Chapter 32

I’m not the sort of chap to sit and talk about the weather. I brood and turn within. The skies of my mind are one colour. Black. And there is no moon on the horizon. I understand the affability in a smile, quick flash of teeth. The promise of connection in a crowded room through the kind crinkling of the eye. I know how to charm, and I know how to lie. There are two people who see though my French suit to the shadowed soul beneath. Two people I watch and study quite carefully. Two who make me seethe.

Septimus wore his hair down his shoulders when he was fifteen. He cross-dressed too favouring a gown of velvet green. His great-great grandmother’s, the Russian princess, he let us know as he strutted into the sitting room with the decaying silk sofa from two centuries ago, vibrant taxidermized peacocks, and oil paintings of his ancient ancestors all beautiful, all insane. His lovely red mane in a high Edwardian coiffure. His mother’s jewels around his neck. His voice affectedly high pitched. There was a man who liked to photograph him. Sir Collin Campbell. Scottish nobleman. Amateur artist. Buggerer. We called him Baron Blood.

A photograph of Septimus in a rose print dress. Red hair billowing behind his shoulders. After the painting “Fair Rosamund” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Septimus is rather proud of his Woman Era, as he refers to it, when he would sit at his vanity and carefully put on make-up. Blue mascara and blush pink lipstick, subtle rouge, and ladies stocking. I watched him from his Tudor oak four-poster bed. His sensuality doing strange things to my head. Brushing his heavy red hair while I stare. He looked like paradise. The most beautiful woman on whom I have ever laid eyes.

We became inseparable the way a junkie is inseparable from his smack and his needle. I handed him one of my gold-tipped black cigarettes. He was impressed. We wondered round cemeteries in the dark. He quite liked my family’s vineyard in Vincenza. We spent some time at his mother’s grand chateau. We taught each other everything we now know. We became known as the Toxic Twins and the Devilish Duo when we returned at Michaelmas to Harrow.

But Baron Blood. Something needed to be done. Sixteen and sociopathic, I laid down what I thought was a brilliant plan. We got into the house. We got into an argument. The plan was to burn the small cottage-cum-studio down and all its contents. But Malfie didn’t want to destroy his photographs. The Baron came down. We beat him. Blood splattered on the walls and on our chins. I broke his clavicle. Septimus laughed. We burnt his small cottage down.

We took a train and fled to Vincenza. A sturdy alibi in hand. We both had compliant girlfriends who would do for us whatever they can. We drank calva and smoked cigarettes and laughed when we remembered the bloody face of Baron Blood whimpering and begging for his pathetic little life.

“Serves him right.” I said and took another sip of the calva.

“I don’t know Old Boy; I was rather fond of the bugger.”

“He’ll recover. Somewhat.”

“Poor chap is going to be wheeled around like his dear old mama. Ha, ha! What a sight!” Septimus held the print of himself as Rossetti’s Fair Rosamund. He caressed the photograph.

It was strange to me, Malfie playing Rimbaud to Baron Blood’s Verlaine.

“He made the most insane sounds when he came. When I’m buggering him, he gives out an intense porcine shriek.” Unsurprised. At that age Malfie’s member towered over others. An astonishing mast made for great things. Made, really, to conquer the world. They buggered one another to Wagner. Added to homosexuality was heroin. Malfie smoked it but never became an addict. Baron Blood introduced him to an assortment of poisons. All they did was make Malfie grin.

I have never quite met anyone like him. Then one day a green-haired imp walked into my office.