Tim Comes Home

 CHAPTER 9

When my Tim turned seventeen, his purgatory began, and our life was never the same again. Overnight, almost, he began to change; to stay out at all hours—most unlike him—and when he returned, he would never tell us where he had been, plead or shout as we might. He was always apologetic, even to the point of tears, but as to details, he stayed clammed shut. One day he returned in tight white trousers which left nothing at all to the imagination, since he was obviously wearing no underwear as usual, and a mesh muscle shirt with his beautiful blond hair cropped like an american marine. I was shocked at the substitution of this tart for my beautiful little boy; I lost my cool, and shouted at him that he looked like a rent-boy. He shouted back that if that was the way he looked, perhaps that’s the way he would behave!

Our fears ran riot. We searched his room when he was at school (very carefully; there is no better way to alienate a teenager than to invade his space) to look for evidence of drugs, or whatever, but we found nothing suspicious. Not even a dirty magazine. For that matter, not only was there nothing suspicious, but there was simply nothing, and that was suspicious. He seemed to have very much less stuff than we thought; both of us saw his bare shelves and sparse wardrobe, and we wondered, with sinking hearts, whether he was planning to move out. Even many things that we had given him and we knew he loved were no longer here. His books seemed to have dwindled, too; just a couple of spiritual books, which narrow interest, though edifying, did not seem entirely healthy, even to a priest’s eye.

Which all led us to worry that he might have a girlfriend—or far more likely a boyfriend—of whom we would not approve. Given his new dress sense, even allowing for the fact that he was a teenager, and teenagers tend to do odd things, this seemed quite likely. But he seemed to have so little joy in it all, even of the secret sort that one might associate with an illicit relationship. He appeared morose, rather, and withdrawn. Was he taking drugs? Had he become addicted to casual sex? Was he going cottaging? Had he caught a disease? Paul and I even put on our secular clothes and went out in the evening to the local cruising areas to see if we could find him, but there was never a sign. We got several good offers, though.

At this stage, Tim’s moods, too, were very mercurial. You could never know whether he would be grumpy and uncommunicative, or garrulous and manic. There would be several days in a row when he would be entirely his old self, at least apparently, and these days Marc and Conor would monopolize him, reassuring themselves that their beloved older brother had not abandoned them, as he seemed to do on the days of his black moods.

But there were good times, too.

It was about this time that the Underwear War began. This was to prove the last really good memory we had as a family while we lived at St Edwards. I may have mentioned before that Tim had been working out on weights at school instead of going to Physical Education or Games. In fact, most days he spent an hour and a half or more in the gym, and had become very powerfully built for his age. Frankly, with his blond hair, chiselled handsome 17-year-old looks, his golden tan and his broad shoulders tapering over a magnificent smooth chest and six-pack abdomen to a narrow waist and slender hips, he was, as they say, a walking wet dream. He began to be noticed by girls, in whom he showed less than no interest, and boys began to cultivate him too, I suppose to learn how he attracted the babes, and then they began to imitate him. And some cultivated him for more personal reasons. Blue jeans (which Tim would still never wear) went out of fashion among his contemporaries—and, more to the point, so did underwear. One morning I received a letter from the school’s headmaster pleading with me to make him wear at least boxer shorts, because the mothers of other boys were complaining that their sons were starting to go commando all the time.

Well, I spoke to Tim, but he refused to change his habits, and that was that. In his current mood, I wan’t going to press him over something that I thought wasn’t really important. For some reason, the whole underwear thing was never negotiable with him; there was some deep reason for his behaviour that I didn’t understand until we had been through the long and painful process that I am going to narrate. Even going to the doctor, or putting himself in situations when most people would have thought that underwear was de rigeur, he never could be persuaded to wear any. So on this occasion I didn’t try hard, knowing it would be fruitless, and anyway, underwear was not a specified item of school uniform, so there was no rule broken; if boys saw him without pants when changing, admired him, and thought that it was a cool thing to go without, then who was Tim to disagree with them? He never saw any point in underwear. So to speak.

The two tearaways Marc and Conor overheard our discussion, though, and were fascinated at this revelation of their godlike elder brother’s private life. Henceforward neither of them could by any means be persuaded to wear underwear either. So, resigned, I made Paul give them the stern hygiene talk about shaking willies and wiping bottoms, and decided that there was nothing more to be done about it except to make sure that all the loos in the house were amply provided with moist toilet tissue. I also resigned myself to the fact that now the only non-commando in the family was going to be me.

My intransigence obviously posed a challenge to the others, and few males can resist a challenge.

I got home from the shops late one afternoon to find a little gathering in the garden around a bonfire. They had obviously been waiting for me, so I came to join them, wondering what it was all about. Marc told me portentously in his rough adolescent voice;

‘Today, Uncle Johnny, is World Go-Commando Day!’.

‘You what?’

‘Watch’

Marc and Conor each had an armful of their underwear that they began feeding article by article ceremoniously onto the fire. I raised my eyebrows at Paul who was watching and grinning, and I shrugged resignedly. It was his money going up in flames, after all. They were his boys. My son Tim went next, though. I didn’t know he still had any underpants, but he obviously kept a pair or two, just in case. They were still in their plastic wrappers, which were torn off for the first time, and the brand new pants went onto the fire. Then everyone looked at Paul, who shrugged and said that he hadn’t had a pair since he was fourteen. But, he went on, he didn’t want to disappoint us. He disappeared behind a tree and came out with a large pile of undergarments. I wondered idly where he had found them. He had cast two onto the fire before I began to recognize my own property. I shouted and lunged at Paul, who ran laughing off up the garden. I rugby-tackled him, but as he fell, laughing hard, he threw the pile of my clothes to Tim. Tim fumbled the catch, and my boxers scattered everywhere. Tim, Marc, and Conor, shouting with laughter, chased my underwear all over the garden, pulling it from the branches of trees and out of the small pond, fighting each other for every article of my most intimate clothing, while I was trying to free myself from the clutches of Paul, who was now wrestling me to the ground and tickling me until I was helpless and breathless. I managed somehow to fight him off, and tried to rescue as much as I could, but it was useless; I was hopelessly outnumbered. As soon as I had wrested one pair from the boys’ hands (I never managed to get any off the muscular Tim), I would be rugby-tackled by Paul or, more efficiently, by Tim himself who was now so well-built and strong that he was impossible to resist. One by one, I saw my beloved collection being consigned to the flames until eventually Conor said in his high Irish voice ‘That’s the lot!’

‘Er, not quite’, said Tim with a wicked glint in his eye. ‘What now?’, I thought, and I poised myself for flight. Paul moved quietly behind me and suddenly pinned my arms behind my back. Tim grabbed my belt and undid it. Oh no! I knew what was going to happen now! It did. Tim pulled down my trousers and tugged them over my shoes. They were followed by my boxers, and there I was, naked from the waist down, swinging gently in the breeze.

‘Have you no bloody respect for the clergy, let alone your own father, you heathen, you unnatural children!’ I shouted, but I was laughing.

The boxers went on the fire, then Tim hugged me and said

‘Welcome to the Commandos, Dad!’

I was then pinned down and tickled until I swore a solemn oath to join the Commandos from that moment. And I must say, as I reflected to Paul later in bed, all the happiest times that he and I had spent together, such as that summer at Tim Senior’s cottage, had mostly been spent ‘commando’.

Paul had been out to a closing-down army surplus shop earlier that day, and had bought everyone ex-army camouflage jackets, trousers and boots. We all had to change into them (nothing at all underneath, naturally) there and then in the garden. Teresa chose that exact moment (of course) to come into the garden with some food that she had brought for the barbecue which Paul had obviously planned in advance. Marc spotted her first;

Er… hello, Aunt Tess.’

Five pairs of hands shot to their corresponding naked groins, and five faces went bright red as she left the food, making some comment to the clouds about what a lot of weather we seemed to be getting these days, and how she ought to be getting home sometime in the next six months. But she was smiling; she was used to men in her own family, and we all loved her, and we knew by a thousand ways that she loved us.

Once dressed in our combats, it felt strange but kind of virile to feel the rough canvas clothes against our skin without wearing boxers, socks or shirts; and the combination of our male bonding (which the feminists love to sneer at) with the love, tenderness and togetherness of our family was so wonderful that I wouldn’t have changed that evening for the worlds. I would have given a lot more than some old underpants away for times like that. We baked potatoes and cooked sausages and burgers on the fire, and hunkered around on our heels until late, drinking beer (for Paul, Tim and me) while the boys drank Coke, talking about nothing and everything, and putting the world to rights.

After the boys had gone to bed, Paul Tim and I stayed outside talking quietly. Then I looked my watch and saw that it was gone eleven. So I said to Tim:

‘You too. Time for bed, Soldier! School tomorrow.’

Tim went suddenly very still. ‘What did you call me, Dad?’

‘Soldier, Son. You are dressed in the gear, and you are going commando, I happen to know that for a fact.’ I grinned at him, thinking of Teresa.

Tim relaxed again. ‘Sorry, Dad; it was just a memory.’

‘Did your real father call you that, Son?’ Oops. We might have opened something up here.

‘No, Dad. It’s all right; it was a happy memory. It was just a surprise to be called that again.’

‘That’s good to know, Soldier.’ His eyebrows raised. He said, dangerously,

‘And what would you know about Commandos? I’ve been one for years. This is only your first day as a recruit, Soldier.’

Like a frog, he powerfully leapt on me from his squat, and sent me flying. We wrestled for a while, but Tim would always win now. He sat triumphantly astride me.

‘I submit!’ I said, breathless.

‘You submit, what?’

‘Er; I submit, Soldier'

‘Wrong! That’s not the way to address a senior officer!’

He undid my jacket, and pushed it back from my chest, and tickled my ribs, then squeezed my nipples. I wondered even then whether he realised just how erotic that was. If it had been Paul on top, I would have disgraced myself with a hard-on.

‘Ow! Ow! All right. I submit, Sir.’

‘That’s better! Captain Topham, I think we’d better keep an eye on this squaddie for a while yet; he’s a bit lippy.’

‘Yessir. I had noticed, Sir. Oh yes, definitely lippy! Perhaps you’d better stay around for a bit longer, Sir,’ said Paul.

I relented, and Paul passed Tim another beer. In the end, it was after three o’clock in the morning when we finally called it a night. We had shed our camouflage jackets a while before, and the three of us left them in the garden as we went indoors arm in arm. Paul and I just fell as we were onto the nearest bed—mine—and knew no more until the morning, when we awoke together, our arms entangled and still in our camouflage trousers and boots. I gently disentangled myself, and went upstairs to call Tim, to get him to school. Finding the door open, I went in to find him asleep on his back, on top of the bed, also still in combat trousers and boots, his morning erection pushing hard at his fly. With his cropped hair and his muscular torso, he looked every inch the young soldier. I kissed his forehead, and said

‘Reveille, Soldier’.

He woke, sleepily gave me his glorious smile and got up.

I treasured the memory of World Go-Commando Day for a long time, for it was the last occasion that we were so happy in quite that carefree way. There were dark days ahead for us all.