by Pirate Irwin
Admittedly having lunch with Steiner’s family was the only other option he had and it was the lesser of two evils, though not by much, but the added allure was that Mirabelle would be there and her beauty and elegance would more than compensate for the as yet to be discovered charms of his hosts.
Sebastian couldn’t stand Benjamin Steiner, whom he regarded as a parvenu of the roughest kind, indeed just the sort that he thought was meant to be excluded from such social events.
His dislike of Steiner senior stemmed from a hatred that such lowly born people could buy their way into respectability – on the back of their son – and calling him “sir” as he had to under the etiquette of the day really stuck in his gullet.
It was no wonder that Adam had turned out to be so driven, Sebastian mused, because his father could not permit one of his blood to fall short of perfection, and his failure to protect himself and fall under his wing stemmed from having always kowtowed to Steiner senior.
“So, Stuart, Adam tells me you have no game-plan for when you leave. Is that true?” Steiner senior asked.
Their small party of five – Mr and Mrs Steiner, Adam, Mirabelle and himself – were camped out on one of the fields leading down to the Isis along with the thousands of other picnickers – and were tucking into the finest, most expensive caviar and Bollinger that Steiner’s father could buy, or at least had instructed his wife to get from that symbol of the establishment, Harrods.
Sebastian, who was dressed in his black tailcoat, whose funereal undertakerish look was countered by a bright blue waistcoat covered in red roses which was a privilege accorded to those in Pop and which he had refused to shed since leaving Eton, had not taken too kindly to the patronising tone of the question which indicated he had no idea whatsoever of what he would do.
He was also not best pleased that Adam, who for all his travails on the Bumping Raceday was a good oarsman and was dressed in his Second VIII outfit – white trousers with a navy blue jacket and topped by his garlanded boater – in preparation for the Procession of the Boats later in the afternoon, had felt it necessary to impart this information to his father, who he knew regarded him as being a bad influence on his son.
“Travel round the north of England and see how you all live up there,” Sebastian replied, hoping that would be the end of the discussion.
Steiner senior, who had dressed himself also in tails, though with a sober grey waistcoat and a black tie, which to Sebastian only confirmed his mournful dour personality, frowned at the tart response.
“Now, now, young man, gone are the days when we were considered to be barbarians who had an outside toilet if we cared for one and didn’t know what a knife and fork were,” he said in a gruff tone.
“In my opinion, such is the moral decay down south that it is us who should build a wall to keep you lot out and stop you from feeding off our industry and pilfering the money we make from it,” he added with a chuckle, feeling very satisfied with his humorous riposte.
Sebastian shrugged, took a sip of champagne from the crystal flute and thought better of carrying on the great north-south divide question which obviously played a large part in Mr Steiner’s daily life. Instead, he reflected that no matter he would ever admit as much to this bearded ogre in front of him but he hadn’t given much thought at all to his future, apart from going to Germany to improve his spoken German, so he could avoid his mother and her interfering ways.
Having finished with one Steiner bombardment, Sebastian looked around him to see how other families were coping with their onerous duties of eating, drinking and camaraderie.
To his perverse pleasure he espied over the bonnet of Steiner’s Rolls Royce, what other car would this man have thought Sebastian, the von Preetz family with the freshly returned Eric splayed on the ground, rather like the last time he had seen him, only this time he was laughing, alongside a very attractive dark-haired girl. Baron von Preetz, who looked the archetypal Prussian aristocrat with his slicked back short grey hair and ramrod back, was standing pouring champagne into his much younger second wife’s glass.
“Ah, Adam, there’s von Preetz and his family, shall we get them over here?” said Sebastian smiling darkly at Adam, who shot back a nervous glance.
Steiner senior looked over the bonnet to where the von Preetzs were and turned back with a scowl on his face.
“Adam, you’re not associating with that German boy, are you?”
Adam, who had been enjoying a conversation with Mirabelle, looked at the ground and blushed.
“I really don’t think that is a very good idea, given I have heard his father is an apologist for Hitler and has scant regard for us Jews,” Benjamin said.
Adam, who Sebastian realized had not told his father about the tearoom showdown, just nodded and mouthed “yes, papa”.
“I know, Mr Steiner, why don’t we get them over here and you can exchange ideas?” Stuart opined.
“Hmm, I don’t believe that a Prussian Fascist is going to be very amenable to that and besides it would spoil mine and Mavis’s day,” Benjamin said, sweeping his arms at his timid wife, who was dutifully serving him with smoked salmon topped with sour cream and a sprinkling of chives.
“Oh, I think you might find young von Preetz’s opinions rather different to his father’s; he’s a changed man since the Oxford Tea Party!” Sebastian laughed as he saw Adam shrink at the thought of his father learning about his role in the tearoom ambush, for while Benjamin was no lover of the Nazis he would not want his son being involved in such antics.
Mavis, who for the most part had learnt to keep quiet and let her husband command the stage whenever they entertained, which was rare, or the even rarer occasions when they went out, thought it was the moment to break what was becoming an increasingly tense afternoon, which was rather clouding the excellent picnic Benjamin had ordered and the warm sunshine was cooling noticeably around them.
“Tell me, Sebastian, have you got a girlfriend?” she piped up.
Stuart for once was visibly taken aback, more that this diminutive greying figure in front of him had the ability to speak, so subjugated as she was to Benjamin.
Lord, who will rid me of these dreadful interfering people, Sebastian thought, casting a glance towards Mirabelle. My God, I want you, he intoned to himself, as he eyed her full breasts, whose size and shape were amplified by the white dress she was wearing.
“No, but I am currently working on it. In fact, I’m researching a project on love itself and what it really means, although you could probably tell me the answer, Madam.”
Mavis’s normally pallid features reddened at his response while Benjamin grunted, in self-satisfied appreciation that both his impressions about Sebastian and his comment on moral decay in the south had been proved admirably correct – though he patently failed to jump to his long-suffering wife’s defence.
Adam hadn’t been privy to this exchange, having gone off to join his fellow crew members for the Procession, so it was left to Mirabelle, who had felt her pulse start racing at the way Sebastian had looked at her, to break the silence, as perceptive as ever, she could see the picnic developing into a very nasty scene.
“Let’s go for a walk, Sebastian, and we can then get a place by the riverbank to watch Adam row past,” she said.
“Yes, that’s a very good idea, Mirabelle,” Sebastian said and standing up nodded his gratitude to the Steiners, who returned his with perfunctory nods of their own.
“We’ll see you down at the river then, Mr and Mrs Steiner,” Mirabelle smiled and turned on her heels to catch up with Sebastian, who had stopped briefly at the von Preetz picnic to ask Eric how his two-week holiday had been and received equally frosty stares from the whole party.
For a while both of them walked in silence, each enveloped in their own thoughts. Sebastian’s were ones of jealousy and anger against Adam, which was a very rare thing for him to ever feel, but to have such a girl in your bed when you wanted to must be something special. His ire was ra
ised for Steiner not having the grace to tell his father that but for him he would not be enjoying his establishment picnic but instead still be grieving for his only son.
Sebastian had always held a candle for Mirabelle, but he knew her parents like most of their generation didn’t think very much of him and had thought better about asking her out on her own – he did take great pleasure at the horror of the pure-blooded English parents when they learnt he had been Cupid for the liaison between their only daughter and the son of a Jewish arriviste from up north.
“Thank you, Mirabelle, for stepping in there, it was getting a bit difficult,” Stuart said.
“Yes, you didn’t exactly cover yourself in glory, did you, Sebastian?” she snorted.
“Well, they are so annoying and holier than thou, looking down their noses at me, I don’t know how you can put up with that, Mirabelle, because Adam is so in his father’s shadow and will turn out exactly like him when he’s older,” Sebastian replied.
“Oh come on, Sebastian, they mean well. It’s just that they’re from a completely different background and he may be lacking in the class you normally associate with but he has earned the right to be proud of himself, having made it from nothing,” she retorted.
“Well, la di da for him. While he sits around pontificating, there are many of his brethren in Germany who would envy his position now and I didn’t hear too much sympathy emanating from their lips about the suffering under the Nazis . . .’
“Oh stop it, Sebastian, you’re getting on my nerves,” Mirabelle snapped.
Having drifted into a wooded area on the edge of the field, Sebastian snapped too but in a different way as he pounced on Mirabelle and slapped his mouth on her luscious lips but found no entry to the frenzied lashings of his tongue.
“What the hell are you doing, Sebastian!” exclaimed Mirabelle as she pushed him away.
“I’m testing out my search for the real meaning of love, having gained no satisfaction from Mrs Steiner,” replied Stuart unashamedly.
“Well, I think that’s totally out of order and we should be getting down to the river to watch Adam . . .”
Undeterred, Sebastian kissed her once again and this time to his complete surprise and to a certain extent disappointment the previously pristine and respectable Mirabelle swallowed his tongue with a passion that even he found overwhelming. “Come on, let’s go,” Mirabelle said.
Sebastian, who had thought he might never see his tongue again, such was the voracity of Mirabelle’s kissing, turned and started on his way towards the river when he was brought up short.
“No, Sebastian, not that way, forget the river,” she said softly.
“Well then, where to?” he asked, his heart racing and feeling his hands tremble ever so slightly.
“Your room, of course, silly fool. I’m not going to let it rest there as we’ve got a project to finish, no? “ Mirabelle said.
They lay in each other’s arms in Stuart’s room for an hour after a session of making love that even Sebastian, who had had several more experienced lovers than Mirabelle, would remember for a very long time.
Mirabelle had made virtually all the running – undressing him, kissing and licking every inch of his progressively more and more naked body, which only increased his lust for her – and he reciprocated every gesture she made until he reached her pants.
“It’s too late to go back now, Sebastian. Betrayal is betrayal and making love or not, we’ve stepped over the line,” Mirabelle whispered.
“This is crazy. I thought we were going to share a picnic. I didn’t think I would end up ripping off your knickers!” he laughed.
With that he tore off her pants and bent down, putting his tongue inside her, whirling it round and round, licking her clitoris with increased fervour as her moans grew ever more excited and her head started to thrash around with her long mane of hair whirling like a mad gipsy dancer – the taste of her salty juice as she came made him even more turned on and he knew he would be back down for more.
She too was not inactive, going down on him with a passion that none of his girlfriends had ever possessed, but then Miss Mirabelle was evidently more experienced than her innocent look when fully dressed reflected.
She licked his balls and then plunged her gaping mouth over his penis taking most of it into her, and within seconds of the touch of her tongue he was on the point of orgasm and had to concentrate his mind on other matters such as Mavis Steiner to stop himself from coming.
He entered her as lovingly as he had ever done to any woman and caressed her mouth with kisses that only made her moan and coo louder which came to one heady combined climax as their respective juices mixed in celebratory manner together.
Both lay there gasping with the sickly sweet smell of their act drifting round the room – an act which that arch Machiavellian figure and ardent womanizer Benjamin Disraeli, whose portrait hung on one of Sebastian’s walls, would have heartily approved of.
“That truly was wonderful, Sebastian,” Mirabelle purred.
“Really, Mirabelle? You really mean that. Better than Adam?” preened Sebastian.
“In a way, yes. This was different because it was totally spontaneous, with Adam it is like planning a battle, a lot of talk then the set hour approaches and he starts the first barrage etcetera, etcetera. All very practical but not exactly a turn-on,” she replied, which was not exactly the response Sebastian had been hoping for.
“Well, I guess love isn’t as deep a feeling as most people portray it to be,” Sebastian said and turned his back on her in the narrow thinly mattressed bed and stared at the portrait of Disraeli and thence to his bookshelves. They were littered with books on Napoleon – known also for his cursory interest in the act of making love, usually spending 30 seconds on the job while planning his next campaign – interspersed with the Romantic Poets, mainly John Keats.
“What do you mean by that? This was nothing, it was a betrayal yes but it doesn’t mean I drop Adam, because I still love him,” she replied frostily.
“Well, if that’s love, then I don’t want to have anything to do with it,” Sebastian muttered sulkily.
Mirabelle, who was still shivering with the pleasure of the orgasms, raised herself on an elbow and with her tresses of hair falling over her eyes and draping themselves onto Sebastian’s chest went for the jugular.
“Listen, Sebastian, it’s time you learnt some hard lessons because you’ve had it so easy for so long and it’s reflected in the way you address people and how deep your loyalty to even your best friend Adam ran. Today I decided to be the professor. I hope you pass muster the next time,” she said.
Sebastian grinned and thought, who are you, Miss ever so pure Mirabelle Ogilvy, to preach about loyalty, and realized with a sudden start that he was running late for the five o’clock Absence or roll call.
“Jesus, I better go. I’ve only got five minutes to make Absence and if I miss it I will be in serious trouble and I don’t want to have to explain why,” Sebastian said.
He barely had time to leap from the bed before his door was almost removed from its hinges and the saturnine one himself, Steiner, charged into the room with his normally placid face creased in fury.
Sebastian, who was standing stark naked with a huge erection just by his desk, decided to brazen out what was admittedly a pretty desperate situation.
“Oh Adam, look, I know it appears really bad but I was just conducting an experiment and really the results are most interesting if you’d . . .”
Sebastian didn’t get any further as Steiner, still dressed in his rower’s uniform punched him full in the face, splintering his nose bone and leaving Sebastian down on his haunches with his hands under his shattered proboscis vainly trying to stop the torrents of blood coming forth from the wound staining the wooden floor.
Steiner was shaking with fury as he stooped over Sebastian and shaped up to land another blow on the pathetic blood-soaked figure below him.
“You’re
a bastard by birth and a bastard by nature!” Steiner yelled before withdrawing from his more aggressive pose.
“You make me sick, Judas, and as for you, Mirabelle, you’re not much better than a whore and as far as I am concerned you can stay with this son of a bitch,” and with that Steiner straightened his jacket smoothed back his hair and left.
Stuart, initially stunned both by the manner of Steiner’s entrance and the blow to his nose, picked himself up off the floor, relieved not to have received the added insult of splinters in his rear end which had happened to his feet on several occasions, stuffed some paper up his nostrils to stop the flow of blood and dressed to go for Absence.
“What about me?” wailed a less than assertive Mirabelle, who sat hunched up at the top of the bed with her knees drawn up under her beautiful though tear-stained face.
“I expect you not to be here when I return to do my packing. You’re on your own, Mirabelle,” Stuart replied glacially.
He could hear her screaming sobs ringing through the building as he made his way down the stairs. Sebastian Stuart, broken nose and all, didn’t give a damn, for his experiment had been a roaring success – it had indeed been a most profitable day.
CHAPTER THREE
Sebastian‘s nose may have healed eventually but his friendship with Steiner had suffered a terminal blow and with no one to help him with his studies, young Sebastian decided it was time to make a real effort himself.
To the surprise of many he got a first in History and the same in German while Steiner also received a first in Law which pleased not only his demanding father but also Stone, who reflected that at least he had looked after the welfare of his students better than the unfortunate platoon over 20 years before.
Steiner prepared to go on to law school while Sebastian got ready to travel to Germany, despite the increasing tensions between the two countries.
As for Mirabelle, she received little truc from either of her former best friends, her letters to Steiner were returned to her unopened, while Sebastian could not even be bothered to go to that length and instead left them on the silver tray in the entrance hall of his mother’s house in London.
