- Yes, I have fucked a little boy.
- Did you burst him in the very depths of his being?
- Not to my knowledge.
- What age?
- He was ten.
Without the window day awaited light to dispel the night. Purple treeshadows leaned dark in the moonshine, brooded the garden, watchful. A mouse scurried across the lawn, leaving a black ski-track through the un-mown grass, each blade scattering beads of dew, mirroring many moons. A Persian, one paw raised, watched. Shy flowers hid their heads, ashamed, hoping, with their petals shut, not to be noticed; birds in the treetops safely slept. No owl hooted, no early car whitewashed walls with swinging headlamps, no. The shadows lengthened, slowly lightened, lost their mystery, disappeared. Moon, la luna, mistress incestuous, gradually faded, took her curtain calls from the clouds, and departed.
Blood red the sun rose, crimson the grass beneath tangerine trees. Orange the daffodils glowed, pink a few late snowdrops shone. Awake, birds called one to another; flowers, delighted by light, timid no longer, stretched and smiled in the sunshine. Shadows again.
*
Steven is dreaming: the cathedral vaulting of King’s Cross, its smoke-stained canopy seemingly weightless suspended above hordes of passengers burdened with luggage streaming along platform one, the train there about to depart, brown and cream of the Pullman cars, engine snorting steam. Sitting by himself in a single seat, a pretty boy in prep school clothes, the very picture. Without the window, alone on the platform, hunched in his overcoat, an adult, shrouded. Agony to say goodbye. All departures are reminders of Alpha and Omega. At birth the scissors snip; tick tick; a coffin slides toward the incinerator. Heart-attack white, the adult waves as the train by the platform glides, sunrise lips through the window mouthing – Thank you for having me – tinkle of cutlery upon the tablecloth. Steven is whirled away and awakes, a world away, arcing, a young boy, aching, arching beneath him, downless lips on departure saying – Thank you for having me, uncle . . . Ceylon. Tell me how long the train’s been gone. Snorting steam.
Stephen is dreaming: the fan-vaulting of his college chapel, its candle-smoke-stained canopy seemingly weightless suspended above a handful of students whose gowns are splashed by coloured sunshine the last rays of which are streaming through the stained glass in a wall of serried windows. Choristers catch fire, surplices draw flame, as stones in roundy wells the organ rings. Just as lotuses on leafy waters undulate, so the heads of the choirboys on their white starched ruffs. Incandescent their prepubescent faces. In a blaze of colour the evening fades, the hymn cascades to a close, echoes through the chapel ripple.
