Tom and Luke's Final Year Pt. 01

[John Cleveland (1613-1658) was one of the most popular metaphysical poets in the seventeenth century, but later fell into obscurity until his work was rediscovered in the twentieth century.

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) was a contemporary. Both men were on the King's side in the English civil war. Cleveland was put in jail by Cromwell, Cowley went into exile as secretary to deposed Queen Henrietta Maria.]

Chapter Fifteen

September in Loxton

For no particular reason, I have decided to begin this part of the story in a pub in the northern English town of Harrogate. Harrogate is a high-victorian spa town, full of select tea-rooms, opulent hotels, upmarket shops and the full panoply of spa buildings. To take the cure in Harrogate was the solution to the unhealthy lifestyle of wealthy Victorians. The town is famous as the resort to which Agatha Christie fled during a period of depression following her marriage breakdown in 1926. We had been brought there for the day by my boyfriend Luke's grandparents, and we were having a quick lunch before walking through the famous Valley Gardens.

Mr Scarborough, Luke's grandfather, told us that he was retiring the following year and to mark this fact and his and his wife's fortieth wedding anniversary that fell in the same year, they were proposing to organize a big family reunion. They had originally planned to hold it at Loxton, but had decided after discussion with Luke's Dad, to have it at Rockwell's Barn, which was bigger and could make use of the additional accommodation at the Jellycotes Arms in Ixton to house some of the party. The swimming pool would be boarded over and the room would comfortably house a big party. Luke said, "Tom and I were planning to sign the Civil Partnerships Register next year. Maybe we could do that at the same time, while all the family are present." We all agreed that September would be the best time. Our Final exams would be out of the way, and my M.Chem. dissertation would be well in hand, though probably not submitted. We felt that Luke was the best person to assist his grandfather in organizing the event.

The holiday we were enjoying with Luke's grandparents gave me the opportunity to really get to know my future grandmother-in-law. She was the first woman of her age-group that I had met who seemed completely comfortable with the idea of two men wanting to become life-partners. This was probably due to the fact that Luke's parents had lived happily together as an item for 25 years, and formed a textbook example of the success of gay unions. Mr Scarborough was delighted when I told him that I had become a catechumen. He shook my hand and then kissed me and said how glad he was that I had come to know the love of God. I told him that his son could take some of the credit for me coming to faith.

During our year apart that had ended only a month before, the lives of both Luke and me had been made considerably pleasanter by having our loneliness relieved by each of us having our respective 'fag-hags.' But my Margaret and Luke's Leonora were not typical women of our age group. Margaret was a lesbian and Leonora had a vocation to become a nun. So we got companionship without any risk of sexual involvement. However, we did not talk to our families about our fag-hags, in case they might think that our friendships might lead to romantic relationships!

Mrs Scarborough was a kind, understanding lady who from day one had loved Luke's cofather Jon, and seemed to have taken a similar fancy to me, in spite of us seeing relatively little of one another. Luke was particularly precious to Mrs Scarborough, because there had been a moment when as Dorothea's bastard son, he, their first grandchild, might have been adopted by a pair of total strangers, and they would never have seen him again. Only the availability of Dorothea's brother David and his partner Jon as adoptive parents had spared them that. Hopefully, the presence of Dorothea and Massimo and their children at the reunion would heal the wound created by that event. The grandparents had never seen Alessandro and Bianca.

The following day, back at Loxton, I was talking in the kitchen to Mrs Scarborough and Connie her home-help and we discussed the future of us two boys. I hoped to do a Ph.D., but there was a lot of doubt about Luke's future job. He might do well enough to do research, but clearly what he really wanted was a job in Italy. It was inconceivable to both of us that we should start our lives together as partners separated yet again. It looked as if I would have to look to doing research in Italy, which would mean that I would have to start learning Italian. The month with Luke's uncle Jeroen's two children had given me a start, but it would take a long time for me to get competent.

It would have been perfectly possible for both Luke and me to have gone without jobs for the rest of our lives, living on a comfortable income from the Singleton family trust funds. But both Luke's parents had the traditional work ethic that "if you don't work, you don't eat" and there was no question of Luke living on family money with me as his kept catamite. In any case, I didn't want to find myself in the role of the Emperor Heliogabalus's muscular blond-haired charioteer boyfriend Hierocles. We both had too much self-respect to live lives of idleness. David's parents, our hosts, would certainly have frowned on any attempt of their grandson's to live a life of idleness. Certainly my own money from Jon's mother, a surprise gift from a year before, although enough to ensure my financial independence for a few years, and more importantly, to give me the necessary financial security to be able to ask Luke to be my life-partner, would, as my sole source of income, have lasted only about five years. Besides, I wanted to become a chemical researcher, not a kept boy.

I was determined that when the time came for Luke and me to tie the knot, there should be a maximum of witnesses, not just from Luke's family, but from all our Camford friends, both male and female and my wonderful sister Liz, who had saved me from a life without prospects. There was however no question of inviting my father to our ceremony unless he got rid of his whorish female companions, nor my elder sisters who had made no attempt to contact me since our mother's death six or seven years before. We would push the boat out with a lavish party after the low-key event at the Registrar's. The blessing service however that we hoped to hold, would be confined to family only, and not necessarily all of them. But that was a problem for the future. Both Luke and I had our university final assessments within ten months, and success in those was the number one priority.

Chapter Sixteen

The Edmund Heptinstall Educational Trust

At the beginning of the previous academic year, conscious of my changed financial circumstances, I had written to both the Student Loans Company and the Edmund Heptinstall Educational Trust, explaining that there had been a change in my financial circumstances and that I no longer needed their financial support. Getting the student loan terminated took months: the barely competent loans company seemed unable to understand why, as I was continuing my degree course, I no longer needed financial support. As it was, they refused to let me repay what I had already received, and insisted that I should continue to repay the outstanding balance after I had graduated. The Edmund Heptinstall Trust wrote back thanking me for informing them, and saying that my two years undrawn future grants would be used to support another student in difficult financial circumstances, and saying that the Trust itself was in financial difficulties, and in order to support its existing commitments, it would be suspending new bursaries for the next few years. I was horrified at this. With the increasing costs of university study, it seemed a tragedy that poor students were going to be deprived of a very useful source of funding. I mentioned the matter to Jon, who said that it sounded as though the Heptinstall Trust needed financial support, and he would get Tim Ingledown to investigate.

It was several months before Tim's enquiries were complete. It turned out that the Trust had been bedevilled by a series of problems. A dishonest Managing Secretary had misappropriated several hundred thousand poundsworth of funds, and criminal legal action against him was pending. Until that had taken place, recovery of the stolen money was delayed, and might never take place. Added to this, the Trust's money had been invested in poorly-paying bonds, and was not bringing in an optimal income. Tim suggested to Jon that he make a loan to the Trust of a million pounds, secured by a short-term mortgage on its properties, with the proviso that when a conviction had been secured against the former employee and the embezzled funds repaid, the loan would become a grant and the mortgage cancelled. Tim also said that he had in mind a good and honest man to move in and take control of the Trust's management, and that his appointment should be a condition of the loan. He added that of course the present trustees would have to be got rid of. This, he said, would not be difficult, as he could threaten them with personal liability for the stolen funds if they did not resign. He had already compiled a list of suitable replacement trustees. These included two retired headmasters from state schools, one from a 'public' (i.e. private) school, Jon in his role as an academic, two retired building society managers and a non-retired unit trust manager. The man Tim had in mind to chair the new board of trustees was called Howard Smithson. All these individuals had expressed their willingness to stand for office, and would be put forward at the Trust's next Annual General Meeting. All that was lacking was a new Managing Secretary. Jon said to me, "What about Mr Silverdale?"

I replied, "But he's just got the job at the Afforestation Trust!"

"Yes, but I think he only took that job because it was secure and pensioned. It does not offer any challenge to a man like him. He hasn't yet started in his new job, and he's got the right educational background for a job with the Heptinstall Trust. I'm in control of the AT, and I have a lot of pull with the reconstituted Heptinstall Trust, as the major stakeholder in the new group, so I am off to the north tomorrow to talk to Bernard Silverdale in person about this. I envisage that the Trust will be run by a troika of him, myself and Howard Smithson."

Needless to say, Mr Silverdale jumped at the offer. He had had contacts with the Trust before over several years, which is how he secured my undergraduate bursary, and was very disappointed to hear about its present situation. Jon set up a meeting with himself, Tim, Bernard and Howard Smithson. The trial of the accused employee was due to come to court in November, and the intention was to have a Special General Meeting and a new board of trustees in place by Christmas. This was facilitated by a development in late October, when the accused decided to plead guilty and offered to pay back his ill-gotten gains over the next two years. Mr Silverdale told Jon that one of the most important targets for the Trust had to be soliciting regular donations, rather than existing on its investment income.

Jon said that he would start the ball rolling with a no-strings promise of £25K per year. He said that he had made very few large charitable donations since his establishment of the Afforestation Trust, the Drystone Walling Trust and the Camford Men's Fitness Centre all of twenty years before, and the Heptinstall Educational Trust looked a very suitable object for a big cash injection, particularly in view of his increased wealth in the meantime. The intention was to select by a series of written tests, totally unrelated to school subject assessments, from lists of persons who had been offered places at the best universities, girls and boys from impoverished backgrounds who would benefit from an entirely free undergraduate course, with fees and a living allowance paid. The grants would thus be substantial, and limited in number according to the Trust's income. The idea was that the receipt of one of these scholarships would be a distinction in itself, and the only condition was that recipients must promise that as soon as their annual personal income after graduation exceeded £50K, they would thenceforth pay 1% of their pre-tax income to the Trust for a period of twenty years, or for the rest of their lives, whichever was the shorter. This figure would reduce to 0.8% after gift aid tax allowance. If their income after ten years from graduation had not reached this level, the Trustees had the discretion to vary the size and frequency of repayments or waive them altogether. The only permitted alternative to this repayment pattern would be a one-time release payment of £50K. The idea was to stimulate ambition as well as excellence in children from poor homes. Another intention was to free them from the taxpayer-subsidized claws of a state-directed student loan. There would always be an exactly equal number of male and female recipients, who would be styled Edmund Heptinstall Scholars. Any mistakes the Trust made in selecting scholars would be reflected in its long term income. Jon would not bail them out a second time!

Chapter Seventeen

Tom and Luke's final year begins

One month later, early in October, we were ensconced in our duplex college room with the en-suite bathroom that our scholar's status gave us, the only one of its type in college and which we had previously occupied in our second year. Looking back over our three years as students at Camford University, it seemed amazing to us that we had been partners for two-and-a-half of those years, and engaged for just over a year. In some ways, as we had got to know one another more intimately, our love for one another had grown, especially now when we were just reunited after Luke's year in Bologna. We were still pretty hungry for one another, even two months after his return. Indeed we had only just reached the stage of being able to keep our hands off one another in the presence of other people!

I have never in these pages tried to give an accurate description of Luke. He was not ravishingly beautiful, no curly-haired blond like his adoptive father David had been. He had lustrous brown eyes, he was dark-skinned in complexion and his long, slightly wavy hair was also very dark, and his beard that he had grown after his spell in hospital after the Bologna earthquake was intensely black. The following words of the poet John Cleveland, with the pronouns changed, sum up my darling boy:

'And yet because 'tis more renown

To make a shadow shine, he's brown, —

A brown for which Heaven would disband

The galaxy and stars be tanned;

Brown by reflection as his eye

Dazzles the summer's livery.'

I was beginning to have reservations about Luke's beard, because the moustache definitely interfered with kissing. But every morning when he kissed me awake (we did not sleep together, as the college beds were too narrow, but I was bad at getting up and needed him to awaken me in the mornings), the beard used to tickle my face, and it was a rather enjoyable feeling to waken up to. He had put on a little weight in Italy, but as it seemed to be mainly on his limbs rather than round his belly, and to be muscle rather than fat, he actually looked better for it. I think the Mediterranean diet had done him good. He now weighed 75 kilos, and his improved musculature looked good when we were at the Men's Fitness Centre, or when I was washing him under the shower in our bathroom. One thing that you the reader will not need reassuring about is that Luke's build and hair were not the only things about him that attracted me. He had a big mass of pubic hair, just as black as the hair on the rest of his body, and out of the centre of it protruded his enormous cock. It was 50% bigger than my own male organ with a big and deliciously chewy foreskin. From this picture you can be sure that although there have been no sex scenes so far in this part of the story, my love for my faggot-boy was far from contemplative. For, as Cleveland elegantly expresses it:

'Love that's in contemplation placed

Is Venus drawn but to the waist.'

Although Luke was eminently fuckable, he was no mere sex object. His cock came into action up my rear-end nearly as frequently as I fucked him.

By about the third week of term, it became clear that Luke's facial hair was an impediment to our lovemaking, and after some discussion we agreed that he should get rid of moustache and side hair and retain just a small neatly trimmed goatee. The few barbers in Camford who had originally shaved customers had disappeared rapidly during the AIDS epidemic, so dealing with Luke's beard was a DIY job. I went out to a medical supplies shop and bought a pair of surgical/dissecting scissors made by a traditional firm in Sheffield of the finest quality steel. Using these, I cut the hair on his cheeks and on his upper lip as closely as I could. Then he took three brand-new razor blades and shaved his cheeks and upper lip. A final trim of the goatee at the barber's completed the task. Although he looked a bit Mephistophelian, the combination of his long hair and short goatee was prick-raisingly attractive, and he had scarcely set foot in our room before I had him under me on my bed!

One of the big advantages of my cash windfall from Mrs Singleton was that I could now pay my own subscription to the Fitness Centre. We both tried to manage three visits to the pool each week, one being the after-hours employee session on Tuesdays. I could still wrap his slender (some would say skinny) body in my arms, and we still slept like that when we shared a bed.

I no longer got weekly tutorials with Dr Vaughan. He arranged that we should meet just three times per term (one of which would be my end-of-term Progress Test), with only two essays, as I would be busy in the lab most of the time. At our first meeting, he said, "Why don't you take your B.A? You're fully qualified in terms of residence and you've passed the exams, even though you don't know your class, all you'll get next year is the class of degree. There's a ceremony in the last week of term." I had not considered this before. I thought that I would have to wait till the following year and take my degree at the same time as Luke. But Colin pointed out to me that by the following December, all being well, I would be able to take my M.Chem. He said it would look a lot better if I turned up at my final oral exam in a B.A. gown and hood, rather than a mere scholar's gown. Luke was enthusiastic at the idea. "You'll be able to invite Liz and Mr Silverdale, and we'll be able to put them up at Rockwell's Barn!" he said excitedly.

"I want you to be there, and at least your Pop, if your Dad is away. I don't know how many guest tickets I shall get."

"I think you get three, but Pop probably has a right to be there anyway, as it is a meeting of Congregation. But we'll invite Mrs Silverdale as well, because there's lots of things that she can do in Camford, without being there in the Aula."

I was now the proud possessor of a driving licence, though with no plans for getting a car until we had somewhere to garage it. The congested streets of Camford were no place for students' cars, hence the proliferation of bicycles in the city. Camford had recently emulated London and introduced a Congestion Charge, making drivers pay to enter the city centre. It was of course coupled with Park and Ride facilities at four points on the main roads entering the city. To my great satisfaction, I had passed the driving test at my first attempt.