The Low Road

by James Lear

  ‘I think, Charles, that you must learn to respect the decisions of your elders.’

  ‘I must understand them before I can respect them.’

  I could see the familiar flash of anger behind his mask. ‘That is not possible. Obedience is the first duty.’

  ‘My position? And what is that, precisely? The heir to the Gordon estate, to my father’s name. Soon to be the master of this house, able to choose what servants I like.’

  Lebecque was thinking. He turned to the moon again.

  ‘Charles, I have never insisted on the respect that my station should naturally command.’

  ‘Your station? As a paid tutor?’

  ‘As a priest, Charles.’ He ran a finger round the tight collar of his black soutane. I saw for a moment a few strands of hair just below the neck line.

  ‘You are not here as a priest.’

  ‘And yet the fact remains.’

  ‘I give you what respect I can.’ I put as much contempt into the words as I dared.

  ‘Charles...’ He was frowning now. ‘I have never asked you to call me “father”, have I?’

  Father? What did he mean? I jumped out of my chair.

  ‘I will never call you father!’

  Lebecque swung round, his mouth open. He was shocked to see me so angry. I was red in the face, clenching my fists.

  ‘Never. Do you understand!’

  I turned on my heel and slammed the door behind me, ran down the stairs and out on to the lawn. An owl skimmed a few feet above my head and swooped low over the grass, picked up a mouse and flapped silently over the loch. A dog barked somewhere over by the coppice.

  The evening air cooled me quickly; I had to think. So, all my suspicions confirmed! Lebecque to be my father - my mother’s husband! Casting off his vows of celibacy in order to clutch at power and wealth! So much for the priesthood. Perhaps the English were right all along; the Church of Rome was nothing but a mask for greed and perversion.

  I ran down to the beach and sat for a while in thought. This was no time for hot-headedness. I had to fight my corner.

  Over dinner I announced to my mother that I would no longer be taking lessons with Monsieur Lebecque, that my education would be better served by a period of private study. My mother was about to protest, but looked up at Lebecque’s pale, pompous face and bit her tongue.

  ‘That seems like an excellent idea, Madame Gordon,’ he said, the smooth-tongued hypocrite. ‘Charles is fast catching up with the limited abilities of his tutor. I would simply suggest that he avoids the temptation of fiction and other works of the imagination. Concentrate, Charles, on fact.’

  The rest of the meal passed in silence. My mother obeyed him in everything. She even cleared his plate. When I saw her pouring his wine, like a servant - or a wife-I scraped back my chair and marched out of the hall.

  For three weeks I avoided Lebecque. Our lessons had been suspended, and there was no natural point of contact save meals, which I insisted be served in my room. To my amazement, I met no resistance to this plan. Oh, they were happy enough to have each other to themselves! I was the unwanted son, the inconvenient memory of a dead man.

  I took to habits of solitude, stalking around the house at night, sometimes not sleeping until the sun rose, then dawdling down to the stable to exercise Starlight, my only agreeable companion. My sexual appetites, so boundless in the summer, had dwindled to a few half-hearted memories of Alexander and the occasional quick, functional wank to clear my head. I was only interested in plotting. I devised a dozen ways of getting Lebecque out of the house: denouncing him to the soldiers, writing to his bishop in Paris, hiring MacFarlane or even Ethel to kill him. Of course, I pursued none of them.

  On one of my nocturnal wanderings in November I had been surprised to see MacFarlane, that shadow that haunted the estate, skulking across the lawn towards the stables. Certain that he was up to no good, I followed him, took an alternative route through the coppice and, thanks to my youth and stealth, arrived before him. He came panting into the exercise yard and nearly screamed when I jumped out from behind the water trough.

  ‘God in heaven, Master Charles, don’t scare me to death!’

  ‘What are you up to, MacFarlane? Who are you spying on now?’

  ‘Nobody, sir. You know that. I’m a reformed character.’

  ‘You’re a sinner, MacFarlane, and you’ll burn in hell no matter how much you repent. What were you doing near the house?’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’ He would not look me in the eye; I knew he was lying. ‘How are you, sir? Have you been taking care of yourself?’

  ‘I am very well, MacFarlane, as you see.’

  ‘Yes, sir, very well indeed. I trust you have all the... help... that you need, as it were?’ The old lecher was trying to distract me. I wanted to knock him down, but a sharp stirring in my balls implored me to let him in.

  ‘Thank you, MacFarlane, if I ever require your services in that area I shall ask for them.’

  ‘Perhaps you have someone else to do the job now, sir.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, sir, I thought perhaps your tutor...’

  ‘Lebecque? What are you talking about, you disgusting old fool?’

  ‘He seems to be a man of... taste... I should say?’

  He was mocking me. ‘Watch your tongue, MacFarlane, or the proctor will cut it out of your dirty mouth.’

  ‘You didn’t complain about my dirty mouth before, Charlie.’ He was openly playing with himself. I was determined not to repeat a mistake that had put me so much into his power.

  ‘Good evening, MacFarlane.’ I turned on my heel and walked away, hearing him laughing behind me.

  Walking back to the house I saw a light in my tutor’s room. What had MacFarlane meant, a man of taste? Had he spied on Lebecque the way he had spied on me - alone, aroused? But surely a man of the cloth was above such pollution. Yes, but he was a man for all that, a young, fit man. It was possible that Lebecque, like me, had ways of keeping a clear head.

  As I neared the house I saw the shadow of not one but two figures against Lebecque’s window. My heart leapt into my mouth; my mother in his room! That was too compromising, too indiscreet. Whatever their future plans, he was still a servant! I crept nearer. No, it was not my mother; it was a man’s shape. I saw Lebecque, unmistakable in his long black garment, hand a package to the other. They kissed lightly on both cheeks in the French way. Of course, it was Girolle, the priest’s servant. Their shadows disappeared from the window.

  I was overcome by curiosity. What was Lebecque doing in the house? He was now, to all intents and purposes, unemployed. I had seen to that. And yet he stayed, he ordered his servants around, he acted like the master. I would find out.

  An ancient vine clad the west wall of Gordon Hall, a huge sturdy plant that, according to my mother, held the house up. It never bore grapes, and was generally considered an eyesore, but now for the first time I blessed it. Years of poor husbandry had left it sprawling and woody; strong enough, I had long since discovered, to bear my weight. In happier times I had climbed as high as the first floor and ambushed Ethel as she sorted linen, swinging through the casement with a loud ‘Tally-Ho!’. Lebecque’s room was on the second floor, where the branches were undoubtedly thinner and weaker. It was a risk I was prepared to take.

  I waited until I saw Lebecque again; he opened the window, took a few breaths of fresh air, pushed back his hair in a characteristic gesture and then shut out the night. Now, I assumed, he would turn to his books or his correspondence. His desk was at the wall opposite the window. He would be unlikely to see me; perhaps, however, I would see something to my advantage. What I expected I don’t know; I told myself that I would catch him in some treasonable act, but in truth I was intrigued by MacFarlane’s veiled remarks and wanted to know more.

  And so I scaled the vine. It was surprisingly easy; I was agile and light, and the branches, although thin, were strong and supple. I waited for a moment
with my head just below the window ledge, listening for sounds of movement; if Lebecque was pacing the room, he would catch me for certain. But all was silence.

  I pulled myself up and peered into the room. There was only a single candle burning on the dresser, but it was enough; by now it was pitch dark outside, and I could make out every detail. The dresser, the desk, the open chest with Lebecque’s clothes and books spilling out over the floor, the chair, two pairs of boots - but no Lebecque. I raised myself a little higher and caught sight of a mattress and a foot. The bed was directly under the window; Lebecque must have decided on an early night. A few more inches, and I could see the ankle, the shin, the knee, the thigh, expecting at every moment to see the nightshirt that protected his clerical modesty. But no: travelling up the thigh, the other foot braced against it, the right leg crooked, further, further...

  A quick hitch up on the vine branch and I had the whole picture. Lebecque, directly beneath me, lay sprawled naked on his bed, illuminated only by the rays of a single candle. He was not asleep. His left hand was busy in his groin, pulling and coaxing his cock, while his right hand rubbed the matted black hair on his chest. I knew from our abortive swimming trips that Lebecque was a hairy man - that much had been revealed by his wet undershirt. Hair covered his torso like a thick rug.

  I barely breathed. The left hand was shielding its cargo from my prying eyes, and I wasn’t leaving until I saw it. He kept pushing it down, out of my sight. I could feast my eyes on the dense black pubic hair, the first pale inch of the root of his cock, but the thing itself remained hidden. Then, as I was about to give up hope, he let go and it sprang up hard and massive, wavered for a moment in the air and fell with a slap against his stomach. Lebecque gripped it again and held it straight; it cast a great shadow up his chest as far as his neck. He tugged on the foreskin, pulling it out an inch from the head, then moved it back to reveal a shiny, slightly pointed head. Back and forth it went, back and forth... I heard Lebecque sigh, he shifted his buttocks slightly and went to work.

  God, I was as bad as MacFarlane. I hated Lebecque, wanted to undermine him, and yet I couldn’t tear myself away. I justified my spying by the fact that any sudden movement on my part might have been dangerous, might have alerted Lebecque to the fact that his shameful practice was observed. And so I stayed rooted to the spot, my own cock dribbling shamelessly inside my trousers. I could do nothing to relieve myself; both hands were fully occupied gripping on to the windowsill.

  It didn’t take long. Lebecque masturbated with a businesslike air. When he came, he didn’t yell or groan. He simply sighed, threw his head back with his eyes tight shut (thank God - otherwise he would have looked straight into my face) and emptied what looked like half a pint of spunk over himself. He was still for a while then stood up and padded towards the dresser for a cloth. I removed myself from his field of vision just before he turned to the window.

  Swiftly and silently I descended the vine, ran round to the front of the house and gained my room within two minutes. A quick tug at the buttons and my still-stiff cock bounced free, more eager than it had been for months. Very few strokes brought me off. I came, to my satisfaction, as copiously as my tutor.

  Disgust set in soon afterwards. This was the man, I reminded myself, who was plotting to marry my mother and disinherit me. This was a priest who soiled himself, who was unfit to live under the same roof as a Gordon. Yes, such were the foolish thoughts of a gloomy youth who was already half in love with a man he professed to despise.

  I consoled myself with the thought that this new information gave me power over Lebecque, that I could use it to oust him from my mother’s affections and rid us of him once and for all. To that end I turned up at breakfast the next morning and cheerfully announced that I required tuition today. ‘I have reached a particularly sticky passage in Plato,’ I said to Lebecque, looking into his brown eyes that had so recently been closed in ecstasy. ‘I need a helping hand, Monsieur Lebecque. Perhaps we could work on it together?’

  ‘Of course, Charles. The Republic, or...’

  ‘The Symposium. I need you to show me what it means.’

  My mother, unversed in the classics, was delighted. ‘Oh yes, Charlie, that’s excellent! You are coming along so well.’

  ‘I feel I could come a lot quicker with a hand from Monsieur.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, folding his napkin. ‘Shall we...?’

  I held the door open for him in what I thought was a crushingly sarcastic display of politeness, and followed him up the stairs to the library, where we used to take our lessons. On the way I taunted him with questions.

  ‘Have I misconstrued the genders in Plato, Father? I mean, it seems to me that Socrates is advocating something that simply doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘No, Charles, I doubt that.’

  ‘You see, Father’ - oh, what irony I packed into the word, how pleased I was with myself — ‘a child like me cannot be expected to understand something as illogical as love between men. Is that what it means? You must explain it to me.’

  We had reached the library. This time he held the door open and ushered me inside, then closed the door firmly behind us.

  ‘Your reading of the Greeks is, as you know, exactly correct, Charles. There can be little doubt in your mind. You have experience, I believe, of the love that can exist between... comrades.’

  This took the wind out of my sails.

  ‘I told you once before, Charles, that actions are rarely dangerous. What we do, certainly in the field of human relations, is nothing compared to what we think. Or the most dangerous thing of all — what others think of us. Especially when they are ill-informed and prejudiced.’

  ‘I see.’ He had fallen into my trap. ‘So the vows that you made as a priest are more serious than the things that you might choose to do while bound by those vows.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ For the first time, Lebecque seemed uncertain of his ground.

  ‘Priests of the Roman church are celibate, are they not?’ I was the great orator, the prosecutor. I was Cicero, Alcibiades.

  ‘They are.’

  ‘And should not pursue wives.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And should renounce impurity, I imagine.’

  There was silence between us.

  ‘What are you getting at, Charles?’

  ‘Are you intending to marry my mother?’

  ‘Your mother? Oh for God’s sake -’

  ‘What about profanity? Where does the church of Rome stand on that?’

  ‘Have a care, young man.’

  ‘And what about pollution of the body?’

  Again, he was speechless. I pressed home my advantage.

  ‘Last night I watched you. I was outside your window and I watched you.’

  ‘You watched me.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I see.’

  Now he would hang his head, admit he was a fraud, pack his bags and leave Gordon Hall for good. I was magnificent.

  ‘Well, Charles, you have seen things that... I suppose it is unfit for you to see.’

  ‘I should say so. Au revoir, Monsieur Lebecque.’

  ‘No. You must understand certain things.’

  His hand was beating a tattoo against his thigh. It was impossible for me to look at him now without a vision of his hands milking a quantity of sperm across his hairy stomach. And he knew it.

  ‘There are things that happen in a man’s life, Charles...’

  ‘As I know. Remember? I had a friend once.’

  ‘Yes, of course, poor Alexander. Most regrettable.’

  ‘You destroyed his family.’

  ‘Ah, no, Charles. I saved him and his family. And you for that matter.’

  ‘You... what?’

  ‘I would like to address you as a man.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘As a man of understanding, I hope.’

  ‘What little understanding I have, sir, you taught me.’

  ‘Charl
es, for one moment come down off your high horse and listen to reason. I have tried to tell you that there is danger for you and your family. I stand between you and that danger. If not as tutor, then as comrade.’

  ‘You are not worthy to live under the same roof as my mother.’

  ‘Why? Because, as you so nicely put it, I pollute myself? Come, Charles, I am flesh and blood, as you saw.’

  Yes indeed, that I had seen very clearly. I knew what was beneath the robe. I could picture it now.

  ‘I cannot be a saint, not in this life. I would be happier if you would accept that. We are... equals in this house.’

  ‘No, sir. We are not.’

  ‘Charles...’ There was a look of imprecation in his eyes. I thought for a moment he was going to cry. With his left hand he took me by the arm. Again I saw the picture from last night, felt the heat of his grasp burning right through me. ‘I want you to know -’

  A loud smash from the lower part of the house interrupted him. Ethel’s voice raised in a scream. I heard my mother crying ‘Lebecque! Lebecque!’ and loud male voices coming from the hall.

  Lebecque grasped me tightly for a second, looked me in the eyes and ran from the room.

  He reached the bottom of the stairs a few seconds before me. The hall was full of people: my mother, Ethel, MacFarlane and half a dozen English redcoats - those devils of my childhood imagination. They were a dirty, ill-disciplined crew, leaning against the banisters, plastering their filthy hands over the walls. The leader was a little smarter than the others-a sneering, arrogant young man who stood smiling and motionless while Ethel battered on his chest with her fists.

  ‘Get out, English devils!’ she cried. ‘There is nothing for you here. Nothing!’

  Lebecque took command of the situation at once. He put a gentle arm round Ethel’s shoulders and steered her out of harm’s way, interposed himself between the soldiers and my mother.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘what is your business?’

  ‘Search and confiscate,’ drawled the sergeant. ‘Stand aside.’

  Lebecque stood his ground. ‘Which regiment?’

  ‘You’re French.’ It was not a question; it was an accusation.