An Episode of Remnants.

Episode Content Warnings

Please bear in mind that this work has content some listeners may find distressing, including themes of war, violence, and grief. This episode contains:

Sounds of fireworks

Implications of racism, specifically against Indian people through the framework of ‘the British Raj’

Mentions of extreme sickness and vomiting

Death and corpses

A teenager (not the main character of the remnant) is sexually abused by a teacher. This is not described in detail or named explicitly for what it is, but there are several references to it throughout the episode, and the main character has witnessed an incident of this happening

References to sex

References to excessive alcohol use

Suicide attempt of another character, interrupted

Infidelity

Implications of homophobia

Brief mention of hard drugs (cocaine)

Transcript

A WHISPERING HUSH

APPRENTICE WAKES WITH A GASP

MOVEMENT, SCUTTLING. WHISPERING.

APPRENTICE CATCHES HIS BREATH

SIR
Ah. You’re awake. How do you feel?

APPRENTICE
What is going on? Where am I– what is…

SIR
I see.

APPRENTICE
Yeah… Why are you keeping me here?

A PAUSE

SIR
What do you mean by that?

APPRENTICE
You said it was a job. But. I don’t remember getting here.

SIR
No.

APPRENTICE
Please let me go. Please, I don’t want to die.

SIR
Bad news, I’m afraid.

APPRENTICE
(frightened, but calm)
Please let me go.

SIR
I can’t. I’m sorry.

APPRENTICE
You– you can’t be the one that– who is making you do this?

SIR
Nobody.

APPRENTICE
But you– how. I.

SIR
Ah. You are afraid of me.

APPRENTICE
Of course I am.

SIR
There is no need to be afraid.

APPRENTICE
You hurt me.

SIR
I never mean to.

APPRENTICE
That. That thing you showed me. It was. Horrible.

SIR
Some of them are, I believe.

APPRENTICE
What do you mean by that?

SIR
By what?

APPRENTICE
‘You believe’.

SIR
I am not a thing that feels. I would not know.

APPRENTICE
Last time I saw you, you were on about processing, feeling them like they–

SIR
It is not for me, as it is for you.

APPRENTICE
Maybe not. But. You’re lying.

SIR
What about?

APPRENTICE
You can feel. Because it hurt your feelings that I’m scared of you.

Please. You don’t have to keep me here like this.

SIR
Ah, dear Apprentice. Would that it were so.

APPRENTICE
So. You’re trapped here too.

SIR
That is the end of this conversation.

APPRENTICE
Okay.

SIR
I came to offer you an apology. I have now thought better of it.

APPRENTICE
Because I’ve been a dick?

SIR
I’m not sure that you have. Nevertheless, I have recalled the last instance on which I gave you such an apology you were very upset.

APPRENTICE
Oh, I– I don’t. I– I– I don’t remember? Didn’t we just–?

SIR
Yes, yes, very good. Nonetheless I think it would be better to move along without attempt at such niceties. That is not why we are here, afterall.

APPRENTICE
Which is…?

SIR
To read the remnants and make judgements.

APPRENTICE
I don’t. I can’t do it again. Not if it would be like last time.

SIR
It won’t. Each remnant is unique; distinct; an individual.

APPRENTICE
Right, sure, it’s just—

SIR
Come along.

PAUSE

APPRENTICE
Alright.

FOOTSTEPS ON SOFT GROUND, AND A FAINT WHOOSH

SIR
This will do.

APPRENTICE
For what?

SIR
You should choose.

APPRENTICE
Choose what?

SIR
A remnant.

APPRENTICE
Oh. Why?

SIR
I have been letting myself dictate too much. You should choose. Follow your own path. Let it take you.

APPRENTICE
I don’t know what you—

SIR
All the same, you ought to be the one who decides what you read. So. Please choose.

APPRENTICE
I want to see her.

SIR
Who?

APPRENTICE
Celine. The woman from the first one I read. I want to see her remnant.

SIR
Curious. Why?

APPRENTICE
Because I need to know if– he was wrong about her.

SIR
Why does that matter?

APPRENTICE
I– I don’t know. But it does.

SIR
I’m afraid I can’t.

APPRENTICE
Why not?

SIR
She is… elsewhere. It’s impossible. I’m sorry.

APPRENTICE
But how will I know if… ?

SIR
If what?

APPRENTICE
If I made the right call.

SIR
Ah. Criteria. Is that what you’re eluding to?

APPRENTICE
I suppose.

SIR
I see. Best we move on swiftly, then. Your request is impossible. Pick something from the shelf.

APPRENTICE
Oh. Okay? How about this book?

SIR
If you like.

APPRENTICE PICKS UP THE BOOK AND TURNS IT IN HIS HANDS

APPRENTICE
The binding is leather. It’s old.

THE BOOK OPENS

APPRENTICE
Oh, handwritten poetry, I think? No, wait. This is just. Names and addresses. Oh, there’s– there’s an inscription in the front, too. Property of Harry Dhairya Standish-Coombes. What a name, I– oh– oh!

WHOOSH. THE SOUND OF DISTANT FIREWORKS.

‘Hello?’ Harry’s mother whispers from his bedroom doorway.

Harry’s mother moves and her clothes shimmer in the low light of the lamp beside his bed. She has her nose ring in, a chain of sparkling gold with dozens of tiny, leaf-shaped charms connecting it to another piercing in her ear. Harry’s father doesn’t like it when she wears her nose ring, so it usually only comes out when he’s away on business.

‘Are you awake, Dhairya?’ whispers his mother, in Hindi. Dhairya his middle name; that’s what his mother always calls him. To everyone else he’s Harry, because that’s what his father has decided.

‘Yes,’ Dhairya whispers back.

‘Do you want to see the lights?’

Dhairya nods. He pushes back his covers. His mother helps him pull on his clothes. She leads him by the hand through the halls of their little palace, and out into the streets of Jaipur. They walk towards the city centre. There are dozens of others walking beside them. Candles flicker on the steps up to the front doors of the pink-painted buildings that line the streets. Coloured cloth hangs from windows, catching in the slight warm breeze stirring the balmy evening air.

The closer they get to the centre of town, the louder things are; the beating of drums; bright melodies plucked from sitars; hundreds of voices.

There’s a bang; the crowd around them gasps.

‘Look, Dhairya!’ his mother calls over the din. She’s pointing at the sky as a firework blossoms like a flower made of red sparks of fire.

His mother lifts him and sets him on her hip. She’s not lifted him this way for years. He’s almost eight, far too big for it, but she holds him like he’s an infant and points up at the fireworks, the sparks reflected in her dark eyes like shooting stars.

At the end of the night, she carries him back home on her back, his arms slung over her shoulders, barely awake with his cheek buried in her sweet-smelling hair.

She deposits him back into his bed and tucks him under his duvet, pulling it up to his chin. She swipes his hair back from his forehead.

‘Don’t tell your father,’ she whispers.

‘I won’t.’

His mother plants a kiss between his eyebrows.

He falls asleep and dreams of lights and fireworks and music, and dancing amongst the stars. When he wakes up in the morning, it might have all been a dream, except he’s still wearing his clothes and sandals under the covers.

‘Harry!’ his father calls.

Harry jumps out of bed. ‘Coming!’ he calls back.

WHOOSH. FLIES BUZZ.

Harry is hot and cold all over. His mother presses cold cloths to his head. Sunlight spills through a gap in the curtains and it hurts his eyes. His sick, too weak to move, he lies in it, vainly trying to call for help.

Time passes. Slow and fast at once. Sun rise; sun set; hot; cold; sweating; shivering; aching.

He wakes tangled in his sheets. His face is stiff and crusty. Apart from the pain in his limbs and his head, the first thing he notices is the smell. Its like off meat and sickness.

He gets out of bed. There are flies buzzing by the bed. They dart past his ears.

There is a dried puddle of sick on the tiles. His pyjamas are stained and stinking. His mouth is dry, eyes crusted.

He calls for his mother. Nobody answers. He calls for the maids, the cleaners, his father. Nothing.

He stumbles out into the hallway. There’s a strong wind blowing the brightly coloured curtains through the open shutters. Strong enough to catch the shutters, too. The clatter is the opposite of music; drums with no rhythm; loud; piercing; echoing through the halls and through Harry’s head as he walks trembling; stinking; shaking.

In his parents room, shapes lie still on the bed. There are flies here, too, buzzing. He calls out for his mother and father but they do not answer.

He does not expect them to. There is nobody there. Nobody in the whole palace.

Nobody but the dead.

WHOOSH. RAIN.

Wind and rain hammers against the windows of Harry’s grandmother’s house. Before he’d come to London, he’d imagined it was exactly like Jaipur, but with a big clock in the centre. He’d imagined it as some massive ornate thing, an outsized grandfather clock with swinging pendulums and a rhythmic tick that could be heard all through the city, keeping everyone apace.

That is not what London is like.

Inside his grandmother’s drawing room, Harry stands up straight with his hands behind his back. His grandmother is writing letters. She will not speak to him until eleven. Until then, he has to stand there, silent, and wait. His nose is itchy.

The clock in the hallway – which is nothing like Big Ben – chimes on the hour.

‘Harry,’ says his grandmother, setting down her pen. She takes off her glasses, sets them neatly beside her stack of letters.

Her hands are oddly beautiful to Harry, their skin almost translucent, her veins a powdery blue-green beneath, the surface spotted here and there with uneven splotches of soft brown, like giant, pale freckles. Her fingernails are perfectly shaped and shiny, her wedding and engagement rings gleaming with polish above the slightly swollen joint of her finger.

‘You’re going to go to school soon,’ she says.

‘Oh,’ said Harry, standing a little taller.

‘You’re a little young, I know, but you’re exceptionally bright for your age, just like your father was. Eton has a good relationship with the Raj; they’ve a handful of other Indian and half-Indian students like you. They’ll know what to do with you.’

Harry nods. He’s looking at his grandmother’s hands still. And then at the window, at the rain. Rain always came with heat, before. Not this withering chill. His nose is still itchy but he won’t dare touch it.

‘Harry?’ his grandmother says, sharply.

Harry jumps, meeting her gaze again. ‘Sorry,’ ma’am.’

She smiles wistfully. ‘I shall miss that accent when they train it out of you. You sound just like your mother. I was very fond of her. She was a smart girl. Yes, very smart.’

Harry sniffles. He nods.

‘Now, listen. I’m going to give you something.’

She opens one of the drawers on her desk. She sets down a small leather pocket book. ‘Do you know what this is?’

‘A pocket book, ma’am,’ says Harry.

‘It’s your pocket book,’ says his grandmother. ‘I’ve put my telephone and address in there. Your first entry.’

Harry nods, smiling awkwardly. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

‘Ah, don’t underestimate it: in a few years, that pocket book will be the most important thing you own.’

Harry opens the book. His grandmother’s information is on the first page. The rest are empty.

WHOOSH. HISSING TAPS.

School is dizzyingly different. There are dozens of rules and still more expectations he has no idea how to meet. He’s the youngest boy in his class. He joined in April, most of the way through the school year, and for a while he was the youngest boy in the school by a whole year. There was a sense of doubt from the teachers that he’d be able to keep up. He’s clever and quick and his grasp of English is near flawless, but his teachers rap his desk when he sounds too much like himself. Each time they correct him, he feels a little part of him getting scrubbed away. As the weeks go on, there’s so little of him left that he aches, hollow as a drum.

He sits up at night, flicking through the empty pages of his pocket book, tracing his fingers over the empty spaces. He screws up his eyes, imagines his mother’s name and details are there, like he might be able to use the telephone in the school office to call her up and hear her voice, like he might be able to write to her and get a reply to open at breakfast when everyone else got post from their parents. Maybe she’d write Dhairya on the envelope and he’d get called out to check it was for him. Maybe the letter would smell the way she always did, like clean laundry and perfume.

In the hallways were busts of different Indian generals, portraits of old Etonians dressed in patterned fabrics like they were Indian despite the pastiness of their skin. Harry took to sneaking out of bed and reading the commemorative plaques which extolled the virtue of every one of them.

One night, after midnight, he was sneaking back to bed when he heard something. A soft grunt, like someone was struggling; the squeak of a shoe on the floor. It was coming from the teacher’s bathroom. He crept a little further along. He heard someone gasp, and then the thud of something hitting the ground. Heart pounding in his chest, Harry pushed open the door.

One of the boys from his class was on his knees in front of Professor Davidson, the music teacher. The professor’s trousers were around his ankles. He was gripping the sinks.

‘Matzner!’ the professor hissed, dragging Simeon Matzner back from his crotch by the hair. The professor tossed Simeon aside, scrabbling with his trousers. He pushed Harry out of the way and strode into the hallway, his belt buckle rattling.

Harry stared at Simeon. He was breathing heavily. There was a string of spit hanging from his chin.

‘What are you staring at?’ he snapped.

‘Are you okay?’ said Harry.

Simeon looked perplexed for a moment, then he laughed. He got to his feet, smoothing his pyjamas. ‘I was up late practicing piano,’ he said. He turned his back to Harry, hurriedly washing his hands in the sink. He dropped the soap and swore.

‘Simeon,’ said Harry.

‘Don’t fucking talk like that,’ Simeon hissed. The water was gargling down the plughole, blasting hard from the tap.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Harry.

Simeon was gripping the edges of the sink, his head dropped forwards.

‘You tell anyone what you saw, I’ll smash your skull in with a rock,’ said Simeon.

The taps squeaked as he turned them off. He pushed Harry against the wall as he stormed past him.

WHOOSH. CHILDREN PLAYING.

Harry does not look at Simeon for weeks unless he’s sure Simeon can’t see him. He stares at the dark curls on the back of his head in the classes they share together. He watches him eat alone at lunchtime, get shoved into the walls by the other boys, the way they shove Harry, too.

At an open evening for parents of new boys, Simeon plays the piano. It’s beautiful, every bit as good as the people Harry has heard playing on records.

Simeon looks across the clapping crowd, unsmiling. His eyes seem to find Harry at once.

Harry withers under his gaze. He ducks out of the door and out into the evening air. His collar feels too tight; his eyes are stinging; he’s gulping the air.

‘Hey, Coombes!’ a voice calls.

Harry urns. It’s Simeon; his expression is strange.

‘I didn’t tell,’ said Harry.

Simeon shifts awkwardly on the spot. ‘I know.’

Harry swallows hard. He balls his hands into fists at his sides. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

‘No, it’s fine,’ says Simeon. He sniffles. He holds out his hand, not making eye contact with Harry.

Harry stares at his fingers for a moment before he takes them. Simeon’s hand is cold.

‘No hard feelings?’

Harry shakes his head vigorously. Simeon almost smiles.

‘Good,’ says Simeon.

Harry fumbles in his pocket. ‘Would you like to put your name and things in my pocket book?’ he asks.

Simeon smiles. It’s crooked and beautiful. ‘Yeah, alright,’ he says.

After that, they are rarely apart.

WHOOSH. AMBIENCE OF EARLY EVENING.

The last dregs of sunlight have stained the sky pink and lavender. Harry is telling Simeon about Diwali in Jaipur, sneaking out with his mother.

‘She liked music,’ he says. ‘I feel bad that I’m a better listener than I am a musician.’

Simeon is sprawled on the grass next to Harry, holding a bottle of brandy upright between them. It’s a sharp change from the tea they normally drink together. Harry puts a slice of orange in it, the way his mother always used to.

‘Don’t knock the value of a good listener,’ says Simeon.

Harry sighs. He takes the bottle from Simeon and swigs it.

‘Can you believe in just a few months we’re going to be at Oxford together?’

Simeon hums softly. ‘I can’t.’ He grabs Harry’s sleeve, pulls him back down onto the grass. They’re lying face to face. They do this a lot, when they’re alone together. Looking into each others eyes as they talk. Sometimes, in the dark, when they can barely make out the shape of each others faces, they hold hands, clasped tight between their chests.

Sometimes, Simeon comes to Harry’s room in the middle of the night.

Harry always knows when Simeon’s been with the professor. He smells like fresh sweat, and heat comes off him like he’s a furnace.

Harry always shifts over on his mattress, lets Simeon fold his way in. Simeon never faces Harry on those nights. He lies with his back to him, shaking.

Harry holds him, arms wrapped tight around Simeon’s chest. Sometimes he runs his hands through his hair until Simeon stops crying and falls asleep.

Harry lies awake, his nose touching the back of Simeon’s neck, hoping.

For what, he doesn’t know.

They are best friends, have been for three years, now. They’re going to Oxford together. Harry is sure Simeon will be a famous pianist and hundreds of people will watch him play every night. He hopes, in some quiet part of himself that he does his best to smother, that Simeon will let Harry watch him rehearse the way he does now. That he’ll let him come sit on the piano stool beside him and feel him breathe as the music moves through him.

‘We’re not in the same college, I know,’ says Harry. ‘But we’ll still be able to see each other, I’m sure. I wonder if there are modules we could do together? I bet there’s some way for Art History to overlap with music—’

Simeon kisses Harry, short, soft, chaste.

Harry is silent. He lifts his fingers to his mouth; the place where their lips met feels hot.

‘Sorry,’ says Simeon. He sits up and away from Harry.

‘It’s okay,’ says Harry. He’s still touching his lips.

Simeon turns, looking at Harry over his shoulder. ‘I keep thinking. About Oxford.’

‘What about it?’ Harry whispers.

Simeon hangs his head. ‘There’s going to be so many people there, and I know you’re only a year younger than me and I, I just think, that it should be with someone you love, your first time.’

‘My first time,’ Harry echoes.

Simeon turns around. His cheeks are as pink as the sky at the horizon. Harry reaches out and brushes his finger across them. Simeon catches Harry’s thumb in his teeth.

‘I love you, Simeon,’ Harry whispers.

Simeon closes his lips around Harry’s thumb.

WHOOSH. CREAKING.

Harry wakes alone in the field outside of the school grounds. The brandy bottle is empty beside him, and so is his pocket book, which had been in his trousers, which lie neatly folded a few feet away. Harry scrambles into them, grabs the pocket book. A page drifts as he lifts it. Harry picks it up. It’s the one with Simeon’s name on it. Simeon has crossed his name out.

Harry doesn’t know how but he knows at once what this means. He does not even finish buttoning his shirt as he bolts towards Simeon’s room.

The door is locked. He slams into it, screaming Simeon’s name.

Other boys are emerging from their own rooms, the housemaster appearing at the end of the hall. They’re yelling, telling him to stop, but he doesn’t care.

The door splinters.

Simeon is hanging by his neck. His legs are twitching. Harry grabs them, holding Simeon up. He can feel him gasping and sobbing as he holds him there.

‘Let me die,’ he barks between sobs and flails. ‘Let me go!’

Harry doesn’t. He holds on, until the house master cuts Simeon down. He holds him still when the ambulance comes. They have to pull him away, both he and Simeon screaming.

Harry’s arms are aching with the absence. His body still feels loose, shaken out. The night flashes behind his eyelids. The feeling of Simeon’s mouth on him, the memory of Simeon’s little gasps as Harry kissed him back, kissed his chest, kissed all the way down his body. How Simeon had seemed almost surprised that Harry wanted to touch him too. All of it plays in loops around Harry’s head. Had Simeon planned it? Had he meant it to be this way?

Harry is sick on his legs. The housemaster helps him up, puts him to bed.

He dreams of fireworks. He dreams of his mother. He dreams of Simeon strangling him to death.

WHOOSH. THE SOUNDS OF A NEARBY STREET.

Harry wakes late morning to the incessant ringing of his doorbell. Sunlight is streaming into the living room as he peels himself up off the floor.

‘Awh, Harry, can’t you make them stop?’ croaks the woman asleep on his chaise longue.

‘On it,’ he mumbles, gruffly.

Harry answers the door. There’s nobody there, just a stack of letters forwarded on from his old address. People he met at parties, people he’s not seen since before the war. There’s a sense, now that peace has come, of promise. A feeling of the future. Everyone Harry knows is interpreting that as meaning it is their sworn duty to party harder than they’ve ever partied before.

Harry wouldn’t argue with that. The war made things awfully dull, though it did give him lots of opportunities to spend time with fine young gentlemen who otherwise would never have made it to the continent. He’s lived in Vienna for almost a decade now, since he came here to study after Simeon tried to kill himself.

Harry rifles through the invitations to parties all over Europe, and stops only when he gets to a stiff ivory envelope. This one is not just a party invitation. It’s an invite to a wedding. Simeon’s wedding.

Harry sits down heavily on the chair in the hall.

‘Betty?’ he calls.

His assistant appears a moment later. ‘Can I help you, sir?’

‘Please bring me vodka and a cigarette.’

‘Are you sure, sir? It’s only eleven.’

‘Oh, right. Bring coffee, too. Enough for Isabella to have some.’

‘Is she the lady on the chaise?’

‘She is indeed,’ says Harry.

‘Another ballerina?’

‘A soloist,’ says Harry, flatly, opening the envelope again.

‘And the gentleman in your bedroom?’

Harry looks up from the invite. ‘Oh. I suppose he’ll probably want coffee too.’

Betty smiles. ‘Of course, sir. I’ll be with you shortly.’

Harry turns the invite over in his hands. He brings it to his face. It doesn’t smell like Simeon. It barely smells like anything.

After Harry left and Simeon had gone away, he would write to Harry every week from the institution they were keeping him at. Sometimes Harry thought about replying, but he didn’t know what to say. He was angry and certain he’d stay that way for the rest of his life.

He crumples the invite in his hands and gets to his feet and slumps towards his bedroom. The lead male dancer of the Paris ballet is sprawled naked and face down on Harry’s mattress. Harry sighs. Of course he will not go to Simeon’s wedding. Of course not.

Harry grabs his pocket book from his trousers and goes back to the hall.

‘Betty,’ Harry calls down. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I want tea.’

‘Your mother’s tea?’ Betty calls up from the kitchen.

‘Yes. With the sugared oranges.’

‘Very good, sir!’ Betty calls back.

Harry runs his hand over his face. He picks up the invitation from the floor. He writes Simeon’s name and the return address for the invite into his book, and slides it into his pocket.

WHOOSH

Harry begrudgingly arrives in London just before Christmas. His grandmother has died; he’s there to pack up her things, but of course he cannot escape the inexorable pull of parties.

Famed cad and serial adulterer Christian Bevan is there, a pretty young thing hanging off his arm. Harry is shocked to learn that she’s Eliza Grenville. The Grenvilles have not been popular in social circles for a while, but their name holds enough power still that he’s surprised he’s not caught wind of a scandal like this.

Harry’s never really understood why Bevan gets invited along to these things; he’s new money to start with and a bastard to boot. His only in with the socialites is his wife, Maud. She’s some kind of dreadfully dull duchess from the Netherlands or something. She’s throws excellent parties herself, but hardly seems to step out of her own house. Perhaps it’s to avoid seeing her husband cheating on her.

Harry ends up speaking with Eliza in the small hours.

‘He says he’s going to leave her,’ Eliza tells him, with a sniflle.

‘Oh, honey, he is never going to leave his wife,’ Harry tells her.

Eliza’s pretty face trembles and she sobs into Harry’s shoulder. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s inviting her to come to Florence with him, and she’s accepting.

The second night in Italy, Eliza tries to kiss him whilst they’re playing mahjong by the pool. He laughs in her face. She recoils from him, hurt.

‘Oh no, sweet thing,’ he says softly. ‘It’s not you. No. I prefer my conquests. Uh. Flatter in the chest and broader in the shoulder.’

Eliza cocks her head to the side like a confused kitten. ‘What?’

‘Ah, you are so very young, aren’t you, sweetheart?’ says Harry. He lights them both a cigarette. ‘Come on,’ he says, beckoning Eliza to follow him.

They walk through his house barefoot and stop at the bookshelf. Harry takes a breath, trailing his fingers along the spines, then pulls one free. He hands it to Eliza.

‘Go on,’ he says. ‘Look at it.’

Eliza opens the book. It’s an album, dozens of photographs fixed on heavy, dark paper. The hand of an unseen man grips the jaw of another tight. His expression is resplendent, exhalant.

‘Oh,’ says Eliza.

She turns the page, gasping. The next image is more explicit, the one after even more so.

‘Oh I see,’ says Eliza. She sits down with the album, cigarette between her teeth, eyes fixed on the pages. ‘Did you take these?’

Harry laughs. ‘No, I didn’t. I’ve always been more archivist than artist, I’m afraid.’

Eliza keeps turning the pages, her cheeks flushed. ‘Well they’re certainly very…’ her words trail off.

‘They are very indeed,’ Harry agrees, with a chuckle.

Eliza blinks rapidly. ‘But. You’re a cad. A womaniser. You’ve a new woman on your arm every week, they say.’

Harry laughs. ‘Yes, indeed. By design.’

Eliza smoothes her fingers over one of the photographs, over the place the two men are joined. ‘Oh my,’ she whispers.

‘There is more. If you’re enjoying yourself.’

Eliza looks up, eyes wide, cheeks redder than ever. She closes the book. ‘No thank you,’ she whispers.

Harry smiles. ‘You can come and go as you please, Eliza. I’m in Florence another week, then I’m heading on elsewhere. You can stay, or tag along. It’s up to you.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ says Eliza, still blushing.

‘Wonderful. I’ll have my assistant, Betty, make the arrangements.’

Eliza is with him for almost a year, until she gets pregnant. Then, Harry sends her home.

WHOOSH

The delivery men shuffle down Harry’s hallway, the huge painting between them. ‘Just here will do,’ says Harry, backing up and holding out his hands to frame the wall.

Celine, the art dealer, tips the delivery men on the way out.

‘Shall we take a peek?’ says Celine.

They pull off the paper wrapping and expose the huge Monet beneath.

Harry sighs. ‘Oh it’s beautiful. And you’re so right, it looks so good on this wall. What was I thinking about the bedroom? Madness.’

Celine laughs. ‘What can I say? I’m a professional.’

Her heels beat a rhythm on the floor as she strides down the hall to the kitchen. She takes a bottle of champagne from her large leather hand bag. ‘Do you have flutes?’

‘Oui, madame,’ says Harry. He steps past her and pulls a couple from the cupboards. They step out onto the balcony, looking down at the Milan streets below.

‘I really appreciate you coming all this way.’ says Harry.

‘That painting is worth tens of thousands,’ says Celine, blasé. ‘It’s worth me keeping it company. Plus, ha, all expenses paid trip to Milan? How could I say no?’

Harry chuckles. ‘I’m happy to facilitate.’

Celine smiles. She steps up and away from the balcony edge and strides into the apartment again. She looks up at the other artwork on Harry’s walls. ‘You have a good eye for paintings; have you considered getting into the business yourself?’

Harry laughs. ‘I don’t know about that. I like it as a hobby, but I’ve no need of money.’

Celine smiles. ‘I suppose to get going.’

Harry sighs indulgently. ‘Lunch tomorrow, before you leave?’

Celine smiles again. ‘Sure.’

After she’s gone, Harry moves the painting into the bedroom. ‘Blood French art critics,’ he says. He swigs the last of the champagne from the bottle.

WHOOSH.

Harry splashes water on his face in the bathroom. He stares at himself, his hair escaping his careful slick back, his shirt half undone, his jacket askew.

‘Harry?’

Harry looks over his reflection’s shoulder. Behind him, there he is, the pretty little thing he met at the party. A young lord. They call him Perry. He’s unfastening his shirt, leaning against the doorway. There’s a few fine hairs on his tanned chest. His hair is as mussed as Harry’s, dark curls framing his face, his eyes dark, predatory.

Harry’s attention falls to his own eyes. They look wide in his face, slightly sunken with age.

The sound of the taps gushing, the water hammering against the ceramic. For a moment he’s back at Eton, looking at Simeon curled up on the floor by the sinks.

Perry’s arms creep around Harry’s chest, opening the buttons on his shirt. Harry grabs his wrist.

Their reflection in the gilded mirror is like a painting, Perry’s chest bare, hands pulling Harry’s shirt open, Harry’s fingers in a vice grip around his wrists, unable and unwilling to make him stop entirely. Harry is breathing fast.

Perry kisses the side of his neck.

‘What is it?’ Perry says.

Harry swallows hard. ‘You just. Remind me of someone.’

Perry hesitates. He glances up at the mirror. In their reflection, their gazes meet.

Harry releases Perry’s wrists and he pulls back, comes to stand beside Harry instead of behind him, bare ass against the marble counter. Harry closes his eyes, shaking his head. He turns off the tap.

‘Who was he?’ says Perry.

Harry half laughs, half sighs. He glances at his lined face again, then turns his back on himself. ‘Someone I knew at school. I must be as old as our professor was, when he…’

The words fade into nothing.

‘I’m not a child,’ says Perry. ‘I’m here because I want to be.’

Harry’s eyes sting. ‘I don’t understand how that can be true! I’m old enough to be your father.’

Perry scoffs. ‘So that’s what this is really about?’

Perry stands up, stands over Harry, one barefoot either side of Harry’s polished shoes. He takes Harry’s jaw in his hand, forces him to meet his gaze. ‘Don’t you think I’m pretty?’

Harry almost cries. ‘Of course I do.’

‘Don’t you want me?’

Harry squeezes his eyes shut. ‘Yes,’ he whispers, like a confession.

‘Come on then,’ says Perry.

Harry lets himself be led from the bathroom. Perry strips him with excruciating slowness and sets about taking him to pieces in a way that feels systematic, practiced, deliberate. Harry is shaking and gasping like he hasn’t for years. Perry barely lets him get a taste of him; the whole interaction is singularly focused on Harry, and he’s spinning out.

When he’s done, he screams so hard it feels like he’s torn his throat, and lies there sobbing, face first into the pillow.

He stays there, pathetic, aching, ecstatic, unmoving as Perry cleans him up, mumbling nothings to him, tucking him under the covers like a child.

‘What’s this?’ says Perry, eventually.

Harry drifts back into himself.

Perry is sitting, naked, cross legged on the floor. In one hand, he has a cigarette. In the other, Harry’s pocket book.

Despite the way his muscles scream at him, Harry forces himself down onto the rug. He plucks the book and the cigarette from Perry. Perry raises an eyebrow at him.

‘It’s my most precious possession,’ says Harry. He takes a drag on the cigarette and slides the book under his mattress.

‘Is he in there?’ asks Perry.

‘Who?’

Perry shrugs. He takes the cigarette back. ‘The man I remind you of. The one you’re still in love with.’

Harry scoffs. ‘I’m not in love with Simeon.’

‘Simeon,’ says Perry, softly. ‘I knew a pianist with that name.’

‘What?’ says Harry. It feels like someone one has thrown a bucket of water over him.

‘Yes, in London,’ says Perry. He’s looking off across the room. ‘He died.’

Harry’s stomach twists. The room is spinning. He grips the side of the bed. ‘Simeon Matzner?’ he whispers.

Perry looks back at Harry, dead eyed. ‘Yes. That’s him.’

Harry gets to his feet. He staggers to the bathroom, barely makes it there before he’s sick.

‘Harry, are you alright?’

‘You should leave,’ Harry croaks, clinging to the side of the bath.

‘I– I’m sorry, I—’

‘Go!’ Harry barks.

Perry picks up the items of clothing he cast onto the bathroom floor and walks away in silence.

Harry is sick again, this time in the toilet.

‘You know the Monet in your bedroom is fake,’ says Perry.

He’s in the doorway to the bathroom again, half-dressed, fastening his trousers.

‘What?’ says Harry, blinking at him in confusion.

‘It’s a forgery,’ says Perry, slipping into his shirt. ‘Just thought you should know.’

The door to Harry’s apartment slams shut.

Harry sits staring at the place where Perry had been for a long, long time.

WHOOSH

There is a knock on Harry’s door as he’s fastening his cufflinks. ‘Tell them to go away,’ he barks.

‘It’s that young man who was here this morning,’ says Betty, from the balcony. ‘He was here yesterday, too.’

‘I’m going to be late as it is,’ Harry sighs. He glances at himself in his reflection, smoothing his hair.

Betty bustles her way back into the dressing room.

‘Did you get rid of him?’ asks Harry.

‘He said to tell you orange tea,’ says Betty.

Harry’s stomach drops. ‘What?’

‘He said if I told you that, you’d speak with him.’

Harry walks out into the bedroom, through the doors, onto the balcony. The boy is looking directly up at him. His blonde hair is slicked back from his face. His eyes are such a pale shade of blue they are almost white. He recognises them at once. ‘Eliza Grenville,’ he calls down.

The boy’s eyebrows raise. ‘My mother.’

Harry closes his eyes. He walks back into the bedroom. ‘Let him up, Betty.’

Betty nods curtly. ‘Would you like some of your mother’s tea?’

‘Yes. Yes, thank you.’

Stephen Grenville sits stiffly opposite Harry in the living room. His gaze keeps flickering to the bookshelf. Harry wonders distantly if somehow this boy might know what his mother had seen on similar pages, all the way in Florence.

‘If you’ve come wondering about your parentage, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you,’ says Harry. ‘But you can probably tell that already.’

Stephen smiles grimly. ‘Yes. We don’t share much of a resemblance. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m looking for someone.’

Stephen reaches into his pocket. He hands Harry a photograph. A bride and groom on their wedding day. The groom looks almost exactly like Perry, except for the eyes. Perry has dark eyes. This man’s are blue.

‘Do you recognise him?’ says Stephen.

‘I don’t know,’ says Harry, and he doesn’t. He’s glimpsed Perry again a handful of times over the last few years, across crowds at the ballet and the opera and at parties. Harry is always fighting with himself: ought he go there, speak to him now? But he never quite musters the courage.

Stephen is staring at him intently. ‘If you think you might know him, I’d have you tell me.’

‘Who is this man to you?’ asks Harry.

‘His name is Edwin Peterson and he stole my life,’ says Stephen.

Harry frowns at the boy sat opposite him. ‘I’m sorry?’

Stephen takes a shaky breath. ‘He– he stole my inheritance. He wooed my aunt, tricking her into putting his will into his name, or not his name. Another fake name, but nonetheless, he took the money when my aunt died and now I have nothing. Nothing!’

Harry looks at the photograph again. ‘I- I’m sorry. I don’t think I can help you.’

Stephen stares at him for a long while. ‘Alright. Then I’ll be on my way.’ He snatches the photograph back and storms out of the house, almost knocking into Betty as she comes through, carrying a tray of orange tea.

‘Sorry, Betty,’ says Harry, standing to steady her.

‘What a troubled young man,’ says Betty.

‘Indeed,’ says Harry.

They sit on the balcony together and share the orange tea.

WHOOSH. FIREWORKS.

Harry stands on the balcony of the hotel in Mumbai, watching the sky light up in dozens of colours. The streets below are rammed with people, lights and music. It’s the first time he’s been back to India since his parents died. He’s more than a thousand miles from Jaipur even now. It’s the closest he’s come to coming home.

He had been planning to leave last week, but his friend convinced him to stay for Diwali. He’s not sure how he feels, if it was the right choice or not. There’s a heaviness in his chest, as though his sternum has been replaced with lead. When he swallows he can feel his heart in his throat.

His mother was a religious woman. Harry’s father always tried to keep him from it, to teach him Christian stories instead, but his mother’s beliefs had lined the walls of their old palace home. And now here there are thousands of people in the streets of this city he’s never visited, in this country he has not seen for decades, who have more of a connection to that part of his mother than he ever could, now.

Harry sips his martini and goes back into the hotel.

Most of the guests are white. Some of the staff treat Harry as though he is, too. For years in European socialite circles, they treated him like he was one of them, but as he’s grown older, his skin has got darker, marking him as different, as other.

They still let him into their circles; he’s rich enough that it matters less. But it still matters, and he sees it, sometimes.

Harry gets himself another martini and as he chews the olive, he meets the gaze of a man across the room, chatting to Harry’s friend, Anish. Plain as day, it’s Theodore du Perier; Perry.

‘Harry! You must meet my friend, Basil. He went to Eton! After your time, I presume,’ says Anish.

‘Basil,’ Harry repeats, holding out his hand for Perry to shake.

Perry smiles, his eyes lighting up.

‘And your name was?’ says Perry.

‘Harry,’ says Harry, icily. ‘But my mother called me Dhairya.’

‘Funny,’ says Perry with a grin. ‘My mother called me nothing at all.’

They chatter for a while. Perry as Basil is entirely full of shit. He’s a pilot, he says. Harry laughs, hanging on his every word, and both of them drink, and drink.

As they pass midnight, Anish invites them both to his rooms. He pours all three of them drinks, sets up a line of cocaine, and falls asleep before he snorts it.

‘Perry,’ says Harry.

‘Dhairya,’ says Perry.

They kiss, ragged, violent. When they fuck, it’s different than before, wilder. Perry is impatient, rough around the edges. Afterwards, they lie on the floor in Anish’s living room.

‘Basil,’ says Harry, handing Perry his cigarette.

‘Yeah, well,’ says Perry. ‘Perry’s not my real name either.’

Harry hesitates a moment. ‘Is Edwin Peterson?’

Perry is silent for a moment. ‘I should go.’

A rush of movement. Harry sits up. ‘Wait–’

Perry ignores him. He leaves, the door slamming behind him.

This, of all things, makes Anish stir on the couch. ‘I’m up!’ he says, blearily.

‘Shut up,’ says Harry.

Downstairs, the party is waning a little but very much still happening. There’s no sign of Perry, no guest named Basil staying in the hotel, or Theodore du Perier, or Edwin Peterson. Harry goes back up to his rooms. He sits on the end of his bed. He takes out his pocket book, touches Perry’s name, and Stephen Grenville’s.

Strange. Very strange.

He gets up, stands on the balcony, looks down at the glittering city. Inside him he feels a great amount of aching loss.

Behind him, a door slams. ‘Betty?’ he calls. No answer. He looks out over the city again.

Then, a hand on his back. Before he knows what’s happening, he’s sailing through the warm evening air. The fireworks look just as glorious as they did from his mother’s shoulders. When he hits the ground, he feels nothing. He can smell his mother’s hair. Simeon is calling his name. They’re late for class again.

WHOOSH

LONG MOMENT OF SILENCE

SIR
Apprentice?

THERE IS NOTHING

SIR
Apprentice?!

THE APPRENTICE GASPS

APPRENTICE
No.

SIR
What do you mean?

APPRENTICE
No!

SIR
I am afraid you’re going to have to elaborate if you would like me to–

APPRENTICE
No, no, no, NO!

SIR
Stop! Be calm!

THE APPRENTICE SIGHS

SIR
Alright. I have you. I have you now.

THE APPRENTICE MUMBLES WORDLESSLY

SIR
We’ll speak when you have rested. Sleep, now. Sleep and dream sweet things.

END

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