Unnatural Relations

by Mike Seabroook

  The Rowes looked at him as he began to shepherd them to the stairs. "Would you be willing to tell me, Mr Bly," said Robert Rowe, "how you feel about Christopher, you personally? I can't help feeling you seem to be a bit on his side in all this."

  Bly stopped by the doors and looked candidly at him and thought for a moment. Choosing his words carefully, he said "I've got nothing against gay people in general. You learn not to make too many judgments in this job, and in the main I don't think they do anybody any harm, except maybe themselves. I feel sorry for them, and I'm bloody glad I'm not that way myself, or my own son. But when young children are involved it's a different ball game, and I've nothing but hatred and contempt. Normally I'd say this other kid was a child, but I've seen him, talked to him, and he's not like any fifteen-year-old kid I've come across. There's people out there wearing coppers' uniforms less - less adult. I must admit, it's made me think a good deal about this affair, and I think..."

  There was a long pause. Then, reluctantly, he went on, "I'm not sure that your boy is altogether... ah... blameworthy. That's not to say I condone what he's been getting up to with the boy. He shouldn't have meddled with him, he shouldn't have allowed himself to be tempted, whatever the boy's maturity, however forceful he may be. The law's cast iron on this, and so it should be, in my opinion. But...there is one other thing about Christopher..."

  They waited anxiously. "Yes," prompted Rowe.

  "I liked him," said Bly, with a slight air of confession. "I'll say that. I liked him." They went downstairs.

  ***

  "You do understand the conditions of this bail - you understand what it all implies?" asked the inspector frigidly. Christopher, white-faced and haggard, nodded silently. The inspector looked at his parents. "You're quite clear about all this? Particularly that he must have no contact with the Potten boy whatsoever?"

  "Of course not," said Rowe. "We wouldn't want him to see the boy anymore, anyway."

  "Very well. Then that's all, and you can go," said the inspector impersonally. He nodded dismissively at Christopher, who rose slowly from the chair across the table in the charge room. He turned and took a couple of steps towards his parents. He looked dazed and slightly sick. His father took him, very gently, by the arm. "Come on, my dear," he said softly, and steered him through the door, into the front office and out of the police station. Bly was standing at the top of the steps down into the street, looking out into the night. He seemed to rouse himself from a trance as the three of them made to pass him. "Good night," he murmured as they went down the steps into the street. As they passed him they just heard him add "Good luck." Christopher passed him like a spectre, not seeing or hearing anything.

  ***

  "You don't care much about him, do you?" said Angela Turnbull to Annabel, glancing curiously at her friend out of the corner of her eye as she ran the car into her garage.

  "What makes you say that?" asked Annabel Potten. Angela halted the car, switched off the engine and turned to look at Annabel. "What makes me think that?" she said in mystification. "You need to ask that, after what I've seen tonight?" She got out of the car and locked it, talking in an everyday tone as she did so. "Tonight so far you've bitched about David - well, I don't blame you for that. You've told me how terrified you are about getting into the local paper. Okay, I can imagine how you'd feel. You've heard this frightful horror story about James and everything that's happened tonight. You've been called out in the night to the police station, where you calmly made a statement to them telling them that you hardly know what your own son's been up to but that what you do know confirms what they've found out from David and his lunatic antics. And then you not only practically give your son away to that headmaster and his wife, but you refuse even to see the poor little sod. He's in the police station, Annabel. He's been dragged away from home - well, it amounts to home for him now, poor little mite - when it's damn near his bedtime, he's been locked up, interrogated, most likely bullied or pressurised, had to make a statement incriminating the person he thinks he's in love with, and then his mother turns up and refuses to see him. Refuses. Christ, even the copper that took me in to see the poor little devil told lies and made excuses for you. Not that they cut any ice with James. He's seen right through you, and lucky for him he has."

  "What did he say, then?" asked Annabel as they let themselves into the house.

  "Nothing very much," replied Angela. "He just said that he'd sort it out for himself. He said he wasn't surprised that you didn't want to see him, but he said to tell you he's all right where he is, and you're not to worry. I think he was being sarcastic. I hope he was."

  "Are you turning on me, then, Ange?" asked Annabel, looking a little anxious.

  "Me? No, I shan't turn on you. There's been a damn sight too much of people turning their backs on people in this whole shabby affair, and I'm not going to start learning from the examples I've seen about me. No, I shan't turn on you. You're welcome here with me for as long as you like. But I'm not going to try to make you feel better, or happier than you ought to be by lying to you about what I think of you. And frankly, Annabel, I don't think much of you right now. I think you've treated that poor child of yours like a leper, at the critical moment when he needed help and sympathy and people round him to love him and no strings attached.

  "I wouldn't expect that rotten hound of a husband of yours to offer him anything in the way of love or anything else. He's no good and never was, as I told you long before you married him. But I thought you'd have done something to stand by him, at least at a time like this, when he's up to his neck in trouble."

  Annabel sighed. "I didn't interfere, Ange, but don't be too hard on me. I didn't expect you to understand... I just hoped you might."

  "What are you talking about?" asked her friend, in something suspiciously close to a snort.

  "I said, I didn't interfere. Don't you see, Ange? If I had seen him tonight, if I see him at all until this thing's over, that's what it will be - interfering. Because he's not mine any more. Did you see how they looked every time they spoke of him? I mean the Lanes. They love him, in ways I never could. I couldn't love anything enough to make me look like that when I talked of it.

  "James? I quite liked him, once he'd got old enough to be a person, he was quite amusing company now and then. But I could never love him, not as most people seem able to love their children - or at least, claim they do. I'm not capable of the emotion, and that's that. I don't deserve James, and the Lanes do, and that's the way it is. Now for God's sake let's have a drink." And she helped herself liberally. Angela took a smaller drink and sat sipping it reflectively. You think you know someone, she thought, and then, out of a clear blue sky, something drops on you like a thunderbolt, and you realise you never really knew them at all...

  Annabel had two more stiff drinks and went to bed. For a long time after she had gone her friend remained sitting and sipping on the sofa, seeing again the tormented, determined, and most of all sad grey eyes looking up at her from under a dark red fringe in the grimy little interview room. There had been a moment when something she had said had brought a smile. It had been a faint one, struggling for life in a sea of circumstances, but it had been a smile, and it had lit up the dingy little room like a flare. Most of all, she thought, topping up her glass at the bar, it was his courage she admired. That smile, in such a setting, in such a predicament. If Annabel Potten, sleeping like the dead and snoring faintly, had suspected the kind of thoughts her friend was entertaining downstairs she might have slept less easily.

  ***

  "How is he?" asked Dr Lane anxiously as his wife came back into the room.

  "He's sleeping, at least," she said wearily. "John, I think we might have some - oh, you've already made some, I see."

  "Of course, my dear," he said, pouring tea into a cup he had ready for her. She sat down heavily beside him and sipped the tea appreciatively.

  "It's been a desperate day," he murmured, scratching the back of her neck ge
ntly.

  "I suppose it was always likely that something dreadful might come of the poor boy's infatuation with that wretched Christopher, but, oh dear, oh dear, John, I never feared that it might be anything as awful as this..." She trailed off, depression settling heavily over her. Her husband pursed his lips. "I agree, Edith, except that if we're to be truthful about it, it's rather the reverse, isn't it?"

  "How d'you mean?"

  "Well, if we're honest, it's that wretched Christopher who's been infatuated with Jamie, is it not?"

  "It doesn't make a lot of difference, does it?" she demanded.

  "Well, it may make quite a lot," he replied mildly. "If the unfortunate boy is charged with some offence of indecency with Jamie, and Jamie insists on claiming responsibility, well, Christopher may be let down comparatively lightly, but Jamie... well, Jamie may find that he's volunteered for some kind of punishment himself."

  "But, John, that policeman said that Jamie wouldn't be involved at all. He said..."

  "I know what he said, dear. That juvenile procedure and all the other jargon he spouted at us. Yes, it seems that Jamie would never be put through the ordeal of a court appearance - unless he can somehow insist on testifying as a witness..." She would have spoken, but he continued speaking, "I know the detective officer said that the boy would plead guilty and that therefore there would be no necessity or occasion for Jamie to appear. But we have to face the fact that Jamie wants to appear - nay, he demands it. We have to face the fact also that he is a quite extraordinarily self-willed and determined boy, as well as being, as we know, just as extraordinarily intelligent. That means that he knows what his proposed course of action may entail, and he is quite capable of circumventing any attempts to frustrate him in putting it into effect. What I'm wondering, though, is whether, in fact, we have any right to make any such attempt."

  He lit a cigarette and retreated into his own thoughts, sipping absently at his tea until he noticed that the cup was empty. "More tea?" he asked, pouring for himself. She gave him her cup.

  "As you know," he resumed, "when I first discovered the true extent of this Christopher business - good Lord, it seems like months ago, yet it's only a couple of weeks - I was clear that the only possible way to proceed was to halt it then and there and ensure that Jamie saw no more of this boy. I've since had a good many second thoughts."

  He looked round to see her regarding him in surprise. "Oh, I don't mean that I've changed my mind about letting Jamie carry on seeing the boy. Of course that's quite out of the question. But I know Jamie a very great deal better now than I did then. I know at first hand the qualities of strength and steadfastness he has. That's a good old-fashioned word one doesn't have many occasions to use nowadays. Steadfastness. But it does very accurately describe our Jamie, don't you think?"

  "I think I see what you mean," she mused. "You mean that we would be wrong to do anything, even if it was in Jamie's own interests, if it came between him and this steadfastness?"

  "Exactly, my dear. I don't think Jamie would forgive anyone who came between him and his loyalties - which are, like so many other things about him, developed to a remarkable degree for one his age. Now think, Edith, where do Jamie's loyalties lie at the moment?" He read the answer in her face and nodded. "Exactly. To Christopher. He conceives, rightly or wrongly, that he has got Christopher into this plight. I think he's wrong, I think Christopher has got himself almost entirely to blame, if only by being quite disgracefully weak and irresponsible. But does Jamie - will Jamie - see it that way? You tell me, Edith."

  She sat for a long time in thought, the light from the fire flickering on her shadowed face. Finally she said slowly, "He won't see it that way for some time, I don't think. Not until he's got Christopher out of his system."

  "I think you're quite right," he said approvingly, rather as he might commend a suggestion from one of the sixth form for a translation of a difficult line in Thucydides. "And he won't, in my judgment, begin to get Christopher out of his system as long as he feels a powerful sense of guilt about him. That's where he's truly exceptional, Edith. He feels responsible for the boy. He's years younger than Christopher; but that's only years. If maturity was all, I could make him Head Boy tomorrow. But now to the heart of it: he not only feels responsible for Christopher, he intends to take that responsibility. There's not one man in a thousand that's man enough to do that. Responsibility is an old-fashioned virtue, not at all fashionable today. But he has it."

  "John, are you sure you're not over-crediting him just a little?" Edith asked him carefully. "You're making him into almost some kind of Messiah, perhaps?"

  "No, dear, I'm sure I'm not. I remember that countless boys not two years older than Jamie lied about their age to go to the Somme. They took responsibility for whole troops of men, and they managed the burden. He could, you know, have evaded all responsibility, in any one of a dozen ways, by a couple of words, tonight. He didn't. And I ask you: can you imagine his face if either of us had suggested to him that he should avail himself of any of them? Can you?

  "Quite so," he said softly when she made no answer. "You can. So can I. Next point: is he, in all truth, wrong to feel this responsibility?"

  She waited for him to go on. He said nothing. "Is that a rhetorical question?" she eventually said.

  "No, my dear, it's not. The answer is clear, to me at least. He's right. He is responsible. And there's our conclusion. We must allow him to shoulder it, and help him to bear it in whatever ways we are able. Even..."

  She sat upright as an ominous note entered his voice. "Even," he continued slowly, "if it means that Christopher is not banished from his life at the earliest possible moment." He raised a hand in a polite gesture to her to allow him to conclude. "We have to accept that possibility, Edith, however little we like it - and I don't like it at all, any more now than I did two weeks ago when I didn't know a hundredth part of what I know now. But If Jamie decides that Christopher is not to be banished, we may well find ourselves having to accept it as a fact."

  "You may be right," his wife replied. She put a hand on his arm and gripped it hard. "But I'm not going to stand by and see him do anything to endanger himself. He's our boy, now, John, my love. We've been told so tonight, as plainly as any words could tell us. The mother is plainly no use at all, and the father is worse than useless, positively - well, demonic was the word I was going to use. Neither appears to have the slightest interest in whether the poor child lives, dies or begs for his living. That friend of the mother, Mrs Turnbull, was the only person there who gave the slightest sign of having Jamie's own interests at heart - apart from the detective, what was his name, Fry?"

  "Bly."

  "Yes, that was it, Bly. Well, apart from him, and he seemed a human enough man, all things considered, Mrs Turnbull alone seemed to be thinking about someone other than herself. I caught the tail-end of a couple of glances she threw in that woman's direction, and I shouldn't want anyone to look at me like that. As long as Jamie's in no danger, as long as he's not put at any risk, or allowed to put himself at risk, I think you're right. We'll simply have to play the thing by ear and help him however we can. Would you mind making more tea, dear? Just one more cup, and then we must go to bed. I've got a splitting headache, and you've got to be up in less than five hours."

  "Do you think he'll sleep all right?" he asked her, heading for the kitchen. "He will tonight," she said, beginning to sound a little drowsy. "I dissolved a whole mogadon in his chocolate. The poor mite was out cold in ten minutes."

  ***

  "What are we to do?" asked Audrey Rowe of her husband.

  "What about?" he riposted. "About him being qu... being hom... being - Christ, I don't even know what word to use. I've never had to discuss it except in bar-room jokes. I suppose we're going to have to start using 'gay', are we?"

  "Bob, my darling, what earthly difference does it make what word we use? He's still the same Christopher. Still the same Chris."

  "But that's just the
point," he expostulated, "he's not the same Chris. At least, he's never been the Chrissie I thought he was. That's the point, surely. Why didn't he tell us?"

  "Oh, Bob, don't be naive. How would you go about telling anybody? Especially your parents. He loves us - especially you. No, there's no need to bother. I've always known there was something special between him and you, and I've never been in the least bit jealous. Most boys are closer to their mothers - Neil is. Chris was always different. He loves me, but he worships you - just like you worship him. He's still that Chris. There's just something rather..." she groped for the word. "Something rather distasteful about him - which we find distasteful, that is - that we're going to have to come to terms with, that's all. But he is the same Chris. He's always been like this. Now he's told us, because he hadn't got a choice about it, and we're going to have to accept it, because we haven't got any choice about that, either."

  He reached for her along the sofa. She saw as she came into his arms that his eyes were glistening with tears. I haven't seen Bob cry for twenty years, she thought, and set about comforting him. It was fortunate that things had not gone very far when they heard sounds of someone coming down the stairs. She flew out of his arms and began rapidly buttoning her blouse, her fingers fumbling with the buttons in her haste. They sat apart, at opposite ends of the sofa, like teenagers disturbed by parents returning unexpectedly early. The door handle turned and Neil walked in, rubbing his eyes a little blearily.

  "Hallo," he said. "I went to bed, it got so late. That policewoman drank some of your whisky, Dad. I said she could. Then she went to sleep, and I left her to it."

  "Good for you, Neil," said his father. "The question now is, why aren't you still in bed?"