by Julian Clary
The week passed with me dreaming of Tim and writing his name over and over again in biro on my school exercise books:
Timothy Thornchurch, Timothy Thornchurch, Timothy Thornchurch … or ‘TT for JD’, our initials enclosed in a heart. I was madly in love. I didn’t care about anything else.
‘You’re looking bright and cheerful, my little fig,’ my mother commented, the night before I was due back at Thornchurch House. We were doing the washing-up together and I felt as though I was floating a foot above the floor. ‘Your eyes are shining, your cheeks are pink and … hold out your hand — yes, you’ve got a tremor in your fingertips.’ She threw down her dishcloth and gripped my shoulders. ‘Are you in love, my sweet?’ She searched my face for an answer and, finding one, declared, ‘Praise the Lord!’
I blushed violently. While I longed to talk about Tim, I was agonized by the thought of admitting that I was in the grip of a full-flown passion.
‘Who is she?’ asked Mother. ‘Anyone I know?’
I shook my head, still scarlet and unable to say a word. I knew she wouldn’t mind a bit if I said it was a he, rather than a she, but I still couldn’t bring myself to say anything.
She smiled kindly. ‘Oh, darling, how lovely. Isn’t it gorgeous? Like a delightful itch you just long to scratch, even though it’s so nice it hurts. Well — enjoy it. And remember what Laurence Hope says.
‘For this is Wisdom; to love, to live,
To take what fate or the gods may give,
To ask no question, to make no prayer,
But to kiss the lips and caress the hair …‘
The following Sunday I arrived at Thornchurch House at nine a.m. on the dot.
‘You’re keen,’ said the head gardener. Little did he know. Clearly impressed, he asked if I’d like to work full-time during the summer. This seemed a very good idea and I accepted with alacrity. He put me to work clearing out an old barn and stacking some elm logs ready for winter. The barn was situated away from the main house, but although I kept a lookout there was no sign of Tim. It wasn’t until mid-afternoon, feeling bereft as I swept the last of the sawdust and twigs into a neat pile, that I heard someone clear their throat behind me.
I spun round and there was Tim, wearing white cricket trousers and a creased grey and white striped shirt. He looked beautiful, of course, even more so than I remembered. He was squinting in the sunlight, and his skin was peach-like, with a dusky golden glow. He gave me a big, crooked smile with a sapphire flash from his eyes, and my stomach did eighteen somersaults in quick succession.
Despite my reaction to his presence, I tried to appear casual and not as though I had dreamt of him every waking moment —and sleeping moment, come to that — since he had kissed me.
‘Oh, hello, Tim,’ I said lightly, as though he was the last person I’d been expecting to see. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m good, thanks. Exams all done. It’s holiday time!’ He did a mad Aboriginal dance to show how happy he was.
I laughed. ‘Holiday for some,’ I said. ‘I haven’t broken up yet. And then I’m going to be working all summer.’ Tim’s face fell. That was a good sign, I thought, heart racing. I added meaningfully, ‘Here in the gardens.’
‘Cool,’ said Tim. He gave a contented smile, as if a plan was falling nicely into place. He stepped forward and gave my shoulder a gentle push. I felt the heat of his hand, and the desire behind it. ‘You finishing soon?’ he asked.
‘Five o’clock,’ I answered.
‘Meet me in the old summerhouse down by the pond?’
‘Sure. See you then!’ I smiled back at him. His touch had made me giddy with excitement. I turned back to my sweeping to hide my burning cheeks. I heard him chuckle as he left. ‘See you later, Johnny.’
The next two hours were the longest of my life. I willed the time to pass but it seemed to take for ever. At last the head gardener dismissed me and I slipped away, not to the gates but towards the pond and the old summerhouse.
When I got there Tim was waiting, sitting on the creaking old veranda, swigging from a bottle of red wine.
‘Try some of this,’ he said, without any preamble. ‘It’s Daddy’s Beaujolais. It’ll put hairs on your chest.’
Nervously I sat next to him on the rickety wicker sofa and took a swig from the dark bottle. I’d never drunk wine before and I choked on the bitter taste, then pulled a face and wiped my lips on the back of my hand.
‘It should be accompanied by venison or pheasant,’ Tim pointed out. ‘Would you rather have a cigar?’ From his trouser pocket he produced an expensive-looking packet and shook it until a fragrant brown cigar popped out. ‘Daddy’s too, from Cuba. Rolled between a virgin’s thighs, allegedly.’
I took the cigar and sniffed it. It smelt rather woody and luxurious, but I had the feeling it wouldn’t be quite so fragrant when it was alight. ‘No, thanks. I expect I’ll only cough again.
Tim took it from me and held it between his teeth while he lit a match. He sucked and chuffed on the cigar until we almost disappeared in a cloud of blue smoke. With the Beaujolais in his other hand, he smoked and drank alternately as we sat in silence.
I watched intently, impressed by his expertise.
‘Now you,’ he ordered.
‘I’m game,’ I said uncertainly.
‘That you are, Johnny-boy,’ said Tim, handing me the bottle and the cigar. As he did so our fingers touched. He looked at me and smiled. ‘Remember me?’ he asked.
A few minutes later I was floating pleasantly, intoxicated for the first time in my young life. Tim seemed to pick his moment. As I sank into the damp cushions and my eyes began to close I became aware of him leaning across me.
‘Now you’ve relaxed a bit, I can give you what you came for,’ he said. Then he kissed me, far more urgently than the first time.
He pushed up my T-shirt and pulled down my trousers; two moves, swiftly enacted to seem as one. He dragged me inside the summerhouse where an old mattress glowed in the dull light. We kissed, caressed and unwrapped each other. I cannot deny that I gasped and cried my way through my first experience of gay sex. Tim was insistent and considerate, telling me to relax and announcing what was going to happen next, as if he were a doctor. Alarm gave way eventually to enjoyment.
‘Good lad,’ Tim breathed in my ear, as he built to a crescendo and my cries became sighs.
Now I understood, at last, what it was all about. With the sense of drama that only an adolescent can articulate, I wrote in my diary that I had ‘discovered the meaning of life’. This much was sure: I had come home. There was no looking back now.
The summer holidays stretched before us, the whole glorious eight weeks.
‘My parents are going to Scotland for the summer, to stay with relatives,’ Timothy said. ‘And Regina is in the South of France where some friends of ours have a villa. So, we’ll have the place to ourselves.’
That was the start of what we called the ‘Summer of Love’. Practically every night we experienced the hard vigour of youthful lust in exquisite combination with the frail wonder of first love. It was carefree, spontaneous and of the moment. Whatever was to happen later, no one could take this time away from us. Neither of us had any agenda or expectations, we just devoured each other. Evening after passionate evening, week after endless week, we would meet, our hunger fuelled by the need for secrecy. Even though Tim’s family were away, we knew that plenty of others could discover us — there were servants in the house and gardeners outside. It was clandestine and dangerous — we understood that no one else must know — but Tim and I were carried away on a tidal wave of heightened emotion. I couldn’t imagine my life without him.
With his family safely out of the way, we were able to extend our playground. Now, when we weren’t in the summerhouse, Timothy took me up to the main house. He showed me around, casual about the vast hallway lined with marble busts and tapestries, the endless corridors, the grand rooms with their silk curtains, antique furniture and oil pa
intings. I was open-mouthed.
‘I don’t really like these rooms,’ he said, hurrying me out, although I wanted to linger. ‘Let’s go to mine.’
His bedroom was tucked away high in the house, in a turret where a spiral stone staircase would give us plenty of warning if anyone approached. ‘This is more like it,’ he said. There were bookshelves, paintings, a four-poster bed and a small cast-iron fireplace. I thought it was enchanting, but I found Tim, pulling me down on to the hard mattress, more enchanting still.
After our initial bashfulness we soon felt comfortable and excited enough by each other’s presence to waste no time on the build-up to sexual congress. The politeness of our encounters in the fields or the flowerbeds was in direct contrast to our animalistic inclinations in the summerhouse or in the exotic, tent-like confines of Timothy’s four-poster bed and its green velvet curtains. We leapt on each other as soon as we were alone, hungry but happy, like ravenous arrivals at an overeater’s banquet. I lost all sense of time and all sense of restraint. Sometimes I would come to, only to find Tim blinking at me in wonder. ‘Welcome back to the planet, Johnny. I knew I was good but I didn’t know I was that good …’
I had never realized how extraordinarily sweet and transporting the pleasure could be.
I often got home after midnight and my mother would singsong-shout through a glass of Viña Sol: ‘Yoo-hoo, precious, who’s a dirty stop-out?’ from the sofa, but I said goodnight and hurried up to my room, where I would leap into bed as fast as I could. There I would lie, exhausted but glowing. I was sore, bruised and desperately tired but too ecstatic even to blink. To bring me down and envelop my emotions in cotton wool, I recited a poem to myself, Sonnet XXX from Spenser’s Amoretti:
Such is the power of love in gentle mind
That it can alter all the course of kind.
‘Why don’t you invite your new friend to tea?’ my mother asked one morning, as she handed me my sandwiches.
‘What new friend?’ I asked, blushing.
‘The one you’re spending all your evenings with. The one who’s making you such a happy boy. I’d like to meet this person.’ Her eyes flickered to the love bite on my neck. ‘I’ll make crab sandwiches and a pavlova, if you like. What do you say?’
‘Er, I’ll ask. Thanks, Mum. I’d better go. I’m late.’ With that I trotted down the lane towards Thornchurch House.
That evening, during our post-coital chat in the priest’s hole, I told Tim of the invitation.
‘I expect she found a blond hair on you and put two and two together.’
‘Well, romance is her specialist subject. She was bound to notice that something was going on.’
‘Yes, but she’ll have some milkmaid in mind, not young Master T. What will she say if she finds out?’
‘My mother’s unshockable. Trust me.’
‘I’d be fascinated to meet her. From what you’ve said, she sounds quite a character. Not at all like mine.
‘Would your mother be horrified by me?’
‘She’d have twenty-eight screaming blue fits. Her precious son fucking the gardening boy in the summerhouse?’ Tim winced. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘I thought your lot were all at it.’
‘My lot?’
‘Public-school boys. Aristocrats. Posh people. I thought you couldn’t stay away from a tradesman’s entrance.’
Tim laughed. ‘Perhaps you’re right. As long as it’s done in private and doesn’t interfere with the business of getting married and having children, the upper classes have no objection to buggery. It’s not like you’re doing anything unspeakable, like using the wrong knife and fork.’
‘Nor do the lower classes, I think you’ll find.’
‘Only the middle class wouldn’t have the imagination. That’s what comes of living in semi-detached houses.’
‘They’ve only themselves to blame. So, will you come to tea, then? Tomorrow? The pavlova’s dreamy.’
Tim paused, then said decisively, ‘Yes. I will. Please tell your mother I’d be delighted.’
‘How funny!’ I propped myself on one elbow to look at him.
I was curiously thrilled at the prospect. For all her peculiarities I loved my mother, and part of me really wanted her to meet Tim.
I didn’t like having a secret from her. ‘Just watch out, she may try to seduce you. She won’t be able to help herself.’
‘Maybe she’ll succeed.’
I pushed him playfully. ‘Don’t you dare, Timothy Thornchurch!’
He grinned and raised an eyebrow.
‘You don’t really want to sleep with a girl, do you?’ I asked. The idea seemed curious and rather repugnant.
Tim brought his face close to mine and stared deeply into my eyes. ‘If I had to, I’d think of you all the time.
‘I don’t know if that’s a comforting thought or not,’ I said, unsure whether I was being teased.
Tim shrugged. ‘So don’t think about it. Mind you, I’ve heard that the female body self-lubricates. Imagine!’
‘How clever.’
‘Come on, let’s go and get some of Mummy’s Russian cigarettes and smoke them out the attic window.’
That night when I got in I told my mother that my ‘friend’ would come to tea.
‘Goody! What fun. And what should I call this “friend”?’ she asked.
‘Tim. It’s Timothy Thornchurch.’
‘No less!’ she said, having choked slightly, clearly surprised more by the breeding than the sex. ‘And would it be wrong of me to serve toad-in-the-hole?’
She didn’t wait for an answer but hurried off to the kitchen where she was soon clattering saucepans and Pyrex dishes, humming, ‘Food, Glorious Food!’ as she did so.
I knew my mother well enough not to urge restraint: the table next day would be heaving with an unseemly spread.
After a day of harvesting beans and carrots from the vegetable garden, I was dirty and sweaty and left it too late to bathe, so I went down to the end of the lane as I was. Tim met me there all spruced up, his hair combed, wearing a smart blazer. We made an odd couple.
‘Perhaps I can give you a bath before tea?’ he joked. ‘And afterwards can we go to your room to play Scrabble?’
Despite the jovial banter I could tell he was nervous. ‘Does your mother know the score?’ he asked, as we walked down Cherry Lane.
‘She saw the love bite,’ I said.
‘An. Oh, shit.’
‘Don’t worry. She has no qualms about such things. I think she’s rather pleased that I’m delving into an area of life that she’s spent so long investigating. She understands these matters.’
‘Does she have liberal views on abominable homosexual practices and licky-licky lesbians too?’ For once Tim was wide-eyed.
‘Oh, yes. No problem. She’s a bit of a hippie. All love is good love.’ It was nice to be impressing him for once.
‘You lucky bastard. My parents would have me hanged, drawn and quartered if they knew what was going on.’ Tim looked troubled. I saw he wasn’t exaggerating. He shuddered, which seemed to snap him out of his darkening mood. He pushed me behind a hawthorn bush and began to kiss me, pulling at my clothes. ‘At least I get to be a rebel.’
When we made it to the cottage my mother had laid a lavish tea on a table in the garden, in the shade of some hazel trees. As we walked down the side of the house she was flapping a tea-towel at the branches.
‘Hello there!’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’m trying to explain to Mr Squirrel and his wife that the Waldorf salad is not for them on this occasion.’
I realized at once that my mother was not speaking in her usual faux-country burr. All trace of that was gone. She was speaking quite naturally in a posh voice, not unlike my grandmother’s.
I could only guess that she had reverted to it in honour of Tim’s presence in our humble abode.
‘You must be Timothy,’ she continued. ‘How do you do?’ She shook his hand and glanced at me, eyebr
ows bobbing as if to indicate her approval of my boyfriend. ‘Very nice,’ she said quietly.
‘How do you do, Mrs Debonair?’
‘Oh, please call me Alice,’ she said graciously. ‘I don’t qualify for the title of “Mrs”, I’m afraid. Shocking, isn’t it?’ She gave a silvery laugh that I had never heard before either, and held up her left hand to show she wore no wedding ring, then she waved it in the direction of the trestle table piled with goodies. ‘Sit down, boys, unless you need to make yourselves comfortable first? No? Jolly good. Now then. Do tuck in.’ Mother handed him a plate. ‘So, you’re the one who’s making my Johnny so happy, then?’
‘I suppose I must be,’ said Tim. ‘Unless he’s seeing someone else on the side, but I’d be surprised if he had the time or energy.’
‘I haven’t,’ I put in.
‘Johnny’s a darling, isn’t he?’ Mother gazed at me with undisguised pride.
‘Mother …
‘Well, you are, sweetheart! I’m only saying the truth. You’re my absolute rock and I can’t imagine life without you. You must take care of my precious boy, Tim. Do you promise?’
‘Of course,’ Tim said.
‘Johnny’s quite a catch, I’ll have you know. Not only are you getting first dibs at him, in all his luscious, youthful glory, but he’s a kind of special breed.’
‘What are you on about?’ I asked, worried about where this conversation was going.
‘Well, just as Aberdeen Angus cattle are selectively bred for the supreme quality of the steak they produce, Jacob’s sheep for their superlative wool, so it is with you, Johnny.’
‘And what, might I ask, was I bred for? Am I going to start laying eggs when I’m twenty-one?’
‘No. Don’t be silly. You were born for love. Top-of-the-range, vintage love.’
