A Passion So Deadly

Three

Charlie left the Crescent Hotel with a smile on his face. Mrs Pattinson was a very imaginative woman. Charlie had seen a lot of life in an action-packed twenty-four years, but he had never met anyone quite like Mrs Pattinson before.

He and his companion, the lad he knew only as Bob and had worked with just once before, had arrived separately for their assignment. Charlie had parked his nearly new BMW 3251 convertible a couple of streets away from the hotel. Mrs Pattinson insisted on discretion. Bob’s seven-year-old Mini was coincidentally just a few cars along the road — he had yet to aspire to Charlie’s lifestyle.

Charlie waved Bob a cheery farewell, clicked off his car’s alarm system and sank contentedly back into the driver’s seat. Involuntarily he checked the pocket of his leather jacket, fingering the thick wodge of twenty-pound notes which nestled there.

Charlie was a male prostitute, a rent boy — although the term more usually referred to the gay trade and that was not Charlie’s game. He preferred to be called an escort and, after all, he worked for a rather upmarket agency — Bristol’s Avon Escorts, which still operated under the vague pretence that it provided escorts and nothing more. He was also undeniably straight — well, more or less. A few times in the past, when the price had been right, Charlie had serviced wealthy businessmen. But he didn’t enjoy gay sex. He didn’t feel demeaned by it or anything like that. It was just doing a job after all and there were aspects of every job that didn’t appeal to you much, Charlie reckoned. But he liked to enjoy his work. He took a pride in it. He looked after his body. Worked out. Kept himself clean. Never had unprotected sex with anyone. Charlie knew what he was doing.

Charlie had a smart flat in a recently redeveloped part of the old Bristol city docks. The three-roomed apartment in Spike Island Court, a red-brick residential complex of strikingly contemporary design, overlooked a marina full of satisfyingly expensive yachts — and Charlie had read all the home and design magazines he could lay his hands on before he had furnished and decorated his home.

A series of lively nights with an extremely well-preserved and very wealthy widow at her big country house had all but paid for the fashionable pale oak flooring he had laid throughout. Charlie remembered her with pleasure and affection as he did all his best clients. He suspected she had been in her early sixties, although she didn’t look it, but Charlie wasn’t ageist. By and large he actually preferred mature women, albeit with a few flaws. He certainly had little time for girls his own age. Compared with him, he felt, they knew so little about life and even less about sex.

Charlie pushed the button which lowered the roof of his car. It was still warm. He was playing Beethoven loudly on his state-of-the-art CD player. He had discovered Beethoven when he watched a pirate version of A Clockwork Orange — the 1971 Stanley Kubrick film which he had been surprised to learn was still banned from British cinemas and television. A Clockwork Orange was about mindless violence and Charlie had no violent tendencies at all that he knew about. The one thing he wouldn’t have anything to do with was sado-masochism — the very thought of it made him sick and they knew that at the agency. Nonetheless the excitement generated by Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the film had got to him and it was because of it that he had begun seriously to listen to classical music.

He parked the BMW in his allotted place in the covered area beneath Spike Island Court and erected the electrically operated roof again. He couldn’t be bothered to wait for the lift. Instead he bounded up the concrete stairs to his third-floor flat, with Beethoven’s Ninth still reverberating within his head.

Inside the front door he allowed himself a small sigh of satisfaction. He slipped off his highly polished Gucci loafers and removed his socks as well. He liked to feel the coolness of the polished wood on his bare feet. And, as he often did, he thought about the floor’s provider. That arrangement had ended abruptly when the woman’s daughter had returned home uninvited after a broken marriage, naturally expecting that her widowed mother would be lonely and therefore grateful for her company. The woman was neither of those things and had been extremely irritated by an untimely interruption to an immensely well-ordered and satisfying life. She had her garden, her bridge parties, her dog, her books and Charlie. And she once told Charlie that she was much happier than she had ever been when her dull and rather grumpy husband had been alive.

She had never really enjoyed sex before either, she confessed. And, as Charlie had run a finger tantalisingly across her naked belly, she had gasped in pleasurable anticipation, then said crossly: ‘This is going to have to be the last time, damn it. We will have to end our little arrangement.’ Adding in a rather more amused understatement: ‘My daughter would never understand...’

Charlie smiled at the memory. He often knew more about his clients, their hopes and their fears, their true feelings, than their closest family and friends. But, he thought to himself, his mind switching to his most recent client, that certainly was not true of Mrs Pattinson.

Lost in thought, Charlie padded across the floor into his bedroom. The big double bed with its deep cream linen bedspread and black silk scatter cushions looked inviting. Charlie hated to admit it to himself, but he was a bit tired. That woman was demanding. He gave in, stretched out on the bed and lay gazing at the pale cream painted ceiling. The whole flat was painted in pale cream, but while in the unimaginative little rooms at the Crescent Hotel such choice of decor was simply utilitarian, here the effect was striking.

Charlie did not like the new trend for garishly bright colours. He didn’t think they were stylish. He also couldn’t quite get over the feeling that it was exactly what would be expected in the home of a young black man. Therefore he didn’t want to know. He never dressed in bright colours either. His clothes were mostly black, white or various shades of beige and cream. Even his car, although in every sense dashing, was an understated dark grey, and not even the metallic kind.

Charlie’s clothes lived in a fitted wardrobe at one end of his long narrow bedroom. His bed was at the other end. The wardrobe doors were made of a fine pale oak that matched the floor. The only other furniture in the room was a bedside table, also of pale oak — upon which stood a large cream ceramic table lamp — and a big squashy black leather armchair. There was no mirror visible. Charlie had spent too much time with people who liked to watch their own sexual activities strategically reflected.

The long side of the room opposite the door was almost entirely window and the view from it was a sweeping one out over the marina in the foreground and across the stretch of water branching off the River Avon known as the Floating Harbour, with Bristol Cathedral in the background. The window was framed by pale cream muslin curtains which almost blended with the walls.

The light was fading now although it was still a beautiful evening. Charlie always found his bedroom so relaxing. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to sleep, just to rest. He was still thinking about Mrs Pattinson and the sensational few hours he had spent with her. Apart from her sexual preferences — upon which he was something of an expert — Charlie knew nothing at all about Mrs Pattinson, even though he had been her regular for almost two years.

That was unusual. Charlie had begun to understand what women prostitutes had known for centuries. Their clients often treated them as therapists. Charlie had looked after a number of clients, some regulars, some just one-offs who kept their identity secret. In fact they almost all did and he automatically assumed that most of them used false names. The widow who had entertained him in her own home had been one of just a handful of exceptions to this rule. But even those who hid behind some fictitious personae were inclined to confide in him — this stranger who had brought them whatever release it was that they so eagerly sought.

Not so Airs Pattinson. Mrs Pattinson occasionally liked Charlie to talk about himself. He had told her all about his new apartment when he acquired it and she had applauded his plan to keep it simple and minimalist.

She had listened to his description and then told him: ‘I like the sound of it, Charlie. Very dramatic. Don’t clutter the walls either. Just one or two good paintings. Better one decent original, if you can afford it, than a dozen prints.’

He had remembered that. In his bedroom now hung a pastel original, in the kind of muted colours Charlie favoured, by a local Bristol painter not yet celebrated enough to be out of his price range. And on a specially purchased round white table in one corner of the living room stood an abstract bronze by West Country sculptor Clive Gunnell. Charlie had saved up for his two original pieces of art only out of money given him by Mrs Pattinson. It seemed appropriate.

Charlie glanced around him with quiet satisfaction. He had achieved something here and he knew it. Mrs Pattinson and all the rest of them were part of it. The painting and the bronze were from her, that was how he thought of it. The floor was his widow’s. The muslin curtains had been bought through six months of regular Wednesday afternoon sessions with an overly thin woman who called herself Angela and seemed to live on nervous energy and nothing else. She would remove her sensible low-heeled shoes, strip off her formal business suits and with them discard the last vestige of her tight-lipped, tension-filled respectability. She had been rampant that one, Charlie remembered.

Mrs Pattinson was rampant too. But, even though she was paying him, Mrs Pattinson gave as well as took. Charlie’s body still glowed pleasurably. He always looked forward to the times spent with her at the Crescent Hotel. Every time was different, you see, every time a new experience. What a way to earn a living, he thought to himself smugly. And what a good living it was too.

Charlie took a winter holiday in his native West Indies every year, and this February planned to take his mother with him. His family were very proud of him. He was bright, likeable, self-assured, fun to have around. But Charlie’s family had no idea what Charlie really did for a living — something in computers, never too precisely explained, was his cover — and neither did most of his friends. It wasn’t that he was ashamed, it was just that, in common with the Merry Widow’s daughter, he didn’t think they would understand. In fact he knew his mother would throw a fit. There were three older brothers and two sisters, one older than him and one younger; the elder, Mary Anne, married to a decent enough but unexceptional man. His younger sister, Daisy, strikingly pretty, looked set to escape to a better life than might be expected, as Charlie considered that he had done. Daisy had caught the eye of a clever young black man who had recently graduated in Law from Bristol University. He had landed a job in London and they were soon to be married. Charlie was ecstatically happy for Daisy. He wanted the best for all his family, but for the others it was probably not to be.

Charlie and his brothers and sisters had been brought up in the St Paul’s area of Bristol which had improved greatly since the terrible days of the notorious race riots, but remained a rough and tough place. Many of the boys and girls he had gone to school with already seemed to have wrecked their lives. Some were in jail or just put. Drugs figured heavily in the day-to-day life of St Paul’s, and Charlie knew that one of his elder brothers, Bart, who had always liked dope a bit too much, was now into crack. That frightened Charlie, but he didn’t blame Bart. Life was hard and you took your pleasures where you could in St Paul’s. The dangers rarely presented themselves until it was too late. Charlie knew that about drugs and always had done — but never even considered that the same premise could be applied to his chosen way of life in which he saw no hidden dangers at all.

Both the older brothers, Jack and Winston, were married and held down steady labouring jobs with the council. They earned little for hard dirty work and Charlie thought they both deserved better. His family was not like many in the St Paul’s area. They had been brought up by a mother who had sacrificed everything for them — his father, who had come to Bristol because of the docks and never got over their closure, had died suddenly of a heart attack when Charlie had been seven years old — to be well behaved, honest and hard working. It seemed to Charlie, though, that these qualities did not necessarily help you get on in life. He knew that up in Clifton, all around the Crescent Hotel where he had spent half the afternoon and evening with Mrs Pattinson, a host of privileged white kids without half his intelligence were being handed opportunities on a plate that his brothers and sisters would have crawled over beds of nails for.

Charlie had determined that he was going to have a future, whatever he had to do in order to build one. His real work was conducted with great discretion. Unlike most of his kind Charlie did not fall into male prostitution by accident. He had made a conscious decision that this was what he would do. After all, sex was what he was best at, what he had always been best at. It was no different really, he told himself, from being good at football, and a hell of a lot better, he reckoned, than being good at boxing — and those were the other two great working-class means of escape.

Charlie first realised how good he was at sex when, aged only thirteen, he had been seduced by the Sunday-school teacher who was supposed to be giving him confirmation class — Mrs Collins believed in religious education above all else. The young woman — although being around thirty she had seemed quite old to him then — had, in between outbursts of self-flagellating guilt, set about giving him a superb sexual education over a period of several months.

At around this time Charlie remembered one of the few things his daddy had told him. If you have a talent you should make the most of it, his father had said. He had been thinking, Charlie had known all too well, of his own abandoned talent as a jazz trombonist. Charlie’s father had even sold his treasured trombone, passed on to him by his own father, in order to provide for his family. Ranwell Collins’ talent died years before he did, and before Charlie had even been born, and Ranwell never stopped mourning it.

Charlie knew what his talent was all right. He also knew his father would not have approved any more than would his mother — but he didn’t think about that. Charlie was a natural sexual athlete whom nature had equipped particularly well for the job. He had been told by veterans in his trade, mostly women, that one day it would destroy him. Some had advised him to get out while he could. It was advice Charlie had no intention of taking. In fact, he couldn’t quite comprehend what they were talking about.

Charlie reckoned he was totally in control of his own life. And he was particularly happy that day. He always was after being with Mrs P. Happy, if exhausted. Invariably exhausted. Charlie chuckled. He liked Mrs Pattinson. Charlie didn’t understand why women were still not supposed to reveal the same kinds of appetites men had quite freely exhibited for years. He didn’t see anything wrong with Mrs Pattinson’s behaviour. And he thought it was sad that she had to be quite so secretive. She was a complete mystery to him, that one. Even the occasions when she would talk to him about his life were few and far between. Mostly she only wanted to talk about sex. That seemed quite reasonable to Charlie. He saw nothing wrong with sex. If you were sensible and used your head, sex was simply about pleasure and nobody need get hurt. Charlie had no time for double standards. Nonetheless, it was largely thanks to double standards that business was so good for him. His market was a growing one. There were quite a lot of Mrs Pattinsons around looking for no-risk sexual adventure, Charlie had discovered, and he was very grateful for it.

He gave Mrs Pattinson a good time, no questions asked, no emotional ties, pure sex — and she paid him handsomely. That seemed like a perfect arrangement to Charlie. And there was the added bonus, of course. As Charlie had yet to become jaded by his work, Mrs Pattinson gave him a pretty good time too.

But this was an adventurous and imaginative woman. She also liked to try new young men from time to time and sometimes she liked to have two of them together. Charlie didn’t mind that. He quite liked watching as well as doing, come to that. And, in any case, there wasn’t a lot that Charlie minded. Life was good.

He smiled languorously, stretching his limbs out across the bed, reliving the afternoon and evening. He could feel her naked body pressed against his, see her face close to his face as she whispered into his ear the erotic details of her most intimate needs and desires, as she dreamed up some new sexual adventure, each more exotic than any that had gone before.

Recently she had come up with a particularly novel idea, a sex game Charlie had never heard of before. It was amazing really, Charlie thought, that any woman could still do that. Charlie was quite impressed.