Some of the Characters Appearing

Mark Henry Foster          The storyteller

Tristan (Tris) Price‑Williams  His well‑proportioned boyfriend

Francis Michael [Microbe] Foster  Alias Toad

James Bowes‑Chesterton  Frankie's pal Bozo

Patrick Montgomery         Frankie's pal Moggo

Anthony Pugsley     A muscly friend of Toad and Shelley

I went home when term ended and worked steadily at all the Maths which seemed never‑

ending.  Tris came home on the Friday before Christmas.  Mum and Dad were appearing in a

concert and decided they would stay up in town for the night.  For some reason, the Price‑

Williams, with Shelley but not Tris, had elected to brave the strictures of Uncle Nick's father

and went up to see him and his wife for the weekend 'as a Christmas treat', staying in a hotel

as life in the big house they inhabited would  be Spartan at the least.  Frankie said he was

going to a party Friday evening, unspecified, so I was left to entertain Tris when he arrived.  I

hadn't seen him for nearly a fortnight so my sexual needs, and I was also glad to find his as

well, were very great.  We had an early supper and just about dragged each other to bed

casting off our clothing on the way.

     We finally emerged from our night's activity at about ten on Saturday morning and

after a quick shit, shower, shampoo and shave we were ready for food.  We were both

starving hungry as plenty of energy had been expended during a very busy night and early

morning.  Even so after dressing, there was still time for a quick hug and a kiss before we

went downstairs to prepare a substantial breakfast.

     As we got to the kitchen there was Frankie.  The usual heaped plate of mixed cereals

was in front of him and as he turned to greet us there was a wild gleam in his eye, as well as

the mouthful of Rice Crispies, Golden Grahams and Frosties which prevented him from

saying anything as he chewed steadily.  He just curled his upper lip having detected from our

lateness evidence, perhaps, of our extended night and morning exertions.

     I sat and Tris went to the fridge.  "You OK, Microbe?" Tris asked.

     No greeting until he'd emptied his mouth.  Good boy!  A big swallow.

     "Couldn't be better," he enthused, "I can announce I'm not a virgin any more! WOW!  PPPPRAGH!!!......"  These strange sounds of utter jubilation were accompanied by the emphatic raising of the lower half and balled fist of his left arm and the biceps thumped

heavily by his right fist in the universal gesture of sexual triumph.  Explanations were

imminent.  "Wow, she's the au pair at Moggo's!  She's nineteen and he says he's been

dicking her for weeks.  Says she can't get enough and he thinks his Dad's been having a go,

too.  Oh, yeah, she was all for it!  She was all over us as soon as we got there.  The little kids

were in bed and his Step‑Mum and Dad are away for the weekend.  We had a couple more

bevvies, vodka or something this time, and Moggo said we could have a turn."  He sniggered.

"Bozo was too wasted so I went up to Moggo's room with her and WOW!!  I was in up to me

elbows.  She's Russian and what she was saying I don't know, but we'd hardly got undressed

when she was on her back and grabbing my dick and as soon as I got going she was jerking

her hips at me.  Fucking Hell, it was more like she was humping me!!"  He shook his head.

"Didn't last long but second time was better...!  WOW!!"  He was sitting back on his chair

and thrusting his pelvis forward and back in remembrance.  "Fucking Moggo came and

watched the second time and sprayed us both!!  Fucking dickhead couldn't wait!!"

     I sat rather gobsmacked by the recital of these events.  The losing of his virginity had

been a prime concern for ages.  OK, he'd lost it in rather a dramatic way, especially being

watched the second time.  Bozo, Moggo!  Oh yes, his old skateboarding mates.  The picture

of Moggo shooting his load was priceless.  But.........?

     "Did you have protection?  And you said Bozo was wasted.  Had you been taking

anything?" I asked quietly.  Little brothers, even at seventeen,  needed protecting, whatever.

     He looked over at me, the usual Toad's sneer on his face.  "You don't wear a fucking

overcoat on a hot day, do you?  And this was fucking hot!!  And, anyway, Bozo's his own

boss!"

     Tris, who had been watching the performance intently from his position by the fridge

saw the look of horror on my face and strode over to Francis.  I had read and heard of taking

puppies or miscreants by the scruff of their neck.  I had never experienced it until then.  Tris

took hold of Francis by the top of the tee‑shirt he was wearing and grabbed his upper arm.

Big though he was,  Francis was lifted up from where he was sitting.

     "Come with me!"  Tris's voice was harsh and the command was unconditional.

Francis was propelled out of the kitchen into the front room and I heard the door slam shut.  I

was aware of raised voices.

     I sat and a thousand things raced through my mind.  OK, OK, the little fool was going

to do the deed some day!  But, not wearing a johnny and doing it with someone who was

being fucked by Moggo, probably Moggo's Dad, and shit knows who else?  I assumed she

was on the pill as she'd obviously been putting it around more than a bit, but visions of

having to take my seventeen‑year‑old brother to the Special Treatment Clinic loomed.  I'd

seen the large signs directing the unwary, unfortunate, or the really stupid, to the long low hut

a good few yards away from the main building of our local hospital.  Oh, God!  The really

stupid.  What do I tell Mum and Dad?  Your younger son's just had jabs for clap, syph,

chlamydia, unspecified pox... ...and he's got a ginormous herpes sore on the end of his rather

over‑developed, over‑used prick...!  All my fault for letting him roam free and  not slipping  a

packet of three in his wallet!  Oh my God!  What if?  What if it was anything worse?  HIV

made my blood run cold.  And he'd said Bozo was wasted!  He'd never answered my

question of what he'd been taking himself.

     My brooding was cut short.  A tearful Frankie came slowly into the room followed by

a glowering Tris.  Frankie came and fell to his knees beside me and the tears came freely as

he put his head on my leg.  I instinctively put an arm round his shoulder as he sniffed.  He put

his hand in his jeans pocket and drew out a packet of three and tipped a lonely, single, foiled

condom onto my other hand.

     "Sorry for upsetting you," he said very quietly, "I couldn't help saying that.  I did

wear something both times.  That's why she grabbed my dick.  She put them on me.  She

wouldn't do it otherwise."  He looked up at me.  His enchanting dark eyes stared up into

mine.  I loved my beautiful young brother and he knew I'd been hurt.  I stroked his head.  He

pressed his head back against my hand as if to get more contact.  "It was incredible," he said,

"She knew what to do and I felt I wasn't a little boy any longer."  He shook his head at the

remembrance of the wonderfulness of it all, then smiled as I smiled down at him.  "You'll

forgive me and we hadn't smoked or taken anything.  Moggo's dead against it anyway and so

am I.  We'd had a couple of drinks at Bozo's and he can't hold it and when Moggo gave him

the vodka as well, he was way out of it.  I only had one lot of that and it's certainly fiery."

He grinned.  "Didn't do me any harm, though!"

     I lifted him up and we stood together and I hugged him tight.  "Now you know what

it's like it'll be a thousand times better when you find someone you can love."

     He nuzzled my cheek.  "Thanks, I don't know what I would do without you and Tris."

He turned to Tris.  "Sorry.  I upset you as well.  Can I hug you, too?"

     Tris put his arms out and the pair stood, heads on each other's shoulders, their cheeks

gently rubbing together and stroking each other's backs.  Tris then held Frankie a bit away

from him as they parted.  "I suppose you'll be a source of trouble always, Microbe.  You

always have been and you always will be,  but..."  He drew him up close again and kissed

him full on the lips.  The kiss lingered as Frankie slightly opened his mouth and kept his face

quite still.

     "You'll always be there for me, won't you?"  Frankie asked as they parted and he

looked from Tris to me.  "I open my big mouth and it just pops out!"

     "If you open your big mouth one day something might just pop in," said Tris giving

him a light smack on his tightly‑jeaned backside and perhaps not remembering I'd told him

about Frankie and Eddie...

     "If it's that little thing you've got I might open it specially!" he said jumping away.

He looked at me, the roguish twinkle now back.  "You always say I've got a big mouth, I

guess I'd be able to suck on two straws at once!"  He stepped back and raised both hands.

"No, no, only joking!  Two macaroni tubes then!"  As neither of us were rising to the bait,

secure in the knowledge that our own mouths were well‑stretched with just the single

insertion of the other's prime‑sized mortadella, he changed tack.  He looked over at Tris.

"You could do me two fried eggs and a bit of that bacon you'll be having.  Man's gotta keep

his strength up!"

     Oh well, all alarms and excursions were over.  The Toad was back and all's right with

the world!

     Tris took out the pack of eggs and the bacon from the fridge.  As he bent to the

cupboard to get out the frying‑pan he turned to Frankie.  "And what do your little pals call

you?" he asked, "Not Gobbo by any chance?"

     "How did you know?" a rather puzzled non‑virginal Toad enquired.

     There was silence from two non‑virginal, in a different way, very satisfied elders and

betters.

     Of course, Frankie had to repeat his tale over mouthfuls of bacon and egg.  We sat

and listened dutifully, both thinking of that momentous occasion when we had first

consummated our wonderful love for each other.  That love which passed between us again,

once, twice, three times last night and this morning.

     As he finished the tale I put out a hand just as a forkfull was being raised.  It

remained suspended in mid‑air.  "That was just a start," I said, "You'll have the opportunity

for many, many more occasions, but I can assure you once you find the right person to love it

will be just right and you will know it straight away.  You may share that love but it will

come down to one person in the end."

     "I know," he said, "I think you've found that with Tris and you must certainly have

shared it  with Ivo and Adam.  And I think from the way Oliver and Zack look at you and talk

to you there must be something there, too."

     Tris came over and put an arm round him.  "You're a very perceptive lad," he said

and looked across and smiled at me.  "True, we've shared our love with all four, but the

truest love I have is for your brother.  Last night I was able to tell him how much I've missed

him the last fortnight or so.  It's when you have love like that you know what heartache is,

too.  That's when it's true love."

     "Perhaps one day you could share that love with me, too," he said simply and

sincerely.

     As we finished breakfast so Tris told him the news he'd broken to me last evening.

Jacob had asked him if, after he finished his degree course, he would consider joining their

firm of solicitors.  He was being invited!  He wouldn't have to apply and do the rounds of

other firms if he wanted to be a solicitor.  Jacob said he and Paul had been so impressed with

the work he'd done they were willing also, not only to waive any fee for articles, but also to

give him something towards Law School fees for the study required to qualify as a solicitor.

There would be a vacancy as one of the junior partners was leaving in about a year's time to

join a big firm in the City of London.  He would be taken on as a trainee but with his ability

he could become a junior partner quite quickly.

     Tris had phoned his father and he had been very pleased and advised him not to have

any second thoughts.  It was an opportunity of a lifetime ‑ just make sure you get as good a

degree as you can.  Dad would foot the rest of the bill for the Law School.

     He had also given me a typed resume of the English ancestry of Simon Finch‑

Hampton which Paul Phillips' search agent had prepared from the records in London.  Yes,

his father was John Gratten, son of James Gratten and Caroline Mellier.  John had been

married three times.   No children by the first two wives who had divorced him for

'infidelity' ‑ that being the least offensive term for a string of affairs and misdemeanours

listed in the Court hearings.   Molly Finch, barmaid, wife number three, had insisted her

surname was tacked on to the Gratten name.  John was fifty when he married Molly and she

had Simon about six weeks after the wedding.  John was the last of the Grattens, who by all

accounts were a very disliked lot in any case.  A Hampton cousin took Simon in and he was

as bad‑tempered as his father had been, but also very clever.  The only Mellier characteristic

he had inherited, other than brains, was the birthmark.

     Paul had also asked Safar Al‑Hamed to ask his surrogate Dad, Dr Jacques Thomson,

if he would consult his family tree.  A second sheet of paper listed the relationship there.

Clement Fontane, born in 1790, had a son, Jacques who was an ancestor of Dr Thomson, and

a daughter, Marie, born in 1824, who married Jean‑Baptiste Mellier.  The name was there.

The links down to Noelle and Caroline still to be filled in.

     Three further interesting things came with the Christmas cards.  Firstly, Charles said

he'd found that the College had two 'dorters' in early times.  One was exactly where my set

was.  The other was where a row of old stones marked out part of the left hand side of the

grassed over portion of the quad.  He said Jason was borrowing a metal detector to explore

that second one as the cellar below my set was empty.  When Tris read that he grinned.  "It

may not be," was his cryptic, in more ways than one, reply.

     Secondly, there was a card from Adam.  He wouldn't be home from America until,

probably,  the third week of January as he had been asked to give three lectures on events

leading up to the First World War and could have a job teaching British History if he wanted.

He thought he'd rather do his research first.  Tris and I thought he might be missing Whippet

a bit, too.

     Thirdly, a card came from Dr Thomson.  He said he'd been in touch with a cousin in

Switzerland who sent the rest of the tree.  Jean‑Baptiste and Marie had a son, Jacques

Mellier.  He had a son, Phillippe, who was the father of the twins.  Welcome to the family!

There was a postscript.  'Twins and ?premature births are a feature.'   Mum looked at Dad

when she read this.  "Better tell him when he's twenty‑one he wasn't five weeks premature."

I could swear Dad blushed before he guffawed.

     As Gran was present at the time no more was said but Toad kept looking at me with a

grin on his face.  When we went up to bed that night he poked me in the back as we parted

and I opened my bedroom door.  "Always thought you were a bit of a bastard....  OK OK," he

laughed and scurried off before I could grab him.

     Among my presents were a couple of  CDs from Gran.  One was of the Second

Symphony by Carl Nielsen, 'The Four Temperaments' and the other was of the Colour

Symphony by Sir Arthur Bliss.  She said she liked both and was always intrigued when there

was a programme behind a composition.  We had quite a discussion on this as so much of

ancient ideas were based on groupings.  The four temperaments, so Gran said, were the basis

of medicine for many years, people were classified as choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic or

sanguine.  She said Nielsen wasn't the only composer to chose those as titles for movements,

Paul Hindemith was another.  Looking at the CD of the Colour Symphony I found the four

movements were not only the colours Purple, Red, Blue and Green but were associated with

gemstones and heraldry.  Gran was a mine of information about all this type of symbolism

and said it surprised her that composers had more or less ignored another basic set of ideas,

that of the Four Elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water.  Dad had been listening in and said he

thought Rameau and another French Baroque composer had used those as ideas for

compositions.  Again, as we were talking about all this something was ticking away in the

back of my consciousness.  Four elements?  Four Temperaments?  What?

     On Boxing Day Auntie Di and Uncle Nick, with Mum and Dad, had a big party.

Included were Pugsy and his parents.  It was obvious Shelley was still smitten.  Pugsy

cornered Tris and me after we'd had a superb lunch.  It might have been disguised turkey but

Auntie Di had produced the most mouth‑watering variations on a theme, nothing

melancholic about it, perhaps a bit choleric in one dish, a hot, spicy curry.  But turkey was

not on Pugsy's mind ‑ nor was it Shelley ‑ he wanted to know if we knew what Cambridge

was like for Engineering, he'd heard it was rated very highly.  We said we didn't know but

why didn't he apply anyway.  He laughed and said that Frankie had said the same.  He didn't

want to stay in London and go to Imperial College or Brunel so he would see if Cambridge

would have him.  What about St Mark's?   Well, Pugsy was a good lad so we praised up St

Mark's and had to tell him our part in the finding of Aubrey Devereux which had been

reported in a couple of the newspapers.

     "Aren't you scared living there?" he asked as he, with Jack, Bozo and Moggo,

Frankie's guests, listened in as we told the tale.

     Frankie said he'd been scared about the rushing noise in the wall but we said that

hadn't really been solved yet, but, no, the only thing that scared us was the thought that

Frankie might be there as a student.  "Don't blame you," said Bozo, "He scares me

sometimes."  He laughed.  "I'm applying to Sussex, though, so I'll be far enough away from

him.  Only joking, mate!" he said as he got the Toad look which would have curdled the

cream ready for the Christmas pudding.

     I looked at Bozo and Moggo, James Bowes‑Chesterton and Patrick Montgomery as I

remembered them at school as smaller versions of the almost six‑footers they were now.  But

now, Bozo wasted, and not getting his end away, and Moggo the serious fucker who

graciously allowed my brother to lose his virginity, then sprinkled his boyish seed when

overcome with the sight of the rutting pair.  Handsome, very poised, neither would ever be

denied a place in bed if they proved willing.  The same with Pugsy, a little shorter but a real

good looker.

     I was helping Tris a little later to load Auntie Di's dishwasher.  "When you're talking

to hunks like that trio you shouldn't let your tongue hang out and you really shouldn't wear

tight trousers," he said patting my bum as I bent down to put dirty plates in the lower part.

"Parts of you are very prominent when you get aroused... ...And those three get me aroused as

well.  Pity they are of the other persuasion!!"

     After the party we were at home and I was in the front 'music' room with Frankie

who was slightly tipsy from having had more than enough champagne.  Not too tipsy to have

a serious conversation, though.  He sat, sprawled, in a comfortable armchair while I sat on

the piano stool listening.

     "Hunh!" he said, "You and Tris! My mates think the light shines out of your

arseholes!  All I got today was how wonderful you are and what was it like having a gay

brother and his so nice friend around.  Even Pugsy nearly had the vapours when Tris hugged

him when he arrived.  I said he got a bigger hard‑on over that than when he kissed Shelley."

He laughed.  "He didn't disagree and he didn't threaten to batter my head in like he usually

does when I say things to him.  Promise you'll take me to that club you took Zack to."

     "Who told you about that?  Did Zack?  If he did I'll have to have serious words with

him."

     Toad looked a bit subdued.  "My big mouth again, sorry.  But he's eighteen quite

soon and he said he didn't drink.  Actually, I've had a few long talks with him on the

telephone.  It's a bit safer as Brandon uses the same computer and he thinks Brandon reads

all his stuff.  I just said tell him I'd ask him if his dick was better when his sister was there

and that would shut him up.  Anyway, Zack is thinking of applying to be Servant of the

Chapel.  He's quite religious.  More than us but he's OK with it.  I felt quite honoured as he

wanted my opinion." He grinned at me.  "He wondered as he's gay whether that would count

against him.  I said he'd better have a word with Charles.  That right?"  I nodded.  "So, he

thinks now he'll read Law now instead of Maths if they'll have him.  Eddie's applying, too,

he wants to be a doctor and his Dad says it'll cost him a lot.  He said Oliver thinks he'd be

good at it."

     "Steady Eddie," I said, "You and he made a fine pair at the Villa.  I suppose if the

College accepted you both the pair of you would share."

     He didn't sneer or anything.  He just looked straight at me.  "Marky," I knew the way

he said it there was something even more important coming, "Mum says I should apply for

the Pennefather Scholarship.  They'll be advertising soon as you've only got one more year.

Do you think I've got a chance?"

     I couldn't do my usual Toad baiting.  "Frankie, I think you have every chance.  You

show how good you are by getting the two diplomas.  You'll hear about the first very soon.

You must have good A levels, you've done so well with your GCSEs, you should be OK.

Practice, practice, practice!  Like Mr Blair said about education, education, education!  You

want to read Music?"

     He nodded.  "Yeah.  I'm doing that and French and History for As.  I'm going to stay

with Laurent for the whole of Easter 'cos he's doing his Baccalaureate and wants to practice

his English and I'll just hear loads of French.  I might do a joint Music and French.  Depends

if I'm accepted."

     I didn't say anything but the comments Safar had already made to Oliver after the

concert and the approving looks on the Master's face might be some indication of the good

chance he had.  Safar had said that Ben was far and away ahead of the others who had come

for interview for the ordinary Organ Scholar post and he was very worried that the number

and the standard of applicants seemed to be falling but if any were like Frankie they'd be in.