Every boy should have a bachelor uncle. He should be
provided automatically by a caring state, like free dental
treatment and basic schooling. It should be his pleasure and
duty to give you unsuitable presents, take you on wild,
imaginative outings which get you back late for bedtime, and
answer all those questions which make your parents look shocked
and change the subject. One of my friends at school had an uncle
who took him all around the world on a cruise - and another,
after binding me with a blood-curdling oath of secrecy, told me
that he often spent weekends with his uncle, and slept in his
bed; and he described all the illicit and delightful things they
did together, crucifying my pre-pubertal emotions between shock
(which I knew I was meant to feel) and jealousy (which
predominated). Whether any of my other friends who came to each
new term with tales of uncles' generosity did the same sort of
things, I never dared ask. I think some of them must have done.
Certainly those lucky enough to have uncles accorded them a love
and a trust quite different from that which theyou, but uncles
took you to Cup Finals and let you steer their cars and got you
into X films when you were still four years too young. There was
no question who was the more important. Uncles were adored by
their nephews, and any boy without one deserved to be regarded
with pity.
I had an uncle. I hated him like hell.
Uncle Edward was my mother's only brother, and about ten
years older than her. He was long and thin with a red, raw face,
a nose like a parrot's beak, and a mouth clenched as tightly as
his heart. Whenever he came to visit us he had a cold - it
seemed to be a permanent feature of his personality and he used
to swallow bottles full of pills and potions, in between blowing
his nose repulsively on a series of evil handkerchiefs which my
mother then had to boil clean. I remember him as always dressed
in the same clothes - black jacket, gray waistcoat, and gray
flannel trousers that flapped forlornly around his spindly legs.
He 'touched up' his premat irregular black streaks, and his eyes
watered, and his hands were cold and dead. All in all, he was
about as affectionate as a mortuary slab. He was, however, a
brilliant scholar and an internationally recognized authority on
a variety of abstruse academic subjects, and my mother worshipped
him with total devotion. What my father thought he never said,
although as I grew older I discerned an aloofness behind his
impeccable good manners which told its own story.
But my father's work often took him away from home, and my
uncle's whim often brought him to visit us, so I grew up in the
shadow of his clammy personality. When he was at our house he
ignored me, and so did my mother. When he was away, my mother
talked about him constantly. Any small victory I won, any
discovery I made and took to her, merely prompted yet another
story of what Uncle Edward had achieved by the time he was my
age. If I passed an exam, Uncle Edward had passed it higher. If
I got a good report, Uy was able to surpass him - like when I was
picked for the school swimming team - it was only to be informed
that of course Uncle Edward hadn't thought such things important.
By the time I was 20, I had been told so often that I was
inferior to him in every way that I had started believing it in
spite of myself.
Maybe that feeling of inferiority was the reason I fought
so hard to be a success: if I couldn't prove to my family that I
was someone to be reckoned with, at least I could prove it to
everyone else. The success came hard, but it came. By 26 I was
assistant manager in a firm that manufactured computer software.
At 28 I started my own business in the same field. And nine
years later, I was employing six hundred staff, and taking orders
from 27 countries. Despite my mother's contention that I was
simply exploiting the creative ideas of other people - such as my
Uncle Edward - I felt fairly good about what I had achieved.
Nevertheless, I won't deny that there wa strong, and there was no
question of my nerves not being up to the strain. But social
life and leisure-time became non-existent. At 37 I had no
friends outside my work, and I hadn't taken a holiday for twelve
years.
It was at that point that Uncle Edward finally, brutally and
irrevocably altered the course of my entire life.
He died.
It happened in early September, and on the day of the funeral a
gray, drizzle day - I picked up my mother in London, and drove
her to Papworth Everard, the village in Cambridgeshire where he
had lived so as to be close to the university. We were the only
family present in the church; indeed, the only family he had, my
father having long since died. A few academic friends, and some
neighbors, dutifully attended the service and stood around with
us for a few moments afterwards before drifting away about their
more urgent concerns. We went to the crematorium alone. But as
we emerged from that macabre charade into the gray drizzle, an s
lawyer. The will was quite simple. Some books and manuscripts
to his Cambridge college library. The rest of his estate came to
me.
"I don't want it!" I protested to my mother.
"Don't be ridiculous," she snapped. "your Uncle Edward had
some beautiful things. Beautiful. Lovely furniture. Pictures.
NOT that you'd appreciate them."
"What the hell can I do with them? Even if I auction them ..
"You'll do no such thing! How dare you think of selling them!
They were precious to your Uncle Edward. Things he cherished.
Auction indeed! I never heard of such ingratitude. You'll drive
me to London, then you'll come back here, stay at his house, and
take a look at your inheritance. And be grateful, if you know
how!"
I sighed inwardly - I knew that tone. But she was right. there
was a lot to be done filling in forms, notifying the various
bureaucracies, putting the house on the market and so forth, and
nobody else was going to do it. It would take m this late-
Victorian junk. For once the business would have to cope without
me.
So I ferried her to London, stopped back to pick up a few basic
supplies, and then drove morosely back to Cambridgeshire. Dusk
was falling as I parked outside Uncle Edward's dingy little semi
and let myself in with the key the Yale lawyer had given me.
My inheritance. It was what I had expected. Heavy, dark
furniture, bees-waxed and over-ornate. Stolid still-life studies
in oak frames. Books everywhere, too - I pulled out a few
drawers at random, and they were all bulging with manuscripts and
correspondence: it looked like as if my uncle kept every letter
he had ever received. Bloody old man. It would all have to be
gone through. I left the bottle of scotch I had brought ready on
the desk and went upstairs. two bedrooms - my uncle's cold and
dark and still smelling of old age, and a comparatively civilized
spare room with a double bed. I threw my overnight bag in there
and, depresated kitchen to knock up an early supper. The tinned,
instant chile-con-carne ("the authentic tang of the Great
Outdoors") did absolutely nothing to raise my spirits. I washed
up morosely and then, having nothing better to do, took myself
back to the study and the scotch, switched on the desk light, and
began the Herculean task of reducing my uncle's chaotic affairs
to some sort of order.
I worked through the top two desk drawers, heaping the papers
into piles of bills, receipts, correspondence and personal
affairs. The light outside dwindled, the level in the scotch
bottle got lower, and the dank house seemed to close broodingly
around me. I promised myself that tomorrow night I'd go to the
village - perhaps even into Cambridge. Have a decent meal, maybe
go to the theatre or a concert if there was one on. Something I
hadn't done in years. With a sigh I started on the third drawer.
"What are you doing here? Are you a thief?"
My head jerked up as if I'd been.
"Sorry," he laughed. "Did I make you jump? I didn't mean to.
I saw the light on through the window. I knew the professor was
- you know - dead. I thought it might be a ghost. Or burglars.
You aren't angry are you?"
I discovered that my mouth was still open, and closed it.
"No, I'm not angry. But I'm afraid I'm not a burglar or a
ghost. How did you get in?"
"The door was on the latch. you have to give it an extra pull
to shut it properly, otherwise it sticks."
"You seem to know a lot about it?"
He moved easily into the room. How old? 12? 13? I hadn't
noticed children for so long that I had no idea about guessing
ages.
"I've been coming here twice a week for..." - he grimaced -
"extra tuition. I'm always bottom at school. My ma arranged for
me to come."
He spoke with the Cambridge burr - a soft country accent,
totally different from the metallic whine of the city. His voice
was alto. Soon, I supposed, it would be starting to head. "I'd
best be getting back. Ma'll be worried."
"Stay a few minutes, " I said, surprising myself. The
emptiness of the house had obviously affected me more than I'd
realized. "I'll make a cup of tea. I'm afraid there's nothing
else, except this - " I tapped the bottle of scotch.
"No, I'd best be going," he repeated. "She's an awful worrier,
our ma. I only came 'coz I saw the light. I'll pull the door
for you so's it shuts properly." At the threshold of the room he
turned. "Will you be here tomorrow?"
"Yes, and most of the week."
"P'rhaps I'll come and see you again, then."
And with that, he was gone. For no reason at all, the house
seemed even bleaker and more dismal. It was with an unexpected
pang of loss that I realized I didn't know his name.
He didn't turn up the next morning. I finished sorting through
Uncle Edward's desk, burnt seven-eighths of what I'd found in the
heavy iron fireplace, and at 1:00 walked down to the local pub f
back with me. And left the door on the latch. Then I started in
on the chest-of-drawers under the window, which if anything
contained even older and more confusing documents than the desk
had done. There were also dozens of loose photos, showing
blurred groups of middle-aged or elderly academics peering self-
consciously at the lens. None of them were even labeled.
He came at 3:00. This time, being near the window, I heard the
snick of the gate catch, and looked up in time to see him wheel
his bike in and lock it against the railings. He saw my face and
waved, grinning - then pushed his way inside as if he knew the
door would be unlocked, and bounced into the study.
"Hi," he said. "I told Ma about you. She says you must be one
of the professor's family. Are you?
"He was my uncle."
"Was I cheeky last night? I told Ma I wasn't, but she says she
bets I was. I'm sorry if you're unhappy about him being dead. Ma
said I could come help you if I didn't get all, and I'm very glad
to see you." I grasped my opportunity. "What's your name,
anyway?"
"Danny. What's yours?"
"William."
"Shouldn't I call you Mr. Something?"
"What on earth for?"
He looked at me assessingly, then nodded. "OK. But William's
boring. Willie?" - He burst into a fit of giggles - "Oh, no, I
can't call you that, can I? I'll call you Bill. Is there
anything you want me to help you with?"
The speed with which he switched subjects was beginning to
confuse me, so I put him to work clearing out some of the
cupboards in the hall and stacking what he found on the kitchen
table. We shouted conversation between us as we worked and by
the time we stopped for tea, I'd found out he lived on a farm a
couple of miles outside the village, had a sister he hated and a
baby brother he adored, and that he had few expectations or
ambitions beyond leaving school and eventually taking over the
farm, although he did sometimes think he might be a racing y
business - especially about how computers are applied to farming,
which intrigued him a lot. Bottom of his class he may have been,
but he had a deft grasp for the basic principals and a flair for
spotting possibilities which were more valuable than any book-
learning. When we took our break, I told him so. He blushed
slightly and took a swallow of Coke to hide his embarrassment.
"Oh, I'm thick. All my teachers say so. That's why Ma sent me
to the professor. He was really clever. Are you as clever as
him?"
I felt the old stab of resentment. "Not in the same ways," I
said. "Like I told you, there are different ways of being
clever. Uncle Edward was good at having ideas. I'm good at
making things work." Then, as he nodded thoughtfully, I asked,
"Did you like him?"
"He was all right." He looked at me with innocence as
transparent as a gossamer. "He used to take me out to the
pictures sometimes."
I told myself that this was one thing at which Uncle Edward was
not going to out-do me. "OK," I said, "I tell you what. You
come up and help me again tomorrow morning and we'll go tomorrow
afternoon."
His face fell. "I can't come in the morning - I've got things
to do on the farm. Can't I come and work in the afternoon and
we'll go in the evening?"
"Sure - but won't your Mum and Dad mind your getting home so
late?"
"That's OK," he said. "You can write them a note saying I'm
going to sleep here. That's what the professor used to do
whenever he took me. You don't mind, do you?"
"Don't - don't be ridiculous!" I managed after the third
attempt. "They've never even met me. How do they know I
wouldn't - er - "
"Wouldn't what?"
"Well...."
"They won't mind, honest. I've slept away lots of times, don't
you want me to?"
"Well, yes - it's just...."
"Write the letter, then."
I wrote the letter.
And after he had taken himself and it off home, I sat in the
gathering dusk, in communion with the remains of the whiskey,
astonishingly confronting a gibbering riot of ideas and emotions
which had suddenly, impossibly, sprouted all over my nice
uncluttered brain.
It wasn't so much his confident suggestion that he should spend
the night - for all I knew, kids did that sort of thing every
day. It was more the bacchanalia of memories that his casual
proposal had needled out of my sub-conscious. I hadn't thought
about boys in a sexual way for nearly 20 years - in fact, I
suppose I hadn't thought about them at all. Somehow it had been
expected that after leaving school, one's sexual energies should
be directed towards women, and I had - conformed, I suppose:
although it must be admitted without very much enthusiasm, and
innocent remarks had reached across the years and abruptly
brought back to me the words of my school friend, describing his
weekends with his uncle. And brought back too, in a flood, the
remembrance of the exquisitely intense pleasure I had found at
school in the beds and the arms of younger boys. God knows why I
had buried the memories so long. Now they tumbled home to me
with echoes of breathless laughter and images of soft, warm
bodies thrusting against each other. And suddenly I realized
with a shock that the image which stood out above all the others
was that of Danny himself.
And hard on the heals of that uncomfortable revelation came the
inevitable, undodgeable question.
Had Danny.... and Uncle Edward....?
No, of course they hadn't. The idea was preposterous. I was
reading far too much into the boy's innocent remarks. And even
if he was that sort of kid, he couldn't possibly have been
attracted to Uncle Edward, with his colds, and clammy hands....
Could he?
And Uncle Edward certainly hadn't been that type of man! He'd
always said his work came before everything.
Yet Danny had often spent the night here. And Uncle Edward he
hadn't liked me. Or thought it was too risky.
As, of course, it was. Far too risky. I wasn't sure what
happened to men who got caught having relationships with boys,
but I had an idea that they put them in prison and threw away the
key.
And on that salutary reflection I took myself to bed.
The cause of all my confusion breezed in at noon the next day
with a self-satisfied grin, a carrier bag of overnight things,
and a gift of a dozen eggs from his mother. Awareness heightened
by the unresolved questions ricocheting around inside my skull, I
found myself watching him while he worked. There was no denying
his attractiveness. Though he was still small, his body was
sturdy and compact, and he moved with the easy confidence of one
who is used to hard work. Laboring on the farm had given him a
late summer tan, which stretched away inside his open necked
shirt and showed up bleached, preadolescent down along his
forearms. his hair was sunbleached too, streake. He wore it
long and ragged, and had a habit of pushing it brusquely away
from his eyes which delighted me with its blend of childish
petulance and adult practicality. His face wasn't beautiful - it
wasn't delicate enough for that - but the soft line of his jaw
and the broad, firm mouth gave hints of strength to come. He was
freckled across the nose and under the eyes, and his skin glowed
with health. In fact his whole body radiated a clean, outdoor
energy which cut through the gloom of my uncle's house like a
shaft of pure summer. Occasionally, as we worked and chatted, he
would glance up and catch me looking at him: and then his eyes
sparkled into a grin of something remarkably akin to complicity -
almost as if he knew what I was thinking....
And what I was thinking, I finally had to admit, was that Danny
was certainly the sexiest young animal I had encountered for -
well, far too long: and that more than anything else just then, I
wanted to put my arms around him ad myself, was probably enough
to have me put away for life, besides being selfindulging,
impractical, corrupt, reckless to a lunatic degree, and liable to
frighten the horses.
The day seemed to rush past. We made good progress with Uncle
Edward's affairs: indeed, by the time we stopped, the worst was
done. But instead of delighting me as it would have 48 hours
earlier, I found myself cast into gloom at the thought of
leaving, and perhaps not seeing Danny again. We had got to know
each other still better that afternoon, and he had opened up even
further about himself and his life, nudging past the normal
bounds of conversation as though trying to shock me, or see how
far he could trust me, or I wasn't sure what. He told me in
detail about taking one of his father's mares to be covered at
the local stud; and a few minutes later informed me that he had
started masturbating some weeks ago, and did I think it was
"wrong or anything?" For my part, I found myself making
excuseying him on ladders, even, once, sitting him up on my
shoulders to investigate some boxes on top of a cupboard. His
skin was warm and silky, and I could feel the soft flow of muscle
under the thin material of his shirt. Lowering him to the floor
again when the jobs were finished, and stepping away from him, I
needed all the will power I could muster.
Question as I would, however, I could not discover what kind of
relationship Danny had with my uncle. The possibility that here,
as in everything else, Uncle Edward had achieved what I could
not, scarified me with jealousy. The alternative - that Danny
was as naive as he pretended - was safe but infinitely
frustrating. Merely looking at the boy made me so hard that I
was certain he would eventually notice it.
At 6:00 we gave up the work, washed, and transferred to my
Jaguar Convertible. It was still warm enough to have the hood
down, and Danny was thrilled by the thrusting sleekness of the
car as I pushed the needle nd then we queued for INVADERS OUT OF
TIME - just like father and son, I couldn't help thinking, and
wondered if the same thought (grandfather and grandson?) ever
crossed Uncle Edward's mind. The film itself was tremendous. I
hadn't been to the cinema in years, so hadn't realized what
progress had been made in special effects and trick photography.
The monsters were revolting, the heroes handsome and daring, the
battles noisy, and the 25th-century hardware utterly convincing.
I don't know who was more spellbound, Danny or me, and we drove
back through the velvet evening pretending to be astro-cruisers,
power-zapping imaginary alien sniper craft and then warping out
of trouble into a different time-zone.
Until suddenly we were home; it was 11:00; the door had been
given its extra pull to make sure that the lock clicked; and I
couldn't put off the decision any longer.
There was the spare room; and there was Uncle Edward's room. I
was sleeping in the spare room, so iff Edward's room: whereas if
he usually slept with Uncle Edward, he might automatically go to
the bedroom he was used to, or he might expect to be asked to use
mine. Or he might assume I was sleeping in Uncle Edward's room,
and go into the spare room because he'd think it would be free
or....
I gave up trying to work out the permutations, and led the way
upstairs. Danny followed silently, even shyly. At the top he
faced me.
"Where are you sleeping?"
My nerve failed me. "In there. The spare room. I'll make you
up a bed in the other bedroom."
"Is that where you want me to sleep?"
My heart jolted with something between disbelief and joy, and I
fell back on aggression to cover my desperate hope. "You can
sleep in the bath for all I care. Or on top of the wardrobe."
He laughed and looked away.
"When I came to stay with the professor," he mumbled,
addressing his left shoe, "I slept with him."
Silence ghosted between us like smoke.
My the risks, I was damned if I was going to be.
"Would you like to sleep with me too?" I asked. adding
incongruously, "Please?"
His face lit up as he grinned at me. Yes, it had been a grin
of complicity.
"Wow - for a moment I thought I'd got you wrong!" he said.
"Come on!"
Any shyness I might have imagined in him earlier certainly
hadn't lasted long. Inside the bedroom he thrust himself into my
arms and hugged me, moving his hips so that his pelvis rubbed
against the top of my legs. And now I could feel, through the
course material of his jeans, the hard shape of his erection. I
pushed my hands down between us to rub it, and he laughed into my
face.
"It's been like that all afternoon." He said. "All the time we
were talking about wanking and things. And when I was sitting on
your shoulders. I was sure you'd notice! I couldn't make it go
down!"
"I was as well," I told him. And then I slid my hand up to
loosen his belt, and pulled the jeans to his legs, across his
thighs and over the strong cheeks of his buttocks.
Abruptly he pushed me away, and hurriedly kicked of his shoes
and socks, wriggled out of his jeans and underpants and pulled
his shirt over his head. Then he leapt onto the bed and lay
there in tense anticipation. Stripped, the young strength of his
body was apparent in his shoulders, chest, and the firm muscles
of his legs. He must have worked practically naked throughout
the summer, because only the briefest triangle of white around
his crotch interrupted the honey tan of his skin.
He leaned across and pulled at the waistband of my trousers.
"Come on!" he demanded urgently.
I fumbled out of my clothes, leaving them muddled with Danny's
on the floor, and joined him on the bed. To be honest, I was
still a little unsure about how to go about things, but Danny
knew what he wanted. As I stretched out beside him, he pulled me
over top of him, hugging me around the waist, tilting his hips
round that elastic epicenter, less acute but still deliciously
perceptible, I was aware of the smoothness and warmth of his
body, of the smell of his hair in my face, like grass in the
summer, and the excited panting of his breath in my ear. I slid
my hands under his back and down to his buttocks, straining him
harder to me, and his grip squeezed tighter in return - then I
felt him pushing me sideways; so I rolled over, bringing him on
top of me, and rubbed his back as he pushed and writhed wildly
against me, pressing the length of his body down on mine, his
skin sliding over me like living velvet. His urgency mounted
quickly, the movement of of his hips and pelvis transposing into
a deep rhythmical thrust which grew fuller and more frenzied
every minute until at last, with a shuddering gasp of pleasure,
he went rigid in my arms, strained in quivering ecstasy for long
moments, and then sighed and sank voluptuously and damply onto my
stomach.
I lay and stroked him softly,ooked down at me, his eyes sleepy
and contented. I kissed his lips, and he allowed it, giggling;
then he eased backwards and took me in his hands.
"Now you."
I was already so intensely aroused that I had been on the verge
of culmination several times, and he didn't have much to do.
Pressing me between his hands and the soft skin of his belly, he
rubbed himself along until everything went beyond control, and I
pulled him back on top of me. Then finally we lay quiet, making
little movements of pleasure against each other, in a drifting
nimbus of security and peace.
"Is that what you did with Uncle Edward?" I murmured.
"Mmmm. Sometimes."
The security and peace wavered as a jagged shaft of jealousy
clawed at them.
"Its better with you, though."
The jealousy went away quickly.
Soon after that I heard his breathing slow and deepen, and when
I whispered his name he didn't answer; so I eased him off me,
pulled the sheet over us, and went to sleep.
It was 8:00 AM when I woke, and Danny was still sleeping. He
had turned over during the night, and was lying with his back
against me, his buttocks pressed against my groin. By raising
myself on an elbow, I was able to look down into his face. He
appeared impossibly young, all the passion of the night before
smoothed away in the innocence of sleep. I let my hand stroke
down his body, exploring gently, so as not to wake him, his firm
chest, his flanks, and the silky skin of his stomach rising and
falling with his sleeping breath. He was flaccid; but as my
fingers fondled him he started to tumesce and soon, although he
hadn't awakened, he was stiff under my touch. I rubbed him
gently until with a sigh, he rolled over and nuzzled warmly
against me. I lay and stroked him while he gradually woke, and
mumbled something in my ear.
"What was that?" I asked, startled, sure that I had misheard
him."
He put his arms round my neck and hugged closer to me ...
I hadn't misheard. Uncle Edward, I forced myself to admit, had
been quite an operator.
That sort of thing had never figured in my school-days
experiments, we had been too naive, I suppose. But if Uncle
Edward had done it, I was damned if I would refuse: and anyway it
would give Danny pleasure, which just then was something I wanted
to do very much indeed.
So I kicked the bedclothes off us and went down on him, taking
him gently into my mouth. Like most boys his age, he had hair-
trigger sexuality, and within seconds I found, as I had the night
before, that in fact I needed to do very little. Danny's own
movements served his own needs, some times pushing deeply and
luxuriously right to the hilt, sometimes rubbing just the tip
rapidly across my tongue and teeth. He was making noises, too:
tiny grunts and whimpers of delight - and as my hands stroked
over and across his body, I found his legs and shoulders to be an
erotic experience in a purely oral sense - but nothing had
prepared me for the incredible intensity of excitement I now
felt. I found my whole awareness telescoped down to that one
area of sensation. I don't know whether it is scientifically
possible to have an oral climax: I do know that there is no other
way to describe what I was feeling.
Then Danny was on the move again. Hardly daring to believe it,
I felt him swivel around on me so that he was still in my mouth
but his knees were either side of my head. Seconds later, there
was a nudging between my legs, and then a delicious sensation of
warmth and tightness as his lips closed around me, and that was
without any question the single most wonderful thing that had
ever happened to me in my life. Soon my body was moving as
urgently as his, and my excitement must have communicated itself,
for now we were racing each other toward the finish.
I felt him throb six or seven times while his body tensed rigidly
against me. The taste was sweet and slightly salty - there were
only a few drops as yet. Slowly he relaxed, rubbing himself with
infinitesimal movements back and forth between my lips, clinging
to the last ecstatic moments. At the same time I realized my end
was approaching. I tried to pull out of him, but he held me
there insistently, caressing me with his tongue, until he took
all that was in me, and swallowed convulsively. Then, gasping,
we let go of each other and rolled apart.
He scrambled around and came up with his head on the pillow
beside me. I put an arm around him and stroked his hair.
"That was - incredible," I told him.
"Mmm. Smashing."
"I've never done that before."
"Haven't you? Oh, I have. Heaps of times. With the professor
and people."
"Christ! is there anything else you used to do with my uncle?"
For breakfast we cooked some of the eggs he had brought - much
tastier than the supermarket variety I had been getting all my
life. Then, the washing-up done, I looked at him regretfully.
"I suppose I've got tot take you home, Danny."
He nodded. "I'd better be getting back. But I'll come again
tomorrow. I'll come every day, if I can; though it can't be for
so long when I'm back at school."
"I'll be in London by then, anyway."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, I'll have to be back at my job soon. I'm only here for
as it takes me to put this house up for sale....."
He interrupted me "But - but I thought - you were going to come
and live here!"
"Danny, I can't. I've got a business to run."
"Won't I ever see you again, then?"
"Don't be daft. I'll come up whenever I can. Weekends.
Perhaps your Mum and Dad might let you come down to London some
time.."
He still looked mollified. "Wow - I thought you meant you were
just going to go away and never come back."
"After last night? Christ no!"
He grinned. "Well, you didn't ought to sell this place then
did you?" Then, when you come up to see me, we'll have somewhere
to be, couldn't you sell yur house in London?"
"I've got to be near my work. And now," I said in what I hoped
was a decisive voice, "I'm taking you home. You're getting far
too inclined to organize my affairs."
He'd come in by bus the day before, having more than usual to
carry, so I had said I'd take him home in the car. Privately, I
quite wanted to meet his parents and make my mark with them. If,
as I hoped, I was going to see more of Danny, I needed their
approval and blessing.
Half-way to his farm, as we were just leaving the village, he
again produced the words I was coming to welcome and to dread:
"When I was out with the professor...."
I sighed. "Yes?"
"Well, there's an old airfield close to here where nobody ever
goes. He sometimes let me drive his car."
"Did he indeed!" I said in some surprise. "How good are you?"
"Dad's taught me a bit, too. On the farm."
"OK," I agreed. "But only if you promise to exactly as I say."
The way his face lit up made even the risk to my belo quivering
with excitement. Not many boys get a chance to handle an XK-150.
That, at least, I told myself smugly, was something that Uncle
Edward had not been able to give him.
Indeed, as far as teaching him to drive went, neither his
father seemed to have got very far. We stayed mostly in second
gear, and got away to some very jerky starts. Nevertheless, when
I called a halt half an hour later, he'd grasped the rudiments of
the art. We changed places again, and he laid back in his seat,
tired from the concentration, his eyes closed. I looked with
pleasure at the smoothness of his cheek and the damp hair falling
across his forehead, and wished it was 11:00 the night before.
"Danny," I said gently, "I'm afraid you've just gone and given
the game away."
He jerked his head around, startled. "What do you mean?"
"You've never driven before."
"Yes, I have."
"Maybe a bit with your dad, but with Uncle Edward?"
"Well - not every time, actually. Only three or four
times.."
"He never learned to drive. And he certainly never owned a car
in his life."
I saw guilt flood into his eyes. Color mount into is face. He
looked away. "It's all right. Really, I'm not angry. But I'd
have let you drive my car anyway. I don't understand why you
wanted to lie about Uncle Edward."
He made a small noise. I put out my hands and turned his face
to me, concerned that he was crying. I should have known better.
He was trying to stiffle a fit of giggles.
I laughed too. "All right," I said, "so tell me the joke."
He took a deep breath. "Well you see - you know when I asked
you to take me to the cinema - when I said the professor always
used to?"
"Yes?"
"Well, I didn't really mean it. I mean, I didn't actually
think you would truly take me. But you did. And I thought it
was probably because of me saying that the professor had done
it."
"And he didn't."
Danny rocked with another explosion of giggles. "The professor
would never take me, I just figured I could make you do things
just by saying the professor had done them."
The boy's grasp of elementary psychology was uncanny. Then the
implications of what he was saying hit me. "You mean my uncle
never...?"
He laughed into my face. "Well, it worked, didn't it?"
"But - I mean - did you ever know my uncle?"
"Oh - I used to go to him for lessons - like I told you the
first time I saw you. But I thought he was really mean. And he
never asked me to stay or anything. And I wouldn't have wanted
to even if he had."
"But - last night - Danny, you've done all that before. It
wasn't the first time. You were too good at it."
"It was, honest....with a grown-up anyway. I've wanted to for
ages. I've got this mate at school called Billy - you'll like
him - anyway, me and Billy muck around together - you know. But
last term Billy met this man at the amusements in Cambridge, and
the man took him into Midsummer Common and did it to him - sucked
him and everythilots of times, but he's never seen the bloke
again. Ever since I've really wanted to do it with a man."
"You and Billy...?"
"Oh yes. And we pretend I'm the man and I pick him up. But
it's not as good - and anyway, I don't want to do everything with
him ,and he doesn't want to do it with me. I never thought I'd
want to do all of it it with you, actually. But when I found out
how good it felt I wanted you to feel it as well. And it's fun,
really once you've started, isn't it?"
I nodded, feeling the inadequacy of such a simple agreement.
One thing troubled me, however: "How the hell did you know that I
was...well... interested?"
"I didn't. Not at first. But you kept looking at me - you
know - and asking me to come round, so I sort of hoped you were.
And you were, so that was all right."
"But - if you never used to stay with Uncle Edward, how the
hell did you get your mother to let you spend last night?" I
thought of my note to her, and shuddered at the risk I had run.
Anyone that moldy have to have boring, safe relatives. Still," he
added thoughtfully, "perhaps you'd better come in and see her
when we get back."
"Yes, perhaps I had," I said grimly as I put the car into gear
and moved off.
"Then when she's met you she won't mind if I come over to your
house every day."
"Danny, it's not my house! Get it into your head that it's got
to be sold! I can't afford two houses! I promise I'll come and
see you - often - but living in Cambridge is out!"
-------------------------------
It's already a year, now, since I sold my London house and
moved to Papworth Everard. It's not as difficult as I feared,
running the business from outside London: and to tell the truth,
I'm not doing as much as I used to - I've promoted a couple of my
executives to full partners, and they've taken on a lot of the
donkey-work. I sometimes go a whole week without visiting London
at all.
Ten o'clock and we have just shown the last of the kids out the
door, latched it securely. The redecorating of Uncle Edward's
old, dark victorian rooms was done almost entirely with volunteer
boy-labor, and having worked so hard on it, they rightly consider
my house partly their own, to come and go in as they please.
Danny himself lords it over them, and views me mainly as his
property, although he graciously lends me out from time to time.
I switch off the lights and we walk towards the stairs
together. Except during the busy times on the farm, he usually
stays with me: its more convenient for his school - of which, to
his intense disgust, I have recently become a governor.
On the landing at the end of the stairs, in the place of honor,
hangs a portrait of my uncle Edward. My mother came to stay last
week, and she was suitably impressed.
"I'm glad to see, William, that you are paying your uncle
proper respect!" she said - and I'll swear she did a little bob
in front of it, as if genuflecting a shrine.
"But of course, Mother," I told her, straight faced. "I do
appreciate it. I don't think he realized how valuable some of his
legacy was."
"Edward always had a good sense of values," she said smugly.
The house is dark, except for the light shining from the
bedroom. Danny sighed luxuriously.
"Mmmm. Saturday. No school."
"What do you want to do?"
"What do you think?"
"Billy's coming round at nine o'clock..."
"So what? He can let himself in. And - er - join us."
"I thought we might all dive over to Allen Towers?" I suggest.
"You know - that amusement park that was on T.V."
"What, where they've got those bob-sleighs? Could we? That
would be brill!" He looks up mischievously. "Afterwards."
I ruffle his hair. "Don't you ever think of anything else?"
"Course I do. Lot's of things. But - er..."
"But what?"
The front of his jeans was noticeably fuller than it was a few
minutes ago. He drops one hand to rub it as he pulls me towards
the bedroom.
"Well - Christ - it's nearly midnight. I mean, what else....."
THE END
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