Robert the Westie. My life. By me.

18. An unavoidable diversion.

Look, you'll just have to just have to forgive this. It's another deviation from my chronology, I know, and quite a radical one, at that. I'm now commenting on an event a few years on from the jolly gathering at Lady Amanda's. But when I see a big thing going down from up here, as I just did, literally minutes ago, it's not in my nature to keep my mouth shut. Well, I probably didn't need to tell you that. Plus it's entirely relevant to the relationship I have recently been portraying.

Yes, I know it all seemed fine, more or less, when we left Steve and Jason. And I know I do sometimes view my Master through rose-tinted spectacles, but the definitive ending of a relationship that had made it beyond seventeen years surely needs some objective comment. Correct, it's now nine years on since I arrived here. Steve and Jason have been through a lot since then. And I have observed them with a slowly sinking heart. Now that the curtain has crashed down on their drama, I'm just bursting to tell it all. So, like it or lump it, here I go.

We were in Brook in the year 2000. I'm now taking you on a seven year leap to the year 2007. Alright, first the obvious health warning: I will never deviate from the view that Steve is a profoundly lovely person, with an immense capacity for giving and receiving love and affection. I was happy to be part of that equation for all my years on earth. So, if you must, do aim off for my bias, my loyalty, my partiality and, yes, my love. Even so, I'm guessing that the truth of all this will emerge all too clearly. I'll call this "Steve betrayed too many times."  Okay, so now you know just where I'm coming from.

You will recall, no doubt, the rather naughty beginning to Steve and Jason. Some moralists would no doubt observe that bad beginnings beget bad endings. They may have a point. These two guys were drawn together by lust. Maybe love came later, but there's no doubting where it all started. And the lust dynamic lingered quite a while into the partnership. Now, there's a word to ponder on, partnership, I mean.

I well remember one fraught evening maybe three years into the relationship. It could have been a typical, pleasant dinner party evening with friends. Three couples enjoyed the soup, the prawn and beef Massaman curry main courses and the traditional English trifle for dessert. But the underlying tension between Steve, who had been working exceptionally hard, and Jason, at this stage in temporary retirement from his hotel career and, domestically, mainly preoccupied with feeding his tropical fish, cast a dark cloud over the conversation.

Steve, talkative as usual, was sharing his views on the nature of relationships and the need for a degree of balance to create "partnership" and support the ones that lasted. Jason, normally charm personified, wore a scowl that suggested storms ahead. They were not long arriving.

"So much bullshit!" he suddenly yelled. "You don't give a damn about balance, just like you don't give a damn about anyone else apart from yourself."

"Isn't that a bit rich coming from you?" Steve responded with surprising viciousness. "You are forever demanding equality in this relationship, then demonstrating your version of it by staying at home every day, turning down all offers of work, ignoring even the little chores that would help to keep our home functioning smoothly and, on my return, enquiring not how my day has been, but instead what little gift I might have brought home for you.  Where's the equality in that? If I had wanted a kept boy, I would have gone shopping for one in Bangkok and brought home one who would have been grateful to be chosen."

"Yes, wouldn't that have been perfect, a Thai kept boy and ageing English Romeo, a match made in heaven? Excuse me." Jason clattered his knife and fork onto the plate and left the dining room.

The concept of a "kept boy" was new to me at the time. But I soon understood the implication. And the truth is that in this very phrase lies the explanation for what then came to pass all these years later.