Chapter 17

Despite his soaking in the River Wye, Dale enjoyed the weekend in Hay. However, we agreed it would have to be our last break until the 'auto'biography was complete. After a couple of days back at work, the weekend seemed long past. Time was short; to maintain our momentum with the book, late nights out had to be avoided, even on Saturdays.

Takings in the shops had held up reasonably well while we were in Hay. Jake told me Jayde had contacted him again, and had admitted the story about her child being mine was false. She said Toby made her implicate me because they were desperate for money. Since then, she had gone back to her parents in East Kent, and she had asked him to visit her. He wanted someone to go down with him. I was reluctant because of the aggravation she had caused me, and asked if Smiles could not go.

'He doesn't know her, and it would be a bit awkward, taking my current boyfriend to visit my ex-girlfriend. They'd probably both feel uncomfortable. She has apologized for making out you got her pregnant. I could go on my own, but she would be less likely to try to re-start things with me again if you came too.'

'Maybe I could help you keep out of trouble. How long were the two of you together?'

'Nearly two years. We saw a lot of life, maybe too much. We were bad for each other, you saw that for yourself; we overdid everything. The way I feel now is, it would be nice if Jayde and I could be friends, but nothing physical. Life's very quiet for her down there. Her old school friends have all moved away. You can imagine it ... watching TV with her parents ... dead boring. She always liked you, you know. She used to say you were one gay boy she wouldn't mind turning straight. Think about it, anyway.'

Though at first not happy to be reminded of her, later the idea of seeing her grew on me, partly out of curiosity to see how she was coping with becoming a mother. Dale was lukewarm because of the time it would take up, but left it to me to decide. He asked me again how I would have felt if the child had turned out to be mine.

I answered, 'I'm glad it's not. What kind of start in life would that be for a kid, having to rely on Jayde and me as parents?'

'It would be a better start than having Jayde on her own. Suppose it had been yours, what would that have meant for us?'

'Nothing, except for me having to support the kid and being skint all the time. You'd still come first.'

'Ought we to talk about how we see the future?'

'So much is going on right now, with our day jobs and Quick's book. The main thing is that we're together... '

'Okay, let's leave it for now, but not for too long.'

If he had told me definitely that a civil partnership was what he wanted, I would have agreed at once. Life with him was far richer and happier than it had been before. For me to do the asking would not feel right; he was more mature, and he owned the flat. Anyway, how do you decide you care enough for someone for a civil partnership? Lots of straight marriages end up in divorce. The Jay's experience showed how tricky long-term commitments could be; he had undergone a vasectomy so they wouldn't need contraceptives, only for her to become pregnant by someone else.

I decided I would go to visit her. We took the train to Aylesham, the Kent village near Canterbury where she had been brought up. Jake looked good in a long-sleeved T-shirt, dark blue jeans and one of the necklaces from Hatshepsut's Pavilion with a central cylindrical bead in rainbow stripes, a signal that he now thought of himself as gay. On the way he talked about Smiles' plans for the bar and his own future. Since Quick's book had to be kept secret from him I had little to tell him, so his being talkative suited me. He was thinking of buying a car or a small van so that he could drive around to sports clubs and show samples of trophies, medals, and key fobs, instead of leaving it to customers to contact him. He had with him a couple of certificates he had designed for the Give and Take's school disco night, to be awarded for best school uniform and best haircut. He asked me if I had any bright ideas for others.

'Teacher's pet, maybe?'

Aylesham was not as you might imagine a Kent village to be, an idyll of thatched cottages with ducks on the pond. Streets of uniform houses had been built for workers in a local coal mine, long closed. He phoned Jayde when we arrived and she gave him directions to the house. Five minutes later we walked down a front garden path, passing a pretty flower border and an incongruous, pretend water-well made of plastic. She was waiting for us at the front door, a bit plumper than before and wearing only lipstick, not the full coating of make-up she wore in London. In the hall she and Jake hugged and kissed lightly, and she pecked me on the cheek. I smiled and asked how she was.

'I never thought you'd come, ' she said, 'not the way I was last time we met.'

I shrugged and shook my head to reassure her. She introduced us to her mother, who brought us tea and cakes in the living room. Jake found it difficult to know what to say at first, and to avoid a silence she said to me, 'You must have thought I was a right old slag, the way I was carrying on. It's nice to see you again. How's that gorgeous boyfriend of yours?'

'He's fine. Working hard, as ever. How's it been for you, coming back here?'

'Didn't have a lot of choice, like. It was hopeless sharing a flat with Toby. He's worse than I ever was, and that's saying something. Last I heard he was in trouble again. He went to Greece, humping the kit for some crap band, and got busted for drugs. He always had to be getting up to something. He wasn't so bad when he was with you. You probably helped to calm him down, like.'

I nodded. Was that how the three of them thought of me, as someone they asked to tag along to calm things down? There was another half minute of edgy silence, until Jake asked her about the child's father. She said she knew who he was, but that he was a happy-go-lucky type who never worked or took responsibility for anything. She was hoping that her mother would share taking care of the baby so that she could get a part-time job.

After an hour or so in the house we took her to up to Canterbury for a meal. She chose to drink mineral water rather than alcohol, saying, 'The baby has to come first now, as my mum is always telling me.' She and Jake chatted about people they used to know and bars they used to go to in London. She did not mention any worries about her future, and said, 'It's not what I set out to do, but p'raps it's what I needed to make me take a hold of myself.' She was standing up well to the challenge.

We saw her onto the train at Canterbury, and waited for one going in the opposite direction. On our way back, Jake was deep in thought. Maybe he was wondering how their lives might have been had the baby been his, or about how his future with Smiles would work out. We spoke very little. I was preoccupied by the thought that, whilst her life was now more settled, since my involvement with The Handyman, Quick and Teef my own had become increasingly unpredictable.

After we left the train and were walking up the platform at Victoria he asked, 'Do you think I was a cunt for walking out on her?' Unsure of himself, he avoided eye contact.

'No, I don't think that at all. Things had to change, didn't they? What would it have been like for the kid, especially it not being yours, with you two overdoing everything the way you used to? It would never have lasted. At least you've kept in touch with her.'

No relationship is immune to problems. Shortly after my visit to Jayde, Dale and I had a tiff over the Give and Take's school disco night. Without telling him, I went to a fancy dress shop that had school uniforms in adult sizes, for hire or to buy. The weather was warm, and as we already had white shirts, all we needed were shorts, socks and ties. We are more or less the same build so I bought two lots, thinking to save him the trip to the shop. When I showed him my purchases he said sharply: 'You should have asked me. I'm going to give the school disco night a miss. I hate the whole idea of it. You go if you want. I'll stay in, there are plenty of things that need doing. Adults fantasizing about being kids again strikes me as immature, not to say bizarre. And it feeds the stereotype of gay men being obsessed with superficialities like dressing up.'

Perplexed by this, I said 'No it doesn't. Most school disco nights are hetero, organized by straight pubs and clubs. Just come for half an hour to be friendly. You've known Smiles longer than I have, you ought to give him a bit of support. Jake's doing his bit; he showed me a couple of certificates he's planning to give out. Don't dress up if you don't want to. We don't need to make a big thing of it, but they'll be expecting us.'

'I said no.'

'Why not? What's wrong?'

'I don't want to.'

'You could put up with going there for half an hour.'

'No.'

'All right, obviously I misunderstood. Since I promised to be there I ought to show my face, but I won't stay long, ' I said, unable to hide my irritation completely, but holding back unspoken the words: you miserable sod.

He nodded and shrugged. 'Fine, if it's your kind of thing. It's not mine.'

We ate dinner in silence. As I started to clear the table he grabbed my arm and said, 'I had better explain. You know how free and easy Smiles is. We had a problem, before I met you. He knew my ex-boyfriend. They used to ... play around ... this is difficult for me to talk about. Of course what Smiles does is up to him, but he invited my ex and me to what turned out to be a sex party. He had this board game where you threw dice and moved a marker round the board. When you landed on certain squares you had to pay forfeits, take off an item of clothing, let someone grope you, do all kinds of stuff, and so on and so on. It wasn't for me, but my ex loved it. Curiously enough, though, when any of the others wanted to touch me he got jealous and was really nasty to them. Well, I went to two of these sex game sessions, people started taking their clothes off, and as the game progressed the real action started. Both times I dropped out early, which was what you had to do if you refused to pay someone a forfeit. Smiles and my ex, though, they stayed right to the end.

'Everyone took his turn at being host. When my ex had them all round here, half a dozen or more of them, I went into my room and shut the door. I'm not trying to condemn people for being promiscuous, some people have open relationships, good luck to them, but how can you stay a couple, if either of you walks off with someone else whenever they feel the urge? It's just not me. After a while my ex and I couldn't be in the same room without having a row. He found somebody who, as he put it, wasn't stuck with a Victorian outlook. The last I heard of him he had moved to Spain.