by James Lear
“So,” I said, trying to regain the upper hand, “what have you found out for me?”
“A lot more than you’ve found out, lying there dreaming of you-know-what,” he said. “Come on, let’s get you into the shade.”
I found the path that twisted into the woods, through the rhododendron thickets to the secret pond. Morgan was delighted, and started to strip with whoops of joy.
“That’s more like it!” he said, flinging his clothes far and wide. “I’m sick of this stuffy bloody hole and the stuffy bloody people that live in it. I’m going to swim.”
I was in like a shot after him, and we wasted more time in fighting and diving and splashing like a couple of otters. Finally tired of the game, we lay at the edge of the pond, both naked. I was propped against the pond’s grassy edge; Morgan’s head lay on my stomach. The water, lapping on my sunburned skin, felt like heaven.
“This is the life,” Morgan said, as I ran my fingers through his wet hair. “God, what a bloody miserable place this is. So beautiful, they’ve got all the money in the world, they’ve got all this”—he gestured around him—“and yet they’re all down in the dumps.”
“Says who?”
“Says everyone you talk to. Now listen to this, Mitch. I got chatting to the kitchen maid, nice enough girl, nothing much to look at but she’s got a fantastic pair of tits. Doesn’t have to work too hard, just does a bit of washing up, bit of cooking, bit of cleaning, she has a much better life than most of the girls of her position I’ve known, and I’ve known a few.” He started toying with his cock at this point; obviously I would never convert him entirely to my way of thinking.
“Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, she’s got nothing much to complain about, and the chef is a nice old bloke, French, of course, but perfectly decent all the same. Well, the moment I had said ‘hello’ to her and come up with some cock-and-bull story about getting lost on the way to the garden, she was off. Bloody this, bloody that, unfair this, unfair that. Can’t stand the housekeeper. Can’t stand the footman. Can’t bloody stand the bloody butler; hates him with a vengeance, the little minx. Didn’t take much to find out why, either. He’s come between her and her true love. I could have told you that. Turns out she’s been seeing that young Hibbert fellow who came and picked us up at the station.”
“Oh, the good-looking, dark-skinned one? Yes, he has a bit of a reputation belowstairs.”
“Suppose you wouldn’t mind having a go at finding out why, eh?” Morgan said, grinning up at me and splashing a bit of water in the general direction of my face. “Anyway, big Susie the kitchen maid reckons that the only thing that’s standing between her and marrying Mr. Hibbert and finding a decent position as a housekeeper and butler in their own right is our friend Burroughs. By the way, I hope he enjoyed the show this morning.”
“I certainly did.”
“Yes, well I could see that, you randy bastard. But I noticed that he never touched himself. Couldn’t even see any sign of a stiffie. Do you think the old boy’s past it?”
“Past certain things, maybe, but his brain is still functioning even if his cock isn’t.”
“Oh, well. We brought the old fellow a bit of happiness, I suppose. I didn’t mind. Rather liked it, actually. Other chaps looking at me and all that. Suppose you’ve noticed I sometimes get stiff in the changing rooms after rowing.”
“Yeah, I had noticed something like that. Stop talking about your cock, Morgan, or I’ll have to fuck you again.”
“Christ, don’t know if I’m ready for that yet—my arse is feeling a bit tender after last night. Mind you—look at that! Part of me is interested.”
His cock, like mine, was well on the way to being stiff. Time to change the subject before, once again, sex got the upper hand.
“Who else did you talk to down there?”
“I had a word with Hibbert, of course.”
“Oh, yes.”
“He’s got no time for Meeks either, though he was a good deal more charitable about Burroughs, as you might expect. But as for Meeks; no, he’s glad to see the back of him. Wants his position, I suppose, which you can understand, but there was more to it than that. Nothing he’d come right out and say. Things like ‘ideas above his station’ and ‘class traitor,’ that sort of thing. I suspect Mr. Hibbert is a bit of a Bolshevik.”
“Maybe. But I’m beginning to wonder about Charlie Meeks. Why him? Why would anyone imagine that he was a killer? Why is everyone so eager to get rid of him?”
“And why does Burroughs love him so much, apart from the obvious?”
“Why, indeed. Go on.”
“That was it, really. Oh, and I saw that poor hall boy, Simon. Sweet kid. Grinned from ear to ear when he saw me coming, but couldn’t tell me much. Deaf as a post and can’t talk properly. Showed me some nasty burns on his wrists; chef said the poor little sod was always hurting himself, carrying bedpans and laying fires, that sort of thing. I would have liked to help him out, actually. But it was nearly eleven, and some of us had appointments to keep.”
“Tell me more about the burns. What were they like?”
“Just round his wrists. Looked a bit sore, really. Must have touched hot metal, something like that.”
“On both wrists?”
“Yes. Doesn’t seem very likely, does it?”
“Not at all. I suspect Simon knows more than he can tell.”
“I’d better have another word with him.”
“Sounds like you’re rather eager to get to know our little hall boy.”
“Jealous, Mitch?”
“Of him? No.”
“Of whom, then?”
“Who do you think?”
“Come on, not jealous of Belinda, are you?”
“A bit.”
“Well you’re bloody mad, then.”
“Am I?”
“Look, Mitch. Belinda is a lovely girl. And yes, I’m in love with her and I’m going to marry her. It’s the real thing, not like Rex and that bloody awful ice maiden he’s marrying for all the wrong reasons, just to please Mum and Dad, if you ask me. No, I love Billie and we’re going to have a family. But that doesn’t mean that you and I aren’t going to be great pals, does it? Doesn’t mean we won’t have fun. I mean, we’ve already done a hundred times more in the last twenty-four hours than Billie and I have done in a year and a half.”
“Okay.”
“So stop worrying and start applying your great mind to the matter in hand.”
I was about to cement this new entente by sucking his dick, when the summer silence was broken by the sound of thundering hooves and a horse neighing at close quarters. The woods, it seemed, were not quite as secret as Leonard had led me to believe.
Morgan and I lay low, our heads barely peeping over the grassy bank of the pool. The hooves pounded nearer, and through the dark leaves and branches we could see flashes of a brown flank, a tossing mane and tail. And then it broke into the clearing around the pool, a handsome chestnut mare—and riding on its back were two naked men.
Once we had recovered from the shock of this dream-like apparition, Morgan and I padded off in the direction in which the horse had disappeared. The ground was covered with dead leaves and twigs, so we had to move carefully so as not to make too much noise—but once we reached the shelter of the rhododendron bushes, beneath which nothing settled or grew, we could proceed faster, if less comfortably, as we were obliged to bend and duck to avoid the branches. Both of us were fleet of foot, and it gave me great pleasure to watch Morgan’s buttocks jiggling a few feet ahead of me.
Suddenly he stopped and gestured for silence. I could hear the unmistakable sound of the horse grazing, tearing up mouthfuls of grass, and occasionally stamping a hoof or snorting. And I could hear laughter.
Morgan crept toward the edge of the bushes, the side farthest from the house, which gave onto a strip of untended field that, after fifty yards or so, crumbled into cliffs. We crouched shoulder to shoulder, blinking out into the dazz
ling sunshine. Flies buzzed around us, landing on our shoulders.
There was the horse, untethered and grazing at will. And there, between us and the horse, perhaps only fifteen feet away, were its two naked riders.
One of them I recognized—the gardener whom I had seen mowing the lawn. He had close-cropped black hair, and looked as if he might be of Mediterranean extraction, with olive skin that tanned easily. I had an uninterrupted view of his face as he lay in a half-seated position, his hands behind his head, his neck and shoulders raised from the ground, which tensed his abdominal muscles.
I couldn’t see his companion at first, until I noticed some movement in the long grass, something dark and hairy bobbing around a few inches beneath the gardener’s belly. It was a head.
The gardener’s eyes were closed, and he was thoroughly enjoying his midmorning blow job. Morgan and I were enjoying it too; after a few moments of spying on this private moment, we were both erect, though there was little we could do about it without drawing attention to our presence.
After a while, the gardener reached down and drew his friend up to his level. At first I thought the second man was wearing an undershirt, a jersey of some sort—but then, on more careful inspection, I realized that he was just very, very hairy. Now, I’m on the hairy side, and even at twenty I had more hair on my chest and stomach than any of my contemporaries in college. But this fellow made me look positively glabrous. Short, dark hair curled on his shoulders, his neck, and down his back, where it lay glossy against his flanks. When the young man turned around, I saw what appeared to be a doormat on his chest, with two pink nipples poking through. His face, when it was revealed, was heavily stubbled—just a morning’s growth, I assumed—and above his eyes was a single, continuous brow. The hair on his head was a rich, dark brown, much the same color as the horse he’d ridden in on.
“It’s the groom,” whispered Morgan in my ear. “I’ve seen him at the stables.”
The two young men, unaware that they were being observed, sat together in the grass, kissing and stroking each other; I had the impression, from the obvious intimacy between them, that this was no casual, spur-of-the-moment fuck, but a regular liaison. I felt bad watching them—but not so bad that I was about to tear myself away. Besides which, Morgan had me rooted firmly to the spot, having worked a wet finger up my hole. This had the effect of making my cock dribble.
The groom stood up—and I was tickled to see that, far from being totally naked, he was still wearing a pair of dirty old black riding boots. He stood with his hands on his hips, allowing us to see that the pelt of hair went from the line around his neck to which he shaved, all the way to his legs. His nipples, his hands, his upper arms, and his cock were the only parts of him that were not hairy—and their relative nakedness drew more attention than usual to these interesting parts. His cock was long, fatter in the middle than at either end; looming against the summer sky, it looked not unlike a zeppelin emerging from a hairy cloud.
The gardener soon had it safely imprisoned in his mouth and, kneeling at his friend’s feet, proceeded to give a blow job that even I would have been proud to administer. Here was someone who had evidently had as much practice in the art as me, and possibly had an even greater natural flair for it. The groom clasped the gardener’s head, and they stared into each other’s eyes.
Morgan was fucking me with two fingers now, and I had the distinct impression that he wanted to have more than just fingers in me; so far he had only taken the passive role in our sexual adventures, and I was pleased to see that he wanted to turn the tables. I was torn between the desire to continue watching the show and the desire to drag Morgan back indoors and let him do his worst. As I was pondering this difficult choice, the young man in the boots pulled his dick out of his friend’s mouth and squirted a huge load of come in his face—one of the biggest loads I have ever seen. The gardener closed his eyes and, mouth open, took all of it. Some of it landed on his tongue, some on his cheeks, his eyelids, and his chin, and from there it ran down his neck. Thus garnished, he lay back, pumped his hand in his groin a few times, and let go of his own load—and I swear I saw semen jumping above the level of the tall grass. The lovers lay back and disappeared from view, and I was left with nothing to concentrate on but the sensation of Morgan’s two fingers battering the walls of my ass.
Time had flown by—and I suddenly realized that lunchtime was approaching. I was about to pry myself unwillingly off Morgan’s fingers and hasten back to the pool to collect my clothes when, to my horror, I saw the two fellows getting up from their improvised bed in the grass—and walking straight toward us. I had no choice but to stay put, holding my breath and desperately thinking up some plausible lie that would explain our naked presence.
The gardener and the groom approached the rhododendrons—and stopped, just inches from us. Fortunately, the sun was behind us, dazzling their eyes and not revealing our position, otherwise we would have been discovered for sure. But instead of proceeding through the bushes, they stood there, side by side—and started pissing in unison. Two long, thick streams of urine hit the dark, dusty green leaves of the rhododendrons; a few drops splashed through to where Morgan and I were hiding, sprinkling us with a fine golden mist. We could not move (I for one didn’t want to); we just had to keep quiet and watch.
The two boys were in a playful mood, and splashed their piss all over the bushes. The gardener aimed at his friend’s boots; this led to a certain amount of fighting, though the streams of piss remained undiminished. Finally they finished and, in a rather touching gesture, shook the last drops off each other’s prick. Then they raced each other back to the horse, bounded onto its back, and trotted off.
When they were safely out of earshot, Morgan and I looked at each other and burst into laughter. He pulled his fingers out of my hole, kissed me on the lips (heedless of the fine mist of piss on my face), and dragged me to my feet.
“Come on,” he said. “We’d better bathe.”
VIII
VINCENT WEST WAS PACING ANXIOUSLY IN THE MARBLED vestibule, looking at his watch, pretending to take an interest in the statues dotted around the place. Clearly he was not encouraged to show himself in public parts of the house; his existence was eked out in Sir James’s office and his own bachelor quarters. I dashed in from the garden, slightly out of breath; the shock of bathing, dressing quickly, and running across the lawn on such a hot afternoon had taken its toll. I checked myself quickly in one of the huge, gilt-framed mirrors that lined the walls, making sure that I didn’t look too sex-crazed—I didn’t want to frighten West away. Looking at him now, as he paced the hall, not knowing he was observed, I saw a curious mixture of energy and restraint—a man who longed for excitement, affection, and status but who was forced by circumstance to curb his desires.
“Mr. West.”
He spun on his heel. “Thought you weren’t coming. Let’s go. I hate this bloody museum.”
Looking around him, he opened the front door (I suspect that, as staff, he was not meant to use it) and ushered me quickly through.
“Where are we going? Aren’t you going to show me around the house?”
“Not bloody likely. We’re going to the pub. If I don’t get out of this madhouse, they’ll have to lock me up for good.”
He closed the door behind us and jogged across the gravel of the drive. Released from his prison, he suddenly looked five years younger. What kept a man of such potential in these straitened circumstances?
As soon as we were through the gates, West relaxed. A smile broke through the habitual gloom of his countenance, and for the first time I realized that he was a handsome man.
“What a beautiful day!” he said, turning around and looking at the sky, the hedgerows, and the sea beyond. “Sometimes I never see the outside world for days at a time. Shouldn’t be out here today. Sir James is keeping me close by him with a lot of useless bloody correspondence to his constituents. Funny that it should suddenly be so urgent.”
&nbs
p; Mr. West, clearly, was in an indiscreet mood. I had little to do but to let him talk.
“Pig farming, grazing rights, motor vehicle access, all those subjects that he cares about so deeply.” He had picked up a stick and was whacking viciously at the cow parsley that fringed the road. “I’ve had enough of it all. God, I need a beer.”
At the pace that West was setting, we reached the village in less than ten minutes, during which time he had vented his spleen. I bought beer and sandwiches, which we took out into the pub’s garden, a perfect confection of geraniums and fuchsias and marigolds. We found a spot under a tree and sat down for our picnic. West took a great draft of beer, wiped the foam from his lips, and finally relaxed.
“Thanks for the treat,” he said. “Can’t pay you back, I’m afraid. Not on my wages. Have to take what I can get. It’s not a nice position for a man to be in, but there’s no point in beating about the bush. I’m very grateful. You’re the first person I’ve been able to talk to since... Well, never mind. Cheers, Mr. Mitchell.”
“Mitch.”
He grinned again. Mr. West, the Confidential Secretary, had vanished, and in his place was a friendly, bookish young man with broad shoulders and a slim waist.
“And I suppose, if you absolutely insist, you can call me Vince.”
We clinked our pint mugs and drank for a moment in silence. His expression darkened again.
“I hope you don’t think I’m being disloyal....”
“To whom? To Sir James?”
“Precisely. But I feel I must speak to somebody.”
“I’m all ears.”
“I thought, when you arrived, that you might be... sympathetic.”
This was the sort of coded Anglicism that I had long since learned to translate. “Oh, believe me, Vince,” I said, placing a hand discreetly on his, “I’m extremely sympathetic.” He beamed at the contact, and the sympathy, and allowed my hand to rest on his.
