Alan Hollinghurst - The Spell

When they got back to the cottage there were several cars in the lane and another half-dozen boys stretching their legs on the verge beside a rented minibus. Bright-coloured groups were strolling through the garden with what looked like glasses of champagne. A window was open to let out surprisingly nice music. There hadn’t been a party here since the circumspect celebrations of Simon’s last birthday, nearly two years ago. Robin felt a tiny proprietary shock at the take-over by strangers.

He came round the house to find the Halls standing together, looking irritably at some shrubs. They had only “dropped in for a drink,” as Robin had suggested, though on their lips the phrase had a worrying looseness, with no implied promise of their dropping out again. Like all awkward guests they had arrived early and would have to be introduced cold to some unsuitable stranger. They had brought a little present for Danny – “It’s only a bottle, I’m afraid” – and Robin was pleased they had come: they were among the few people in the village who remained friendly and hospitable after Simon’s death. Not that they could be said to revel lubriciously in the reported details of gay life. On occasion they were merrily caustic. (It was Mike Hall who had said, when shown a volume called The Cultivated Fruits of England , “Good god, a book about Woodfield and his chums.”) They made a wonderfully inadvertent contrast to the other guests, who were exploring the garden as if it was their first one – there were shrieks of laughter and worried gasps from the woodshed and the greenhouse. Margery was red-eyed and exhausted; the rape that was in flower in great garish blocks around the village gave her rashes and hay-fever. “I’m not supposed to drink with these pills,” she said, taking the vast gin and tonic that Justin had made for her. Justin had an almost reverential fondness for the Halls, and ushered them indoors, perhaps relieved not to have to talk to what he called the Orchidaceae. There was something both evasive and host-like in this. Robin stood swaying in the wake of his beauty, and went off to struggle with the barbecue as if physically grappling with the malign mechanics of the situation, the enforced indifference. He had built the little sheltered griddle himself and was vexed by its frequent failure to draw.

When he came back to the kitchen, Danny was hectically opening bottles of champagne: it was that startling moment when you find that the party has taken off and is using up fuel. He was wearing black trousers and a crisp white collarless shirt, as though he’d been interrupted in dressing for some more formal event.

“Hi Dad!” he said. Then, “Have you got a drink?”

Robin realised that he hadn’t, and that it might be a good idea. “Where did all this bubbly come from?” he said.

Danny looked confused – it was a look he’d had as a kid, on far earlier weekends, when Robin found him playing with expensive toys that were given him by Jane’s new men-friends. Well, he still came for weekends, and he had chosen to be here for his birthday – it was something, but it wasn’t nearly enough. “George brought a whole case,” he said.

Robin gave a murmur. “That’s very generous of him.” Perhaps George hadn’t yet got anywhere with him, and was giving him lifts and expensive drinks as an old-fashioned way to his heart; but it seemed out of character. He must have been frowning, because Danny said,

“Don’t worry. There’s nothing going on. Oh, by the way, Mum rang, to wish me happy birthday. She said to tell you hi.”

“Is that what she said…” said Robin.

They went out together with clutches of glasses. A dark Arabic-looking boy, with a shaved head and a goatee, sprang up to Danny so that he jogged the drinks, and kissed him on the mouth. “See, I made it!” he said. He was holding a loosely wrapped present, and slipped it under Danny’s arm. When his hands were free Danny opened it, and shook out a white T-shirt, with the disconcerting legend MaDmAn on the front. “Put it on,” said the boy. There were one or two whistles as Danny fiddled with his cuff-links, and someone said, “He’s off…” It was a tiny change in the climate, a casual tension, as if more than a young man’s upper body had been briefly bared. He had a small pendant on a chain, and Robin wondered if that was one of George’s gifts as well. Alex was standing close by with a protective but unpleasantly lustful look, and tucked in the label at the neck of the T-shirt when it was on. There was laughter and clapping, Robin said “I don’t get it,” though Alex seemed to find it funny, or wanted to suggest that he understood. Robin hoped with curt benevolence that Alex would get off with some nice London boy tonight, and stop hanging round his fucking house.

He was relieved to find that the coals had reached a pinkish orange, and tied on his apron; soon there was the expected smoke and spatter, and the reek of seared meat was drifting among the fir-trees and over the field where cows themselves stood munching unrecognisingly.

Danny behaved with a sweet combination of shyness and bossiness appropriate to a birthday boy; and Robin was aware too of the restraint that his own presence imposed. Some of the boys didn’t yet know who he was and said, “Oh, you’re the cook, are you – great food!” or “How long have you known Danny?” as though he might be some secret sugar-daddy rather than his real inadequate father. He brought out candles in jamjars as the dusk set in and listened to Danny talking about his exchange year at college in Vermont. He thought it must be then that he had started taking drugs, though Jane claimed omnisciently that he never touched a thing at that time.

“There was this guy who had really bad asthma,” Danny said. “And he was always really speedy on some stuff he had, called Blocks Away �?” – he drew the trade-mark sign with his finger.

“So we started trying it, and it was amazing, it made your heart race, but you were really concentrated as well – it had ephedrin in it.”

“Oh, right,” said one of the boys.

“It was great for working late at night. Though more recreational uses did…suggest themselves once exams were over. We used to go into this little pharmacy in town, wheezing and panting, and the old guy there would say, “Sure is a lot of asthma up at that college,” and we’d say, “I know, sir, I reckon it’s the pesticides they put on the fields up there – that’s the one disadvantage of a college in a beautiful rural location like this, sir,” though often we were pretty high already and probably overdid the explanations. What my English prof called “trowelling on the authenticating detail, Whitfield.” And he never did get my name right…”

Robin smiled and got up to collect plates. He wondered how he could worry about Danny doing things he had done himself, or would have wanted to do. He’d never seen him like this, as an adult at the centre of a circle of friends. It was as if the revolve had brought a whole tableau of characters swiftly on stage, already drinking and laughing. Whether the detail was authentic he couldn’t tell. He went towards the back door and the lights went out, and then a gleaming white oblong of candlelit cake seemed to levitate into the garden, and high above it, in its ghostly but lively light, Alex’s pale captivated face.

Robin had worried from time to time about the Halls, but whenever he saw them they were caught up in serious talk with some new group of Orchidaceae. Margery was a quiet, stoical woman, with the spare weight and poor concentration of a reformed heavy smoker. Mike was the retired bursar of a military college, proud of his own intelligence, and always hungry for talk. His drunkenness had three phases: first an expansive open-mindedness and principled respect for ideas, then a rather moody period of stifled impatience with his interlocutors, whom it emerged he simply couldn’t agree with, and third, launched with sudden sneering force, an hour or so of unbridled contempt and obscenity, ending with an abrupt collapse. As he came through the house, Robin heard Mike’s voice in the front garden reaching a steady dogmatic yap, and thought it might be time to ease them homewards. He found him in an improbable group of young style-queens, whom he seemed to have roused to unexpected animation. “You know nothing of war,” he was saying.