Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2019 20:36:18 +0000 (UTC) From: Peter Brown Subject: Queen Mary Bell Boys Queen Mary Bell-boys by badboi666 =============================================================================== If sex with boys isn't your thing, go away. If, as is much more likely, you've come to this site precisely to get your rocks off reading about sex with 14-year-olds then make yourself comfortable - you're in the right place. Don't leave, however, without doing this: Donate to Nifty - these buggers may do it for love but they still have to eat. http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html =============================================================================== Chapter 166 Luckily there were two berths in the Sleeper. Charlie told me that we'd have to stay with Angus and his wife "so acts of sodomy are off the menu, I'm afraid." We had inter-connecting berths and the jolting was keeping us both awake. Somewhere north of Carlisle it was beginning to get light. "Are you awake?" whispered Charlie. "Yes. Can't sleep a wink." "Fancy your first, and probably last, act of sodomy in Scotland?" It wasn't ideal, I have to say, but it had the merit of being in the same box as the Mile High Club, at least to the extent of making bouncy love in a confined space. I think if we'd both still been teenagers we might have found it more fun, but for a middle aged man being comforted by his lover it brought Charlie some minutes of not thinking about Durness and what awaited us there. After we'd had a while to recover I suggested that as he had now committed sodomy on his native heath I might be permitted to sodomize him. "Oh, very well, if you insist." "I do, Charlie, my love, I do." Funnily enough we both slept after that until a great banging on the cabin door awoke us. We leapt apart like guilty schoolboys. ***** The car was waiting for us when we arrived, and I set off for Durness. We arrived around midday. On the journey Charlie briefed me about what we might expect. "They're very religious - you can tell that from the letter. I expect they'll all be in black from top to toe, and the bloody parrot'll be shut in its cage too." "How do you know they have a parrot?" "I don't, you daftie, but if they did it would be dyed black." I was glad that the loss of his mother - to whom he had written so devotedly and from whom he had heard not a whisper - wasn't proving too great a burden. Our parents die, and if they have been absent from our lives for 40 years that death is not much more than just another event. Sad, but not devastating. "Don't, for God's sake, let on you're a Catholic or they'll have to have the place fumigated after we've gone." I assured him that any long-buried reflex desire to cross myself would be sternly resisted. "That's good then," and he patted my knee - a thing I didn't recall his ever having done before. Angus and Morag greeted us. Were I to be forced to append an adverb to that last sentence I think it would have to be 'cautiously'. Charlie aged 16 had been a known person to both of them - Morag was almost exactly Charlie's age and they had been in the same class at school - but nearly 40 years on things change. I, the spawn of Satan, the tempter of their wee Highland angel, was to be treated politely, but warily. We were welcomed in and shown to our room. Charlie's mirth was only just confined. "Look at this," he whispered when the bedroom door was closed behind us, "the same room, but twin beds." "Just like Cabin 1 on Queen Mary," I said, "quite like old times." We dumped our cases and went downstairs. As well as Angus and Morag we met their three children. The two eldest, Fiona and Annag were both married. Neither of them had stayed in Durness a moment longer than they had to, escaping to what passed for bright lights in Glasgow to get away from home. Their husbands weren't with them - Fiona was married to a fisherman and Annag to a policeman in Inverness. The youngest child was much more interesting. Charlie, it turned out, had a nephew, and moreover a nephew called Tearlach. Had the boy been given that name because Angus felt he had let his wee brother down? We never found out. Tearlach was very much an afterthought, being born when his sisters were 14 and 11. He was now a slim shy boy of 14. Nothing about him rang any kind of bell with me apart from his eyes, which were identical to his namesake's. He made himself scarce as soon as he could after being introduced to us. I wondered if terrible warnings about what sodomites might wish to do to him had been made. Had it not been for those eyes this sodomite would not have harboured even the tiniest shred of a suspicion of a design, but ... those eyes! A hefty dram was placed in our hands. Fond as I am of a decent malt (and this was just such a one) three fingers on an empty stomach wasn't something I was expecting. "Slainte," said Charlie - or perhaps Tearlach. I mumbled something which I hoped would do. Eleven fingers of whisky were despatched remarkably swiftly (Morag, as a highland woman, received only two). "Well now," said Angus ... Lunch was a strain socially, even after Angus had done his best to make us both welcome. Satan might have put hatred in Angus's heart for only a few minutes, but his hot toasting-fork was still a threatening presence all the same. All six of us were on egg shells; only Tearlach was oblivious to the tension, but he was so busy being shy (and eating as though he had not fed for some days) that he wouldn't have noticed the roof blowing off. As had happened so many years ago (but for wholly different reasons) I decided that Tearlach was a challenge. By half past two, after a fine lunch (why had I assumed that the art of cooking hadn't reached the north of Sutherland?) and another dram, Charlie and Angus had wiped any slates clean. "What you do is for you, and although Father would be birling in his grave I really don't care," said Angus. "Patrick, Tearlach, you are my kin, both of you - yes, I mean both of you," and a tear rolled slowly down the side of his nose. Morag said nothing, but I saw a mischievous twinkle in her eye. Now that both parents were dead was there to be a lightening of the heavy burden of Old Testament superstition? Certainly there was no sign of the black everywhere. Had Charlie been winding me up? Or was he just 40 years out of date? However by 4 o'clock I could stand the tension no longer. "I need a walk," I said, "after a night in the so-called sleeper I can't keep my eyes open. An hour in the air is what I need. Charlie, are you going to show me your home town?" To my surprise Tearlach perked up immediately - he thought I was talking to him. Charlie grinned, "yes, come on Tearlach, let's see if the places I loved when I was your age are still there." By mutual consent Angus and Morag didn't accompany us, and Fiona and Annag had the wit to see that Charlie and Tearlach needed to get to know each other. After all, the boy hadn't known he had an uncle until a couple of days before. By 5 o'clock we knew a bit more about Tearlach - not much, but enough to suggest that he was unlikely to find himself as innocent as his uncle when he reached 16. His shyness disappeared after about five minutes when it was just the three of us. New unfamiliar adults who clearly had 'FRIENDS' invisibly tattooed on their foreheads were just what Tearlach needed. Parents and teachers were out of the question, naturally, but this new uncle and his boy-friend - his boy-friend! - were just the sort of adults of whom questions might be asked. Questions about growing up. Questions which a 14-year-old desperately needed answers to. And best of all, the adults would go away again soon and there would be no lasting embarrassment. It took Tearlach those five minutes to work this out. "Tearlach," he said tentatively after the five minutes of silence had enabled him to screw up his courage, "can I ask you something. Promise you won't laugh." Charlie stopped dead and turned to look straight at his nephew. "Tearlach, you can ask me what you like. I won't laugh - ever - and nor will Patrick. Go ahead, I won't mind." "Is it true you're ... queers?" Normally I'd have laughed uproariously at such a question, but Charlie had promised so I kept a straight face. "Yes," said Charlie simply, "that's what some people call us. Often they mean it as an insult, and if you don't mean to insult us the nicer word is to say that we're gay. But queer is fine too - it's what we call ourselves." Tearlach took all this in. "Isn't it wicked though?" Here we go with the son of Calvinism, I thought, how will Charlie deal with this. Charlie dealt with it in an unexpected way. "Sit down," he said, and the three of us sat on a bench overlooking the sea. Tearlach was in the middle. "When I was about a year older than you are now my father caught me having a wank. You know what wanking is, I assume?" Tearlach reddened fetchingly and nodded, his eyes firmly on the ground. I knew where Charlie was going with this, but I thought I ought to put my oar in, if only to help Tearlach in his embarrassment. "Tearlach," I said, "I wank. Charlie wanks. Every boy or man we've ever known wanks. Your father wanked when he was a boy. Do something for me, will you? Stand up, look us in the face, smile and say 'I wank, and I love it'. Go on." Tearlach looked at Charlie, panic on his face. "Do it, Tearlach, it won't hurt, I promise," said Charlie quietly. Tearlach stood up. Tearlach made a supreme effort. He turned round. He cleared his throat. He looked at me, then at his uncle. "Uncle Tearlach ... I wank and I love it. It makes me feel good. Is what Patrick said true?" Charlie stood up and drew Tearlach in for a hug. "Yes, every word of it. Now sit down and if Patrick'll keep his mouth shut I'll finish what I was going to tell you. Charlie then told the boy about the whipping, about deciding to leave as soon as he could, about Queen Mary, about me (yes, including the challenge and the swimming pool), about how we discovered what we felt about each other, about the fact that nearly 40 years later we still felt the same. Tearlach drank it all in, his eyes wide at the astonishing taboo-breaking stuff he was hearing. He was spared any knowledge of our whoring though - no point in frightening the poor boy. "Charlie, you left out the biggest thing of all," I said, "you didn't tell him we love each other." Tearlach sat bolt upright. "Are you allowed to love another man? I thought you had to love a woman." Luckily the walk home, by a more indirect route, allowed enough time for Tearlach's idea of who one might love to be widened considerably. I was expecting to be questioned on the mechanics of how one demonstrated this strange kind of love, but Tearlach had had enough for one day. ***** The funeral was the next day. Luckily Charlie had briefed me about that as well. "Men only, takes hours, have a pee before setting out, take peppermints." Truly this Calvinism was a decidedly strange religion. I though our lot were big on ritual, but peppermints? Charlie added helpfully, just as we were solemnly walking into the wee church (it's catching, this dialect), that the entire proceedings would take place in Gaelic. "Just do what I do," he whispered. "Can I cross myself?" "Don't you fucking dare." Despite the slightly brittle levity it was strangely moving. My emotional connection to the person lying in the coffin was entirely through the person I loved, and his sorrow (there was nothing as sharp as grief) was my sorrow for the man I loved. And it was a real emotion. After a long service the men followed the coffin to a grave overlooking a lively sea. There were wild flowers only a few feet away. I don't think I'd ever seen anywhere more bleak and more beautiful at the same time. Angus was at the head of the coffin, Charlie at the foot. Three other men and I helped lower it into the grave. The awful patter of earth on the lid. The words whipped away by the wind. The shaking of hands. The trudge back to real life. The happy discovery that while the men had been away doing their solemn work the women - or Morag, at least - had been busy. Scones in her case, and very welcome too. "You'll be needing refreshment," she said. The six of us talked throughout the rest of the day - we had 40 years of history to learn. Tearlach was nowhere to be seen. Naturally some of the details of our earlier life together remained where they belonged: in the past. Angus, as a fisherman, had been in a reserved occupation during the War, and had one one occasion been far out west of Ireland and had seen what must have been us or the Lizzie "coming at us like a thunderbolt. I've never seen a ship with such speed on her." ***** The next morning Charlie and I were propositioned by Tearlach who expressed a desire to show us his favourite place. Morag grinned. "You're honoured - he's never told us where it is. Mind you keep it a secret." What was important to Tearlach was not the destination of course, but the opportunity to get these two friendly adults to help him explore more of his horizons. It became clear very quickly that sex education had not been offered to Tearlach, so Charlie and I, hardly experts, set about telling the poor boy the basics. After an hour Tearlach had got hold of the biology and we had discovered that he fancied a girl in his class. Time for insensitive Patrick to put his oar in again. "OK, Tearlach, when you wank what do you think of?" I did love the way he blushed. He mumbled a single word. "Say it louder, there's no-one here but us queers, and we won't tell." "Rosie," he whispered. Tearlach, unlike his uncle, was going to travel the more frequented road. I hoped that somewhere along it he would find the kind of love his uncle and I had found - in my case at about his age. ***** We left the following afternoon to get the Sleeper home again. Angus was insistent that he and Morag could do all the things needing to be done "and you two have a business to run. Will the boy have burnt your house down, I wonder?" Angus was aware of Ade, but not of his duties outside the kitchen of course. Tearlach was the last to say his farewell, out by the car. "Thank you, Patrick, Uncle Charlie. I'll think of you when I wank," and his blush then was spectacular. "No, no ... " "We know what you mean, Tearlach. Be happy," I said. I'd like to have kissed him good-bye, but I resisted. He was a nice boy. =============================================================================== The fun continues in Chapter 167 as we return home and life goes on. The story is, of course, fiction, but the photographs in Queen Mary 2 are real, as are the details of the final voyage. I first saw the boys while making a transatlantic crossing in 2017, and had the pleasure of seeing them again in April 2019, smiling at the knowledge of all the things that had befallen them since I first saw them, and thought again how cute "I" was. I'm sure he had adventures in real life ... Drop me a line at badboi666@btinternet.com - that is after you've dropped nifty a few quid. =============================================================================