by David Rees
I had a good look: it was expected. As was my agreeing with his assessment. But she did nothing for me; she was just so much bare flesh. A girl with extremely large tits. So what? I felt uneasy. It was bad enough, living a life of pretence with Louise, Leslie, and the others; but I had learned to cope with that. Now it seemed to be intruding into other areas of my existence: would I be able to get by? I’d be found out. That was my worst fear.
He put the newspaper away, and started to talk about whether Exeter City would keep their place in the third division next season. That was the end, I hoped, of showing me that he liked page three of the Sun and assuming that I did too. But I was wrong. On subsequent mornings, I was often asked for my views on the girl of the day. ‘I wouldn’t turn her down,’ was his comment on one of these creatures, who was sticking her bottom out in a supposedly provocative manner. I thought she looked quite revolting.
‘Dad, I didn’t know you were a sex maniac,’ I said, lightly. ‘Whatever would Mum say?’
‘It’s natural, isn’t it?’
I imagined it was. For everyone in the world, it seemed, except me. ‘What’s wrong with Mum?’
‘Nothing.’ My question surprised him. ‘Nothing at all. What made you ask that?’
‘I wasn’t being serious.’
‘I should hope not, indeed! Your mother and I are very happily married. Always have been. Never any trouble between us of that sort. But there’s no harm in looking at a picture. We’re all human,aren’t we?’
‘Oh yes.’
He laughed. ‘I’m not one of those old fuddy-duddies who’ve forgotten what it was like to be fifteen. I should say nearly sixteen: only two months now to your birthday. Good God! It makes me feel old!’
We had arrived at the village of Marhamchurch, which I hoped would bring an end to this topic of conversation. There was work to do, leaving the correct number of bottles outside each house, he taking one side of the road and me the other. He would surely come back to the van with something else on his mind: Mrs Powelsland’s youngest girl had been ill yesterday, and he’d have news of whether she was better or worse or much the same; Mrs Oke wanted two extra pints because she had visitors arriving, and Dad would tell me whether it was her brother and his family or her parents-in-law; Mr Honeychurch had run off with someone else’s wife a few weeks ago, and Mrs Honeychurch was now carrying on with a lad of seventeen who milked the cows at Fuidge Farm, but this lad was also carrying on with a girl from Whitstone who was no better than she should be, and Mrs Honeychurch had caught them, red-handed, on Saturday night: Dad would undoubtedly give me a progress report on that particular shemozzle.
But he didn’t. As we drove up the road towards Bridgerule, he said ‘How are you getting on with Louise these days?’
‘What do you mean,’ I asked, guardedly, ‘how are we getting on?’
‘Nothing special. You seem to spend a lot of your free time with her.’
‘When I ought to be studying?’
‘I didn’t say that. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. No... I just wondered... if... ’
‘If what?’
‘If everything was all right. No need to get so prickly about it! I was only asking a friendly question.’
Help! I thought. He wonders if we’ve been to bed together! ‘She’s just someone to go around with,’ I told him. ‘There’s nothing in it at all. Absolutely nothing.’
He smiled, then went on, as if he hadn’t taken in a single word I’d been saying, ‘It’s not very easy at your age... controlling your feelings. . . I’m always here if you want to ask my advice. You do know that, Ewan, don’t you?’
‘Of course.’
I stared out of the window at the passing fields, acutely embarrassed. Was he trying to say something about contraceptives? It would be so good, so really good, to tell him exactly what was troubling me, to hear him say it didn’t matter, that he understood, that it was a phase he’d been through himself; but he wouldn’t: he’d be appalled. If this went on, I suddenly realised, if it wasn’t something I could grow out of, I’d be cut off — for ever maybe — from my parents in one of the most important areas of life. It was too bleak even to contemplate. ‘Tell me about Mrs Honeychurch,’ I said, wanting to return to the safe, ordinary topics of our conversations. ‘Has Gilbert made his peace with her? Given up the Whitstone girl? Or is he having it away with somebody else?’
When exams were over Leslie and I hardly bothered to attend school. The weather was magnificent and as the beach was only ten minutes’ walk from home our days were spent swimming and surfing. June, July. I spent much more of my time with Leslie than with Louise. She wasn’t particularly interested in the sea, like so many people who are brought up within sight and sound of it, whereas he and I often said it was the only thing that made existence in Bude just about tolerable. He had abandoned Linda and was after other girls. Something struck him that had been obvious to me for ages: women found him good-looking, attractive, and sexy. He could choose almost any girl he wanted. And the ones he was interested in now let him go a bit further than Linda had. Though not as far as he hoped, he admitted when I pressed him on the subject, not far enough by a long chalk. Which, he said, in the end was less satisfactory than Linda: he got frantically worked up and there was no relief whatsoever. Except by himself, he said, grinning shyly, as if he was introducing into the conversation something that shouldn’t be mentioned; it was, he added, a stage he would like to leave behind. Women! They were holding him back, frustrating him, preventing him from moving into the next department of life. ‘What about you?’ he asked.
‘Me? Oh... I’ve nothing to report.’
He was silent. Then said ‘You’re a dark horse, Ewan.’
The summer heatwave seemed to go on for ever. We wore only shorts and sandals, and even that, most of the day, was too much: we were constantly plunging into the sea just to cool off. We both began to take a serious interest in surfing. We’d been able to use a board for years, from almost the time we could swim; I can hardly remember when we couldn’t. But until now it had been merely a pastime, just fun to wrestle with the swell or flirt with danger, enjoying the sensation of excitement as we shot towards the beach ahead of a really good wave. Now we began to look at it as a particular kind of skill, one which we wanted to learn to the best of our abilities. We had both asked for, and got, new malibu boards for our sixteenth birthdays. Bude is a surf town, though not as popular as it used to be. The sea is often excellent, as good as anywhere in England, but treacherous currents can make even swimming impossible, particularly at low tide. And the beaches face only one way — west — whereas further down the coast, at Newquay for instance, there are three different directions owing to the structure of the cliffs and the positions of the headlands, so that if the surf is poor at one place it is more than likely good or first class at the others. ‘Next year, if I can, I shall spend the whole summer at Newquay,’ Leslie said one morning, when we found ourselves staring at water as flat and useless as a millpond.
We read books on the subject. And joined the local Surf Club. We became almost fanatical about it; we could hardly talk of anything else. My parents must have found us extremely boring. ‘Make the most of it,’ Mum said. ‘The long hot summer won’t last for ever.’ She was trying to be particularly nice to me: C.S.E. results had arrived. I hadn’t done at all well. Nor had Leslie. We went down to the social security together and signed on. There were few jobs available. We tried for what seemed within our capabilities, but none of the bosses wanted to know. A few even laughed.
So, more concentration on surfing. We improved, rapidly. And started to experiment with the more difficult and spectacular techniques: going in the tube (which means allowing the wave to curl right over you) or trying a spinner (you whisk the board round in a 180 degree turn) or a side slide (you come down the wave parallel to it instead of at an angle). Leslie was stronger than me, a heavier sort of person. He could conquer waves I wouldn’t even dare to at
tempt, but I was the first to execute a perfect spinner and master the skill of the side slide. I had more finesse, he said, a greater delicacy. We wanted to try our luck in a championship; neither of us would win, of course, but we would have liked to find out where we stood. There wasn’t such an event for juniors, however, on the calendar at Bude.
Leslie said we needed to build up our strength if we were to improve any more. Swimming and surfing were not enough; they didn’t cater for all the body’s muscles. We ought to go for a four-mile run every day or cycle twenty miles; we should do various gymnastic exercises and take up weight-lifting. ‘If we did all that,’ I said, ‘we’d have no time in the sea! Anyway, my bike is bust.’
‘We could go jogging. And there’s a gym club we could join. Look at your arms!’ He gripped my biceps. ‘You see? Flabby. The girls won’t like that.’
‘Flabby biceps? I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that worries them.’
‘Oh, that’s all you know about it,’ he said, loftily.
‘You reckon girls like a beefcake type of body? Mr Universe?’
‘Well. . . not Mr Universe exactly. But a bit of muscle wouldn’t look out of place.’
‘No. I suppose not.’ I rather liked the idea. I’d found, recently, that my eyes kept straying to the tough, well-built men on the beach. They held my attention; and returned to my mind when I was thinking about something else. I didn’t interpret this interest as raging sexual desire; it seemed to me that I admired and envied them, as I did Leslie. I wanted to be like them. Even to be them. Which was stupid; in fact inexplicable, I told myself one evening as I looked at my own body in the bathroom mirror. There was nothing dreadfully wrong or misshapen with my own physique, though it was still very thin. There was no lack of muscle. And I was tremendously suntanned. What was wrong with me? Did I fancy these men? Leslie? As I should a girl? I just didn’t know. And as usual, I pushed the problem out of my head as best I could. My days were filled and happy; Leslie’s company was all I wanted, and the hot summer nights, meeting the others at the Wimpy bar, or wandering around the town in a group and dancing at the occasional disco, were fun too.
So we practised weight-lifting, Leslie and I, twice a week at the gym. And we went out before breakfast, jogging. Not four miles of it as he had suggested, not even three. Round the edge of the golf links, a big green triangle of open space just behind the beach; on two of its sides were houses and hotels, on the other the cliff road. Then a sprint, racing each other flat out to see who could be first. Sometimes he won, sometimes it was me: on one occasion a dead heat, each of us trying to jostle the other as we pushed open the back door of my house, then dash through the kitchen, up the stairs, and into my bedroom, which we’d agreed beforehand was ‘home.’ I shoved him away from me in the hall, shot up to the landing, and threw myself, exhausted and panting, onto my bed. He pounded up after me, yelling ‘You ratbag!’, then flopped down beside me. Silence, except for frantic gulping of breath. Our legs touched. Sweat. Then the most extraordinary, unlooked for, incredible thing happened. His hand was inside my shorts.
For me, though not for him, it was one of the most important moments of my life: a revelation: nothing had told me so much about myself before, or was ever to spell it out so clearly again.
I tugged at his shorts; I wanted to see. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he asked. But changed his mind: they were obviously a handicap. He shut his eyes. I did not, amazed at what I saw. I hadn’t realised how much the size of an erect cock differed from one person to another. Noticing other boys, limp in the changing-room at school, had merely told me mine was much the same as other people’s. But Leslie’s was a prodigy. Would a girl be able to cope with such a weapon?
I wanted to touch him, caress him, wrap myself round him, kiss him all over. I didn’t, of course. He was doubtless pretending that my hand was Linda’s or Adrienne’s or whoever the girl of the moment was, and I. . . I saw only him. The climax was the most ecstatic few seconds I had ever experienced.
He opened his eyes. ‘What are you smiling at?’ he asked. His words were loud and harsh; they seemed to tear the silence to shreds and break the spell utterly.
‘Nothing.’ I made my mouth look stern. ‘Maybe. . .we shouldn’t have done that.’ I didn’t mean what I said, but I guessed such a comment was what he expected me to say. It would have been catastrophic if I’d let him know how much I’d enjoyed it.
‘Probably not,’ he agreed. He rolled off the bed and picked up his tee-shirt and shorts. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Does it? Better than the solitary thing. I get so frustrated. . . If only I could find a girl, just one girl, who’d let me!’ I didn’t answer. ‘You’re not angry, are you?’
‘Angry? No, not at all.’
‘I was worried you might be. That you’d be so livid or something you wouldn’t want to speak to me again. I mean. . . I started it.’
‘I didn’t stop you.’ Then, as he looked at me with a slightly odd expression, I added, lying through my teeth, ‘I’ve got the same problems as you have.’
‘Oh? Louise?’
‘Well. . . you know. . . ’
He was dressed now. ‘I feel. . . a bit bad about it, all the same.’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘It’s not the end of the world. It happened; that’s all. It’s of no significance.’
He nodded. ‘Just physical relief, I suppose. Bloody women! Well. . . I’m going home. Bath and breakfast.’
‘Shall I call for you later? The sea should be good this morning.’
‘Yes. Give me an hour.’
I listened to him clatter down the stairs, and heard the door slam shut behind him. The silence surged back, so thick it was almost tangible, like velvet.
A revelation, I said. Now I knew. Knew for a certainty that I’d never enjoy it so much with a girl. It couldn’t, it just wouldn’t be possible. I wasn’t in a ‘phase’. I was homosexual. And always had been. And always would be.
But I was far from ready to be happy about that. I was terrified. And wanting Leslie all over again. I’d not ask, not even suggest or hint at such a thing. It would have to happen exactly as it had done just now, spontaneously, he starting it. Any move on my part and I would be exposed for what I was, with all the dire and dreadful consequences such knowledge in the hands of others would bring down on me.
Sperm on my skin, his mixed with mine. I touched it, then licked my finger. I was still perpendicular, firm as a rock; a situation I could do something about, and I did, reliving the experience in my imagination.
Two: The Linga Longa Cafe
One curious result of what happened was that, for a time, I drew closer to my mother. I remembered that moment on the beach the previous year when I felt I’d bring her more sorrow than joy; then, I didn’t know why I felt that, or how it would come about. Now I knew. If she discovered what I was she’d never forgive me. Nor, maybe, herself: she’d think she was responsible, that something in the way she had brought me up had caused this dreadful thing. Thing? What name would she give it? Disease? Crime? Neurosis? Some such word, certainly. I thought about that a lot. What had caused it, what ‘it’ really was. Disease was absurd. So was crime. I didn’t feel in the least bit ill. Or criminal. And I wasn’t a screaming neurotic. There was nothing very terrible that she had done to me in early childhood; growing up had been easy. My parents had never ill-treated me or made excessive demands. Nor had they dressed me up as a girl or stopped me from indulging in normal boys’ pastimes and interests.
I began to be more considerate to Mum: it was like paying cash into the bank in order to fend off some future crisis. Saving for the proverbial rainy day. She worked in a shop in Kilkhampton Street, selling cakes and loaves of bread. Which, of course, was why the house had been empty when Leslie and I had returned from jogging, why our escapade had been possible. I had grown used, when quite young, to having the house to myself in the mornings and afternoons of the school holidays, to cooking my own breakfast and lunch. No
w, when she returned from the shop tired out, I would, if I was in, make her a pot of tea and tell her to put her feet up, or in the evening bring her a cup of coffee while she watched the television. I wiped the dishes without being asked, and on two or three occasions I actually did the ironing.
‘Are you about to put in a request for something big, Ewan?’
‘No.’
‘I was wondering why you’ve started being so thoughtful.’
‘No reason in particular. . . You look a bit under the weather.’
‘I have been more tired than usual this past fortnight, to tell the truth.’
Dad glanced up from his paper. ‘I hadn’t noticed,’ he said.
‘Oh, you never notice anything!’ she replied, scornfully.
‘You’re not ill, are you?’ He began to sound anxious.
‘No, no. We’re just extra busy at the shop; that’s all. There seem to be more holiday-makers this summer than any year I can remember.’
‘Yes. There are.’ He returned to the sports page. ‘Good training for Ewan,’ he said. ‘Make somebody a nice little housewife one of these days.’ He laughed.
My heart nearly missed a beat. What did he mean by that? Had he guessed?
‘What a thing to say!’ my mother exclaimed, affecting to be shocked.
‘No, I meant it,’ Dad said. ‘The whole world’s different from when we were young, what with women’s lib and all that sort of caper. When we got married we knew where we stood; some jobs belonged to the men and some to the women. Ewan’s wife will probably want him to make beds and change nappies and do the shopping while she goes out to work. That’s how it is now. I’m right, Ewan, aren’t I?’
‘Could be,’ I said, cautiously. I felt somewhat relieved at the turn his thoughts had taken.
‘It doesn’t do men any harm to be aware of what’s involved in running a house,’ my mother said. ‘If I had a stroke and got carted off to hospital, you wouldn’t know how to survive! Lord! You don’t even know how to boil an egg properly!’
