He woke me up with a sneeze.
I stirred. "Martin…are you awake?" he snuffled.
"Mmmm."
"Why aren't you here?"
"Couldn't sleep."
"Did I keep you awake?"
"No. Well, yes. A bit."
"Sorry."
"'S OK. I must need to move in my sleep, and couldn't. But it was good being so close."
"Mmmm. Wassertime?"
I smiled to myself. "Dunno. Watch is up there somewhere."
He turned over to look at his own bedside clock. "Nine! But where are the parents? They've usually got me up by now."
"I can smell bacon," I said.
"Oh wow. They must like you. We never have a cooked breakfast except on holiday."
It took ages to eat a vast breakfast, carry box after box from the small loft above their two-up, two-down house, and carry it out to the car, then another age to say goodbye. At last we were mobile, and he sank back into the seat beside me with a sigh.
"I've been waiting for this moment since we were on the phone."
I looked round into his eager eyes, which were staring at me as if I was something special. It stopped me saying something flippant, and I told him the truth.
"So have I, James, so have I. Not just since the phone call, but since the train left the station last Monday."
He drew in breath, gently touched my thigh, and sighed again. Who said that you didn't really know about love until you were eighteen?
It was a quiet journey. Not having slept well I needed all my concentration on the road, so conversation was sparse. When we stopped for a meal the woman serving us asked what my little brother wanted, and I was just about to say something rude to her when I remembered Amberdale and the times when I regarded him as just that. So I asked for a child's portion. The woman was even about to serve one up when he exploded into laughter. That set me off, and it was a full minute before I could hand him the menu to make his choice.
She was not amused.
As we continued our journey I was almost falling asleep, much to his alarm. He had to shout at me on two occasions before I decided to take a break and sleep. I found a minor road to turn on to, where I could park in peace. It was very narrow and quiet, and trees lined it. We parked and got out. I wandered off to have a pee, and was about to return when he called. I joined him, and he was overlooking a small hollow, surrounded by trees, thick with grass and meadow flowers, and baked in the sunshine. I felt sleep creeping up on me as we walked slowly down into it and lay down facing each other.
"Strip?" he asked.
"Mmmm?"
"Shall we strip?"
"Why?"
"Nice."
"Dunno who's around."
"Nobody'll come here."
"How d'you know?"
"They won't."
And before I knew it he was hauling off his shoes and socks, pulling off his T-shirt and pulling down his rather short, rather wide shorts. The everyday white briefs reminded me of the exotic pair he'd left for me. But to me he looked just as good in these. I lay there as he teased me by pulling them down his belly and back, slowly, tantalisingly, then rolled the cloth down until he was only just technically decent. He pulled the waistband, such as it was, round his middle a little, so it stretched the right hand leg opening, leaving a gap.
And as I watched him, without any effort from either of us, the bulge there increased, and increased, and a pink bullet shaped thing appeared at the opening and looked down his leg before extending itself further into the open air and my wondering gaze.
And then he rolled over, and planted one knee either side of my chest as I lay on my back. Facing me was the cleft of his bottom, fully three inches of it, before it dived into his rolled waistband. And his rounded, muscular buttocks were separated to allow his legs to go either side of me.
I felt a fumbling at my belt, then at my waistband, then at my zip. Then there was a warmth over my underpants, then he was holding me, supporting me, gently kneading my testicles in his left hand. The other one was already exploring under my waistband to release the inevitable erection.
I did what I had never done before, not since the time in the shower when he had said he didn't like it. I took my hands onto his covered buttocks and massaged them gently, gently round and round, and then more and more towards the cleft. I don't know why. Certainly I had no intention of doing that thing that 'everyone knows queers do'. All this time he was massaging me, fondling, sometimes masturbating me. And he'd pulled back my foreskin, and I knew as the breeze caressed us that I was already wet with fluid. He shifted forward slightly, and my sensitive glans met his. He carefully rubbed the two together. I shuddered — not with horror or anything like that but with the delight of being so intimate with him in yet another different way. How could I be even more intimate with him?
I pulled down the rolled waistband of his pants to expose him to the air. Even with his legs either side of my body the ring of muscle was hidden. Not without some discomfort I brought up my head. Grasping the cheeks carefully at either side, more to steer them than anything else, I closed the gap between us. As he felt my warmth behind him he stopped his actions on me, in uncertainty.
I put out my tongue and touched the back of his scrotum, and was rewarded by feeling him shiver. As best I could I lifted each testicle in turn with it, then traced it back over the sensitive plateau. He moaned quietly as I repeated the actions…and again…and again…And while he had stopped his actions on me, the better to experience this new sensation, I licked my way backwards again……and this time slowly entered the base of his cleft. Again I explored him with my tongue, over the plateau, into the cleft…and again…and again…I could feel on my exposed, wet glans that his breathing was fast.
And then at last I pulled his cheeks gently, carefully, further apart, and he gave a short, sharp intake of breath. His strong bum muscles tensed, then relaxed further than before. Love welled up in me. I knew he trusted me completely not to hurt or harm him, and was overriding his natural reflex to keep his most secret area hidden.
Summoning more saliva to my mouth to cushion even my soft tongue from his super-sensitive nerves, I brought my tongue back: further and further. His buttocks trembled with the conflict in his mind between the trust of me and the want for me to pleasure him, and the fourteen year old inborn instinct to cover it up again. His love and trust won, and I softly, carefully, brought my tongue over the strong, sensitive ring of muscle, up and up to the very top of his cleft. As I lifted it off, he sighed, and relaxed again, allowing his buttocks to part even further. And as a reward to me for my persistence he shuffled further back and brought his own tongue to bear on my — by now — leaky penis, and lapped off all the fluid on it and around it. Encouraged, I repeated my own special new manoeuvre. This time there was only a flutter of movement from right inside, from the puckered circle. And again and again we stimulated each other like this, me gently on his hidden secret and him with increasingly strong strokes on me, first with his mouth, and at last, just as I thought I had no more fluid to produce, with both hands, one on my scrotum and the other round my erection. I should think he had time for about twenty strokes before I could feel that IT was starting for me. I did all I could to continue what I was doing for him as my body tensed and concentrated on that one, magical, wondrous action.
Like a true soldier — no…nothing to do with warfare and death in this. Like my true lover, the true lover that he was and is, he accepted all that my body could give him. His mouth held on to me as I subsided. He cleaned me. He gently — so gently — replaced my foreskin over the now exceptionally sensitive glans. My head had fallen back to the horizontal. There was nothing more I could do for him for the moment. At last he eased himself off me, brought his head up beside mine, and rolled over to face me. I managed to turn my head and look at him with a small smile.
There was no need of words between us. His look, his Mona Lisa smile said everything I needed to know. There was no look of reproach to tell me that I had violated that final part of him that he wanted to keep secret. There was no look of pain that I had gone too far. There was love, and pleasure, and still more love.
Oh this boy, this man, this boy that I loved, love and will always love. This boy whose body stretched out beside me, scarcely clad in his diminished underwear. Even in my post-orgasm state he was beautiful and I knew that I wanted to give him the pleasure he had given me. And I did, as soon as some vitality returned to my body. His penis went into my hand, and his scrotum into the other. I shifted round to exercise him with my mouth. His legs parted. My tongue once again searched round to the back of his scrotum, as far as I could to the area I had been attending to earlier. And the taste of his fluid in my mouth was sweet, and I knew he was ready for my mouth and my hands.
After a little manipulating and caressing with mouth and hand his body tensed, his testicles rose in their sac up toward the base of the penis, he let out a moan, and the jet of his seed struck hard at the back of my throat. Once, twice, three, four, five…the sixth was diminishing and the seventh felt like just a dribble. But still he twitched in the warm wetness of my mouth. Gradually the testicles returned, then erection started to soften, and the breathing deepened. As he had done for me, I cleaned him, and kissed the now flaccid penis before bringing my head up to look at his sweat-glistening body and flushed, beautiful face. And still the little smile was there.
We lay there, enjoying the peace, the warmth that the dell had kept to itself for us, and that deep affinity there is between us, for a long time. Sleep took us, and left us, and eventually he turned to me again.
"There's an ant crawling up your willy."
Now, if you want to get someone going, that must be the easiest way of doing it. Of course, in my soporific state I reacted and swept the non-existent insect off myself. Whereupon he started laughing his head off.
"Gotcher."
I reached out for him in mock anger, but he was too quick. This young athletic body, still clad in just underpants, which currently started below the top of his thighs and ended just a short distance down them, was up and had darted away in a moment, fully exposed to the eyes of anyone around. I started after him, forgetting that my own trousers were far more restricting and I couldn't run without some basic adjustments as they, too, were down my thighs. I found him, now stark naked, in a clump of trees.
"Come on!"
"Come on what?"
"It's like Amberdale. Come on, strip!"
I looked at him stupidly for a moment, and something in the care-less part of my mind said 'why not?' So, just like the fourteen year old I had been, I did so. Dropping everything I had on down where he had dropped his underpants, I joined him, to walk, now unashamedly holding hands with him, through the wood and back toward the road. We were both listening intently for any sounds ahead of us that might indicate people, though. We heard nothing. At last the grey metalled surface of the road could be seen through the trees. I stopped. He looked round.
"Last one across has to stand in the middle of the road." As he finished speaking a car could be heard approaching. We ducked. When it had gone we listened again.
"Go!"
We scampered down toward the surface, but as soon as we were on it we found it was covered in a very sharp gravel that really hurt our feet. With lots of indrawn breath and curses and taking big steps we managed to get to the other side. I was first. I clambered up the other bank, found some cover and sat down. He joined me.
"That hurt."
"Yeah," he answered. "Whose silly idea was that?"
"The same idiot who's got to stand in the middle of the road for sixty seconds 'cos he lost."
"Sixty seconds? I never said anything about how long!"
"No. But I did. Come on, don't you accept the challenge?"
"Yeah but…"
"No buts. A minute it is."
"Oh Martin…"
"Your rule, not mine. I just add the interest."
He looked at me, then got up. "Who's doing the counting?"
"I am."
"'Kay. Come on then."
And he scrambled down to the last bit of cover, stopped and listened intently, then sauntered — if you can saunter when your feet are being perforated — to the middle of the road. I started counting.
It'd be nice to be able to write about a car that could be heard approaching when I got as far as fifty seconds, so he had to scramble out of sight just as it rounded the bend. But unfortunately it didn't happen. Well no, fortunately, I suppose, because I wouldn't have liked anyone else to see him naked, and for him to feel embarrassed to that extent. We were — are - close, so what happens to one, the other one feels too.
What really happened was that I took those sixty seconds to look at his body and physical development from a distance. He really was beautiful. Musculature starting to be prominent on his chest, his flat belly, that soft scattering of hair above his genitals, the good sized penis, now at rest, and the low-hanging, capable testicles that swung to a halt as I watched. Oh…he was — is — beautiful. And I just wished that my own body had travelled that far along the rocky road of puberty at fourteen. But then, I had managed to attract two beautiful friends, and the one I knew would be mine for ever was now standing, showing everything that nature had equipped him with, in the middle of a country road on the way home.
I reached sixty, scrambled down to road level, walked calmly (and painfully) across, then told him his minute was over. He gritted his teeth and followed.
Saying little, once we had dug out the odd bits of sharp grit from our toes, we relieved ourselves — it didn't really matter where, did it? - and found our clothes. We walked — clothed — back down to the road, found my car, and once we were in it he began to giggle.
"What's up?"
"I just never imagined that I'd have the nerve to do that. When we were in Canada I often thought back to Amberdale and the islands. At first I just missed them, and you, and all the fun we had, but as I got older I really wondered if I'd ever really done it all, you know, taken everything off like that. I mean, I knew I had, but I couldn't see how I'd made myself strip in front of other people."
"But you're the one who started it all."
"I know…in a way I was, but that was just the two of us."
"But if we hadn't, and if they'd not seen us from the naturist island, they'd never have come over to see us."
"'Spose not. But as I said, as I got older it just seemed like another life, and I knew I'd never have the nerve to strip in public like that again. And today…today I have."
"Yeah, but I'm the only public."
"You know what I mean — stripping in the open air. And the silly thing was, I enjoyed it."
"You did?" I thought of my own reactions. He was doing it, and he was a potent male; why should I then worry about my own nakedness. And I had had to keep him company. But it hadn't been the innocent, practical nakedness of that original holiday. This had been…what? Exhibitionism? Or a desire to get back to that innocence and happiness we experienced then?
"Do you think we'll be naturists, then?" I asked him.
He looked at me, eyebrows raised. "Dunno. I will if you will. You're not having a holiday without me!"
"I don't mind either way. But if you decide it's something you'd like to do then I'd be happy with it.
"You saying I've got to decide?"
"Well, if you wanted to go, then I'd want to, too."
He looked astonished. "But when we live together I'd have thought you'd decide that sort of thing."
"Why?"
"'Cos you're…older."
"Five years isn't much."
"Yeah…but…"
"Look, when we're twenty and twenty five there'll be no difference between us at all."
"I can't imagine being twenty."
"Well you will be, or you'll have me to reckon with."
"What'll you do?"
"Tickle you until you make it."
"You tickle me enough and I'll probably pee. I'll remember that on my twentieth birthday."
I laughed.
We arrived home, unpacked the car, left all the railway bits untidily in the hallway near the cupboard, and went out for a meal. When we came back he said he was too tired to move it all then and could we leave it until the morning. So we just sat in the lounge, doing nothing apart from listen to music, me sitting at one end of the settee and him stretched along it, head in my lap. I was stroking his hair, and if he'd been a cat he'd have purred.
As well as the music coming from my speakers, my heart was singing too.
And that, really, is where the story ends. Except that it doesn't. I mean, I've been giving little clues all the way through this, our story, with the use of the present tense. So yes, he's still with me, and I'm still with him, and that's the way it's going to stay. We're older now, he's turned twenty, and I did tickle him on his birthday, but his bladder control is excellent. So far as our love is concerned I think you've got the general gist of it, and as the story is rapidly approaching our present rather than our past it gets a bit too personal to describe in detail as I have been all along. So I'll go back a bit.
His parents were great in not minding his weekly or fortnightly visits to me. They knew that I'd keep him safe and on the straight and narrow — well, so far as the dangerous things were concerned, like drug taking and crossing the road when not looking, and meeting strange men. Of the delight there was — is — between us they were blissfully unaware.
The railway — the full-sized one — was kind to us. They introduced a train from his town to mine which started at about 9 p.m. on a Friday and arrived here at about 1 a.m. Peter and Doreen agreed after a long argument that if he could be sure of getting a taxi the other end, and if I let him sleep late in the morning, he could use it. I'd already given him a key, of course. This might seem like little to you, but to him, at fourteen/fifteen, a key to get to his lover was a great responsibility and delight, 1 o'clock in the morning was a great adventure, as were the delights of a night train, the responsibility of a taxi (and the look on the driver's face when approached by a tired young boy and asked to be taken to my flat). The night drivers got used to him eventually. He was once propositioned on the train, but told the man where to get off in no uncertain terms. It alarmed me, though.
But the greatest adventure was always mine. I never knew when he'd be able to come down. There were always so many complications, and increasingly, there was homework. More times than I can count I'd be asleep, and the first I knew of his arrival was a click of my bedroom door, or even the feel of his smooth, naked body slipping into the bed next to me, and snuggling up with a sigh of contentment.
"I was always half scared I'd find someone else in bed with you," he told me later.
"I was always more than half scared you'd fall in love even deeper with somebody of fourteen," I countered. We looked at each other, unsure of what to say next, and simultaneously opened our mouths to speak.
"No way!!!"
Both families did well at their joint venture, and I was glad that effectively each was able to help the other. Both sets of parents were good friends, and remain so despite living so far apart, which is a necessity of the business. We had another holiday the next year, and again when he was sixteen and waiting for the results of the GCE's. Most of the rest of the time he spent with me, and there were occasionally plaintive requests from one set of parents or the other that their respective sons should spend more time with them. Yes, I got it too. His case was worse though, because they had now moved into a bigger house, one where I could have my own room when I went to visit. Talk about a lead balloon. But he was even more attractive than at fourteen. He'd got a bit taller, but no fatter, and he looked the human equivalent of a young gazelle. He even moved like one, with a natural grace and fluidity that was a real delight to the eye. I loved him even more. Better, he still loved me, despite my broadening out and increasing hairiness around the legs, which he liked, and chest, which he didn't. One day I was told to lie on the bathroom floor, naked, while he, naked, soaped my chest and very carefully razored all the hair from around my breastbone and down to the navel. The rest he left, thank goodness. And I let him? Yes. His love and happiness were more important to me than a few old hairs.
He did well in the GCE's. University was more than on the cards if he carried on that way. He had decided to go into my line of study, and I swear I had nothing to do with that. With his cool common sense I was sure he'd do even better at it than I had. The trouble was that the next two years of really hard study were hell for both of us. The first was my finals year, and was the first year of his A level course. But we knew that, by fair means or foul, we'd get him accepted into my own University.
It came as a shock to us both, that period. He found that he had so much work to do in the weekends that if he came down it was a case of sleep, eat, work, sleep, eat, train home. And when I say sleep, I mean sleep. And I found the same. Especially when dissertation time came round I was ragged, burnt the candle at both ends more times than I care to remember, but had this nagging void inside me that equated to my love being miles away, also ragged and working his socks off.
But there were two memorable nights in all this.
The first was when a group of us had decided to have a break from studying, and one of those silly student parties was happening at the flat. Over the previous two years I made sure that my socialising was done outside weekends, so I could be sure to be alone when he came down. Now when I mention parties, I don't mean orgies, or anything like that, so I never knew the sexuality of any of the people there, whether male or female. Like most of this sort of party it was just starting to think about winding up when to my horror and delight a key turned in the lock. The door opened and a very tired looking, taller, slim and desperately attractive youth stood there, blinking. He was still bemused after his sleep on the long journey, and it was only with a supreme effort he managed to wake up enough to be nice to my friends as I introduced them to him as a friend of mine from home. He hadn't a hope of remembering names, of course, but accepted a beer, and sat on the floor by my legs as I sat on the settee.
As the conversation flagged a bit, I noticed that one of my Uni. friends kept looking over to me, down by my right leg, to look at James. He was unaware of the looks. This guy had stopped adding anything to the conversation at all, and I noticed that he finally gave up all pretence at looking anywhere but at James.
I couldn't say I blamed him. Tired and slightly dishevelled, his eyes were heavy and kept drooping. His hair was untidy - nothing unusual there — and he must have looked very small and vulnerable (Yes! Still, in my eyes.) sitting on the floor with his back against the end of the settee. But he was mine, and nobody else was going to get near him! The trouble was I had no idea how to tell the obviously attracted one that he was not available without giving away the whole scene.
Eventually they left, and clattered down the stairs. The attracted one wanted to linger, so I had to say that I was very tired.
"So'm I," he said. "Too tired to walk back, really. I suppose I couldn't sleep on your floor, could I? I mean, James could have the settee and I'd be happy on the floor."
Arghhh…Now get out of that. But James piped up.
"It's no good, I'm afraid. I forgot to bring a sleeping bag with me. And I know he's only got two duvets. So there's be nothing for you to sleep on, or in."
I suppose he reckoned that it was enough of a problem to indicate that he shouldn't push it any further, so, not without some sidelong glances at James, he left.
"It could have been your lucky night," I told him. "He'd probably have made sure you were very comfortable tonight."
"Didn't fancy him," he said with a tired smile. "Besides, it is my lucky night."
"How's that?"
"You're here, and we're going to bed. Please?"
That weekend, nothing really sexually new happened, but it was the first time we'd been together for ages, and — not that night but in the morning and the following night and morning — things got really intense. And we were both weeping silently as the strain of his departure on the Sunday finally bit.
The second time was when he suddenly appeared in my bed early one Saturday morning after another long absence studying. The next week would see my Finals, which he and his parents knew about, and he had been strongly discouraged from visiting that week. In fact he'd sneaked out of the house that night, having left a note to say he'd probably be back Saturday night rather than Sunday night, but not to worry.
That night proved very intense, too. Much more than the usual kiss and cuddle that was all we usually managed on the first night of his visits as we were always both so tired. This time…Well. It was intense.
The following morning started early. We each felt the need to go and relieve ourselves, and ended up in the shower together. Once dry, he beckoned me back into the bed. And there it all started again.
What there was in the atmosphere that day I don't know, but something had charged us both up. It was the first time he did for me what I done for him in the open air on our way south with the railway bits. The sensation of his tongue on my own hidden secret, as I knelt attending to his own excited penis, came as a bolt from the blue, and I nearly closed my teeth on his manhood with the shock. As he had got used to relaxing, so did I, and I nearly wept with the depth of love I felt for him as he made me come to orgasm for the first ever time with no massaging of my own penis. And that night, too, we did the same, having each discovered the pleasure it gave to the other, and how close, how personal, how intimate it was to do it. For my turn I managed even to penetrate the ring of muscle with my tongue, so electrified I felt at the time. It mattered nothing to me the real purpose of what I was penetrating. That knowledge was there, but it was him, and it could only be sweet.
When we had each recovered from the intensity of those magical few — too few — moments he turned to me and said something which was, to me, incredible.
"When you did that, I felt something I'd never even thought of before." He stopped and gulped a bit, seeming almost as nervous as he had been about revealing his feelings, right at the beginning. "I…I wanted you inside me."
I was stunned.
His visit set me up for my forthcoming exams. I knew that after them he'd be free to stay with me — parents permitting — and the knowledge drove me on. Time told that I did well, I'm glad to say. Whether I'd have done as well without him and his encouragement, I don't know.
He had a break then between the two years of his A-level course. I was on a permanent break then until I found a job. Which I did, with no difficulty. These were the seventies, after all. I started work in my University town, knowing that he'd be going to Uni. there himself in a year's time.
Once again it was a good year, with his company on a regular basis. The job I had enabled me to take over the rent of the flat from my parents, who proceeded to put the money I'd saved them toward buying a narrow boat. It also enabled me to spend more on the railway layout, on which we'd spent a good deal of time but not much money. And it came on apace. Both sets of parents visited at times, and were duly impressed. Their visits meant that I had to install a camp bed for him in my room, while they slept in the lounge on an airbed.
The camp bed was for show, and didn't get any serious use.
As his A-levels approached his visits got sparse. And the weekend before I made a decision to go up, spend a night with them, and come back the following day. I made the arrangement with Doreen and Peter, swearing them to silence, and just appeared at their front door in the middle of the Saturday afternoon.
The look on the face of my unshaven, young-looking, eighteen year old little brother when he saw me was heart-stopping. And this time nothing stopped him from rushing up to me and throwing his arms round me. He stopped himself from kissing me, though. The only trouble with that weekend would be that I'd have a room on my own, and as it was more or less impossible for either of us to visit the other without discovery we both found it very frustrating. Until Sunday morning, that is, when Doreen and Peter went to church and left us each asleep — as they thought. Being in a strange bed I slept lightly and was woken by the front door, looked out, put two and two together and tiptoed, wearing just underpants, to his room.
Eighteen or not, he looked angelic asleep, despite the thin late-adolescent stubble round his face. I pulled off my pants and eased myself into the single bed — no mean feat as his adult sized body now took it up almost completely. He woke, looked startled for a minute, then the smile appeared on his face and we held each other and kissed.
And, quite swiftly, did a lot of other things. We heard their footsteps approaching in time, though, and I scurried back to my room and got up properly. As did he.
We had another holiday that year, on the canals, but again it was frustrating as we were in bunks, and they're very difficult to get two in especially if the two want move around. But we managed somehow. And afterwards, of course, he came back to my flat and we spent a week there, exploring.
Yes, and the local area. But we didn't get a lot of time for that.
When I heard that his results were easily good enough to get him into my old University I went wild with delight and relief. He was laughing at the other end of the phone at me, so incoherent with joy I'd become. Because I knew that it was the beginning of the rest of our life together. No more, apart from when Uni. was down, would he need to go home, and that we could cope with.
Mum and Dad eventually announced that there was enough in the kitty for a narrow boat, and three glorious weekends we all six went to visit boatyards to decide on what to buy. It was surprisingly tiring, especially as all four parents descended on James and me as we were nearest and most central, not only to the canals but to the two homes. It was then that James and I decided to sleep upstairs in the railway loft, giving the lounge floor and our own bedroom up to the old ones. At least we were alone, on a double mattress, and could do what we wanted. And we did.
At the end of the third weekend's series of visits we went through the details of all the boats we'd seen, and whittled the choice down to one. And then phoned the boatyard owner, checked it was still available, and told him we'd be buying it. Then it was celebration time, especially as we'd made sure it was a long weekend that time. We all went out for a meal, then continued drinking, and it all got very silly, especially as two of us were students and one was ex-Navy. We went to bed, James and I, ratted and careless about what we said or did or how much noise we made.
I noticed in the morning that Dad looked rather strangely at me.
In the middle of the next week the phone went.
"Can you come home this weekend, Martin?" My father, making a very unusual and rather formal request.
"Well, I can," I said, surprised. "If we leave at nine on Saturday morning we should be there by three."
"We really want to talk to you alone, Martin. Can't you leave James there?"
"Well…I suppose I could, but why?"
"We need to talk to you."
"Why? Is something wrong? Is one of you ill?"
"No…but we need to talk about you. Um…and James."
My insides seemed to shrivel away from my skeleton. You know the feeling?
"What about James and me?" I asked, hoping my voice wasn't as dry as I thought it had just become.
"I can't do this over the phone…look…if you really want to bring James with you then bring him."
"Why? I mean, yes, of course I will. If you're talking to me about him it's only fair he's there, isn't it?"
I explained to James when I'd rung off that I thought my parents had an idea what was going on between us. To my surprise he was defiant.
"Well, if they have, so what? They can't do anything to us, can they? I'll have done my finals soon and then it'll be just us."
"But I don't want people to know about us! It's…none of their business. And I don't want my parents to hate me." I was surprised that I'd been able to summarise almost all my fears honestly, even to James.
"And I don't want that either. And I want my parents still to want me to be their son, too. But it won't come to that. I mean, it won't get to be as bad as you think it will."
"I wish I was as sure as you."
When we got to my old home only Dad was there. He seemed very on edge.
"Where's Mum?" I asked suspiciously.
"She'll be back at lunchtime." He sounded, for the first time in my life, unsure of himself. He hummed and hawed, trying to work himself up to something.
"Dad, have a rum," I said, even more on edge than him, if only he knew. My voice was tight with apprehension again and I felt the weight of almost knowing what was coming pressing down on me like a ton of bricks. "I know you're trying to tell us something."
Relieved for anything that would stave off the moment he fiddled about with glasses and the bottle, and poured out three, one for each. That relieved the tension a bit. Once he'd handed ours to us he turned back to the cupboard to tidy up, then turned round abruptly and almost barked it out.
"Please will you tell me if there's anything except friendship between you two."
There was a silence that stretched to an uncomfortable eternity. A silence that was tangible. A silence that gave the answer as succinctly as any form of words. But no father likes to hear that his son is a faggot, gay, queer…well, you know. And that father will always need to be told in words of one syllable if he's to be certain.
I could feel James' eyes boring into me as I looked steadily at the opposite wall. My father was looking out of the window, his eyes hard and his lips set, for once, in a straight line.
"Martin?" said James at last. I turned to look at him. He was looking at me and… smiling?
"Martin, you know the answer, so far as I'm concerned. Do you want me to tell him?"
Dumbly I nodded. Anything was better than this silence. He cleared his throat. The muscles across my back contracted still further, knowing the crushing blow, the knife-stab that would surely come.
"George……" James' use of my father's christian name still jolted me slightly after all this time, or was it the circumstances that made it so? "George…oh dear, this is more difficult than I ever imagined." He cleared his throat again. "George: what there is between Martin and me, what has developed over many years, is love. Real love. Love as deep as between the partners in any couple. We have always been friends, ever since we met, and so many times I've tried to put words to what it is that attracts me to him. But there are so many, little, things, all parts of his character, that to name any one of them sounds unconvincing. But there it is. I've met many other people around my own age in Canada, back here in school and University and elsewhere, but nobody comes near Martin."
He paused. If this was an off-the-cuff-speech, I thought, it's marvellous, because it says everything I felt about him apart from the physical attraction. I learnt afterwards that he'd been practising what to say ever since we'd been summoned. Not that that made it any less impressive.
"If that means that we're not what you hoped, or that Martin isn't the son you thought he was, or that you hoped for, then please think some more: he's still the same boy and man as he was a week ago, or a year ago, or ten years ago. Nothing has changed. He's always been the same as you've seen him and as you've known him. Please will you also consider this: if he'd been attracted to his own sex and had nobody, and never had anybody at all in his life who he could genuinely love, then please…please…" and he stopped to draw breath. "Please think how unhappy that would make him. And please, also think about Mark, who took his life rather than face an attitude and lack of love and an outdated, useless, so-called treatment, that ultimately would have had no effect at all apart from possibly breaking his mind and spirit in the long run anyway." He stopped, and his eyes never left my father's astonished face.
Was this really my nine year old, unofficial, little brother talking? Could he really have gained so much from School and University to enable him to put it all so clearly and logically and humanely? I mean, it affected me, and I was — um — his lover and confidante and life's partner.
For ages there was another silence. But a different one. Had there been lines of power between Dad's eyes and James' like in a B-movie I wouldn't really have batted an eyelid. But slowly poor old Dad's eyes moved down to look at the floor. I was ready to rush over to James and hug him. But what Dad said next stopped me in the middle of my triumph.
"And we were so looking forward to having grandchildren."