Boy of the Westend

by Zack

  In a special concession to the summer heat, the removal of school ties had been permitted, and the two friends basked in the luxury of open necks. The navy-and-rusty-red snake of Mike’s tie lay on the grass where he’d thrown it. Julian had neatly coiled his and placed it on his stomach. Every now and then he absently patted the diagonally striped toroid flat against his white shirt as if it were a pet. Mike and Julian were idly watching four younger boys playing on the court.

  Three large beech trees, which lined the right side of the lawn, helped deaden some of the endless ambient buzz of city traffic, albeit pleasantly dulled in the north London arboretum of Highgate Village. Nearer at hand the boyish obscenities and chattering of the croquet players rose above the hazy summery sounds of birds shrilling, wasps humming above the water-filled honey jar Mrs. Boone had put out earlier to trap the stripy garden terrorists, and the lethargic rustlings of the spreading trees.

  “Shit you, Jansen, you sod!”

  “Got to hell, you wanker! If you leave yourself open like that—”

  “That’s not fair, Mason, is it?”

  The boy called Jansen placed a foot on his own ball and whacked his mallet down. The transmitted force shot Mason’s ball off down the court. A scuffle broke out. Amid laughter and shouts, the argument faded down the garden.

  A radio playing from somewhere inside the stuffy rooms of Fabian wafted the country voice of Tammy Wynette through an open sash window, topping the U.K. Chart that early June. Mike Smith hummed along.

  Stand by your man

  Stand by your man

  And show the world you love him

  Keep giving all the love you can

  Stand by your man…

  “Crap,” Julian stated flatly, and yawned.

  “Song or my rendition?”

  “Both.”

  “Thanks, Jules. I love you too.” Mike smiled lazily and thought dreamily of the man he could stand by—Jez McGowran, studly lead singer of Bay Area Transit. When our time is truly come / That’s when we’ll have some fun. He kept that refrain to himself. Jules was a good friend, but not the sort, Mike innately knew, who could accept his craving. To be honest, he didn’t altogether understand his yearning either. When he looked in one of the cracked bathroom mirrors of an afternoon, he always wondered whether there was another guy out there—handsome, young, preferably with straight, shining blond hair and brimming over with sex appeal—who could fall for him. Jez McGowran would certainly do, especially with the new peroxide look in his latest photos. And according to the music papers, he was only three years older. And there were rumors. Mike distrusted them, though. After Bowie and Ziggy Stardust, every glam star got categorized as queer, or at least AC-DC, regardless. He sighed inwardly. In any event, the man would never look at a kid like him.

  The sigh must have been louder than the thought. Jules turned owlish eyes on him and blinked, supremely relaxed in his half-reclined slump. “Penny for them?”

  “Thinking about the exams,” Mike fibbed.

  “Ah.” Julian’s understanding nod said all that needed saying about the impending O-Level examinations.

  The lie sufficed. It was even too hot for busy-busy Jules to be bothered delving further.

  Mike closed his eyes, and on the crimson screen of the inner lids his vision wandered down from the glorious face of Jez McGowran to tight-fit tartan troos and segued into a recent Viva magazine cover he’d stared at surreptitiously. He’d spent minutes in Howe’s newsagents in Highgate Village pretending to browse the motorsports titles on the shelf beneath. Six stylishly photographed male crotches were stacked up three rows on two to barely conceal the enticing shapes coiled beneath six different skin-tight fabrics. Mike had never seen anything quite so blatant, or stimulating. He would have liked to buy the mag, but of course there was no way. He couldn’t even believe Howe’s would dare put such a thing on display, what with the way the school kicked up a fuss over the least hint of sexuality. He still remembered the brouhaha when he was in the last year of Junior School and a universal ban was made on the record shop for placing a cover of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers album in the window. Even at eleven, Mike had wanted to feel that bulging shape and pull down the zipper. He guessed he’d just been born wicked and there it was.

  He suspected some boys, who he guessed (or knew only too well, to be honest) felt like he did also suffered similar torments of guilt about it, but Mike had lived with his inclinations so long he’d given up worrying. Okay, he worried enough not to give himself away, other than to the few he had stumbled into through a weird process of sexual osmosis. Well, that’s how he put it. The fear of being caught out was ever present, which was why he’d never said anything to his best friend, Julian Webb. He couldn’t imagine how awful that would be. And to make things worse, his young brother William was due to move up from Junior School next term and would be joining him in Fabian. Couldn’t they have put the little fucker in one of the other boarding houses, but no, of course not. His parents wanted their sons together. Mike’s problem was that, because they had to share a bedroom in their Swiss Cottage ground-floor flat, last vacation Will had caught him having a delicious wank. The creamiest he’d ever had. For some reason all the imaginings were going gang-a-lang. Juicy Jez was sucking him like crazy and, groaning, he’d come off into his handkerchief, then looked up to see Will sitting up in his bed, staring across with a gleeful expression plastered over his silly face. Mike got his way after kicking up a stink, and the small front bedroom which acted as their mother’s sewing room was emptied out and Will given his own space.

  He wouldn’t give better odds than a hundred to one on the likelihood of bossy-gossy little Will keeping that secret in Fabian when he got here. It was almost certainly all over Junior School anyway. Still—he consoled himself whenever he thought of the episode with a shudder—everyone tossed off. Some even got caught beating off and made a boastful joke of it. It wasn’t like Will had caught him getting it from someone else, like Jez McGowran and the entire line-up of Bay Area Transit.

  When our time is truly come / That’s when we’ll have some fun.

  Getting advice on a possible career was evidently a dirty business, something to be secreted away behind a door in a space not much larger than a Fabian House bog, and in fact not a great deal less redolent of overuse between failed flushes. The only thing missing was a mess of unrolled toilet paper, although the Careers Advisor made up for the lack with sheaves of pamphlets flowing from his worn leather attaché case.

  Mike sat opposite him at a table so tiny they had to keep shifting position to avoid clamping knees together under it. The man had a mustache. It didn’t work well for him. He hadn’t even introduced himself, so Mike had tagged him simply as “Careers.” Why on earth would they shut innocent young souls up in this smelly, cramped office to get advice on their putative futures?

  Earlier, Jules had helpfully asked, “Have you decided on what you want to do when you grow up?” It was all right for Julian. Jules knew he was going to be either a barrister and Queen’s Counsel or a City banker-rhymes-with-wanker, because they became disgustingly wealthy, and Jules could see no good reason to be anything other than stinking rich.

  “I haven’t a fucking clue,” Mike retorted. “Something to do with photography, I s’pose. It’s one thing I’m good at, and I can’t think of a single thing you can do with Latin.”

  “You weren’t any good at Latin,” Jules pointed out.

  “Bloody was, too. I just got bored and switched it for Geography.”

  The disconnect between the subjects made them crack up. Laughing like a drain, as the egregious croquet cheat Jansen elegantly put it.

  But in the closet with Careers, the slew of potential futures which slid across the table top and cascaded to the floor failed to raise any merriment in either party.

  “Oh dear. I do wish they’d give us a bit more space for this.” Careers squinted at Mike with penny-slot eyes over half-moon glasses in an aggriev
ed way, as though their being incarcerated here was all Mike’s fault. Which in a way it was because he wasn’t one of those with a clear expectation of A-Level passes in two years’ time and a clear path to Oxbridge, or any university, come to that. In fact most of his teachers anticipated him failing all his O-Level papers. “I mean, this is an expensive school and they can’t be short of a bob or two to afford a larger office space.”

  Mike was fairly certain Highgate wasn’t short of a bob at all, but it was an institution that largely filled the upper echelons of creative arts—music, drama—finance and banking (at the City level), and the mandarin civil service. Such illuminati didn’t require careers advice, while those boys who were deemed in need were not regarded as a priority of any kind; certainly not the sort who should be granted space. Mike leaned over and shuffled the stationery spillage into a stack and dumped the leaflets down between them.

  “Now, er…” Careers surreptitiously consulted a list at his elbow. “Mister Smith, have you any thoughts as to your future?”

  High-class escort, operating out of Mayfair, servicing wealthy male tourists.

  “Um. I was thinking along the lines of, well, photography, maybe getting into movies?”

  Careers—perhaps he’d just forgotten to offer his name or become numbed by the horde of under-achievers foisted on him?—rummaged rapidly through the perilous pile of pamphlets. “Hmm, I really don’t think either of those subjects is actually regarded as a career, as such, not really per se.”

  “Not of itself,” Mike translated to show off. “But why not? I know of one leaver who went to work with John Schlesinger…” And ended up in his bed, lucky fucker… I think.

  “Hmm,” the man hummed again. “I am sorry,” he said unapologetically, “but I really have nothing on either subject at all.” He produced another blank look which made him briefly resemble one of the security robots in THX 1138, only with half-moons glittering like electric tears. “I’m not even sure anything to do with the cinema is actually a career at all.”

  Mike swallowed the indignant comment which rose to the surface: that he’d seen David Hemmings in Blow Up, a very serious piece of career cinema featuring a very career-minded photographer that totally disproved—

  “Now, what I am recommending to boys with gumption and a go-ahead attitude like you, Mister… er… Smith, is… Timber!”

  He produced the word like a conjurer whipping a rabbit from a top hat. For an instant Mike flinched and almost looked up to dodge the falling tree. His eyebrows rose with a surprise to match the other’s triumph. Their eyes locked. For an absurd moment, Mike thought they were playing the staring game, but the sheer incomprehensibility of the exclamation so took his breath away that Mike broke first.

  “Timber?” he echoed faintly.

  Careers nodded emphatically. “There are marvelous openings in the Forestry Commission, and the opportunities are endless.” He spread his arms as wide as the confines of the room allowed to encompass the magnitude of bucolic possibilities. “Forestry management, silviculture, wildlife conservation, fiberboard manufacture, sustainability research, phellem production for garden centers, timber-frame building—a coming thing, young man—Christmas trees, deer culling… it goes on.”

  Mike glanced down at the two pamphlets shaking enticingly in Careers’ eager hand. He saw a dark green bosky photograph showing a pinewood-deep of the kind that his foray into art history told him Lucas Cranach would have died for. At its heart stood a fine and very unculled stag. At the upper edge of the top leaflet, and upside down, he made out the legend: Where It’s At—Wood! The other leaflet inspired with the alliterative slogan: A Life in Lumber.

  “Uh, thank you. Thank you very much. I— I will certainly read these and give it serious thought.” For two seconds.

  “Good boy!” Careers glanced obviously at his watch. “Goodness. Doesn’t time fly?” He looked up with a professionally satisfied smile. “I have another ten to get through this morning. Thank you so much for attending. I’m sure you will find timber a most rewarding and profitable career. Good day to you.”

  Mike closed the door behind him and leaned on the cool wall of the long hallway that ran the length of the ground floor of the Science Block. Chortles burst up from his chest and blossomed into laughter. The waiting line of his peers looked on uncertainly. Mike just shook his head, flailing the artful chaos of black hair his housemaster Mr. Boone (known to the boys as The Boonehead, naturally) repeatedly told him to get cut. When breathing became critical, he pushed away from the wall and lumbered toward the exit. The pamphlets fluttered like discarded fledglings into the trashcan by the double doors—wood pulp to waste.

  Somehow, in the strange and very probably esoteric way of these things, the word “wood” had come into common school parlance recently to mean a hard-on, but try as he might, Mike simply couldn’t get a wood for timber. “Now, Mister whateveryournamewas, if you’d had some information on becoming a really professional male escort…”

  Fortunately, out in the quadrangle there was no one near enough to overhear him.

  “It’s far more likely I’ll get a reasonable pass in Polycon than Additional Maths.”

  Julian sniffed smugly and Mike knew he did it to tease. He didn’t rise to the bait, though; politics and economics was not his bag at all. In fact he felt quietly satisfied at the outcome of two weeks of concentration. The exams hadn’t felt anywhere near as disastrous as he’d feared. And that was in spite of the residual hay fever he suffered during the early summer, for which the amelioration of antihistamines brought on a drowsiness not conducive to sensible revision.

  “I suppose you need politics to screw your way to the top of the bench and economics to make the most of the loot you’re going to make,” Mike said gruffly, but flashed a brightly dimpled smile at his friend.

  As Mike stepped off the curb to cross the small bus stand at the edge of Pond Square, his breath caught as it always did when he spotted Manners, a member of another boarding house. In his eyes the older boy represented a form of youthful perfection which tugged at Mike’s heart. Hopelessly unobtainable, of course; another year, another world, an august person in the highest echelon of the hierarchy. He and Julian dipped their heads politely at the school prefect as they crossed over the South Grove pedestrian crossing to go on down Highgate High Street. Manners acknowledged the greeting with a slight twitch of his finely shaped lips, and for a brief stitch of time his eyes locked with Mike’s. It was entirely accidental, of no note or moment, but pierced Mike to his core because, even though he knew full well it meant nothing at all, his loins reacted differently. They headed on down the hill aiming for Highgate Bookshop. In as nonchalant manner as he could manage, Mike threw a glance over his shoulder at Manners’s retreating figure. So graceful…

  The High Street swooped off down the long steep hill between widely spaced residences after the shops ended and, through the haze, the sprawl of London’s East End filled the horizon. Julian wanted a copy of Thomas Sowell’s Race and Economics. “It analyzes the relationship of wealth and race in America.”

  “Sounds like a fun read, Jules.” Mike grinned at the expected haughty sniff. He was tagging along for a browse through the shop’s extensive photographic and “kinematographic” section.

  Crossing the threshold always made Mike feel as though he were entering a different world. Highgate Bookshop boasted what it called “climate control,” effected in part by a downdraft of air from above the doorway, warm in winter, cool now in summer. It was like passing through a magic curtain into the Court of the Crimson King. The shop had its own warm hush and a cathedral-like sense of anticipation amid its mahogany wood fittings and dark-magenta wall coverings. Acolytes stood in various poses, bent over carefully handled volumes, worshipping at the different fonts of knowledge, polemic, inspiration, arousal. Mike absorbed the low susurration of passing traffic on the High Street, dulled by the double-glazed windows and spinner-racks of Mills & Boon paperbacks in front
of the glass; the distant murmur of voices at the service desk; the creaky flip of turning pages; and the shuffle of leather soles on polished wood. The rich scent of wood pulp ( Timber! ) and printing ink pervaded every nook between crowded shelves. Jules shoulder-twisted his way politely between the several customers filling the narrow aisles as he headed for the rear of the deep shop and the esoterica of economics. Mike drifted sideways along the knee-to-ceiling By-Author shelves, vaguely thinking he might buy a science-fiction novel; which is when a name and a title caught his eye. Not so many months ago one of the Fabian inmates had loaned him Report on Probability A by Brian Aldiss, and against expectations he had enjoyed it. Now he slid a paperback from the shelf at just below eye-height: A Hand-Reared Boy by Brian Aldiss. It was the double-entendre title, suggestive of sex, which struck the sting of a chord in Mike’s chest. He glanced around guiltily, before half-opening the cover. He peered at the first words with mounting excitement:

  I was introduced to the delights of masturbation early, and had never looked back since then. You might say I was a hand-reared boy. Perhaps I should have been ashamed of all that; I was not. People pretend to be so enlightened about sex these days; they talk happily about copulation and such subjects, about adultery and homosexuality and lesbianism and abortions. Never about masturbation, though. And yet masturbation is the commonest form of sex, and tossing off the cheapest and most harmless pleasure.

  A quick flip farther into the pages revealed an astonishing blur of word-pictures: the young hero, Horatio Stubbs, wanking his older brother, Nelson, making him ejaculate, and the pleasure of it; a boys’ boarding school dormitory packed with randy teens giving each other a helping hand like there was no tomorrow.

  Another quick over-the-shoulder glance revealed Jules stuck away, his head buried in some tome, and no customer presently at the service desk. Mike hurried across with the book’s cover pressed close to his blazer. He noted with satisfaction its SBN code on the back cover, which meant the girl on the till didn’t need to turn it over and see the title. Highgate Bookshop prided itself on being state-of-the-art. She punched the code numbers in on the big I.B.M. cash register and looked up with a scant smile.