Box Hill

by Adam Mars-Jones

  I’m not convinced that Ray would have talked, even if there had been a radio connecting us. At one point he shouted to me that I should hold onto him, instead of trying to grip the back of the saddle. I must have been dragging on the bike every time he accelerated. I’m bulky. I can’t help it. I’m bulky. I wouldn’t have dared to hold onto him unless he’d told me to.

  The roughness of the ride, despite Ray’s scrupulous handling, unsettled my stomach and made me burp up memories of the hamburger and glass of lemonade I’d had before I’d even known there was a Ray. I also burped up taste-memories of him, the taste of Ray’s body in the only place I’d touched it. As if I was proving to myself what I’d thought when I first set eyes on him. Ray was tasty.

  For a while, as we headed north from Box Hill, I thought he was taking me home to Isleworth after all, past Chessington and Surbiton, on the A243. Chessington was only a zoo in those days, it wasn’t a World of Adventures. I even wondered if the whole afternoon was some sort of outlandish birthday present. But who knew me well enough to lay on a combination bike-taxi and charismatic male prostitute package? Particularly if I didn’t know those were things I might want myself.

  It was as if Ray clicking his fingers up by that tree earlier on — an hour ago, maybe two — had paralysed my will. Perhaps he was a hypnotist. Perhaps that was what he did for a living. That was how he could just click his fingers and shut down some pathways in the brain, open a whole new lot up. Still, you can only be hypnotised if you let it happen. It can’t be done against your will. Anyway now, as I held on to him on the back of his bike, and not just because he told me to, part of me was like someone on stage at the end of a hypnotist’s show.

  After the man with the eyes that look right through you clicks his fingers the second time, the people on stage wake up and realise that what they’ve been champing on with such relish is actually an onion and not an apple. The sweetness and the vileness fighting each other for a moment in the mouth and in the memory, before the sweetness goes for good.

  Bits of my mind started to come alive again, and to connect up with other bits. One bit was still shouting to itself in horrified triumph, I sucked a man’s cock — real-life blow job — I sucked a cock and didn’t throw up! And another part of me was thinking that I didn’t have the first idea of where this stranger was taking me, or what would happen to me when I got there.

  When we crossed the river at Kingston Ray turned left instead of carrying straight on to Isleworth. The air was cool and moist by the river. Even double-jacketed, I wasn’t any too warm and Ray must have been freezing, but he gave no sign.

  Ray turned right after a couple of miles. It turned out he lived in Hampton, in a cul-de-sac off the High Street. The cul-de-sac was called Cardinals Paddock. No need to guess which cardinal — there’s not much inside a five-mile radius of Hampton Court that doesn’t trade on old Wolsey. As I climbed off the bike, stumbling on gravel, I could see a stretch of old wall with flowerbeds against it. For all I know, it was Cardinal Wolsey’s paddock, or what was left of it after five hundred years or so.

  Like a fool I undid the strap without thinking, and pulled the helmet off without removing my glasses, so I mangled the stems a bit. I had to hold the specs against my head with one hand to stop them falling off. I felt even clumsier than usual, with the helmet in the other hand.

  Ray held the front door for me and bounced up the stairs two at a time to his flat. I did my best to follow him, but I’ve always had one leg stronger than the other, so all I could do was two stairs then one, two then one. I was out of breath by the time I had reached the first floor, and my glasses were misted again now, as well as wonky. I put the helmet down.

  When we were both inside he raised his hands to me, and I flinched back from him. Ted’s Viking helmet banged against the wall. I almost dropped it. I didn’t dare look down in case it had left a scuff mark on the wall, a stripe of beer and human hair.

  Only that morning my gentle Dad had raised his hand to me, and it looked as if my birthday was going to be the day everyone got their blows in. Dad had slapped me, because of something I’d told him about my visit to the hospital with Joyce the day before. The ward sister had asked us to leave because we were making Mum laugh, and Dad got terribly angry when I told him about it. I just didn’t understand. I’d have been worried about Mum if we hadn’t been able to make her laugh. We didn’t say people ‘overreacted’ then, or else this would have been a classic case of a person overreacting. Me trying to cheer him up and Dad flying off the handle.

  When Ray came towards me a second time with his hands raised, I’d already realised he wasn’t really going to strangle me. I was even able to think, Just my luck, he’s going to strangle me without going to the trouble of raping me first, which shows that I wasn’t really worried. Of course he was only grasping the lapels of his heavy jacket to peel it off me. Then he hung it carefully on a peg. There were leather jackets on the pegs next to it, so that I thought, How many people live here? It didn’t occur to me that anyone could own more than one leather jacket. When I took off my own naff leather jacket, he didn’t offer it the hospitality of a peg, and I didn’t blame him for that. It didn’t deserve any better than to lie on the floor.

  When I flinched from Ray my glasses almost fell off my face, so he noticed there was a problem with them. He took them off to another room to do something about it. I stayed where I was, thinking that was safest. I could hear the clatter of a household drawer being opened, a gloved hand rummaging softly among tools.

  I was stranded without my glasses, I needed a pee and I was starting to get hungry, and of course the moment Ray was out of the room I knew quite clearly that he meant me no good and that I had been mad to go with him. Nobody knew where I was.

  In two minds. It’s a usual phrase, but it’s a rotten feeling when you spend half the time thinking one thing — I’m safe, this is fine — and then you switch to panic certainty, you’re done for and it’s all your fault. It was exhausting not being able to settle to one way of thinking.

  Then Ray came back and fitted the repaired specs back on my face. He’d done something clever with pliers. He seemed perfectly calm. It stood to reason that if he was planning to do me harm he’d be more excited. He’d taken the bike gloves off to do the repair, and I tried not to look at his hands. I’d decided he must have birthmarks or scars on them, to keep them covered up so much of the time, but they were perfect strong pianist’s hands. Not that I know any pianists, it’s just something people say about fingers they like. Ray caught me looking and smiled at me with a bit of mockery, as if he knew what I’d been thinking. He even turned them over slowly in front of me, so I could get a good look from every angle. Ray’s smile was beautiful, but it made me uneasy. I couldn’t see what I had done to deserve it.

  He asked me if there was anything I needed, and I managed to blurt out about needing a piss and something to eat. Something to nibble anyway. And Ray said: ‘Why don’t I show you where everything is, and you can look after yourself?’

  It seems absurd now how few times I’d seen the inside of people’s houses up to that point — mainly my parents’ friends, and a few of Joyce’s. My older sister, Donna, she was older enough that she didn’t want her kid brother hanging around, and anyway she’d always been the type that wants to leave home as soon as she can and get stuck in to her own life.

  I’d certainly never been inside a modern flat decorated in a modern way. I’d never seen windows that went down to the ground, for a start, so that the wall was mainly glass. I’d never seen spotlights in a private home, and Ray had spotlights in every room, including the bathroom. The lounge was dominated by an enormous black leather sofa with chrome armrests. It hardly seemed like a sofa at all, being so angular, or not my idea of a sofa: nothing round or bulgy about it. I knew people with record collections, I even called the few LPs I had myself ‘my record collection’, but I’d never seen a
room with a whole wall of shelving which held as many records as books. Ray had a big reel-to-reel tape recorder, as well as a professional-looking record player with a perspex top, and a separate shelf of tapes in grey plastic cases.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but Ray often used music to set the scene. On this occasion, though, he didn’t put anything on either deck, but I don’t think he had forgotten. He was just setting the scene with silence instead. Letting the silence build.

  He fetched a can of beer from a fridge twice the size of the one at home, and settled himself on the sofa. There wasn’t much in the fridge besides beer, some milk and a sliced loaf. With anyone but Ray, I’d have thought it was a bit poncy, having a fridge so much bigger than you need.

  When you switched on the lights in the bathroom, a fan came on with a whirr, which gave me a bit of a start. Ray had a shower head fixed to the wall above the bath, and a glass panel to intercept splashes. The shower at Mum and Dad’s fitted over the bath taps, not very reliably.

  After I’d had my pee, I had a good look at myself in the mirror. Blue eyes are supposed to be an advantage, but I don’t see how they can be when they’re a mucky blue like mine. Blue eyes should be a strong colour like Ray’s. My eyes wobble the whole time when I look at myself in a mirror. I can’t seem to fix them so they’re still. I wonder if they’re like that all the time, wobbly rabbit eyes, or if it’s just me in the mirror that sets them off.

  After my pee I went into the kitchen and wolfed down some of the bread from the fridge. I could see a big steel toaster but I didn’t want to keep Ray waiting, and I wasn’t sure how to work it. There wasn’t any butter but I found some jam. Then I put the kettle on. I’d not come across an electric kettle before — I knew they existed, obviously, I didn’t live in a time-warp, I’d watched Tomorrow’s World since I was eight or something, but my parents used the hob. Ray’s kitchen was all-electric, though, and the kettle looked more like a metal jug plugged into the wall. I filled it and pressed the switch so a light came on. To be fair to myself, that jug style wasn’t common for a long time after. Maybe it was a prototype or something imported.

  I couldn’t keep still, and though I was trying to play it cool, I kept looking in on Ray in the lounge. I noticed he had put the dress gloves on — I thought then that he had retrieved them from his jacket while I had my pee, which he may have done, but I didn’t even consider the possibility that he had more than one pair. More than likely it was another pair.

  He didn’t speak to me, or look at me directly. I kept shuffling from watching the kettle in the kitchen to hovering over Ray, and he was kind enough not to make me feel stupid by pointing out that I didn’t need to watch the kettle, which would turn itself off without my help when it had boiled. Of course I only thought of that later on. I can’t believe how patient he was. He absolutely didn’t rush me.

  When he had finished his beer he shook the can significantly and raised his eyebrow. I didn’t need subtitles to know he wanted me to fetch another, and I wasn’t offended that he didn’t say thank you when I brought it. When I came in at last with my cup of tea, I must admit that I was a bit put out that he stretched out his gloved hand to bar me from the place on the sofa next to him. I suppose I was being a bit sneaky making myself at home, but he’d told me to help myself from the fridge so I didn’t realise I was taking a liberty in the lounge.

  When he stretched out his hand, I thought he meant I should sit on the end furthest from him, but when I made my way over there he just shook his head — still without meeting my eyes. The leather of his one-piece suit accompanied his gestures with a supple creaking.

  In a way it was insulting that he warned me off the sofa as if I was a dog that would leave stray hairs on it. But if he hadn’t given me any guidance, how would I have ended up where I wanted to be but would never dare to suggest, curled up at his feet? He didn’t tell me what to do. He didn’t say that I had no right to a chair, any more than my naff jacket had a right to a peg. In a strange way he freed my choices, though he seemed to take them away. There was a matching armchair opposite the sofa, and I could perfectly well have gone over to that. Of course I’ll never know whether he would actually have let me sit there, but knowing his nature better now, I think he would have. He just wasn’t interested in forcing people.

  After all the palaver of making the tea I didn’t get the chance to drink it. Ray simply moved it out of my reach. Obviously he had realised that I needed something to do with my hands, and that if he just let me get rid of my fidgets I wouldn’t disappoint him. Ray was good at waiting. Even his waiting wasn’t like ordinary people’s waiting. His waiting was decisive. He decided that I had needed to make that cup of tea, but I didn’t need to drink it.

  Ray took my glasses off for me. If I’d been told before it happened that I would be blindfolded the night I lost my virginity, I would have had one of my panics. But when Ray took a black handkerchief, folded it slowly and then knotted it round my head to blot out my vision, I was almost relieved. The thing I’d never been able to imagine about sex, as it might apply to me, was how anyone would ever have the patience to show me what to do. I couldn’t see it happening, not to me. Now as Ray deftly knotted the black hanky behind my head, I knew it was under way at last. It no longer mattered that I didn’t have the first clue. Someone else was taking responsibility.

  When he started to take my clothes off, I minded a lot less than I would have without the hanky. He undressed me not roughly and not gently, just efficiently. I found I could cope with Ray seeing my body, as long as I didn’t have to see it myself.

  Ray pulled me up to my knees facing him. Obviously he had decided that I needed something stronger than tea. It may not have occurred to him that I wasn’t any sort of drinker. On special occasions Dad would pour me a glass of ‘shandy’, which was really only lemonade with a splash of beer in it. He made a big show of it, as if two sips would have me roaring, and I suppose I believed I was being allowed into the world of the grown-ups. Mum and Dad drank advocaat on special occasions, and from the time I was twelve they let me have some at Christmas — only it was really only custard, in a little glass like the ones they were using. Since I was sixteen they’d given me actual advocaat, but I actually preferred the custard, and I would have asked to go back to the old routine if I hadn’t been afraid of seeming a baby.

  Suddenly there was warmth against my mouth, and roughness and cold and wet. I opened my lips and Ray let beer trickle from his mouth to mine. I coughed and choked on the sour-tasting liquid. If I had been a beer-breathing creature from some sort of lager planet he would have been giving me the kiss of life, but I was only dazed Colin from Isleworth and I couldn’t cope. Then when I’d choked on the taste I realised there was another taste behind it, the elusive taste of Ray’s tongue. I wanted that. The tastiness of him inside his mouth.

  Still, my fear of drink was stronger than my curiosity about kissing, and it paralysed me. Ray took another gulp of beer, but this time I kept my mouth shut against him, until he used his tongue as a slippery crowbar to overcome my defences. His tongue turned to a warm liquid inside the cold stream of the beer as it entered my mouth. It vanished before I could find it with mine.

  This was very clearly not a kiss, but it also wasn’t the opposite of a kiss. I found if I opened my mouth obediently for each new gulp Ray kept his tongue well back, and I didn’t dare to do any exploring of my own. But if I resisted a little, his tongue would play against my mouth until I gave in. Once or twice I was able to taste his tongue, and feel again its warmth through the coldness of the beer.

  Watching kissing done in films, I’d always been puzzled that people seemed to close their eyes the moment anything happened. Wasn’t the whole point of the exercise that you could gaze into your lover’s eyes? Now, blindfolded in the middle of my first real drink, something I didn’t want, and the near-kiss I wanted more than anything, I realised that gazing didn’t come int
o it.

  After ten minutes of this I was fainting with pleasure and frustration, and also fairly sloshed. Ray left at one point, it must have been to get another can of beer, and already I was unsure of my whereabouts in space — where the door and windows of the room were. Ray was trying to orient me by touch and taste, in the world of my less developed senses. He was also making me relax, whether I wanted to or not. Obviously I can’t tell how much of the beer went down his throat instead of mine, but I think he only drank enough to keep me company.

  There was a time when the small ads in gay papers were very indirect in their suggestions — very circumspect. Now of course you can say absolutely bloody anything. But in between, when you could say so much and no more, there was a time when people referred to O-Levels and A-Levels. Of course they meant Oral and Anal, but when I first saw those ads I honestly thought they were talking about qualifications. It’s a sore point with me. I left school at fifteen, and I’ve got O-levels, and I know I’m not stupid. But it’s not difficult to make me feel as if I am. I didn’t leave school because I’d learned all I wanted to know. I left school because I was short and fat and tired of being bullied.

  I’m passionate about education. It’s really important to me, and it’s not something I ever take for granted. When I have a class, my workmates help me out by organising their shifts to fit in. They’re very good about it. They tease me a bit about using long words and always taking a book with me into the cab, but I don’t mind that. My job nickname is Brainiac. It’s fine being teased by people who know you and like you, it’s almost the opposite of the other kind of teasing, the deadly kind you get at school.