Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

Margaret's voice sounded just the same as Bottles, as if it were the sixteen-year-old on the phone. Except that she didn't call him Babe and was content to stay with her all-purpose native London accent. Her voice was calm, and soft and business-like all at the same time.

'A lot of people are very frightened by the test, so it's good that you want to come in with him. Does he have any problems with confidentiality?'

'Um, in what way?'

'If he's paranoid about one thing he may be paranoid about other things. Like being seen by anyone.'

'Could we come in after hours?'

'It's an imposition,' she told him directly. 'But if it will make the difference between him coming in or not, then I'll do it. But it can only be this Wednesday night.'

Her clinic turned out to be attached to a hospital in the East End. The door was locked, but he rang and she herself opened it.

Margaret's hair was the colour of carrots, like his mother's used to be. Michael had the feeling that the hair and her long loose Chinese jacket were all carefully calculated to strike the right balance of flamboyance and reliability. She was like a civil servant with a past. I used to be quite interesting, but now I'm reliable. It was a balance inclined to create trust on both sides: the ill and the official health establishment. Her voice was motherly, concerned, and extremely cautious. Every word was carefully rehearsed; not so much chosen as identified over thousands of ticklish interviews as being the most appropriate thing to say.

Yup. Bottles was dead.

'Hello,' she said to Michael's companion, and held out her hand. 'My name's Margaret, I'm an old friend of Michael's.' She was searching his face with concern.

'So am I. My name's Mark.'

Mark was tall, broad-shouldered with wavy red hair streaked with grey. He had died five years before from Aids.

Michael had met Mark at Sussex University. Mark was in the Army, studying under some kind of Army grant, and he was big and muscular and freckled and slightly overripe. He wore cravats and played polo, and wore a green carnation in honour of Oscar Wilde.

Mark was one of Michael's more spectacular missed opportunities. They met in drama club and were doing an experimental piece that involved a lot of stretching, yoga and jumping about. It was easier than being talented. At one point they all had to lie on the floor on their tummies and put their heads on someone else's bum.

The entire time Michael's heavy head rested on Mark's bottom, he flexed his cheek muscles, up and down. Michael's head wiggled. Mark turned back and grinned naughtily. He had a general's face, lumpy and attractive rather than pretty, and he had a soldier's lumpy body. Jolie-laide , they might call it in France. Butch, Michael called it. He was unable to believe that someone so masculine and so military whom he fancied so very much could actually be gay. Instead, just to stop Mark's flexing, he bit the bum very hard.

'You must be hungry,' said Mark. He spoke rather like Noel Coward. 'Why don't you come back to my flat and have another bite to eat.'

Michael managed to pretend to himself that this was an invitation to supper.

So he showed up with a bottle of wine, and talked in a prolonged way about the director, a woman called Rosie. Mark began to look wistful. Rosie fancied Mark, and had asked Michael to find out if he was gay. Even this was not enough to trigger the conscious thought in Michael that the man he fancied might fancy him.

So Michael pumped Mark for information about his reaction to Rosie, which confused the issue more.

'I'm afraid I'm a bit inexperienced with women. I imagine you're not,' said Mark.

'Tuh. Not that much experienced. But I get along with them.'

'Well, perhaps you can show me how to as well.'

'I'd be really surprised if I had anything to teach you about women.'

When someone wants you, they admire you. You seem larger to them than you actually are, which is why it's difficult to believe they can or do love you, and not some image they've made up. It was hard for Michael to imagine that this strapping, athletic, outgoing, happy man admired him, respected him. It was simply unthinkable that he actually desired him.

So. Nothing happened.

There was a florid would-be Englishman at Sussex. He was in fact South African, and tried to live up to an image of England that had more to do with Bloomsbury than the new era of Margaret Thatcher. He kept talking about Virginia Woolf and Quentin Bell, and 'real universities' like Oxford. He ran the literary society and wore white suits and once, even a straw boater. Michael detested him.

About six months after his dinner, Michael saw Mark with this man together in Sainsbury's, plainly doing domestic shopping together, having a slightly acid conversation over the right choice of coffee.

Michael said hello, and Mark's chest swelled with pride as he introduced John, who said coolly, 'We know each other. Michael acts, doesn't he?' Mark seemed to display their married condition like another green carnation, and Michael ended the conversation, blinded by an inexplicable headache.

Mark and he stayed friends. The straw boater had married Mark in an attempt to marry old England. Mark realized this, as the bickering got worse. 'He's a bit of a fraud, actually,' Mark said lightly to Michael in the student bar. 'He's moved out. I'm doing some reassessing. I'm beginning to understand that, as much as I love it, the Army and I aren't meant for each other either.'

It would be illegal, in fact.

Mark became someone who added up. This made him less surprising. He dropped his science course, and took art history. He saved money to pay back the Army for their grants. He went on to run an art gallery. Somewhere in all those changes, he and Michael managed to become best friends, especially after Michael had met Philip.

Philip worshipped Mark. My ex-Army gallery owner who also plays rugby, Philip enthused, and took him to parties without Michael. Mark could more than hold his own at arty gatherings at which he doggedly wore blazers and cravats.

Mark never introduced his boyfriends. Mark's boyfriends evidently were not quite fit to be introduced. It was the first time that Michael noted a tendency in Mark towards secrecy. He kept aspects of his life in separate compartments.

Mark had developed a taste for leather and rough trade. He moved in with a rich banker, but they weren't lovers. They shared servants, and a games room, and gave parties in which people wore leather crotchless knickers. They called their joint townhouse the Cock Exchange. Michael never really felt comfortable with the grandees he met there, or the way in which the banker, especially, treated the people who worked for him.

Mark's face and manner remained disconcertingly fresh-faced. His eyebrows went prematurely shaggy, like an old general's, but there was something in his expression that reminded Michael of a child. He looked like a little boy who could play innocent.

Mark began to be away a lot on business or make excuses when invited to dinner, and to drive an old banger which he saw no point in replacing. He was ill and didn't want Michael to worry.

What do you say to someone who has died and who was one of the few people you could really talk to?

Perhaps you look at his face, suddenly returned to you, and consider saying all the things you never had a chance to say. You consider saying: you were a hero to me. You were so many things; it wasn't just the Army or the sport. There was your political work for the Labour Party, though everything about you signalled Tory. There was the way you knew the market value of every piece that came your way, including things you hated like the Pre-Raphaelites. There was the way you could explain to me how Picasso was a genius, so that I've seen Picasso differently ever since. There was the way you fixed your car, and the way you spent all Saturday afternoon playing rugby and two hours every Sunday morning tending your stocks and shares. There was the way you could give me advice on how to apply for research grants, advice that worked, or who at the Poly knew they had support in high places. You were astute and kind and sensible and strong.