Close My Mouth

This is Tony’s house, and the pair of them are the only living creatures in it. There isn’t even a housecat to compete with. Regardless, it seems as if Barrett is always underfoot — not unpleasantly so, but as a consequence of close quarters. They are caught in an awkward press in the narrow doorway, Barrett coming and Tony going — the meeting of their bodies is distinct for a moment, Tony and Barrett face to face.

Barrett could fill the doorway almost by himself, simply with his presence of personality. It’s not only his iron will that compels one to yield; there is a disconcerting solidness to his body, not flabby bulkiness but a slim and discreet hardness. Tony murmurs some apology; Barrett steps aside and lets his master pass. How funny to think of harmless old Barrett being called Basher, like a boxer or something. What did he do during the war, anyway?

Tony crosses the rug and pauses at the door, looking back. The room is just as he likes it, all the books orderly on their shelves and the chairs plump and inviting, only a few flowers have fallen from their vase. The white petals have gone yellow with early dehydration, yellow petals trodden brown, like a ghost of Susan’s presence — scentless. Even at their peak of freshness, they didn’t quite harmonize with the room’s colors and textures — like an article of discarded clothing, a glove or a stocking.

Fresh flowers are too fussy and too feminine, not quite tasteful, not quite suitable for a man’s rooms. They strain the eye. Tony can’t recall how long he’s felt that way, but it seems as certain as anything. He’ll tolerate the gesture for Susan’s sake.

“Oh, and Barrett — sweep these up, would you?”

Barrett lowers his eyes. “Certainly, sir.”

*

There is a scratching sound in the walls, like a trapped animal of some sort — or perhaps it’s coming from the front of the house, from outside. Tony pads down to the landing, lurching a little as he casts out a hand for the railing — the railings are sound, at least, even if some of the timbers underneath have gone. It could be a burglar, or God forbid, a disgruntled earlier renter. Who was the person who’d rented this place before? Some confused elderly person, or a genteel fellow in disgrace.

He’d gone up to bed awfully drunk, after all. Perhaps he had forgotten to lock up. It could be anyone or anything.

The scratching noise has stopped. Tony stands on the edge of the stair and listens fiercely for a culprit. If Susan were here, she’d really let him have it for being so foolish. Stumbling around in the dark, suspicious of every creak and rustle such an old place can supply. It really is an awfully old house, and even fresh paint and paper can’t conceal the bones of the place. At night all the vases and carpets only furnish a nicely-upholstered Georgian mausoleum. If Susan were here, she’d be laughing at him.

The staircase is an insurmountable obstacle when regarded from below, steep and forbidding — as he tries to ascend Tony goes tumbling, and the fall is nauseatingly heavy. He cannot even call out, and his cry is more like a low moan, a stifled animal sound.

Tony blinks back surprise. He is on his hands and knees in the landing, with the taste of liquor in his mouth and Barrett steadying him, Barrett’s hand between his shoulder-blades, Barrett’s fingers brushing the hair back from his forehead. It’s the damned damp rot again, uneven timbers swollen and spoiled. He hadn’t even thought of Barrett — perhaps he’d been reading a book in his room, or even that he’d gone out. What marvelous strong hands he has, and what a patient tread.

Barrett lifts him up and clasps him by the shoulders. Those canny dark eyes search his face for any sign of hurt.

“I thought I heard something,” Tony says by way of breathless explanation. He’s more embarrassed than hurt, but his head is beginning to spin, his vision beginning to go blurry.

“I’ll see to it, sir. Back to bed with you, then.”

Barrett is there when he wakes with a glass of tomato juice and an aspirin, exuding an unshakable tranquility. There’s the perfume of fried eggs, and a fresh shirt is laid out for him — the one from the night before has been unbuttoned, and hangs loose.

What a wonderful fellow he is, this Barrett — faced with such a plum opportunity to mess around unsupervised, another man would help himself to his master’s drinks cabinet, or have a rummage around his billfold, or some other mischief like that. Barrett wastes no time and makes himself useful without needing to be asked. In bed, Tony’s throat is terribly dry, and his head aches, but he can’t help but feel a sneaking sense of contentment. Who could be accommodated more comfortably?

*

The bed is empty; the sheets haven’t been laundered. He could lie here very still and listen for the sound of footsteps.

Barrett is gone, and Vera too. If he goes on lying here he’ll never get up. He needs to make a telephone call, and that might be the prelude to some unbearable meeting in person, he’ll have to wash and dress and shave or people will think he’s ill. It would be easier to be ill, one of those horrid neurasthenic women who never get out of bed and give themselves sores — but a nurse is necessary to make that kind of pitiful malingering really possible, or else you’re only making yourself a nuisance.

Downstairs he runs himself a bath and lies back in the water with the memory hanging over him. The enamel of the tub is worn spotted — Barrett had meant to order a new one put in, hadn’t he, he’d meant to do that before Vera came and he hadn’t had the chance. He can picture them having their fun in here — her small trim naked body heaped up against Barrett’s, her small high breasts under his hands. Barrett’s clever hands ringing the girl’s throat, his naked body resting here where Tony now lies contemplating his knees.

It hadn’t been her fault, the silly creature — it had been Barrett’s. For Barrett’s sort of person, there could be nothing better — to make themselves indispensable and then to laugh at you for it, to make up for their position in life with a hundred thousand digs at their masters’ expense. Cruel laughter from behind closed doors, nasty sniggers in the kitchen, from below. It had all been a joke, a nasty twisting joke.

He’ll have to fend for himself, now, and to make his own comforts. For God’s sake, he’s alone, like he’s never been alone in his entire life — not in the nursery, not at school, never. Even before Barrett came into this place, he was never as alone like this. He’s lost everything that ever seemed to satisfy him.

There will never be another one like Barrett. This pains him for reasons he cannot understand — that there is only one Barrett in the world and he has lost him, he has lost the low cool steadiness of his presence and will never taste it again.

Damp has warped the plaster, and the enamel has flaked away; the mirrors and taps are all spotted with fingerprints. The water has gone cold. Tony breaks into sobs of helpless hiccoughing disgust and presses his face in his hands.

*

After he gives Barrett his second chance, the pair of them don’t make it back to the house — Barrett leads him, docile and nervy. In the washroom, he puts him up against the wall and draws him off in his hand until Tony is shaking and bloodless and spent.

He is as efficient as anyone could hope for, only breaking the quiet with a single frustrated huff of breath that makes Tony’s face burn. He has performed a burdensome task with expert attention and perhaps even pleasure, but you’d never know that from the set calm hardness of his face, the steady action of the motion in Tony’s lap.

This is the seal on what there is between them, as indelible as a marriage.

To touch him without express permission would be to violate the terms of Barrett’s employment — that he must be allowed to serve in whatever manner he likes without interruption. Barrett knows what he wants before he can possibly speak the words, more neatly articulated than he could ever say. There isn’t language suited for this sordid business, nothing that could encompass the absolute breadth and depth and scope of what Barrett is to him, the brutality of their separation and the joy of reunion, the savagery of sex.

Tony falls against his shoulder, utterly nerveless, breathless. This is what soldiers do, isn’t it? Sailors and guardsmen, doing unspeakable things with men for a little bit of money. Unspeakable things. Men are arrested for this sort of thing in public toilets; it had always seemed like a bit of a joke, an annoyance to be dodged. Back at school, a friend’s father had come to a bit of grief for it — the matter hadn’t come to court, he’d shot himself first. Nervous exhaustion.

Barrett’s great dark eyes search him, as he turns away to wash his hands. He looks almost lost.

“It’s late,” Tony says. They must go back.

*

The ringing of the telephone interrupts a rowdy game of beggar-my-neighbor on the landing, and Tony fairly has to sprint down the hall to pick it up. In the library, he pours himself a drink with the headset juggled under his chin.

“Tony, how lovely to hear your voice—”

“Eleanor!” He can’t help but let his surprise show — he’d half-expected it to be Susan on the line, chiding him once again. Eleanor is one of those venomous plum-taloned women with which every promisingly-connected young men becomes acquainted — ostentatiously happy in her marriage, and a friend of Susan’s, but her perfect opposite in temperament. Perhaps a cousin or something.

“I do hope I’m not interrupting anything. Michael had heard you were just lying about the house vegetating, so I thought I might as well call. It’s going to be our fifth anniversary very soon. That’s wood, isn’t it — or is it fruit?”

“Congratulations.” He only weakly understands what it is he’s meant to say any more, what kind of inane niceties are supposed to leave his mouth when speaking over the telephone. “I believe it is fruit, yes. Are you still living in the old place?”

“Oh, yes, they haven’t driven us out yet. We’d never have a party without inviting you, of course. You used to have those intimate little suppers, with that cook of yours padding about like a cat.”

Susan must have told her. Susan must have told her quite a lot, the insolent bitch. She wants to lure him out into the open, or else to coax him in some other way — to spring some trap on him. Tony rests the glass against his lip and licks his teeth.

“I’m afraid I can’t come.”

“Oh, Tony, but I haven’t even told you the day. Don’t tell me you’re off to Argentina already. Or was it Brazil?”

“I’m afraid it’s — it’s simply not possible.”

“I think I understand, now.” Eleanor’s voice becomes oddly breathy; she must think she sounds tremendously sensitive and sympathetic. “You needn’t worry about that, really, it’ll only be a couple of our friends. You can bring a girl if you like.”

“It’s not possible, I said.” For Christ’s sake, can’t the woman understand something as simple as that?

After he’s set aside the telephone, Tony must press his face in his hands and breathe long shuddering breaths. In the library, Barrett brings him a glass of Plymouth gin and bitters, and they begin their game again.

*

Tony has his crossword and his claret, with his reading glasses on his nose.

When he comes to settle in, Barrett has put his feet up by the gas fireplace and is writing notes in a small black book.

He’s wearing slim tight trousers and the most beautiful suede shoes Tony’s ever seen — the long lines of his cocked ankles are almost obscene, the bone of the foot turning sharply and the well-pieced smoothness of the shoe. They can only be new.

The damned arrogance of it, the gloating smugness — of making such a purchase and then rubbing Tony’s face in it, daring him to notice and to remark. He’d wear Tony’s clothes if he could get away with it — his suits, his shirts, his shoes. He’s already slept in his sheets, bathed in his tub. He’d slip inside him if he could, and occupy him.

“How did you afford those, hmm?” Tony sends the offending articles a cutting look. “I haven’t seen you wearing those before. They must be new.”

“Thrift. You don’t believe me, I can see it in your face. What, you think I’m not well-paid enough? Whose fault is that?”

“Don’t talk about money. It disgusts me.”

“How do you think I fucking feel? Relying on you for bed and board? For scraps?”

Money is one thing there is plenty of between them — stagnant, useless, poisonous. There can never be enough of it. Barrett will only be happy when he’s got him on his knees, and when his access to Tony’s means is utterly complete. It isn’t as if he feels love, or appreciation, only desire — desire as any animal feels it, covetousness for one thing or another, an appreciation for tasteless conveniences. There’s no use feigning a democratic attitude toward one’s servants when they insist, they simply insist on throwing the matter in one’s face —

He cannot look at him without a queer sort of sickness seizing his heart — a mingled shame and pleasure

“I didn’t know you felt that way,” Tony says leadenly. It’s a polite lie and a rather lame one. “We’ll have to do something about that. It’s almost Christmas, after all.”

Barrett doesn’t look at him; he is pretending to study his fingernails. To Tony’s eye, they are as immaculate as ever.

“You never go out anymore. You’ve gotten boring, you know. I want to see my friends once in a while, and it’s almost Christmas. Come with me some time, it’ll do you good.”

*

No more Soho dinners and long wet lunches talking about something-or-other with his father’s friends — no more Brazil or the Argentine, only awful indecent places where men with murderous eyes survey him as if he’s meat. Skull-faced whores and pock-faced spivs survey them at their places, which have been made ready in advance as if silly old Barrett is some great dignitary of the underclass — Barrett lets him drink, and lets him pay, with a hand in his lap under the table like a wicked reminder of just who is supreme, just whose place this is.

It’s as if his whole body has come unlatched and loosened, and the tight starched edges of his life have spoiled. Barrett’s hold on him is such that he would follow him anywhere, to the lowest places on earth where men are knifed and women are raped in the gutter. He’ll tolerate an awful lot, but he won’t tolerate being put on display, like a zoo animal.

Tony breaks in exasperation. “Why do you take me to these places? I haven’t anything in common with these people.”

“Of course not.” No sir. “They’re not your friends, they’re mine. Consider it payback for all those insufferable God-damned dinners.”

Cheap music, cheap glasses, and cheap scent. Tony is too-warm and irritable, and he bolts from Barrett’s grasp as soon as he can — Barrett trails him out into the wet black street. On the pavement, he has the uneven gait of a cripple, and Barrett’s military strides outstrip him easily. Tony rounds on him, feeling his face burn.

“It’s transparent, that’s what it is, when you take me to places like this — this isn’t you at all. You’re only happy when you’re at home with a nice crossword and a cup of tea.” He presses a hand squarely in the middle of his chest — Barrett’s whole body stiffens. “Like an old woman. Do these friends of yours know that?”

“You’re drunk,” Barrett says. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

‘“You’re soft, that’s what you are. Comfort at all costs. Quit looking at me like that, you’re no tragic proletarian. You’re feathering your own nest at my expense, and I won’t have it. Quit looking at me like that, you dirty old bastard—”

Tony shoves him, strikes him, right in the middle of the street — berating him with voice rising to a feverish volume, words he’s never used before without cringing. Barrett breaks his nose with the heel of his hand, and after that, they do not go out.

*

Barrett is stirring from his sleep. At rest he is more beautiful than ever; his smooth dark hair is flattened from the pillow and his lips faintly parted, his cheeks faintly grainy. He looks as if he’d be cool to the touch, cool as a stone.

In the mirror he is a stranger to himself — he has grown ragged and too-thin. The bandage on his nose has gone, but not the faintly septic look of his bruises. Barrett has grown sturdy and comfortable, and Tony has fallen away.

There are no letters and no photographs of the two of them together, not in any context, whether ordinary or incriminating. There is no evidence, exculpatory or otherwise. There have been mercifully few witnesses to this pitiful bedroom comedy. Tony draws a ragged breath through his nose and closes his eyes.

Barrett first, and then himself. Barrett must go, and he will follow. Barrett must be emphatically cast out or there will never be peace in this house, never, never. Barrett must go.

“What do you think you’re playing at?”

Barrett seizes him by the arm; the hammer drops from his hand and clatters to the floor. It could have been a gun, just as easily, only he didn’t have the slightest idea of how to get his hands on one. Everything else seemed near-comical. Poison or gas or kitchen knives. A statuette is too showy and liable to break in the course of a bludgeoning. Household tools are ordinary.

This is the farce of their domestic life. He couldn’t have done it, not really — he hasn’t the strength in his hands or the tolerance for discomfort — but another man might have. Barrett shakes him savagely and pulls him down to the mattress. Tony collapses against him, laughing soundlessly.

“Just wanted to give you a fright,” Tony says “I would never have really done away with you.”

“No, you bloody well wouldn’t.” He could scarcely sound more pleased. Barrett ravages him with his mouth, musses his hair and gouges his neck with his cold probing fingers. Tony’s hands ease from fists to splayed fingers; they clasp at Barrett’s back.

All of it in the spirit of play; they’ve fallen back on children’s games to keep themselves amused, cooped up in the nursery on a rainy day. Barrett will sleep in Tony’s bed from then onward, and the door to the servant’s room will remain closed.

*

The will to go out has vanished from him, like a limb that has atrophied — Barrett’s domain is only a suite of rooms, and it is Tony’s fate to live in them. Barrett lies back in the beautiful new tub, with a dirty book laid open across his thigh — the pages have gone wrinkled from the turning of damp fingers. It is one of Tony’s own books, plucked off the shelf as carelessly as if it were an almanac. There is a cigarette in his hand, and the smell of Russian birch and leather hanging in the air — it wears differently on the skin for Hugo than it ever did for Tony, one of those curious mysteries of chemistry.

Tony lights his cigarette, kneeling on the tile. If Barrett wants his robe or a fresh towel for his face, Tony must bring it for him. He’ll fetch him the crossword, or another novel with a pale green cover. It’s a pleasure to serve.

“What did you do in the war, Barrett?” Tony’s head is aching, and the nearness of Hugo’s body has him useless with confused wanting.

“I don’t think you care any more about that than I care about your school days. I was younger than you are now, and it was a bloody fucking nuisance.”

Tony lowers his eyes. “Yes, of course. I shouldn’t have asked.”

In his imagination, Barrett could never have been any younger than he is now.

Someone must have loved him, once. There must be a mother or a sister or a withered old aunt who looked on him with pride and pleasure, not for his service but for a thousand other trifling reasons within the bonds of blood and status and close acquaintance. Some girl must have loved him once, some man who’d seen those clever drowsing eyes and felt the electric bolt of desire. Even Lord Barr could not have been immune to the powers of those eyes.