Peter May - Runaway

‘Why the hell should I?’

‘Because you’re not Jewish!’ He almost shouted it.

I could hardly have been more startled if he had physically hit me.

‘What?’ I could hardly believe it. Religion had never been an issue — at least, not one that I had been aware of. ‘Oh, don’t be such a Yid,’ I said, knowing that would hurt him.

His simmering anger burst into full-blown fury. He came at me. Grabbing me by the collar and pushing me back towards the doorway. Almost full into Simon Flet, who was just emerging from the darkness of the hall.

His anger stopped us in our tracks. ‘What the hell do you think you boys are playing at?’ It was extraordinary how bad temper could turn such a handsome face ugly. ‘This is not some pub where you can go about brawling and swearing. And who told you that you could come into Cliff’s private apartments when he’s not here?’

Neither of us knew what to say and we stood, chastened, like naughty schoolboys.

‘Really! If you’re going to be here at all — and I hope that won’t be for very much longer — then stay down in the basement, unless otherwise invited.’ He turned and glared at me. ‘And you might like to rethink your sleeping arrangements. This is not a brothel.’

I am sure I blushed. And I glanced nervously at Maurie, whose face was like stone.

‘Now get out!’

I didn’t dare go upstairs immediately, so I went back down to the basement with Maurie. He went straight to his room, and I sat nursing my resentment on the settee. I waited half an hour before creeping back up to our second-floor room to find Rachel standing by the window, staring out over the rooftops, arms folded across her chest.

She neither turned nor waited for me to speak, pre-empting my question with a curt, ‘Don’t even ask.’

And we never spoke about it again.

Sometimes, when Simon wasn’t there, all six of us would sit in the evenings with Dr Robert in that first-floor living room watching TV and smoking dope. One time we saw J. P. Walker on a late-night current affairs programme talking about the Victoria Hall experiment, and it felt odd to be watching someone we knew up there on the television screen. It probably increased our illusion of being at the centre of things. And an illusion it was. For we were going nowhere fast. Treading water in a deep, dark pond that would eventually suck us down and drown us.

That was also the night, I’m sure, when Dr Robert told us that JP’s personal life was a mess. How he’d sacrificed his marriage on the altar of his career, losing his wife and family to separation and then divorce.

‘He’s a wreck of a man, really,’ he said. ‘How he manages to work through other people’s problems when he can’t even deal with his own, I’ll never know.’ He was half sitting, half lying in a leather armchair, legs extended, sucking on a joint. ‘He’s on medication for depression.’ He grinned. ‘I should know. I write his prescriptions.’

Which seemed to me a breach of medical ethics and his Hippocratic oath. I think that was when I finally decided that I really didn’t like Dr Robert.

But the most worrying thing during those weeks was the sense that we were losing Jeff. From that first night, when Jeff had seen rainbows coming out of the walls, he was lost to LSD. I think maybe Maurie and Dave took it again a few times, but Jeff couldn’t get enough of it. And Dr Robert, it seemed, made sure he had all he wanted. It released something in Jeff, some inner sense of himself that he’d never been aware of before. He had always been the poor performer at school, the runt of the intellectual litter. I suppose that nowadays the therapists would say he had low self-esteem, and that his extrovert, often brash, behaviour was a compensation for that. Well, with acid, he didn’t require compensation. He’d found something beautiful, he said. A part of himself that he never knew existed.

But it changed him. And not in a good way. He no longer felt a part of the group, either to us or himself. He frequently failed to turn up for practice at the hall and spent more and more time with Dr Robert. They would often go out together in taxis, or on the tube. It wasn’t that he was secretive about where they went, he just believed it was none of our business. And increasingly Dr Robert appeared to be exerting an almost Svengali-like influence on him.

We had a council of war one day. Me and Luke, and Dave and Maurie. We were losing Jeff, and we knew it couldn’t go on like this. Maurie was taking it the hardest. They had been so close all through their childhood years, sharing everything. Hopes, dreams, ambitions, thoughts. For Maurie it was almost as if Jeff had died. And although Maurie and I were still barely speaking, Rachel told me that he was becoming increasingly depressed. While he and Jeff shared a room, it seemed that the two of them hardly ever talked any more.

But as far as the group was concerned, we were losing our drummer, and so it was agreed that Maurie should speak to Jeff that night, raise our concerns with him, and try to bring him back into the fold.

The four of us, and Rachel, sat about in the basement flat smoking nervously, waiting for Jeff to get home. We had returned from Bethnal Green late in the afternoon and there was no sign of him. He had left no word of where he was, and Dr Robert was not around to ask.

It was almost nine before he finally appeared, and I guess he must have sensed the atmosphere the moment he came in. He hesitated, almost imperceptibly, by the door when he came down to the flat, glancing around the room with a kind of dead-eyed disinterest. Even from where I was sitting I could see how dilated his pupils were.

‘Hey, guys,’ he said, and went straight through to the bedroom.

We sat in silence for several moments, none of us wanting to look at Maurie. Finally he eased himself out of his chair and I saw how pale he was. Apprehension filled his eyes. He followed with heavy steps in Jeff’s wake.

I suppose we had always known it would not turn out well, but the moment had come when we couldn’t let it go any longer. There was an elephant in the room and the time had arrived to acknowledge it. Though none of us had anticipated just how badly it would go.

At first we heard only a murmur of conversation. Then Maurie’s voice raised in anger, though we couldn’t hear what it was he said.

Then silence. Followed almost immediately by more raised voices.

And finally, clear as a bell, Jeff shouting, ‘You’re just jealous!’

‘Jealous?’ Maurie sounded both hurt and angry. ‘What have I got to be jealous of?’

A loud crash brought us all to our feet. We exchanged glances, but nobody moved.

The door to the bedroom flew open and we heard Jeff screaming, ‘You’re just a stupid little bunch of fucking wankers. No talent, no future. Grow up, go home!’ And he stalked from the hall into the sitting room. He stood and glared at us in turn, the strangest look in his eyes, before turning and slamming out on to the stairs and running up to the first floor.

It was a long time before Maurie came out into the smoke-laden silence of that basement living room. He didn’t say anything. Just dropped himself into his seat and lit another cigarette. But I would swear to this day that there were tears in his eyes.

The other thing that became only too apparent during those weeks was that Dr Robert and Simon Flet were lovers.

When he wasn’t on set, Flet spent all his time at the house, often prowling the stairs and hallways, reciting mumbled lines of dialogue and growling at any of us that he came across. He was a thoroughly objectionable individual, and I never met anyone who had a good word to say about him. But that he and Dr Robert were obsessed by each other was obvious to everyone.