Джон Бойн - A Ladder to the Sky

‘Well, I suppose if I’m anything, I’m straight,’ I said. ‘Although I don’t feel an enormous pull in any direction these days. I never really did, if I’m honest. I was never a terribly sexual person, not even when I was your age. Perhaps I’m missing a certain hormone, I don’t know, but it was just something that was never very important to me. Are you driven by sex, Theo?’

He blushed a little and I felt pleased to be able to discombobulate him, for he had been too in control of today’s meeting for my liking.

‘Well, I mean I like it,’ he said. ‘When I can get it, that is.’

‘And do you have a girlfriend?’

‘No.’

‘A boyfriend?’

‘No.’

‘All right.’ I smiled at him, wondering whether he was going to give me anything else, but it seemed that he was determined to stick to his role as interlocutor.

‘Anyway,’ I said finally, ‘I’m pretty certain that that part of my life is behind me. Can I just say,’ I added after a moment, not wanting to scare him away, ‘just so there’s no confusion, I haven’t invited you here in order to seduce you, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘What?’ he said, looking at me now with an expression of such surprise on his face that I realized he hadn’t been thinking anything of the sort.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I’m misreading things. I was worried that you thought I was agreeing to these meetings for some unsavoury reason. That I’ve only taken an interest in you because I want to form a romantic attachment. I just want to reassure you that nothing could be further from the truth.’

‘I honestly hadn’t even considered it,’ he said. ‘Not for a moment.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘How embarrassing. For me, I mean.’

‘I mean, if you are interested in me in that way—’

‘I’m genuinely not. It’s the furthest thing from my mind, I promise you. I was simply concerned that’s what you thought and wanted to set your mind at rest. I can see that all I’ve achieved is the opposite. Let’s talk about something else. I think I’ve made rather a fool of myself.’

‘It’s okay.’

He looked as if he wanted the ground to open up beneath him and I cursed my own stupidity. Was I going to lose him now? I couldn’t risk anything like that. He needed to finish his thesis and it needed to become a book. For that to happen, I needed to focus. I decided it was time to give him something. A small morsel to stimulate his appetite.

‘Actually,’ I said at last, ‘if you don’t mind, I’d like to confide something in you.’

‘Really?’ he asked, looking up hopefully.

‘Yes. Something for your thesis. Something I’ve never really talked about before.’

He turned another page in his notebook, his pen hovering over the paper. His eagerness was endearing.

‘I want to be honest with you, you see,’ I continued. ‘And I agree with you that it’s important that your thesis is a work of true integrity. Especially if it’s to become the basis of a full book. You’re still planning on that, I hope?’

‘Well, yes. But that’s a long way—’

‘Good. I want to tell you something about Dash Hardy.’

‘The American writer?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think I read somewhere that he was a mentor to you, is that right? When you were starting out, I mean.’

‘I’m not quite sure that I’d describe him in those terms,’ I replied, ‘although he probably would have. But, to be fair, yes, he was very generous towards me. Have you read any of his books, Theo?’

‘No, I’ve never got around to them,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘Are they worth reading?’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I mean, one or two maybe. But there are so many books out there in the world that I wouldn’t bother if I were you. You won’t find anything particularly interesting in them. Not today. They’re very much of their time. I met Dash many years ago, not long after I met Erich Ackermann, as it happens. Our paths crossed in the Prado in Madrid and, like Erich, he was entranced by me. They were both homosexuals, of course, but very different types. Where Erich was content just to stare at me across the dining tables of Europe, fantasizing about a relationship that would never come to fruition, Dash came straight out and told me what he wanted on the day that we met. He wasn’t looking for romance, he said, he didn’t want a lifelong companion or someone to show up on his arm at parties. He just wanted to fuck me. Really, I admired his forthrightness. And so I let him. The very night that we met, in fact, but never again after that. I drifted towards him after I parted from Erich because he had a higher profile in the States but, in retrospect, I think I may have treated him unkindly. You see, when we met, he just desired me, so the sex was probably not that interesting, but after that he fell in love, desperately in love, and the moment he did I made sure to deny him everything he wanted. I would barely let him put his arms around me and certainly never let him in my bed again. The poor man went around in a state of such abject misery that one day, having grown tired of him following me around like a bewildered puppy, I announced that I’d grown bored of him and didn’t want to see him ever again. It was just after we’d spent an evening at Gore Vidal’s house on the Amalfi Coast, in fact. I broke the bad news to him while we were driving back down the mountain. Actually, I waited until we got close to the bottom in case he drove us over a cliff. Gore wasn’t my biggest fan, I should say. He felt that I was just using Dash to get a good American publisher and that, once I had what I wanted, I would walk away.’

‘And was he right?’

I shrugged. ‘He wasn’t entirely wrong. But that was Gore. You couldn’t make a fool of him. Only a fool, in fact, would have tried.’

‘And you did all this consciously?’

‘Yes. What can I say? I was ambitious. I still am.’

He hesitated for a moment. ‘That’s quite an admission,’ he said.

‘It is,’ I said, feigning surprise. ‘Oh, I’m not sure it amounts to very much. Although, are you aware that Dash committed suicide?’

‘No.’

‘Well, he did. Years later, mind you, but not long after he’d run into me again at the Hay Festival. The poor man looked as depressed as ever, and I suppose seeing me again after all that time re-lit the flames that he’d tried so hard to extinguish and he decided to end it all. He contacted me after our brief encounter, you see, and begged me to come back to him. He said that he’d never stopped loving me and that he would do anything if I would simply return. I just laughed, told him I wasn’t even slightly interested. I was seeing Edith at the time, anyway, the woman who would become my wife. I told him I could scarcely imagine anything more tedious than returning to a life with him in New York and he shouldn’t bother me again. Later that evening, he hanged himself in the apartment we’d once shared in Manhattan. I suppose, in some ways, I have his death on my conscience.’

‘I see,’ said Theo, thinking about this. I could see his eyes moving back and forth as he wondered how best to use this in his thesis. He waited a long time before speaking again and I determined not to break the silence. ‘Well, you can’t blame yourself for what he chose to do,’ he said eventually, a certain hesitation in his tone. ‘I’m sure you didn’t intentionally hurt him.’

‘Are you?’ I asked, smiling.

‘Well, you didn’t, did you?’

I was still smiling. It was decent of him to think that. Time to pull back a little. I didn’t want to make myself out to be too much of a monster. ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I was young, that’s all. And we all take a little help where we can get it when we’re that age. But still, if I could go back in time, perhaps I would have acted a little more kindly towards him.’