White boxer shorts, since you’re asking. Lovely crisp American-style ones. And he didn’t wear anything on his top half to sleep in.
I didn’t think I’d ever be able to sleep, and not just because of the snoring and farting going on all around the rest of the room. The chaotic bustle of a dozen men manoeuvring awkwardly around one another to unpack their bags and undress and then queue for their turn in the adjoining bathroom (two showers in individual cubicles, to my disappointment) had given way to a loaded silence as soon as the single main light was switched out. I turned onto my side to face Liam’s bed, and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dim light that made it into the room between the thick curtains – it was barely dark outside, for God’s sake, this was like being a little kid again. He was facing away from me, his head a dark mop half-submerged in the pillow, but it was a warm night and he had left the sheets pooling loosely down somewhere near his hips, so I could see the full curve of his bare back exposed, as white and faultless as a marble sculpture in the half light. I spent what felt like an age gazing at the shadowy void where the sheets gaped at the base of his spine, willing him to shift and let them fall further open, but the soft, barely visible swell and ebb of his upper torso suggested he had fallen into a deep sleep just as he lay, and telekinesis is sadly not among my talents. It was taking all the willpower I had not to stretch out and lay a gentle hand on the expanse of warm flesh just tantalisingly beyond my reach. I honestly think I might have been happy with just that contact. Although to lift those curled sheets and slide in beside him, every inch of his warm body against every inch of mine, and nuzzle my face deep into that soft neck and breathe in the scent of him…
I was pulled rudely back into reality as one of our roommates rose and padded to the bathroom to let rip an epic thunderstorm of wet farts. Our surroundings could scarcely be less romantic: I’d had plenty of sex in places even less salubrious than this in my time, but nonetheless, if anything was to happen between me and Liam – and please, please, it had to, or I might explode – I wanted it to be special. I pulled back the hand that had strayed idly to my crotch, wound it self-denyingly in the sheets which I drew all the way up to my chin, and squeezed my eyes firmly closed. And kept them that way for what must have been a full ten seconds before opening them again for just one more look at him lying there.
I don’t know how long it took me to eventually go to sleep that night – although I can tell you that it was long enough for Liam to change position twice, rolling first onto his back and extending one bent and tantalisingly hairy leg out from beneath the sheets, then onto his other side with one arm crooked beneath the pillow and the other plunged envy-inducingly between his sheet-tangled thighs. I must have dropped off eventually, though, because I started awake from one of those dreams where you’re about to go into an exam you haven’t studied or even read the right texts for and found myself looking at an empty bed, which prompted an even bigger rush of anxiety as I remembered just who was supposed to be in it.
I pushed myself up onto my elbows and squinted around the dormitory. It was properly dark now, and it was my senses of hearing and smell as much as sight that told me I was still surrounded by sleeping bodies on all other sides, but I was left with the impression that it had somehow been lighter a moment before, and as the sleep-fuddle cleared from my mind I realised that the main door to the room had just closed behind someone. And since Liam was the only person not where he was meant to be, it followed that he must be that someone.
Feeling a bit like Jane Eyre, I threw back the sheets and swung my feet down to the scratchy carpet-tiled floor, groping around until I found my jeans and pulling them on as I stood up and gingerly began picking my own way to the door, now just a faint rectangular outline. I stubbed my toe on a suitcase and walked into a protruding limb, its owner grunting and shifting in his sleep but thankfully not waking. Finally my outstretched hands found the lever handle on the opposite side of the door to where I was expecting, and I eased it open and slipped out onto the landing. It was marginally lighter out there, lit by those green-tinged safety-lights that are meant to keep going if the rest of the electricity blows, enough to see that there was no one in either direction and all the other doors were closed. The one opposite, I knew, was a female dormitory: if Liam had gone in there it didn’t bear thinking about – but no, a flicker of movement drew my eye to the staircase, where I could see a faint shadow descending and growing monstrously large as it approached another light in the hallway below.
I scampered along the corridor and down the stairs, making it to the turn in time to see Liam hesitating in the house’s wide hall between the doors to the lecture room and the dining hall. He had put on a black t-shirt, but was still just in his boxer shorts: even under the circumstances I couldn’t help clocking just how muscular his legs were.
‘Liam!’ I hissed, making him jump. ‘What are you doing?’
He spun round. ‘Tommy! I…I thought I heard something.’
I tiptoed down the last flight, wincing as my bare feet hit the cold tiles in the hallway. With the main lights off, the place had a strange atmosphere: not spooky exactly – too much of the original paraphernalia had been ripped out for the ghosts of the past to keep a hold on it – but slightly sinister nonetheless. It took me a second to locate what it reminded me of: I had spent a couple of years working as a hospital porter, and the house, with its institutional décor and safety lighting, had the same feel as the wards and corridors at night, the enforced stillness masking matters of life and death going on somewhere unseen. And the same sense that anyone caught out of bed would be in big trouble.
‘What?’
He looked at me blankly, but just at that moment, I heard it too: raised voices, a man and a woman; him angry, her sounding distressed.
‘It’s through there.’ I pointed to the dining hall.
He nodded, gesturing rather touchingly that I should stay behind him as he pushed the door open. But it was immediately obvious that the room was empty: chairs stacked upside-down on tables, the buzzing flycatcher bathing the kitchen beyond the serving hatch a bright neon blue. Liam held a finger to his lips, and we stood poised just inside the entrance for a moment, listening to nothing but silence.
‘That’s weird,’ he started to say – and at that moment a door on the other side of the dining hall was thrown open, and a woman erupted from it, head down, rushing towards us, or rather the doorway we were blocking. For a fraction of a second in the brightly-lit room beyond I caught a glimpse of Healy, his bald bullet head unmistakeable, in shirtsleeves now and with a pair of braces hanging down loose, and then he reached out to slam the door and the woman stumbled right into us, sobbing, and pushed her way through into the hallway beyond.
‘Hey, stop,’ said Liam, but the velocity that had got her this far was already running down, and she made it only as far as the stairs before twisting and sinking to sit on the second step, her hands pressed to her face, long hair hanging down like a veil in front of her misery. She was wearing a long dress with cartoonish flowers stitched to the front of it. One of them was torn, its lacy petal fringe hanging down from her left breast.
It was my turn to put out a hand to halt Liam: somehow I felt I might be better at this. ‘What’s happened, love?’ I said as gently as I could, moving cautiously towards her. She just shook her head, her shoulders shuddering as the sobs burst out of her. Steadying myself on the newel post, I squatted down so we were on the same level, taking care not to loom in too close. I wished I had more clothes on. ‘Can we help?’
‘No,’ she managed to gasp, shielding her eyes with her hand. ‘Please, please just go away.’
I looked over my shoulder at Liam. He shrugged helplessly.
‘Is there someone you’d like us to get? A friend? Upstairs?’
Suddenly panicked, she looked up with wild eyes. ‘No! Please! I don’t want anyone to know!’
‘OK, OK, don’t worry.’ She had returned her face to her hands, pulling her feet up onto the first step so she was almost in a foetal position. The brief glimpse I had got of her face, however, had disturbed me: she looked incredibly young.
‘It’s fine. Don’t worry, it’s our first time here; we don’t know anyone anyway. What’s your name?’
I couldn’t hear her the first time, and had to ask her to repeat it. ‘Sarah.’
‘OK, Sarah. Was he – was Healy trying to get you to do something with him in there?’
It was pretty obvious he had been. Dresses don’t rip themselves. But she was shaking her head vehemently. ‘No. No. I’m just being stupid.’
‘You’re not being stupid. Not at all. Oh – thanks – here.’ Liam had quietly gone to the toilets and fetched a handful of loo roll, which she accepted gratefully and pressed to her eyes. Her breathing was gradually becoming less ragged. But I couldn’t get over how young she looked – she was a teenager at most. Healy must be in his sixties at the very least. Another dirty old man pushing his power. I’d met plenty of Healys when I was working the Dilly: men who thought their money, or age, or respectability, or political importance bought them the right to do whatever they wanted with you. To you.
‘You haven’t done anything wrong,’ I assured her. ‘It’s him who’s bang out of order.’ I straightened up and looked at Liam, a sudden rush of fury surging through me. ‘I’m going in there to have a word with him.’
‘No, please!’ Sarah gasped, rising and grabbing my arm to stop me as I set off back through the empty dining hall. ‘You can’t go in there; it’s the leader’s private quarters!’
‘I don’t care if it’s Buckingham bloody Palace, he hasn’t got the right to behave like that!’ I wasn’t bothering to lower my voice any more: better to wake the whole place up and show them how their precious leader behaved behind closed doors.
‘No! Please! I don’t want anyone else to know! Please!’
She was clearly desperate. And she had the right not to be humiliated in front of her friends, bunch of weirdos though they appeared to be. ‘All right.’ I turned and held my hands up, and she sank gratefully back onto the steps. ‘But promise me you’ll talk to someone about this.’ I couldn’t think who would be most appropriate. She really did look young. ‘Maybe your mum and dad?’
She shook her head desperately, pressing the sodden wad of tissue to her mouth. ‘I can’t. They’re party members. They’ve known him for years. They’d be so ashamed.’
‘They’d be ashamed?’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘Listen, Sarah, the only person who should be ashamed is him. He’s the one that took advantage–’
She wouldn’t, couldn’t listen. ‘No, I – I must have got it wrong. Please. I just want to go to bed now. Please.’
I looked at Liam again. He gave a helpless shrug.
‘OK. We’ll take you up.’
‘No.’ She stood up hurriedly. ‘I don’t want anyone thinking – I’ll be OK. It’s fine. Thank you.’ And before we could move, let alone assure her she had nothing to fear from our company, she was off up the stairs. We both listened to the sound of her sniffing fade away up the corridor above us, and a door opening and softly shutting.
‘Bloody hell,’ Liam said finally.
‘Jesus Christ.’ I couldn’t remember when I’d last felt so angry, or so useless. ‘How old do you think she is?’
‘Sixteen? Seventeen?’ He shook his head sorrowfully.
‘And him!’ I gestured furiously through the dining hall wall at the leader’s lair.
‘He’s a monster.’
‘No he’s not; he’s a man,’ I said bitterly.
‘Are you OK?’ He could see I was shaking, but maybe he thought it was from fear rather than rage.
‘Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just’ – I gestured around us, at the house with its soul ripped out – ‘this place.’ But it wasn’t just this place, it was everywhere. Only these days I allowed myself to forget it sometimes.
‘Hey,’ he said sharply. ‘You did good, Tommy. With Sarah. Looking after her.’
I was about to protest – doing good would have felt more like actually doing something – but he stepped forward and wrapped me up in a hug. ‘You did good,’ he repeated, close to my ear. And squeezed.
It was the closest contact we’d ever had – the close contact I’d been craving ever since I first set eyes on him. Our bodies pressed together in the cold hallway, me topless in just my jeans, him in his pants and t-shirt. But I can honestly say I’ve never felt less sexy.