Tim Comes Home

 CHAPTER 5

In the morning, I woke to two shocked shouts. Tim, who had gone to bed far earlier than me, had woken, then wandered sleepy-eyed into the bathroom and come across Paul stark naked, fresh out of the shower, shaving at the basin with my razor.

Paul was the last person Tim expected to see, and especially like this. And Paul, with his headmasterly dignity to consider was shocked to be caught by a boy when in the nude.

By the time I had made it to the bathroom, Paul had dropped the razor and pulled on his (or rather my) shorts.

Tim found the whole thing highly amusing. I could see him trying to work out how to tell his friends back at St Tarcisius. He said to Paul

‘Nice to see you, Father Paul. I seem to be seeing quite a lot of you lately’ and then collapsed into fits of giggles at his own joke.

‘Cheeky bugger’, said Paul, going red, but smiling at me affectionately over Tim’s head.

Tim intercepted the glance, and stopped giggling.

‘Oh’, he said, knowingly. ‘Are you and Dad…you know?’

‘Know what?’ said Paul, puzzled. Then it dawned on both of us what the precocious little git meant. An Item.

‘NO!!’

‘BLOODY HELL! NO!’

We were both aghast. Well perhaps not very aghast. My mind went back to that kiss.

‘Look, Tim’, I said, ‘Father Paul is my dearest and closest friend. As he said yesterday, he comes here often, and frequently stays the night. As you brought up the subject and you seem wiser about these things than you should be, you should also know that I love him very much, but we are just friends. You know very well we keep separate rooms. And we are both priests. We are married in a way, to the Church, and so are not free to have that sort of a relationship with each other. Even if it were allowed, which it isn’t.

‘And not that we want to’ I added firmly, though the last twenty four hours had begun to shake my convictions on that score even further than before.

‘Shame’ said Tim. ‘I’d love it if my two favourite people could live together’.

‘Fucking little charmer!’ said Paul, though not without affection.

‘Oooh, Uncle Paul, you used a bad word!’ Tim smirked.

‘What did you call me?’

‘Uncle Paul. Do you mind?’

‘No, Tim, I love it very much indeed. Call me that always’. Paul suddenly sounded choked up.

Tim was always hungry, I was soon to discover.

‘When’s breakfast?’

‘After Mass’.

‘Cool. When’s Mass’

‘Nine o’clock, that’s in half an hour’s time. Do you know how to serve at Mass?’

‘Er, no. Can I have something to eat now?’

‘Nope, sorry. Too late if you’re going to Communion.’

He accepted this calmly. Was this boy real?

‘In the meantime, you’d better put some clothes on’ He was still only in his shorts. He disappeared upstairs, passing Paul coming down.

‘Morning, handsome’, Paul said to me, and kissed me on the cheek. Again! That’s the third kiss. I was really confused now. I had spent the last ten longing years thinking Paul was terminally straight. But then, from what he said, he seems to have been thinking the same about me, or at least waiting to for me to admit my gayness to him. Isn’t life a cock-up sometimes?

Hang on; wasn’t Paul in khaki chinos and a blue polo shirt last night? And surely he brought nothing with him? Now he was in a black clerical suit with smart clerical stock and collar.

‘Hope you don’t mind’, he said. ‘I found this in your bedroom, and it all fits really well. I wanted to say Mass with you this morning, and thought I should be properly dressed.’

So far from minding, to tell you the truth I was a little turned on by the idea of the man of my dreams wearing my clothes. What on earth was happening to me? These last twenty-four hours had been the most extraordinary in my life.

‘No, you’re welcome. Actually, you’ve given me an idea. You say the Mass on your own—I hate concelebrating anyway—and I’ll serve you with Tim. I can teach him, so that he can do it on his own in future.’

‘Fine.’

At that moment, Tim came downstairs wearing his tracksuit bottoms and the other t shirt.

‘My jeans have gone’ he said.

‘Oh yes, Tere…, er Aunt Tess took them last night to see if anything can be done with them.

‘And it can’t’ said Teresa coming into the house. ‘Morning, Father John. Morning, Father Paul, Morning, Tim. So I’ve thrown them away. They were coming apart at the seams. I really think that if you had run in them again, they’d have fallen apart, and you’d have been left in your boxer shorts on the High Street.’

Remembering that he never wore underwear, Tim and I both suddenly looked at each other and blushed, thinking that it wouldn’t be boxer shorts that would flutter in the breeze.

‘And, Mother of God, what are you wearing now, boy?’ Teresa said. We all looked at Tim. The tracksuit bottoms did stretch to cover him, but were stretched so tightly that nothing at all was left to the imagination as he stood in the sunny kitchen. He might as well have been wearing lycra. The t shirt was even smaller than yesterday’s.

‘Tim’, I said to him quietly, ‘you can’t go out dressed like that; you’d better go and put your shorts on again instead. And take a t shirt from my room; better too big than too small.’

When the boy reappeared, relatively decently dressed for once in shorts and t shirt, Teresa produced a pair of sandals. ‘These might fit you, Tim. I bought them for myself, and it was only when I got home that I realised they were mens’.’

Finally, we were ready to go to Mass. It all went very well; the parishioners always liked it when Paul came to visit, as he celebrated Mass with reverence and always had something interesting to say after the Gospel. Tim learnt very quickly to serve, and I began to realise that he was naturally very bright as well as devout. Afterwards I introduced Tim to everyone and he was surrounded with surprised laughs as being ‘the priest’s son’, and made very welcome. He beamed with happiness, and I glowed inside to see that glorious smile that had already so endeared him to me. My life already felt so very, very full.

I cooked a huge breakfast—Tim and I had eaten very little for ages—and afterwards as Paul and Teresa washed up I finished measuring Tim for his new clothes.

Paul and I took off our black gear and changed into casual things. With a wicked thought, I went into the room where he had spent the night and put on his chinos and polo shirt. They fit perfectly. So Paul had to rifle through my cupboards and found some white jeans and an open-neck deep blue shirt. He looked amazing.

‘You look like a rent boy’ I said.

‘Trust you to know’ he retorted. ‘I wouldn’t have any idea; and anyway, they’re your clothes!’

Paul, Tim and I set off for the shopping centre, ten miles away. I had made up my mind that I was going to spend a thousand pounds at least today on my boy. Sod the holiday this year. This was going to be much more fun, and give us all far more pleasure.

Tim was surprisingly fussy. I had expected him to resist being bought for, as he had resisted being given clothes at St Tar’s. But on the contrary, perhaps because these purchases were further links binding him to his new home, and perhaps because he could see the pleasure it was giving me, he was determined to spend my money like Edina Monsoon.

He turned into quite a dandy for the day. No blue jeans, he swore. ‘I’ve worn them and nothing else for the last two years, and that’s enough!’ So he had to have khaki chinos like mine (‘actually, erm, they’re Fa…, er your Uncle Paul’s’) and white jeans like Paul was wearing. Some t-shirts, and plenty of polo shirts and button up shirts. A school uniform for the autumn term two months away, with black trousers, black shoes and socks, a blue blazer with the school arms and motto on the breast pocket, white shirts and striped tie. Then two suits, one in sober navy blue and another, which he begged for, in a sort of shiny silvery material. It wouldn’t have suited an adult, but when he came out from the fitting room, Paul and I drew breath because he looked so handsome in it. Then socks, but we had a tussle again over underwear.

‘I told you, Dad, there’s no point. I won’t wear them, so why bother buying them? If you want to throw your money away, let’s get another shirt, or another pair of trousers.’

I turned for support to Paul, who was watching the exchange, highly amused.

‘Don’t look at me, Johnny’ he said, ‘I never wear underwear either’.

I felt the stirrings of sexuality once more. I would never look on those white jeans of mine that Paul was wearing now in the same light again.

‘Ok, ok, ok’, I sighed. ‘For now, but this argument isn’t over yet’.

‘Whatever’, said Tim.

Then came the most expensive visits: the sport shops. Paul, fortunately, seemed to have a good sense of what was fashionable. Trainers, a (decent!) track suit, white socks, various sports shirts and shorts. Tim wanted some pairs of football shorts like the ones Paul and I had worn last night, but he insisted for some reason that they had to be by Adidas, in royal blue. Then he had to have a back pack. And finally I threw away the last of my savings and bought him a mountain bicycle, arranging for it to be delivered.

Paul, who seemed not to want to be outdone, decided that if he was going to be Paul’s uncle, and not his headmaster any more, put the crown on the day by taking Tim to Computer World and buying him the latest Apple Mac computer. In the shop, Tim suddenly started crying uncontrollably, clearly unnerving the nice lady shop assistant.

‘Y…y…yesterday I had n…n…nobody and n…nothing’ he sobbed ‘and now a family and all this. I’m terrified I’m going to wake up now.’

He ran to Paul, and threw his arms around him, giving him a huge kiss on the cheek, and then did the same to me. It was the first time my son had kissed me, and I began to cry too, to see his happiness. I looked up and saw Paul doing the same. Even the shop assistant gave a sniffle or two. I gave Tim my handkerchief, as his shorts had no pockets, and after he had used it, I used it myself.

The way families do, I suddenly thought. It wasn’t disgusting, it was beautiful. And then I grinned when it occurred to me that it wasn’t my handkerchief, but Paul’s, from his trousers. He grinned back at me and blew his nose loudly in my hanky which he took from my white jeans.

The three of us had a blast. Tim made us buy some things for ourselves, including sunglasses (which he called ‘shades’) and said we looked ‘really cool’. And as we made our progress down the high street, a handsome trio, we drew admiring glances from many of the passers-by. Not often that happens in a priest’s life, I can tell you.