by Lear, James
“Only the first-class ones, I suppose, who might pay well.”
He looked crestfallen.
“I don’t blame you. I’d happily pay five pounds to get my cock up your ass.”
“You’re American, aren’t you, sir?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Is it true what they say?”
“What might that be?” I’d heard a lot of folklore about Americans, not least the prevalent notion that we were all multimillionaires.
“That you have really big cocks.”
This sounded so comic, in his Scottish accent, his face red, his eyes shining, that I had to bite the inside of my mouth to stop myself from laughing.
I grabbed his hand and placed it on my crotch. “Why don’t you find out for yourself?”
His eyes grew even wider.
“I… I think it must be true.”
“I guess it is.”
The whistle blew again, and we heard footsteps outside the carriage. The door handle turned, and we sprang apart.
“There you are, Arthur.” It was that mean conductor again. “There are passengers waiting to be attended to.”
“He hasn’t quite finished attending to me yet, thank you. Now, would you mind putting the case back up on the rack?”
“Yes, sir.”
The conductor hung around in the doorway.
“Was there something?” I asked, in my most arrogant Yankee tone.
“No, sir.” Oh, the emphasis on that last word! “Hurry up, Arthur.” He walked away, scowling.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Will I see you again, Arthur?”
“It’s a long way to London.”
“Here.” I pulled out my wallet and gave him a ten-shilling note. “A little payment on account.”
“Thank you, sir. That’s very generous.”
“Don’t worry, Arthur. You’ll earn every penny.”
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Mitchell. Edward Mitchell. But my friends call me Mitch.”
He pocketed the bill and gave my cock a last squeeze. “Thanks, Mitch.” He winked over his shoulder and was gone.
I took a book out of my case—I was greatly looking forward to reading Agatha Christie’s latest novel, The Big Four, and had been saving it especially for the trip—hoisted the luggage aloft, and settled into my seat.
At ten o’clock sharp, the Flying Scotsman puffed and jolted its way out of Waverley Station in a great cloud of steam, and as I watched the hills of Edinburgh recede I reflected that this was my second view that morning of Arthur’s Seat.
II
READERS OF MY PREVIOUS ADVENTURES MAY RECALL THAT, after the completion of studies at Cambridge, I intended to return to my native Boston to pursue a career as a doctor. But plans change—and when an opportunity arose at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, I jumped at it. There were many reasons for this, the main one, of course, being Vincent West, to whom I was devoted and with whom I wanted to live, wherever it may be. We planned to move to America, where, I naively assumed, he would be able to walk into a good job—but, in fact, Uncle Sam was against us, and it would have been easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than to get Vince through US immigration. When I made the mistake of losing my temper at the American embassy, the officials started asking all sorts of awkward questions about the nature of our friendship, and hinted that the police might be interested. We retired, hurt, and began to consider a future in the United Kingdom, where doctors were in short supply and I could earn enough to keep both of us in reasonable comfort. Vince got a good job in an Edinburgh publishing house, and we both loved our new Caledonian existence.
But there were other reasons why I was drawn to that rocky city, less romantic but no less real. For it was here in Edinburgh, around 50 years ago, that Arthur Conan Doyle had embarked on his medical and literary careers. Here he had trained at the University, and here he had published his first story. I saw Edinburgh entirely through Conan Doyle’s eyes, scanning its narrow side streets for evidence of crime, hanging around the Castle eyeing what I thought might be suspicious types—and, of course, eyeing the soldiers, who came and went in noisy, bekilted groups. Both Vince and I developed a taste for these rough and ready Scottish lads, and we occasionally invited one of them back to our lodgings for supper. The fact that I was American, and a doctor, seemed to make it easy for them to engage in acts that they might have thought disgusting otherwise. The money didn’t hurt, either.
The only crimes I stumbled across in Edinburgh were, alas, those committed by Vince and myself and our occasional guests in our apartment on Nicolson Street—and we made very sure that there were no snooping “detectives” around when we got down to those particular felonies. That aside, life rolled along without incident; I did well at the hospital, and Vince did well at the publishers, we made some good friends, enjoyed plays and concerts and long walks on weekends. It was an agreeable existence, illuminated by our deepening love for each other, and by our regular, inventive, and extremely athletic sex life.
But once a sleuth, always a sleuth—or so I told myself. My brush with crime in Drekeham Hall, and my brilliant (I thought) methods of discovering the villain, had given me an appetite for amateur detection that was far from satisfied. I slaked it on detective fiction, of which there was no shortage. I devoured every new Agatha Christie as it appeared, and had become completely obsessed by the personality and methods of her detective hero, Hercule Poirot, the fastidious Belgian with the superfluity of “little grey cells.” I loved, also, Lord Peter Wimsey, the gorgeous aristocratic hero of Dorothy L. Sayers’s novels—and I fantasized, while reading about his deeds, about how this blond athlete might take to a dark-haired, muscular, American assistant with specialized medical knowledge. We could do great things together…
My family kept me supplied with lurid crime magazines, the covers of which adorned our walls. Conan Doyle I still revered and reread, and found all sorts of erotic undertones in his novels and stories which I’m sure would have disgusted him, but which delighted me. Vince said that he half expected to find me masturbating over Sherlock Holmes novels, so intently did I read them—and, although I laughed it off, it was in fact true. I had frequently read between the lines so deeply that I would finger myself just as Holmes and Watson fingered the villain, shooting my load as the police shot their guns. Detection and erection did more than rhyme, in my book.
While my medical career was going according to plan—in another year I’d be fully qualified—my detective career had stalled. Without crime there could be no detection, and Edinburgh seemed to be a sort of crime-free Utopia. I suspected all sorts of villainy, and Vince often accused me, with good reason, of deliberately seeing the worst in people just to feed my own appetite for mystery. However, I have always believed that readiness and preparation are the key to success in life, so I kept my powers of observation and “deductive reasoning,” as Holmes would have it, in good order.
To that end, I found myself studying my fellow passengers as they passed up and down the corridor outside my carriage, settling themselves in for the trip. There was the overdressed dowager type with her mousy traveling companion, bustling along like a glorious galleon with a dingy little dinghy in its wake. They looked respectable enough, but who knew the truth? The dowager could be a man in women’s clothes—I’d encountered such things, both in life and in fiction—perhaps on the run from the police, or heading to London for some piece of skulduggery. Her companion, shabby as she looked, could be the daughter of an aristocratic family, kidnapped and drugged, brainwashed into a state of semiconscious slavery, a pawn in a daring ransom drama… They passed by, followed by my little porter friend, almost buried under a crazy burden of hatboxes and suitcases. I don’t suppose they’d get to see Arthur’s seat as I had, I thought, rubbing my crotch. How could I get him in a dark corner before we reached London? Perhaps the first-class lavatories would do… There would be room enough in there to bend him over and give
him what he wanted, and of course there would be the great advantage of a lock on the door…
As usual, I had drifted from practicing my detective skills into some time-wasting sexual fantasy. I sat up straight, took my hands from my lap, and looked at the next passersby, a highly respectable family, led by an immaculately dressed young blond father in his gray suit and hat, followed by a meek, pretty mother in an over-fussy gown, and three young girls of diminishing sizes. The father looked angry, the wife near tears. A simple misunderstanding over the whereabouts of their seats, perhaps, or an argument over the trivia of childcare—or something more sinister? He appeared to be the very epitome of middle-class British manhood, with his pale skin and blond hair—but could he not, in fact, be a Bolshevik spy in disguise, accompanied by his equally dangerous whore and a group of homicidal midgets in knee socks and satin sashes? They had crossed the North Sea at night, beached the boat somewhere on the Firth of Forth, and were now heading to London, perhaps bent on assassination…
“Well, for God’s sake, get her into a dry pair!” said the father as he passed the door, his face like thunder.
“Yes, dear,” said the wife, her voice trembling.
There was an unmistakable odor of infant urine as the youngest and smallest of the daughters passed by. Had she really wet her pants? Or was this just another example of their dastardly cunning?
Next came a group of three young men—this was much more to my taste than toddlers in damp pants—in animated discussion, carrying their own luggage toward the rear of the train. They were all dressed stylishly, one of them—the best-looking, with his black hair and dark, regular features—in an excellent tweed suit that must have cost a pretty penny. The other two, good-looking in a more obvious, less appealing way, were weighed down with cameras and briefcases. They looked like reporters to me; they had that sneaky, over-observant air about them. Were they trailing someone, hoping to uncover a scandal? Was their black-haired companion in fact a junior minister entrusted with secret documents of state? And were the reporters really reporters—or thieves? They looked slick, a little too slick, perhaps. Highly paid cat burglars, put on the train expressly to acquire the documents, disappearing before we reached Kings Cross?
“She’s not so good-looking in real life,” said one of them, the shorter of the two, a smooth-faced fellow with pale green eyes.
“I suppose the studio lights do a lot,” said the handsome guy in tweed.
They passed by, one of them—the taller of the two “reporters”—casting a last look at me over his shoulder. Desire? Or something more sinister?
I got up and stepped into the corridor, partly to stretch my legs, partly to investigate the bathroom facilities. Those of us who look for adventure in public places do well to check the locks on doors, the dimensions of cubicles, the arrangements for washing. Also, I needed to piss.
The door was locked, the “Engaged” sign showing, so I waited, looking out the window at the still dark sky, wondering if those heavy gray clouds presaged rough weather or simply another gloomy winter day. Minutes passed. The door remained locked. Just my luck: someone was settling down for a good long dump. I wandered up to the dining car, which was already starting to fill with people requiring coffee. The steward, an immaculately dressed man somewhere in his sixties, laid out the crockery and silverware with exquisite precision. Each knife, each fork, placed just so; each plate, each cup, with the London and North Eastern Railway crest facing forward. He looked up at me, smiled, blushed, and patted the back of his neat white hair. A useful ally and confidant for later in the trip? Or an accomplished poisoner, even now plotting the death of a prominent passenger?
Now I really needed to get to the lavatory, and retraced my steps. It was still occupied, and I had raised my knuckles to rap discreetly on the door when I was stopped by a loud bang and the sound of a raised voice, hastily dropped, from within. Had someone beaten me to it, and got Arthur the porter in there for a quick fuck before we had even reached the border? I thought not; the voice sounded threatening, and there was nothing rhythmic about that single bang to suggest pleasant physical activity.
I knocked on the door. Total silence.
“I say,” I began—I had picked up such Anglicisms from Vince, and found they worked well in such delicate situations—“are you going to be long in there?”
The lock rattled, and the “Engaged” sign slid around to “Vacant.” The mean conductor slipped out of the compartment and pulled the door closed behind him.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, sneering and, I noticed, sweating slightly. “The lavatory is out of order. I suggest you use another.”
I tried hard to see through the narrow gap between the door and the frame, but he pulled it shut.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Perhaps I can fix it.”
“No, sir. I’m about to lock this facility. Please go further down the train.”
I smelled a rat. “I’ve paid for a first-class ticket,” I said, now allowing my New World directness full range, “and I intend to have first-class service.”
I heard another, softer, thump from inside the cubicle.
“There’s someone in there, isn’t there?”
“No, sir.” He looked shifty now.
“What have you been doing?” I felt more kindly disposed to him now, assuming that he had been enjoying himself, either with a girl or a young man; with my track record, I could hardly judge him.
“Nothing.”
“I am quite prepared to overlook your…indiscretion…if you will simply vacate the facility and allow me to use it.”
“It’s out of order,” he said faintly, but he knew the battle was lost. I put my hand on the doorknob and turned it. Inside, cowering against the wall, was just what I had hoped to see—an attractive young man in a state of disarray. But his disarray was not one that suggested sexual activity. His collar was torn, as if from rough handling around the neck, and there was blood trickling from one nostril.
“Good God,” I said, “what has been going on here?”
“I caught a stowaway, sir,” said the conductor, grimly. He looked like a prison officer about to lead a condemned man to his cell. “We have to deal with this sort of scum every day.”
The young man didn’t look like scum, even though it was clear that he was not well off; his frayed cuffs and patched jacket suggested to me an impoverished student rather than a crook. He was short, not much over five foot four, and rather stocky, though far from fat. He had brown hair cut short over a high forehead, wide blue eyes, and freshly shaven cheeks, already turning slightly blue with stubble. He dabbed at the blood with a handkerchief.
“Are you all right, friend?” I asked.
“There’s no point talking to him, sir,” said the conductor. “He’s some kind of foreigner.”
“As am I,” I said. “And I should have thought that, as a guest in your country, he deserves to be treated with some respect.”
“He’s traveling without a ticket.”
“And do you regularly beat up people who appear to be traveling without a ticket?”
“It’s my job.”
The stowaway was looking from one of us to the other, trying to figure out if he was about to go from the frying pan to the fire. I thought it was time to reassure him.
“So,” I said, slowly and clearly, as if speaking to an idiot, “you do not have a ticket?”
“Non. I ’ave lost ’im.”
He spoke good enough English, though heavily accented. French, I guessed.
“That’s what they all say, these stowaways,” said the conductor, puffing out his chest. “Now, if you’ll let me get on with my job, sir.”
“No,” I said, ignoring him and addressing the man. “You haven’t lost your ticket. Didn’t they tell you?” I reached into my jacket pocket and produced Vince’s unused ticket. “I was holding it for you.” The conductor—and, indeed, the young man—looked baffled.
“What is your name?
”
“Bertrand Damseaux.”
“That’s precisely what it says here,” I said, referring to a piece of paper that actually listed a few books I was hoping to get in London. “I was expecting to meet you at the station. Where were you?”
Both the conductor and the boy had figured out that some deception was taking place, but it was in neither’s interest to expose me. The conductor, if he’d called me a liar, would have lost his job. And to the boy, I represented deliverance.
“Come along, Bertrand,” I said. “Your carriage awaits.”
“But—” said the conductor.
“First class,” I said.
The boy came out, skirting the conductor as if he feared another blow, and followed me down the corridor. I ushered him into the compartment, closed the door behind us, and pulled down the blinds. I still needed to piss, but not so urgently that it would delay me from getting to the bottom of a potentially interesting story.
“Alors, Bertrand,” I said, and quickly realized that I had exhausted most of my conversational French, as I had no immediate need to remark on the weather, order a beer, or borrow a pen from my aunt.
“Sir.”
He stood, awkwardly fiddling with a loose button on his jacket.
“If you play with it, it’ll drop off. Did your mother tell you nothing?”
He looked up at me through wet lashes, trying to figure out if he’d understood me correctly, and then broke into a huge smile.
“That’s better,” I said. “And I see that you understand English perfectly well.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “My accent, it is very pronounced.”
“But charming.”
“Merci.”
I held his look, and realized that my chance companion could help me pass the time very pleasantly. The ticket would not go to waste after all.
“Please, sit down.”
He did as bidden.
“So, Bertrand,” I said, sitting opposite him and leaning back, crossing my legs, “you were traveling without a ticket.”
“Yes.”
“You hadn’t lost it, had you?”