Nicholas Royle - First Novel

‘I didn’t tell him to climb on top of that truck.’

‘You were flying the plane that cut off his head.’ Ray stared hard into Dunstan’s dark, quick little eyes. Emboldened by drink, he went on. ‘All for your own entertainment and to impress a couple of nurses.’

‘I seem to remember you being present,’ Dunstan said, adding slyly, ‘with your own unsavoury agenda.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘Quite the poet, aren’t we?’

‘If you’ll excuse me…’

‘ If you’ll excuse me . You’d never have lasted in my squadron if I’d have known your dirty little secret. You’d have been out on your ear.’

Ray was aware of a gap having opened up between the two of them and the rest of the celebrants, almost as if a space had been cleared in which they would fight.

‘There was no dirty little secret , as you put it. I had just lost my wife.’

‘Your family. That’s an interesting topic of conversation. How interested would they be in the sordid details of your so-called lifestyle?’

‘You know nothing about me or the way I live my life.’

‘It’s amazing how chatty some people get when you’re maintaining their habit.’

Ray stared into the black holes of Dunstan’s eyes.

A third person joined them. Ray’s editor brought an immediate calming influence.

‘Everything all right, Ray?’ asked his editor with a smile.

‘This gentleman was just leaving,’ Ray said.

‘He’s right,’ said Dunstan. ‘I was just leaving. I’ve got what I came for.’ From the pocket of his velvet jacket he slid out a copy of Ray’s book.

‘I hope you signed it, Ray,’ the editor said, placing his hand on his author’s shoulder.

‘His signature’s all over it,’ said Dunstan before turning his back and walking in a straight line towards the exit.

‘Funny chap,’ said the editor. ‘Friend of yours, Ray?’

‘Not exactly, no,’ Ray said, watching the space Dunstan’s disappearing back had filled. ‘Someone I used to know. Or thought I used to know.’

The encounter with Dunstan at the launch party had left Ray troubled, in particular the former squadron leader’s mention of Ray’s family. To reassure himself more than anything, Ray took the train to Manchester and followed the by now familiar route out to Hyde.

Everything appeared normal in the Cross household. Nicholas, now fifteen, was as tall and broad as Ray and took a bigger shoe size. Ray suggested a game of snooker in Gee Cross, where he bought his son a half of bitter. Nicholas surprised him by buying the next round. It seemed to Ray that they were more like uncle and nephew than father and son, but there was no denying their actual relationship. It just wasn’t a subject for conversation.

The idea that Dunstan might show his face around Manchester and seek to cause trouble was a worry, but in the end it was the TLS that broke some difficult news to Ray’s parents.

They were sitting in the lounge. The television was on but no one was really watching it. Maybe Ray’s parents were, but neither Ray nor Nicholas were paying it much attention. Nicholas was finishing off some homework on the floor — he was doing well at school — and Ray was missing London. From his position on the settee, at the other end of which his mother was sitting, he could just reach the magazine rack with his feet. He pulled off his sock and went fishing among the contents of the rack with his toes. Radio Times, Manchester Evening News, TLS, Woman’s Weekly .

TLS .

What were his parents doing with the Times Literary Supplement ? Where had they even got hold of it? In other circumstances a proud son might have sent his parents a copy of the issue containing a generous review of his first collection of poems, but the reviewer in this case had interpreted a number of the poems in terms of the author’s presumed sexuality. Presumed around literary London, perhaps, but not in east Manchester. And even then only presumed or guessed at. Ray had never publicly acknowledged his sexuality, but he wasn’t a fool. He had known that people would talk and that talk had a way of spreading from one community to another. But from Bloomsbury to Hyde? He had feared the intervention of an embittered ex-con, but Dunstan had been beaten to it — at least as far as putting Ray’s parents in the picture was concerned.

Ray turned to look at his father, ensconced in the armchair across the narrow room. His face didn’t leave the television, but he gave what Ray interpreted as a tut of disapproval.

Ray returned to London the following day without having had that conversation with his mother and father. He imagined they would have said nothing to Nicholas and he also guessed they would have removed the TLS from the magazine rack and either used it to light a fire or — and here he knew he was pushing it a little — perhaps his mother might have hidden it away somewhere or, at the very least, used it to line a drawer.

The way Veronica found out about Susan Ashton was stupid and regrettable and avoidable and all my fault. We were having a rather pointless conversation about dashboard displays in different makes of car. Particularly the colours used. We were bored with orange. The idea of getting a new car had been proposed some weeks earlier, since ours was not in great shape and we could probably just about afford to replace it. Each time the subject came up, we discussed a different aspect of design or specifications. On this occasion we were talking about dashboard design. I said I liked the red and the blue of a VW dashboard. I even used the phrase ‘jazz-club blue and traffic-light red’.

Veronica asked when I had ever seen the inside of a VW and instead of quickly inventing this or that owner of a Passat or Polo whom I knew well enough for them to have given me a lift, or whatever other plausible explanation might have come to mind if I had been able to think a little faster on my feet, I hesitated, and that hesitation was what caught Veronica’s interest. Maybe it was her lawyer’s training, her hours of cross-examination, or maybe it would have been obvious to just about anybody that I had taken an unnecessary pause before answering. And then there was the answer itself.

‘I don’t know, someone gave me a lift once.’

‘At night?’

‘I don’t know. Why at night? What do you mean?’

I could hear my voice getting whiny.

‘When the headlights are on,’ she said, ‘the dashboard will glow.’

I could feel myself getting flustered.

‘What’s the big deal?’ I said.

I could feel blood rising to my face.

She questioned me for an hour. Whose car was it? Where was I going? How many times was I driven in this car? I protested feebly, but with horrible self-righteousness, that I was not in a court of law, that I should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. But that clearly was another mistake on my part. I was in a hole and I couldn’t seem to stop digging. We established an uneasy truce and slept on it, but in the morning she was cold and distant. She went off to work and I took the children to nursery and then I went to work as well.

When I came home I saw that, unusually, she had got home before me. She was in my study going through my desk drawers, picking books on the shelves and flicking through them before dropping them on the floor.

I didn’t feel the hesitation had been sufficient to provoke this level of suspicion. I wondered what subtle changes to my behaviour there might have been during the week the affair lasted. Perhaps I’d given the game away long before the hesitation over the VW dashboard, but Veronica had had no reasonable provocation. Maybe the mad cleaning session on the Saturday after returning from Feltham and finding that Veronica and the twins had gone out? Maybe that had sowed the seed?