Prelude

by William Coles

  Some people, when I’ve told them of Tap, express amazement that Eton should be encouraging its boys to drink. But it is better by far for boys to learn about getting drunk in a controlled environment than to do it on the sly and end up soused and vomit-stained in a gutter.

  Tap was a strange mix, as if a northern bar had been transported from Yorkshire and dumped onto the Eton High Street. It had dark panelling and low ceilings, while on the walls were a few school photos plus a couple of oars and some cricket bats. There was also the Long Glass, which held a quart of ale, and over the years had humiliated countless Etonians. Unless you knew the correct angle to hold the glass, it was guaranteed to dump a pint or so of beer in your face.

  As usual the bar was heaving so Jeremy and I were sitting in the beer-garden. We were nursing pints of lager—we had both yet to acquire a taste for bitter—and, for a moment there in the sun, you could almost have believed you were having a quiet pint in your local.

  Jeremy had not spoken for a couple of minutes. I had just told him that India and I had made love. Not, I hope, in a boastful way, but because he was a friend and an ally, and because, even then, I realised he needed to be kept abreast of events.

  In total silence he heard me out, pursed his lips, nodded, templed his fingers, and when he could think of nothing else to distract him, pursed his lips again and continued to nod.

  “Fouquet,” he muttered. For a few seconds he was speechless. “You lucky, lucky bastard.”

  I could only shrug, the cat with the cream. I was embarrassed at my good fortune.

  I might have told Jeremy more, but I was silenced by the loud, crowing voice of Savage who had walked into the beer-garden with two of his cronies. He sneered at me but didn’t say a word, returning to the bar while his friends sat down at a table. We knew their names, but they would not have been aware of our existence. One of them, Howells, was also a popper, dressed in sponge-bag trousers and a garish orange waistcoat, while the other, Buck, wore stick-ups and a silver-buttoned black waistcoat, the badge of office for another elite Eton society, Sixth-Form Select.

  It’s hard to describe how oppressive it was sitting just a few yards from these senior boys. They may have been only a year older than us, but they were Eton’s cream and didn’t we just know it. Both Jeremy and I found we were unable to say a word. We played with our pints. We stared at the sky. We attempted to look as if we were sharing an amicable, contemplative silence.

  Savage, King of all he surveyed, came out with a tray of drinks and peanuts. Immediately the braying Hooray Henry behaviour started—the sort of thing that most people expect of public school boys at play. We were about to skulk from the beer-garden, leaving our half-drunk pints, when Jeremy stayed my hand.

  Buck had asked Savage a question. “How’s it going with you and India James?”

  Howells laughed and clapped Savage on the back. “Yes— how is the wonder that is India?”

  Savage took a long sip from his pint, and this stupid ‘Aw shucks’ grin appeared on his face, as if he’d have loved to have told them all about it, but it just wouldn’t be right.

  “Come on,” persisted Buck. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

  Savage helped himself to some peanuts, milking the moment. He tipped his head back and trickled them into his mouth one by one. “Saw her this morning,” he said. “Gagging for it.”

  Goosebumps on my wrists. It was like the air was being wrung out of my lungs. But with a studied, manic intensity, I picked up my glass and drank.

  Buck, the stooge of the group, giggled. “But you’ve done more than kiss her?”

  Savage, his coiffed black hair nestling into his collar, dribbled more peanuts into his mouth. “What do you think Bucky, old boy? Do you think we’ve just spent our time necking, or do you think that just possibly we might have got a stage further than that?”

  I looked at Jeremy. He mechanically lifted his glass to his lips, his face an inscrutable mask.

  Howells chortled. “Surely not another notch on the Savage bed-post?”

  Savage shrugged and kissed the tips of his fingers.

  “Tell us. Tell us,” Buck exclaimed. “We want details.”

  “A gentlemen couldn’t possibly comment,” Savage said, adding underneath his breath, “Insatiable.”

  I could hear the blood thumping in my ears as ice-cold anger swept through my veins. It couldn’t be possible. Could not be possible. Savage was just being the braggart he always was.

  By then Jeremy had me by the elbow and was dragging me out of my seat but, even as we left, I could hear another shriek of laughter from Buck. I looked back to see Savage grotesquely thrusting his groin at the table-leg.

  It made my stomach heave. Was it possible? Could he? Could she? I didn’t know what to think.

  Jeremy was the first to speak. “He’s a bag of piss and wind.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s a bullshitter; you know he is.”

  “Yeah.”

  But it was as if that gnawing sewer-rat had done a back flip in my belly, twisting and turning through my guts. Of course I knew it wasn’t possible that India and Savage could have been together. She’d said she loved me. We’d been making love only the previous afternoon.

  And yet, and yet . . .

  It was like hot coals being pressed to the soles of my feet. Because, of course, a little piece of me not only believed Savage, but actively wanted to believe him.

  So, as we walked back, I went along with whatever Jeremy said. I agreed with him and pretended I was mollified. But underneath I was incandescent with anger. I needed to know, had to know and, if I had been able, I would have gone round to India’s house that very moment.

  But I couldn’t do that. There wasn’t time and she wasn’t due home for another hour yet. I spent the time in my room. Pulsating with rage. Cursing Savage as a liar. Wondering how to pose my questions. Whether to be upfront, to just tell her what had happened, or whether to be circuitous?

  I know it seems ridiculous now. Of course India loved me and only me, and Savage was nothing but a lying, boasting hellhound who had not even come close to laying a finger on India.

  But, at the time, things were not so simple. India had said she loved me, but I had no idea why. And, if me, then why not somebody like Savage, who I knew was more sporty, more funny, a hundred times better-looking? Besides, had she said she loved me exclusively and above all others?

  Give me enough time and I will be able to conjure up every conceivable worst-case scenario.

  Although my calm, rational side was yelling at me to get a grip, there was always this insistent sniping, this little whisper of violence in my heart that said, ‘What if he’s right?’

  I called India at 7 p.m., a bristling mountain of indignant rage.

  And you know what happened?

  The very moment that I heard her voice and heard her say “I love you”, the heat of my anger was doused, as if a burning match had been dropped into an ocean. For that was all my jealousy was: barely a spent match compared to the sea of her love.

  She loved me. Of course she loved me, and only me, and, as for that shit Savage, he was beneath contempt.

  India and I chatted for a few minutes. We swapped endearments. But instead of mentioning what had happened in Tap with Savage, I vaguely alluded to him. I was casting a fly on the water, just to check for any reaction. Not that I didn’t trust her, but . . .

  “Got supper in a few minutes,” I said. “In the delightful company of your old friend Savage.”

  She laughed. It was so open, so natural. Not even the slightest bit forced. Her and Savage? It was unthinkable, impossible.

  “Well, enjoy yourself,” she said.

  But still I gave it one more tweak. I had to make sure. “But you must fancy him just a little bit?” I laughed as I said it though maybe it did sound a bit hollow. It might have given India the first hint of the monster that she was dating.

  “Kim!” She shrieked with laughte
r. “I do hope you’re joking. He’s beyond awful!”

  How happy I was to hear her say that. But you know, in this life, whatever you look for you will find—and that even goes for when you’re searching for a speck of malice in the most honest and the most caring heart that was ever to fall in love.

  AL FRESCO LOVE-MAKING—IS there any finer way on God’s earth to have sex?

  You can keep your linen sheets, your king-size beds, your cosy central heating, your room service, your mini-bars and your five-star hotels.

  For me, sex is always better when it’s outside, with your toes grinding into the grass and your back bared to the wind. Rain, shine, clouds, snow, hail and thunder, embrace them all.

  Bedrooms speak of middle-age spread and pedestrian love lives.

  But sex outside? Raw and naked, with the sun seeping through the trees? With a blanket, a bar of chocolate and a thermos of ice-cold lemonade? This was how I was first introduced to the joys of love-making, and it was as if, after four grinding years at Eton, I had come to realise that I was living in paradise.

  I may as well admit it though. There is one other ingredient that always adds piquancy to sex au naturel: the very real prospect of being caught.

  For although there are thousands of acres around Eton that are just perfect for discreet love-making, there are also many hundreds of boys and masters, their heads filled with bile and boredom, who would delight in catching two lovers in the act.

  The first time it happened was that Saturday afternoon.

  By now, India and I were so meticulous about our trysts that we were like a couple of veteran World War II spies. I had started to view Eton through fresh eyes, for I was ever on the search for out-of-the-way meeting spots, and soft, secluded nooks.

  We would meet in the hidden spinneys of Eton and Windsor and only when we were far from prying eyes would we kiss and cling to each other as if our lives depended on it.

  We were out in the fields past Eton’s nine-hole golf course. I had discovered a thicket of brambles, right in the very centre of which was a luxuriant bed of grass. If you jumped up high into the air from outside the thicket, you could just spot this hidden bower behind the thorns.

  Getting in there had been a test. We’d crawled on our stomachs, hauling our way through on our elbows like buffed commandoes. But get through we did, and the nicks and cuts to our hands and arms only added to our pleasure. We were so in love, so besotted, that everything life hurled at us, even the inconveniences, were nothing more than spice for our passion.

  India pulled a thorn from the palm of my hand and kissed the wound. It reminded me of that first time she had kissed my wrist underneath that elderberry bush near the Master’s Field. How my life had changed in barely nine days.

  With all the ease of lovers who have the night ahead of them, we peeled off each other’s clothes, kissing and caressing every part of each other’s bodies until we were husky with lust and aching to make love.

  India had taught me well and already I was becoming quite the veteran lover. I knew all about the monumental power of delayed gratification.

  I was teasing India, teasing her with my fingers, with my hands, and with my tongue. We were both naked now, surrounded by our wall of thorns with only the sun peeping in on our bodies. India was on her back, her eyes closed, her fingers knotted tight in my hair as she tried to guide me.

  But I was having none of it.

  I trailed my fingers up the side of her thigh, and nuzzled at the side of her neck, my tongue light against her ear. I drew back and blew lightly on her lips as my hands glided down across her stomach. I paused again, just beneath her tummy button, so close that she thought this time, this time . . .

  Her breath was short, staccato. “Please.” She was begging me. For a moment she grasped my teasing fingers, her knuckles white.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Kim, you’re killing me.”

  I was spinning her out as long as I dared.

  Then suddenly an alien sound fell on our ears. It was one of the Eton beaks. I couldn’t see him but I recognised the voice of that dry old stick Malcolm Singleton, another of the school’s die-hard bachelors. “Hi Sultan! Sultan come here!”

  Singleton was not four yards away from us, standing on the other side of the bushes. India’s body froze, every muscle locked.

  There was nothing we could do. Either he found us or he went on his merry way. So I did one of the most swinish things that I have ever done as a lover.

  I started to kiss India again as my hand worked down to her inner thigh. Her fingers were taut in my hair. Then, to the sound of Singleton’s Labrador rampaging through the bramble bushes, I gave India the soft touch that she had been craving. Her mouth was rigid against my lips and I could sense the breath about to shriek from her throat.

  The dog had worked its way through to the centre of the thicket and was now sniffing around us. Its tail wagged against my leg. India was trembling, and I could see the ripple of her stomach muscles. What with the Labrador, and Singleton shouting on the other side of the brambles, she’d got the giggles. Suddenly she was stuffing her top into her mouth. She made no sound, but I could feel the laughter detonate through her body.

  “Sultan! Sultan, come here!” It was Singleton again, only his voice was lower now. He was squinting through the brambles.

  As for me, I was methodically going about my business of bringing India to the most shuddering orgasm of her life. Whether Singleton saw anything or not, I will never know. I do think that most of Eton’s masters are gentlemen who, more often than not, prefer to ignore their pupils’ myriad misdemeanours for after a slight grunt of surprise, he was marching off and calling over his shoulder for his Labrador. We were left with the sunshine and the sound of the skylarks.

  “Kim.” India choked, her voice tight. “You are a monster. But God, how I love you.”

  And with that, her spine arched, her arms laced round my neck, and she clung to my head as if she were drowning. She was so shattered that for a minute, two minutes, she was too weak to move. I wormed my way around her cheek to kiss her.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you,” she replied. Her smile started to tip the sides of her mouth. We rolled to and fro on the blanket until India was astride me, her knees secure round my chest.

  “I love you so very much.” She drummed a tattoo on my chest. “But I’m going to have to make you pay for that.”

  And so she did, stoking me until it felt as if there was a furnace raging in the pit of my stomach and until it was now my turn to beg for release. It makes me smile just to think of that. Not quite the dominatrix, but without doubt the mistress of all she surveyed. At that moment, India could have asked me anything in the world and I would have given it her.

  We cuddled, we made love, she sipped her homemade lemonade and trickled it from her lips into mine. Finally, we were spent and lay in each other’s arms, staring up at the sky and the Heathrow planes that forever drone over Eton.

  “I think I ought to tell you something,” India said with a kiss. “To avoid any embarrassment.”

  Instantly my heart was yammering, claxon bells were ringing. Was this it? Was this the bullet? Was she about to reveal some ghastly skeleton from her early life?

  But I could relax.

  It was none of that.

  “It’s my birthday tomorrow,” she said. “I thought it better to tell you now than to spring it on you on the day.”

  “Brilliant!” I said. “What present would you like?”

  “Only you,” she said. “Just you and nothing more.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  I kissed her. My heart was filled with rapturous love. A most devilish idea was forming in my mind.

  “How old will you be?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Twenty-four?” I’d never really thought about her age before. India was just India, my first great love, and her age was an irrelevance. “Maybe I ought to be there
to bring it in?”

  “Kim, you are mad.”

  “I mean it.” I was bubbling with glee at the thought of it.

  “I mean it too.”

  “It’ll be great,” I said. “Wait till after lights out and I could be with you in five minutes.”

  “You’re mad.” She kissed me again, and that dreamy look had come into her eyes that meant she wanted more than just a kiss. Her fingers wandered down my chest. “You’re mad but I love you.”

  We talked as we made love. She gasped, she purred, and she asked me, “Are you serious?”

  “Of course.” Up until then, I had not thought about the sheer enormity of what I’d promised to do. But love and teenage bravado had given me wings. The more I thought about it, the better it sounded. Despite my love of the outdoors, a whole night of love with India, with soft sheets and feathered pillows, and that blissful moment when I awoke with her in my arms.

  She writhed against me, her fingers deep into my back. “You know I’d love that more than anything.” She panted. “But you will take care?”

  We didn’t need to utter another word. We bucked, we churned and braced against each other, our lips locked.

  “Trust me,” I said.

  And she did.

  AS I WALKED back to the Timbralls, my mind ticked over all the various options.

  I’d never broken out of the house before and when I came to consider the practicalities, it did seem a most foolhardy venture.

  But my love was expecting me and I could not let her down.

  My first problem was how to get out of the house. I tried the downstairs lavatory window. At a push, I could have squeezed out. But when I went upstairs, I discovered a far more expedient option: the fire-escape.

  I asked Jeremy if I could borrow his bike.

  “Jesus.” He shook his head as he handed me the bike lights. “If they catch you, you’re toast.”

  As I knew only too well. Just being caught outside the house after dark would have warranted instant expulsion. But I thought that so long as I covered my head, I wouldn’t be recognised. And if it ever came to a chase, I would work my way home on Eton’s hidden paths and shortcuts.