Dorian Read online

  The interior of the restaurant was vernal in the extreme: great tubs full of blooms stood about, connected by troughs full of shrubbery. The carpet was floral-patterned, the drapes the same, the lighting in this painforest was noonday equatorial. From between two pointy-shouldered PR girls – their dumpling bodies unsuitable for such sharp suiting, their blonde sausage curls and retroussé noses making them altogether spaniel-like – came Phyllis Hawtree. She set off gamely towards Dorian and her son across the trackless waste of carpeting, but the distance was so great they had plenty of time to appreciate quite how mad and ethereal she appeared, with her coiffure so stiff it vibrated with each arthritic step, and her knee and arm both surgically braced. As she drew nearer they could see that her creviced cheek was so powdered that a careless air kisser might find themselves tumbling into her face.

  ‘My mother,’ Wotton whispered, ‘is an intelligent woman who views the distressing of the social fabric with the very real emotion she withholds from all those around her. Like Schopenhauer, the more she loves mankind, the less she loves men.’ Dorian was going to say he thought this was unfair, but it was too late, he was caught in her bony talons.

  ‘Oh Dorian,’ she fluted, ‘I’m so glad you’re here, there are so many people who want to meet you.’ She ignored her son and he took this as his familial due, merely following in her wake as she led Dorian into the throng of superannuated debs, professional faggots and off-the-peg suits – a flat company leavened only by a handful of the requisite donkey-jacketed roll-up smokers (just as a charity event for multiple sclerosis sufferers would have its wheelchair users, or for sickle-cell anaemia its blacks).

  Eventually, after traversing the trench between two buffets, where glistening kiwi fruit cascaded and miniature sausage rolls were piled up like some novel form of ammunition, they reached their target. He was a florid politico in a suit with wide chalk stripes and a yellow waistcoat. He had an impressive lick of chocolate hair over a bulbous brow, and those out-of-control eyebrows which only men firmly within the British Establishment can carry off.

  ‘Dorian,’ Phyllis cooed, ‘this is David Hall, the Member for Bexleyheath, he’s on the Housing Committee. David, this is Dorian Gray, the young man I told you about, the one who’s putting the shelter on a computer… And this is my son,’ she added as an afterthought. Then she evaporated, leaving only the stench of her perfume.

  ‘Are you working voluntarily at the shelter, Mr Gray?’ Hall’s accent was as fruity as the buffet.

  ‘Dorian, please – and yes, there wouldn’t be money to pay me, and I’ve no need of it anyway.’

  ‘What’re you doing, exactly?’

  ‘Oh, this and that, computerising the client list, the donors and so on. I also muck around a bit with some of the regulars… muck about with art materials.’

  ‘Is it a career path for you’ – Hall was amazed – ‘social work?’

  ‘I dunno – I shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘There’s obviously a need for such people, but I wouldn’t have imagined you one of them –’

  ‘Which is all by way of saying,’ Wotton scythed in, ‘if you sympathise too much with pain, you become one.’

  ‘I’m s-sorry?’ Hall spluttered.

  Dorian wasn’t surprised that the MP was taken aback, but more shocking than Wotton’s intervention was his appearance. He looked entirely at ease, his complexion warm, his hair neat, his cuffs shot. It was as if he were a chameleon, assuming the protective coloration of respectability simply by standing in front of it. ‘Bluntly,’ Wotton continued, ‘I’m trying to warn Dorian off this man-of-the-people act. Hypocrisy won’t suit his nature.’

  ‘Do you think…?’ Hall left a gap that begged for the insertion of a name.

  ‘Wotton.’

  ‘Mr Wotton, that all philanthropy can only be for show? Surely it’s only an “act” when viewed with an eye for acting, a cynical eye.’

  ‘I’m sure, Mister Hall, you would agree that the most honest of socialists couldn’t give a toss being poorer, so long as nobody else is richer.’

  ‘D’you think there were any such honest socialists among the youths rioting the other week?’

  ‘Probably, but I know there were definitely some ballet dancers manqué – marvellous, lithe young black guys. I saw them on the news, shattering the windows of shoe stores with the most delicate of high kicks, then selecting the training shoes they wanted, then off they went through the wreckage en faisant des pointes –’ Wotton broke off as a thin, nervous woman approached their group. She was in her forties, prematurely grey, wearing loose trousers and a top which appeared to be woven from a fine hessian. ‘Hello, Jane,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she replied through cracked lips, her brown eyes downcast.

  The apology was not just for the interruption – it was for everything. For colonialism and racism and sexism; for the massacres of Amritsar and Sharpeville and Londonderry; for introducing syphilis to Europe and opium to China and alcoholism to the Aboriginals; for the little Princes in the Tower and the Tower itself. This was manifestly a woman who viewed sackcloth as de rigueur. But Hall saw her as an opportunity to escape, and grabbed on to her with both hands. ‘That’s all right, Jane – we need to talk. I’m sure these blokes won’t mind…’ And he whisked her away.

  Dorian was left with a spluttering Wotton. ‘Christ, he’s awful, a serial realist – the very worst kind.’ He got the capsule out, fiddled, took a snort, then passed it to Dorian.

  Dorian followed suit then asked, ‘What about her?’

  ‘The Duchess? Not that she uses the title – she’s extraordinary. She wove those drabs herself in some godforsaken mud hutment in Uttar Pradesh. She has the finest Palladian house in the world, Narborough, and she’s trying to throw it – along with the rest of her husband’s staggering wealth – into the void.’

  ‘The void?’

  ‘Nirvana, that which is beyond all illusion, the eternal substratum. It’s true that the best kind of woman has an empty head and donates it willingly, but that isn’t Jane’s particular vapidity; she’s genuinely lost in Turgenev’s white void, the only alternative Buddhism offers to the black void of Christian damnation, or materialist extinction. And her house – which would offer a great deal of shelter for a great many youths – is in the process of going the same way.’

  ‘But is she happy?’

  ‘Happy? My dear Dorian, she’s fucking furious. The Buddha is the patron saint of the passive–aggressive.’

  ‘Does she go out in society much?’

  ‘Of course, she’s a fucking duchess. No amount of eccentricity debars her from her own kind. Aristo punks sniff glue together, just as aristo Buddhists meditate together. She’ll be in St Paul’s next month, along with the rest of them. She’ll probably be wearing a special Royal Wedding hair shirt.

  ‘I hate this doghole.’ Wotton suddenly changed tack.

  ‘This’ – he made as if to spit out a gulp of the white wine they’d acquired – ‘is the decoction of the bile of the livers of splenetic Communist Party bagmen in Lyon. These people’ – he gestured at the debs, the suits, the faggots – ‘can’t even make proper use of their own homes, let alone provide shelter for anyone else. That cunt over there is screwing me out’ – it was true, an intense type with spiky hair and wire-rimmed spectacles was staring at Wotton – ‘I want to break free!’ He turned on his heel and made for the distant double doors.

  Dorian remained where he was, and the intense man – who was the volunteer co-ordinator at the project – joined him. Who’s he? the man spat in the direction of Wotton’s retreating back. His own name was a classless John.

  —’Enry Wotton, Dorian sneered, despising himself for the way he automatically dropped into Mockney. ’E’s Phyllis’s son.

  —Why’re you hanging out with him?

  —Friend of a friend.

  —He looks fucking dodgy – John looked Dorian in the eye – like a junky as well as a toff.

&
nbsp; —And a queer – you forgot to say queer.

  —What?! John was nonplussed, but Dorian was gone.

  Meanwhile, Wotton had run into the Ferret, an old crony, by the entrance. The Ferret was staring at Dorian. ‘He’s amazingly beautiful, the one natural flower in this plantation of artifice.’ The Ferret himself was small, and his wrinkled pinhead was liver-spotted. He wore an obvious toupee.

  ‘Yes, well’ – Wotton gave a bashful moue – ‘I’m going to mount him like a butterfly until he whimpers like a hog.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ the Ferret giggled indulgently. ‘All that heroin and cocaine and alcohol and nicotine and marijuana makes your penis very small and completely limp.’

  ‘I tell you, Fergus,’ Wotton said with some seriousness, ‘I’d give up doing drugs altogether, if I wasn’t afraid of other people taking them without me.’

  A waiter was passing and the Ferret took a glass of Perrier before replying, ‘No one’s suggesting that you stop dissipating yourself for one minute, Henry. The IMF are being called into Rome – fiddle on. How’s Baz?’

  ‘I don’t mind discarding any lover – as long as they stay discarded.’

  ‘You’re unnecessarily cruel –’

  ‘And you’re ridiculously old.’

  ‘And he…’ the Ferret chose to disregard the insult, preferring instead to ogle Dorian, who was hovering nearby ‘… he is most lovely. He reminds me of somebody… Can he talk?’

  ‘Who cares. Dorian, this is Fergus; Fergus, this is Dorian. That’s all that it’s necessary for either of you to know now. You’ll both know everything else so soon it’s sickening. Bye.’ And he strode out, obviously expecting Dorian to follow.

  Dorian – with a feeble ‘Excuse me’ to the Ferret – complied.

  In the street, feeling stoned and strange and oddly exalted among the office fodder, Dorian found himself loitering with Wotton in front of a tailor’s window. They contemplated a model gentleman, who was perfect in every way save for being headless. ‘Who is Fergus?’ Dorian asked, for want of any other thought to enunciate.

  ‘The Ferret is immensely rich,’ Wotton obliged, ‘from property deals. He’s also immensely queer; he has his own resident catamites. He’s fairly posh – his father was Lord Rokeby. He’s also nearly psychopathic – he killed a man once in an alleged skiing accident. Quite a feat, as I’m sure you can imagine.’

  And with this, Wotton took his now somnolent and opiated acolyte by the arm and guided him in the direction of the Jag. It was time to take Dorian Gray somewhere else for more intimate and mysterious instruction.

  3

  A week later Henry Wotton called on the Ferret at his maisonette, which was high in one of those blocks on Chelsea Embankment that impart an almost Dutch feel to the view from across the river. It was another hot morning in the city. That summer Britain was in the process of burning most of its remaining illusions, which was why, perhaps, Henry Wotton felt more obliged than ever to drape his warped sensibility in the straightest of garbs. For this particular elevenses he opted for the green corduroy bags, the brown brogues, the powder-blue Pringle sweater, and the check Viyella shirt – what had been, still was and would remain the uniform of the seriously retarded country gent.

  It was difficult to secure an invitation from the Ferret, who had that foible of men who have inherited a fortune and managed to multiply it: he was staggeringly mean. He didn’t want to invite anyone round for a meal because he wanted it all. He wanted to gobble and be gobbled by a procession of Dilly boys. He wanted to snack on warm, free-range coddled eggs, lopped open and dusted with beluga caviar, while drinking the finest Champagne. And it was these victuals that he was obliged to share with Henry Wotton, along with the sanctuary of his equally opulent rooms. Rooms that were like a calm pool of urbanity tucked behind the waterfall of the city.

  The Ferret had serious taste. There were good Persian rugs on the parquet floors, fine modern paintings on the silken yellow walls. The place had an apian smell. Pollen, wax, royal jelly, honey. There were proper bookcases which appropriately sequestrated the Ferret’s serious collection of weighty tomes. Outside, the sweep of the river was unusually glittery in the sun. Inside, all was furtive, comforting gloom.

  The Ferret and his guest were being imperfectly served by the current catamite, yet another Dilly boy, Jon. He was a big, crop-headed bruiser who lent a tin ear to his silver service. Each time Jon offered the rack of toast, Wotton observed the word ‘FUCK’ tattooed on the knuckles of his right hand, and each time he charged Wotton’s glass, the word ‘CUNT’ was manifested on the knuckles of his left. ‘Thank you, Jon,’ said the Ferret; ‘now put it back in the cooler – the bucket, that’s right.’

  Wotton exhaled cigarette smoke over a small silver dish of truffles. ‘I’ve taken a shine to that boy Gray,’ he purred.

  ‘I know,’ his host slurred with fatigue.

  ‘It’s disgusting the way you know everything, Fergus – perhaps you’re God?’

  ‘That would be a turn-up.’ The Ferret appeared to be genuinely pondering the ramifications; at any rate his old, lizard eyes were being occluded by near-transparent lids.

  If the Ferret had been God it would have explained a lot. The occurrence of evil, for one thing, and the extent to which it thrived, because for much of the time he left the world to its own devices and slumbered, a curiously willing victim of narcolepsy. So it was on this occasion: the window of the Ferret’s consciousness was slowly pulled to, and his brow declined towards the smoky truffles. ‘Perhaps, pour m’sieur un petit cachou?’ Wotton mimed pill-popping for Jon’s benefit.

  ‘I was gettin’ one, mate.’ He went to the sideboard and selected a pillbox from a display of bibelots and knick-knacks.

  ‘What’s he on nowadays?’ Wotton adopted the hobbyist’s tone he used for serious drug talk.

  ‘Same as ever, five-mil Dexies in the day, tombstones or bombers if he’s out on the razzle.’

  ‘Spares?’ A twenty-pound note appeared in Wotton’s hand and was exchanged for the pillbox less the required dosage.

  ‘C’mon, Fergus me old love…’ Jon cradled the Ferret’s head with surprising tenderness, and as the jowls sagged open, deftly inserted a couple of Dexies ‘… ’ave a little shampoo to wash ’em down…’

  ‘Gaa! Oh – gaa! This is bitter.’ He came round abruptly.

  ‘It’s always bitter – when you crunch ’em.’

  ‘But I like crunching them – more Champagne… ah, better… much.’ As the Ferret slurped, Jon continued to cradle his warty head. The lizard eyes flickered, opened and then focused on the twenty, which was still tucked between the ‘N’ and the ‘T’ on Jon’s left hand. ‘You young people imagine money will get you everything,’ the Ferret said, without rancour.

  Wotton reflected that he was a noble queer of the old school, who rather than paying his servants preferred that they steal from him with panache. ‘And old ones like you know it full well.’ He ostentatiously munched a Dexy of his own and snapped the box shut.

  ‘You still here?’ said the pocket Morpheus.

  ‘I’m not going until you tell me what you know about Dorian Gray.’

  ‘That would take simply hours…’ the Ferret disengaged himself from Jon’s arms ‘… I’m not prepared to have you remain for a fraction of the time necessary – you consume so much, Wotton, it’s like having elevenses with a high-class bloody renter. Still, I was right about recognising him, I knew his bloody father – I know his bloody mother too. As a matter of fact he lives virtually next door to me… across the river behind Battersea Park –’

  ‘Fergus, I know where his flat is, what I want to know doesn’t appear in the A–Z. He’s distinctly cagey about his family.’

  ‘As well he might be.’ The Ferret yawned expansively, stretched, rose and walked to the mantelpiece, which, instead of leaning upon as any average man might, he tucked himself beneath. ‘Dorian’s father was a peer and a curly-wurly. An habitué of th
e Grapes, he liked a bit of scarlet as we all did in the war –’

  ‘The war?’ Wotton was incredulous. ‘Which war – the Crimean?’

  ‘No, the Second. You youngsters take so much for granted, you know nothing of the way we were, the tenderness that can exist between men from quite different stations in life…’ Reaching up above his head, the Ferret selected a photograph in an ornate gold and ivory frame from among many similar. It showed a young man in pillbox hat and frogged jacket. ‘Ah well’ – his eyes grew misty – ‘I’m wandering. Dorian’s father, Johnny Gray. He was a gambler and a drinker, part of the set around Lucky Lucan. What passed for a man of the world in the days when the world – for that sort of man – was the size of a schoolroom globe. He put on a grand show, indeed he did. Very upright, didn’t want any whispers –’

  ‘So how did you know he was queer?’

  ‘Like I say, we had similar tastes. Must I elaborate? Anyway, he married Dorian’s mother – Francesca Mutti – for what? Show, certainly, and I daresay issue as well. Although he already had an heir from a previous marriage, these types like a spare. I’ve heard it said he was vicious to the boy before a friendly aorta took him from us.’

  ‘And the mother?’

  ‘You’ve never heard of her, my dear! She was a thinner, more elegant Lollobrigida. Very beautiful, very sexy – if you like a pudendum, that is…’

  For much of the time Henry Wotton wasn’t altogether sure which human gender he preferred, or even if he liked sex with his own species at all. Pudenda? Pricks? Petals? What now?