Tom and Luke's Final Year Pt. 01

On January 2, we went by train to Locarno for a short visit to Luke's Uncle Jeroen and his family. It was nice for me to meet Maria and Andrew again. Their Italian was by now quite fluent and they had settled in happily at their new schools.

Chapter Twenty-three

How Tom spoilt Luke's twenty-second birthday

We were no sooner back in college than in the first week of the Candlemas term, it was Luke's twenty-second birthday (actually it lasted more than twenty seconds twenty-four hours to be exact! I wished afterwards that it had been only twenty seconds). We wanted to do something different, so we invited Steve and Alex to join us for an all-male dinner at the Carp at Stubbington, a favourite place of Luke's fathers, but not much visited by Luke and me. I arranged in advance for a cab to collect us at the end of the evening, because we would have had a great deal to eat and drink. We arranged to sit at a table for four with each of us opposite our partners, with one of the other pair sitting next to us. I was paired with Alex and Luke with Steve. The food was excellent. We went right through the menu, three courses each, but accompanied by beer rather than wine. The pub had a good selection of Belgian beers and Luke arranged for us to have a different beer with each course. It must have exhausted the pub's entire stock of some of the beers that he chose, because there is not a lot of call for imported beers in English pubs.

Before the meal we had a pint of West London bitter each, the staple beer of many Camford pubs, before going on to the more exotic and expensive high-alcohol Belgian beers. At the end of the meal, Luke had arranged for unlimited coffee, but that did not exclude more beer for those who could manage it. We were all rather happy and intimate: we were in a quiet and secluded part of the bar, and I noticed that Steve had put his arm round Luke. I felt a twinge of jealousy, but retaliated by putting my arm round Alex. By now the meal was long since over and the effects of alcohol had cut in. I felt a sudden, and untypical desire shoot through me, and I turned to Alex and kissed him. To my surprise, instead of resisting, he responded by opening his mouth. As I stuck my tongue into his mouth I realized what I was doing, but it was too late.

I looked across the table and saw the horrified look on Luke's face. It soon crumpled into a look of misery, and he burst into tears. A lot of men might think nothing of what I had done, but it was really a betrayal of Luke's trust in me. My heart sank. How could I have been so stupid? How would I have felt if my boy had kissed another man in front of me? In the next twenty minutes, we uneasily finished our drinks and waited for the taxi to arrive. In the taxi, I was seated next to Luke and I tried to hold his hand, but he shrank away from me into the corner. When the cab arrived at Buckingham, I paid the driver and thanked Alex and Steve for their company. Luke and I walked slowly back to our room. He pulled his hand away when I tried to get hold of it. When we got in, he rushed into his bedroom and I heard him bolt the door. I cleaned my teeth feeling miserable. I said my prayers asking God to forgive me and to thaw Luke's coldness. Although I felt dreadfully guilty and hated myself, the effects of alcohol overload soon cut in and I fell asleep.

I awoke late the next morning. Luke had not wakened me as he always did. Unshaven and depressed, I just made it into breakfast before the servery closed, but I only ate some toast and drank some coffee. Had I, through alcoholic stupidity, lost the only person who meant anything to me? It was a cold January morning, which increased my misery as I walked to the lab. I did not know what to do. How could I even get Luke to talk to me? I had no idea what to do about approaching him. I tried to ring his cellphone, but it was switched off. An SMS seemed an offhand and cowardly way to approach him.

I realized that it was Wednesday and that Luke's cofather Jon had one of his tutorials in Maths for first-year chemists at 11 am. I made my way to the seminar room and caught him, just he was coming out. "Tom! he exclaimed, "Come and have a bite of lunch." I explained that I needed to talk to him urgently, and as we made our way to the canteen, I told him what had happened. He was very sympathetic. He told me that many years ago, in the same pub, he had under the influence of drink, done something similar to David. "I still regret it, even after all these years," he said. "So I quite understand how you are feeling. Well, Tom, I can't intervene or talk to Luke. This is something that you must both sort out for yourselves. The only advice I can suggest to you is two-fold: write him a letter of apology and push it under his door, and go to Francis Eglantine and make your confession. Publicly kissing another man in front of the one you love is an unbelievably hurtful thing to do, and you must admit that, not just to Luke, but to God. Francis might be able to help you as he knows you both. Luke is a loving and forgiving boy, so I am optimistic that you can sort this out between you. And if you do, then it will strengthen the love between you. But be careful, remember what David's father said to you. Your relationship is too precious to do any further damage!"

I only ate a sandwich and drank a cup of coffee with Jon. Then, because few fourth-year students worked in the lab on Wednesday afternoons, as several were playing sport, I did not go back there, and slowly walked back to college. Luke was not in our room, he was probably in the Watsonian. What would I do if he decided to move out of college to Fountain Street? Would I never kiss his delicious lips or enfold his warm and slender body in my arms ever again? I E-mailed Francis and asked if I could see him as a matter of urgency some time that day. I then sat down, still full of guilt, and tried to write a letter to Luke. However, I couldn't get the words on to paper.

TO BE CONTINUED