Ben Halpern and his bit on the side

Almost three weeks had passed since  Oliver Groves  and Ben Halpern parted after what was supposed to be a joyous and romantic rendezvous at Mrs Marlowe’s famed restaurant. The UK, Tuvalu and the other Realms had a new King. The UK specifically also had a new Prime Minister, whose tenure of office would be of such brevity that it would set a record unlikely to be broken.

Oliver, who took an acute interest in public affairs had a bet with his father that the new PM would last for less than two months. He accepted his £10 winnings with good grace and was contemplating all of this as  Gary Hopton approached with their drinks in hand. Somehow Oliver knew that he must bring this first date; really just a meeting, to a close. It was going nowhere and was becoming more of an effort by the second. Around them, the Krakatoa Club, generally thought more sophisticated than The Queen’s Shilling, was at its most vibrant.

Oliver was pissed off. The evening had not gone well. When his friends and acquaintances approached he reluctantly managed to keep his conversations with them to a minimum, when he could. Most of all, he had spent hardly ten minutes with Isabel and Jen in celebration of their anniversary together. Such was the less than scintillating pallor Gary Hopton’s presence seemed to cast whenever Oliver’s friends were anywhere near the two of them.

“I’ve failed the ‘interview,’ haven’t I,” he said, not caring now that his conversation had shifted from the polite and stilted, to the downright sardonic.

“Well I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” was Gary’s unconvincing reply. But then, nothing Gary had managed to say to Oliver’s friends was convincing either.

“I’m not even going to get a shag out of this, am I?” Oliver announced with a deliberate show of resignation. His coup de gras worked in an instant. Gary almost smiled, as one reaching gratefully  for the emergency exist.

“Oh! Put like that, no, I suppose not,” came the indifferent riposte. After that, perfunctory farewells took but seconds before Gary went to join someone in a distant corner of the club.

It would of course be only a matter of time before Charli Stansfied saw that he was now alone and would return to interrogate and condole, just as she had done when Oliver’s brief affair with Ben Halpern had come to its end.

You’re kind and lovely thought Oliver of his friend. But just now he wanted to slip from the Krakatoa Club as unnoticed as possible.

“Can we talk for a bit? At the EPO bar upstairs.”

Oliver stared at the unexpected text as though it were a message from outer space. The temptation to reply with two pithy words was almost overwhelming until curiosity at the sheer cheek of the sender got the better of  him. Besides, after the tedium and disappointment of Gary Hopton, the prospect of someone else paying for a taxi home, did not seem too mercenary at that moment.

“k. But outside in 5 min.”

Make him wait, establish who is in charge if I really must go through with this. Quite  deliberately Oliver stepped into the autumn night ten minutes later. The handsome figure with the swept back dark fair hair and grey-blue eyes approached, hand outstretched in greeting.

“Thanks for seeing me Oliver. Believe me I know this is an imposition. I really do. I am only sorry that our first meeting should be in these circs.”

The smile was so warm; lips sensual as he spoke. The few images Oliver had seen on social media, did not do him justice he thought, recollecting the happy enthusiasm with which Angela Aldis had shown pics once, after a meeting of the Clarion Socialist Cycling Club.

Oliver took a moment to marshal his thoughts. For despite himself, his intention to be cold and aloof was ebbing away,

“You should come to our socials. Angela is always saying how sorry you are to miss them.”

“And I am sunshine, but my job at The Royal Eastamptionshire County Hospital,- someone’s got to keep the lights on.”

“We need to go somewhere to talk, Frazer. I thought we might as well get a taxi back to my place.”

“yes we do,” Frazer Shaw agreed, adjusting his own tone to the seriousness of Oliver’s words. “If you really want to go by taxi, I’ll pay of course. But I have my car here.”

Oliver did not need help in getting in and out of Frazer’s car but accepted it in the spirit in which it was offered. -That and for the tingle Frazer’s attention was sending down his spine.

Oliver’s living room was small, but Frazer recognised the care and taste that gave it character. A springling of photographs illustrated people who mattered to his host. Pictures of Oliver and his parents mostly, Frazer guessed; with photographs of Marius Metanin and an older couple who looked like Marius, forming a cluster of their own. Most eye catching of all, Frazer decided, was a photograph of Marius beside Rosie, the Daimler.  

“How do you come to know  Marius and Rosie?” Oliver added a nip of Bushmills, to their mugs of strong coffee as he spoke. “if whiskey hasn’t got an ‘e’ in it, it is merely scotch,” according to Marius’s godfather.”

“Cheers” responded Frazer clicking their mugs.

“Just before the pandemic lockdown in  2020 I rewired Appleton House and rebuilt the security system to Marius’s design. We have been friends ever since. Mr and Mrs Parslow were still alive then of course. Marius was their carer and chauffeur.

“And you, Oliver, how do you know Marius?”

Animated by the joy Oliver always felt when talking of his parents,- where they met and the enduring friendship he and his widowered father still shared with the Metanin family, his recital lost nothing in the retelling to the attentive Frazer.

A natural lull, a studied stillness followed. Both men had avoided Ben Halpern’s name: Oliver, because he did not wish to hear it; and Frazer because he wanted to be considerate.

“And to the elephant in the room? The reason I am here, said Frazer, at last. “I don’t want to cause you pain Oliver. But..”

“Yes,” sighed Oliver. “Ben… What is it you want to say?”

“The truth is..”

When anyone began an explanation with, ‘the truth is,’ Oliver was on his guard. Whiskey laced coffee, even when accompanied by so obviously sincere an emissary as Frazer Shaw, was not going to change that.

“… Ben loves you.”

The plea that followed was touching, romantic and more. But to Oliver’s ear, Frazer’s disinterested eloquence served only to make Frazer, not Ben, the more desirable. As he listened, he knew that Frazer would never hurt anyone and would certainly never steal anything.

“Ben loves you deeply,” continued Frazer, drawing now to the close of his appeal on behalf his friend. “He wants to give up crime. He really does. I know him Oliver. But he can only go straight with your love and support.”

Oliver gulped a double whiskey and to his mortification forgot to offer one to his guest.

“And there you have the matter in all its naked precision,” said Oliver. He was calm because he was only saying again what he had already said to Ben.

“Ben puts all the pressure on me. He will go straight if I support him; If I take responsibility for what he does or does not do!”

“He doesn’t mean it like that,” Frazer insisted.

“Yes he does Frazer, I Can’t and won’t take the pressure and responsibility. If he were giving up cigs, or booze, or even some drugs, it might be different. But it isn’t. And please forgive me for putting it like this, great as the sex is, it is not worth the responsibility Ben wants to burden me with.”

Oliver fell silent, aware that was practically shouting at the figure now looking diminished, perhaps even lost.

“Do you know the full extent of Ben’s life of crime, by the way?”

Frazer took his hands from his face.

“No,” he replied. Almost absently, he stood up and led the two of them Oliver’s kitchen. “ If I am honest I suppose that I’ve have always known that he is a petty criminal. He has a small gang of football obsessed mates at the Dog and Trumpet. That’s where they plan whatever it is they plan.”

“yeah.” I know that as well,” Oliver acknowledged. “That is where we met on our first date.  Ben didn’t call it that, as I recall. But I hoped it would be and was as chuffed as you like when that’s how it turned out.”

“I still think that despite what I know now, there is still a lot he isn’t telling,” Frazer replied, almost to himself.

Oliver’s hand touched Frazer in a gesture of understanding. “I’d but money on that as a near certainty, despite the detail he went into at our final meeting…You know at Mrs Marlowe’s restaurant; My guess is that Ben is into more serious crime that he keeps well beyond the knowledge of his confederates in the Dog and Trumpet.”

Frazer searched the other’s face in hope of some change of mind. “So you’re determined that it was your final meeting then?”

Oliver took a proffered biscuit and second coffee. What brief spark there was in Frazer’s face was no more.

“Yes, I think so,” he affirmed.

“Here I am, offering you coffee and a biscuit in your own flat,” Frazer grinned, slightly embarrassed at seeming to take over Oliver’s home.

“I’m his Marra, you see Oliver. His best Marra. That’s what Ben calls me. I suppose we love each other in our own way.”

“And that’s why you want me to consider taking him back, so to speak?”

“Does that sound so bad?”

“Thinking about it, no. Not at all Frazer. It just shows how lucky Ben is to have such a devoted friend as you.”

“Will you mind very much then if I make a little confession?”

Not if you care to make it in my bed, was Oliver’s first thought.

“No,” is what he actually said to Frazer.

“The slightest tincture of your whiskey might help at this point.”

“Now that’s an interesting confession,” Oliver laughed. “Help yourself and another one for me, please.”

“I came to you on Ben’s behalf because he is my dearest friend and I would do anything for him…Within the law, that is.”

Oliver nodded and sipped his drink.

“But I also came for me. For my own selfish reasons, to be brutally honest. You see, if you don’t agree to take Ben on again, it means that knowing what I know now, it will be up to me to somehow keep Ben away from crime. Believe me, I am going to do my best for the guy. I really am. But as you say it means accepting a lot of pressure and responsibility.”

“Yes, I see that very clearly Frazer. Like I said a minute ago, Ben is lucky to have you as a friend. But, like I also said, I am not going to change my mind. Such as the affair between Ben and I was, it is over.

If that is understood though then perhaps we can start again and just be friends. That might help Ben and perhaps help you too.”

Frazer glanced at his watch.

“look, sorry I have to go. I’m on the early shift in 6 hours time. Everything we have spoken of, I will speak to Ben about and get back to you. And by the way, Oliver Groves, now that we have met, lets you and me be friends as well.”

 Frazer found himself hugged and hugged in return. The hug became a brief meeting of their lips. Perhaps it was the whiskey, but their kiss became a little more intense, or so it seemed to Oliver.

“You could stay, the night. I have a spare bedroom; and you have been drinking”

“You are very sweet, Oliver,” replied Frazer, enjoying the taste of whiskey on their breaths. “But my love life is complicated and enjoyable enough as it is, thanks. Besides, a while ago I had a one night stand with a lovely guy called John Poole. It went wrong and now he won’t even speak. He has ghosted me, even though we are neighbours. I’d hate that to happen to us, now that we have met at last.”

                                    *******  

The December night was cold. A black clad figure under the weight of a shoulder bag that rattled more than it should, made his way to the tall privet hedge marking the southern boundary of Appleton  House. Soon, he was in the dormant kitchen garden, sprinting to the wall and up, only to the first level of the fire escape. Any higher and lights and the alarm system would betray him. Luck was with him. To break in to Appleton House he must first reach its roof. At the precise moment that he needed a little extra light clouds briefly parted. More quickly and easily than he could have hoped, the figure leaped on to a narrow ledge and began the dangerous ascent up the side of the building. Soon he was dashing across the length of the roof, pausing thrice to cut wires and disconnect lights.

20 minutes later he was inside Appleton House having disabled every internal and external alarm and camera. As he did so, the man in black took particular care to switch on every light, from the fifth floor attics to the basement. Appleton House shone like some garish Christmas grotto.

At an unhurried pace the intruder glanced into every room with a fresh eye, now that he had only to wait. What he was looking for,-and he was looking something specific,-he was unsure. It was not anything obvious; certainly not the expensive furnishing, nor indeed the paintings and objet d’art the house had in abundance. He wondered what would become of it all when the Parslow family transformed Appleton House into the much rumoured hotel.

At length, the intruder was back on the ground floor, aware of a short corridor he had missed. He approached it with caution, perhaps it had an alarm device he had missed. It led to a small suite of rooms clearly lived in and thus so unlike the rest of the building. In the comfortable and well appointed living room he noted a chess board between too deep chairs. It looked as though the white queen would be check mated in two moves. The single malt Black Bush Bushmills whiskey stood sentinel on a small side table. The man in black sighed a little. This is where he would wait. This, he was certain was where he needed to be. With feline care he explored every draw, every corner of what proved to be a self-contained apartment.

He missed it at first, telling himself that was understandable, as he did not know what he was looking for in the first place. But then he caught sight of a box; a silver box. He knew enough to know that it was real silver and not just some well crafted artifact. He could not read whatever language the inscription was in, but the crown and the M II R attested to the box’s status. It took him a short while to recall where he had seen the box before. Within, the box was lined in purple velvet. It protected a solid siler wand of some 30 centimetres length, with a bright Azure Blue covering the top quarter of the whole.

The black clad intruder could scarcely believe his eyes; indeed his fingers shook as he explored his phone. But there it was, a picture of the Azure Wand, one of the smaller items of what constituted the crown jewels of  the Kingdom of Triesenbourg . He yelled in triumphant delight as he read that the wand had been stolen  in 2019. Here was proof. He had been right all along.

To force himself to be calm, to contain his sense of excitement, he stood and gazed for a while at what he judged to be a competent amateur landscape painting. It was one rather like he himself might attempt.

Suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck rose. In the split second it took fear to grip him, a voice spoke. It sounded more foreign and certainly more threatening than the last time it spoke to him.

“I have a gun pointed at your head. A sudden move and my trigger finger will become extremely itchy.”

As suddenly as the fear had gripped the intruder, it dissipated. He gave a little laugh. “you no more have a gun than I have one,” he announced almost breezily. Slowly he turned around.

Ben Halpern and Marius Metanin faced each other.

Two young men, in their late twenties prime stared at each other.

Ben his good looks as ever enhanced by his lopsided grin, brown eyes and spikey brown hair that really  was made special by those blond highlights. And Marius. A fraction taller perhaps, a real charm that had others attending his every utterance when he chose to use it and a natural authority which often conveyed itself through deeply expressive dark eyes.  Right now those eyes were black as black could be and bore deeply into Ben.

“You have a gun! A fucking gun,” Ben cried in a terror he had not known until this moment. Marius took two steps forward and Ben’s balance began to fail him. As he fell backwards into a large leather chair, he privately promised God, with whom he had not been on frequent speaking terms of late, that he would foreswear crime, if only he emerged from all of this in one piece.

“God can’t help you now,” soothed Marius as he thrust a tumbler of whiskey into Ben’s trembling hands.

The man can read my mind thought Ben, not for the first time, as he gulped and choked the whiskey down.

“I would ask you what move you would make to save the white queen, Ben. But for the moment, you have more pressing concerns.”

So saying, he emptied the contents of Ben’s shoulder bag at their feet. Despite himself he could not help but express admiration for the range of tools, aids and implements arrayed before them. He proceeded to light two brown leafed cigarettes and passed one to Ben.

“You’ve had one before,” he assured him. “You had one, when we met at the coffee shop. Remember?”

Ben inhaled deeply and nodded.

The gun is not loaded,” Marius continued as he saw Ben relax. “If you answer questions I am about to put to you, we will part not as enemies. But if you lie to me, you will suffer life changing injuries.

“Say so, if that is clear to you.”

“I understand,” replied Ben looking into those dark eyes.

Ben’s co-operation was, to say the least of it, eager. It took some  time for Marius to establish to his own satisfaction that Ben had not stolen anything; had no intention of stealing anything and had no accomplice. Though Marius noted that with each answer he gave, Ben became just a little more assertive. His natural self-confidence, though he was careful to keep it in check, was clear enough.

“Right then,” said Marius. “Since you appear to know every corner of Appleton House, including my living quarters, you can get your criminal arse into the kitchen. We will have soup, omelettes and tasty Fiorentine bread. Why is it that you British eat that nutrition free gunge you call bread?”

“Of course,” came the deferential reply as Ben disappeared into the kitchen, with dark eyes following him and wondering what this abrupt change of demeanour was all about. Whatever it was all about, Ben set to his task with enthusiasm. Unbidden he presented Marius with a bottle of uncorked wine and it took Marius a moment before he realised that he was expected to sample the offering.

“It’s from the family vineyard,” Marius said as he sipped and watched as his glass was immediately replenished.

They lipped their soup in silence. It was only after Ben had removed the empty soup bowls and replaced them with the omelettes that Marius decided to speak. He fixed his gaze on the figure opposite. The voice was even enough. But the eyes once again struck fear,- and something else as well,- into Ben.

“You set out to impress me Ben. Please believe me when I say to you that I am genuinely impressed. This evening you have accomplished a feat that any self-respecting burglar would want on his curriculum vitae.”

Marius deliberately paused aware that he had the burglar’s full attention. Slowly he refilled their glasses and as was his habit, it seemed to Ben, he lit two Fiorentine cigarettes and passed one to Ben.

Ben inhaled deeply. The now familiar warmth sent its easing relaxation to his head.

“The time has come my dear Mr. Halpern to explain why you have gone to so much trouble for no apparent reward. And before you do, have the prudence to recollect that that if you are less than honest with me the consequence for you will be dire.”

Inwardly Ben quaked. He placed both hands around his glass of wine, the better to shake less obviously, or so he hoped. Marius’s dark eyes offered no compassion. Yet Ben gathered all his wits and intellectual resources. The answer to this question, after all, was the reason he was here. In a small token of assistance Marius actually smiled and gestured his unwelcome visitor to drink.

“I have been waiting for you to ask; Ask why I broke in I mean. I was beginning to think you never would. I am a burglar. But tonight I clearly, am not.”

Marius reached for his whiskey. In an act of sacrilege that would have cut Lorcan, his godfather, to the quick, he poured a generous measure into his wine glass.

“Alright Ben. Tonight, you are not a burglar. Go on.”

“Well Sir, My Lord. By the way, is that how I should address a Count, a senior member of the Triesenbourg nobility no less?”

 

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The definitely the final chapter to follow.