“You’re a strong man, aren’t you, Graham?” Stephen said. “In both senses.”
“You have to be, being gay in this job”, said Graham quietly. They resumed ambling round the field, staying rigidly by cricketer’s instinct to the almost vanished, washed-out remnant of the old boundary line.
When they reached the far side they went and watched the little stream flowing in its gulley through the strip of trees from which the mist was flowing out across the field. After standing listening to the friendly chucklings and splashings of the water for a while, Graham said slowly, “I’ve spent the whole of last night and today in a thoroughly wretched state of frantic, desperate jealousy. And yet, when I came and dragged you out, I didn’t really intend to let fly at you like that. I wanted… I just wanted…Oh, God, Steve, you know what I wanted — to talk to you, to be with you.
“In a way, I congratulate you on finding someone so…so worthy of your own sweet self. You’d better look after him, love. He’s rare and precious. Take good care of him. And now I think, as we’re more or less back, I’d rather like to go away and lick my wounds, if it’s all right with you. Most of them self-inflicted, some of them probably deserved, but all painful. Friends?”
Stephen looked at him in great distress. “Of course we’re friends”, he said. “I think you must be the best friend anyone ever had. We’d be more than just friends, if I had anything to do with it. You’ve only got to say the word, you know that, and however good for me Richard is, and I know he’s very good for me indeed, and to me — well… you know.
“We had an arrangement, if you remember”, he went on after an awkward pause. “I told you I was going to try and get you back. Well, I am going to. But not until after I take my A- levels. Once I’ve taken those, there’s nothing necessarily holding me to this place. It won’t be a master-and-pupil relationship then, so we’ll be in a position to do as we like. All I ask of you is that you wait for me that long, and then give me a chance to see if you still want me then. If you do, I shall hold you to it, and I shan’t let you give me the elbow again. Agreed?”
“Agreed”, said Graham, looking him directly in the eyes. But privately he was sure his goose would be cooked if he was found associating even with a former pupil of such recent vintage, and he took his leave of Stephen with a double feeling of depression and defeat.
Stephen, on the other hand, went off to Richard’s house with a lightness in his step that had not been there earlier that day. He had a guilty feeling that he ought not to be heading for Richard feeling bucked about anything; but the relief of knowing that all his affairs were above board, and that he had Graham’s blessing, even the realization that Graham was jealous, all pleased him in their own very different ways. He thought that his love for Graham had survived the painful moments when Graham had looked at him with contempt, almost with loathing, and emerged from the test greatly strengthened, and that was a cause for a profound, secret joy; and Richard was pure pleasure at any time.
* * *
Andrew Tyldesley was drowning in the grip of a profound personal crisis.
Unknowingly, Graham had diagnosed his state of mind quite correctly when he had spoken of him with Reggie Westwood. Revenge was indeed the mainspring driving Tyldesley since Graham’s utterly unexpected and not very principled disappearance from his life. Tyldesley was a man who needed not so much a life-partner as a life-support system: without such a partner it was highly likely that his lifestyle and his own volatile temperament would destroy him.
If this had been the only facet of Tyldesley’s personality that was about to play a part in Graham Curtis’s life, Graham might well have been safe. Unfortunately, there were two other aspects of Tyldesley that also came into the equation. First he was a man with a highly developed need for drama. Like many neurotics, he lived a secret life utterly different from the ordinary routine of his real everyday existence. This life was lived out within the unlimited world of his own imagination, and it was infinitely the more real to him of the two lives. And it constantly needed fuelling with dramas, real or imagined. Everything that happened had to be probed, tested and assessed for its dramatic properties, its potential as material for the stories which he recounted obsessively and interminably to his cronies in the endless circuit of gay bars in which he circulated in his “real” life. The cronies put up with him and the stories partly because he was open-handed with his plentiful money, partly because superficially he was amiable and amusing company, and partly because he was very good-looking indeed, not in any flashy way to match his character, but with real beauty of face and body, and many of the cronies lusted after him insatiably — though if they had known what kind of a personality lay beneath the beautiful exterior, most of them would have opted rather to go to bed with a well-dressed corpse.
One man who had seen through all the elaborate window-dressing without any difficulty was Reggie Westwood, who had demolished his character in Graham’s interest, and done a thorough job. But even Westwood failed to understand the other aspect of Tyldesley, and the one which turned him from an averagely pathetic specimen of life’s losers into a very dangerous adversary indeed.
Put simply, Tyldesley was a sociopath. Once activated by some grievance, real or imagined—there would be no difference in Tyldesley: it would simply be a matter of which of his twin lives it took place in — he would choose his course of action, and then pursue it. The whole affair might lie dormant. It might never emerge from that state. Or it might come out instantly, or after any kind of interval. But once he had made up his mind to pursue it, he would do so rigorously and with an utter disregard for any other lives on the periphery, however innocent, that he might damage. Provided he could strike at his intended target, he would be completely fulfilled and content.
* * *
The Lent term was well advanced. Graham and Stephen had resumed the edgy, unsatisfactory semi-acquaintanceship of the previous term, seeing little of each other but thinking about each other a great deal. Stephen was much the happier. His relationship with Richard continued to put down deeper and deeper roots, and Stephen sometimes lay in his bed, after a session in Richard’s, wondering if he was ever going to be able to break it, even for Graham. But Richard never pressed it, hardly ever speculated about the future, seeming content to enjoy the present to its outer limit.
The cricket season was about to start, which was one source of consolation for Graham, and another for Stephen. Richard had declined, not very politely, to accompany Stephen to his games, remarking that if he wanted to bore himself to death he would be likely to choose a nine-millimetre bullet to bore himself with. Cricket, he said, suggested strongly to him that it had been invented by one of the more ingenious sadists employed by the Inquisition, and one who positively loved his work at that. But he said it with a friendly twinkle, and Stephen accepted it as a small blind spot in a character otherwise completely compatible with his own. “After all”, as he remarked tolerantly when Richard had finished disparaging his beloved game, “everybody’s a philistine in some small way or another.” Richard had hit him once, hard, and then resumed efficiently pleasuring him.
Stephen had offered to drop out of the occasional Sunday game to be with Richard, and Richard had refused to hear of it, saying he had plenty of pursuits which he’d been neglecting since his life had revolved round Stephen, and therefore needed some of his own time. The only concession he made to what he insisted on calling, to Stephen’s intense irritation, the life-cycle of the common, or garden cricket, was that he agreed to wait outside the ground after matches to walk back to his home with Stephen. “I won’t come in and have a drink”, he said firmly. Graham Curtis will be there, and it would hurt him awfully. It’d be rubbing his nose in it, wouldn’t it? He must be in enough pain as it is.” Stephen gazed at him in wonder. “You’re always full of surprises, Richard”, he said gratefully, “but sometimes you just take my breath away.”
“We aim to please”, said Richard, fondling him. �
��I’ll just turn up and lurk discreetly outside, in that side road. If he wants to give you a lift home, go with him and ring me from home. No ring, no Richard. Ring me twenty minutes before you want me there. No need to waste money, though. Just let it ring three times, then put the phone down. I’ll know it’s you. That way when you’ve played away I’ll know you’ve got back.”
“What if you’re out?” queried Stephen. “And won’t your people think it’s a bit odd if the phone keeps ringing like that?”
“Don’t be a prat all your life”, said Richard good-naturedly. “D’you think I’m likely to be out? And miss out on a bunk-up with you? I should coco. As for my people, well mother never wastes energy on thinking at all if she can help it, and I’ll tell Dad that it’s just a way of getting a message to me free.”
“But then he’ll know we’re…” said Stephen, looking bothered.
“I told you, Steve, Dad knows me very well. Well enough to trust me. I don’t know if he knows, exactly, what we get up to in my room, but if he did, he’d understand, and accept it, I know that.” He laughed at the dumbfounded expression on Stephen’s face. “But in any case, he’s civilized enough to accept that I’m entitled to a private life of my own. He wouldn’t dream of intruding—unless he thought I was doing something that put me in danger. Or you, for that matter. He thinks a lot of you.” And Stephen, for once, had nothing to say.
They were both very happy, and Stephen only suffered when he saw or thought too much of Graham. Even Graham, who had not had Stephen’s uncommon luck in finding a compatible companion to love, and hadn’t even got Stephen’s very active sex life to keep his mind off his loneliness, managed to dismiss his problems for much of the time and regain a little much-needed serenity. Work helped, cricket helped more, and Stephen, realizing that he was the luckier and happier, worked hard to make himself agreeable as far as Graham would allow it, and that helped more than anything.
And so they approached the Easter vacation, with, all in all, a fair degree of equanimity: three fat and contented fish who, having identified the single hook dangling in wait for them, were as yet unaware of the stick of dynamite about to be dropped into their small pond.
BOOK TWO
CLOSE OF PLAY
“Bugger!” muttered Graham cheerfully when the doorbell rang. He was sitting sideways on a kitchen chair in his flat, humming tunelessly to himself as he stroked whitener onto a cricket boot. Its partner and his pads were propped against the fridge, gleaming brilliantly as they dried.
He put the boot carefully down on an old newspaper on the kitchen table, put the cap back on the whitener, and went to the door, expecting the postman, or maybe the milkman after his money, and still savouring a mental vision of an extra-cover drive scorching its way to the boundary. He opened the door, and the vision of the glorious cover drive vanished instantly. On the doorstep, smiling genially, stood Andrew Tyldesley.
Had he been asked, he would have given his opinion that it was by any realistic criterion a human impossibility for anyone to discompose or depress him on the first morning of a new cricket season. Tyldesley managed both effortlessly.
“Aren’t you going to ask me in?” he said, after Graham had stood staring at him for several seconds, too surprised to speak. “I can see you’ve been associating with too many rough boys, dear. Their manners are beginning to rub off on you.”
“Yes. You’d better come in”, said Graham, dully. He had woken early that morning, with a keen, expectant feeling of optimism like a pulse in his stomach. That bright, buoyant mood now vanished like a ship sliding beneath an oily, sluggish swell. He stepped aside to let Tyldesley past, and glanced about before he closed the door and followed his visitor through into the kitchen.
He found Tyldesley holding one of the freshly whitened pads with a mocking expression on his handsome face. “Very butch, darling”, he said, ogling Graham. “Really, I knew you were into these manly pursuits, but I’d never been able to see you urging the flying ball and all that. I can see I’ve been missing lots and lots of new experiences.”
“Put that pad down”, snapped Graham, his voice brittle and crackling with tension. “It’s not dry yet.”
“Mmmm. Wet paint?” he chuckled, and ran a finger along one of the snowy ribs of the pad. He inspected the tip of his finger, and grimaced comically as he saw the thick daub of white there.
“I said put it down”, said Graham, beginning to recover from his initial dismayed surprise. This time his voice was steady, and a little menacing. Tyldesley showed, for the first time, a faint hint of uneasiness. “No need to get tough, Gray, dear”, he said easily. “I’m very interested in these alien pastimes.” He put the pad back beside its mate, carelessly, so that it slipped forward onto its face. Graham winced, and set it upright again, inspecting it and the floor for white smears.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“I want a talk with you, dear”, said Tyldesley. “But all in good time. First I think it would be common courtesy to offer me a nice cup of tea, don’t you? And then we’ll sit and have a talk, and then perhaps a drink somewhere?”
Graham compressed his lips, trying to keep his rapidly mounting anger under control. He glanced at his watch. “I don’t know what you’ve got to say to me, but if you can say it in half an hour, go ahead”, he said. “That’s when I’m due to leave.”
Tyldesley stared at him. “We aren’t very friendly, are we?” he said softly.
“I said, I don’t know what you can possibly think we’ve got to talk about”, repeated Graham. “There’s nothing to say, that I can think of. But since you’ve taken the trouble to come out here to see me, I take it there’s something you think we’ve got to say. All right, say it, and go. Or, better, just go. I’ve got things to do. Re-whitening that pad, for one thing.”
“Really, Graham, do you think this is good enough? Here I am, having to get up at a most ungodly hour, taking all this trouble to come to see you, and you’re behaving like a bear. Anyone would think you’re not pleased to see me.” The rejoicing in Graham’s discomfort was quite unconcealed now. “I don’t think you understand quite how you’re placed, my dear Graham”, he said silkily. “I certainly don’t think you realize that I’m not to be talked to like this, and lightly tossed aside any-old-how you like. Of course”, he added, affecting an afterthought, “if it was a matter of lightly tossing me off, that would be very different. But it doesn’t look as if that sort of thing’s much in prospect, does it?” he said, as if addressing a third person. He leaned nonchalantly against the wall and surveyed Graham cheerfully down his nose.
Graham breathed very hard. “Listen”, he said in a concentrated tone, “I don’t know what the hell you’re getting at, if anything, with all these supposedly subtle innuendos, and I don’t care. It looks as if you’ve got something on your mind. Well, you’ve already wasted five of the thirty minutes you had. That leaves you twenty-five minutes. I suggest you spit it out, whatever it is, and then go. Whatever you decide, I’m leaving here at ten, and so are you — if I haven’t thrown you out before.”
“I don’t think you’ll want to do that, my love”, said Tyldesley, silky again. “No, Graham, dear, I don’t think there’s going to be any of that kind of thing. Not unless you want trouble. But since you’re so pressing, and since it doesn’t look as if I’m going to be offered the elementary courtesy of a cup of tea, I’ll do as you ask, and tell you what I want to talk about.”
“Do that”, snapped Graham.
“It’s simplicity itself, my love. I want you back.”
It took Graham several seconds to grasp what he had said, and several more as he tried to work out whether it was some elaborate joke and, if not, what it was. When it finally sank in that the man was in earnest, he laughed. He couldn’t help it. He leaned on the nearest wall and rocked with laughter for some time, while Tyldesley, who had thought he might receive any reaction except this one, stared back at him, piqued and perplexed. For the first tim
e, too, he showed signs of real nervousness.
“You’re not serious?” asked Graham incredulously when he had regained control of himself.
But Tyldesley was very serious indeed, and he employed every artifice he knew to convince Graham of the fact. He tried alternately the man-to-man and the beguiling; he wheedled and demanded and he blustered and cajoled. Meanwhile Graham stood listening in growing astonishment, wondering what had driven Tyldesley, who started feeling homesick if he went outside the City of Westminster, into this desperate, and hopeless attempt to raise the dead. And why now, he asked himself, more and more puzzled. If he wanted to make this absurd and humiliating mission, why did he wait all this time? Why didn’t he come out here with this embarrassing performance when he was first given the heave-ho? Why now?
In the end Tyldesley clearly saw that his attempt was doomed to failure. He stood upright, squared his shoulders as if preparing to box. His face cleared, and he looked squarely at Graham. “One last time of asking”, he said, trying to sound straightforward, which given his nature was not easy. “Are you willing even to consider trying to make a fresh start with me?”
“No”, said Graham. “Not even to consider it. We’re through, as I told you a very long time ago. I can’t think why you’ve decided to come all this way out of your natural habitat to ask me something you must have known quite certainly was out of the question. I’m even more surprised that you should have done it now, after so long. But I’m not really interested in those things, or in anything else to do with you. The answer is No, and that’s the end of the matter. Now please go.”
Tyldesley looked keenly at him, with doubt and uncertainty edging into his face. “Can it be…” he mused as if to himself, “can it be that I was given false information? Surely not.”
Out of Bounds Page 19
