A Pistol Shot

By David Pearce

A world of wealth, forgery, smoke and mirrors that begins and ends in Plymouth Arts Centre. That is where Graham goes to see a film – The Duellists. That is where he meets Molly.

Graham is seduced not just by Molly but his world of shooting clubs, oligarchs and a father who will do anything to satisfy his son's obsessions. A son who, he tells Graham, is under sentence of death. Before what Graham assumes is an illness terminates his lover's life his father arranges "charades" to indulge his son's passion for danger and shepherded by the enigmatic Anna, Graham is along for the ride.

It is a far cry from what Graham expected of life – he was a trainee librarian.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Pearce
• Release date: Sep 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393698234

David Pearce

Well past his sell-by date, Dave Pearce does what he can to keep fit walking and cycling in the Ardeche region of southern France where he lives. 

Book preview

A pistol shot

The report was appalling, mind numbing. It filled the Great Hall momentarily but it lived on in the ears as if the pistol had been held against his head. He stood incredulous, unable to believe that he was still standing. As smoke hovered in the stunned air he began to shout that the man was a coward and a cheat. His wife, his children...he must...but even as his reeling mind tried to decide what he must do first the hall darkened as the door to the outside world, the first sun bearing down on it, closed and the man was gone.

Tumult now as shocked servants arrived but he thought he heard, his ears still ringing, a carriage pull away, wheels cracking the forecourt gravel, a coachman’s yell. His assailant must be...assailant? The man had raised his pistol, taken aim, fired. Fortunately a poor shot.

But already, his mind still ringing as if within a reverberating bell, ideas began to form. A miss-fire? If not a miss-fire the aim had been deliberate. Servants looked at him and at each other sniffing the air and waiting for orders. They had come expecting agony, wounds, blood, a body, death even and found none of those things, only their master, his face pale but unbroken, smoky oblique shafts of sunlight from the high windows, and a silence that still seemed to vibrate with the outrageous report.

A poor shot? The man had missed? That was the least likely explanation. No one who had ever witnessed that man raise a pistol had ever thought him capable of doing so...at that moment he knew and was forced to suppress an urge to shout for joy. Instead he shouted for ladders to open the high windows; he shouted for men to open the great door and for his coachman to tack up the dog-cart and to go as quickly as he could to bring his wife and children back from their neighbour’s where they had been sent for safe-keeping. For an instant the thought crossed his mind that that was where his enemy might be heading, that he would take an altogether more appalling revenge but he knew that the thought was nonsensical. His enemy had taken his shot; he was no longer his enemy; the threat that had overshadowed his life for a decade had been neutralised. All that remained was to open doors and windows, let in fresh air and sunlight, to dissipate the smoke.

He was free at last from a foolish episode of his youth.

******

There! My very first first scene! Very satisfying, I ease my shoulders, stretch and congratulate myself but that it is the easy bit, so far so good. That was an isolated incident, as neat a package as one could buy in a Christmas market; it is short and to the point, a dramatic paragraph or two, designed to capture your attention, raise questions in your mind and encourage you to read on in the hope of answers and, of course, entertainment. It was the way I had been advised to begin my story.

I have to stop and look out of the window to get my breath back! The sparrows are back, lively and noisy, Italians to a man. In ten minutes I shall have yet another excuse to stop what I am doing...trying to do, I shall have to fill their feeder...anything to divert my attention from the job at hand.

That is done and relative peace reigns as now the sparrows are too busy filling their beaks to shout at each other, but the problem of how to continue remains. I have to motivate myself; the alternative is despair. It ought to be easy. I have come full circle, all I need to do is begin at the beginning from Mrs. Gamble's bedsit back to where I am at this moment, in Mrs. Gamble's bedsit reeling from recent events and trying to assure myself that nothing is as effective as writing therapy. Get it all down on paper and it will make sense of itself or so it seemed last night after I had sought solace for my soul in a number of pints and asked myself when would be the best time to contact Jenny, to persuade her to share a pint or two with me and deliver the jelly babies. I am not sure whether Mrs. Gamble has much truck with souls and she has a robust attitude to solace but yes she would have me back I was her favourite dear boy and the increase in rent was my fault and only to be expected and serves me right for going off in the first place.

The Russia connection!

I toy with the idea of that as a chapter heading because there was so much Russian involvement which is curious when you consider that it all begins in Mrs. Gamble's bedsit but even that simple statement is not quite true, I am trying to make things neat and circular, but my interest in things Russian had begun much earlier besides which what caught my eye that Friday evening was not, strictly speaking, anything to do with Russia, apart from the retreat from Moscow, but an advertisement in the Western Morning News that induced me to head for Plymouth Arts Centre. There is small vegetarian restaurant and a small cinema that shows films that do not make it to the multi-plexes. That evening I promised myself Brenda’s parsnip roast followed by plum crumble. I would glance at the Western Morning News from the depths of one of the vast sofas in the restaurant annex before the Friday night film – The Duellists, director Ridley Scott.

I have to break off once again to apologise to the sparrows, the Italians were starlings but sparrows are just as noisy and hungry – seeds, sex, sleep – the uncomplicated life. You see my problem: the moment a complication raises its ugly head I seek distraction, sparrows, starlings, any port in a storm; it will not do but I have an excuse, this is a complicated story; it is all very well telling myself to begin at the beginning and that would solve the problem neatly if only I were able to identify where, and when, a story begins that has such disparate elements; Molly, Pushkin, duels and duellists, vandalised paintings, forgery and love at first sight to mention a few. I forgot to mention Conrad but if anyone can be said to have set these events in motion it was he - or should that be him? More of him later.

The easiest approach may be to cast modesty aside and begin by introducing myself – briefly, I shall spare you the details but I have to start somewhere and the vegetarian restaurant smells good and has eccentric furniture and that was where I met Molly. The place was crowded and he asked if he could share my table. He put down a book. It looked cheap, faded and scuffed and the title and the author’s name were in Cyrillic script. I know this because he told me. At the time I would have made a semi-educated guess at Russian and I would have been right but at that point my erudition stopped.

Pushkin, he explained, short stories.

I date three essential elements from this moment, the first that I fell in love; the second my introduction to Pushkin and the third what was to become an obsession with the duel. It is at this point that I remember that I had announced a decision to start by introducing myself...excuse me – a seagull, voracious, noisy, greedy...they will clear the bird table in seconds...he’ll be back but the starlings give as good...

I made room for him. The tables are small and the plates large to accommodate Brenda’s helpings. Lightning had struck. Do you believe in love at first sight? My hands began clearing the table on automatic pilot. I became conscious of examining him as if he were about to perform a magic trick but he already had. I had to force my eyes away from him. It was too late. I was in love.

He said, Mollison, by the way, Molly. I’ve forgotten what my Christian name is.

He was slight, dark, immaculate and, I thought, slightly theatrical. That is not quite the right word, neither is exotic though both words had come to mind. I am trying to avoid charismatic but that is what he was, to me at least. I was about to make a fool of myself. I would ask him whether he came here often. He would smile condescendingly, ask me politely to shut up while he tucked into his parsnip roast; I would ask him whether he had tried the plum crumble.

He asked me if I were a regular; he had never seen me before, what brought me here the food or the film? His father had seen its first showing in Los Angeles and sent him a DVD but advised that he must see it in a cinema at the first opportunity and he had just manage to catch up with it. Was it Ridley Scott or the subject or did I just come whatever was on the menu on Friday?

We sat side by side in the cinema. As the little goose girl was frightened out of her clogs by the appearance of the cavalry officer he took my hand and hissed something in my ear about the uniform, the hat, the expression as the camera came into close focus on the officer’s head. I suppose I watched the film. I can still remember many of its details but after he relinquished his grip on my hand I could still feel its shape and warmth and what I wanted was for him to take it again and hold it forever.

At least I was conscious enough to be surprised by aspects of the duel that were previously unknown to me; to begin with it had not occurred to me that they come in all shapes and sizes. You have seen the film? If not stop reading this instant and order up the DVD, available at one click from the usual channels. You have read the story? Let me remind you: two officers, one relatively civilised, the other a street-fighter were involved in a feud that extended over wars and decades. The original story is by Joseph Conrad and is said to relate to true events. The film is beautiful, breathtaking, except that there is nothing beautiful about the duels with the exception of the one on horseback, though spectacular might better describe the magnificent uniforms, the horses and the woodland setting. You might have thought, as I did, that a duel is fought by two decent though perhaps deluded chaps wearing white shirts and tight trousers and fencing according to Queensbury Rules or levelling pistols to defend their honour or that of their regiment but these two hack, there is no other word for it, at each other with sabres, monstrous lumps that become so heavy that arms can no longer lift them to attack or defend and the protagonists snarl and grovel in the dust. The spectacle is as edifying as bull baiting or a dog-fight. Fascinating. I couldn't believe my eyes but even as I watched I was aware that something had happened to me. I had fallen in love. This was not the first time but this was different. This was the real thing and now it was a question of survival.

Molly and me

We left the Arts’ Centre and walked across the Barbican. I can’t remember either of us speaking, the place was its usual raucous, Friday night self, pubs spilling onto the quays and I can’t remember being invited into Molly’s apartment only as we stood in the foyer and he punched a code into the entry system it crossed my mind that this was the moment when he would say goodnight, worse still goodbye and I must be prepared with an invitation for tomorrow, we would meet for coffee...he must introduce me...to Ridley Scott, to himself, embroidery, anything.

He stood aside as the door opened and we made for the lift.

Molly’s apartment was a study of black and white and shades in between. There were striking black and white photographs, several portraits, two of a woman who must have been his mother, others of Molly himself.

There was a sound system that was spare, black and glistening. Valves were visible that emitted a warm red-orange glow in the dark room. I think the furniture might have been described as Scandinavian, unfussy but comfortable, not the sort of stuff that comes home in a flat pack, the wood of its frames rich mahogany red, that and the valves the only...no, that isn’t true...that is the impression that the mind retains because it overlooks the books. There were many books but even they were well behaved. My books have lives of their own; they spill over tables and chairs and booby-trap the floors. Some of my books turn up in the toilet. Molly’s books would expire at the thought of such indignity. There were other differences between his and mine; his was a cosmopolitan bunch, a hefty proportion of them were in Russian and many were huge, coffee table art books one of which stood open on a stand close to the window. On each of the open pages were reproductions of icons.

I stood at the picture window, from which one could look out over the Sound and as far out to sea as the Eddystone. I would try to laugh at myself and to make light of the situation. I would think of something witty to say about the dark sea and the distant lighthouse, the lonely watcher, I could even bring Virginia Wolff into it if only I could trust myself to string a coherent sentence together but my mouth was dry. I was tense and shaky. What was to happen next? He had kissed me gently in the lift on the way up to his apartment but it was no more suggestive than the hand clasp had been. I was a pick-up. People like me were the reason that he frequented the arts centre. I thought about Jenny and the conversation we had had over the water fountain.

She said, Helen thinks you’re gay. I don’t think so.

That’s only because I let you get away with the black ones.

Jenny is so friendly and funny that she must have been able to get away with more than mere black jelly babies but did she think that I would be pleased with her opinion? Was she sounding me out? Did she expect me to confess? I might have asked her what she understood by gay but just ten years ago she was in primary school but then I was only a year or two older.

Up until that evening and the encounter with Molly I think it possible that I might have been persuaded that a particularly attractive girl, with or without a partiality for black jelly babies, was destined to be my partner for at least a part of my life but having met him there was no question of persuasion or choice. I awoke the following morning as Molly slipped from the bed and made for the shower aware that I had a major obsession on my hands. Curiously I was at that time, unaware of a second: the duel!

An unequal relationship

In the following weeks we eased into a relationship. For some time I maintained my lodgings with Mrs. Gamble, an arrangement whereby I had the use of the first floor of her house, bedroom, bathroom and another room furnished with a threadbare comfy sofa and a desk for my computer. She was a widow who would, I suspect, have been happy to adopt me as the son she had never had and she could hardly have wished for a more amenable lodger. I was quiet and went to bed early. I did not smuggle young ladies into my room or lower them from my bedroom window when I had had my wicked way with them and I did not play rock music at full volume on my stereo system. I paid my rent without fail and expressed my appreciation of the meals she prepared for me. When I told her I am gay she did not inform me that of course she had known all along and she didn’t mind a bit though she was no doubt relieved that I had not made the discovery until I met Molly and I had not brought lovers home.

Inevitably I spent more and more time with him at his apartment which meant that my landlady was alone in her house. I moved most of my possessions to Molly’s apartment and found myself apologizing for failure to pay the rent on time. When I called to pick up my stereo system I discovered that it was in the garden shed and that twins had moved in. This brought home to me the seriousness of what I was doing and the tricky problem of explaining to myself that I could live with subsidies. I was understandably cross with myself: what qualities can a man have who hesitates between a kindly mother figure and his first lover?

I told myself that I was a promising librarian (I had passed the first of my exams.) and not built for adventure, especially at someone else’s expense, because no matter how I tried to cook the books there was no way I could participate in this new adventure on my own resources. Molly appeared to be perfectly happy with the arrangement and I took care not to exploit his generosity. I went to work and did my best to concentrate. I returned to the apartment and asked him whether he had had an interesting day or, in his absence, did my best to inhabit it without creating a ripple on its immaculate surface. When he returned he would find the books in their ordained positions, surfaces dust-free, dishes in regimental order, the bed made as if by matron, my possessions out of