Peter Rowe was my education. Peter was that magic person we all meet, if we’re lucky, who shows us how to live our lives, and be ourselves.’ This stirred vague wonderings about the completely unknown subject of Bryant’s private life. ‘Like… Professor Dupont, I too was brought closer to Cecil Valance by Peter. I well remember him showing me the poet’s tomb at Corley on our very first date – an unusual sort of first date, but that was Peter for you! He even talked at that time of writing something about Valance, but I think we’re all agreed that he would never have had the patience, or the stamina, to write a proper biography – as soon as I started on my own life of Valance he sent me a letter, that was very typical of him, saying that he knew I was the right man for the job.’ Rob was looking at Jennifer’s card as she swiftly and elegantly wrote ‘NOT!’ on it. ‘When I’d made my way somewhat in the literary world, it was a pleasure to be able to recommend Peter as a reviewer, and he did some marvellous pieces in the
It was true of course that the lyric of grief was often attended, or followed soon after, by a more prosaic little compulsion, the unseemly grasp of the chance to tell the truth – and since the person involved could no longer mind… There was a special tone of indulgent candour, amusing putting-straight of the record, that wandered all too easily and invisibly into settling of scores and something a bit shy of objective fact. ‘He once more or less admitted to me,’ Bryant said with a rueful laugh, ‘that he could hardly play the piano at all, but in front of an audience of prep-school boys he could generally get away with it.’ (Here Jennifer shook her head and sighed, as if disappointed but unsurprised.) By the time he sat down again, he had said almost nothing about Peter Rowe’s life in books, beyond his failure to produce anything but ‘TV spin-offs’. Was it envy? It was fairly clear that they hadn’t seen much of each other for the past forty years, so the talk was a wasted opportunity – Rob thought of what he could have said himself about Peter’s book collection.
The final speaker was Desmond, who gripped the mike in both hands with a much less humorous look. There were perhaps a dozen people of colour in the room, but Desmond was the only black speaker, and Rob felt the small complex adjustment of sympathy and self-consciousness that passed through the audience; and then an unexpected squeeze of emotion of his own, at the thought of Desmond ten years ago. He was heavier and squarer-faced now, the lovely boyish thing in him was lost, except in his tremor of determination. Rob frowned gently as he remembered the scar on Desmond’s back, his almost hairless body and knobbly navel; but he saw that the magic of sexual feeling for him lingered only as a kind of loyal and sentimental sadness. He knew that in the six years he’d been with Peter, Desmond had divided opinion, especially among Peter’s old friends: was he a godsend or a frightful bore? Now he had the awkward dignity of the less amusing survivor from a couple, testing the loyalty of those very friends. Perhaps grief itself had subtly unsexed him, just at the moment he would have, in one way or another, to start again.
He spoke clearly, and rather stiffly, with a hint of reproof in his face for all the trivialities that had gone before. The nice square Nigerian diction, with its softened consonants and strong hard vowels, had been slowly effaced by London in the years since Rob had met him at a party and taken him home shivering in a taxi. He said how being Peter’s friend had been the greatest privilege of his life, and that being married to him for two years had been not only wonderfully happy but a celebration of everything Peter had believed in and worked for. He had always said how important the changes in the law in 1967 had been to him and to so many others like him, when he was a young man teaching at Corley Court, but that it was very imperfect, only a beginning, there were many more battles to be won, and the coming of civil partnerships for same-sex couples was a great development not just for them but for civil life in general. This was met by a few seconds of firm applause, and flustered but generally supportive looks among those who didn’t clap. Rob clapped, and Jennifer, surprised but willing, a moment later clapped too. It was good to see the gay subject, which after all had bubbled through Peter’s life more keenly and challengingly than it did in his own, brought home here under the gilded Corinthian capitals of a famous London club. There was a sort of yearning in some of the older faces not to be startled by it. Then Desmond said he was going to read a poem, and drew out a folded sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his pin-stripe suit. ‘Oh, do not smile on me if at the last / Your lips must yield their beauty to another…’ Rob didn’t think he knew it, and felt the awkwardness of poetry in the mouths of people untrained to read it; then abruptly felt the reverse, the stiff poignancy of words which an actor would have made into a dubious show of technique. ‘Let yours be the blue eye, the laughing lips / That at the last and always smile on me.’ Rob gave Jennifer a quizzical glance, she leant towards him and whispered behind her hand, ‘Uncle Cecil.’
Rob escorted Jennifer through the clearing and stacking of the chairs towards the crowd around the buffet table, Jennifer making confidential but fairly loud remarks about some of the speakers, while Rob discreetly switched on his phone. ‘A shame about the sound,’ she said. ‘That young man was absolutely hopeless!’
‘I know…’
‘You’d have thought they’d have something as basic as that sorted out.’ Rob saw he had a text from Gareth. ‘I thought that Scotsman was awfully boring, didn’t you?’
‘He was rather…’ said Rob – distracted for a moment in the mental blush of disorientation, then pocketing his phone and glancing round. The blond man had attached himself to the group of leather queens. But the idea of picking him up, so simply initiated by a sly shared smile, didn’t wholly dissolve under the reminder of his imminent date with someone else.
There were rows and rows of white cups and saucers, for tea and coffee, but Jennifer said, ‘I’m having a drink,’ and Rob, who never drank during the day, said, ‘I’m going to join you.’ She picked up a glass of red with a quick shiver – and then seeing platters of sandwiches already reduced to cress-strewn doilies she pushed in between two other people waiting and built herself a little plateful of sausage rolls and chocolate fingers. She had the look of someone making the most of a day out – Rob thought the arrangements at St Hilda’s College might be fairly spartan; and then a visit to London… She held her plate and glass expertly in one hand, and ate swiftly, almost greedily. He wondered what her emotional history had been – not women, he felt. She had a quiver of sexual energy about her, unexpectantly tucked under her crushed velvet hat. They moved away together, each looking round as if prepared to free the other. He felt she liked him, without being interested in him – it was a consciously temporary thing, and none the less happy for that. He said, ‘Well, you were saying…!’ and she said, ‘What? – oh, well,
Bryant stepped back, gripped her forearm, stared as if he were being tricked, while some rushed but extremely complex calculation unfurled behind his eyes. Then, ‘Jenny, my dear, I don’t believe it!’
‘Well, here I am.’
‘Oh, Peter would have been thrilled,’ shaking his head in wonderment. Was it a fight or a reunion? He craned forward – ‘I can’t believe it!’ again; and kissed her.
She laughed, ‘Oh!’, coloured slightly and went on at once, ‘Well, Peter meant a lot to me, long ago.’
‘Oh, the dear old tart that he was…’ Bryant said, glancing narrowly at Rob, not knowing of course what role he might have played in Peter’s life. ‘No, a great man. Peter Rowe-my-dear you used to call him, do you remember?’ – he was sticking to the fondly proprietary view of the deceased, barbs in an indulgent tone of voice. ‘Andrea, this is Jenny Ralph – or was – I don’t know…?’
‘Still is,’ said Jenny firmly.
‘A very old friend. Andrea… who was Peter’s next-door neighbour, am I right?’
‘Rob,’ said Rob, nodding, not giving them much to go on, though Jennifer endorsed him, in a supportive murmur, ‘Yes, Rob…’
‘Rob… hello, and this is – where are you? –
