DOWNSTAIRS MARK MADE THE MISTAKE OF DRINKING FROM ANOTHER bottle of red wine.
Peggy sat with Richard and they were attempting to pick up their conversation from some time before. But Mark could see Richard casting glances at him, only half-heartedly chatting away.
Mark wasn’t sure what was going to happen now. Earlier the evening had been winding down towards that disconsolate, close-down blip on the screen that follows the national anthem. Now everything was up in the air again. Mark was having to pick himself up, stir himself for whatever the sequel to the bathroom would be.
Iris reappeared, simpering and drunk. Peggy took one look and suggested some coffee. She slipped out to make it and Mark sipped more wine. It was coppery in his mouth and he felt a vague regret. It washed out that brief taste of Richard.
Richard and Iris were talking in a half-playful, half-hushed tone. Mark wasn’t sure what about. He stretched back leisurely, unwilling as yet to commit himself to the night’s precise pleasures of what had happened. Richard’s warm, sure and only slightly clumsy hand had been quite different to anything that had touched Mark recently. He smiled in premature nostalgia at the thoughtfulness of those gestures; that quick dab of the tissue and the practised running of the finger up his cock’s tender underbelly.
Mark had forgotten how he recognised a good lover, those who acted from the first as if your body were as familiar to them as you were. When their curiosity is accompanied and rewarded with a delighted recovery of what they always, surely, expected, then you know you have them, hook, line, and sinker; and they have you.
“So what did you see?” Richard was jeering in a louder tone. Mark saw that he was drinking again, too.
God, this is decadence, he thought. Like the Borgias. Nipping out to spew and snog and wank and then back in for a chat and more booze. Fabulous.
“I didn’t see much. But it was a surprise!”
“I’m sorry,” said Richard. “I don’t know what came over me.”
But Mark thought it wasn’t directed at him. If it had been, it would have signalled the end of the matter. It would have been saying, I’m sorry, but it was a silly mistake. Mark blinked. Perhaps it did mean that. He knew now that he wanted Richard tonight. He had done all along and he was pissed enough now to admit it. The thought that it mightn’t happen set up a prickle of disappointment. A surge of panic, even.
“Well, I saw enough,” Iris was saying. She looked at Mark and giggled. “Nothing I haven’t seen before, anyway.”
Mark lurched to his feet. “Excuse me.”
Iris and Richard looked up in concern as he hurried out to the kitchen. Peggy was thoughtfully plunging the filter through a cafetiere as he dashed to the sink. She watched Richard follow him and lovingly pat his back as he threw up. Fastidiously Mark managed to direct the spew between the washing-up bowl and the taps. He didn’t want to disgrace himself and make a mess for anyone.
Peggy picked up on the tenderness of the scene and left them to it. So they’ve bonded, she thought, with some satisfaction. She took coffee to Iris.
When Mark had brought up the whole lot, Richard silently plied him with pints of cold water, then black coffee. They had a quiet exchange of ‘sorries’ and support back-pattings and shoulder-rubbings. Mark was shuddering and streaming with tears.
At last, Richard said, “So we’ve both thrown up tonight, love.”
Mark stared at him. He was horrified by the words. Inappropriately, of course. Richard was just being sweet. But they recalled irresistibly the disastrous night Mark had first met Sam.
Here he hit another hinge in his life.
His chest seized with a series of dry retches. Richard hugged him and Mark had to struggle free.
Quietly Richard walked to the kitchen door.
“Listen, I’ve got to go round and switch everything off. You’d better go to bed. We need to rest.”
Mark wanted to say, That’s not what I meant. That’s not what I wanted. Not at all.
Now Richard could reverse yesterday’s roles. With satisfaction? Mark wanted to ask. But Richard had slipped out to do his housekeeping bit. Mrs Danvers, Mark thought. Burn down Manderley; bring it all down. I’ve had enough—but to tide me over, I still want you. It was terrible, pathetic of him, but he wanted to depend on Richard now, on his sometimes eager, soft, cool, warming flesh, to give him a separate space to play upon. If only he could take him to bed. Now. But Richard had gone.
The night had been jump-started into something exciting, waking Mark from his stupor and self-absorption. Now abruptly it seemed to have ended and no one was happy.
Mark had never really used sex to forget. It had never seemed the thing to do. Tonight it had and he was starting to suspect he’d chucked it all away down the sink.
Never mind. With nothing to regret, he decided he’d better get himself away to bed.
THE HOUSE WAS LABYRINTHINE. ALL THESE HALF-ASSEMBLED DINING rooms, sitting rooms. In the front hall connecting them all, he found Richard standing pissed and nonplussed before two familiar, abandoned heaps of clothing.
“I was going to lock up the front door,” he said. The key was ready in his hand.
“Oh,” said Mark. “They’ve gone out. They do this sometimes.”
“They’ve taken the spare key.”
“They can look after themselves.”
“It’s weird,” said Richard and they both laughed.
A tense moment hung between them.
The phone on the table beneath the chandelier started to ring. Mark looked at it and so did Richard. There was a spread of
