Against The Current
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CHAPTER 1: At The Savoy
The service at the Savoy Grill had noticeably declined John Dixon remarked to himself. The headwaiter’s cuffs were frayed at the ends as he served the soup from a chipped tureen. The consommé was tepid and undersalted. The tablecloth was spotted and stained in several places with the claret of past diners. John mused that he really should consider taking his dinner at his club which was so much more convenient to his City brokerage and where he could get a decent meal before taking the late train back to Hampshire. But the Savoy offered him total anonymity on those occasions when he pursued those other activities in London. Those other activities which were becoming more frequent.
He cut into his roast. Underdone with blood oozing from the tines of his tarnished fork. He pushed the meat back into his plate, sloshing the bland, lumpy brown gravy onto his Saville Row suit.
"Bloody hell" he cried as the stain spread on his silk shirt. He dabbed his cloth into his water glass and tried to dab the mess off of himself, but it clung to him like wallpaper paste. John signaled the waiter. The octogenarian stumbled arthritically toward him.
"Sir?" He queried.
"Take this swill away! "
"Will the gentleman be wanting coffee?"The waiter hovered.
"Don’t like coffee," John replied, "Bring me a double Scotch and water."
"Very good, Sir!" The waiter replied and limped off.
John sighed and returned to dabbing his shirtfront with his napkin. The shirt was straining over his ample stomach and one button was noticeably coming loose. The waiter returned with his drink. John took a deep swig and returned to trying to clean his shirt. The napkin was only succeeding in spreading more of the cloying brown goo around. In futility and despair John threw the napkin onto the table. Everything seemed to be going wrong lately. Not that John could put his finger on any one event, it was just a feeling that things were slipping out of control, that everything that had once shined so brightly and seemed so delightful, now was dull, foul and worse of all - uninteresting and unappealing.
John felt as if he were floundering, no not even that since floundering required some effort and activity. He felt dead in the water being carried off toward mediocrity and boredom in a sea of respectability, duty and routine. Everything in the past years had seemed as bland and tasteless as his dinner. The marriage his mother had arranged to an woman of suitable rank and wealth who now seemed shrill and shrewish, the career he had embarked on with his father’s contacts which had once seemed so challenging were all now like day old cola, tepid and flat.
"Let’s face facts, Johnny, you’re not a kid anymore" he mumbled to himself as he signaled the waiter for another drink, although he didn’t remember finishing the one he already had. "You’re 40, balding and developing a definite paunch."
John gazed into the amber liquid in his glass. He usually needed some fortification before venturing out for those nights in the city which were becoming ever more important to him. Those brief encounters in Soho or in tatty bedsits off the Brompton Road were the only times that John actually felt alive anymore. Furtive fumblings in the dark, vague promises unkept, a transient moment of connection, then the numbness would return except for an undetermined ache of unfulfilled longing.
"It didn’t bloody well used to be like this" John murmured into his glass. Like a ray of sunlight that pierces the close gray clouds a memory of a time long passed came forth. Early summer sunlight on a green sports field. The lockerroom smell of sweat and dampness. The feel of someone warm and breathing in his arms. The soft lips of a gentle kiss in the dark by the playful splash of water in a swimming pool. These images assailed John unceasingly to be beaten back by the whiskey into the recess from which they would regroup for another attack.
John signaled to the waiter for the bill. He was ready now. The hammering in his skull was suitably numbed by the alcohol. He reached into his billfold, dropped some notes onto the table and staggered toward the cloakroom. The gray man behind the counter took his ticket stub and withdrew into the racks of coats. The door behind him opened, bringing in a blast of cold air from the street outside and some late diners. A figure came up behind him swirling in his peripheral vision. A man’s voice called out to the clerk. The voice hit John like a steam engine. A voice he heard in a million dreams and nightmares. The voice ringing in his head while a figure in blue walked away across a green field. He moved his head up slowly and gazed into the man’s deep bluegreen eyes. Eyes which pierced his soul just as they had twenty summers ago. A name came unbidden to him through the thick fog of his whiskey clouded mind.
"Steven?"
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