Ray’s debut collection, The Beach, was published in autumn 1978. Ted Hughes was among those present at the launch party. Ray was introduced to the future Poet Laureate and he shyly confessed that without Hughes’ example he might never have attempted to marry nature with humanity. He said that his poem ‘The Mynah Bird’ had been intended as a tribute to Hughes’ ‘Crow’. During a lull, Ray found himself at the drinks table taking small gulps from a glass of champagne in readiness for another that was in the process of being poured when a man in a wide-lapelled velvet jacket and flared jeans approached him, placing a hand on his arm.
‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’ said the newcomer.
‘I certainly don’t, no,’ said Ray as he turned to look at the man, whose reddish-brown hair was styled in a wiry bouffant that had been fashionable a year or so before. The straggly moustache had never really been in vogue. Ray himself had shaved off his own moustache when he had acquired a crew cut in 1977. It was the man’s eyes that struck Ray. They were deep-set, wary, suspicious, even hostile. This was a man who had had good looks and lost them, a man who had deliberately shed them. Good looks in prison were a burden.
‘Squadron Leader Dunstan,’ said Ray.
‘Just Bill nowadays,’ said Dunstan.
‘Bill.’
‘So, you seem to be doing well for yourself, Corporal.’
‘Bill, I…’
‘What? You’re sorry? You don’t know what came over you?’
‘How long have you been out?’
‘A while.’
Dunstan took the glass of champagne from Ray’s hand and downed its contents in one. He held it out to the waiter to get it refilled, then sipped at his second glass.
‘How did you find me?’ said Ray.
‘Don’t flatter yourself, Cross. I go to all the launch parties.’
‘Was it hard?’ Ray asked.
‘What, prison? You get used to it. If you don’t, you go under.’
‘That boy had his whole life ahead of him,’ Ray said, pre-empting Dunstan.
‘I didn’t tell him to climb on top of that truck.’
‘You were flying the plane that cut off his head.’ Ray stared hard into Dunstan’s dark, quick little eyes. Emboldened by drink, he went on. ‘All for your own entertainment and to impress a couple of nurses.’
‘I seem to remember you being present,’ Dunstan said, adding slyly, ‘with your own unsavoury agenda.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘Quite the poet, aren’t we?’
‘If you’ll excuse me…’
‘If you’ll excuse me. You’d never have lasted in my squadron if I’d have known your dirty little secret. You’d have been out on your ear.’
Ray was aware of a gap having opened up between the two of them and the rest of the celebrants, almost as if a space had been cleared in which they would fight.
‘There was no dirty little secret, as you put it. I had just lost my wife.’
‘Your family. That’s an interesting topic of conversation. How interested would they be in the sordid details of your so-called lifestyle?’
‘You know nothing about me or the way I live my life.’
‘It’s amazing how chatty some people get when you’re maintaining their habit.’
Ray stared into the black holes of Dunstan’s eyes.
A third person joined them. Ray’s editor brought an immediate calming influence.
‘Everything all right, Ray?’ asked his editor with a smile.
‘This gentleman was just leaving,’ Ray said.
‘He’s right,’ said Dunstan. ‘I was just leaving. I’ve got what I came for.’ From the pocket of his velvet jacket he slid out a copy of Ray’s book.
‘I hope you signed it, Ray,’ the editor said, placing his hand on his author’s shoulder.
‘His signature’s all over it,’ said Dunstan before turning his back and walking in a straight line towards the exit.
‘Funny chap,’ said the editor. ‘Friend of yours, Ray?’
‘Not exactly, no,’ Ray said, watching the space Dunstan’s disappearing back had filled. ‘Someone I used to know. Or thought I used to know.’
The encounter with Dunstan at the launch party had left Ray troubled, in particular the former squadron leader’s mention of Ray’s family. To reassure himself more than anything, Ray took the train to Manchester and followed the by now familiar route out to Hyde.
Everything appeared normal in the Cross household. Nicholas, now fifteen, was as tall and broad as Ray and took a bigger shoe size. Ray suggested a game of snooker in Gee Cross, where he bought his son a half of bitter. Nicholas surprised him by buying the next round. It seemed to Ray that they were more like uncle and nephew than father and son, but there was no denying their actual relationship. It just wasn’t a subject for conversation.
The idea that Dunstan might show his face around Manchester and seek to cause trouble was a worry, but in the end it was the TLS that broke some difficult news to Ray’s parents.
They were sitting in the lounge. The television was on but no one was really watching it. Maybe Ray’s parents were, but neither Ray nor Nicholas were paying it much attention. Nicholas was finishing off some homework on the floor — he was doing well at school — and Ray was missing London. From his position on the settee, at the other end of which his mother was sitting, he could just reach the magazine rack with his feet. He pulled off his sock and went fishing among the contents of the rack with his toes. Radio Times, Manchester Evening News, TLS, Woman’s Weekly.
TLS.
What were his parents doing with the Times Literary Supplement? Where had they even got hold of it? In other circumstances a proud son might have sent his parents a copy of the issue containing a generous review of his first collection of poems, but the reviewer in this case had interpreted a number of the poems in terms of the author’s presumed sexuality. Presumed around literary London, perhaps, but not in east Manchester. And even then only presumed or guessed at. Ray had never publicly acknowledged his sexuality, but he wasn’t a fool. He had known that people would talk and that talk had a way of spreading from one community to another. But from Bloomsbury to Hyde? He had feared the intervention of an embittered ex-con, but Dunstan had been beaten to it — at least as far as putting Ray’s parents in the picture was concerned.
Ray turned to look at his father, ensconced in the armchair across the narrow room. His face didn’t leave the television, but he gave what Ray interpreted as a tut of disapproval.
Ray returned to London the following day without having had that conversation with his mother and father. He imagined they would have said nothing to Nicholas and he also guessed they would have removed the TLS from the magazine rack and either used it to light a fire or — and here he knew he was pushing it a little — perhaps his mother might have hidden it away somewhere or, at the very least, used it to line a drawer.
The way Veronica found out about Susan Ashton was stupid and regrettable and avoidable and all my fault. We were having a rather pointless conversation about dashboard displays in different makes of car. Particularly the colours used. We were bored with orange. The idea of getting a new car had been proposed some weeks earlier, since ours was not in great shape and we could probably just about afford to replace it. Each time the subject came up, we discussed a different aspect of design or specifications. On this occasion we were talking about dashboard design. I said I liked the red and the blue of a VW dashboard. I even used the phrase ‘jazz-club blue and traffic-light red’.