1. Exploration

I owe it a very great deal, so I may be biased. But Yarborough seemed to me a pretty good school. It had its weak points, of course — what school doesn’t? — but overall it was high quality. Its staff ranged, inevitably, from the excellent to the lousy. It kept a fair balance between the academic and the sporty. It encouraged independence and tolerance. And it offered that respectable degree of privacy which growing boys need — the dormitories had individual cubicles, and in theory everyone had his own study, though growing numbers meant that for the first year one had to share. In short, the school respected the individual. We are talking, by the way, about fairly ancient history: starting in 1956, to be precise.
I arrived at the beginning of the summer term, at the age of thirteen. I found I was sharing a study with the only other new boy in the house, the main entry being in September. More of me in a moment; his name was Andrew Goodhart, and in almost every way he was the complete opposite to me. Outgoing, full of good nature, hair blond and curly, eyes clear blue, face combining a classical beauty with a wicked smile, voice already broken, body sturdy and athletic. The proverbial Greek god, in fact — Apollo, I thought. Though not a scholarship boy, he was well above average at work, and at games he excelled.
Our first meeting must have been a bitter disappointment to him. Andrew was friendly and bubbled with questions. Easy at first. Then questions which any ordinary boy could have answered without embarrassment, but left me wallowing.
Where did I live? — Cambridge.
When was my birthday? — August, exactly a week after his.
What county did I support? (cricket, I found he meant) — None.
What did I think of Bill Haley? — Uh?
Had I heard Satchmo’s latest record? — Er, no.
Did I prefer Brigitte Bardot or Sophia Loren? — Who?
“Gosh, you’re really not on the ball, are you?” he ended. “What do you like?”
And my mumbled reply, that I liked reading and classical music, can hardly have satisfied him either. But, for the time being, he left it at that, and we moved on to deciding who should have which desk and where we should put our things.
So there I was, installed as a public school boy, and not in the least enjoying the prospect. I had long since grown a thick shell, both as a protection against the knocks which life had always brought me and as a screen from behind which I could cautiously peer at the world outside. I knew all too well that I was a swot, a drip, and a weed. I had better explain how and why, although it is a complex story which will take a bit of time.
I was the only child of a scholarly family. Both my parents were high-powered academics, Professor Gerald and Dr Mary Michaelson, and both of them had been only children of academics too, which perhaps explained a lot. They had met during the war in the military hospital at Alexandria, Father as a patient, Mother doing her patriotic duty as a nurse. They married out there, and I duly appeared. Judging by their later attitude to me, I am virtually certain I was an accident. The war over, they both found good jobs at Cambridge. They were specialists in Plato and his philosophy, and lived for all things Greek. Father, having been wounded defending Greece against the Germans in 1941, evidently felt an affinity with Leonidas, the Spartan king who died defending Greece against the Persians in 480 BC. Hence my name. Leonidas Michaelson, for heaven’s sake. No surprise that I kept it as quiet as I could, and tried to be called Leon.
Mother and Father, it has to be said, were not good parents. That is putting it mildly. They were not exactly cruel. They just knew damn all about children, and had little love and affection in their repertoire. What they did have they showered on their bloody Siamese cat (all right, I was jealous of it), leaving none whatever for me. As far as I was concerned, their cranky mentality showed up in three ways. First, I was a nuisance at home, a waster of their precious time. So they put me first in the care of nannies and then, at the earliest possible moment, pushed me off as a boarder at a bad prep school, where I was bullied. Constantly and badly, verbally and physically, and the staff did not give a damn. I cannot bring myself to write of what I endured there. One day, perhaps, but not yet. Suffice it to say here that, by the time I left, I was deep in the pit of despair. Even in vacations Father and Mother spent most of their weekdays in college — he was a fellow of Selwyn, she of Newnham — and usually dined there at high table, leaving me to fend for myself.
The second aspect was that, as scholars, they automatically expected me to follow in their footsteps. Which was no doubt another reason why they sent me away to school, because a local secondary school, though free, could not possibly offer the level of teaching they required. And follow in their footsteps I did, whether by nature or nurture or both — it hardly matters. I was top of the form in most subjects, and won a scholarship to Yarborough, which would look after most of my school fees. They heartily approved of such achievements (and anyway I had no others), and would reward them in cash. Moreover, books being the stuff of learning, I had open access to their splendid personal library, provided they were not in it themselves. They also made me free of their account at Heffers, where I could buy any book I wanted that they did not already have, though I might be called on to justify the purchase when the bill came in. And on the rare occasions they had colleagues in for dinner they would parade me to show off my erudition. They treated me, in fact, rather like a promising young racehorse. No expense was spared on training me to win races, but it left me totally unfitted to do anything else.
The third aspect was that, except where cat food, books and rewards for scholarship were concerned, they were pathological misers. They did buy my school uniform and games kit, but gave me no pocket money at all. In effect, they paid me by result. The theory, I suppose, was that the harder I worked, the greater my income and the more I could spend on myself. In practice, the budget hardly balanced. Whatever clothes I wore at home I had to buy myself, and were permanently scruffy and threadbare. If my spectacles broke, I paid if I had the money or used sellotape if I did not. Virtually never could I afford a luxury; but dedicated apprentices don’t need luxuries, do they? They refused to employ a cleaner or a gardener, or to do such menial and time-wasting work themselves. Instead, my unpaid job in the holidays was to remove months-worth of accumulated dirt from the dingy house in Grange Road, to do the washing and ironing — they sent it to a laundry in term-time — and to reduce the wilderness outside to a semblance of order. In short, my parents were professionally a highly intelligent and accomplished couple, but in most other departments of life they had a screw loose. Quite a number of screws, to be honest. Their fellow academics were doubtless accustomed to eccentrics, but to anyone else they were strange and unlikeable people. In retrospect, they were in dire need not only of a course in parenting but of psychiatric help as well.
I was therefore lonely and miserable. Maybe that is not wholly accurate, since misery almost implies a lost happiness, which was something I had never enjoyed. Likewise loneliness implies a memory of what it is like not to be lonely. But solitary I certainly was. I occupied myself, between bullyings at school and hard labour in the holidays, in reading: poetry, novels, history, and especially — chip off the old block — Greek and Latin literature. All I had to live for was books and music. Somewhere along the line, though no musician and totally ignorant of modern and popular music, I had picked up a love of classical and especially baroque music. And when my parents graduated to an electric record player and 33s, I rescued from the dustbin their old wind-up gramophone and scratchy 78s, and listened endlessly to them when I was at home. All in all, then, I was indisputably precocious, but hardly pampered.
I was painfully aware that, although academically a high flyer, in all other departments I was a disaster. Pompous and pedantic in speech. A squeaky voice. A duffer at games of every sort. A body to despair of, small for my age, gawky and weedy, arms and legs like matchsticks. If my face did not look quite like the back end of a bus, I would certainly never win any beauty competition. My nose was long, my chin narrow, my hair straight and mousy, my nondescript-coloured eyes sheltering behind a pair of large spectacles. My equipment down below, at this barely pubescent stage, seemed by comparison with others at prep school to be microscopic. I had learned to put up with these deficiencies and, when they aroused derision or indifference in others, I simply took refuge in my shell. Except in my work, I had never had any encouragement from anyone.
I could respond without embarrassment to adults — to teachers, even to my parents and their colleagues — of the subject was work or scholarly matters. But with youngsters I had nothing in common. The upshot, inevitably, was that I was painfully shy, gauche and unworldly, and never had any friends. The best I could claim were the few boys at prep school who had been tolerant enough to put up with me. Never having had any practice, I had no small-talk, no social graces, and on the rare occasions when my parents dragged me to social events, any of their colleagues’ offspring who tried to talk to me soon drifted away in boredom.
My only friend, in fact, was between my legs. I communed with it a lot, dreaming about inaccessible boys. Yes, boys. I had met few girls and could see nothing in them, but boys were a different matter. From behind my shell I worshipped them, even if they bullied me. I inwardly smouldered that I could never reach them, never emulate their looks or athletic bodies or simple joie-de-vivre. In thought, though not in deed, I was already a queer, a homo, and knew it.
But it was not thoughts of mere sex which tormented me. My theoretical background was already extensive. Knowledge of Latin and Greek, and access to my parents’ books, opened up a whole world of literary pornography and philosophical enquiry which was available to few boys of my age. So, from the philosophy, I appreciated the essential difference between sex and love — ‘common’ and ‘heavenly’ love as Plato called them. From the pornography I knew about the mechanics of sex, both homo and hetero. The ancient pornography had been updated by an entirely legitimate visit to a public convenience and what I read there. The philosophy had been confirmed by reading Mary Renault’s marvellous novel The Charioteer. Being understated (both intentionally and inevitably) it needed to be read between the lines, but it clearly distinguished between the depths of honest love and the treacherous shallows of most queer relationships.
There was no shadow of doubt where my preference lay. The brittle and unstable world of camp screamers in The Charioteer and the sordid and shifty world of one-off copulations recorded on the shithouse walls turned me on, of course, and helped fuel my nightly activities. But in truth, in that form, they disgusted me, and needless to say I had no practical experience of them. Nor had I ever received a jot of love of any sort from anyone. Or given it. But that was what my solitary and idealistic soul really yearned for: love of soul, not just love of body. Sex I regarded as an optional (if highly desirable) extra, not as an alternative.
So much, then, for the pathetic specimen that was Leon Michaelson at the time I joined Yarborough School, where I was expecting a repetition of the hell on earth that had been my prep school. Or worse.
*
Once I was at Yarborough, Andrew Goodhart became my prime object of desire; indeed I fell in one-sided love with him at first sight. Greek god that he was, it could hardly be otherwise. Moreover he proved quite astonishingly friendly, infinitely more so than anyone at my prep school. It goes without saying that he made many friends in the house and on the cricket pitch, while I did not. But in sharing a study we were thrown together willy nilly. Far from writing me off as irredeemably boring, as he might very well have done from our first encounter, he went to endless pains to draw me out. He was my salvation. At first he steered tactfully clear of the yawning gaps in my experience and concentrated on my few strengths. Then, almost imperceptibly, he started introducing me to new ideas and guiding me towards a degree of social acceptability. He performed the miracle of getting me to communicate — small things at first, admittedly, but you have to start somewhere. It was all done so delicately that I was unaware of it at the time. Only later, in hindsight, did I come to understand his strategy. Goodness of heart was his nature, and he could hardly have had a more appropriate surname. Within a few weeks of our first meeting it was not merely his body that I lusted for as I jacked off. I began to love him for his soul.
All this may make him sound like a goody-goody. But he was sight more than that. He was not only a strong and original character in his own right, but a bit of a natural rebel as well; and it was in this respect, in our very first week, that I inadvertently went up in his estimation. During a maths lesson — we were in the same set — it turned out that I did not have the right textbook. When Jerry Lloyd the teacher, a pompous man, asked why, I replied “I apologise, sir, the supply was inadequate and I was unable to procure a copy.” Lloyd threw me a very sharp look, but moved on.
Afterwards Andrew buttonholed me. “Blimey, Leon, you were pretty smart in taking the mickey out of Lloyd!”
“Uh?” I was bewildered. “What’s wrong with what I said?”
“Well, anyone else would’ve said ‘Sorry, sir, the shop had run out’ or something.”
What Andrew did not know was that that was my natural way of talking formally to people like masters, though I had learnt that only ordinary language meant anything to my peers. Instead, he assumed that I had a healthy disrespect for authority, just as he did. Wrong: I was the most respectful and law-abiding boy imaginable. But it taught me a lesson, and thereafter I was careful not to be pompous at all. Which merely confirmed to him that I had been taking the mickey.
Since all I heard from my parents was the occasional curt bickering, I rarely wrote home. But Andrew did regularly. In his first letter he had reported that he was sharing with Leon Michaelson from Cambridge. His parents replied that I must be the son of philosophical friends of theirs whom they knew well professionally, though not so well personally. Andrew relayed this, and I confirmed it. Which set us to comparing parents. He too was an only child. He lived in Oxford, where his Mum and Dad were the exact counterparts of mine, but in every other way, it sounded, as different from them as Andrew was from me. From all he said, they were warm, affectionate and tolerant, and he spoke of them with love in his voice. When I haltingly described my father and mother and my life with (or without) them, I could feel sympathy wafting from him.
It was a sweltering day when we talked about these things, and he suggested going to the buttery for a fizzy drink. I declined, not because I was not thirsty but because I was almost broke, though I did not say so.
He looked at me shrewdly. “Go on, have it on me.”
“Thanks, Andrew, but no. I’ll never be able to pay you back.”
“That’s not the point. I reckon I get more pocket money than you.” And he said how much. A fortune, by my poor yardstick. “Look, it isn’t my business, and you don’t have to tell me anything. But is that more than you get?”
“Yes.”
“A lot more?”
“Yes.”
“Right, then. Have a Vimto on me. And forget about repaying.”
I surrendered. Generosity was a phenomenon new to me, and I could have hugged him. So we swigged together. The gift was repeated at intervals. But not too often. He was aware that there is a limit to the charity one can comfortably accept.
We found, too, that we had similar senses of humour. Andrew was always cracking jokes and puns, which I enjoyed, though at first I did not dare reciprocate in case I was laughed at the wrong way. Unlike some boys who were pretty foul-mouthed, though, he was a modest chap who rarely used dirty words or cracked dirty jokes, at least until we got to know each other much better. But I found he was not averse to mildly risqué fun. Another day in our first week I actually dared to initiate a conversation and share a joke.
“Did you hear what Larry wrote on Griffiths’s essay?” Larry was our form master, a delightful man who was also full of fun.
“No. What?”
“Well, Griffiths wrote something like ‘When I wake up in the morning I stretch and feel rosy all over.’ And Larry wrote in the margin ‘How nice for Rosy.’”
Andrew hooted with laughter, and I giggled like a maniac too. Heady stuff. I could not remember anyone laughing with me before. Only at me. That particular inhibition began to dissolve.
Next day we were introduced to baked beans for lunch.
“Good show,” said Andrew, “I like beans.”
He tucked in heartily, while I, not being over-fond of them, ate modestly. What our neighbours did not tell us — we later heard that new boys were traditionally left to find out the hard way — was that house beans were the most vicious in the known universe, and most people gave them a wide berth. That evening, over prep in our study, Andrew was fidgety.
“Leon, I’m sorry, I’ve just got to fart.”
Practice in this respect was variable. Some boys farted in company at the drop of a hat. Most followed polite adult convention and contained themselves, and both Andrew and I, demure creatures, were of this persuasion. But asking to go to the bog during prep was heavily frowned on — ‘surely you can last an hour?’ So I understood Andrew’s dilemma.
“Don’t mind me, as long as you open the window.”
He did, and let fly, fortissimo.
I risked a pun of my own. “Brilliant! Fart of the year! Anus mirabilis!”
He chortled. “Yes, ace of farts!”
“Andrew Goodfart!”
And we giggled helplessly like the two schoolboys we were.
In our studies we were allowed wind-up gramophones but not electric ones, and I had brought mine from home. When Andrew saw it, he had his parents send over his collection of 78s, and we shared the gramophone. He was as unfamiliar with classical music as I was with popular, and we tried to educate each other. He had little success: try as I would, I simply could not see anything in his crooners and rock and only a little in his jazz. But he was a sensitive chap and — this was about the first non-academic success of my life — it cost me little effort to open his ears to the glories of Mozart symphonies and even the stark purity of Bach cantatas.
In the same vein, there came the audition for the concert choir (as opposed to the much smaller and more proficient chapel choir). If your voice was unbroken, they automatically roped you in unless you were totally tone-deaf, and though I had never sung before I was glad to be enrolled. Of broken voices, having many more to draw on, they were much more selective. But when Andrew showed a reluctance to try, I daringly prodded him to give it a go, and he agreed, and got in. Another minor triumph for Leon. So twice weekly we went to choir practice together, treble and tenor, and with great pleasure thundered out the choruses of Israel in Egypt.
Our first week, then, was not only full but bewildering, as we learnt the complex pattern of where we had to be when, doing what, with whom. At the end of it, sitting in our study drawing breath and looking back, I realised to my astonishment that I had actually enjoyed it. And much of the enjoyment, I saw, had arisen from Andrew’s presence, from his veiled encouragement, from his support. But some, yes, definitely some, had come from my own initiative. My shell was already being loosened, which allowed me to interact more with the outside world, which further reduced the need for the shell. It was a slow process, but it was visibly under way. What was more, I had not been bullied — hardly any disparaging remarks, and no nasty tricks or violence at all — and I concluded that Yarborough was a much more civilised place than my prep school. The whole atmosphere was a sight better. But I also felt subconsciously that I was under Andrew’s wing. He never gave me the corny ‘It’s OK, kid, I’ll look after you,’ or anything like it. But somehow he seemed, in the background, to be doing just that. And this in turn helped me to open up to him, if not much yet to others. As all this went through my mind, tears began to ooze. Tears of relief, tears of gratitude.
Andrew saw, and was concerned. “Leon, what’s up?”
I had to tell him. “Sorry. Nothing up. Happy. Happier than I’ve ever been before. Thanks to you. Can’t think why you take any notice of me. I know I’m a swot. A drip. A weed.”
“Leon. Look at me.” He fixed me with a stern but kindly eye. “Leon, you’re wrong, completely wrong. You’re not a swot, you’re a scholar. You’re not a drip, you’ve got far too much gumption. And if you’re a weed, you’ll grow out of it. Get that into your head.”
I gawped at him. It was not easy to get into my head. But such words from such a paragon could not be ignored, and presently my massive inferiority complex shrank several sizes.
*
Before long, life settled into routine. Andrew spent time with his friends, but he always found time for me as well, and not merely during prep and other occasions when he had to be in our study. The rehabilitation of Leon continued, and I found myself being accepted by his friends, and even made a few tentative overtures towards making friends of my own. And by pure chance I got to know Andrew, and his body, in a more intimate way. Nudity was standard, of course, in the changing room and showers, and nobody — or few — thought anything of it. I was still ashamed of what little I could show, but since I could do nothing about it I stoically bore my shame. The point is that close encounters with another boy’s body were definitely not on the approved agenda.
But Field Day came, when the whole cadet corps spent the day playing soldiers. You could not join the corps until you were fourteen, after which there was no way of escaping it, as long as you had two legs and two arms (though ownership of a head did not seem obligatory). The under-fourteens were entertained for the day with team games under the eagle eye of the PE instructor, in a nearby meadow since the proper games fields were all occupied by would-be soldiers on exercise. During a relay race, Andrew trod awkwardly on a tussock, twisted his ankle, and sat down squarely in a fresh cow-pat, to a mixture of sympathy (for he was already popular) and hilarity. He was invalided out; and because I was the rabbit which no team wanted, the instructor told me to take Andrew back and have him patched up and sanitised. Hanging on to my shoulder, he limped fragrantly back to a completely empty house. The cow-pat had soaked through his shorts, and a bath or shower was the first essential. He opted for the bath, where a good wash is easier when one leg is out of action.
But he still needed my help, and my baser instincts made me mentally lick my lips. He took off his shirt as he sat on the bath edge and revealed his chest, muscular and smooth, and quite hairy armpits. I knelt to remove his shoes and socks, getting a close-up view of sinewy legs already sprouting an early crop of soft hair. I unbuttoned his stinking shorts, and he raised his bum off the bath to allow me to manoeuvre them carefully down past his swollen ankle. My face was now abreast of his cock: distinctly bigger than mine (which was already hard inside my shorts), and crowned with a good bush of fair curly hair. He put one hand on each side of the bath, and with his powerful arms swung himself up, over and down into the water.
“Thanks, Leon. Don’t go away, please. I’ve got to get out and dried too.”
He washed himself all over, except for his middle which was under water, and sat there, obviously wondering how to tackle that.
I was so entranced that I could not prevent myself. “Want me to do the rest?”
He gave me a slightly frightened look. “Leon, if you do, I’ll go hard. I’m bound to.” He hesitated. “Do you mind?”
“Course not. Anything to help.”
“Yes, but don’t help too much. You know what I mean. Please. Trust you?” As I have said, he was a naturally modest boy.
“Of course.” Disappointed in a way, but not showing it.
So he lifted himself again and supported himself, bum above water, on his arms and his good leg, and I took the soap and lathered him with my hands, scrubbing carefully over his cheeks. Fair game there: had to get the cow-shit off. His cock immediately stood to attention, and I lathered that too, and his balls. Not quite forbidden territory, but there only on sufferance. Three thoughts battled in my mind. Lust wanted to take advantage of this golden opportunity, caution knew full well it could ruin our friendship, idealism dismissed quick gratification without love. Lust was defeated, and I prevented my hands from lingering. Both our faces were red. I do not think I breathed during the whole operation, and I had almost come in my shorts. Andrew lowered himself, and swilled water around to rinse off the soap.
“Thanks, Leon. That was … ”
I thought he meant ‘tactful’ or ‘restrained,’ but I may have been wrong. He was now done. He swung himself back on the bath edge, and towelled himself dry, except for his bum which was out of his reach because he was sitting on it. So I got him to stand on one leg, arms on my shoulders, while I knelt and dried his crack. He was still stiff as I eased clean pants and trousers on to him, and he did the rest. I acted as his crutch to Matron’s room, where she strapped up his ankle, and down to our study, where we sat down to listen to music until the soldiers should return and routine go back to normal.
We had said very little during the whole proceedings, but thought much — at least I had — and now he turned to me and said quite simply “Thanks, Leon, I knew I could trust you. You’re a good friend.”
While things had not gone as part of me might have liked, I nevertheless felt a glow of genuine pride. I still had no idea what turned him on. I do not mean feeling up his private parts — that would give anybody a hard-on. But what did he think about when he jacked off? I assumed he did jack off, just as I assumed everyone did. He had never said anything about girls, other than film stars and singers, but that was no real guide because few boys of our age did anyway. Nor had he shown any sign of being interested in boys, let alone in me. I had no reason even to hope that he might love me as I already knew I loved him. His friendship — and that was real — would have to be enough.
*
He hobbled for a week, and in a fortnight was back in full working order. A little later, on Speech Day, I had a further insight into what made Andrew tick. We did not have a half-term break, and my parents never came to visit me, not even on Speech Day to witness me being awarded the form prize and the junior Greek prize. They merely sent a modest reward in cash. But Andrew’s parents did come, although he had won nothing, except my love. They invited us both out to lunch at the Red Lion where they were staying. His Mum was tall, fair and serenely beautiful: easy to see where Andrew’s looks came from. His Dad was short, dark and cheerful. Easy to see that Andrew’s good nature came from them both. They shook my hand and studied me with interest.
“Leon, how good to meet you, after all we’ve heard about you.” I looked at Andrew in enquiry and some alarm.
“Don’t worry,” he said, laughing. “None of it’s bad.”
“Indeed not,” said his Mum. “It’s all very good. Andrew’s a fan of yours, Leon.”
“A fan of mine?” I was bemused but disarmed. As I said, I found no difficulty talking with adults, especially such kindly ones as these. “It’s the other way round. I’m a fan of his, Dr Goodhart, Professor Goodhart. You’ve no idea how good he’s been to me. When I came here I was petrified. But he’s made it tolerable. No, not just tolerable. Great fun.”
“Two points there. First, yes, I think we do have some idea. We know our Andrew. Second, titles and surnames are such a mouthful. Why don’t you just call us Jack and Helen?”
Unheard of, in those days, and on such short acquaintance. I would never dream of calling my parents’ colleagues, whom I had known for years, anything but ‘Professor Cavendish-Skellingthorpe’ or whatever, or maybe ‘sir’ for short. Before I could think of a reply, they whisked us in to a damn good lunch, and allowed us a glass of wine apiece. Unheard of again. They plied me with questions. Andrew had clearly primed them on my home life, or lack of it, for they said nothing about it directly, and used the utmost delicacy when they even approached it. But they were open in their congratulations for my prizes, and open in their interest about my classical background and about our life at school. Andrew said little, but seemed to be observing with approval from the sidelines.
By the time lunch was over I was utterly captivated. Here were two human beings I would most willingly have for parents. I was aware that under their friendly probing I had revealed a lot of myself, and got the unfamiliar feeling that they had liked what they saw. When the time came for us to leave to watch the cricket match, as we had to, they invited me to stay with them in Oxford during the coming holidays. And they gave me a tip. I looked at them in blank amazement. Though I had not experienced it before, I had heard from other boys about parents tipping their sons’ friends, and knew that a bob or two was par for the course. But Jack and Helen had given me exactly the same amount as Andrew got in pocket money for the whole term. Coincidence? I doubted it.
“But I can’t … You can’t … ”
“Yes, you can, and yes, we can,” said Helen. “Go on. Pocket it. With our love.”
“Oh gosh.” I had tears in my eyes, and no words to thank them. So I hugged them, in turn. I could not remember hugging anyone in my life, or being hugged. “Do you know what I’m going to spend a bit of this on? A record. Bach chorale, Nun danket.”
They understood, and smiled. And from that point on I could meet Andrew on financially equal terms, and treat him back.
“Andrew,” I said as we walked to the ground, “your parents are splendid. I wish … ”
“That yours were as good. Yes, I know. I’m lucky. I only wish you could do something about yours.”
But I could not. All the time the Goodharts were free to have me in August, my parents were booked to attend a variety of meetings and conferences throughout the country. It was therefore my duty, I was told, to stay at home and look after the cat. This was standard practice but, because there was now an alternative attraction, I felt rebellious. I ventured to suggest that Andrew should stay at our place instead. The reply was brusque and final: his presence would interrupt my work, and his parents would need him at home. Nothing doing. Andrew was as mortified as I, but we were powerless.
*
So the holidays passed in boredom, as usual. Only two actual events are worth recording. First, my voice broke. I said goodbye to Mother and Father in my usual treble, and five days later, to my utter confusion, found myself welcoming them back, on my fourteenth birthday, in a brand-new if uncertain bass. I had not spoken, or even seen anyone to speak to, in the interval. Otherwise, as usual, I cleaned the house, did the laundry, worked in the garden, read, and listened to music. But I had occasional letters from Andrew, and it buoyed me up no end to know that I was not forgotten. I had something quite novel to think about. So I also spent a lot of time dreaming, reliving the past term, anticipating the future.
It was this anticipation which prompted me to take my courage in both hands and ask my parents some very tentative questions by way of testing the water. They were a pretty conservative couple, both in outlook and in politics, but Cambridge had a number of dons and some undergraduates who were known to be homosexual, and so long as they did not flaunt it too publicly they were generally tolerated, and even accepted and respected for their other qualities. I needed to know Father’s and Mother’s attitude towards homosexuality in general. So I broached the question as delicately as I could, by naming two dons who were known to be queers (though I did not mention that) and asking my parents what they thought of them as scholars.
“Fair to middling,” was Father’s answer. “But their pernicious relationship will ruin any reputation they may have. They’re a disgrace to their college. They deserve to be stripped of their fellowships.” He beetled his eyebrows at me. “You seem to be reaching sexual maturity. Should you ever contemplate practising such obscenities, let me warn you that you will never practise them in this house. We will not tolerate iniquity and scandal.”
Well. A clear-cut answer, and I now knew where I stood, even if I did not like it one bit.
*
September saw the start of the new term. Andrew had had a more varied time than me, swimming, cycling and larking about with his local friends. But one thing had thoroughly got his goat. A gang of them had been playing impromptu cricket in South Park when Andrew had hit the ball clean through the stained glass window of a nearby house. All his friends had scarpered, leaving Andrew alone to face the irate owner. The cost of repairs was considerable. His parents chipped in generously, but his pocket money was mortgaged for weeks. His friends refused to contribute on the grounds that it was he who had hit the ball. Their case was at least arguable. What Andrew found hard to forgive was their deserting him in a crisis. His sense of loyalty was outraged. So was mine, on his behalf, and I told him so. And since I was temporarily the better off, I could treat him at the buttery from time to time. At first he demurred, so I threw back at him the argument he had used on me, and he gave way.
We had both automatically moved up a step in school, into different forms where I specialised in arts and particularly in classics, while he was moving into the sciences. He had the right sort of probing and practical mind, and was often to be found tinkering with gadgets like a radio set he was building, or even conducting mildly chemical experiments. The next episode worth recording gave a foretaste of the research scientist that Andrew looked likely, one day, to become. A local shop got in a large batch of whoopee cushions, a novelty to us, which were eagerly snapped up and widely employed, at least between friends (and enemies) of the same sort of age. Andrew, indeed, ventured to install one on the chair of Jessop, a sadistic and unpopular prefect. Unfortunately he had forgotten that he had written his name on it as a mark of ownership. He was rewarded with the unduly hefty punishment of a week’s confinement, which meant that, except for normal school and house routine, he could not leave our study without permission, even for a pee. But as with most crazes, the novelty of whoopees soon wore off. One day, soon after Andrew’s sentence had expired, I sat on one that he had put on my study chair.
“You know, these things are getting old hat,” I said, not in the least surprised. “I mean, they make a pretty convincing noise. But when anyone sits on one now, everyone knows it’s only a whoopee. If only it made the right smell too, what’d people think then?”
“That’s a thought. That is a thought.” Andrew put his chin on his hands and gazed at nothing with a calculating look.
“Penny for them,” I said after a while.
He looked across with his devilish smile. “Leon, you’re a genius.”
“Eh?”
“You’ve given me a brilliant idea. How to get a whoopee to make a pong. Listen. I’m going to need your help.” And he told me how.
I could not fault him on the technical side but, timid and law-abiding citizen that I still was, I was aghast at what he proposed to do with the finished product. But his enthusiasm swept me along.
The plan went smoothly ahead. He waited for a day when the infamous baked beans reappeared for lunch, and scoffed his own and the rest of the table’s. He spent the late afternoon and early evening in increasing discomfort, fighting against premature explosion. At last, during prep, he waddled off in distended agony to his statutory twice-weekly bath, carrying hidden in his towel a funnel and jar he had borrowed from the chemistry lab. At this stage I could not help: to be caught present when another boy was bathing was disciplinary suicide. He came down again, considerably more comfortable, clutching his achievement, a firmly stoppered jar full of gas. The next step, in the quiet of the study, did need my help. With the assistance of a bowl of water and a bicycle pump we transferred the contents to a whoopee cushion, and the first half of the job was done.
Next day was Saturday, when we had lessons only in the morning. Andrew’s last class was to be French, and his chosen victim was Buggy Butterworth, the French master and the most despised member of staff. He was ineffectual and weak, ragged unmercifully and lacking the balls to do anything about it. As it turned out, this weakness was not to be tested. As the boys streamed into the classroom, a couple of his mates whom Andrew had let into the secret kept cave while Andrew installed his lethal device under the cushion on the master’s chair. So far so good. But sadly it was not Buggy who came in, but Doc Fellows, a firm disciplinarian and highly popular besides, who announced that he was standing in for Mr Butterworth, who was ill. Andrew spent the period with his heart in his mouth. But miracles do happen, and Doc never once sat down. When the class ended, Andrew had only to retrieve the whoopee and all would be well. Alas for fond hopes. While Andrew hovered on tenterhooks in the background, Doc remained beside the chair, haranguing some boy on some totally different matter, until the school porter came round to lock up the classrooms for the weekend and shooed them all out, including an empty-handed Andrew.
We were stymied, and spent the weekend in anxious debate, with no practicable ideas at all. The porter’s key cupboard was inviolable, neither of us could pick a lock, and we could not find out who used that room for the first period on Monday. We had to get in before then. But when we tried the door immediately before assembly, it was still locked: the porter evidently unlocked it during assembly, and for us to miss that would be death. Assembly over, the headmaster swept out first, as always, and we fought to emerge as fast as we could. We got to the right corridor just in time to see the headmaster’s back disappearing into the room, followed by one of the sixth forms about to receive, we later heard, its weekly dose of religious education. All hope faded, and we crept to our own classes with our tails between our legs. If Buggy was the most despised member of staff, the HM was unquestionably the most feared.
Later we heard what happened next. The HM spent a few minutes writing on the blackboard before plumping his portly frame into the chair. It is pleasant to report that the Goodfart Blaster Mark I, on its first and last test run, performed with devastating success. The noise was perfect. So too was the smell, which reached four rows back. The HM turned beetroot red. History does not record what went through his mind, but one can guess. First, he had to identify himself as the victim, not the perpetrator, and so he got up, fished the whoopee out and uttered something like “Ptchah” before dropping it in the bin and opening the window.
Then his mind began to move, detective-like, along the lines of opportunity, motive and suspects. He recalled the porter’s routine and his own progress from assembly to classroom, swept his eye around his stunned but responsible audience, and said, “I presume that none of you is responsible for this, ah, joke?” Deathly silence. And he carried on with the class.
The news, disseminated at break by gleeful sixth-formers, spread like wildfire. Andrew’s classmates who were in the know immediately leaked his name as the criminal. We both quaked.
“Don’t you worry, Leon. Nobody knows that you’re involved.”
“Come off it. If you’re caught, I’ll go down with you,” I replied staunchly. I am not sure he believed me.
In the event, he (or we) escaped scot-free. Doubtless the HM concluded that the crime was committed on the Saturday, but found the trail too cold or the possible suspects too many to pursue. Nobody ratted to him. Andrew was too popular in the lower half of the school, and not even seniors would have dreamed of spoiling a good joke. The episode became a nine days’ wonder, and Andrew’s standing was never higher. But the main beneficiary was our relationship. Companionship in crime and adversity forges a marvellous bond.
*
Not long after, Andrew had his shoulder muscles pulled in a rough tackle at rugger. Rather than submit to Matron’s unsubtle ministrations, he appointed me his physiotherapist. For a week, whenever we had the time, he would take off his shirt in the study, and overall I spent hours massaging, kneading, and applying liniment. More than once I strayed, not entirely by accident, as far as his nipple, and though his baggy school trousers were an effective screen, more than once I thought I saw signs of movement down there. If so, neither of us remarked on it.
Mid-way through the term, Andrews parents came over again. Same drill, same tip. This time I bought Monteverdi’s Vespers. It began to look as if they were deliberately and systematically funding me. And we had some discussion about the Christmas holidays. Andrew was determined that the fiasco of the summer should not be repeated, and this time the Goodharts interceded directly with my parents by writing to ask if they could steal me for at least part of the time. Confronted with this appeal from respected colleagues, Father and Mother grudgingly gave way. Partly, I suspect, because they would necessarily be at home over Christmas and were happy enough that I should be out of their hair. That was something much to be looked forward to by all concerned.
Our study was a content and happy place as our friendship consolidated, with only brief spasms of discord, as when I accidentally sat on his favourite record or he spilt his Tizer over my book. We talked, played music, helped each other with homework, simply larked. My horizons broadened. My shell was steadily dissolving; almost entirely with Andrew if more slowly with others. My self-esteem had never been higher: I no longer felt myself the lowly worm, the downtrodden insect. I do not mean I got cocky. I hope — I am sure — I did not. If I had, Andrew would have slapped me down. He was still my mentor, supporting, encouraging, yes, educating me too. He did not drop his other friends; I just seemed to have priority. His confidence and poise were rubbing off on me, and I never ceased to thank the fates for throwing us together and giving me a purpose in life and a love, however secret, to strive for.
*
Towards the end of term there was a house cross-country run. Not a race. Just leave when ready and run the prescribed route. I hated the things. No muscle, no stamina, no wind. No alternative, either. So I ran. Was overtaken by lots of people. Through a gate, sharp left along a hedge, stop, got to stop. Stood there, stitch in side, hands on knees, face scarlet, lungs heaving. Through the gate ran Thorne, not much bigger than me but wiry. Ratty. A nasty piece of work, my biggest bugbear. Not even puffing.
“Ha, Michaelson! Might have guessed it. Only a mile and you’re knackered. So weedy you can hardly stand up.”
And to prove it he pushed me on the chest. I stepped back, tripped on something, and sat down hard in a spreading gorse bush, thick with end-of-season needles, sharp and brittle. But even as he pushed, someone else appeared through the gate. Andrew. He took in the scene, grabbed Thorne by the shirt, and Thorne quailed. Understandably: I would not like to be grabbed by an angry Andrew either.
“Thorne, eh? There’s only one cure for bullies like you. A taste of your own medicine.” And he pushed him backwards into the gorse alongside me.
“Right, let’s have you out of there, Leon,” and he held out a hand and hauled me out of my prickly perch.
No need to worry about Thorne blabbing. If it was Andrew’s word against his, no contest. Andrew then surprised me. He pulled Thorne out too, but instead of letting go of his hand he shook it sedately.
“Nice to meet you, Thorne, in the flesh. Now scarper.”
Thorne scarpered painfully, muttering, while Andrew and I hooted with helpless laughter, despite my bum feeling as if it was on fire.
“Thanks, Andrew,” I managed to say. “You’re a brick.”
“Don’t mention it. I enjoyed that. Now, what about you?” He looked. “Hmm. Your shorts are like a hedgehog. Is your bum too?”
I slid a cautiously exploratory hand down inside my waistband. “Yes. Feels like it.”
“Lor. Hardly do much about that here. We can’t even brush the prickles off without pushing more in. Do you think you can walk like that? Try keeping your shorts away from your skin.”
I tried, and with judicious waddling it was not too painful. So I waddled home, Andrew beside me.
“You can’t sit down like that. You’ll have to go to Matron.”
“Oh Christ, no, not her.” Matron was no doubt a qualified nurse, but her bedside manner, so to speak, was unsympathetic and, worse, she was notoriously ham-fisted. “Would you have a go, Andrew?”
“Well, I reckon I owe you a favour.” His impish grin was in full play. “But where?”
I knew what he meant. If a boy were to be found in close communion with another boy’s bare bum, eyebrows would go through the ceiling. To put it mildly.
“I reckon we’d best be above board,” he decided. “Clear it with Doug Paxton” — the house captain, and a damn good one too — “so that if anyone sees us they’ll know I’m not seducing you.”
I could think of nothing better, but could hardly say so. But he was right. Massaging a naked shoulder was one thing. Nobody would comment, and nobody had. It was the waist that was the frontier. To cross that legitimately, one would need a passport and visa. So we applied for them to Paxton, explained the problem, and exhibited my hedgehog backside as evidence. He was graciously amused, refrained from asking what I had been doing in a gorse bush, and no doubt calculated that the chances of Andrew wanting to play hanky-panky with an ugly runt like me were nil.
“See your point about Matron,” he said. “OK, go ahead. Use your dorm as an operating theatre.”
I gingerly removed my shorts, pulled up my shirt, and lay down, skinny buttocks upmost, on Andrew’s bed. (God, naked on Andrew’s bed!)
“Yes, you are a hedgehog. Quite a lot of scratches too, but nothing bad.”
He got to work pulling out spikes, the longest ones first, from my thighs and cheeks.
“Right, I think your thighs are clear now, but you’ve got some pricks deep in your bum.” He was giggling as he said it, and so was I.
“Stop shaking. Surgeon can’t operate when you’re shaking.” He found his Swiss army knife which had a pair of tweezers, and tweezed for a while.
Then, “There are some broken off at the skin. I’ll have to excavate.” He got out a needle and very delicately poked, levered and squeezed.
At last, “Right, that’s all I can see. But you went down with your legs apart, and there may be more inside. Bring your knees up.”
This opened my crack, and he peered into it. “Yes. There are some in there, some quite close to your hole. And a few on the back of your balls.” Back to work.
I had long since got a raging hard-on. It could not be otherwise. But now that his fingers were working around my hole and on my balls, and his hand was resting on my cheeks, pressures began to build up nearby. Rapidly. Urgently. Unstoppably.
“Sorry, Leon, I can’t do this without feeling you up. But these bloody needles have got to come out.” He was clearly aware of my state. “Do you want me to stop?”
I did not answer directly. On fire with embarrassment, I could only mumble desperately, “Andrew, sorry, I’m going to come. Quick, towel or something.”
He grabbed his towel and spread it under my raised belly. Just in time. I came, came on Andrew’s bed, without him even touching my cock, grinding my head and shoulders into his pillow, groaning in a complex mix of emotions. Oh God! First things first. I squeezed my cock, already deflating, to empty it. Wiped it. Rolled up the towel. Dead give-away evidence of seduction, to anyone else. Only then could I look up, red in the face and tears not far off.
“Andrew, sorry, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to. Just couldn’t control myself.”
He was concerned. “Who could? Look, Leon, don’t worry. Don’t be sorry. It’s me should be sorry — I didn’t realise you were so far gone. I’m sure I’d have come if you’d been handling me like that. That’s why I was so cautious in the bath. Remember, when you were washing cow-shit off me? All the same” — there was more than a hint of a smile and even a touch of pride — “that’s the first time I’ve made anyone come!”
Oh no it’s not, I thought. You’ve made me come often enough before. But once again I could not say it. I was mixed up. Coming was such a private thing, coming by accident was if anything worse. True, far better it should happen with Andrew than anyone else (Matron? Christ almighty!). But whatever my inward thoughts, I was still bashful, still far from ready to contemplate deliberate sex with him. Because I still had no notion where he stood.
“Well, yes, thanks. It won’t happen again, as long as you’re quick. So finish your evil work.” I was trying desperately to keep it light.
So he finished his evil work. “No, stay there. Your bum looks as if it’s got measles and been in a cat fight.”
He fished out a tube of antiseptic ointment from his bedside drawer, and with gentle fingers anointed me from thighs to lower back, high on the mountains and deep in the valley. And even though I was in heaven, I did not turn a hair. Not that I had many to turn.
“Right, that’ll do,” and he slapped me lightly on the buttocks. The whole operation had taken over an hour. “But you smell. You haven’t had a shower yet. Nor’ve I.”
So I dressed enough to get to the shower, and we showered together, everyone else having long since been and gone, and he gave me the ointment. “You need another dose of this, but you’d better put it on this time, not me.” And we ended up back in our study, where I lowered myself gingerly on to my chair.
I could not leave it there. “Whew. Andrew, thanks. Look, I was dead embarrassed by what happened. But thank God it happened with you, not somebody else.” I deliberately echoed what he had said to me after his bath. “Because you’re a good friend.”
His look showed that he appreciated it. “Well, that’s what friends are about, isn’t it? And I don’t think it quite qualifies as seduction.” He was grinning.
“Umm. No, not quite.” I needed to match his mood. “But it reminds me of a joke I heard someone telling yesterday. Have you heard it? About fortune-tellers?”
“Don’t think so. What?”
“Well. Fortune-tellers have crystal balls. So they can tell when they’re coming.”
Andrew rocked with laughter. “That’s a good one. Reminds me too of one Jim told me this morning. About the boy who said, ‘My dad says French letters don’t work.’ That’s pretty clever, when you thi — Leon, what’s the matter? What’ve I said?”
I felt as if I had been punched in the solar plexus. I had hardly given them a thought for months, but now a batch of ancient sorrows suddenly returned, out of the blue.
“Oh God, sorry. Not your fault. You couldn’t know.”
He came close and put his hand on my shoulder. “Tell me, Leon,” he said gently.
I was not in tears, or anywhere near them. It was more like being winded. I replied tonelessly, “It’s just that I’ve always reckoned my father’s French letter didn’t work.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Andrew. I was an accident. I’m sure. Not planned. Not wanted. That’s why they don’t love me.”
“Oh my God.” He was clearly appalled, and scrabbling furiously in his mind for a crumb of comfort to offer. “Leon, they may not want you, not love you, but there are other people who do.” He blushed, as if aware of what might be read into that.
“Yes. Thanks. I know. It’s just that when I compare them with your Mum and Dad … And it still hurts. Not as much as it did, but when I’m reminded of it.”
He sat staring at me, deep in thought. “Leon, you like my Mum and Dad, don’t you? And trust them?”
“Why, yes, of course, they’re wonderful.”
“Look, I feel out of my depth here. For helping you, I mean. So may I tell them about this? They’ll be much better with this than me. After all, they are parents. They’ve got the experience. Can I tell them?”
I looked at him. Yes, it made sense. I had met them only twice, but I would already be willing to trust them with my innermost secrets. To treat them as the parents I did not really have.
“Yes. Yes, please do. I’d like that. Thanks.”
So it was left.
*
By the end of term my love for Andrew had grown more pressing. I took great care to hide it, for I had no real evidence at all that it was returned, or that it would be. The message of The Charioteer was constantly in my mind. Its hero Laurie is a decent young man trying to work out who he is. While recovering from a war wound he meets two people. One, by coincidence, is another Andrew, an innocent Quaker youngster who is a conscientious objector. The other is Ralph, Laurie’s hero from his schooldays and now a naval officer who is embroiled with a circle of homosexuals, some repressed, some blatantly promiscuous. Laurie, although head over heels in one-sided love with the unattainable Andrew, is determined not to violate his purity. But violated that purity is, not by Laurie or Ralph but by one of Ralph’s circle, and Laurie is shattered.
I had had no more semi-sexual encounters with my Andrew, and he had displayed nothing beyond his usual friendliness and consideration. None the less, after that afternoon, I began to sense — I could not for the life of me say how — that he was not innocent in the way that Mary Renault’s Andrew had been. I sensed that his friendship was moving towards something more than friendship. I sensed, if it really was love, that it was still young, that he was feeling his way and still had quite a distance to go. If it is love, Leon, I said to myself, foster it, feed it, strengthen it. But don’t violate it. Don’t try to force the pace. Don’t rush. It’s too delicate and too precious to risk. The emperor Augustus had a motto, festina lente, make haste slowly. I commandeered it for myself. Patience became my middle name
So I went to Oxford for Christmas, for ten days of unalloyed delight at the Goodharts’ elegant house in Park Town. School apart, I had never been away from home before. To my relief and his, we met up with none of Andrew’s faithless friends. Rather, he showed me round the university which, I reluctantly admitted, was not inferior to my Cambridge. We went to the cinema — another first for me — to see Danny Kaye in Hans Christian Andersen. We attended the carol service at Christ Church. Andrew even taught me to ride a bike. I had never touched one before, but now found myself on his small cast-off machine, wobbling uncertainly beside him through the University Parks.
And we wallowed in the warmth and love and generosity of the Goodhart home. It was a constant stimulus and a constant haven. On Christmas Day, apart from eating ourselves into a torpor, I was bowled over by their presents to me: a record of the Allegri Miserere from Andrew, and a three-volume set of the Lord of the Rings from Jack and Helen. Modest enough by many standards, but charged with meaning for someone who was a stranger to generosity, other than theirs. There was nothing from my parents, who did not believe in such fripperies. And one evening Helen and I found ourselves alone together in the living room, with a blazing fire in the grate and the illuminated Christmas tree in the corner, and we sat side by side on the sofa.
“Leon, dear, Andrew’s told us about your unhappiness. About your birth. That you were unplanned and unwanted. Would you like to talk about it?”
I looked at her, and saw love and concern. “Yes please. Yes, I would. The point is …” I paused to get my thoughts in order. “The point is, if my parents had wanted me in the first place, I reckon they’d have loved me. But they never have. Not like you love Andrew. Nothing like. It feels … this sounds silly, but it feels as if I was adrift in the middle of the sea. Ready to drown. No land in sight. Nothing to hold on to. Or rather it did feel like that, often. Until I met Andrew. He’s been … yes, that’s it, he’s been a lifebelt, keeping me afloat. Giving me hope. I don’t get the feeling nearly so much now, but it still comes back occasionally. Specially in Cambridge. That nobody loves me. Nobody at all.”
“Oh, Leon. How dreadful for you. I can imagine, or I think I can. But there are two points there, aren’t there, which are slightly different. One is being an accident. Unplanned. That’s something that’s totally outside your control, and always has been. You can’t do anything about it, however much you may want to. It’s rather like the colour of your eyes. Or whether you’re right- or left-handed. Or whether you love women or men. Or whether you’re an early or a late developer. Or whether you were born in Kamchatka or Timbuktoo. You might wish it were otherwise, but it’s a fact you can’t change. So there’s no point in agonising about it. Are you with me?”
I was. Very much so. It was a comfort, hearing it put so clearly. And one thing she had said was very relevant in another way. Did she suspect, even know, that I was queer? No, she couldn’t. But it was a huge relief to know that the Goodhart attitude to queerness was the complete opposite of the Michaelson one. She put her arm round my shoulder.
“And the second point, arising from the first, is being loved, or not loved. I find the total absence of love very hard to visualise. Oh, I’m not going to go all prim and proper and say that your parents really must love you even if they don’t show it. That would amount to an absence of love, anyway. No, from all I’ve heard and seen of you, and from what I know of your parents, I fully accept that you were an accident and that they don’t love you. Which must be very hard to bear. But the point is this. Even if you weren’t loved once, you are loved, now. By at least three people. By my two menfolk, and by me.” I understood perfectly well the sense in which we were using the word ‘love.’ “So you’ve got at least three lifebelts to keep you afloat. You know all about Andrew, and Jack and I are always here if you want to talk about anything you feel you can’t talk about with your parents. Or with Andrew. You do understand, that, don’t you? And you’ll come to us when you need to?”
I breathed a deep breath. “Oh, Helen, thanks. Thanks very much indeed. Yes, I will.”
A huge comfort, that. Stand-in parents whom I loved and respected far more than the real ones. She had already succeeded in banishing my ancient sorrow and loneliness, I thought for good. And I swung round and hugged her. That night as I went to bed I found myself once again in tears: tears of release, of relief, of gratitude, of love.
I returned to Cambridge for a week of housework — snow kept the garden untouchable — in somewhat bitter recognition of the variety of human behaviour. The Goodharts had soared in my mental league table; my own parents had plummeted. The difference showed itself in umpteen ways. But it was encapsulated in the simplest of facts: whereas I had to call my parents Mother and Father, Andrew called his Mum and Dad.

Part 2: The abler soul

Part 3: Captain of my soul

This story was unwittingly inspired by a reader who sent some kind remarks about The Scholar’s Tale and asked about my pen name. I explained that, in full, it is Mihangel Hwntw, Mihangel being the Welsh form of Michael and Hwntw (‘from beyond’) being the North Wales term for a South Walian. He replied, to my astonishment, with a virulent tirade against the Welsh. It was, as he himself admitted, an ‘unseemly display of shameless racism’. But such xenophobia between proud — possibly over-proud — neighbours is not uncommon, in either direction, and it struck me that it might be interesting to explore how a gay love affair might come to span the divide.
Writing a story like this solely in English is fraught with difficulties. The narrator is a Welshman. You must imagine that all the dialogue between Welsh characters is in Welsh, and that the dialogue between Welsh and English characters is at first in English but, as will become apparent, increasingly turns to Welsh. To help maintain the colour, however, I have retained occasional Welsh words or phrases. Most are exclamations and, unless they are translated, their exact meaning is unimportant.
This is not a Welsh lesson. But if you want to pronounce the principal names more or less correctly, Elfed is El-ved, Maelor is My-lor, Macsen is straightforward and Huw is the same as Hugh. Iawn — whose meaning will be explained in due course — is pronounced roughly Yown, rhyming with Town. For further guidance, see . Tad, as is obvious enough, means father. But in Welsh some initial letters are altered by the preceding word. Thus a son addressing his father will call him fy nhad, my father, which is commonly abbreviated to Nhad. I therefore use Nhad in such circumstances, and Tad otherwise.
All the places mentioned are real.
I owe a debt to Bil for keeping me on the rails.
5 Ionawr 2002
It was a lovely summer evening as I chugged happily home from a day in the mountains. Term had just finished, and six weeks of unparalleled independence stretched out ahead. If you are a boy who lives in a very small village, who likes nothing better than the solitude of the wilds, and whose Tad works long hours including Saturdays, then your main problem is mobility. Up till now I had had three unsatisfactory options. Push bike, which in the mountains of Eryri is plain daft. Or buses, which cost a mint and don’t run when or where you need them. Or, on Sundays, cadging lifts from Tad. He had helped out uncomplainingly, but it dragged him away from his beloved gardening.
So last April, in self-defence, he had presented me for my sixteenth birthday with a second-hand yellow Honda scooter, a crash hat, a tax disc and insurance. Bless him. I had got on the road at once, and as soon as my GCSE exams were under my belt I had taken a course of lessons. Only a week ago I had passed the test, thrown away my D-plates, and now, armed with a full licence, could carry a passenger. There were snags, of course. The speed limit was 30, not that the scooter could do much more, and reckless holiday traffic made the narrow roads scary. But my independence was now complete, and I was in bliss. True, I had to think about a modest holiday job to replenish the coffers, but that could wait for a few days.
A couple of miles short of Bangor, where I go to school and where Tad works, I turned off the main road. Past the gatehouse of Penrhyn Castle, that grim monument to the exploitation of my people in the Bethesda slate quarries, and into the quiet oasis of Llandygái, with its short street of small houses and trim gardens leading up to the church. There stood an unfamiliar red Astra and a big removal van, nearly emptied, with bits of furniture on the verge and men carrying a sofa into a house. Ha, new people moving in next door. When old Mr Hughes died, Mrs Hughes had gone to live with her daughter in Llanfairpwll. Recently the Ar Werth sign had been replaced by Gwerthwyd, but we had not heard who had bought the place, so I was agog to find out. Llandygái is a friendly little community where neighbours are important.
Standing behind the van was a boy of my age or a bit younger. But where I am short and dark — typically Welsh, some might say — he was tall and fair. And, yes, decidedly attractive. I parked my scooter, took off my helmet, and approached him with a grin on my face and my hand stuck out.
“Su’mae! Elfed. Elfed Griffiths. Dw i’n byw drws nesaf, efo Nhad. Croeso i Landygái!”
He shook my hand, blushing. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand Welsh. I’m Hugh Lestrange. And my mother’s inside somewhere.”
Sais! English! Iesu Grist! I had a deep-seated antipathy to the English, engrained in the fabric of my being. What bloody right had an English family to invade our tight little Welsh village? Bitterly disappointed, I almost turned my back on him. But politeness had been drilled into me, like most Welsh youngsters, so I repeated in English what I had said before, carefully omitting the ‘welcome’ bit.
“I’m Elfed Griffiths. I live next door, with my Nhad.”
I saw him mentally filing the name. But he must have read my face, which had lost its smile and was doubtless glowering, and he apologised again.
“Oh Lord, I’m sorry. You were hoping I’d be Welsh. Or speak Welsh. But I’m going to learn. Can you put up with me till then? The English aren’t all bad, you know.”
Well, that was a bit better. He did seem to appreciate that most of the English were bad.
So I manufactured a smile. “Iawn. Till then.”
At that moment a poncy middle-class voice brayed out of the house, “Kitchen chairs next, darling!”
“OK, Mum.”
He picked up a couple, turned to me, and said “Diolch yn fawr.” His pronunciation was dreadful, but I got the message. He was saying thank you very much. At least he had made the effort to read up a few basics.
He carried the chairs inside. I called after him “Da bo am rŵan,” goodbye for now, and wheeled the scooter into our garage, deep in thought. Over tea, I told Tad. He was disappointed, of course, because he did not like the English either, and with very good reason. But his dislike was more mellow and rational than my youthful unforgiving hatred, which at that stage — I fully admit it now — verged on a warped and paranoid racism. Looking back, I can trace exactly how, over the next few weeks, my rabid extremism was softened in the fire and finally hammered into a relative tolerance, more akin to his. So Tad was inclined to be philosophical. The very fact that Hugh was aware of being potentially unwelcome gave him some comfort.
“There’s hope yet,” he said. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
But I had another problem which Tad did not. I was gay. Hoyw, in Welsh. Not actively. I had simply known for some time that I could never love girls, but that I could love boys. I had not met the right one yet, or anything approaching it. A romp in the heather with any boy with a beautiful face was not my cup of tea. I knew I had to wait until my soul-mate turned up, someone who thought the same way as me. And on top of that, I was a loner by nature. I had plenty of casual friends from school, of both sexes, and got on well enough with them. But no real friends. Tad was well aware of all this — there were no secrets between us — and, though I thought I could detect sorrow that he would never have grandchildren, he was splendidly supportive. But he could only help so far. Some battles I had to fight entirely by myself, such as battles with myself. That night, as I jerked off, I found my thoughts turning, quite against my will, to Hugh. It’s just not on, I told myself. You can’t lust after the enemy. I managed to banish his image from my head, but it was not easy.
*
Next morning I was up early, intent on walking over Bwlch y Ddeufaen. I am no mountaineer, let alone a climber. Conquering all the 3000-footers and running up and down Cnicht in half an hour is emphatically not my scene. Except perhaps for the views they offer, the peaks as such do not mean much to me, and the big ones are usually swarming with visitors. I am no naturalist either, though I have picked up a bit of geology. No. To me, the lure of the mountains is that they are the bones of my country, the home and defence and refuge of generations past. My greatest pleasure is to find a solitary spot and, as the clouds sweep by, watch the ever-changing light. From bright and deceptively benign, to misty and mysterious, to black and ominous. And in my mind’s eye I replace the distant ants of hikers with shepherds and cowherds about their business, or with clerics and merchants and soldiers following long-abandoned tracks. I re-people the old forts with their garrisons, re-enact the battles of the past, relive ancient power politics. The mountains reek of history. The mountains are the soul of Gwynedd. Of my country. Therefore they are my soul too. I am a romantic as well as a loner, and not ashamed of it.
Nowadays the traffic hurtles along the dual carriageway of the A55 close to the sea and through the beetling cliffs of Penmaenbach and Penmaenmawr, a route tamed quite recently, only two or three centuries ago. Until then, the entrance to Gwynedd was Bwlch y Ddeufaen, the bleak inland pass connecting Dyffryn Conwy with the coastal plain at Abergwyngregyn, where the princes of Gwynedd had a llys, a court. No vehicles have crossed the Bwlch for centuries, but it is lined with prehistoric settlements and burial cairns, and in places the Roman road and its successors have worn the ground into deep hollow ways. This was once the principal access to northern Gwynedd, followed by most of the trade and most of the armies. Few people go there now. The only blot on the landscape is the high-voltage power lines which even today find this the easiest route.
So I drove east, turned off the main road at Aber, and wound my way up the steep valley. Ignoring the car park that serves tourists heading for the waterfalls, I continued to the end of the tarmac, parked the scooter and took to my feet. With intervals of sitting and pondering, I ambled across the pass, beyond the two prehistoric standing stones which give it its name, to where the tarmac starts again and the road drops steeply down towards Y Ro-wen. There I turned back, still lost in history. At the summit, my stomach was reminding me of my sandwiches when I saw someone coming the other way. Almost bound to be an English hiker, since few Welsh take their homeland as seriously as me, and I was mildly irritated at the interruption to my solitude. But as it drew nearer the figure became more familiar. Male. Tall. Fair-haired. Hugh Lestrange. Carrying a large rucksack, wearing sensible boots, striding out sturdily.
I was astonished. Not that he was exploring on his first day in a new home, but that he had come here. The dubious delights of Bangor High Street, yes; or the tourist traps of Caernarfon or Conwy Castles; or even the train to the top of Yr Wyddfa. But Bwlch y Ddeufaen? It was hardly spectacular — moorland rather than mountain — and hardly well-known. Far down any ordinary list of priorities.
We drew abreast. “Hi!” he said, grinning broadly. “Thought I recognised your scooter back there.”
For the life of me I could not help smiling back, though it broke all my rules.
“How did you get here?”
“Oh, bus to Aber.”
So he had walked four miles and climbed 1500 feet, and was not even sweating in the bright sun.
“But why here, of all places?”
“Well. It’s hard to explain.”
He gazed out across Llanfairfechan and the placid sea to Ynys Seiriol in the hazy distance, evidently collecting his thoughts.
“I have this odd feeling, you see, wherever I am, that I somehow need to know what makes the place tick. Not just now — that’s usually fairly obvious — but what’s made it tick in the past What’s shaped it. Shaped its people. When we lived in Germany, at Mönchengladbach — Dad was in the army there — I read up its history and prowled round the Rhine valley. Then we moved to Wiltshire and I did the same on Salisbury Plain. Tried to make sense of it. Its story, before it became an army training ground, back to the Stone Age. It’s a sort of … need to belong, I suppose. I’ve heard it called a sense of place. But you can’t belong somewhere till you know about it. So I’ve got to get to know this part of Gwynedd. Does that sound totally daft?”
“Not daft at all. I feel exactly the same. But why Bwlch y Ddeufaen? Why not somewhere obvious like Caernarfon?”
He looked surprised, as if I had asked a stupid question.
“Oh, but Caernarfon isn’t Welsh. OK, the Romans were there, and of course it’s Welsh now, and the county town and all that. But the English created the town. They built the castle. No, I’ve come here because this was the front door to Gwynedd, long before the English were thought of. This is the way you’d come in. Where you’d get your first sight of Gwynedd proper. Whether you were a monk or a pedlar or a king. So it seemed the best place for me to start too.”
Diawch. He was on the ball, this one. I could not have put it better myself. Two instincts struggled in my mind. One was never to fraternise with the English, who could not be trusted. The other was to find out more about this sensitive soul, alien though he might be. The second instinct won.
“Hugh, I was thinking of having my sandwiches. Have you eaten yet?”
“No, but I’m ready.”
So we shrugged off our sacks, got out our food, and sat down on the heather.
“So why’ve you come to Gwynedd?” I asked.
“Oh, my Dad was in the army. Like I said. Got seconded to the peace-keeping force in Kosovo. He was killed out there, a couple of months ago.”
I heard the pain in his voice. “Duw, I’m sorry.”
“We were in army accommodation at Larkhill, and had to move out. Well, Mum’s a qualified riding instructor, and she’s been offered a partnership in a riding school at Pentir. She comes from an army family, and she’s terribly terribly military, don’t you know.” He had put on an exaggerated accent. “And these stables sound a pretty snooty place. Just up her street. Don’t get me wrong. She’s OK, if you handle her right. But Dad wasn’t military, not in that sense. We were on the same wavelength.” It was pretty clear that he and his Mum were not.
“Where are you going to school?”
His face dropped even further. “I wanted to go to Ysgol Tryfan” — one of the two state secondary schools in Bangor — “but Mum insists I go to St Gerard’s. ‘Surely you realise it’s more appropriate for an officer’s son’” — he was obviously quoting her.
St Gerard’s is an independent day school in Bangor, academically good, but emphatically pricey and snobbish.
“Where do you go?” he added,
“Tryfan. It’s a good place.”
“So I’ve heard. But I’m not allowed. Anyway, it’s Welsh-medium, isn’t it? So I couldn’t go there yet. Not without Welsh. How old are you?”
“Sixteen last April. You?”
“Sixteen last May. D’you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No, there’s only Tad and me. He runs a second-hand bookshop in Bangor. We’re on the same wavelength too.”
“No Mum, then?” he asked tentatively.
“No. She walked out before I was a year old, and hasn’t been in touch since. She was English,” I added bitterly. “Discovered, a bit late in the day, that she didn’t like Wales. Or the Welsh. Or Tad. Or me.”
There was a pause. “So that’s why you don’t like the English?”
Well, Mam’s treachery to my beloved Tad was probably the main plank on which my xenophobia was built, but there were plenty of others too.
“One reason among many,” I admitted.
It hardly seemed polite to spell out the rest, unless he insisted. Which he did.
“Look, can you help me out? Please. I’ve no-one else to ask. I mean, it’s one thing to live in your own country, like I’ve done the last few years. And in Germany it was different. I wasn’t happy with the set-up there — British Army of Occupation, for heaven’s sake, fifty years after the war was over. But we were insulated. We had our own schools, our own shops, little reason to mix with the locals. But Wales is another matter. OK, it’s part of Britain, but it’s not part of England. I know the English are … aren’t always popular here. But I want to fit in as best I can. And if I’m going to fit in, I need to know the background. Why they aren’t popular.”
Fair enough, but it would need quite a lecture to put it across.
“Iawn. Well. There are umpteen shades of opinion. Some people don’t give a damn, and live happily alongside the English. But I’m at the other end of the scale, or nearly. Real nationalists can’t stand the English. Cold-shoulder them. For all kinds of reasons. Take the past. Time was when we were the only people in Britain. Our literature goes back much further than yours. There was a cathedral in Bangor long before there was one in Canterbury. Then you came swarming in and pushed us back, till we only had Wales left. We’ve got long memories. Ever heard of Elmet, as you call it now? A small Welsh kingdom, round Leeds. Hung on a long time before you finally squashed it, about 620 AD. We still remember it. It’s where my name comes from. Elfed.
“And then you started invading Wales itself. Took us over for good when Edward I killed Llywelyn ap Gruffydd in 1282 and built his bloody castles to keep us under control. It’s burned into our memory. There was quite a stir in 1982, seven hundred years on. You can still see the graffiti painted then, if you know where to look, saying cofiwch 1282, remember 1282. And the next year he mopped up the last resistance. Captured Llywelyn’s brother Dafydd, the last prince of Gwynedd. On Bera Mawr, only a couple of miles from here” — I jerked a bitter thumb over my shoulder — “and hauled him off to Shrewsbury to hang, draw and quarter him. For defending his country.
“And ever since then you’ve been treating us like a colony, nibbling away at our resources, our identity. Exploiting our coal, metals, slate, water. For your own profit. Insisting till quite recently that kids speak only English in school, even in the playground. Infiltrating Wales and diluting our culture. Buying up our houses for holiday homes at prices beyond our reach. Small wonder there was that campaign some years back — Meibion Glyndwr — to torch holiday homes. I agree with the reasoning behind it, if not with the method. And you buy up perfectly good Welsh businesses and bring in English labour and sack the Welsh. That happened to Tad. He had a damn good job with a computer programming firm. He was due for promotion. But it hadn’t been taken over a week before he was out on his ear.
“Beth nesa? What next? Well, hordes of you swarm in for your holidays. Look at the coast here. Prestatyn, that’s Liverpool-on-Sea. From there past Rhyl to Abergele, it’s solid with caravan parks. Then Bae Colwyn and Rhos, which are Costa Geriatrica. And out on Llŷn there’s Abersoch, aka Wilmslow-on-Sea, for the folk with too much money and too little sense. Iawn, it helps the economy, can’t be denied. But it does nothing for our Cymreictod. Our Welshness. You lord it over us as if you own the place, and laugh at our funny language and our quaint customs. Net result, the language has been dying. Iawn, it’s picking up a bit now, but there’s a hell of a long way to go. So nowadays the graffiti say Tai, gwaith, iaith — houses, work, language.
“And do you offer us independence like all your other colonies? Like hell you do. All you’ve allowed us was this referendum on whether we wanted a Welsh Assembly. Hardly any powers, nothing but a talking shop. Wafer-thin majority in favour. If we’d had the option of a proper parliament like Scotland it would’ve been a thumping big majority. And when we’d said yes, what did you do? Imposed a Whitehall poodle on us as First Minister. We had the hell of a job to get rid of him and get Rhodri Morgan instead. A proper Welshman. And … oh well, that’s plenty enough to be going on with. To show why you’re not popular.”
It struck me that I had been on my soap-box for rather too long, and that I had not been entirely polite in referring to the English as ‘you’, as if Hugh himself had been responsible for all these iniquities. So I hastily added, “Nothing personal, of course.”
Hugh was gazing at me thoughtfully. “OK, I take your point, and I can’t dispute your facts. I’m not defending the English, what they do, what they’ve done. Lots of them are crass and insensitive. Can’t be denied. But there are lots who’re thoroughly decent. And aren’t you over-painting it a bit? I mean, Englishmen regularly behave like that on holiday, whether it’s in Blackpool or Majorca. It’s not aimed just at the Welsh. They always have been arrogant with foreigners — it’s how they won their empire. But how long do you go on holding it against them? I mean, are they really to blame for what their ancestors did? It’s like the Crusades, or the slave trade. They shouldn’t have happened, but they did. And there were Welsh crusaders and slave traders as well as English ones — do you feel guilty about that? And even now, surely, the right isn’t all on one side, either. OK, English yobs get pissed in Prestatyn, but I gather that Welsh yobs get pissed in Caernarfon, and smash the place up as well.”
Overall, my preconceptions were far too deeply entrenched to be easily altered. But one thing I did notice. Whereas I had rudely used the blanket term of ‘you’, he had referred to the English as ‘them’, not as ‘us’, as if he was distancing himself from them. And I had to admit that his last point was true.
“Well, yes. But I’d rather have Welsh yobs smashing the place up than English ones. At least it’s theirs to smash. The long and the short of it is that if you’re a proper Welshman you just can’t trust an Englishman. At least, Tad and I can’t.”
“No exceptions, then? You have to be a full-blooded Welshman to be on side of the angels?”
I sensed that he had found a weakness in my argument and was probing it.
“Well, no. After all, I’m half English,” I replied defensively.
“You mean you sort of suppress your Englishness and cultivate your Welshness?”
“Something like that.”
“Does that mean a full Englishman can’t ever identify with the Welsh? Become an honorary Welshman?”
“Well, there are exceptions, of course. So I’ve heard. Though I’ve never met one myself.”
“Well, there’s a target for me to aim at, then. And the first step is to learn Welsh, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Do you reckon it’s easy to learn?”
“Oh yes,” I said blithely. “It’s very straightforward.”
“And how best to set about it?”
“Well, they say Wlpan courses are the best. Intensive. Based on conversation. Bangor University runs them. But only in the winter.”
“Ummm. That’s a pity. I’d hoped to get fairly fluent before term starts.” He cocked a considering eye at me. “But what about you? Would you be interested in teaching me? I’d pay, of course. Mum’s already agreed to fund me learning Welsh.”
Duw. An interesting idea. But play it cautiously.
“It’d have to be pretty well full-time, you know, if you want to be fluent. And you realise I’ve never taught Welsh before?”
“Does that matter? At least you know the language inside out.”
“Hmm. How much would you pay?”
“Haven’t the foggiest. How much would you charge?”
“Haven’t the foggiest either. Have to ask Tad.”
“Well, if we can agree on a price, how about it?”
It was a thought. It really was a thought. I needed the money, and I reckoned I could give fair value for it. It would be a sight more interesting than stacking shelves at Tesco. Equally important, I reckoned I could survive the next six weeks in the company of this bloke who was, I already had to admit, far out of the ordinary run of Englishmen. Pam lai? Why not? In for a penny.
“Iawn, you’re on.”
He beamed with delight. “Cool. Thanks a million. For starters, what’s this word iawn you’re always using?”
“Oh, a very useful one. Equivalent of ‘right’ or ‘OK’. Also means ‘very’. But I won’t begin proper lessons till we’ve got textbooks. We’re both going to need a structure to follow. Tad can help there too.”
“Right. I mean iawn. Makes sense.”
“But there’s one thing we can do without a textbook. Pronunciation. If you don’t mind me saying so, yours isn’t exactly hot.”
I found a scruffy bit of paper, got out the 1:25,000 map I always had with me, and started him off with the Welsh alphabet (which is by no means the same as English) using place-names as examples. Some good specimens for practising on were in fact within sight, like Ynys Seiriol and Abergwyngregyn and Llanfairfechan, with Dwygyfylchi just round the corner. Welsh pronunciation, once you know the rules (unlike English which does not seem to have any), is easy, though some of the sounds do not come readily to foreign lips. I was pleased that he managed ll, that standard pitfall for outsiders, very well, though the long ŷ as we say it up here, and some of the diphthongs, were more elusive. But it was a good start.
So I retraced my steps with him as far as Y Ddeufaen, pointing out things of interest as we went. Miles away to the east, just short of the silver ribbon of the Afon Conwy, we could just make out the gable of Caerhun church on the site of the Roman fort, where the road over the Bwlch began. Again to my surprise, he knew about it, and even supplied its Latin name. So, as we walked back, I probed to see how much he already knew about Gwynedd and its history. Quite a bit, it emerged. A couple of years ago, he and his Dad had been on holiday further south, at Borth y Gêst, and they had explored those parts, from Cricieth up into the mountains. It had whetted his appetite. He had read enough since to grasp the outline of Welsh history, and was not badly informed on the Romans and the Middle Ages.
Of course it’s all pretty superficial, I said cynically to myself. He’s read no Welsh literature, and his history’s all one-sided, being drawn from English sources. But — I forced myself to be fair — at least there’s something to build on. At least he’s read Edith Pargeter’s Brothers of Gwynedd — now there’s a sympathetic English writer — and so he’s well genned up on the last princes. I began to appreciate the enormity of what I had taken on, of trying to instil some Cymreigrwydd into an Englishman. It’s not going to be easy, I realised, to strike a balance between the healthy scepticism due from a true Welshman and the proper encouragement due from a teacher. But it’s not going to be dull.
When we got back to the scooter, the question arose of how he was getting home. To catch a bus from Aber would mean a long wait. So I offered him a lift. He had no crash helmet, of course, though he would have to get one if we were going out together regularly. Now, because in a sense he was my guest and it was my duty to protect him, I insisted he wear mine, while I remained bare-headed. We followed the old road, where the chances of meeting a police patrol were nil. But as we buzzed across the bridge over the dual carriageway, what should pass beneath us but a blue-and-yellow-chequered police car. No harm done, surely: we could hardly be identified. And so we returned to our respective homes.
Over tea, I filled Tad in on what had happened, and asked his advice. He listened with interest and — rather to my surprise in view of his traumatic experience with my Mam — with qualified approval.
“Give it a go,” he said. “You’re plenty wise enough not to sell your soul to the devil, like I did. And it’ll be good for you, too. Teaching’s the best way of learning. How much? Umm. Well, don’t go over the top. What are you thinking of in terms of hours? Eight hours a day, six days a week? Say fifty hours. Wlpan courses cost about a pound an hour. Hmm. That’s only £50 a week. Slave labour. And he’ll be getting one-to-one tuition into the bargain. But against that, you aren’t a qualified teacher. I’d suggest trying for £75 a week. It’s still not much, but if you go any higher you’ll probably put them off. And suggest a trial period of a week.”
So I went next door, to their back door as neighbours always do, and met Hugh’s mother for the first time. She was horsy in looks and in voice, and struck me as vastly less intelligent and sensitive than her son. I proposed my fee and explained why it was pitched at that level, and after some bickering she accepted it, at least for a trial week. And she agreed to pay for a crash helmet for him.
When that was all sorted, she fixed me with a faintly manic eye and said, “Introduce him to some girls, Elfed. He still doesn’t have a girlfriend, and if he doesn’t get one soon we’ll have to assume he’s a poof. And if stallions aren’t interested in mares they’re best gelded.” She laughed a sinister, neighing laugh.
Iesu Grist! Hugh blushed crimson. Full of rage, I thanked her politely and said goodnight, and he followed me into the garden.
“So,” he asked quietly, “are you going to introduce me to some girls?”
“No. Not unless you want. I don’t have a girlfriend either.”
He seemed relieved. “Good. If Mum was right, and I was a poof, would that be a problem with you?”
I forced myself to look him in the eyes. “None whatsoever.”
He seemed even more relieved. “Good. Because I think I am. You’re sure?”
Part of me wanted to match his honesty with my honesty. He was attractive, in body and mind. Very attractive. But that other deeply-entrenched part of me said no, he’s English, that’ll be playing with fire.
So I merely replied “Sure. No difficulty.” And we made arrangements for next day.
“Nhad,” I said as I got in. “She’s a poisonous woman, gweitha’r modd, but she’s agreed. And Nhad, Hugh’s gay. Or thinks he is. And she suspects he is too, and doesn’t like it.”
“Myn brain i! That’s a complication!” He regarded me carefully. “Have you told him about yourself?”
“No.”
“Wise. But you think you might fall for him. No, you’re afraid you might fall for him. Is that it?”
“Yes. He’s very attractive. Likeable. But he is English. How do I balance the good and the bad?”
Tad ruminated. “Take your time,” he said at last. “Make sure the good really is good. And you may find the bad isn’t so bad after all. True, all the English people I’ve known at all well have proved rotten. But that’s probably my bad luck. I’m willing to accept there can be sound fruit there. After you’ve lived cheek by jowl with Hugh for six weeks, or four, or even two, you’ll have a clearer idea if he’s a bad lot, or so-so, or pure gold. And act accordingly. The thing not to do is act too soon, either way, before you’re absolutely sure. Like I did. But you know that as well as I do. Anyway, pob lwc. Good luck. And I’m behind you all the way.”
Thank God for an understanding, tolerant, trusting Tad. He was my sheet anchor.
“Diolch, Nhad. We’ve got to go into Bangor tomorrow to get a helmet for Hugh, and could you fix us up with a couple of copies of a good Welsh-for-beginners textbook? And would you give Hugh a lift in, while I follow on the scooter?”
“No problem to either.”
*
So next morning Hugh and I met on the street. His mother had already gone to Pentir. While we waited for Tad to get the car out we were hailed by a very good friend and near neighbour.
“Bore da, Tecwyn!” I replied, and made the introductions. “Tecwyn, dyma Hugh Lestrange. Hugh, this is Sergeant Evans, from the Bangor police station.”
“Pleased to meet you, young man. Welcome to Llandygái.”
They shook hands.
“How do you do. Sorry I can’t speak Welsh. Yet. But Elfed’s going to teach me.”
“Is he now? Well, take my advice and mind what words he teaches you. You can’t be too careful with the foul-mouthed youngsters around these days.”
He winked at me.
I grinned back. “You should know. Tecwyn keeps tabs,” I explained to Hugh, “on every youngster in Gwynedd.”
“Not all, I don’t. Only yesterday I was on the A55 when what should pass over the bridge by Ty’n yr Hendre but a yellow scooter ridden by a dark-haired young man without a helmet and a passenger with a green helmet. No idea who they were.” He was looking pointedly from my scooter to my helmet to my hair. “There might have been hundreds of vehicles of that description between Aber and here.”
“Oh yes,” I said, keeping my face straight. “We were out that way yesterday, and saw several dozen.”
“But if I’d been on the same road, mind, I’d have had to pull him in. Ta ta for now.”
And he climbed into his car.
“Great man,” I said to Hugh. “That’s the way he works.”
Then Tad emerged, and I introduced Hugh. They drove off together, and Tad told me later that, even in the five minutes it took into Bangor, Hugh had impressed him mightily. I met them at the shop, and we got the books and helmet.
Thus began Hugh’s education. It would bore the pants off you if I spelt out everything we did over the next few weeks. To satisfy our mutual sense of place, we tended to spend the day out, weather permitting, in some scenic or historic place, as long as it was secluded, and we would pursue our studies lying in the sun, lost in the vastness of the hills. After tea, as often as not, we continued at home. Usually in mine. His mother would be out at Pentir until all hours, so that I saw little of her, which was no great sorrow. But her shadow dominated their house and made it less than comfortable, whereas from the word go Tad got on well with Hugh. He lent him books, and within a week of their meeting insisted that Hugh call him Maelor, rather than Mr Griffiths. It became quite normal for Hugh to have tea with us. So we sometimes watched Welsh programmes to get him used to voices other than Tad’s and mine, and introduce him to other dialects.
Tad, moreover, was quite right. Hugh’s education proved to be Elfed’s education as well. Like any child, I had picked up my mother tongue quite automatically. English had followed a number of years later, learnt without conscious effort from the radio and TV and from my contemporaries, but reinforced by lessons at school. I was absolutely typical. All Welshmen speak English, whether or not they speak Welsh too. Having a way with words, they probably speak it and write it better than most Englishmen do. So I had learnt the rules for English, but not for Welsh. Like most people, I spoke my own language without ever giving a thought to its grammar and syntax. I had blithely told Hugh that it was straightforward. And so it is, as far as spelling and pronunciation go.
But the further I looked into the textbook, the more complex the rest turned out to be. In English, for instance, if you want to say ‘No’, there is essentially only one word to use. In Welsh, though I have never counted, there must be fifty or more ways of saying it, depending on the context. I used them all, but without thinking about them. Then there are the mutations, where the first letter of a word can be changed in up to three different ways by the word before it. These things come automatically to a Welshman. Genders come automatically too. One way sounds right, all other ways sound wrong. But an outsider has to learn the rules.
Quite apart from what I learnt, Hugh learnt too. He was an excellent pupil, with a quick ear, a flexible tongue, and a retentive memory. But learning any language in a structured way involves tedious memorising of grammar and vocabulary, and whereas we had fondly imagined we would be able to have proper conversations in a week, we found we were still stuck with textbook sentences like ‘Perhaps you have left your purse on the counter.’ Not very useful when we wanted to talk about history or culture.
So we compromised. At first, we alternated spells in Welsh with spells in English. Or, as time progressed, more and more was in Welsh but incorporated English words when Hugh’s vocabulary failed. It was bloody hard work, for both of us. I have heard it said that learning a language is like climbing a hill: a hard slog for a long time, but once you are over the summit you are past the worst and can coast downhill, still learning, but much more easily. And one measure of whether you have reached the summit is your ability to make puns. Hugh was always good at puns in English, and when he started punning in Welsh — which is not so easy — I reckoned he had got there. So one day, nearly four weeks in, I decreed “Dim Saesneg heddiw. Dim un gair.” No English today. Not a single word. We managed it, and were very proud. Hugh had endured much good-humoured banter from friends in the village, who followed his progress with interest. Now he could hold his head high with them.
Nor was it only a matter of language. Wherever we were, we also talked about history and literature. During the first week in August we spent a lot of time in front of the TV watching the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol (it was miles away in South Wales that year) while I tried to explain what was going on with the poetry and dance and drama. And at home I introduced him to Welsh pop — not the Manic Street Preachers and Catatonia and Tom Jones, who come from Wales but are not really Welsh, and whom he knew anyway — but proper Welsh music, from Dafydd Iwan to Bob Delyn and Catsgam. All in all we found we were working much more than the agreed fifty hours a week. No problem, for we got on well together. And so it went on, week after week. Many of the details merge in my memory, but four particular conversations do stand out.
One day, after only a week or so, we struggled up to the cave high on Moel yr Ogof where Owain Glyndwr had hidden from his English pursuers and, like him, we looked across the forest to Yr Wyddfa crowned with a halo of white cloud. Hugh had an unexpected request to make. He reported a conversation with his mother, who had pointed out that if she were to die before he turned eighteen there was no obvious member of his family to become his guardian. Three of his grandparents were dead and the last was in a home, with Alzheimer’s. Otherwise his nearest relative was a second cousin in Singapore. Could Hugh, she had asked, suggest a suitable potential guardian? Elfed’s Tad, he had said at once. So now Hugh was canvassing my opinion.
“It’s highly unlikely he’d be called on,” he said. “It’s less than two years before I’m eighteen, and Mum’s not expecting to turn up her toes in the immediate future. It’s just an insurance in case the unexpected does happen. What d’you think? And if you can stomach the prospect, what d’you think he might think?”
If it had been an imminent likelihood, I was still wary enough to have said no; but this remote possibility was a different matter.
“Fine by me,” I said.
Tad, when approached that evening, took the same line. So Mrs Lestrange paid a formal visit to confirm things, and added a codicil to her will. We agreed, Tad and I, that Hugh’s gesture in committing himself, however theoretically, to a strange family he had met so recently was both endearing and complimentary. And it was further proof, we felt, of his genuine desire for a Welsh identity.
This desire of his was underlined by a conversation in the middle of August. One day found us at Tre’r Ceiri, the Iron Age hill fort on Yr Eifl. Our GCSE results had just come through and, having both done pretty well, we were feeling pleased with ourselves.
As we sat on the rampart looking down towards the tip of Llŷn, Hugh said, “Elfed, thinking of results. I’ve been into Welsh for a month. Progress report, please. How’m I doing?”
“Bloody marvellously.” It was the honest truth. “I didn’t dare hope you’d be so good so soon. I reckon you’re past the worst, and it’ll get easier now. There’s still a long way to go, of course. You can’t be expected to learn the whole dictionary in a month, or hoist in all the idioms. But your grammar’s good, your vocabulary’s getting better, and your accent’s fine. There are times when you might even be taken for a Welshman.”
“Well, great. All thanks to you. You’ve got the patience of Job. It’s been damned hard work, but it’s been worth every minute. Being with you.”
A nice compliment, but what did he mean? We certainly got on well, but was he hinting at something more than that? Inevitably, we had learnt quite a lot about each other simply by being together, but remarkably little of our talking had been specifically about ourselves or our thoughts. Hugh had not mentioned his gayness again. Nor, of course, had I mentioned mine. But it was always in the back of my mind, and no doubt of Hugh’s. Might he be falling for me? Had he been Welsh, I would pretty certainly have been in love with him long ago. Tad was right, yet again. I had found that the good in Hugh was good, and the bad was nothing like as bad as I feared. He was sunny and open, intelligent and witty, and (though I was perversely reluctant to admit it, even to myself) already a damn good friend. I had not found a jot of arrogance or anti-Welshness in him.
On an earlier occasion, for example, I had asked him, “Hugh, if you were old enough, how would you vote?”
“Oh, in England, LibDem, no argument. But in Wales, Plaid, like a shot,” Plaid Cymru being the Welsh National Party.
Once, I might have suspected him of saying that merely to please me. Now that I knew him, I believed him.
So I had already accepted that he was indeed, in Tad’s words, pure gold. Not a bad lot, not so-so, but pure gold. Except, and this was the solitary fly in the ointment, that by birth and first language he was English. His virtues, numerous though they were, could never over-ride that one fatal flaw. So help me, that was how I saw it then — I am not defending my attitude, just recording it. Therefore, in my bleakly jaundiced view, he was still dangerous enough to keep at arm’s length, still impossible to fall in love with. Whether or not he fell in love with me. End of story, I thought. I had programmed my mind to avoid emotional involvement. My job — a demanding but enjoyable job — was simply that of a teacher. In this capacity, I could and did take pride and pleasure in helping him towards the Welshness he desired.
That reminded me of something else. “Hugh, if you’re to become an acceptable Welshman, we ought to do something about your name. I mean, Lestrange is so utterly un-Welsh.”
“Yes, I’ve wondered about that too.”
“Well, Hugh’s easy. Spell it H-U-W and it’s a fine Welsh name.”
“Iawn, no problem there. But what about my surname?”
“Well, there are other ways. I’m thinking of changing mine myself.”
“What to? And isn’t it complicated? Deed poll or whatever?”
“No, easy as wink. Your name is what you want to be called. Your surname’s not on your birth certificate. And I’m thinking of swapping my surname for a patronymic. You know, Tad’s first name.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, surnames are inherited, generation after generation. Like Tad and me, Maelor Griffiths and Elfed Griffiths. It’s very boring. Half the population of Wales is called Jones or Williams or Evans or Hughes or Griffiths. But round here the idea was only adopted a couple of centuries ago. Imported from England. Before then, we used patronymics, ‘so-and-so son of so-and-so.’ My Taid — grandfather — was Emrys. So Tad would’ve been called Maelor Emrys. And I’d be Elfed Maelor. Much more variety. More and more people are going back to the old system now.”
“Da iawn. Nice idea. But it wouldn’t work very well with me. My Dad’s first name was Max. Huw Max doesn’t sound right. Quite apart from there being no x in Welsh.”
“Well, it doesn’t have to be a proper patronym. What about Macsen? That’s near enough, and a perfectly good name. Very historic — you know, Macsen Wledig.”
In Welsh legend this was the name of the Roman emperor Magnus Maximus, who had started on his imperial career in 383 AD, supposedly at Caernarfon.
“Elfed! That’s it! Macsen Wledig was an ancestor of mine!” Huw was almost bouncing in excitement.
“How on earth do you know?”
“Well, the Lestranges are Norman, came over with William the Conqueror. But somewhere in Tudor times one of them married a descendant of Edward III, and the English roy —”
“Huw. Hold it. If you’re descended from Edward III, you’re descended from Edward I.”
In my book, Edward I was about the biggest bugbear in Welsh history, who had robbed us of our last shreds of independence and consigned us to servility. I shrank away from Huw almost as if he was King Edward Longshanks reincarnated.
“True. I wish I weren’t. But look here, Elfed” — and for the first time in our acquaintance he sounded impatient — “don’t hold someone guilty of the sins of their ancestors. I don’t like what Edward did any more than you do. But don’t hold me responsible. Everybody’s family tree’s got black sheep in it. I’ll bet yours has.”
“It goes back to Archbishop Williams of Cochwillan,” I protested grumpily, as if that answered him.
“In the Civil Wars? Iawn. But even archbishops can have ancestors or descendants who’re bad lots.”
I sighed and tried to be fair. “Well, I suppose you’ve got to have the benefit of the doubt.” I was still put out.
“Thank you, sir, for your generosity to this benighted foreigner.” He was poking fun at me, but I could not laugh. “Anyway, I was saying, if you follow the English royal line up, one branch brings you to Hywel Dda.”
“Ah! That’s better. A sight better.” Hywel Dda was the great lawgiver, king of Wales in the tenth century.
“And according to the old genealogies, if you believe them, Hywel’s wife was descended from Macsen Wledig.”
“Huw, that’s great! Huw Macsen it is, then. Much better than many a proper Welshman could claim. Macsen and Hywel might almost outweigh your later villains,” I added graciously. I was already feeling a bit happier.
So Huw Macsen he became, if only privately at first.
We got back quite early and, as we drove through Bangor, Huw asked to be dropped off at the library, and made his own way home.
Next morning we went to Dinas Emrys near Beddgelert, by arrangement with the National Park warden. We sat inside the ramparts and chewed over the legend that on this very spot, in the dying days of Roman influence, the young Emrys had confronted the evil Gwrtheyrn; or Ambrosius had confronted Vortigern if you prefer the English forms. Here the red dragon of Wales had fought the white dragon of the Saxons, and had emerged victorious.
Presently Huw remarked, a little cautiously, “Elfed, I’ve two things to say which you may not like. There was a bit in the paper yesterday, a quote from Kim Howells.”
This was a junior minister in the government, but a good Welshman. Huw fished a cutting out of his wallet and read it out:
“The Scots don’t mind laughing at themselves, but in Wales we’re obsessed with proving we’ve got an identity that the world doesn’t understand.
“I reckon he’s right. You ought to laugh at yourself more often. Even if it’s only laughing at those crummy nighties the bards wear at the Eisteddfod.”
My hackles rose instantly and I began to grumble, but he over-rode me.
“And the other thing is this. I looked it up in the library. Archbishop Williams was descended from Edward I.”
I stared at him blankly, in deep shock. Not that Huw and I were distant cousins. That was likely enough, since most people in Britain are related, though they do not know it. What rocked me to the foundation was the news that in my veins ran the blood of the arch-enemy, of the tyrant who had raped my country. My face flamed, and I was on the brink of erupting with anger at Huw, at the English, at the archbishop, at any conceivable scapegoat for my shame.
And then suddenly, as if lit up by a flash of lightning, the bigotry and illogicality of my thinking was laid bare to me. I saw the utter absurdity of it all, and the bubble of my pride burst for good. To my own astonishment, instead of exploding in fury, I collapsed in hysterical laughter, and fell back on the turf, face still scarlet, flanks heaving. When in a lucid interval I caught a glimpse of Huw, he was chuckling gently, both at me and with me, and wearing a distinctly satisfied look.
When I had recovered, he relentlessly followed up his victory, and we spent the rest of the day trying to reorganise my battered mind.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said at one point. “I admire you Welsh for hanging on to your identity, your culture, through thick and thin. I admire you hugely. But your national pride is bruised. And that can turn into an obsession, as Kim Howells said. And obsessions aren’t good for anyone.”
I saw that he was right. By the time we left for home he had emptied me of my generic mistrust and hate. I still did not like what the English had done and were doing to the Welsh, any more than he did. But he had changed my perspective. He had brought home to me that while one might blame the past for the present, one could not reasonably blame the present for the past. He had taught me to judge not the herd but the individual. Edward I’s misdeeds could not be laid at my door. Nor, therefore, could they be laid at Huw’s. Nor was Huw an English opportunist buying a holiday home, nor was he an English yob getting pissed in Prestatyn. He was innocent. That he was English was his misfortune, not his fault. Come to that, was it even a misfortune? Are we not all born with clean slates, and what matters is what we write on them?
“Huw, you’ve performed a miracle,” I said at last, as things fell into place.
“Tit for tat, then. You’ve performed a miracle on me.”
I was already aware that, with this spring-cleaning of my mind, love was now on the cards, though I had not had time to face up to that yet. As for Huw, he too knew that the blockage had been removed. After all, he had engineered its removal.
And now he remarked, “Elfed. You’ve been keeping me at arm’s length, haven’t you, and I understand why. Really I do. But you don’t have to any more, do you?”
I could only reply vaguely. “No, I don’t, do I?”
Right now I was not ready to be more specific. I had just had a massive and effective dose of mental laxative, and was still recovering from the shock of the resulting clear-out. But I did need to discover, as soon as my system had settled down, how the land lay with him. And I knew just the place to do it.
So next day we crossed the Menai Straits to Ynys Môn, and spent a long time exploring the weird lunar landscape of Mynydd Parys, which had once been the greatest copper mine in the Old World. But we returned, at my suggestion, by a roundabout route which took us to the south-west corner of the island. It was already getting late, so we phoned home that we would not be in for tea, and bought something to eat instead. Eventually we reached Llanddwyn.
It is a remote little peninsula with a ruined church and with broad views of the mainland mountains in one direction and up to Ynys Gybi in the other, a magical place once the tourists have gone. We left the scooter in the Forestry Commission car park and ploughed our way for a mile along the beach to the rocky headland. By now it was almost dark. The sun had set into the Irish Sea and an orange glow leavened the western sky, while over the mountains to the east a nearly full moon was rising and reflecting in the waters.
Huw gazed in awe. I let him drink it in, and after a while he softly recited an englyn — a Welsh mini-poem, as delicate as a Japanese haiku and almost as untranslatable.
Y nos dywell yn dystewi, — caddug
Yn cuddio Eryri,
Yr haul yng ngwely’r heli,
A’r lloer yn ariannu’r lli.
The dim night is silent and its darkness covers Eryri; the sun in the bed of the sea, and the moon silvering the flood.
I had not heard it before, and was delighted. Mightily impressed, too, that Huw knew it.
“Who wrote that?”
“Gwallter Mechain. I found it in your Tad’s copy of Blodeuglwm.”
“How appropriate. Might have been made for the occasion. And for the place too. Isn’t it splendid here? It belongs to St Dwynwen, our counterpart to St Valentine. It used to be a place of pilgrimage for lovers, because here they couldn’t deceive each other.”
I said that very deliberately, in the hope of some enlightenment; and in the bright moonlight I saw Huw turn and look at me in long-drawn silence.
At last he spoke. “No deceit, then, Elfed Maelor. I told you I thought I was gay. Now I know I am. And that I’m in love. With you.”
And he kissed me on the cheek.
I had never imagined, let alone expected, that he would move so fast and so soon after yesterday, and I was so astonished that I made no response at all.
“O Duw, I haven’t spoiled it, have I?” he cried out in anguish. “I was so sure you were gay.”
“No, Huw, it’s all right,” I replied hastily. “You haven’t spoiled anything. No deceit from me either. You’re quite right. I am gay. But till yesterday I was trying hard not to fall in love with you. And succeeding. Now I want to love you, but I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Sorting out my muddled brain. I’m sorry. Give me a few days. Please.”
And to show there was no ill-feeling I kissed him lightly on the cheek as well.
He gave me another long look. “Iawn,” was all he finally said, in a tone of understanding tinged with a hint of resignation. “Iawn.”
For half an hour more we sat, alone with our thoughts under the moon, but yet together. At last, by unspoken consent, we got up and trudged back along the sands. We chugged home over the Menai bridge, his arms around my waist saying more than they had ever said before.
Back in Llandygái, as we parted, I looked him in the eye. “Huw, thank you for saying what you did. I don’t want to raise false hopes, but I think I’m almost there.”
“Diolch am hynny,” he replied with a tolerant smile. “Nos da.” Thank goodness. Good night. And he kissed me once more on the cheek.
It was too late to share my turbulent thoughts with Tad, so I had to wrestle with them by myself.
*
Next morning dawned bright again. I told Huw that a day of quiet contemplation might complete my sorting out. So we drove to the car park in Nant Gwynant and walked companionably up the Watkin Path towards Yr Wyddfa, but below the waterfalls we turned off right along the old miner’s track to Cwm Merch, a small and long-abandoned copper mine perched on the side of Lliwedd. The view across to the bleak crags of Ysgafell Wen and Yr Arddu puts humanity into perspective, and it is a solitary place. I have never seen anyone else there. We sat side by side on the ledge of the old tramway, leaning against the wall which held back a scree of rocks and spoil, saying little, wrapped in our thoughts.
Neither of us had slept well, and soon the warm sun took its toll. Huw’s head nodded and his eyes shut. I took the opportunity to inspect him more closely. A face of strength and confidence. Straight flaxen hair. A longish nose. A generous and firm mouth with a hint of a smile at the corners. Tanned skin, very smooth. At the back of his jaw a barely visible strip of hair he had missed in shaving, not stubble but fluff. He did not have to shave every day, as I did with my permanent six o’clock shadow. Smooth muscular arms and large capable hands. Then I dropped off too.
We were wakened by a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder. Black clouds were rolling overhead, and the air was stirring.
“Waterproofs!” we cried.
Our rucksacks lay on either side, but even as we reached for them there was an almighty flash and a simultaneous explosion immediately behind us, followed by a sulphurous smell and the rumble of stones tumbling down the scree. Huw leapt up, and before I could collect my wits I felt him grab my arm and trousers and drag me bodily sideways, even as a great slab of rock slid over the wall and crashed down on the spot where I had just been. It did not miss me entirely, for my left leg was trailing behind the rest of me and caught a glancing blow on the shin. And as Huw tried to pull me further, my leg stayed behind, the slack of my trousers trapped between the rock and the ground. Small stones continued to rattle down, and I covered my head in my hands. But he whipped his first-aid kit out of his sack, found a pair of scissors, deftly cut right round my trouser leg at the knee and slit it down from knee to hem. I was free, and he hauled me away from danger.
He was in total command. The rain began to lash down, and in the twinkling of an eye, it seemed, he had fished his sweater and anorak out of his sack and dressed me in them, and pulled his over-trousers onto my right leg. With gentle fingers he explored my left shin, which was hurting like hell, and had me flex my foot and wiggle my toes.
“No bones broken, I think. Maybe chipped. Certainly badly bruised. Can’t do anything about it here.”
He fed the waterproofs over my left leg too. The eye of the storm was moving away across the valley, and we looked at each other. It was raining old women and sticks, as we say, and he was already soaked, his hair plastered down, his thin shirt clinging tight to his body. And we looked at the rock, maybe three tons of it. If it had not been for Huw, I would have been under it, squashed rather flat. Still under it was my rucksack, containing not only my waterproofs but my crash helmet, the scooter keys, my house key, and our one and only mobile. He knelt down and fumbled beneath the rock from both sides. All he came up with was my stick, the sturdy piece of ash with a fork at the top that accompanied me everywhere in the hills.
“Your sack’s there for the duration, I’m afraid. Iawn, what about you? There’s no way a helicopter could get here in this, even if we could whistle one up.” The cloud was now low and the wind gusting madly. “Which leaves two choices. Either I nip down and phone Mountain Rescue. Where would they come from? Plas y Brenin?” I nodded. “It’d be two hours before they got here, at least. While you get wet and cold. Or else I carry you down. That’ll be a lot quicker. I’m going to carry you.”
Where he was tall and slender, I was short but stocky, and we probably weighed much the same. Say eleven stone, no easy burden. But he was still in total command, and I could only obey.
“Not piggy-back with your legs round my waist. Bad balance, and I’ll need my hands for the stick. You sit on my shoulders.” He got out his own helmet and buckled it on my head. “If I do slip, you’ve got further to fall than me.”
He banished my doubts about his strength by lifting me bodily and sitting me on the edge of the tramway shelf, my legs dangling over. He put on his almost empty rucksack, grabbed my stick, and jumped down off the tramway. Standing against the retaining wall between my legs, he fed them over his shoulders, and I shuffled my bottom forwards until my weight was on him.
“Sit tight up against my neck. Keep your weight forward. Hold on to my head, but allow it to move, and don’t cover my eyes. Iawn? Off we go.”
So we went. Very slowly at first down a slippery grass slope, where Huw held the stick with both hands and took great care that it and at least one of his feet were always on the ground at the same time. When we reached the roughly metalled track, the footing was firmer and his speed increased. A few times he skidded slightly on a wet stone, but recovered himself. The rain was still heavy, and streams cascaded over the track where there had been none before. He did not try to jump or stride across them, but simply ploughed with small steps through the water. He said nothing beyond the occasional instruction or enquiry if I was all right, but concentrated single-mindedly on his task.
I was lost in admiration. He had unquestionably saved my life. He had risen to the emergency like a professional. He was carrying me as if he had been practising for months. And, as if it mattered, every word he had said had been in Welsh. Not just the thoughtful, companionable, patient, beautiful Huw of before, but now the brave, sturdy, dependable Huw. The few remaining barriers crumbled. I knew that I loved him.
As my mind took the final step, my body responded. Of all the absurd occasions to get a hard-on! I fidgeted to make it more comfortable, until it was pressing, though separated by several layers of fabric, against the back of my love’s head. As he picked his way down the track his body swayed, and to maintain my balance I had to rock gently on his shoulders. In the process I was being unintentionally wanked. The last thing we wanted now! So I squirmed backwards to take things out of contact.
Huw noticed immediately, and stopped.
“Mae’n ddrwg gen i, Elfed. It’s no good. You’re upsetting the balance. I know what’s up.” He gave a little giggle as he realised what he had said. “I can feel it. But don’t worry. Let it happen. Dammit, enjoy it, even. Though it isn’t what I had in mind for you. The important thing is to get you down.” And he giggled again.
With that permission, indeed that command, I surrendered and squirmed forwards again, and within a hundred yards I shot my load in my pants. Bizarre though the circumstances were — or perhaps because they were so bizarre — I had never had an orgasm of such intensity. As I came, I groaned aloud and gripped his head viciously, and Huw silently stroked my hands in acknowledgement.
We negotiated a stile with considerable difficulty, crossed the slab bridge over the now raging river, and climbed up to the Watkin Path. Here the going was much easier, and about an hour and a half after leaving Cwm Merch we reached the main road and the car park. Huw unloaded me onto a convenient wall and heaved a deep sigh of relief. Without the keys, nothing could be done about the scooter.
“I’ll come and get it with your Tad,” he said, “And we’ll try to rescue your rucksack too. Meanwhile, we’ve got to get you to hospital.”
Since the timetable at the bus stop threatened a long wait, we could only try to hitch, and Huw stood by the roadside thumbing. We were in luck. Only half a dozen cars had swished past, little more than headlights visible in the clouds of spray, before one drew up. A police car. Driven by none other than Tecwyn Evans.
“Thought I recognised you,” I heard him say as Huw bent to the passenger window. “You in trouble? Not allowed to give you a lift if you’re not.” Huw explained briefly. “Iawn. I’ll take you to Ysbyty Gwynedd. Not much out of my way. But I don’t want my upholstery ruined.”
He fished out some rugs to protect the seats, they inserted me painfully into the front, and Huw got in the back. As he drove, Tecwyn demanded details.
“A lightning strike, eh? That’s not something one can plan for. You seem to have coped pretty well, young man,” and he glanced appreciatively at Huw through the mirror.
He was interrupted by a call on his radio, which led on to an incomprehensible conversation and occupied him for the rest of the journey. He dropped us at the entrance to A&E and drove off, pursued by our thanks.
People say rude things about Ysbyty Gwynedd, but they dealt with me very efficiently. Much of my shin was now purple, but mercifully accessible without removing the remains of my trousers and revealing the embarrassing evidence inside. An X-ray confirmed Huw’s verdict that nothing was broken. Painkillers and rest was the only treatment they could recommend. We took a taxi home. My key being on the mountain, I was locked out until Tad should return, so we went to Huw’s, with me hanging on his shoulder.
The first thing was to get dry and warm. Huw took off our sodden boots, put on the kettle, carried me in his arms up to the bathroom, turned on the tap — there was no shower — and went down again. He returned with two mugs of very sweet tea and some codeine and, although his clothes were clinging clammily to him, insisted that I bath first. We had not seen each other naked before, and I felt some trepidation as between us we stripped my clothes off. I was especially conscious of the half-dried mess matting the hair on my belly.
Huw helped me into the bath and, while I washed myself and sipped my tea, he sat on the loo and eyed my body with unconcealed interest.
“Sorry to stare,” he said, “but I can’t get over how hairy you are.”
It was true: shaggy legs, a carpet of hair up to my navel, even some on my chest.
“I’m a smooth man,” he went on, “Jacob to your Esau.”
He peeled off his own clothes to reveal his muscular body. True again: apart from his bush and his armpits there was not a hair visible.
“I never will be hairy, I reckon. My Dad wasn’t. But what the hell’s it matter?”
He helped me out of the bath, dried my bum, sat me on the loo to do the rest myself, and handed me a dressing gown. He climbed into my second-hand bathwater and lay back to soak. Though naked together for the first time, neither of us had shown the slightest twitch down below. I was in no state to do or say anything about my love. My mind was half numb and could focus only on the recent events, and spasmodically at that. I was suffering, I am pretty sure, from delayed shock and Huw, considerate soul, recognised and respected it.
So, guiltily conscious that I had hardly said a word to him since we had arrived at Cwm Merch, I made a huge effort and broached another topic.
“Huw. I haven’t thanked you for what you did. If it hadn’t been for you, they’d still be scraping me off the mountain.”
“Self-interest,” he said, smiling guilelessly at me. “Can’t let anything squash my love.”
I appreciated both meanings, but persevered. “Well, once you’d got me out, you knew exactly what to do. How come?”
“Oh, I’ve done first aid and mountain leadership courses. Easy when you live alongside the army. That’s one thing they’re good at.”
He heaved himself out of the water and towelled himself vigorously.
“That feels a sight better. Let’s find some clean clothes.”
He slung our wet ones into the washing machine and supported me to his bedroom, where I had not been before. Tidy where mine was a tip. Rummaging in a drawer, he threw me a pair of boxers and some socks, and as I put them on he hesitated over something. He seemed to make up his mind, and held up a white tee-shirt.
“How about this?”
It carried the mysterious lettering ‘RU (Mg,Fe)7Si8O22(OH)2?’ I looked my question.
“A friend in the States sent it to me. I gather they’re all the rage there among chemistry students.”
He dug out an old pair of his trousers that might just fit me.
“But what does it mean?”
“Oh, the formula’s a mineral. Named after a place called Cummington. In Massachusetts, I think. Cummingtonite.”
As he got dressed and as I looked back at the message and worked it out, he smiled a wide and wicked smile.
“So are you?”
“I hope so.”
With him, ideally, but I knew that I would be out like a light as soon as my head hit the pillow.
At that point the noise of a car took him to the window.
“Your Tad’s back. We’d better get you round there. Hang on!”
“What?”
“What’ll he make of that tee-shirt?”
“Probably too polite to ask. Even if he does, he knows I’m gay. And doesn’t mind a bit.”
“Really? Y nefoedd fawr!” Good heavens! “But better put this sweater on anyway. We’ve got to keep you warm.”
So we found ourselves at our kitchen table, Huw and I side by side opposite Tad, while I blearily relayed the outline of our story. Tad listened without interrupting, and when I had finished he moved round to Huw’s other side, hugged him, and said his simple thanks, “Diolch, Huw, diolch.” He made no attempt to hide a tear that trickled down his cheek, and I had a stark insight into the despair which would have engulfed him if I had ended up underneath that rock.
“Your name,” he continued to Huw, “ought to be Ywain mab Marro.”
I had no idea what he was on about, so addled was my brain, and stared stupidly; but it took Huw only a couple of seconds to twig, and to blush to the roots of his hair.
“Oh come on, Maelor,” he protested, “that’s going a bit far!”
“No, it’s not,” said Tad.
He saw me still gaping, and chuckled. “Ha, the pupil’s overtaken the teacher! Come on, hogyn, remember your Gododdin!”
The penny dropped. Aneirin’s Gododdin is the earliest Welsh poem, fourteen hundred years old, a string of elegies to warriors killed in battle by the English. Its first stanza commemorates a young man named Ywain mab Marro, and the very first line runs Greddyf gwr, oed gwas. A man in might, a youth in years. How absolutely right. That was just what Huw was.
Seeing that I had caught up, Tad turned back to Huw.
“When you first met Elfed, you pleaded that not all the English are bad. You’ll have heard that our experiences of the English have been none too happy, and we were sceptical. Elfed, I think, more than me. We shouldn’t have been. You’ve proved that you were right. Not by saving Elfed’s life, eternally grateful though we are — you’d have done it for anyone. But you’ve got an empathy with Wales and the Welsh that I’ve never met in an outsider. Ny bi ef a vi cas e rof a thi,” he quoted from a few lines further on in the Gododdin. There shall be no enmity between you and me.
“That’s right, Huw.” I had to add my agreement. “As far as we’re concerned, you’re a Welshman.”
Huw said not a word, but bowed his head in acceptance and hugged us both, hard.
Tad did not allow us to wallow in sentiment, but moved briskly on to practicalities.
“Look, boys, Elfed ought to be resting in bed, if not sleeping. Will you be all right by yourself? And Huw, we ought to recover the property you’ve carelessly strewn around Gwynedd. Are you game? There’s enough light left.”
It was six o’clock, and Huw was game, so they saw me to bed with a supply of codeine. I was only too glad to get there, and fell asleep the moment they left. Never a hope of doing what the tee-shirt said.
*
In the morning I woke late. Though no cushion of ease, my leg was definitely better. When I hobbled downstairs I found two things on the table. A damp square of cloth — the sad remains of my trouser leg — with a note in Huw’s writing saying simply ‘A memento for my love.’ And a note from Tad telling me to phone him in case of need and — a little mysteriously — to be especially considerate of Huw. So after a bite of breakfast I found my stick and limped next door.
The back door was unlocked. Once in the kitchen, I heard English voices coming from the lounge. One was Huw’s, the other belonged to a stranger whom I could see, through the open doors, lolling on the sofa. He was the spitting image of Stephen Fry as the general in Blackadder, a series which I had watched with glee simply because it showed up the English as total asses. The visitor’s plummy voice, and his inability to say r properly, somehow suggested that he too was a military man.
“Made any fwiends up here yet?” he was saying as I came in.
“Yes. The boy next door’s cool. We spend most of our time together.”
“Hmm. You seem to have picked up his accent in the process.”
It was true, I realised now he mentioned it, that Huw’s English had acquired a Welsh intonation. From me, presumably. I was not happy about eavesdropping but could not tear myself away, though I did step back out of sight.
“Have I?” Huw was surprised. “Anyway, he’s taught me Welsh, fluent Welsh. It’s marvellous.”
“What on earth do you want to learn Welsh for?”
“Because it’s the language here. Didn’t you pick up any Serbo-Croat or Albanian in Kosovo?”
“Course I did. Had to. The benighted heathens don’t speak anything else. But they all speak English here, don’t they? What’s wong with using that?”
“It’s a foreign language. Imposed from outside. How’d you have liked it if the Russians had invaded us in the cold war and everyone’d had to speak Russian?” I could tell that Huw was controlling himself with difficulty.
“Good God! Are you suggesting Wales is an occupied tewwitowy?”
“In effect, yes.”
“Seems to me your so-called fwiend’s been teaching you wevolutionawy ideas. What sort of chap is he? What’s his father do?”
“He keeps a shop. Salt of the earth.”
“Ha. One of these working-class nationalists, eh?”
“Nationalist, yes. So’m I, and proud of it. But the class system’s irrelevant here. The Welsh don’t have one. Not like you do in England.”
“Don’t you take that tone with me, boy. Damn it, you’re going native. I’ve seen it before. If you live outside England, you have a duty to your countwy. To fly the English flag. I’m going to speak to your mother about this. Suggest she keeps you away from these bad influences. Your father would have been ashamed of you.”
I heard Huw stand up. “Captain Masters.” His voice was icy. “I won’t have my father maligned. He would have approved of my friend. Wholeheartedly. I’m only sorry they never met. I think you’d better go.”
He spoke with quiet authority, and the visitor, blustering angrily, went. Huw slammed the front door on him and came into the kitchen white and quivering. He hardly seemed to notice me.
“I heard that, Huw,” I said quietly, “or the end of it. Thanks for the testimonial. Who’s that prat?”
“Captain Toby fucking Masters,” replied Huw in a flat voice. “Adjutant of Dad’s regiment. He’s staying somewhere nearby. Dad couldn’t stand him, but he gets on well with Mum. Thought it his duty to come and see how she’s getting on. She’s taken the day off, but she’s out shopping. She’s going to throw a wobbly when she hears I kicked him out with a flea in his ear. But he got right under my skin. Did you hear? Prime example of the benevolent English attitude to other races.”
“Pwime example” — I had to say this in English — “of a high-wanking officer.”
Huw exploded into laughter. “Oh, Elfed, that’s done me a power of good,” he said finally. “Yr hen dwpsyn. Forget the bugger, at least for now. How’s your leg?”
“Still hurts, but better, thanks. Slept like a log. How did it go last night?”
“Fine.”
And he told me how they had driven to Nant Gwynant in Tad’s old Volvo estate, armed with the spare scooter keys and a large crowbar. Together they had manhandled the scooter into the Volvo’s spacious interior which was normally used for carting books, and trudged up to Cwm Merch. With the crowbar on a judiciously placed fulcrum, Huw had managed to raise the rock enough for Tad to reach under with the crook of his stick and pull my sack out by the strap. The crash helmet was a write-off, having taken the full force of the falling rock. But in doing so it had protected everything else, which was more or less intact and dry. By half past nine they were home again, to find me fast asleep.
“I had a long talk with your Tad,” Huw ended thoughtfully, “In the car, and afterwards. He’s such a lovely gentle person. Like my Dad was. We talked about my Mum. How difficult she is. And I hope you don’t mind, but I told him I loved you. He didn’t blink an eyelid. He just said, ‘Good for you, ngwas. Persevere, and he’ll love you back’.”
But even as I opened my mouth to say that I already loved him back, we heard a car door slam and Huw’s Mum stridently demanding help with the shopping bags.
“Oh, shit,” said Huw. “Elfed, sorry, do you mind making yourself scarce? I’ve got to face the music. Best by myself. I’ll come round when it’s all over. If I’m still alive.”
Fair enough. I went home, frustrated. An hour later he put his head round the door, looking shaken.
“Duw. She put me through it. Winkled out the whole conversation. Then she phoned Toby — he’s staying at the Goat in Beddgelert — and got an earful from him. Which she passed on to me. She’s arranged for us both to go down and see him. To make peace. Though I’m damned if I’m going to apologise for anything. But I’ll survive. Problem is, he’s put ideas in her head. She’s beginning to think you aren’t really a nice person to know.” He sighed heavily. “Have to play it by ear. Can’t do anything else. I must go. See you.” And he ran back.
I was still frustrated. Bottled up. Not liking one bit the way things seemed to be heading. It was noon. Beddgelert was a good three-quarters of an hour away. Add say an hour for them to talk. They would hardly be back before half past two. I tried to read, resting my leg on the sofa. It did not work. I sat in the garden. I unenthusiastically nibbled some lunch. I tried lying on my bed. By three I had this foreboding that something was wrong, badly wrong — a major family row? an accident? — and I was as jittery as if sitting on an ants’ nest. I tried ringing Huw’s Mum’s mobile. No answer. I summoned up my courage and phoned the Goat, asking for Captain Masters. Sorry, he’s not in. I thought of ringing Tad, but while he would sympathise he would not be able to help. Nothing else I could do but fidget and worry. It was not till five, when I was back in the garden and my heart had shrivelled to the size of an old walnut, that I heard a car draw up and footsteps coming round to the back. I climbed to my feet. But it was not Huw. It was Tecwyn Evans.
“Tecwyn!”
“Ah, Elfed.” He came over, looking as serious as I had ever seen him. “I’ve bad news, I’m afraid. The Lestranges have been in an accident.”
“Huw’s not …?”
“Mrs Lestrange is dead. Huw’s all right. Well, he’s got nasty injuries, but he’ll get over them. But he’s in Ysbyty Gwynedd, and he needs you. I gather you’re his brother now, in a manner of speaking. Would you like me to take you over? And would you like to tell your Tad?”
Bless you, Tecwyn, I thought. The voice not just of authority but of friendship. I hobbled inside, grabbed my mobile and painkillers, and locked up. As we sped round the bypass, siren blaring — he was giving me the works — Tecwyn filled me in. The Lestranges had been driving back from Beddgelert towards Pen y Gwryd when a car coming the other way had taken a sharp bend near Hafod Rhisgl too fast and too wide, hit their Astra amidships, and pushed it clean through the drystone wall and down the sleep slope beyond. It had rolled down a drop of a hundred feet and more. Mrs Lestrange had died instantly. Huw was concussed and bruised, and had broken both arms.
“Lucky to survive, he was. We had to get the fire brigade in on the bottom road to cut them out. They’ve put him in plaster and sedated him, but he’s conscious. Or was twenty minutes ago.”
“Does he know his Mum’s dead?”
“Don’t think so. Luned’s looking after him.” I knew Luned Williams, a charge nurse at the hospital and mother of a school friend. “I doubt she’s told him. We’ll check. If not, will you break the news? It’s not an easy thing to do, Elfed, you know. Leave it to your Tad if you’d rather. But it’ll come least hard from someone he knows well. And he knows nobody here better than you.”
“Wrth gwrs.” Of course I will.
And as we turned off the bypass I phoned Tad at the shop and told him that he was now Huw’s guardian and could he come over as soon as possible. At the hospital, Tecwyn took me up. Perhaps because of the circumstances, they had put Huw not in a public ward but in a room by himself.
Outside the door, Tecwyn handed me over to Luned.
“Elfed, oh good,” she said. “He’s a bit dopey with morphine, but he’s awake. He’s been asking for you. Don’t talk too much, he just needs you with him. Stay as long as you want. Have I told him about his mother? No, I’ve been leaving that to you. Break it gently.”
And I went in, alone.
He was lying on his back, his arms in their casts outside the sheet. His head was covered with cuts and bruises, but nothing that looked too bad. His eyes were open and his face empty, but as soon as he saw me it lit up and shone.
“Elfed. Thanks for coming.”
He sounded drowsy. I sat down in a chair on his right side and took his hand firmly in mine. The plaster covered most of his palm, leaving his thumb sticking out of a hole.
“Tecwyn’s told me what happened. How’re you doing?”
“Not much pain. But a bit cross-eyed.”
“That’s the morphine. We’ll soon have you out of here. But Huw.” I was dreading saying what I had to. “They haven’t told you yet …”
But he cut me off. “It’s all right, Elfed. I heard the nurse talking. She thought I didn’t speak Welsh. I know Mum’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So’m I. I suppose. I don’t know what to think about it.”
“Give it time. It’ll sort itself out. The important thing is you’re not alone. You’ve got Tad to support you. And you’ve got me to love you.” His eyebrows rose. “Yes, you’ve got me. Dw i’n dy garu di, Huw Macsen. Yn oes oesoedd.” I love you. For ever and ever.
And I leant down and kissed him on the lips. As I lifted my head he gave a little sob.
“Oh, Elfed!” A few tears trickled down. “Kiss. Again.”
This time his tongue felt its way between my lips. Not far, not passionately. But enough to confirm his own love.
“Oh, Elfed!” And he smiled.
He had tired himself and dozed off, the smile and the tears still on his face. Shortly afterwards Luned came in to check on him. Then a tap on the door announced Tad’s arrival. I told him quietly that Huw knew he now belonged to us, and that I had declared my love. Tad beamed his approval, hugged me, sat down on Huw’s left, and held his other hand. Presently Huw stirred, and his eyes focussed.
“Nhad!” he said sleepily. It was the first time I had heard him call him that, face to face.
“Croeso, fy mab. Mae popeth rŵan yn iawn.” Welcome, my son. Everything’s all right now. “Just rest.”
Huw smiled drowsily, and tears appeared again in his eyes. After a while, “Nhad, I’ve been thinking. Need I go to St Gerard’s now?”
“No, no need at all. Ysgol Tryfan, then, with Elfed? Your Welsh is plenty good enough.”
“Please.”
“Iawn. I’ll see to it. As Huw Macsen?”
“As Huw Macsen.”
He dozed off again.
“I’ll leave you to it, Elfed,” said Tad. “Get some food at the canteen. Here’s a bit of cash. Stay as long as you want, as long as he needs you. Give me a ring to keep me posted, or if anything crops up. Any time. You all right? Leg not too bad? Got your codeine? Iawn. Good lad. So’s Huw. I’m proud of you both.” And he was gone.
I stayed where I was, still holding Huw’s hand, dreaming about the future that stretched limitlessly ahead of us. We knew each other pretty well by now. But not yet, of course, sexually. It would be weeks before his plaster was off and we could give our love full rein. But I yearned to give Huw some physical pleasure, as a token of my love. As a token, too, of the union of England and Wales. Yet the setting was hardly propitious. I could not risk a nurse or doctor bursting in to find a visitor administering a blow-job to a patient. A more discreet hand job would be safer. But not even that could be contemplated until he was ready. Patience, boy, patience.
It was already dark when Luned checked him once more, and was satisfied. Before long Huw woke again, in discomfort.
“Ych y fi! I need a pee. How the hell do I do it?”
“I’ll show you.”
I turned back the sheet, rolled him partly onto his side, and found one of those cardboard bottles on his cabinet. Kneeling painfully beside the bed, I lifted the ghastly hospital gown he was wearing, and fed his cock into the neck of the bottle.
“Fire away.”
He fired, at length, and I squeezed his cock to milk the last drops out. As I did so, I felt it expand in my grasp, and I gave it a little stroke. He responded not with thanks, but with a very audible sigh.
Was this the moment? With luck, Luned would not be back for a while. I put the sloshing bottle down and rolled him onto his back again. Then I looked carefully at his face. Much more alert and vivacious than before. Even wearing a touch of mischievous anticipation. Miraculous. He seemed to be not only fit enough, but willing. I kissed him again, this time deep and long, and he responded with vigour. On surfacing, I glanced at his cock. It was rigid. So, still without saying a word, I lifted my sweater enough for him to see the message on the tee-shirt, and raised a questioning eyebrow.
His battered face crinkled into that wide and wicked smile which I had seen only once before.
“You bet! But” — he looked at his plastered hands — “I can’t do it myself. It’s up to you. England’s at your mercy, Welshman. Take your revenge.”
Iawn. I did. I attacked England. And presently it came into Welsh hands.

Not understood. We move along asunder;
Our paths grow wider as the seasons creep
Along the years; we marvel and we wonder
Why life is life. And then we fall asleep —
Not understood.
Not understood. How trifles often change us!
The thoughtless sentence or the fancied slight
Destroys long years of friendship, and estrange us,
And on our souls there falls a freezing blight —
Not understood.
Not understood. How many breasts are aching
For lack of sympathy! Ah day to day
How many cheerless, lonely hearts are breaking!
How many noble spirits pass away —
Not understood.
O God! that men would see a little clearer,
Or judge less harshly when they cannot see;
O God! that men would draw a little nearer
To one another; they’d be nearer thee —
And understood.
Thomas Bracken, 1879

Although this story is set in Wales, the Welsh language plays little part in it. For those who like to pronounce the more important names right, Cilmin is (fairly obviously) Kilmin, Clynnog is Klunnog, and Lleuar approximates to Hlay-ar.
As should be clear from the headings, the chapters are narrated alternately by the two protagonists. All verses in the chapter headings and, limericks apart, all unattributed verses in the text are by Robert Hunter. All the places mentioned are real (although I have moved Lleuar to a new site) and all the historical personages mentioned are also real (although Cilmin Droed-ddu, St Beuno and St Cybi are only mistily so). But every present-day character is wholly imaginary.
This story is dedicated, with respect and gratitude, to Ben.

31 July 2005
Walk into splintered sunlight,
Inch your way through dead dreams
to another land.
Maybe you’re tired and broken,
Your tongue is twisted
with words half spoken
and thoughts unclear.
Box of Rain, 1970

Not understood. A short phrase and sharp, hammering in my head like the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth. Try it in German, then, and French — nicht verstanden, non compris. Different rhythms, but just as terse. Now try my mother tongue, which claims to be the language of heaven — neb yn deallt. Back to the Beethoven pattern. But is it really my mother tongue? And am I a traitor for wondering so?
Yet all that is mere word-play. None of it matters. Language is only the wrapper round the parcel. What matters is what’s inside. Whatever the language, it’s me that’s not understood. Me, Cilmin. And it’s my fault that I’m not understood. If I don’t explain myself, how can I expect to be understood? But how can I explain myself if I don’t know what I am? At Penygroes they thought they knew, and they laughed at me. Here at Pwllheli they don’t laugh because they know nothing about me. So keep it that way, Cilmin. Head down. Be unsociable. Huddle under your hoodie. People assume it hides a menacing tearaway brooding on aggro. In fact it hides a wounded teenager bent on anonymity. And it works. They leave me alone.
I suppose, looking back, that last year was easy. I was fresh to Pwllheli. Nobody knew me, nobody got to know me. The move from Penygroes was a good move. The down side was living in Clynnog ― no free transport from outside the college’s catchment, only public service buses. But that’s all over now, thank God, now that I’m seventeen at last and can drive Dad’s old MG. There’s a new down side, though. There always is. All the macho lads suck up to the driver of a snazzy red sports car and enthuse about RPMs and injectors and how fast it accelerates from 0 to 100 and can they have a go? None of which is my scene. Macho lads, what’s more, tend to have other interests that I don’t share. But I’m unsociable with them and they’re taking the hint. This year promises to be more relaxed than last. And I will be equally alone.
Just what I want, yet what I hate. Aloneness means loneliness. Desperate loneliness. At least it does to me. I’m not a natural loner. And aloneness underlines that swamping sense of non-fulfilment. How can you find fulfilment if you don’t interact with people? I used to be quite popular. Until eighteen months ago I did interact, and I want to interact again. On top of that, I’m conscious of an outward urge, a sense of rebellion, an impatience with the narrow world of Clynnog and Pwllheli, of Gwynedd, of Wales. I want to break free. But I’m trapped in this narrow world. Just as I’m trapped by this walnut-shell of secrecy which I dare let no-one pry inside.
Keeping that shell closed shuts out any hope of fulfilment, any chance of being understood. If I’m to be understood, I’ve got to open up, I’ve got to trust, I’ve got to make my identity known. But what is my identity? An unknown quantity, to most. A laughing-stock, to some. An object of respect and love, to just three people. But what am I to myself? I’m not sure. Am I ashamed of the contents of that shell? I’m not sure. Would I want to change its contents? I’m not sure. I’m different, and proud of my difference. Aren’t I? Aren’t I? Yet what sane person wants to be fundamentally different?
So I don’t know what I am. Maybe there’s someone, somewhere, who can tell me. But to date nobody has. The only people I’ve opened up to are Mum and Dad and Gwilym. They sympathise and they support, but I doubt if they know what I am, any more than I know myself. And they’re of a different generation. Of my own age, I’ve not come across a single soul I feel in the least inclined to trust.
So here I am, reasonably good to look at (as if it matters), reasonably well-off (as if it matters), reasonably intelligent (I ought to make university), reasonably likeable (look at my past record), and pining for companionship and more. Yet what am I doing to find it? Hiding under my hoodie.
Such thoughts regularly chased pell-mell around my head, and they chased around it that Tuesday as I sat in the common room belatedly eating my sandwiches. Sandwiches, because the college canteen’s menu is far from inspiring. Belatedly, because my history class runs from 12:30 to 2:00 and I don’t like eating too early. And, as I nibbled the last bit of apple from the core, this boy passed me. I had seen him around a number of times over the first few weeks of term — evidently a new student and therefore presumably sixteen. I had overheard him talking to his friends in English with a noticeably Scottish intonation — evidently an incomer. He was eye-turning, too, his manner one of thoughtful independence, his hair curly and almost auburn, his face square and almost freckly, his eyes blue verging on green. Those eyes met mine as he passed, as eyes do, and in them I seemed to see a sympathetic recognition.
He was heading for the lockers. On the spur of the moment I ventured a step which I had never ventured before. I threw my core into a bin, pulled my hood back off my head, and followed him. I rummaged in my locker, he rummaged in his, and as he rummaged he sang softly to himself. The music was hardly my sort. It was the words that held me transfixed like a butterfly on a pin.

In the attics of my life,
Full of cloudy dreams unreal,
Full of tastes no tongue can know
And lights no eye can see,
When there was no ear to hear
You sang to me.