Since my success I had begun to be invited to numerous openings, closings and publication parties, which appeared to go on most nights of most weeks of the year. We went to places where, outside, there were groups of photographers waiting for film stars and famous writers. I hadn’t bought a drink in two years, and if you wanted to pick up strangers and meet bores, you were made. Soho was still rough but money and glamour, eventually to ruin it, was on its way. The Groucho Club had opened and in those days you could blag your way in.
I liked to take Phillip out with me. Being more committed to his pleasure than I — and convinced he could make an instant connection with people — he was always more successful. I was a dedicated cheerleader and witness, but one night, in a pub after a party, he flew into a rage, suddenly grabbed me by the throat and shook me. ‘For fuck’s fucking fuck sake, stop telling people all the time that I’m a teacher!’
‘Should I say you captain submarines?’
‘These supercilious, overprivileged people want to hear I’m an actor. I’m a model. I’m a hooker. I’m a movie director. “Teacher” makes them struggle with the death instinct. I can see their eyes trying to contact someone — anyone — across the room.’
Then a girl said to me, another time, ‘Will your wonderful play become a film?’
‘But yes,’ I said. ‘It is about to be made.’
‘What do you mean?’ Phillip asked.
‘Looks like I’ve been lucky again,’ I said.
Within a few weeks of my delivering the script, the movie had gone into pre-production. As the director wanted the actors to spend time together before shooting, it was cast early, with a group of attractive young potential stars.
Phillip and I went to a Soho restaurant to meet ‘the supernatural two’, the boy and girl playing the leads, both of whom had recently appeared in hit feature films, as the stream of ecstatic strangers who approached them attested. The next day, the four of us went to a movie together.
After, I walked Phillip back to his flat. He’d been sullen for a while but now began to berate me. I lacked principle and inner strength; I was a liar, doing or saying anything to gain an advantage. I was losing contact with the actual — working people, money and its absence. In fact I was a total pretence. ‘How do you justify your life!’ he shouted.
‘At least I’ve made something of myself,’ I said.
He grabbed me around the neck. Why would he want to have one of our mock fights now? He was only a little taller than me at around five feet eleven, but at university he’d been a keen rower. His arms were thick and capable; his stomach was hard.
He pulled me backwards until I was on the ground looking up at him as he kicked me in the side. I wanted to get to my feet and lash out at him with schoolkid punches. But not only did this feel unnatural and stupid, I’d get hurt, and I would forfeit our friendship at the moment of my greatest fear.
‘That’s shown you,’ he said.
‘Shown me what?’ I asked, brushing myself down.
Now I phoned Phillip again, late at night.
‘My dear, good evening,’ he said sleepily. ‘What a treat to hear from you. Have you been drinking?’
‘It’s worse. I have reached the age when I’ve begun to survey my wretched life, doing the addiction — sorry, I mean addition, and subtraction.’
Why did I say ‘wretched’? Did I really see it like that? Was there justification? Perhaps tonight. My four children were home for the holidays. They were kicking away from us. Soon they would be gone for good, returning only with complaints. I was beginning to wonder that if I wasn’t a father, what in fact was I?
Earlier that evening I’d been to an AA meeting. Back at home I’d held out as long as possible before pulling out the vodka bottle I kept behind my study sofa and taking a couple of long swigs.
Phillip said, ‘That does happen at your age, my dear boy.’
‘Do you remember much about our friendship?’
‘Enough of it to say it is characteristic of you to ask such a direct question. As I can hardly sit here and consider the future, since we last spoke more of our shared past has come back, providing considerable amusement.’ He went on, ‘You were one of my best friends. I still think of you that way.’
‘But you hurt me — physically, I mean — several times.’
‘Did I do that?’ he said. ‘Have you been brooding? If that is why you called, I can remember us wrestling a bit. Didn’t we like to mess about together like kids?’
‘I hated it.’
‘I can’t recall you saying much at the time,’ he said. ‘You’re certainly not one to refrain from complaint, and you always loved any kind of attention. But I am prepared to apologise,’ he said. There was a pause and, I thought, a little giggle. ‘Are you still attractive?’
‘To some people, I hope. Why does it matter?’
He laughed. ‘What else matters except pleasure or at least being cheered up? If only you would come and see me we could clear everything up. And Fred, my dear, if I send you some of my plays and short fiction would you be sweet enough to show them to someone who might help me? I know you have influence and time is shutting me in.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘By the way, do you still wake up with an erection?’
‘No, I don’t,’ I said. ‘It is also true that I hadn’t even noticed.’
I should have seen that our conversation wouldn’t provide any of the clarity I’d hoped for. I drank some more, lay down, and reran the spools of memory.
I did like to tease and provoke and I could be, as Fiona liked to point out, an irritating person with a vibe of stubborn negativity. She had moved out of our flat by the time the film started to be made, and I was both bereft and elated, with time on my hands, a lot of which I liked to spend with my friend.
For a few weeks it was just Phillip and I, more or less living together in his flat, though I never slept there. Sometimes I’d walk through the door and he’d cuff me straight off. ‘You behave today,’ he’d say. ‘I’m tired. Don’t mess me around.’ Or he’d encircle my neck from behind and pull me down, leaving me on the floor, or grab my arm and twist it up behind my back. If he was particularly mad, he’d just throw me to the ground and kick me.
Most days he punched me on one or other of my arms, in a slightly different place, so I had continuous bruises above my elbows, like smeared love-bites. One time I dropped a glass and fetched the vacuum cleaner to clear it up. He took the flex and lashed me about the legs as I stood in a corner, attempting to protect myself. ‘This is fun,’ he declared. At other times we’d watch TV together, read newspapers aloud or discuss the Labour Party.
Phillip had begun to see a teacher at the school with whom he had a zealous sexual relationship. He flashed me a photograph of her, saying, ‘I wouldn’t want her meeting you! She nearly tore my cock off.’ He withdrew his key and his physical attention. I could not visit him without phoning. One time I walked past him and the teacher on the street and he only nodded at me as a friendly neighbour. I was his shame. I had collaborated, of course. I didn’t have to see him. I could even have spoken out.
Soon he married the teacher. When I asked why he hadn’t invited me to the wedding he just laughed. The wife lived with him while they waited to move to Rome, where they’d got jobs in an international school.
We spoke on the phone, but I didn’t see him until he called and we had a drink together three months later. He explained he’d be going to Rome alone as the marriage had failed. That was all he would tell me.
His leaving for good without any acknowledgement made me aware that this had been the most anomalous episode of my life. The simple explanation was that at the time when I was most successful, I had requested a smack and received it. But really knowing why, isn’t that the thing?