Tales of 1920: the Scientist

I hadn't seen Worboys for years. I hadn't thought about him for longer than that; he'd been a year below me at school and then two years below me at Oxford, thanks to some illness I'd never cared enough to find out much about, though my friends knew him. He'd been a slight, black-haired chap then, hidden behind spectacles, always toting a book. But he'd been fast on his feet, one of those lunatics who ran miles overland for the fun of it. Not that he'd found it fun. I remembered him in college, limping down the stairs from this blister or that sprain, always grave-faced, softly-spoken. He had a fine pair of grey eyes, if you could make them out behind his spectacles, but I wasn't after him. In those days I reserved my energy for the great moon-arsed boys on the rugger and rowing squads, happy titled dimwits with futures in parliament and big cocks.

And so it took me a while to recognise Worboys when I saw him next, some seven years after I'd gone down. I was leaving my firm in the late afternoon of one of London's hot yellow afternoons, the sun still high and the whole stink of the city - petrol, cement, soot - in my nose as soon as the door swung shut behind me. Distracted, sun-blind after the cool office, I walked slap into a solid fellow, who dropped his case with a clatter.

"Watch where you're going, would you!" he snapped, stopping to retrieve it.

"I beg your pardon." He'd dropped a canvas holdall as well, which I bent to pick up. "I'm dreadfully -"

"Guest?" he said then. "Lawrence Guest, is that you?"

I looked him dead in the face and didn't know him. The way I go, this happens. It's not their faces I'm concerned with, after all, but this was going to be awkward if I'd met him through the firm or at a party. He was about my height, solid in the shoulders and chest even under his coat and waistcoat, narrow-hipped, upright. A row of tiny dark spots crested one cheekbone where he'd cut himself shaving.

"I beg your pardon," I said again, stupidly, still clutching the holdall. "I don't -"

"No, I suppose you wouldn't," he said, smiling, shaking his head. "Richard Worboys."

"Wor - oh! Yes. How are you, old boy?" I hadn't ever known his first name. Worboys Major at school had become just Worboys in college.

"Fitter than I've any right to be," he said. "And you're looking well, yourself."

"Yes, I -"

"I'd heard you got shot."

"Ah, well, a minor..." I was rapidly losing the thread. "Were you - in France -?"

"Briefly," he said, with a sort of grim smile. "I heard old Fitz, well, died."

"No, Fitz is alive and well," I said, surer of my ground now. "You're thinking of Oswald. But he fell down the stairs while he was on leave, broke his neck. Drunk," I added. I hadn't much liked Oswald.

"Litton?"

"Well, he, yes. His lieutenant was completely insane."

"Ah. Pity. Great pity. I always thought him to be rather delicious."

I stared at him. He gazed back, quite unperturbed.

"Worboys," I said eventually. "I had no idea."

"Really none?"

"None whatsoever. You always seem so -"

"Neuter?" He smiled.

"Well, yes."

"I think you have found me quite changed."

"Rather!"

"And your memory isn't quite what it might be, either," he said.

I blinked. "I don't follow."

The late-afternoon tide was all around us, hats and coats and cases all making for the station and the train home to sublet villas and rented rooms, flats and apartments, grand old houses cut up into bedsits. But he only lowered his voice.

"Last week at the Turkish baths."

I still didn't get it. Admittedly, I'd been fairly ossified by the time I'd made it there.

"You gave me," he said, leaning in a little, "a rather delightful French."

I stared. I had? Had I?

"You didn't ask my name," he added. "But I thought you'd recognised me, at least."

"I - no."

"I'm quite hurt to find you've forgotten, old chap."

"I am sorry. My memory, it's not, as you said."

He leaned in a little closer. I could smell him now: the cloth of his coat, the starch of his shirt, the salt smell of his skin, the day's animal sweat.

"You were very complimentary of my, what did you call it, cob."

I remembered that, at least. Average length, cut, thick, rising from a thatch of dense black curls. Muscular thighs, flat belly, all sheened with sweat and steam. I'd spent time on it, a long slow suck, my head swimming from the drink and the heat. I'd rubbed and kissed and played with it, taken it into my throat, run my tongue and teeth along it until he'd fetched into my mouth, and never once looked up at his face. He'd known me, though. But I'm distinctive.

"Has it come back to you now?"

"Yes."

He smiled, a pleasant smile, and indeed there was nothing malicious in his manner, just a sort of lazy curiousity. I've run into men that don't remember me, and I'm not often this gracious about it. I smiled back.

"You've grown up rather," I said.

"Out, you mean."

"If you're not busy this evening," I heard myself say without really meaning to, "why not come to mine for tea? I live quite nearby. Well, within an easy walk. If you're not otherwise engaged."

"No, not at all. I have rooms, you see, quite on my lonesome. Also rather nearby. My brother and I share a modern flat. My brother's in India at the moment."

"What did he do, again?"

"He's an artist. Birds, mostly. He's gone with an expedition."

"And I didn't ask -?"

"Ah. I'm a bacteriologist. Not glamorous, but interesting. You work here?"

"I do."

"Doing - what?"

"Brokering. I'm supposed to be learning the ropes from my uncle, but he's dead set against actually letting me do anything, so I just arrive every day and follow him around."

"I rather had the impression that you didn't have to do anything."

"I don't, but I find, these days, I get bored. The War left me unable to sit with nothing to do. Will you come to my place for tea?"

"No, I think you should come to mine. Unless you've got someone there."

"No, I'm quite on my own."

"Oh, do come. We'll fetch some beer and - we'll talk of old times."

So I followed him home. Down the main road, onto another; along a cinder lane to a third with a stop for a jug of ale on the way. Down a side street into a fourth road. We stopped outside a new block, so new the facing was still mainly white, and up a wide staircase we went, one behind the other, to a door at the end of a hall. He unlocked the door with a key from his pocket, ushered me in ahead of him, and shut it behind himself. I heard him slide the bolt. I heard him set down his case. I heard him set down his holdall. I heard him set down the beer, somewhere. It was dark in the hall, but light fell into the rooms from spacious windows. In the dimness he turned to me and fitted his hand between my legs, massaging.

"Two bedrooms," he murmured, his fingertips finding the end of my cock. "Sink, burner, sitting room. WC. Fireplace. We're bachelors but we're neat." He stroked the length of me through the cloth of my trousers. My back was to the wall, his breath warm on my neck. His other hand slid behind me, cupping my arse. "It's quiet, of course, and private. My brother has his studio here, of course."

I made some sort of noise to show I was listening. He kissed me then, slowly, his mouth unexpectedly cool and sweet-tasting, as though he lived on nothing but cold water and tobacco. I felt his heart against my chest. I reached down and felt the front of his trousers, the spring of his hard jack against my palm.

"Shall I repay the favour?" he murmured against my lips.

"If you would," I said, hoarse.

He undid my flies one-handed, reached in past my drawers and found me. In his throat he made a small, low sound of approval. He knelt, and pushed my trousers down to my thighs, tangling his fingers in the hair, nudging the base of my cock, weighing my balls in his warm dry palm. He looked up at me.

"Now I must ask you," he said, as if he wasn't about to take it in and do for it, "to remember that whatever one says in this hall is quite audible to people outside. So do keep as quiet as you can, would you?"

I nodded. He licked the tip, experimentally, as a child might lick an ice. He fluttered the tip of his tongue over me until I twitched.

"I could just stop here," he said.