Perfect Freedom (52 page)

It looked even bigger than it actually was. Robbie admitted to himself that if they were locked in a room he wouldn't be able to keep his hands off it. For the sake of everything that was most sacred and precious to him, he had to make sure that they weren't locked in a room again. What if Toni came home unexpectedly? “Please. Try to understand,” he said earnestly. “I told you I shouldn't. I'd never forgive myself if I let it happen again. I've promised Toni. I can't explain it. Please believe me.”

“We shall see. I'm not going to beg.” His conqueror's eyes looked undaunted.

“Thanks. I'm sorry.” Robbie felt as if he had taken a step toward redeeming himself. He was able to deny desire, if somewhat belatedly. He hoped Jeff understood that he'd been turned down.

They mingled again with the others and the guests soon began to make their departures. Betty was unsteady on her feet and clung to Jeff for support. As they moved toward the archway, Robbie was struck by inspiration.

“Didn't you have a toilet case with you?” he asked Jeff.

“So I did. What a clever boy.”

“Did you leave it in the room? I'll run get it.” Virtue sharpened the wits. He knew from the anger he caught in Jeff's eyes that he had still been planning to come back for him. He avoided looking at him when he returned with the case and politely performed his duties as a junior host. When they were all gone, he said a hasty goodnight to his parents and hurried back to his house. Their house. Toni's house. Being in it helped him to think his way back into the person Toni wanted him to be.

He was going through a difficult period but his beloved friend was helping him over it. Any day now he would fall for a girl. The innocent physical play Toni permitted them was enough to satisfy his still undirected sexuality. He didn't really want to feel Jeff's body against his again. He went over Picasso's memorable words. He was a painter. That was the main thing.

The day had exhausted him. His body was eased by Jeff's possession of it. He had resisted temptation finally. He slept.

He was awakened by movement in the bed. Consciousness returned with a rush of contentment as he reached out to Toni. His hands encountered the body he had denied himself and his heart stopped. He tried to scramble away but Jeff was on him, pinning him down. A lamp snapped on. Robbie blinked in the sudden light. All his body responded to the naked body on top of him, even while he fought him off. Jeff looked down at him and laughed. Fingers delved between his buttocks and applied lubricant. Robbie twisted his hips and thrashed about, trying to free himself.

“No. Oh God, no. Not here,” he cried.

“We mustn't desecrate the chaste matrimonial sheets? I like it here.” He bent Robbie's arm behind him and got a painful grip on it and lifted him so that he was sprawled out on his back with his head against Jeff's abdomen. He wanted to hide the evidence of his desire but pain forced him to lie still and expose it. Jeff's erection prodded the side of his face. “There, you little cocksucker. God, what a body. A big young cock wanting me. Okay. I'll take your beautiful ass.” He exerted additional pressure On Robbie's arm and flipped him over onto his stomach and straddled him. “There. Lift up. Put it in you. Don't you wish yours was as big? In you, dammit.”

“No. I beg of you. You're raping me. Oh God. Please. Not here.”

“It's exciting, isn't it? He might walk in any minute. This may teach you not to play games with older men. Beautiful boys drive us wild. Come on. It's not rape if you want it. Struggle, damn you.”

“I can't.” Robbie was overcome by tears. “Do it. Oh God, do it. Quickly. Don't let him find us.” Robbie surrendered to his need while his body was shaken by sobs. It didn't matter if he found them. He couldn't go on pretending with him.

He continued to weep quietly long after Jeff was gone. He was vile. All queers were vile. How could he hope for anybody decent to care for him? Everything that he cherished in himself and found beautiful was an illusion. He was nothing but a cocksucker. He had defiled Toni's house, his bed, his trust. He forced himself to get up and change the sheets but he didn't think he would ever be able to lie with him in peace again.

When Toni finally slipped into bed beside him, he couldn't bring himself to welcome him but grunted in simulated sleep and rolled away from him.

Toni grinned as he settled back to sleep. He was curing his young friend of his obsession with him. Girls would be next.

To his amazement, Robbie was able to face Toni the next day as if nothing had happened. Something had stretched and relaxed in him so that he no longer felt a need to prove himself. There was nothing left to prove. He was what he was. Toni would eventually find out. His love remained intact, tempered by the deepening awareness that an impossible change would have to take place in both of them before it could offer any real rewards.

Toni gave his final performance two days later and Robbie was faced with a month of their being together more constantly than before. Would he be able to preserve Toni's illusions that long? He was eager for Carl's imminent arrival; he needed guidance. There was a phone call from Marseilles and then Carl was there, blonder, more bronzed, more radiant than ever. He looked at them all and seemed to say, “So. I have arrived. Now life can begin.” His youthful high spirits were infectious. Within an hour, Toni felt as if the family had acquired another member.

Carl had arrived before lunch and was given a tour of the house. He was stunned by it and said so with flattering enthusiasm. Stuart had made no secret of having made a considerable fortune in real estate but Carl hadn't been prepared for anything like this. It was a small principality. He noted its privacy and its strategic location at the entrance to the bay. It was a find; he was already enlarging his plans for the future.

“Come on, Toni, we've got to show him
our
house,” Robbie exclaimed.

The three of them climbed up together. “Don't let me look at your pictures,” he said to Robbie. “I am seeing too much at once. Later, I will come and we will look at them and I will be able to really see them.” He noted the double bed. He saw the way Robbie looked at his friend. He had subjected Toni to close scrutiny. The godlike serenity of his good looks would be a magnet to men inclined that way but he found no trace in him of the availability that he had always detected in equivocal male beauties. Robbie was in love with him. How far did Toni's indulgence go? The circumstances of his being here, which had been explained, intrigued him. It confirmed the emptiness he had sensed in Stuart's life. He sorted out the explosive elements in the situation and saw how easy it would be to precipitate a crisis. Something to keep in mind.

When Robbie rose from the lunch table to go back to work, Carl got up too. “May I come with you? I want to see what you're doing and then I'll leave you in peace.”

“Come on, but don't forget I'm a genius. You're supposed to stand in front of the canvas in hushed amazement.” He looked at Toni and pledged himself to him with his eyes before facing the unpredictable hazards of being alone with Carl.

“Now you must tell me everything,” Carl said as they started up through the terraces, “You're in love.”

“You can tell?”

“Of course.”

“Can everybody?”

“Only those who are looking for it, I think. He's so deeply and openly fond of you that it appears very innocent. I would never have guessed that he's your lover.”

“He isn't. Not really.” Robbie was still explaining his peculiar relationship with Toni when they reached the house. They stood facing each other beside his worktable.

“So. You're in love but you are not having a love affair,” Carl summed up. “How long do you think that can go on?”

“I don't know. As long as he'll let it. Did you expect us to be lovers again?”

Carl drew him close and kissed him on the mouth. He felt the control he still exercised over the boy and was satisfied. He gripped his shoulders firmly and drew back. “You don't want us to be while you're in love with Toni, do you?”

“I know I shouldn't. I wouldn't dream of it if things were different. Can I come to you if I get desperate? It's hard to do without something I need so much.”

“You two must stop playing games with each other. You must tell him that you're not going to want girls, that you want only him.”

“But it's not just that he isn't like that. He hates anybody who is.”

“Nonsense, my dear. He doesn't hate you. Seduce him. You already have, I think. He's not a homosexual but anybody is capable of homosexual love at least once in their life. I will talk to him about you.”

“I knew I needed you here,” he said with grateful affection. Carl was the one known, stable element in his life. Only he could help him break the stalemate of his passion.

Carl kissed him again, briefly and lightly this time. “We're allies. We will always be able to count on each other. Now I wish to be shown a work of genius.”

Robbie laughed. “Well, a
budding
genius.” Two canvases were finished now and he had made great progress on the third and started a fourth. He propped them all up around the easel and waited uneasily while Carl looked. His work was growing too important for him not to care what people thought of it. Carl was really looking at it.

“I have been looking at paintings all my life,” he said finally, “and I still don't trust my own judgment. I see here great strength, an almost frightening intensity of expression. It's so dense, Robbie. I will have to look again and again. It is foolish to say that I
like
these things. They excite and fascinate me and make me want to see what you will do next.”

“That's good enough for a budding genius.” He laughed with proud-relief. He was apparently doing something that people connected with. Toni refused to comment on the grounds that he knew nothing about art but he often watched Robbie at work and hugged him and nodded with mute approval. Robbie had asked his mother to wait until he had at least three things finished but he couldn't expect her to be objective. Carl counted. “Now you know everything about me,” he said.

“And very fortunate I am, my dear young friend. I'll leave you to your fascinating work. Till later.”

Carl's success continued that evening with the friends who had been invited for drinks to welcome him. Rather crossly, Helene restored him to the head of her list of attractive men. He easily outshone all the others. She watched him charm Hilda and Jane Cumberleigh and several others, and noted with approval that his charm wasn't as superficial as the old Greek lady had suggested at their first meeting. He charmed them because he liked them. He charmed her because he liked her more.

He turned to her constantly for her opinion and didn't leave her side for long. Perhaps because she had recovered her social ease and was no longer flustered by men's attentions, she felt far less impregnable than she had in Greece. When she felt his attention straying, she made an effort to hold it. She was very aware of the splendid body under the immaculate white clothes. Lending herself to the usual give-and-take between the sexes risked leading her too far. When their eyes met and held for a second too long, her heart gave a warning flutter of desire. She told herself that after he had been with them a few days, she would get used to him and recover her sangfroid. He made no attempt to disguise the fact that he was still determined to have her. She must find a way to enjoy him without encouraging him too much.

Only the admiral struck a sour note. “I say, that's the chap I told you about,” he said to Stuart, drawing him aside.

“Told me about?” Stuart repeated.

“Yes, wasn't it you? Perhaps it was your good wife. Don't like to speak about it, but I rather think I ought, you know. Dirty bit of goods, von Eschenstadt. Knew him years ago in Cairo. Ran off with a chap's wife and afterward bled him white. Blackmail, that's what it amounted to. No saint myself, but one must draw a line.”

“Don't you think it might have been a misunderstanding?” Stuart suggested uncomfortably. “People often get these stories garbled.”

“Quite so, but I knew the chap. Whole thing took place right under my nose. Awkward running into him here.”

“Well, yes; it is,” Stuart agreed. It was awkward to hear such a story about somebody who had become a friend. Should he speak to Carl about it? None of their new friends were saints but this was the life their money had bought them and Helene was enjoying herself. The season would be over soon. It had brought them Toni. He was worth all the rest. “Do you feel you have to cut him or anything of that sort?” Stuart asked.

“A little late in the day for anything drastic,” the admiral admitted. “I shall simply give him a wide berth. Thought I should explain.”

“Yes, of course. I'm glad you did,” Stuart said, relieved that there weren't going to be any scenes.

He and Carl were returning to the terrace after seeing off the last of the guests when Carl referred to the story himself. “He is a real character, your admiral, no?” he said easily. “Did he tell you what a scoundrel I am?”

“He told me a story.”

“It is not the most admirable episode of my career,” Carl said with a candid smile. “I was still young enough to believe that love excuses everything. The lady felt she had a right to certain sums of money from her husband. I agreed to get them for her. Of course, everybody thought it was for myself and I felt very heroic sacrificing my good name for a beautiful woman. Shortly after the lady had her money, she left me.”

Stuart laughed. He had known it would turn out to be something of the sort. He would set the admiral straight.

During dinner and the evening that followed, the five of them achieved a harmony that was peculiarly their own. Carl was the ringleader in providing boisterous fun and the others played off him, dazzling each other with the pleasure they found in each other's company. Toni was profiting from his freedom by integrating himself fully into family life. His Mado was gone. Robbie suspected that there had been jealous scenes with Michèle; she had faded from the picture. He was between girls. He seemed to be in no hurry to find a new one. He'd told the Coslings that it was such a relief not to be making his nightly appearances that he didn't care if he didn't leave the place for the rest of the summer.