Oh, the things they’d done! Pure carnality. Oh, and his cock … Bart brought a pillow down under the blankets and started to hump it, his breath quickening, when suddenly he remembered the letters. Hips slowed down, eyes opened. The pillow became a pillow again. ‘Oh, shit and rot,’ he whispered, rolling onto his back and staring ghoul-eyed at the ceiling.
Back at school he kept his personal correspondence and anything else of intimate value locked up in the battered but hardy tuck trunk he’d had since the age of eleven. Not to mention the contraband. There were two bottles of gin and a tin of tobacco. An illustration ripped out of a Berlin magazine depicting a sailor fellating another sailor, a pack of cards and a velvet drawstring pouch filled with poker chips.
He kept the trunk key in his trouser pocket at all times. And the last thing he could remember of his descent into sickness was sitting on the toilet with his trousers around his ankles as his entire insides steamed out … so, what became of those trousers? Did he manage to get them back on? Did Roger see to them? It’s likely he got shit on them. Did they get sent to the cleaners?
He hadn’t always been kind to them, the fags – especially Roger, whose very presence irritated him. He was always snotty and runny-eyed, scratching his neck eczema with his red, flaky claw-hands. His obsequiousness grated. Bart had given him a hiding a few times, and if he was being honest with himself, these hidings hadn’t always been earned. If Roger got into that trunk, Bart’s life was over. He wasn’t being melodramatic. He would be in the same predicament as Bettina, only twenty times worse. Bettina had her father’s protection, and anyway, she was just a silly girl play-acting – that’s what everyone would think. Her future husband would smirk at such girlish nonsense. Just making do with what was available before the almighty cock came along with its dazzling finality! And likewise, if Bart had been caught messing around with the house tart, this too might be treated with some tolerance, because boys locked up with other boys will do their thing, whether it’s in Eton or Oxford or fucking Swansea. But the letters, they spoke of love. Not brotherly love, not convenient love, not the awkward jism-handed love of a pair of confused schoolboys who would no doubt go on to marry and procreate in the proper way, but radical, crushing, self-aware love.
He’d met the boy while on a school trip to Paris in the spring of 1921 (he’d been seventeen). One supposedly went to Paris to look for romance, but Bart had already decided at a young age that he was going to marry Bettina because not only was she the funniest person he knew, she was also gorgeous and capable of reluctant kindness in the right circumstances. And she came from wealth, so there you go. He had been going to try to kiss her, in fact, and had almost done so on one occasion, but had bottled it when he’d caught the sarcastic curve of her mouth once in close enough range.
He went to Paris thinking of one thing – freedom. He’d twice been on school trips, once to Edinburgh to visit the castle and the other time to Caerleon to see the old Roman amphitheatre, and on both instances, he and his schoolmates had enjoyed a moderate loosening of the leash – a couple of hours here and there to explore places unwatched (the upper-school boys, far from keeping an eye on the younger boys as they were supposed to, had pissed off to find cigarettes and flirt with girls). It was the same in Paris. There were tours around the Louvre, visits to Notre-Dame cathedral and a showing of Othello at the Chaillot (with Mr Fletcher continuously nudging him throughout the performance to make sure he was paying attention; Bart was the most promising student of the school’s drama cohort). On the fourth day, all boys were granted the afternoon to go off and explore by themselves, with explicit instruction to stick together and behave with the bearing and dignity of a Winchester boy. ‘We will be checking your breath on your return, so don’t do anything stupid,’ added the headmaster.
The boys did not stick together. A band of six went off to the Folies-Bergère to see a burlesque show, a few others returned to the Louvre, some went to a picture house on one of the grands boulevards to see The Mark of Zorro and a brave bunch ventured into the Goutte d’Or district to look for a brothel (four out of seven would wind up contracting crabs and return to England in a blind panic, eventually procuring some ointment from a pharmacy in Weeke). Many others went off by themselves, some taking their fags along, but Bart had no intention of taking Roger with him. He told him to meet him ‘back in this exact spot’ in four hours. ‘If you get into any trouble, I get into trouble, so bloody well watch yourself,’ he said, before booting Roger’s arse as he turned to run away.
Bart bought some cigarettes and found a café. He sat outside under the low hanging branches of a cypress tree and ordered a beer. A light breeze rustled the branches above him and the sun came out sporadically from behind slow-coasting white clouds. Heaven. He ordered more drink and a bowl of garlic mushrooms hoping it would conceal the alcohol on his breath. If the headmaster really wanted to check for immoral conduct, he’d be better off smelling all the boys’ cocks, because it was women they were after more than anything else (except for those subhuman bores re-treading their steps in the Louvre), and even the boys at the cinema had only gone because they’d heard rumours of loose women giving out handies in the back seats. Bart laughed to himself, imagining his classmates standing in a long row with their cocks dangling out, the head going from boy to boy and sniffing them with the snooty air of a wine-taster inhaling a new vintage. ‘Hmm, this has a fully rounded and robust bouquet and I’m getting spicy and syphilitic undertones of Parisian tart.’
‘Qu’est-ce qui est si drôle?’
It was a boy at the next table. He looked around the same age as Bart and was dressed in a sailor’s uniform – white middy blouse with a black and white striped undershirt and white beret. He had large brown eyes with the thickest, darkest lashes. A blocky, squarish nose, wide at the bridge. Deep dimples. Placed in front of him was a tiny coffee cup and a leather-bound notepad and pencil. He held a fatly rolled cigarette between thumb and forefinger.
‘Nothing I care to share,’ said Bart.
‘That’s a shame.’ The boy made a mock-sulky face.
Bart turned away from him and fixed his eyes on the passing people. A very tall woman dressed in trousers marched haughtily past. Bart had never seen a woman in trousers before. A man in rumpled evening wear was thrown out of a restaurant door across the road. He jumped to his feet and screamed French obscenities before dusting himself off and looking around with a dignified air of hurt feelings. A group of black men in cheap brown suits were gathered around two other black men playing chess on a granite table, talking fast and gesticulating with jerky, sophisticated movements. Bart had only seen black people a handful of times before. It was all dizzying and marvellous.
‘What do you think?’ Sailor boy again. He was holding up his notepad. Bart squinted to see, but the sun was flashing off the white paper. He came over, handing the notepad to Bart. It was a pencilled profile sketch of Bart, hastily done with zippy little squiggles. It caught the pleasure in his observing eyes and the sardonic twitch of his mouth.
‘A fair likeness,’ said Bart. ‘I expect you want me to give you money for it.’
‘No, no,’ he said, waving his hand and taking a seat at Bart’s table. He ripped out the drawing and placed it in front of him. ‘It is for you, a present.’
Bart looked at the boy with nude scrutiny. ‘Then I suppose you’re hoping to sell me something else.’
He affected a look of bewildered, shocked hurt. ‘Such sharp words! I have no need for your money. Look …’ He took out a thick band of notes from his pocket and waved them in Bart’s face.
How many cocks did you have to suck for all that? Bart thought. No, he was being mean-spirited. It was a beautiful day. Why not just let it be beautiful? He offered the boy a vague apology. ‘And thank you for the sketch, it’s very good. Are you an artist?’
‘Yes, I’m a street artist. Also I supply satire for some newspapers.’ Up so close, Bart could smell the boy’s sweat. Strong and spicy.
‘Aren’t you a sailor?’
The boy laughed. ‘Never! It looks good though, non?’
‘It looks very good.’
The boy plucked a pre-rolled cigarette out of his packet and lit it with quick hands. ‘I have a special feeling about you,’ he said, smiling brightly through a fog of grey smoke.
Bart drank his beer, trying to suppress the hooks of a smile. He was being duped in some way; he was an obvious tourist and the boy a shark, and yet … the boy’s eyes were gentle, musical and emanating an earnestness that Bart would normally find embarrassing. He seemed at ease with himself, abnormally so. And those dimples. Bettina had a name for boys like him: musky cherubs. He couldn’t remember how she’d come up with it, but it probably had something to do with working-class body odour.
A waitress came out to collect glasses and the boy got her attention, ordering two beers and two shots of peach schnapps. He turned back to Bart and said, ‘Please, tell me about yourself,’ and Bart said, ‘Fantastic, my favourite topic,’ and rubbed his hands together gleefully, and they both laughed, looking at each other while trying not to look at each other.
The walls were watermarked by damp with clusters of black mould in the corners, except for one wall, which was painted a shocking bright green, but only half-heartedly, with unfinished patches and the edges not yet done, as if he’d got bored of the project halfway through or run out of paint. There was a soot-blasted fire grate topped with blocks of wood and twists of newspaper, and in singeing distance, a small table and two wicker chairs. In one corner were piles of books, some mildewed along the edges. Empty wine bottles stuffed with candles dominated every surface, save for a space on the boy’s work desk, which was kept relatively clear, the woodtop stained by a constellation of ink blots. Here were signs of the boy’s artistic delusions – a box of pencils and pastels, jars filled with paintbrushes and muddy water. The bed was a mattress on top of box crates, and Bart was surprised to see it made, the blankets drawn tight around the mattress; but, ruining this, an overflowing ashtray lay on the pillow, and next to it was a tattered pamphlet of pornographic drawings. A smell of piss, eggs and tobacco smoke was in the air.
‘You live very differently to this,’ said the boy, watching Bart with an amused expression. ‘You feel disgust, I can see this.’
Bart tried to smile. ‘You’re a perceptive chap.’
‘Artists, by their very nature, are perceptive.’ He smiled ironically, as if this observation was a well-known cliché (it was) and uncorked a bottle of wine, pouring two glasses. He handed one to Bart. ‘I love my home. It is mine to do what I like with. I’m not ashamed. You should be ashamed.’
Bart laughed. ‘Me, ashamed? You really don’t know me. Let’s not talk of shame. It’s the most wasteful emotion, don’t you find?’
The boy gave Bart a look that seemed to him deliberately loaded. ‘I do.’ He drank his wine, keeping eye contact. ‘You are very trusting.’
‘I most certainly am not. That is the very opposite of what I am.’
The boy shook his head. ‘You come into my room. Perhaps there are other men here, waiting for me to bring you in. Terrible men, criminals, vagrants, and they are waiting for you, like this’ – he rubbed his hands together lasciviously – ‘Non? I showed you my money. It was a roll of money, yes? Perhaps it was a roll of scrap paper with notes on the outside.’
‘I didn’t think of that.’
The boy smiled again. ‘Lucky for you, nor did I.’
‘How did you make that money?’ Bart asked.
‘Let us not talk of money,’ said the boy, in a gloriously snobby English accent, his nose tilted in the air. ‘It is worse than shame, don’t you find?’
‘Good for you,’ said Bart, laughing.
The boy put his glass of wine on the floor and took off his middy blouse. He pulled off his striped undershirt, lifting it over his head so that his stomach tightened, his ribs shimmered and his skinny biceps flexed. He didn’t have an ounce of fat on him. His armpits sprouted the thickest, softest-looking hair, and as the boy caught the shirt collar on his chin and struggled to get free of the article, Bart stared hungrily at that hair.
Finally he was free of the shirt. Grinning bashfully (oh, those dimples) he tossed it on the chair and picked up his wine. He took Bart’s hand and brought it to his crotch. Bart felt the soft bulge – a good handful – and squeezed it until it hardened, gazing at the boy’s off-white teeth.
‘You’re very assuming,’ Bart said.
‘But I am correct in assuming.’ His lips apart, a string of pearl-white saliva between upper right fang and lower right fang.
Bart downed his drink and wrapped his arms around the boy’s neck, the empty glass dribbling out its last drops onto his back.
His name was Étienne, or so he said. Bart thought this a beautiful name, the ‘t’ like a tiny melting dagger of ice in a pool of clear water. They lay intertwined, hot and sticky, sometimes kissing, other times talking. Étienne read from a book of poetry (Rimbaud) in French and Bart listened with closed eyes, his hand on Étienne’s chest, feeling the vibration as he spoke. He hated poetry. But coming from Étienne (Eh-tee-enn), it was tolerable. They smoked cigarette after cigarette, accidentally tapping the ash onto each other’s bodies and then wiping it off with hushed apologies. They fell asleep, and though they moved around the bed in the stuffy night, they remained together, one arm draped over a shoulder, one leg thrust between the thighs of the other, a hand loosely cupping an ear.
Bart woke up first, and, staring at Étienne’s sleep-crusted eyes and wine-purpled lips, he felt a capsule of despair. His saliva tasted like cheese and a sharp stinging pain streaked up his rectum. Étienne’s genitals were plastered clammily to his thigh and a great stink of garlic sweat and stale farts rose out from their joined bodies.
But then Étienne opened his eyes and smiled.
They each washed over a bidet, using a bar of dry, shrivelled soap that had to be rubbed for ages to produce any lather, and Étienne boiled up some water for coffee over a gas camping stove. He cleared all the junk off his tiny table and they sat and drank their coffee and tore chunks of olive-dotted bread, eating it with spicy sausage and tiny, sweet tomatoes. It was simple but delicious and both ate like hogs, burping throughout. Downstairs someone was playing the piano freely and the notes tinkled out and rose through the ceiling. Bart’s spine tingled.
‘You like it here,’ said Étienne. An observation more than a question – he was often doing this.
‘Well, I won’t pretend I’m enamoured by your living conditions, but it does have a certain quality that I enjoy.’
Étienne scattered tobacco into a paper, rolled it up, burped and stuffed it in the side of his mouth. ‘You are a rich boy and this is a quaint novelty.’
‘I wouldn’t call it quaint.’ Bart pointed at the last slice of meat. ‘Are you having that?’
Étienne shook his head and lit his cigarette with a match. ‘Do you have servants at home?’
Bart nodded, chewing. ‘But not as many as we used to have. Things changed after the war.’
‘Poor thing.’
‘I know. It’s heartbreaking.’
‘How many servants?’
‘Six.’ Bart drained his coffee and lit his own cigarette. ‘That’s not that many, considering,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘It’s a big house. Not quite a country mansion or anything, but fairly big, and with a decent plot of land. When my father was alive we had a staff of twelve.’
‘Are you dressed by staff?’
‘Lord no. I dress myself. Wash myself …’ He tried to think of something else he did for himself. No. That was about it. He’d shined his own shoes once – he’d been in a terrible rush and couldn’t find the footman. ‘I’d like to drive my own car one day. Once Mother’s had the Rolls re-upholstered.’
‘You are so brave. How many people live in your house?’
‘Well, just my mother. During term time. But she entertains most evenings and always has guests staying over.’
‘Are you a kind taskmaster?’
‘No. I’m a mean bastard.’ He rubbed his leg against Étienne’s under the table. ‘I could be a kind master to you, though.’
Étienne moved his leg away. ‘Please, don’t make these jokes.’
‘Does my way of life offend you?’
‘Mais oui! But I like to make love with you, so for now I am not thinking of it. In the same way that you are not thinking about all this.’ He waved his hand to signify the room. ‘It is a compromis … uh, what is it in English? Compromise? A temporary compromise. Oui? Born of cock-love and foolish romantic notions. That is what this is.’
Bart nodded, eyeing Étienne analytically through the thick smoke. ‘We’re very honest with each other. Do you know how rare that is?’
‘It is life for me. Do you want more coffee?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Have you fucked other boys?’
‘Not like this. I’m in public school. You must have heard about English public schools. I’ve never kissed anyone. Just some wrist action under the covers at lights-out. You?’
Étienne waved a dismissive hand. ‘I have been with many men. One night only, you see? I like you though, rich boy. That is some more truth. You make me laugh. Do you like girls?’
‘I think so. You?’
‘Non. I am flaccid with girls. But breasts – I am fond of breasts. The female form is beautiful. And the vulva, c’est fascinant. Some are pretty, some are ugly, but all are fascinating.’
‘And what of cocks?’
‘Also fascinating. And arousing.’
‘I have a friend, a girl, who is very beautiful. Lovely red hair with a wave in it, like something from a Renoir, you know? Nice breasts, not too large or small. She’s a dear, dear friend too, and always up for a laugh, I’m exceedingly fond of her.’
‘Is she fond of you?’
‘Yes. I think I might marry her, if she’ll have me, and if our parents approve.’
‘Have you kissed her?’
Bart laughed. ‘God no. What a terrifying prospect. She’d slap me, I’m sure of it. No – she’d kick me. She’s a kicker.’
Étienne gave him a pitying look full of conceited wisdom. It was irritating. ‘Bart, do as I say: kiss her. Then you will know. Parfois, I have seen men or boys who are, how do I say – ugly? No, that’s not kind. But certainly they were not attractive for me. And so I have kissed these imperfect specimens, to try it, and sometimes it has been magic and we have made love with much success. Also the opposite – I’ve kissed beautiful men and felt nothing. It is important, the kiss. It tells us many things.’
‘I don’t like hearing about you making love to other men.’
Étienne shrugged.
‘Listen – you don’t know what the time is, do you? I’m going to be in a world of trouble. I was supposed to be back at the lodging yesterday evening.’
Étienne tutted. ‘Naughty boy. What will you say?’
‘I shall say that I was accosted by a sailor boy with a beautiful big cock.’
Étienne laughed. All eyelashes and dimples and fangs and loose shoulders with the sun from the window hazing his skin. ‘You flatter me. C’est très grand, oui, but also it is horrible. I have been told this. “What a hideous cock!” These words.’
‘Whomever told you such a thing is clearly a jealous cad.’
‘What will you say, truly?’
Bart picked a strand of tobacco from his tongue and wiped it on the rim of his coffee cup. ‘I might say I was attacked. Mugged. That I lay unconscious in a Parisian alleyway all night, getting pissed on by sailors and whores.’
‘I think you would enjoy that.’
Bart aimed his smoke in Étienne’s face.
‘No sign of any attack,’ said Étienne, waving the smoke away.
‘You could hit me. Bloody my lip.’
‘I am a pacifist.’
‘You weren’t last night.’
‘I have never struck a person, Bart. Only to defend my life.’
‘But I’ll be expelled. Honestly.’ He pushed out his chair and stood up, looking around the room. ‘Have you got a knife?’
‘What will you do with a knife, silly boy?’
‘Nothing too extreme. A knife, any sort of knife.’
Étienne gestured towards the kitchen knife on the table in front of him, the one they’d used to slice the sausage. ‘Only this.’
‘How do you shave?’
‘I don’t. My beard is slow to grow. My father was the same.’
‘Then how do you sharpen your pencils?’
‘With the sausage knife.’
Bart looked incredulously at the knife on the table. ‘Really? You walk the streets of Paris dressed as a sailor and you mean to tell me you don’t carry any sort of weapon?’
Étienne laced his hands under his chin and smiled sweetly. ‘My charm is my weapon.’
‘Oh for God’s sake.’ Bart picked up the knife, wiped its blade with the bottom of his shirt and went to the small cracked mirror by the bidet. ‘If this gets infected I’ll give you hell.’ He twisted his head to the side, parted his hair, took a breath, then pressed the knife-point to his scalp at a point over his ear. ‘Christ!’ He dropped the knife and clutched his head. ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’
‘You silly boy!’ said Étienne, laughing.
Bart looked in the mirror, turning his head to the side. The cut was an inch long and shallow. Blood – not enough to fill a thimble – trickled down his face. ‘It’s not enough.’
‘It is enough,’ said Étienne. He came over and examined the cut. ‘It’s getting on your collar.’
‘That’s the idea. It needs to look messy. Lots of blood, more blood, if I’m to carry this off.’
‘“Carry this awf,”’ mimicked Étienne. ‘Écoute, don’t mutilate yourself any further.’
‘It’s not convincing.’
Étienne sighed. ‘The things we do.’ He picked up the knife from the floor, and before Bart could stop him, sliced the blade across his palm, wincing with little flashes of teeth. He opened his hand: a fat red line, the blood already swelling and threatening to wobble out. He clenched his fist and held it over Bart’s ear and the blood dripped out, joining Bart’s own blood and spattering his starched white shirt. ‘I would never do this for anyone else,’ he said.
So full of shit. They barely knew each other. I would never do this for anyone else. Laughable.
Still, Bart grabbed him and kissed him fiercely, surprised to feel a pressure building up in his sinuses, as if he might cry.
*
‘Bring me the salt, please,’ said Bart. Since meeting Étienne he’d starting tacking a ‘please’ on to the end of his demands. It wasn’t like he had to – the servants were paid in money, not manners. But, well, why not? It was only a word. And a very easy word – just the one syllable.
Dottie handed him the salt-shaker and he sprinkled some over his poached eggs – the first solid food he’d braved since his illness. He was wearing a dressing gown and his mother wanted to say something about it, he could tell. He forked some eggwhite into his mouth and smiled at his mother. She was done up like some sort of Egyptian peacock, all feathers and silk cloth in an explosion of clashing colours. She’d recently hosted a ball for struggling artists and clearly their grubby bohemian ideas were rubbing off on her.
‘Nice?’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Listen, Mother,’ he said, his fork held aloft, ‘you don’t happen to know if the trousers I was wearing when I got sick were brought back with me?’
‘They were not,’ she said, stirring sugar into her tea. ‘You came back in your nightclothes.’
He looked down at the quivering milk-sheened yolks.
‘Why do you ask?’
He shook his head, mouth drawn down at the sides. ‘No reason.’
Smiling, she rolled her eyes. ‘I have your key. It was put in an envelope for you. All right?’
‘Key? Oh. Oh. That’s not what – thank you.’
‘It’s none of my business,’ she said. ‘You’re a young man.’ She sipped her tea, grimacing, and added more sugar. ‘Though I hope you’re not so reckless as to have anything in your possessions that might get you into trouble.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I am not a benefactor to your school.’
‘I know.’
She chewed on a piece of toast. ‘Dottie? Be a dear and tell Arthur to get the car ready, would you?’ She turned her attention back to Bart. ‘I’m meeting Augustus John for coffee. He wants to sell me his paintings.’
‘Is that why you’re …?’ He gestured at her outfit.
‘Yes.’ She smiled self-consciously, like an adolescent girl. ‘I thought it’d be fun.’
‘Be careful with him.’
‘I’m not daft, Bart.’ She finished her tea and got out from the table, gesturing with an aggressive wave of her hand not to get up. Another girlish smile. ‘Nothing wrong with a little flirt though.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Mother.’
‘I’m teasing, of course.’ She kissed his head on the way out, her jewellery jingle-jangling. ‘Eat your eggy-weggies!’