An Italian boy in Camford Pt. 07

A successful university education involves the acquisition of many skills. These include a healthy lifestyle (getting the right amount of food, exercise and sleep), civilized drinking of alcohol, regular doses of culture, which may include music, cinema and theatre, working hard enough to get a good degree, making friends at all levels, forming the right kind of sexual relationships and learning critical insight. Three years is barely long enough to achieve all this, and of course many students do not!

There were no major exams in the second year, although like all Camford undergraduates, we had termly progress tests, though the only penalty for messing up a progress test was a severe reprimand by our tutor, or if the offence was repeated, by the college Dean (the college disciplinary official). Most discipline at Camford was to do with antisocial behaviour rather than lack of academic progress. In spite of the high intellectual calibre of Camford students, many of the men were not much better than their non-university contemporaries when it came to drunkenness, horseplay and hooliganism. Even some of the girl students displayed extremely unladylike behaviour.

Chapter Forty-one: The new répétiteuse starts work

Pauline van Houtenstok began work at the Teatro Musicale on October 1. With her began a new production, one that had not been heard in Trabizona for many years, Bellini's La Sonnambula. The chorus had two weeks to learn their parts and rehearse during the day while they were singing in La Fanciulla del West in the evenings. Then the director and principals would arrive and there would be a full week of intensive rehearsals. It was clear from day 1 that Pauline was a far from laid-back professional. Indeed, the chorus used to mutter about a slave-driver. Her ambition, which of course Luke and Cornelio entirely agreed with, was to drive the standards in Trabizona higher, so that people would come from other cities to see the productions.

With her arrival, with mutual agreement, Luke revised his working hours. It was agreed that he should work from 9-30 until noon in the mornings, then have a three-hour break before resuming work. At the same time, Tom fell into line with his Italian colleagues in the lab, and took a three-hour lunch break at the same time. This enabled the boys to get rid of their 11 pm dinner, and have lunch together on most days. At the same time, they ate lunch in restaurants more often, though at least twice per week they would go home and eat a meal prepared by Tom the night before.

Because his father thought so highly of her, Luke felt that they ought to invite Pauline round for a meal. Tom, flushed with the success of the meal he and Costanza had cooked for Arturo and Bastian, was happy to do another. He and Costanza had various ideas that they wanted to try out. "I wondered whether we should invite Signora Bruschetti," said Tom, "We owe her hospitality, but do you think it would work, or are they incompatible?"

"Maybe two women together would feel more secure than either of them coming alone to meet two gay men," said Luke. "And they are at least both pianists, so they may have lots of interests in common."

Next day Luke said to Pauline, "I would like you to come and have dinner with us next Wednesday to meet my partner. We are also inviting his piano teacher, a very nice lady to whom we owe hospitality. That means that we would have to speak Italian. I hope you don't mind."

"Thank you very much. I would love to come. I don't mind at all speaking Italian. After all, we do it all day! Did I hear that your partner's a boy?"

"Yes, does that worry you?"

"Not at all. Sono olandesa, non inglesa. (I'm Dutch, not English) It seems then that you take after your father as far as sexual orientation is concerned."

"Yes, gayness seems to run in the family! My Italian cousin, currently studying in Camford, has just come out as gay as well. But unlike Dad and me, he is not very musical, he's reading engineering."

When Tom went for his next piano lesson, he said to Signora Bruschetti, "My partner Luca and I would like you to come to dinner next Wednesday. Luca's colleague, the new répétiteuse at the Teatro Musicale will also be there."

"Grazie, Tomaso, it will be a great pleasure. It will be interesting too to see your apartment. Maybe you will play the piano for us."

It was with some apprehension that the two boys awaited the reaction of the two women to an evening spent alone with two gay men. It was too much to hope that their social success with Ben and Leonora could possibly be repeated. However, the two women did appear to get on well together, and seemed to have a lot to talk about. The meal, which this time Tom had delegated entirely to Costanza, was a typical Italian dinner and very enjoyable.

After dinner, the ladies asked Tom to play something for them. He played a movement of a Mozart sonata. After they had applauded, both of the guests said that Tom should take some piano exams in order to measure his progress. Luke asked Pauline if she had driven or come by cab. She said that she had come by cab, so the wine was able to flow freely, which led to a very convivial evening which everyone seemed to enjoy.

Chapter Forty-two: The end of the Martinmas term

The Martinmas term went by steadily. Dom and I settled in to a comfortable routine, and made the most of the rapidly shortening daylight hours by spending most Sundays out walking, either along the numerous Camford waterways, or in the hills surrounding the city. As Christmas approached, Jon asked me if I would like to attend the Camford Bach Choir's Christmas production of Händel's Messiah with guest soloists, one of whom was David. I banged on Dom's door and asked if he would like to go as well, and the upshot was that the three of us turned up at Camford Town Hall early in December to hear and see David sing the tenor part. As usual, David gave a very polished performance. He always reckoned that he performed better when he knew that he had family in the audience.

After the performance, knowing that my two uncles wanted to be together, Dom and I said goodbye, and we entered a pub and sat down with two pints of WLB. I had explained to Dom that David was Jon's partner, but that they were forced by the nature of David's job to undergo many periods of separation. It was interesting to see Dom's reaction to the Messiah performance. He had obviously been extremely moved, and I was a bit surprised, because I had never seen him show emotion before. I tend to assume that geekish persons have little emotion. But of course, Dom was not really geekish, he just was working in an area full of geeks! He sat there, quietly sipping his beer and saying how he had been moved to the point of being uplifted by the performance. I reached out my hand under the table, and got hold of his hand in agreement. To my surprise, he did not withdraw his hand, but squeezed it appreciatively. He no doubt thought it was a gesture of sympathy, which it was, but it was a bit more than that. I was seriously starting to fancy him. We finished our beer and slowly walked back to college.

It was the last week of term, and we both had Progress Tests at the end of the week, after which Dom was going home, and I was staying with Jon for a week before flying home. We both performed to our tutors' satisfaction in our respective tests, and locked up our possessions before moving out of college for the conference trade. Dom and I agreed to keep in touch by E-mail over Christmas. I found that Jon wanted us to move to Rockwell's Barn for the week before I left for Christmas, and I was keen to do that as I had not yet been there. David was in Amsterdam, singing at the Musiektheater until the week before Christmas, when he had two more gigs, one of which was important as the inaugural event for the new Saint Andrew's Singers in the newly restored and refurbished collegiate church of Tokenham.

Chapter Forty-three: Christmas: Dom looks back on his first term in Camford

As I travelled home for Christmas on the train from Camford, I reflected on my first term at university. My re-emergence into the world of people after nearly three years working in isolation had not been an easy transition. It was as if I had been on another planet and was now visiting an alien world. My old school friends, of whom only a couple had gone to Camford, had completed their courses and left the university. In Camford, no-one had welcomed me except my next-door neighbour, who was on the rebound from a failed gay love affair, and would have welcomed anything on two legs with a tool hanging between them! But Sandro was a sweet guy, and never made sexual advances. Academically, all had gone well. I got on well with the other students in my year, and my tutor gave me one-to-one tuition, because of my age and alleged experience. Socially, I felt no desire to chat up the birds or to join in student dramatic, musical, political, sporting or journalistic activities. I was a natural loner who preferred pubs to nightclubs and libraries to the theatre.

Pressure by Sandro helped me to enjoy art-house cinema, squash and swimming, as well as ensuring that one essential aspect of the undergraduate way of life, drinking, was not neglected. His liveliness began to make me feel young again. Three years outside the teenage education system had made me feel old and continually irritated by the juvenility of most first-year students. One of my most enjoyable memories of that term was the evenings spent in either my or Sandro's room tasting a wide range of Belgian bottled beers supplied by Sandro, for whom beer had been the major lifestyle discovery on coming to England; though he said that he had had a lot of tuition in beer appreciation by his gay uncle.

I asked him if his gayness had been fostered by his uncle and his partner, but he strenuously denied it. He said that he had been strongly attracted by a gay chemistry research student, and had fallen in love with him. The guy turned out to be the type who specialized in leading boys 'astray', as some people would term it, having sex with them, and then discarding them after a few months. Sometimes when he talked about this man, he sounded, to use an operatic simile, like a cross between Cio-Cio San and Donna Elvira, a typical deceived love-victim! His bitterness to my surprise actually made me feel, not just sorry for him, but rather tender and sympathetic. I felt that it would be nice to get E-mails from him over the Christmas vac.

Maybe I should use this opportunity to tell you more about myself. To my regret, I come from a wealthy family, and have no economic need to earn my living. But my family, as well as myself, felt that no self-respecting person would want to lead a life of idleness, so after boarding school, I worked for a few years before taking up my place at Boni's. The really wealthy person in the family is my grandfather, who to avoid tax when he reached the age of 65, gave half of his wealth to my father and another 25% to me, as the eldest grandson. My share was vested in a trust, and after I reached the age of eighteen paid me an income of several thousand pounds per month, out of which I had to pay the entire costs of residence at University (my fees were paid from an obligatory government loan). When at home, I was charged £50 per week to cover my food and contribution to household expenses. My two brothers were allowed to live at home for free, but they were under 18, with no incomes of their own, except anything they earned from part-time jobs.

We lived in a large house in Kent, and employed a gardener and a part-time cook/cleaner. My father was a professor at Home Counties University, a twenty-minute drive from our house. My grandfather, a widower, lived in a large house on an estate in the West Yorkshire countryside. When we grandchildren visited him, we always enjoyed ourselves, but I sometimes felt guilty in coming from a family with inherited wealth and a public position, particularly as I hated politics. For that reason, I resolved when I went to Camford, to keep my family background secret. I had not even been able to get away from my background when I was working, as the family converted an empty outhouse adjoining the house into a workplace for me, with wired internet connection, so I was effectively a self-employed home worker. Make no mistake, I loved my parents and brothers, and they never attempted to govern my life when I was away from home, but it was a life far removed from that of most university students: indeed it was like that distant planet which I felt I had left when when I went to college.

My father met me from the train and drove us home. It was nice to see my mother and father again. My brothers would be away at school for another ten days before Christmas. The day after I got home, I got an E-mail from Sandro.

Hi Dom,

I am now living for a week at my uncles' country house in Ixfordshire. It is my first visit there since I came to England, and I love it. My English ancestry often makes me think what I had missed by being born and living in Italy! Even though it is winter, the countryside is attractive. Although my uncles try to keep a low profile, talk in the village revealed to me that they are known and well liked because Uncle Jon pays secret subsidies to the post office, the pub and the church, that ensure that they remain in business. The farmer whose father's barn Jon bought to create the house also gets a subsidy from Jon, as well as a part-time job as forest warden for an Afforestation Trust plantation. I think that it's good that wealthy landowners should contribute to the wellbeing of the communities in which they live. Unfortunately, they have had to mothball the swimming pool in Rockwell's Barn, because the house is rarely lived in for more than a few days at a time, and running costs for the pool are high, but the house will be lived in for a month over Christmas, as David's parents are coming to stay. I almost wish that I was staying for Christmas, except that it will be much warmer at home, and I miss my parents and sister. I look forward to hearing what you are doing.

Very best regards from Sandro

Although he was careful to avoid the word 'love,' Sandro did not say that he was missing me, but it was implied in what he wrote. I replied saying that I had got home and was enjoying using our indoor pool and looking forward to my brothers coming home from boarding school. They were weekly boarders, so they came home most weekends, unless they were revising for exams. My grandfather was coming for Christmas, but would only stay for three or four nights, because he had his own house in London.

Christmas was a busy time for my mother, but she loved it. Even without help in the house, she would have been a brilliant hostess, but with paid help to assist her in the hard work in the kitchen she was able to produce fantastic meals, which three generations of the family could all appreciate. My family had never been particularly religious, but it was still expected that we would attend church on Christmas Day. After church we opened our presents and sat down to an excellent Christmas dinner. After the meal, we all dispersed to do different activities. These mainly involved talking to more distant members the family on the phone. It was a fine and reasonably sunny day, so I decided to go for a walk by myself. This afforded me the opportunity to relieve myself of the high-pressure gas that had built up in my guts by a series of loud and frequent farts, without creating offence to anyone else.

Having reached a cluster of trees a couple of miles from home, I stood under the shelter of a large tree, got out my cellphone and rang Sandro in Italy. It was nice to hear the boy's voice. He told me that the family, including his English brother and his partner, were having an afternoon walk round the city walls and how lovely and warm it was! We exchanged Christmas greetings and then hung up. As I walked further through the countryside I found myself wondering why I had so much pleasure in hearing Sandro's voice. Surely I was not developing gay tendencies? That would not please my family.

When I reached home, the Christmas festivities resumed. On Boxing Day, rather against my will, I was dragged out by the rest of the family to attend the meeting of the local hunt. This did not involve anything but standing there watching a lot of crazy men and women on horseback, but at least it was something different! My tutor had set me a couple of projects to do over the vacation, and I spent a few days doing these, but on the whole, apart from vigorous exercise in the pool and a few walks, I did not do very much. It was clear to me that I was missing the company of Camford, and especially the company of my next door neighbour. Our local market town had a specialist beer shop and it appeared to me that it would be a good idea to repay Sandro's hospitality by taking a mixed assortment of Belgian beers back to Camford. However, it was only practicable and possible to take a dozen standard 330 ml bottles with my luggage when I returned to Camford early in January.

I moved into my room in College on the Saturday before term began on the following Monday. In the evening, Sandro rang and invited me to spend the next day at Ixton and he arranged for David, who was at home for a few days, to come and collect me at 10 am the next morning. I spent the evening getting ready for my first lectures on the Monday, and was up early on Sunday morning and waiting for David Singleton-Scarborough at the porter's lodge. He came on foot, having parked in the Fellows' car park. He was not himself entitled to use the car park, but as he was driving Jon's car with the appropriate sticker on the windscreen, no-one in the lodge ever queried it. He collected his mail and me, and by noon we arrived at Ixton just in time to go for a drink at the local pub, the Jellycotes Arms.

The three of us lingered for some time at the pub, while Jon was cooking lunch, and walked back the short distance to the house, Sandro's natural ebullience having been enhanced by the intake of a couple of pints of excellent cask beer. He was obviously delighted to see me, and I noticed when we got back to the house that his two fathers were grinning at one another at his evident happiness. This in turn made me feel happy myself, to feel that my company should have had such an effect on another human being. In fact, it made me feel quite humble. It made me feel that Planet Camford was indeed a place worth visiting and worth spending a substantial portion of my life in.

By the time we had finished lunch, there was perhaps an hour of daylight left, so ignoring any clearing up of the meal, we put our coats on and set off for a walk, all four of us. We naturally broke up into two parties and I tried to prevent Sandro from dragging us too far behind his two uncles. They showed me the now well-established woodland that had been the first project that Jonathan Singleton had embarked on when he founded the Afforestation Trust. At 10 pm, Jonathan, who had had much less to drink than the rest of us, drove Sandro and me back to college before parking his car and spending the night in Fountain Street. Like us, he would be back in the world of Academe the next day.

Chapter Forty-four: December in Trabizona

The weeks in Trabizona went steadily by. Pauline van Houtenstok's chose a director for her first production called Immanuele Stoz. It was a great success. Producers from other Italian cities came to see the revival of La Sonnambula, and Cornelio and Luke felt that their appointment of her had been vindicated. There were to be two fairly new productions before the arrival of David in January, a revival of I Vespri Siciliani in November and Mozart's Don Giovanni in December. Tom's first paper on his work in Trabizona had been accepted and two further papers were in preparation. To mark the acceptance of the first paper, Tom and Luke took Ben and Leonora out to dinner at Agostino's.