Out of Bounds

by Mike Seabrook

  Graham looked fearfully round. Then he caught himself doing so, and his face set. “I’m sorry, Stephen”, he said. “I’m brooding and worrying like a moulting owl. I’ll do my best to pull myself together. Take no notice of me. It’s probably just a reaction from last night. I was very worried — about breaking the law, you know. I mean, you can imagine the newspapers yourself, I dare say: ‘Teacher in gay sex romps with boy, seventeen. Schoolmaster Graham Curtis, twenty-nine, of…’ And so on.”

  “But no-one’s ever going to know”, protested Stephen, his voice rising in perplexity. “I mean, how’s anyone going to know, ever? Unless we tell them, that is? And I’m certainly not intending to sell my story to the News of the World — are you?”

  It was so absurd a suggestion that Graham laughed for the first time that day. “As I said, Stephen, take no notice of me”, he said. “I’ll get over it. It’s just a reaction. You don’t know how I’ve wanted you, since we started getting to know each other. You remember that day”, he went on, in a happier tone than he had used all day, “when we walked round the ground and I introduced you to Don?”

  Stephen nodded, looking fondly at him. “How could I forget it?” he asked lightly.

  “Well, I think I fell a little bit in love with you that day”, said Graham. He halted, and his eyes slipped out of focus as he cast his mind back and remembered. “It was something you said. I’m damned if I can remember what it was now, but I remember suddenly thinking ‘this boy’s got a sharp wit’ — I remember that quite distinctly using the word to myself. Wit — it’s a very rare quality, perhaps the rarest of all, and certainly not a word you expect to find yourself using about one of the boys every day. But I thought it to myself, and that’s when I really started to take notice of you. Up to then you’d just been…”

  “A face in the crowd?” suggested Stephen. “Just one schoolboy out of hundreds, I suppose?”

  Graham nodded. “Yes. But never again, not after that day. So, as I say, my dear, you don’t know how I’ve wanted you, or how badly. So this morning, having attained what I’d been yearning for, well…” He left it at that, glanced at the boy to see that he had understood, and started walking once more.

  They turned the conversation to the game as they completed their circuit of the boundary and set off on another. As they were coming home to the pavilion after the second, Stephen said quietly, “You really aren’t regretting last night, are you Graham? Please tell me you’re not.”

  Graham gave him a slow, tentative smile. “No, I’m not regretting it”, he said. “I couldn’t regret it. Don’t worry about me, Stephen. I enjoyed every moment of it, of course. And I’m not having secret second thoughts or anything like that.”

  “I hope not”, said Stephen, suddenly mischievous now that his anxiety was allayed. “You’re fucking me tonight, don’t forget.”

  Graham jerked his head round, shocked into a wide-eyed stare of surprise. Then, abruptly, he laughed. “Hah! You’re a boy, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Well, I’m not just a silly girl”, said Stephen, in a remarkable imitation of Bill Stanley’s lugubrious voice — it was one of Bill’s favourite catch-phrases. Graham laughed, and got hiccups for his pains, which cracked both of them up. “That’s better”, said Stephen in satisfaction.

  “Who’s running this show?” asked Graham when he recovered.

  “I am”, said Stephen cockily. “Until tonight”, he added in a soberer tone.

  “Come on, you little bugger”, said Graham. “The bar’ll be open. I could do with a drink.”

  * * *

  Driffield resisted vigorously before succumbing, but eventually lost by fifty-odd. The drinking was hearty, and Stephen allowed himself to get a little tight after they got back to Malton. It was after midnight when he slipped out. The surviving drinkers were all too preoccupied with singing rugby songs, led by Bill, who had an inexhaustible repertoire of them, even to notice his going. Graham, whose earlier depression had been replaced by a pendulum swing into a bright, confident cheerfulness, stayed on for another half hour, then yawned and left the hard core to continue with John Tozer until long after dawn.

  The room was silent and in darkness as he stepped in. He shut the door and turned the key that Stephen had left in the lock, and cat-footed across to his bed, knowing it was occupied. He stripped off and slid easily down beside Stephen. The touch of the boy’s cool naked body was a long bliss, which he took his time to savour. Then arms came round him, and a murmur. “Still feel the same about me?”

  A cool current of air came cheekily into the room from the window. He let out a long, shuddering breath, then began to stroke Stephen’s body. “Just the same”, he said. “Or stronger.”

  * * *

  At the selection meeting in the bar after breakfast the next morning Bill announced that they were both rested for that day’s game, to give some of the others a place. They saw the players off on the coach, then wandered about the little town for a couple of hours. There was a livestock market in full swing, and they stood for a while listening with townsmen’s fascination to the incomprehensible proceedings at various auctions going on. They watched some prize pigs being sold for sums that made their eyes widen in astonishment, and admired the dimensions of the testicles on the boars. They had a couple of pints in the Spotted Cow, a dingy little pub of nooks and narrow passages, full of farmers in identical tweeds who appeared to be selling each other things. Then they went back to the hotel for lunch, after which they went to their room and fell on each other.

  In the afternoon they hired a car and went to York, where they ambled round the railway museum gazing at steam engines, which Graham just about remembered seeing once or twice as a small boy. Stephen had only seen them on television, and fell unreservedly in love with the gleaming monsters. When they got back to Malton they made love again, and had just got down to the bar when the team got back from their game. They exchanged accounts of their day with the players and the other small groups of people who had been rested and drifted off to one point of the compass or another. The drinking was beginning to tell, and by some communal instinct most of the party drifted off quite soon for a restorative early night.

  This set the pattern for the remainder of the tour. They played cricket enthusiastically, and when they made way in the side they wandered about the Dales, stopping for drinks in quiet country pubs and eating meat and potato pie and faggots and mushy peas. (“Does this count as cannibalism, do you think?” Stephen said, taking a large bite out of a faggot.)

  One day they drove out to Harry Ramsden’s fish and chip shop and tested the claim on the sign there that “If it swims, we sell it”. Stephen had swordfish and chaffed Graham for conservatism when he stuck soberly to haddock. They rambled in the wild and beautiful hills, and at one point, high and carried away by elation and a general feeling of well-being, looked quickly about, saw no-one, and plunged into some bushes to appease a sudden sexual craving that struck them both powerless at the same moment and would not be denied. Once or twice Graham became moody and quiet again, worrying about what they were doing, but the attacks were short-lived, and Stephen’s consistently high spirits as he continued enthusiastically on his journey of discovery into his newfound delights rallied him rapidly. And all too quickly, almost before they knew it, the week was over and it was time to go home.

  * * *

  “You want fuckin with a rusty ragman’s trumpet, the lot of you”, said Jack Page furiously, tramping into the midst of fifteen naked eighteen-year-olds in the visitors’ changing room. “What the hell was the matter with you?” he demanded. “They were all over you.” He stared angrily round his team of hopefuls. “I mean, I really had hopes for some of you miserable specimens. What went wrong? You had enough ball to’ve stuffed ’em out of sight, and you played like a bunch a women. I might as well’ve had fifteen from the girls’ school out there.” He blew out his cheeks in ill-controlled temper as he threw off his referee’s strip and stepped into
the shower. There he found Stephen Hill, who had changed in a hurry and been first under the jets. “You, for instance, Master Hill”, he snapped, slapping Stephen’s backside hard enough to extract a “Wow!” of pain from him. “I had you down as certain for loose-head, and what did you do? Eh? What did you do to repay my confidence? Played like a pregnant duck, is what you did. My seven-year-old would’ve played more of a game. My seven-year-old daughter. I mean, honestly, someone tell me, what went wrong?”

  The first rugby occasion of the Michaelmas term was the traditional trial for the School XV between the whites — the Fifteen Elect, comprising those of the previous year’s team who were still at school and the pick of last year’s reserves and Second XV, against the colours, who represented the brightest hopes from the rest. Jack Page, a small, lean, ferret-like Welshman of forty who kept himself fanatically fit and active and, besides teaching German to the lower forms, was head of games at the school, made a point each year of forsaking his beloved First XV and taking personal charge of the colours team, and rivalry among the boys for promotion into Page’s elite was ferocious and, often, unscrupulous. Stephen had been among the most hotly favoured for elevation; but he had played half-heartedly, almost as if he was uninterested in the game or its momentous consequences. Accordingly he came in for an especially bitter measure of angry disappointment from Page, who regarded a less-than-enthusiastic attitude on the rugby field as something akin to felony, if not crime against humanity.

  Mr Page was dressed well before any of the team, and leaned on the the dressing room wall while they got into their clothes. Stephen finished first, and was halfway through the door when Page’s voice halted him in mid-step. “Not so fast, my lad. I haven’t finished with you yet.” Stephen looked enquiringly over his shoulder. “Sir?”

  “Back here, boy.” Page crooked a finger, twinkling ominously. Stephen sidled back, looking apprehensive. The others looked likewise as they completed their dressing and wondered what was to come.

  “Got a staff meeting tonight, lads” he said when they were all gathered apprehensively round him. “Otherwise it would’ve been my pleasure to arrange a little work-out to express my appreciation of your efforts out there today.” They glanced at each other, and a faint grin appeared here and there, like a watery sun trying to show through cloud. They failed utterly to escape his eye. “Aye, you may smirk at each other”, he said cheerfully. “You’ll be smiling the other side of your horrible little faces tomorrow, I reckon.” The grins vanished instantly.

  “Yes, my boyos. I’ve been wondering how to reward your labours for me out there today”, he went on. “If you want to humiliate yourselves to Graham Curtis’s shower, that’s your own affair. But when you humiliate me as well, it becomes my affair too, don’t you agree?” He waited, in a profound and fearful silence. “Well, well, I’m glad to see you’ve got enough sense of shame that you don’t want to argue about it. Fortunately for you, I haven’t got a staff meeting, or any sort of meeting, tomorrow”, he continued, still twinkling mercilessly. “So, my friends, I’ve been thinking while you’ve been cleansing your bodies — which I shouldn’t’ve thought you needed to do, considering the amount of honest sweat you didn’t work up out there today — what should I offer you as a consolation prize for failing to get into the School Fifteen, which should’ve been your rightful reward? Well, I’ve decided to be kind, lads. Tomorrow you run ten miles for me.”

  There was a general groan. “Oh, NO!”

  “Oh, YES”, he said. “I’ll see you all here at nine o’clock tomorrow. I shall be feeling especially ready for a nice trot, having missed my little work-out tonight, you know. Ta-ta, lads.”

  “Sir”, called one of the team urgently. Page turned back. “Yes, White?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday, sir.”

  Page stared at him. After a few moments a smile spread slowly over his face. “It is, isn’t it?” he said, and strolled out of the room, whistling.

  They looked at each other in dismay. “The old bastard!” said someone feelingly. “Let’s give him a send-off”, cried another.

  As Page reached the outer doors of the gymnasium block he heard a chorus, to the tune of “Clementine”, ringing out from the changing room he had come from. “Who’s your father, who’s your father, who’s your father, Jacko Page? You ain’t got one, you’re a bastard, you’re a bastard, Jacko Page…” He smiled satanically to himself as he pushed the door open. Then, on a second thought, he turned and walked silently on his crepe soles back to the dressing room, pushed the door open and peeped round it at the crowd of disgruntled and indignant boys picking their gear up and preparing to leave. There was a sudden silence as they saw him. They looked at him angrily, almost mutinously, but apprehensively.

  “I saw a film once, with Jack Palance in”, he said, smiling affectionately at them. “You won’t have heard of him, you being a bunch of philistine, uncultured little ragamuffins, but never mind that. Anyway, someone in this film calls Jack Palance a very rude word, suggestin that he was born the wrong side of the blanket. And Jack Palance says ‘In my case an accident of birth; but you’re a self-made man!’ Well, lads, I don’t suppose you’re self-made men. More like hand-reared women, I’d say. Or breech-born spastics, maybe.” His smile grew broader. “I reckon you need toughening up. We’ll make it fifteen miles tomorrow, shall we?” He disappeared, leaving fifteen young men in such a depth of dismay that they had not a word to say between them.

  * * *

  Of the subdued little throng who eventually trudged dismally out of the gymnasium, wishing from the bottom of their hearts that they hadn’t decided to give tongue to their little impromptu valediction, Stephen alone went with a light heart. He was as disgusted with the imposition looming horribly over them as the others, but nothing could really depress him that evening.

  When the Elderton Park party had got home from Yorkshire he had settled more or less cheerfully back into the routine of home, revision of A-level work and the casual job in a supermarket by which he earned himself pocket money. He found it all more and more unsatisfying having tasted a bit of independence. But he had his weekends to look forward to, and the first week after their return opened up a whole new horizon for him.

  He passed the week as best he could, measuring its passing by the high spots — Monday and Tuesday he spent looking forward to four hours’ net practice on Tuesday evening, followed by a drink in the pavilion that kept him out until bedtime. Wednesday and Thursday were a simple repeat, waiting for nets on Thursday night. Friday he spent watching the clock until he could set out for the pre-weekend booze-up in the pavilion. And he had boldly decided to see if he could secure for himself a bonus.

  “Cheerio, Mum”, he had said as he set off. He was carrying his cricket bag, which he had packed extra carefully to cram in an extra set of daytime clothes and two cricket shirts and flannels instead of the usual one. “I may not be back tonight”, he added casually as he gave her the expected peck on her cheek.

  “Oh?” she said. “Why not?”

  “One of the lads at the club has invited a few of us round to see some videos”, he lied, crossing his fingers in his trouser pocket. She was instantly suspicious. “Oh, really?” she said, compressing her lips into a thin line of disapproval. “What kind of videos?”

  “Honestly, Mum”, he said, laughing. “They’re not blue films, or anything. He’s got the complete Fawlty Towers and some Clint Eastwood films, that’s all.” He laughed again, a real laugh this time, as he reflected privately that the kind of pornography she had in mind quite genuinely wouldn’t interest him. “Don’t worry about me, Mum. I’m a big boy now”, he said lightly, and was gone before she could think of an objection to make, or ask him which player’s house he was going to be at. She watched him out of sight, then made a small, faintly comic gesture of defeat to herself. “Oh well”, she muttered. “I suppose he’s old enough…” She left the thought unfinished, and went back into the
house.

  That evening he waited for Graham’s arrival with suppressed impatience and excitement. Graham greeted him with the affected casualness they had agreed on as the best camouflage for their real relationship, which they had discussed at length in private moments on the tour. After a couple of drinks and an exchange of the small news of the week between the two of them and some of the others Stephen managed to catch Graham on the quiet, and murmured urgently to him. They rummaged in the kit lockers in the dressing room, took an old bat and a ball out to the outfield, and began knocking up skied catches to each other. In the intervals between catches Stephen was able to tell Graham of his neat little deception. “So you see, I can stop out tonight”, he said eagerly, “and it’ll be okay, because they’ll think I’m watching videos. They’ll probably assume I’m watching porn”, he giggled, “but it doesn’t matter what they think, as long as they don’t know what I’m really doing. So we’ve got the whole night clear”, he finished excitedly.

  “Hmmm. It’s a bit risky”, Graham said, pursing his lips. “But I must admit, I’ve been missing you badly this week.”

  “Have you?” said Stephen, halfway between mere happiness and bliss. “Have you really missed me?”

  “Of course I have”, said Graham seriously, and then he smiled. “Didn’t you expect me to miss you?”

  “Well, I…” began Stephen. “I missed you terribly”, he said. “But I thought you’d… well, I suppose I didn’t dare to hope that you’d…”

  “I know what you mean”, said Graham kindly. “Well, of course I missed you. And since you’ve fixed things so we can spend the night, well… Not that I altogether approve of your methods”, he broke in on himself. “I don’t much like being a party to your deceiving your parents, however shaky your relations with them may be. Still, it’s done now, and I can’t say I wouldn’t hate to waste the chance now it’s there to be taken.” He smiled, rather uncertainly, at Stephen. “I can’t help feeling, you know”, he said with a grunt, whacking the ball into a vast parabola. “Chase that one…”