Perfect Freedom (63 page)

By Monday night, he was nearly frantic with anxiety and anticipation. His whole future was at stake. He worked himself up into an agony of indecision while he waited for it to be late enough for Maurice to be asleep. Should he give the whole thing up? Even if Maurice didn't have him expelled, he might withdraw the friendly interest he had taken in him and his work. He didn't know how he had thought of such an outrageous scheme. Duplicating the key. Creeping naked into his bed. Maurice would think he'd gone mad. Perhaps he should try to forget it and settle for the handsome new boy, whose advances were becoming increasingly bold. Robbie had had an occasion to observe that he had a very impressive cock. They were rare. None of the boys he'd picked up in St. Tropez had exceeded the norm.

If he had allowed himself some relief from his self-imposed celibacy, he wouldn't be goaded into pacing the corridors in his dressing gown now, breaking the rules, pretending to go to the toilet, waiting for midnight. Maurice was two flights of stairs above him, in an apartment on the top floor of the building where Robbie shared a cubicle with two classmates. He could be with him in less than a minute. Feeling him so close, he knew that he was doomed to carrying out this final bid for his heart's desire.

Nothing happened the way he had expected. To begin with, Maurice was awake. Robbie had oiled the lock and he entered soundlessly except for the click of the door closing. He had learned the lay of the land. Maurice's bedroom was straight ahead of him, more a curtained alcove than a room. Robbie paused to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. A voice broke the silence.

“Who's there? Is that you, Robbie?”

Robbie's heart leaped into his throat. He stood transfixed while his mind seized on the fact that Maurice had expected him. Surely that meant that Maurice wanted him. “Yes, sir,” he gasped.

“Stay where you are.” A light switched on. He heard movement in the alcove and then Maurice appeared tying a dressing gown around himself. He looked very young with his hair ruffled and the dressing gown clinging to his trim athletic body. He looked as if he were naked under it. He stopped on the other side of the room and faced Robbie. “Did you do something to the lock so you could get in?”

“Not exactly, sir. I had the key copied.”

The sides of Maurice's mouth twitched. “I should've thought of that. Did you meet anybody coming up here?”

“No, sir;”

“What about your roommates?”

“Sound asleep, sir. Anyway, I told them I wasn't feeling well and might go to the infirmary.”

“I see. You've thought of everything. Good. Now you'd better tell me what you're doing here. I might have an idea but I think if you do things like this you should be prepared to offer an explanation.”

“Yes, sir.” Robbie began to tremble all over but his eyes didn't flinch from Maurice's level gaze. “I want you, sir.”

Maurice looked at the floor and nodded briefly. He turned away and went to his desk and sat and adjusted some papers. He remained with his back partly turned to Robbie. “Can you explain just how you mean that?”

“In every way, sir. I thought you'd be asleep. I was going to get into bed with you.”

Maurice uttered a harsh impatient sound and swung around in his chair. His dressing gown fell away from his handsome, firmly muscled chest. “Have I ever given you the slightest sign that you could have what you wanted?”

“No, sir.”

“You're sure? Not a word, a touch, something in my eyes?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Then how can you have the temerity to come here with this insane idea in your mind?”

“I don't know.” Tears stung Robbie's eyes. He pressed trembling hands to them and dropped his arms back to his sides. “It's something I feel when we're together. I feel as if I belonged with you, as if we belonged to each other. Maybe I've just imagined it.”

“Even if you haven't—” Maurice started up and sank back into his chair and pulled his dressing gown around him. “My poor Robbie. You're so young. Don't you understand that at your age these infatuations happen? As we grow older, we learn how unimportant they are. I think you'd better go to bed. In the morning, we'll have forgotten all about it.”

“No, sir. I don't believe you. This isn't unimportant for either of us. If you really wanted me to go, I'd feel so ashamed by now that I wouldn't be able to stay.”

Maurice's expression hardened and he suddenly looked older. “Don't you understand that I'm trying to be kind?”

“It's not very kind to tell me to go when I'm baring my soul to you.” He could finally move. He advanced into the room and pulled open his dressing gown and dropped it and stood just out of Maurice's reach. His erection slowly lifted between them. “I'm baring all of myself. I'm not ashamed. I'm yours. I want you to take me.”

Maurice's eyes flickered over him but otherwise he made no move. His control was unshakable. “Have you thought what would happen if we were found like this together?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. There'd be a frightful scandal.”

“It would be the end of school for you and the end of my career. Is a few minutes' pleasure in bed worth that?”

Robbie choked with relief and uttered a strange sound like a sob. He was saved. Maurice wasn't going to reject him. “You admit it would be a pleasure? Why should anybody find us? Are you expecting somebody?” He summoned up his last reserves of courage and took another step forward and dropped to his knees. He pushed Maurice's legs apart and found the erection he was sure would be waiting for him. Even in the tensions of the moment, he was able to observe that it surpassed the norm. He bent over it and drew it into his mouth and moved his hands up over Maurice's body, pushing his dressing gown out of the way until he was totally exposed to him. He ran his fingers along the scattering of hair that defined his pectoral muscles. He felt as if his heart were melting in the joyful heat of learning the feel of him. Maurice shrugged off the dressing gown and gripped the sides of his head and lifted it away from him. He moved forward to the edge of the chair and pulled him into him so that their erections touched. They were naked together at last. Robbie shuddered with ecstasy. “Oh God, I've wanted it so,” he moaned.

“How can I know what this means to you?” Maurice said with a hint of bewilderment in his voice. His eyes were altered beyond recognition, full of tenderness and desire. “Is it just sex? I'm in love with you. Does it sound ridiculous to you? I've been in love with you for months. I suppose you've felt it even though I've done everything I could to conceal it. You're a beautiful boy. I'm a mature man. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?”

“I don't know. Do you mean I'm too young to know the difference between love and sex? Try me.” His voice grew husky with the wonder of being loved. “I want you to take me. I'll be yours. I understand that.”

“Do you know anything about homosexuality? I don't mean boys playing with each other. I mean the deep love that men can have for each other.”

“I'm a homosexual. I hoped you were too. I've been in love with a man before. I want us to love each other.”

“If there's any doubt in your mind about what you're saying, you'll be leading me into a very great sin.”

“Unless you think making love is a sin, you shouldn't worry. I know what I need. You can't corrupt me. I've done everything. If you don't take me, I'll have to wait for somebody else I can give myself to. I can't imagine it being anybody but you.”

Maurice rose, drawing Robbie up with him. They held each other lightly, their eyes meeting almost at a level; Maurice was a little taller. Robbie glanced down and saw that his erection wasn't quite as big as Maurice's, nor was his body as muscular. He had chosen well. Maurice was his master in every way. With all his guards discarded, his sexuality had become vivid and compelling. A little smile played around his lips.

“My dearest Robbie,” he said in his gentle cultivated voice. “I'm quite worn out with resisting you. Bless you for bringing it to an end. What now? Is any of this possible? I'm holding the beautiful body you drew me a picture of. You didn't do your cock justice. I feel rather as if all my fantasies had finally broken my grip on reality.”

They made love with an abandon that Robbie was proud to have stirred from the depths of Maurice's reserve. When they had washed and returned to bed, Robbie found the peace he had longed for in Maurice's arms. They talked, laying the foundation for what Robbie already thought of as their life together. They talked about the great difference in their ages. “Haven't you ever wanted a son, sir?” Robbie asked and they both burst into laughter. “I'm sorry. It's a habit I'll have to get over. Darling Maurice. Just think. You can make me what you want me to be. I'll be your obedient son and your passionate lover. It sounds like an ideal combination.”

“I'm so terribly in love with you, my dearest. I'm not sure I'll be capable of much paternal authority.”

“I belong to you. You can do anything with me. You've come into me and taken possession of me. I'm yours. I love you, Maurice.”

They talked about Robbie's sexual experiences and Maurice's, and about fidelity. “It shouldn't be a problem at your age,” Maurice said. “Youth has ideals and faith in the future. It's only as we grow older that we grow careless and self-absorbed. We begin to feel the passage of time and every opportunity missed seems to diminish life irrevocably. The fact of infidelity, the fact of holding another body is unimportant. I assume we'll have enough consideration for each other never to do anything that the other might find out about. It's the admission of a failure to love truly and wholly that does the damage. Perhaps you have to be unfaithful at least once to learn that.”

They talked about the future. “I'll have to leave here when you do,” Maurice said. “I've violated my most sacred oath. I swore that I would never lay a hand on one of my students. It wasn't difficult until last spring when I fell in love with your work. I've been obsessed by the fear of seeing you leave school without ever having you and knowing you and making love to all the beauty I see and feel in you. It was like knowing my life was coming to an end. We must be very careful while we're still here. I don't want us to leave under a cloud. Fortunately, I don't have to stay to make my living, but I owe it to the school and to myself to make an honorable departure.”

“What can we do for the Christmas holidays?”

“I'll have to think. Nobody must know about it if we go somewhere together. We have many plans to make. My life from now on will be yours, my Robbie.”

As far as Robbie was concerned, the foundations they laid that night had remained unshaken. At the end of term, Maurice took him to a beautiful small family château in the Loire valley. He discovered that Maurice was very well off. Robbie had never felt so cherished and worshiped, except perhaps by his mother. Maurice devoted himself to anticipating his every wish. His sexual appetites were as voracious as Robbie's; they spent a great deal of time naked in front of roaring fires. All their interests were shared. Robbie found to his surprise that despite his caution at school, Maurice frequented an undisguisedly homosexual circle, writers, musicians, theater people, a painter or two, who came from Paris for lunch or dinner. Maurice displayed Robbie proudly; they were treated like a newly married couple. It was the beginning of ten months of growing harmony that was brought abruptly to an end by the war.

Robbie longed for Maurice to be here to help him through the meeting with his father. Even after four or five months, he was just beginning to learn to do without Maurice. He would ask Raoul to go with him this evening, although he knew Maurice wouldn't approve. Maurice made allowances for his father's lack of understanding and thought Robbie should try to find an opportunity to arrive at a reconciliation. Maurice didn't know how impossible it was to get anywhere with his father, especially when he'd been drinking. The thought of his drinking decided him; Raoul would be a comfortable buffer against conflict. Maurice had arranged for him to stay with Raoul before he was called up. Robbie thought of him as his maiden aunt.

Stuart spent the hour before Robbie was due trying to prepare himself psychologically for their reunion. They had last met the previous summer, when Robbie had stopped for the night with Maurice Monneret, on their way to join Helene and Carl. Stuart hadn't known how to behave with them. Nothing in his experience had prepared him to deal with an openly homosexual couple. It was something to be swept out of sight, hidden in dark corners, but there was nothing furtive about this pair, nor was there any suggestion of depravity in their behavior.

Their making a kind of normalcy of their perversion made it additionally shocking to Stuart, a parody of human decency. If Robbie would recognize his sickness and ask for help, he would offer him guidance and sympathy and understanding. What could he offer a boy who placidly accepted his role as another man's wife?

He didn't know what Helene expected him to do for Robbie, except to assure him that he would provide all the money he needed. If he was working well, there was no point in his going anywhere else. He wanted to make him feel that he would always be welcome at home should the world situation change, he wanted him to know that he was taking an active interest in his mother's case, he intended to urge him to spend some part of the summer at St. Tropez if Helene were not yet free. Further than that, he was at a loss. Perhaps an evening alone with the boy would enable him to see him with fresh eyes, not as his own creation whose progress he had watched since infancy with love and hope but as an important talent in his own right whose sex life needn't concern him.

Robbie arrived with a friend. Stuart was barely able to be civil as Robbie introduced the stranger as Raoul Bertot, a large good-looking young man who on second glance appeared not so young. His dark hair shone so glossily, his skin was so well cared for that he almost achieved the freshness of youth.