“What I was going to say was”, he went on, grinning at Stephen, “that this is an ideal opportunity for you to spend some time with Richard, and try to give him what comfort and peace you can. Don’t worry about me”, he added, seeing Stephen’s expression falter. “I’m not stupid. I know what you’ve been doing together for the last however long it is. And I’m not the kind who regards an act of sexual intercourse as the be all and end all of a partnership. If I can accept and tolerate your being in love with Richard, which I do — in fact, I’ve found it a great source of comfort and reassurance, because I know how much it’s done to keep you on an even keel while you had to wait for me — if I can cope with that I’m not likely to crack up at the idea of your going to bed with him, am I? Comfort him in every way you know how. He deserves that much, at least, along with a lot more that we can’t offer him.”
He dropped Stephen at the same place as before, round the corner from the school, and kissed him softly. “I’ll see you on Saturday, at the club”, he said as Stephen got out of the car. “You’d better make your own way there, because I can’t say for certain whether I’ll be back on Friday night or whether I’ll drive straight there from London. You take care of your sweet self, now, and take care of Richard too. Bye, love.” Stephen stood on the kerb and watched him drive out of sight, raising a hand, and seeing Graham do the same as he disappeared round a bend in the road. Then he walked, feeling a little disconsolate, round the corner and into school.
He found Richard toying with revision work on the sixth form balcony in the library. Richard was overjoyed to discover that he had Stephen to himself for three whole days, and they spent the day together, doing a little perfunctory revising, then slipping off to their back-street pub at lunch-time. When it was time for them to return to school they looked at each other enquiringly, and agreed without a debate that they had better things to do. “I’m pretty well finished with my revision”, said Richard, justifying the unspoken decision they had just seen in each other’s face. “If I’m not ready now I’m never going to be.”
“Same here”, said Stephen, emptying his glass. “Shall we have another, or shall we go home?”
He saw the answer in Richard’s face, and stood up.
* * *
Over the next three days they hardly slept at all. The hours and days dissolved into one another in a continuous blur of talking, sex, occasional visits to their scruffy pub and even more occasional flying visits to school, to show their faces. Stephen smothered Richard in affection, and Richard, appreciating his motive and loving him for it, responded for all he was worth. They spent untold hours in Richard’s room, which began to reek so strongly of sexual activity that on the third day they left it with the windows wide open for the whole of the day to air, and spent the morning in the school library and the afternoon in the pub.
Between their prolonged and inventive sexual bouts they talked endlessly, analyzing what they felt about each other, as the young will, about how they were situated, about everything under the sun. It was Saturday morning before they had stopped to draw breath. “I’ll go to the cricket”, said Stephen as they stood in the shower washing the traces of their night’s activities off each other, “but it’s a home match today, so I shan’t need to be out very late. I’ll ring you as usual, twenty minutes before I’m going to leave, and see you in the usual place.”
“But Graham…” began Richard, putting his finger on the flaw in this suggestion.
“Yes, I know, he’ll be back”, said Stephen, “but I’ve decided I’m going to spend all my time with you until… until I have to go and join him in France. We owe you that much, Richard, and much more. Graham’ll agree with me, I guarantee. He’d have suggested it if he’d thought of it, I know. So I’ll tell him after the game, and have a drink. If there’s anything I need to know about I may go back to his flat for a short while. But I’ll be back here with you before it’s late. Oooh! Do that some more”, he added with a shiver as Richard began pleasuring him inventively with one soapy hand and one soapy finger.
Graham was already in the pavilion when Stephen got there, changed into whites and propping up the bar with a pint of lager in his hand. As Stephen had predicted, he supported his idea of giving Richard as much time as possible. “Yes, love”, he said, not bothering to suppress the endearment, and causing a number of heads to turn in surprise. “You do that. It’s a generous thought, and nothing less than he deserves. In any case, I’m going to be up to my eyebrows in odd jobs—you know, tidying up my affairs, loose ends, that sort of stuff. I’ll be snowed under next week, as well. I’ve got to make arrangements with an agent to sell the flat, and fix up an accommodation address, make arrangements with the post office to forward mail, all kinds of things. I’m off on Friday, and I want to take you down to London on Thursday if it’s at all possible.
“Yes, things are moving very fast, aren’t they?” he said, answering Stephen’s expression. “Hovercraft’s booked for Friday afternoon. And on Thursday I want to take you to dinner with Reggie. He’s fit enough to go out for a short distance, and for a short time, and he was very anxious to meet you. I spent the entire afternoon and evening with him, and I told him the lot. You’ll be glad to know we’ve got his blessing—not that I doubted it, but his opinion always matters to me. I think when you’ve met him you’ll see why, and you’ll be glad to have his favourable opinion, too.
“So we’ll take him somewhere for dinner—I haven’t decided where yet, but I’d like to take him somewhere decent, within reason. Anyway, leave that to me. Then I’ll have time to whizz you back here and hand you over to Richard — and I want to make his acquaintance, by the way, once we’ve got ourselves settled down. And then it’s down to Dover and anchors aweigh — or is it chocks away for a hovercraft? I don’t know, but whichever. I’m booked in at the Sauvage in Calais for Friday night—I always stay there on my first night, and then I’ve got the whole weekend to drive to Strasbourg — that’s where I’m heading first off. There could well be a job there for me, I think, and I want to get myself fixed up as soon as possible. I’ve got some money, enough to keep us for a few months, actually, so I don’t have to take the first post I’m offered; but I want to feel that we’re secure for the first year, which is going to be the tough part, as far as getting used to a completely new lifestyle’s concerned. Now, you leave all the arranging and the worrying to me, and have a quick drink with me. Bill’s won the toss, and I’ll have to pad up in ten minutes.”
Graham scored a good twenty against strong opposition that day, and bettered it on the Sunday, when he flayed a fair bowling attack murderously, scoring almost at will in an arc from fine third man to the finest of fine legs for a magnificent seventy-six, in which there was not one chance to score runs from which he did not actually score. “Well”, he said sadly as he emerged from the dressing room after stripping off his pads, “if that’s my last game I couldn’t have wanted a much better one to go out on, could I?” It was undeniable. He received numerous reminders of the jug that it would now be his pleasure to buy after the game, and a lot of generous congratulation, mixed with inquisitive, and barely-suppressed, interest in why it was his last game. As he had decided long ago, when the idea was first conceived, he said nothing to give away their plans.
After that game, Stephen saw little of him for some time. He compensated by seeing Richard for every moment of every minute of the day and night that they could contrive to be together.
He met Reggie Westwood over a sybaritic dinner, and they liked each other enormously, to Graham’s proud gratification. After the dinner Westwood dispensed wisdom effortlessly, Stephen drank it in like sand soaking up moisture, and Graham looked on, proud of the impression his two closest friends made on each other.
They got home late, and Stephen felt that he did not dare to ring Richard at such an hour, so he slept in Graham’s arms instead. He saw Graham off in the morning, waving till the car was a speck in the distance. Then he went in search
of Richard, and devoted the weekend to a two-boy orgy with him. The exhausting rapture was broken by periods of recuperation in which he scored a bright fifty-five not out in an otherwise sluggish draw, and a fizzing little innings of twenty-seven to win a thriller on the Sunday. The following day he began taking his A-level papers; and halfway through the ten day period of his exams, the blow fell.
* * *
* * *
Andrew Tyldesley, although he was not a coward, was not notably braver than most people either. Terry Garrard’s methods had frightened him to an extent that shocked him and shook him to the roots. He had prudently vacated his beautiful house within days of the horrifying raid on him, and then he sat down to decide what to do next. He thought seriously about going to the police, but found his courage wanting. He had heard a good deal about the kind of conditions that could be expected in prison, and he suspected that for someone with his looks there would be other horrors in store, of a kind not spoken of in even the more lurid newspapers. He also had a very unpleasant suspicion that blackmail might not be a particularly good offence to be inside for. Knowing that Graham would unquestionably retaliate if he put the thing on an official level, he decided instead to snipe from cover, so to speak.
His investigator required only a single morning, using detective work of the most elementary kind, to establish (1) that Graham had resigned from the staff of the school and left the country (though his destination was not known) and (2) the address and other personal details of the boy he had photographed with him in the Sussex hotel. Tyldesley had this information in his possession the same afternoon, and sat considering two questions. The first was what exactly he could get out of the information he had acquired. In the end he decided that simple revenge was what he desired most, as well as being the only kind of satisfaction obviously available. He sat in his borrowed apartment, thinking how best to turn the information he had acquired to the downfall of his one-time lover, now the target of his obsessive, maniacal hatred.
* * *
They had woken, deep in one another’s arms, and the first thought that came, joyously, to both of them was that neither had a paper to sit that day. They went down for breakfast and said goodbye to Richard’s parents, who were both going out for the day. As soon as they had the house to themselves they promptly went back to bed and stayed there until lunchtime.
They got themselves a scratch meal in the kitchen, leaving a large pile of washing-up and a dirty hob where something boiled over, and they were just on their way back upstairs when the telephone rang.
Richard happened to be nearest. “Hallo”, he said, giving the number. “Oh. Yes, just a moment.”
“It’s for you”, he said, passing the receiver to Stephen. “It’s your dad.” Stephen raised his eyebrows. “Oh”, he said. “Wonder what he wants. Hallo, Dad?” he said into the telephone.
“Hmph!” he said in disgust when he put the receiver back in its cradle. “They want me to go back. Right now, apparently. Said it’s very urgent. He wouldn’t say what it was, though. Something to do with UCCA, maybe. I suppose I’d better go, hadn’t I?” he said hesitantly, clearly hoping for advice to the contrary.
“Yes, you go”, Richard said, disappointingly confirming his own feeling. “I’ll just mess about here, and I’ll see you when you get back. Hurry back, won’t you, though.” He put his arms round Stephen and hugged him tightly for a minute, then let him go and followed him to the front door.
“See you in an hour, I should think”, said Stephen, setting off. “I can’t think it’ll take more than that, whatever it is. Bye love.”
Richard watched him out of sight then shut the door and went to see what was on television.
* * *
His parents had evidently been watching while they waited for him, because the door opened as he turned in at the gate, and both of them stood in the doorway, as if to greet a favourite relative returning after ten years in Australia. They were both wearing looks of stupendous seriousness and concern, and parted to allow Stephen into the house like footmen sweeping apart to admit guests to a ballroom. Impatient and irritated as always by them in their more presbyterian moods, Stephen strolled breezily in with a casual “Hi”, guessing that this would annoy them more than any other entrance. They closed the door and followed him into the dining room, closing the door of that room too.
“Please sit down, Stephen”, said his father gravely. Stephen turned and looked at them, a little puzzled by the portentous expressions on their faces, but not yet anxious. He followed his father’s wave and drew out one of the heavy mahogany dining chairs that they had inherited with the vast square table from his grandfather. He rested his elbows on the mirror-like surface of the great table and waited.
His parents took seats at the mid-points of the two opposite sides of the table, so that the three of them formed a triangle with Stephen at the apex, farthest from the door. “Now, Stephen”, began his father. “I’ve summoned you here because we have received some very disturbing — er — information, which requires an explanation. I believe that we have taken an altogether too lax attitude towards the ideas of independence that you have been entertaining of late, and the notion you’ve recently had that you can just go out and make friends with anyone you please. It seems that you’ve been associating with some very unsavoury people, who appear to have led you into… into what I must confess I can find no other word for but sin.”
Stephen gazed at him, temporarily at a loss for words. He was quite busily occupied by his efforts not to laugh, the impulse which always came most readily in the wake of irritation when his father was being pompous, but his mind was also racing as he tried to think what they could have discovered, and how. He couldn’t think of any answers to either, so he waited.
“We should like, please, an explanation of these from you, Stephen”, his father went on. He reached across from his seat to a large sideboard, and brought down from it copies of the three photographs of himself and Graham. He slid them over the polished surface, and Stephen looked at them with interest.
Stephen riffled through them, studying each one intently before moving on to the next. When he had given all three an intensive scrutiny he pushed them away, sat back and stared at his father. “Well, what do you want to know?” he asked, softening the blunt words with a quiet voice and a half-smile.
Both parents bridled and looked surprised simultaneously. “What do we want to know?” echoed his father. “I should have thought it was self-evident what we’d like to know. What does this mean, that’s what we want to know?” He sorted the photograph of the kiss in the corridor from the other two and held it up, tapping the two in the centre of it with a forefinger to emphasize what he said.
“Christ!” ejaculated Stephen, irritation finally gaining a narrow points win over amusement. “I’m getting sick to death of people taking one glance at that sodding picture and having an instant fit of the vapours. What does it mean? I’ll tell you what it means. It means exactly what it says — it’s a picture of a man kissing another, younger man. To wit, me. What does it look as if it means, for Christ’s sake?”
His parents had sat through the brief explosion impassively, with only their tight-compressed lips betraying the depth of the scandalized shock with which they had heard it. “I wanted, and still want, Stephen”, his father now said, “to know not what the picture portrays, but what it signifies — a rather different matter. Kindly answer that for us, and if you have learned the language of costermongers from your new acquaintances, please reserve it for use among them. In this house you’ll keep a civil tongue in your head, please.”
Stephen cocked his head on one side, wondering whether to be brutal or whether to try to soften the blow which, he felt sure, it would be, either way. He decided to soften it. “What does it signify? Right, well, I’ll tell you then. It signifies that somebody from the cricket club gave somebody else from the cricket club a lift to an away match, his car broke down on the way back, so the two
of them had to spend the night in a hotel, where there was only one room free, and this is them on their way down to breakfast the following morning. That’s what it signifies.” He fell silent, and waited once more.
His father grunted expressively. “You’ll have to do better then that. I think you’re being deliberately disingenuous. What’s the kiss in aid of?” he pressed.
Stephen considered, and decided that there was nothing for it but to let them have it. He sighed. “The kiss. Well, it’s a gesture of affection”, he ventured.
“Are you trying to be deliberately insolent?” said his father.
“No, I’m not But I find it a little difficult to be asked to explain a kiss. I’d have thought everybody knew what a kiss was — what it signified.”
“Stephen! You will kindly do me the elementary courtesy of not trying to appear dense, and answer my question.”
“Okay”, snapped Stephen grimly, “if you will have it. He’s kissing me because it’s an elementary gesture of affection. He feels a lot of affection for me. In fact, he loves me. As a matter of fact”, he added spitefully, “he’d just finished screwing me in this room here” — he indicated the door of no. 7 on the photograph — “a few minutes before this was taken. There. You’ve got it out of me. I hope it’s what you wanted, and that it’s made you feel better.”
Out of Bounds Page 28