‘Let’s not bother, then,’ said Tony. ‘I’ll go home and watch Millionaire Matchmaker and have my lunch.’
For a long time, Bill and Tony had met up every other month or so, but it had been harder over the last decade. Tony would try to steer a steady path between the perils that always threatened to capsize their fragile, leaky little boat: he didn’t talk about work (because Bill didn’t have any), or June (because Bill’s life-partner, a younger man called Christopher, turned out to be no such thing and left him), or more or less anything that indicated happiness and fulfilment. Tony didn’t mind long, brooding conversations about the state of the BBC and the dismal savagery of modern comedy; he too was confused by it. But in the end the discourse became so repetitive that when Bill stopped calling Tony didn’t chase him.
It wasn’t the pursuit of art that had impoverished Bill; he just didn’t work hard enough, and when he did write, he wrote the wrong things. Diary of a Soho Boy had done well, but he’d taken too long to write his second book, and his second book, when it finally appeared, was almost identical to its predecessor. He’d survived on his royalties, for a while, and the film option he sold, and the money he’d been given to write the screenplay, but he’d never finished it, as far as Tony knew, and it had saddened him to see it mentioned in the BAFTA programme as a work in progress. There was nothing going on there, and nobody was ever going to make a film of it. Diary of a Soho Boy was old hat now. It was still in print, but only students of gay history wanted to read it these days. Twenty-first-century homosexuals in Britain had their own literature, different lives, new problems. Fear of imprisonment wasn’t one of them. It had gone the way of polio and rickets.
Christopher had paid for everything in the last fifteen years of their relationship. Tony hadn’t known him well, but he knew him to be a kind man, and he’d almost certainly tired of the relationship, and Bill’s hopeless dependency, long before he actually left. Tony had ‘loaned’ Bill money in the past, and he could see that if they were going to have another stab at working together, he wouldn’t be able to avoid another request.
The coffee arrived, and Bill picked up his cup with two hands and trembling fingers.
‘Be nice to put a drop of something in here,’ said Bill.
Tony ignored him.
‘Just to get us going.’
Tony put the laptop back in his briefcase and found a notebook and a ballpoint pen.
‘We don’t drink,’ said Tony. ‘Not during the day.’
Clive and Sophie met in an Italian restaurant in Kensington Church Street, a few doors down from where the Tratt used to be. It had been Clive’s suggestion, and the sentimentality made Sophie feel a little queasy; one of the many difficulties of ageing, she found, was that people wanted to rekindle friendships the cheap and easy way, by pressing buttons – old jobs, old friends, old restaurants – without doing any of the work. But Clive didn’t know London very well any more and she couldn’t think of anywhere better.
‘May I begin by telling you how beautiful you’re looking?’ he said. ‘I won’t say that you don’t look a day older, but you have aged in a most charming way.’
‘It wouldn’t kill you to say I don’t look a day older,’ said Sophie. ‘You last saw me at Dennis’s funeral three years ago. And I was a wreck.’
‘I was thinking about the other night. The BAFTA thing.’
‘I’ve only aged four days since then.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I’ve now lost track of the compliment,’ said Sophie.
‘You look well.’
‘Oh. Is that what it boils down to?’ She pouted to indicate disappointment, and Clive laughed.
‘Did you enjoy seeing the shows again?’
‘It was complicated. You?’
‘You know, I don’t really want to spend the whole lunch talking about the past,’ said Clive.
‘What an annoying thing to say.’
‘Why?’
‘Because nobody was asking you to. Because you just asked me about the other night, so out of politeness I asked you the same question. Because we wouldn’t even be sitting here if it wasn’t for the past, and for people wanting to talk about the past.’
‘If it’s any consolation to you, I regret everything,’ said Clive. ‘And I always have.’
‘When you say you regret everything …’
‘Related to Barbara (and Jim), and my part in its downfall.’
‘I’m going to shove a breadstick up your nose in a minute,’ said Sophie.
‘What have I done now?’
‘Why on earth would your regret be a consolation to me?’ said Sophie.
‘I just thought you’d like to know.’
‘No.’
‘It doesn’t give you any satisfaction?’
‘No.’
‘You weren’t annoyed with me?’
‘No.’