Alan Hollinghurst - The Spell

He said, surprised by his own note of involuntary bitterness, “Well, there’s not much to keep me in this country.” When you had an audience you could say things easily that were almost impossible to bring out one-to-one, even in bed. Though perhaps it was also easy to say too much.

Mike said, “I suppose we could hang each bell-ringer from his individual rope.”

“I’m quite getting used to it,” said Margery. “I think we’ll all rather miss it when it stops.” Then, seeing Alex had got up and was going towards the door, she said, “It’s across the hall and turn left.” He blinked and went out.

The conversation ambled on, given sly prods and perverse turns by Justin, who seemed to feel responsible for the success of the occasion, in a way that he never did at home. Mike was wincing at the wall, too caught up in the smoulder of his outrage to make his usual polemical sallies. Danny had the childish sensation of being ignored and unvalued after his clumsy moment in the spotlight. He couldn’t think about how cruel he had just been to Alex, and when he tried to run through his resignation speech again it had a horrible echoless deadness to it, like something said in a recording studio. He looked along the faces of the others, wondering what they were talking about. His father’s expression was specially husbandly and benign. Then Danny found Justin was staring privately at him, and he knew he was right when he twitched his head towards the door. “I must just go too,” Danny said under his breath as he slipped out.

The lavatory door was shut, and he waited for a minute outside, suddenly fidgety for a pee himself. Then he thought, well he’s still my boyfriend, and tapped and went in. But Alex wasn’t there; and in the white emptiness of the stuffy little room Danny knew the crisis had closed in on him. As he peed he looked sideways into the mirror, and saw how terribly beautiful he was: the image itself was reflected again off some hard vain surface deep in his eye, and he thought, with easy pity, how little Alex would want to lose him. On the narrow shelf above the basin was a thinning hairbrush, and a comb, and a square bottle of cologne: he pulled out the stopper to confirm it was the one they had been breathing all evening, and turned down his mouth in the mirror when he saw it was called “Bien-Etre.”

Alex was sitting on the back-door step, looking down the sloping, untidy garden. Danny came through the kitchen and sat beside him, but without touching him. Alex said, “Oh Dan” – it was very rare for him to call him by name.

“I’m sorry,” Danny said. He thought perhaps by some miracle Alex had understood everything.

“I really do think you might have told me about this US thing.”

“Yeah…”

“You terrify me at times.” Alex reached for his hand, and he let him hold it, but without any return of pressure. “I mean, what happens to us? I can come and see you, of course. I look forward to that. But it’s hardly very convenient.”

“Well”

“Or perhaps you’re not really going,” Alex went on, in a tetchily forgiving tone. “But if you are it would have been nice not to have heard it announced in the middle of a drinks-party.”

They had never had a row, merely separate hurts and irritations which they seduced each other out of. Danny saw that he hadn’t done this right, and it made him sulkily aggressive. “I may not go,” he said, and withdrew his hand.

“I mean, I’m your boyfriend. That lanky bloke whose arms are round you when you wake up, and who then goes off to make your breakfast: that’s me.”

“Yeah, I wondered who it was,” said Danny. “Look, it doesn’t really matter whether I’m here or in San Diego, I can’t go on seeing you, Alex.”

Alex had already drawn the breath that should have carried his next remark, but he halted and let it out in a tragic sigh.

Danny stood up and strolled back across the kitchen and drew a glass of water. The whisky was giving him a slight headache; rather like poor Heinrich…“I’m very sorry,” he said.

When he glanced round, Alex was sitting in the same place, but tipped sideways against the door-frame, as though he had been thrown there by a blast. The pose was somehow histrionic and got on Danny’s nerves. He saw him roll his head, once, quickly, to see where he was, and Danny had the feeling that he himself had become the embodiment of something dreaded, that could hardly be looked at.

Back in the sitting-room he was told to help himself to another drink. He knew he had been sobered by the adrenalin of the past five minutes, and unexpectedly humiliated by Alex snapping at him to leave him alone. The others all seemed pathetically drunk and old. Adrian was asking about ladies-that-did, and various village names were rummaged for, each followed by a horrifying cautionary anecdote.

“We’ve never had any fucking charwoman,” said Mike; which nobody pretended to be surprised by.

Justin said, “You can always have nude housework done, of course.”

Adrian pursed his lips, but would clearly have liked to know more.

Mike said, in a marvelling monotone, “You lot talk so much fucking tripe.”

“I’m not against nude housework,” said Margery, “but I think I’d have to go out while it was being done.”

“Where’s the silent Scotsman?” said Mike. “Polishing his nails?”

Danny studied their five faces again; they all had a foolish look of temporary confidence, which he forgot he must often have had himself, in extremer forms too. Even Mike, who got furious on drink, seemed to have entered into a richer and more involving relation with himself. “Alex is just getting a bit of air,” Danny said; at which Mike nodded and drummed his fingers on his knee. Both he and Margery had renounced cigarettes, and the peculiar ashtrays mounted on stirruped thongs had gone from the arms of the sofa; but still the magnolia paintwork was dimly varnished with smoke and gave the room an atmosphere of terminated pleasures. Perhaps the others didn’t care, or were too sozzled to notice the room filling with shadows; but Danny never lost his sense of the speed of time. When he thought of Alex’s epic hesitations – the years without sex, the unaccountable solitariness – it brought him close to a panic of impatience.

He saw that Justin was peering at him again, with a hint of a smile – he couldn’t work out the ironies in it, it seemed encouraging and disappointed at the same time, as well as secretively sexual, as if they already had an agreement to meet up later. He knew he had just done something serious, and needed assurance that he had been right. Then the bells came tumbling down the scale and stopped.

The overtones swam there for a moment, and after that the ear was haunted by the bells and heard them fadingly continuing. The silence was astonishing, being ordinary existence thrown into relief by the hour or more of incessant sound, unwavering in rhythm and volume. And then it wasn’t silence. Mike got up and pushed the windows open, and there was a bird twittering, a car whining as it reversed, the dry runs of an old-fashioned mower, like a child’s rattle. Alex was somewhere outside, in the wilderness of the garden. Danny had been sent in, but he guessed he would have to go back out to him.

Mike sped across the room with the brawler’s roll he had when drunk. “Right!” he said, switching on the old blue-leather Philips gramophone, which he had confidently attached to an even older-looking valve amplifier and big, BDX-size, speakers.

“I think they’ve cut it rather short,” said Adrian, unwisely.

“Don’t get me wrong, Ringrose,” said Mike over his shoulder. “But your bell-ringing pals are fucking cunts.”

“Oh dear,” said Margery.