by Zack
“That’s forty-five pence, please.”
Mike fumbled in his trousers’ pocket, briefly encountering an incipient hard-on, and fished out a fifty pence coin. How quickly they had all become used to the new decimal coinage—except his parents, who still bemoaned the loss of £-s-d. He handed it over as the girl slipped the book into a paper bag emblazoned with the Penguin logo. She gave him his change of five pence ( That’s what we used to call a shilling, Mum, don’t forget ) and another wan smile. He just managed to bury the book in his blazer’s accommodating outside pocket before Julian swept up triumphantly brandishing Race and Economics aloft.
Back out on the street he split from Julian, who had something to do in school first, and walked swiftly down Hampstead Lane. The boarding houses, playing fields, and Junior School premises were about half a mile from the old school buildings (and extensive modern additions) on top of Highgate Hill. As he turned off into the tree-lined crescent of Bishopswood Road, he ran into his brother loitering outside the Junior School buildings with two mates. It was disconcerting to see Will. It was like staring at a younger reverse version of himself in the mirror; a version with much shorter hair though almost as raven black but—annoyingly—a bit straighter, slightly different hazel eyes, and a snubbier nose, but definitely a Mike-alike.
One of Will’s friends (called Maxwell, he thought) tipped Mike a cheeky salute and reached out to grab the Penguin bag which had worked its way up with the walking. “Ooh, whatchagot there?” the kid piped up.
Mike twisted violently sideways and slapped a hand over the pocket. “Mind your own business. Will!” He nodded at his brother, uncomfortably aware suddenly of the book’s contents, recently speed-read in the bookshop, and its sexual connection between an older and younger brother. Truth be told, though, his mind was more bent toward Pendleton, one of the Fabian lads, possessed of a cute elfin face and fair hair more straw than blond, but which lay thickly in a fashionable flop over his tall forehead. Mike was drawn to flaxen mopheads. Apart from liking his look, he and Pendleton would have had little in common were it not for a coincidental week spent recovering from some malady or other last term in the school’s sanatorium which threw them into each other’s bedside company. There, in splendid isolation, one thing led to another. Pendleton (Eric, it turned out) was a naturally demure guy—at least, that’s how he appeared to Mike—and he expected an initial reluctance on Pendleton’s part to engage a boy from the senior common room in conversation. In fact, Eric opened up like a spring flower once he had accepted his companion’s gentle interest.
Flicking his brother a salute as saucy as his friend Maxwell’s had been, Mike walked on along the road, hoping the uncomfortable strain in his trousers wasn’t showing too much. Thinking of Pendleton had that effect. Shy exchanges of shared interests grew into longer conversations and more intimate confessions. Yes, one thing certainly led to another, and in the process it was Eric Pendleton who slowly took the lead. To Mike’s astonishment, the boy suddenly announced that because of its length, he could suck his own dick. Surprise turned to instant arousal.
“Bet you can’t,” Mike taunted.
By that time neither was any longer feeling the effects of illness, and Pendleton wasted no time in pushing the bed clothes down and producing his already erect cock through his pajama fly. Mike propped himself up on one elbow and stared in amazement as Pendleton flipped legs into the air until his toes engaged and locked under the back of the military-style iron bedhead. With little more effort than that, he popped a good two inches of cock into his mouth and began sucking avidly.
Mike was struggling for breath when he quietly stuttered, “God, Eric, I wish I could do that.”
The boy disengaged enough to speak. “You need to be flexible if it isn’t so long.”
Mike’s voice came from a constricted larynx, almost a croak. “That wasn’t really what I meant.”
The longing in Mike’s voice must have carried his true meaning, because Eric slowly unfolded and lay back flat with his head turned to engage Mike’s unblinking gaze. Motor responses, not his disconnected brain, drove Mike from his bed to the cold linoleum to kneel by Eric’s mattress, and with no further thought, he dropped his mouth over the swaying erection and in surprisingly few strokes brought Eric off spectacularly.
Since then, the two engaged with each other as frequently as the complex program of boarding house life permitted, and not as often as Mike would have liked. It helped, of course, that Eric enjoyed doing him as much as he did Eric. It transpired that Eric had inserted himself into another mutual pairing, and twice the four had utilized the facilities of Fabian’s other premises along the road, a basement of another large Victorian house, but the upper floor privately owned. Only a few boys ever bothered to use what everyone referred to as “next door,” although it was in fact one building along from Fabian. There, safely behind the locked front door accessed by a short set of stone steps into the sub-basement, they romped on the overstuffed sofa and two armchairs. Their group even had a private code, which the historian Eric invented. One only had to quietly ask one or all of the others if they fancied a “Spanish” later on. When Mike first heard the term, he queried it.
“History not a strong point?” Eric asked.
Mike shrugged. “I’m okay on history—”
“So you know all about the War of the Spanish Succession?”
“Yeah, start of the 18th century, about who had the right to rule Spain.”
Eric’s eyes creased in a sexy-sly smile. “The operative word, or should I say words, is suck session.”
Words he’d quickly snatch-read in The Hand-Reared Boy snagged his memory on thinking of a Spanish—the way Horatio Stubbs and his miscreant dormitory friends called jacking each other a “mutual,” after the adjacent building of the Mutual Insurance Co. A Mutual Spanish, he mused with a pleased smile.
Yes, Mike had lived with his inclinations so long he’d given up worrying. But he hadn’t yet met his yearnings. School fumbles were not going to be enough. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he just did.
CHAPTER TWO
Impossible Possibilities
“Nice wheels.”
Julian nodded at Mike’s departing parents while Mike’s innards squidged with his embarrassment. What was the point in driving a flame-red 1972 Alfa Romeo 2000 GTV like it was one of those Safeway shopping carts? His father liked a sporty vehicle, but honestly, Mr. Adrian Smith was no Niki Lauda, not even a James Hunt (though for an old guy, he was still as handsome as the English F-1 driver). Besides, he went everywhere by train to play his concerts. Mike couldn’t wait to get past his driving test. Have to book it in at Hendon next year. He nudged his friend. “Yours pick up your stuff too?”
“Who, the Parentalis sapiens?” Julian quipped. “An ubiquitous species but easily avoidable with care. Yes, yesterday. I stand in the only clothes I have for the rest of the day. Still, it saves having to return home in the familial bosom to face all the unpacking and head shaking at the term’s wear and tear and too-close scrutiny at what’s tucked away in the jolly old tuck box while you have to look on. You taking the bus?”
Mike nodded. “I have to grab my brother first. When are you leaving?”
Julian gave it a moment’s thought. “After lunch. I’m not hanging around for the leavers’ Big School speeches and all that crap. It’s all right for them: they won’t be coming back next term like we will.”
“’Kay. Catch you back here, say, two-thirty?”
* * *
Bliss—the end of the summer term, with eight weeks of luxurious free time ahead. Actually, not entirely free. Mike had wrangled a vacation job with the branch of Fox Talbot on Baker Street for three weeks, filling in for assistants on overlapping package holidays to Benidorm or Torremolinos or Ibiza. All the lucky ones seemed to be flying off to exotic locations in Spain these days. Not the Smiths, though. “It costs enough to keep you boys at Highgate, you know,” his father said often enough. “
Have you any idea how much it would cost the four of us to go flying off in an aeroplane? No, I thought not.”
The recent crash course at the school Photographic Club, of which Mike was a member, had come in useful. It included an overview of all the single-lens-reflex camera bodies and lenses. The cream of optical technology filled his mind: Konica, Leica, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Rollei, and Zenit, to name a few. He enjoyed the process of photography, but it had added attractions when Joey Townsend worked with him in the dark room. In the dim red light and heady smell of fixative, a Mutual with Joey came naturally. Otherwise he had nothing to do with him beyond the shared love of taking pictures and developing them, and Joey’s dick.
“William!”
His kid brother waved nonchalantly, said his farewells to friends who would be moving on to other schools for the next stage of their young lives and back-slapped those he’d meet next term in the Senior School, and then sauntered over. “Time to go home, Mike?”
“Yeah.” He consulted his wristwatch. “Come on. I said I’d meet Julian Webb now and we’d get a two-ten together.”
They set off back along Bishopswood Road past two other large boarding houses toward Fabian, collected Julian, and carried on to the far corner with Hampstead Lane and the bus stop across the road.
“Did you get those tickets, Mike?”
Julian glanced up at Will’s question.
Mike grinned tightly. “I did.”
“Yo!” Will slapped Mike on the lower back.
“For what?” The exchange had piqued Julian’s curiosity. “Here comes one.” He pointed beyond Mike, back up the Lane where a bright red single-decker bus came around the distant bend and bore down on them. Will stepped out from under the request-stop sign to lean over the curb and wave at the driver.
“For Top Of The Pops, next Wednesday.”
The 210 bus pulled up with a hiss of air brakes, and the three boys climbed up. Will slid into a seat next to the window four rows down and Mike sat beside him, with Jules across the aisle.
As soon as he settled, Julian raised his eyebrows and waited for Mike to answer the unasked but obvious question. He had to wait as the conductor loomed over them with the sort of expression that said he knew Highgate schoolboys all too well, thank you—fares purrlease. Mike handed over the correct change. “Two. All the way, thanks.” He meant to Golders Green, where the service terminated.
Once Julian had coughed up his five-pence fare money and the man went back to the front to lean above the driver, Mike told him. “Bay Area Transit is on again, playing live.”
“Oh, Mikey, Mikey…” Julian shook his head sadly. “I didn’t know you were into bubblegum—”
“I’m not. I just like the new one—”
“And you do have a poster of Jez McGowran on your bedroom wall,” Will jumped in, peering at Julian around Mike, who was doing his best to choke his brother back against the window.
Will started strumming an imaginary guitar, his fret hand banging against Mike’s chin. “I don’t know why you don’t play with me. We could be good—”
“You’ll need a much better name than the Smiths,” Julian snapped back with a self-satisfied chortle.
“Pack it in, Junior,” Mike snarled in mock irritation at Will.
After running along Spaniards Road, framed between Sandy Heath on one side and the plunging woods of Hampstead Heath on the other, the bus turned a sharp right at Jack Straw’s Castle and dipped down the green gulch of North End Road. Mike looked across Will’s shoulder over to the left where the thick wood of West Heath flashed past the windows. A couple of boys had lurid tales to tell of being propositioned by men when cutting across that way. Mike had taken it with a pinch of salt. Such rumors were rife, like the one that suggested there were men who hung around in Highgate Village’s Pond Square willing to pay a fiver if the boy would let the guy suck him off. Hah! Chance’d be a fine thing.
Ten minutes later the 210 pulled into the bus stands adjacent to Golders Green tube station and the driver cut the engine. It juddered to a stop in a coughing way which suggested it would be grateful not to be started up again soon. Mike and Will said goodbye to Julian, who only had a few hundred yards to walk to where his parents lived. “Get over, if you can,” Mike shouted out. He never minded a visit from Jules in the school holidays.
Julian waved and disappeared below the Northern Line bridge where it crossed Finchley Road. Mike was still watching his bobbing shoulders as he merged with other pedestrians when Will yelled. He looked around to see a 13 crossing the traffic lights for the southbound Finchley Road bus stop. Will broke into a run and Mike took to his heels to catch his brother. There were only three waiting at the bus stop, but Mike just made it on as the double-decker pulled away, headed into the center of town. He followed Will up the tight stairs and swayed along the aisle, hand-holding from seat back to seat back to where his brother had already grabbed the free front seats on the left. He was still a kid, after all. The thrill of having a view through the front from high up had paled for Mike, who longed to start motoring on his own. It was unfair, he thought: in America he would be old enough to drive. They sat in silence for the ten-minute ride up to the Hendon Way junction and then downhill all the way to Swiss Cottage. As he usually did, Will hung over the trailing edge of the doorway platform as the bus pulled in to the stop opposite Finchley Road tube station, and then leapt off while it was still moving. Mike didn’t wait for it to stop either. He was eager to reach home, get out of school uniform, and change into a normal teenager again.
They dodged with long practice around the rear of the bus and between traffic stalled at the stop lights in one direction and the vehicles accelerating from around the corner on the other side of wide Finchley Road. Pedestrians marching in all directions filled the deep paved area and disused service lane in front of Habitat, alighting from buses, emerging from the tube station or rushing to catch a train, and piling out from Waitrose, arms laden with grocery bags. Mike took the lead and wove a passage through the bustle to turn down the steep drop of Greencroft Gardens. As though a volume control had been flicked, they walked into sudden silence—well, as quiet as London could ever be—under trees between tall terraces of gray Victorian houses, many of them now divided up into separate flats and bed-sits. A left on Fairhazel and quickly right into Aberdare Gardens. The Smith residence sat on the right, just after the slight rightward bend of the quiet, tree-lined road of elegant, three-story Edwardian houses. The Smiths owned the whole building, but lived on the spacious ground floor and rented out the two upper stories, which had a separate stairway entrance on the side. The place had been home for as long as Mike could remember, and he loved this part of West Hampstead. In truth, the bus ride to Highgate was short enough for him and Will to be day boys, but their father’s concert career kept him darting about the country at a moment’s notice, and their mother had Welsh family she liked to visit for extended periods, so boarding the boys was convenient even if it did stretch the family finances to the limit. No, I thought not, Mike heard his father’s voice repeat.
Later, outside through the wide French windows, the garden glowed gold-green in the evening light as the four Smiths sat around the dining table digging into a roasted leg of lamb with mint sauce (and redcurrant jelly as a special home-for-vacation treat), minted and buttered new potatoes and freshly podded peas. Adrian Smith paused in the act of forking half a potato into his mouth. “When does your photo thing job start?”
“Oh, not until the second week of August, Dad.”
“By which time we’ll be in the heart of Wales, won’t we, darling?” his mum said to Will, who scowled predictably at the thought of weeks spent in the family’s modest cottage near Betws-y-Coed. Truth be told, Will was even more of an urban creature than Mike, but at twelve-not-quite-thirteen he had no say in the matter.
“I heard you doing some practice before dinner, or was that just you warming your cello up?”
Adrian Smith gav
e Mike a broad smile and gurned. “Just having a saw! If you don’t burnish the strings every day they lose their sweet tone on the bedpost—”
“Overnight!” the boys finished the old joke.
“I’ll be joining you and your mother for a few days,” he said to William. “As soon as the mini-tour of Midlands concert halls is over.” He turned to Mike. “That will leave you all alone here, but I’m assuming you’re grown up enough to look out for yourself?”
Before Mike could pour scorn on his father’s remotest possible doubt, his mother jumped in.
“The freezer is well stocked. I’ve made a load of stews and a shepherd’s pie base. You can mash the potato for it and don’t you dare go and buy that Smash stuff and there’s Bolognese sauce in small pots in the freezer as well and I stocked up with lasagne, spaghetti, and some penne in the dry cupboard. Just nip into Waitrose for eggs, milk, and Grodzinksi’s for bread (don’t you dare buy that supermarket rubbish), and don’t forget the fruit and vegetables. I don’t want you eating takeaway.”
“No, Mum. I’ll be fine.” Mike rolled his eyes at Will in response to a toe jab on his shin. In fact he was looking forward to being alone at home for a change, without the promiscuity of dormitory life: the pushing, joshing, rushing, the smells, the lack of privacy. Time and again of late, he’d considered asking them to pull him out of Highgate and let him go to the local school half a mile, if that, away. It might be a State comprehensive school, but Quintin Kynaston boasted an excellent reputation, and he knew they were strong on photography and film skills. And, it would cost the family hardly anything.