2025-07-15, 07:45 PM
“Oh my God,” Barry exclaimed, as he watched the new boy mince across the yard and into the school entrance, “I don’t believe it.”
“Did you see what he was wearing?” Grant asked, not certain he could believe his eyes. Nobody, but nobody could be that stupid; everybody knew how Barry felt about queers after one of them had made a pass at him. And everybody knew that Barry was the boss around here.
“Yes, a fucking Gay Rainbow badge. He’s going to get it. This is going to be fun.”
“Careful Barry, you’re on your last warning about bullying.”
“I know, but I’m not putting up with queers around here. We’ll have to take him off school premises. Paul, find out where he lives.” The fourteen-year-old, the youngest of the Q boys, nodded, wondering why Barry always picked him for that sort of job.
Barry continued, “Pretend to make friends with him. Sit at the same table at dinner.” Paul Parks just nodded; there was no way he wanted to be anywhere near that fucking queer, but there was no way he was going to upset Barry. That was one thing you did not do, not if you wanted to survive in this school — especially not if you wanted to be one of the Q boys.
The object of their attention, one Paul Samuel Richardson (who preferred to be known as Sammy), was well aware that he was being observed. So, tossing his long blond hair back with a flick of his head he proceeded to mince his way on into the school. As he entered, he watched with some care the group of five lads lounging by the gate. He knew who they were — or at least who three of them were: Barry Goldmeister, the seventeen-year-old bully who ruled the Q boys and the school. It was said that even the teachers were scared of him, or of his father, Jacob Goldmeister, a big wig in the local community who was also a school governor, as well as a heavyweight on the local Council. Next to Barry was his younger bother, fifteen-year-old Ruben Goldmeister. Sammy suspected that Ruben would rather be elsewhere but did not really have any choice. Then there was Grant Thompson, also seventeen, a black stud who thought he was a gift to any girl around. Well, if that was what the girls wanted, Sammy thought, they could have it. He was not impressed; the bulging muscles were more the work of the needle than the gym.
Sammy was not sure who the two younger boys were; no doubt they were new acolytes worshipping at the altar of Barry’s toughness. He suspected, though, that he would find out soon enough.
“Boy! You there!” an authoritative voice sounded out. Sammy turned, and saw an obviously irate teacher coming towards him.
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Richardson, Sir, Paul Samuel Richardson.”
“Well Richardson, you’re new at Leyton Magna High, I take it?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Didn’t you read the dress code?”
“Of course I did, Sir; I read it very carefully,” Sammy replied, a faint smile starting to cross his lips.
Mr Buntage, the head of sixth form, who was on hall monitor duty that morning, began to feel uneasy. After thirty years of teaching you tend to get a sixth sense for those times when you come up against a student who knows the game better than you do — especially when it is one who is prepared to play it, and play it hard.
“The code requires ‘black trousers and white shirt’. You do not appear to be wearing either.”
“Oh, but I am, Sir.” Sammy stopped, and stood dead still. “The trousers are black iridescent silk.” Now that the boy (and the cloth of the trousers) had stopped moving, Mr Buntage could see that they were indeed black and not the vivid colours they had appeared to be as the boy had been swishing along the corridor. ‘Swishing’ was the only way his movements could be described. It was the sort of movement that would attract attention — and not a nice sort of attention.
“I suppose you are going to tell me that you’re also wearing a shirt, and not a blouse?”
“Of course, Sir, it’s Sea Island cotton, as Ian Fleming had James Bond wear. Of course, Bond had them tightly tailored; I prefer a much looser fit, but it still buttons up as a shirt, not a blouse. Also, Sir, I would point out that it is white.”
“And what about that?” Buntage asked, pointing to the flowing tie-dyed silk scarf around the boy’s neck.
“Section 23 of the dress code specifically states that scarves may be worn, provided they are not in the colours of a sporting team or club. I think, Sir, you will find that no sporting team or club has adopted these colours.”
On that point Buntage had to concede that the boy was almost certainly right. No club or team would ever dare adopt a scarf like that.
“You know, boy, something makes me think that outfit is deliberate, and you are wearing it with a very specific intent.”
“Of course, Sir.” Sammy glanced over his shoulder at the group of boys loitering just outside the gates. “I am always quite deliberate about my actions; one never knows where they might lead.”
Buntage noted the glance, and who was on the receiving end of it. There was something about this boy he could not quite fathom, but he sensed that there might be some interesting surprises coming if Sammy stayed around.
“Well, you had better get to the office and check in. They’ll give you your class assignments.”
“Oh, I already have those, Sir, I checked in at quarter past eight; just popped back out to make sure I was seen. I believe I have you for advanced maths first period.” He turned and casually sauntered off down the corridor.
Buntage stood in the hall, thoughtfully reviewing the encounter with Sammy. Every now and then somebody arrives in a school and has a massive impact on it. That impact may be for the better or the worse, but it will be real, and Buntage was certain that Paul Samuel Richardson was one of those people. After a few minutes he decided to slip down to the office and have a chat with Mrs Blain, the school secretary. She always knew what was going on.
* * * * *
“The Richardson boy,” she explained, “the family moved her last Christmas, but he stayed at his old school in High Down till he had finished his exams. I believe he stayed with friends during the week, and only came home at weekends, moved here at the start of the summer holidays. I’m rather surprised we’ve got him here actually, he already has his A-levels for university, and if he had wanted a couple of extra subjects he could have gone to Leytonford College.”
“He’s got his A-levels?”[/url]
“Yes,” Mrs Blain replied, “Damned good ones too: A in English Literature, German and Physics and B in Higher Maths. His GCSE’s[url=https://awesomedude.org/nigel_gordon/bashing-a-queer/bashing-a-queer.htm#fn2][ii] are impressive considering he took them at fourteen. A in all subjects, including Japanese.”
“What the fuck is he doing here, then? He should be at Cambridge!”
“I think the Head asked the same question when he interviewed the family. Apparently the boy wanted Manchester University for its science and technology department, but the offer from them required an A in maths. He had offers of places at Cambridge and Oxford, but decided to take an extra year to get his maths up so he could get into Manchester.”
“It doesn’t ring true,” Buntage commented, scanning through the boy’s file, “I know Donaldson, one of the admission tutors at Manchester University. He would have swung Heaven and Hell to admit a boy with these grades at his age.” He paused and glanced down at the papers. “What the heck, he took the maths paper in hospital, and still got a B?”
“Yes, remember that food poisoning outbreak at Crayfield earlier this year? The family told the Head that he was one of those hospitalised. They had been at the Crayfield Arms for his 16th birthday party. If you remember, young Warston was taken ill at the same event.”
Suddenly Buntage had an inkling of what was happening; a vague suspicion, yet one which made sense. A new boy, who clearly had better alternatives, had enrolled in this school’s sixth form; a boy who, apparently, spoke Japanese very well, and who had some connection with Tim Warston. The teacher quickly looked at the back of the file of papers where the new boy’s interests were noted, read them and smiled.
He closed the file and returned it to Mrs Blain. “It looks as if we are going to have an interesting term.”
With that, Mr Buntage left the office and slowly walked along the corridor to his first class. As he did so the first bell sounded. He looked out at the gate to see Barry Goldmeister and his cohort saunter into school, bathing in the appreciation of the group of girls who always fluttered around them.
“Yes,” Buntage thought, “if my guess is right we are going to have some interesting times.”
* * * * *
The move from High Down to Leyton Magna had not been planned. In fact Sammy’s mother had firmly stated, when they moved from East Grinstead to High Down five years before, that she was fed up with packing and unpacking, and that was their Last Move. To be fair, she probably had good cause. They had already lived in five different towns that Sammy could remember, and he was only eleven at the time. However, his father had been promoted in the company and that meant that he was working at head office; High Down looked as if it was going to be a long term base for the family, at least until Sammy and his sister were off to University. In her case that would not be long, since she was seven years his senior.
In fact, everybody seemed content to stay in High Down, and they had even been talking about extending the house when Sammy’s great-aunt died and left the Dowager House and its adjoining land and properties in Leyton Magna to her favourite nephew, Sammy’s dad. At first the family had considered selling the House, but then they realised that it had everything they wanted in a home, including a couple of annexes that the children could have as their own flats when they needed them. There was also the fact that in order to sell it they would have to undo the trust that owned the property, and that would cause a massive tax hit. Moreover, selling the High Down house, even in the prevailing depressed property market, would give them a quite nice tax-free capital gain.
Of course, when they had put the house up for sale they expected it would take several months before they got a buyer and probably that long again before completion; the winter was never a good time to sell a house. They never expected to have somebody come along and offer ten percent over the asking price, subject to completion in four weeks. It was too good an offer to turn down, so the family moved to the Dowager House.
It did, of course, present a problem with Sammy’s schooling. Although he was only fifteen (his sixteenth birthday was towards the end of May, actually two days before his Maths exam), he was already doing A-levels. He was currently taking two, having completed German and Physics the previous year. For Sammy those subjects were a doodle. His mother was half German, and he had spent most summer holidays with his German grandparents from the age of three until he was eleven. Both his parents were physicists; his father a researcher in the aerospace industry, his mother a senior tutor at the local university. So, with German and Physics under his belt he had only English Lit and Maths to contend with and he didn’t expect any problems.
There had been no question of Sammy’s changing schools so close to his exams so it had been agreed that he would see out the year at High Down Comprehensive. After that he would be off to university. His mother had said she could drop him off each morning on her way to work since it was only a mile or two out of her way, but Sammy would not hear of it. As he pointed out, most days he would be finishing at three thirty, sometimes earlier, and she did not finish till gone five. Occasionally she worked even later. There was no easy bus route to Leyton Magna so it was best if he stayed with friends during the week.
In fact, it worked out very easily. Mike, Sammy’s best friend and next door neighbour, asked his parents if Sammy could stay during the week for the two remaining school terms. They said yes, provided he was prepared to share a bedroom with Mike. The fact that Mike and Sammy had been in a sexual relationship for a couple of years made the arrangement a godsend to them. They could now be together most evenings, helping each other with revision and other matters, with the other matters taking more of the time.
Each Friday Sammy made his way to Leyton Magna to spend the weekend with his family. It was during his first weekend after the Christmas break that he made his first friend there.
The Dowager House was approached along a drive that branched off from the main driveway leading to what had once been Leyton Magna Court, demolished many years earlier and replaced with a architecturally dismal office block for the County Council. Despite the destruction of the fine Georgian manor, the Gate House still stood in what was now the grounds of the Dowager House. For some years it had been let to the Warstons, a three-generation family of six. Old Mrs Warston, known to everybody as Gran (and Flori to a few friends), her son, Arthur Warston, his wife Margaret, and their three children — Mary, Martha and Tim, with Tim being the youngest.
It was the first time Sammy had been in the Dowager House since the move. His parents and sister had actually moved in two weeks before Christmas, but Sammy had flown to Germany that weekend to visit his Grandparents and to go skiing with his cousins. After that the whole family had gone to New York for Christmas and the New Year, Sammy meeting up with them at Heathrow. The House seemed much bigger than he remembered from his occasional visits to his great-aunt.
One thing that was especially nice about the move was that he now had his own suite of rooms. His father had said that, rather than waste time in moving him around once he was at university, he might as well move straight into the Stable Annex rooms. So it was that he had a bedroom with en suite shower room, a lounge, and a small kitchen on the first floor[iii] of what had once been the Dowager House’s stable block. Mary, Sammy’s sister, who was already at University, had a similar set up on the ground floor.
The Stable Annex was connected to the main house via a glass-roofed passageway. Sammy surmised that it had once been an open alley for servants to scuttle along, but had been roofed over when the Annex conversion was done. It led to the scullery behind the kitchen. That was rather convenient, for the kitchen in the Annex was just about big enough to cook a slice of toast.
Somewhat to his frustration, when he arrived at the Dowager House Sammy found there was no broadband service; even worse, there was no internet access at all. There was no 3G signal out at the Estate, even the 2G was so weak that anything beyond texting was out of the question. For some reason which Sammy found completely unfathomable, his parents seemed to think that this would be a good thing, at least in the short term. It did mean that Sammy’s plans for the weekend were completely out of the window, so by midday on the Saturday, once he had finished his assignments he was at a loose end.
With nothing else to do, Sammy decided to walk around the wood that was part of the Dowager House grounds. It was a mixed woodland, about fifty-fifty deciduous and conifers, the latter lining the driveway down to the gate. He found a path that roughly followed the drive but about thirty feet into the wood; the path seemed to go straight whilst the drive took a big sweeping curve.
He had walked what he thought was about halfway to the gate when he heard a voice.
“Hello!”
Sammy turned, trying to pinpoint the source.
“Up here.”
Peering up into an old oak tree he saw the face of a boy who looked a year or two younger than himself.
“You must be Sammy. I’m Tim… Tim Warston. Your ma told my ma you would be here this weekend.” He dropped from the branch he had been sitting on, and landed lightly on his feet in front of Sammy, extending his hand in greeting. Sammy took it — not being able to think of anything better to do — and shook it, whilst looking into the boy’s face.
“So wat yu’r up to?”
“Just walking to the gate, something to pass the time.”
“Yeah, not much to do out ’ere this time of ’ear”, Tim replied.
Sammy nodded, not sure if he should say anything or not; in fact he was not sure of anything right then.
“Cum’n up, I’ll show you something.” Tim turned, jumped up and grabbed a low-hanging branch of the oak, and pulled himself up. Looking down he beckoned to Sammy to follow him. Somewhat to his own surprise Sammy did.
Once up on the branch Sammy could see what had been hidden from below. Between two slightly higher limbs was a platform with a tarp roof over it. Clearly, it must have been here that Tim had been seated when Sammy walked up. Its position meant that it was all but invisible from below, and Sammy surmised that it would be totally hidden when the tree was in leaf.
Tim pulled himself up onto the platform and indicated that Sammy should join him. Then he lay belly down, looking at a tree some twenty feet away. Sammy pulled himself up and got down next to Tim.
“Look, over there.” Tim indicated an old oak on the other side of the path and about twenty feet further along.
Sammy looked but failed to see anything. “What am I looking for?”
“Just below the second branch on the right. Look at the trunk.”
Sammy did, and became aware of a small greyish-brown shape moving down the trunk. “What’s that?”
“Certhia familiaris, it’s the only bird that can go down a tree trunk head first.”
“And what is certhia familiaris?”
“I thought you were supposed to be intelligent? It’s the common treecreeper.”
“I may be intelligent, I just don’t spend my time in trees looking a birds. Exactly why are we up here?”
“Avoiding my sister.”
“Why?”
“She’s taken up knitting, and wants somebody to hold her skeins open whilst she winds them.”
That response made Sammy even more puzzled, but he decided to go along with things for the simple reason that he rather liked lying up there on the planks next to Tim Warston. In fact, given that he had nothing else in particular to do, he could not think of anything more enjoyable.
“What did you mean… that you thought I was supposed to be intelligent?”
“Ma said that you were doing A-levels and you’re three months younger than me. I’m sitting GCSE this year.” The news that Tim was older than himself gave Sammy a shock; he would have sworn he was a year or two younger. He certainly looked it.
“Doing A-levels early is not a sign of intelligence, just of being a geek.”
“Are you a geek?”
“Well, everybody at school thinks I am; at least, everybody except my friend Mike.”
“What does he think?
“He thinks I’m….” Sammy was going to say ‘sexy’ but then thought better of it. “Er… special.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you special?”
“That depends on how you define special. All right, I’m two years ahead of my age group at school, and I do things that most boys my age don’t, but I don’t think that makes me special. Different, yes, but not special. To be special you have to be able to do something others can’t do. Everybody — or at least most people — could do what I do. It’s just that they’ve not had the background, or the interest or opportunity to do it. They probably do a lot of stuff I can’t.”
“Like what?”
“Change a bike tyre.”
“You’re joking? Anybody can do that!”
“I’m not, and I can’t. The moment I touch anything mechanical it breaks. Ask my father… he’s forbidden me to even think about mowing the lawn. He says the ride on mower he’s bought is too expensive for me to break.”
“So you’ll need somebody to mow the lawn?”
“I suppose so, but that won’t be till April.”
“Tell your old man I’ll do it… a fiver for each lawn.”
Sammy nodded and turned to smile at Tim. “You really want to do it, Tim?”
“Yeah, I could do with the cash; going to get a moped as soon as I’ve got enough saved.”
That was the start of a close friendship. Every weekend that Sammy was home he would meet up with Tim and they would spend time together. Tim showed Sammy things which — in all honesty — Sammy would never have even thought about.
Sammy would have found it hard to say exactly why the friendship developed. It could have been that Tim was outstandingly attractive, but it also could have been that (much to his surprise) he found himself interested in what Tim had to tell him and show him. With Tim he could understand things which had previously had no interest for him. Tim even managed to teach him how to mend a bike tyre.
Sammy’s bike had been sitting in the garage awaiting repair since they moved, and had sat even longer in the garage at their old place. Once they had mended the tyre, the two boys started cycling around the area. During the half-term in May they cycled all the way out to Silbury Hill and then, in blazing sunshine, climbed it. It was two rather exhausted boys who collapsed on the side of the hill to lie in the sun and enjoy a break from all the exercise. Tim lay on his back watching a buzzard circling over the nearby road. Sammy lay on his side watching Tim.
“Sammy, can I ask you something personal?”
“Why do you have to ask? You’ve never bothered before, and some of your questions have been dead personal.”
“Well this one is a bit more personal than those. Are you gay?”
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s the way you look at me sometimes; also, I’ve seen you looking at men, like that road worker we passed on the way here. You nearly missed the bend because you were looking back at him.”
“Well you have to admit he had quite a body.”
“Yes, if you like that sort of thing… and I think you do.”
“Yes, I do, I think I am gay.”
“Only think?” asked Tim.
“Well, I’m fairly certain, but not absolutely sure. A friend at school and I have been messing around with each other for the last couple of years. We’ve had some great sex, but he says he’s growing out of it; he’s getting interested in girls, and doesn’t want to do it so much now.”
“I can understand that. One moment they are a pain in the neck, and then you turn around and they are the most important thing on earth.”
“I take it, then, that you’re not gay?”
“No. Sometimes when I see you I wish I was, but I’m not.”
“Why would you wish you were gay?”
“Sometimes when you look at me I see something that suggests that there could be so much more for us if I was gay. I even considered trying it again with you, but then I realised it would be unfair on both of us. I’d be faking it to you, and to myself.”
“You said ‘again’. So… you have tried it?”
“Yes, got into playing around with my cousin. Things got rather serious, and he said he was in love with me. Then we both discovered girls.”
“Shit, I’m a year or so too late!”
“Only six months, actually.”
“You don’t have to rub it in!”
“Sorry.” Tim leaned over and kissed Sammy on the forehead. “Does that make up for it?”
“I suppose it will have to as I can’t have anything more.”
“I didn’t say that; just… I can’t give you the relationship which you are after. If you want a bit of mutual release sometimes I am sure we can sort something out. After all, I’m going to need it as I don’t get any from Jenny.”
“Jenny? Who’s Jenny?”
“Girl from school. We’ve been out together a few times, but can only do it midweek as she is from Lower Ambyford and there are no buses coming this way at the weekend, they only run into Leytonford, then only up till four.”
“Big breasted, with long red hair, no doubt.”
“No! She’s got no breasts — or at least none that show — and her hair is cut short, schoolboy style, and it’s black.”
“Sure you’re not gay, Tim? That sounds more like a boy than a girl.” Tim grabbed an empty bottle and threw it at Sammy, who had to duck to avoid being hit.
Tim glanced at his watch. “Shits, we better get a move on. Ma will murder me if I’m not back to do the paper round.”
Strangely enough, Sammy found that the fact that Tim was not gay actually made things easier between them. Although Tim had suggested that there could be something sexual occasionally, neither had any inclination to follow up on it. Sammy in particular felt that to do so would be wrong. Somehow he sensed that, no matter what Tim had hinted at, any physical involvement between them would endanger what they had. Sammy did not want to risk that, for he sensed that in Tim he had found somebody who would be a good friend — but just a friend, even if he had at one time wished for more.
Although they rarely spoke about their schools, Sammy got the feeling that Tim was not happy at his. Oh, he liked to read and to study, and Sammy spent many an hour explaining something mathematical or scientific to him. He also helped Tim with English and German. Nevertheless, Sammy felt that there was something wrong for Tim at school.
One weekend Sammy was up in the Old Hay Meadow practising a bo[iv] kata[v]. Although part of the Dowager House land, the Meadow was some way from the house and cut off from it by the wood. It was, however, one of the few spaces where Sammy could practice with an eight-foot staff of Japanese oak without any chance of hitting or catching something. Although the lawns around the Dowager House were extensive, they were also filled with statues, ornamental plantings and other items that his great-aunt’s family had acquired over the preceding three hundred years, which made them less than ideal for swinging eight-foot staffs around.
Tim sat at the edge of the Meadow — in fact now more a clearing at the edge of the wood than a meadow — and watched. There was something peaceful about watching Sammy go through the sequence of moves in the kata, it was more like some form of dance than an aikido training method. Although Tim knew that it was a fighting exercise, he also understood it was a form of meditation. Just looking at Sammy’s face as he moved, Tim could see that he was totally lost in another world. Tim wished that he could be, too.
Sammy finished the sequence of moves and looked over at Tim, who seemed dejected. He also noticed that there was a bruise on the back of Tim’s wrist. Sammy moved over and sat down next to him.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“Come off it Tim, you’re as miserable as last week’s Sunday paper left out in the rain, and that bruise is saying something has happened. What is it?”
“I’d rather not talk about it, can’t we do something else? Can you teach me how to fight?”
Sammy leaned over and took hold of Tim’s shoulders and gently turned him so they were facing one another.
“Tim, why the hell do you want to learn to fight? You always told me you hated fighting.”
“I do, but sometimes it seems like the only way.”
“All right, something has gone seriously wrong and you better tell me about it. You don’t really have any choice.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you don’t I’ll phone Jenny, then get Mother to go over and pick her up so that we can both nag you.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Wanna bet?”
“You would.”
“Of course I would, so cough up. What’s wrong?”
Tim looked for a moment as if he was about to cry. Sammy was ready to pull him into a hug when Tim took a deep breath.
“Alright, I’ll tell you but you’re not to say anything whilst I do.”
“OK,” Sammy nodded his agreement.
Tim was quiet for a moment, building up the courage to say what he did not want to say, even though he knew he really had to confide in his friend.
“Look Sammy, you know I have not been happy at school this year.”
Sammy nodded.
“Well, Barry Goldmeister and his gang have been picking on me. I may be one of the oldest boys in the class but I am certainly the smallest. Barry keeps calling me queer and gay. Him and his mates have been bumping into me in the corridor, and pushing doors closed in my face.
“Over this last term it has been getting worse. Barry’s even made comments about Jenny, saying the only reason I’m with her is because she looks like a boy.
“I had a free period yesterday and had to go to the bogs.[vi] Barry and his mates were there. As soon as I entered I saw them and went to leave, but Grant grabbed me. He pushed my arm up behind me in a hammer lock, then pushed me down in front of Barry. Barry got his cock out and told me to suck it. Grant kept twisting my arm. I couldn’t stand it, so I sucked Barry. They were all laughing at me, and then Barry came in my mouth. After that he made me suck them all off. He said if I wasn’t gay before I definitely was after that.”
“You should have told somebody.”
“I did. I saw Buntage; he’s Assistant Principal and Sixth Form Head. Goldmeister is in the sixth form.”
“Well,” asked Sammy, “what did he do?”
“Nothing. He called them in to question them, and they all said I had gone into the bogs and propositioned them, offering to suck them off for a quid a time. Buntage told me afterwards that he believed me, but it was my word against four of them, and with no other evidence he could go no further, unless he called in the police.”
“He should have done.”
“Not so easy. If the police had believed their story I could have been in trouble. You know Social Services are already have us on the ‘at risk’ register because of that trouble with my sister a couple of years ago. We don’t want them getting involved, and if they thought I was propositioning other boys for sex in school they would.
“Also, Goldmeister’s dad is on the school’s Board of Governors. He’s OK — I’ve met him a couple of times — but he thinks the world of Barry, and thinks he can do no wrong. That’s how Barry’s got away with things so long.”
Sammy nodded, he could see the problem. Tim had told him that his older sister had got pregnant by a thirty year old man when she was fourteen. There had been a bit of a fuss about it as the man had claimed she had been prostituting herself and he thought she was sixteen. That, of course, had triggered a Social Services enquiry. He could see Tim would not want to risk there being another.
He decided to change tack. “Come on, let’s get back to the house, and I’ll get changed. Then I’ll get Mother to drive us into town; we can meet up with Jenny, and go to the flicks. I’ve got enough to get a taxi back after so we can be back before your paper round. Tomorrow I’ll start to teach you to fight, after you’ve done your papers.”
“OK, but forget the flicks. Jenny is at her gran’s this weekend. How about you start to teach me this afternoon?”
“OK then, but get a move on, this gi is starting to get uncomfortable. I need to get changed.”
As it was, their plans never came to fruition. Just after Sammy had finished his shower and changed into jeans and a tee-shirt, they heard the sound of a rather badly tuned car pulling up outside the stable block. Sammy’s sister had returned from university. Sammy rushed outside to meet her, followed by Tim.
“Hi, kiddo!” she called as she climbed out of a battered Morris Minor Traveller station wagon that had clearly seen better days about forty years before. “Give me a hand with these.” She indicated a pile of boxes, books and papers that filled the back of the vehicle.
“What’re you doing here… and where you get this?” Sammy enquired, looking with distaste at the car.
“As to your first point, I finished my exams on Thursday, and did not fancy sitting around in Sheffield for four weeks till the results go up. Barry’s gone off on an expedition to some distant and clearly uncomfortable place, so I thought I’d come home. This is Barry’s, we found it in a locked garage at a house sale. Barry got it for a few hundred. He only got it running a couple of weeks ago; when he gets back he is going to restore it.” Sammy remembered a rather gangly boyfriend that his sister had dragged home for Easter. Clearly, the relationship had progressed.
After they had all had some lunch and his sister had been grilled by his parents — on why she had come home early, why she had not warned them, and how medical school was going — the two boys spent a couple of hours helping to unload the car. It was not so much that there was a lot of stuff, more that it had simply been shoved in rather than packed. As a result they could only take out a bit at a time. They managed to get finished just before three-thirty, when Tim had to leave to go off and do his paper round.
Sammy’s sister watched as Tim cycled off down the drive. She looked at Sammy. “New boyfriend?”
“No, just a friend.”
“But you wish?”
“No way Sis, he’s far better as a friend than he would ever be as a boyfriend.”
“How come?”
“We have enough interests in common that we can share things, but we are different enough to be able to give each other space. If we were boyfriends we would find those differences would quickly start to grate and I don’t think it would last more than a few months. We would both need time to do our thing, and I am fairly certain the other would get jealous of the time being taken up. I’d give it six months at the most, if that. Friends who will last are more valuable; I think Tim is one.”
“You’ve grown up over the last six months! How are things with Mike?”
“They’re not. He’s discovered girls.”
“A bit late, but to be expected. I take it you haven’t?”
“No, Sis. I am fairly certain I’m gay: full, proper, one hundred percent queer.”
The siblings finished tidying up the stuff that had been moved into her suite of rooms, then made their way to the family lounge where they spent the next hour talking with their parents about studies, plans and the coming summer holidays. It was just before five when the phone went and Sammy’s mother answered it.
She came back into the lounge looking worried. “Sammy, did Tim plan to go anywhere before he went to do his papers?”
“No, Mam, why?”
“That was Tim’s mother. The paper shop phoned and said Tim has not turned up for his round.”
Sammy gasped then looked at his sister. “Mary, can you drive me into town? I know which way Tim went; we can look for him.”
Mary stood up, saying, “I’ll just go and get my keys.”
Her mother handed her the keys to the family car, and told her to take that.
The main road into Leytonford was to the left as one exited the driveway. Sammy told Mary to turn right, which took them first into Leyton Magna, and then, via a series of twisting country lanes, a back route into Leytonford. This was the way Tim would have ridden; it was also the route to his school, which lay on the outskirts of Leytonford.
They passed through Leyton Magna and turned off the road behind the Manor Farm into a narrow side road. They had gone about fifty yards when, just as they rounded a bend, saw Tim’s bike lying at the side of the road. Just beyond it was a huddled form which they knew was Tim.
Mary, after some basic first aid, left Sammy with Tim — who seemed to be slipping in and out of consciousness — telling him to try and make the boy comfortable, but to avoid moving him as much as possible. She then drove down into Leytonford to get a mobile signal, called the police and an ambulance, then let her mother know what they had found.
The next couple of hours were fairly hectic. Both of them had to make statements to the police, then recount everything to their parents.
It was just after eight that evening when Tim’s parents phoned from the hospital to let them know how things were.
Tim’s left arm was broken, and his right shoulder had been dislocated. He had a couple of cracked ribs and a fractured collarbone. The doctors were more concerned, though, about the possible side-effects from the concussion he had suffered, and they would keep Tim in the hospital for at least a few days. Sammy was told that Tim had regained consciousness and that, if he wanted, he could go in and visit Tim the next day.
Late that Sunday a visibly shaken Sammy stood outside the hospital waiting for his mother to drive around from the car park to pick him up.
He was way beyond upset; what Tim had told him had provoked him to anger, an emotion that Sammy was not used to. Anger, he knew, was to be avoided, but he could not help feeling furious when he heard what had happened.
Tim had been riding his bike down to the paper shop to do his round. As usual he had cut through Narrow Lane, only to find Barry Goldmeister and his gang waiting for him. They had been hiding behind the hedge at the sharp bend in the lane, and jumped out at him as he rode past. Barry, it seemed, was not happy that Tim had gone to the Assistant Principal after the incident in the toilet, and intended to teach Tim a lesson. It may be that the bully had got a bit carried away; nonetheless the ‘lesson’ put Tim in hospital.
Worse still, at least from Sammy’s point of view, was the fact that Tim had decided he was not going back to school. He would miss his last couple of exams anyway, being in hospital, and would have to re-take them next school year, but he had told Sammy that there was no way he could stand up to Barry and his bullies, so he would not return. Instead, he would go to Leytonford College and finish his schooling there.
To make matters worse, although Tim was able to name his attackers to the police, it appeared nothing could be done; all four boys had cast-iron alibis for that afternoon — all of which put them well away from the scene. Sammy thought it very convenient that all four of them had such strong alibis. Judging from the comments of the police sergeant he had spoken with, the police also found that somewhat strange. Without other evidence to support Tim’s account of events, however, they could not proceed.
What Sammy found most annoying was the feeling of helplessness that enveloped him. To make matters worse, he was not even going to be around for Tim. The following day he would be flying out to Japan with his father, and would be away for at least eight weeks. He had been looking forward to the trip but now, somehow, he wished he was not going.
* * * * *
“Did you see what he was wearing?” Grant asked, not certain he could believe his eyes. Nobody, but nobody could be that stupid; everybody knew how Barry felt about queers after one of them had made a pass at him. And everybody knew that Barry was the boss around here.
“Yes, a fucking Gay Rainbow badge. He’s going to get it. This is going to be fun.”
“Careful Barry, you’re on your last warning about bullying.”
“I know, but I’m not putting up with queers around here. We’ll have to take him off school premises. Paul, find out where he lives.” The fourteen-year-old, the youngest of the Q boys, nodded, wondering why Barry always picked him for that sort of job.
Barry continued, “Pretend to make friends with him. Sit at the same table at dinner.” Paul Parks just nodded; there was no way he wanted to be anywhere near that fucking queer, but there was no way he was going to upset Barry. That was one thing you did not do, not if you wanted to survive in this school — especially not if you wanted to be one of the Q boys.
The object of their attention, one Paul Samuel Richardson (who preferred to be known as Sammy), was well aware that he was being observed. So, tossing his long blond hair back with a flick of his head he proceeded to mince his way on into the school. As he entered, he watched with some care the group of five lads lounging by the gate. He knew who they were — or at least who three of them were: Barry Goldmeister, the seventeen-year-old bully who ruled the Q boys and the school. It was said that even the teachers were scared of him, or of his father, Jacob Goldmeister, a big wig in the local community who was also a school governor, as well as a heavyweight on the local Council. Next to Barry was his younger bother, fifteen-year-old Ruben Goldmeister. Sammy suspected that Ruben would rather be elsewhere but did not really have any choice. Then there was Grant Thompson, also seventeen, a black stud who thought he was a gift to any girl around. Well, if that was what the girls wanted, Sammy thought, they could have it. He was not impressed; the bulging muscles were more the work of the needle than the gym.
Sammy was not sure who the two younger boys were; no doubt they were new acolytes worshipping at the altar of Barry’s toughness. He suspected, though, that he would find out soon enough.
“Boy! You there!” an authoritative voice sounded out. Sammy turned, and saw an obviously irate teacher coming towards him.
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Richardson, Sir, Paul Samuel Richardson.”
“Well Richardson, you’re new at Leyton Magna High, I take it?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Didn’t you read the dress code?”
“Of course I did, Sir; I read it very carefully,” Sammy replied, a faint smile starting to cross his lips.
Mr Buntage, the head of sixth form, who was on hall monitor duty that morning, began to feel uneasy. After thirty years of teaching you tend to get a sixth sense for those times when you come up against a student who knows the game better than you do — especially when it is one who is prepared to play it, and play it hard.
“The code requires ‘black trousers and white shirt’. You do not appear to be wearing either.”
“Oh, but I am, Sir.” Sammy stopped, and stood dead still. “The trousers are black iridescent silk.” Now that the boy (and the cloth of the trousers) had stopped moving, Mr Buntage could see that they were indeed black and not the vivid colours they had appeared to be as the boy had been swishing along the corridor. ‘Swishing’ was the only way his movements could be described. It was the sort of movement that would attract attention — and not a nice sort of attention.
“I suppose you are going to tell me that you’re also wearing a shirt, and not a blouse?”
“Of course, Sir, it’s Sea Island cotton, as Ian Fleming had James Bond wear. Of course, Bond had them tightly tailored; I prefer a much looser fit, but it still buttons up as a shirt, not a blouse. Also, Sir, I would point out that it is white.”
“And what about that?” Buntage asked, pointing to the flowing tie-dyed silk scarf around the boy’s neck.
“Section 23 of the dress code specifically states that scarves may be worn, provided they are not in the colours of a sporting team or club. I think, Sir, you will find that no sporting team or club has adopted these colours.”
On that point Buntage had to concede that the boy was almost certainly right. No club or team would ever dare adopt a scarf like that.
“You know, boy, something makes me think that outfit is deliberate, and you are wearing it with a very specific intent.”
“Of course, Sir.” Sammy glanced over his shoulder at the group of boys loitering just outside the gates. “I am always quite deliberate about my actions; one never knows where they might lead.”
Buntage noted the glance, and who was on the receiving end of it. There was something about this boy he could not quite fathom, but he sensed that there might be some interesting surprises coming if Sammy stayed around.
“Well, you had better get to the office and check in. They’ll give you your class assignments.”
“Oh, I already have those, Sir, I checked in at quarter past eight; just popped back out to make sure I was seen. I believe I have you for advanced maths first period.” He turned and casually sauntered off down the corridor.
Buntage stood in the hall, thoughtfully reviewing the encounter with Sammy. Every now and then somebody arrives in a school and has a massive impact on it. That impact may be for the better or the worse, but it will be real, and Buntage was certain that Paul Samuel Richardson was one of those people. After a few minutes he decided to slip down to the office and have a chat with Mrs Blain, the school secretary. She always knew what was going on.
* * * * *
“The Richardson boy,” she explained, “the family moved her last Christmas, but he stayed at his old school in High Down till he had finished his exams. I believe he stayed with friends during the week, and only came home at weekends, moved here at the start of the summer holidays. I’m rather surprised we’ve got him here actually, he already has his A-levels for university, and if he had wanted a couple of extra subjects he could have gone to Leytonford College.”
“He’s got his A-levels?”[/url]
“Yes,” Mrs Blain replied, “Damned good ones too: A in English Literature, German and Physics and B in Higher Maths. His GCSE’s[url=https://awesomedude.org/nigel_gordon/bashing-a-queer/bashing-a-queer.htm#fn2][ii] are impressive considering he took them at fourteen. A in all subjects, including Japanese.”
“What the fuck is he doing here, then? He should be at Cambridge!”
“I think the Head asked the same question when he interviewed the family. Apparently the boy wanted Manchester University for its science and technology department, but the offer from them required an A in maths. He had offers of places at Cambridge and Oxford, but decided to take an extra year to get his maths up so he could get into Manchester.”
“It doesn’t ring true,” Buntage commented, scanning through the boy’s file, “I know Donaldson, one of the admission tutors at Manchester University. He would have swung Heaven and Hell to admit a boy with these grades at his age.” He paused and glanced down at the papers. “What the heck, he took the maths paper in hospital, and still got a B?”
“Yes, remember that food poisoning outbreak at Crayfield earlier this year? The family told the Head that he was one of those hospitalised. They had been at the Crayfield Arms for his 16th birthday party. If you remember, young Warston was taken ill at the same event.”
Suddenly Buntage had an inkling of what was happening; a vague suspicion, yet one which made sense. A new boy, who clearly had better alternatives, had enrolled in this school’s sixth form; a boy who, apparently, spoke Japanese very well, and who had some connection with Tim Warston. The teacher quickly looked at the back of the file of papers where the new boy’s interests were noted, read them and smiled.
He closed the file and returned it to Mrs Blain. “It looks as if we are going to have an interesting term.”
With that, Mr Buntage left the office and slowly walked along the corridor to his first class. As he did so the first bell sounded. He looked out at the gate to see Barry Goldmeister and his cohort saunter into school, bathing in the appreciation of the group of girls who always fluttered around them.
“Yes,” Buntage thought, “if my guess is right we are going to have some interesting times.”
* * * * *
The move from High Down to Leyton Magna had not been planned. In fact Sammy’s mother had firmly stated, when they moved from East Grinstead to High Down five years before, that she was fed up with packing and unpacking, and that was their Last Move. To be fair, she probably had good cause. They had already lived in five different towns that Sammy could remember, and he was only eleven at the time. However, his father had been promoted in the company and that meant that he was working at head office; High Down looked as if it was going to be a long term base for the family, at least until Sammy and his sister were off to University. In her case that would not be long, since she was seven years his senior.
In fact, everybody seemed content to stay in High Down, and they had even been talking about extending the house when Sammy’s great-aunt died and left the Dowager House and its adjoining land and properties in Leyton Magna to her favourite nephew, Sammy’s dad. At first the family had considered selling the House, but then they realised that it had everything they wanted in a home, including a couple of annexes that the children could have as their own flats when they needed them. There was also the fact that in order to sell it they would have to undo the trust that owned the property, and that would cause a massive tax hit. Moreover, selling the High Down house, even in the prevailing depressed property market, would give them a quite nice tax-free capital gain.
Of course, when they had put the house up for sale they expected it would take several months before they got a buyer and probably that long again before completion; the winter was never a good time to sell a house. They never expected to have somebody come along and offer ten percent over the asking price, subject to completion in four weeks. It was too good an offer to turn down, so the family moved to the Dowager House.
It did, of course, present a problem with Sammy’s schooling. Although he was only fifteen (his sixteenth birthday was towards the end of May, actually two days before his Maths exam), he was already doing A-levels. He was currently taking two, having completed German and Physics the previous year. For Sammy those subjects were a doodle. His mother was half German, and he had spent most summer holidays with his German grandparents from the age of three until he was eleven. Both his parents were physicists; his father a researcher in the aerospace industry, his mother a senior tutor at the local university. So, with German and Physics under his belt he had only English Lit and Maths to contend with and he didn’t expect any problems.
There had been no question of Sammy’s changing schools so close to his exams so it had been agreed that he would see out the year at High Down Comprehensive. After that he would be off to university. His mother had said she could drop him off each morning on her way to work since it was only a mile or two out of her way, but Sammy would not hear of it. As he pointed out, most days he would be finishing at three thirty, sometimes earlier, and she did not finish till gone five. Occasionally she worked even later. There was no easy bus route to Leyton Magna so it was best if he stayed with friends during the week.
In fact, it worked out very easily. Mike, Sammy’s best friend and next door neighbour, asked his parents if Sammy could stay during the week for the two remaining school terms. They said yes, provided he was prepared to share a bedroom with Mike. The fact that Mike and Sammy had been in a sexual relationship for a couple of years made the arrangement a godsend to them. They could now be together most evenings, helping each other with revision and other matters, with the other matters taking more of the time.
Each Friday Sammy made his way to Leyton Magna to spend the weekend with his family. It was during his first weekend after the Christmas break that he made his first friend there.
The Dowager House was approached along a drive that branched off from the main driveway leading to what had once been Leyton Magna Court, demolished many years earlier and replaced with a architecturally dismal office block for the County Council. Despite the destruction of the fine Georgian manor, the Gate House still stood in what was now the grounds of the Dowager House. For some years it had been let to the Warstons, a three-generation family of six. Old Mrs Warston, known to everybody as Gran (and Flori to a few friends), her son, Arthur Warston, his wife Margaret, and their three children — Mary, Martha and Tim, with Tim being the youngest.
It was the first time Sammy had been in the Dowager House since the move. His parents and sister had actually moved in two weeks before Christmas, but Sammy had flown to Germany that weekend to visit his Grandparents and to go skiing with his cousins. After that the whole family had gone to New York for Christmas and the New Year, Sammy meeting up with them at Heathrow. The House seemed much bigger than he remembered from his occasional visits to his great-aunt.
One thing that was especially nice about the move was that he now had his own suite of rooms. His father had said that, rather than waste time in moving him around once he was at university, he might as well move straight into the Stable Annex rooms. So it was that he had a bedroom with en suite shower room, a lounge, and a small kitchen on the first floor[iii] of what had once been the Dowager House’s stable block. Mary, Sammy’s sister, who was already at University, had a similar set up on the ground floor.
The Stable Annex was connected to the main house via a glass-roofed passageway. Sammy surmised that it had once been an open alley for servants to scuttle along, but had been roofed over when the Annex conversion was done. It led to the scullery behind the kitchen. That was rather convenient, for the kitchen in the Annex was just about big enough to cook a slice of toast.
Somewhat to his frustration, when he arrived at the Dowager House Sammy found there was no broadband service; even worse, there was no internet access at all. There was no 3G signal out at the Estate, even the 2G was so weak that anything beyond texting was out of the question. For some reason which Sammy found completely unfathomable, his parents seemed to think that this would be a good thing, at least in the short term. It did mean that Sammy’s plans for the weekend were completely out of the window, so by midday on the Saturday, once he had finished his assignments he was at a loose end.
With nothing else to do, Sammy decided to walk around the wood that was part of the Dowager House grounds. It was a mixed woodland, about fifty-fifty deciduous and conifers, the latter lining the driveway down to the gate. He found a path that roughly followed the drive but about thirty feet into the wood; the path seemed to go straight whilst the drive took a big sweeping curve.
He had walked what he thought was about halfway to the gate when he heard a voice.
“Hello!”
Sammy turned, trying to pinpoint the source.
“Up here.”
Peering up into an old oak tree he saw the face of a boy who looked a year or two younger than himself.
“You must be Sammy. I’m Tim… Tim Warston. Your ma told my ma you would be here this weekend.” He dropped from the branch he had been sitting on, and landed lightly on his feet in front of Sammy, extending his hand in greeting. Sammy took it — not being able to think of anything better to do — and shook it, whilst looking into the boy’s face.
“So wat yu’r up to?”
“Just walking to the gate, something to pass the time.”
“Yeah, not much to do out ’ere this time of ’ear”, Tim replied.
Sammy nodded, not sure if he should say anything or not; in fact he was not sure of anything right then.
“Cum’n up, I’ll show you something.” Tim turned, jumped up and grabbed a low-hanging branch of the oak, and pulled himself up. Looking down he beckoned to Sammy to follow him. Somewhat to his own surprise Sammy did.
Once up on the branch Sammy could see what had been hidden from below. Between two slightly higher limbs was a platform with a tarp roof over it. Clearly, it must have been here that Tim had been seated when Sammy walked up. Its position meant that it was all but invisible from below, and Sammy surmised that it would be totally hidden when the tree was in leaf.
Tim pulled himself up onto the platform and indicated that Sammy should join him. Then he lay belly down, looking at a tree some twenty feet away. Sammy pulled himself up and got down next to Tim.
“Look, over there.” Tim indicated an old oak on the other side of the path and about twenty feet further along.
Sammy looked but failed to see anything. “What am I looking for?”
“Just below the second branch on the right. Look at the trunk.”
Sammy did, and became aware of a small greyish-brown shape moving down the trunk. “What’s that?”
“Certhia familiaris, it’s the only bird that can go down a tree trunk head first.”
“And what is certhia familiaris?”
“I thought you were supposed to be intelligent? It’s the common treecreeper.”
“I may be intelligent, I just don’t spend my time in trees looking a birds. Exactly why are we up here?”
“Avoiding my sister.”
“Why?”
“She’s taken up knitting, and wants somebody to hold her skeins open whilst she winds them.”
That response made Sammy even more puzzled, but he decided to go along with things for the simple reason that he rather liked lying up there on the planks next to Tim Warston. In fact, given that he had nothing else in particular to do, he could not think of anything more enjoyable.
“What did you mean… that you thought I was supposed to be intelligent?”
“Ma said that you were doing A-levels and you’re three months younger than me. I’m sitting GCSE this year.” The news that Tim was older than himself gave Sammy a shock; he would have sworn he was a year or two younger. He certainly looked it.
“Doing A-levels early is not a sign of intelligence, just of being a geek.”
“Are you a geek?”
“Well, everybody at school thinks I am; at least, everybody except my friend Mike.”
“What does he think?
“He thinks I’m….” Sammy was going to say ‘sexy’ but then thought better of it. “Er… special.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you special?”
“That depends on how you define special. All right, I’m two years ahead of my age group at school, and I do things that most boys my age don’t, but I don’t think that makes me special. Different, yes, but not special. To be special you have to be able to do something others can’t do. Everybody — or at least most people — could do what I do. It’s just that they’ve not had the background, or the interest or opportunity to do it. They probably do a lot of stuff I can’t.”
“Like what?”
“Change a bike tyre.”
“You’re joking? Anybody can do that!”
“I’m not, and I can’t. The moment I touch anything mechanical it breaks. Ask my father… he’s forbidden me to even think about mowing the lawn. He says the ride on mower he’s bought is too expensive for me to break.”
“So you’ll need somebody to mow the lawn?”
“I suppose so, but that won’t be till April.”
“Tell your old man I’ll do it… a fiver for each lawn.”
Sammy nodded and turned to smile at Tim. “You really want to do it, Tim?”
“Yeah, I could do with the cash; going to get a moped as soon as I’ve got enough saved.”
That was the start of a close friendship. Every weekend that Sammy was home he would meet up with Tim and they would spend time together. Tim showed Sammy things which — in all honesty — Sammy would never have even thought about.
Sammy would have found it hard to say exactly why the friendship developed. It could have been that Tim was outstandingly attractive, but it also could have been that (much to his surprise) he found himself interested in what Tim had to tell him and show him. With Tim he could understand things which had previously had no interest for him. Tim even managed to teach him how to mend a bike tyre.
Sammy’s bike had been sitting in the garage awaiting repair since they moved, and had sat even longer in the garage at their old place. Once they had mended the tyre, the two boys started cycling around the area. During the half-term in May they cycled all the way out to Silbury Hill and then, in blazing sunshine, climbed it. It was two rather exhausted boys who collapsed on the side of the hill to lie in the sun and enjoy a break from all the exercise. Tim lay on his back watching a buzzard circling over the nearby road. Sammy lay on his side watching Tim.
“Sammy, can I ask you something personal?”
“Why do you have to ask? You’ve never bothered before, and some of your questions have been dead personal.”
“Well this one is a bit more personal than those. Are you gay?”
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s the way you look at me sometimes; also, I’ve seen you looking at men, like that road worker we passed on the way here. You nearly missed the bend because you were looking back at him.”
“Well you have to admit he had quite a body.”
“Yes, if you like that sort of thing… and I think you do.”
“Yes, I do, I think I am gay.”
“Only think?” asked Tim.
“Well, I’m fairly certain, but not absolutely sure. A friend at school and I have been messing around with each other for the last couple of years. We’ve had some great sex, but he says he’s growing out of it; he’s getting interested in girls, and doesn’t want to do it so much now.”
“I can understand that. One moment they are a pain in the neck, and then you turn around and they are the most important thing on earth.”
“I take it, then, that you’re not gay?”
“No. Sometimes when I see you I wish I was, but I’m not.”
“Why would you wish you were gay?”
“Sometimes when you look at me I see something that suggests that there could be so much more for us if I was gay. I even considered trying it again with you, but then I realised it would be unfair on both of us. I’d be faking it to you, and to myself.”
“You said ‘again’. So… you have tried it?”
“Yes, got into playing around with my cousin. Things got rather serious, and he said he was in love with me. Then we both discovered girls.”
“Shit, I’m a year or so too late!”
“Only six months, actually.”
“You don’t have to rub it in!”
“Sorry.” Tim leaned over and kissed Sammy on the forehead. “Does that make up for it?”
“I suppose it will have to as I can’t have anything more.”
“I didn’t say that; just… I can’t give you the relationship which you are after. If you want a bit of mutual release sometimes I am sure we can sort something out. After all, I’m going to need it as I don’t get any from Jenny.”
“Jenny? Who’s Jenny?”
“Girl from school. We’ve been out together a few times, but can only do it midweek as she is from Lower Ambyford and there are no buses coming this way at the weekend, they only run into Leytonford, then only up till four.”
“Big breasted, with long red hair, no doubt.”
“No! She’s got no breasts — or at least none that show — and her hair is cut short, schoolboy style, and it’s black.”
“Sure you’re not gay, Tim? That sounds more like a boy than a girl.” Tim grabbed an empty bottle and threw it at Sammy, who had to duck to avoid being hit.
Tim glanced at his watch. “Shits, we better get a move on. Ma will murder me if I’m not back to do the paper round.”
Strangely enough, Sammy found that the fact that Tim was not gay actually made things easier between them. Although Tim had suggested that there could be something sexual occasionally, neither had any inclination to follow up on it. Sammy in particular felt that to do so would be wrong. Somehow he sensed that, no matter what Tim had hinted at, any physical involvement between them would endanger what they had. Sammy did not want to risk that, for he sensed that in Tim he had found somebody who would be a good friend — but just a friend, even if he had at one time wished for more.
Although they rarely spoke about their schools, Sammy got the feeling that Tim was not happy at his. Oh, he liked to read and to study, and Sammy spent many an hour explaining something mathematical or scientific to him. He also helped Tim with English and German. Nevertheless, Sammy felt that there was something wrong for Tim at school.
One weekend Sammy was up in the Old Hay Meadow practising a bo[iv] kata[v]. Although part of the Dowager House land, the Meadow was some way from the house and cut off from it by the wood. It was, however, one of the few spaces where Sammy could practice with an eight-foot staff of Japanese oak without any chance of hitting or catching something. Although the lawns around the Dowager House were extensive, they were also filled with statues, ornamental plantings and other items that his great-aunt’s family had acquired over the preceding three hundred years, which made them less than ideal for swinging eight-foot staffs around.
Tim sat at the edge of the Meadow — in fact now more a clearing at the edge of the wood than a meadow — and watched. There was something peaceful about watching Sammy go through the sequence of moves in the kata, it was more like some form of dance than an aikido training method. Although Tim knew that it was a fighting exercise, he also understood it was a form of meditation. Just looking at Sammy’s face as he moved, Tim could see that he was totally lost in another world. Tim wished that he could be, too.
Sammy finished the sequence of moves and looked over at Tim, who seemed dejected. He also noticed that there was a bruise on the back of Tim’s wrist. Sammy moved over and sat down next to him.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“Come off it Tim, you’re as miserable as last week’s Sunday paper left out in the rain, and that bruise is saying something has happened. What is it?”
“I’d rather not talk about it, can’t we do something else? Can you teach me how to fight?”
Sammy leaned over and took hold of Tim’s shoulders and gently turned him so they were facing one another.
“Tim, why the hell do you want to learn to fight? You always told me you hated fighting.”
“I do, but sometimes it seems like the only way.”
“All right, something has gone seriously wrong and you better tell me about it. You don’t really have any choice.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you don’t I’ll phone Jenny, then get Mother to go over and pick her up so that we can both nag you.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Wanna bet?”
“You would.”
“Of course I would, so cough up. What’s wrong?”
Tim looked for a moment as if he was about to cry. Sammy was ready to pull him into a hug when Tim took a deep breath.
“Alright, I’ll tell you but you’re not to say anything whilst I do.”
“OK,” Sammy nodded his agreement.
Tim was quiet for a moment, building up the courage to say what he did not want to say, even though he knew he really had to confide in his friend.
“Look Sammy, you know I have not been happy at school this year.”
Sammy nodded.
“Well, Barry Goldmeister and his gang have been picking on me. I may be one of the oldest boys in the class but I am certainly the smallest. Barry keeps calling me queer and gay. Him and his mates have been bumping into me in the corridor, and pushing doors closed in my face.
“Over this last term it has been getting worse. Barry’s even made comments about Jenny, saying the only reason I’m with her is because she looks like a boy.
“I had a free period yesterday and had to go to the bogs.[vi] Barry and his mates were there. As soon as I entered I saw them and went to leave, but Grant grabbed me. He pushed my arm up behind me in a hammer lock, then pushed me down in front of Barry. Barry got his cock out and told me to suck it. Grant kept twisting my arm. I couldn’t stand it, so I sucked Barry. They were all laughing at me, and then Barry came in my mouth. After that he made me suck them all off. He said if I wasn’t gay before I definitely was after that.”
“You should have told somebody.”
“I did. I saw Buntage; he’s Assistant Principal and Sixth Form Head. Goldmeister is in the sixth form.”
“Well,” asked Sammy, “what did he do?”
“Nothing. He called them in to question them, and they all said I had gone into the bogs and propositioned them, offering to suck them off for a quid a time. Buntage told me afterwards that he believed me, but it was my word against four of them, and with no other evidence he could go no further, unless he called in the police.”
“He should have done.”
“Not so easy. If the police had believed their story I could have been in trouble. You know Social Services are already have us on the ‘at risk’ register because of that trouble with my sister a couple of years ago. We don’t want them getting involved, and if they thought I was propositioning other boys for sex in school they would.
“Also, Goldmeister’s dad is on the school’s Board of Governors. He’s OK — I’ve met him a couple of times — but he thinks the world of Barry, and thinks he can do no wrong. That’s how Barry’s got away with things so long.”
Sammy nodded, he could see the problem. Tim had told him that his older sister had got pregnant by a thirty year old man when she was fourteen. There had been a bit of a fuss about it as the man had claimed she had been prostituting herself and he thought she was sixteen. That, of course, had triggered a Social Services enquiry. He could see Tim would not want to risk there being another.
He decided to change tack. “Come on, let’s get back to the house, and I’ll get changed. Then I’ll get Mother to drive us into town; we can meet up with Jenny, and go to the flicks. I’ve got enough to get a taxi back after so we can be back before your paper round. Tomorrow I’ll start to teach you to fight, after you’ve done your papers.”
“OK, but forget the flicks. Jenny is at her gran’s this weekend. How about you start to teach me this afternoon?”
“OK then, but get a move on, this gi is starting to get uncomfortable. I need to get changed.”
As it was, their plans never came to fruition. Just after Sammy had finished his shower and changed into jeans and a tee-shirt, they heard the sound of a rather badly tuned car pulling up outside the stable block. Sammy’s sister had returned from university. Sammy rushed outside to meet her, followed by Tim.
“Hi, kiddo!” she called as she climbed out of a battered Morris Minor Traveller station wagon that had clearly seen better days about forty years before. “Give me a hand with these.” She indicated a pile of boxes, books and papers that filled the back of the vehicle.
“What’re you doing here… and where you get this?” Sammy enquired, looking with distaste at the car.
“As to your first point, I finished my exams on Thursday, and did not fancy sitting around in Sheffield for four weeks till the results go up. Barry’s gone off on an expedition to some distant and clearly uncomfortable place, so I thought I’d come home. This is Barry’s, we found it in a locked garage at a house sale. Barry got it for a few hundred. He only got it running a couple of weeks ago; when he gets back he is going to restore it.” Sammy remembered a rather gangly boyfriend that his sister had dragged home for Easter. Clearly, the relationship had progressed.
After they had all had some lunch and his sister had been grilled by his parents — on why she had come home early, why she had not warned them, and how medical school was going — the two boys spent a couple of hours helping to unload the car. It was not so much that there was a lot of stuff, more that it had simply been shoved in rather than packed. As a result they could only take out a bit at a time. They managed to get finished just before three-thirty, when Tim had to leave to go off and do his paper round.
Sammy’s sister watched as Tim cycled off down the drive. She looked at Sammy. “New boyfriend?”
“No, just a friend.”
“But you wish?”
“No way Sis, he’s far better as a friend than he would ever be as a boyfriend.”
“How come?”
“We have enough interests in common that we can share things, but we are different enough to be able to give each other space. If we were boyfriends we would find those differences would quickly start to grate and I don’t think it would last more than a few months. We would both need time to do our thing, and I am fairly certain the other would get jealous of the time being taken up. I’d give it six months at the most, if that. Friends who will last are more valuable; I think Tim is one.”
“You’ve grown up over the last six months! How are things with Mike?”
“They’re not. He’s discovered girls.”
“A bit late, but to be expected. I take it you haven’t?”
“No, Sis. I am fairly certain I’m gay: full, proper, one hundred percent queer.”
The siblings finished tidying up the stuff that had been moved into her suite of rooms, then made their way to the family lounge where they spent the next hour talking with their parents about studies, plans and the coming summer holidays. It was just before five when the phone went and Sammy’s mother answered it.
She came back into the lounge looking worried. “Sammy, did Tim plan to go anywhere before he went to do his papers?”
“No, Mam, why?”
“That was Tim’s mother. The paper shop phoned and said Tim has not turned up for his round.”
Sammy gasped then looked at his sister. “Mary, can you drive me into town? I know which way Tim went; we can look for him.”
Mary stood up, saying, “I’ll just go and get my keys.”
Her mother handed her the keys to the family car, and told her to take that.
The main road into Leytonford was to the left as one exited the driveway. Sammy told Mary to turn right, which took them first into Leyton Magna, and then, via a series of twisting country lanes, a back route into Leytonford. This was the way Tim would have ridden; it was also the route to his school, which lay on the outskirts of Leytonford.
They passed through Leyton Magna and turned off the road behind the Manor Farm into a narrow side road. They had gone about fifty yards when, just as they rounded a bend, saw Tim’s bike lying at the side of the road. Just beyond it was a huddled form which they knew was Tim.
Mary, after some basic first aid, left Sammy with Tim — who seemed to be slipping in and out of consciousness — telling him to try and make the boy comfortable, but to avoid moving him as much as possible. She then drove down into Leytonford to get a mobile signal, called the police and an ambulance, then let her mother know what they had found.
The next couple of hours were fairly hectic. Both of them had to make statements to the police, then recount everything to their parents.
It was just after eight that evening when Tim’s parents phoned from the hospital to let them know how things were.
Tim’s left arm was broken, and his right shoulder had been dislocated. He had a couple of cracked ribs and a fractured collarbone. The doctors were more concerned, though, about the possible side-effects from the concussion he had suffered, and they would keep Tim in the hospital for at least a few days. Sammy was told that Tim had regained consciousness and that, if he wanted, he could go in and visit Tim the next day.
Late that Sunday a visibly shaken Sammy stood outside the hospital waiting for his mother to drive around from the car park to pick him up.
He was way beyond upset; what Tim had told him had provoked him to anger, an emotion that Sammy was not used to. Anger, he knew, was to be avoided, but he could not help feeling furious when he heard what had happened.
Tim had been riding his bike down to the paper shop to do his round. As usual he had cut through Narrow Lane, only to find Barry Goldmeister and his gang waiting for him. They had been hiding behind the hedge at the sharp bend in the lane, and jumped out at him as he rode past. Barry, it seemed, was not happy that Tim had gone to the Assistant Principal after the incident in the toilet, and intended to teach Tim a lesson. It may be that the bully had got a bit carried away; nonetheless the ‘lesson’ put Tim in hospital.
Worse still, at least from Sammy’s point of view, was the fact that Tim had decided he was not going back to school. He would miss his last couple of exams anyway, being in hospital, and would have to re-take them next school year, but he had told Sammy that there was no way he could stand up to Barry and his bullies, so he would not return. Instead, he would go to Leytonford College and finish his schooling there.
To make matters worse, although Tim was able to name his attackers to the police, it appeared nothing could be done; all four boys had cast-iron alibis for that afternoon — all of which put them well away from the scene. Sammy thought it very convenient that all four of them had such strong alibis. Judging from the comments of the police sergeant he had spoken with, the police also found that somewhat strange. Without other evidence to support Tim’s account of events, however, they could not proceed.
What Sammy found most annoying was the feeling of helplessness that enveloped him. To make matters worse, he was not even going to be around for Tim. The following day he would be flying out to Japan with his father, and would be away for at least eight weeks. He had been looking forward to the trip but now, somehow, he wished he was not going.
* * * * *