One for the Gods (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (8 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody. I just had to go home to change.”

“Just like that. I’d like to know what’s going on.”

“Shall we say good night to Madame Graumont?”

“You couldn’t have let me know what you were up to, could you? It didn’t occur to you that I might have been worried.”

“I’m sorry, Champ. There was nothing I could do about it. You’ll understand when I tell you.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

The atmosphere was tense between them as they left their hostess and went out to the car. Peter couldn’t think how to begin without immediately adding substance to Charlie’s displeasure.

“You’re not going to like this,” he said when Charlie had the car in motion. “I don’t either, as far as that goes. I beg of you not to make more of it than it’s worth.”

“You really have me guessing. You go home in the middle of a party to put on a new outfit. Go ahead and tell me about it.”

“I want to. It all has to do with Jean-Claude, of course.”

“I see.” Charlie felt as if he had been hit in the stomach but he didn’t show it. “Then I think you’d better be very careful to tell me the truth. I’ll find out if you’re lying.”

“You don’t have to use that tone, but never mind. After what you’d said, I decided just to ignore him this evening. He cornered me eventually and said he wanted to talk to me. I refused but he began insisting, and I decided it was as good a time as any to tell him to lay off, to stop running after me. Besides, he was drunk and sort of wild and I was afraid of what he might say in front of others. We were beside the pool so I went with him a little beyond it where there’re trees and a sort of clearing and steps going down to the sea. That’s were it happened.”

Charlie’s grip tightened on the wheel as Peter went on. He was intent on every word, weighing it, subjecting it to lightning scrutiny for hidden implications, waiting to pounce on a discrepancy. His chest and stomach were aching with the conflict of doubt and outrage, trust and despair. The thought of anybody handling Peter, above all of harming him, aroused in him a passion of protest. If Peter were telling it as it really happened, he would gladly kill Jean-Claude. Could he believe it? Was it really convincing?

“All I could think of was to go on reasoning with him so he would leave me.” Peter quickly concluded his account, suggesting that Jean-Claude had only looked at him rather than touched him after ripping his clothes. “I had to get away and change. There was no way of letting you know:”

“And you expect me to believe that he did this without your having encouraged him in any way?”

“How could I encourage anybody to do a thing like that?”

“I don’t mean tonight. I mean the last few weeks. You’ve let him hold hands with you. What else have you let him do? Have you let him kiss you, for instance?”

Peter’s instinct for truth made him hesitate for a fatal instant. Would it be so bad to admit to a kiss? “You know I don’t go around letting people kiss me,” he protested a beat too late.

“Is that supposed to be a straight answer? I think all the rest of it might be a bit more believable if you’d said yes.”

“I agree it’s unbelievable. I was stunned. Wait till you see my clothes.”

“Clothes are apt to look a bit the worse for wear if you’ve been out fucking under the trees. Why did he look so tidy? Had he taken his clothes off, perhaps?”

“He was ripping and tearing at me, I tell you. I didn’t touch him.”

“That’s odd, too. If anybody tried to rip open my fly, I’d really bash him. Unless I wanted him to, of course.” His breath caught in something like a sob as he said it. He was turning the knife in his own wound. He couldn’t believe the worst, but he had caught Peter’s hesitation and he was sure now that he had led Jean-Claude on in some way. If Peter were really lying, he would have made up a better story, but he was surely editing the facts in some way. That such a thing could have happened, even seeing Peter’s part in it in its most innocent light, made him sick.

“I wanted to hit him, God knows,” Peter asserted with persuasive passion. “I was afraid once might not be enough. He’s stronger than you’d expect. If it had turned into a free-for-all, I was afraid everybody would find out. You’d have hated that as much as I would.”

“Yes. Well, let’s restudy the whole scene. For the sake of argument, let’s say that Guy asks me to leave a party and go for a little stroll with him. I know perfectly well what he has in mind, so I say no. We’ll have to assume that I temporarily lose my mind and agree.” That he was actually having this conversation with Peter was inconceivable, but he went on implacably. “So there we are in the dark and if I let him move in close enough to tear off my shirt, I must know the moment is coming. He makes a grab and I’m ready to move fast. If I don’t want to hit him for some reason, I run and there I am back at the party, a little out of breath but intact.”

“It’s not going to help for you to make some sort of lousy joke of it.”

“Oh, no. That wasn’t a joke. It was a perfectly reasonable reconstruction of a perfectly familiar situation.”

“All right. That’s the way it would be with you and Guy. But can’t you understand how I was thinking? You’d just spoken to me about Jean-Claude. If I got in some sort of a mess with him, it would’ve seemed as if I hadn’t paid any attention to you. I just wanted to keep it quiet and get it over with as quickly as possible until I could speak to you.”

“I still have the feeling that you’re leaving something out,” Charlie said coldly.

“What? I’ve told you I found him sort of appealing. I admit I’ve known he thinks he’s in love with me. I guess I was touched by it. I wanted to help him get over it. Maybe I shouldn’t have. But I swear to God I never dreamed he’d be capable of anything like tonight.”

“Well, that sounds a bit more honest. Maybe you’re ready to admit to a few more things.” He didn’t want to hear any more. He wanted to stop the car and jump out and run, run anywhere to get away from this. But he knew how to exploit Peter’s basic honesty and he was blindly determined to get the truth. He felt as if their whole future depended on it. He took an iron grip on himself and said quite lightly, “You might as well admit you’ve let him kiss you.”

“Well, yes. I—”

“I don’t think I want to make a catalogue of all the things you might have done. He’s had a good look at your cock. I can’t imagine his bothering to pull your pants off without playing with it a bit. Are you sure he didn’t show you his?”

“All right, if you want all the sordid details. Yes, he opened his pants. He had a hard-on. I didn’t. That’s the difference.”

“Really lovely. I suppose you know I’m going to beat the shit out of him myself tomorrow. Tell me this. Under different circumstances, can you imagine going to bed with him?”

“Not after—” He checked himself. The question had been phrased so that it was easy to evade but he realized that an attempt at honesty in answering it might achieve more understanding between them. Charlie’s unyielding manner was making him begin to pray for understanding. He began again, “Oh, Christ, how do you expect me to answer that? You know you’re the only person I’ve ever cared about. But—hell, things happen sometimes. Damn rarely. Practically never, really. Two or three times in ten years. It’s just a kind of chemical reaction. It doesn’t mean anything, but it’s hard to control when it’s going on. I admit I got pretty worked up about him for a little while, but it’s all over. I don’t mean just because of tonight. What happened before lunch today—that was real. You know that. That’s all I want, you, you doing the things we do together.”

Charlie’s jaws were clamped shut. He felt as if he could break the wheel in his hands. This wasn’t going to end here. “Well, I suppose I ought to thank you for telling the truth,” he said evenly, “but I can’t pretend I like it. I feel as if I don’t even know you. Things happen! Is that your way of saying you’ve been to bed with two or three other guys?”

“Good God, no. I’m just talking about being attracted sometimes.”

“Well, things like that don’t happen to me. I don’t let them. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s what I’ve always believed in. If I found out you’d been sleeping around, it would be all over.”

“You know I feel the same way.” Peter’s heart pounded up with alarm. Charlie spoke with such cold finality. He had to enter a plea for forgiveness in case this thing went any further. He added hesitantly, “Still, if something did happen with you and somebody else, I suppose I’d have to accept it somehow. I can’t imagine life without you.”

“I can’t imagine life without you so long as you’re the person I’ve always thought you were. If things changed, the hell with it. I need you.
You.
Not somebody who gets into nasty little messes with hysterical kids. Just don’t forget it.”

Peter could think of nothing to say. Although he was badly frightened, his mind was rapidly sorting out Charlie’s words, assessing the situation. The main thing was that Charlie still thought he hadn’t been to bed with Jean-Claude. How was he going to silence the boy? Charlie’s threat to beat him wasn’t idle talk; it was just the sort of thing he would do, rushing off to defend their honor. He felt the danger in Jean-Claude like a timebomb ticking away toward the blasting of their lives. He would certainly have to go to him in the morning. He knew he could demonstrate that he was of no use sexually to him any more. Would that be enough? If not, he would have to plead with Anne to intervene. She had some control over her brother.

They completed what remained of the drive in silence. As soon as they reached the house, all lighted up as Peter had left it, Charlie got out of the car without a word and went straight in and mixed himself a drink in the living room, where bottles and ice had been left out by the cook-maid who was included in the rental. He was still seething. His hand shook as he lifted the glass to his lips. He took it out to the terrace and sat in a canvas chair. He was aware of Peter trailing along behind him. He approached and put his hand on the back of Charlie’s neck and stroked it.

“I’m sorry. It was awful but we can forget it now. I suppose I could say it’s taught me a lesson, but this sort of thing happens so rarely that I don’t really need any lessons. Beautiful darling. It’s all right now, isn’t it? Please don’t make anything more of it.”

“I don’t know. Maybe in the morning you can make it sound as if you were telling all of it. I don’t want to go over it all again now.”

“Would you like me to stay and have a drink with you?”

“Not particularly.”

Peter lingered miserably. It was so awful. He was beginning to feel deeply ashamed, but he couldn’t see how any of it, except for tonight, could have been different. Last week, Jean-Claude really had represented a threat to everything he felt for Charlie. This morning before lunch had been proof that he had met the danger and overcome it. He couldn’t allow anything to go wrong now. Perhaps by morning Charlie would have worked it out in his mind and they would be secure and together again; he was completely shut off from him now. Peter touched the back of his head again, longingly. “Well then, I’ll go on up. Come up soon.”

When he was gone, Charlie finished his drink in several long swallows and got up to get another. He went back to the terrace and sat, his throbbing head resting in one hand. Forget it, he counseled himself as the second drink began to calm him. If Peter had been lying, it could only be because he and Jean-Claude had been having an affair. This quite simply wasn’t possible. Oh, possible. Everything was possible if you set your mind to it. There had been Guy’s innuendoes about the trip back from Paris. Peter was out and about for hours during the day while he was at work. He and Jean-Claude had disappeared long enough this morning for anything to happen, which was one more reason why it was impossible. If anything were going on, Peter would take great care not to give him any grounds for suspicion. Still, he was going to make sure. He had no intention of living with doubt. He sprang up, tempted to go back to the party and confront Jean-Claude. And make another faggotty little scene? He went in and replenished his drink and returned to the terrace and sat. He would find out in the morning and if, as he was almost sure, Peter had been more or less telling the truth, he would give Jean-Claude a beating he wouldn’t forget. Christ, faggots. How he hated them.

In the past, in periods when things weren’t going well between them and life had sometimes seemed unbrearable, he had spent hours picking meticulously over the past, assembling a case history, trying to understand why his life had taken this course. He had seized on every small milestone, arranged them in chronological order, learned the sequence by heart. Somewhere as it unfolded in his mind should lie the answer to why all his life was bound up with, all of himself was dependent on, another man, yet he had never found it.

It had all started at school, of course. From the age of sixteen, his sex had begun to attract attention. For a long time, he didn’t know whether he was supposed to be proud or ashamed of it. It was simply commented on as one of the school’s phenomena. One year’s jokes and hints and glances became the next year’s acts. Somehow—it had had something to do with a boy who wanted to measure him—he was introduced to a secret circle that engaged in mutual masturbation. After the measuring boy, he was approached by another, who muttered something about “doing it” and led him down into the basement to a dusky, dusty room where athletic equipment was stored. There, they unfastened each other’s flies, liberated their by-now erect sexes and rapidly stroked each other to orgasm. That was all there was to it. Thereafter he was approached regularly and repeated the routine with a number of others. It was a day school in the suburbs of Philadelphia and the encounters always took place somewhere on the school grounds, never at home. It was a practice he associated with school and although it was secretive, he couldn’t think it was bad because all the others were doing it, all the ones he cared about, the athletes, the leaders, the good-looking boys.