Alan Hollinghurst - The Swimming-Pool Library

‘Is he the one that changed his name?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Why did he?’

‘Well, it wasn’t so much him as his father, I suppose, or his grandfather even. He was Jewish, and before the war Jewish people changed their names so that people wouldn’t know. His real name was Ecklendorff.’

‘Why didn’t they want people to know what their name was?’

‘It’s a long story, old boy. I’ll tell you another time.’

‘Yes,’ he frowned, turning the page. It was Oxford now-the matriculation photograph, posed in the stony front quad at Corpus, the pelican on top of the sundial appearing to sit on the head of the lanky, begowned chemist at the centre of the back row. I looked rather anonymous in it and once Rupert had identified me we moved to some colour snaps of a summer picnic at Wytham. There I sat, cross-legged on a rug, shirtless, brown, blue-eyed-perhaps the most beautiful I had ever been or ever would be. ‘That’s you,’ cried Rupert, splodging his forefinger down on my face as if recording his fingerprints for the police. ‘And that’s James! Isn’t he funny?’

‘Yes, isn’t he a scream.’ James had on his panama hat, was quite drunk and had been caught at an unflattering angle (one I had never seen him from in real life), so that he looked lecherously seedy.

‘And is that Robert Carson um Smith?’

‘Smith-Carson, actually, but jolly good all the same.’

‘Was he a homosexual?’

‘Certainly was.’

‘I don’t like him.’

‘No, he wasn’t very nice really. Some people liked him, though. He was great friends with James, you know.’

‘Is James a homosexual, too?’

‘You know perfectly well he is.’

‘Yes, I thought he was, but Mummy said you mustn’t say people were.’

‘You say what you like, sweetheart; as long as it’s true, of course.’

‘Of course. Is he a homosexual as well?’ he chimed on, pointing to the remaining person in the picture, the blazered, boatered man-mountain, Ashley Child, a wealthy American Rhodes scholar whose birthday, as far as I could remember, we had been celebrating.

‘A bit hard to say, I’m afraid. I should think so, though.’

‘I mean,’ Rupert looked up at me cogitatively, ‘almost everyone is homosexual, aren’t they? Boys, I mean.’

‘I sometimes think so,’ I hedged.

‘Is Grandpa one?’

‘Good heavens no,’ I protested.

‘Am I one?’ Rupert asked intently.

‘It’s a bit early to say yet, old fellow. But you could be, you know.’

‘Goody!’ he squealed, banging his heels against the front of the sofa again. ‘Then I can come and live with you.’

‘Would you like that?’ I asked, my avuncular rather than my homosexual feelings deeply gratified by this. And really Rupert’s cult of the gay, his innocent, optimistic absorption in the subject, delighted me even while its origin and purpose were obscure.

I was saved from the sexual analysis of the next set of pictures, the Oscar Wilde Society Ball, by the doorbell ringing. (The dressnote that year had been ‘Slave Trade’, and the spectacle of predominantly straight boys camping it up to the eyeballs would have been confusing to the child’s budding sense of role-play.)

It was not Philippa but Gavin who had come. ‘Sorry about this, Will,’ he said. ‘Has he been a frightful bother?’

‘Not a bit, Gavin. Come in. We were just having a talk about homosexuality.’

‘He is frightfully interested in that at the moment, although he can’t have the least idea of what it is -can he? It must be the effect of his overbearing and possessive mum. Odd what little children get up to; I was a committed transvestite at his age. But that seemed to get it out of the system,’ he added hastily.

‘I’m surprised the overbearing mum let you come to collect him,’ I admitted.

‘Got a bit of a head,’ said Gavin, in a way that suggested this was a known euphemism.

The reunion with his son was a low-key affair, conducted by both as if nothing had happened, while Gavin and I carried on a pleasant conversation over the child’s head. ‘At least this little escapade has saved us from dinner at the Salmons,’ he conceded. ‘That man is the most insufferable little twerp. I’d better just give Philly a call, if I may.’

‘Yes, of course.’ The phone was in the bedroom. ‘But you will be back home in no time at all.’ I tried to disguise my sudden swerve of attitude. ‘I mean, if you really want to, then do…’

‘Thanks. Where is the phone?’

‘Oh, I’ll show you.’ I felt extremely anxious, and as Gavin followed me across the hall, I turned and addressed him outside the bedroom door in an unnaturally carrying tone: ‘I suppose you want to confirm to the child’s mother that I have been a responsible uncle and not encouraged him in hard drugs or any other dangerous abuse.’

Gavin smiled at me politely, sensing he was missing a joke. ‘Partly that, but also I’m going to have a little talk with our runaway before he goes home to be eaten alive.’

‘Yes, do save him from all that,’ I gabbled. ‘So you’re ringing to say you’ll not be coming straight home.’

‘Quite so.’

I paused, considering how I could possibly disallow this. ‘Right,’ I said with a nod, opening the door resolutely and going into the room. To take another person in there was in itself disquieting; it made me conscious of how unaired it was, and of the fetor of socks and semen which would never have been allowed to accumulate in the Croft-Parkers’ dustless Regency sleeping quarters. Dirty clothes amassed on chairs and on the surrounding floor. The wardrobe doors were open.

This was the most alarming thing to my eye, as I had imagined it as the only place in which Arthur could reasonably have hidden. As I went into the room I was ready, if need be, to find him merely sitting there, or standing around, waiting. Though a surprise, it would not have seemed so remarkable; only my failure to warn Gavin would have been thought odd. But to warn him would have been a treacherous concession. I showed Gavin the phone, on the bedside table. The curtains were closed, as always, but I had put on the overhead light, and as the duvet was thrown into a heap at the foot of the bed, the rumpled green sheets and pillows showed their shamingly stained and fucked-over countenance; Gavin remained standing as he phoned.

I wandered back into the hall, where Rupert was standing, an expression of the utmost apprehension on his face. ‘Isn’t that boy…’ he mouthed, his eyebrows raised and then biting his lower lip, which I laid my finger across in a gesture of silence. The bed came down to within an inch or two of the floor. He must be behind the curtains.

‘Thanks, Will,’ said Gavin as he emerged, with a slightly amazed look.

‘Everything OK?’ I enquired, with extreme casualness.

‘We’ll be off now, young feller.’

I saw them to the door of the flat. ‘Thanks, Will,’ said Gavin again. ‘See you soon. You must come round or something…’ He laid a hand fraternally on my shoulder.

‘Bye, Roops,’ I said, expecting my normal kiss but getting instead a handshake, which, nevertheless, I recognised as a sign of greater intimacy.

Farce is always more entertaining to watch than to enact, and I was relieved to hear the house door slam and a car start. I turned back to the bedroom, crossing to the window as I said, ‘It’s all right, they’ve gone.’ But when I tweaked open the curtains, it was my own face, with a silly hide-and-seek smirk on it, that I saw reflected in the window. ‘Funny,’ I said aloud. There was a rustle behind me, and I swung round to see the flung-back duvet heave, lurch upwards, and after a further convulsion, bring forth Arthur. He had been curled up there like a young stowaway, his flexible body folded so as to be almost imperceptible. He hammed up his recovery rather, flustered at the alarm, boastful of his ingenuity. ‘Man, you didn’t know where I bloody was!’ He fell back giggling, then clutched his head, still leaden from his hangover.