Perfect Freedom, page 48
“It’s a funny time,” she said. “Nothing seems to lead to anything. Do you really think the war’s going to last long?”
“I don’t see what’s to stop it. Russia and the States will get into it eventually, I should think. One of these days, I’m going to have to do something about it.”
“Oh, but you’re—”
“Too old? Carl and I are almost exactly the same age and he’s apparently valiantly serving the fatherland. I’d have done something before now only I was still a little groggy when it started and then you came along and I wanted to make sure that Helene and Robbie would be all right.”
“I keep trying to think what makes you seem so old-fashioned,” Anne said. “I guess it must be because you seem to care. Everybody I know would have got married again or had quantities of dazzling mistresses, or taken dope or something. Of course, you did drink, but you don’t seem to have put your heart into it.”
“All the more reason I should go get myself killed. There doesn’t seem to be much else left for me to do.” Anne’s firm mouth closed more firmly and she looked away. Had he hurt her? She surely couldn’t expect him to pretend that she had given him a new purpose in life. He was profoundly grateful to her but his gratitude was tempered by his conviction that there was little left in him worth saving. He rose and leaned against the back of her chair and put his hand on her shoulder.
“I think maybe we’d better have that drink after all.”
He drove to Paris alone the next day and took rooms at the Ritz. He immediately sent for a tailor and offered a stiff premium to have several suits made for him overnight. He intended to play to the hilt his role as the rich and influential son of a rich and powerful father. He knew there was no point in asking for direct aid from his father. He had sneered at Stuart’s domestic difficulties when he had seen him more than a year ago.
“We Coslings do badly with our women,” he had said. “You, though, have had the good sense not to get tied up legally.” Stuart was glad now that he had stopped off to see the disagreeable old man. It permitted him to give the impression that they maintained a normal father-son relationship. He was the heir of an English milord.
His game almost worked. Expensively groomed and handsomely tailored, he cut a fine figure. The Cosling name carried even more weight in wartime than in peace. After an initial contact with his father’s French lawyers, Stuart had no trouble gaining admittance to ministerial antechambers. For several days he had high hopes.
“You and I know that anybody connected with the Coslings is above reproach,” the dignitaries he interviewed said in substance. “But there is this tiresome matter of public opinion.”
For Helene’s sake, he was ready to make the most of the distasteful fact of privilege, but in the end it failed him. “It would change everything if she were your wife,” an under-minister explained. “As your wife she wouldn’t be a French citizen. As it is, think what the press would make of it. Government corruption. The mistress of a highly connected person. Espionage. National security. We simply cannot afford any scandal. Couldn’t you marry the lady in question? We could manage it secretly perhaps and after that it would be easy.”
Of course, there was no hope of persuading Helene to accept such a solution. He could do no more.
It hadn’t been all wasted. His efforts had assured Helene of special attention. He had been practically guaranteed that she would be tried by sympathetic judges who would deal with her lightly. Of course, if they’d been married—The knife was being turned in the wound.
He waited to get in touch with Robbie until he knew what success he was going to have. He wrote him a note now and asked him to call. He telephoned Anne, too, and found that it helped enormously to listen to her hard young voice. When Robbie phoned the next day, they arranged to dine together at the Ritz that evening. Stuart could draw no conclusions from the boy’s manner on the phone except that he didn’t sound actively hostile.
Robbie hung up in a quandary. There was no point in seeing his father unless it might help his mother in some way. He no longer dreaded facing him; he just didn’t think they would ever have anything to say to each other. He had survived the worst period of his life without his father’s or anybody else’s guidance, and had found that he wasn’t totally without character. His father’s disapproval had become irrelevant.
The few weeks he had spent with Edward after the collapse of his parents’ life, those few weeks leading up to his last year at school, had cured him of his hunger for promiscuous sex. He had done the rounds of the bars for the first time, and under Edward’s disapproving eyes had gathered together groups of attractive young men and taken them home and given himself to anybody who wanted him. Group sex. Exhibitionistic sex. Voyeuristic sex. He had learned the limits of purely physical satisfaction. When his head count (cock count?) passed fifty he stopped keeping track. He was no longer interested. He wished that Edward could fill the strange terrible emptiness that he felt in himself but they couldn’t quite connect. Anyway, they were about to be separated by the normal course of events.
School meant Maurice. When he was once more seeing him daily, he wondered why he had pinned all his hopes on him. He was everything Robbie remembered him to be—attractive, reserved but charming, quietly humorous—but never by the slightest glance or word or gesture did he betray any hint that he might be romantically or sexually interested in Robbie or any other boy. The only thing that Robbie had to go on was that in his middle thirties he was still a bachelor, one of only two bachelors among the teachers.
The only classmate he had felt close to was gone so there was nothing to distract him from his preoccupation with Maurice. A handsome new boy looked at him with suspect interest but he had chosen celibacy until he had arrived at some resolution with Maurice.
As was usual among the masters and the senior students, some small social life developed between the art teacher and his favorite pupil. They took a few trips along the coast to museums and exhibitions. Maurice proposed dinner in town on a couple of Saturday nights. Robbie pressed himself against him, let his hands stray as intimately as he dared, tried to engage his eyes flirtatiously, but if Maurice was aware of it, he made no sign of responding. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, some irrational conviction persisted in Robbie that his elder was playing a game with both of them.
There was a moment of panic during the fall when there was talk of the school being closed by a threatened general mobilization, but an elderly British statesman returned from Munich announcing “peace in our time” and life resumed. Christmas approached. Robbie began to get desperate. He had heard from his mother that his father had returned and gone away again. He didn’t feel emotionally stable enough to face her and her companion in the dangerous confinement of Carl’s rented house. The situation was too explosive; anything might happen. The prospect so unnerved him that he began to wake up sobbing in the night. His personal life needed some direction. Only Maurice could provide it.
He knew that he wasn’t in love in the blind headlong way he had been with Toni but he thought that if they were lovers something deeper, surer, more rewarding would come of it. He had admired Maurice’s trim fit body on the tennis court. Although his manner and personality denied his sexuality, Robbie found him intensely desirable. The thought of arousing him from his rather British diffidence thrilled him. He wanted to find peace in the tranquil enclosure of Maurice’s arms. More immediately, he was desperate for somewhere to go for the Christmas holiday.
None of his wiles succeeded. He even showed him, among others of his recent drawings, a full-length sketch of himself, naked, in which he had subtly emphasized his partially erect sex without exaggerating its dimensions despite the temptation to do so. Maurice barely glanced at it and reproved him for wasting his time on such literal figurative work.
He seized on what he thought of as a final attempt at seduction when Maurice told him he was going away for the weekend. The master had a collection of very expensive art books that he never allowed out of his apartment. Robbie asked him if he would leave his key with him while he was gone. He improvised a project for which the books would be useful references. Maurice hesitated.
“I suppose there’d be no harm if you don’t let any of the other boys know. I don’t want them to think I’m playing favorites.”
Once Maurice was gone, Robbie hurried into town and had a copy of the key made. The next step was simply to get into Maurice’s bed as soon as Maurice was in it. If that didn’t work, he would know that there was nothing to hope for. At worst, Maurice could have him expelled, but he thought it more likely that he would be given a severe lecture and be made to promise to mend his ways.
As Sunday evening approached, when he was due to return Maurice’s key, Robbie’s nerve began to falter. Would he be able to go through with it? Circumstances turned out to be in his favor; Maurice was late and in a hurry and collected his key amid the usual bustle before dinner. Knowing he was back, Robbie had to fight the temptation to go to him that night, but for some reason he had settled on Monday night, when the routine of school would have resumed, and he decided to stick to his original plan for luck.
By Monday night, he was nearly frantic with anxiety and anticipation. His whole future was at stake. He worked himself up into an agony of indecision while he waited for it to be late enough for Maurice to be asleep. Should he give the whole thing up? Even if Maurice didn’t have him expelled, he might withdraw the friendly interest he had taken in him and his work. He didn’t know how he had thought of such an outrageous scheme. Duplicating the key. Creeping naked into his bed. Maurice would think he’d gone mad. Perhaps he should try to forget it and settle for the handsome new boy, whose advances were becoming increasingly bold. Robbie had had an occasion to observe that he had a very impressive cock. They were rare. None of the boys he’d picked up in St. Tropez had exceeded the norm.
If he had allowed himself some relief from his self-imposed celibacy, he wouldn’t be goaded into pacing the corridors in his dressing gown now, breaking the rules, pretending to go to the toilet, waiting for midnight. Maurice was two flights of stairs above him, in an apartment on the top floor of the building where Robbie shared a cubicle with two classmates. He could be with him in less than a minute. Feeling him so close, he knew that he was doomed to carrying out this final bid for his heart’s desire.
Nothing happened the way he had expected. To begin with, Maurice was awake. Robbie had oiled the lock and he entered soundlessly except for the click of the door closing. He had learned the lay of the land. Maurice’s bedroom was straight ahead of him, more a curtained alcove than a room. Robbie paused to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. A voice broke the silence.
“Who’s there? Is that you, Robbie?”
Robbie’s heart leaped into his throat. He stood transfixed while his mind seized on the fact that Maurice had expected him. Surely that meant that Maurice wanted him. “Yes, sir,” he gasped.
“Stay where you are.” A light switched on. He heard movement in the alcove and then Maurice appeared tying a dressing gown around himself. He looked very young with his hair ruffled and the dressing gown clinging to his trim athletic body. He looked as if he were naked under it. He stopped on the other side of the room and faced Robbie. “Did you do something to the lock so you could get in?”
“Not exactly, sir. I had the key copied.”
The sides of Maurice’s mouth twitched. “I should’ve thought of that. Did you meet anybody coming up here?”
“No, sir;”
“What about your roommates?”
“Sound asleep, sir. Anyway, I told them I wasn’t feeling well and might go to the infirmary.”
“I see. You’ve thought of everything. Good. Now you’d better tell me what you’re doing here. I might have an idea but I think if you do things like this you should be prepared to offer an explanation.”
“Yes, sir.” Robbie began to tremble all over but his eyes didn’t flinch from Maurice’s level gaze. “I want you, sir.”
Maurice looked at the floor and nodded briefly. He turned away and went to his desk and sat and adjusted some papers. He remained with his back partly turned to Robbie. “Can you explain just how you mean that?”
“In every way, sir. I thought you’d be asleep. I was going to get into bed with you.”
Maurice uttered a harsh impatient sound and swung around in his chair. His dressing gown fell away from his handsome, firmly muscled chest. “Have I ever given you the slightest sign that you could have what you wanted?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re sure? Not a word, a touch, something in my eyes?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Then how can you have the temerity to come here with this insane idea in your mind?”
“I don’t know.” Tears stung Robbie’s eyes. He pressed trembling hands to them and dropped his arms back to his sides. “It’s something I feel when we’re together. I feel as if I belonged with you, as if we belonged to each other. Maybe I’ve just imagined it.”
“Even if you haven’t—” Maurice started up and sank back into his chair and pulled his dressing gown around him. “My poor Robbie. You’re so young. Don’t you understand that at your age these infatuations happen? As we grow older, we learn how unimportant they are. I think you’d better go to bed. In the morning, we’ll have forgotten all about it.”
“No, sir. I don’t believe you. This isn’t unimportant for either of us. If you really wanted me to go, I’d feel so ashamed by now that I wouldn’t be able to stay.”
Maurice’s expression hardened and he suddenly looked older. “Don’t you understand that I’m trying to be kind?”
“It’s not very kind to tell me to go when I’m baring my soul to you.” He could finally move. He advanced into the room and pulled open his dressing gown and dropped it and stood just out of Maurice’s reach. His erection slowly lifted between them. “I’m baring all of myself. I’m not ashamed. I’m yours. I want you to take me.”
Maurice’s eyes flickered over him but otherwise he made no move. His control was unshakable. “Have you thought what would happen if we were found like this together?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. There’d be a frightful scandal.”
“It would be the end of school for you and the end of my career. Is a few minutes’ pleasure in bed worth that?”
Robbie choked with relief and uttered a strange sound like a sob. He was saved. Maurice wasn’t going to reject him. “You admit it would be a pleasure? Why should anybody find us? Are you expecting somebody?” He summoned up his last reserves of courage and took another step forward and dropped to his knees. He pushed Maurice’s legs apart and found the erection he was sure would be waiting for him. Even in the tensions of the moment, he was able to observe that it surpassed the norm. He bent over it and drew it into his mouth and moved his hands up over Maurice’s body, pushing his dressing gown out of the way until he was totally exposed to him. He ran his fingers along the scattering of hair that defined his pectoral muscles. He felt as if his heart were melting in the joyful heat of learning the feel of him. Maurice shrugged off the dressing gown and gripped the sides of his head and lifted it away from him. He moved forward to the edge of the chair and pulled him into him so that their erections touched. They were naked together at last. Robbie shuddered with ecstasy. “Oh God, I’ve wanted it so,” he moaned.
“How can I know what this means to you?” Maurice said with a hint of bewilderment in his voice. His eyes were altered beyond recognition, full of tenderness and desire. “Is it just sex? I’m in love with you. Does it sound ridiculous to you? I’ve been in love with you for months. I suppose you’ve felt it even though I’ve done everything I could to conceal it. You’re a beautiful boy. I’m a mature man. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”
“I don’t know. Do you mean I’m too young to know the difference between love and sex? Try me.” His voice grew husky with the wonder of being loved. “I want you to take me. I’ll be yours. I understand that.”
“Do you know anything about homosexuality? I don’t mean boys playing with each other. I mean the deep love that men can have for each other.”
“I’m a homosexual. I hoped you were too. I’ve been in love with a man before. I want us to love each other.”
“If there’s any doubt in your mind about what you’re saying, you’ll be leading me into a very great sin.”
“Unless you think making love is a sin, you shouldn’t worry. I know what I need. You can’t corrupt me. I’ve done everything. If you don’t take me, I’ll have to wait for somebody else I can give myself to. I can’t imagine it being anybody but you.”
Maurice rose, drawing Robbie up with him. They held each other lightly, their eyes meeting almost at a level; Maurice was a little taller. Robbie glanced down and saw that his erection wasn’t quite as big as Maurice’s, nor was his body as muscular. He had chosen well. Maurice was his master in every way. With all his guards discarded, his sexuality had become vivid and compelling. A little smile played around his lips.
“My dearest Robbie,” he said in his gentle cultivated voice. “I’m quite worn out with resisting you. Bless you for bringing it to an end. What now? Is any of this possible? I’m holding the beautiful body you drew me a picture of. You didn’t do your cock justice. I feel rather as if all my fantasies had finally broken my grip on reality.”
They made love with an abandon that Robbie was proud to have stirred from the depths of Maurice’s reserve. When they had washed and returned to bed, Robbie found the peace he had longed for in Maurice’s arms. They talked, laying the foundation for what Robbie already thought of as their life together. They talked about the great difference in their ages. “Haven’t you ever wanted a son, sir?” Robbie asked and they both burst into laughter. “I’m sorry. It’s a habit I’ll have to get over. Darling Maurice. Just think. You can make me what you want me to be. I’ll be your obedient son and your passionate lover. It sounds like an ideal combination.”
