Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2019 21:05:13 +0000 (UTC) From: Peter Brown Subject: Queen Mary Bell Boys Chapter 175 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 175 I started thinking about this lengthy reminiscence when I saw that photograph on Queen Mary 2 in April. I looked at it, thinking how much had happened since it was taken over 83 years ago. I said when I started that all the others in the picture were dead now. What I didn't say was that one of the second intake was not only alive, but with me, looking after me. I'm pretty frail now, and since I lost Charlie last year I've rather lost interest in things. After all, there isn't a great deal to look forward to when you're 97. Ade and Simon are still running the restaurant. Charlie and I used to eat there every couple of months until a few years ago. Neither of us liked being out late, so we rather gave up. Ade's 66 now - the same age as Charlie was when we retired - so I imagine he'll be handing over to Simon soon - Simon, the last 14-year-old Charlie and I ever fucked: Simon, who's 54 now. They're married, of course, and they own 50% of the business each. Charlie and I sold them our shares some years ago. I suppose I should summon up the energy to tell you what happened to all the others. My lovely loving twin Tim died a while back: cancer - it was horrible. He was only 83. Sam lasted a couple of years longer, but Mr A. clouded most of that time until a heart attack ended his bewilderment. Charlie and I used to visit him now and again, but he didn't know who we were in his last months. I read somewhere that de Gaulle said old age was like a shipwreck. He wasn't wrong. Prince succumbed to some tropical disease a year or two after he and Graham finally got back from Africa. They'd stayed much longer than the ten years they originally planned, and that may have been what killed him. He was only 66. Graham had a stroke when he was 77 and went out like a light. There one minute, healthy; dead 10 seconds later. Lucky sod. George and Kevin stayed together, getting a civil partnership at the same time as we did. The four of us had a celebration afterwards, and remembered with fondness those two days before good old Queen Mary set off on her final voyage. Who could have thought then that the four of us would still be couples, getting on for 40-odd years later. Poor George suffered the death of yet another love when Kevin was another victim of fucking cancer, and only just 63. George basically gave up then. Losing Vin and Pedro, and then Kevin donkey's years later, knocked the stuffing out of him. Charlie and I tried to support him, but he went into a decline and died. That sounds a bit like a 19th Century novel, but the doctors couldn't find anything particularly wrong with him. "He must just have given up," was what our GP said, "it's not uncommon at his age when your life partner dies." Our GP, a nice understanding lad of a mere 50-odd, was really good when Charlie was ill. "`Old man's friend' is a good name for pneumonia," he'd said. Charlie had had a fall, and broken his left leg, and the spell in hospital had seen him slowly get weaker. After seven weeks pneumonia had spared him the horrors of Tim's last few months. He was 98. I was devastated, as you'd expect. Javid and Nigel, still living in Chicago, were the only two left apart from me. Bless them, they had flown over for Charlie's funeral, and the three of us spent a week veering between being tearful and laughing as we remembered all the fun we'd had as boys. "As whores, you mean," Javid had said. I agreed. "I've been a whore, a brothel-keeper, a restaurateur, a husband. Not bad for a working-class Irish Catholic with no education." "You forgot the most important thing, Patrick," said Nigel. "What's that?" "You've been loved." And that set the weeping off again. They flew back to America after I'd stopped weeping. Two months later Javid was coming home from the grocery store when some idiot ran a red light and hit him broadside. He can't have known a thing about it. It was my turn to fly to Chicago to support Nigel. That was when I met Cal. They'd never mentioned him and it came as rather a shock to meet someone who had lived with them for over 40 years. Cal was queer of course, and either Javid or Nigel had met him somewhere and one thing had led to another. Cal had been a medical student in his mid-20s then. By the end of the following weekend Cal, Javid and Nigel were a threesome. Cal had no family, so there was no reason not to move in with the two of them. I discovered all that pretty quickly after meeting Cal. Once the funeral was over Nigel and I just sat and continued the conversations we'd been having with Javid back in Aylesbury. The future seemed bleak for all of us, although Cal was still a central part of Nigel's life. As old men do, we talked round and round for ages. By the third night Nigel said he had a suggestion. "Why don't you come out here and live with us? Cal's as good a doctor as any you'll find in England, and we two oldies can sit in the sun and talk about the good old days. Who will you talk to now that Charlie's gone?" It came as a shock, but as the hours passed and we went on talking about it (including Cal by this stage) it made good sense. I won't bore you with the details. I flew home a week later. The agreement was that I would sell the Aylesbury house we moved into when we left the restaurant in 1986. Nigel and Cal would fly over and, at my insistence, the three of us would travel back to New York as my guests on Queen Mary 2. Charlie would come with us, and I would scatter his ashes at sea. I knew the exact spot. Nigel and I said farewell to the love of my life as I sent him to rest where I'd first made love to him. As I let the familiar Atlantic wind take Charlie's ashes Nigel said quietly, "you should write his story, you know, otherwise there's nothing left to remember him by." I nodded; I couldn't speak. Cal stood beside us, knowing much of the history. We drove to Chicago, taking three days, and I was feeling very tired by the time I got to my new - my last - home. A few days later I started to write all this down while I could still remember. ***** All that was nearly four months ago. Patrick never recovered from Charlie's death and all the travelling he did to see us after Jav was killed. He spent a part of each day writing, and occasionally chuckling. He slept a lot. He was completely lucid, however, and made his desires very clear. When he felt that enough was enough he would tell me. He grew more and more frail, and this morning he had enough strength to nod in response to my question. Nigel held his hand while I did what he had asked me to do. I can't believe it was wrong: insulin's a good peaceful death. We put on the piece of music he'd chosen. The last thing Patrick did was smile, and I think I heard him whisper `Charlie'. I signed his Death Certificate. "Patrick Joseph Mulloy; born Liverpool, UK, 29 November 1921, died Chicago 11 August 2019. Cause of death: heart failure, age 97." Calvin Cleeves MD, 11 August 2019 =============================================================================== Patrick's choice of music can be heard here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZmxZThb084 =============================================================================== The story is, of course, fiction, but the photographs in Queen Mary 2 are real. I first saw them 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 the boys since I first saw them, and thinking again how cute "I" was. I'll miss him. Drop me a line at badboi666@btinternet.com - that is after you've dropped nifty a few quid. ============================================================================