Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 23:29:38 +0100
From: jerryfell@hushmail.com
Subject: Boy at the wedding - part 5

"You'll join us for lunch old chap!  My shout."  Not so much an
invitation as a command.

"Of course Henry.  Delighted."

"Come on Seb.  Let's get you cleaned up."

And with that father and son left Alexander with three quarters of
a bottle of fine white in an ice bucket.  He watched them walk away
from him towards the house.  Henry dwarfing his son.  The shoulder
blades of the boy moving gently under his brown skin as he skipped
along to keep up with Henry's strides.  Fifty yards away the boy
turned on his heels and waved.

He waved back.

What time was it? He had no idea.  He had left his watch in his
room and his mobile phone was, mercifully, a distant memory.  It
was somewhere in his suitcase.

Alexander sat with his back against the ancient oak.  He raised the
crisp wine to his lips, and swallowed.  For a moment the wine
reminded him of his Roman ancestors.  He felt their presence around
him.  He was suddenly surrounded by the Seven Hills and the estate
on the Aventine owned by his line until the modern day.  The packed
streets of Rome.  Armies marching to the ends of the Earth.  In the
inexorable drift of history, who was he?  What mark would he leave
on the world?  For the first time in 48 hours he thought of work.
He had landed a major airline by pitching to them the strap line:
"Arrive before you leave."  Those four words were worth millions to
his company, and hundreds of thousands to him personally.

`What a pile of shit.'

Augustus had been notorious for his love of boys.  Had he been a
weaker Emperor it might have brought down the Empire.  What had
possessed him?  Was it the same lunacy?  Were there perverted genes
scurrying around?

He grabbed the neck of the bottle and pulled it out of the ice.
Armed with the dripping bottle and the glass he headed across the
lawns in the direction of the maze.

Soon he was in amongst the English Yew.  He was annoyed to see a
plinth with a map just inside the entrance.  He marched passed it
and embraced the maze as it was meant to be experienced.  High
hedges led him inwards.  He stopped and took a long sip from his
glass.  He was in a green confine.  Like life itself the path
presented him with a series of choices.  Instinct was irrelevant.
There had to be a formula to navigate the maze successfully.  Could
he fathom it?

He tried hugging the right wall.  It led him deep inside the maze,
but in the end dead-ended.

`If I make it to the centre of the maze I will seduce Sebastian.'

No no no!  The maze was just a dalliance.  A plaything.  It was not
some giant fortune cookie.

The yew pressed in.  He noticed the mown grass.  The gardener
obviously knew the trick.  The solution.  He stopped to refill his
glass.

He pressed on.  He had no idea if he was going deeper or going in
circles.  He tried hugging the left wall.  Then alternating the
pattern.

How the fuck could he be lost?  He was a highly paid, smart CEO.
He was in a bush.  There was a path.  He would find the way.

He had never really paid any attention to English Yew.  The bush
was dense.  It was an anti-cheating vegetation.  He made a mental
note.  There would be an advertising campaign where he could use
the metaphor.

He refilled his glass.

Fucking bush.

And it was hot.  Fucking hot.  Like an English summer from his
youth.  He remembered when he had been Sebastian's age.  A summer
with his family in Henley, constantly on the water.  He could see
the sparkling water and his teenage toes beneath, wriggling in the
flow of the Thames over beds of reeds and the mysterious slow fish
below.

`When I was thirteen I was sex obsessed.  Don't forget that.  Seb
is not an innocent.  By that age at boarding school there would not
only have been the ritual hazing, but he might well have had three
or four sexual partners.  Too heavy a word.  Encounters....  Too
light a word.'

Alexander was lost in a maze far more complex than Yew.  By
thirteen he had fallen in and out of love several times with boys
at his school.  His own introduction to sex had been at ten years
old.  Not in the hazing ritual, but in a bizarre encounter with a
boy one year younger who occupied the bed next to him.  This little
tyke had, out of nowhere, asked him: "What would you do if I put my
hand in your bed?"  He had known, immediately, what was being
asked.  For a reason he still didn't understand he had answered
"Nothing." and that night his cock had been gripped by a nine year
old, starting his own sexual history.

By thirteen Alexander had developed the predatory instincts of a
sex-obsessed eighteen year old.  He had schemed, flirted, broken
hearts and had his own broken several times.  He had been no
innocent.

`So why did Seb cry?'

There was no answer.  There was just the rustling of the yew.
There was no way out of the maze.

Alexander looked skywards.  High above him, at 30,000 feet a plane
passed overhead leaving a vapor trail.  It brought him back to
earth.  He refilled his glass.

Perhaps he should have studied the map.

Brute force.  When all else fails.  He marched.  Down dead ends.
He turned on his heels.  Down more dead ends.

`This is it.  This is a new turn.  Bound to be right.'

He turned the corner.

Dumb Yew stood across his path.

Alexander.  The Roman.  The rich.  The lost.  Stood there and
laughed until his eyes watered, until he had to put the bottle on
the grass, until he had to sit down in a heap and just let the
laughter wash out of him.  He wiped his eyes.  Calmed down.  Then
broke out in laughter again until his sides ached.

Eventually he was able to stand.  He gave up on his system.  He
wandered lost until he was joined by a limp looking couple who had
read the map.  They guided him like a blind man, proud of their
absurd knowledge of the maze's secret.

At the centre of the maze was a spiral staircase.  Below was a
tunnel that lead out of the maze to one of the ornamental lakes.

Unfortunately the man recognised him.  "Are you Alexander Steel?"

"Guilty."

He had to endure ten minutes while the man described the public
relations challenge faced by the insurance industry.  He smiled and
nodded.  The couple had rescued him after all.

"Could I call you when you are back in London?"

"Of course."

He made a mental note to tell his PA to reject any calls from the
man.  Then the emotion of the day got the better of him.

"Actually..."  The man looked startled.  His wife more so.

"Don't call me.  I despise the insurance industry.  I am on
holiday.  Thanks for the rescue."

And with that he left them behind gaping like fish out of water and
made his way back towards the house.

He had been in the maze far longer than he realized.  Henry, Mary
and the kids were on the shaded terrace.  Water bottles and olives
were on the table.

Henry got to his feet.  Smiling.  Arms open.

Sebastian was grinning.  Patting a vacant chair next to him.

Mary was smiling.

Matilda slipped away from the table and ran to greet him.  She met
him like an infant rugby player in an ineffective, but altogether
pleasant tackle.  He picked her up under her armpits and swung her
onto his hip.

"Just in time!"

He settled at the table.  Matilda left him beaming.  He sat next to
Sebastian.  He unfolded the starched napkin.  He leaned in to Mary.
 "If you are tempted to try the maze.  Take it from me.  Don't!"

Mary patted his arm and laughed.

There followed a lunch that took its place in his imagination.
Shaded.  Complex.  Surrounded by children.  The boy.  Henry.  Mary.
 Matilda.  White Wine.  A more than passable Gazpacho.  Fish.
Summer pudding with berry juice running down Sebastian's chin.
Smiling at Mary he had leaned forward and wiped the juice dribbling
down her son's face away with his thumb.  Cupping her boy's face in
his hand.  He had not pulled away.

And after lunch he left them and made his way back to his room.
Sebastian needed his final hours with his family and he was spent.

He crawled into bed in the mid afternoon.

He woke when it was dark.

There was no air.

He rolled out of bed and opened the window wide.

Over the hotel, clouds pumped up in the darkness, obscuring the
moon.

Thick drops of rain splattered on the sill.

Alexander stood at the window.  Lightening strobed, picking out the
clumps of the rooky wood that edged the hotel grounds.

The rain started to drive.  Bouncing off the sill.  Hissing on the
warm land.

Crack and boom.

Alexander wrapped himself in the bathrobe provided by the hotel.
He picked up the magnetic key card from the bedside table.  In his
bare feet he left the room and made his way downstairs.  He
unbolted the door to the terrace and walked out onto the grass.  He
was surprised by the grey.  Surprised by the darkness.  By the
ferocity of the rain against his upturned face.

A shock of light picked out the hotel.  The croquet hoops cast
eerie shadows.

Shortly after a rolling crack of thunder.

He was a hundred yards from the hotel.  He held his arms out, palms
upturned.  Face to the sky.  Mouth open.

The heavens opened in a monsoon downpour.

He closed his eyes against the battering.


He let the rain soak him to the skin.  His toes sank into mud and
grass.  He kept his eyes tightly shut.  He hoped that when he
opened them again he would see in front of him a soaking wet boy in
the ragged moonlight.

He imagined the scene in high definition.

Escorting the soaked lad back up to his room.  Towels.  Removing
pajamas.  Soaked hair.  Rubbing dry.  The intimacy of the storm.  A
decision.  Sharing the bed.  The lad's limbs inside the sheets.
Feet tangling.  Rough hands on the soft silk of the boy's thighs.

Thick drops of rain beat against Alexander's upturned face.

He brought his hand up.  Cupped.  He stood blinking.

No boy.

His bare feet in the soaking grass.

The hotel like a cold shoulder silhouetted against the purple sky.

And for the second time that day, Alexander laughed out loud at his
foolishness and turned his face again to the sky.

-----

Are you along for the ride?  email me: jerryfell@hushmail.com
Bless you if you are, for your patience!