Alan Hollinghurst - The Spell

When the car stopped at the gate he did a cursory mime of dismay over his wallet. “It’s all right, I live here,” he said; but the driver held on to his luggage. He hurried down through the dark garden, hoping more than ever that Robin would be in. A light was visible through the apple-trees – it was like a house at the end of the world, and he had a sense that he had left it thirty years ago, rather than ten hapless days.

Some punctilio, or maybe a taste for drama, made him ring the bell, though his keys were in his pocket. He heard the springy thump of Robin’s footsteps, and knew he would be barefoot, and pictured his puzzlement at a late-night visit. The door was plucked open, and there he was, shockingly himself, utterly lifelike. Justin saw his sigh of surprise, and then the doubting but unstoppable smile. “Have you got twelve quid, darling?” he said. “I’ve got to pay the taxi.”

Robin came up to carry his bags, and Justin thanked him quietly, as for an expected but still agreeable tribute. In the kitchen they had a quick hug, but sat apart across the table. Justin had the beginnings of a dry headache. When he looked up he saw that Robin was crying.

He always rather froze in the presence of other people’s distress. He had only once seen Robin cry before, not long after they’d met, when he had told him about Simon – and it was true that on that occasion he had found it terribly sexy. Now he said, “So when did you come back?”

Robin pulled a hand across his face and cleared his throat. “Um…about three days ago. I couldn’t stand not hearing from you – knowing you were somewhere near by.” Justin read his desire to ask a dozen questions, some of them important. “Are you going to tell me where you were?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Robin sniffed and stood up. “Drink?”

“Yep. Scotch.”

He got glasses and a half-empty bottle. “Did you have fun?”

“Yes, for a bit. I needed time. You mustn’t forget I’m a city girl, darling, at heart. I grew up in Solihull.” He took the glass that Robin slid towards him, and peered into it absently. “Anyway, then I decided it was time to get back to dear old Luton Gasbag.” He smiled briefly and then drank, but with no show of celebration. He was anxious to prevent avowals from being made. “Did you get up to any mischief in my absence?”

Robin hesitated for a moment, as though trying to make up something silly, and said, “I slept with Terry Badgett.”

“Huh…I see.” Justin scraped back his chair. “That’s a bit pathetic, isn’t it?”

“Totally pathetic. I was lonely, he jumped me. It was a waste of time. And money.”

“You don’t mean you paid him for sex?”

“The sex was hopeless, and then he woke me up and asked me to pay for it. He obviously sees himself as some kind of hustler.”

Justin tried to show he was above such things, but he felt bitterly wounded; and baffled by Robin’s motives in telling him. “I’m not sure I needed to know that,” he said.

“Well, you asked. I’ve never had secrets from you, and I’m not starting now. I thought you’d left me, for fuck sake. I haven’t taken a vow of chastity.”

“Maybe I have left you,” Justin said. He felt his anger waking up, with its exhilarating potential to take him far from home, and he slammed the hatch down on its head and bolted it shut. “Anyway, I hope he didn’t stay the night.”

“No,” said Robin impatiently. “He was only here about an hour. It was nothing.”

An hour, thought Justin. An hour of betrayal. He said, “I don’t want all the village knowing about it”; and then started laughing, and carried on laughing for longer than was pleasant.

When they were in bed he curled up in Robin’s arms and felt his hard cock pushing apologetically against the back of his thighs – he thought it was more like Alex’s shy lust than Robin’s usual masterful advance. He said, “Do you mind if we don’t tonight. I have, genuinely, got a headache.” He shifted away, but reached back to grip his powerful hand.

In the morning Robin lay in much longer than usual, and kept rolling on to Justin with pretend-sleepy humphs and gropes. But Justin could outsleep anyone. Eventually Robin swung his legs out of bed and went to the bathroom, leaving the door open. Justin listened for the boyish noisiness of his peeing, always straight into the water, and the flush pulled just before he finished. A minute later he heard rattling in the kitchen beneath. He lay there waiting for the Terry thing to break loose again; but nothing very much happened, and he wondered if perhaps he didn’t care. He intuited some motive of revenge in the whole business, which made it amusing in a way, and he saw that it was something he could always bring up. He pushed back the covers, and turned round on the bottom sheet like a dog in its basket. It didn’t take him long to find half a dozen bent black hairs, which he picked up fastidiously and took between thumb and forefinger down to the kitchen. Robin was laying the breakfast, and Justin set them down with a conscientious frown on his side-plate. “How much did you have to pay for these?” he said.

Robin’s face was instantly shadowed. “I said, I didn’t know you were coming.” He turned away with a shake of the head, as if he could never do anything right.

It was extraordinary to have such power over someone to whom you longed only to submit. There they both were, half naked in the kitchen, the back door open, the noise of birdsong fading under the gathering roar of the kettle. Justin said, “Shall we do housewife surprised over breakfast by meter-reader? Or are these the Lucy Rie plates?”

Robin said, “Mike Hall rang and asked us to go round. They’re having the new man from “Ambages.” I imagine he wants some moral support.”

“I’m not sure I can give that,” said Justin. “What’s his name?”

He was very cheered by the thought of a social evening, with old people.

Robin went to the phone, where he’d written it down. “His name’s Adrian Ringrose.”

Justin raised an eyebrow. “He sounds like the ballet critic of a provincial newspaper.”

“That’s what he may well have been. I think he’s retired down here.”

“He’ll be awfully glad he’s met us,” said Justin, with a companionable yawn, and a sense of the significance of the first person plural. “Still, there’s lots of time before then.”

“Masses,” Robin agreed, and raised his eyebrows optimistically. He had taken the day off work, to be with Justin, which was both comforting and oppressive. He came back across the room to sit beside him on the sofa, and put a hand on his thigh.

Justin said, “Shall we have a game of Scrabble, darling?” in a special broody tone.

Robin seemed to ponder for a moment if this was code for something even more enjoyable, and then modified his caress into an encouraging rub. “Sure, if you really want to.”

“I do, darling.”

“Okay.” Robin jumped up to get things ready, with a slightly exaggerated air of keenness and self-denial, like a hospital visitor. Their two previous games of Scrabble had been reduced to absurdity or even aborted by Justin’s childish resentment of the rules. It was especially risky if they played one of the Woodfield variants, where the rules had been devised by Robin himself. “What shall we play?”

“I don’t mind, darling. You decide.” Justin was charmed by his own cosiness and pliancy, and couldn’t have said how ironic he was being, or where it would all lead. “Something a bit different?” He knew that Robin and his mother had played obsessively in her last years, and that Lady Astrid had made and memorised a list of all the two-letter words in the language.