“Right, then”, he said, directing himself sternly to his argument, “the moment you’ve taken them, you’re free. Once you’ve sat those pestilential papers, you’ve taken your A- levels, and no-one this side of the last trump can take the fact away from you. Right?” Stephen nodded again, becoming, Graham noted a trifle gloomily, brighter-eyed by the second. “All right. As soon as you’ve sat them, we’ll consider our position, and our feelings, and if we both still feel then as we both feel now, then we’ll have a look round at the possibilities. If you agree. Now, how does that sound?”
Stephen sat cross-legged, wiggling his toes and looking levelly at Graham. He could see quite clearly the grainy tracks of the tears that had zig-zagged their erratic way down his cheeks leaving tiny flecks of salt behind them. After a long wait Stephen asked very softly “Is that a promise, Graham?”
“Yes, of course it’s a promise. If you want it to be. If we both feel the same way then as now, and if you want to rethink after you’ve sat your A-levels, we’ll rethink.”
“All right”, the boy said, seriously. “I shall hold you to it. You know that already, I think.” As on many occasions before since they had become lovers, Graham thought how curiously adult Stephen sounded when he spoke of anything that mattered, especially anything to do with the two of them. He looked into the grey eyes, and heard the words, uttered in Stephen’s deep, nicely modulated voice, so different from the hysterical howling he had had to put up with for so much of the preceding couple of hours, and shivered. He didn’t bother to try to deceive himself that he would not be honouring the promise in just under nine months’ time. He experienced a sudden, sharp moment’s intuition, like the after-image of a thousand-megawatt lightning flash, and knew for certain that this boy would be waiting on the appointed platform of the appointed station on the appointed day, precisely on the appointed time.
“All right, my darling”, said Graham, huskily. He hesitated, wondering whether to risk anything emotional, but thought immediately that he owed the boy that much, at least. “I love you. Try not to forget that, if it’s… when it’s hard to be apart. You’re not bound to wait for me. I don’t deserve it, and I’m not asking you to wait for me, don’t think that for a moment. I’m taking you at your word, and telling you that I’ll be ready to try again if our circumstances are the same in nine months. I wish to God it didn’t have to be this way — I suppose for some other people it might not have to be. For me, it does. Try to understand. Try not to hate me…”
“I shan’t hate you”, said Stephen, sounding more self-possessed than he had for a long time. “How could I hate you? I love you, and I’ll be there in nine months. As I said, I’ll hold you to it. In between I shall try and get you back. I’m not taking tonight as the last word, I warn you. But if I have to wait this ridiculous nine months, I’ll wait. And as for forgetting you love me — well, I love you, and I don’t think you’ll forget that, will you?” Graham felt the same electric sensation of being talked to by someone far older than himself in the body of someone far younger. He shivered. Stephen slithered down into the bed, pulling the sheet and quilt up. “Come down here”, he commanded. “We’ve got about nine hours before we have to go to the cricket. One hour a month. We’d better not waste any of it, had we?”
* * *
The Michaelmas term was a miserable period for both of them — but not as bad as they had feared.
Coming as it did after the emotional turmoil of the events of the day and the scene in Graham’s bed that night, their lovemaking had a desperate, frantic quality which left them exhausted yet unsatisfied, physically drained but aching with unfulfilled need. They heard the birds strike up their morning uproar and leaned naked together in the bedroom window to watch the dawn flushing colours through the diluted blue ink of the morning sky. It soothed them a little, and in the end they slept for a while, waking stiff and unrefreshed but, at least, a little more resigned to their self-imposed exile of each other.
When they were ready to set off for the match Stephen took Graham by the shoulders, looked him levelly in the eyes and said “Are you still going through with it?” Graham returned the gaze. “I’m no happier about it than you are”, he said. “But I don’t think it’s safe — for either of us, but the damage to you would be more serious in the long run. So yes, I’m going through with it.”
Stephen’s eyes fell. “All right, then”, he said, speaking so quietly that Graham had to put his ear close to his mouth to hear the words. “I’m sorry for kicking up such a fuss about it last night. It was ridiculous. Like a little boy who can’t have his own way. I’m sorry.” He clung to Graham in a long, close embrace, burying his head on his shoulder and stroking his hair. Graham, feeling equally wretched, caressed him in return, rocking him gently to and fro in his arms and kissing his face and throat and tickling his neck with the tips of his fingers. “We’ll still be able to see each other as often as…as possible, Graham?” asked Stephen, in a small, hopeless voice.
“Of course we shall, love”, said Graham. “All the time. Until you feel it’s making it worse. You must tell me as soon as you feel that, and I’ll disappear.”
“It won’t happen”, said Stephen dully.
They broke from each other, and went to play cricket for the last time but one that season.
They missed each other terribly, and, especially in the first few weeks, it was aggravated by the casual contact they were still able to have, in class and occasionally out of school hours — they even managed the occasional stroll round the cricket field, now wearing its shaggy, worm-casty winter coat. Gradually the acute pain began to diminish as far as meetings at school went. But every time they met at the cricket club, which kept up its esprit de corps, and its finances, by maintaining a vigorous schedule of winter activities and drinking, all the dull ache of pain and loss flared up in them afresh.
One Saturday about midway through the school term the club organized a sponsored marathon. By that time they were both beginning to wonder if it would not spare them pain to see as little of each other as possible, but neither of them could bear it, so they jogged comfortably round the long course together, rekindling all their old feelings, and not quite sure whether to rejoice as they found that their love had actually managed somehow to put down deeper roots than ever, or to groan under the reactivated anguish that went with it.
Halfway round the course they found themselves alone in a deep tract of woodland, with no other runners within a mile of them. Almost without communication they slipped off the course and into the trees, and fell into each other’s arms. They clung fiercely together for whole minutes on end, until they were forced to release each other to draw the breath that their frenzied bear-hug had been too tight to allow them. Both felt tenderly over their ribs for spots that had been bruised in the embrace, and broke into Spontaneous laughter. But though they were only too acutely aware of what they both wanted and needed, they didn’t dare to risk it, and the dank, dripping trees and the chill cutting edge on the wind that penetrated even deep into the wood completed the deterrent.
They both found their own ways of dealing with the parting, the loneliness and the missing of the other. Graham solved it by hurling himself into work, generating a cyclonic burst of energy week after week that left the classes he took stretched to their limits and himself so exhausted that the weekends had to be dedicated exclusively to mental and physical recovery, leaving him no time for brooding.
Stephen solved the same problem in a very different way. He found himself a lover. He suffered severe pangs of conscience at first; but the colossal urgency of a very young man’s physical desire had been awakened just as it was ready to scale its loftiest peaks, and was not to be denied its fulfilment. He conducted lengthy arguments with himself, talking aloud on long walks into the countryside around the town. After all, he told himself, his real feelings were as devoted to Graham as ever, while what he felt for the boy he had begun to covet was physical and very little more. He
could take his friend or leave him, and if the day came when Graham was available once more to satisfy his physical needs as well as his emotional ones, he went on, the friend could be ditched so fast he would never see Stephen go. So the easy insouciance of youth came to his aid, and he began to pay court assiduously to his casual friend and upper-sixth form colleague, Richard Fitzjohn.
He had been vaguely aware of Richard from the first stirrings of realization that he was capable of physical attraction only to members of his own sex. Richard was a shortish, compactly built boy a few months older than Stephen, with a pretty, cherubic face, a lot of long golden hair and, as Stephen had not been slow to notice, golden thighs as well. He wore the golden hair in a long, curling fringe that was forever dropping heavily over his eyes, and he had a fetching little mannerism of blowing upwards over his upper lip to blow it out of them, which Stephen, having once noticed him doing it, found indescribably sexy. He was popular, partly because of his looks, partly because he was a lively, witty boy, but most of all because he was, quite simply, nice. He was friendly without being clinging, always ready to talk and to help lesser intellects with academic problems, and was blessed with a sunny, easy-going disposition. He was also a virgin; and, as he admitted cheerfully and without a trace of embarrassment to Stephen when they found themselves paired for cross-country practice one Friday shortly after the end of Stephen’s sexual relationship with Graham, he rather fancied the idea of ceasing to be one at the earliest opportunity.
It was such a shameless and unmistakable proposition that Stephen was too surprised to take the bait, with the result that he passed the weekend that followed haunted by images of the pretty face, the long golden hair and, mostly, the golden thighs, alternately masturbating voluptuously and cursing himself virulently for a purblind halfwit too slow on the uptake to seize the offer of the decade when it was thrust under his nose.
He wasted no time in remedying his dull-wittedness, however. In morning break on the Monday following, Richard Fitzjohn was mooching alone in the quadrangle when Stephen fell casually into step beside him. “Did you mean what you said on the run last Friday?” he asked.
“Eh?” said Richard. “What did I say? I don’t remember saying anything special.”
“You said you were a virgin, and wanted to do something about it”
“Oh”, said Richard, turning to look at Stephen and giving him a naughty grin. “That.”
“Yes”, said Stephen, striving to maintain his air of airy self-assurance. “That.”
“Oh yes”, said Richard, smirking openly. “I meant it all right. And I’m still a virgin, though another weekend’s passed with all its promise. Tom Cruise didn’t turn up, so it was the box of Kleenex again, I’m afraid, and I’m still available for deflowering if required. And if the right deflowering consultant turns up. I’ve got ambitions to be a tart, you see. I think I’d make rather a good tart”, he said thoughtfully, as if considering it with the careers master. “The trouble is, I’m a bit particular about who to go offering myself to — hence the excessive prolongation of my regrettable condition…
“I’d love to lose it to you, though”, he added after a pause. “I’d marked you down as the ideal rescuer ages ago… But you never seemed very interested”, he said after another pause. “I supposed you were already fixed up.”
“How the hell did you know I was a… a… candidate?” asked Stephen, staring at him.
Richard laughed. “Come on, Stevie. I could see you were gay a mile off. I’ve seen the way you looked at some of the men here, in the changing rooms. More to the point, I’ve seen the way you looked at me. I used to hang about in the showers, giving you a chance to make a move on me. It was like being eaten alive — except that looking was all you ever did.” He smiled dreamily to himself. “I’ve often imagined being eaten alive by you, Stevie. Guess which bit I’d want you to start with?”
Stephen deflowered him that evening, in Richard’s bedroom, while his parents watched the nine o’clock news below.
* * *
The relationship blossomed as the term passed. Stephen progressed from enjoying Richard’s nubile and freely, indeed wantonly given body to appreciating him as a clever and amusing friend; and in the wake of liking came a firm respect. Richard was admirably free from illusions, about himself in particular. He was good for Stephen, who sometimes exhibited a tendency to mild priggishness. If he was in one of his occasional consequential moments Richard would poke fun at him until he came back to life-size; but he would do it in such a gentle way, without any malice, that Stephen had to laugh at himself, and so the lesson was learned without any loss of face.
Richard was also possessed of a gift of clear-sightedness, a refusal, perhaps an inability, to indulge in self-deception, which would have been remarkable in the most perceptive of adults, and was extraordinary in a boy.
One Saturday about halfway through the term his parents had announced without a moment’s warning that they were treating themselves to a weekend away, and intending to leave in the next hour. “You’re sure you don’t mind being left alone, Richard?” his mother had asked, without any anxiety, for they knew their son very well, and trusted him unreservedly. “Yes, yes”, he had said graciously. “You go and have your break, it’ll do you good. The old homestead’ll still be here when you get back. Which will be when, by the way?”
He established beyond doubt that he had the run of the house until very late on the Sunday night. His father, who placed a high value on having a self-reliant and competent son, winked at him and slipped two twenty-pound notes into his hand as he pushed his wife out of the front door. “Thanks for being reliable, Dick, old fellow”, he said. “Treat yourself to a meal out somewhere. Or get some of your mates in with some cans. Just make sure if anybody feels he’s got to throw up, he does it over something washable, okay?” Richard had grinned at him and watched them out of sight. Twenty seconds later he was talking to Stephen’s mother on the telephone; in less than half an hour they were in Richard’s bed and Stephen had his head firmly lodged between the silky thighs at which he had once shot what he had thought were covert yearning looks.
They went to the nearest pub for an hour late on the Saturday night, and for two hours Sunday lunchtime. The rest of the weekend they spent in bed. At one point on Sunday afternoon they were lying side by side on their backs, exhausted. Stephen had an arm thrown across his eyes. Richard wriggled onto his side and propped himself on one elbow to look down at him. “You’ve got someone else, haven’t you?” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone.
Stephen removed his arm from his eyes and looked up at him, a little startled. “Eh? Someone else?” he said, trying to collect his thoughts from where they had been straying, and marvelling at the other boy’s perception, that he should have picked the precise moment that he had to make his remark.
“Don’t get worried”, said Richard reassuringly, playing idly with the fine golden hairs on Stephen’s chest. “I shan’t mind, not in the least. I’m not going to throw a jealous tantrum or anything. I only said it because, well, really, because I just happened to realize it just then, that’s all.”
“Well, you’re wrong”, said Stephen, feeling faintly annoyed for some reason he couldn’t identify.
“Honestly, Stevie, there’s no need to get upset, or anxious”, said Richard placidly, and laughed as he saw Stephen’s eyes widen slightly at these apparent feats of mind-reading. “I know you very well, old scout, and I’m very, very fond of you. Very fond indeed. I dare say I’m in love with you, if I wasn’t too shallow and idle and too lacking in seriousness to know what being in love with someone felt like.”
“I don’t think…”
“Yes, you do”, said Richard, still serene and slightly amused. “That’s exactly what you think of me, Stevie, darling, because it’s what everybody thinks of me. And the reason everybody thinks that of me is because it’s quite true. Or rather, it’s exactly what I want them to think of me, because it’s what I wa
nt to be the truth about me at the moment.
“I’m as much in love with you as I could be capable of at the moment, which is not very much. That’s because I want it that way. You’re not built that way at all, Stevie, my lovely. You’re good fun, and you’re lively, but you’ve got a serious side, and it’s more than fifty per cent of you. You’ve got a dark side, too, and it scares me, just a little. I wouldn’t want to be whoever this someone else is. I couldn’t handle it. You’d ask too much, and it would most likely take the worst possible form…no, let me finish. I’ve got a feeling, I don’t know why or where it’s sprung from, that this could be something important.
“I think you’d ask more than someone like me could possibly give in a million years. Because you’d ask the one thing above all others that I couldn’t give. You’d ask to be allowed to give too much. Or rather, you’d demand it. And that’s something I couldn’t deliver. Do you understand what I mean? No, I didn’t think you did”, he went on as Stephen shook his head.
“Let me put it this way”, he said, running his neatly clipped nails up and down Stephen’s side. “Whoever this someone else is, he must be absolutely immensely strong — stronger than I’d know how to understand, let alone be. Because whoever he is, he can obviously cope with you giving him your all. It would finish me off in two weeks. Please don’t get me wrong, Stevie. It’s as I said. I’m very, very fond of you. You’re good company, you’re good fun, and you’re dreamy here” — he ran his hand over Stephen’s limp, slightly sticky penis. “Screwing you’s lovely, and being screwed by you’s beyond belief. Also you’re funny — you make me laugh. Your sense of humour’s a bit hard to find, but for anyone who’s got enough time for you to take the trouble to dig far enough down, it’s very rewarding. You’re a pretty super sort of chap, Steve. Just too…” He hesitated, groping for the word, for the first time since he had started speaking.
Out of Bounds Page 14
