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Charlie: The Promise of Paris – Partie 4

Not for the first time, Charlie had not been entirely honest. When we arrived at his parents’ apartment, it was immediately clear they hadn’t been expecting me. It made my situation more disconcerting. Still, they welcomed me into their tastefully decorated rooms—ornate, unmistakably Parisian.

I had left Thomas, Ambre and Léo behind, taking my first tentative steps towards reconciliation with Charlie. Yet I could not shake a lingering sense of disappointment. All three had hugged me as I left—our plan à quatre had come to an end, but it would stay with me for a long time. We crossed Paris in uneasy silence, neither of us willing to admit that we had both behaved badly.

“This is completely unexpected,” Charlie’s mother said. “But it is a wonderful surprise, and we are delighted to see you both. I have not seen Charlie for such a long time, and at last we get to meet the person he shares an apartment with.”

Charlie leaned in and whispered in my ear. “My mother still hopes I might give her grandchildren and refuses to accept that it will never happen.”

His father shook my hand warmly and patted my shoulder. “Come in and make yourself at home,” he said. “I shall make coffee for us all.”

“You never said anything about visiting,” his mother added. “If I had known, I would have prepared something special. Never mind—we shall go out. I’ll call Thomas and see if he can join us.”

Charlie cut in quickly. “Thomas is working. I have already seen him, but he sends his love to Maman.” He glanced at me cautiously; it could not have escaped her notice.

“Such a shame,” his father sighed. “It is not often we have both our sons together. “But” he added, turning to me, “when Charlie and Thomas are in the same room, things can become a little… lively. Perhaps it is for the best.”

It was certainly for the best. If Charlie and Thomas had begun arguing, it would have been about one thing—me—and that would have made everything unbearably awkward. I might even have had to explain that I had been caught in a love tryst with both their sons.

“Follow me,” Charlie said.

He led me through the apartment to a bedroom that had clearly once been his. The bed sat directly beneath the window; he climbed onto it and pushed open the large panes. The street stretched out in a straight line towards the Seine, and on the opposite bank, the Eiffel Tower rose above everything.

“This room is perfect in summer,” he said. “It’s wonderful to sleep with the windows open, your head almost out in the street.” Six soft pillows were stacked against the iron grille. I placed my holdall beside his and pretended to take an interest in the view.

“I’m glad you came with me,” he admitted. “For a moment, I thought you might stay with Thomas—and that would have made me very unhappy.”

If he was expecting reassurance, I wasn’t going to give it.

“I’m very upset about those photographs in Le Pénis,” I said. “Why, Charlie? Why pose naked—and not have the decency to tell me?”

“I was foolish,” he admitted, “but I found it exciting. It was some time ago, when I went to Lille with Matis. He persuaded me to pose. I knew he intended to submit them to magazines in France. I was wrong on two counts: I thought they weren’t good enough, and I never expected you to see them.”

“But I did, Charlie.”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “And I regret that. But I must live my own life.”

“And what about me? Did you ever consider how I might feel?”

“I always consider your feelings, Miles. But I suspect your problem isn’t really the photographs. It’s something that was mentioned earlier.”

“What do you mean?”

“That you have never seen me naked. That we have never made love.”

My silence gave him his answer.

“You, see?” he said softly. “I knew that was on your mind. But you must understand—my reluctance is for your own protection. I have lived carelessly, in both Paris and London, and I promised myself I would not return to that life. It does not mean I don’t love you—quite the opposite. And when it does happen, it will be because the moment is right. Love is meant to be something beautiful.”

It was not the explanation I had expected, and it did nothing to satisfy me.

A faint flush rose to his cheeks; he chose his words carefully.

“Despite appearances, I am a shy person. And yes—before you say it—those photographs were difficult for me. I had to force myself. But there is something else.”

I stared at him, incredulous. Shy was the last word I would ever have used to describe Charlie.

“There is also the fact,” he continued, “that you are highly sexed. We are compatible in many ways, but not in that.”

“So it’s my fault?”

“I didn’t say that,” he replied quickly. “But I know you will seek sex elsewhere. I just didn’t expect it to be with my brother.”

Since his arrival in Paris, everything had become a quiet contest of blame—and he was adept at shifting it onto me.

“If you want me to apologise for last night, I won’t.”

“Your promiscuity frightens me,” he said. “I’m afraid you will catch something—and put me at risk as well.”

“If you think I’ve been sleeping around, you are mistaken. Yes, I’m attracted to people—but for years, the only person I’ve wanted is you.” I sat down on the neatly made bed. “Last night was an exception. I was angry, drunk—and yes, I find Thomas attractive. But it wasn’t planned. It just happened. It was new to me. I won’t pretend I didn’t enjoy it. But I also need to live my own life.”

“But you have hurt me,” Charlie said, his voice breaking. “I never imagined that you would make love to my brother before me.”

We had reached an impasse.

“If you like, I can return to Thomas and leave you alone.”

“Non!” he exclaimed. “I want you to stay with me. We must try to make this work.”

“But I don’t see how we can. Our trust has been compromised—by both of us.”

For the first time since I had known him, I saw fear in Charlie’s eyes.

“I beg you not to give up on us. I came to Paris to make our relationship work. I am certain we can return to the life we have in England and put all this behind us.”

I was not so sure. Away from Charlie, I had tasted a kind of freedom that had awakened something in me. If we were to make this work, he would have to change—and I doubted that he would. And yet, despite my coldness, I felt a flicker of pity. I considered forgiving him for those revealing images in Le Pénis. I also wanted his forgiveness—for Thomas, for Ambre, for Léo. In the space of twenty-four hours, everything between us had shifted. But if I gave in now, Charlie would always hold the advantage.

My phone buzzed. A WhatsApp message lit up the screen: Bianchi, in Verona. His timing was uncanny, as though he had sensed an opening and meant to claim it.

“Let’s talk about this later,” I said.

Charlie’s parents took us out for dinner at a small restaurant on rue de Passy. It was expensive, and I felt slightly underdressed, out of place. His parents made polite conversation in English as we waited for our main courses. I played my part, courteous and attentive, while Charlie remained withdrawn and silent.

“What is the matter?” his mother asked. “Is something troubling you?”

“No,” he replied. “I’m just tired.”

“Charlie tells us you are a writer,” his father said, turning to me with quick interest. “Is it true you write about travel?”

“It is,” I said. “But I would like to write about other things.”

“Have you considered a novel?”

“I have,” I admitted. “But I’m not sure I have the patience—or the skill—to write a good one.”

“My sister, Cecilie, has written a book,” his mother announced. “It was dreadful. She attempted a grand romance, with a few murders thrown in. It ended up chaotic—and not at all romantic.”

“My Aunt Cecilie knows about murder,” Charlie interjected. “Her first husband was killed by his business partner, and she became very wealthy as a result. We have often suspected she was having an affair with the man who killed him.”

“That will do, Charlie.”

But he continued, undeterred.

“Of course, infidelity is common in our family. You must look around this table to realise there are secrets waiting to be uncovered.”

He looked at each of us in turn—his parents, then me. I remembered what Thomas had told me: that he suspected he was not his father’s son. The flicker in his father’s expression suggested there might be truth in it—or at least, guilt of another kind.

“Should I assume something is wrong between you?” his mother asked.

Charlie left the answer to me.

“I think every relationship has its difficult moments,” I said evenly. But the mood had already soured.

Charlie’s behaviour throughout the meal suggested he might not be as ready to forgive as he had claimed.

Afterwards, we made strained conversation as we walked back to his parents’ apartment. Rain had begun to fall, quietly at first, then more steadily—as though the evening required it.

Inside, we were offered brandy—expensive, warming. I was pleased to discover that his father smoked. He suggested we step out onto the balcony together. Closing the French doors behind us, he gestured for me to sit.

Below us, the hum of traffic drifted upward, mingling with the occasional burst of laughter from passers-by in the street.

In the half-light, I could see Charlie in him. His thinning grey hair had once been as dark and full as his son’s. He carried himself with a surprising vitality, every inch the businessman—someone accustomed to inspiring confidence, to being believed.

“You are the only person Charlie has ever introduced to us. That must mean you are important to him.” He spoke calmly, with quiet precision. It was not a question, but a statement. “And yet, the circumstances suggest there is a problem between you.”

“We’ve been very happy together,” I said. “But let’s just say we have both done things we now regret.”

“Would you care to elaborate?”

It was a difficult decision. Should I tell him everything? Neither of his sons would come out of it well—nor, for that matter, would I. But there was something in his manner, a steadiness, that suggested he would not rush to judgement.

“Before you answer,” he said, “allow me to tell you a few things. I love both my sons, but—as Charlie implied—there are secrets in this family. Charlie is my flesh and blood, but he takes after his mother, who, in her youth, was… let us say, complicated.” He paused briefly. “I am closest to Thomas, though he is not my son in the strict sense. I am not his biological father. He was the result of one of his mother’s affairs. And yet, Thomas is very like me. He has loved me in a way that has made me deeply proud.”

He hesitated, then continued.

“But do not imagine that fault lies only with their mother. I, too, have been unfaithful—many times. Age tempers these things or perhaps exhausts them. We settle, eventually. But my sons… they have inherited more than we intended. In their own ways, they are becoming what we once were.” He studied me for a moment. “Am I close to the truth of your situation?”

“I believe you are, sir.”

And so, I told him everything.

As I spoke, I watched him carefully, searching for some flicker of judgement or surprise. But he remained composed, listening, nodding occasionally, as though nothing I said was entirely unfamiliar. When I finished, he was silent for a long moment.

“The question I must ask,” he said at last, “is which of my sons you love.”

“I suppose the honest answer is that I love them both.”

“But love is a delicate thing,” he replied. “Do not mistake it for desire. I suspect it is Charlie whom you love. Thomas, perhaps, is a distraction.” He took a measured breath. “I am not surprised by Charlie’s actions. Nor am I surprised that Thomas would seek to provoke his brother. That is their nature. But you, Miles—you are the unknown quantity. Everything now depends on how you choose to respond.”

“That is the problem,” I admitted. “I don’t know how to deal with it.”

“Charlie craves attention,” he said. “He will do almost anything to be noticed. But beneath that, there is a boy who wants to settle down with someone he truly loves—and he is afraid to reveal those feelings.” He paused, weighing his words. “If you want my advice—and I offer it as someone who knows his son—then leave him. Leave Paris without telling him where you are going. Let him believe that he might lose you.”

He glanced out into the night before continuing.

“He will return to England in a hurry, convinced that you have gone back there. Whether you are waiting for him… or not, is entirely your decision.”

The David Problem: Notes from a Life

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Giacomo crowned with passion-flowers. c.1890-1900. Wilhelm von Gloeden

Art, Innocence, and the Burden of Looking Back

David was in a quandary; the problem was of his own making. It was a friend of Joshua who wanted a name — a name that would read ‘curated by’ and command attention. Of course, David had agreed, but now he had his regrets.

An email from Pamela Hutchinson had been the source of it all. This exhibition is inappropriate and offensive. When David failed to respond, she went to the media, who were only too eager to champion her cause.

“Fucking do-gooder,” he had moaned to Joshua.

But it transpired that she knew far more than he had anticipated.

“The boys he used were underage and exploited by an unscrupulous man.” Those were the words a journalist from The Standard had used over the phone.

“How does anyone know that?”

The exhibition at the McDonald Gallery on Wellington Street was to include sixty photographs taken by the German, Wilhelm von Gloeden. The concept mirrored a similar exhibition mounted by the photographer in the 1890s.

Back then, there had been no objection to von Gloeden’s work.

“The Victorians were either more accepting or considerably more naïve,” David reflected. “His work has been displayed all over the world, and I doubt they faced the kind of problems I’m dealing with now.”

David wasn’t selecting the photographs — that responsibility lay with Nathaniel Wilson, the American who had approached him — but he had agreed to write a critical essay for the catalogue. Yet as the backlash grew, it was David whom people sought out. Mail Online had already published a particularly damning article, one that threatened his reputation as a credible writer.

Joshua had researched von Gloeden and discovered that his notoriety only emerged in the latter part of the last century. Before then, his work had received glowing reviews from newspapers around the world.

“Count von Gloeden is very clever in the way he introduces nude figures of Sicilian boys into his landscapes. It is something quite out of the ordinary, and for those who appreciate artistic work, the figure studies — with their almost classical subjects — will be found of especial interest.”

He read this passage out aloud to David, who noted that it came from a newspaper published in 1909.

“I suppose it’s my fault,” Joshua reasoned. “I must admit, I didn’t realise the subject matter might be considered objectionable now.”

The story of Count Wilhelm von Gloeden had always fascinated David. He had first encountered his work in an old book — The Spell of the Southern Shores; or, From Sea to Sea in Italy — written by Caroline Atwater Mason in 1915. It had been illustrated with landscape images taken by von Gloeden.

Von Gloeden had been born into a well-heeled Prussian family in 1856 and later travelled to Naples, where his cousin, Wilhelm von Plüschow, a photographer who also specialised in pictures of young nude men, encouraged him to take up photography. In his early twenties, suffering from tuberculosis, von Gloeden moved on to Taormina, then a remote village, only accessible by donkey, in Sicily.

He was one of two men credited with turning Taormina into a tourist destination.

The first was Otto Geleng, a Prussian painter who, having fallen ill in Rome, travelled to Taormina in 1863 to convalesce. When three Parisian critics came to visit, the only local inn — the Bellevue — proved inadequate, and Geleng transformed the house in which he was staying into a hotel. It became the Hotel Timeo, still thriving today. When the critics returned to France, the articles they wrote drew the first wave of tourists from Prussia and France, soon followed by visitors from Holland, England, America, Russia, and Poland.

The next was Von Gloeden, a member of the German nobility, who was wealthy, extravagant, sociable — and more than a little eccentric. He kept a large collection of birds — ravens, parrots, nightingales, canaries — and delighted in teaching them to talk and whistle military marches.

He began taking photographs as a hobby, but when his stepfather was accused of treason by Kaiser Wilhelm II and stripped of his possessions, the flow of money to Taormina dried up. Von Gloeden was forced to rely increasingly on photography for his income.

He installed a studio and laboratory in his villa and printed images of local landscapes and architecture as postcards and souvenirs.

The baron also set about persuading shy, nubile young boys to pose in the manner of Greek statues.

“Many of the pictures have a fascinating charm that recalls the odes of Horace and other classical poets of these sunlit lands. All his models seem to the manner born, their graceful lines and quiet, expressive faces harmonising so perfectly with surroundings of luxuriant foliage, abundant flowers, and sunlit glades.”

That, along with their easy smiles, was about all they wore.

David rang Nathaniel, who seemed to be keeping a low profile in New York.

“The problem,” David said, “is that people now see the photographs as child pornography.”

“They’re of their time,” Nathaniel replied. “They belong to a particular moment in photography — when people were still working out how to handle flesh in strong light and shadow. And you must admit, for such an early stage, it’s handled with real skill.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I mean,” Nathaniel went on, “you’re looking at sun-darkened skin under a harsh, blazing light — not the pale tones you’d get in England’s softer sunshine.”

David was none the wiser. It sounded as though Nathaniel was reading from notes laid out in front of him.

“And besides,” Nathaniel continued, “this was when photography was beginning to supplant fine art. Visitors wanted clarity — every detail sharp, everything evenly lit. That was what they valued.”

If David had been hoping for reassurance from Nathaniel, he wasn’t finding it.

“But the nude photographs appear to be of underage boys,” David suggested.

“They’re not underage boys,” Nathaniel replied. “They’re dark-skinned, classically proportioned lads — fine-limbed peasant boys. I’ll grant you, the work does come under scrutiny from time to time, but we are talking about art.”

“If that’s the case,” David said, “then I’ll forward all media enquiries to you.”

He ended the call and turned to find Joshua hovering with fresh information.

“I came across something about a von Gloeden exhibition in Sydney — in the nineties, I think. Detectives were sent in after a complaint, quite high-level, claiming the photographs amounted to child pornography. But in the end, they decided the images were harmless.”

“Exactly,” David said, warming to the argument, finding himself cast as an unlikely devil’s advocate. “Why do people take offence at something so trivial? The models themselves hardly seem troubled by any sense of impropriety.”

“But…” Joshua hesitated, choosing his words carefully, “there’s no getting around the fact that von Gloeden used these photographs of nude boys not just as art, but as a kind of advertisement — for the sort of clientele Taormina began to attract.”

“That’s a bit harsh,” David replied, though he was aware that von Gloeden had been openly homosexual and known for his late-night revelries, both at his villa and in the surrounding meadows. It spoke to von Gloeden’s charm — and his influence — that the people of Taormina tolerated his unconventional behaviour, even when it involved their own sons. The town, after all, had prospered, riding a wave of economic growth driven by the very visitors he helped to draw there.

Joshua continued.

“I don’t think we can deny that von Gloeden was a gentleman who liked young boys and took a great many photographs of them — mostly nude.”

That night, David resolved to look more closely into von Gloeden’s life and work. What he found would help him reach a decision: whether to withdraw from the exhibition or stay and weather the criticism.

He trawled through old newspapers and discovered that attitudes had shifted in the latter part of the twentieth century, and that von Gloeden’s reputation had suffered accordingly. The tone had hardened. One writer dismissed him as “that poor old homosexual, the Baron von Gloeden, who hid lust behind an academic glass.” Another claimed the photographs seemed “designed for a market of privileged oglers,” while a third described him as “an artful dodger whose work slipped past the censors.” Even the more measured critiques carried an edge, suggesting his images gratified “three desires at once: art, classical tranquillity, and the sanctioned glimpse of desirable bodies.” One publication went further still, branding von Gloeden a charlatan.

Von Gloeden’s work seemed almost tame by today’s standards, yet he could not ignore the fact that his steady production of homoerotic images had proved immensely profitable, earning him admiration across Europe.

Most of the photographs, he noted, were sepia-toned, printed on gold-hued salted paper. The boys posed with a certain taste and deliberation: a dark-haired youth stretching eagerly sideways and upwards to peer through a window; a group of boys reclining along the rough parapet of a height overlooking a lake ringed by mountains. Both compositions made full use of their romantic natural settings. The wider body of work followed similar themes, many images featuring boys whose graceful bodies were adorned with wreaths of laurel and flowers, set against pale masonry or slender columns. In some, distant bays appeared through arching boughs heavy with white blossom.

One journal compared von Gloeden’s photographs to the paintings of Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

But, as he delved deeper, David discovered a great many photographs of completely naked boys that left nothing to the imagination.

He also came across a reference to Pancrazio Buciunì, who had died in 1963, a year before David was born. At fourteen, he had entered von Gloeden’s service and later became one of his most frequent models — known as Il Moro — and, likely, his lover. Von Gloeden had taken more than 7,000 exposures and, upon his death in 1931, left them all to Buciunì.

In 1936, Buciunì was prosecuted by the Fascists for possession of “pornographic material,” and many of the Baron’s plates were destroyed under court order. Yet he had the foresight to conceal around 1,500 of them beneath the stones of his floor. While von Gloeden’s photographs had already travelled widely across the world, it was largely thanks to Buciunì’s intervention that many of the surviving images — including those now destined for exhibition — had endured at all.

But David’s thoughts kept circling back to the present.

Pamela Hutchinson, who had first raised concerns, spoke for a wider audience — those whose views were shaped by a more modern moral framework.

The ages of the boys had never been definitively established, and David discovered that many may have perished in the 1908 Messina earthquake, though Taormina itself seemed to have escaped the worst of it. In truth, the extent to which minors were depicted erotically might never be fully known.

There was also the question of power: von Gloeden, a wealthy aristocrat, and the impoverished peasant boys who lived at his mercy. In Sicily, young boys commonly went nude at the beach, and across much of the Mediterranean, homosexuality was often regarded as a passing phase in adolescence.

For struggling families, payment in exchange for their sons posing for von Gloeden would have been difficult to refuse. Yet it was equally hard to ignore the likelihood that he exploited these boys, his images serving, in part, the interests of sexual tourism.

David could not deny that, throughout the twentieth century, von Gloeden’s work had frequently been labelled obscene. What unsettled him was the realisation that earlier generations had not seen it that way at all — to them, it had been art: a new form, even, one that threatened to unsettle the dominance of traditional fine art.

Joshua interrupted.

“Have you made a decision yet?”

David toyed with a ruler, buying himself a moment, as though the answer required more thought than it did.

“I have,” he said at last. “For all the criticism, the exhibition matters. I need to write something that acknowledges everything we’ve uncovered — the admirable and the troubling — and accept that some will find it distasteful. There’s a temptation to sanitise the past, to smooth it into something more palatable, but ignoring it doesn’t make it disappear. It happened. The least we can do is face it honestly, from all sides.” He paused, then added, with a faint shrug, “Besides, as they say, even bad publicity has its uses.”

Giacomo garlanded with passion-flowers. c.1890-1900. Wilhelm von Gloeden

Gypsy Blood: Some Bare-Knuckle Fighter in his Family

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Colvey said I had something and wanted to know more. I had no fuckin’ clue what he meant. He stepped in close, his face right up in mine, and for a second, I thought he was gonna headbutt me. His eyes were this icy blue—never noticed before—and they had that look that made you feel small. I stared back, like I wasn’t scared, but I was.

I wanted to ask what his problem was, but Colvey always said silence spoke louder than words. So I kept my mouth shut.

“There’s no one here,” he said. “Told the boys to fuck off.”

Just then, a bit of glass dropped from the busted skylight and smashed on the floor. He didn’t even blink. “But they’re still watching,” he said. “They wanna see me cut you.”

I didn’t dare look away. If I did, he’d know he had me. So, I just stared at his face. They said he had gypsy blood—some bare-knuckle fighter in his family. Probably bullshit. There was a scar under his left eye from when someone bottled him once. Bit of stubble, strong jaw, eyes like razors. Eyebrows shaped. Long lashes. Minty fuckin’ breath.

“You tryna stare me out, bro?”

Didn’t answer. Then he blinked. Looked away for half a second. Tiny moment, but I saw it.

Then—slick movement—blade at my cheek. Pressed it in till I felt it cut. Warm blood sliding down my face.

Door creaked open. Metal scraping.

“You cool?” Mason shouted.

“Fuck!” Colvey hissed. He was pissed.

“All good, bro,” he yelled back, easing the knife away.

I could tell he was gutted. He’d wanted to slice me good. Maybe he still would’ve, but Mason was climbing through the mess toward us.

“What’s going on?” Mason said.

Colvey wiped the knife on his T-shirt, leaving a red smear. “Nothin’, bro. Just sorting a few things. Where’s the boys?”

“They’ve gone. Told ‘em to call it.” Mason clocked the blood on my cheek. “Clean yourself up, dickhead.”

They turned to go. Colvey slung an arm around Mason’s shoulders. Whispered something. Kicked a paint can that rattled off into the dark.

My heart was still banging. I took deep breaths. I’d got off lucky. Stood my ground, though. Still here.

At the door, Colvey turned and shouted, “I’ll see you again, pussy!”

Mason flipped me the finger, then did that wanking motion. “Fuckin’ knobhead!”

That’s when I realised I’d pissed myself.

“Bro, answer your fuckin’ phone!” Blake was yelling when I finally picked up. Music blasting behind him. “I’ve been calling loads, you blanked me.”

“Yeah, been busy,” I said.

“Why’s Colvey after you?”

“I dunno,” I said. “Didn’t say.”

“He’s goin’ mental, bruv. Proper mental. Said he’s gonna kill you.”

“Well, he didn’t,” I said. “And I’m goin’ home to sleep.”

“Nah, come Billy’s,” Blake said. “The boys wanna hear what happened.”

I thought about it. But there was a wet patch on my joggers that made me feel sick, and a cut on my face that didn’t bother me at all.

I kept replaying it in my head. I’d done something to piss him off, that much was clear. I just didn’t know what. I hadn’t stolen from him, hadn’t touched his gear, hadn’t said shit behind his back. And I sure as hell hadn’t been with his girl. That was never happening.

Still, this was proper bad. I’d half expected him to stab me, but he hadn’t. Told myself Colvey’d never killed anyone—but who knew? Maybe he just hadn’t needed to.

What scared me most was thinking he might cut me off from the crew. Then what?

The night felt dead. Cold. Empty. And I felt smaller than I’d ever felt before.

Charlie: The Promise of Paris – Partie 3

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Caught Between Brothers, Desire, and Sex
French films—where sex feels real. Skin is just skin, textured, imperfect; faces carry lines; bodies are allowed to be naked, warm, a little unguarded. That was my first thought when I woke the next morning: that I had been inside a film, and now there lingered a soft, satisfied glow, the sense that something good had happened.

We were all naked.

Thomas lay close beside me, his right arm draped across my chest. Ambre was sprawled over our legs, her head tipped over the edge of the bed. Léo’s head was tucked beneath my left arm, one leg thrown across my midriff. I couldn’t have moved even if I had wanted to.

It had been very late when we returned to Thomas’s rooms. We had drunk far too much. And somewhere in that blur, the three of them had shown me something about sex in France—something unforced, unashamed, almost instinctive. The rest dissolved into fragments, but I woke with a lingering, uncertain impression: that, perhaps, I had crossed a threshold I hadn’t expected and shared something new.

And then I thought of Charlie, back home.

The anger I’d felt—at discovering those explicit photographs of him in Le Pénis—had dulled overnight, settling into something cooler, more measured. In its place came the faint, unsettling sense that the balance had shifted. I hadn’t replied to his messages, hadn’t answered the calls he’d tried to make. I imagined him now: alone, uneasy, carrying the weight of a secret no longer entirely his own.

And there was something else.

I had slept with Thomas, with Ambre, with Léo. The thought lingered, complicated and strangely satisfying. That I had been with Charlie’s brother felt, in some quiet, private way, like the sharpest form of retaliation available to me—an unspoken act that tilted things, however slightly, back in my favour.

For it to have the effect I imagined, Charlie would have needed to take the first Eurostar of the morning and walk through the door at that exact moment—only then would he have found us as we were, the four of us bound together by something reckless, unguarded, and impossible to explain away.

“Bonjour,” Thomas murmured into my ear, his voice still heavy with sleep as his fingers idly traced my chest. “How are you today, my English lover?”

Léo was awake too, stretching out beside me. It was only then I noticed the words Esprit libre tattooed along his arm—something I had somehow missed before. “Miles,” he breathed softly, shifting closer, his warmth pressing into mine.

Amid all of this, Ambre slept on, undisturbed, as though the morning belonged entirely to her dreams.

Thomas was the first to get up. The night before, he had warned us that he had work in the morning—that he would come to regret his small indulgences. I watched as he slipped from the bed and wandered, still naked, into the small kitchenette to make coffee.

He moved with an easy, unselfconscious grace—tall and lean, his pale skin catching the soft morning light. There was something quietly inviting in the ease of his body, a softness to him that made it difficult to look away.

I felt, unexpectedly, a flicker of disappointment as he pulled himself from the warmth of us, as though something of the night had gone with him.

Léo took it as an invitation to move closer. He kissed me softly, his lips brushing mine, the faint roughness of his stubble grazing my skin. There was a quiet confidence in him, a suggestion that the night could easily begin again.

But Ambre, roused by the promise of coffee, chose that moment to wake. With a casual gesture, she tossed a crumpled sheet over us both before slipping out of bed and wandering into the kitchenette, where she joined Thomas and helped herself to a stale croissant.

“What are you thinking about?” Léo asked.

“I’m thinking about that Bertolucci film—the one where a brother and sister take in his teenage friend.”

“Innocents,” he said, after a moment. “The Dreamers was the English title. It shows how different French sensibilities can be—more permissive, less constrained. Like Les Enfants Terribles, with its own tangled intimacy between brother and sister. But there are no siblings here.” He paused, a faint smile forming. “The only brother worth mentioning is Charlie, who—if I understand correctly—has managed to embarrass himself rather thoroughly with his boyfriend.”

“Ah, Charlie,” I said. “That’s something I’ll have to deal with.”

Ambre perched on the edge of the bed, finishing the last of her croissant. She retrieved her phone from the floor and began tapping out a message, only half-listening.

“Miles,” Léo went on, his tone light, almost teasing, “you find yourself in a rather enviable position. You’re able to make comparisons—observe what each brother has to offer. Charlie, who, judging by Le Pénis, is… generously endowed. And Thomas, whom you seemed to appreciate last night, is rather more modest. Would you agree?”

Ambre raised her little finger in the air, a mischievous glint in her eye. “I don’t think Thomas is in any position to impress anyone with the size of his bifler,” she said, laughing.

She wasn’t entirely wrong, I thought. Thomas may have come second to Charlie in that regard, but there was something about him—something understated, quietly appealing—that stirred a different kind of interest in me.

As if to underline the point, Thomas reappeared with the coffee and came to stand over me, the morning light catching him in a way that made it difficult to think of anything else.

“What are you going to do about Charlie?” he asked.

“I’ll message him later,” I said.

“Forgive me, Miles,” Ambre added, almost lightly. “But I’ve already messaged him. I told him you spent the night with us—nothing more than that, of course—but enough for him to understand that the four of us may have… misbehaved.”

“Oh,” I said, caught off guard. “Was that wise?”

Thomas came to sit beside me and brushed a quick kiss against my cheek. “Brothers are meant to share their toys,” he said with a faint smile. “And besides, Ambre’s right—after what he did to you, he deserved to hear something.”

Léo shifted closer, his touch unexpectedly intimate, then lifted his gaze to meet mine. “There’s a difference, isn’t there,” he said quietly, “between posing for photographs and actually taking part in something.”

And just like that, I felt it—the subtle, unwelcome shift. The balance, which had briefly seemed to favour me, tilted back toward Charlie.

After showering and dressing, we followed Thomas down to the bar below. We found a table outside and ordered Orangina, which he promptly fortified with generous measures of Cointreau. It might have suited the night before, but just after midday the taste felt oddly sharp, almost unwelcome.

“A few of these,” Thomas said, with quiet encouragement, “will put you in the right frame of mind to speak to my little brother.”

The conversation was interrupted when one of Thomas’s colleagues appeared at the table, breathless with excitement. She spoke quickly, hands moving as much as her voice, pausing only when someone cut in with a question.

Thomas frowned, then glanced at me, unwilling to let me be shut out of something so clearly urgent. He began to translate, his English halting, searching for the right words as he went.

“She… she is saying… a group of American boys, they went into a café nearby, last night. And—how you say—they noticed a very beautiful French girl, sitting with her friends.” He hesitated, brow furrowing. “One of them, as… a kind of bet, tries to speak with her. But she is not interested. She shows this, very clearly. Still… he continues.”

Thomas paused, as if rearranging the story in his head.

“Then a French boy—he does not like this—and he punches the American. In the face.” He gestured vaguely to his own cheek. “And after this… it becomes worse. The American, he takes out a gun. He fires. He misses, but… the café, it is chaos. People shouting, more guns, even knives…”

He exhaled, shaking his head slightly.

“The police are called—the Préfecture. The Americans, they run upstairs, to escape. And then…” He faltered, searching again. “A policeman, he is pushed from a window. He falls—rolls over the awning—and lands in the street below.”

Ambre and Léo both reacted with open disgust, though how much of the story was true remained uncertain. Léo placed a hand on my knee and gave it a small, deliberate squeeze, as if to underline the gravity of what we’d just heard.

But the moment quickly lost its weight.

Outside Bar Dieudonné, Charlie was standing on the pavement.

The others hadn’t noticed him yet, but I had—and for a second, I could only stare, caught somewhere between disbelief and recognition.

He moved towards us, a travel bag slung over his shoulder, running a hand through his thick hair. I tried to read his expression—whether it was anger, or embarrassment—but couldn’t quite settle on either. By then, Thomas had seen him too, his voice cutting gently through the table.

“Charlie. What are you doing here?”

Charlie’s eyes went straight to me, sharp, accusing. “I thought it would be easier to come to Paris,” he said, “since none of my messages or calls were being answered.”

Thomas stood to greet him, pulling him into a brief embrace, but there was something restrained in it—something almost reluctant. I felt it too, that same flicker of disappointment.

It seemed Charlie had a way of appearing wherever I went.

Charlie dropped his bag to the floor and pulled up a chair, his movements abrupt, almost territorial. He made a visible effort to ignore Thomas, Ambre, and Léo, as though shutting them out might simplify things. As for me, I still had no idea what I was going to say.

The waitress slipped away unnoticed, sensing the shift in the air, and Thomas drew up a chair of his own. The five of us sat there, suspended in a strained, uncomfortable silence.

Charlie broke it.

“It seems I have gate-crashed an orgie,” he said, placing deliberate weight on the final word.

No one reacted. Ambre and Léo shifted awkwardly, and Thomas reached for my hand, a quiet gesture of support.

“We were drunk,” I said at last. “I had reason to be. It’s not every day you discover your partner naked in a gay magazine.”

“I wanted to explain that,” Charlie replied, his tone tightening, “but I haven’t exactly been given the chance.”

“Then explain,” Thomas said evenly.

Charlie exhaled. “They were taken a long time ago. I was in Paris, and someone offered me a lot of money to pose. I didn’t tell you, Miles, because I knew it would upset you.”

“That’s true,” I said. “But not as much as it did yesterday.”

“It isn’t something shameful,” he continued. “The male body is beautiful. I liked the idea that someone thought I was worth photographing. And posing for images like that is not the same as…” He hesitated, his gaze flicking toward Thomas before settling back on me. “…what you’ve done. With my brother. And the others.” His glance toward Ambre and Léo carried a trace of disdain.

“It was one night,” Léo said lightly. “It didn’t mean anything.” Ambre let out a small, disbelieving snort.

Charlie shook his head, his frustration now turning toward Thomas. “I can’t forgive you. This happens every time I have something of my own—you take it. That’s why I left for England. And still, somehow, you manage it.”

“Wait,” I cut in. “None of this would have happened if we hadn’t found those photos.”

“That’s not true,” Charlie said, his voice sharpening. “I knew something was going on between you and Thomas. When you came to Paris, I knew you’d see each other. So Ambre’s message…” He gave a small, bitter smile. “It didn’t surprise me. It only confirmed what I already suspected.”

“We are French,” Thomas said, with a faint, knowing shrug. “We do the wildest things when they are expected of us. We have welcomed Miles—made him feel at home. For that, you should be grateful, Charlie.”

Ambre, who had been silent until now, leaned forward, her tone calm but unflinching.

“And we also know that the two of you don’t sleep together. Miles hasn’t even seen you naked.” She tilted her head slightly. “That isn’t natural. The fault is yours, Charlie. You are boyfriends, yes? And yet you keep him at a distance. So he looks elsewhere.” Her gaze shifted to me, softer now. “I hope last night was good for you.”

She had, with disarming ease, landed on the truth.

“It’s true,” I said. “I don’t really know what we are, Charlie. We live together; we get on well—but I’d be embarrassed to explain it to anyone else. That this is all there is.”

Charlie looked unsettled, as though trying to assemble a response that would satisfy both me and him.

“You came to Paris to find him,” Thomas said, more gently now. “That must mean something. Forget everything else—what’s happened, what you think it means. If you came here to make things right, then do it. There is still something between you worth saving.” He paused, then added, without apology, “As for Miles—I won’t pretend otherwise. I like him. And I know he likes me. But I also have Ambre, and Léo. They know who I am. I follow what I feel, while I can. There’s something in that, little brother.”

In a few quiet sentences, Thomas stripped the argument back to its core, leaving little room for accusation.

Charlie drew a breath. “I’ve spoken to our parents,” he said. “I’m staying with them while I’m in Paris. I asked if Miles could stay too—they said yes.” He glanced at me, something softer now beneath the tension. “But if you’d rather stay here… with Thomas… I’ll understand.”

I realised then how deeply I had been pulled into something that had begun long before me—a quiet, unresolved rivalry between two brothers. I hadn’t expected to stand at its centre, still less to feel responsible for how it might end.

I loved Charlie. That much was certain.

But Thomas—there was something about him, something immediate and consuming, that I couldn’t ignore.

And it seemed, whether I was ready or not, that a choice had to be made.

The Distance Between Us Was Never Truly Death

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“Paolo went to your country to die, and now, Harry, you have come to his country, where you will also die.” Harry arrives at the small Italian town of Montescaglioso, where it is time to make peace with the person he once loved. The final part of an unlikely story. (Parts 1 to 24 are available to read in the menu)

Perfectly Hard and Glamorous – Part 25

April 2026

The clock struck twelve at the Chiesa di San Rocco in Piazza Roma. The warmth from the Easter sun was unfamiliar, but as shadows crept from the old buildings and advanced towards the monument, the coolness of the spring afternoon would follow, and remind us that where we came from didn’t matter. One place could be much the same as another.

Piazza Roma was mostly deserted except for a handful of pedestrians who emerged from between these crumbling buildings and went about their business. The peace was only shattered by the noise of a scooter which entered from Corsa della Repubblica. On it, a ragazzo, wearing short sleeves and crash helmet, noticed me standing alone, revved its engine, and circled several times around me. All the time he watched, as there would be other people watching too.

High above the square, on top of an unlikely building, was a webcam; its five cameras pointing in different directions. Somebody in a cramped New York apartment or a hotel room in Bali, was able to see what was happening in sleepy Montescaglioso. The views were familiar. I looked at them every day, and now, I was also one of the strangers on the screen.

The ragazzo eventually pulled up beside me and cut the engine. He removed his crash helmet and revealed himself to be in his late teens, with black curly hair and neat stubble on his chin. “Sei inglese?” he asked. “Sì, io sono,” I replied. “Then you must be Harry,” he said with broken English.

He introduced himself as Tino and retrieved a second crash helmet from the sottosella. “Put this on,” he advised, “and get on the back.” I did as I was told and placed my arms around his waist. The engine kicked into life, and he sped off down Via Cavour; through cobblestone lanes that twisted and turned, both sides lined with old houses painted in shades of pink and yellow that the southern sun had slowly faded.

The farther we rode out of town, the wider the roads became, and the houses grew larger and newer. When we reached the petrol station at Strada Provinciale, Tino swung right and came to a stop beneath huge Italian cypresses leading to the gates. We dismounted, and I took in the panoramic views of the surrounding Basilicata. I noticed that the area below the cemetery had been used as a dumping ground for builders’ waste from the construction sites we had passed. Tino opened the sottosella, deposited both helmets, and retrieved a plastic bag.

“Paolo went to your country to die,” said Tino. “And now, Harry, you have come to his country, where you will also die.” An exchange of the dead. I was the lad from the working classes who had sunk to the bottom before being gifted a chance to rise again. I was about to confront my past again.

Tino took me into the Cimitero Comunale and along corridors of loculi, multi-storey rows of concrete vaults stacked several levels high. The sight was striking; each grave was decorated with vases of fresh flowers. It was a Catholic tradition, an artistic expression, and a practical solution to space limitations. Italian culture maintained a strong, ongoing connection with the dead.

“My family were upset when you asked to visit,” Tino told me as we walked along. “The older ones are still angry and did not want you to come. But it was the younger ones who were able to change their minds.”

“Please thank them for doing so.”

“They call you the ‘English Boy’—the one who came from the projects. Our elders believe that Uncle Paolo did something gravely wrong, and that you were the cause of it. It is the only way they can forgive him. Blame you. Maybe the younger members of the family have more compassion and understanding, and we are more interested in seeing the boy who became the source of such hatred.”

The boy he referred to was no longer a boy. I was now in my sixties and had waited far too long to come here. Tino looked at me, and I could not help noticing his delicate brown eyes, which seemed to be searching for answers.

“I am older than Uncle Paolo was when he died. He will remain a boy forever. In the same way, you have not aged either, Harry. You are still the boy who was responsible for sending him to his tragic death. It is the boy that people will condemn.”

Like Paolo’s family, I had also believed that Paolo had taken his own life. The shame of being arrested and exposed as a homosexual had been too much. But Frank Smith had taken forty years to tell me otherwise: that Andy, my best friend, had blamed Paolo for coming between us—for ruining my life—and had sought revenge by sending him to a horrific death from the top of an abandoned factory.

It had taken me twelve months to process that news. Those last seconds, when Paolo knew that he was going to die. What had been going through his mind? Those intense emotions—fear, love, regret. Had Paolo thought about me in those last moments?

I was about to tell Tino the truth but didn’t get the chance. He had stopped in front of a small, rectangular niche on the bottom row and pointed.

I noticed the flowers first—chrysanthemums, alongside a mix of vibrant and white blooms, carefully arranged in small glass vases. There were also tulips, symbolising the freshness of spring, new beginnings, and hope.

And I saw Paolo again—for the first time in forty-one years.

There was a black-and-white photograph: a headshot of him looking at the camera, that nervous expression, expressive eyes, thick black hair with the same curl that always fell across his forehead, and a half-smile. Paolo was looking at me. A look of surprise. I had finally come to see him. The years of regret washed away, and we were back together again. I saw him smiling. “I loved you, Harry, but I was taken away. The years were long, but you found me again. Ti amo, Harry.”

It was a moment where grief, memory, and love converged.

Tino reached into the plastic bag and handed me a white rose to place in front of the photograph.

“I shall leave you to make your peace,” he said, and slipped away to a bench at the end of the avenue.

I put my hand on the marble slab that had been used to seal the tomb. It felt warm in the afternoon sun. I traced the inscription with my finger—Paolo Antonio Moretti—Amato da tutti coloro che lo conoscevano—beautifully carved in italics by an Italian craftsman.

“Well… Paolo. Here I am. I never imagined that I would speak to you again. The last time I saw you was at that big house, when we were all arrested. My last recollection is of you looking terrified and shouting my name. I’ve replayed that moment every day for over forty years. Shouting my name because you were scared, and I couldn’t do anything. Do you know how painful that memory has been?

“I tried to speak in the days afterwards, but everyone hated me and wouldn’t let me anywhere near you. They said that I had corrupted you. I suppose your parents were trying to protect you… and they told me that you didn’t want to see me. That hurt, and I’ve tried to come to terms with it ever since, but I never believed it.

“And then you were gone. Forever. Do you know how that felt? The realisation that you love somebody so much, but can never see, touch, or love them… ever again. It was the most painful thing that ever happened to me.”

A tiny sparrow landed on the ground beside me. In Italian folklore, these are seen as a sign from the dead, and it hopped around my feet before flying up onto Paolo’s grave.

“Last year I saw Frank Smith. He told me that you didn’t commit suicide. That was a relief to me—for a while, anyway—but then I found out that it was Andy who killed you. It meant that your parents were right to blame me. My best friend killed you because he was jealous of us. That is something your family needs to know.

“What happened afterwards? I went to pieces. I nicked a car and drove to London, where I stayed for years. I worked as a rent boy and then became a writer. Can you imagine that? A small-time shit from Park Hill who couldn’t string a sentence together. But I’ve written books that proved I could do something with my life. I also met a guy called Scott, who I thought I loved, but now I realise that I probably didn’t.

“I went back to Sheffield—to Park Hill—which had completely changed and wrote about our past. It is the most successful book I’ve written. Everyone thinks it is fiction… but everything in it was true. About growing up, the Geisha Boys, meeting you, loving you, and the things we did.

“But I had to leave again. I didn’t belong there anymore. Many ghosts were laid to rest, but I couldn’t exorcise the memories.

“And now I’m here in Montescaglioso, where I can stay close to you. I’ve brought Tom with me and we’re buying an apartment on Viale Europa, not far from here. It’s modest, but for someone who lived at Park Hill, it will herald a new start.

“Tom is Jack’s youngest son and was a bit of a tearaway—a bit like I was. But he’s attached himself to me and will look after me as I grow older. Growing old is something you won’t know about, but it’s very overrated.

“And I met Jack again. I needed to know that he had forgiven me, but it turned out that he wanted my forgiveness too. The tragedy is that we wasted years feeling guilty. Both of us were afraid to make contact.

“Most importantly, I needed his blessing about Tom, and do you know what he said? When we were teenagers, he thought there was something different about me, but couldn’t pin it down. When it all came out into the open, he expected me to make a move on him. If I had, he said that he wouldn’t have said no. That floored me. He gave me his blessing about Tom because he knew that I’d turned his life around.”

Tino was approaching, and the small sparrow flitted between the flowers with a burst of energy. I stopped talking but couldn’t leave it like that.

“I must go now, but I shall return soon. Ti amo, Paolo.”

“I heard what you were saying to Uncle Paolo,” Tino said. “Did you love him as much as you say you did?”

“I did,” I confessed, “and it was a relationship that should never have happened. Did you know that the first night that I met Paolo, I punched him in the face… and immediately regretted it. He was incredibly sweet and beautiful. I wish you could have met him.”

“And this Tom that you spoke about—he has come to Montescaglioso with you?”

“Another unlikely relationship. Tom is much younger than me, and the story is far too complicated to explain. But he is a link between the past and the present.”

Tom was waiting for me when I returned to Piazza Roma. He smiled—a dazzling grin that showed his face had already tanned under the Italian sun. I explained that Tino had promised to visit us at the new apartment and that he had also asked for a copy of Perfectly Hard and Glamorous.

“But the book is in English,” he replied.

“I know,” I said, “but he wants it because that book is part of his family history.”

And that is the end of this long story.

The journey from a bleak northern city that had little going for it in the 1980s to the present, in a small Italian town that nobody has heard of. Tino was right when he suggested that Paolo had travelled to another country to die, and that I had done the same. And that is what will happen.

We are both happy here and will never leave.

Sometimes, when I stand on the balcony of our new apartment at Viale Europa and look at the house across the street, I imagine that I am seeing Park Hill again. And then the laundry tries to break free with the help of the strong wind that blows from the distant olive groves and wheat fields, and the memories evaporate.

I watch people going about their business—the animated, loud conversations, the frequent gesticulation, and that strong personal style. Both the young and the old, slipping into cafés, shops, and gelaterie. Walking between sun-drenched, ochre-washed buildings and piazzas, with the noise of Vespas weaving through the narrow streets. They are blissfully unaware of that sensory blend of ancient history and modern life; unaware that historic architecture is now adorned with contemporary graffiti.

The Italians are wonderful people.

I also think about everyone who shaped that journey: those who are dead—my parents, my best friend Andy, whom I may never forgive, and Paolo, whom I visit every week. I even think about Frank Smith and Billy Mason. Then there is the living—Jack, who will make regular visits to Italy and remind me that I was once a Geisha Boy, who swore, fought, and offered my body to anyone who wanted it; and Tom, who one day will replace Paolo as the love of my life.

The David Problem: Notes from a Life

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Peter Snow – Cleaver Square from Kennington Park Road (1988). From the Southwark Art Collection.

The Countess, the Living, and the Dead

There was a video featuring Adam Rickitt, who had been big in Coronation Street, in which he appeared naked. The song had been around when David had been clinging to the frayed edges of his youth. He hadn’t pulled it off. Everything went downhill afterwards. Adam Rickitt went to New Zealand to appear in a soap and was accused of stealing a block of cheese, a bottle of HP Sauce and a jar of coffee from a supermarket. David had moved out of the family home because the banks were knocking at the door.

On Sunday night, they had called at a gay bar, and David saw Adam Rickitt on the screen again. “I would gladly have sniffed his bollocks,” he told Joshua, who turned his nose up. “What the fuck is this shite?”

David recalled dancing to Adam Rickitt at Cruz 101 in Manchester. He was high on ecstasy at the time. But he’d gone to a friend’s flat afterwards and written the best chapter of a book he had never written—longhand, too. Then he had left it behind, where it ended up in a black wheelie bin.

Mancunian days. Every weekend in the North West. But he remembered little. The only memory he retained was of a cute little chicken who had taken his shirt off and started singing, “Sexy… everything about you, so sexy.”

David went home with him. The biggest shithole in Longsight, with every room knee-deep in empty Coke bottles. The bed was hidden behind a mountain of takeaway boxes. It had taught him that all that glittered was definitely not gold.

He related the story to Joshua while walking home in the rain.

“You’re too posh,” Joshua warned him. “Too many frills and high expectations.”

“But I ended up with you,” David replied.

“Your problem is that you look too much at the past, and forget about the future.”

“But there isn’t much of that left, is there?”

David was feeling down.

March had been a bad month. April looked bleaker.

“There are too many deaths, Joshua. Once, I went to weddings all the time. Now I go to funerals. I suppose we’re all in the same boat, because everybody dies.”

But Joshua was too young to understand and nudged him on the arm.

David was referring specifically to their next-door neighbour, who had surrendered to the inevitable. In the square, Dorothy Jerman had been known as the ‘Countess’ and lived alone. Not many had known why she was called the Countess, but there was a suggestion that it was a nickname given to her by a former landlord at the Prince of Wales opposite.

“That’s right,” she once told David. “He was the Brixton Bomber, a former boxer, who took over in the 1960s and upset residents by installing a juke box. It attracted teenagers and the lawyers and solicitors who lived nearby wanted a quiet pub and drove him away. But he was a good chap, and called me the Countess because he wanted to get into my knickers. Little did he know that I never wore any.”

The Countess, a portrait painter, had moved here in the early sixties when Cleaver Square had been different to what it became. She shared it with her kids after a messy divorce and remained after they had grown up and left. By all accounts, she was a ‘rebel’ who famously held wild parties that spilled out into the street.

David inherited the house next door and on most fine days, the Countess could be found sitting on the front steps, a glass of wine at hand, either reading a paperback or making conversation with anyone who passed.

And the Countess had loved Joshua from the moment David invited him to move in with him. Two fucking artists, David had mused. Joshua would sit on the steps as she stroked his blond hair and told him stories about her life.

She claimed to have chosen Cleaver Square on the recommendation of a friend, Innes Fripp, a landscape painter and portrait artist who had taught at the nearby City and Guilds of London Art School and once had a studio in the square.

David had looked up the connection and found that it might have been true. He also discovered that the area had once been called Prince’s Square, named after two houses flanking the entrance, built for Joseph Prince by Michael Searles in the 1760s. The name was changed in 1937, a throwback to Mary Cleaver, who had owned the land in the eighteenth century.

“This is where sea captains lived,” the Countess once boasted, “but the square fell on hard times by the end of the nineteenth century and attracted old music-hall stars instead. It fell on evil days—crumbling brick façades hiding three families across three floors. During the war, the council requisitioned many of the houses for bombed-out families. The trees died, and the gardens were razed.

“South of the river was one vast slum when I arrived. When I fled Chelsea’s superficiality, the square was dilapidated, with shabby red-brick houses—homes for dockers and clerks—but every door stood open. Everybody knew everybody else. Materially, they had little, but they shared it when needed. Then the developers came, and with them came the barristers, judges, and MPs. That was when the doors shut. The young people drifted away, saying the square was not worth living in—it was dead. That is how we ended up with John Major.”

The houses went for millions now, but the Countess had not been tempted to sell. She could have died a millionaire, but preferred to live with her memories and pry into the lives of people she did not know… and who might have looked down on her, had it not been for her cheek and charisma.

When David arrived in the square, the Countess welcomed him as somebody who lived on her level. Shortly before he died, David’s uncle, William, had kicked out the previous tenants with a view to selling it. It was vacant when David discovered that the property now belonged to him.

But now the old woman had died.

It was good fortune that the Countess had resolutely refused to lock her front door. Joshua had gone looking for her and found the body slumped in a fireside armchair: a flute of flat champagne beside her and a dog-eared copy of Valley of the Dolls in her lap. He had panicked and gone running round to David, with no idea what to do.

Only the day before, David had made an unnerving discovery. The Countess had told him that he was not an Aries after all, but a Taurus. It had taken sixty-two years to learn the truth. But David, who normally paid little heed to astrology, realised that he preferred being a ram to a bull—it was better for a gay man, he suggested.

“A cusp baby,” the Countess commiserated, “and if it helps, you have adopted elements from each star sign.

“You do love a grand romance—you throw yourself into it, heart first, and breathe your partner in as though they were oxygen. But you bruise easily in love, my dear, and you’re far too quick to feel taken for granted. You’ve a weakness for strays as well—people from all walks, the straighter the better.”

“I do have a weakness for working-class boys,” David agreed. “And Joshua comes from a relatively poor family in Thamesmead.”

“Really?” said the Countess. “I had no idea. He speaks with such charm and dignity—and is incredibly handsome. And Thamesmead is perfectly lovely in the summer.”

“I met him when he was only twenty-one and working at Morrisons. For some reason, I was walking around the lake and came across him standing there, looking at the birds on the water. I found out later that he didn’t know one bird from another—except when we were talking about cocks. He had been cruising for a shag, which he didn’t get, but we talked. I pointed out that Thamesmead had been the setting for A Beautiful Thing, which turned out to be his favourite film. Eighteen years later, here we are.”

The Countess had not finished.

“You may have secret love affairs or fall in love with someone who is quite unavailable to you.”

“That’s not true.” David had been a bit too quick to reply, and the Countess raised her eyes, because she had not, for one minute, believed him.

David was thinking about Miles, his provincial friend, whom he had first met when the boy was eighteen. Putting Joshua aside, he had spent the last eight years trying to seduce Miles, but had failed at every attempt. Unknown to Joshua, David had once fallen in love with Miles. It was never reciprocated, but that feeling never changed. Miles was only interested if you happened to be a good-looking French or Italian boy—certainly not somebody like David.

“Are we referring to Freddie, dear?” the Countess asked.

Freddie lived in Hammersmith and was the same age as Miles, but his eccentricities annoyed David—not least his tendency to point out dead people whom he claimed to see at the most inappropriate times. Once, David had slept with him, and Freddie had told him that there was an old woman sitting knitting at the bottom of the bed. He had also ingratiated himself with the Countess because he claimed that a family friend had used his name for a character in The Archers. That had gone down extremely well, because she listened to the programme without fail.

“The last time that I saw Freddie,” she laughed, “he suggested that there was the presence of two dead women—Christine and Hannah—who once ran a brothel here. I talk to them all the time now, and suggest that far worse things have happened in my time.”

“It is definitely not Freddie,” said David, “and I would appreciate it if you did not repeat that to Joshua.”

“Because Venus represents attraction, and the twelfth house is associated with the feet,” she said, “your feet may be especially attractive—and have erogenous zones!”

He had turned his nose up.

David and Joshua headed home and passed the Countess’s house, which stood in darkness.

“I wonder what will happen to the house,” Joshua speculated.

“Well,” said David, “she must have had a will, and I suppose everything will go to her family.”

They were both aware that the Countess had fallen out with her three children, and only one of her grandsons, Owen, ever visited her. The two of them had known him as a young teenager and knew that he did much of the maintenance work around the house, though there were difficulties the Countess had often fretted over.

“If Owen gets everything,” Joshua mused, “it could prove interesting.”

David thought that Owen had grown into a striking young man, but conveniently overlooked that he suffered from a severe case of ADHD, which made him prone to violent bouts of temper.

“He would most likely sell it and become fabulously wealthy,” he suggested.

David knew that the Countess was of sound mind and that she had deliberately led her family to believe that she suffered from delusions—among them that she saw thousands of long-tailed birds clinging to a tree in her back garden, that the other trees were covered in hundreds of cats, and that dead dogs with fiery eyes lived beneath the bushes.

“At least it stops them visiting a crazy woman,” she had laughed.

“Whoever it is left to will find it contested,” David added, “because they will say that the Countess was of unsound mind when she made it.”

“Maybe she was deranged,” Joshua decided. “She often claimed that all sorts of famous people visited her at one time or another. She once told me a magnificent story about Vivienne Westwood, David Bowie, and Marc Bolan coming to tea—and that they ended up bouncing along the street on great big orange balls.”

Space hoppers,” David implied. “I had one when I was a small child in the 1970s. Did you know that Russell Harty was also a personal friend of the Countess?”

David knew that Joshua would not know who Russell Harty was.

“What was he famous for?”

“Sexual escapades with much younger men,” David replied, “and for hosting chat shows on television.”

David had met him once, when he had still been young enough to turn heads in the street. Harty had just returned from Paris, where he had lunched with Nureyev and Charlotte Rampling at the British Embassy. He made small talk, and David was disappointed that this brief encounter on Greek Street had not led to anything more. Still, it had been enough for him to brag about at Comptons.

A few months later, Harty was dead, having suffered liver failure—a result of hepatitis.

“The Countess knew everyone, or said she did. And now there’s no one left to confirm it.”

“That’s the problem,” said Joshua. “Did these encounters actually happen? Was she connected, or just a brilliant bullshitter? I often wonder the same about some of your stories.”

That last comment hurt David.

“Everything I tell you is true.”

“But nothing ever seems to happen to me. The Countess knew famous people. And you’ve done things—wild things—that make my existence seem ordinary.”

“The older you get, what once seemed ordinary suddenly becomes fascinating. We all look back and realise that we did something special.”

The funeral was due to take place the following Friday. The cortège would leave Cleaver Square at lunchtime and travel to Lambeth Crematorium, where a short service would take place before she was handed over to the devil.

Joshua unlocked the door and turned to David. “Do you think we’ll see anybody famous at the funeral?”

“Probably not,” David replied.

The Truth Will Set You Free, but it Will Also Hurt

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Harry Oldham is writing a novel based on his criminal and sordid past. To do so, he has returned to live at Park Hill, where he grew up, and the place that he once left behind. That was then and this is now, in which the old world collides with the new. (Parts 1 to 23 are available to read in the menu)

Perfectly Hard and Glamorous – Part 24

April 2025

I swear there were tears in Tom’s eyes when he finished reading the closing chapter of my story. The reasons were unclear. Perhaps he believed I had been dealt a cruel hand. Perhaps he had come to realise that Jack—his father—had played a part in my abrupt departure from family and closest friends. And then there was Paolo’s suicide, and the shameful way the police had treated us.

I was young, and everything had become intolerable. The only option had been to nick a car and head for London, where I was unknown and made to feel thoroughly unwelcome. But youth is resilient, and even though it took me nearly forty years, I climbed out of the gutter and—dare I say it—became almost respectable.

I knew, of course, that I had played a part in my own downfall.

But this was now, and something had shifted the moment Tom revealed who his father was. We had become unlikely lovers—the ageing novelist and the young drug dealer. It pulled the past sharply into the present, and with it came complications.

The most obvious issue was the age difference. Tom had gate-crashed my world and taken root within it. The intrusion had been deliberate, set in motion by his father, Jack. Yet Tom had stayed; a compelling glimpse into a generation with which I had no real connection. More than anything, I had watched him change—from a surly young man into someone capable of warmth and compassion—and that, to me, had been irresistible, though I had no right to expect anything at all.

There was also Jack, whose hand I had last shaken forty years earlier, when my fate had been sealed. Those final words—“Seeing your boyfriend?” He had meant Paolo, whose own destiny was unfolding elsewhere, and without me. At the time, I had taken Jack’s question as sarcasm, but years later, when time had dulled the memory, I began to hear it differently; perhaps he had been genuinely interested.

The question still lingered.

I imagined Jack asking it again: “Seeing your boyfriend?” Only now he was no longer referring to Paolo, but to his own son—and this time, I heard it as a threat.

But there was another complexity that I hadn’t expected.

A letter arrived on April Fool’s Day, forwarded by my publisher. It promised answers to past events.

One sunny morning, a few days later, I found a dilapidated bench overlooking the city centre. I waited until he arrived and sat beside me. He was a very old man now, moving only with difficulty, supported by a walking stick. He reminded me of someone from long ago. “If you’re not with the Mooney’s, then who are you with? You’re not with the Park lads—I’ve never seen you before.” “We’re the Geisha Boys,” Jack had explained.

We did not look at one another but stared out at the view.

“I did a lot of business here. Do you remember this bench, Harry? It’s where you and Paolo first met.” The voice was frail, the muscles long since weakened.

“How was Torremolinos?” I asked.

“I don’t remember,” Frank Smith replied. “I drank too much, smoked too much, and the wife would’ve read the riot act afterwards. Gone now, bless her. She was the only one who could keep me in line.”

He turned to me and held out a conciliatory hand.

“I thought you might punch me,” he said. “But I told myself, if you did, it would probably kill me.”

I shook his hand. More than that, I offered him a cigarette, which he accepted.

“We’ve spent a lot of time shaking hands and sharing cigarettes—but I think this is a first for us, Harry. I came here thinking I might give you a hard time, for old times’ sake, but I realised it was only in my head. I don’t have the strength for that anymore. I’m ninety-two now.”

“I got your letter.”

“My daughter has a way with words. Not like me—I’d have been dead before I finished it. She didn’t want to send it. Thought I was too old to be dredging up the past.”

Frank began to cough, and I hoped it wouldn’t take him before he had the chance to explain. When it passed, he took another drag on the cigarette.

“We left things badly, Harry. But I watched from a distance. I had connections in the Met—they kept me informed. There were a few scrapes, as you know, but my boys saw to it.”

I thought back to the arrests. Three for soliciting, twice for violence, once for shoplifting. I had always assumed the London coppers had gone easy on me.

“It worked, Harry,” he went on. “I knew you’d come good in the end. You became a successful writer. That eased my conscience. And here we are.”

“It’s only possible to ease a conscience if you had one to begin with.”

“I’m going to tell you a few things, and I want you to listen. Will you let me?”

I nodded.

“Sheffield was a bad place in the eighties. Crime, vice—the police were struggling to keep a lid on it. We were under pressure to get results, whatever it took. Some of us became… unorthodox. But we got results, and that kept the ‘pips and crown’ happy.

I was tasked with clearing out criminal gangs who thought they could make money exploiting a minority—the gays. We had to infiltrate them, and the best way was to pose as bent coppers who could help them. I’ll admit, I took my share of hush money along the way.

“We started with the weakest gang—that’s where you came in. The others thought they were paying me to remove the competition. What they didn’t know was that I’d use the same tactic on them. And it worked. There were smaller players too—groups who saw what happened and abandoned their plans. If I’d failed, Harry, I suspect you might have tried your hand as a small-time operator yourself.”

So far, Frank had told me nothing I didn’t already know.

“You might have wondered how you got pulled into it. There was a night I came to your flat—we thought you’d set fire to Manor Library. You’d just had a bath, and I did something small, just to make a point. I ran a finger down your chest. I expected you to live up to your reputation and kick off. But you didn’t. That made me think. Had I stumbled onto something about Harry Oldham that he didn’t yet know himself?

“I already had Paolo in my pocket—that was easy. He was scared out of his wits, would have done anything. What I needed was someone who looked the part and could handle himself. That was you, Harry. My instincts were right, though I was surprised how naturally you took to it—not least, becoming involved with Paolo.

“The rest, as they say, is history. I made Inspector off the back of it.”

Frank had mentioned Paolo, and even now, after all these years, it still hurt.

“I never saw Paolo again, Frank. And I never got the chance to say goodbye.”

“You mentioned having a conscience. But I must ask you the same. Did you have a conscience, Harry? You were happy enough to take the money. It only stopped when Billy Mason outed you.”

“Maybe I only found my conscience afterwards.”

“At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing. And, if I’m honest, I hated queers—and then the AIDS crisis began, and I hated them even more. But I changed. And the two people who changed me were Paolo and you.”

“What do you mean, Frank?”

“I liked Paolo. Sweet little Paolo, always polite. I never had any intention of outing him to his parents. I liked you too, Harry—rough and ready. If I kept you in line, everything held together. And you were different from the others. There was a spectrum: Andy, a complete head case; Jack, who wanted to be the same but didn’t have it in him; and you, who didn’t have the faintest idea what you wanted to be. I never intended to out you either. But I needed you both to believe that I could.

“And don’t think I didn’t have regrets. I had plenty. Things went downhill quickly. I hadn’t realised that DC Ian Thornhill was such a bastard. He hated queers even more than I did—and he had it in for you, Harry. He couldn’t understand why I was trying to protect you. To him, you were scum who deserved locking up. I came back from holiday to find you’d been arrested and charged. The work I had to do to sort that out…”

“And Paolo’s death made everything worse. Questions were asked—why he’d taken his own life. I was one of them.

“The gaffers got involved as well. The ringleaders managed to slip away, leaving their lackeys to take the fall. There were bigger names mixed up in it all—judges, solicitors, doctors, even coppers. Anyone with something to hide. What they were doing was illegal, but they were never charged. They knew the right people, high up in the force. I questioned it, and do you know what the gaffers said? Keep quiet, Frank, and we’ll make sure you’re looked after. The weight of it landed on ordinary blokes looking for a cheap thrill. The publicity ruined most of them.

“And then everything changed after Hillsborough. New bosses came in, looking for scapegoats. Everything had to be squeaky clean. They started reopening old cases—anything where the police might be held accountable. It got uncomfortable. I was questioned about Paolo, about you, about my role in it all. What I’d done was illegal too—and there was no one left to protect me.”

“What happened?”

“I left the force. And I’ve been looking over my shoulder ever since, expecting a knock at the door.”

Frank’s revelations showed me a side of him I had never imagined. Not once had I thought him capable of regret. It changed something between us—but it did not change what had happened. And once again, I knew I had to accept my own share of the blame.

Frank had not finished.

“I’ve read all your books, Harry. Had to, didn’t I? In a way, it gave me some satisfaction knowing you’d made something of yourself.”

“There’s something you should know,” I told him. “The next book is finished. It’s about the Geisha Boys—Andy, Jack, Paolo, me… and you, Frank. And you don’t come out of it well.”

He smiled.

“I’m not going to ask you to leave me out. What’s done is done. Go ahead—publish it. But there are a few things I need to say first.”

Frank gripped my arm.

“Do you know what happened to Andy and Jack?”

“I’ve met Jack’s son,” I said. “Tom. It’s a long story. I know Jack was asking questions about me, but he doesn’t know anything about Andy.”

“Things changed after you left for London,” Frank went on. “The case was closed as far as the exploitation went, but there was another side to it. Andy and Jack thought they could carry on without you… but it didn’t work out that way.

“I knew Andy was trouble, but you pushed him over the edge. Everything started to unravel. He began operating on his own—serious stuff: drugs, armed robbery, the lot. Jack wanted no part of it.

“But the deeper Andy got, the more he attracted attention from people bigger and smarter than him. All we had to do was wait. It ended badly, a few years later. Beaten to death at a flat in Nottingham. His body wasn’t found for weeks. I won’t pretend I was sorry.”

For years, I had held on to the hope that one day I might reconcile with Andy and Jack. Wishful thinking. But learning that Andy—my oldest friend—was dead still struck hard.

“Did Jack know?”

“Probably not,” Frank said. “Andy turned on everyone who knew him. The family kept it quiet. By then, Jack’s lot had already moved out of Park Hill.”

“We looked up to Andy,” I said. “He was everything we thought we wanted to be.”

“But he couldn’t cope without you.”

“That was his choice,” I said, bitterness creeping in. “I needed him. I needed Jack. But then I got arrested. That settled any doubts they had about me. After that, they didn’t want me anymore.”

“That part was your doing. You wanted out—you made that clear enough. I wanted to hold off, because I wasn’t going to be around, but you forced my hand. If you’d waited, it would have ended anyway… just without the mess it caused.”

I wanted to ask Frank something I had asked myself countless times. The answer mattered.

“Do you think I was to blame for Paolo’s death?”

“Well,” he said, “his family certainly did. According to them, you turned him into a queer and drove him to take his own life. They moved back to Italy afterwards. Not what you wanted to hear, is it?”

“No, Frank.”

“But I knew Paolo loved you. He told me. I told him not to be a sentimental fool. So—do I think you were to blame?” He paused. “No. I don’t. If anything, I’m the one who should carry that. And there’s something else I need to tell you. Something that changes everything.”

“When I came back from holiday, I couldn’t find my notebook—the one with all the names, addresses, telephone numbers. I searched my desk. Gone. A few days later, I needed a file from Ian Thornhill’s desk, and while I was looking, I found the notebook buried under a stack of papers. When I asked him about it, he said he’d needed a number for a case. Which case? I asked. He said he couldn’t remember.

“I checked the notebook—made sure nothing was missing—and noticed a coffee stain on the page for M. There were only three entries there. Two were old informants already inside. The third was Moretti—Paolo.

“I asked Ian again. He said he’d needed Paolo’s number in a hurry and had grabbed my notebook instead of going through the files. It sounded plausible. But something didn’t sit right.

“I checked the records. There had been calls and visits between Paolo’s family and other officers—but none from Ian. Anyone else might have thought nothing of it—that he’d passed the number on to someone else. But I knew better.

“That night, I took him for a drink. Started talking about Paolo’s case. Told him the gaffer was asking questions about the lead-up to the suicide, that I needed to know everything—even anything off the books—so I could cover for everyone if it came to it.

“That’s when he told me.”

“Told you what?”

“A few days before they found Paolo’s body, someone had called asking for me. Ian told him I was on holiday. But the caller said he’d been told to ring me for a number. And the idiot gave it to him—just like that. No questions. And worse than that, Ian reckoned the caller was Andy.”

“What?” I gasped. “Andy didn’t even know him.”

“Let me finish, Harry.”

“After that, I went to Park Hill to find him. It wasn’t difficult. He was with Jack in the Parkway. I told Jack to clear off and dragged Andy outside. That’s what I liked about that place—plenty of dark corners. He looked a mess: bags under his eyes, stubble on his chin, drunk. There was no fight in him. I pinned him against the wall and told him exactly what I thought.”

“What was that?”

“Oh, Harry,” he sighed. “Don’t you see?”

I didn’t.

“The next day, I went to see Paolo’s family. I asked his mother if he’d received any calls before he died. No, she said—she’d tried to intercept them all. But then she let something slip. There had been one call she hadn’t reached in time—when your mate managed to pass on a message, telling Paolo to meet you at your usual place.”

“What place?”

“An abandoned factory.”

“Frank, I can’t believe that. Are you saying—”

“Yes,” Frank said. “I told Andy what I suspected. Paolo had gone out, thinking he was meeting you. But when he got there, it was Andy. And Andy blamed him for everything—for coming between you, for being queer, for making you the same.”

I shook my head, unable to take it in.

But Frank went on.

“He killed Paolo. Pushed him from the edge of the building.”

“No, Frank. That can’t be true. Andy was many things, but not that. I don’t believe it.”

“All Andy said to me that night at Park Hill were two words: Prove it. But that was enough. Enough to know I was right. And he was right too—because he knew I could never make it stick.”

I broke down, and Frank let me.

“It was good to see you again, Harry. I mean that. And I’m sorry things turned out the way they did.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this years ago?”

“I thought about it. But I knew what you’d do. You’d have wanted revenge.”

He was right.

“There’s an expression—never shit on your own doorstep. I remember saying that to Billy Mason. He did me a favour—a big one—and he waited for the right moment to return it. Took his chance somewhere else… Nottingham, as it happens.”

“What are you saying?”

Frank struggled to his feet.

“I have to go,” he said. “My daughter’s picking me up in five minutes.” He began to hobble away, then paused.

“I meant to ask,” he said. “Are you seeing anyone?”

“Would you believe me if I said I was involved with Jack’s son?”

“Yes,” he said, with a faint smile. “I would.”

Charlie: The Promise of Paris – Partie 2

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I had assumed that French people’s reputation for being sexually daring and uninhibited was overstated. My relationship with Charlie confirmed it. An observer could have thought that I was more typical of the French than he was. Charlie avoided sexual gratification: my desire for sex could be insatiable.

My reason for going to Paris was not, as I had told Charlie, to review an exhibition at an art gallery, but simply to find Thomas, his older brother, who had urged me to go. Charlie had every reason to suspect that this had been my intention all along. He had watched my contrived journey around the city with scepticism. Every message, each question, was an effort to catch me out.

Charlie knew much more about his unlikely brother than he cared to mention. “Make sure you do not go to see Thomas.” It was a warning that implied something unthinkable might happen if I did. That was the allure. I hoped that something might happen.

My arrival had stirred a buzz of excitement. Thomas had greeted me like a returning lover. But there was still ambivalence. He had rooms above Bar Dieudonné and I had noticed the only bed which suggested that I was going to share it with him.

The arrival of Ambre was the first time I realised that he had a girlfriend, and I confess that I initially regarded her as unwelcome competition. His friend, Léo, added to the uncertainty. After that, I resigned myself to sleeping on the brown leather sofa.

While Thomas worked at the bar, Ambre and Léo took me into Le Marais and we ended up at Joe Le Sexy, a gay sex boutique, where I had discovered naked photos of Charlie in the glossy magazine Le Pénis.

Ambre consulted Thomas and took it upon herself to make me drunk. After drinking too many Vodka-Apples I began telling them everything that was wrong with Charlie. They comforted me in a way I had never known. Ambre kept kissing me and brushing her cheek against mine. Léo insisted on nibbling my ear and letting his lips trail down my neck. I found that I was enjoying the attention.

We encountered Thomas as he was shutting down Bar Dieudonné for the night. He slipped his arm around me. “My brother is an idiot,” he whispered. “But we shall make your stay memorable, and then you might not wish to go back.” He insisted that we go to a late-night café on Rue de Seine where bar staff gathered after work.

It was a small place; tables with candles squeezed into every available space; the walls covered in black and white prints of Paris in the 1960s; chart music turned low. “Brigitte Bardot, Françoise Hardy and Serge Gainsbourg used to come here,” said Ambre.

There was a vacant table in a dark corner.

“Come,” Thomas gestured. “Sit beside me and we can lust over Ambre and Léo together.” His hand rested lightly on my knee.

A young man brought bottles of red wine and fussed attentively over us.

“The waiter who was in charge of that part of the room was a young, handsome fellow, about 23 years of age,” said Ambre, smiling. Her eyes followed the blushing boy and then settled upon Léo.

“Civil, good-natured, and obliging,” Léo interjected. “He was a favourite with both master and son, the latter of whom, black-eyed beauty as he was, seemed to regard him with even affection.”

He signalled for Ambre to continue.

“But he was only a waiter: he was an heir,” she sighed and shook her head in quiet sadness. “Mutual affection is, in civilised parts of the world, a mere folly.”

Everyone laughed.

“The French are crazy people,” the waiter said to me with a shrug.

When he had gone, Thomas restored a sense of order around the table.

“I must see the incriminating photographs that have caused such remue-ménage.”

Ambre pulled out Le Pénis and handed it to him.

Thomas slowly flicked through the magazine, carefully studying each page, raising his eyebrows once or twice. We, the jury, waited until he finally reached the images of Charlie. Léo kicked me under the table while Thomas spent a long time examining the photographs.

“Thomas!” Ambre shrieked. “If you spend any more time looking at them, I shall think that you are becoming aroused by your own brother. What do you think?”

“I think it is a tragedy and a regeneration,” he replied. “Good pictures. Unusual themes—beautiful, dramatic, romantic—exquisitely thrilling and appealing. What more can I say.”

So far, I had been allowed to wallow in my misery; the quiet spectator who was content to let the others remain the focus of attention. But Ambre and Léo were waiting for me to say something.

“Your critique is interesting, it is almost an art form,” I managed to say, “but, sadly, that is not the way I see it.”

Thomas gave a great sigh and stroked my hand.

“I understand that you are hurting. I understand that you are embarrassed and angry. But we are not talking about war, suffering, or death. We are talking about photographs.”

“Only photographs,” I agreed, “but naked photographs of Charlie with an erection. It was a shock because I had no idea that he had agreed to be photographed in this way. Charlie usually tells me everything. In this case, he didn’t because he knew that I would disapprove.”

“And why would you have done so?” asked Ambre.

“Because,” I stammered, “I fail to see why the world should see him like this when I have not. Why has he allowed this to happen? I feel like a fool.”

My phone pinged again as it had done dozens of times. I looked at my messages, some accusatory, and some, I might add, showing concern. But I had no desire to reply. Among them, I saw that Bianchi had also messaged, and, for once, I did not feel guilty.

“Give me your phone,” Thomas demanded.

I resisted. It was said that a boy and his dog were inseparable, and the same might have applied to a boy and his phone. Especially when you knew that Thomas was about to do something that I might regret.

Thomas held his hand out and waited until I reluctantly handed it to him.

He laid the copy of Le Pénis on the table and took a photograph of it. Then he opened WhatsApp and sent it to Charlie.

It was as simple as that. No need to make excuses for not replying to messages. Make him see that I was angry without saying anything.

Almost immediately, the phone pinged.

“No, monsieur,” Thomas warned. “You are not permitted to look at it and certainly not allowed to answer it… at least not for three years.”

Charlie maintained that Thomas was stupid but, from what I saw and heard, I began to understand that the opposite was true. Thomas was like Charlie in some ways, and, as the older of the two brothers, had been able to refine his instincts in a way that made Charlie seem less complete.

Thomas turned and kissed me. His lips were warm and soft, and I felt the brush of stubble against my chin. When he pressed his tongue into my mouth I yielded, accepting that this had been the moment I had waited for. There was a soft, melodic hum—Ambre’s way of showing that she found this display of affection ‘cute’ and ‘heartwarming’. Léo gripped my inner thigh. “Nous prendrons soin de toi, ami,” he said soothingly.

We were interrupted by the waiter who, satisfied that the occupants of this corner table were unlikely to cause any trouble, had brought more red wine.

We talked for ages: nothing of any consequence.

“Thomas tells us that you are an established travel writer. That must be very exciting.”

“Well,” I volunteered, “Thomas is only partly correct. I am a travel writer who does not go anywhere.”

“And that you are also living in Italy.”

“Again, Thomas is being creative with the truth. I can stay in a room that Signora Bruschi keeps for me. It is not mine, and when I go, which is not often, I am allowed to stay rent free.”

“But you are able to make a living?”

I decided that the truth could wait for another day and nodded. My head spun slightly as I did so.

“Miles must earn money to keep Charlie,” Thomas interjected. “My brother is known for not paying his own way. But I think that they are in love most of the time.”

I pulled a face.

“I am a student at Paris Diderot University,” Léo said. “I study history and one day I shall win a Nobel Prize for my genius.”

Ambre howled with laughter.

“And that means you are always spending your time with friends, visiting cafés, and enjoying the nightlife. Studying is only a small part.”

“And do not underestimate the importance of sleep,” he said “Ambre does nothing worthwhile. She works in a fashion store at Canal Saint-Martin and spends her days complaining about loathsome Parisians with too much money and no manners.”

We talked for ages: nothing of any consequence.

“Where did you all meet?” I asked.

“We do not know when or how we met,” said Thomas. “A French thing. It is usually through a friend, or a friend of a friend, and after we have been introduced, they disappear and we are left with each other. It is a union of those people who are not wanted.”

“Non,” Ambre decided, “it was about sex.”

“What?”

“The French prioritise the art of seduction, and our appetites are natural and normal rather than shameful. We were certainly attracted to each other sexually.”

If that were true, then I had been unfortunate enough to have become involved with the only French person who did not follow such principles. But Charlie had allowed strangers to see him in a way that I, his lover, had never been permitted to. I thought back to the times when I had tried to be affectionate and the refusals that followed. And now there was the realisation that, if this relationship was to survive, it might have to be shared through the pages of magazines like Le Pénis.

I slipped away to the toilet, and, with Thomas not there to admonish me, I could not resist the urge to look at my phone. The last message from Charlie had been an hour ago and read: I love you. Really, I do. I had always understood the meaning of a Queen’s silence, or what might now be a King’s silence, and I was not drunk enough to forget it. I did not reply.

When I returned, Ambre was lip-synching to Melodrama. Léo was nowhere to be seen. Thomas had that ecstatic look on his face which suggested that he had taken something. But then I noticed that Léo had slipped beneath the table and was giving him a blow job. When somebody came over to say hello, Thomas shook their hand as he came in Léo’s mouth.

There’s No One Left Who Wanted Me Anymore

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Perfectly Hard and Glamorous – Part 23

March 1985

They played You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) on the radio. We used it in our act, and every time I heard it, it cut deep—a reminder that everything had gone tits-up.

I had wanted that night at the big house to end things. It had—but not as I’d imagined.

My body ached, inside and out. The lesions across my back, my legs, my arse burned like hell.

The night after the police bust, I tried phoning Paolo. No answer. I needed to see him. I wanted to hold him, to tell him everything would be alright, even though I didn’t believe it myself.

Over the next few days, I made call after call. Nothing. He never rang back. I began to wonder if he wanted rid of me—if he blamed me for it all. If he did, I needed him to understand that I was a victim too.

I couldn’t face going out. I stayed in, watching television, drifting through the day.

“Harry, what the hell’s up with you?”

Dad came home from work. Mum had already told him I’d been moping around the flat.

“Where are Andy and Jack? Why aren’t you out with them? I know you get up to no good, but even that’s better than hanging round here under your mum’s feet.”

I shrugged. Said nothing. They’d find out soon enough.

On the sixth day, Mum went into town. I trashed my bedroom. When she got back, I was gone, leaving chaos behind.

I’d decided to go to Paolo’s house.

I knocked and waited. Movement inside. The door opened to a woman wiping her hands on a towel—Paolo’s mother. She looked exhausted.

“Is Paolo in?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Harry. Can you tell him I’m here?”

She tried to close the door. I stopped it.

“Please,” I said. “I need to speak to him.”

She looked me up and down, eyes wet.

“I just need to know he’s alright.”

“Paolo has told us everything,” she said, her Italian accent hardening her words. “The last thing we need is you turning up here.”

I waited, hoping he’d appear, that he’d tell her it was fine. The house stayed silent.

“My son’s life is ruined,” she said. “He is a finocchio. He will be mocked, blackmailed… and in time, he will die a lonely death.”

“That won’t happen.”

She held rosary beads tight in her hand.

“My beautiful Catholic boy has danced with the devil. If anyone could have saved him, it was you. But you danced with him too. If you had been strong, this shame would not have happened.” She paused. “He trusts you. He thinks he is in love with you.”

“I love him too.”

“It is not love,” she snapped. “It is sodomy. Against the will of God.”

It landed hard.

“Paolo is not here. We sent him to his Aunt Luisa in London. He must return to answer police questions. After that, he will go to relatives in Montescaglioso.”

I felt myself breaking.

“Will you tell him I came?”

“He would never forgive me if I didn’t,” she said, dabbing her eyes. “He will be back Saturday. His father will be working. Ring then. Say goodbye—and promise me you will never contact each other again.”

I nodded. I had no intention of keeping it.

*****

I saw Andy and Jack before they saw me.

They were by the steps outside our block. Andy leaned against the wall in jeans and a white Levi T-shirt. Jack sat on the bottom step in black shorts and a Sheffield Wednesday top, staring at something on his knee.

They looked up as I approached.

I stopped in front of them. Waited.

Then I saw it on the wall behind them:

HARRY IS A QWEER

“Bum bandit,” Andy said, not even looking at me. Jack glanced around, pretending it wasn’t aimed at anyone.

“I want to explain,” I said.

Andy shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to face me. Jack kept his head down.

“What I can’t get over,” Andy said, “is knowing someone for years, then finding out they’ve been living a lie.”

“I never lied.”

“But you turned out queer. What’s that supposed to mean for us? All those years—were you fancying us?”

It seemed every bloke thought that.

“Maybe I didn’t know at first. But don’t flatter yourself. Not every ‘queer’ thinks you’re a catch. I don’t see girls throwing themselves at you either.”

“You’re a bent cunt!”

“Do you want to hear him out?” Jack asked, tentative.

“Don’t bother,” Andy snapped.

“At first I was blackmailed by Frank Smith,” I said. “Then I got pulled into something bigger.” I told them everything.

Andy spat.

“So, it’s true?” he said, almost hopeful it wasn’t.

“Yes. I made good money doing it.”

“But you never told us,” Jack said.

“How could I? What would you have said? Why didn’t I walk away? Because once I started… I liked it.”

“Where does that curly-haired little cunt fit in?” Andy asked. “You denied everything.”

“Paolo? He was in the same position. We got close.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” Jack asked.

No one had ever asked me that.

“Yes,” I muttered. “I suppose he is.”

Silence.

Andy lit a cigarette, offered one to Jack. Not to me.

“Show him,” Jack said.

Andy pulled out a torn front page of The Star.

POLICE SMASH GAY SEX RING

My stomach dropped.

“Want me to read it?” Andy asked.

I nodded.

“It says this is the second operation targeting fucking queers. Loads arrested. My mate Harry—turns out he’s one of them. Charged as a bender.”

Not exactly true—but close enough.

“Your mum and dad will see it,” Jack added.

Andy wasn’t finished.

“We’re done, Harry. You’re not one of us. Not anymore.”

“I want to sort this out—”

“Fuck that.”

I turned to Jack. “Is that what you want?”

He met my eyes. Said nothing.

That was answer enough.

I offered my hand to Andy. Geisha Boys never shook hands.

“Don’t want to catch anything,” he said. “I don’t want AIDS.”

I offered it to Jack. He took it. Held it tighter than I expected.

Then I left them.

“Seeing your boyfriend?” Jack called.

“I’m ringing him Saturday.”

Too much information.

“Harry is a queer!” Andy shouted after me.

His handiwork was on the wall.

*****

In the 1980s, everyone bought The Star. Ritual. Dad picked it up near work, read the football first, then the headlines on the bus home.

They were waiting.

Mum crying. Dad with his head in his hands.

I knew.

“Everything alright?” I asked.

“A few days,” Dad said. “That’s all you’ve got. Pack your things and get out. We’re ashamed of you. We don’t want to know you.”

His voice faltered.

“I won’t be able to show my face. My son’s a Nancy boy.”

*****

Saturday afternoon.

I rang Paolo. His mother answered.

“He’s not here. An old schoolfriend called. He went out for the day.”

“Did you tell him I’d ring?”

“I did,” she said coolly. “It seems he doesn’t want to speak to you.”

I tried again later. Still nothing.

“Tell him to call me.”

“I’ll tell him,” she said, “but he seems more interested in his other friends now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means he’s moving on. Someone like you isn’t what he wants anymore.”

I slammed the phone down.

*****

There was no reprieve from my parents. I delayed packing, hoping they’d calm down.

They didn’t.

On Monday, Dad gave me an ultimatum.

“When I get home Wednesday, you’d better be gone. If not, I’ll throw you out.”

I stood on the balcony, looking over the city. Below, Andy and Jack laughed as they walked down the hill.

Adam came up behind me, wrapping his arms around me.

“What’s going on, Harry? I don’t like it.”

“Me neither,” I said. “But I’m stuffed.”

*****

Tuesday evening.

I packed a few clothes into my Adidas bag. Counted the money I’d made. Hid it at the bottom.

Tomorrow I’d go to June’s.

My parents’ voices drifted from the other room.

I wished I hadn’t turned out such a disappointment. Then again, I always had been. Trouble from the start. Crime. Violence. And now this.

Fuck them, I thought. Fuck all of them. I was still a Geisha Boy.

I went into the lounge, turned on the TV. They left the room.

Basketball on Channel 4. I barely watched.

I picked up The Star.

A body found at a derelict factory in Attercliffe. I recognised the place—we’d smashed it up once. I flicked through, checking for more about the ‘gay sex ring’.

Nothing.

That night I went to Paolo’s street. Waited at a bus stop, hoping he’d appear.

Hours passed.

He never did.

I went home for the last time.

Voices inside. Not just my parents.

They stopped when I slammed the door.

“Harry, come here.”

Two uniformed officers sat on the sofa. Mum and Dad in armchairs. By the window—Ian. The lanky copper I despised.

I thought they’d come to arrest me again.

“Fuck me. What now?”

“It’s a delicate matter,” Ian said. “Sit down.”

I squeezed between the officers.

“When did you last see Paolo Moretti?”

“Not since the arrest. And he won’t speak to me.”

“And since then?”

A cold grip of panic.

“What do you mean? Has something happened?”

“Workmen found his body this morning.

“No,” I said. “No, that’s not—”

“Found him at the bottom of an old lift shaft.”

Everything stopped.

“He jumped,” Ian added. “Couldn’t handle the shame. Mess everywhere. No note.”

I stood, almost collapsing. One of the officers caught me.

“Goes to show,” Ian laughed, “another homosexual bites the dust.”

“YOU FUCKING BASTARD!”

*****

Early Wednesday morning.

Dark. Empty road. A sign: London – 80 miles.

I didn’t remember how far I’d come.

After the police left, nothing was said.

I lay on my bed and cried into the pillow. Not since infant school.

I needed Andy and Jack—but they were gone.

More than anything, I needed Paolo. I thought of his body beside mine—warm, alive—and it almost broke me.

Gone.

Forever.

I thought about jumping from the balcony. Joining him.

Sometime after midnight, I took my bag and walked out. Said nothing. Not to my parents. Not even to Adam.

A Renault 5 sat near the flats.

I broke in. Hotwired it. Jack had taught me well.

I drove onto the Parkway. Then the M1. Straight towards London.

Fuck them all.

The David Problem: Notes from a Life

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The Boys of Harrow… and Rockley Beach

David had been researching his new novel: a story set in nineteenth-century Woolwich, where two families are pitched against one another. The plot was already mapped out, but he now wanted to weave in an episode he had discovered in an old newspaper.

In 1850, thirty-three boys were expelled from the Carshalton and Woolwich Military Academies for what the paper called “grossly immoral practices.” The report described their behaviour as being of “a distressing and disgusting nature.” Their humiliation was made public: they were marched through the streets and deposited on the doorsteps of their families.

David decided that the youngest son of the genteel Morgan family would be one of these unfortunate boys.

But the discovery distracted him. As he continued searching, he found other accounts of young men disgraced and dismissed from the armed forces.

In 1976, several young airmen in the Royal Air Force were reportedly paid to perform sex acts at parties hosted by executives from influential companies. The story surfaced soon after eighteen soldiers were dismissed for posing for suggestive photographs in a gay magazine.

A decade later, two sailors were discovered together in a cabin aboard HMS Torbay. The ensuing investigation implicated three more men, including an officer, for homosexual acts.

David knew from experience that when boys were thrown together, it was almost inevitable that those inclined that way would find one another. The thought brought back pleasant memories of his schooldays at Harrow in the 1970s—before he was expelled, that is.

When he was fifteen, David had been caught in flagrante delicto with another boy. Peter had been a year older and known to most as ‘cock of the school’. David had been afraid of Peter because he strutted around as if he owned the place. He was the toughest boy—and the most arrogant—and Peter had often been at the end of his cruel jibes.

One sunny evening David had found a spot under a tree to read his well-thumbed copy of The Passing of the Modern Age. He had been disturbed by a group of older boys on their way to rugby practice. They hadn’t noticed him in the shadows and passed by without comment. David watched them go and marvelled that boys’ legs could be extremely attractive.

He had just tackled the crisis of individualism when someone came out of the bushes. Peter had split from the group and doubled back. David, in awe of the older boy, feared the worst and put his book down.

“Come with me,” said Peter.

David did as he was told and followed Peter through the bushes towards the tractor shed. There was no doubt that Peter was going to inflict some kind of schoolboy torture on him. He expected to see other boys waiting to witness his humiliation.

But there was nobody around.

Inside the shed, Peter forced David up against the back wheel of the groundsman’s Massey Ferguson. He stuck his bubble-gum tongue inside David’s mouth and started kissing him. David had not resisted.

“Let me make love to you,” Peter had instructed and began tugging at David’s trousers. He stuffed the trailing end of David’s school tie into his mouth to stop him making any noise and bent him over the wheel of the tractor. That, as David reflected later, had been the most exciting thing that had ever happened.

They returned to the tractor shed often after that—until the day the groundsman, having left his house key in the tractor, came back for it. He found them both naked and reported them to the headmaster. They were expelled from the school and never saw each other again.

That first encounter with Peter never left his thoughts. All these years later, he accepted that their relationship had been purely physical—there had been no love between them. What remained was the memory of contact, and the illicit thrill of something strictly forbidden. The excitement, as someone had once put it, lay in the chase.

But David’s thoughts also drifted to Nigel—or Nige, as he preferred to be called—a young sailor he had met in the late eighties.

David had been twenty-five, holidaying with friends in Barbados. It was a hot July, and most days were spent lounging on the crowded stretch of Rockley Beach. Fifteen years later, he returned to the same place and found it completely deserted.

He could still remember the book he’d been reading—Koko, a horror-mystery by Peter Straub—pristine when he bought it at the airport, dog-eared within days. He had set it down in the sand, closed his eyes, and listened to the conversations drifting around him.

Vendors moved along the beach, trying to persuade holidaymakers that the unlabelled bottles of pure aloe vera they carried were the secret to a perfect tan. David had bought one, of course, only to discover it did nothing except increase the risk of sunburn.

David had drifted off for a few minutes, and when he woke he found himself surrounded by young men in tight bathing costumes. “Sailors from a British warship,” his friend Debbie smirked. They were gathered in small clusters, towels spread out on the sand, cans of beer passed easily between them.

The one he later learned was called Nige lay stretched out nearest to him. David found himself drawn to the pale, slender body—the long legs, the flat stomach, and the way his shorts seemed to accentuate what lay beneath—of the nineteen-year-old.

They fell into conversation, and David learned that Nige was an able seaman aboard HMS Intrepid. A bit rough and ready, he thought—the Yorkshire accent lending him an air of unpolished charm—but friendly. More than anything, David found him most handsome.

It was David who suggested a beer at an open-air bar at the far end of the beach. They talked and drank bottles of Banks—“pee beer,” as the young Black barmaid jokingly called it—until they noticed the beach had emptied and a magnificent sunset had taken hold in the west. In Barbados, the day did not fade so much as vanish; the sun slipped cleanly into the sea, and night arrived almost at once. Then the tree frogs began to make themselves heard.

David never quite reflected on what followed.

Nige, in T-shirt and shorts, remarked with easy indifference that he felt hot and sticky, and wished he were back aboard ship for a shower. David—less innocently—suggested he come back to his room instead, where he could use his. The young seaman accepted without hesitation, and the two of them crossed the road together.

A few words might have applied; aroused, horny, frisky, and most definitely ‘in the mood’. Nige took his shower and invited David to join him, which was all that he had hoped for. And then they had indulged in hours of drunken sex, only halted by Nige’s necessity to get back to ship before curfew.

David stood naked in the doorway as Nige left. At that exact moment, Anderson—a good-looking, God-fearing porter—passed by, his glance lingering just long enough for curiosity to harden into suspicion, and then into something closer to disgust.

Still, David and Nige agreed to meet again the following day.

Only years later, after some research, did David grasp how serious the consequences might have been had they been reported. Nige—young, impulsive—would likely never have considered that homosexuality was an offence in the armed forces, one that could have led to immediate dismissal. David, meanwhile, would have risked falling foul of the island’s colonial laws, under which homosexuality was illegal. A conviction might have meant life imprisonment in Glendairy Prison, notorious for its brutality, overcrowding, and inhumane conditions—grimly known as a “house of horrors” before it was destroyed by fire during a riot in 2007.

Ignorance had allowed David to preserve certain memories, untouched and untroubled.

But he sometimes wondered what had become of Nige, who would now be fifty-six and long since retired—no doubt altered by time: the silky crew cut gone, the firmness of youth softened into weight, skin loosening, and body hair in unwelcome places. Had they passed each other in the street, he might not have given him a second glance—and Nige, he suspected, would have done the same.

Things had changed.

Homosexuality was legalised in the British armed forces at the turn of the millennium. But Barbados had been slower to catch up. The island had enacted its Sexual Offences Act in 1992, which carried a grim warning: “Any person who commits buggery is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for life.” Even worse, the law specified that the offence applied “whether natural or unnatural, involving the use of the genital organs for the purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire.”

Homosexuality had gone entirely underground, though David took some comfort in the fact that prosecutions had been relatively few. It was not until 2022 that the law was finally repealed, and same-sex relationships legally recognised, when the Sexual Offences Act was declared unconstitutional.

David finally admitted the truth: he had let himself grow lazy. His novel would never be finished if he continued to daydream.