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Authors: Michael Arditti
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the initiative. Mike had little patience with his fears. For him, the safer sex guidelines were protection enough but, for Clement, the comparative contained a warning. So, night after night, he lay beside the love of his life, longing to give himself without restraint, tortured by thoughts of ulcerated gums and split condoms.
‘I think I’d like that champagne now,’ Carla said. She led the way to the kitchen, the gleaming white cabinets looking even more sterile in the aftermath of Peter’s departure. While she heated the soup, he tentatively broached the subject of using an anonymous donor.
‘Never!’ She shuddered.
‘Not even a Nobel Prize-winner?’
‘I want to raise a child, not breed a racehorse.’
Fearing he had wounded her, he was doubly grateful for her keenness to return to the workshop and restore their relationship to its former footing. He showed her the sketches and ran through the budget hammered out between Gil and the Dean. He suggested that they mix different kinds of glass, something opaque, either antique or semi-antique, for the figures, and hand-blown, even streaky, for the surround.
‘What’s behind it? Are there any buildings we need to blot out?’
‘None at all. One advantage of such a backwater is that the close is completely unspoilt.’
‘I suppose you’ll want the figures painted?’ He nodded, knowing that she thought it old-fashioned but also that he had to carry the conservatives on the FAC.
‘Unless there are serious financial implications.’
‘It’s much of a muchness. What you save by not using flash glass, you lose by spending longer on the painting and cooking.’
Their wariness with each other made it easier than usual to agree on a scheme, although he was aware that it left scope for future conflict. He set out a provisional timetable. He was to present a scale design to the FAC at the beginning of April. Then, provided that the glazier was prompt with the template, he hoped to have a cartoon ready for her to start work within six weeks. She in turn confirmed that, other than repairing a large art deco panel for an exiled sheik in Godalming, she was totally free. ‘After all, I shan’t have any reason to take things easy.’ Feeling as though he had been kicked in the teeth, he kissed her and cycled home.
He spent the next two weeks in the studio. Despite having finished the drawings for The Second Adam , he asked Rafik to sit every morning. As he filled his pad with sketches of a man whose every pose was as natural as sleeping , he knew that he had found not just a model but a muse. Besides, it was clear that Rafik needed distraction as well as cash. The manager of the bar had sacked him the moment he learnt of his status, leaving him far too much time to brood, especially after his interview at the Asylum Screening Unit in Croydon. ‘If they wish to make me feel bad to stay here, they have success. Persons are as cold and hard as building.’ Then, on the eve of the FAC meeting he arrived, wrapped in gloom, and without uttering a word held out a letter. A quick glance confirmed Clement’s worst fears; the Home Office had rejected the appeal. He longed to take him in his arms but was afraid to offend him. So, with his sunniest smile, he pointed out that it was exactly what Shortt had predicted and that the real test would come in court.
‘I ask who they will put in court first: Rafik or Desmond?’ Rafik said, presenting Clement with a quandary that was painfully remote from his own experience. Beyond registering the irony that Desmond’s morbid fear of losing Rafik had been self-fulfilling, he had trained himself not to think of him. He could no more conceive of the horror of being held on remand in Belmarsh than of being sent back to a country overrun by homicidal Islamists. He was forty-two years old, but the bitter reality of countless lives was merely a TV-lit flicker in his brain.
Thinking that a trip out of London would lift his spirits,
‘I think I’d like that champagne now,’ Carla said. She led the way to the kitchen, the gleaming white cabinets looking even more sterile in the aftermath of Peter’s departure. While she heated the soup, he tentatively broached the subject of using an anonymous donor.
‘Never!’ She shuddered.
‘Not even a Nobel Prize-winner?’
‘I want to raise a child, not breed a racehorse.’
Fearing he had wounded her, he was doubly grateful for her keenness to return to the workshop and restore their relationship to its former footing. He showed her the sketches and ran through the budget hammered out between Gil and the Dean. He suggested that they mix different kinds of glass, something opaque, either antique or semi-antique, for the figures, and hand-blown, even streaky, for the surround.
‘What’s behind it? Are there any buildings we need to blot out?’
‘None at all. One advantage of such a backwater is that the close is completely unspoilt.’
‘I suppose you’ll want the figures painted?’ He nodded, knowing that she thought it old-fashioned but also that he had to carry the conservatives on the FAC.
‘Unless there are serious financial implications.’
‘It’s much of a muchness. What you save by not using flash glass, you lose by spending longer on the painting and cooking.’
Their wariness with each other made it easier than usual to agree on a scheme, although he was aware that it left scope for future conflict. He set out a provisional timetable. He was to present a scale design to the FAC at the beginning of April. Then, provided that the glazier was prompt with the template, he hoped to have a cartoon ready for her to start work within six weeks. She in turn confirmed that, other than repairing a large art deco panel for an exiled sheik in Godalming, she was totally free. ‘After all, I shan’t have any reason to take things easy.’ Feeling as though he had been kicked in the teeth, he kissed her and cycled home.
He spent the next two weeks in the studio. Despite having finished the drawings for The Second Adam , he asked Rafik to sit every morning. As he filled his pad with sketches of a man whose every pose was as natural as sleeping , he knew that he had found not just a model but a muse. Besides, it was clear that Rafik needed distraction as well as cash. The manager of the bar had sacked him the moment he learnt of his status, leaving him far too much time to brood, especially after his interview at the Asylum Screening Unit in Croydon. ‘If they wish to make me feel bad to stay here, they have success. Persons are as cold and hard as building.’ Then, on the eve of the FAC meeting he arrived, wrapped in gloom, and without uttering a word held out a letter. A quick glance confirmed Clement’s worst fears; the Home Office had rejected the appeal. He longed to take him in his arms but was afraid to offend him. So, with his sunniest smile, he pointed out that it was exactly what Shortt had predicted and that the real test would come in court.
‘I ask who they will put in court first: Rafik or Desmond?’ Rafik said, presenting Clement with a quandary that was painfully remote from his own experience. Beyond registering the irony that Desmond’s morbid fear of losing Rafik had been self-fulfilling, he had trained himself not to think of him. He could no more conceive of the horror of being held on remand in Belmarsh than of being sent back to a country overrun by homicidal Islamists. He was forty-two years old, but the bitter reality of countless lives was merely a TV-lit flicker in his brain.
Thinking that a trip out of London would lift his spirits,
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