Free The Spell by Alan Hollinghurst

Hotel.
    “I’ve been doing some work for Bernie Barton,” said Terry. “Papering his back room.”
    “Do you mean PC Barton Burton?” Justin enquired.
    Terry was uneasy with Justin’s humour, and said merely, “Whatever you say,” and grinned at the others for solidarity.
    “Been over to the Mill lately?” asked Robin, in a tone that irritated Justin. “How are the prices doing? Still £35 for fish and chips?”
    “Something like that,” said Terry. “Cheers” – taking a cautious drink and then laughing retrospectively. “Or it may have gone up.”
    What was annoying was the slightly roguish joviality, the way Robin’s own vowels became ambiguous, half-rusticated, a sort of verbal slouch as if to disclaim their differences in age and class. He should be what he is, thought Justin, who was not too drunk to know that his annoyance was sharpened by guilt. The present impromptu occasion was a test for Terry as much as himself. He didn’t know how practised Terry would be at deceit, and it was perhaps his own snobbery to assume that a Londoner would do better at concealing a transaction like theirs. He was far cheaper than the London boys too, and Justin believed in general that what you paid more for must be better. He should have given him a larger tip. Glancing at him now, with his forearms and broad brow already pinky-brown from the sun, Justin felt the sweet bite of his addictive nature, and looked forward to other mornings when Robin had gone to Tytherbury and left him in the waking surge of hangover lust.
    “This is Alex, by the way,” said Danny.
    “How do you do?” said Terry, half getting up to shake his hand across the table.
    “Do you live near by?” said Alex feebly.
    “Very near by,” said Terry, with a genial laugh at his ignorance. “No, my mum lives up here, in the back lane.” He tipped his head backwards. “I can slip in through the back gate.”
    Justin wondered how artless all this talk of back bedrooms and back lanes was. He said, “Mrs Doggett grows marvellous delphinia.”
    Terry frowned at this, in the suspicion that it was another joke. “She’s won some prizes,” he said. “It’s Badgett.”
    Justin himself was slow on the uptake – it was a genuine confusion, arising perhaps from Doggett’s Coat and Badge, a pub on Blackfriars Bridge where he had lost several evenings with a randy young sub from the
Sunday Express
. He thought there was no point in apologising.
    “You don’t need any jobs doing?” Terry asked with a vague head-shake.
    Justin said, “Robin’s famous for doing all his jobs himself.”
    There was a little pause. “Are you running the disco this year?” said Robin, as though it was an event he especially looked forward to.
    “Yeah, I expect so, come the holidays, come July,” said Terry quietly, and continued to nod at the difficulty of the task and his readiness to perform it. Justin could see his blue briefs through the side-pocket of the dungarees. Nothing else underneath then.
    “We’ll have some great music for my party,” said Danny, leaning forward from the other side and resting a hand on Terry’s thigh in a split-second enactment of Justin’s own fantasy. “You’re all invited,” he went on, apparently making it up on the spot. “Two weeks’ time, right here. That’s cool, isn’t it, Dad?”
    Robin shrugged and spread his hands: “Sure…” Justin saw it at once as a plan dense with potential opportunities and embarrassments. Alex obviously wouldn’t be there, though he was already accepting with a show of flattered surprise; and maybe Robin too, as a parent, would see fit to pass the evening with the Halls…He supposed there would be drugs, which always made him uneasy, and seemed to make their users amorous but incapable.
    “How old will you be, darling?” he said.
    “Twenty-three,” said Danny, with a grimace at the ghastliness of it; then muttered histrionically, “What have I
done
with my life?” At which