Devil in Disguise Read online

  Simon and Molly spent a week splashing the walls with white paint and making novelty tables and chairs out of old orange boxes and bits of hardboard.

  ‘It’s all about lighting,’ said Molly, when she brought home a small red-painted lamp with a fringed shade. It cast a warm pink glow around her room. Simon opted for a bare blue-tinted lightbulb.

  ‘I guess the time has come to stop talking and get on with it,’ said Molly, one evening, as they sat in her room, she with a cup of tea, Simon drinking a can of Special Brew.

  ‘That sounds rather ominous.’

  ‘We’ve got to do something, though. Don’t you agree? We’re running out of money for a start.’

  ‘Can’t we just be fabulous wherever we are? Or is that too gay?’

  ‘You’re all talk and no knickers, you are.’

  At least Molly knew what she wanted from life. Singing, as anyone within earshot could testify, was her main interest. But what were Simon’s plans exactly? He was undoubtedly clever and perceptive, but how did he intend to apply these talents? His vision of a marvellous life involved no career or particular prosperity. If he was to take a piece of paper and write ‘Interests’, alcohol and anonymous sex with straight men would have been at the top of his list. ‘I suppose I could become a Welsh politician,’ he joked, ‘or I might be the reincarnation of Truman Capote,’ he added, a glimmer of seriousness just detectable in his tone.

  When Molly was faced with an empty purse she was far more practical and dynamic. ‘Well, I’m getting my glad-rags on tomorrow. I’m taking my sheet music with me into town and I’m going to march confidently into every bar or restaurant that has a piano and ask if they want a singer. Or a waitress. Or a barmaid.’

  ‘If that’s my cue to say I’m coming too, forget it.’

  ‘We can’t live on fresh air. Or drink it.’

  ‘In that case I shall make my weary way to the DSS and sign on.’

  Molly found work almost immediately as a singing waitress at Joe Allen’s in Exeter Street, a restaurant popular with musical-theatre types. Simon’s dole money was not enough to keep his bottomless glass full so he reluctantly phoned his contacts at the Old Vic and got part-time work as a backstage dresser.

  ‘Pulling down some West End Wendy’s trousers six nights a week is not my idea of a fulfilling life,’ he announced, after his first night.

  ‘Neither is dipping my thumb into Christopher Biggins’s gravy, but needs must,’ replied Molly.

  Most nights after work, Simon would go drinking. He would have a couple in the pub next to the stage door, chatting with the wardrobe girls and the front-of-house staff. Then, after a while, he’d say, ‘Time for me to slip into the night,’ make his way to Soho and spend a few hours touring the gay bars and clubs. Simon had various ‘drinking buddies’ — friends he only ever saw in these places, after dark and under the influence. Some evenings Molly would meet up with him when she finished at Joe Allen’s. Their nights out together could get quite wild, if the wind was-in the right direction, but he always steered clear of his drinking pals on those occasions. They were part of a world to which he couldn’t take Molly, much as he would have liked to.

  Simon was always Molly’s biggest fan. When she sang for the diners at Joe Allen’s he would often turn up after his shift at the Old Vic and lean against the bar, listening intently while keeping a firm eye on the gentlemen’s latrine. He alone would holler and cheer when she finished a number and, emboldened by drink, he would often shush a particularly noisy table and tell them to show some consideration for the poor girl singing her heart out by the piano. Simon watched Molly’s confidence as a performer grow and soon he suggested she get an audition song ready.

  ‘Audition song?’ said Molly, rather taken aback.

  ‘Yes. It’s time you offered your services to the professional theatre, don’t you think?’

  So one night at Joe Allen’s, when someone approached Molly after hearing her act and asked if she would be interested in auditioning for a musical, she was all ready. Better than that, she got the job, playing the stripper Tessie Tura the Texas Twirler in Gypsy, singing ‘You Gotta Get A Gimmick’. It was hardly the West End — four weeks’ profit share in Milton Keynes. It turned out there was no profit but lots of sharing. Still, Molly returned with an agent, a list of auditions to attend and a boyfriend called Paddy, a musician who played sax in the Gypsy band. Within a few weeks she had a part in the National’s production of Candide and had given up her room at the squat to move in with Paddy. Simon was invited over to their love nest in Wimbledon, but it wasn’t to his liking. He thought Paddy was a crashing bore who smoked too much dope, but he could see Molly was smitten.

  Simon seemed perfectly content to stay on at the Kennington squat until the day he lost his job at the Old Vic. He’d made the mistake of having a few Bacardi Breezers between shows one afternoon. Bacardi always had a particularly strident effect on his mood, so when the company manager ticked him off because he was ten minutes late for his evening call, Simon picked him up and threw him down the stairs. The man was not badly hurt and decided not to involve the police — on the condition that Simon was fired on the spot.

  Simon never considered getting another job. He signed on and he had somehow convinced his doddery father that he was still a student, now studying for a PhD on Albanian theatre practitioners. He moved to a new squat north of the river and, between the dole money and the cash his father sent, he was able to support himself and, more importantly, his drinking habit, which, without the restraining influence of Molly, was considerable. He had his first drink of the day earlier and earlier, and ended the night drunker and drunker. It became commonplace not to know what he’d done or how he’d got home.

  Simon and Molly still met frequently and spoke on the phone, especially once they both had mobiles (even if Simon’s pay-as-you-go was always running out of juice), but she was not there to see the state he was in when morning dawned. She scolded him if he sounded hung-over, but she didn’t know the half of it and Simon was careful to hide it from her.

  If anything they were more affectionate with each other on the telephone than they had been when they lived in each other’s pockets.

  ‘I love my Molly!’ Simon would declare several times a week.

  ‘Are you missing me?’ Molly would ask.

  ‘I feel like the Marquis de Sade without a whip. And how is life in the cosy seclusion of heterosexual coupledom?’

  ‘Apart from your and my forced estrangement, it’s fantastic. Paddy has issues with athlete’s foot, but no one’s perfect.’

  ‘That’s why I prefer my men to keep their shoes on.’

  ‘Paddy is gorgeous and kind and I love being with him,’ said Molly, dreamily.

  At this point Simon always lost interest in the conversation. Hearing about the walks hand in hand on the common, Paddy’s prowess in the lasagne department or their pet names for each other made Simon want to heave.

  ‘The thing is,’ Molly was saying, ‘because he goes to the gym three times a week there’s an awful lot of laundry.’

  ‘You don’t say?’ remarked Simon. ‘I have a lot of laundry too, but that’s mainly on account of all the bodily fluids I’m drenched in by the time I’ve strolled innocently home through the park.’

  ‘Thank you for sharing that, Simon.’

  But only ten months later things went wrong with Paddy. While Molly was away appearing as the Good Fairy in Sleeping Beauty at Brighton’s Theatre Royal, Paddy fell in love with one of his private pupils. Molly moved in with an actress friend of hers called Jane, and there was much weeping and wailing down the phone to Simon.

  ‘Well, look on the bright side,’ he offered. ‘You’ll never have to eat lasagne again.’

  Molly choked. ‘Your flippancy isn’t funny at all sometimes. I’ve got a broken heart here! I thought I was going to spend the rest of my days with Paddy…’ She dissolved into tears.

  ‘Listen to me,’ counselled Simon. ‘
There are bumps and bruises in all walks of life. I let this real beauty slip through my fingers the other day at the swimming baths. I was devastated. I could hardly roll my towel up afterwards. But I dealt with it. Move on, I say. Next! Don’t let the bastards get the better of you.’

  ‘I’m trying,’ said Molly.

  ‘Let’s exorcise him with a trip to Soho. Meet me at eleven o’clock at Revenge.’

  While Molly’s career was blossoming, Simon’s energy went into maintaining his ‘interests’. He didn’t aspire to anything, as long as he could feel the first flush of intoxication, which swept over him like bleach on a greasy floor every time he had a large glass of Chardonnay. That was what Simon lived for. The liberating douche. That, and urgent sexual gratification.

  ‘It sounds horribly primitive,’ said Molly, when he tried to explain it to her.

  ‘It is,’ agreed Simon.

  ‘And I worry about you. I worry that one day you’ll meet the straight man who takes real offence when you make a pass and decides to duff you up.’

  ‘I’ve had the odd unfortunate encounter but I can run fast. I want you to understand. You like safe, steady men and I like dangerous, unsteady men. Each to their own.‘

  That Christmas, Molly gave Simon a St Christopher medal with his initials engraved on the back. ‘To keep you safe on your travels,’ she told him. Simon laughed, but he promised to keep it with him just in case.

  Molly soon acquired another boyfriend and entered into another, what he called ‘warts-and-all’, relationship. And then another. Simon would meet them, shake their hands limply and suffer their company at the occasional party, but he was resolutely cool with them. He much preferred to meet Molly alone because he hated to see how needy and loved-up she got, forever leaning into her boyfriend for a reassuring peck and gazing longingly at him across a crowded room if they should be separated for more than a few seconds. It never rang true to Simon. Molly was a vivacious, sexy woman. Why was she squandering her charisma on these dreadful men? She devoted so much energy and emotion to each relationship that she must be exhausted! Given how predictable the eventual outcome was, it didn’t seem like a wise investment to Simon. If that was the price you had to pay to get a cup of tea made for you in the morning and have someone to rub your feet when they were sore, it wasn’t worth it.

  One night the following spring they fell out of Heaven nightclub at three in the morning and Simon insisted they go for a stroll by the river. Molly was more street-wise than Simon, but they linked arms as they walked over a deserted Charing Cross Bridge and were soon sitting on a bench by the inky Thames just in front of the National Theatre. Everything seemed incredibly peaceful. They could see and hear traffic crossing the bridge to their left and the distant whoops of other late-night revellers. Even faraway sirens seemed just a part of the great cacophony of the metropolis.

  ‘Do you ever wonder where we’ll be in ten years’ time?’ asked Simon. ‘Or twenty? Or thirty?’

  ‘We’d be in our fifties,’ said Molly, sounding appalled at the very thought.

  ‘Grey hair and grey skin,’ said Simon. ‘If we’ve been successful in life we’ll be trying to cling on to what we’ve achieved, fighting off young pretenders. If we’ve failed to make our mark we’ll be full of self-loathing and disappointment.’

  ‘That depends at which point you give up on life, I guess,’ replied Molly, resting her head on Simon’s shoulder as she looked at the streetlights reflected in the water.

  ‘I imagine it’s a gradual procedure,’ said Simon. ‘Preceded by a period of self-delusion. I’ve always thought the ageing process is far worse for beautiful people.’

  ‘Are there any preparations I should be making?’

  ‘I somehow think you’ll manage,’ said Simon tartly.

  ‘Well, there’s no shame in getting older. It happens to everyone.’

  ‘It does. But there’s no one so self-aware as a homosexual. We tick off every day, watching for decay — little signs of death. We welcome them home like stray dogs. It’s thought we party more than other folk because we have no breeding responsibilities. We don’t live in supportive family groups so we seek and satisfy our human social needs through the so-called gay community. We’re also the lucky dispensers of the mythical pink pound, so it’s assumed we can afford to go out swinging from the chandeliers every night of the week.’

  ‘Yes, you’re all loaded,’ said Molly, enviously. ‘You’re never seen in the same cap-sleeved T-shirt twice.’

  ‘None of that’s true!’ Simon sounded agitated. ‘I’m not out every night to interact with our gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender brothers and sisters. I’m out every night because I’m a sex maniac.’

  ‘Always out on the sniff,’ said Molly.

  ‘It rules my life.’

  ‘I know it does. From an outsider’s point of view it seems like torture.’

  Simon sighed. ‘I’m so glad. It would be awful if no one noticed how much I suffer.’

  Even through his jacket Molly felt Simon’s shoulder muscle tighten. She lifted her head and peered at her friend. Simon, nostrils flared, was staring with the intensity of a gun dog towards a shadowy area under the bridge. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘A man!’ said Simon, incredulously, as if this were an endangered species. ‘Tracksuit bottoms, a tattoo on his neck and he seems a bit drunk.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, no,’ said Molly, wearily. ‘Not at this time of night, surely?’

  ‘I’m going over to investigate,’ announced Simon, resolutely, never taking his eyes from the target. ‘You stay here.’

  ‘Simon!’ said Molly, indignantly. ‘It’s half past three in the morning! You can’t leave me here. It’s not safe.’

  ‘I’ll only be a few yards away,’ said Simon, over his shoulder, by this time already several steps from her.

  ‘Simon, no!’ shouted Molly, but he carried on, disappearing into the shadows under the bridge.

  The morning sunlight came streaming in through the faded cotton curtains of Molly’s bedroom in Kit-Kat Cottage. She had slept comfortably and woken up happy, until she remembered her conversation with Simon the night before. She’d been shocked and hurt when he’d hung up on her. He must have been drunk, she thought, or well on his way to getting there. He was such a worry. She’d seen his drinking getting heavier and heavier over the years, but she was convinced it was entirely because of his consistently tragic love life. They were so close that it made her almost as miserable as it made him.

  If only Simon could restrict himself, as Molly knew some gay men did, to furtive, fleeting encounters with these allegedly heterosexual alpha males, it would be all right. But in the years Molly had known him, Simon had got himself into a repetitive cycle of intense excitement followed all too swiftly by wrist-slashing misery. Now she dreaded hearing about his latest love because she knew for sure exactly where it would lead. She knew that she’d got over-involved with relationships herself in the past, and been depressed when things didn’t work out, but at least her affairs of the heart were in with a chance. Simon only lusted after the unattainable. If, as had happened once, the man of his dreams fell for Simon too, and decided to give up his ‘straight’ ways and embrace a committed relationship, then Simon, of course, went off him instantly. The men he desired had to be straight and be seen to be straight. A wedding ring was a particular turn-on, a child seat in the car a plus. A sniff of homophobia in the mix and Simon was in heaven.

  Quite how it all worked — how Simon managed to get into these men’s trousers — was a grey area. As far as Molly knew, there were two methods of attack. Sometimes Simon would target a particular man, slowly but surely seducing him, igniting his curiosity, then pouncing once the grooming process was complete and sufficient alcohol had been administered. The other, less time-consuming option seemed to involve relieving men already in a state of some arousal, be it in cinemas, saunas, toilets or parks, the any-port-in-a-storm scenario. Darkness seemed to help things al
ong.

  In either case the outcome was always doomed. Love could not flourish in such circumstances. Simon was aware of this. As he had told her himself, with infinite sadness in his voice, love grows towards the light, and the glow of a Benson & Hedges behind a rhododendron did not suffice.

  Molly sighed and put her worries about Simon Out of her mind. She would deal with all that when she got back to London next week. In the meantime there was the weekly challenge of working out how the shower operated. Some she’d come across seemed more complicated to master than flying a helicopter.

  She took her faded avocado-green towel from the chair where it was neatly folded, put on her dressing-gown and padded across the hall to the guest bathroom. It was a tiny space, with only a lavatory, a miniature basin the size of a sandwich box and a plastic shower as narrow and claustrophobic as an upright coffin. After several attempts, Molly managed to open the door, which suddenly folded in two like a trouser press. Squeezed inside, she looked at the various buttons and levers, mystified. After several exploratory jabs, she pressed a small frosted orange button and, with a sound like a lawnmower, the shower churned into action. Several lukewarm jets fell like light rain. She moved an important-looking lever downwards and the flow increased until it hissed and steamed, scalding hot. It seemed that in this particular model of shower, the temperature was inextricably linked with the water pressure, so if she wanted to shower, the only answer was to stand patiently under the equivalent of a dripping umbrella or lose her skin under a boiling torrent. She chose the umbrella. Washing the soap off took ages, but she managed in the end, dried herself and got dressed.

  It was nine o’clock — exceptionally early for theatre folk — when Molly ventured into the kitchen. It was empty, with no sign of Lilia or her husband. A selection of breakfast cereals was lined up on a shelf-like library books, each one decanted from its cardboard box and put into secure see-through Tupperware containers, and the labels from the original packaging Sellotaped to the tops. Molly chose Somerfield’s own-brand muesli, and poured some into a bowl. She saw the milk jug on the table and went to pick it up, then noticed an envelope, with her name on it in sweeping handwriting, propped against it. Inside she found a tasteful retro drawing of a black-headed seagull with the words ‘Bonne Chance!’ printed underneath. On the reverse was written, ‘Wishing you the greatest of success in Northampton, and a happy stay at Kit-Kat Mansion, Lilia xxxx’.