Had he wanted a telephone number, my mobile 'phone would have allowed me to keep any subsequent meetings from Darren, but we parted without either of us expressing any interest in meeting again. I wondered what he thought of our night together, whether he was simply content with having sex with me once, or if he had found I was not at all what he wanted and gone away disappointed.
That one night apart there never seemed to be time for me to go out looking for pick-ups. The only aids easily available to assuage my desires were magazine pictures of naked men and my own hands. The satisfaction was meagre compared to holding a lover in my arms. Sometimes alone in bed at night I imagined the hotel rooms above me writhing with acts of love, while I lay alone in the basement like a wretched doorkeeper, not permitted to share in the pleasures of the house above.
Of all the gay men around me, the one who might have been my choice for starting a new relationship was the manager of the garden centre. He was seven or eight years older than I, and not 'with' anyone as far as I knew. Darren had been over to his small terraced house to see the long narrow garden almost completely taken up by a series of ponds where he grew aquatic and marsh plants. He was fit, even-tempered, intelligent, and had the great advantage of not looking at all like Tom.
Andrew sometimes described him as an excellent employee, praise which contained the implied criticism that, however well he did his job, he was unwilling to commit himself beyond his contracted hours or show the broader interest that might have made him a potential business partner. To a lover this characteristic might have been welcome - workaholics do not have much time to devote to relationships.
Unfortunately my ignorance of gardening irritated him and he had never been very friendly towards me. Whenever he and Darren talked they would litter their conversation with multisyllabic horticultural terms and discuss esoteric subjects such as biological methods of pest control. My attempts to contribute to discussions of this kind only made me seem stupid. Once he forced me to admit that never in my life had I planted seeds, waited for them to germinate, and watched the plants go on to develop flowers or bear fruit.
Darren, in contrast, never criticised me and was my constant support. As he gained experience he took on more and more responsibility for the hotel. He had settled in well at West London Tertiary College, took Cheung up to his room for the night once or twice a week, and helped me get out for an hour in the evening now and again by arranging for me to meet them both in the Beckford Arms.