Help! The Comfort of David Templeton

That day I’d travelled the length of East Anglia just so I could tell him everything.  Confess. My angst, my problems, my sexual perversity.  Tom.  Would David think my feeling were a joke?  Simon in love with a little boy, ha, ha, ha.  But I had to talk to somebody, and David was the only friend I could easily track down.  Besides, no one else had sent me a postcard, bothered to get in touch.

Walking up and down the length of the slow train from Norwich, I tried to come up with other reasons to use him as a Father Confessor.  All my other University friends came from grammar schools, one from a comprehensive.  And David had a fiancée - so, probably knew about both homosexuality and love.  Yes, he could be facetious, but always easy to talk to.  Goodness knows, it would be hard enough to talk.

“Super to see you Simon, my boy.”  Not the slightest bit surprised I was sitting on the landing outside his room.  He climbed the stairs in just three strides.  “Have you been waiting long?”

“Ten minutes or so.”  David tucked his tennis racket under his arm, and opened the heavy door.

His oak panelled room overlooked the main Peterhouse courtyard.  On one wall hung huge decorated oars - trophies of victories in the Head of the River race.  There were inscribed silver cups on the mantelpiece, and, below them, logs waiting to be lit into a fire.  Probably since April .

Without being asked, I sat down in one of the two armchairs.  Collapsed.  Perhaps, all my problems could be solved by falling asleep.

“Are you up for long?”
“Just a couple of nights probably, David.”  No, that was wrong.  It was Thursday already.  In less than twenty four hours I would have to be back on the beach - if that’s what my friend advised.  At that moment, I hoped he would persuade me to give up on Tom, advise me to grow up.  Every moment, I felt differently.

David poured two large sherries.  “You staying in College?”

“No - I came up on the spur of the moment.  Anyway, I expect they’ve let off my room for the summer.”  The sherry tightened my throat.  “You see...”

“Well, you can crash on the couch here, if you like.  Pretty comfortable.” 

“Thanks. That would be  - super.”

“More sherry?”

“No thank you David, not just now.  I wonder if you would mind...”  My half sentence died.  Cliché or not, my heart’s thumping the loudest sound in the room.  “I - feel like two people.” I announced.

“I know that feeling.  When I’m playing tennis...”

“Most of the time I’m very clear about what I want to do with my life.”  Yes?   “I feel really mature, and...”

“Absolutely.  By the way, you haven’t thought any more about standing for the Liberal Club Presidency next term?  I’ve told you before, I think you’d do a first class job.”

“No.  Thanks.  But next year I want to concentrate on acting.  Perhaps do some directing, as well.  University politics seems a bit - childish.”

“Yes, you’re right.  But the Club needs people like you, Simon.  I suppose it would be a good idea to elect a woman, but that Smithers girl is so earnest, don’t you think?”

“The thing is, David, there is another side to me.  And talking to you, that other side seems so remote, so - ridiculous.”  Every time I looked up, the room had grown darker, and my friend was filling my glass with more sherry.  “Some of me is so absurd and I don’t know what to do about it.”  The gloom, the alcohol, gave me courage.  “At Repton, did you - was there - a lot of - homosexuality?  Chasing little boys and things?  I just wondered - I wondered if you went through that phase.”

“Well, we all go through it, don’t we?  It’s what we public school boys have got in common.  Pretty harmless fun, I’d say - though don’t tell my fiancée!”  No chance.  I’d never met Janet and David seldom mentioned her by name.

“But I don’t think it is harmless, what I’m going through now.”  The difficult part had been leading up to it.  Now I plunged into the confessional monologue I had rehearsed on the train.  About following boys through the streets, spying on them, fantasising.  About how I had spent the last six weeks.  Most of all, about Tom - his ruffled hair, his supple limbs, his grey blue eyes, his smile.  About my guilt, about...  I was glad when David interrupted.

“A vicar’s son.  I wonder if my father knows him.  What’s his surname?”

“I don’t know.  There hasn’t been time to ask.”  I tried to laugh.  “But you see, David, I’m really - frightened.”  The only feeling I was sure of, now.  “We’ve got this sort of assignation.  We’re meeting on the beach tomorrow, we’ll, we’re meant to be.  I mean suddenly, it’s real and I just don’t know - there’s the risks of being found out, but also because, well, I might harm him.  It might not be right, now I have left school.”  It might not even be what I wanted.  But moral agonising had taken on a dynamic of it’s own.  “I used to like girls.”  Did I?  When?  “The thing is I think...”  Come on, get it out.  “I think I love him.”  In the comfortable gloom of Peterhouse, I didn’t believe it any more, but on the train I’d decided to say the words.

It had become too dark to see David’s face, his reaction.  But what a relief, to have spoken out loud.  “Honestly, David, I may be in love.”

For a minute or two, I felt glad of the silence.  After a while, though, it became heavy, pregnant.  I launched another speech.  “It takes me over, completely.  I just want to kiss him, to take him into my arms, to...”  Or that’s what I’d felt, until we’d spoken in the café   “Is this love?  Is this what you feel towards Janet?”

Well, was it?  David stood up.  The twilight from the window caught his face.  He was smiling.  An odd smile - mocking, or... or... 

“How about it?” he asked, jovial, matter of fact, confident.

I muttered I’d had enough sherry. 

“How about it, Simon, old boy?”  My friend rubbed his fingers together.  I thought of pastry.  For heaven’s sake, there had to be an innocent explanation.  “Let’s do it!” he suggested, moving towards my chair.

“Do - what?” I asked, idiotic.  My eyes dropped from his face, past hairy arms, to his tennis shorts.  Between David’s legs, a huge, uninhibited swelling.

“It’s only natural, Simon.  Everyone wants to shag each other really - though only people like us have the guts to admit it.  Don’t you think?”  I shook my head.  Bending forwards, David moved his hand towards my fly buttons.

“You bastard” I shouted, too shaken for a witticism.  “You bloody perverted bastard!”  Then I pushed him in the stomach.  He stepped back, puzzled.  I ran over to the mantelpiece, seized his photograph of Janet, hurled it to the floor.  The glass failed to break.  All I wanted was to get out of his life.

“Simon, my boy” David shouted after me, down the stairs.  “Where are you going to stay tonight?  Come back, if you want to, when you’ve cooled down.  Simon?  You shouldn’t take life so seriously.”