Free The Fowler Family Business by Jonathan Meades

anything?’
    ‘There was Moira.’
    ‘Three years ago that was Henry, at least.’
    ‘And thingy, ahmm, the French one, Natasha.’
    ‘Natalie. Henry – that was when he was living there.’
    ‘I don’t know – it’s not the kind of thing I like to talk about with him.’
    ‘Do you think he’s queer and that’s why we never meet his friends?’
    ‘Curly?’ Henry’s incredulity was such that he turned towards Naomi and narrowly avoided a cyclist who yelled an imprecation, waved a sinewy arm.
    ‘God, look what you made me do.’
    ‘I merely suggested that perhaps he is not as other men – apart that is from other men who go for other men.’
    ‘What are you saying – he’s a danger to the children?’
    ‘Don’t be so bloody melodramatic. And do look where you’re going.’
    ‘It’s these humps in the road.’
    ‘Well you know who put those there.’
    ‘If you’d paid a blind bit of attention you’d know that Curly is totally 100-per-cent against traffic calming. His whole thing is to make it go faster …’
    ‘So more kids get run over.’
    ‘So congestion is – what’s the word, alleviated. And if you want to know how I know he’s not a homo it’s because of your precious chum Freddie Glade.’
    (Freddie Glade, b. 21.1.42. Aquarian – but on the cusp, luv. Garden designer, ‘exterior decorator’, artist in flowers, the creative florist’s creative florist. Naomi’s occasional tennis partner. Colourful dresser. The front hedge outside the Crittall-windowed house he had inherited from his parents by Sydenham Wells Park was topiarised into the shape of a poodle.)
    ‘What about Freddie?’ Naomi’s tone was cold, urgent, suspicious.
    ‘D’you know what Curly calls him? The cottage gardener.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘Well he wouldn’t call him that if he was one too – would he?’
    Naomi cocked her head quizzically: ‘Uh?’
    Some seconds passed before Naomi, a woman and thus antipathetic towards slang which she regarded as a male-generated pollutant of pure language, remembered what a cottage was.
    ‘Oh that’s horrible, that’s so unfair – just bloody smug. Offensive.’
    ‘Only the truth isn’t it?’
    ‘It dirties everything doesn’t it, that sort of talk. Like mucky schoolboys. Anyway just ‘cause Curly calls him that doesn’t prove anything. Haven’t you heard of pots and kettles?’
    ‘I know, I know,’ Henry sighed, ‘takes one to know one.’
    ‘Quite!’
    ‘As a matter of fact Curly only calls him that because there was a time when every time Curly went to the club Freddie would make a pass at him, want to get in the shower with him, all that. Real pain he was.’
    ‘Hmmhh. He could be exaggerating. I’m sure Freddie’s not that bad.’
    ‘How would you know? Or are you going to tell me he’s a rampant hetero now? Freddie the lady-killer. The Don Juan of Sydenham Hill. They called him the Dulwich Casanova. Women! Can you resist this man? Thrill to his lithp. Quake as he flaps his writht. See him minth.’
    ‘You’re being really cheap.’
    ‘
You
are being really ridiculous … I mean, Curly was only saying the other day that he wants to have kids of his own.’
    Naomi laughed pityingly. ‘And queers don’t?’
    They were still bickering when Henry turned into the Thicket Road car park. Lennie was high above Curly on his shoulders.
    ‘Grandpa says you been dilly-dallying.’ Ben looked at his grandfather to make sure he had got the word right.
    They walked up the worn, grassless slope past the noxious blasts from the cafeteria’s humming extractor, past the crates of soft-drinks empties and the brimming refuse bins. ‘A hearty meniscus on mine if you please,’ said Mr Fowler, as always, when his eyes came level with the surface of the boating lake. It was a wonder that the water didn’t spill over, it was that high, lapping at the edge where refugees from domesticity sat on their X-folders surrounded by six packs, vacuum flasks, seething bait in