Forth into Light

by Gordon Merrick

  Peter laughed at the lovely solemn little face that was studying him with such concern. “Just wait. There isn’t all that much difference between us. When you’re fifty, I’ll only be about eighty and then the joke will be on you.”

  Little Pete exploded in a series of fearsome detonations and ended up on Charlie’s side of the bed. He smoothed the sheet over Charlie’s bottom so that its contours were precisely delineated. “Hey, Daddy,” he said, stroking a buttock. “Why do you and Daddy sleep in the same bed? Kyria Tula says daddies usually don’t.”

  Charlie heaved himself over onto his back. “Because we like to, dopey,” he asserted.

  “Why else?” Peter agreed. “Why do you like to get into Mummy’s bed? It’s nice sleeping with people you love.”

  “He doesn’t understand anything,” Charlotte pointed out with slightly bored forebearance.

  “Then why don’t you let Mummy get in with you?” Petey persisted. His sturdy little body was largely hidden by the bed. Eyes full of mischief searched for an answer across Charlie’s sheeted and blameless stomach.

  “She doesn’t like the way we snore,” Peter explained.

  The look of eager anticipation lighted the child’s face once more. “Show me, Daddy,” Little Pete urged, already beginning to do a jig of hilarious appreciation. Peter snored hideously. Charlie joined in. They all dissolved in paroxysms of laughter and rolled around on the bed together.

  They had expected questions from the moment they had decided to create a family with the unorthodox material at hand (decided to live with and for these miracles? what loss would they be answerable for if they had failed to do so?) and had resolved to answer them as truthfully as possible. Martha had already explained to Charlotte that Charlie was her father, but that she had been married to another man so that when she was free she had married Peter in order to have Petey.

  “It amounts to the same thing,” Martha had pointed out, unconscious that there was anything extraordinary in what she was saying. “They’ve always been together. They’re like brothers, only even more so. When you’re older and understand more about love you’ll realize how rare and wonderful it is.”

  The adoption of a common name had consolidated the family. It had been Peter’s idea to go through the legal formalities of combining his and Charlie’s surnames into a hyphenated amalgam so that the children, with Martha’s former husband’s consent, were legally brother and sister, Martha was legally the mother of both, and Charlie and Peter achieved a sort of official sanction to their extralegal relationship. This had so nicely confused the situation that few remembered for long who was what to whom. There were those who believed that Charlie and Peter really were brothers despite the fact that they were openly and unabashedly in love with each other. Some people were convinced that Martha had worked it out somehow so that she was in enviable possession of both husband and resident lover, though they were inclined to be vague about which was which. On the island, having notably failed to live up to their explosive and scandalous potential, they were regarded as the essence of sanity and respectability. It was generally and reassuringly felt that as long as the Mills-Martins were there, everything would be all right.

  “All right now,” Charlie said, disentangling himself from immature arms and legs. “Go tell Mummy you’ve made complete nuisances of yourselves and that we’ll be down in a minute.” Charlie swung Charlotte into the air above him and Peter caught her and landed her on her feet. Petey planted a hand firmly and painfully on Charlie’s genitalia as he pushed himself off onto the floor. The children scampered off across the big, white, shuttered room and disappeared.

  “I’ve always thought the Mills-Martins sounded like a circus act,” Charlie said with a chuckle. They joined hands under the sheet. “God. That’s all I needed after last night. What are we going to do about the Leightons?”

  “I don’t know. I think maybe we’re going to have to start keeping them in separate cages. I haven’t had a chance to tell you. Young Jeff sidled over to me in the heat of the battle. He wants to have a serious talk.”

  They turned their heads simultaneously on their pillows and exchanged a look. Charlie lifted his brows. “Has the hour struck at last?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Dimitri?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “I hope not, poor kid. I’m afraid Dimitri is not one of our greatest successes. Could it, by any chance, be you he’s interested in?”

  “More likely you—more of a father figure,” Peter said with a spurt of laughter.

  “Well, as the elder statesmen of international homosexuality, we have our responsibilities. I hope you’ll be able to help. Jeff’s a good kid.”

  “I’ll try to handle it the way I hope somebody would if the hour ever strikes for Little Petey.”

  “The Groper? Are you mad? He’s going to be so bored and familiar with the male body by the time he’s twelve that he’ll be the straightest guy who ever walked down Main Street.”

  They smiled into each other’s eyes. “That’ll be his tough luck. You know, if Miss Charlie gets any more like you, I’m going to fall in love with her. Would that be incest? Let me think. You’re her father and Martha’s her mother and I’m—no, it’s perfectly all right. She’s just my son’s half-sister. What could be more natural?”

  They burst out laughing at the complex web of relationships they had created. Charlie brushed the sheet off them and propped himself beside Peter and bent over him and kissed his sex. The heat rather dampened Peter’s ardor, but he touched Charlie’s hair and made little murmuring appreciative sounds to indicate his willingness if Charlie wanted it.

  “Lovely toy,” Charlie said and stirred unique excitement with his tongue. He gave Peter’s thigh a squeeze and rolled over and dropped his feet over the side of the bed and rose. Peter’s eyes were fixed on the heavy curve of Charlie’s semi-erect sex as he turned toward the bathroom. After twenty years, it was still to him the most magnificent and exciting spectacle in nature. Presented with Charlie’s back, his eyes traveled from the broad shoulders down to the spring of solid hip and buttock. He smiled as his thoughts grew lustful and his sex hardened and lifted from between his legs. “If it weren’t so hot, I’d drag you back here and have my way with you,” he called after the retreating figure.

  Charlie laughed. “It’s bound to cool off. I’ll still be here.”

  When they had taken turns in the bathroom, they twisted lengths of cloth around their waists sarong-fashion, and set off through the house to Martha, Peter’s hand resting lightly on Charlie’s shoulder.

  Ten years ago when they had bought it, the house had looked a severe uncomplicated block of masonry but as they rebuilt it, they had discovered many surprises. Guided by old photographs, they had restored the colonnade along the wide upper balcony, they had cleared terraces, created loggias, dug out shady inner courtyards. It was spread about the hillside on three levels, a house of big cool marble-paved rooms and unexpected private apartments all giving out onto the port and the town and the islet-strewn sea. It wasn’t home to them—they still considered the farm in Connecticut their real base—but it had become more important to them than they had expected. As an art dealer, Peter used it frequently as a stopover point on his frequent business trips about Europe. Charlie found it congenial for work. They had acquired a proprietary feeling toward the island, had been alarmed by the increasing influx of tourists following the big Hollywood film that had been made there two years before, had successfully used their influence with the local authorities to limit hotel and night-club developments. They had the right of discovery. If they hadn’t already been there, the Leightons wouldn’t have bought and in the absence of both families, nobody would have ever heard of the place. They were already talking of spending at least half the year here when the children were old enough to travel alone.

  They descended a covered exterior stair and crossed a courtyard and entered Martha’s q
uarters. She was waiting for them at a table set inside open doors which gave onto a balcony overlooking the port. The sun was still behind the house so that the room was dark and shadowy behind the motionless linen draperies at the windows. Through the doors, the lower town built close around the port looked like a miniature stage setting.

  “Good morning, darlings,” she greeted them, holding each briefly to her comfortable breast and giving each a maternal kiss. She had never been thin and, with time, had settled into an appealing amplitude. Her soft pretty features were ageless, but she had an air of settled maturity that her two men lacked. “Were you able to sleep in this heat?”

  “We were doing fine until you unleashed the hounds of hell,” Charlie said.

  Martha laughed. “Did they pay you a visit? I didn’t tell them to. You should be flattered. They can’t bear to be away from you.”

  “The fiends. Actually, we had a very jolly roughhouse. Peter’s toy failed to put in an appearance.”

  They all exploded with laughter.

  “Call Kyria Tula for your coffee,” Martha said, shaking her head in mock reproof.

  Peter did so. The kitchen and dining room were on the other side of the courtyard. The three sat in caned armchairs around the table. Powerful binoculars lay on it. Peter picked them up and began to explore the town.

  “What a horrid evening,” Martha said. “I’m devoted to the Leightons, but they’re making themselves socially impossible. You’d suppose they’d have worked their way through last year’s little trouble by now. Unfortunately, I’m afraid Sarah’s headed for real disaster.”

  “Pavlo?” Peter said from behind the binoculars.

  “She can’t take her eyes off him. She actually had the cheek to compare him to Charlie. Really! That dull body boy.”

  Peter lowered the binoculars. “It’s obvious where she’s been looking.”

  Martha looked at him with a twinkle in her eyes. “Yes. Well, there may be some slight similarity, but I doubt if he can compete even there.”

  “Trust my expert eye. He can’t.”

  “For God’s sake,” Charlie exclaimed. “You two have such dirty minds. Come on. Let’s stick to the Leightons.”

  The Greek housekeeper entered and greeted them all affably and set cups and coffeepot on the table and withdrew. Peter resumed his scrutiny of the outside world.

  “I feel as if we ought to be able to help them,” Martha continued, pouring coffee. “They’re still in love with each other. I’m sure of that, even though they’ve been together almost as long as you two. Their financial worries are over for the moment. I thought that might help them settle down. Isn’t there some way you could scare Pavlo off?”

  “What do you expect?” Charlie asked. “Sarah’s making a big play for him. You can’t blame him for taking what’s offered, especially when it’s such a high-class article. He’s probably used to little tarts.”

  “There he goes now,” Peter said, shifting the binoculars along the opposite promontory where the road led out to the swimming rocks. “Off to give all the girls their morning thrill.” He swung the glasses back toward the center of town, held them steady a moment, and then inched them back toward Lambraiki’s. “Yes, by golly. This is a new twist. Here comes old George himself. He seems to be in rather a flap. I’ve never seen him walk so fast. Why isn’t he at work? If he starts drinking at this hour, the glasses will be flying by noon. In he goes.” He put the binoculars aside and picked up his cup.

  “Speaking of work,” Charlie said, replacing his cup in its saucer. “The Master had better get at it.” He rose but lingered as Peter’s head lifted and their eyes met. “That thing I started yesterday has turned out to be a bitch,” he said. “Come up to the studio. I’d like to talk it out with you.” He ran his fingers along Peter’s upturned jaw. “Beautiful bastard.” He leaned over and their mouths touched briefly in a kiss. He gave Peter’s neck a squeeze and trailed a hand affectionately across Martha’s shoulders as he moved away.

  “Soon’s I finish my coffee, love,” Peter said, his eyes once more following the back, his smile reborn by lustful thoughts. A surge of the almost tangible contentment that he had learned to accept as a feature of life swept over him.

  Martha sat back in her chair with a little sigh as she saw the triumphant light in his eye, compounded of desire and confident possessiveness. It was a familiar look associated inextricably in her mind with a memory of one of the first nights she had spent in this house, long ago, just after Charlie had bought it.

  She had been pregnant with his Charlotte, she had been in the first desperate throes of her passion for him, she had been still married to Jack, and had no faint intimation of what the future might hold. First Charlie, then, more convincingly, Peter had talked of the possibility of her living near them after her divorce so that Charlie could take some part in his child’s upbringing. She was still clinging to the hope that she could somehow win him away from Peter and marry him in a conventional way and bear him more children.

  An odd time, fraught with crisis, yet what she remembered mostly about it was a great inner stillness. A spiritual paralysis, perhaps induced by the scene she had inadvertently witnessed. The house had been little more than a ruin then and so different from its present splendor that she wasn’t even sure where it had taken place.

  She had been below and they had been above somewhere, the pattern for the future already established—she in her quarters, they in theirs—although she hadn’t grasped that that was the way it was to be. Slow of her, perhaps, but so much had happened that summer when they had become friends and made the trip to Greece together, she and her husband and the two beautiful young men who made it quite plain that they were a couple.

  She had finally accepted the failure of her childless marriage to Jack. She had seduced Charlie and become pregnant by him before she had accepted the fact that his prowess as a lover was no evidence of a heterosexuality. She had even had Peter as a lover, at Charlie’s insistence, because he rejected any experience that excluded his friend.

  On that restless night when she had heard sounds above, she hadn’t hesitated to go up and join them for a goodnight chat. At the top of the perilous stairs, she had found an open door filled with a glow of lamplight and had taken only a few steps toward it before she realized what the sounds signified. She drew back with an instinctive respect for their privacy but neither of them had been reticent in telling her about their love-making. She was filled with a sudden rebellious urge to see for herself. Simple prurience? A lingering delusion that their sex play could have none of the passion she had offered Charlie? She moved cautiously until she had the bed framed in the door while she remained in darkness.

  The lamp revealed Charlie and Peter locked in each other’s arms, their limbs beautiful in the soft light but so closely entangled that it took her a moment to define their positions. It was Peter who bore down on Charlie’s back; it was Charlie who had been mounted. As she watched, they reared back onto their knees and Charlie slid back into Peter’s lap, his hips working, his whole body writhing with submission, his voice crying out his joy at being possessed, the look of rapt ecstasy on his face similar to what Martha imagined a woman would look like being taken by her man.

  Mingled rage and horror struck her at the experienced mastery with which Peter was handling him; he was fulfilling desire with blithe possessive authority. She turned and moved silently, as quickly as she dared, away from the light and back down safely to the part of the ruin assigned to her.

  She had sat for a long time in the dark, it must have been several hours before she had sorted out all her reactions. She had no grounds for being shocked; they had both made it clear that they engaged in that form of copulation, although she had always imagined their positions reversed. She found the act repellently unnatural but after the first searing vision of it had dimmed a little, she knew that she found neither of them repellent. She was still in love with Charlie, but the fire of it had gone out the in
stant she had seen the rapture in his face and known that she could never make him look like that. She felt an odd sadness, the birth of a sad sisterly maternal tenderness for him mingled with the love that had lost its fire.

  As she sat in the dark, she had decided to leave them both, she had decided to stay and destroy the bond that held them and take whatever could be salvaged of Charlie and make him her husband, while in the midst of these decisions a curious intimation grew in her of having passed through the stress of some initiation.

  She had been consecrated the high priestess of the mystery. They had carried her beyond the world of ordinary men and women into some transcendental realm where love was the only law. She would never feel at home elsewhere again. She was the handmaiden of the unknowable that would some day be revealed to her. If leaving them was impossible she must accept the role assigned to her and fill her life with whatever unknown rewards she might find in it.

  Martha looked at Peter as he swallowed the last of his coffee. She loved the curve of his neck and the long lashes that lay on his cheeks like a girl’s. Her husband. The father of her son, by Charlie’s volition as much as Peter’s. She still found it very nearly incredible, even though it was only a technicality. By the time they had all been ready to make a final commitment to each other, it hadn’t mattered which she married legally.

  Affection had plastered over the cracks where love had proved inadequate. Peter’s tax position was the primary consideration since he had had most of the money in those days. She had chosen a life that most people would find incomprehensible but it worked. Only rarely, when Peter was away on business and Charlie chose to spend the night with her, did she feel that she had somehow allowed herself to be cheated.