Chapter 11
The Old Bad Songs
A few weeks later, and not for the first time, Maurice turns up at Lestrade's with a nice bottle of wine. A very nice bottle of wine, in fact. And obvious intentions. And despite all Lestrade's good resolutions they end up having sex again. Which is almost as nice as the wine, but still feels wrong.
"We've got to stop doing this", Lestrade says afterwards.
Maurice is still getting his breath back, so he doesn't say anything for a bit. Lestrade looks at him. Thinks again how beautiful Maurice is in his very particular, absolutely normal, fair-haired, regular-featured-handsome-Englishman way. Looking even better for being naked and frankly dishevelled, still all loose-limbed and befuddled in the aftermath of sex. Anyone in their right mind would be delighted to have this man collapsed across their bed in a just-fucked haze.
It really is a crying shame Lestrade's not in his right mind. But he still isn't, and he doesn't think he's ever going to be. Not while he still feels the way he does about Sherlock.
Maurice's breathing gradually steadies, and his eyes lose their cloudy look.
"I know," he says. "This is the last one."
"You said that last time," Lestrade reminds him. "And the time before."
Maurice grins ruefully. "I did, didn't I? But this time I mean it. I'm going to start looking. Seriously looking."
For a partner, boyfriend, something like that. He doesn't have to say it. Lestrade knows. "Better idea," he says.
"Yes," says Maurice. "I'm sorry it couldn't be you, but I do know it can't."
Lestrade nods, because he finds he can't say anything.
"You are wasted on him, you know that?" Maurice says gently.
Lestrade just looks at him, because even nodding feels too difficult right now.
He still has no idea what's going on with Sherlock. If anything, this whole business of Sherlock looking at him like that is getting more confusing, not less. Lestrade keeps thinking he'll manage to say something to Sherlock about it but he never does. Even when it happens again. Which it seems to be doing quite a lot.
"Brought you a present," Maurice says, getting up and starting to pull on his clothes.
"What, another one?" Lestrade says, looking at the wine.
"That wasn't a present, that was a seduction," Maurice says. He doesn't quite add you idiot, but it sort of hangs in the air.
"Go on then," says Lestrade ungraciously, starting to get dressed as well. "What's this present?"
It's a CD. Nice-looking man on the cover, who must be the singer. Looks about their age. Classical, Lestrade registers, suppressing a groan. Trouble with posh lovers, they always want to improve your mind.
He looks at the track listing on the back and his manners desert him.
"Maurice, it's in German."
Maurice looks as if the words I know that, you fuckwit are hovering on his lips. But he doesn't say them.
"There's a translation in the liner notes," he says instead.
"Sorry," Lestrade says remorsefully. "I'm an ungrateful bugger, aren't I?"
"You are," says Maurice, now fully dressed and hugging him. "But I'm not. So this is to say thank you. Thank you and goodbye."
That probably should be goodbye for now, on past form. Lestrade hopes so, anyway. He's got quite fond of Maurice.
They kiss once more, and Christ it's a bloody shame Lestrade can't feel what he'd like to feel for this man because he is fine, and a lovely kisser into the bargain. But it's just not going to happen and they both know it. Not for the foreseeable future, at any rate.
So Maurice goes, and Lestrade makes himself a massive pot of tea to try to fend off the hangover he can feel waiting in the wings. Looks at the CD, feeling guilty. Ought to put it on, really, give it a try at least.
He flips through the booklet, pulling faces at nightingales and more nightingales and linden trees and moonshine and the rest. Not his idea of a good song. Notices that Maurice has scrawled an asterisk by one song near the end of the booklet – at least he assumes it's Maurice. Wonders why. He puts the CD on, selects the track and sits down to listen, grumbling before the singing's even started because the piano is doing that jaunty German thing that reminds him of his sister's piano lessons when he was a kid. The Merry Peasant or some such bollocks.
Then he looks at the words, which are all about a boy who loves a girl who loves another boy who loves someone else, so the first girl marries someone else again, first person she sees, the boy we started with is hurt... Stupid fucking clichés. Don't know why the music has to sound so bloody cheerful about it either. The last verse says something like "It's an old story but it's always new, and when it happens to you it breaks your heart in half." Yes, well, thank you for your input, Mr Hall. Some present this turned out to be.
He thinks about getting up to turn it off but he can't be bothered. And the singer is good, have to hand it to him, and the pianist is no slouch either if you like that sort of thing. Lestrade's almost dropping off when the last track makes him jump: angry, harsh chords and an edge in the singing that wasn't there before. This one sounds oddly familiar. Actually, thinking about it, various bits of it have been. He dimly remembers one of the posh lovers back in the old days who might have dragged him to a concert with this in. Probably fancied the singer or something. He doesn't think it was this singer, though he supposes it could have been.
He reaches down for the lyrics, which have fallen on the floor – he really was dropping off there. The singer is saying he's going to bury his old bad songs and his bitter dreams in a massive great coffin which twelve giants will throw into the sea.
Always good to have a plan, Lestrade scoffs -
And is doing fine at resisting the song until the last verse, when the music gets darker and slower. The singer's explaining that the coffin has to be so big because he's planning to bury all his love and pain in it. Sentimental tosh, obviously, but something in the way he sings it catches Lestrade right under the ribcage, like a punch he didn't see coming. Right in the middle of a word, the singer's voice goes away almost to nothing. It's like he can't quite believe how much of this pain there is, how much it hurts. Or like it's a secret he's trying to keep even from himself.
And that's the end, of the singing anyway. Piano's still burbling on, not unpleasantly. Lestrade coughs a bit, tries to clear his throat. Maurice's bloody idea of a thank-you present -
He's not even going to try to finish that sentence.
That concert's coming back to him now, bits of it anyway. Bunch of songs about a poet and his love, self-indulgent fool Lestrade thought he sounded. Going on about a love that never really existed except in his mind. Just a kiss, if that, and then carrying on for half an hour tormenting himself because the girl marries someone else. Should just go out and get laid, young Lestrade had said, disgusted. Plenty more fish in the sea. What's the silly fucker whinging about? Put your stupid old lovesongs in the coffin, best place for them. Get over it, get over yourself and move on.
In those days, it had seemed as if there would always be plenty more fish in the sea. It hadn't ever occurred to him that even if there were that might not solve the problem.
Now – well, Lestrade knows it would take a bloody big coffin to put his feelings for Sherlock in. He's not sure twelve giants would be enough.
Seems you don't get rid of the old bad songs so easily. Lestrade sighs and drinks his tea and wonders if he ever will.
The End.
The Old Bad Songs Tracklist
Chapter 1
Watching the Detectives – Elvis Costello (My Aim Is True)
Chapter 2
The British Police Are The Best In The World
from Tom Robinson, Glad To Be Gay (released as single, 1978; complete history of the song can be found at / )
Chapter 3
You'd Better Speak Up Now, It Won't Mean A Thing Later
from Elvis Costello, Fish 'N' Chip Paper (Trust, 1981)
Chapter 4
Mystery Dance – Elvis Costello (My Aim Is True, 1977)
Chapter 5
One Of The Minor Players
from Round Midnight, recorded by Robert Wyatt (Shipbuilding/Memories of You/Round Midnight, 1982)
Chapter 6
Waiting For The End Of The World – Elvis Costello (My Aim Is True, 1977)
Chapter 7
Just Too Bad That He Had To Fall
from I Don't Want To Hear It Any More, recorded by Jerry Butler (1964)
Chapter 8
Welcome To The Human Race
from Mr Blue Sky – Electric Light Orchestra (Out of the Blue, 1977)
Chapter 9
Dreams Of What Could Be
from Round Midnight, recorded by Robert Wyatt (Shipbuilding/Memories of You/Round Midnight, 1982)
Chapter 10
Small Hours – John Martyn (One World, 1977)
Chapter 11
The Old Bad Songs –
Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen (A Youth Loves A Girl) and Die Alten bösen Lieder (The Old Bad Songs)
from Robert Schumann, Dichterliebe (A Poet's Love)
I imagine the recording Maurice gives Lestrade is the 2009 one by Simon Keenlyside and Malcolm Martineau.
The film JW and Clara go to see and which Maurice quotes from is Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du Paradis (1945). It is 190 minutes long, not six hours, and is seriously gorgeous.