back to see this muddy kid clambering up his beloved tree at the foot of the garden.

I remember the roar that he gave out; it reverberated around the garden. I instantly opened my arms and fell about ten feet, grabbed onto one of the lower branches. ‘Get down!' you screamed. ‘He's going to kill us!' I was so much more scared of him than of the fall. When I got to the ground my arms were bruised, my knees were cut and bloody and you said – ”

“That I'd never seen you look that frightened before. And then he loomed over and grabbed you by the arm, and I was so terrified of what he might do Vincent, his rage was so terrifying that I reacted – ”

“You told him that it was you who'd climbed the tree.

I'll never forget that. And he looked at me and said, ‘Is this true? Because if not you have just doubled your punish-ment.'And you insisted.” The memories are raw and clear now, if a little disordered. “‘It was me,' you said. ‘Vincent told me not to do it but I ignored him.' And then that moment of mute rage when he looked between the two of us, and it occurred to me – ”

“That he'd hoped it was you in the tree?”

“Yes,” I answer. “I think you're right. But then his rage was so enormous, so overwhelming, that he couldn't stop himself. There in front of me, he beat you. He even dropped your shorts to do it, didn't he?”

“You kept opening your mouth, to say it was you. That he shouldn't beat me, but my eyes were begging you not to as I knew it would just mean both of us getting punished.”

“That was my punishment. He knew it. To let you take the blame for me, he knew that would destroy me. And it did. You were such a good friend Graham. You really didn't need to do that for me.”

“I don't know why I did!” he laughs. “But I remember afterwards, looking at him and thinking how incredibly
unfair
it was. I had no idea life could be so wrong. And him, shamefaced, saying to me, ‘It's for your own good Graham. Your father would have done the same had he been here.' It was pathetic. He seemed to want me to thank him for his brutality, to look up at him through the tears and congratulate him for being such a man. And of course I didn't; I kept completely silent. And I felt that in some little way I got level with him at that moment. By seeing how embarrassed he was with his own rage.”

He kicks at the water. “My father would have beaten me too, but not as savagely. He knew about my little secrets, he just needed to catch me in the act. Our fathers were similar in that way, both of them made us hide a great deal. That sense of having a certain state of mind that you sometimes must express – it's enough to define you. I think if I'd not have had a father who found such activities repulsive, I would probably not have gained as much pleasure from them, funnily enough.”

“If he can't take in your contradictions, I reckon he hasn't spent enough time with you while being openminded,” I suggest.

He smiles. “I know what you mean. Through my eyes, I make perfect sense. My maternal instincts are put into my work, which is a perfect continuation of my lifestyle. But to him it's a maddening contradiction. He's pleased that his son has an enviable career, but infuriated that the honour that brings him is tempered by me queening it about in drag. But what do I do? Work four days a week at the hospital and spend the rest of my time wearing a suit from Next?”

“No. I can't see you in anything off the rack.”

“Just one reason he'll never be happy,” he laughs. He exhales, smoke passing from his mouth into a cloud above us. “People don't see. They spend their lives in compromised and unhappy states because they don't stumble across a state of mind in which they feel liberated. I'm straight, but I probably never feel more like myself than when I'm wearing a dress. In a way, I feel fortunate. At least I have found a state of mind which I can call home. But the world, perhaps through envy or fear, forces me to hide it away.

“It holds me back professionally Vincent, of course it does. How can I push for consultancy posts when my cross-dressing is bound to be brought up by the review panel? We supposedly live in enlightened times, but my rivals have my head in a noose if they find out about my nightlife. The insinuation behind Francoise calling this party is that we should take a long hard look ourselves, and get over whatever restricts us. But she doesn't see that I have already done that. I'm not like Franz or Barbara, hankering after adolescent glory. I'm more successful than ever, approaching the top of my game. Unlike them, I do not hold
myself
back. It is the rest of the world that restrains me.”

“What Francoise has shown me this evening is that you shouldn't compromise. If other people can't get their head around you, forget them. Concern yourself with embodying your own contradictions as fully as you can. If you are open about your own individuality then your rivals will have no hold over you. Now I'm not saying you should go into the surgery theatre in full drag Graham, I'm not saying that.” He smiles. “But I am saying that you should try to be as open about your life as you reasonably can. If you do, you'll find that people quickly fall into two camps – those you want to know, and those you don't.”

He considers this for a second. Then we both look at each other and laugh at our sudden seriousness. Whenever we're in each other's company we seem to use the time to steady ourselves against the world.

“Unfortunately, one of the people who'll fall into the latter camp is my father,” he says.

“But how often does anybody accept all our contradictions? Barely ever. They all try and mould us in some way. Your father probably
won't
appreciate all the self-actualisation you've achieved. What Francoise says stings me, because I haven't achieved my potential. I'd nearly convinced myself that I didn't have it in me, so that was alright. But she's reminded me that weight is still there, because I
have
got something.”

“I think you have too,” Graham replies. “I think you've tried hard to justify your situation, when the answer has been in front of you all along. You want to write, but your father's judgements have stopped you. You need to face up to him. Everyone is so frightened of him coming here this evening, of being badly wounded by one of his off-the-cuff remarks. But I know that if you're bold you can face up to him.”

His conviction unnerves me, though I suspect he might be right.

“He has a torrent inside him Graham. I don't know if I can face it this evening.”

“You can Vincent. You can because you must. Do you remember when we used to jump from the pier into the sea at low tide, just for the rush? Do you remember that your father specifically told us not to, that one day we'd hurt ourselves? It was me who encouraged us to keep doing it, and so it was fitting that one day I gashed my leg open doing it. And your father saw the blood and his face went – but before he could open his mouth you said, ‘Did you forget the first aid kit Dad? I told you Graham was going to hurt himself riding his bike one day, and you still forgot it, didn't you?'That look of rage disappeared from his face because you'd shocked him; you had him on the back foot.

“If you confront him, he will be so surprised that he will probably just take it. Look at how trapped each of us are – in our little delusions, our little predicaments. If just one of us faces up to our situation it will offer all of us a way out.”

“But how can I just confront him? If he's to be convinced, he'll need to know what my plan is, and I don't have one. What am I going to tell him, that I'm going to find a quiet desk in a corner somewhere and write something as universally appealing as his first two plays? I don't even have a plan!”