Tales of Persuasion. Philip Hensher

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СКАЧАТЬ just yet. He took a seat. In the recesses of a flat, a door clanged; the waters of a shower began to hiss.

      When Eduardo presented himself, he was in holiday wear; a pair of white low-slung jeans, advertising the wares, and a sexily much-washed and faded black T-shirt. On his hairy, broad, flat feet, a pair of sandals identifying themselves as Versace. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Where do we go?’

      In the taxi to Sloane Square and the tube to Richmond, Eduardo was evasive, short-sentenced, hardly observing Fitzgerald’s company at all from behind his sunglasses. Fitzgerald made a couple of observations about passing objects, but then left it; some people, or so he believed, were not at their conversational best in the morning. At Earl’s Court, an acquaintance of Fitzgerald’s got on – one of his commissioning editors from way back, when Fitzgerald was still writing for gay magazines at a hundred pounds a pop. He stood in front of Fitzgerald, his eyes wandering constantly to Eduardo; the train was full, and it did not appear to occur to him that Fitzgerald could be accompanied by someone like Eduardo. When Eduardo said impatiently, ‘How many more stops?’ Fitzgerald introduced him; he noticed that Eduardo was just as brief with the editor, whose eyes were wandering back to Fitzgerald, perhaps considering whether he had missed something vital about Fitzgerald in the first place.

      ‘This is nice,’ Eduardo said, once in the park. ‘I like to walk.’ Over there was the white-icing façade of the royal lodge – or was it the ballet school – or White Lodge? Somewhere in the park was the Isabella Plantation. Fitzgerald remembered being taken to it, the dense displays of magnolia and rhododendron, whatever. He recalled walls of white and pink flowers; he did not think it was worth while dragging Eduardo about the place in search of somewhere so pensioner-friendly. Over there was a copse, heading the hill, and a single white cloud in the sky, quivering still on this warm morning. Eduardo flung himself down on the slope, made a single twisting gesture with his fists at either hipbone, and drew his T-shirt over his head. In the open air, there was the brief gust of that smell of Eduardo’s: clean, but animal, and suggestive to Fitzgerald. Eduardo screwed his T-shirt up into a pillow, and placed it beneath his head. Lying back, his torso was articulated like architecture. The twin lines headed downwards into his low-slung trousers as if towards the point of a V; they bracketed about his solid abdominal muscles, like the lines of a pendentive on a dome, lightly furred. Fitzgerald sat down too, drawing his knees up and hugging them tight.

      ‘Look,’ he said, after a while, more for the pleasure of seeing the concertina-fold of Eduardo’s stomach as he sat up than anything else. ‘There are the deer.’

      They had been there for a while, in fact. They were a herd of does and month-old fawns; a great buck or two could be seen, much further off. The mothers were performing a small ballet of rush and delay: of eating, of raising their heads, then making a short communal run before stopping again. The spontaneous and sudden movements separated by pauses of still and quiet had something moving about it to Fitzgerald. He wondered whether Stubbs had ever painted does with their fawns.

      Eduardo propped himself up on his elbows, inspecting the herd. ‘They are big animals,’ he said. ‘You don’t know deer, they are such big animals. I thought they were the same size as, I don’t know, as a goose, but they are big.’

      ‘Yes, they are big,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘The males are bigger.’

      Eduardo took this without comment. ‘You know, it’s strange that nobody ever eats deer,’ he said. ‘Every other animal, they eat them. Sheep, they eat them. Beef, they eat them. Pig, they eat them. Veal, they eat them. Fish, they eat them. I never heard of anybody eating deer.’

      ‘People eat deer,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘It’s called venison. It’s good. I don’t know whether people eat the deer in Richmond Park, though.’

      ‘I never heard of that,’ Eduardo said. ‘I don’t think that’s right. I never heard of anyone eating deer, or what did you say?’

      ‘Venison,’ Fitzgerald said. Presently, Eduardo lowered himself back onto his pillow, and behind his mirrored Aviator sunglasses, his eyes closed; in a few moments, his hands folded on his chest, his slightly open mouth began to emit faint whiffles. And Fitzgerald admired the view.

      Fitzgerald went round to Bradbury’s flat the following day at ten thirty in the morning – he didn’t want to make a habit of waking Eduardo up, if he was not a morning sort of person. He went to his usual café first, and picked up two croissants and two cups of some take-out coffee – a cappuccino with skimmed milk and without chocolate on top for him, a double espresso, which was what he believed South Americans drank for breakfast, for Eduardo. A different voice answered the intercom – not Eduardo’s, but not Bradbury’s either. A small Vietnamese woman opened the door to him, dressed in a plastic coverall. She explained that Mr Bradbury was not at home, and that his friend who was staying had gone out. She looked at Fitzgerald, wearing a pair of white jeans, sandals on his hairy white Irish feet and a washed-out black T-shirt, carrying two paper cups of coffee, one in each hand, and the neck of a paper bag awkwardly between the fourth and fifth fingers. ‘If you like, you can give me his breakfast,’ she said. ‘I think he’s Mr Bradbury’s boyfriend, the one who stays here,’ and she made a small, amused expression on her small, experienced face.

      Timothy Storey was lying on the sofa when he returned, some time after eleven. ‘Was it with that handsome fella you went to Richmond Park?’ she asked.

      ‘Eduardo, yes.’

      ‘Is he a half-caste?’ Timothy Storey said.

      ‘No,’ Fitzgerald said, with distaste. ‘He’s Argentinian.’

      ‘You know how you tell a half-caste – because some of them, they look really as if they could be white? You take a look at their gums, and they’re sort of bluish. It’s hard to describe, but they never lose that.’

      ‘I see,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘I must keep it in mind.’

      On the television, a boy like a rat was assuring a girl very much like Timothy Storey that he had not slept with her mother; the girl was assuring the boy in return that the baby she had just given birth to was his. ‘Do you ever watch this?’ Timothy Storey said. ‘We don’t have programmes like this in Africa. This is great.’

      ‘Normally, I have too much work to do in the mornings to watch television,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘When does your course start, Timothy? Shouldn’t you be in college or something?’

      ‘They’re going to make them take a lie-detector test,’ Timothy Storey said. ‘I love it when they do that.’

      ‘Where is your college, anyway?’

      ‘I think it’s in Canning Town,’ Timothy Storey said. ‘Is that close to here?’

      ‘Not very,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘You’ll need to be out early in the morning to get to classes on time.’

      ‘Oh, I don’t think it’s really that sort of college,’ Timothy Storey said. ‘You pay them a fee and they get you a student visa, but I don’t think they expect to see you at classes or anything. It’s just to get you into the country, and then you see how long you can stay before they catch up with you. The visa don’t know your address, though. I would reckon I’m pretty safe for a few months holing up here. Is that a coffee going spare?’

      Bradbury came back from Paris the next day, and though of course he worked during the day, there would be more of a sneaking-around aspect to calling on Eduardo. The combination of Bradbury being away and Fitzgerald knowing that Bradbury was away would not necessarily coincide soon. But before Fitzgerald СКАЧАТЬ