The Scholar's Tale
by Mihangel
Part 1, Chapter 5 - Consolidation
Towards the end of term there was a house cross-country run. Not a race. Just leave when ready and run the prescribed route. I hated the things. No muscle, no stamina, no wind. No alternative, either. So I ran. Was overtaken by lots of people. Through a gate, sharp left along a hedge, stop, got to stop. Stood there, stitch in side, hands on knees, face scarlet, lungs heaving. Through the gate ran Thorne, not much bigger than me but wiry. Ratty. A nasty piece of work, my biggest bugbear. Not even puffing.
"Ha. Michaelson, might have guessed it. Only a mile and you're knackered. So weedy you can hardly stand up." And to prove it he pushed me on the chest. I stepped back, tripped on something, and sat down hard in a spreading gorse bush, thick with end-of-season needles, sharp and brittle. But even as he pushed, someone else appeared through the gate. Andrew. He took in the scene, grabbed Thorne by the shirt, and Thorne quailed. Understandably: I wouldn't like to be grabbed by an angry Andrew either.
"Thorne, eh? There's only one cure for bullies like you. A taste of your own medicine." And he pushed him backwards into the gorse alongside me.
"Right, let's have you out of there, Leon," and he held out a hand and hauled me out of my prickly perch. No need to worry about Thorne blabbing. If it was Andrew's word against his, no contest. Andrew then surprised me. He pulled Thorne out too, but instead of letting go of Thorne's hand he shook it sedately.
"Nice to meet you, Thorne. In the flesh. Now scarper."
Thorne scarpered painfully, muttering, while Andrew and I hooted helplessly, despite my bum feeling as if it was on fire.
"Thanks, Andrew. You're a brick."
"Don't mention it. I enjoyed that. Now, what about you?" He looked. "Hmm. Your shorts are like a hedgehog. Is your bum too?"
I slid a cautiously exploratory hand down inside my waistband. "Yes. Feels like it."
"Lor. Hardly do much about that here. We can't even brush the prickles off without pushing more in. D'you think you can walk like that? Try keeping your shorts away from your skin." I tried, and with judicious waddling it wasn't too painful. So I waddled home, Andrew beside me.
"You can't sit down like that. You'll have to go to Matron."
"Oh Christ, no, not her." Matron was no doubt a qualified nurse, but her bedside manner, so to speak, was unsympathetic and, worse, she was notoriously ham-fisted. "Would you have a go, Andrew?"
"Well, I reckon I owe you a favour." His impish grin was in full play. "But where?" I knew what he meant. If a boy were to be found in close communion with another boy's bare bum, eyebrows would go through the ceiling. To put it mildly.
"I reckon we'd best be above board," he decided. "Clear it with Doug Paxton" - the house captain, and a damn good one too - "so that if anyone sees us they'll know I'm not seducing you." I could think of nothing better, but could hardly say so. But he was right. Massaging a naked shoulder was one thing. Nobody would comment, and nobody had. It was the waist that was the frontier. To cross that legitimately, one would need a passport and visa. So we applied for them to Paxton, explained the problem, and exhibited my hedgehog backside as evidence. He was graciously amused, refrained from asking what I'd been doing in a gorse bush, and no doubt calculated that the chances of Andrew wanting to play hanky-panky with an ugly runt like me were nil.
"See your point about matron," he said. "OK, go ahead. Use your dorm as an operating theatre."
I gingerly removed my shorts, pulled up my shirt, and lay down, skinny buttocks upmost, on Andrew's bed. (God, naked on Andrew's bed!)
"Yes, you are a hedgehog. Quite a lot of scratches too, but nothing bad."
He got to work pulling out needles, the longest ones first, from my thighs and cheeks. "Right, I think your thighs are clear now, but you've got some pricks deep in your bum." He was giggling as he said it, and so was I.
"Stop shaking. Surgeon can't operate when you're shaking." He found his Swiss army knife which had a pair of tweezers, and tweezed for a while.
Then, "There are some broken off at the skin. I'll have to excavate." He got out a needle and very delicately poked, levered and squeezed.
At last, "Right, that's all I can see. But you went down with your legs apart, and there may be more inside. Bring your knees up."
This opened my crack, and he peered into it. "Yes. There are some in there, some quite close to your hole. And a few on the back of your balls." Back to work. I had long since got a raging hard-on. Couldn't be otherwise. His fingers were working around my hole and on my balls, and resting his hand on my cheeks. Pressures now began to build up nearby. Rapidly. Urgently. Unstoppably.
"Sorry, Leon, I can't do this without feeling you up. But these bloody needles have got to come out." He was clearly aware of my state. "D'you want me to stop?"
I didn't answer directly. Burning with embarrassment, I could only mumble desperately, "Andrew, sorry, I'm going to come. Quick, towel or something." He grabbed his towel and spread it under my raised belly. Just in time. I came, came on Andrew's bed, without him even touching my cock, grinding my head and shoulders into his blanket, groaning in a complex mix of emotions. Oh God! First things first. I squeezed my cock, already deflating, to empty it. Wiped it. Rolled up the towel. Dead give-away evidence of seduction, to anyone else. Only then could I look up, red in the face and tears not far off.
"Andrew, sorry, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to. Just couldn't control myself."
He was concerned. "Who could? Look, Leon, don't worry. Don't be sorry. It's me should be sorry - I didn't realise you were so far gone. I'm sure I'd have come if you'd been handling me like that. That's why I was so cautious in the bath. Remember, when you were washing cow-pat off me? All the same" - there was more than a hint of a smile and even a touch of pride - "that's the first time I've made anyone come!"
Oh no it's not. You've made me come often enough before. But once again I couldn't say it. I was mixed up. Coming was such a private thing, coming by accident was if anything worse. True, far better it should happen with Andrew than anyone else (Matron? Christ almighty!). But whatever my innermost thoughts, I was still bashful, still far from ready to contemplate deliberate sex with him. Because I still had no notion where he stood.
"Well, yes, thanks. It won't happen again, as long as you're quick. So finish your evil work." I was trying desperately to keep it light.
So he finished his evil work. "No, stay there. Your bum looks as if it's got measles and been in a cat fight." He fished out a tube of antiseptic ointment from his bedside drawer, and with gentle fingers anointed me from thighs to lower back, high on the mountains and deep in the valley. And though I was in heaven, I didn't turn a hair. Not that I had many to turn.
"Right, that'll do," and he slapped me lightly on the buttocks. The whole operation had taken over an hour. "But you smell. You haven't had a shower yet. Nor've I." So I dressed enough to get to the shower, and we showered together, everyone else having long been and gone, and he gave me the ointment. "You need another dose of this, but you'd better put it on this time, not me." And we ended up back in our study, where I lowered myself gingerly on to my chair.
I had to say a bit more. "Whew. Andrew, thanks. Look, I was dead embarrassed by what happened just now. But thank God it happened with you, not somebody else." I deliberately echoed what he'd said to me after his bath. "Because you're a good friend."
His look showed that he appreciated it. "Well, that's what friends are about, isn't it? And I don't think it quite qualifies as seduction." He was grinning.
"Umm. No, not quite." I needed to match his mood. "But it reminds me of a joke I heard someone telling yesterday. Have you heard it? About fortune-tellers?"
"Don't think so. What?"
"Well. Fortune-tellers have crystal balls. So they can tell when they're coming."
Andrew rocked with laughter. "That's a good one. Reminds me too that Jim told me one this morning. About the boy who said, 'My dad says French letters don't work.' That's pretty clever, when you thi - Leon, what's the matter? What've I said?"
I felt as if I'd been punched in the solar plexus. I'd hardly given them a thought for months, but now my ancient sorrows suddenly returned, out of the blue. "Oh God, sorry. Not your fault. You couldn't know."
He came close and put his hand on my shoulder. "Tell me, Leon," he said gently.
I wasn't in tears, or anywhere near them. It was more like being winded. I replied tonelessly. "It's just that I've always reckoned my dad's French letter didn't work."
"I don't understand."
"Andrew. I was an accident. I'm sure. Not planned. Not wanted. That's why they don't love me."
"Oh my God." He was clearly appalled, and scrabbling furiously in his mind for a crumb of comfort to offer. "Leon, they may not want you, not love you, but there are other people who do." He blushed, as if aware of what might be read into that.
"Yes. Thanks. I know. It's just that when I compare them with your mum and dad ... And it still hurts. Not as much as it did, but when I'm reminded of it."
He sat looking at me, deep in thought. "Leon, you like my mum and dad, don't you? And trust them?"
"Why, yes, of course, they're wonderful."
"Look, I feel out of my depth here. For helping you, I mean. So may I tell them about this? They'll be much better with this than me. After all, they are parents. They've got the experience. Can I tell them?"
I looked at him. Yes, it made sense. I'd only met them twice, but already I'd be willing to trust them with my innermost secrets. To treat them as the parents I didn't really have. "Yes. Yes, please do. I'd like that. Thanks." So it was left.
By the end of term my love for Andrew had grown more pressing. I took great care to hide it, for I had no real evidence at all that it was, or would be, returned. We'd had no more semi-sexual encounters and he'd displayed nothing beyond his usual friendliness and consideration. None the less, after that afternoon, I began to sense - I couldn't for the life of me say how - that his friendship was moving towards something more than friendship. I sensed, if it really was love, that it was still young, that he was feeling his way and still had quite a distance to go. If it is love, Leon, I said to myself, foster it, feed it, strengthen it. But don't try to force the pace. Don't rush. It's too delicate and too precious to risk. The emperor Augustus had a motto, festina lente, make haste slowly. I commandeered it for myself. Patience became my middle name
So I went to Oxford for Christmas, for ten days of unalloyed delight at the Goodharts' elegant house in Park Town. School apart, I'd never been away from home before. To my relief and his, we met up with none of Andrew's faithless friends. Rather, he showed me round the university which, I reluctantly admitted, was not inferior to my Cambridge. We went to the cinema - another first for me - to see Danny Kaye in Hans Christian Andersen. We attended the carol service at Christ Church. Andrew even taught me to ride a bike. I'd never touched one before, but now found myself on his small cast-off one, wobbling uncertainly beside him through the University Parks.
And we wallowed in the warmth and love and generosity of the Goodhart home. It was a constant stimulus and a constant haven. On Christmas Day, apart from eating ourselves into a torpor, I was bowled over by their presents to me: a record of the Allegri Miserere from Andrew, and a three-volume set of the Lord of the Rings from Jack and Helen. Modest enough by many standards, but charged with meaning for someone who was a stranger to generosity, other than theirs. There was nothing from my parents, who didn't believe in such fripperies as presents. And one evening Helen and I found ourselves alone together in the living room, with a blazing fire in the grate and the illuminated Christmas tree in the corner, and we sat side by side on the sofa.
"Leon, dear, Andrew's told us that your unhappiness. About your birth. That you were unplanned and unwanted. Would you like to talk about it?"
I looked at her, and saw love and concern. "Yes please. Yes, I would. The point is ..." I paused to get my thoughts in order. "The point is, if my parents had wanted me in the first place, I reckon they'd have loved me. But they never have. Not like you love Andrew. Nothing like. It feels ... this sounds silly, but it feels as if I was adrift in the middle of the sea. Ready to drown. No land in sight. Nothing to hold on to. Or rather it did feel like that, often. Until I met Andrew. He's been ... yes, that's it, he's been a lifebelt, keeping me afloat. Giving me hope. I don't get the feeling nearly so much now, but it still comes back occasionally. Specially in Cambridge. That nobody loves me. Nobody at all."
"Oh, Leon. How dreadful for you. I can imagine, or I think I can. But there are two points there, aren't there, which are slightly different. One is being an accident. Unplanned. That's something that's totally outside your control. Always has been. You can't do anything about it, however much you may want to. It's rather like the colour of your eyes. Or whether you're right- or left-handed. Or whether you love women or men. Or whether you're an early or a late developer. Or whether you were born in Kamchatka or Timbuktoo. You might wish it were otherwise, but it's a fact you can't change. So there's no point in agonising about it. Are you with me?"
I was. Very much so. It was a comfort, hearing it put so clearly. And one thing she'd said was very relevant in another way. Did she suspect, even know, that I was queer? No, she couldn't. But it was a huge relief to know that the Goodhart attitude to queerness was the complete opposite of the Michaelson one. She put her arm round my shoulder.
"And the second point, arising from the first, is being loved, or not loved. I find the total absence of love very hard to visualise. Oh, I'm not going to go all prim and proper and say that your parents really must love you even if they don't show it. That would amount to an absence of love, anyway. No, from all I've heard and seen of you, and from what I know of your parents, I fully accept that you were an accident and that they don't love you. Which must be very hard to bear. But the point is this. Even if you weren't loved once, you are loved, now. By at least three people. By my two menfolk, and by me. So you've got at least three lifebelts to keep you afloat. You know all about Andrew" - and I understood perfectly well the sense in which we were using the word 'love' - "and Jack and I are always here if you want to talk about anything you feel you can't talk about with your parents. Or with Andrew. You do understand, that, don't you? And you'll come to us when you need to?"
I breathed a deep breath. "Oh, Helen, thanks. Thanks very much indeed. Yes, I will." A huge comfort, that. Stand-in parents whom I loved and respected far more than the real ones. She'd already succeeded in banishing my ancient sorrow and loneliness, I thought for good. And I swung round and hugged her.
I returned to Cambridge for a week of housework - snow kept the garden untouchable - in somewhat bitter recognition of the variety of human behaviour. The Goodharts had soared in my mental league table; my own parents had plummeted. The difference, I reflected, showed itself in umpteen ways. But it was encapsulated in the simplest of facts: whereas I had to call my parents Mother and Father, Andrew called his Mum and Dad.
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