A Ladder to the Sky(32)
‘Of sorts. A young man meets a girl who—’
‘Yes, yes. I daresay you’ll send me a copy. I promise I’ll read it.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course. I’m moist with anticipation,’ he added, writing his address on the back of a napkin and passing it across. He suspected that Dash would frame it and keep it for ever although on this point he was wrong for when Dash returned home that night – alone, for Gore had indeed left with the sailor and Dash had been happy to give the boy up to him – he copied it into his address book, before crumpling the napkin up and throwing it in the wastepaper basket like a normal human being.
When the novel arrived a few weeks later, Gore had been true to his word and, to his surprise, had rather admired it, writing to Dash to tell him so. From an unpromising beginning, a friendship of sorts had developed and they saw each other whenever they were in the same city or travelling nearby. For many years, Gore had dutifully read each of his books as they were published and, although he felt that Dash had diminished as a writer, he found that he liked him more as a person. Perhaps that was the generosity of age, he reasoned. Dash could be a fool, at times, but he was never disagreeable. He didn’t have the tendency towards spite or envy that Gore had, although he’d been hurt many times over the years, always by young men who’d used him for his connections before disposing of him like yesterday’s newspapers. Dash had no Howard, he’d never had a Howard, and his life would have been improved immeasurably by one. But then, as Gore knew, Dash didn’t want a Howard and wouldn’t have accepted one. He wanted, for want of a better word, a Howie. A kid just out of college with a pretty face, tight abs and ass cheeks that could crack a walnut. Well, he’d liked that sort of thing himself once upon a time and still did, occasionally, when the boys from the nearby villages came up to the Swallow’s Nest for parties, but in truth he’d grown less and less interested in carnal pleasures with the passing of the years. Sure, if it was there for the taking and there were no complications attached, then why not? But not if he had to put any particular effort into the seduction.
The sound of voices distracted him and he noticed a small sailboat in the distance and three – no, four; there was one in the ocean – boys diving from the deck into the dark blue water. They were young, no more than fifteen, with brown bodies and energy to burn. He reached for his binoculars and put them to his eyes, watching as each one dived, swam and returned to the boat to ascend the ladder and start all over again. He recognized one of them as Alessandro, defender of mankind, the son of the woman who came twice weekly to clean La Rondinaia, and thought the second was Dante, a boy who helped out at his father’s art gallery on weekends. Gore rather liked Dante. He’d once observed him fucking his girlfriend behind the church of Santa Trofimena, his buttocks moving back and forth with a machine-like efficiency as he pressed her against the wall; he’d yelped like a startled dog when he came. The other boys he didn’t know and they weren’t much to look at so he put the binoculars down again and finished his coffee.
They would be here soon, he knew, glancing at his watch. A part of him was looking forward to seeing his old friend again and discovering whether his latest acquisition was as handsome in the flesh as he appeared in his author photograph. The other part wished that this had all taken place the week before and was now a fading memory. The truth was, he would have preferred to spend the day reading and writing, with the promise of a few cocktails on the terrace with Howard later to sustain him through the sunshine. Easy conversation. No need to be on. But Dash had written to say they’d be passing through the Amalfi and hoped that it wouldn’t be too much trouble if they spent the night, and Gore, who’d been in an uncommonly good mood that morning as he’d had an amusing conversation with a shirtless Egidio, had replied to say that of course they must stay, that he’d be offended if they didn’t, and Dash had subsequently sent a telegram, which was quaint, to say: THERE ON 11TH STOP CANT WAIT STOP LOVE TO HOWARD STOP
Perhaps an hour later, having worked his way through a few dozen pages of his galleys, he watched as a car began to ascend the hill and let out a deep sigh. He had ten more minutes before they would reach the top, when they would inevitably ring the doorbell and Cassiopeia would call down to say that his guests had arrived.
He looked out into the sea again, reaching for his binoculars, but while the sailboat was still in situ there was no sign of the young swimmers. Perhaps they’d all drowned, he thought, realizing that he didn’t care very much if they had. The bodies would wash up on to the rocks eventually, after all, and their mothers would have the time of their lives screaming through the streets, pulling their hair out and ripping their clothes as they grieved publicly for their lost heroes.
As it turned out, the boy was even better-looking in person than he was in his author photograph, but there was something about his character that made Gore immediately suspicious. He’d been beautiful himself once, of course, and knew the power that handsome boys could wield over ageing homosexuals, men who longed not only for the feel of their young skin but for the delusional sensation that they too remained objets du désir, despite wrinkled faces, varicose veins and hair that sprouted from ears and nose. There were boys in the village who flattered both Gore and Howard with their attentions when they discovered them sitting alone at local cafés, scanning the pages of a two-day-old New York Times, and he indulged them occasionally, enjoying their smiles, their white teeth and the way they reached under their T-shirts to scratch their flat stomachs, revealing a treasure trail of dark hairs that ran from navel to groin. He never paid for a boy, he hadn’t done so in years, but when he was going he would always leave a tip for the waiter and another for the youth, who would sweep the money up quickly in his brown hands and say, Grazie, grande uomo, before scampering back to his friends to say that fifteen minutes of conversation with the famous writer from La Rondinaia could earn you enough lire to take a girl to the movies that night and buy her a gelato e espresso afterwards.