The Peter & Charlie Trilogy

by Gordon Merrick

  She made an enormous effort to hold herself in her chair. She fought against going to the kitchen for a drink. She didn’t want it to happen in a daze of alcohol. She wanted to experience it coldly and conquer her craving for new young bodies.

  At last, she heard voices and a door close. When nobody appeared in the garden, she supposed they had gone out the side door. She sprang up and went directly to her room—their room—but it had become more and more hers. She pulled the cover from the big double bed and mussed the sheets and punched the pillow. She stripped off everything she had on and put the clothes neatly away. She avoided looking at her body. Its hunger shamed her. She pulled on a straight sack dress and slipped her feet into sandals and was ready. She stood for a moment, listening to the house. She heard nothing. She went out to the foot of the steep stairs that led to George’s study and, as an extra precaution, called his name. There was no answer. She slipped noiselessly down the stairs and through the garden and was gone.

  Peter opened the letter he had saved for last from the batch that had come in on the morning boat. The house was very still. Charlie was working. Martha and the children were having their afternoon naps. Peter was waiting for Jeff in the room that was officially his bedroom but in which he never slept. It was furnished as his office, with a bed thrown in.

  The letter was from a friend, Raoul Bertin, who had a famous restaurant in the south of France. Peter had kept it for last because it was the one that interested him most in today’s lot. He had read in the newspapers a month earlier about the robbery at Raoul’s restaurant. In the French tradition, Raoul had fed a great many needy painters over the years and had been given a great many pictures. Some of them had been painters who later had become important names in contemporary art and they formed the nucleus of a collection to which Raoul had extensively, if not judiciously, added. It was a quite important but uneven collection. A month ago, a large part of it had been stolen. Peter ran his eyes over the letter, finding, as he had hoped, that it was about the theft.

  … I have a very good idea who did it … transporting themselves by yacht … the pictures will be divided into lots and disposed of around the Mediterranean, in Spain, Egypt, perhaps Turkey and Greece … this is not certain knowledge but suppositions fabricated with what I have heard.… I do not cooperate with the police. In recent years, I have had reason to believe that some of the pictures are fakes. Have you not suspected yourself, my friend, that some were not quite right? The insurance is very good. I will be able to console myself if I never see them again. Because you are there, you may hear noises of them. For myself, I will be happy if you seal your ears. You are a man of big scruples and may feel obliged to act. That will be your affair. I write so that you do not concern yourself very much for a friend’s loss.…

  Peter finished the letter with a smile and tossed it down on the desk in front of him. After a moment’s thought, he tore it into very small pieces and went to the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet. A waste of precious water, but Raoul really shouldn’t have written that he was prepared to cheat his insurance company. Peter had been sure that quite a lot of the collection was fake but had never said so; he had tactfully refused when Raoul had hinted that perhaps Peter might arrange the sale of some of them.

  He started back to his desk and then remembered that he was naked and picked up his loincloth from where he had dropped it and hitched it around his waist. As he did so, he heard the front door open and close down below. It had its particular sound. Costa? Jeff? He had told Jeff where he would be so that he could let himself in without disturbing any of the household. Nobody ever locked their doors here. Costa always seemed to know instinctively where he would find anybody he wanted. In a moment, he heard footsteps crossing the room next door and he went to the door to greet his visitor.

  “Hello, young ’un,” he said, standing aside to let Jeff enter. The boy offered him the ghost of a smile as he slouched in. He had very wide shoulders, but the rest of him was still in the formative stage so that he looked rather as if he had been hung on a coathanger. He had big hands and feet that suggested he still had some growing to do. He would probably be as tall as his father, a couple of inches taller than Peter, who just grazed six feet. Jeff slumped into a chair, his arms and legs all whichaway. Peter pulled the chair out from his desk and placed it near him. “Do you want anything? Coffee? A cold drink?”

  “No. I’m fine.” Jeff’s voice was deep and pleasing. A lot of dark hair fell over his forehead. Heavy brows rose into it. He had a strong straight nose and a delicately sculpted mouth. His face would probably be slightly craggy, handsome and masculine when finally formed, but there was still something softly androgynous about it that didn’t appeal to Peter. His eyes were enormous and fascinating, full of intelligence and dreams; they roved constantly to Peter, to the ceiling, to the shuttered windows. He had never been seen with a girl, although the intensity of his manner seemed to herald the birth of passion. It was one of the things that had made him and Charlie wonder.

  “Any news of the family fortune?” Peter asked as he sat.

  “The money?” Jeff shrugged and ran powerful fingers through his hair, a mannerism he had presumably acquired from his father. “Dad’s probably put it somewhere in the house. He’s so drunk most of the time, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’ll find it.”

  “It would be too bad if Costa gets into trouble if it’s as simple as that.”

  Jeff’s eyes shot to him and away. “They can’t do anything to him if they don’t have any evidence.”

  “I hope you’re right. Did your celebrated guest arrive?”

  “Mike Cochran? I like him. There’s something peculiar about him.”

  “Really?”

  “The way he looks at me. He’s supposed to have had all these women.” Jeff flung his long bare brown legs about and dropped his head onto the back of the chair. He looked at Peter through half-closed eyes. “I guess you know what I wanted to talk about. I’m in love with Dimitri.”

  “I see.” Peter had expected a more roundabout approach. (“Is it possible for a guy——?” Or, “I have this strange feeling.…”) He should have realized that, growing up here, Jeff would take for granted all the permutations in the range of physical love. “Let me think. You’re almost eighteen, aren’t you?”

  “I’ll be eighteen when I go to Harvard in the fall. Are you thinking I don’t know anything about love? I don’t.” He pulled himself forward and propped his elbows on his knees and gripped the sides of his head with his hands. He stared at the floor. “All I know is that I’ve been passionately attracted to him ever since he came back in the spring. That’s why I had to talk to you.”

  Peter was touched. Jeff was almost two years younger than he had been when he had met Charlie and had his first sexual experience. He tried to imagine what it would have been like for him to have had this sort of conversation at the time and realized that it would have been impossible. He rose and went to his desk and found that he had nothing to do there. He turned back to Jeff. “Do you want to talk or do you want me to ask you questions?”

  “Either way. You can ask me anything you want.” He lifted his head and dropped his hands. The unabashed adoration in his great dark eyes made Peter’s throat tighten. The gift of youth engaged his responsibility. Jeff went on, “You and Charlie are my gods. You must know that. I couldn’t talk to Charlie like this—he’s so sort of aloof and above it all—but I worship him, too.”

  Peter cleared his throat. “We’re very fond of you, Jeff. We’ve talked about you and wondered. We thought something might be going on with you and Dimitri. What’s the matter? Has it gone wrong? Is he giving you a bad time?”

  “You don’t understand.” Jeff slumped back in the chair with his hands between his legs. The ghostly smile hovered on his lips. “Nothing has happened. I mean, nothing. Ever. Not with Dimitri or anybody else. I haven’t wanted sex until Dimitri, and he wouldn’t have anything to do with me. He said I w
as too young. He was afraid of having trouble with my father.”

  “That sounds suprisingly sensible of him,” Peter said, returning to his chair.

  “That’s changed now. Something’s happened—I can’t tell you all of it—he’s agreed to let me stay with him tonight.”

  “Ah?” An unformed thought strayed through Peter’s mind and was gone. “Well, there’s not much anybody can say at a moment like this. Are you sure you know what you’re getting into? You’re too intelligent for me to tell you that we all go through phases and that sort of thing. I just wish it weren’t Dimitri.”

  “I know. I know all about him. I know he’ll go to bed with any man who comes along. I had to pretend I’d had a lot of experience before he’d even look at me. I haven’t the slightest idea what sex is all about. That’s why I had to come to you. I couldn’t talk to the queers around town. They’d just try to make me and I don’t want that. Please, Peter. I want you to tell me what I ought to know.”

  “That’s a big order, love. Do you know what he likes in bed, for instance?”

  “Oh, yes, I know that. I can’t imagine doing it. All the kids here sodomize each other. They’ve tried to get me to join them, but they’re so ugly and it seems so animal. I know size means a lot to him. He never stops talking about it, but I don’t even know if I’d be considered big or little. I’m terrified. I don’t want tonight to traumatize me for life.”

  Peter suppressed a smile. His solemnity was comic, but also touching. “You sound a bit mixed up. There’s no law that says you have to go to bed with a boy.”

  “Oh, I know about myself. I always have.” He pulled his hands out from between his legs and ran them up, palms flat, over his stomach and rested them on his chest, wide fingertips touching. The insidious, unconscious seductive wiles of youth. The ghostly smile brightened. “I should’ve been born in Delos. I would’ve been a naked dancing boy and performed unspeakable rites before a monumental phallus. I’ve known about myself even before I knew anything about sex. I remember reading about Apollo and Hyacinth when I was a kid—one of those children’s mythologies with all the sex and meaning taken out—and I almost fainted, it was so beautiful. I understood completely without knowing what I understood. I knew the story was about Apollo being in love with a beautiful boy and it almost made me swoon. Literally. Who’d mind having a discus between the eyes if they’d had erect Apollo? To me, the phallus is the most thrillingly beautiful form in nature. I see it in everything. It’s life itself. I don’t see how anybody can help worshipping it. I wish mine was a yard long. When I masturbate—I do a lot—I think of you and Charlie with huge erections. Two beautiful huge phalli.”

  “Goodness. I do believe I’m blushing.” Peter was glad to be able to let himself laugh. “Charlie probably qualifies, but there’s nothing very special about me.”

  “I wonder how people get to be homosexual. I should think everybody would be, but since they’re not there must be some reason for it. Does anybody know? I mean, I know the theory about the dominating mother and the inadequate father, but it hasn’t been like that for me. Dad’s always been wonderful until recently. I realize that knowing you and Charlie, seeing what a wonderful life you have together, and knowing you’re in love with each other—that helped me not to be ashamed of it but even if I’d been brought up in the States where it’s supposed to be a fate worse than death, I’d still worship men. The divine phallus. Do you know why that is?”

  Peter smiled and shook his head. “Not a glimmer. It was different for me, but the result was the same. I grew up without knowing anything about it. As far as I knew, I’d never even seen a queer, but when Charlie looked at me the day I met him I knew exactly what I wanted.” Peter lifted his head and laughed. “The only way it makes sense is if we’re all bisexual and some of us suppress the homo part more than others. Maybe I’d have been for girls if I hadn’t fallen so in love with Charlie. The important thing is not to close yourself off to any development. You might have a surprise yourself someday.”

  “You’re so relaxed and sure. You make me feel as if I can say anything to you. Would you let me see you naked?”

  Peter was startled, but managed not to show it. “I’m fairly naked already. Would a little more make any difference?”

  “Of course. You know that. If you’d let me see you naked, I’d get an erection. If I were naked too, you could tell me if I’m anywhere near big enough to interest Dimitri. Don’t you understand? I know that anything you tell me will be right. You make everything seem good. I don’t want it all ruined tonight because of my abysmal ignorance.” He flung a leg over the arm of the chair and dropped his head back and stared at the ceiling. His long neck had a prominent Adam’s apple. It bobbed up and down as he spoke musingly. “Do you know that thing—Homer or somebody—about the birth of Apollo? He came forth into light. Maybe gods do. Everything has always seemed pretty dark to me.” He suddenly dropped his head forward and covered his face with his hands. “It’s so damned important to me,” he said in a deep painful growl.

  Peter was moved by him, but not remotely tempted. It had been years since he had even thought of making love to a boy, not necessarily out of loyalty to Charlie or because his basic sexual drive was any less unequivocally homosexual but because he was simply no longer interested.

  Peter didn’t quite know how it had happened; it was one of Charlie’s miracles. He had demonstrated to Peter, by insisting that he share Martha, that he was capable of giving pleasure to women and could derive pleasure from them. The discovery had broadened and opened out the world for him. His occasional heterosexual experiences offered the revivifying titillation of novelty and the comfort of knowing that they were incapable, through some private chemical eccentricity, of throwing him off course emotionally. As Charlie had doubtless hoped, they had somehow eliminated the temptation of boys.

  Peter looked at the tormented boy in front of him and chose his words carefully so as not to let their conversation get out of control. He didn’t want to add to his torment or make him feel rebuffed. “I don’t have to see you with an erection to have a pretty good idea of how you’re built,” he said. “You’re all right.”

  “You’ve noticed?”

  “Sure. I’m no longer in the market but I still take a scholarly interest in guys’ crotches.”

  Jeff looked up and his smile was suddenly boyish and vivid. “You’re extraordinary. You’re so natural. I don’t know any grownup like you. To be perfectly honest, I don’t feel any age difference between us at all. You might not think that’s a compliment but it’s meant to be. It’s amazing. You will let me see you naked, won’t you?”

  “I’ve never been shy about stripping, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea under these particular circumstances.”

  “You mean because of Charlie?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You’re faithful to him, aren’t you?”

  “Of course, but stripping for you wouldn’t be unfaithful to Charlie. Anyway, we found out long ago that we can’t be unfaithful to each other. I have a girl every now and then, but he likes that. We all have our queer patches. That’s Charlie’s. He gets a kick out of thinking of me with a girl.” He paused, thinking of the girl on the port at noon. He directed his attention back to Jeff. “The last time I was almost unfaithful was with Dimitri, God help us, and that was ten years ago when we first came to Greece on that cruise with Martha and her husband. When we bought the house.”

  Jeff’s eyes had widened with interest. “What was he like?”

  “About the same age as you are now. Very innocent and appealing. Not as beautiful as he is now. Quite small, by the way, if that’s as important to you as you make it sound.”

  “It’s important to him. I don’t know what’s important to me,” Jeff burst out, flinging himself about in the chair. “I haven’t wanted sex until now. It seemed dirty to me. I realize that that’s because with kids there’s no love. I’m ready for love now. I’ve got to c
ome to terms with sex. If I don’t, I’ll end up with fantasies about you and Charlie and Apollo, and masturbating for the rest of my life. Is it mad for me to be a homosexual and think I can have a good life? Is it very difficult?”

  “I suppose so. Maybe more difficult than for other people, but making a good life isn’t easy for anybody. I have no complaints but——” He paused and his habitually sunny expression clouded briefly. “It can be weird sometimes. Being queer, I mean. You go along leading a good life—I mean, really good—loving and living for love the way everybody agrees is good—and then some trivial little event of the day reminds you that you’re supposed to think of yourself as a monster. Charlie fought it at the beginning. He threw me out to get married. I mean a regular marriage, not the nutty setup we have now. Well, you’ve probably heard about that. For a long time after we got together again, we tried to hide it. You know, pretended with everybody that we were just good friends. That does a lot of damage. Then Martha came along and by some fantastic freak of luck she turned out to be the one woman in ninety million we could work things out with, to have the children and everything. The thing I don’t tell most people is that if she hadn’t come along, we’d have been fine without her. It’s been marvelous but as much as I adore the family, Charlie is still the center of life and always has been. People may be fooled by us but we’ve never fooled ourselves about that. Yes, dammit, of course a homosexual can have a good life.”

  Jeff was staring at him. Peter was astonished to see that his eyes were liquid with tears. “There’s so much love and understanding between you,” he said wonderingly. “Why isn’t everybody like that? When I think of what goes on at home, it makes me sick. My father turning into a drunken wreck. My mother running after young men who aren’t much older than I am. And they never talk to each other. They fight, but they never say the truth. You weren’t here so you didn’t meet Ronnie, but you must know all about it. He was after me. I wouldn’t have him so Mother grabbed him instead. That’s why tonight is so important to me. I’ve got to start some time. I’ve got to make a life for myself. I may really be in love with Dimitri but I’ll never find out if I go to him like this, all tied up in knots.” His voice strangled on his words. He lifted his fists and pressed them to the sides of his head. “I’m going out of my mind. He’ll see that I’m an inexperienced kid and throw me out. Oh God, Peter, you could help me so.” He closed his eyes and tears spilled down his cheeks.