Tales of Persuasion. Philip Hensher

sofas. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ Eduardo said. He was in a white shirt, unbuttoned to below his nipples, and quite an ordinary pair of jeans from which the labelled waistband of a pair of white pants emerged, whether by design or chance; he wore no shoes, and once more Fitzgerald allowed himself to be dazzled by the broad dark feet, the dazzling emergence of the dark breast from the flutters of a new white shirt. It was too much.

      ‘Is anyone getting you a drink?’ Fitzgerald said.

      ‘I’m fine, I don’t want one,’ Eduardo said. ‘I don’t know why Daniel’s having this party. They all come and say hello, then they leave me, they go off into their bathroom and they have a line. I don’t like to drink, I don’t like to do line. It makes you fat.’

      ‘Don’t you like a party?’

      ‘Oh, sure, but I like to dance, and no one’s dancing here. That’s not dancing,’ indicating the wobbling pair, whose attempts to mambo to Perez Prado had turned into a more or less successful attempt to hold each other up. ‘No one wants to dance, or talk, or anything but get drunk and high and then go to a club, maybe. And they all sleep with someone who isn’t their boyfriend. I never do that. I think if a man’s your boyfriend, you keep yourself for him and he keeps himself for you. That’s what I think. Daniel thinks I’m crazy but I know he’s happy I’m a good boy like that.’

      ‘Well, Eduardo,’ Fitzgerald said. He was so much more beautiful than anyone else there, so much more. ‘One day soon I’ll have a party for you, and people will dance and talk, and not sleep with anyone who isn’t their boyfriend afterwards.’

      ‘Thank you, you’re sweet,’ Eduardo rattled off, scowling at the room.

      ‘I don’t think anyone here understands you,’ Fitzgerald said.

      Eduardo seemed to ignore this, but something in his demeanour, like a dog pricking up its ears at the faint noise or sniff of prey two hundred yards off, encouraged Fitzgerald.

      ‘I don’t think you show people what you’re really like,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘I think I know what the real you is like.’

      ‘I don’t think you do,’ Eduardo said. ‘I don’t think anyone does. Sometimes I don’t think I do, even.’

      ‘Well, I think I have some idea,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘You’re really beautiful, do you know that?’

      ‘Oh, everyone says that,’ Eduardo said, the air of the attentive dog suddenly switching off. ‘It’s so boring, people saying that, it means nothing. I’m going to dance.’

      ‘Let’s dance,’ Fitzgerald said desperately, and leant forward; he meant to take Eduardo’s arm as a dancing partner might, but some movement of Eduardo’s, some inability of Fitzgerald’s to execute a suave gesture, meant that first his right hand, then the other, landed on Eduardo’s upper thigh.

      Eduardo pushed him off angrily. ‘Leave me alone,’ he said, getting up. ‘Daniel was right about you. You’re just the same as everyone else.’

      ‘Yes, he does that to people,’ Bradbury said to Fitzgerald, gliding past. Humiliatingly, the episode had amused the whole party, including even the terrible Irishman, who was tittering behind his hands. ‘Don’t worry, Graham. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. I’m going to Munich for four days next week. Take him to the zoo this time. He’d like that, I expect.’

      Fitzgerald punished himself; he only had himself to blame. A little more leisurely, a few more compliments about his beauty, and Eduardo would be eased into his bed. That was how it was done, wasn’t it? Involuntarily, he thought about his greyish crumpled sheets, the pillows and the holed duvet scattered about his fetid retreat, and revised the picture: seducing Eduardo onto the no-doubt immaculate and crisp sheets of Bradbury’s vast and snowy bed. All the next day, he lay on the sofa, groaning when he thought of what he had said and done, in front of an audience who despised him anyway. Timothy Storey was out for the day, God knew where; he settled into the depression in the sofa, the buffalo wallow she had made in the previous weeks of lying down. He did not have the excuse, for last night’s behaviour, of drunkenness, either; he hoped Eduardo might assume, as they did, that Londoners were drunk most of the time.

      Around three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, the telephone rang, and he leapt for it. He was conscious that Bradbury’s ‘four days’ meant that he might have gone on Monday, but had definitely gone on Tuesday. He set about immediately constructing a scene in which Eduardo was offering him the opportunity to apologize, in which Eduardo was apologizing, in which Eduardo had considered his offer and, now that Bradbury had gone to Munich and Eduardo was alone in the house—

      It was a woman’s voice. ‘Is Timothy Storey there?’

      ‘No,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘She’s out.’

      ‘Well, could you pass on a message? Tell her that Mrs Baxter from Ealing called, and she’d very much like to know where her aubergine bath sheet and matching hand towels are. It’s not a joke. Those were expensive towels she’s waltzed off with.’

      Fitzgerald knew those purple towels: he kicked them out of his way on the bathroom floor most mornings, wondering who on earth bought purple towels. ‘I’ll tell her,’ he said equably.

      ‘It’s really too bad,’ Mrs Baxter said, relenting as she talked. ‘Have you let her a room? I’d just like to give you some advice. Count your towels before she leaves.’

      ‘I’m puzzled,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘This is Ealing in London you’re calling from, right? When was she living with you?’

      ‘Till two weeks ago,’ Mrs Baxter said. ‘It’s taken me that long to get this number out of her people in Kenya. She was with me for six months. I had to pretend to her family that I’d bought her a gold necklace and I wanted it to be a surprise for her. Otherwise they wouldn’t give me her new number – they’re no fools. She told me she was going back to Africa, but of course I didn’t believe that. She came to me from a friend of a friend in Acton, and I’ve just heard she had concerns about some missing knives. Sounds like she’s preparing to furnish a flat. At our expense, if you don’t mind me giving you some advice.’

      ‘I’ll let her know,’ Fitzgerald said, and put the phone down. Rage filled his soul.

      ‘I said that,’ Timothy Storey said, when she returned and Fitzgerald asked her for some more details. ‘I do come from Kenya. Mrs Baxter didn’t tell you that I didn’t come from Africa, did she?’

      ‘But you asked me to meet you at Paddington,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘I thought you’d come from Kenya just that moment. I thought you were coming on the Heathrow Express.’

      ‘Oh, no,’ Timothy Storey said. ‘I was coming from Southall on the train. It’s only fourteen minutes, it’s quite convenient. Mrs Baxter says she lives in Ealing, but it’s really Southall, she thinks it sounds smarter. It was nice of you to meet me at Paddington. I could have made my own way here, but I thought it would be good if we met somewhere neutral before you took me home – you hear such awful stories. Mrs Baxter, she was a bitch from Hell, I’ll tell you. She was always complaining about me watching TV when she wanted to watch something, and telling me I shouldn’t be lying on the couch eating snacks, and there was something on the other side she wanted to watch, like she owned the TV or something.’

      ‘But she did own the TV,’ Fitzgerald said, almost incapable of speech. ‘Didn’t she?’

      ‘No, I mean the TV channels, like she owned the TV channels. She always had her own thing she wanted to watch. She was a prize bitch. I’m glad to be out of there.’

      ‘You know,’ Fitzgerald said, ‘I think I’m going to have to ask you to move out. I don’t think you’ve been truthful with me at all.’

      ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that,’ Timothy Storey said. ‘I like it here. It’s been nice of you to let me have the room for nothing, but some people might wonder why a single man wanted to have a girl to stay in his house and gave