I talked to Aunt Margaret about my future a couple of days after she had fetched me from the school. I asked if she thought I could do medicine and become a doctor like her. Tom had already told me that was what he wanted to do as well. She was ever so pleased and said I would have to work hard but she had every confidence in me. She also said that there was a Trust Fund set up by the insurance company after dad died to pay for my education and that should help a lot.
And, so the holidays started.
Tom and I got on so well it was really as if we had never been away from each other for long periods of time. We had both grown considerably over the year and I was nearly six foot even at fifteen. Tom’s growth spurt had come on line with a vengeance and he was now topping five-seven and still growing. We had both developed in other areas over the year as well. My cock was now six inches fully loaded and his was getting on for that as well. The black hairy bush above his cock was more luxurious than mine, but mine was now a bright chestnutty auburn, darker than my flaming mass of red head hair. I think we made a fine pair as we set off each day on our explorations of the country, always dressed in our kilts. With my increase in height I now wore my father’s kilt on alternate days.
Tom had developed a great interest in wildlife and we spent many hours watching and waiting as the creatures and birds around us got used to our motionless forms. Tom was still as horny as ever and we had a list of favourite places where we could hide away, strip off our kilts and tee shirts and spend an hour or so giving each other exquisite pleasure.
Tom’s parents took the two of us on holiday with them to Greece for a fortnight. There I even developed a bit of a tan while Tom went really dark. He was determined to get an allover tan, so while his parents had their siesta in the late morning and afternoon, he and I, like mad dogs and Englishmen, would go off in the midday sun after a small lunch, loping off up the hillside to sunbathe nude in a secluded area. Seeing each other like that always set off our hormones and two sweaty bodies would return later to the beach to bathe away the smell of boy sex. We shared a room and a bed, so our lovemaking continued at night, often three or four times, dozing in between. As it was very hot during the day our sleepiness wasn’t noticed. We could drop off under the partial shade of a large umbrella during the morning and between our bouts in the hills in the afternoons. I don’t think I have ever had so much sun-kissed sex as I did on that holiday. Sun, sand, sea and sex with Tom. A wonderful combination.
Still Scotland wasn’t so bad on our return. I’d told Tom about Simon and Richard and, just before we parted again when the new term was about to begin, he shyly broached the subject I’d wanted to talk to him about for such a long time. The afternoon before he started back at school again we were lying side by side in the secretness of a clump of trees, still tasting the residue of each other’s boy cream, when he leaned across me and whispered in my ear with great hesitation.
“Flip…” he began, “do you love me as much as I love you?”
Those were the words I wanted to hear. We may have only been fifteen but both of us knew we were made for each other.
I put my arms around him, tears running out of the corners of my eyes and all I could say was, “Oh, Tom…”
We held each other closely as I then put my own thoughts into words. I said I’d made two decisions earlier in the year. One was to study medicine and be a doctor, the other to tell him I wanted to be with him as my companion and lover in the future. I told him I had wanted that second thing for such a long time. Simon’s example was before me, and I explained how he and Richard had decided to pledge themselves to each other but wait until both were eighteen before consummating their relationship. I told Tom how happy Simon had been that afternoon when he’d told me they were now fully committed to each other. I remarked that we both knew we were still very young and it would be difficult for us because, as Simon had explained to me, there were many people who didn’t understand.
Tom was very quiet while I was speaking, gently stroking my arm.
“Oh, Flip,” he said finally, “I’ve loved you from that very first day I met you. I knew before then that I only liked boys and I knew from that moment I wanted you if you would have me. That day you fucked me and I fucked you was the happiest day of my life. If you never wanted to see me again after that I would never forget you and your love. Simon waited, and now he knows how much he loves Richard. We didn’t wait, but I know how much I love you. Please, Flip, whatever happens to us between now and when we can always be together won’t matter, because then there will be just you and me.”
Oh dear, my thoughts were racing. Was I old enough to make such a deep commitment? Tom was deadly serious. I knew I wanted Tom. I whispered in his ear, “I love you… for always.”
We lay in each other’s arms and just enjoyed the feeling of closeness and deep love.
I think Aunt Margaret sensed there was something more than just a boyish friendship between us. I couldn’t tell her yet—and she didn’t enquire—but she gave Tom and me every opportunity to be together. Towards the end of the holiday Tom’s parents were called up to his father’s parents’ home as Tom’s grandfather was taken seriously ill. Tom and I house-sat for three days, rarely leaving the police house on the pretext that the phone might ring—but, in reality, keeping as close together as possible. We decided not to fuck again until we both felt ready, but we explored each other’s bodies in a myriad of ways, each of us so sensitive and responsive to the other’s touch. We also had to make a pact that we could both have encounters with others as long as we didn’t keep any secrets from each other. Tom especially wanted me to remain a good friend and companion to Ghazi and said he also wanted to share our love with him.
Tom had also made his plans, which we discussed. He confirmed that he wanted to study medicine. Would I mind? As if I would! When he told his parents, they were very pleased he wanted to go to university and said they would support him as far as they could. It would be expensive, but he was their only child and Mr McLaren had just been promoted to Sergeant, and there were further promotions in line.
Tom was so open and kind I knew I would have a faithful companion for life when the time came. Somehow I had to explain to Michael, but from the tone and contents of the two letters I received from him during the holiday it was patently clear that he and Darryll were very close. The second contained a photo of him and Darryll, side by side, arms round each other’s shoulders, gurning idiotically for the camera on a beach somewhere in Greece! He managed to convey that they were more than just good friends by the continual use of ‘We’. I still loved Michael for being the friend who had helped me over my troubles, but I was so happy he had found someone for himself. I wondered what would have happened had the four of us met up, because we had all been in Greece at the same time!
There was little news from home. I sent cards and letters to Stuart and he responded in kind. He proudly told me he came top of his class and Aunt Margaret made the comment that he was following in the footsteps of the older Menzies. I dearly wanted to see Stuart again, but I still had no straightforward correspondence with my mother. She, like Simon’s parents for him, had sent me a cheque for my birthday in April. The card enclosing it hadn’t mentioned Ray the Creep, thank goodness.
Of course, the death of Diana that August was a black time. I had a phone call from Paul, who said his parents were going down to London for the funeral, and I knew Hamed had seen the particular Christmas card which was amongst the great collection displayed while we were at Linnhe. He had stood by me while I was inspecting it, and smiled when I looked at him.
So my second year at Kinloch began. Aunt Margaret deposited me outside Mr McCrae’s house and went in to have coffee with Mrs McCrae. Of course, there was no Simon. He’d sent me a card from Edinburgh a couple of days earlier wishing me well. He said he was looking forward to his first term at medical school. There was no Robbie MacPherson, either. He’d had gone off to spend a year in Australia before starting university. There were two new senior House prefects to see us all arrive and to control the new bugs—who had, as usual, arrived the day before.
As I was standing looking at my luggage Mr McCrae came round the side of the house. Sam and Boz rushed around me wagging their tails.
“Come here, you damn dogs. Can’t control them. Worse than boys.” He looked me up and down. “Glad you’re back. A good few changes. No more Simon or Robbie, plenty of new bugs, and you’re in the exam year now. Quite a few others have gone too… young Crowley’s decided to pursue his Highers nearer home.”
Oh, my God, why did he say that? Crowley hadn’t been in our House! I waited for the chop. Instant dismissal for grievous bodily harm.
He drew on his pipe. “By the way, I’m producing the school play this term… Hamlet.” He pointed the pipe at me. “You and Paul can be the gravediggers and I think I’ll cast young Ghazi as the ghost of Hamlet’s father, but he’ll need a bit of camouflage for that… OK?”
He knew! I marvelled again at the way schoolmasters knew so much of what was going on. This was confirmed when I asked Paul and Ghazi later if they had met Mr McCrae. They knew he’d twigged who the perpetrators were, because they’d had the exact same interaction with him as I’d had. I was even more convinced when, in the school library a couple of days later, I perused the dramatis personae of the play and found there, ‘two clowns, grave-diggers’.
I was just about to take my bags up to the dorm when the bus arrived from the station. I waited and wasn’t disappointed, as the unmistakable sounds of Clyde’s voice soon rang out around the approach to the house. Sure enough, a trolley loaded with bags appeared, but the biggest shock was the now slimline Clyde, who was berating his companion pushers, Hamed and Ghazi. Gone was the plumpness; gone also were the owlish spectacles. A bright, fresh-faced, taller Clyde was in full voice. Hamed and Ghazi were laughing uproariously as he stood back and let them push the final few yards.
“Goddam it, Flapso!” he called out. Then he spotted my aunt, who was just emerging from the McCraes’ house. “Why, hallo, Dr Menzies,” he said, oozing the charm of a Southern gentleman. “What d’you feed that hulking great nephew of yours on? If he came to my granddaddy’s health resort he’d get rid of all those spots he’s got with a proper balanced diet!”
My aunt guffawed. She’d prescribed some liquid, which stung like buggery (to coin a phrase), when she found me one morning peering disconsolately into the kitchen mirror and fingering the rampant acne round my lower jaw. Trust Clyde to draw attention to my weak spot, or spots! I felt like ramming the largest object I could find right up his tailpipe! He was undeterred by the venomous look I shot at him.
“We’ve…” here he waved an arm expansively at Hamed and Ghazi, “spent eight goddam glorious weeks at my granddaddy’s latest interest. He’s sold his goddam hosses and bought this retirement present for himself…”
Here Ghazi and Hamed relapsed into laughter again. Clyde’s language had not improved, but my aunt laughed merrily as well.
He pointed an admonitory finger at Ghazi and Hamed. “These boys accompanied me and helped my granddaddy out of his great difficulty of getting good supporting staff. At the Bon Repose Health Centre we have brought new life to many tired, and if I may say so, unduly surplussed, clients…”
Ghazi could stand it no longer. “Oh, shut up, Clyde! You sound like one of your granddaddy’s brochures.” He came over to my aunt. “Please, Dr Menzies, take no notice of him. His granddaddy put him on the strictest regime and now you see the new Clyde—contact lenses and all—but still as noisy as ever. His granddaddy says when we go there next time he’s going to put him in a cage as a prize exhibit, wearing a gag.”
His balloon pricked, Clyde stayed silent while we congratulated him on his new look. He smiled and said it was all with the help of Hamed and Ghazi who had sustained him when he was so, so hungry at times. With that, Mr McCrae came out with the two dogs. They sniffed suspiciously at Clyde’s legs.
“Good God!” he said, when he had taken in the sight before him. “I thought I heard the voice, but who is it?” He turned to Hamed. “So, who’s your svelte friend? Is he a new bug I don’t know about?”
Hamed said he and Ghazi had been bugged by Clyde for the past eight weeks. Mr McCrae laughed and went off in close conversation with Aunt Margaret. I wondered if bugged was actually a shortened form of a slightly longer word as I suspected Clyde’s dagger had needed sharpening during that time!
The Winter Term sped by. The play’s the thing! We hammed Hamlet up, Paul and I appearing with torn, dishevelled doublets and hose, flashing our muscles, getting a round of applause at each of the three performances. Ghazi appeared all in white and nearly brought the house down with his sepulchral delivery. Our muscle-building had progressed well during the term. The three of us had to move to the proper gym for most of our sessions as Mr McCrae was a bit worried in case we overdid things. However, Simon had left his stuff for us and we tried to have a few minutes every day, when we weren’t in the gym, doing a few reps and curls in the garage. Mainly Ghazi and myself on those occasions and this did lead to several ‘extra-curricular activity’ sessions, where we practised press-ups over each other’s cocks. Two of the previous year’s new bugs asked if they could join our group. I don’t know if either wanted anything extra. Perhaps they pleasured each other, but we weren’t interested. They exercised very energetically, and were very pleased with even one term’s results.
Six of us in dorm, excluding Clyde, were now full members of the House XV. Paul, who was growing ever faster, was a reserve for the School First XV. Little Dick was shooting up, and on his sixteenth birthday in November he proudly announced that he was now five feet eight inches tall. Paul remarked cryptically that if he grew any more he’d be eight inches elsewhere. I did note, while observing a series of Fergie’s nightly wanking sessions, which always spurred me on to faster stroking, that his cock was now not only very long but was also getting thicker. I was pretty certain that Hamed and Clyde were up to no good as well. They disappeared, on the pretext of playing golf, most times Hamed wasn’t required for rugger, coming back with satisfied looks on their faces. I was sure they weren’t just trying out backswings and underhand grips, which were topics of much of their conversation in the dorm.
An invitation for Hogmanay at Linnhe Castle came for all of us. The sweetest thing was that Tom was invited as well. Again, Fergie and Little Dick declined, but when we arrived on New Year’s Eve who should also arrive but Simon and Richard! Richard was such a nice person as well as a real hunk, just like Simon, and took over the role of ‘older brother’ from Roddy, who was somewhere in Germany with his regiment. Paul was bunking with Ghazi and the look on their faces each morning was as if both cats had had the cream. Tom and I were together and made the most of it. So what with Hamed and Clyde, and Richard and Simon, I think a good time was had by all.
Ghazi came and stayed with me for Easter 1998. We celebrated our sixteenth birthdays with Tom making great play on the fact that mine fell on Palm Sunday that year. He said that ordinary lovers celebrated on St Valentine’s Day, but Palm Sunday was more appropriate for ardent masturbators like me. He didn’t get away with that! He was palmed himself several times the next day by both Ghazi and me on one of our jaunts.
I have never worked so hard as over that Easter holiday. All three of us had our exams at the beginning of the Summer term. All three of us took our books and notes out each day and worked away at our various tasks. Quite a bit overlapped between us and I felt that I knew far more because of the help we’d given each other. The exams came and went and the wait for the results seem interminable.
All seven of us were staying on for the Sixth Form. Little Dick hadn’t taken any exams, but he was returning, we were told, to prepare for entry to an agricultural college. Ghazi and Hamed spent the summer with Clyde at his granddaddy’s health resort in the South of France. Excited phone calls flew around when the results were announced. Tom and I had done exceptionally well. Fergie astounded us; in his quiet way he had taken further subjects and got top marks in all of them. Ghazi, Hamed and Clyde were well satisfied with their results. For some reason Paul came down on two of his subjects and was pretty morose about it. Still, we all turned up ready for the First Year Sixth. Paul was over the moon as he was elected vice captain of the First XV. Clyde, of course, wanted to know what vice it was.
We seven no longer shared the dorm. As Sixth Formers we were promoted to the fourth floor, where Ghazi and I shared a room, as did Clyde and Hamed. Fergie and Paul insisted that Little Dick should be with them so they had a separate room as their study, and the three of them shared the original study-bedroom. We spent a lot of time in each other’s rooms and our camaraderie flourished. We never enquired about the others, but Ghazi and I slept together almost every night. We had to remember to alternate beds over the week so that our sheets were equally scruffy and slept in.
I was now over six foot and Ghazi was nearly five ten so the pair of us in a single bed made for one adolescent led to many giggles as we manoeuvred ourselves into the most comfortable position. We enjoyed each other’s bodies immensely, and always shared everything we did. So much so that Paul observed one afternoon that if we insisted on moving the furniture around in our room at midnight would we do it more quietly as he was next door and needed his sleep. Needless to say, we made sure the bed bumped the wall rhythmically that night.
The Sunday Chapel ritual Paul and I had started two years previously had blossomed. There were always at least a dozen of our House who appeared clad in the kilt. That first Sunday there were two surprises. Clyde, who had only worn his Glaswegian tartan at Linnhe, appeared resplendent in his own clan kilt as he had found the Scottish connection of his family line. The second surprise was even greater. As we marched into the chapel we were greeted with the organ thundering out. I looked to see who was playing as I expected to see Dr Barnes as Nelson had gone to one of the Oxbridge colleges as an organ scholar. Oh, my! It was Little Dick! For someone for whom the square root of forty-nine was an arcane mystery to have such talent was heart-stopping. I looked at Paul and Fergie and the pride in their eyes brought tears to mine.
That year also passed rapidly. We settled into a routine over holidays with the Campbells once again inviting all of us for Hogmanay. The big news there was that Walter the Banker and his wife, married during that summer, had a kid on the way, so Paul would be an uncle! I found out from conversation with Mr Campbell that at the wedding, to which Charles Parsons, the Sheik’s secretary, had been invited, he had said Hamed’s uncle was so pleased with his progress that he wanted to know what had happened. Paul had obviously not told his father the story of that Sunday night. I didn’t enlighten him; I just said I thought he’d learned very quickly to value friends. Mr Campbell said that was something you either learned quickly or not at all. True.
My seventeenth birthday came and went during the Easter break, as did Ghazi’s. We had some uproarious times, especially with Tom being so amazed at how hairy Ghazi was, even at seventeen. He was developing quite a mat of very fine, very black hair on his pecs, with a dense treasure trail leading to a mass of curly tufts around the base of his cock. Having also observed Hamed in the changing rooms I knew he was going the same way, but even though he was that much older than Ghazi he was shorter and less hairy. Where he did win was in the lengthy tool which hung between his legs. Lying in bed one night I asked Ghazi if he knew what Hamed and Clyde did. I learned then that it was true that Clyde fucked Hamed as much as possible. As we had no secrets from each other Ghazi described several encounters he’d witnessed at the health resort. Although Clyde’s cock had always seemed on the short side, apparently it lengthened considerably as he became erect.
The Summer Term exams came and went. I was determined to do well, so I really worked hard. I also became quite proficient at computing, with Ghazi as a willing and most competent guide. We appropriated Clyde’s old Mac which had lain unused in his locker ever since he’d unpacked it two years before—“Goddam thing, my daddy said I was to have one, but what goddam for?” Somehow Ghazi, with his newfound skills, managed to hook it up to the Internet through an unused line and we browsed some very revealing sites.
We all split up for the summer holiday. I took a schedule of work home as I was to go for interview at medical school early in the next term. I found Tom was going the same day, so we consulted Simon and Richard by phone about what might be asked. They were quite positive that with our academic and sporting records we would both have a good chance of being accepted. Fingers crossed.
We certainly didn’t keep our legs crossed that holiday. I had read somewhere that seventeen was the peak age for sexual activity. If it was, it seemed no different for Tom and me from when we were fourteen. Probably the most different thing was that our encounters were now not just a release—the old genital sneeze—but were carefully orchestrated to give maximum pleasure. We kept a tally that summer, and over the time we spent together we averaged nearly three times every day. Tom did remark that it was a reduction on his frenzied activity when he first learned the joys of wanking, but said he just loved his ginger friend’s horny hand curled round his massive Scottish claymore. I retaliated on three counts: cheek, lies and boastfulness. I said my hair was bright auburn, my hands weren’t horny (at least, not in the same way that he was in bodily need), and that thing between his legs wasn’t big enough to poke a Sassenach’s eye out, let alone decapitate him.
I shut his screams of mirth off abruptly when I then had him on his back tickling him by presenting him with my version of his favourite dish, a Clootie Dumpling. I said his mother never made anything so sweet and tasty as mine and he could suck the fruit out of it as much as he wanted. He couldn’t laugh out loud as my cock was now well entrenched in his jaws and a swift turn about gave me that so-familiar taste of his own, slightly less massive, Clootie. And so we spent our days until it was time to begin our last stint of boyhood.
Of course, we were all about to begin our final school year.
At the end of the previous term it had been announced that Paul would not only be Head of School but also Captain of Rugby, with Hamed as his vice captain. Paul was following in the steps of his two elder brothers, and he was very proud but also relieved to have such honours. He was also promoted to Sergeant Major in the CCF, with Fergie as his Staff Sergeant, which was going to be very useful when they made their bid for Officer Training.
The big surprise was that Clyde was asked to be Head Boy of McCrae House, although really it wasn’t a surprise. Given all his supposed brashness and flashiness, with his out-and-out Southern charm no one ever had a bad word about him. His tongue was sharp and he despised any appearance of superiority, but he was the sincerest friend anyone could ever have. Hamed had recognised this and the pair were inseparable.
The first day back was one of meeting old friends. As usual Aunt Margaret drove me there—or rather I drove us, as I had passed my test during that summer holiday. No sooner had I stopped the Range Rover than Boz and Sam were all over me. This meant that Mr McCrae was in the offing. Sure enough he appeared, greeted Aunt Margaret effusively, and pointed her towards the coffee pot, which he said he knew was ready in the house.
He eyed me up and down. “They don’t get much bigger than us, do they?” he said. We were now the same height, six foot three. “Still, you did well in the exams; more to come this year, eh?” I nodded. That was praise enough from the laconic Mr McCrae. I had done well. “Anyway, school play’s Macbeth this year. Good choice, but Paul will not be playing Macbeth, even if he is supposed to be descended from the Thane.” He wagged his pipe at me. “You, Ghazi and Paul will be the three witches. Most appropriate, brewing up trouble for the wicked.”
Schoolmasters never forget.
The seven of us roomed as we had the year before. I was in our room when Ghazi appeared, closely followed by Hamed and Clyde. Hamed had grown a very fine moustache over the holiday and Clyde was telling him as he was now Head of House he would decide whether moustaches were allowed, but perhaps as Hamed was now a Sergeant in the CCF and still not much bigger than a four-year-old he might be allowed to keep it. All three had spent the summer at granddaddy’s health resort. All three were brimming full of good health and all three hugged me tightly in greeting.
“Hi, Flopso, we got a new line for the goddam extroverts,” said Clyde later that evening, coming into Ghazi’s and my room when he’d unpacked at least one of his many bags. “Granddaddy has extended the goddam gym so we had masses of your goddam European thirty-somethings all keen to expose their goddam pale bodies while on those goddam machines.” He paused to take breath and held up a cardboard box. Ghazi dissolved into giggles. Clyde ignored him, just shaking his head disdainfully. “Unfortunately, someone we know well underestimated their goddam general size, so, when I told my granddaddy you were a real skinny fucker he sent you a boxful of the goddam leftovers.”
Knowing that even disrespectful Clyde would never use such language to his granddaddy, and that by the side of the new, tall, slimline version of the old Clyde I was rather well built, I wondered what was in the largish cardboard box thrust at me. I opened it gingerly, as Ghazi, who obviously knew its contents and was obviously the culprit, started to laugh uproariously. I grinned at the contents—about three dozen posing pouches ranging from minuscule to minute, in all sorts of colours.
“You’ll bloody get me arrested if I wear any of these,” I said, shaking out of its packet a satin lycra number in bright red.
Needless to say they were worn. I distributed them to our First and Second Rugby XV’s and we all paraded for group photos of various dimensions after the final game of the term. It’s said you need balls to play rugger. The swellings on display gave credence to one interpretation of that statement and I know a few startled parents and girlfriends received rather revealing Christmas cards that year.
Ghazi and I resumed our almost nightly adventures. That first night back he confessed he’d missed me over the summer, having to make do, as he coyly put it, with shaking hands with the unemployed, while Hamed and Clyde, according to him, were going at it hammer and tongs in the next room. He admitted he’d met a French kid, our age, who’d been at the resort with his widowed mother, and the lad had ended up in bed with him for the last few nights of his stay. He said he now had a standing invitation to visit Toulouse at any time. I pointed out that the lad was probably spellbound by Ghazi’s perpetual standing, which earned me two mouthfuls of his so-well-remembered boy cream as a reward, as he said, for my perspicacity. After sharing the first with him I said he had plenty to lose.
A couple of weeks later I met up with Tom on the train when we went for our medical school interviews. Sweet relief—I was shitting bricks with apprehension—we were both offered places on condition of satisfactory exam grades. We stayed the night with Simon and Richard and I, flush with the money I hadn’t spent from my allowance over the summer, took us all to a rather posh restaurant. What with the food and drink and lack of sleep that night because of—what else could I blame other than Tom’s insatiability, and my willingness?—I was quite exhausted when I arrived back at school early the next evening and entered the prep room carrying my overnight bag.
Clyde was the first to greet me as he was haranguing the new bugs about the interpretation of some rule or other and clapped me on the back at the news. “Goddam it, Flipper, my granddaddy would have y’all on the goddam payroll straightaway. Two young, handsome medics, you and that winsome Tom, in your wee skirts…”
Six foot three met five foot ten in an unholy rumble on the prep room floor, watched, open-mouthed, by the gaggle of new bugs who soon realised that the heaving mass was really two great friends hugging each other. Others crowded around, and I was being congratulated on all sides by all and sundry when Paul, alerted by the noise, came striding in.
Being Head of School, Captain of Rugby and Sergeant Major made Paul an object of awe for the new bugs—and even for the Second and Third Years present, who were trying, unsuccessfully now, to complete their prep before supper.
“What the hell!” were Paul’s opening words, but before he could say anything else he found himself pushed aside as Hamed and Ghazi rushed into the room shouting, “What’s the news?”
So, that was how I knew once again that my friends were real friends. Even more so when that night, just before lights out, the seven of us congregated in the trio’s study and Paul produced a bottle of his father’s malt whisky, saying his father had known I’d be the first to hear good news and wanted us to celebrate it in the proper Scots way.
More good news followed fast. Paul and Fergie were accepted for officer training. Ghazi heard that his application for a place at a prestigious London college to study Economics was confirmed. The strangest news was that Hamed had given up the idea of a military career. His uncle had stayed at Clyde’s granddaddy’s health resort and been cured of some stomach upset. He was so enamoured of the place and the royal treatment he got, not to mention his and the granddaddy’s shared interest in horses, that he was proposing to help with further extensions. That meant, without much persuading on anybody’s part, that Hamed and Clyde were going to work together there—no worries about university, square-bashing or what have you.
Term work built up. Ghazi, Paul and I worked off our frustrations over Maths and Physics with intense workout sessions in the gym and the garage. Ghazi and I relieved our delving into our Biological heritage by more intimate explorations of our own structures and functions. Paul’s other duties meant that Hamed took over much of the running of the First XV. I had often envied Clyde’s possession of Hamed’s tightly muscled young body, as his faithfulness never wavered. Other than that initial fondling of each other’s young manhoods three years previously, neither I nor anyone else other than Clyde ever did anything with Hamed. We were good friends, though, and hardly a week went past without us giving each other a brotherly hug over some triumph or other.
Fergie quietly got on with his work and looking after Little Dick’s interests. I often heard them discussing music, and realised this was a common bond between them. Little Dick spent more and more time in the chapel playing the organ. In fact, whenever I could I would take a textbook or my notes and secrete myself in a corner while Bach, Parry, Stanford or Cesar Franck soared round my head. It was interesting that when I was sitting my Highers in the Summer Term how often a remembered fact was accompanied by the phrase of music I had heard when learning it.
The other thing which occupied quite a bit of our time was Macbeth or that bloody Scottish play as it was usually referred to because of the ill luck that was supposed to accompany it. Three of the ugliest, largest and most evilly-attired witches opened the play and when we doubled and bubbled in Act IV there were howls of laughter as one of the new bugs, promoted to being a sorcerers’ apprentice of the Harry Potter variety, but not in the hallowed script, was bodily upended into the cauldron as the final ingredient.
As it so happened the new bug was a component in one of the two contretemps Paul had to deal with in that first term of high office.
The first was when Clyde consulted him as Head Boy and me as devil’s advocate, over a delicate situation. One of the Lower Sixth in the House had apparently been making advances towards this new bug, a blond, curly-haired lad with Cupid’s bow lips, who was reputed to be hung, at thirteen and a half, like a horse. How or why, I do not know, whether through sheer ignorance or wilfulness, this child had boasted openly in the prep room that he and Antony, the Sixth Former, had decided they wanted to share a room together. This was the stuff that rumours, and more serious trouble, were made of.
When confronted, Antony Fuller said it wasn’t true. Then he confessed he was infatuated with the kid and had told him he wouldn’t mind sharing a room with him but maintained he had never touched him. This last bit was most probably true as we knew Antony and his cellmate were soul mates, so he was told in no uncertain terms to definitely keep his hands to himself or to his own age group.
The new bug was interviewed by we three—just as a precaution, Clyde laughingly said, in case he claimed he’d been raped by Paul—and given a very stern ticking off with the injunction that it was always wise to keep one’s mouth shut. The kid blubbed and admitted he was fond of Antony. He was very sorry he’d got him into trouble but he couldn’t help it, and his best friend said he would be responsible for him if he was forgiven. After much nodding of sage heads, faces kept tightly in stern lines but shoulders heaving, we conferred and said all was forgiven. But after that the grateful child became our shadow and we, to get him off our backs a bit, decided, with Mr McCrae’s unquestioning permission, to create the Macbeth role for him. Of course, we had to tell Ghazi why.
What was interesting was that while in the dressing room getting our costumes on for the dress rehearsal we were able to confirm the rumour. Little Master Christopher Phelps had a horsecock to match any of ours. Ghazi took one look and leaned confidentially over to me and opined that you couldn’t do anything else but keep your mouth shut about that!
The other incident could have been very serious. A rather officious Sixth Former in another House, a corporal in the CCF, had discovered two of the Third Year cadets from our House in flagrante delicto, that is, tossing each other off, in the back room of the CCF stores, which they were supposed to be minding at the time. He’d gone in to collect some equipment and, finding no one behind the counter, had snooped and was full of righteous Presbyterian indignation.
When Paul consulted our little group about what should be done he said half the trouble was that the two lads were in our House, and we’d thoroughly beaten the other lot in the first round of the inter-House rugger tournament, and the other half was that prissy Angus Reid was irked because he was only a corporal when daddy was a colonel and expected greater things.
It was decided that Paul and Fergie would put on a pseudo-court-martial which would mollify Angus and keep him from blabbing to the powers that be. I was roped in again and was told I could be an observer to ensure fair play. The courtroom was to be the trio’s study, so at the appointed time Paul and Fergie were seated behind the communal desk and I was perched, primly, on a chair at the side. But what the prime actors in this drama did not know was that Ghazi, Clyde and Hamed had each acquired a laptop computer in London after their sojourn in France, and Ghazi had also equipped himself with a webcam. Somehow he had daisy-chained the computers, so one, with the webcam sitting on top, was on the bookcase in the study and the other two were strategically placed in Ghazi’s and my room connected by a cable through a convenient hole in the wall made by previous occupants. This meant a good view of the proceedings could be had by Ghazi and Hamed, and highlights recorded for evidence if needed.
There was a clatter of hefty boots as the two young wankers were marched in by a straight-backed, nose-in-the-air Corporal Angus Reid. The three stood stiffly to attention in front of the desk, all three bulled up to the eyebrows and looking very, very smart. Angus ordered the two youngsters to remove their Glengarries, which they then nervously clutched in their left hands.
Paul cast a practised eye over the pair of them and must have thought they were smart enough as he then proceeded to spell out the composition of the board. While he was doing this I had a good look at the two lads who now looked very woebegone. They had even had very short haircuts in preparation for their ordeal. I knew them both, having watched their progress from their entry as new bugs two years before.
In fact, I’d helped one of the lads, Jamie Drummond, with Maths several times and he cast a wary eye at me, but I kept a poker face as his lower jaw began to quiver. He was eminently bed worthy according to the points system which the Sixth Formers always used when assessing—jocularly most of the time unless it got out of hand, as it had with that prime prat Antony Fuller—whether they would kick a kid out of bed. His uniform fitted him well, showing off a trim figure and a rounded butt, which I’d also noted filled out his tight shorts when I’d coached the scrum for the Junior House XV match a couple of weeks previously.
The other lad, Pete Douglas, was a dark horse. I only knew him slightly as he went about the House quietly and I’d had little interaction with him. He’d opted for hockey and was the only one in his year not in the House Junior XV. Looking at him more closely I surmised that he must be well-developed for his age of fifteen. There were definite signs of an incipient moustache and the evenness of his sideburns looked as if he was already shaving quite regularly. Poor bugger, if his hormones raged like mine at that age, then sweet relief on a regular basis, even in the backroom of the CCF stores with a buddy, was a prime necessity. If it was to be with the fresh-faced lad by his side all the more comfort.
Paul then read the charge. Worded by Angus, it came out under a mishmash of Queen’s Regulations as being conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline in that the two named, Cadet Peter David Bowen Douglas and Cadet James Arthur Stewart Drummond, had been discovered in the process of performing a lewd act together, wearing the Queen’s uniform, whilst on duty.
Both lads looked suitably cowed. The Head of School, Paul Adam Duncan Campbell, Captain of Rugby and Sergeant Major in the CCF, together with Staff Sergeant Fergus St. Andrew Cowen and Phillip Thomas Menzies, the No. 8 in the First XV, not only knew that they were real wankers but also that they were helping each other in their depravity.
I don’t know how Paul did it with a straight face but he began to question Angus.
“So, Corporal, were the cadets touching each other?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“In what way were they touching?”
Angus began to colour. He mouthed silently, then said slowly, “Sir, they were holding each other’s sexual parts.”
“And which parts were they?”
Angus was clearly not expecting this interrogation. Again he seem to mutter something to himself. Then he cleared his throat.
“They were holding each other’s penises, Sir.”
“And in what state were their penises?”
Angus’s mouth opened and shut. No sound came. I looked at Fergie who was staring ahead through half-closed eyes.
“I asked, in what state were their penises, Corporal?” inquired Paul very deliberately and with quite an edge to his voice.
Angus was bright red now.
“In an erect state… Sir.” The last word was almost spat out.
“And in what way were they handling each other’s erect penises?” asked a very composed Paul.
“Holding them, Sir,” came the answer after a short pause.
“Is that all? Just holding them?”
“Yes Sir. When I entered the room they must have heard me so they were just holding each other.”
Paul turned to Fergie.
“Staff-Sergeant, are there any questions you wish to ask?”
Fergie nodded.
“Was there any other evidence of a lewd act having been committed?” he asked.
Angus’s eyes nearly popped. He didn’t reply.
Fergie continued. “You saw no evidence of an act having been completed?”
Angus breathed out. “No, Staff.”
“So, they could have just been examining each other, say, looking for jockrash, or scabies, or whatever, before asking matron’s advice. You didn’t enquire?”
This was too much for Angus. He turned bright red and blurted out in strangled Aberdonian tones, “Those cheeky little fuckers were bloody well tossing each other off! I should know…” He stopped on that rising phrase before anything else of an incriminatory nature was divulged.
Paul and Fergie were a picture of calm. I couldn’t wait to see what the webcam had recorded or what the webcam viewers were doing at that moment. Stuffing football socks or pillows in their mouths to stop them from shrieking with laughter most probably.
Paul took over.
“Thank you Corporal for your evidence. Please wait outside while we take further evidence from the accused.”
I stood up and opened the door. Angus turned smartly on his heels and stomped out, more loudly than necessary, I felt. I closed the door and perched again.
Paul looked at the two miscreants, who seemed ready to wet themselves.
“What have you to say for yourselves? Anything?”
He fixed his gaze on the bubble-butted one, young Jamie.
“Please, Sir, we weren’t wearing the Queen’s uniform,” he said, his voice faltering at the end.
Paul raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“No, Sir, we’d taken our uniforms off.” A little note of confidence appeared here.
Straight-faced Paul looked at the other one and raised his eyebrow again. I guessed if he’d opened his mouth he would have collapsed.
“Please, Sir,” the lad said, his post-pubescent voice a pleasant tenor, but quavering a bit. “We weren’t really on duty. It wasn’t our turn, but Sergeant asked us to mind the store while he went and had a ciggie…” He stopped, having dropped our friend Freddie Turner right in the shit as the school had a strict no-smoking policy for pupils, which was obeyed somewhat.
Paul looked from one to the other. Bubble-butt had relapsed, he had the beginnings of a quiver by the side of his mouth and looked really worried. The other had pursed his lips and was standing with his eyes cast down. Paul whispered to Fergie but I couldn’t catch what he said. Fergie nodded when he’d finished, then Paul delivered the judgment in a clipped and forceful manner.
“Right, look up and stand to attention!” Two bodies jerked and stood even more stiffly, I think almost too frightened to breathe. “Your punishment is to have that store and back room in such a state of cleanliness that your father’s ghillie…” he pointed at the saturnine one “…could cast a fly without disturbing a mote of dust. I’ll inspect it with Phillip and Staff Sergeant Cowen tomorrow at eighteen hundred hours.” He paused to let that sink in. Then, in a quieter voice but still with an edge of steel, he went on, “Now. A word of advice. We in this room have no interest in what you do in your spare time, but there are two rules if you can’t keep your hands to yourselves. First, don’t be caught. Second, if you are, make sure it’s not by Corporal Reid. And just remember… always keep a civil tongue in your head… and the key to the back room to the stores is the third one from the left on the rack! Dismiss!”
Both mouths were wide open as they automatically remembered to turn to the right. I leapt up and opened the door as, heads held high, they marched out and down the corridor.
Paul called Corporal Reid in. He told him the judgment, also that the matter was closed and he wanted no discussion of this distasteful aspect of Cadet business outside this room. He didn’t mention the bit about his advice or where the key was. Reid looked pleased, the straitlaced sod. He said that he had not discussed the matter with anyone nor would he, as ordered. God! it was my bounden duty to dish the dirt on him if I could find any! He was dismissed and marched away, clattering down the stairs. I closed the door and looked at Paul.
“Want a wank, my old mates?” he said in the unmistakable Aberdeen accent of priggy Reid and for the benefit of our unseen viewers and listeners.
The door burst open and Hamed and Ghazi rushed in cackling like maniacs.
I said quietly to Paul and Fergie, shaking my head, “I don’t know how you did that, but I take my hat off to you.”
We all agreed that Paul and Fergie had averted a real disaster. Having more or less admitted he’d had experience of joint jacking off sessions, Angus couldn’t say another word. And his embarrassment had been mitigated by the level of punishment meted out, so he would be satisfied on that count. Two lads had learned a salutary lesson and would be eternally grateful to the senior members of the House. We also had a record of a most interesting half-hour, which we sat and watched with Clyde, chuckling at Angus’s discomfort during the interrogation. However, level-headed Clyde made Ghazi erase the recording after we’d seen it. That chapter in the life of the House was most definitely closed and would stay shut.
Our last Christmas at school arrived and the usual invitation came for Hogmanay at Linnhe Castle. I was so pleased because Tom was also invited again. First, we had the usual Christmas celebrations in the village. And… I had a major Christmas and premature birthday present! A small package on Christmas Day contained the keys of a car! It was a very generous present from Aunt Margaret, who said she had more money than sense because she had also arranged for a laptop computer to be delivered to Stuart. Impatient me! I had to wait until the Tuesday to go with Tom to collect the car from Fort William as Monday was a holiday as well.
That meant I didn’t need a chauffeur (chauffeuse, as Aunt Margaret usually drove) to get to Linnhe, so Tom and I arrived in style on New Year’s Eve with me driving. I’d made him help me clean and polish the car the day before so it would be pristine. He had the audacity to grumble about it as that was a chore his father expected him to do on the police car, so I told him I needed his experience at buffing. He then complained that he preferred my aunt’s driving as at least she did that with flair and a decent turn of speed. Christ, I had to drive slowly and carefully because the silly sod kept putting his hand on my bare leg under my kilt, and asking if he could change gear on the next corner… and was he anywhere near the gear lever?
On arrival there was the usual greeting by a gaggle, herd, pack, whatever of dogs. Friendly creatures, at least. Then other friendly creatures started appearing. Paul and Hamed came out first and fussed round the car and Tom. I was ignored until Clyde and Ghazi came round the side of the castle with another lad who looked familiar. He was dressed in a blue kilt which clashed quite seriously with his dark green Kinloch sweatshirt. Bloody hell! It was one of the two merry wankers, the dark lad, Pete Douglas.
After the court-martial I’d seen very little of him. I expect he was avoiding any confrontation. The other lad had shyly approached me one evening to ask if I would help him and a mate with some horrible trigonometry, and he had looked so grateful when the task was done. I made some corny double entendre about the pair finding some new angles to explore. I nearly patted his bum as he thanked me and went off.
Pete Douglas now stood back as I was clasped and welcomed by his companions. Clyde, as always, had been in the middle of one of his monologues but started another about how full the Castle would be for the big bash tonight and had I brought my dancing partner, and so on, and so on. I was staring past him and Ghazi at the lad who stared straight back now, and smiled. The ice was broken. I, at least, was no longer an ogre who knew his dreadful secret!
Clyde shut up for a moment and saw I wasn’t drinking in every one of his words. He realised I was looking past him.
“You know Pete, don’t you? Just been selected for the Scottish junior hockey team, haven’t you, Pete?”
I walked up to Pete, shook his hand, and winked at him.
“He’s bunking in with Ghazi. He wants to do Economics in the future as well. At least, that’s what he said at breakfast this morning,” the ever informative and solicitous Clyde added.
Whew! Extra-curricular activities no doubt where supply and demand have to be carefully balanced, otherwise raging inflation might ensue—causing breakdown in carefully maintained infrastructures and undue wastage of vital raw materials! What other jargon could I dredge up from Ghazi’s mumblings in our study while we were wrestling with our school work?
I grinned at Clyde. “Yeah, you clot, of course we’ve met before, but as he doesn’t play rugger and he seems good at putting two and two together, we’ve hardly had any interaction, eh, Pete?”
He knew I was pulling his leg, gently, and wrinkled his nose at me. We fell in step together as Clyde and Ghazi at last expressed interest in seeing my car.
Actually, he was a good-looking lad and, from the evidence of the hairy knees under his kilt, he and my furry friend no doubt made a fine pair of shaggy bedfellows. Shaggy, maybe, but not shagging, as Ghazi told me later when I cornered him to hear the gossip. He said the lad had turned up a couple of days earlier as his father had a big shooting party meeting at his place near Glen Clay. Since Mr Campbell was a member of the party and the kid had no companions of his age he had been shipped off to Linnhe. Ghazi was alone in his room, so Paul suggested they shared. He said Paul was a bloody matchmaker, knowing what the lad’s major hobby was. And it was, too.
Apparently, when bedtime came that first night, the lad watched as Ghazi stripped off and seemed so mesmerised by Ghazi’s hairy pectorals and stomach that he was only half undressed when Ghazi got into bed in the nude. The lad had arrived at the castle wearing a sweatshirt and jeans and had left his boxers and a singlet on when he had taken the outer layers of clothes off. As he lifted a leg to get into bed Ghazi had told him he didn’t need those things on as it was warm enough. Rather reluctantly the lad had quickly dropped the boxers and pulled off the singlet and slid in under the covers.
Ghazi produced his infectious giggle when he said he’d then turned over in the bed to say something to the lad and his cock had brushed the kid’s leg and he’d, automatically, gone hard. The kid had then moved to face him and his hand swept over Ghazi’s chest and he’d let out a low whistle. He’d then enquired how old Ghazi was. When Ghazi said he was nearly eighteen, Pete asked, “Can I show you something?”
This kid, sixteen a fortnight before, was beginning to get a hairy chest of his own. Ghazi had switched on the light again and looked and found a patch of little curls between his pecs with quite dense whorls around his nipples. He’d asked about further down and there he said the kid had so much curly black hair you could hardly see his cock, which just peeped out of the bush. Ghazi had run his fingers through the thicket and the lad had responded with an immediate hard-on. Ghazi said it was short and thick and had lots of foreskin. I knew Ghazi loved foreskins because he always bemoaned the fact that his had been removed as he moved mine back and forth.
He giggled again and reminded me of what I’d said to Simon the first night we’d bunked together.
“It’s a good job I don’t have any morals,” said Ghazi. “Here was I, a Sixth Former, just like Simon, in bed with a younger boy, a known masturbator…”
I stopped him there.
“Simon at that time did not know I masturbated.”
“Bloody hell, of course he knew!” he expostulated. “You’ve told me enough times that ninety-eight per cent of boys wank, one per cent tell lies, and the other one per cent can suck themselves off.”
I had invented that bit of esoteric knowledge after Ghazi and I, using Clyde’s computer, had somehow surfed to a site which showed young men with prodigious lengths in all sorts of contortions with their cocks poked into their own mouths. We’d speculated on who we knew might be able to do it, but hadn’t had the courage at the time to suggest it to long-shafted Fergie.
“Anyway, I was in bed with a known mutual masturbator… and you know how things are.”
I nodded sagely and wrinkled my nose at him.
“You’re fucking insatiable,” I said. “You’d cadge a wank off anything that moves up and down in a regular motion.”
“Bloody hell! Me insatiable? I thought Tom was bad enough, but I got no sleep that first night. He kept insisting he wanted another wank and could he give me another in return! Same again the next night. I could hardly walk yesterday morning!”
As Ghazi could come with the best of them I said I thought he was exaggerating.
“You’re a disbelieving sod,” he said disapprovingly. “And then last night he asked if you and I did it together as we shared a room in House. I said that was not a topic of discussion and what he did with his friends need not necessarily happen elsewhere.”
I chuckled at the sound of Ghazi getting on his high horse with the kid.
“He said that fucking Reid was going to get his comeuppance for shopping him and Jamie, because he knew Reid had shared a bed at CCF camp last year with some kid called Dolly.”
I knew of Dolly, Adolphus Meinherzen. He was the usual stuff of legends and gossip in boarding schools. He was a blond, Austrian Third Former in Paget’s House, and was reputed to have sucked off the whole of the Senior Hockey XI over two afternoons in his First Year—the year he came up from Prep School, when his elder brother was in the team. Dolly, at sixteen now, was himself a good hockey player and defended well in goal. Whether he was still a champion cocksucker was anybody’s guess, but his blond good looks would be enough to lead even arrogant Angus astray.
“Good,” I said, “I’d shop the bastard any day. But perhaps a good scare might be better.”
“I think big Flip fancies little Petie,” taunted Ghazi.
I did but I wasn’t going to confess to him. He wouldn’t tell Tom, but he would make my life unbearable by dropping hints.
“Shut up, because I’m not swapping Tom for you. Just tell me the rest. I suppose this morning you shagged the poor boy insensible to keep him satisfied.”
Ghazi actually looked a bit shocked.
“Fuck you, Flip,” he said testily. “That’s reserved.”
I stuck a hand out to calm him. I hadn’t seen Ghazi in flames like that for some time, and then only over real miscarriages of justice. And I didn’t quite know what he meant.
“Sorry, mate, I was only joking. Please don’t be cross with me. That was crass of me.”
We were such good friends the awful moment passed, and Ghazi said he’d try to find out what the youngsters in the House thought of us lot. If nothing else young Pete was a blabbermouth. Perhaps I should remind Ghazi of a good method of shutting him up but that would only start him off again about being worn to a frazzle.
When I finally got indoors, after making sure the car was safely garaged with the ancient unused Rolls and three other undefinable vehicles in the spacious stable block, I found that Roddy, as well as Simon and Richard, had arrived. And, surprise, surprise, who should be talking to Hamed but Charles Parsons, his uncle’s secretary. A rather tanked up Mr Campbell arrived just before six o’clock, while an imperturbable Mrs Campbell marshalled an army of helpers getting the great hall and other rooms ready for the later influx. As had happened last year, we lads were deputed to see that the food, and the drink, especially, was dispensed in suitable quantities. And we were warned that it wasn’t one drink for them and one for us.
That New Year’s Eve party was great. Tom was a great hit as he was an expert dancer and led us galumphing boys with assorted partners from the estate and surrounding houses through many of the more convoluted sequences of the various reels and strathspeys during the evening. Roddy was resplendent in full dress uniform, but rather spoilt the effect when, in one twirling movement, he displayed the bright blue lycra cycle shorts he was wearing under his kilt. This was much to the amusement of the young lady I was partnering at that moment, who was obviously quite keen on him.
So, full of food, several goodnight drinks, and well-exercised, Tom and I staggered to bed about half past one. We lay in each other’s arms and once more pledged our love for each other. No sex, just sweet, full contentment.
I must say that Ghazi did look a bit peaky the next morning. Tom and I shuffled down to breakfast at about half past nine. Ghazi, and a now very loquacious Pete, appeared about ten. Ghazi raised his eyebrows as he saw me look at him. It said it all. Ghazi was in the presence of a sex machine of greater power, endurance and stamina than himself. I contemplated jokingly to myself what might happen if I did let Tom loose on the lad. Frictional combustion of some sort; a variation on lighting a fire by rubbing two Boy Scouts together. No ma’am, the sheets aren’t stained, just slightly scorched!
My reverie was curtailed by the entry of Hamed with Clyde, who proceeded to give the assembled company his version of the night before as he chomped his way through a meagre bowl of muesli. His final peroration involved his collision with a rather well-built lady. I had witnessed the incident, and winced for him at the time.
“…I ain’t been so goddam squashed since my sister’s goddam hoss fell against me at that goddam rodeo.”
“Oh, Clyde, shut it for a moment,” said the usually tolerant Hamed. “I’ve got a splitting headache. And, anyway, Mr McCrae said you weren’t to say ain’t, because it’s common.”
Unperturbed, Clyde turned on him, emphasizing one word in particular. “Goddam it, Hammo, you ain’t supposed to drink those goddam strong beverages. I saw you imbibing more than once, especially in the company of that young filly in the pink dress.”
Hamed sighed and picked up his cup of black coffee and drained it with one gulp. The war between friends was continuing and in full spate.
“Come on, Clyde,” he said standing up, “let’s go for a walk. The cold air will freeze your tongue and tonsils and we might get a bit of peace.”
They both got up and were just departing when Roddy appeared through the door and clapped Clyde on the back as he passed him. Clyde turned and looked him up and down. Then reached down and disdainfully lifted Roddy’s kilt a few inches as Roddy flinched, unsure of what was to happen. Clyde dropped the fabric and turned to Hamed..
“At least he ain’t wearing those goddam disgusting panties this morning, Hammo. These Scots have no sense of dress. And there ain’t much to goddam cover, either.”
He shook his head and the pair walked off, their immaculately tailored kilts swinging sedately; the American and the Arab, side by side.
We all collapsed laughing as Roddy tried unsuccessfully to grab the stately figure of the retreating Clyde. After composing ourselves we discussed what was to happen that day, as it was Simon’s twentieth birthday. Roddy said he had to go back to Perth. Charlie Parsons was driving him there before taking the road south, so they wouldn’t be around for the evening’s bash. He said his mother had arranged everything for the evening, and from what he’d heard there was to be a formal dinner, with several guests who weren’t able to make it the previous evening.
The rest of us spent most of the morning trying to stalk Clyde and Hamed, but they’d disappeared. It was only later that we discovered that they had gone for a jaunt in Mr Campbell’s Land Rover—on a spurious American licence Clyde had acquired somehow—delivering braces of birds to people in the nearby village.
We all rested in the afternoon, and then made ourselves as smart as possible for the evening. Tom’s parents had bought him a most expensive sporran for his forthcoming eighteenth birthday and he’d persuaded them to let him have it early. He decided to wear that. An extravagant present from Aunt Margaret to me was a proper black dress coat. I hadn’t worn it the previous evening because I wore an open-necked shirt in light of the energetic dancing. This night I would be the young Highland gentleman!
Tom didn’t know I’d received this gift; I’d told him I’d got a new jacket, but he just assumed it was for school. When I put the coat on, completing my outfit, he whistled softly and came over and put his arms round me.
“You’ll wear that when we make our vows, OK?” he whispered.
I kissed his forehead and we made our way downstairs.
Even Clyde admitted I was perfectly turned out.
Simon was overwhelmed by the affection everyone showed him. Tom and I had clubbed together, after a phone call to Richard, and bought him a textbook he needed. In the end he had to give a speech and he just thanked everyone for everything, especially Richard who had put up with him during his first year and a bit at medical school and had made sure he knew enough to pass his exams. The only thing he was really sorry about was that he wasn’t celebrating his twentieth birthday on the first day of the real new millennium, as the powers-that-be had chosen the wrong date—today—so he was still a man of the twentieth century!
There were about twenty of us who sat down to the very lavish dinner. The main course was piped in with much ceremony and there were numerous toasts and plenty to drink. Among the guests who hadn’t been able to come to the party the night before was a family of four—mother, father and twins of seventeen. The twins were tall, willowy (Tom said skinny) youths, clad in immaculate black jackets, with their long legs encased in tartan trews just like their father. As they had come a fair distance the family were staying the night. With Roddy gone the twins were going to bunk with Paul.
The lads seemed rather reserved to begin with but Clyde was set off when he found out from Paul that the two boys were at a Public School in England and were keen on fencing. They spent most of the evening with Clyde and Hamed discussing feints, guards, blades and so on, and gradually getting more and more pissed, as Paul, sitting with the group about halfway up the table, made sure their glasses were kept full.
At midnight, some of us desultorily viewed the so-called millennium celebrations on the television in the corner of the drawing room. Then, after we’d all bellowed out Auld Lang Syne with Queen, Prime Minister and country, we sat chatting, perhaps a bit under the influence since Mr Campbell’s best malt was flowing rather freely. However, it wasn’t long before Paul waved goodnight to the rest of us and ushered the four lads, lurching somewhat, up the main staircase. Luckily, his and the twins’ parents had gone back to playing bridge in the library, so they didn’t see the state any of the boys were in.
Not long after that the rest of us decided to mount the timber hill, and Tom and I managed to get to our bedroom without too much of an effort.
“Bloody hell!” said Tom, not one usually for expletives. “That lot had a skinful, eh?”
I agreed, as I carefully hung up my new black jacket.
Tom was sniggering. “Paul’s in with those two. I wonder if he’ll be the filling in a three-decker sandwich tonight. They looked as if they could be a randy couple of buggers—with an en garde here and a coupe there.” This last was spoken with a passable imitation of the twins’ cut-glass English accents.
It was my turn to snigger.
“Just because you fancied them doesn’t mean they’d play ball.”
He sniggered again. “Bet you’d like them to play with your balls.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “If you don’t behave and be polite about your host you won’t have anything played with.”
“Bet ya!” was his only reply. He started up a tuneless whistle and continued to put his clothes away neatly as he took them off.
I ignored him, but I was determined to have my friend’s balls in my hand as I sucked his cock. Within two minutes of getting into bed we were holding each other’s balls and sucking each other’s cocks. We moved back around, head to head, at the end of that first encounter of the night. Our tongues duelled.
Tom drew his head away. “I don’t know which tastes better—Mr Campbell’s malt or your spunk!”
I wrestled him and got my long legs round him and held him tight.
“I love you more than anything in the world…” I whispered in his ear. He mewed with delight at that. I went on, “Except for my new car.” I kissed his ear.
He gave a hoot of derision.
“That clapped-out old banger!”
I silenced him with my mouth over his. My car was only four years old, one careful owner. Then I leaned back a bit.
“I’m going to give this clapped-out little banger such a big hug his wee bollocks will swell as big as his thick skull with all that hot air that won’t escape from his frog-like mouth.”
I covered his mouth again with mine and gave his torso a firm squeeze. Wrong thing to do. Tom blew down my throat with the force of blowing a pill down a horse’s throat. We both collapsed laughing, but with him still firmly in my grip. Of course, being Tom, he was not perturbed. He just began to stroke my back and gradually he managed to tickle me and I was helpless. We ended up squirming and wriggling about the bed kissing each other, feeling each other’s bodies and revelling in the sensations that produced.
“I’m going to cum again,” he whispered after we’d spent some time grinding our pelvises together and feeling our rampant pricks rub up and down against each other. He shot a load of his fabulous boy cream up between us, coating both of us liberally. We kissed as he reached down and, with a few deft strokes, brought me to my climax and I added my contribution, cementing our friendship and love once more.
We wiped ourselves with the strategically placed towel, then lay face to face for a few minutes, stroking each other’s backs very gently until we fell asleep.
Neither Tom nor I had drunk as much as any of our companions the night before. We were up, washed, dressed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed just after eight o’clock. We went downstairs, where a couple of ladies from the village were clearing the dinner table of the debris of that wonderful meal. We helped them stack all the bits and pieces and chatted to them about the place and the people. One of them knew my aunt, as she’d been born in Glenfinnan and had left there when she got married about ten years earlier. She told us the previous policeman had to retire because he drank too much. Tom laughed and said they knew that because they’d found a stack of old bottles in an outhouse. We were just about finished and were ready for a good feed when Paul appeared. Surprisingly, he was not too much the worse for wear.
“God,” said Tom, “I’d have thought you’d still be sleeping the sleep of the unjust.”
“Gahhh, I made sure the twins were canned, but I kept my intake down.” He laughed. “They’re like the babes in the wood at the moment, snoring gently.”
“And what about Pyramus and Thisbe?” I asked, wondering if Clyde and Hamed actually made it to bed. The names had stuck after a riotous read-through of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Mr McCrae’s English class one Summer term, after the school exams. With the practised wisdom of schoolmasters he had cast a stone into the slightly seething waters of relationships by literally casting these two heroes as Bottom and Flute. Clyde made the most of his part, almost raping Paul, who was a rather disgruntled un-girly Titania, before he rolled his eyes lasciviously at the hapless Hamed who turned deeper shades of duskiness. I was Snout the tinker and had to show my chink as Wall. Mr McCrae’s stern look, but twinkling eye, kept the class from going into overdrive, especially when Clyde stopped the performance to protest that it wasn’t politically correct to say that word especially as Hing-Heung Lee was in the same class as him for Geography.
“They were pissed as newts last night. I virtually had to strip them after I got them on their bed. Tell you what, Clyde’s got quite a length on him now. You’d be surprised what flopped out from under his kilt.”
“His little dagger’s become a sabre, eh?”
Seeing Paul’s puzzled look I explained Ghazi’s metaphor for Clyde’s and Hamed’s favourite activity. Paul nodded his head. Tom snickered. Paul and I looked at him.
“The penis, mightier than the sword,” he said, misquoting Bulwer-Lytton.
We threatened him with instant death in a bowl of soggy cornflakes for such an outrageous pun.
“And what about the twins? Why did you pour all that liquor down their throats?” Tom asked quietly, as we got on with our plates of eggs and bacon.
Paul peered at him with a look of resignation on his face.
“You don’t know those bloody kids like I do. I’ve known them all their lives. In fact, Adam’s named after me, ’cause you know, that’s my second name.” He paused to take a large bite at a piece of toast dipped in his egg yolk. “Mum went to school with their mother, and their dad owns a factory somewhere or other in England.” Another bite and slow mastication. Waiting for Paul to tell a tale was almost like watching paint dry. “They’ve been coming over here to stay since well before we all went to Prep School. Luckily, their mother didn’t think we should all go to the same one, so they got shipped off down into England.” Paul took a large swig from a cup of coffee.
I kicked Tom under the table. His face was composed.
Paul continued. “Buggers once came to stay here when I was just thirteen and they were twelve.” He looked around the room as if to check that no one else was listening. “They taught me more than I’d ever learned at Prep School.”
“What? Maths and so on?” Tom asked with a completely straight face.
“No, you idiot! You know!” He realised that Tom was pulling his leg. “Oh, all right. We spent all one weekend in the loft of the stables while they filled me in on what we could do—which wasn’t much at that age—but it made me the best informed erk when I got back to school.” He looked at me over the table and grinned. “How do you think Fergie and Little Dick learned all they know?”
“And… since then?” Tom asked, nonchalantly.
Paul looked at him warily. “What do you mean? What do you know?”
“Nothing,” said Tom, “but the inference from your manner is that things have happened since.”
“Don’t forget, his dad’s a copper and he’s learned all about how to get evidence,” I said.
Paul leaned back in his chair and looked from Tom to me and back again.
He sighed. “Rory and Adam are mischievous bastards. They look as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. I’m always dead scared of what they’ll do next. I was on tenterhooks all evening wondering what they might do to me while I was bunking down with them.”
We both laughed at tough Paul, frightened of two scrawny teenagers.
“You can laugh. When I was fourteen they stripped me one night and hung me out of a window wrapped in a sheet and they were only thirteen. They’re tough. Don’t be fooled. They’re tough as nails. Bloody fencing.”
Poor old Paul. The picture of him trussed up made me guffaw. He was well into his story now and there was no stopping him.
“You know, they’ve got tattoos down there.” He pointed towards his groin. “Had them done when they were fourteen. Day trip to Edinburgh. Paid some sleazy sod double his price to get them done because they were underage. Fucking cheek!” He was getting quite worked up. “They’d shaved their hair off and had their clan badge put there, just by their cocks. Sacrilege!”
I knew from past slight contretemps that when unwise fellow pupils, not always Sassenachs, had a disparaging word to say about Scotland, its history or its customs, Paul was quick to anger.
“What’s their clan badge?” I asked, hoping to get more outrage. We were not disappointed.
“Fucking thistle,” he hissed. “Goes back hundreds of years.”
“But, Paul,” I said, in as honeyed tones as the greatest ham actor that ever graced the Kinloch school stage could produce, “perhaps it was a danger signal to warn you not to grasp…”
Tom let out an explosive gasp. Paul stared at me for a few moments, then his face creased into his usual smile.
“You bloody fool!” he said. “You two have been leading me on.” He sniffed. “But I’ll tell you this… those two are as horny as hell and I didn’t feel too safe, even with them bladdered.”
“And what were you frightened they might do to you again?” Tom asked in his policeman mode.
Paul twigged this time. He looked at Tom through slitted eyes.
“If I told you that, your hair would stand on end.”
“More likely his cock,” I said.
“Shut up you! You’ve got a one track mind.”
I agreed, but what a wonderful track. But the moment for more revelations was lost. A bleary looking Ghazi and his wank-an-hour friend stumbled into the room. I was just going to make some ribald comment when Ghazi straightened up, laughed, and put his arm round Pete and hugged him.
“We’ve been plotting,” he said sitting down, elbows on table, leaning forward confidentially, Pete standing behind him. “Pete’s going to get Dolly to cozy up to Angus the Arsehole and then put his hand upon his and stare into his eyes as Angus explains what happens when you rotate a thingumabob through nine hundred degrees. At that moment… tra-la… said Pete will step out and take a photo with his new digital camera he got for Christmas. Voila! Threats of placing said photo on school website, unless…” He stopped. “We haven’t really thought of the ‘unless’ bit. Over to you, brainboxes.” He pointed at Paul, Tom and me in turn.
“Can’t have that,” said Paul ponderously. “OK, Angus is a real arsehole, but that is entrapment. And I’m not having that. You find something fair and square and we’ll have him!”
My estimation of Paul rose even higher. Ghazi was not squashed.
“OK. It was just an idea, but it was fun planning it, eh, Pete?” He turned to Pete who took the vacant chair next to him.
“Yeah, but I don’t want him hunted down. I just want him to know you don’t drop your schoolmates in the shit.”
Pete was growing up fast, to match his incipient hairy chest.
Ghazi was not to be beaten. “Look, he’s only got one more year after this at school. What would he like most but shouldn’t get? You said he doesn’t like only being a corporal. Can’t you get Pete and Jamie made up to corporals as well? Because they’ll be in the Sixth Form next year, and what if Angus isn’t promoted any further? They’ve both had full ratings for the past year on all their assignments and tasks—Hamed told me that as he did some of the assessments—and that’s a lot more than any of the others. And Angus, I hear, is a lazy sod.”
Paul nodded sagely. “True. I can tell you, even though Pete is here, that they have very good records, apart from their propensity to handle dangerous weapons in an unguarded manner.” Pete went bright red at this, but the rest of us kept straight faces. “Their good records mean that any promotion board sitting this summer term would single them out for consideration.”
Come to the point, Paul, I thought.
“And, although I will not be responsible for the Cadets next year, my opinion might be sought.”
“And?” chorused Tom and Ghazi.
“Shan’t tell you. And you…” He pointed a finger at Pete. “One word of this conversation to anyone, including your blond-haired, two-handed drill instructor, and your balls will be forfeit and you’ll be singing soprano in the school choir for the rest of your days!”
As I expected his balls were very precious to him Pete agreed without demur, even though he was already an accomplished alto in the choir.
The subject was dropped, and gradually the others drifted in.
Simon and Richard were first. Tom and I moved over to them, hoping to find out more about being medical students. We heard Hamed and Clyde down the corridor rabbiting on together, well before they swept in still arguing about some minutiae of golf, or fencing, or managing a health farm. Finally, in voluminous Arran pullovers and well-worn jeans, and looking really bleary-eyed, the twins entered. They made straight for the coffee-pot. They were going home that day, they informed us after taking in deep draughts of the now lukewarm black liquid. Their father had received an early-morning telephone call about a break-in at the factory over the holiday, and he wanted to get home so he could fly down and find out what had happened. Paul looked rather relieved; a repetition of some heinous act on his body was postponed. Something to pull his leg about, though, when the time was ripe.
Tom and I stayed another day, but we had promised to be home on Tuesday as it was a Bank Holiday in Scotland and there was a big party on in the village that evening. Being good lads we volunteered to go quite a few miles out of our way to deposit Pete at his residence somewhere along Loch Lochy. Ghazi didn’t seem too relieved that Pete was leaving. Having the young stud in his bed probably kept the old boy’s hormones on the move! Still, as we left I said he could test Paul’s stamina because they were going to bunk together now. I also said that when he had Paul in a suitable state of frenzy and desire he should get him to spill the beans about the terrible twins. Ghazi made some cryptic remark about Paul being too eager to spill his own beans than to think about the twins.
The trip home was reasonably pleasant. I let Tom drive as he’d passed his test—on the second attempt, a fact I kept driving home—during the previous term. Also, I didn’t want the two horny buggers sitting together in the back seat as they would probably pass the time indulging in some bizarre sexual practice which would frighten any passing horses… Oh God, what I mean is, I would be left out. So, I sat in the back seat with Pete and we spent the first part of the journey in silence.
We’d just passed the pinch between the two parts of Loch Linnhe when Pete roused from his pensive mood.
He turned to me. “Can I ask you something? Please only tell me if you want to.”
I guessed the subject of the question as I’d seen Pete watching Simon and Richard very carefully as they talked and joked together, and then the day before he’d made a point of being around Tom and me as much as possible. Ghazi’s description of his bedroom behaviour was also a fair clue.
“Pete,” I said, “I’ll give you a truthful answer if I can.”
“Um… you and Tom… and Simon and Richard… are you really…” He stopped, probably thinking he’d gone too far.
“It’s alright, Pete. I love Tom and he loves me, just as Simon and Richard love each other.”
He released his pent-up breath. Tears rolled down his cheeks. I put my arm round him and hugged him nearer to me. I saw Tom glance in the driving mirror. His sharp ears had heard the exchange.
“Yes, we intend to be together as soon as we leave school,” Tom said. “Who do you love?”
Poor Pete. He was sobbing quite hard now. “I just love Jamie, but he won’t tell me he loves me.”
Tom looked in the mirror again. “Have you asked him?”
“No! I daren’t…”
“But you toss each other off?” Tom’s interrogation was explicit. “Do you do it regularly with him… and only him?”
Pete composed himself. Tom’s authority, like Paul’s, was inbuilt. Pete sniffed and I passed him the hankie I kept tucked up the sleeve of my pullover. He blew his nose. Time for confession to Father Flip and Brother Tom.
“I do it with him and with Dolly, but I only love Jamie. Dolly scares me. He wants me to do other things and says he wants me all the time. What shall I do?”
I put my hand on his knee and stroked up his furry leg a bit under the hem of his kilt. Oh God, it wasn’t the vibration of the car which was making my un-furry leg start to go stiff.
“Look Pete, we haven’t got time to talk all through it now. Do your parents know anything about how you feel?”
Pete was quite composed now. “Mum did ask me last Easter why I didn’t want to ring round any of the girls we know to go out for an evening. I said I was a bit shy as I only knew boys at school…” He paused. “Then in the summer hols she found the bloody mag Dolly gave me…” He looked at me and put his hand over mine. I moved my hand again and he didn’t stop me. “It was a magazine with boys and men in it… you know, showing themselves off and doing things.”
“And had you been tossing yourself off while looking at the magazine?” Tom asked. I think he was relishing his cross examination.
“What do you think…!” came a rush of words and the true answer.
Tom continued. “And what did your mother say?”
Pete looked at me. I shrugged my shoulders.
“She asked me was I gay. I told her I didn’t know, and she said she wouldn’t say anything to dad. Do you think I’m gay?”
“You’ll know, Pete. It’ll be difficult, but you’ll know,” I said, slowly and deliberately.
“Then I’m gay!” he said with sudden conviction.
I told him he’d better come and talk things over with me once we were back at school. I said he wasn’t to do anything that might jeopardise his school career, and to steer clear of Dolly whatever happened. If Dolly approached him, he should say he was too busy getting ready for the exams in the Summer Term. With Jamie it was a question of wait and see. I told him to be doubly careful if they couldn’t keep their hands to themselves, but suggested that it might just be sexual release for Jamie.
I had my doubts, but I wasn’t going to bolster Pete’s hopes with idle speculation. However, I had noticed a couple of looks which Jamie had given Pete in the prep room since the horrid court-martial, and I’d concluded then that there was a bit of desire of a more personal nature than usual between mere wank buddies.
“Next year, when you’re in the Sixth who have you said you’ll share with?” I asked.
“Oh, Jamie, of course.”
“Did he suggest it, or you?”
“He did.”
“Is there anyone else he might have asked?”
“Oh, yes, he’s very friendly with Jack Pringle.”
That was the other lad who was with Jamie when I’d helped with their trig problems. Another tasty morsel.
“Has he done things with Jack? It’s OK, you can tell us. We’re hardly likely to say anything.”
Pete grinned now, much more relaxed.
“I should think all our dorm has done something with each other. It was being caught by Reid that hurt us. The others said we weren’t to worry as they knew Paul was very fair. I’d never been so scared in my life, but he was great the way he helped us.”
He rubbed his hand up and down on mine.
“Jack’s brill, but Jamie prefers to be with me. We’ve always worked together since we were in Prep School.”
“Well, my advice is to share a room with him and take it from there. If you find he doesn’t want more than a bit of relief then you’ll have to bottle your real feelings up until you find someone.”
Tom was nodding at this. “If you are made for each other you’ll both know when to say something. We did.”
Pete looked much happier. “Thanks. I feel a lot better, and if I can tell you things I won’t be a nuisance, I promise.”
He pushed down again on my hand. I gripped his leg just above his knee and he winced a bit.
“And did you seduce my friend Ghazi?”
The look on his face was a picture. What did I know?
I laughed. “I don’t know who seduced who, but you certainly tired him out. He told me he was knackered.”
Pete gasped. “He told you what we did?”
“Look, Ghazi and I have no secrets from each other. We joined the school together, and we’ve been mates ever since. I love Ghazi almost as much as that big-eared jerk in the front seat, and when Ghazi says he’s knackered it’s a case of the insatiable meeting the unstoppable. Which are you?”
Pete looked from me to Tom’s back, then at me again. “Both,” he said quietly, “And I think Ghazi’s the same.”
I gave his leg another squeeze, and I had to squirm a bit to get more comfortable with my rapidly expanding hard-on.
“I should know,” I said, also quietly. Tom snickered and accelerated to pass a Ford even more ancient than my car.
After that implicit confession Pete was in questioning mode.
“Ghazi said I wasn’t to ask about you and him. But it’s true?”
“What’s true?”
“Well, we talk about all of you on the top floor and Jac— I mean, someone, says you all must be doing things all the time, especially since you all share rooms. Is it like that?”
To tell the truth or not? That was the question.
“Look, Pete, I can’t and won’t answer that question. Ghazi told you that any discussion of us was not a topic of conversation. Gentlemen do not tell tales. So, speculate as much as you like, but watch what you say—and to whom. We were exactly the same. We were always curious about what went on up above us. You’ve shared a dorm room long enough to know everyone else’s secrets. Keep it like that.”
Pete grinned. “Only asking.”
“Still,” I said, “I think Ghazi is going to miss you. He’s bunking in with Paul tonight.” I winked at Tom who was looking in the driving mirror again. “The insatiable with the imperturbable, eh?”
I removed my hand but Pete gripped it.
“Thanks,” he said. “I feel so much better.”
We chatted on then about more mundane things, such as the ludicrous Dome, and more important things, like the chances of Pete going on the next Scottish Schools hockey tour. And then, with directions from Pete, we drove up to a quite enormous house.
More dogs greeted us. I was getting a bit fed up with wet snouts pushing their way up my legs beneath my kilt. In fact, poor Ghazi had told me he got a shock when one of the Campbell retrievers reached such a high level its snout was dangerously near his precious equipment.
Mrs Douglas was very welcoming and we were straightaway taken inside. We had been invited to stop for lunch when Pete phoned his mother to let her know how he was getting home. One of Pete’s two older sisters was there with her young child, who proceeded to cling to Tom’s legs and call him Dada. I knew Tom was a horny bastard but I didn’t think he’d impregnated any young ladies! I resolved to tell his mother, who would use the knowledge to tease him. Tom tried to tell the infant he wasn’t his dad but this only made the child more determined, and he kept repeating “Dada,” much to the amusement of his mother and the rest of us.
Lunch was great but Tom and I had to leave as soon as we had finished to get back to prepare for the village party. Pete came to see us off, shook hands with both of us, and thanked us profusely for listening to him. I said if he wanted to he could phone me before we went back to school.
I let Tom drive me home. He was quite a good driver. I sat in the front next to him, but I did not distract him by looking for the gear lever!
“He’s a good lad, isn’t he?” he said almost before we had left the Douglases’ drive. “But you were drooling over him all the way there and I saw you with your hand on his leg. I’m warning you. No ending up in bed with that one. At least, not unless I’m present.”
We’d already discussed Ghazi’s experience, so I teased Tom a bit with what I might do with the lad while I was counselling him.
“Wait till I get you home. You won’t want to dally with a sixteen-year-old once I’ve shown you what a proper man can do!”
“You’re not a proper man until the end of the month!” His birthday was on the twenty-eighth, four days after Paul’s.
Copyright © 2002–2025 Joel
Posted at AwesomeDude 2007
Updated 1 October 2025