Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 15:07:40 +0100
From: Nick Turner <nickturner@breath.org.uk>
Subject: Tim Comes Home

This story should not be read by those who ought not to read material of
homosexual interest for whatever reason. It is about recovery from abuse,
among other things, and readers are alerted to this before they begin.

The author would be interested to hear any constructive comments or
enquiries from readers, and will do his best to reply, assuming, of course,
that the comments are polite... :-).


Tim Comes Home

by Nick Turner    nickturner@breath.org.uk


This story takes place in Southern England, in the Counties of East and
West Sussex which lie directly South of London, along the coast. The lively
City of Brighton and Hove lies on the seafront, and all the action takes
place within a few miles of it.


CHAPTER 1


It was a very cold night, late in November, with the wind blowing strongly,
and there promised to be a heavy chill. The rain came down hard, sometimes
turning to sleet, and the man was sorely tempted to miss his usual
five-mile run when he came off duty at the police station. But he had
promised himself to be regular about this, and so as soon has he got home,
he stripped completely and pulled on his favourite blue adidas soccer
shorts, sporty t-shirt and trainers. Track suit? Nah! The cold would
encourage him to run harder. He looked in the mirror as he did his
stretches, to ensure correct form. `Not bad', he thought complacently, as
he took in his handsome face surmounted by short mid-brown hair, and his
broad shoulders, tapering over a powerful smooth chest and abdomen to a
narrow waist.

He went out, locking the door and attaching the key to his wrist on an
elastic band. He set off at a steady lope; instantly he regretted having
started, as the cold rain soaked his few clothes in an moment. But he was
wet now, so he might as well continue. His sodden t-shirt clung against his
chest, and the wind chilled him to the marrow. He picked up his pace,
running hard into the night. He decided not to follow his usual route, but
to follow a shorter way along the Brighton and Hove by-pass where it ran
through a cutting, and there might be a bit more shelter from the sharp
wind. About a mile along the busy road, he saw a lone figure in tracksuit
trousers staggering along into the wind. Another mad runner, he thought,
smiling wryly to himself, but as he drew nearer he began to see that the
other runner looked completely exhausted. He could see the three white
adidas stripes along the legs moving irregularly in the car headlights. In
another minute he saw that the figure was a boy, and that he had no
shirt. Then he saw that he had no shoes either, and was staggering along
irregularly; the boy's eyes were closed; he suddenly feared that any moment
the lad was going to lurch into the traffic. So the man sprinted, and
caught hold of the boy just as he fell.

`What the hell are you doing, lad?'

But there was no reply. In a moment, he realised that the boy was freezing
cold, dangerously so, and nearly unconscious. Almost without thinking, he
stripped off his own t-shirt, sodden as it was, and put it on the boy,
rubbing him fiercely until he got some response. The boy awoke and looked
blearily into the man's face.

`Can you hold on, Soldier?'

The boy nodded, and the man turned round and crouched down. He grabbed the
boy's legs and lifted him onto his back. The boy wrapped his frozen arms
around the man's neck, and the man started to run towards his home. He
realised that this was a life and death situation. If he waited until he
ran to call an ambulance, the boy might die. Carrying the lad straight to
his own home was the only option.

He had never run better or faster, despite the weight on his back, though
the boy was thin and not very heavy; his legs pumped and his chest
heaved. The lad drew some warmth from his pulsing body and the shaking up
and down, and began to revive a little, retaining enough strength to hang
on to the man's neck. In a few minutes, the man had reached his home and
put the boy down, leaning him against the wall. He opened the front door.

`Can you walk, Soldier, or shall I carry you?'

The boy just shook his head blearily and took some steps into the warmth.
As soon as he crossed the threshold, however, he fell to the floor,
overcome by the sudden heat. The man kicked off his wet trainers, pushed
the door shut and picked the boy up in his arms, carrying him upstairs into
his tiny flat.

He laid him out on the floor and tore off his own t-shirt from the lad. He
did not even notice the bloodstains on it. Next he pulled off the blue
track suit trousers; he was startled to see that the lad wore nothing
underneath. Strange to be out on the bypass with literally nothing but
trackie bottoms on. He ran to the little bathroom and brought towels. He
chafed the lad's limbs and chest, rubbing and rubbing hard to restore the
circulation. The boy groaned softly. That was a good sign. He turned his
body over onto his front so that he could rub his back. An oath escaped
him;

`Fuck!'

The boy's back was a mass of bruises and gashes extending down over his
buttocks and to his knees. There was matted and dried blood and excrement
down the inside of his thighs. He couldn't rub this; it would reopen the
wounds. And the lad had clearly been sexually attacked.

`You poor little bugger! No wonder you were running!'

He lifted the boy into his arms tenderly, and took him to the bathroom. He
ran a tepid bath, poured some antiseptic into the water, and laid him in
it. The lad hissed with pain as the antiseptic found his wounds. He was
slowly beginning to revive. The man gently washed the boy and cleaned his
gashes. He lifted him up and examined the damage to his anus; there was
less than he feared, but still the boy was going to have to go to the
hospital in the morning to be checked properly. He drained the now bloody
water, and refilled the bath with warmer water, letting the lad soak a
while to warm up. He repeated the process a couple more times, each time
with slightly warmer water until the boy was fully conscious and warm to
the touch. The young recover quickly. The man relaxed. He eased himself up
from his long crouch; it had been a busy hour. His shorts, still the man's
only garment, had dried off with his mud-spattered body in the meanwhile,
and he pulled them off to step into the shower next to the bath while the
lad soaked in the tub. Five minutes later, he felt much better. He dried
off and pulled a dry pair of shorts on, exactly like the other pair, while
the boy watched him with puppylike adoration in his eyes. The man felt
vaguely flattered.

`You feeling better, lad?' The boy nodded.

`Good. Stay there, and I'll fill the bath one last time'.

He did it, and this time the water was quite hot. The boy had never had a
bath before, at least since he was a baby, only showers. The feeling was
good. This time the man poured in some bubbly stuff under the running taps,
which felt wonderful. He then gently sponged down the boy who shut his eyes
in bliss, having never experienced anything that felt so fantastic. After
he had done his legs and chest, the man stopped sponging, and the boy
opened his eyes to see the beautiful barechested man squatting at his side,
grinning, foamy sponge in hand, looking at his groin. The boy looked down,
only to see that he had sprung an enormous erection. He looked at the man,
mortified. But the man just continued to grin at him;

`It's okay, Soldier; happens to us all. You can clean that bit yourself!'
And threw the sponge at him.

The boy relaxed in the steam as the man left the bathroom. A few minutes
later the man returned with a couple of mugs.

`Something warm. Only home-made chicken soup, I'm afraid. Will it do you
for now?'

The boy nodded vigorously, afraid to speak. His eyes were glowing. The soup
tasted more delicious than anything he had ever tasted before. He hadn't
realised that he was hungry; he had had nothing to eat all day.

When the soup was finished, he put the mug carefully on the side of the
bath. The man was watching him all the time as he drank his own soup,
crouched at his side, his knees apart and his spare hand gripping his
thigh. The boy finally said one word, and put his whole heart into it.

`Thanks'.

And the man smiled. `He speaks!'

The boy's eyelids began to close, so the man moved quickly and pulled the
plug, then lifted the boy up and out of the bath. The boy felt the man's
bare chest against his own, and he opened his eyes in surprise. He stood on
the mat while the man towelled him down. He protested feebly

`I can do that'

but the man said

`Soldier, you can barely stand. Let me do it for now, and we'll see
tomorrow.'

When the boy was dry, the man picked him up again and carried him into his
room. He looked at the sofa, then changed his mind, putting the boy in his
own bed. The lad was asleep in seconds. The man gathered up the boy's track
suit trousers and tutted over the blood stains. He put them into the
washing machine to soak and wash overnight.

He then went and poured himself a glass of whisky, sat in his armchair, and
looked at the boy as he slept. There was something about this lad that went
to his heart; an innocence and a vulnerability that survived all that had
obviously happened.

`Who are you, lad?' he asked himself quietly, `and who did this to you?'



A while later, the boy began to squirm in his sleep and to cry out. The man
jumped up and put his arm over him, and the boy stilled. The man took his
arm away, and in a few minutes the boy began his distress again.

`Oh fuck it!' said the man to himself. `I can't have this going on all
night; I'll have to get in with him.'

He put his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts and pushed them down,
throwing them over the chair. `Oops', he thought, `that's one'd interest
the Child Protection Agency', and stepped into them again. He knelt and
said his prayers quickly, then got into bed behind the lad and put his arm
around him.

The sleepy boy woke, nestled his wounded back against the man's chest and
sighed contentedly. The man patted his shoulder. The boy, happier than he
had ever been, determined to stay awake as long as possible to treasure
this moment, and so he tried to think of questions to ask the man. He
wanted to know all about him; was there anybody else in his life? He had
never felt so good, so secure, and he wanted to stay here forever.

`Do you have a girlfriend, or are you married?'

The man stirred uncomfortably.

`I used to be. My wife left me for another bloke a year ago. She took my
daughter with her and most of what I had. That's why I have to live in one
room now.'

The boy didn't understand all this, but understood that the man was sad and
lonely. He turned in the bed and hugged the man back.

`That's so sad. Perhaps you'll find someone to marry again'. Find me a
mother too, was the unspoken thought. The man answered softly

`Not likely, Soldier. I'm a Catholic, and we marry for life.'

`What's a caflic?'

`A sort of religion lad. Now go to sleep.'

The boy fought his tiredness as hard as he could, but his exhaustion
finally won through, and he slept like a log.



In the morning, the man woke early, as was his way, and somehow forgetting
his bedmate, jumped violently out of bed. The boy was shaken awake, and saw
his hero and saviour outlined against the window, his morning erection
pushing out the front of his shorts, and his muscular chest and narrow
waist silhouetted against the dawn sky. `That is the sort of man I want to
be', the boy thought. `I wish he were my father', and a few silent tears
made their way down his cheeks.

The man had moved off to shower himself, and the boy stirred out of bed. He
had never felt so clean in his life, nor so rested, though his back and
bottom still hurt a lot. It was worth it, though, just to have had this
night, he thought. He would have something to think about when they took
him back to Dad. And something to tell his little brother. But just the
thought of going back terrified him; he had crossed too many taboo
boundaries in his escape, and his father would likely beat him worse than
ever before. And that was seriously frightening.

A thought struck him. After all, who but he knew even who he was? If they
didn't know who he was, how could they make him go back? A plan began to
form in his mind.

He looked around the room for his tracksuit trousers, but couldn't find
them. Oh well; the man had seen absolutely everything last night, even an
erection, so it wouldn't matter being naked for a minute. The man chose
that moment to come out of the shower, and came into the room completely
naked himself, towelling himself vigorously. The boy looked in admiration
at the man's beautiful muscular body.

`How do you get to look like that?' he asked.

`And good morning to you too' the man replied, then grinned to take the
sting out of his words. `Hard work with weights, press-ups, sit-ups and
pull-ups every day. You too can have a body like mine!'

The boy didn't understand the joke. `I can?'.

`Yes, Soldier, but first you have to have a shower'.

`Again? But I had a bath last night. Several baths, in fact!'

`That was last night. This is this morning. March, Soldier, and I'll get us
some breakfast.'

When the boy came out of the shower and dried off, the man shouted to him
to wrap a towel round his waist and come to eat. The man was back in his
shorts again, though he wore no shirt still. It seemed that he liked
dressing that way when he was at home.  They ate breakfast together, and if
the boy thought it odd to be eating breakfast nearly naked with a
nearly-naked stranger, he was enjoying the experience too much to
comment. It felt so grown-up and, well, male.

But `the talk' had eventually to come. After breakfast, the man sat the boy
down in the big armchair. He hunkered down in front of the boy, but close,
so their knees touched. The boy watched the tanned, powerful lean muscles
on the man's bare thighs so near his own, and swallowed as the man rested
his hands on them and rubbed them up and down their length. He watched the
powerful pectoral muscles rise up and down as the man breathed gently, and
the folding up and down of the strangely erotic ridges and bumps of his
abdomen. It set up a strange longing in the boy, which he knew to be
something like love, like desire; he longed to be with this man forever, or
perhaps to be just like him in every way; that strange but intoxicating
combination of strength, latent raw power, and yet extraordinary
gentleness; the fascinating contrast of the man's sleek muscles and strong
handsome face with the gentle melting brown eyes that gazed steadily on the
boy.

`Sorry?' said the boy, aware that the man had been speaking for some time.

The man patiently repeated a few questions about where the boy came from,
who his family was, and above all what his name was. He was sharply
surprised when the boy's face drained of all its colour, and his bright
blue eyes stared back at the man in a mixture of fear, puzzlement and
determination. And he barely uttered a word of reply, but sharply evaded
any attempt to get him to reveal what his name was or where he came from.

The man pressed a little harder, but the boy grew more and more distressed,
until the man gave up. His heart wasn't into pressing any further; it could
be somebody else's job. He could see the lad was determined not to give
anything away, and as for himself, he wasn't into the third degree,
particularly just after breakfast. Nonetheless, there was something very
appealing about this boy, and he found himself already becoming very
attached to him. He certainly didn't want to hand him over to somebody
else, particularly to an comfortless official body, but that was what was
going to have to be done, and a report was going to have to be filed by
somebody.

`Well ok, lad. I may be a policeman, but this morning I'm an off-duty
policeman'.

The man leant forward and placed his hands high on the boy's thighs. The
boy's whole body thrilled with the intimate touch.

But you'll have to tell someone, Soldier, because your parents will be
worried about you. They'll want to know where you are, and what has
happened to you. They need to know that you have been attacked, for
instance, so that we can catch whoever did it.'

The boy, who had been looking at the man's hands on his thighs as if they
were the hands of a god, suddenly looked up into the man's eyes, both
tearful and terrified.

`Oh shit... you mean that your parents...oh fuck...oh Soldier, I'm so
sorry.'

The man leant forward and hugged the boy tightly. The boy winced as his
back hurt, but did not make a sound, as he was busy recording every
sensation of the moment; the feel of the man's pectoral muscles against his
own, his breath on his neck, the tight, safe, sensation of those strong
arms around him, to treasure in his memory forever.

The man sat back on his heels again, then unfolded his legs with lithe
grace and stood smoothly upright. He looked down at the boy, who for the
first time was smiling. And the smile was one of the most beautiful smiles
that the man had ever seen. The boy's eyes were intense blue and looked
directly into the man's soft brown eyes, full of trust and love, and the
man found himself smiling back at his foundling and wishing that this lad
could stay with him.

`Oh, Soldier,' he said, `if only all the troubles of the world, or even all
your troubles, could be solved with a simple hug, how much happier the
world would be'.

`Can I stay here with you? Live here, I mean?' Had the kid read the man's
mind?

`I'm sorry, Soldier. I don't know who you are, where you come from, only to
start with. For all I know, I could get into real trouble. I live in one
room which is hardly big enough for me; I only have one bed'.

`We managed all right last night. It was really cool. And I sleep with my
brother all the time'.

`Well, I don't, and last night was a special occasion. You're only a
youngster,--how old are you, by the way?'

`Fourteen'.

`Bollocks! How old are you, Soldier?'

In a small voice. `Eleven and three quarters'.

`Right. There has to be someone taking care of you all the time; I'm a
copper, and I'm often out all night and half the day; I can be called at
any moment. Son, believe me when I say that I wish I could take you. I've
already grown fond of you, but in this world some things just can't be.'

The boy was nearly breathless. `He called me Son!' he thought. `It's only
four and a bit years until I'm sixteen. I'll wait. I'll come back. Then we
can share a house or something. Then he can be my dad.' He smiled radiantly
again.

The man seemed relieved, if surprised, that the boy had taken it so well,
so he told the lad that he would need to visit the hospital now, to get
checked up, and they would alert the social services to take care of
him. The boy thankfully seemed willing enough, so the man turned to get
ready.

The man stepped out of his blue soccer shorts and walked to his wardrobe to
get some more suitable clothes. His casual nudity in front of the boy
deeply impressed the lad, made him feel accepted and part of the manly
tribe. The man pulled out a pair of khaki chinos and stepped into them. No
underwear. The boy stored that away. Heroes don't wear underwear. It was
followed by a green polo shirt and a pair of deck shoes, and the man was
ready to go.

`Let's go, lad'

`Like this?' said the boy. He was still wearing only a towel.

The man hit his head with the heel of his hand--this boy was getting to him
somehow--and threw the boy his track suit trousers, as clean as he could
get them, and now dry.

`Catch! Sorry if you want underwear, I don't have any. Can't abide
it. You'll need a shirt, though. Hang on a tic...'

The man rummaged in a drawer and came up with a faded blue and white
striped football jersey.

`This should fit you, Soldier; it's my old school one, though I'm sorry to
see it go; I scored a lot of goals wearing it. I hope it brings you luck,
too. It's even got my name still inside, look! But I suppose I'll never
wear it again and your need is greater than mine. Besides, it won't look
odd with tracksuit trousers.

The boy pulled on the shirt; it was rather big, but he was thrilled to the
core to have his hero's shirt around his chest.

`I don't think I've got any shoes to fit you, though.'

`I've never worn shoes'.

`Never? Well ok then, we're ready to roll, Soldier.'


At the hospital, the lad was admitted to the long queue in Casualty. The
man waited with him for his turn, and when the boy was taken to be
examined, he held so tightly to the man's hand that the man had to come
too. The man gave the doctor a rundown of the events of the previous night,
and said what he had done. The boy was made to strip, and was examined. The
doctor praised the man's quick thinking, and agreed that he had followed
the best course in the circumstances, given that all the bleeding had
stopped, and the essential need to warm the boy as quickly as possible.

`But the condition of his er...back passage was surprisingly uninjured. I'm
afraid that that is not as good news as it sounds, however, because it
almost certainly means that he has been regularly sexually abused over a
long period of time. This is a matter for the proper authorities.'

The social services were contacted; the only thing was to wait for them to
arrive.

At lunchtime they had still not come, and the man had to go on duty at the
police station. The boy got very tearful and frightened and the man felt
himself getting tearful too. But it had to happen. The boy clung to the
man's neck and hugged him fiercely.

`Thank you, thank you, thank you! I will never, ever, forget you'.

`Somehow, Soldier, I don't think I will ever forget you, either'. And the
man kissed the boy on the forehead, turned and walked out to find his car;
a difficult job, since he was having difficulty seeing anything much
through his tears.




Social Services were represented by a business-like woman in a trouser
suit. The boy, still wearing a surgical gown, was very much in awe of
her. She told him that he would not be returned to his parents if he had
been abused by them, which news came as a great relief to the boy. She
asked for confirmation that it actually was his parents who had abused him.

The boy thought about it for a moment, trying to see what implications the
question might have for him, and nodded.

All right, we will need to take you into care at Turling Park until we sort
this out. It's a sort of boarding school for children with special needs
like yours. Unless you're a Catholic, in which case we'll take you to St
Tarcisius' Home for Boys. Are you a Catholic?

The boy shrugged. That word again. He had absolutely no idea what a
Catholic was, so he had no idea if he was one.

Now, the nurse tells me that you refuse to give your name. Why is that?

The boy knew this game now. He stayed silent. The game went on for about
twenty minutes until the woman lost her patience and snapped at the boy;

`Oh for pity's sake just give us a name! Any name! Make one up, then at
least we can get you off our hands!'.

The nurse who had just come in with the boy's tracksuit trousers and the
man's football shirt was very tight lipped with the social worker's
explosion and said

`There'll be no need for that! The boy's name is right here on his
shirt. `Timothy Sullivan'.

`Sullivan? That's about as Irish as they come. If you weren't Catholic
before, you are now, Timothy. Put your clothes on quickly--oh, for pity's
sake, have you no underwear? We're off to St Tarcisius. I've another case
to pick up after you from the hospital here.


CHAPTER 2


Tim was the first. It had never occurred to me to get into fostering,
myself: I'd never even heard of a priest doing it before, but somehow I
found myself manoevered into it by a charming boy and my best friend. I'd
preached the annual retreat for the lads at St Tarcisius' Home for Boys,
and when it was all over I was relaxing with the Principal, a colleague of
mine from the seminary who had remained a close friend. Father Paul Topham
was still a lovely guy, but very much a teacher and headmaster now. As
such, he never had much trouble shooting from the hip when he felt the
situation demanded it, and this was no exception. As we lingered over our
whisky and diocesan gossip, he said suddenly,

`Johnny, have you ever thought of fostering?' It was like a bolt from the
blue.

`What about it?' I asked suspiciously. `You want me to come and work here
some more? I don't mind; you know I love the boys.'

`No, you old sod, I mean take a boy home. We're getting over-full here, and
could really use a bit of space.'

`Less of the old sod; I'm only thirty. Same age as you! Anyway, what do I
know about kids?'

`You're really good with them. They warm to you because you're friendly,
but you stay yourself with them. You don't try and pretend you're a
teenager, like some priests do, which the lads see through straightaway and
really hate. And they don't just like you, they also respect you.'

I mulled this over for a minute. `Well, thanks, I think. It's true, I'm
very fond of kids, but it's a big step from liking them to having them in
my home 24/7. Don't you think there might be a reason why priests don't
foster?'

`Johnny; you have one of the smallest parishes in the diocese; it really
can't take all your time. You can't be that busy'.

`I write'. That's true; I write theological textbooks that people who like
that sort of thing are kind enough to find useful. Don't go looking for
them yourself, though, unless you find it difficult to sleep.

`Exactly; you're at home almost all the time. It couldn't be more ideal.'

I thought of the clinching argument: `The Bishop would never agree'.

`He already has. He thinks it's a brilliant idea'.

`WHAT? You've already spoken to the Bishop, you bastard? Well, thanks a
bunch!' I was cross, most of all at having my most clinching argument blown
away. Well, the most clinching argument that I was prepared to let on about
then, anyway. I was saving the big guns for later.

Paul was smug. `Well, whatever it takes. My boys come first, in my mind,
and if I get a whiff of a good home for them, I want to see them happy. We
do our best here at St Tarcisius for them, but really we are a sort of
all-the-year-round boarding school, and we can never give them the
individual love, care and attention they desperately need. Their lives are
a desperate scramble for love, and when they don't get it, they try to grab
our attention in other ways, and that means that, despite all we do, many
end up in juvenile courts by the time they are sixteen. What do you expect
me to do? I'm asking you to take one--well, perhaps another one
later--because I am finding it difficult to find enough love for
sixty-three.'

I was silent. What could I say to that? I knew exactly what he meant;
whenever I came to St Tar's, the smaller boys would clamber all over me
like monkeys looking for attention, and the older boys would hang back, too
cool to say anything, but looking with longing eyes at the smaller boys'
frank admission of their need. I was very fond of the boys already, and
felt deeply for them in their unsatisfactory upbringing. The only thing
that could be said for it was that the Catholic home was better than
Turling Park, the state alternative. I was weakening, but I thought that I
had better stop this before I became so interested that I would be going
home with a lad in the back of my car. I was going to have to tell the
truth. Time for the big guns!

`Look, Paul, there's something you need to know, and I think it's going to
change your mind about my suitability. I'm going to have to ask for a lot
of understanding here, and ask you to respect the confidentiality of what I
am about to say. Since there's no easy way to say this, I'm just going to
have to come out with it, Paul, and you're going to have to deal with it in
your own way. Erm,...I'm afraid that I'm gay.'

There was an uncomfortable silence; Paul's face was unreadable.

I thought it necessary to add `I have always kept my vow of celibacy,
though, if that's any comfort.'

`Did you think I didn't know you were gay?' Paul said in an amused voice,
smiling now.

`Wha......?'

`Close your mouth, or the flies will get in! Oh Johnny, I've known you
continually since you were twenty-one, including living with you at the
Seminary. I watched you perving at me when I was playing football or coming
back from the showers... oh, don't worry; I was flattered, and you know
enough about me to know that I'm not one for holding back if I'm upset
about something. And besides, you're my best friend. I reckoned that if you
were going to make a move on anyone you'd have made it on me, and you've
never tried anything except steal a glance now and then.'

`Paul...I don't know what to say! I'm so embarrassed! But it's true, you
were then, and still are, a really beautiful guy, body and soul. I love you
properly, as well as fancy you improperly.'

Actually, I more than fancied him improperly; I was deeply in love with
him, and had been for years. I smiled nervously at the very good-looking
man who had occupied my fantasies for the last nine years and who was also
my dearest friend. Paul kept himself at the peak of fitness, and had been
sent to run St Tar's because three women in his last appointment, a parish,
had fallen for him and fought amongst themselves for his favour. The
repercussions were horrible, but I don't want to go into that here.

`You're not so bad-looking yourself, you know, Johnny. And you don't act
gay; I don't imagine anyone even suspects, unless they know you as well as
I do.' he said back. Which was also true, I suppose, if truth be told. I
have many women friends and have even been accused of having affairs with
some. Which, as Simon, an openly gay friend, commented, did my reputation
no harm whatever. `Anyway,' he continued, `the issue here is that I know
how you perv, and you've never perved on the boys'.

`No', I said. `Kids, thank God, do nothing for me in that area, apart from
general admiration of their cuteness and so on. But that's not what people
think. People think that all priests are child molestors these days;
there's me with one or two cute boys living with me; what could I say if
people start spreading malicious gossip? And don't say that isn't a
possibility, because in fact it's only too likely.'

`Yes, I can't deny that that is an issue, and we'd be fools to ignore it',
said Paul. `So I think you need to get yourself a housekeeper. A female
woman of the feminine gender. Not live-in, necessarily, just somebody to be
a presence every day, who can spread positive gossip about what goes on in
the house. And it'll be good for the boys as well, they need some feminine
influence in their lives; this is far too masculine an atmosphere here at
St Tar's'.

`A breeder?' I said in my best queeny voice, `You want me to bring a
breeder into my home, leaving fishy trails all over the furniture?' The
crude joke made us both giggle and broke the rather tense atmosphere. It
was followed by a few more cracks, and when we had subsided, I discovered
that I was already making plans in my mind, taking it for granted that I
would now have a family.

Suddenly it hit me, and there were tears in my eyes; not having a family
was the thing I most resented about being gay (though I suppose priesthood
was hardly a way down that trail, either) and suddenly it looked like it
was going to be possible. I knew now I really wanted to do this, that it
was a fulfillment of a dream for which I had never dared hope.

`No girls', I said. `I've got nothing against girls; I like girls, but I
wouldn't know what to do with one. I have no sisters, or even female
cousins. I went to an all-boys school. What do I know about times of the
month and frilly knickers? And I've only got one bathroom!'

`No, don't worry' said Paul. `We only have boys here; Tim is very
definitely a boy, and he's longing to meet you'.

`Wha...? You've spoken to a lad already? You're bloody sure of
yourself!'. I was suddenly furious, aware that I'd been manipulated all
through this conversation. `You already have every detail sorted out before
I've even agreed? What about the boy? Don't we even get a chance to work
out if we're going to like each other? What's the poor lad done to get
dumped on a total stranger for the rest of his childhood?'

`Trust me; I'm very good at my job, and I haven't gone wrong yet. Real
parents don't get to choose their children, and in my experience it's
better that way. This is not a consumer choice, Johnny, but a Christlike
act. And anyway, you're not a total stranger, he knows you quite well;
you've been coming often to St Tar's for a few years now.'

`Yes, but do I know him?'

`I suppose not; Tim's a quiet lad, thirteen and a half years old, and tends
to hang at the back of groups. When he came here he was completely
illiterate, but he's made excellent progress and if anything, he's quite
bookish now. His home seems to have been sexually abusive and violent--his
back is scarred--though he refuses to talk about it at all. Never a
word. He's very gentle, and doesn't like the normal boyish rough and
tumble, which might be due to his past, or our team sports, though he has
recently been using the weights in the gym quite a lot. He's only got a
couple of friends, but he's frantically loyal to them and they to him. And
to be perfectly honest with you, I think he's probably beginning to suspect
that he may be gay.'

`Poor little bugger. Sorry, no pun intended.'

`He's really a lovely lad, and I very much doubt he will give you any
trouble; food, drink, clothes and love will be all he'll need. He'll be
watching television with the others now; shall we go and meet him?'

`For God's sake, no, Paul! I'm stinking of whisky, and this has all been
too much to take in at once. Paul, this last couple of hours has turned my
life upside-down and I've got a great deal of thinking to do.'

`Sure, Johnny. I'm sorry; I'm just so keen to get you together. I know
you'll love each other'. Paul pulled himself up from the sofa in one strong
and beautiful movement. He went over to his desk, where he rummaged for a
few moments and brought back to me a photograph.

`This is Tim; it was taken last week at the local swimming pool.'

For the first time I looked at the face that was going to become so
important to me; the person I was going to love before anyone other than
God. He had middle-blond hair, cut short, but not too short, and piercing
blue, blue, eyes; a chiselled face with high cheek-bones and a smile that
would make you do anything for him; this boy was truly beautiful, but with
a sadness in his eyes that went straight to my heart. Was this to be my
son?

`Can I keep this?' I asked.

`Sure; it was taken for you anyway'.


I went home in a whirl, and I stayed in a whirl for the next month. The
local child care authority came to inspect the house, interview me again
and again, and run police checks on my background. I advertised in the
parish magazine for a housekeeper and managed to secure the services of
Teresa, a big Scottish mumsy widow with two sons who had grown up and left
home. Perfect. I didn't mind cooking for an army, but washing and cleaning
clothes and house were jobs I hated. Scrubbing boys' collars and cuffs,
ironing school shirts and throwing football kit into the washing machine
were things I was definitely not looking forward to. But Teresa said to me
with a smile that she loved nosing around other people's homes, and
cleaning was the best way to do it, so we were suited.

My first meeting with Tim was not the great event I thought it would be. We
met at St Tar's, just about the most awkward place for a good chat, so we
shook hands uncomfortably, and I took him out for the afternoon. I
recognized him as soon as I set eyes on him; he had always been around when
I visited, hanging to the back of groups, but never saying a word. Somehow,
I had never seen that magical smile, nor heard him speak, and so we had
missed each other--or rather, as I was to find out, I had missed him. He
already knew me very well.

That particular afternoon, I was rather at a loss where to begin; I asked
him what he wanted to do, and he had no particular ideas either, so we
ended up simply wandering around the shops. I couldn't help noticing that
his clothes were terribly ill-fitting--he told me later that boys had to
fight among themselves whenever any new (which meant second-hand) clothes
arrived at St Tarcisius. Being by nature self-effacing that meant that he
was left with what remained when others had taken what they wanted, which
often meant that what he got was nothing. He had on a scruffy old pair of
jeans; the holes in its fabric were not fashionable ones, but caused by
wear and tear. They were clearly too tight and too long; he had worn away
the hems as they caught under his feet and the threads trailed behind him
in the dust. He wore mismatched socks, and his plain once-white t shirt was
far too small, leaving his midriff bare whenever he moved. Automatically
and unselfconsciously he was always tugging it down. His training shoes
were so old that they were actually back in fashion, but these were the
originals. Again they were too small for him, and the backs were broken
down by his heels which extended beyond the back of the shoes. So he walked
along with a type of shuffle that had become part of him. My heart was
broken just to watch him, simply because it did not seem to occur to him
that he was in any way to be pitied. And I was filled with puzzlement and
even anger at Paul and the other staff at St Tarcisius who had not noticed
how neglected this lad was. Time would soon show just how I misunderstood
them. Tim had a way of simply not being noticeable, of disappearing into
the background; indeed it was his habitual state, especially when he didn't
want to be found.

We found a Macdonald's and, much as I abhor the place, I know that healthy
lads love it. So we went in--Tim's eyes noticably brightening--and we had a
Big Mac each and a drink.

`Do you come here often?' I asked, mentally kicking myself for such a
brilliant and original opening gambit.

`No; this is my first time' said Tim, speaking around a huge
mouthful. `I've heard about it from some of the others, though; it's
brilliant, isn't it.'

`Hm; it's alright for some, if they like this sort of thing.' I said
grumpily.

I immediately saw the pain in Tim's eyes as the food turned to ashes in his
mouth; he said quickly `Would you rather go somewhere else; honestly, it's
fine by me?' He was so eager to please, or rather desperate to please, that
it hurt.

I backtracked quickly.

`I wouldn't dream of it, Tim. I want you to be happy this afternoon, and if
this makes you happy, then there is nowhere else I'd rather be'.

Tim smiled then, that same smile that he had made for the photograph--this
time it was for me--and I began to love this quiet boy. He said softly
`Nobody has ever said that to me before'.

I had the most difficult time keeping the tears back. Why the fuck do
people do this to children? I have no difficulty at all in believing in the
existence of a devil.

I was sorry when the time came to take Tim back. Although we hadn't said
much to each other, we had `connected', and the silence was companionable,
rather than strained.

Back at the Home, I spoke rather sharply to Paul about Tim's clothes,
asking if it was all right for me to buy him some more. Paul discouraged
me, saying that he knew Tim was terribly shabby, but to get him clothes now
would just rub into the face of the others that Tim was about to be
fostered out of St Tar's, and simply emphasize their own need. Though I was
still cross, I saw the point straight away.

`Besides', said Paul, `Shopping is what I do best, and I'm not going to
miss the little spree you and Tim will have when he moves in, for
anything!'




Three weeks later, again amidst the garish reds and yellows of Macdonalds
Tim and I looked at each other over our polystyrene containers and
polystyrene food and said nothing with words, but a bond was forming in our
hearts. We had spent six or eight afternoons together by this stage.

`So', said Tim casually, `are you going to be my dad, then?'.

I choked on my Diet Coke `Bloody hell; you move quickly, Tim!' I saw the
pain and insecurity in his eyes again, and he shrank back as if I was going
to strike him. I saw immediately that I was going to have to tread very
carefully with this lad. `Tim; it's very early days; there are a lot of
hoops to jump through first for both of us. We've got to get to know each
other better, you've got to come and see where I live, to see if you'd like
it, there's school to be discussed, and so many other things, don't you
think?'.

Tim shook his head obstinately. `I know already,' he said.

`Know what?'

He looked exasperated. `Know that I want to come home with you. I don't
care about the details; anything is fine with me. I'll sleep in the coal
shed if I must. I just want to come home. Actually, I want to do it
today. Now. I'm tired of waiting. I want to be your son. I want you to be
my dad. What's the point of hanging around even longer?'

`The point is, Tim, we hardly know each other. Look, I understand you want
a home; hell, life must have been dreadful to you up till now, but there
may well be a better alternative to anything that I could offer you. With
me, your life would be a bit odd, to say the least; as for a real home;
brothers and sisters, a mother; I can't offer you anything like that. You
really have to be sure that you can do without these things if you are
going to come with me. You mustn't just take the first option that comes
along simply because it's a quick way out of St Tar's; it's got to be the
right option.'

Tim went bright red and his eyes teared up. `That's bollocks, bollocks,
bollocks! Sorry, Father John, but it is. You often come to St Tar's, I've
listened to you, I've been to confession to you, I've watched you and
dreamed that one day you would take me home with you, that you could be my
father in reality, and not just as in `bless me Father for I have
sinned'. And you're not the first; Father Paul has tried me with two other
families, and I wouldn't have them, because I knew what was right, I know
where I belong. I wouldn't stay with them, because I knew I belonged with
you.'

This impassioned speech took me aback, and left me mute for a minute while
I gathered my thoughts. When I could speak again, I said

`Do you mean that this is all your own idea, about me becoming a
foster-father, I mean?'

`Well yes...er...no...well, it was a sort of mixture. After my last try
with a family, I talked with Father Paul, and he was pretty cross with me
for messing it up. The family was really nice, and they wanted me, but I
didn't want to be there. He asked me what I did really want, and I told him
I wanted to go with you. I thought he would blow up, but he didn't, he just
went all quiet like you did just now. Then he said "You know, Tim, I'd been
wondering whether Fr John would make a good foster father. We can always
ask him, there's no harm in that". And I've been praying every day since
then for this.'

Tim squared his shoulders, and looked me in the eyes with his piercing blue
ones that I found so irresistible. He said firmly, `Look: what I want isn't
in doubt. The only question is whether you want me. And I want you to tell
me, today. Do you?'

I looked down. Was this really only a thirteen year old speaking to me?
Thirteen going on thirty, perhaps. I looked up to be sure, and met his
swimming eyes, filled with a deep appeal and need for that which he
obviously felt only I could supply. I saw love there already, love and
trust such as I had always longed for from an adult, and never thought to
look for in a child. I thought to myself `If I say no, I am going to
destroy him. He feels this to be his first and only chance of
happiness. But am I ready for this? Is this going to destroy my life? I'm
not ready to make this choice. It's too soon! Can I love this lad enough to
be my son?' I looked up again at him, and the distress in his eyes brought
a sudden pain to my heart; I felt his hurt as my own, and sensed for the
first time an urge so overpoweringly strong to protect this boy, that
anything that brought him pain I would resist to the last ounce of my
strength. So I looked straight at him and, not able to bring myself to say
a word, I just simply nodded.

The tears in his eyes broke their bounds and poured down his cheeks. In a
flash he was in my arms sobbing his heart out. I could feel his heart
pounding against my chest as he clutched me fiercely to him. He turned his
head so that his mouth was by my ear and said one word;

`Dad!'

In a moment I joined him in his sobbing, and we held each other there in
Macdonalds while the crowds round us looked on curiously as they stuffed
their faces with french fries, unknowing that here in their presence the
world had jumped on its axis, the Jordan had turned back on its course, the
mountains had skipped like rams, and the hills like yearling sheep.

I pressed my face into his blond hair and for the first time smelt his
special smell. I kissed the smooth lightly-tanned skin of his forehead.

`Tim, my son', I whispered.


CHAPTER 3


Tim Sullivan--the real Tim Sullivan--the policeman who had rescued the boy,
lay in his hospital bed and considered what a fuck-up he had made of his
life. He had once been a pious and idealistic youth who had thought of
being a Franciscan friar. Something about the simplicity and extremity of
the life had appealed to him, but he drew back at the last moment because
his schoolfriend, Paul Topham, was going into the ordinary seminary to
become a diocesan priest, and Tim thought he might join him. They had been
very close friends at school, both of them very handsome, top class
athletes and popular; most of the girls (and one or two of the boys) had
been devastated when the prospect of marriage, or at least sex, with one or
other of them seemed forever off the cards.

Both young men had persevered at the seminary, and were ordained deacons,
(the step immediately before priesthood) taking their vows of celibacy at
the age of 24. But in his diaconate year, when working in his first parish,
Tim met a pretty barmaid in a pub and fell hard. He abandoned all thought
of the priesthood, and applied to Rome to be returned to the lay state. His
dispensation from celibacy came through, and six months later Paul, now a
priest, and not without private reservations, officiated at Tim's wedding
to Sylvia. A little over a year later, baby Catriona was born, looking (as
new-born babies will) like neither of her parents.

Having now to choose another career, Tim had decided to join the police,
and his five older brothers clubbed together and put down a deposit for a
mortgage on a small house in Brighton. And, as the saying goes, Tim and
Sylvia lived happily ever after until the next day. It was about a year and
a half after the marriage that Tim returned home unexpectedly to find
Sylvia in their marital bed with a stranger. Tim hit the stranger, and
flung him out of the front door in his underwear, throwing his other
clothes out of the upstairs window. It was the first and only time in his
life that he had behaved violently. Sylvia could not understand Tim's rage
and grief; she was a simple soul who liked to give her affections freely,
and in her opinion, Tim was out of order. There was no meeting of
minds. They raged at each other, and in the end, a couple of weeks later,
Tim moved out and found himself a small flat. When he went to put a deposit
down for the landlord, he found that the joint account he had with Sylvia
had been emptied; it had contained all his life savings. The landlord was
understanding, and gave Tim time to go back to his brothers and ask for a
loan, which they willingly turned into a gift, together with something to
help him buy again all the necessities of life, like saucepans, towels and
spaghetti.

A solicitor's letter arrived shortly, stating that Sylvia was divorcing him
on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour and desertion. The court case did
not go well, Tim was sullen and aggrieved, and behaved badly; the
magistrate--a dyke if ever there was one, he thought-- was utterly
unsympathetic to Tim on principle, as the violent and unstable man who
walked out on his wife and their baby, and not faced up to the
problems. She was not interested in Sylvia's adultery, which she considered
understandable `under the circumstances'. In granting the divorce she
ordered Tim, as the `aggressor', to pay all the court costs, maintenance
for baby Catriona (to whom he could have one hour's supervised access every
other month), and ninety percent of the mortgage of the house. Sylvia left
the court and smiled smugly at a devastated Tim. She walked arm-in-arm with
the man Tim had seen in her bed, who was wearing an expensive suit, and he
decided then and there never to see her again.

In order to meet his crippling financial obligations, and also to fill his
mind with something not to do with Sylvia and Catriona, Tim began to work
all the hours God sent. He took all overtime that was offered, and cajoled
his colleagues into letting him do more. Unsurprisingly, after a while, he
began to get seriously depressed, and it was only the intervention of a
colleague at the Police Station that changed things. The friend, Thomas,
was a serious keep-fit fanatic. He would call by Tim's bedsit, and
sometimes physically strip Tim and force him into his sports gear. At
times, Tim thought he hated Thomas, but as his fitness level grew, the
world looked a kinder place, and he found his depression lifting. When
Thomas was transferred to a station far away in the North East, Tim was
functioning again, and had become once again a very fit and very
good-looking young man, spending all his free time, such as it was, either
in the gym or running. A substantial legacy from an understanding
great-aunt helped to pay off a lot of the mortgage for the house he could
never even visit, and he felt able to meet the world again. He had also
grown in self-understanding, and the suffering he had experienced had made
him a good listener, something not often found in policemen. At work, many
of the people on his patch had a very soft spot for their local constable,
and he loved that part of his job. But other parts he hated. He hated the
violence, he hated the hatred, the bitterness of horrible people. He hated
the police stereotype; the brutal over-careful enunciation in a South
London accent that was supposed to suggest to the listener that this copper
was someone to be reckoned with. As a gentle-spoken man himself, he was
despised by many of his colleagues as being `superior', and not `one of the
lads'. Since he was naturally affectionate, this got to him too.

So his career, then, was going nowhere fast. He considered himself a good
copper; his averages were among the highest in his station, but he had been
several years in the Force, and was still a mere Police Constable. Only
promotion could make the unpleasant aspects of the job more bearable. He
had no illusions. He had been approached once or twice with offers to join
the Freemasons, but his principles, as well as his Catholic faith, rendered
that impossible. As a result, he was never promoted.


Then one rainy night, Tim had met a young lad who had begun to change the
way he looked at the world. He hadn't been on duty, he was just out for a
run in the freezing rain and found this battered waif by the
roadside. Taking the lad back home with him, he had cared for him like a
baby, before handing him over to the hospital and social services the
following day. The lad had somehow opened a window in his heart, and he
realised as if for the first time that his real problem was loneliness, and
the need for someone to love, unconditionally, and be loved in
return. Remarriage was out, on account of his faith, so it was going to
have to be something else. Something, perhaps, to do with children. That
lad had been the first child he had ever interacted with; he himself was
the youngest of six brothers, and he had always been surrounded with people
who were either his own age, as at the school and the seminary, or older
than him, who had shown him nothing but affection. Unlike that poor lad;
the first person younger than Tim who had shown him affection, and who had
actually needed him.


And then, one night about a year and a half later, Tim had got beaten up
when he was walking down a dark alley on his regular foot patrol. He never
saw who did it, he just woke up in hospital with multiple fractures and
abrasions. The month he spent in bed provided a lot of time doing
nothing--the first time since the divorce when he had not been able to fill
his mind with distraction--and, not being able even to hold a book at
first, he spent the time thinking. He remembered how the lad he had rescued
had wanted to stay with him, and he remembered the strange resonance that
he found in himself. He couldn't even remember the boy's name, though the
memory of his face, and above all his wonderful smile, was as fresh as
anything. In fact, he remembered that he had never even known the boy's
name. When he could stagger around the hospital feebly with a stick, he
managed to take himself down to Casualty to see if they had a record of his
visit. The ward clerk there rather primly told him that the records were
confidential, and he had no right to any information. So that was that.


One day he had a bedside visit from his old school and seminary friend
Father Paul Topham, now the Headmaster of St Tarcisius' Home for Boys. It
was wonderful to see him again, and they gossiped about their friends and
what they were doing. Soon, Tim found himself pouring out his heart to
Paul, and Paul was, as ever, straightforward in his advice.

`Get out of the police, Tim. They don't deserve you, frankly, and as far as
I can see it's doing you more harm than good in all sorts of ways'.

`What else can I do Paul? I've made such a fuck-up of my life so far! I've
failed in everything I've turned my hand to. I'm a failed Franciscan, a
failed priest, a failed husband and father, and now a failed policeman.'

There were tears of self-pity in Tim's eyes, and Paul gave his friend a
hug.

`Never a failure, Tim. You just haven't found your niche yet. But you have
so much love to give, and you're like a blocked pipe; with no outlet for
it'.

Tim began to tell Paul all about the boy he had rescued in the night, and
how he kept thinking about him, and how he would like to give him a
home. He asked Paul how he might find him.

Paul said, `Without a name, it's very difficult. If he were a Catholic,
that would narrow it down a bit, because if he wasn't returned to his
family, he'd have ended up with me at St Tar's. Was he a Catholic, do you
think? Though, I suppose, the finer points of theology were not something
you discussed in your evening together'.

Tim thought, and then remembered a conversation in bed. `No, I'm certain he
isn't a Catholic. He'd never even heard the word.'

`Then start looking at Turling Park. That's where most of the others go'.

And when Paul left, Tim began to think about his life, and what he might do
with it, and how he might find that strange boy.

Back home at last, he submitted his resignation to the Police Force, then
began cutting out advertisements for job vacancies. He applied for many,
and received many offers, but the only post that really jumped out at him
was that of a groundsman at Turling Park, the regional state home for boys
with special needs. An orphanage, by any other name. Perhaps, he thought,
perhaps he would meet that strange lad again who had opened his heart which
had been closed for so long. At any rate, there would be lots of people
needing love there, and he could, as a sporty man, perhaps, have something
more to offer the lads than just mowing their lawns.

He applied for the job, citing Paul as his referee, went for interview, and
was pleased to be offered the post two days later.


CHAPTER 4


Back at St Tarcisius, we were met by Paul, who, when he saw our faces and
Tim's hand confidently in mine--he may have been thirteen, but he wasn't
going to miss any chance of affection just now--broke out into a broad
smile on his handsome face.

`I guess that's settled, then'.

I was taken aback; I had thought that I was going to have to do some quick
talking to even set the fostering on the road. But Paul took us both into
his office and told me that all the checks had been approved. The only
remaining authority to satisfy was Paul himself.

`And I know you only too well, mate. Congratulations, both of you!'

`How soon can Tim come home?' I asked. `He hasn't even seen where I, no,
we, live yet'.

`Right now, if you want. If, in the very unlikely event it doesn't work
out, you can always bring him back here, but I think that what he needs
right now is love and stability. As for the latter, I know you well, and
I'm sure he'll have that. And as for the love, I can see it from here. God
bless you both'.

My head was spinning. So much had happened in a few hours, and with that
short speech the course of my life was definitively changed. I looked at my
foster son, and his face was shining, that is the only word for it, with
that special radiant smile which had won me when I first saw it on the
photograph. But this time it was for me, me alone, and that thought made me
feel ten feet tall.

`Run and get your things, Tim. We're going home.'

Tim was off like a flash, as fast as his ill-shod feet could carry
him. When he left the office, Paul pushed some papers across the desk. I
read them, and signed them. Paul countersigned them, then looked seriously
at me.

`Johnny, I ought to warn you of something. As I said to you, I am pretty
sure that Tim has been seriously abused, physically and sexually, and
perhaps over a long period. No doubt you have seen for yourself that he is
a lovely lad and appears quite balanced. But abuse always leaves
psychological scars of one sort of another; as he moves into his teens,
you're going to have to watch him so very carefully, especially to see that
he does not turn to abuse of others. I think, given his loving personality,
that this is unlikely, but there may well be other things; theft,
self-mutilation, even suicide--I don't want to alarm you unduly, but these
are possibilities. People who are abused often feel that in some way they
deserved what they got, that there is a sort of justice about it. Given his
reticence, and the importance he attaches to his own privacy, I don't think
it is a good idea to force Tim to talk about it--indeed, I'd be surprised
if he'd let the subject be addressed at all, given our lack of success in
this area--but if it comes up, be ready for it, and certainly expect more
than the usual traumas of adolescence.'

Paul must have seen the apprehension on my face, because he then came
around the desk and pulled me into his arms.

`Oh Johnny, I feel so guilty at young Tim and me having manipulated you
into this. I know we haven't let your feet touch the ground, but if we had
let you hesitate, you would have prevaricated and procrastinated like you
always do, and this would never have happened. Trust me, this is really
going to work out. I can't tell you what joy it gives me to bring two of my
favourite people together. Tim is a really special lad, one of the
loveliest boys here, and if he is with you, I'll be able to go on seeing
him, too.'

And Paul kissed me on the cheek.

Mm. Nice! He had never done that before.

`Yeah, well' he said, looking at my shocked face, `I've done a bit of
perving in my time, too, you old stud'.

Before I could regain my wits or think of something to say, Tim burst back
into the office and said `I'm ready!'.

`That didn't take long! Okay, lad, time to go home'.

Tim turned to Paul and said, simply, `Thank you. Thank you so very much for
everything, Father Paul'. He hesitated a moment, and then ran to him and
hugged him tightly. Paul hugged Tim back, patting his shoulder and saying
`Be happy now, Tim, and, you know, I'll still be seeing a lot of you,
because I come over to St Edward's parish often to see Father John. And I
want you to know that I will always be here for you if you want to talk, or
want anything I can help with.' We all got a bit sniffy and so I said.

`Come on, let's go. Where's your luggage?'

`Here' said Tim happily, and he held up a single Tesco plastic carrier bag.

`Is that all?' My heart wept again for the boy's deprived life. Tim nodded
cheerfully; he didn't care if he had nothing. He had a home now, and a dad,
and that was all that mattered.



Teresa was in the house when we arrived. She knew that I was probably going
to have a lad to live with me some time in the future, but she was
understandably taken aback to find it happen so suddenly. Nevertheless,
having had two boys of her own, she was accustomed to taking shocks in her
stride, and she opened her arms to Tim and gave him a huge bosomy hug. Tim
looked over her shoulder at me crossing his eyes and sticking his tongue
out of the corner of his mouth to suggest that he was being crushed to
death, but he hugged back enthusiastically enough. Teresa then held him at
arms length and said

`I'm Mrs Wright, Tim, Teresa Wright, but I think it might be best if you
were to call me Aunt Tess. That way, we'll get on just fine'.

I thanked God for Teresa's quick wit. She had understood that what Tim
needed most was to feel he belonged, and this was certainly going to help.

I hadn't even thought about which room Tim might occupy, so we went
straight upstairs to have a look. There was no contest; he fell in love
immediately with the attic room, up its own little flight of stairs and lit
by skylights and a single dormer window. It had cheerful blue and yellow
paint and colourful painted furniture.

`Is this all for me? Just for me?' He gaped.

`Just for you, Tim. Glad you like it. This is your very own space, to do
with what you want--within reason. Now let's unpack and get your things
hung up in the wardrobe.'

Tim upended his carrier bag and spilled all his worldly possessions onto
the bed. There was a spare t-shirt, even tattier than the one he wore, a
pair of blue adidas tracksuit bottoms, a old blue and white football shirt,
a pair of navy nylon football shorts, seven assorted socks, a rosary and
missal (standard St Tar's issue), some odd coins not amounting to more than
fifty pence and a worn and dirty teddy bear. There was certainly nothing
worth hanging up.

I said, in horror, `Tim, is this really everything you own? You had nothing
else at St Tar's?' I found it impossible to believe that Paul would have
let the lad live so shamefully poorly. But then, as I was to learn, Tim was
apt to fade into the background, and simply get overlooked. Tim answered

`Well, there were a few other clothes and stuff, but we have a rule at St
Tar's among the guys that when someone gets lucky, he leaves the best
things for the others who have to stay. I'm not expecting you to buy me new
stuff, it's just that I didn't want to be mean to the others. So I just
took enough to get me by for a couple of years.'

`A couple of years? Tim, one thing I know about boys is that they
grow. Those jeans are already so tight on you that I suspect that your
voice is never going to break while you still wear them. And you're going
to break your neck tripping on the hems one day.' I picked up the tracksuit
bottoms and looked at the label; `For boys 10-11 years' I read out loud.

`They're ok, they're stretchy' Tim mumbled.

`No, Tim, they won't do. Tomorrow we go shopping. It's a shame that tonight
is too late. But it isn't too late to make a start. Put these things into a
drawer now; I'll be right back.'

I went downstairs, shaking my head, to ask Teresa if she had a measuring
tape. I told her about the contents of the carrier bag, and she put her
hand to her mouth.

`Oh, the poor wee lad'.

`Quite!' I said. `We'll go shopping for some new clothes tomorrow'.

`I'm sure I can put my hands on some of my boys' old stuff' she said; `I'll
bring a load tomorrow'.

`Thanks, Teresa, but no thanks. I think that for the first time in his life
Tim is going to get some brand new clothes that fit him, and that no one
else has ever worn before.'

She squeezed my arm and smiled. `You're a good man. I'll get you the
measuring tape'.



Back upstairs, Tim was sitting on the bed, smiling, and bouncing up and
down, clutching his teddy. Suddenly he looked nine, not thirteen. I looked
at him, and the most extraordinary protective instinct kicked in again. In
a matter of hours his life, even more than mine, had been turned upside
down, even if it was for the better, or at least I hoped so.

`Slip your t-shirt and jeans off, Tim, and we'll get you measured'.

He complied quickly, pulling the shirt over his head to throw it on the
bed, and then sucking in his tummy to get a bit of slack to lower his
trousers. And there was the next shock of the day. He had no underwear
on. I remembered then that there had been none in the carrier bag,
either. And I couldn't help but notice that for a lad of his age he was
very well endowed, as they say. Still hairless, as one would expect, but
that only made the generous proportions all the more obvious.

`Gosh, Tim, don't you have any underpants?'

`No, never have. Well, only occasionally. Can't abide them.' Abide? strange
word for a lad, I thought; it's as though he's quoting someone.

`Didn't they mind at St Tarcisius?'

`They never found out. There were an awful lot of us, and not all of us
wear them'.

`Why?'

`They make me sweat, they tangle my tackle and get caught in my bum, if you
want to know.'

Frank enough, I suppose. He'd obviously said that before, too. I thought
about arguing, but then I postponed that particular battle for another
day. He was so adamant about it that I could see he was going to take some
convincing, and I didn't want to spoil his pleasure in the day of his great
escape from St Tar's.

`Well I'm not going to measure you like that, wearing only your odd socks,
with your wedding tackle in the way'.

Tim giggled and said

`That's easily put right; I'll take my socks off!', and he did.

`Tart', I said without thinking. But Tim didn't notice. He took his navy
nylon shorts out of the drawer and pulled them on; I was pleased to see
that for once we had found a garment that actually fitted him. No doubt he
had acquired them when they were far too big. I took an appraising look at
my son's body for the first time and noticed that he was really pretty
muscular, with strong well-defined pectorals and abdomen.

`Most of us work out in St Tar's' he said, seeing what I was looking
at. `Survival of the fittest! Not bad, eh?' he preened.

`Not bad is right!'

I began to take his measurements and as he lifted his arms to let me put
the tape round his bare chest, I saw several little scars dotted here and
there, mostly on his pectorals. Cigarette burns. My heart thudded. I turned
him round, and there were several long white scars on his back and the
backs of his thighs. They were all old.

`Excuse me, Tim', I said, and pulled down his shorts a little to reveal a
web of welts on his buttocks. I pulled his shorts back up and turned him
round, looking deeply into his eyes. I pulled him into a fierce hug, all my
protective instincts raging, raging, raging. I wanted to kill someone.

`My son, who did this to you?' I asked in a shaking voice.

`Them', said Tim tonelessly, his mood suddenly turned black. I was startled
at his voice.

`Who's them?'

`Just Them. The sperm donor and the owner of the cunt I came out of,' he
spat viciously.

`Your mother and father?'.

`NO! ' He suddenly shouted. `They are not my parents, they are never my
parents. YOU are my father. I don't WANT another. I HAVE no other'. He
broke into a storm of weeping, so I took him in my arms, sat on the bed and
rocked him gently until he calmed down. I was staggered at this sudden
tempest that had come out of nowhere. I was going to have to go carefully.

`Ssh, my son, ssh. You're safe now, you're home. Nobody is going to hurt
you any more. Ssh, my son, my beloved son.'




I don't know how long we sat there, but when I looked up, there was Teresa
in the doorway, tears in her eyes.

`Poor wee laddie', she whispered. `What a lot of sadness he's seen in his
short lifetime. We'll have to do our best to make it up to him'.

I could only smile ruefully. I was thinking that this was only the
beginning of a long road that Tim and I were going to have to travel
together while we unpicked all of this. Tim himself had had an awful
emotional rollercoaster of a day, and now he was fast asleep in my
arms. All for the best. I gently lifted him and laid him on the bed,
pulling the duvet up over his bare chest. I kissed his forehead; his
features had relaxed again and he gently smiled in his sleep, his good mood
restored in slumber.

`Has he eaten?' said Teresa.

I smacked my head. Neither of us had even finished our Macdonalds burgers
early in the afternoon. It was now eight in the evening.

`I'll make him a sandwich, Father,' (she pronounced it `sangwich') `and
leave it by his bed. I'll do you one, too'

`Bless you, Teresa, for everything. But it's long after your going home
time now'.

`Ah well, it's a special occasion, isn't it? I've the car with me anyway.'



After Teresa left, I sat down in my den and put my feet up to think about
the events of this momentous day. No sooner had I done so, then the door
bell rang.

`Fuck!' I swore out loud. No doubt some old biddy wanting a Mass card
signed. No peace, it seems, for the wicked.

`I heard that, Father! Not very priestly, I must say,' came a voice through
the letter box.

`Paul, you bastard!' I said, opening the door to my best friend, he being
dressed casually in chinos and a blue shirt. `But you're just the bastard I
want to see right now'.

We hugged, and he gave me a bottle:

`It's the rest of the whisky we didn't finish the other day. I thought we
might have another stab at it. Where's the lad?'

`Fast asleep upstairs. Emotionally worn out, I guess. I'm pretty fucked
myself.'

`You wish!'

`Piss off! Grab yourself a glass'.

We sat together on the sofa in companionable silence. After a while, Paul
asked me how it had all gone. I told him about the day, and about how it
had ended. Paul gave a low whistle.

`I knew about the scars, of course, but he would never say who had given
them to him. We guessed that it was probably his parents, but he has told
nobody before. You've done really well for a first day!'

`Who were his parents?'

`We haven't a clue. Tim was found wandering on the Brighton and Hove bypass
at night eighteen months or so ago, wearing only some old tracksuit
bottoms. It was late November, and he was suffering from hypothermia. He
never gave any details of his family; we don't even know if has given us
his real name. He was sent to us because Sullivan, being Irish, would make
him probably a Catholic and the local authorities were anxious not to have
to take another mouth into the county home, Turling Park, which is like a
borstal in my opinion anyway, and therefore Tim's good luck. In the event,
Tim hadn't a clue as to whether he was a Catholic or not, but took to it
all like a duck to water, so after he begged, I baptized him and gave him
his first Holy Communion last June. He is fixated with the idea of God as
his father, Mary as his mother, and Jesus as his brother, so I guess it all
fits together, especially his wanting to come to you. He badly needs to
belong somewhere, or to someone. I think our faith supplies deep needs in
him. Which is nice all round.'

`Paul, I need to ask you a question, and it's been burning me for a
while. Why is Tim dressed so badly? It can't have escaped your notice that
he looks like a street kid. Surely St Tar's isn't that short of cash?'

`Well, we are pretty strapped, Johnny, but no, we usually do better than
that for the boys. Honestly, Tim would never take clothes or anything from
us, more than the simple minimum. We do get clothes and toys given us quite
frequently. We'd noticed that Tim tended to hang back when the scrum was
on, and so got little or nothing, so we'd put one or two things aside for
him. He'd give them to the other kids, though, saying that as he wasn't
going to be here long, he didn't need them. They took them happily enough,
as you can imagine. So we began to shift heaven and earth to get Tim
fostered as quickly as possible. I even wondered whether he were playing
some clever game and had manipulated us into this very thing. But then he
turned down not just one family, but two. Unheard of! The other boys
thought he was mad. I think he just wanted you, and was waiting for you to
notice him. Finally, he had to stir it a bit.'

We talked for a couple of hours about everything, and by the end of it we
were both very relaxed and pretty drunk. Paul, leaning forward with his
hand on my thigh, shook the last drops from the bottle into my glass and
said

`A pious bottle; made a good death with not one, but two priests.' He
thought a moment. `Shit, I can't drive; I must be well over the limit. Can
I stay?'.

`Of course. As long as you want'.  Forever, I thought.

`I've got nothing with me, though'.

`I'll give you a pair of my footie shorts and a new toothbrush. That do
you?'

`Mm. Fantastic. Am I in my usual place in the attic?'.

`No, that's Tim's room now. You can have the room opposite me: the bed's
made up. Good night!'

`'Night'. We got up. Paul stumbled a little, or appeared to, and steadied
himself on my shoulder.

`Mm, you smell nice' he said, and he paused, looking intently into my
eyes. An eternity passed, and then he gently leaned forward and kissed me
for the second time that day, but this time full on the lips. I was too
shocked to respond, even if I had known how. I looked into his beautiful
brown eyes, and realised that neither he nor I were as drunk as we made
out.

`Sleep well, Paul', was all I could say.

`Mm, you too'.



In the middle of the night I woke up. There was someone in my room. I
remembered Paul's kiss and my heart gave a bound of mingled desire and
dread. I put the light on and saw Tim, still in his shorts, looking tousled
and sleepy. He also had a raging erection.

`Dad' (my heart beat even faster to hear myself called that) `Dad, I really
need to pee, and I can't find the bathroom'.

`Oh Tim, I'm so sorry, we never even gave you the grand tour of the
house'. I hauled myself out of bed, wearing my usual footie shorts, and
took him to the loo, leaving him to find his own way back. He did, but he
appeared in my room, not his own.

`Dad, can I stay in here tonight?'

`What's wrong with your own room, Tim?'

`It's lovely but it's all so quiet. I can't sleep very well'. Then,
reluctantly, he added `and I'm a bit scared.'

It then dawned on me that maybe Tim had never had to sleep in a room on his
own before.

`Er, well, sure... but how are we going to manage; there's only one bed?'

Tim grinned happily and jumped into my bed, scooting over to the far
side. All sorts of warning bells rang, including the fact that the director
of St Tarcisius' Home was sleeping just on the other side of the corridor,
and he would presumably not be at all happy to find us cuddled up together
on our first night as foster father and son. The bed was only a large
single, not even a double.

I had to ask myself whether I was any danger to Tim. Had I any sexual
desires for him? None whatever, I concluded. On the contrary, my urges were
all to protect this lad, not exploit him. Tim, looking puzzled at my delay,
patted the bed.

`Come on, you'll get cold'.

`Cheeky sod'.

So I got in, and my son snuggled close to me. We slept with my right arm
protectively wrapped around him. It was a first for me, too.


CHAPTER 5


In the morning, I woke to two shocked shouts. Tim, who had gone to bed far
earlier than me, had woken, then wandered sleepy-eyed into the bathroom and
come across Paul stark naked, fresh out of the shower, shaving at the basin
with my razor.

Paul was the last person Tim expected to see, and especially like this. And
Paul, with his headmasterly dignity to consider was shocked to be caught by
a boy when in the nude.

By the time I had made it to the bathroom, Paul had dropped the razor and
pulled on his (or rather my) shorts.

Tim found the whole thing highly amusing. I could see him trying to work
out how to tell his friends back at St Tarcisius. He said to Paul

`Nice to see you, Father Paul. I seem to be seeing quite a lot of you
lately' and then collapsed into fits of giggles at his own joke.

`Cheeky bugger', said Paul, going red, but smiling at me affectionately
over Tim's head.

Tim intercepted the glance, and stopped giggling.

`Oh', he said, knowingly. `Are you and Dad...you know?'

`Know what?' said Paul, puzzled. Then it dawned on both of us what the
precocious little git meant. An Item.

`NO!!'

`BLOODY HELL! NO!'

We were both aghast. Well perhaps not very aghast. My mind went back to
that kiss.

`Look, Tim', I said, `Father Paul is my dearest and closest friend. As he
said yesterday, he comes here often, and frequently stays the night. As you
brought up the subject and you seem wiser about these things than you
should be, you should also know that I love him very much, but we are just
friends. You know very well we keep separate rooms. And we are both
priests. We are married in a way, to the Church, and so are not free to
have that sort of a relationship with each other. Even if it were allowed,
which it isn't.

`And not that we want to' I added firmly, though the last twenty four hours
had begun to shake my convictions on that score even further than before.

`Shame' said Tim. `I'd love it if my two favourite people could live
together'.

`Fucking little charmer!' said Paul, though not without affection.

`Oooh, Uncle Paul, you used a bad word!' Tim smirked.

`What did you call me?'

`Uncle Paul. Do you mind?'

`No, Tim, I love it very much indeed. Call me that always'. Paul suddenly
sounded choked up.




Tim was always hungry, I was soon to discover.

`When's breakfast?'

`After Mass'.

`Cool. When's Mass'

`Nine o'clock, that's in half an hour's time. Do you know how to serve at
Mass?'

`Er, no. Can I have something to eat now?'

`Nope, sorry. Too late if you're going to Communion.'

He accepted this calmly. Was this boy real?

`In the meantime, you'd better put some clothes on' He was still only in
his shorts. He disappeared upstairs, passing Paul coming down.

`Morning, handsome', Paul said to me, and kissed me on the cheek. Again!
That's the third kiss. I was really confused now. I had spent the last ten
longing years thinking Paul was terminally straight. But then, from what he
said, he seems to have been thinking the same about me, or at least waiting
to for me to admit my gayness to him. Isn't life a cock-up sometimes?

Hang on; wasn't Paul in khaki chinos and a blue polo shirt last night? And
surely he brought nothing with him? Now he was in a black clerical suit
with smart clerical stock and collar.

`Hope you don't mind', he said. `I found this in your bedroom, and it all
fits really well. I wanted to say Mass with you this morning, and thought I
should be properly dressed.'

So far from minding, to tell you the truth I was a little turned on by the
idea of the man of my dreams wearing my clothes. What on earth was
happening to me? These last twenty-four hours had been the most
extraordinary in my life.

`No, you're welcome. Actually, you've given me an idea. You say the Mass on
your own--I hate concelebrating anyway--and I'll serve you with Tim. I can
teach him, so that he can do it on his own in future.'

`Fine.'

At that moment, Tim came downstairs wearing his tracksuit bottoms and the
other t shirt.

`My jeans have gone' he said.

`Oh yes, Tere..., er Aunt Tess took them last night to see if anything can
be done with them.

`And it can't' said Teresa coming into the house. `Morning, Father
John. Morning, Father Paul, Morning, Tim. So I've thrown them away. They
were coming apart at the seams. I really think that if you had run in them
again, they'd have fallen apart, and you'd have been left in your boxer
shorts on the High Street.'

Remembering that he never wore underwear, Tim and I both suddenly looked at
each other and blushed, thinking that it wouldn't be boxer shorts that
would flutter in the breeze.

`And, Mother of God, what are you wearing now, boy?' Teresa said. We all
looked at Tim. The tracksuit bottoms did stretch to cover him, but were
stretched so tightly that nothing at all was left to the imagination as he
stood in the sunny kitchen. He might as well have been wearing lycra. The t
shirt was even smaller than yesterday's.

`Tim', I said to him quietly, `you can't go out dressed like that; you'd
better go and put your shorts on again instead. And take a t shirt from my
room; better too big than too small.'

When the boy reappeared, relatively decently dressed for once in shorts and
t shirt, Teresa produced a pair of sandals. `These might fit you, Tim. I
bought them for myself, and it was only when I got home that I realised
they were mens'.'

Finally, we were ready to go to Mass. It all went very well; the
parishioners always liked it when Paul came to visit, as he celebrated Mass
with reverence and always had something interesting to say after the
Gospel. Tim learnt very quickly to serve, and I began to realise that he
was naturally very bright as well as devout. Afterwards I introduced Tim to
everyone and he was surrounded with surprised laughs as being `the priest's
son', and made very welcome. He beamed with happiness, and I glowed inside
to see that glorious smile that had already so endeared him to me. My life
already felt so very, very full.

I cooked a huge breakfast--Tim and I had eaten very little for ages--and
afterwards as Paul and Teresa washed up I finished measuring Tim for his
new clothes.

Paul and I took off our black gear and changed into casual things. With a
wicked thought, I went into the room where he had spent the night and put
on his chinos and polo shirt. They fit perfectly. So Paul had to rifle
through my cupboards and found some white jeans and an open-neck deep blue
shirt. He looked amazing.

`You look like a rent boy' I said.

`Trust you to know' he retorted. `I wouldn't have any idea; and anyway,
they're your clothes!'




Paul, Tim and I set off for the shopping centre, ten miles away. I had made
up my mind that I was going to spend a thousand pounds at least today on my
boy. Sod the holiday this year. This was going to be much more fun, and
give us all far more pleasure.

Tim was surprisingly fussy. I had expected him to resist being bought for,
as he had resisted being given clothes at St Tar's. But on the contrary,
perhaps because these purchases were further links binding him to his new
home, and perhaps because he could see the pleasure it was giving me, he
was determined to spend my money like Edina Monsoon.

He turned into quite a dandy for the day. No blue jeans, he swore. `I've
worn them and nothing else for the last two years, and that's enough!' So
he had to have khaki chinos like mine (`actually, erm, they're Fa..., er
your Uncle Paul's') and white jeans like Paul was wearing. Some t-shirts,
and plenty of polo shirts and button up shirts. A school uniform for the
autumn term two months away, with black trousers, black shoes and socks, a
blue blazer with the school arms and motto on the breast pocket, white
shirts and striped tie. Then two suits, one in sober navy blue and another,
which he begged for, in a sort of shiny silvery material. It wouldn't have
suited an adult, but when he came out from the fitting room, Paul and I
drew breath because he looked so handsome in it. Then socks, but we had a
tussle again over underwear.

`I told you, Dad, there's no point. I won't wear them, so why bother buying
them? If you want to throw your money away, let's get another shirt, or
another pair of trousers.'

I turned for support to Paul, who was watching the exchange, highly amused.

`Don't look at me, Johnny' he said, `I never wear underwear either'.

I felt the stirrings of sexuality once more. I would never look on those
white jeans of mine that Paul was wearing now in the same light again.

`Ok, ok, ok', I sighed. `For now, but this argument isn't over yet'.

`Whatever', said Tim.

Then came the most expensive visits: the sport shops. Paul, fortunately,
seemed to have a good sense of what was fashionable. Trainers, a (decent!)
track suit, white socks, various sports shirts and shorts. Tim wanted some
pairs of football shorts like the ones Paul and I had worn last night, but
he insisted for some reason that they had to be by adidas, in royal
blue. Then he had to have a back pack. And finally I threw away the last of
my savings and bought him a mountain bicycle, arranging for it to be
delivered.

Paul, who seemed not to want to be outdone, decided that if he was going to
be Paul's uncle, and not his headmaster any more, put the crown on the day
by taking Tim to Computer World and buying him the latest Apple Mac
computer. In the shop, Tim suddenly started crying uncontrollably, clearly
unnerving the nice lady shop assistant.

`Y...y...yesterday I had n...n...nobody and n...nothing' he sobbed `and now
a family and all this. I'm terrified I'm going to wake up now.'

He ran to Paul, and threw his arms around him, giving him a huge kiss on
the cheek, and then did the same to me. It was the first time my son had
kissed me, and I began to cry too, to see his happiness. I looked up and
saw Paul doing the same. Even the shop assistant gave a sniffle or two. I
gave Tim my handkerchief, as his shorts had no pockets, and after he had
used it, I used it myself.

The way families do, I suddenly thought. It wasn't disgusting, it was
beautiful. And then I grinned when it occurred to me that it wasn't my
handkerchief, but Paul's, from his trousers. He grinned back at me and blew
his nose loudly in my hanky which he took from my white jeans.

The three of us had a blast. Tim made us buy some things for ourselves,
including sunglasses (which he called `shades') and said we looked `really
cool'. And as we made our progress down the high street, a handsome trio,
we drew admiring glances from many of the passers-by. Not often that
happens in a priest's life, I can tell you.


CHAPTER 6


It was late spring. From the very first day, Tim (senior) loved his new job
at Turling Park. The house itself was a large Victorian mansion which had
had several dormitory blocks built on to it over the years, until it could
accomodate over two hundred boys in draughty discomfort. The compensation
was the magnificent grounds and facilities, with playing fields and acres
of space, and the formal gardens that the boys were expected to work on
under the direction of the head groundsman.

That wasn't Tim. Tim provided the unskilled labour; he had to drive the big
motorized lawn mower and keep the acres of grass trimmed, and was
responsible for keeping the hedges and trees cut back. One of the things
that made the work such a pleasure was that every afternoon a couple of
boys would be assigned to him as his assistants.

Another pleasure was finally getting rid of his police uniform. He had
hated the sweaty man-made fibre trousers and tunic which were unbearably
hot in the summer, even though worn without underwear. He hated the belts
that hung around his waist with walkie-talkie, handcuffs, plasticuffs,
truncheon and half a dozen other impedimenta whose weight pulled down the
waistband of his trousers and made them sag at the arse. He hated the
helmet that looked like a tit, and made him feel like a tit. Now,
especially in the summer, in the morning he could jump out of bed, into the
shower, and just pull on a pair of footie shorts, and he was ready for
work. That was all he needed until the evening when, if it got cool, he
could add a t-shirt. In the winter, he could add a sweatshirt, but except
for going to Mass, or special occasions, there was no reason, really, why
he need ever wear trousers again.

He revelled in the fresh air and in the sunshine, in which he tanned a
smooth golden-brown quickly. He loved the hard exercise that his job
provided, and the beautiful grounds and surrounding countryside in which he
could run to his heart's content in the morning or when the day's work was
over. He loved the well-equipped gym that the regional authority provided,
and he loved it that the boys used to ask him for help on their workouts,
seeing him as a sort of unofficial expert coach. He loved the olympic-sized
pool in which he could relax as an alternative, or in addition to the run,
and in which he could race and play with the lads.

And he loved the little house that came with the job. For the first time
since his divorce, he had a home with more than one room, and at first he
found it difficult to fill up the space. But soon the boys discovered that
he was good with his hands, and they brought to him their broken toys and
then found out that he was equally good at dealing with broken hearts, and
Tim found out that his loneliness had largely dissipated, and his life, as
well as his house, was full.

The boys at Turling Park had a tough life. The principle was that if they
were kept busy, they would have little time to brood on their unhappy
backgrounds. So the place was run along the lines of a boot camp. They were
woken by an electric bell at 6.15am, on hearing which they had five minutes
to put on their shorts and trainers, and shirt if they wanted (which most
eschewed), and report to the front of the school for their morning run for
which they were given a time within which it had to be completed. They ran
a mile for each year that they were there, beginning at the age of 11 with
one mile, up to the big lads of seventeen and eighteen who were expected to
run nearly eight miles. When they got back, there were press-ups and
crunches and other exercises, and then showers, which, unlike those of
earlier generations, were no longer cold, but as a concession to modern
soft living, had plenty of hot water. They could then dress in the
comfortable but drab uniform of navy nylon shorts (which doubled as
underwear) under grey sweatpants and t-shirts under grey hooded sweatshirts
which they would wear for the rest of the day. These clothes were not their
own; when returned from laundry, the boys would simply help themselves to
any of the identical garments in a size that fitted them. In fact, they had
very few possessions of their own, just an occasional toy or photograph,
and they received no money, for fear that they would be tempted to escape
in order to spend it in unsuitable ways.

After their showers, beds were made, and breakfast was eaten in
silence. Then the boys were left for half an hour to do whatever they
needed, and classes began for the rest of the morning. Lunch was followed
by a compulsory siesta, and then there was garden work, when the boys would
strip to their shorts in fine weather and learn the management of
land. There was `Trades' after this, when the boys would learn computing,
carpentry, metalwork, plumbing, electrics and other skills. Finally, they
had an hour to do with as they wished, and it was then that there would be
a well worn path trodden to the house of the junior groundsman by those
privileged souls who had got to know him, to listen and talk and drink his
hot chocolate, and feel for once that they were more than just a number on
the college books.

If Turling Park excelled in its facilities, far beyond anything St
Tarcisius' Home could offer, what it lacked was the human dimension. The
staff were not uncaring, just far too few and far too busy to provide what
the too-many boys needed on the scale it was necessary. The only answer to
their lack of human resources was regimentation, and so the boys were very
tightly regimented indeed. Most of the staff were kindly intentioned,
though harassed and overworked, and this meant that the boys were given
very little liberty. Counsellors came in droves every day, but the boys
rarely availed themselves willingly of their services. There was something
too artificial, too contrived, about the soft lighting and fake plants and
antiseptic atmosphere of the rooms, and the professional caring voices that
were not even remotely a substitute for what the boys really needed; a
loving family.

But not every member of staff was good or was liked. Since caning or
beating was as illegal at Turling Park as in any other school in Britain,
it was very much down to the individual staff member to improvise his or
her own methods of enforcing discipline. It was not easy, as the boys had
few privileges that could be withdrawn, and the teacher would have to be
imaginitive. The metalwork teacher, known to the boys simply as The Screw,
due to his previous employment as a prison warder, was especially feared
and loathed. He had lost his last job because of his brutality to the
prisoners, but this was never made known to the authorities at Turling
Park, in case it reflected badly on the Prison service, who were under
scrutiny at that time by the Government. In his metalwork classroom, The
Screw had made a number of sets of handcuffs, leg irons, heavy collars and
other implements, which hung up on the walls. Any misdemeanour by one of
the boys--and it seemed that The Screw's list of punishable offences was
longer than any one else's--would see the lad have to strip to his shorts
and be locked into one or more of these artefacts for as long as it pleased
the teacher. It wasn't so much the irons themselves that frightened the
boys--that had a certain element of dressing up and showing off to it-- as
the intense look that came into The Screw's piercing grey-blue eyes, and a
certain menacing stillness. The older boys of seventeen or eighteen had
also noticed that when they were stripped and locked into their irons, The
Screw would develop a visible erection; the lads pretended to joke about it
with each other, but secretly they deeply feared this man and what he might
do, given the opportunity.

The staff were not fools, and most of them were genuinely good people; they
could see that if The Screw was a little unhinged, Tim on the other hand
was providing the boys with a more than special service, something they all
knew was really lacking, and so they were all prepared to turn a blind eye
when a distressed lad would flee his class or his tormentors and run to
where the motorized lawn mower was turning round and round on the cricket
pitch, because they would see the machine stop, and a tall, barechested man
get off and hunker down by the lad. Sometimes, he would pick the lad up on
his back, or if he was bigger, put an arm round his shoulder, and leaving
the machine, would walk over to his house where they would chat for an hour
or so. The lad would always come out looking much happier, and often with a
toy or a sweet, or something else good. The head groundsman was annoyed at
first, but soon realised that Tim made the time up later, and was such a
good worker anyway that it was worth tolerating his eccentricities. The
care staff were relieved that Tim would find time to provide what they
could not.

Inevitably, in an atmosphere where Harry Potter was all the rage, Tim came
to be known to both boys and staff as Hagrid.



The summer came, with its long lazy days, and the classes stopped. Many of
the luckier boys were able to go for the summer to stay with relatives or
friends, or good people who were prepared to take a boy for a few weeks in
the holidays; lots of others joined the many summer programmes available
around the country. The grass became scorched, and it was no longer
necessary to cut it so frequently, and so by mutual agreement of care and
grounds staff Tim was free far longer to mingle with the twenty or so
unfortunate boys who remained, to find things for them to do in their
copious free time. He took them swimming in the large ornamental lake, and
went hiking with them on the Downs round about, where they would play wide
games; hunt the flag, manhunts, bulldog and all those sorts of activities
that would be considered too rough if they were played within sight of
Turling Park. They would end each day around a bonfire not far from Tim's
cottage, where they would bake potatoes, and burn sausages and burgers,
drinking copious quantities of drinking chocolate, as Tim sang to them and
played his guitar and told them ghost stories in the firelight.

One day, they were joined by the Principal of St Tarcisius' Home, Father
Paul Topham, for a hike. Paul and Tim met infrequently these days, but had
remained in close touch ever since their school days. As they walked along,
keeping an eye on the kids, who were ever likely to get up to something,
they caught up on everything that had happened to them since they had last
met by Tim's hospital bed. Paul said, after Tim had just stopped a lad
falling over into a river,

`Tim; I have never seen such a natural at this job. You are really
wonderful with the boys. I am as furious as all hell that I didn't think to
get you for St Tar's. Somehow, I never connected you with this sort of
work. You're wasted, cutting grass.'

`To be honest, Paul, I never connected myself with it, either. I have a
daughter of my own, but I haven't seen her since she was a toddler.'

Tim had tried to go for his statutary visits, but Sylvia always found some
excuse why it was not convenient, and eventually Tim realized it was
useless, and stopped trying. He went on:

`But then there was my mysterious visitor. That perhaps should have told me
something sooner; I really connected with that lad, and both looking for
him and my new interest in kids made me think of coming to work here.'

`Oh yes; I'd forgotten about him. Did you find him here?'

`No. There's nobody even like him, and believe me, I have looked...  OY!
YOU TWO! LEAVE JOEL ALONE!'

Tim yelled at two bigger boys who were throwing another little one between
them, and he sprinted off to deal with it.


Paul stayed for the bonfire that night, and as Tim sang, he looked at the
boys' faces. It was like Christmas for them; from the age of eleven up to
eighteen, the lads were all entranced. They would remember the happiness of
this time for all their lives, Paul thought, and in his heart he blessed
his friend Tim Sullivan for having brought joy to this unhappy place. He
was clearly no longer a failure.

When the boys had been reluctantly seen off to their beds, Tim and Paul sat
in the cottage talking over several large tumblers of whisky. It had been
agreed that Paul was going to stay the night, and he had borrowed a pair of
shorts from Tim (borrowing clothes was one of his favourite activities) and
the two of them were sitting together companionably dressed only in their
shorts. The whisky had relaxed many of their inhibitions, and they were in
a very frank and confidential mood. Paul said;

`Tim, I've been thinking, while watching you today. Have you ever thought
of fostering somebody yourself?'

`Well, only that lad I told you about whom I brought home that night. But
I'm not really sure I'd be suitable. I'm a single man, for one thing. Isn't
that rather frowned upon? And I'm divorced. Wouldn't that make me count as
unstable?'

`I very much doubt it. I know you very well, and can vouch for your
stability, and I'm sure the staff here would be agree
enthusiastically. Anyway, lots of single men are fostering. You must
remember Johnny from the seminary: he's fostered a smashing lad from St
Tar's.'

`Johnny? Never!'

`Yeah, honestly. And he's doing a really good job. The two of them are
really happy together. I see a lot of them; Johnny and I have become close
friends since we were ordained, and since you went your own way'.

`But Johnny, he's... well,.... oh, never mind.'

`What were you going to say?' asked Paul, suspecting what was coming.

`Well, when we were in the Sem, I used to see him... erm,...'

`You mean he was perving on you? Did that bother you?'

`Paul! Honestly! Great subtlety, Soldier! Eat your heart out, Shakespeare!
But, yeah, that's what I mean, though it's your word, not mine.  For
instance, I used to catch him sometimes intently watching me when I was
shirtless for any reason, not that I ever need much reason to be
shirtless. And I remember he `perved' on you too.'

`Hm. That didn't, and doesn't, worry me at all. In fact, I was flattered!
And I'd be flattered if I were you, as well.'

`What the hell do you mean by that, Paul?'

`Just what I said. Johnny's very attractive: he's handsome, a really
great-looking guy, something of a hunk, and a really lovely person as well,
don't you think?'

Tim went red, then white with shock and then anger.

`Handsome? Something of a hunk? What's that supposed to mean? Are you
trying to tell me that you, whom I have known almost all my life--or
obviously not known all my life--and are now sitting drinking my whisky,
are... are...'

`Are what, Tim? Gay?'

But Tim was silent, his mind working furiously. So Paul continued

`No, I'm not trying to tell you that. You could have worked that out for
yourself if you had tried. In fact, I'm surprised you didn't. No, what I'm
asking you is whether you think that Johnny is a great-looking, handsome
guy, and a lovely person.'

Tim spat out `God! You're really in the mood for shooting from the hip
tonight! But I suppose that's always been your way. Shoot first and ask
questions afterwards. Fuck, Paul, it's just not good enough! And for your
information, read my lips, no I don't think that Johnny is really
handsome. I don't think he's something of a hunk. I don't think about it at
all! Have some more whisky, and let's change the subject, for Pete's sake.'

There was silence for a while. Tim writhed uncomfortably in his chair, the
horsehair bristles poking through the fabric and irritating his bare back
and thighs. Paul watched him, an unfathomable sympathy in his eyes. Tim
caught the look, and it held him, and as they looked at each other, tears
began to well up in Tim's eyes, and he began to weep. He had not cried
properly in years, even when Sylvia had betrayed him, but he cried now,
like a little baby. No doubt the whisky had something to do with it. Paul
rushed over to the other side of the room and drew his friend into a tight
hug.

`It's okay, Tim, it's okay'.

`It's not okay. I told you again and again, I have totally fucked up my own
life. How can I possibly unfuck somebody else's life, especially a child
who's already fucked up by life?'

`Let's not talk about all of this now.'

`No, you don't understand. I want to. The point is...' and here Tim was
sobbing hard, and had to try and master himself `...the point is, that I
meant what I said, that Johnny is not in my opinion really handsome. In
my... in my opinion...' Tim pulled himself away from Paul's grasp, stood
up, and went to look out of the darkened window with his back to the room.

`...In my opinion Johnny is drop dead fucking gorgeous! I have been so
desperately in love with him since the Seminary, so hard that it hurts. All
the time, all the fucking time...' and he broke into sobs again.

He continued, when he had mastered himself, `I saw him draw close to you,
Paul, I watched him watching you, and I hated you for it. I could see he
found me attractive, but he adores you, Paul. I realized that only when I
was a Deacon. I decided that I could never go through life like this,
yearning after the unattainable, so I made the decision to turn myself into
a man before it was too late, rather than a heartbroken castrate existence
as a celibate, and what is worse, a faggoty castrate.'

Paul winced, but Tim continued,

`Yes, a real man. I bought porn magazines with girls' pictures and tried to
masturbate, with some success, but hey, when you're young even misshapen
carrots turn you on. I went to the pub and got drunk till I puked. I went
to football matches--I even supported Brighton and Hove Albion; there's
desperation for you--I learnt to strip an engine and put it back together
again. I joined the police, one of the most macho jobs I could think of. I
proposed to Sylvia and almost forced her to marry me. She was so slim,
almost like a guy... Oh God, I did a wicked thing to her. No wonder she
found me unsatisfactory in bed. I'm almost certain my supposed daughter is
not mine, because we hardly had sex after the marriage, let alone before
it!

`The divorce magistrate was right, you see. I'm a rascal and a loser. In
everything I've done I've failed spectacularly! And I'm as much of a
celibate as I would be if I had been ordained. And all this time, I've
played the sympathy card with all of you for all it was worth. Poor Tim,
abandoned by his tart of a wife, and shafted afterwards by her and her new
boyfriend. You see: I'm a hypocrite, all along. And now you know that I'm a
poof too. No, they would never trust me with a child to foster.' And he
sobbed again.

Paul got up and put his arms around his friend again, and held him until
the sobs died down. He asked

`Have you ever told anyone this before?'

`Never, not even myself, really.'

`You poor, poor, lamb. Tim, you can't spend your whole life yearning over
the impossible. But there is lots of possible happiness for you. You are
certainly suitable to foster; I know of no-one better, in fact. I know that
this is a strange time to bring it up, but fostering has brought such joy
to Johnny! Yes, you're right, Johnny and I are very much in love. We've
never said it to each other, and we probably never will; being faggoty
castrates...

Tim interrupted `...I'm so sorry, I didn't mean that to apply to you...'

`...not at all. As you know, I approve of saying what you mean as directly
as possible, and it is just a very direct way of saying celibate gays. And
since we both love being priests, we are going to have to be very careful
how much rein we give to our love. The love which I cannot express for
Johnny, I lavish on my boys at St Tar's. And Johnny lavishes love on his
Tim. There never was a boy who was so loved.'

`His Tim?'

`His Tim. His foster son. By some weird coincidence, his foster son has the
exact same name as you; he's another Tim Sullivan, as if one wasn't
enough. Perhaps you are distantly related,'

`That's extraordinary! I'd love to meet him.' Distracted for a minute, Tim
began to cheer up.

`And so you shall. But not for a while, because Tim is going away to summer
camp with the other St Tarcisius lads; he begged and begged so hard to be
allowed to go, in order to catch up with his friends, that we agreed. And
as there was no way that Johnny could afford a holiday this year, it seemed
a good solution. Besides, it'll give me a little time to be with Johnny on
our own.'

The normal talk had calmed Tim down, and he felt at last and suddenly
supremely at his ease, as if a huge burden had lifted off his
shoulders. Oddly, even talking about Johnny had not produced the same
agonies of heart that it had done for so long, even as recently as twenty
minutes ago. Tim felt waves of the deepest affection and gratitude to Paul
for having given him this occasion to say what he needed to say at last.

`Paul' he began. `I can't begin to thank you enough for helping me to
discuss and accept this. Just talking about it in a normal way for the
first time has been so amazing. I thought that if I told you the truth, you
would hate me, I would lose my job and all my friends. But in your
generosity you `came out' to me first, so that I might have the courage to
admit it to myself. Did you really know what was going on all along?

`Oh yeah, Tim. It's sad, really. In the seminary, you perved on Johnny,
Johnny perved on me, and until I fell for Johnny myself, I perved on you,
Tim. I've always had a thing for you, even at school. It was a sad little
love triangle, with each person aware only of their own love, and watching
their own love loving someone else.'

`Bloody hell! Was everybody in the Sem a poofter?'

`Not at all. Most weren't. But I suspect that there were a larger
proportion than in the general population. After all, if you are a devout
Catholic, especially these days, you would find it very difficult to
explain to your family and friends just why you are not bringing
girlfriends home. A vocation to priesthood is an honourable way not to find
girls attractive.

Paul went on,

`But I think that in the case of each of the three of us, there was a real
vocation.'

`The three of us?'

`Yes, you too, Timmy'.

`Paul, I really have fucked up, haven't I?'

`Oh come here and give me a kiss, you great butch thing, you!'




By contrast, the following morning, Tim was in a buoyant mood. He had been
thinking about a great deal of things after he went to bed, and he had an
idea to propose to Paul. Over breakfast, they talked. Tim said

`Paul, did I hear you say that you and Johnny can't afford a holiday this
year, and that this other Tim is going away with St Tar's. Do I assume that
you are not going to camp with them?

`Spot on. I have them all year round; this is my holiday, too.'

`So you and Johnny were just going to stay in the parish? Not much of a
holiday for Johnny, then. Why don't the two of you come here? The St Tar's
camp is for a month, isn't it? Turling Park sends all the boys who remain
here away to a boarding school in the highlands of Scotland for a fortnight
during that period. I'm going, too. So why don't the two of you come and
use my cottage for as much of that month as you want. I'll be here for part
of it, but there'll be two weeks when you'll have the place to
yourselves. What do you say?'

`Tim, that would be just perfect. It's really kind of you! I know that
Johnny will be thrilled, not just at your offer, but at the chance to catch
up with you again. Honestly, it's time the three of us grew up, and found
our friendship once more. It used to mean so much to us.'

And so it was arranged.



Tim Sullivan Junior was duly packed off to camp, too excited to eat his
breakfast on the morning of departure. Johnny drove him to St Tarcisius'
Home, the place that Tim had previously hoped he would never have to see
again, and there was a great reunion. He had a small bag with him with some
old clothes; bizarrely, they were new old clothes, and had to be specially
bought from Oxfam, as Tim's own clothes were all new; Johnny had impressed
on him how important it was not to make the other boys jealous, or feel
second-rate. Tim began to climb onto the bus, and then it suddenly struck
him that he would be leaving his new father for the first time. He suddenly
felt insecure, and he panicked, running back to Johnny, and hugging him
hard.

`Dad, I've changed my mind; I don't want to go!'

Johnny tugged him by the hair. `Listen, sunshine, you've got to learn to
run on your own for a while. We've had a blast over the last few
months. I'm going to miss you like crazy, but you'll be fine with all your
old friends. Go! go and have a wonderful time.' He kissed the top of Tim's
head, and pushed him towards the bus, hoping that Tim would not see the
tears in his own eyes, and hear what his heart was shouting `Tim, I don't
want you to go either!'

Johnny waved hard until the bus was out of sight. Then all the St Tar's
staff let out a huge cheer; "FREEDOM! YEAH!!" It was an annual custom, and
Johnny was laughing hard, despite the sudden ache in his heart at the first
departure of his son. They all went into the staff dining room to drink
bucks fizz and let their hair down. By tradition, the staff party went on
most of the day, and after an hour or two Johnny was already maudlin,
missing Tim desperately. The rest of the party became increasingly
difficult, and he was heartily glad when the last of the revellers went off
home. Then he felt arms round him from behind, and a chin on his shoulder.

`Just you and me, now, for a whole month'.

`Yeah, and Tim.'

`Tim's gone. He's having a whale of a time on the bus with his friends, and
he's forgotten you exist already.'

`No, not Tim Sullivan you silly bugger, but Tim Sullivan.'

`Oh, that Tim Sullivan. Well, only for a week. And it'll be fine, you'll
see.'



And so it was. Though Tim senior's vigorous fitness regime was rather more
energetic than either Johnny or Paul were prepared for.

Paul and Johnny arrived at Tim's cottage that same afternoon in one
car. Tim was out cutting grass, but he saw them and waved. He stopped the
engine, and jumped off the machine, loping easily over the cricket field
towards them, passing under the sprinklers as he ran. The water fell on his
tanned and muscular torso, and glinted in the sun. Johnny had to swallow
hard. This man, once a close friend, whom he had not seen for nearly ten
years had become utterly gorgeous. Johnny gulped again.

`Oh my! He's stunning! A real running wet dream!'

Paul nudged him hard in the ribs. `Don't you dare perv on him! You're
suppposed to perv on me, and anyway, Tim's still very uneasy with all that
sort of thing'.

The vision of beauty came near; though running, he was scarcely breathing
any more heavily than normal. He went straight up to Paul and flung his
arms around him, and kissed him full on the lips. Then he did the same to
Johnny. Both men were flabbergasted.

Johnny looked at Paul as if to say `uneasy with all that sort of thing,
eh?'

`There!' said Tim. `That's just to get us off on the right foot. We'll
start as we mean to go on. No more angst! No more bloody nonsense from me!
We are three mates, and we are going to have a real hoot this week! Come on
in. Oh, there's one problem; there's only one bedroom, I'm afraid, so if
you, Paul would kindly take your usual couch downstairs here...?'

`Fine!'

`...I'll take Johnny upstairs to my room and fuck him silly, like I've been
wanting to do for years!'

It took a moment for Johnny and Paul to realize that Tim was joking, but
when it had sunk in, the three of them were crying with laughter. And the
week got better from there. The boys had already left for their summer
break in Scotland, and so the three men would have the run of the entire
school and grounds, and have it all to themselves.

Tim tossed a coin for beds, and ended up with the couch himself. Paul and
Johnny got the big bed upstairs between them, which both excited and rather
alarmed them. They rather suspected that Tim had engineered the toss this
way, and had done so to give them what he thought they needed, but without
embarrassment to to the visitors for having pitched their host out of his
own bed.

The first night, Tim built a big bonfire where he usually did for the boys,
and the three friends cooked a sort of meal on it, and sat around until the
small hours of the morning, drinking wine, reminiscing, and quickly
rebuilding their relationship. Both Paul and Johnny realized how much they
had missed Tim, and on his part he was thrilled to the marrow to have his
closest friends back again. Above all, he now had two people with whom he
could discuss the things that had been burdening him for so long. He, who
was so good at helping other people through their difficulties, had had
nobody to talk to about his own. But all that was changed now, and the deep
loneliness he had borne for so many years was finally beginning to recede.

The three friends found their way somehow to bed that night and fell
immediately asleep.

About eight o'clock in the morning, when Tim had been up and fretting
around, bored, for two hours, he went up the stairs quietly to the
bedroom. There he saw Paul and Johnny side by side on the bed, the sheets
flung back because of the heat, they were not touching but lying on their
backs, still fast asleep. And both of them were tenting out the fronts of
their shorts with vast erections. Tim giggled quietly as an idea struck
him. He tiptoed downstairs and filled a jug with ice from the freezer. Then
returning to the room, he took a handful of ice in each hand and deftly
pushed a hand down the front of each sleeper's shorts. In a New York
second, the air was blue with foul language, and a moment later there was a
three-way wrestle on the bed going on, with each participant trying to
stuff ice into the others' various crevices. It was wonderful to be a kid
again. When all the ice had melted, the three of them lay entangled in each
others' limbs, like so many puppies, laughing and enjoying the moment.

`Paul' said Tim.

`Yeah?'

`The bed's wet'.

`So it is. Who's fault's that, I wonder?'


Pause.


`Tim', said Johnny.

`Yeah?'

`When's breakfast?'

`Not for ages yet. Put your running shoes on, both of you.'

`Why?'

`Run first, then breakfast'.

`Run? Me? Ooooooh, no. It's a while since I swore off that sort of thing
for life! I'm a born-again couch potato!'

`No breakfast, then.'

`Okay. Fine by me, we'll just go back to sleep and get up for lunch.'



Pause.



`I'm going to tickle you until you put your trainers on'

`Fuck you!'

`Right! You asked for it!'

Five minutes later, the three men were out of bed and jogging down the
drive together.




Despite their protests for Tim's benefit, neither Johnny nor Paul were as
unfit as they alleged, but they were certainly not nearly as fit as their
host. He made allowances for them, and set a gentle pace, so that they
could talk as they ran. While they trotted past a lake and waterfall, Paul
said quietly;

`This seems almost too simple, and at the same time, too good to be
true. My life normally seems so complicated, and yet here I am running
through this wonderful scenery, accompanied by this wonderful scenery' --he
looked at Tim and Johnny and smiled--`and I'm far happier than I was in my
complex own life. I have just rolled out of bed, and thrown on a pair of
trainers, and am now out and about in the same pair of shorts I slept in
and nothing else. And I feel wonderful. Does life get any better than
this?'

`Yes, it does.' said Tim gravely. `It gets better every day now, I find'.


They ran for about eight miles, and then returned to Turling Park. However,
Tim would not let them rest, but pushed them through a series of gruelling
physical exercises until every muscle group had, in Tim's case, received a
good workout, and in the others' cases caused what was beginning to hint at
some serious aches later. But Tim jumped up and jogged lightly off again,
and the others had no choice but, groaning, to follow him. However, he
didn't go far before he entered a big building and jogged down a tiled
corridor to a set of double doors.

`This', he said, `is one of the biggest pleasures of this place'. It was a
vast shower room, with about twenty heads, so that the whole room would
fill with hot spray. `It's made to take fifty boys at a time. Kick your
trainers off,' he said, setting the example, and throwing them outside the
door. He suddenly threw a switch, and the room was filled with freezing
rain. The three of them gasped with shock, but the water could not be
escaped. Slowly it warmed up until the temperature was almost as high as
they could bear. They took soap from the wall dispensers, and washed
themselves, both their bodies and their shorts.

`Simplicity.' said Tim, `This way you only need one pair of shorts; you
keep them clean all the time. And if the shorts are nylon, as all mine are,
they dry in no time'.

By common consent, they stood washing themselves close together far longer
than was necessary, drinking in the sight of each others' hands caressing
their own bodies, disappearing below the wet shiny shorts and washing below
in the secret areas. Then, at some unspoken moment, they started washing
each other slowly and tenderly. None of them could by this stage have said
which of the other two he loved more; every sense was straining to suck in
every detail of the others standing so close. The atmosphere between them
was electric; the sexual tension zinged in the tropical downpour as by
common consent they each pushed their neighbour's shorts to the floor and
kicked them away. They stood there in the steamy rain of the showers,
standing still, fascinated at what was before their eyes. They had never
before seen each other completely naked, and they just wanted to experience
the moment, wishing that it would last forever. They gently began to touch
and run their hands over each others' bodies; their palms felt the hard
ridges of each others' abdomens and their fingers brushed their pectoral
muscles and nipples until their penises strained and strained for
release. That release would certainly have come quickly had not the hot
water run out, and they were all suddenly drenched and deflated by an icy
downpour. The tension of the moment relaxed, and they waited together,
their hands in each others' hair, laughing with laddish and rather foolish
joy until they had accustomed themselves to the cold, and were enjoying its
refreshing vigour.

`You're going to ache so badly later' said Tim, turning the water
off. `We'd better give you a massage'. And on the benches in the changing
room they took turns kneading each others' limbs and torsos until each felt
utterly relaxed. Finally, they pulled on their wet clammy shorts and went
to dry off in the sunshine and eat breakfast.

They wandered around the grounds after breakfast, and talked of their
lives. They swam naked in the lake later on; Tim said that he had always
wanted to do that, but with the boys around it was not a good idea. Then
they lunched lightly with a bottle of white wine. After a siesta, Tim woke
them again and took them to the gym, where they worked out under his
direction for an hour, followed by another swim, this time in the
pool. Then the three of them lay in the afternoon sun; the priests prayed
their breviaries while they tanned, and then they talked and talked. At
sunset they lit the bonfire. Tim sang to them with a passion that he had
never felt before, and in the circle of the firelight their love blossomed
and grew strong.

They were all exhausted by eleven o'clock, and went indoors. Tim turned to
go to the sofa as on the night before, but by one consent Johnny and Paul
each took a hand and led him upstairs, where the three fell onto the (now
dry) bed. The three of them wrapped their arms around each other, and
relaxed into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Each day the week following was like this, and both Paul and Johnny grew
visibly younger-looking. Their waistlines tightened, their tans deepened,
and they grew clearly more relaxed. The love that the three felt often came
to the surface, but one of them would usually head off the passion with a
funny remark or a practical joke. As the end of the first week drew near,
they began to sadden, as Tim prepared to go away to join the Turling Park
boys in Scotland. Not that the packing took long. As Tim said:

`For the journey, shorts, t-shirt, trainers. For changing into, another
pair of shorts, another t-shirt. Plus, wallet, sunglasses, toothbrush,
towel, rosary. I think that's all I'll need for a fortnight.'

`The simple life' said Johnny admiringly.

Tim gave them no warning of his departure; he simply left early one morning
while the others still slept, leaving a note on the kitchen table.



At first, Paul and Johnny were lost without Tim, and rather depressed. But
their joy at their good fortune at being where they were soon reasserted
itself, and they resumed the vigorous regime that Tim had bullied them
into. He had left his school keys for them, and they were able to continue
to use the gym, pool and showers as before. In return, they were supposed
to keep an eye on the buildings and drive the lawn mower around the cricket
pitch once or twice.

Paul was amused. `How many businesses would employ the managing director of
their rival to look after their property in their absence?' But he took the
opportunity to look over the wonderful facilities at Turling Park and plan
how to persuade the diocese to invest more in St Tarcisius' Home.

And he and Johnny found after all that the absence of either of the Tims
was no brake at all on their fun. They regressed to childhood; they grew
daring, scampering naked up and down the corridors of the college, playing
hide and seek in the empty classrooms. They found the school uniform store,
and tried on the drab uniforms, grimacing at the scratchy rough nylon of
the boys' shorts. They climbed the climbing frames in the gym and swung
from the ropes, doing Tarzan impressions. They had fun in the chemistry
labs, trying to remember from their schooldays what made things go
bang. They made rude pots in the pottery room, and, giggling, hid them
among the prize exhibits on display, with false names attached. They found
the headmaster's study and, dressed only in school shorts and his academic
gowns, sat at his desk drinking his sherry.


And then they found the metalwork classroom, with its bizarre display of
fetters, yokes, collars and handcuffs hanging on the walls. They shouted
with laughter, thinking the dungeon ironmongery was hugely camp, and
assumed that the teacher responsible was both gay and quite
self-mocking. They found the keys to the locks in the teacher's desk
drawer, and tried on the various fetters and collars, photographing each
other. Paul hung Johnny on the wall in manacles from a hook, Johnny locked
Paul into a sort of yoke that held his hands out on either side of his
neck.

`If we took our shorts off, we could sell these photographs for a fortune
on the internet' Paul joked.

`It's no joke' said Johnny, yanking down Paul's shorts, and taking a
snap. `I've got my retirement to save for'.

Five minutes later, with a pair of handcuffs on his wrists, Johnny suddenly
went quiet.

`What's up, Johnners?' said Paul, concerned that he had fastened them too
tight.

`Paul, there's blood on these cuffs'.

`Shit'. Suddenly the two of them shivered, and unlocked all the irons they
had put on each other. They hung them back on the wall and went to put the
keys in the drawer. Their mood was broken. As Paul pulled the drawer out he
caught sight of a photograph. He took it out and looked at it, turning
white. It was a boy, an adolescent, fourteen or fifteen years old, dressed
only in school shorts and wearing presumably the same yoke that Paul had
worn. The boy had fetters on his ankles too, and he looked the picture of
misery. A short search revealed half a dozen similar pictures. Suddenly the
two men wanted to get out of the room. They felt sick.

For the first time in a fortnight, Johnny and Paul went back to the cottage
and dressed properly in shirts and trousers. The naughtiness of playing in
the school had somehow lost its appeal.

`You know,' said Paul, `St Tar's boys call this place Alcatraz. They don't
seem to be far off the mark'.




The following day, the friends resumed their active regime, though they
confined their visits to the school to the gym, the pool and the
showers. They simply did a routine patrol through the other corridors to
check on security.

`There is one thing we haven't done, though' said Paul, one afternoon.

`What's that?'

`Gone through Tim's clothes and tried them on!'

`You're awful! Paul, you are such a fabric queen! Does it really turn you
on to wear other people's clothes?'

`You have no idea! Particularly when they are as gorgeous as you or Tim.'

`Well there's one thing, at any rate. It won't take long. Something tells
me that Tim's wardrobe is not going to give you a lot of scope'.

But Johnny was wrong. Tim's collection of sportsgear, especially shiny
nylon shorts, was extensive.

`A little bit of a fetish here, I think,' said Paul, gleefully. `I'm really
disappointed I didn't find this little hoard sooner; it'd be fun to go
running in a different pair each day'. But he tried them all on, anyway,
and then insisted that the reluctant Johnny do the same. Another cupboard
turned out to be full of uniforms. That was a real surprise. There were
Tim's old police uniforms, but also an imposing collection of military
ones. Since Tim and both Paul and Johnny were slim and fit, the uniforms
looked magnificent on them, and the camera came out again.

Then there were suits; about five really good suits, hardly worn, and three
new pairs of leather trousers. But no underwear, anywhere.

`Why three identical pairs of leather trousers?' said Paul. `What a lot you
can learn from a guy's wardrobe!'

`What a lot you can learn from watching a guy learning from another guy's
wardrobe' said Johnny, highly amused. `Look, Paul, what is it, this
underwear thing? What have you got against it?'

`Nothing at all' he replied. `Underwear is very useful if you've got a
hernia, or you are incontinent, or unhygienic, or you want to kill off your
sperm, or you're so impossibly hugely endowed that you can't even carry
your own weight'.

Look,' he went on. `Tim and I went to the same school, as you know. In
fact, we were really close friends, and we were both what the Americans
call `jocks'; Tim has carried all that on, but I've let it slide,
rather. At school I used to be even fitter than he was. Our school used to
insist that none of us ever wore anything under our sports kit; they said
it was unhygienic, with all the sweating going on. Dead right, I think. But
it was the jock thing to do; it was manly and virile, the badge of our
status, to do without underwear all the time, particularly when we heard
that Mohammed Ali never wore it. Both Tim and I swore off underwear at
fourteen, and have never changed our minds, nor have had cause to regret
it. And others at our school who admired us did the same. By that age, both
Tim and I were doing our own washing, so our families never knew. Happy
now?'

`Well, I understand a bit better, but I still don't get why everyone I love
seems to feel the need to go without!'




We lit our evening bonfire as usual, and we lay together with a bottle of
wine, each of us wearing a pair of Tim's leather trousers (and nothing
underneath, at Paul's insistence), looking at each other in the light of
the flames, and watching the flickering light playing on our bare
torsos. We drank each other in more greedily than the wine; there was no
need for words. We moved closer together; I lay against the scratchy trunk
of a tree, my legs wide apart and Paul came to lie with his back against my
chest. I folded my legs around his waist and pulled him to me with my arms
around his torso. His hand began running up and down my leathered thigh,
while I let my hands roam over his smooth chest. I leant my head over his
shoulder and began to blow gently in his ear. I explored its whorls and
cavities with my tongue, while he gasped. I wanted to taste every inch of
this man I loved. I clenched my hands hard on his pectorals as I bit gently
on his earlobe. I could see his hard cock straining against the leather,
and the sweat running down his beautiful chest, catching the firelight, as
he writhed ecstatically in my grasp. The same writhing had made me
painfully erect, my cock trapped in the tight leather as Paul frotted and
rubbed at my groin with the waistband of his trousers. The sensation, at
once painful and so very sweet made me clench my teeth on his earlobe and
crush his nipples in my fists. Together we cried out and came at the same
moment, subsiding into each other's arms in ecstasy.

After a minute or two, Paul turned in my arms and began to kiss me
passionately. We rolled on the grass there in the firelight, trying to suck
the life out of each other--or was it trying to give each other our own
life? We paused for breath, me underneath, and Paul on top, his beloved
handsome face only a couple of inches from my own. I gazed at him, my chest
suddenly constricting as I felt a rush of the most ardent emotion.

`Oh Paul', I began, `I lo...' but he covered my mouth with his own.

When we separated again, he said,

`Don't say it. Don't say the L word. There's still too much at stake.'

I was saddened, but agreed. We got up and went hand-in-hand to Tim's
cottage, stripped off the leather trousers, peeling them away from our
caked privates (ow!) and tried to clean them up as best we could. Then we
got into Tim's tiny shower together, and washed each other tenderly.

We each put on a pair of Tim's shorts and went to bed, holding hands, lying
and looking at each other until we could keep awake no more.




The following morning, we ran as usual; this time Paul insisted that we ran
wearing the official school shorts `out of solidarity for the poor bastards
who have to wear them all the time'. By this time much fitter, we were
really able to speed along, and there was no breath for talking. So when we
reached the waterfall, I took Paul's arm.

`Paul, I want to talk a minute.'

`Anything you want, baby. And I mean anything'. He smiled wickedly. `But
I'm only too glad to stop, because these rough shorts are giving my tender
bits no end of gyp. Why don't they just make them of sandpaper? It would
surely be kinder. Poor bloody sods here at the school have nothing else to
wear, ever. Perhaps they are designed to cool their adolescent ardour!'

But I was serious.

`Paul, up to this point, it's all been fun. But last night we crossed a
barrier. Things are different now. We may not have said the L word, but we
have had orgasm together, and taken physical, sexual pleasure in a way that
is different from what was before. We could kid ourselves before that we
were playing. But last night was not playing.

`I certainly enjoyed myself!'

`Paul, be serious for a minute! Do you think we actually did the deed?'

`The big nasty? Well we didn't bugger each other, if that's what you mean.'

`Did we have sex?'

Paul sighed. `Well, sort of. If you're splitting hairs, we helped each
other to achieve orgasm. But it wasn't directly intended. I wasn't directly
trying to make you cum, and I suppose you weren't directly trying to make
me cum. It just happened, though you might fairly say that our activities
made it pretty inevitable. Don't worry about it, darling, just enjoy the
memory. I certainly do!'

And Paul laid a gentle kiss on my forehead, kissing away the worry lines he
saw there. He added, smiling:

`And don't ask me to hear your confession, because if I absolve an
accomplice, we'll both be excommunicated.'

`Let's swim under the waterfall.'

So we kicked off our trainers, and jumped in the water, and frolicked for a
while before running back to the cottage.



Tim returned a few days later. We had frantically tidied everything up, and
put everything back in its place, as well as we could remember, but we
still felt anxious that he might detect that we had been on the rampage. He
came breezing in looking the picture of health and fitness. Bitch. He
floored us with his first sentence.

`I hope you girls had fun with all those uniforms while I was away!'

We didn't know what to say.

`Well I certainly hope so: I was having no end of fantasies imagining you
in all the various outfits! I can see you both in the leather trousers,
now.'

We must have looked guilty, for Tim gave a wicked laugh.

`Well, we've only got two full days before the horrors return from
Scotland, and a week before you go, so we'd better make the most of it'.

He had us into all the uniforms again, until he decided that we were all
best in the leather trousers. And that was that for the evening, all three
of us. I wonder now if Tim hadn't bought three pairs in anticipation of our
coming. No pun intended. In some ways wearing them that evening
desentitized us to that particular garment, for Tim kept chattering merrily
in a way that kept any sexual tension out of our interaction.

It also gave us an opportunity to bring up what we had found in the
metalwork room. Tim looked grim.

`Thompson. The boys call him "The Screw", and they're all scared of him. He
certainly gives me the creeps, but as far as I know, he's never laid a
finger on a boy in a sexual way; he has only used those irons as short-term
punishment. But he uses them too frequently, and now that you have told me
about the pictures, I'll keep my eyes and ears open. It ought to be stopped
in any event. It's pretty seedy.'

At the end of the week, we went home. Paul had to prepare for the new term
at St Tarcisius, and I couldn't wait any longer to see my beloved son home
again.


CHAPTER 7


After the holidays, life returned to normal. The autumn drew on, and Tim
Sullivan Jnr (as Paul and I now jokingly called him) went off on his
bicycle each morning to his new school, St Thomas More's Catholic Secondary
School for Boys. He fitted in happily enough; for a while I don't think
anyone noticed he was there, really. He used his usual skill of blending
into the background and lying low, though after a term or two he made
something of a name for himself in gymnastics, since he was in such good
physical shape. He was found to be of above average intelligence, as I
suspected, and his reports were good, though unremarkable. He rarely
brought any friends home except, from time to time, a nice sporty lad
called Jack, nor went to their homes, seeming to be content with his old
Dad, Teresa, and his Uncle Paul who came and spent the night at least once
a week, and often visited for meals at other times. I was sorry that Tim
Senior did not find time to come up, but once term had recommenced, the
needs of the grounds, and even more of his boys, who spent a precious hour
every evening in his cottage, meant that he was never free. We spoke often
on the phone, however.

Tim Jnr grew over his fear of sleeping alone, and grew to love his attic
room, where he surrounded himself with all the things that boys of his age
like. I had warned him that priests didn't earn a lot of money, and the big
expensive shopping blow-out we had when he first moved in was going to be a
very rare, and possibly unique, event. He didn't mind, and seemed to manage
on the pocket money I could find for him, plus little extras he managed to
charm out of parishioners from time to time, especially at Christmas, when
he benefitted from the bonanza that priests tend to receive from their
parish. For me it was bottles of wine and whisky; for Tim, computer games,
footballs and book tokens. The parish had adopted him as a sort of mascot,
and he revelled in the attention. Boys in residential homes are starved of
attention, but now he had amassed an audience of several hundred!

It was now early summer again, when Tim had been with me for about a year,
and we had settled down very happily indeed. Paul had indeed been correct
that we were made for each other, and I blessed him for his intuition. The
weather had grown unseasonably hot, and I could hear Tim in the attic room
above me tossing and turning on his bed as indeed I was doing on mine. I
heard a car pull up outside erratically, crunching into something, followed
by a big crash as if a dustbin had been knocked over.

`Shit'. I thought. `Another drunk'.

The doorbell rang and rang. This happens to priests rather a lot; drunks
and tramps think that the presbytery is the very place to get whatever they
want. Which is usually money, and the time is almost always unsocial.

As usual, I was only in my shorts, so I pulled on a t-shirt and went to the
door.

I was confronted with a most terrible sight. A man stood swaying in front
of me, his hair and face a mess of blood, his clothes torn. I gasped. The
vision spoke indistinctly,

`Johnny, Johnny, please help, please...'

and fell forward into my arms. I was frantic. It was Paul! I half carried,
half dragged him inside to the sofa. I heard Tim call down

`Dad, who is it?'. I didn't want him to see Paul like this, so I said as
calmly as I could, `It's your Uncle Paul, Son. Go back to bed.' But he must
have heard something in my voice, so he came downstairs and saw his beloved
Uncle in that dreadful state. I fully expected hysterics, but was reassured
when he said calmly to me: `Shall I ring for an ambulance, Dad?'

`Yes, Son, good idea'. Inside, it was me who was nearly in hysterics.

Paul started slurring again `please, please...'

`Oh God! Paul, the ambulance is coming; hold on, my love'.

Paul began to get agitated.

`NO, NO, please, please, St Tar's, breaking it up, boys in danger, please
p'leeease'

Now I understood: Police. I shouted to Tim `Tim, urgent, Police to St
Tars!'. Paul collapsed back in relief and closed his eyes. Soon after, his
breathing became erratic; I put my ear to his chest and could hear that his
heart beat was irregular, too. `O please God, no!'

I ran for the holy oils, then absolved and anointed my beloved as the tears
ran down my face. I clutched him to me hard `Oh Paul, Paul, please don't
die. I have never said that I loved you! Oh Paul my love, my love, my
heart!' I was frantic.

I had forgotten that Tim was there listening, but he said to me quietly
`Dad, I'm sorry, but you'd better put Uncle Paul down; there may be
internal injuries.'

He was right. I wasn't thinking straight. I stood up, my t shirt covered
with my beloved's blood, in a mental state little better than his. It
seemed like an eternity, but it must have been only a minute or two before
the ambulance came. Tim, still calm, let them in, and his tranquility
brought me to a sense of myself again.

The ambulance men were friendly, steady and professional. While Tim brought
me a clean t shirt, they asked me for Paul's details, and for his next of
kin. I told them that we were the nearest thing Paul had to family, and
that I thought Paul had named me as his next of kin. So Tim and I got to
ride in the ambulance to the hospital.

On the way, Tim talked to me to keep me calm; he said that when he had
called for the police to go to St Tarcisius', it had been unnecessary;
someone else had called both them and the fire service. And of course, that
makes sense; it must have taken Paul at least twenty minutes to drive from
St Tar's to my home, especially in the state he was in. It still baffles me
to think how he managed to drive at all, though it is wonderfully
comforting to think that he turned for help to me first.

At the hospital, Paul was rushed into emergency care, and from then on
there was nothing we could do but sit in the corridor in our bare feet,
shorts and t-shirts leaning against each other for comfort. We said the
rosary on our fingers and just waited. Tim remained calm as ever, and my
heart, even in its distressed state, swelled with pride in my beloved son.

`Don't cry, Dad, it'll all be fine. You'll see.'

My son was no fool. He had always known that I loved Paul: he saw the way
we interacted, but had the good sense to keep his knowledge to himself. I
dared not ask him whether he thought my feelings were returned, because no
doubt he would know that too. And I wasn't sure I'd be able to cope with
the answer--whichever answer it was. I thought back to the night nearly a
year before when Paul had put his hand over my mouth to prevent me telling
him I loved him, and the thought tormented me now.

A kindly nurse brought us a blanket and a warm drink, seeing that we had no
pockets in our shorts, and therefore no money with us, and we fell asleep
in each other's arms. An hour or so later, a policeman called and woke us
in order to take a statement. We learnt what had happened at St Tarcisius
before and after the attack on Paul.

A drunken man whose child had just been taken into care and placed at St
Tarcisius by Social Services had gone on the rampage, attacking Paul with
an iron bar and running amok. Eventually he set fire to the whole
building. Thanks to Paul's warning, no lives had been lost, and the boys
and staff were being taken care of in a local school. The man was in
custody; the irony was that his son was not even at St Tar's but away for
the night, staying with his grandmother.

St Tarcisius Home for Boys, however, was no more; it had been entirely
gutted by fire; the roofs had fallen in. All the students and resident
staff had lost everything they owned except the night clothes they stood up
in.

The news cast another gloomy pall over us after the policeman left. St
Tarcisius' Home had saved so many unhappy lives over its hundred years of
existence. Tim was especially downcast. It had been the place he called
home for eighteen months, and had been the beginning of his happier
life. He was also worried for his friends who were now homeless.

But with the dawn came better news of Paul. He was safe, thank God, though
terribly battered and weak. The wounds to his head were all superficial,
though they looked so awful; the important thing was that his skull was not
broken. His right collarbone, however, was shattered, and the shoulder
itself was dislocated and his left forearm and upper arm were broken where
he had tried to shield his body from the iron bar. Several ribs were
broken, and there was extensive bruising and lacerations over all his
body. The irregular breathing and heartbeat that had so freaked me were the
result of the shock he had taken, and these had both now
stabilized. Apparently, the fact that he had become so fit on our last
summer holiday, and had got his muscles so strong and firm had probably
saved his life. We had both kept up our exercise since.

We were allowed in to see him for a few minutes, and we each took hold
gently of a bandaged hand and spoke to him of our love, though we were
unaware whether he could hear us. A nurse came in, and ushered us out, and
we left. It was as we were at the front entrance that we both suddenly
realised that we were still in bare feet, clothed only in football shorts
and t-shirts. Well that was not too strange, since it was hot summer, but
several miles to walk in bare feet during morning rush hour was a little
daunting. Then Tim thought of Teresa, and slipped in to charm the
receptionist into letting him phone her. She arrived shortly, full of
concern for Paul.



Paul recovered slowly in hospital, and I was with him when at last he
woke. His first thought was to smile at me,

`Hello, handsome.'

and then he said, his face clouding over:

`My boys?'

`They're all fine, Paul; nobody except you was in the least hurt.'

After Paul had visibly relaxed, we chatted quietly for a while, and I was
able to fill him in on the details, which were nearly all sad news for him.

`All the boys have been rehoused with families or at the Seminary or the
ones with the short straw at Turling Park, poor sods. It's a bit tougher on
the staff, because they have lost everything, but the diocese and the local
authority are seeing to them. I guess there'll be a huge insurance
claim. You don't have to worry; it's all being taken care of.'

But then I had to break to him the news that St Tarcisius' was destroyed
beyond the hope of rebuilding, and that with it he had lost everything he
himself possessed. I hated to have to tell him. But he looked at me and
said quietly

`at least I still have something which means more to me than anything
else'.

I looked enquiringly at him.

`You, above all' he said. `But Tim, too. Both Tims, in fact.'




A fortnight later he was discharged into my care. Tim and I turned up at
the hospital with a pair of my shorts and a t-shirt, since he had lost all
his own clothes in the fire, and those he had been wearing on the night of
the attack had to be thrown away. Somehow the nurses got him dressed, but
from there on it was down to us. It was a terrible job to get him into the
car with both arms in plaster; we couldn't even grasp him around the torso
because of his broken ribs. In the end, we sat him on the passenger seat
and swung his legs in. Getting him out wasn't quite as bad, and I was
relieved to get him upstairs and into my own bed which, being bigger, was
better for the purpose than the guest bed he had always used before.

As he eased back onto the pillows he said to me

`Oh Johnny! It's good to be home.'

I just smiled down at him, thrilled that he thought of my home as his, then
I leant forward and kissed his forehead.

`Mmm. That's nice. That reminds me', he continued, smiling `I have this
faint memory that somebody not a million miles from here told me that he
loved me when I was bleeding myself dry over his sofa'.

Shit! He had remembered, even through all that. So, the moment had come,
and I was dreading the time of acknowledgement.

`Oh Paul: I'm so sorry; it came out all on its own! I couldn't help it; I
was so terrified I was going to lose you that I didn't know what I was
saying.'

`Are you saying it wasn't true, then?'

 `No, never that. I can't deny it; I do love you. Always, everywhere, with
all my heart. And I simply couldn't have lost you without telling you'.

`And now you've got me into your bed at last, you old pervert, hmm? Still,
there won't be much hot passion with me plastered up like this, so I think
the Vatican can relax for now.'

I think Paul saw my distress, so he grew serious for a minute. `Come here',
he said. `Kiss me again'. So I did, on the cheek.

`No, you blushing virgin, properly!' So I kissed him on the lips, so very
gently. And he turned and whispered in my ear `And I love you too, and I
think I always have done from the first day I saw you at the Seminary. And
now that I have found you again, I find that I cannot bear being away from
you; my heart sings when I see you, when I smell you, when I hear the sound
of your voice, I love you always and forever'.

There were no tears, but a silent content. I got onto the bed and lay by
his side. And Tim, who had been watching from the doorway, having heard
everything, tiptoed out and left us together.




It was Paul who broke the silence with a little giggle.

`Ow! my ribs! Johnny: I've got this little problem'.

`Yeah, what is it?'.

`Actually, it's a big problem; I desperately need to take a leak'.

`Well, you can stand, you can walk, you can use the loo, can't you?'

It was then that the problem struck me, and I was both amused and
appalled. How was he going to extract his little friend to do his business,
with both arms in rigid plaster? He looked at my consternation and tried to
laugh.

`I've had Nurse Nasty doing it for the last couple of days, after they took
out that bloody catheter. It was so embarrassing! To have you do it will be
infinitely preferable, believe me.'

`It wasn't your embarrassment I was thinking of; it was mine!'

Paul only smiled.

It didn't work out well at first. If we were simply two mates, no doubt it
would have been fine, bar a little embarrassment, which a couple of crude
jokes would have solved. I got Paul off the bed and once he was on his
feet, he walked to the bathroom easily. But when the moment came to begin
operations, my hand began to shake with the sexual tension there was always
between us, and the same tension made him nervous when I approached the leg
of his shorts to extract his pride and joy. In short, he dried up.

`Hell, I'm not going to be able to go now!' he said.

But, nothing daunted, I found his penis and drew it out with trembling
fingers. All I could think was `Here I am, holding Paul's cock at last'. A
similar thought must have crossed Paul's mind, because he began to grow
hard. That was the end as far as peeing was concerned. And then I grew hard
too.

`This is so fucking humiliating!' he said, and then characteristically
started laughing, and yelping in pain from his ribs. In a moment we were
both hysterically cackling. When we recovered, I had another idea; Before
he could protest, I jerked down his shorts over his erect penis (`Ow,
careful!') and spun him round to sit down on the loo. I reached over for
the shower head, and turned the tap to cold. I aimed at his groin'.

`Johnny, no, please, NO!! Aaargh! You BASTARD! I HATE YOU!! Oh shit, that's
cold. Haha! Oh! my poor ribs!'.

He swung himself from the waist and clonked me on the side of the head as
hard as he could with a heavy plastered arm, but I pushed him back and
persisted until his equipment was soft. His urine released then, and he
sighed with relief. I said smugly

`If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!'.



That night Tim and I tried to undress Paul. There was no way we could get
the t shirt off, twist as we might, without causing him excruciating pain,
and so we resorted to scissors. He would have to stay barechested until the
plaster casts came off. Naturally this distressed me enormously. Not!

I then went off to sleep in the guest room. But Paul spend a dreadful night
on his own, with all the little discomforts that hot weather, illness and
incapacity bring, literally being unable to move a finger to alleviate
them, and unable to wake me through two doors when he called for help. When
I went in to see him in the morning, late, since I thought to let him catch
up on sleep, I found him exhausted and drawn, sorry for himself, and a
little fractious and tearful. So the next night, I slept on the floor by
his bed, which was almost where I wanted really to be, and tended his
little needs through the night. It made me so happy just to be near him,
listening to his breathing close to me, and taking in his special
smell. Tim suggested we move the spare bed in for me and put it next to
Paul, and that is what we did. I could lie awake and just look my fill at
my beloved, asking myself `who needs sex?' I nearly convinced myself, too!

Tim's sixteenth birthday came and went; he was so much part of our lives
now that I could not imagine life without him. His quiet logical presence,
so accepting of the strange relationship between Paul and me, gave me daily
more joy. There seemed to be no problems of adolescent angst, and even the
humiliating agony of acne hardly troubled him. His schoolwork gave no cause
for concern, though the headmaster told me that he was very reluctant to
join in the violent games that most boys enjoy; the school had a good rugby
tradition, and Tim would be physically sick with apprehension before every
game. I went into school and had a chat with the head, and mentioned
confidentially the fact that Tim had had an abusive past, which might have
led to an exaggerated fear of violence. Secretly, I suspected that the real
reason Tim hated rugby was that he was simply gay. So, every day, when the
other boys were hitting each other around on the rugby pitch or soccer
field, Tim was allowed to go to the school gym weights room, pumping
iron. It was already beginning to show in his deepening chest, his
broadening shoulders and his narrow waist and hips. And as a result, he was
beginning to attract attention from the girls who liked to hang around the
school gate, and the boys who simply tend to hang around the jocks. It
rather amused the three of us to think of Tim being thought of as a jock!

The hot weather, which continued well into the autumn, meant that I had to
wash Paul three or four times a day. It was hardly a chore. I loved tending
to his beautiful smooth body, kneeling on the bed astride his slim waist,
and our intimacy grew apace. I had to do almost every action for him from
feeding him every mouthful to cleaning him when he went to the
lavatory. But I loved every minute of it and would let nobody else
help. Our summer holiday the year before both of us had regarded as
something different, out of the ordinary conduct of our
relationship. Midsummer madness had taken us over then, and we treasured
the memory without thinking that it would be the norm. We had both taken
our vows of celibacy freely and joyfully, and neither of us took that line
beloved of certain High-Church Anglican clergy who thought that celibacy
was simply not having sex with women. But would we ever have taken those
vows at all if we had known at the time that our love was reciprocated?
Probably, because our vocations meant so much to us both.

We were also both on the more traditional wing of the Church, and we really
believed that the consummation of our love which we both desired would not
be a good idea. So there we were; not an ideal situation. But we loved each
other, and loved each other's company, chattering about absolutely anything
and nothing, so I was getting very little writing done which was annoying
my publisher. No doubt it was all for the best when first one, and then
another plaster came off Paul's arms, and he was released into the world
once more. But I missed having my little captive audience; I missed the
intimacy, frankly.

Paul had lost all his belongings in the fire, as I said, and at first he
twitted me, saying that he wanted me to outfit him as I had Tim. But there
really was not the money any more; that had been a one-off, there was not a
lot left, and Tim had to be my first priority. So, since we were the same
size and build, I told him he could share my clothes with me. I knew the
naughty effect that would have on him. And truth to tell, we both found the
idea very intimate and rather erotic; it served as a kind of secret
surrogate bodily love. Thereafter, whenever either of us bought clothes
they went into the common wardrobe.

Our weeks of intimacy had blunted the sad loss of St Tar's for Paul, but
there was little doubt that he had lost a part of himself too, because he
had loved the work, and adored the boys. He missed them all and worried
about them terribly. I had had to hold the phone to his ear while he made
detailed enquiries about each of them, and where they were, and how they
were doing. When the plaster came off his arms, I had to drive him round to
see all the boys, so that he could see for himself that they were well
treated. He worried most about the ones at Turling Park, and spent a lot of
energy unsuccessfully trying to convince the headmaster there (with guilty
glances at his sherry bottle) that none of `his' boys would benefit at all
from the metalwork classes. He couldn't come out with his accusations
against The Screw without admitting that he had himself been rampaging
round the school during the holidays!

Tim having been so easy, and there being a lot of homeless boys since the
destruction of St Tar's, Paul (now living with me) and I began to apply our
minds to fostering again. It was hard to choose among the boys, but in the
end we decided to take two of those who had been sent to Turling Park, and
of whom Paul had been particularly fond. So Marc, who was 12, and Conor, an
Irish boy of 10, arrived in time for Christmas. Tim was delighted with the
prospect of two new brothers, and spent all his free time decorating the
spare room for them to share. This left us with a problem. There was no
bedroom left for Paul. Tim, characteristically, offered to move in with his
soon-to-be-brothers, but we told him that we thought that he needed his
privacy. Which, let the reader understand, meant that we knew very well
just how badly sixteen year old young men need their privacy, and we didn't
want Marc and Conor finding out about all that sooner than they would find
it out for themselves anyway. And secretly, we thought that if we left
ourselves no other option, Paul and I could continue sharing a room with a
clear conscience. As long as we had separate beds, nobody could point the
finger. We hoped.

From the first, Marc and Conor were a complete delight, though they were
far noisier and much more rumbustuous that Tim had ever been. Paul,
believing that the St Tarcisius phase of his life had come to an end, had
decided himself to be the fostering parent, and so he was `Dad' to them,
and I was Uncle Johnny. It worked fine; Teresa had easily fallen back in to
the role of part-time-mother, and she said that she felt ten years
younger. But really, Tim did most of the work with the lads; he was truly
wonderful with them. Even then, Paul and I wondered whether he had done
this sort of thing before; he seemed a complete natural with younger
boys. The first time they saw Tim shirtless in the bathroom, the boys
conceived a towering awe of this godlike muscular hunk who was their new
big brother; they started walking like him, imitating all his little catch
phrases, and dressing like him, never wearing their blue jeans again, but
sticking to khaki chinos and slim-fitting white jeans. And on his part, he
kept an eye out for them at school; he took them there, and brought them
home. He picked them up and comforted them when they got hurt (which was
often, for both the boys were very athletic and competitive), and even
mended their clothes. He sorted out their many quarrels and occasionally,
when he thought we were not looking, clouted them over the head for some
misdemeanour. He taught them to serve Mass reverently, and would pray the
rosary with them every night. In our own prayers, Paul and I used to thank
God fervently for Tim, for we should never have managed the lads so well
without him. And the boys simply adored him.

As he began to get fit once more, Paul started to worry that being made
jobless by the loss of St Tarcisius' Home, the Bishop would now send him to
be a Parish Priest at the other end of the diocese and we would be
separated just as our life together was becoming so rich. He hated the
thought of being far from Tim, too, for the two had become closer and
closer, and separating Tim from Marc and Conor just was not to be thought
of. Then finally, just before Easter, the summons came. Instead of just
sending for Paul, however, unexpectedly the Bishop sent for us both, and
so, with our three sons in tow (all in smart suits), we set off to hear
Paul's fate.

The Bishop was charming, and put us at our ease straight away,
complimenting Tim on being a fine young man and a credit to his father, and
then asking the two lads about school football statistics, complimenting
them on their prowess. He was a canny man, who knew that even in the case
of priests, the way to parents' hearts is through flattery of their
children. He then sent the three lads out to feed the ducks in the local
pond, (Tim was a little chagrined at that) and finally turned to us. He got
to the point straight away. There were, he confirmed sadly, no plans to
rebuild St Tarcisius. The project was just too large to contemplate, even
with the insurance money. The land would be sold for housing. Therefore,
henceforward all Catholic boys would have to be sent to Turling Park.

I saw Paul's look of horror, and I groaned inwardly. However, the Bishop
had not finished. The Headmaster and Governors of Turling Park had agreed
to the construction of a Catholic house in the grounds of the College, and
the Bishop wanted Paul as its Warden, and me as its Chaplain, both jobs to
be residential and full-time. The insurance money from the destroyed Home,
plus the money for the sale of the land, should pay for the building work,
and also provide a substantial endowment for the new House. The school
would provide the land free of charge, since it would benefit from the
greater numbers (hence getting more money from the state), and be able to
hire more staff overall, to everybody's satisfaction, and the new St
Tarcisius House would mean that the boys could benefit from the wonderful
resources of Turling Park while still having the loving family atmosphere
that had always been a feature of St Tarcisius' Home for Boys. The best of
both worlds, in other words. In the meantime, we could both continue at St
Edwards until the new building was ready. The boys made homeless by the
destruction of their old home could stay at the seminary for the time
being, but would be admitted gradually to the existing Turling Park
buildings as soon as places became available, and when the new building was
ready, hopefully in two years' time or so, they could all move in
together. In the meantime, Paul could go in on a regular basis to keep in
touch with the boys. By this time, Paul was grinning from ear to ear. His
recovery was complete.

We celebrated that night with champagne and a big dinner. Even Marc and
Conor got a little champagne, and a lot tipsy. Tim carried both of them up
to bed as they fell asleep.


CHAPTER 8


Tim Sullivan Senior had enjoyed his little game with Paul and Johnny. The
uniforms had not been his at all, but had been borrowed from a friend who
collected all sorts of militaria, simply in order for Tim to give his
visitors something to talk about, and some fun. Next time they came, he
would have to think of something else. The suits (for Mass and meetings)
and the sports clothes (for everything else) were his, however, and he had
bought the leather trousers simply because he thought they would all look
dishy in them. He was right. He decided that he would have to buy another
pair for Tim Junior, his own young namesake, whom he had yet to meet, but
whom he heard on the grapevine was also something of a dish.

His life was getting better all the time. Just before Christmas, he had
received a letter from his former wife, Sylvia. He had written to her
himself, largely to apologize for having used her; he told her that he had
finally acknowledged that he was gay, and hoped that she would find it in
her heart to forgive him. Sylvia was not a vindictive woman; her behaviour
at the trial was untypical of her, though sadly not at all untypical of
divorce courts. She wrote back warmly, also frankly acknowledging her own
part in the breakup. She was bitterly sorry for her unfaithfulness; she
knew how much it hurt Tim, and she said that she did it partly for that
reason, to try and make him jealous and notice her again. And no, she was
sorry, but Catriona was not his daughter. Her father was the man that
Sylvia had been married to these last few years, whom Tim had seen her with
in the courtroom, whom she loved to distraction, and to whom she had not
only been faithful, but had borne three more children. He was, moreover, a
prosperous architect, and they had never needed Tim's and Sylvia's old
family home, for which Tim had been paying the mortgage. Instead, they had
been renting it out to students and saving the money. They felt dreadful
about this, but since Tim had disappeared without leaving any forwarding
address, there had been no way of contacting him. The house was still in
Tim's name, and was not needed by her or Catriona, and was therefore at his
disposal; she had pleasure in enclosing a cheque for nearly ten thousand
pounds back rent, and another couple of thousand pounds of Tim's savings
which Sylvia had taken from their joint account at the time of the
divorce. The house agents would henceforward send Tim the rent directly,
and he could either contine to rent it out as a source of income, or put
the house up for sale. In any event, the house was now his, without strings
attached.

Tim even went to see Sylvia in her new imposing home, and was genuinely
pleased that she was now so content. Catriona had no memory whatever of
this tall handsome man, but she liked him, and though now eight years old,
happily sat on his knee, to be quickly joined by all her younger
siblings. Tim also got on well with Sylvia's husband, Roger, and he spent a
happy few hours with him putting up the Christmas decorations. It was a
sign how well Sylvia and Roger liked the new Tim that they invited him to
spend Christmas with them, and it was a sign of how well Tim liked them
when he genuinely regretted having to refuse, because the boys at Turling
Park who had nowhere else to go used to spend the day with him.

So Tim was now relatively wealthy, and could reduce the hours he worked in
the grounds to allow more time with the boys. He had received promotion,
too, and was no longer the grunt who cut the grass, but he had moved to
work in the vegetable and flower gardens. For this he took night classes in
horticulture. He had to go and buy some ordinary trousers for this, and a
couple of shirts; the first in several years. The new job brought a new
home, too. He moved out of his old cottage and into one with no fewer than
three bedrooms, which he would use to put up the occasional lad who found
the privacy-deprived dormitories of Turling Park too much to bear in
whatever grief was uppermost in his mind at that time.




Easter brought the news of the building of the new St Tarcisius' House in
the grounds of Turling Park. Tim was overjoyed. His rediscovery of Paul and
Johnny's friendship had been the biggest event of his recently new and
happier life, and the thought that they would be always near was wonderful.



That summer, the old St Tarcisius boys were reunited to go on Summer Camp
together. They met at the old site, sad to see their old home standing
blackened and empty, and soon to be demolished, but the reunion was a happy
one, and several former members of staff came for the occasion. Once the
boys were seen off, the old staff, eschewing their former triumphant shout,
went off to a pub for their traditional bucks fizz and caught up on the
gossip.

Paul and Johnny came down to see Tim Senior again. This time, however, they
spent only a couple of days at Turling Park, and Tim did not go away with
to Scotland at all. Instead, the three of them took bicycles over on the
ferry to France, and spent a wonderful fortnight pedalling around Normandy,
squeezing together in one tent designed for four (and therefore with only
enough room for two) and eating large French meals. Their delight in each
other continued to deepen, and somehow the flippant humour that was
naturally created in the particular combination of these three individuals
kept them from the sexual consummation that each of them longed for, and
yet feared.




On coming back to Turling Park, Paul and Johnny walked over the site for
the new house with the architects--among whom was Roger, Sylvia's
husband--and made a lot of decisions.




The new term at Turling Park opened a new chapter in Tim's life. He was
hunkered down weeding a flower bed early one afternoon, wearing as usual
only his blue football shorts, and waiting for his assigned boy assistant
to arrive, when he was tapped on the shoulder.

`Mm?' he said.

A small voice asked `Are you Mr Hagrid?'

`Grr,' he said, without turning round. It was an old trick to play on a new
boy, to make him call one of the staff by his nickname. They should try
that with The Screw! As a joke, it was as old as sending a boy to the
stores to ask for a tin of elbow grease.

`I'm Mr Sullivan, Soldier, though you can call me Tim if you like, as I'm
not a teacher'.

`Erm... thanks Mr Tim. But could you please tell me where I can find Mr
Hagrid?'

Tim sighed. `Its ok, Soldier, that's what some people with what they think
is a sense of humour call me. You've found me'.

He turned round on his haunches to inspect his new recruit, and looked into
the piercing blue eyes and took in the light, fair hair.

`Oh my God!' he said, and fell on his backside into the flower bed. He was
instantly transported back four, five years to that freezing night when he
had rescued......this boy??...Surely not! That boy was nearly twelve, and
must be sixteen or seventeen now. This boy was about thirteen. And this boy
clearly did not recognize Tim.

`Are you all right, Sir?' said the vision.

It must be a coincidence, he thought. He pulled himself together and out of
the flowerbed, brushing soil off his shorts and legs, feeling rather
foolish. `Yes, Soldier, I'm fine, thanks. You just reminded me of
someone. What's your name?

`Thompson, Sir. Dan Thompson.'

`Well, Dan Thompson, we'll get on fine, if you can tell the difference
between a weed and a flower. The first lesson is to get yourself some
sun. Take off your sweatshirt and sweatpants; you'll get them filthy. Good,
that's better, isn't it? Take off your t-shirt too, if you like, but don't
lose it, or there'll be hell to pay from the ogres in the clothing
department.'

Dan stripped quickly until he was, like Tim, dressed only in shorts. Tim
looked appraisingly at the boy. He was clearly a sturdy, good-looking lad,
and his initial impression of waif-likeness was immediately dissipated by
his confident, athletic movements as he stripped, and the developed boyish
musculature on his chest and arms. But Tim was reminded more and more of
that lad whom he had rescued in the night. It was something in the way that
the lad moved, as well as his striking looks.

`Are you new here, Soldier?'

`Yes sir. I've just come from Welling Court.' Welling Court, far away in
the Midlands, was the elite of the state junior homes for boys in
trouble. It worked more or less like a private prep school, taking in the
brighter younger boys that needed special housing and care. It had the
disadvantage of removing the boys from all that was familiar, and taking
them far away, but it gave them an unprecedented start in life, which they
otherwise would not have. They were also kept there until they were
thirteen, when some lucky boys could win scholarships to public
schools. Dan was not that lucky, and so was sent to Turling Park.

The man and boy worked companionably side by side. The boy learnt quickly
and worked very hard, so Tim and he finished the bed in record time, with
half an hour to spare.

`Well, Soldier, I think we've earned ourselves some refreshments before
your carpentry class. Grab your things, and we'll go back to my house'.

That was the start of a close friendship between Tim and Dan. Somehow they
found that they understood each other without much needing to be said. Each
afternoon they worked together in the gardens, and simply enjoyed each
other's company. Tim's mind went back to what Paul had said to him about
fostering, and he thought that, much as he loved the other lads, this was
the first boy he could really imagine sharing his life with since his
nocturnal visitor five years ago.

Dan was one of Tim's most regular visitors during the evening free time;
there was scarcely an evening when he did not put in an appearance, making
himself entirely at home with confidence. His natural ease and charm, his
physical strength, his intrepidity, and his prowess on the games field made
him popular with the other boys and with the staff too, and so nobody
questioned his growing closeness with Tim, whom he soon came to
idolize. Unknown to Tim, Dan had begun to wonder whether he could persuade
Tim to foster or even adopt him. And neither had any notion that the other
was thinking, let alone wanting, the same thing.



One evening, Dan was Tim's only visitor. Over the hot chocolate, Tim took
his chance, and gently began to explore Dan's background. He sensed
immediately from the boy's tension that he was going to have to go
extremely carefully. On his part, Dan was apprehensive. He had never spoken
to anyone about these things before, but somehow those understanding brown
eyes made him think that this man was special, and so he was prepared to
risk it.

Dan could not remember his mother, he said; she had died when he was an
infant, but he remembered others talking about her without much
respect. The only family he could remember were his father and his
brother. Even at this distance of time, he cried when he remembered his
brother.

`He was the only good thing in my life at that time. I was very small, but
Ben looked after me. He fed me, changed and washed my clothes, and tucked
me into bed, but most of all, he protected me from Dad.'

`How much older was your brother?'

`I really don't know. When you're that small, everyone seems so adult. But
I think that he can't have been that much older, because Dad used to hang
him by his arms from a hook in the roof of the caravan to beat him.'

`Oh my God! What did he do to deserve that?'

`Nothing, nothing at all!' The boy was crying now. It was all pouring out
of him. Somehow those warm brown eyes of Tim's had opened gates that many
counsellors had tried to breach without success. Tim moved unconsciously to
hunker down in front of Dan, his knees against the boy's, looking into his
eyes. From his looks and his story, Tim was beginning to suspect who the
lad was now.

`Dad used to do something mean to Ben most nights, but some nights it was
worse than others. If he had been drinking and had friends around, it was
worse. Then Ben would be tied up as I said, and hit really hard with Dad's
belt. His back used to be covered with bruises. And then Dad would... I
don't know how to describe it ... he kind of pretended that Ben was a
woman, and put his... his willie up Ben's bottom. And sometimes Dad's
friends would do it too. Often there would be blood. Sometimes they took
him out of the caravan to do it, and when they came back, Ben wouldn't be
with them, but he would come back later, crying. I think it was probably
worse, what they did to him then.

`The last night was the worst of all. It is stuck in my mind for ever. They
tied Ben up and beat him so hard that I couldn't bear it any more. I tried
to take the belt from Dad, but he hit me across the face. That was the
first and only time he ever hit me, but then he pulled my trousers off, and
untied Ben to tie me up to beat me. Ben saved me again, and threw me out of
the caravan door. I was terrified, so I went and hid. But I heard the
terrible noises, and Ben screaming. I don't think I can ever forget that
sound.'

Dan and Tim looked into each others' eyes; Tim was deeply shocked, and Dan
was weeping hard.

`A little while later, Ben came looking for me. He was covered in blood,
his whole b...b...back was in a terrible state. He only had a towel on, and
even that was covered in his blood. But he still was thinking of me! He
took me back to the caravan, and tucked me up in bed. Dad and one his
friends were asleep at the table. I suppose they were drunk. I wanted to
stay with Ben, but he said that he had to go and get rid of the blood. He
told me to be calm, that everything was all right, that he would come back
for me. And he took his tracksuit trousers and went. Those were the last
words he ever said to me.

`Dad stirred at that point and I lost it. I scrambled out of bed and ran to
find Ben in the shower block only just in time to see him running out of it
as fast as he could go. I wondered what could have so scared him. Perhaps
one of Dad's friends was in there. I called to him, but he didn't hear
me. I started to run after him--I was only in my night things--but he was
too fast for me. I followed along as best I could, but I only had little
legs, and was too slow and it was too late. I found the towel soaked with
his blood that he had worn around his waist, but I never saw my brother
again. I still have the towel. They tried to take it away from me when I
came here, but I wouldn't let them.

`He promised to come back for me, and he always kept his promises,
especially to me. So I think he must be dead. I think Dad found him and
killed him that night, or one of his friends did it.'

Dan broke down and sobbed. Tim leant over and hugged him tightly. He had
such a powerful sense of the past repeating itself. Nothing had ever seemed
so right as the young man in his arms now. He felt no erotic desire, just a
strong protective sense. Nobody is going to hurt this lad again, if I can
help it!

When Dan had calmed down, he continued,

`I don't remember anything else after that. I was completely lost, and the
night was dark, raining and terribly cold. I remember lying down on the
pavement and going to sleep with Ben's towel in my hand, but the next thing
I remember I was in the Royal Sussex Hospital, still gripping the towel.

`They questioned me, but I hadn't got a clue where I lived, other than in a
caravan, and clearly Dad hadn't bothered to report me missing--perhaps he
was afraid that the police would discover he had killed Ben--so I was sent
to Welling Court, and I've been there ever since, until I came here.'

Tim went over to the telephone, and rang Dan's housemaster to ask if Dan
could stay with him tonight. Permission was given for this on special
occasions, and this was no exception. Tim returned to squat down in front
of the lad.

`He said you can stay the night, Soldier'. For the first time in the
evening, Dan smiled. The smile was radiant, and when he saw it, Tim was now
completely certain whom he had in front of him. He laid his hands on the
boy's thighs.

`Now I've got something to tell you. I don't know where your brother Ben
is, nor do I know if he is even alive. But I do know by the most
extraordinary coincidence that he did survive that night, and you have
explained to me some of what has been perhaps the most puzzling episode in
my life so far.'

And Tim proceeded to tell Dan the story of that evening when he had rescued
the boy he now knew for the first time to be called Ben. And so he finished
the story

`...and at the hospital, the social workers took him. But I had had to go
by then, and I never saw who took him, nor have heard of him since, though
I have been looking for him all the time, because I think now that I acted
wrongly to abandon him. And now perhaps you understand why I reacted the
way I did when I first saw you, because you are very like your brother
indeed, though something tells me you are a bit tougher. Perhaps because,
thanks to him, you never got the abuse that he did, and you had his love
and protection in your formative years, something he never had.'

`I think you're right, Sir. Am I like Ben? I'd like that; he was wonderful!
But do you think that my Dad found him at the hospital and took him back
home?'

`Very unlikely. The staff at the hospital were extremely shocked at the
state of Ben's abused body, and they would never have handed him over to
anyone but the proper authorities. I thought it most likely that Ben would
have been brought here to Turling Park, but there was never any sign of
him. He was too old for Welling Court. The only other place was St
Tarcisius, the Catholic college, but your family is not Catholic, is it?'

`No; we're nothing, really'.

`Yes, I remember asking Ben if he were a Catholic, and he didn't know what
the word meant'.

`Yes, theological nicities were not frequently discussed in our family'.

Tim smiled at the lad's precocious language. That's Welling Court for you!
Tim said;

`But I have never given up hope that one day we will come across him. You
know, he would never tell me his name, his home, his family, or anything
about himself. He hoped that I might be able to take him in, but when he
discovered that it was impossible--which I really thought it was, then,--he
made up his mind to disappear completely, and he has succeeded only too
well. When I changed my circumstances--in order to make it possible to take
him in, among other reasons, by the way--it was too late, and he had
vanished.

`But I am certain in my heart that he is alive, and now that there are two
of us with a real interest in finding him, perhaps we shall have better
luck together.'

Dan gave Tim his radiant smile again. Tim held out his hand,

`Come on, Soldier, time for bed.'

`Sir, Mr Tim, could you do me a favour?'

`Depends on the favour, Soldier'.

Give you a home for the rest of your life? Sure, kid. But Tim only thought
it.

`Would you look after my, that is, Ben's towel for me? I'm so scared that
the school will take it.'

`Of course. I'd be honoured.' And Tim was. The boys at Turling Park had so
few things of their own, that what they had was extremely precious.

They went upstairs, and Tim showed Dan to a spare room, and showed him the
bathroom. He then went and drank a thoughtful glass of whisky by
himself. He had lost his heart to the brave little lad.

When all was quiet upstairs, Tim tiptoed up himself, knelt as usual to say
his prayers, and went to bed. He had only just turned out the light when
the door of his room opened. There was the boy, in his school shorts.

`Tim, Sir?'

"Yes Dan?'

`I've never slept on my own before. Can I sleep on your floor?'

And against all his better judgment, Tim flung back his coverlet, and the
lad scrambled in to join him. Just as well, thought Tim, that he was at
least wearing his shorts. He prayed hard that his instinctive, and, he
thought probably stupid, action to take the boy into his bed would have no
unforseen consequences.

And so that night Dan shared Tim's bed just as his brother had done five
years before. Tim pulled the youngster against his chest, and was almost
surprised by the smooth and unblemished skin, where he had expected welts,
blood and scars.

They both slept soundly.


CHAPTER 9


When my Tim turned seventeen, his purgatory began, and our life was never
the same again.  Overnight, almost, he began to change; to stay out at all
hours--most unlike him--and when he returned, he would never tell us where
he had been, plead or shout as we might. He was always apologetic, even to
the point of tears, but as to details, he stayed clammed shut. One day he
returned in tight white trousers which left nothing at all to the
imagination, since he was obviously wearing no underwear as usual, and a
mesh muscle shirt with his beautiful blond hair cropped like an american
marine. I was shocked at the substitution of this tart for my beautiful
little boy; I lost my cool, and shouted at him that he looked like a
rent-boy. He shouted back that if that was the way he looked, perhaps
that's the way he would behave!

Our fears ran riot. We searched his room when he was at school (very
carefully; there is no better way to alienate a teenager than to invade his
space) to look for evidence of drugs, or whatever, but we found nothing
suspicious. Not even a dirty magazine. For that matter, not only was there
nothing suspicious, but there was simply nothing, and that was
suspicious. He seemed to have very much less stuff than we thought; both of
us saw his bare shelves and sparse wardrobe, and we wondered, with sinking
hearts, whether he was planning to move out. Even many things that we had
given him and we knew he loved were no longer here. His books seemed to
have dwindled, too; just a couple of spiritual books, which narrow
interest, though edifying, did not seem entirely healthy, even to a
priest's eye.

Which all led us to worry that he might have a girlfriend--or far more
likely a boyfriend--of whom we would not approve. Given his new dress
sense, even allowing for the fact that he was a teenager, and teenagers
tend to do odd things, this seemed quite likely. But he seemed to have so
little joy in it all, even of the secret sort that one might associate with
an illicit relationship. He appeared morose, rather, and withdrawn. Was he
taking drugs? Had he become addicted to casual sex? Was he going cottaging?
Had he caught a disease? Paul and I even put on our secular clothes and
went out in the evening to the local cruising areas to see if we could find
him, but there was never a sign. We got several good offers, though.

At this stage, Tim's moods, too, were very mercurial. You could never know
whether he would be grumpy and uncommunicative, or garrulous and
manic. There would be several days in a row when he would be entirely his
old self, at least apparently, and these days Marc and Conor would
monopolize him, reassuring themselves that their beloved older brother had
not abandoned them, as he seemed to do on the days of his black moods.

But there were good times, too.

It was about this time that the Underwear War began. This was to prove the
last really good memory we had as a family while we lived at St Edwards. I
may have mentioned before that Tim had been working out on weights at
school instead of going to Physical Education or Games. In fact, most days
he spent an hour and a half or more in the gym, and had become very
powerfully built for his age. Frankly, with his blond hair, chiselled
handsome 17-year-old looks, his golden tan and his broad shoulders tapering
over a magnificent smooth chest and six-pack abdomen to a narrow waist and
slender hips, he was, as they say, a walking wet dream. He began to be
noticed by girls, in whom he showed less than no interest, and boys began
to cultivate him too, I suppose to learn how he attracted the babes, and
then they began to imitate him. And some cultivated him for more personal
reasons. Blue jeans (which Tim would still never wear) went out of fashion
among his contemporaries--and, more to the point, so did underwear. One
morning I received a letter from the school's headmaster pleading with me
to make him wear at least boxer shorts, because the mothers of other boys
were complaining that their sons were starting to go commando all the time.

Well, I spoke to Tim, but he refused to change his habits, and that was
that. In his current mood, I wan't going to press him over something that I
thought wasn't really important. For some reason, the whole underwear thing
was never negotiable with him; there was some deep reason for his behaviour
that I didn't understand until we had been through the long and painful
process that I am going to narrate. Even going to the doctor, or putting
himself in situations when most people would have thought that underwear
was de rigeur, he never could be persuaded to wear any. So on this occasion
I didn't try hard, knowing it would be fruitless, and anyway, underwear was
not a specified item of school uniform, so there was no rule broken; if
boys saw him without pants when changing, admired him, and thought that it
was a cool thing to go without, then who was Tim to disagree with them? He
never saw any point in underwear. So to speak.

The two tearaways Marc and Conor overheard our discussion, though, and were
fascinated at this revelation of their godlike elder brother's private
life. Henceforward neither of them could by any means be persuaded to wear
underwear either. So, resigned, I made Paul give them the stern hygiene
talk about shaking willies and wiping bottoms, and decided that there was
nothing more to be done about it except to make sure that all the loos in
the house were amply provided with moist toilet tissue. I also resigned
myself to the fact that now the only non-commando in the family was going
to be me.

My intransigence obviously posed a challenge to the others, and few males
can resist a challenge.

I got home from the shops late one afternoon to find a little gathering in
the garden around a bonfire. They had obviously been waiting for me, so I
came to join them, wondering what it was all about. Marc told me
portentously in his rough adolescent voice;

`Today, Uncle Johnny, is World Go-Commando Day!'.

`You what?'

`Watch'

Marc and Conor each had an armful of their underwear that they began
feeding article by article ceremoniously onto the fire. I raised my
eyebrows at Paul who was watching and grinning, and I shrugged
resignedly. It was his money going up in flames, after all. They were his
boys. My son Tim went next, though. I didn't know he still had any
underpants, but he obviously kept a pair or two, just in case. They were
still in their plastic wrappers, which were torn off for the first time,
and the brand new pants went onto the fire. Then everyone looked at Paul,
who shrugged and said that he hadn't had a pair since he was fourteen. But,
he went on, he didn't want to disappoint us. He disappeared behind a tree
and came out with a large pile of undergarments. I wondered idly where he
had found them. He had cast two onto the fire before I began to recognize
my own property. I shouted and lunged at Paul, who ran laughing off up the
garden. I rugby-tackled him, but as he fell, laughing hard, he threw the
pile of my clothes to Tim. Tim fumbled the catch, and my boxers scattered
everywhere. Tim, Marc, and Conor, shouting with laughter, chased my
underwear all over the garden, pulling it from the branches of trees and
out of the small pond, fighting each other for every article of my most
intimate clothing, while I was trying to free myself from the clutches of
Paul, who was now wrestling me to the ground and tickling me until I was
helpless and breathless. I managed somehow to fight him off, and tried to
rescue as much as I could, but it was useless; I was hopelessly
outnumbered. As soon as I had wrested one pair from the boys' hands (I
never managed to get any off the muscular Tim), I would be rugby-tackled by
Paul or, more efficiently, by Tim himself who was now so well-built and
strong that he was impossible to resist. One by one, I saw my beloved
collection being consigned to the flames until eventually Conor said in his
high Irish voice `That's the lot!'

`Er, not quite', said Tim with a wicked glint in his eye. `What now?', I
thought, and I poised myself for flight. Paul moved quietly behind me and
suddenly pinned my arms behind my back. Tim grabbed my belt and undid
it. Oh no! I knew what was going to happen now! It did. Tim pulled down my
trousers and tugged them over my shoes. They were followed by my boxers,
and there I was, naked from the waist down, swinging gently in the breeze.

`Have you no bloody respect for the clergy, let alone your own father, you
heathen, you unnatural children!' I shouted, but I was laughing.

The boxers went on the fire, then Tim hugged me and said

`Welcome to the Commandos, Dad!'

I was then pinned down and tickled until I swore a solemn oath to join the
Commandos from that moment. And I must say, as I reflected to Paul later in
bed, all the happiest times that he and I had spent together, such as that
summer at Tim Senior's cottage, had mostly been spent `commando'.

Paul had been out to a closing-down army surplus shop earlier that day, and
had bought everyone ex-army camouflage jackets, trousers and boots. We all
had to change into them (nothing at all underneath, naturally) there and
then in the garden. Teresa chose that exact moment (of course) to come into
the garden with some food that she had brought for the barbecue which Paul
had obviously planned in advance. Marc spotted her first;

Er... hello, Aunt Tess.'

Five pairs of hands shot to their corresponding naked groins, and five
faces went bright red as she left the food, making some comment to the
clouds about what a lot of weather we seemed to be getting these days, and
how she ought to be getting home sometime in the next six months. But she
was smiling; she was used to men in her own family, and we all loved her,
and we knew by a thousand ways that she loved us.

Once dressed in our combats, it felt strange but kind of virile to feel the
rough canvas clothes against our skin without wearing boxers, socks or
shirts; and the combination of our male bonding (which the feminists love
to sneer at) with the love, tenderness and togetherness of our family was
so wonderful that I wouldn't have changed that evening for the worlds. I
would have given a lot more than some old underpants away for times like
that. We baked potatoes and cooked sausages and burgers on the fire, and
hunkered around on our heels until late, drinking beer (for Paul, Tim and
me) while the boys drank Coke, talking about nothing and everything, and
putting the world to rights.

After the boys had gone to bed, Paul Tim and I stayed outside talking
quietly. Then I looked my watch and saw that it was gone eleven. So I said
to Tim:

`You too. Time for bed, Soldier! School tomorrow.'

Tim went suddenly very still. `What did you call me, Dad?'

`Soldier, Son. You are dressed in the gear, and you are going commando, I
happen to know that for a fact.' I grinned at him, thinking of Teresa.

Tim relaxed again. `Sorry, Dad; it was just a memory.'

`Did your real father call you that, Son?' Oops. We might have opened
something up here.

`No, Dad. It's all right; it was a happy memory. It was just a surprise to
be called that again.'

`That's good to know, Soldier.' His eyebrows raised. He said, dangerously,

`And what would you know about Commandos? I've been one for years. This is
only your first day as a recruit, Soldier.'

Like a frog, he powerfully leapt on me from his squat, and sent me
flying. We wrestled for a while, but Tim would always win now. He sat
triumphantly astride me.

`I submit!' I said, breathless.

`You submit, what?'

`Er; I submit, Soldier'

`Wrong! That's not the way to address a senior officer!'

He undid my jacket, and pushed it back from my chest, and tickled my ribs,
then squeezed my nipples. I wondered even then whether he realised just how
erotic that was. If it had been Paul on top, I would have disgraced myself
with a hard-on.

`Ow! Ow! All right. I submit, Sir.'

`That's better! Captain Topham, I think we'd better keep an eye on this
squaddie for a while yet; he's a bit lippy.'

`Yessir. I had noticed, Sir. Oh yes, definitely lippy! Perhaps you'd better
stay around for a bit longer, Sir,' said Paul.

I relented, and Paul passed Tim another beer. In the end, it was after
three o'clock in the morning when we finally called it a night. We had shed
our camouflage jackets a while before, and the three of us left them in the
garden as we went indoors arm in arm. Paul and I just fell as we were onto
the nearest bed--mine--and knew no more until the morning, when we awoke
together, our arms entangled and still in our camouflage trousers and
boots. I gently disentangled myself, and went upstairs to call Tim, to get
him to school. Finding the door open, I went in to find him asleep on his
back, on top of the bed, also still in combat trousers and boots, his
morning erection pushing hard at his fly. With his cropped hair and his
muscular torso, he looked every inch the young soldier. I kissed his
forehead, and said

`Reveille, Soldier'.

He woke, sleepily gave me his glorious smile and got up.

I treasured the memory of World Go-Commando Day for a long time, for it was
the last occasion that we were so happy in quite that carefree way. There
were dark days ahead for us all.


CHAPTER 10


As autumn moved into winter, I began to suspect that Tim was no longer
going to school. It worried me enormously, because despite his late start
in education, he eventually did justice to his considerable intelligence
and had been doing well. I phoned the headmaster, who told me that Tim had
hardly been in at all for about a month and a half. They had assumed that
he had been unwell, since he had always been so punctual and regular in
everything. I was angry, and thought that they had been negligent with
regard to my son by not keeping me informed, and nearly told them so, but a
parish priest has to stay on good terms with his school.

I tried talking to Tim about it, but uncharacteristically, he would not
discuss it. He said `Look! I'm seventeen, so it's my business if I go or
not. Just mind your own business!' I was shocked; other than the incident
over his new haircut and clothes, he had never talked to me disrespectfully
before. I hoped that it was just overdue teenage angst (which I had
expected at some time, after all), and decided to talk it through with
Paul. What with one thing and another, the opportunity never came, and Tim
always warned me off with a black look whenever I tried to broach the
subject of school with him. As with the matter of underwear, there was not
the slightest room for dialogue, and so I left it until we could find a
good moment. By the time Christmas had come, he had missed too much school
to be able now to take his A level exams; he would simply have to repeat
the whole year or go to a college to start again. I was secretly happier
than I let on, as it would be another year before I lost Tim to University
or to whatever else he wanted to do. So I did nothing, and Tim continued to
not bother with school. How foolish and self-deceiving we can be when we
love!

I shall reproach myself to my dying day that I made no serious attempt to
find out where Tim did spend his time.



One day Tim came in, looking very sheepish, with a scarf around his
neck. Even when it was cold, he never wore scarves. And it wasn't cold. He
was also walking awkwardly, rather carefully, and pushed past me without
giving me my usual hug. I was immediately suspicious.

`What's up, Tim? Have you been in a fight? Has someone kicked you in the
unmentionables?'

`No. It's nothing. Get off my case, will you?'

`Tim!'

I was hurt, and not a little worried. But he went upstairs and didn't
reappear for supper. Paul raised eyebrows enquiringly to me. I shrugged, so
Paul went upstairs to Tim, and was there a long time. The two of them came
down together and sat on the sofa to watch the TV. I sent a questioning
glance to Paul, but he simply shook his head and shrugged. He'd obviously
had no luck either, except to convince Tim to join the rest of us.

Tim was wearing a button-up shirt, and the collar was, unusually for Tim, a
casual dresser, completely closed. This intrigued Marc and Conor, who began
to tease and tickle him, which he was definitely not in the mood for. He
tried to push Conor off his neck. He underestimated once again his own
strength. Conor flew off, still with a grip on Tim's shirt collar. The
shirt buttons popped off, and the shirt tore right off Tim's
shoulder. Marc, who was pulling the other side of the shirt, sat back
heavily as the buttons gave way. We all looked in amazement. Tim, his
strong shoulders now bare, had around his neck a heavy steel chain closed
with a huge padlock. There was an awkward silence. Tim seethed with
fury. Paul looked at me, puzzled.

`Tim, what's that?' I asked.

`What does it fucking look like?'

Paul reacted furiously: `Tim! How dare you speak to your father like that'.

`He's not my father, he's only my fucking landlord! The state pays him to
look after me!'

Pandemonium. Conor screamed something incoherent at Tim, and Marc battered
him hard with his fists. Paul went white, then red and was building up to a
whole explosion.

I yelled to everyone to get out except Tim, and we would sort this out
between us. When they had left, I looked at my son closely. Tim's beautiful
eyes were brimming with tears. Careful, Johnny, I thought, this wasn't what
it appeared to be.

I went over to my son, who seemed to want to be that no longer, and put one
hand on the back of his head. He didn't pull away, but seemed in some way
to want me to be there. With my other hand I picked up the padlock that lay
against his breast. It and the chain were horribly heavy. I was beginning
to suspect what this might mean.

`Tim?'

`Yeah, what?' he said sullenly.

`Do you really want this around your neck?'

`What do you think?' he retorted rudely.

`Where's the key?'.

`I'm not taking it off, and that's that!'

`I didn't ask you to. I just asked where the key is'.

`Never you mind. It's none of your bloody business!'

`Well, all right. Just get the key of that padlock, and show me that you
can open it, and I'll leave you alone. You can wear what you like, as far
as I'm concerned'.

`No.' He looked trapped.

`Do you mean that someone else has the key?'.

`I didn't say that'.

Tim still wouldn't lie to me. He looked at me desperately, willing me not
to push him any further. The tears in his eyes began to spill onto his
cheeks. I wiped them away with my thumb. I wanted to cry myself.

`Tim, something has to be going on for you to speak to me like that. I
cannot believe that you are fighting me of your own will. We have always
loved and honoured each other, and been more friends than foster father and
son. What have I done to you that you would push me away from you like
this? Do you know how you are breaking my heart? Paul and I are so very
worried for you, my darling.

Tim steeled himself and pulled away from me.

`Don't be. I'm not your `darling'. Paul's your `darling', your
bum-chum. I'll look after myself. I've always had to, after all. I'm an
adult now and can do as I want' Tim sniffled through his tears, his eyes
pleading with me.

His words spat hate, but his eyes begged for understanding and love and
forgiveness. He never could lie to me. What the fuck was going on?

`No, Tim, you're not an adult, and all this proves it. Yes, you'll be
eighteen in a few weeks and in law our fostering relationship ends. You
will no longer be a ward of court. You can go where you want, do what you
want, if that's what you want. Up to you. But now? Tim, for the first time
that I have known you, you are not behaving responsibly. Perhaps, my son, I
know you better than anyone else on earth does, and I know that this is
untypical behaviour. I had wondered whether you might be on drugs, but I
don't think so now.'

Tim's head shook strongly. I continued.

`I think you are steeling yourself for some life decision. You think you
know what you want, and I fear that you are about to make the biggest
mistake of your life. Won't you please tell me what is going on?'

I had struck a nerve.

`It's none of your fucking business! I've got to live my life my own way,
not your fucking way. Get out of my fucking hair'.

Tim was sobbing now, his voice cracking, and pulling the shreds of his
shirt to try cover the obscene chain and lock. Unsuccessfully.

I had to persist. There was something wrong here. I knew Tim far too well
to even think for a moment that he really no longer loved me. He was
putting on an act for some reason that I could not fathom, and though that
act hurt me, I could see that it was hurting Tim much, much, more.

`Tim, I will always love you, and wherever I am will be a home for you. You
may not want to think of me as your father any more, but I shall always
think of you as my son. You can say what you want, do what you want, call
me what you want, but you won't change that. Now please won't you tell me
what's going on?'

Tim shook his head again.

`Okay. Then perhaps I'll tell you what I think is going on'.

And I told him what I thought, and I read in his frightened eyes that I had
got it at least partially right. As time was to prove, I was not right
enough. Tim hobbled out of the room, as quickly as he could. I wondered
again how he had injured himself.






Later as we lay in our twin beds, side by side, with a heavy heart I told
Paul what I had guessed.

`Paul, I think that Tim has a Master'.

`A what?'

`It means that he has got into BDSM or something."

`What on earth's that?'

`Bondage and Domination, Sadism and Masochism.'

`Sadism? Oh God! He's only seventeen!'

`Quite. I don't know how far it has gone, but I think that he may have
committed himself in some way to some man or woman. I suspect a man, from
what we know of him. I can't think why otherwise he would be behaving quite
so badly towards us unless someone were forcing him somehow to choose
between us, or to otherwise alienate us from him. His `Master' I think is
making him say all these things as a sort of test of his obedience. The
chain and lock are another test; they must be really uncomfortable.'

`But why, Johnny, why? Tim has always been the gentlest, loveliest,
sunniest lad. We've all always got on so well. Why would he do something
like that?'

`Who can tell what lies below the surface? He was terribly abused as a boy,
and perhaps this is somehow a bubbling up of the problems. Perhaps it is
how he learnt from his father to express sexual passion. Perhaps as a
result he feels more fulfilled as a gay submissive. I never got any further
with him on the subject of his father than we did that first day when he
arrived. He would freak out every time I approached the subject, so I took
the cowardly route and decided to let it come out in its own time. I never
guessed he would turn against me.'

`I couldn't bear the way he was talking to you. Calling you his `landlord',
after all you have done for him.'

`That wasn't him, Paul. I cannot believe he would ever willingly say
that. His `Master' has probably told him to call him `Daddy' or
something--it's quite common--and told him that here is merely the place he
lives now. I could see in his eyes that it was breaking him up to say it'.

Finally I wept, and Paul came across from his own bed, got in with me and
simply held me, our bare chests pressed together. We were both so full of
grief that the erotic significance of what we were doing quite passed us
by.




Christmas and another month passed without incident. Tim continued to be
sullen and uncommunicative. Marc and Conor, after refusing to speak to Tim
for some days, had with the resilience of youth bounced back and they
treated him as always before, mutatis mutandis.

Tim still wore his chain and padlock, but now he made no attempt to hide
them, which drew some startled glances from the parishioners, as did the
tight trousers he had resumed, in which his bulging genitals seemed to have
doubled in size. But most of the parishioners had children too, and simply
passed me sympathetic glances. One evening, Tim returned, and came into the
house so quietly that we could hardly hear him. But Conor, who had just
been brushing his teeth ready for bed saw him and called out

`Tim why are you walking so funny?'

Paul came out of our room at that moment, and saw him hobbling along,
wincing. As soon as he realised he was being watched, Tim straightened up
and ran briskly up the stairs to his room. We heard a thud as he threw
himself onto his bed followed by a groan of pain. Paul knew from recent
experience that questioning Tim would be fruitless, so when the lad left
for his mysterious destination in the morning, Paul went up to his attic
room and found the khaki chinos Tim had been wearing the previous
day. Inside the seat of the trousers there were bloodstains which Tim had
inexpertly tried to remove. Even Paul knew what that meant, but he did not
tell me what he had found for a very long time, knowing how it would
distress me. Tim stopped serving at daily Mass, or receiving communion and
just sat in the back pew with his head in his hands.



It was shortly after Easter that Tim returned with his padlock and chain
gone, and in their place was a thin shiny steel collar. It actually looked
rather good on him but for the fact that there was no opening or even lock
on it. It had been welded in some way. Then over the succeeding weeks, and
as the days became warmer, Tim's habits of dress began to change again. He
had always loved the feel of shiny 80's-style brief nylon football shorts,
(he had told us once that that was another happy memory, as it was for us,
remembering Tim Senior's cottage holiday) and now he would wear nothing
else. We never saw him in trousers any more--we had another row when I
tried to make him wear some to Sunday Mass. Even the obscene tight white
trousers had vanished. He wore shirts less and less (though his torso
seemed to grow ever more defined), and never shoes or socks. I was losing
my son before my eyes, and there was not a thing I could do about it.

We were all watching the television together a few days after this--it was
two days before Tim's eighteenth birthday--and Tim, who was looking very
tired, fell asleep, sprawled in the big armchair, shirtless as usual, his
strong legs apart, wearing only his shorts. The rest of us, since the
business of the day was over, were dressed casually, ready for bed, though
it was still early. A little later, Conor giggled and pointed,

`Look everyone, Tim's got another collar on his balls!' From where he was
seated on the floor, he could see up the leg of Tim's shorts, and he
scooted across to Tim and gently lifted back the nylon for us to see for
ourselves. Yup, he was right. There was another solid steel collar welded
around the neck of Tim's scrotum, which strained his angry red testicles
down painfully. No wonder he had been hobbling. And that wasn't all. His
whole groin was entirely smooth. I looked up at the young man's
outstretched arm and saw that his armpits, too, were like Conor's, totally
hairless.

I had to talk to Tim. It was going to be fruitless, but I had to do it. So
I woke him up, and asked him to come into my den for a while. He looked
grumpy, but complied, growling at Marc and Conor, asking what they were
giggling about.


Tim and I sat side by side on the sofa--it was the one that Paul had bled
on so copiously that night when St Tar's had burned, and I could still see
the stains. It was why we had moved it out of the sitting room.

Tim sat slumped, his shoulders the picture of dejection, and his eyes
closed. My heart went out to him again. I had to get his attention,
seriously.  So I got up, and hunkered down before him, our knees touching.

Tim looked startled, as if this brought some memory for him. Not as
startled as he was going to be in a second!

I moved my arm across quickly and lifted back the nylon of his shorts
before he could react. I grabbed hold of his testicles and held them
firmly.

He gaped at me, baffled and shocked. I tugged his balls to bring him to
himself.

`Tim, what's this?'

`Aaaaargh,...what does it fucking look like?'

`Isn't it terribly uncomfortable?'

`Yeah, when you do that! Let go, for God's sake! You're hurting me!'

`And when I'm not? Does it hurt the rest of the time, Tim?' I squeezed
gently again.

He shouted. `Yes! yes! yes, Fuck! Ow! Yes it hurts all the time. It hurts
when I take cold showers, when my balls pull up, it hurts like hell when I
run and they slap against my legs, it's agony when I sit down too
quickly. It aches all the time, all the fucking time, all the fucking,
fucking time. It doesn't stop, it just gets worse sometimes. There, are you
happy now? Are you happy now?' Tim was crying with his pain and
frustration.

And, to add to his embarrassment and humiliation, while I had been holding
his balls he had grown a fierce erection which tugged on his scrotum,
pulling his testicles hard against the steel of the collar.

`Ow! ow! ow!' And Tim sobbed with the pain and the humiliation.

I let go and tried to cover his privates with the nylon shorts, but the
tented royal blue shiny cloth looked even more obscene. The shorts were
really too brief to cover him properly.

`You asked if I am happy now, Tim. Look at me. Look at me, Tim! Do I look
happy to you?'

Unwillingly, he dragged his head around and saw my anguish and my
tears. The answer was whispered.

`No.'

`Why am I unhappy, Tim?'

There was a long silence. I repeated the question. Another long silence.

`Shall I grab your balls again, Tim? Why am I unhappy?'.

Tim gasped, but said nothing. So I grabbed him again. His erection
hardened, and I could see the front of his shorts growing wet. He cried
even harder from the pain in his balls and from embarrassment, and
blubbered out

`Aarrrgh! Ow! Please let go! I'll talk. All right! ALL RIGHT! I know why
you're unhappy! You're unhappy because of me. You hate what I'm doing, you
hate what I'm becoming'.

I relased his balls again leant forward, and placed my hands high up on
Tim's slim but powerful thighs.

`Correct, my son! Do you really want me to be this unhappy, Tim? Do you
really think I deserve this?'.

`No!' Quietly, though.

That was something, at any rate. Progress.

`Tim, have you been happy living with me?'

`Yes. This has been the best time of my life'.

`And are you happy now?'

Tim spat out `Do I fucking look it, Johnny?'

I edged forward until I held Tim's knees between my own. His erection was
still straining at the cloth of his shorts, the blood flow no doubt
constricted by the collar. I laid one hand on his shoulder and the other on
his waist, and looked directly into his beautiful blue eyes.

`Son, I want you to ask yourself something. You have said some atrocious
things to me over the last few months. Things I never in my wildest
nightmares thought to have my beloved, my gentle, my loving son say to
me. I have cried, agonized, asked myself where I have gone wrong, but never
for a single moment has my love failed for you. Tim, you come first in
everything I do, before myself, before Paul who is my life, before those
terrors Marc and Conor whom I adore, before my parents, before everyone
except God. Even, God forgive me, before my priesthood and people; so now,
perhaps, I understand why the Church is so wise in insisting on celibacy
for its priests, because, Tim, this is tearing me apart to see you like
this. Tim, I would die for you. What is more, I would kill for you. I would
go through hell and high water just to see you smile your wonderful smile
for me once more. If this goes on for much longer, frankly, I think that I
will want to die!

This `Master' you have, whatever his name is. Could he say any of that? Or
is he just using you for sex, to gratify his own sexual needs without a
thought for yours, let alone your wider needs? Would he kill for you, die
for you, love and hold you tenderly?

Tim was yelling his sobs now in his grief and confusion of mind and he
threw himself into my arms with all his force. I rolled back onto the
floor, and Tim fell on top of me, hugging me fiercely. His sore balls
connected with my thigh and he screamed blue murder as he dragged me
against his chest with his considerable strength; he was as tall as me, and
much stronger now. I feared for a moment that he was trying to fight me,
but he just hugged me as hard as he could. When his bawling subsided into
wracking sobs, and he let me finally breathe, he just lay in my arms on top
of me, quietly crying, beating his forehead against the floor over my
shoulder. His tears fell as he calmed, and I could feel his heart within
his chest banging hard against my ribs.

`Tim, my beloved son, what does he give you that I can't?'

Tim thought, still gripping me tightly. He said haltingly

`He gives me what I need. And I give him what he needs'.

`What do you need, Tim?'

`Resolution. Closure. Peace with myself. You've always said that Jesus said
that the greatest thing someone could do was to give his life for
another. That's what I need. And I need to put right what I did wrong all
those years ago. This is the only way.'

`What did you do wrong?'

`I walked out. I hated where I was. I hated my parents, even my mother, who
died when I was little, who gave me these scars on my chest, but now I know
that hate is wrong. Hate is wrong. Hate destroys. I doubled what was
already bad. That was where God put me and I should have stayed. I was so
wicked, so wicked. I ran away. I should have stayed. Perhaps my father
needed me more than you need me, and certainly my brother did'.

`Tim, your parents abused you horribly. And now you feel that you have to
be abused again by somebody else to get yourself back?'

`Something like that. I must go through it again, if necessary. After all,
if that was what my parents were like, that must be what I'm like. Its
genetics.'

I spun Tim over so that now I was on top of him. I sat astride his thighs,
leaning forward and pinning his shoulders to the ground with my hands. He
didn't resist me: I wouldn't have stood a chance if he had made even a
small effort.

`Bollocks. Do you really think that God wants this?

I reached down and grabbed his balls again. Tim groaned and his erection
hardened again. I continued relentlessly

Do you really think your coming to live with me was something wrong, not
something right?'

Tim wailed: `I don't know any more. I really don't know. But it's too late
now. I've made up my mind.'

`And does this decision bring you peace?'

`Sort of'.

`Does it make you feel good?'

Tim whispered `No, but at least it's the first truly unselfish thing I have
ever done. It's time to repay.'

`Bollocks. Double bollocks!' I said again. But I could see that he truly
believed it.

There was silence, while we both thought. Tears continued to trickle from
Tim's eyes, and an occasional sob heaved his chest. After a while, I broke
the silence:

`Tim; this man. Does he like to hurt you?'

`Duuhh. Look at me! That's the idea, Johnny. He loves to hurt me, and he
likes to fuck my arse hard.'

`Why do you let him? Does he love you?'

`He says he does, though I'm pretty sure he doesn't. But he finds me
pleasurable'

`I'll bet he does. But why do you allow it, Tim?'

Softly Tim answered: `Because he has the right'.

`Did you give him that right? Did you sign something?'

`I didn't need to. He has the right anyway. But yes. I have signed a slave
contract, Johnny'.

The world turned black, and I saw stars. I struggled for breath.

`Oh God! Oh Tim! Oh my son!'

There was a deep silence as I lay down on Tim and held my son to my
breaking heart. Eventually, I had to ask

`Why will you no longer call me Dad?'

Silence. Tim started shaking.

`Does he make you call him Dad?'

Silence.

I said bitterly `So in your view, the man who abuses you, chains you,
collars you, tortures you, and fucks you till you bleed is entitled to be
called Dad, while I who love you so deeply, who have fed you, protected
you, adored you, given my life to you and have never consciously or
deliberately hurt you in any way am allowed no relationship to you at all
except that of landlord, simply because the bastard whom you let torment
you says it must be so. Oh this is too, too much! I'm not sure I can handle
this any more! Well, all I can say is that the sex must be really fantastic
for you to come to think this way! You sad, sad, sad, twisted fuck-up!

I got off my son--or was he my son any more?--and went back and sat down on
the sofa. I looked down at my boy lying on his back on the floor, sobbing
into his hands, his erection still tenting his shorts--due, no doubt more
to the collar than to any erotic sense, and waited.

Silence. For a long time.

Tim whispered. `It isn't'.

`What?' I had forgotten my question in my misery.

`The sex. It isn't fantastic. In fact he never lets me cum at all. Even
when he fucks me he ties up my tackle with wire.'

`What?? And this is the man you prefer to me?'.

Tim began to sob again. `No, n...no, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. DON'T think that,
ever, ever. I love you more than I've ever loved anyone else. This is not
something I want to do; I've told you, it's something I've got to do. He
has the right!

Well, that was some small consolation, I suppose. But I had to ask.

`Tim, does this have anything directly to do with the abuse you suffered as
a child?'

Silence. Tim shut his brimming eyes.

Well, I suppose that gave me my answer. I had guessed it was something of
the sort, when Tim had said that this man had a natural right to abuse him.

`Tim, I'm nearly finished for now. I think we are both far too traumatized
and exhausted to go any further. But I want to ask you a very important
question. I've never been in an BDSM relationship, it doesn't really do
much for me, but I have read a bit about it. And so I want to ask you; what
is your safeword?'

`My what?'

`Your safeword. Your `Master' will have given you a word to say when you
and he are... well, you know. When you say that word, it is a sign that you
have taken as much as you can and you want him to stop. What is the word he
has given you?

`He hasn't given me any such word. He just stops when he wants to.'

I was now very frightened.

`Tim, this man is a dangerous lunatic. You have made me so very afraid for
you. He cannot, must not, be your lover. We must talk this over further. In
the meantime, call me Johnny if you can't call me Dad. It's better than
silence.'

We went slowly to bed. I was shocked to my core and utterly horrified at
the prospect of what the future might hold.




Earlier in the evening, when the shouting and screaming had started in my
den, Marc and Conor had got very distressed, and Paul had taken the two of
them to Macdonalds. When I came into the bedroom, after brushing my teeth,
I found Paul undressed and in his bed with his eyes closed. I was already
in my shorts and so just slipped into bed. As I reached to turn out the
light Paul asked

`Well? I heard the commotion. I take it you have some news.'

I told him everything briefly, and by the end he was white with shock. He
loved Tim nearly as much as I did. I asked him

`Do we tell the police? Tim is still a minor, just.'

Paul thought about it. `You might alienate Tim forever if you do. And he'll
only be a minor for two more days. He will almost certainly grow out of it
when he realises that this guy is out of his tree. Apart from those
collars, which I suppose are largely symbolic, if uncomfortable, and the
sex, which seems to be consensual, if rather violent, he doesn't seem to
have hurt Tim in any serious way. The contract thing couldn't possibly hold
Tim against his will; it'd never stand up in court; slavery is still
illegal. Even if this monster were to claim that it was a binding exchange
of goods and services, the very fact that the man made Tim sign it while
still a minor goes against him.'

`I still have a very bad feeling about this'.

`Well, leave any action until after Tim's birthday. Let's take that
opportunity to show him how much we love him, and he can work out any
comparisons for himself.'

`Okay, lover boy. But I'm still uneasy. He's very, very determined, as only
Tim can be. And we know only too well how he sticks his heels in if he
really wants something.'

`True enough! Do you think he's going to do a runner?'

`It's not impossible. But it shouldn't be too difficult to trace him if he
does.'

`How? We've not the slightest idea who this bastard who shafts him is.'

`On the contrary. Because Tim is so insistent that this man has the right
to abuse him, and because of other things, such as his refusal to call me
his father any more, and his insistence that he is somehow righting
something in the past, I'm 99% certain that Tim's abuser is none other than
his dear old dad. No, not me, you silly bugger! His natural father. It
shouldn't be impossible to trace him. How many Sullivans can there be
within an area small enough for Tim to get there and back on
foot--barefoot, in fact--in an afternoon?'.

Paul looked troubled, but said nothing. Both of us slept uneasily.



The following day, Tim and I were alone in the kitchen together eating
breakfast. Though Tim was still wearing only the same pair of shorts and
his collars, things were much easier between us. I was glad that we seemed
to have cleared the air. I leant across the table and took Tim's hand.

`Tim, I explained what a safeword is last night. Do you remember?'

`Yes: it's a word you use when you want the hurting to stop, when it's too
much.'

`That's right. I want to give you a safeword, Tim. It's "Roses". Say it,
Tim.'

`Roses'.

`Tim, if you're ever in trouble, you've only got to say that word to me,
find a phone, or whatever, and I will be there for you. I will cross the
world, I will tunnel through mountains, I will do whatever necessary. Do
you understand?'

`Yeah, Johnny, thanks.'

He looked as if he meant it, but he changed the subject quickly.

`Is Uncle Paul in?'

`Yes, I think so.'

`Good. I want to go to confession'.

Another hopeful sign. He was with Paul for over an hour. I would have given
anything to know what he said, but Paul, of course, kept his mouth shut,
simply shooting me a look of anguish when it was all over. Tim, on the
other hand, seemed transformed, radiant. He went to Mass and served again
with the boys for the first time in months, with the most tender
devotion. I had never seen him so transported, and I felt a whole lot
better. Hopefully he had turned a corner.



That evening, Tim had a few close friends around for a barbeque to
celebrate the eve of his eighteenth birthday. We, the family, were going to
celebrate on the day itself with a special outing, a trip on the Eurostar
to Paris, kept very secret. Tim was the life and soul of the party; his
friends thought his neck collar was dead kewl (they didn't see the other
one). Tim wore the same pair of shorts that he had worn for the last few
days, but this time added a new shiny t-shirt. He looked so beautiful,
tanned and fit from all his workouts and shirtless weeks that no one could
keep their eyes off him. He shouted and laughed and played practical jokes
in his old happy way that I had not seen for some time and even I began to
relax.

As his friends departed, Tim would press something into their hands, a
little gift. I was touched. His best friend, Jack, was the last to leave,
and I watched from a window as Tim gave Jack his own rosary, and then
pulled his new t-shirt off and gave him that too. Odd gift, I thought.

For the last hour or so of the day, Tim was very affectionate to all of us,
and we all went off to bed in a decidedly better frame of mind than the
night before.




As midnight struck and Tim turned eighteen, he got off his bed where he had
been lying awake, and took off his shorts. They were his last remaining
possession. Over the last weeks he had given absolutely everything else
away, the more noticeable things like his bike and his computer going to
his brothers. Now, literally, all he had in the world were these shorts,
and he carefully folded them and laid them on his bed with a note for me.

He knelt naked on the ground until he was sure everyone else was
asleep. Then he rose and let himself quietly out of the house.


CHAPTER 11


I woke early, and went down to the kitchen to make breakfast in bed for
Tim. His first day as an adult was going to start well, and we had an
international train to catch. I fried bacon and egg, poured cereal, made
toast and a pot of tea, and put it all on a tray. I knocked at his door,
and was not amazed to get no answer. Well, at least I wouldn't surprise him
in the act of wanking! So I turned the handle and went in.

No Tim. Just his shorts folded neatly on the bed, and a letter addressed
`to Dad'. I hoped that was me and not the other bastard. I put the tray on
the floor and opened the letter.



An hour later, Paul, who had been searching for me all over the house,
anxious about our trip, found me curled up on Tim's bed too shocked even to
weep. I simply clutched Tim's shorts against my nose as I treasured his
fading scent for the last time, staring at the wall and barely breathing.

Tim's note was short and to the point. He said that he was going off to be
a slave, he had found his true vocation and state in life. He was hoping by
his self-sacrifice to right the wrongs he had done in the past. After
thanking us for all we had done for him, he asked us to forgive anything he
might have done amiss while he lived with us, and freely forgave any wrong
we had done him, not that he could think of any. He asked us not to attempt
to find him, but doubted we would succeed anyway, even though he knew we
had worked out that he had gone to his natural Father.

`You see, Dad', wrote Tim, `Tim Sullivan was never my name anyway. You have
never known my real name.'

That was the most terrible blow of all. Had these last few years all been a
complete deception? What else had he not told us?

 There was a sad little postscript in which he said that he was glad in
this letter to be able to call me Dad one last time. He would have to
acknowledge his fault to his new Master, his real Dad, and knew he would be
severely punished for it, but, he said, it was worth it to bring me a
little happiness in return for the great deal of happiness I had brought
him.

Paul pulled the bedclothes over me, and then got into bed behind me. He
wrapped his arms around me and tried to warm me with his body and with his
love. In some distant way I was grateful for his presence, but even more
for his silence.



It was another two hours before we were found by two hungry boys.

`Dad', said Marc to Paul. `Where's Tim? ... Golly! Where's all his stuff
gone?'

`He's left home, Son.'

`Cool! Can I have his room, then?'




Four terrible months passed, with no word from Tim, or whatever his name
is. I can't call him anything but Tim. But he was rarely out of my thoughts
or my prayers. I lost a great deal of weight and for the first time began
to look my age. Paul was wonderful, as always. He pushed me around,
shepherded me, spoke to the police for me, took me to the doctor for my
happy pills, ran the parish, and generally organized my life, never
complaining at the three dependent males clamouring for his
attention. `It's a lot easier than seventy boys, which I had at St Tar's',
he said. Though his grief at the loss of Tim was not so very much less than
my own, it was compounded by the daily sight of my own sorrow, and the work
with the diaspora of St Tar's boys, and the building of the new home was
already heavy enough as a burden.

The police were not a lot of help. They pointed out that my legal
guardianship had ended on Tim's eighteenth birthday, that he had plainly
taken himself off, and he was now responsible for bringing any charges of
assault that he wanted to on his own behalf. No, they wouldn't institute a
manhunt. Yes, they would keep their eyes open in the area.

No, you're right. I didn't believe them either. Their looks implied what
they were thinking. `We all know about little boys and Catholic priests. No
wonder the poor blighter got out of it the first moment he could, and good
luck to him!'.

I knew with every fibre of my being that Tim was in trouble. I knew he had
bitten off more than he could chew; it was simply not in his nature to
fight back despite his awesome physique. He wouldn't hurt a fly
deliberately. I was sure that he would simply submit to his father's abuse
as he had done before. And I had little doubt that his father would
eventually kill him. This thought did not help me to sleep any sweeter.

The parishioners were puzzled at Tim's disappearence. What could I tell
them? That he had gone to University? I didn't want to lie to them, so I
just prevaricated.



I had one ray of hope. One day a Mrs Flanagan spoke to me after Mass.

`You know, I thought I saw Tim yesterday'.

I affected great nonchalance.

`Oh really, where?'

`Oh, it couldn't have been him, of course. This boy had a neck brace and
was completely bald. Tim has such lovely hair.'

`I'm sure you're right. Where did you see this lad? Perhaps he's a relative
of Tim's; Tim was fostered after all and for all we know might have
brothers and sisters all over the country'.

And she gave me an address where she had seen this boy in the company of an
older man who was holding firmly on to the lad's arm.



No sooner was she out of sight, than I ran to my car and drove like a
maniac to the house she had told me about. I parked a little distance away
and just looked and waited.

Nothing.

Nor the next day.

Or the next.

Or the next.

Or the next.

I saw men going in and out, but never anyone who looked remotely like
Tim. Or anyone with moustaches or in leather chaps and caps, for that
matter, either, though I don't know why I thought that Masters always
dressed according to sterotype. I don't know why I stayed. I even stayed
when no one had gone in or out at all for several days. Something kept me
glued to the spot. I returned only to do my duty by celebrating Mass, to
eat once a day and shower; I snatched a few guilty hours of disturbed sleep
in the car.

Meanwhile, the time for the St Tarcisius' summer camp had come. The new
building at Turling Park was almost finished, so this year, not only the
old residents of the former Home were coming, but also those who were due
to move with us into the new buildings in September. It was thought that
they would integrate together more happily if they had a chance to do so in
a neutral and enjoyable place. Besides, those boys incarcerated in the old
buildings at Turling Park would be able to get a full month's holiday
instead of the two and a half weeks in a Scottish boarding school that they
normally got. So Marc and Conor left happily, waved off by Paul on his
own. I was still obsessively sitting in my car, watching that bloody house.

It had been four days since I had seen anyone at all at the house--I had
been watching now for over a week and a half--and Paul had had enough. With
the boys gone, he was lonely, and he was worrying, with good cause, about
my mental health. So he waked across town to the place where I had parked
my car, and reached in through the open window, taking the keys out of the
ignition. He got in beside me, talked to me with his hand on my knee, and
finally forced me to see sense and get a good night's sleep. He drove me
back, undressed me, bathed me and even gave me a massage to relax me. He
helped me into my shorts and put me to bed. He kissed me on the forehead
and tiptoed out of the room. I was past thinking about sex, and his
attentions didn't even cause a flicker of randiness. Poor Paul.

He came up to bed at the usual time, but I was deeply asleep, and did not
stir when, instead of getting into his own bed, he got in behind me and put
his arms around me.

It must have been about 3am when I woke. I had had the strangest dream. In
the midst of it, I thought someone had shouted `Roses', several times.

`Roses?' Tim's safeword! I was awake in an instant. I tore myself from
Paul's arms without a backward glance, without even particularly noticing
that he had been in my bed with me. Not bothering to dress, I ran
downstairs in my shorts, flung and left the door wide open, and ran out
into the warm August night. I had no doubt as to where I was going. I was
drawn as if by a magnet to that same house I had been outside for the last
week or more. I ran and ran through the town, paying not the least heed to
my sore bare feet.

When I arrived, the house was in darkness. I tore up to the front door and
battered on it like a maniac. No response. Some little voice in the back of
my head calmly told me that I was behaving stupidly, a nearly naked man
disturbing innocent strangers in the early hours of the morning. I had not
a shred of evidence that my son was even here, and I was undoubtedly
trespassing. But I was driven by my love and my desperation. I went around
to the back of the house and tried the other door. A large half-starved
Alsatian dog chained to a kennel barked and strained to get at me; I
couldn't have cared less. The back door was locked, but I was so desperate
that I picked up a large brick from a pile nearby and shattered the glass
panel. I put my hand through and opened the door, passing through, not even
feeling the shards of glass on the kitchen floor. I could see in the
moonlight that the place was a disgusting tip and it stank of rotting
food. About a century's worth of filthy dishes stood in the sink. I choked
as my gorge rose, and ran on into the house.

`Tim! Tim! Are you there, Son?' I called.

I heard a movement upstairs, so I ran up and called again. `Tim, Son?' This
time there was a faint gurgling noise from one of the rooms. I went in, and
was plunged into deep darkness. There must be heavy curtains over the
windows, and no light was able to percolate from the streetlamps outside. I
turned back to the doorway and felt along the wall for a light switch. I
found one; it worked, and the resulting brilliance dazzled me for a
moment. When my eyes adjusted, I nearly passed out with shock.

There, hanging from the high ceiling by manacles was a powerful young man,
but in a terrible state. He was completely naked, his neck in a huge steel
collar, and his ankles in heavy fetters. His nearly black testicles dangled
low, pulled by heavy weights. His feet could scarcely touch the ground, and
he alternated by hanging from his arms, when he could raise one or the
other foot to lift the weights hung from his testicles and then standing on
the toes of both feet to give his arms some relief while his balls screamed
pain instead. The outline of every muscle could be seen, which suggested
that he was seriously dehydrated. He was gagged with some sort of ball in
his mouth, tied with a cord around the back of his head. Every inch of his
body was shaved clean of hair, though there was a little stubble on his
scalp.

There was no doubt it was Tim, though.

I moved like a robot. First I had to to ungag him. As I went round the back
of him, I saw that the skin of his back, buttocks and thighs had been
flogged brutally. And trailing down the inside of his legs was a dried and
caked mess of blood, shit and semen. I untied the cord; Tim, his jaw
helpless, was unable even to spit out the ball, and I gently took it out.

He then whispered thickly and hoarsely through scarcely moving lips:`Oh
Dada! Roses! Roses! Dada, oh Dada!'.

He had never ever called me that before. Only Dad, or sometimes Father,
when we were being formal in front of parishioners. `Dada' was the cry of a
little child. I understood immediately that he was giving me a new and more
precious title than just `Dad'.

`Oh Tim, oh my beloved, poor, poor Son'. I kissed him tenderly on the
shoulder; this was as high as I could reach.

My first priority was to take the weight off his testicles so that he had
only one problem to manage at a time. Thankfully, the weights had not been
fastened in any secure way, but were simply attached with small
shackles. Tim groaned with relief as the terrible weight was reduced to the
weight of the collar on the scrotum itself, to which I turned my attention
next. There was nothing I could do about that. It was much thicker and
heavier than the one I had seen him wearing before, but, like that earlier
one, it had been welded on in some way. Even if Tim's balls at normal size
could have passed back through the aperture in the collar, which I doubted,
there was no way that they could do so in their current swollen and bruised
condition.

Tim's weight was suspended by manacles on his wrists, which were connected
to each other by a chain, and a shackle on the mid point of this chain was
suspended from a pulley in the ceiling by another chain, attached to the
wall behind Tim. To lower him gently would take another person to hold his
weight as the tension was released. And the tension was so great that I
could not release the chain from the hook on the wall. Tim could not push
himself any higher to release the tension--he was already at full
stretch--and so I looked around desperately to find some tool to use. A
metal bar was nearby, with shackles on each end of it--no doubt used to
hold Tim's legs apart at some time--and I battered at the hook on the wall
to try and release it. I fitted the bar behind the hook, put both feet up
on the wall and pulled with all my might, shouting to Tim to lean all his
weight downwards on the chains. After what seemed an eternity, the hook
came free from the wall, and as I fell backwards to the floor I snatched at
the chain to try and break Tim's fall. However, even in his pitiful state,
his weight was too much for me, and Tim crashed to the bare floorboards, a
look of absolute agony on his face as his outraged arms were wrenched from
the place where they had almost set, and from having been tugged around by
me on the other end of the chain; his sore balls were trapped under a thigh
also. But he had no voice left to cry out; he could only gasp and make dry
sobs. I could only sit there and pull him into my lap and sob for him.

At that point, my heart suddenly nearly stopped. I heard footsteps coming
up the stairs!

At that stage I didn't even want to move. If I couldn't get away, then I
just wanted to die there with Tim, and that was that. A tall man came into
the room, and I didn't even look up.

`Oh there you are' he said.

It was Paul, in shorts and a t-shirt. He had guessed where I had gone as
soon as I had torn away from his arms to run into the night, and had
brought the car to try and bring me back to my senses. Though he had
followed me immediately, he had waited outside until he could bear it no
longer, and now he had found us both.

I suddenly found his simple `oh there you are' hilariously funny. So
utterly inadequate to the appalling situation. I cried and laughed--I'm not
sure which; I suppose it was a hysterical reaction, but Paul soon joined
in, chuckling, and even Tim heaved his ribs trying to laugh.

Somehow between us we got Tim home. We thought of trying to find him water,
clothes or medical help there at the house, but we were nervous still that
his tormentors would return, and thought that the more quickly we got him
out the better. No doubt we should have taken him to hospital, but somehow
that did not occur to us. Perhaps unconciously we thought that the
humiliation for Tim would have been too great on top of everything else. In
the event, our instinct that his hurts were not life-threatening was to
prove right, but if he had had some serious injury, I suppose we might have
put him in danger. After what he had gone through, though, we wanted no
other hands touching him but those who loved him.

I suppose it was as well that nobody saw us that night. Two almost-naked
men carrying one completely naked man in chains to a car and driving him
off in the night; well, that would have given Mrs Flanagan something to
gossip about, wouldn't it? Particularly if she'd recognized us.

We tried to lie Tim on his back on the back seat of the car, but his wounds
were too painful. We couldn't lay him on his front because of his tender
testicles.

In the end, we sat him up in the back seat, and I supported him with my
hand behind his neck. Paul drove slowly and carefully. I alternated
ecstatic joy and happiness at having found Tim with bitter tears at his
distress. Tim just sat in silence, too overwhelmed to have any reactions
yet, groaning from time to time, perhaps out of habit, perhaps at the
little potholes in the road which Paul could not avoid. I could see by the
trembling of his shoulders that Paul was finding it hard to keep back the
tears.

Back home we brought Tim and laid him gently on the couch in my den, where
Paul had been laid when he was had been injured on the night St Tarcisius'
Home burned. On that couch, Tim's blood could mingle with Paul's almost
like a strange blood-brotherhood ritual.

Tepid water, gently administered sip by sip, from a spoon held by Paul, was
the first priority, followed by a weak solution of sugar and salt. In all
this, Tim lay in my arms as gentle as a lamb, his beautiful, beautiful eyes
fixed on us both with love. He never uttered one word of complaint, though
moving him and all the manipulation must have been terribly painful. We
then got a camera, and carefully photographed all his hurts; it might be
necessary for evidence later. We explored his body minutely, testing the
feeling in each of his fingers and toes, to see whether there had been any
nerve damage from the long suspension in steel bonds. It seemed that he had
been very lucky in that regard. We carried him upstairs to the bathroom; as
life returned to his limbs, he found that he could slowly and agonizingly
walk, as long as he went between us with an arm around our shoulders, and
we supported him around his narrow waist. We tenderly washed him clean,
pushing our face flannels under the steel that still bound his limbs. We
cleaned up his lacerated back as well as we could--it had always been
scarred--and examined his anus for tearing. Thankfully there appeared to be
no major damage. I suppose he had been raped so often in the last year that
he could take whatever his father had to give him in that area. He bore all
these indignities so patiently that I was moved beyond description. Never
had I loved him more than at that moment. We fed him a little fruit juice,
and some warm milk.

We took him downstairs again and laid him on a sheet on the floor; we had
to do something about his irons. While Paul went down to the shed to find
some tools, I examined them. The collars that he had been wearing round his
neck and balls at the time he left us had gone. In their place were these
new, much heavier, ones. These, like their predecessors, had been welded
into place; there were burn marks here and there on Tim's skin, as if he
had not suffered enough! Tim's testicles under their heavy collar had
already returned to a more regular colour, though they were still swollen,
terribly bruised and sore. Tim choked with pain whenever they were touched,
though he still said not a word in protest. The fetters on his ankles were
terribly heavy too, and the chain between them was thick, heavy and short,
only about just over a foot in length. About the same length of lighter
chain connected his wrists, from which he had dangled. Paul brought a
couple of files, and we set to work. We made almost no progress at all, and
by the time dawn came, we seemed to have barely scratched the surface. We
decided to call it a night.

I was on my last legs. I left a note for Teresa, asking her to go around
quietly with her work, and went up to our room. There I found that Paul had
pushed our two beds together and remade them as one big double bed; I
hadn't thought where Tim was going to sleep. We couldn't leave Tim alone,
so now there was room for the three of us here. Paul said

`Somehow, I don't think it would be fair to make Tim sleep on his own
tonight'.

`Well, Tim, we have one big bed. Where do you want to sleep?' I asked him.

"Between the two of you, in the middle, Dada,' he whispered hoarsely. It
was the first time he had spoken since we had brought him home.

`On the crack between the mattresses? I asked.

Tim smiled wanly.

`Dada, I've been sleeping in a dog's kennel, on concrete or standing up,
for the last few months. I think I can cope with the crack of two
mattresses!'

And his smile broadened into his characteristic beautiful, radiant
smile. It was at that point that it all became too much. The dam broke, and
it seemed a lifetime of tears and sobs rushed out of me. Tim painfully
raised his arms, lifted his chains over my head and hugged me tightly, then
Paul came up behind me and hugged us both together. I wanted that moment
never to end. And so we went to bed.


CHAPTER 12


We woke at about two in the afternoon, and Teresa cooked us brunch. She
cried too when she saw her beloved Tim home, and still more when she saw
his bare back. His chains puzzled her, but we could not tell her the whole
truth. That would have to wait. His arms would still not fully obey him,
and were terribly sore, having stiffened in the night, so we had to feed
him. Because of his irons, Tim could not get dressed, and so we had simply
tucked a towel round his waist.

`Still,' he said cheerfully, his voice husky but returning, `it's more than
I've worn in a while!'

After brunch, we filed away a little more on the irons, but we were
beginning to realise that removal was going to be a professional job. That
was more complicated. We had no wish to involve outsiders. Paul had the
idea of going back to the house to see if the tools that got the irons on
might get the irons off.

`Tim; how long were those bastards going to be away?'

`I'm not sure, Uncle Paul. A few more days, I think. It's a bit risky.'

`I'll come too,' I said.

As I left, I thought to take the camera. A few photographs of the dungeon
and other evidence might be useful in case Tim's tormentor tried to make
trouble about our breaking and entering or retrieving his victim.

The house was as we left it last night, and in the daylight somehow the
interior seemed even more sinister. I took my photographs of all the
implements that had been used to torture Tim and perhaps other young men
too. And as I prepared to leave, my eye fell on a pile of books in the
corner; they were photograph albums; clearly the monster liked photography
as well as torture, and had compiled his own record for revisiting happy
memories. On top were some envelopes of new photographs. I dreaded to look
inside for what I might find; probably pictures of Tim suffering. I took
the lot; these should ensure Tim's safety and hopefully that of
others. There was a video camera, too, and that inspired me to look in the
sitting room, where there was a large collection of videos simply labelled
by date. Paul came in from the garden, where in the shed he had found some
tools that he thought would help him. He also had the Alsatian with him on
a length of cord, and who was now completely tame from hunger; thus we
returned to Tim.

We fed the dog, who was completely won over by our friendliness, and who
seemed overjoyed to see Tim for some reason. The dog, sated, then found a
warm corner and went to sleep. He became a most welcome addition to our
family, and we later called him Butch, which sounds rather camp, but the
name was Conor's idea, after the Disney dog. We had drawn the line at
Goofy!

Teresa dropped by a little later; she had made Tim a sort of kilt out of an
old white sheet which he could wear to cover the necessaries. A great
improvement on the towel.

Tim said `Great: I've always wanted to look like David Beckham! Now at
least I've got the sarong.'

 She kissed him warmly, and went home. She had over the years become
totally one of the family, and had recently agreed to move with us to
Turling Park to become the house mother to the boys.



We men--Tim could no longer be classed as anything else--sat down that
evening, just the three of us, and we had a serious talk about what had
happened. Tim got very weepy, not out of self-pity, but in sorrow for
everything that had happened. His memories were harrowing, and we were soon
grimly silent.

`You were right, Dada, so right, and I was so determined that what I
thought was right was right.' The whole story poured out of him. He told us
at last of his abuse as a child; how his mother was a drug addict who never
touched him except to hit or burn him and only spoke to him except to order
him to do this or that, and of his father, a bisexual rapist whose appetite
or even need for causing pain in other had grown more and more overpowering
as Tim grew older. He told us how his mother died of an overdose when he
was seven. We heard how Tim used to have a brother, and how he had no idea
what happened to him. He told us of the night he had run away from home
wearing nothing but tracksuit bottoms--`the same ones I tried to go
shopping in the first day I came here, the ones Conor wears sometimes
now,'--and his life at St Tar's, how even life in a orphanage was like a
heaven to him, compared with his life before.

`And then here... Dada, you and Uncle Paul have been so wonderful. I just
felt it all had to be paid for. It wasn't right. I didn't deserve it. I had
abandoned my brother. I had done nothing to earn such happiness. I had
stolen that happiness by running away; it wasn't mine by right. I promised
myself that I would go back to my father, but most of all to my brother,
who must have suffered so badly as a result of my cowardice, just as soon
as I could bear even to think about it. I was sure that as soon as I left
our home in the caravan park, my father would have started in on him. I
couldn't bear the thought; I had always tried to protect him, but I
couldn't bear the thought of going back. But I had to, one day. One morning
at St Tar's I looked at myself in the mirror and thought that if I was
going to cope with that prospect, I would have to prepare. I was far too
easily intimidated, far too physically weak and weedy. Dad had made me
terrified of strength and somebody needed only to shout or to shove me for
me to to capitulate entirely. I think I'm still the same way, a bloody
coward. So I started to work out, really hard, I wanted to learn to be able
to bear pain, and make myself as physically strong as I could. Perhaps I
could stand up to Dad if I were bigger than he was, perhaps I could bear
his beatings and his abuse if I could tolerate pain better.

And then you came along, Dada, and I saw the possibility of a new life. A
different way. In fact, you reminded me very strongly of someone else who
was once so kind to me when I badly needed it; he saved my life when I
nearly died of hypothermia the night I ran away. Other than my brother,
that guy was the first person whom I loved, though I only met him once, and
that for only about twelve hours. That man inspired me, you can't imagine
how much. He became my hero, my model, even my fantasy, and I used to sit
in the chapel at St Tarcisius, and pray that he would come and take me away
to his home to be his friend, his son. Then you came, Dada.

You and Uncle Paul had taken a bunch of us swimming; someone had lent us
their private pool, and when you came out of the changing room in your blue
shorts, you reminded me so much of that guy whose memory I treasured that
it just took my breath away. And you and Uncle Paul were so wonderful, both
of you! You raced with us, you let us clamber all over you, we dunked each
other, and then you both picked us up and threw us into the water, one
after another. None of us could get enough, and eventually you were both
exhausted, and lay down on the mats by the side of the pool. Both of you
lay with two of us next to you, one on each side, with one of your arms
round us, holding us tight to you. I couldn't remember being that happy in
my life before. You can't imagine what it is like growing up with no
affection at all; when it comes, it is the most precious thing you can
imagine, and all of us yearned for it, and loved you so much for giving it
to us. When it was somebody else's turn to lie beside you, I would
cheerfully have killed them for pinching what I saw as my place at your
side Dada. I decided there and then that I wanted you as my new dad; you
were so handsome and strong; everything I wanted to have and be. I no
longer wanted the other guy to be my dad; I knew that he was a preparation
for you, really.

And Uncle Paul, perhaps this says something to you about how all of us at
St Tar's adored you. You were a sort of combination of priest and father,
but also our big brother and our closest friend. If any of us have turned
into any sort of decent human beings, it is nearly all down to you. I don't
know what would have become of me without St Tar's, if I had been sent to
Turling Park, for instance. And you two are so great together; the whole is
greater than the sum of its parts. Uncle Paul, you were always so much more
fun when Dada was around; you two used to lark around like you were one of
us. I knew it drove some of the staff mad to see you playing like kids, but
we absolutely loved it, and we would do anything for either of you just to
earn a smile from you.

And then I came to my new home here, as I said, and things got even
better. School was difficult at first; I found it hard to make friends. I
was still terrified of all contact sports and getting hurt, and there was a
lot of that sort of thing. The school seemed to sense my
reluctance--perhaps you told them something, Dada--and so instead of making
me play rugby, they let me work out in the gym. I had got myself not a bad
physique at St Tar's, before I came to you, but now I became a real gym
junkie. A lot of good it did me: I should have recognized that making my
body strong wouldn't necessarily make my spirit strong. I was as much a
coward as ever, as I was to find out.

I then set a date. I decided that I would try to find my father when I
turned eighteen, when I became a legal adult. I knew that before that age,
and even perhaps after, you, Dada, would move heaven and earth to prevent
it, and so for that last year, from my seventeenth birthday I actually
tried everything I could bring myself to do to make you stop loving me...'
Here Tim gasped and choked when he saw my shocked face ... `be...because I
knew how unhappy you would be with my decision, and I wanted you and Uncle
Paul not to regret my going, since you had made me so happy, and I love you
so very much. So I wanted you to be glad that I went. The night before I
went, the night Conor discovered the collar on my balls, you made me
realise that all my efforts had been in vain, that there was nothing I
could do to change your love; I came so close to telling you everything,
but I still knew I had to go, that I could never live with myself if I
didn't try...'

I said `Oh, Tim... I'm so sorry for not realising all this. I feel it's my
fault for having failed to understand you properly'.

`No, no, never your fault! Not even slightly. And what is more, when I was
hanging in the chains, I finally began to realise that it wasn't even very
much my fault, that in all my abuse I was at least a little bit more sinned
against than sinning. And that finally set me free. In my chains, and in my
pain, my heart felt free of the burden it had carried for years. And so I
called for you, Dada. I knew at that moment without any doubt who was
really my father.'

Tim, unable to speak for a moment, and seeing me about to say something,
leant across and laid his hand on my mouth, shaking his head. The chains
meant that he had to raise both arms to do it. We sat in silence. Then Paul
asked quietly,

`Tim; I'm so happy to hear that. But I still can't understand why, having
escaped from hell and having found somewhere you felt secure and happy, you
felt the need to go back to hell.

Tim cried a little, and then said simply.

`Dan.'

`Who's Dan?'

`My little brother. You should know, Dada, and Uncle Paul, that what I
wrote in my letter, about Tim Sullivan not being my real name, well that's
true. It's a name I borrowed from that policeman who was wonderfully kind
to me the night I ran away. I fantasized about being really his son. He was
the one who was so kind to me, the one you remind me of so strongly, Dada,
My real name...' Tim paused, trying to get hold of himself, `...my real
name is Ben, Benjamin Andrew Thompson. I'm so sorry to have decieved you
all these years, but I spent all that time trying to hide from my past,
until I was ready to go back to it and confront it. And now I've run away
from Dad again, even though I know now it was the right thing to do, and I
don't know now whether I'm Ben or Tim, or who the hell I am!'

I said, to forestall more tears, `Tell us about Dan.'

`Dan's wonderful. He's about four or five years younger than me, so I
suppose if he's alive, he must be nearly fourteen now, and I almost had to
bring him up, because Mum couldn't, and then she died, and Dad wasn't
interested in us until we were big enough to beat with his belt or to
fuck... er, sorry, but that's what it was. It wasn't love, or even sex. It
was just fucking. My biggest problem was trying to protect Dan from Dad. We
only lived in a small caravan, so that was difficult. There was a double
bed, for Dad and whoever he shared it with at that time, and a small single
bed for Dan and me to share, though we often ended up on the floor, or even
under the van if Dad had more than a couple of friends over. Though we were
never sent to school, or even taught to read or write, we knew all that
there was to know about sex before most kids can ride a bicycle. I must
have been about seven or eight when my Dad first fucked me; it was after my
mother's death, so perhaps she protected me in her strange way, when she
wasn't stubbing out her joints on my chest. Dad's cock isn't really very
big, so he didn't do as much harm as he might have done to me. But he began
to experiment, and he found that if he tied me up, he got more pleasure out
of it. Eventually he used to hang me from the caravan ceiling, or in a barn
nearby. That wasn't too bad while I was little, but as I grew heavier, and
he used to leave me for longer and longer, it got really painful. I
developed good arms and shoulders, though, from pulling away from him and
his belt. He began thrashing me every time he fucked me. I don't know why,
but my pain made him get really hard.

He got into a circle of men who were into the same thing, about the time I
was ten. He used to bring them home and take me out to the barn and they
would all use me. Some of these had really big cocks, and then I was in
real pain, and sometimes injured, I think; at least, if blood is any
indication. I would be left for a few days to heal, and then it would all
start again. Dan was my only happiness and my only friend at that time. He
worshipped the ground I walked on, which is a nice feeling, but I'm not
really sure how much he understood of what went on. I had to feed him and
look after him, because nobody else was interested, and I loved him more
than anyone else on earth. My main concern was keeping Dan out of the way
when Dad got randy or drunk, because I knew that it would not be long
before Dan would be seen as fair game too. I wanted to postpone that
inevitable event as long as possible.

One night, when Dan was seven and I was eleven and a half, Dad got really
roaring drunk with a friend, and he boasted of what a good fuck I was. They
tied me up in the caravan, and both fucked me so hard I cried. Then Dad
beat me with a belt, more violently than ever before. Dan got really
distressed and the valiant little bugger tried to take the belt from Dad's
hand. I didn't realise he had that courage in him; more than I ever had! It
was a new side of my little brother. In his place I would never have
dared. So they decided that he was old enough to take a little
treatment. They took down his shorts and decided to fuck him, so they
untied me, and started towards Dan with the rope. He got frightened, hid
behind me and started screaming. I grabbed him and pushed him out of the
door. So Dad and his friend started on me again. They stripped me naked,
tied me up to a hook on the ceiling of the van and gave me the beating of
my life. Then they took me down, and still with my hands tied together,
fucked me again and again and made me do all these really disgusting
things.

It wasn't just the sex; there was something else in them. I could see they
were getting a real kick out of my pain, which frightened me more than
anything. Eventually they untied me and settled in to a drinking session. I
had been there before, so I just sat on the floor, all covered in blood and
really hurting, as quiet as a mouse in case they noticed me again, and I
waited for them to fall asleep. When that inevitably happened, I pulled a
towel round my waist and crept out to look for Dan; I was really worrying
about him, that he had got lost in his fright. I found him in his usual
hiding place, though, under a neighbouring van where he could get some
warmth. He was shivering and crying...no bloody wonder, and he was still
naked from the waist down. When he saw me all covered in blood he started
to scream. I put my hand over his mouth until he calmed, then picked him up
and took him back to the van, telling him he was safe now, and everything
was ok. I undressed him properly, put him in his night things, and tucked
him up in the bed we shared, hugged him, then grabbed a pair of tracksuit
trousers and some soap to go to the shower block to clean myself up. I had
done this often before. Dan started to cry, begging me not to leave him. I
shushed him, and told him I'd be back as soon as I could. Then I went out
carrying my trackies.

The night was freezing cold; I remember cracking through the icy puddles in
my bare feet, with only a towel round me. It was November, you see. I went
into the cold shower block, and then for the first time caught sight of my
reflection in a mirror. I looked absolutely terrible. It completely freaked
me out to see that I had never been as badly beaten as this. There was so
much blood all over me. No wonder Dan had been so frightened! That's all I
can say in excuse for my behaviour.

Without even stopping to think, even of Dan, I just ran; all I wanted was
to get as much distance as I could from my Dad. My mind was empty, or
rather it was full, only full of terror. There wasn't room for anything
else. I ran and ran and ran, with no idea where I was going. Somewhere, I
lost the towel round my waist; I didn't stop, but ran on naked. I learnt
later that I must have gone something like fifteen miles--and all in my
bare feet, though I'd never had shoes and so my soles were pretty hard.

I ran so hard that I didn't feel the cold, and when eventually I could go
no further, I stopped for breath, and realised why cars were hooting at me:
I was stark bollock naked! I had thought it was my Dad after me in his van,
and that is what spurred me on. Then I saw that I still had my tracksuit
trousers in one hand, and the bar of soap in the other. I felt so stupid! I
dropped the soap and pulled the trousers on. By this time the sweat on my
body was beginning to freeze, and I was getting really cold. It began to
rain really hard again, freezing rain that was turning to sleet. I had not
the slightest idea where I was; just on the side of a busy road. I started
to run again, just to get warm, but I was beginning to get frightened now,
not of Dad, but because I was lost, and I thought I might die of cold. I
ran faster, but I had used up all my energy. I got a stitch, and slowed to
a walk, then got cold and tried to run again, but I couldn't; I had nothing
left. I just kind of lurched along trying to think of something else. Then
it was really weird; I got really hot-feeling and really sleepy; I wanted
to take off my trousers again to cool off; it was only embarrassment that
prevented me. They told me later that I had hypothermia. I suppose I would
have died if this man who was out for a run hadn't found me and carried me
to his home. He warmed me, bathed me, fed me, and put me in his own bed,
lying with me and cuddling me. No, it was not remotely sexual; I was
certainly experienced enough by then to know the difference. He washed my
trackie trousers, and the next day he gave me one of his own shirts to
wear, then took me to the hospital for a check-up. I begged and pleaded for
him to let me stay with him, but he told me he couldn't; he was a policeman
with terrible hours, and nobody at home when he wasn't there. He looked so
lonely, too. In a way, I still wish it could have worked out, although of
course I would never have come here.

At the time, I was devastated! I wanted so badly to be with him, to be like
him, to live in his home, oh, above all to be a man like him. I suppose I
fell in love, in a way. He was the first man who ever showed me any
tenderness or kindness; in that one night he gave me an ideal for my life;
he actually showed me some affection, what it was like to be a human being,
and I have never forgotten him or his lesson. I suppose he has long
forgotten me, though. When he left me in the hospital, it was a lot worse
than when my mother died. And it made me all the more determined not to go
home. The nurses were really sweet, but I was determined to tell them
nothing, not even my name. If I couldn't have my policeman, at least I must
give them nothing which would connect me back to my father. One of the
nurses thought she was really clever when she took off my clothes to treat
the wounds on my back and my bottom, because she read the name tag on my
shirt. Only she didn't know that my rescuer had given me the shirt, and the
name was his, not mine.

`I thought that if I couldn't have the man himself, I'd at least have his
name. His name was Timothy Sullivan, and that is what I have been called
from that day to this.'

Paul and I looked significantly at each other. Tim went on,

`I never told a soul otherwise, and that is why I ended up at St Tar's. If
I had not given an Irish Catholic name, I would have been sent to Turling
Park --we called it Alcatraz--not St Tarcisius, and would never have met
either of you. So I'm sorry for all the lies, but I'm not sorry, if you
know what I mean.

Tim--or was it Ben?--started to fill up with tears again. `But I never
forgot my little brother Dan, not all these years, and I was so terrified
for him. I felt so guilty in my happiness, because I could never forget
that he was now getting everything, all that abuse, from our Dad that I had
been getting before, and should have been getting for several years now. I
knew I had abandoned him to his fate. In my mind he is still seven, though
I know that he must be thirteen or fourteen, and I imagined him tied up by
his hands in the caravan or the barn being r...raped and b...b...beaten. So
I knew that one day I would have to go back for him as I promised.

`Then, about a year ago, I met Dad, my real Dad. It happened by accident on
the way home from school; he saw me on my bike and followed me in his
van. I'm surprised he recognized me; it was never my face that he was
interested in--except when I was sucking him off, of course. I wanted
nothing to do with him at first, and I sprinted hard on my bike, but he
made me get off by nudging me with the van until I was afraid he would run
me over.

`He got out of the van and we talked, or rather he talked. He made me feel
so guilty for abandoning him. He hit me twice across the face. Day after
day he waited outside the school gates, then followed me, and would try to
knock me off my bike until I got off and talked to him. He would tell me
nothing about Dan, though I begged him to. I made him all sorts of promises
if he would let me see my brother, and he dropped all sorts of hints about
what he made Dan do; the sorts of things I knew only too well. He said that
Dan thought that I had abandoned him, that I had gone after money and
comfort and left him and his Dad alone. He said I could never see Dan
again, because Dan hated me for what I had done to him. There was only one
thing to be done to make amends, and that was to come home, but not as his
son, because I had forfeited that, but as his slave. His property, to do
with as he liked. And that made sort of sense. I had been expecting it for
years; preparing for it, even. It was agreed that I was to come to him, to
his new home, willingly and alone, at midnight on my eighteenth birthday,
the first moment I was free of the fostering order, naked, and wearing only
the collars that he would put on me as a sign of his ownership. Until that
time, Dan would be fucked and beaten every night. And if I said anything to
you or the police, Dan would be killed.

`I agreed. What else could I do? I knew he was completely capable of
everything he had threatened. As a sign of my agreement to his ownership,
he told me to get my hair cropped, and to wear those horrible see-through
clothes which he got for me, and soon after, he hung a heavy padlock and
chain around my neck, which you saw, and hung another padlock on my balls,
which you didn't, just locking the hasp over the neck of my ball sac. That
was the day you thought someone had kicked me in the nuts. The lock was
incredibly heavy, and fucking painful after a few minutes, and the hasp
nearly cut off the blood supply; I must have looked as if I had half my
sock drawer stuffed into my groin! Whenever I took a step, the padlock
would bang against my balls or thighs. Then he took away the tight
trousers, because they supported the padlock to some extent, and I was only
to wear loose trousers or footie shorts. The only relief I had was to go
round to his house each day, when he would take my ball lock off for a
couple of hours, chain me up and fuck me. By this stage he couldn't even
get it up unless I was chained and in pain. He never let me see Dan, but
told me he was tied up and gagged in the next room. I could only see him
when I came to be his slave permanently. I dropped out of school, as you
know; how could I go in that state, with the locks on my body? My days
began to take on an awful familiarity, like when we lived in the
caravan. Despite all my working out and my good physique, I was paralyzed
whenever I saw my Dad, and I failed completely to stand up to him. I should
have, because there is no question that I was much bigger and stronger than
he was. I should have gone and searched for Dan to take him away, but I was
so weirdly afraid of this man and what he could do, that I did nothing
except submit to whatever he wanted.

`The last stage of my freedom was when he made me sign my life over to him
in what he called a `Legally Binding Slave Contract'. He said that when I
fulfilled its terms, on my eighteenth birthday, he would stop abusing Dan,
and would take me in his place. Everything would return to the way it was
before I ran away. So I signed, agreeing to be his slave, without condition
whatever, and do for the rest of my life whatever he wished, relinquishing
all my human rights to his will. He then shaved my whole body except my
head, and welded on me those collars which you saw. They were a little less
uncomfortable than the padlocks, but these new collars were never removed
at all. And then Marc and Conor spotted my ball collar the night before I
left, and I had all that explaining to do which I could never do until now,
for fear of what that bastard would do to my little brother.

`I left here the following night, as you know, and ran to his house, naked
apart from my two collars. It wasn't easy, dodging the people coming home
from the pubs, but I don't think I was seen. It was a bit painful, though,
because with the extra weight and no restraint from clothing, my balls and
cock banged against my thighs as I ran. I went to his door and rang. He
told me to wait outside until he was ready for me, and shut the door. I
knelt naked on his doorstep until the following morning; the milkman was a
bit surprised to see me, but he passed no remarks. I assumed he was used to
seeing Dan, whom I was longing to see again, if only to apologise for never
coming home that night I had left.

`Dad woke up eventually, and saw to me. He wouldn't take me inside, but
cuffed my hands behind my back and chained me up with the Alsatian in the
kennel outside in the back yard, connecting my neck collar by a chain to a
staple to the kennel opening. I have to say that the dog was my best friend
there; he's a big softy. It's lovely to have him here with us. He didn't
mind sharing his kennel with me, and both of us were at least warm at
night. We ate the same food out of the same dish--it takes some getting
used to without hands--and the dog seemed to understand that I was upset.

`Days later, I was unlocked from the kennel, and my hands were unlocked. A
lot of my hair had grown back by this time, and I was made to shave myself
again, squatting in the back garden, without soap, using only cold water
from the garden hose, while they watched and masturbated themselves.'

`They?' I asked. It was the first word I had been able to utter for ages.

`Dad had a couple of mates around for the show. Oh Dada! Please see how I
couldn't bear to call you Dad any more! I couldn't liken you to that man!'

Tim/Ben cried again quietly for a moment, and then continued;

`So, there I was, sitting on the concrete behind the house, shaving my
balls, legs, armpits, eyebrows, scalp: everything. How the neighbours
didn't see, I don't know. Perhaps they did and didn't care. Perhaps they
were used to it. It took several disposable razors. When I finished, he
smeared some foul-smelling stuff over me which he said would kill off the
follicles, and mean I wouldn't need to shave again for several months. He
only left my eyebrows and scalp, in case, he said, he wanted to sell me at
a later date to someone who preferred hair on their boys. He cuffed my
wrists behind me again and put me back in the kennel. Not even the dog
would come near me because of the smell. The stuff itched and burned, but
it did its job, because I haven't seen a sign of a hair in all the normal
places since. I haven't even needed to shave my chin; it feels just like
when I was a little boy.

The next day he washed me down with the hose. This was the worst day so
far. He got out his oxy-acetylene torch, and putting a sort of blanket next
to my skin, he cut off my collars. Good job, I thought. But it was only to
make way for all the assortment of ironmongery that I'm still wearing
now. The burns of the torch were horrible, because the asbestos blanket
wasn't much protection. I've been wearing the irons for several months
now. Weeks passed, and then things changed. One day, about a fortnight ago,
Dad decided to take me indoors; he put an old raincoat around my shoulders,
and led me round to the front door. I saw Mrs Flanagan passing, and tried
to hide my face, but I think she saw me.'

`She did' I said. `It was how we found you.'

`Despite everything' he continued, `I was elated. It was the day I would
finally see Dan and make it all up to him. I thought it was all going to be
worthwhile. Dad took me into that room where you found me, and chained me
to the wall. It was then that he told me the truth. Dan was not here. Dan
had never been here. It was all a ruse to get me back for him to play with.

`It seems that the night I ran away, Dan must have woken and found me
gone. He wandered out to look for me, presumably, and he never returned
either. Dad just found our bed completely empty when he woke in the
morning. He had no idea what had happened to either of his sons. Perhaps
Dan was kidnapped, or died, or found by someone else, but was missing,
anyway. Not that Dad ever bothered making enquiries, or even bothered to
report him missing. There were two less mouths to feed.

`When Dad told me this, I despaired. I had hurt you both, Dada, and Uncle
Paul, but also Marc and Conor, myself and everybody, and done it all for
nothing. I retreated into myself, and Dad tried everything to get me to
scream, respond, interact with him in some way. Maybe in his own way he was
lonely too. He never tried talking to me as another human being,
though. All his dialogue was with violence. I cannot tell you how awful
things were, but perhaps all my workouts had done something to help me bear
it. My big body made him randy though, so he made me do push-ups, sit-ups,
pull-ups, loads of exercises for hours on end in my chains while he wanked
himself off. And he flogged me, burnt me, raped me, cut me, taunted me...I
just endured. I'll spare you the details, but if you can imagine it, he did
it. Perhaps if I had screamed, it might have been easier. I just wanted to
die, knowing all the harm I had done to Dan, and to you both, who had loved
me. I remembered Jesus on the cross, and I asked him to accept my suffering
as a penance for my sins, especially for what I had done to you.'

Tim/Ben stared into space for several minutes. Paul and I were speechless.

`Finally, after some weeks, he chained me up as you saw me and began to
starve me. I think he was fed up trying to break me. He used to bring the
dog in and feed him in my presence to torment me. He only gave me
water. Then he tied the weights to my balls which you saw, hauled my arms
above my head until I was standing on tiptoes and said that he had to go
away on some business to do with his job. He left me to die, he said, of
dehydration and pain, if I was the weakling he always took me for. I was an
utter failure as a son to him, and an even worse slave. `Think on that', he
said, and left.

`I didn't think on that, surprisingly. After he had gone, my mind was
occupied principally with keeping the weight off my arms and my balls. I
got into a sort of rythym, but I knew I could not keep it up
forever. Actually, I prayed, and tried to prepare for death, which I felt I
deserved for having abandoned first Dan and then you, Dada. I tried to
remember bits of the Gospels. Above all I remembered the Gospel that was
read at the Mass I came to, the day before I finally went back to Dad. It
was the parable of the prodigal son, who stupidly left his father's home
against his father's will, and starved among the pigs whose food he was not
allowed to eat. I thought how I had left my father's home in the caravan
park, and run away, leaving my brother, to make myself happy.

`And then I realised that I had it the wrong way round. Yes, I had run away
from my father's home, but it was the wrong father and the wrong home. Who
was the father but the one who loved and protected his son despite what his
son had done against him? I remembered the last talk you and I had,
Dada. And I thought of the father in the parable watching out for the
return of his son, and celebrating at his return. Fatherhood has nothing to
do with biology. My natural father was simply an accident of fate: God had
sent me instead the gift of a most wonderful father, who had said
repeatedly that he would always love me whatever I did, wherever I
went. What on earth was I thinking? And here I was, in a strange place
where the dog was fed but I was not: Here I was, unloved and literally
starving to death.

`I will arise,' I thought, `I will arise and go to my father and say;
"Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am not worthy to be
called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants".

`And then I remembered the safeword you had given me. I couldn't speak,
because of the gag, but in my heart I called "Roses, Roses, Roses" again
and again. And, Dada, you heard me! you heard me! I know now who my father
is. I want no other. There can never be any other, whether you forgive me
or not.'

Tim/Ben got painfully to his feet from the chair, and hobbled his way
across the room, his fetters dragging and clanking on the carpet, and knelt
down slowly in front of me. He took my hand, kissed it, and said humbly:

`Dada, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am not worthy to be
called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants'.

Paul and I got on our knees too, and the three of us embraced and wept for
a long time.

I went to the hall, and took my best coat, and put it round Tim's
shoulders. I found my father's signet ring, and put it on Tim's finger. I
took off my own sandals and put them on Tim's feet.

I took Tim's hand in my right hand, and Paul's in my left: `Rejoice with
me,' I said shakily, `For this son of mine was dead, and is brought back to
life; he was lost and is found!

`Tim, or Ben, or whatever your name is; all that I have is yours. I love
you, my son; you are no hired servant, but my pride and joy, my beloved
son.'

Paul, who had been watching this with tears running down his face, suddenly
smiled and said

`There's one thing missing. Where's the fatted calf?'

`Damn' I said, laughing through my tears; `there's always something
missing! Well, there may be no fatted calf, but how about the magnum of Dom
Perignon 1995 that someone gave me for Christmas?'

And we all began to celebrate.


CHAPTER 13


Tim went up to bed before we did, because he was emotionally drained. I
went up with him, to help him up the stairs, brush his teeth, help him off
with his kilt and generally do any little thing he might need. Then when he
was settled, I kissed his forehead and went back down to Paul.

We discussed it all a little bit and then wondered what to do. We had both
picked up on the reference to Tim Sullivan. Our Tim must have been rescued
by our best friend; surely there couldn't have been two policemen of that
same name in that same area? We didn't tell our Tim (we couldn't get used
yet to him being Ben) that we knew his hero; that would have to wait until
we had thought what to do.

The priorities were, firstly to get his irons off, and second, to do
something about his father.

Paul had an idea.

`What about Turling Park? Do you remember that awful metalwork room? It was
full of dungeon equipment; surely we can find something there which will
help us with Tim's irons. Tim Senior has the keys.'

`Hasn't he gone to Scotland with the boys?'

`No; he didn't go this year. He's stayed behind to do some thinking;
there's a lad at the school he's considering fostering.'

`Well, well, well. Even mighty oaks fall!'

`In any event, it would be good to get our own Tim away from here as soon
as possible. I don't like to think of his father knowing where he is until
we have him under control.'

So there and then, we rang Tim senior, and arranged to bring our Tim down
to meet him. We told him that we thought he had met our Tim in the past,
though we mentioned nothing of the circumstances, which he would surely
have forgotten in the meantime.

Tim senior sounded delighted. He had always wanted to meet his namesake. He
giggled wickedly, and asked for Tim's waist and leg measurements. I told
him 30" waist, 33" inside leg. I could guess what was in his mind, but said
no more. I told Tim that our visit was not entirely pleasure, and told him
simply that our Tim had got himself locked in some ironmongery and needed
releasing, so would he mind looking out the keys of the metalwork
classroom.

`Sounds kinky,' said Tim. `Sounds like we're going to have some fun!'

`Tim, you don't know the half of it!'

We chatted a little longer, then Paul and I went up to join Tim junior in
bed.




The following day, we packed the car with all we would need. I put in a lot
of clothes, as I planned staying there at least a fortnight, and Paul took
most of them out again, saying that I had completely forgotten what Tim
Senior was like; suits, clerical collars and smart shoes being the last
things we would be needing for a while. But we did take the photographs and
videos we had taken from young Tim's Father's house. That was vital
evidence, and we could not risk a burglary while we considered the best
course of action. And Paul packed our commando outfits.

`We must have some fun', he said.

It was wonderful to see Tim senior again. He was as usual wearing only his
trademark shiny blue shorts, this time while he was painting the woodwork
on the windows of his new big cottage which lay near the new buildings for
St Tarcisius. Paul and I leapt out of the car, and the three of us hugged
and kissed, forgetting for a while about our passenger.

`Tim,' I said, `we have somebody who wants to meet you.'

Our Tim, with a puzzled look on his face, swung his fettered legs together
out of the car and with difficulty stood up, trying to pull down his kilt
as he did so. And so he was looking down as he got out. When he raised his
head, it was to look directly into those soft brown eyes he had remembered
so well, and which had widened in shock and recognition of the piercing
blue eyes of the chained boy before him.

Both of them said together

`You!'

and young Tim fainted, with a rattle of ironmongery.




I had not bargained for this; I had expected suprise, pleasure, even shock,
but not this. Our Tim had never fainted before, as far as I knew. Tim
Senior was white, and no use to us at all in getting our boy into the
house.

We laid our Tim on Tim Senior's couch, and gently revived him. Then, when
we were sure that he was in one piece, Paul and I withdrew to inspect the
new buildings, tactfully leaving the two Tims to renew their acquaintance.




`It was your eyes, Ben,' said Tim. `You've grown so much, got so big, lost
that frightened look, shaved your head... I'd never have known you
otherwise, Soldier. Oh, lad, I cannot tell you how happy I am to see you at
last!'

Ben was speechless. So many powerful emotions raged through him as he
looked at the man who had occupied so much of his dreams, thoughts and
aspirations for the last seven years; he could only gape. His hero squatted
beside him with a quizzical smile on his handsome face. The years rolled
away. Nothing at all seemed to have changed.

Eventually he found his voice. He croaked `How...?

`How what?'

`So many, many things. But, for a start, how did you know my name was Ben?
I took very good care not to tell you or anyone else for that matter. Not
even my Dada--Johnny, that is--knew until yesterday. Did he tell you? I
think he hardly took it in himself.'

`No, it wasn't Johnny. Look, Ben, I will tell you how I know, only not
yet. I don't think you're quite ready. But I have got a lot I want to say
to you, and I've been waiting seven years to say it, so please sit back and
make yourself comfortable.'

Ben did as he was asked, but he was feeling far from comfortable. He was
fighting back tears very hard, and wanted to throw himself into this man's
arms and be held as he had been when he was a frightened
eleven-year-old. He wanted to tell him everything; his whole life story,
what he had for breakfast, the name of his favourite footballer, how to
programme an Apple Mac, everything, and he wanted to know......

`Ben, relax! We've got all the time in the world! And now's my turn. You
can have your turn later.' Tim took the young man's manacled hand in his
own.

`Soldier, the first thing I want to do is to humbly, no grovellingly,
apologize to you--no, don't say anything, shush--yes, apologize to you and
beg you to forgive me for walking out of that hospital! Within an hour of
doing it, I regretted it, and have regretted it more and more every day of
the last seven years. I thought my police career was more important that
you, and by the time that had sunk in, the social worker had taken you
away. My selfish, thoughtless, act sent you into an orphanage; had I stayed
with you, no doubt you would have been released into my care sooner or
later, and we could have sorted everything out between the two of us. We
could have gone and found your brother, got your father arrested and
charged--yes, I know about that--and you and your brother would have been
spared years of loneliness and misery.'

Tim then added in a very quiet voice; `And so would I'. The silence was
profound. Tim went on,

`Don't think I didn't search. Ask Paul. He even advised me on where to
look, and when I came up with a blank, it was he who made the suggestion
that I do some fostering myself. Imagine it: you were right under all our
very noses, and we never realised it. I knew that Johnny had fostered a lad
with my name, and that was what made me rule you out, besides the fact that
you had come from St Tarcisius, and were therefore a Catholic meant that
you couldn't be the boy who had never even heard the word Catholic in his
life. I came to work here, among abandoned boys, because that night we
spent together touched something very deep inside me, and I thought that
maybe I could expiate my guilt for abandoning you by making the lives of
the boys here a little bit happier. And maybe find someone to foster. Maybe
even you were here. But none of the lads, much as I love them, ever came
anywhere near that meeting of souls I experienced with you. Until
recently. I think now I have met a lad I want to foster, but I'll tell you
about him later.

`But for now, I don't want to rush you into forgiveness, Soldier. No doubt
all of this has been a shock, and I've been a selfish sod again, getting it
all off my chest before you can even say "hi" to me, or hit me, if that's
what you want to do.

`Ben, I don't know. I've been beating myself up about all this for so
long. Perhaps you never felt the same way I did. Perhaps your asking to
stay with me that night was simply a lad looking for anywhere at all to be
safe. Perhaps I've been deluding myself all along, and you haven't given me
a thought from that day to this...'

`O yeah', Ben broke in. `I faint all the time. It's my party
trick. "Fainting Nelly", they call me. Don't be so BLOODY stupid! I have
never stopped thinking about you. I worshipped you. When I was at St Tar's,
the other lads had Superman, and Batman as their heroes; I had Tim
Sullivan. When they got older, they dressed and talked and walked like
David Beckham or Michael Owen. I dressed, and talked and walked like Tim
Sullivan. I've never even worn underwear, simply because you don't, or
didn't then, anyway. "Can't abide them", you said, and that's what I've
always said. I hate sports, but I wanted to look like you, so I worked out,
and pumped iron--you told me how to do it, in fact--and here I am. I even
tried dying my hair dark brown to look like you. I looked stupid, by the
way. I wanted Dada to buy me brown contact lenses, but he just laughed
himself silly, and wondered why I would want to hide what he calls my
beautiful eyes. Forget YOU? I even took your bloody name!  How could I
forget you, when every day I heard "Tim Sullivan, you haven't done your
homework", "Time for bed, Tim", "Sullivan, how could you miss such an easy
goal", "Tim Sullivan, I love you, my son"? Not even my beloved foster
father, whom I love so dearly, knew that I lit such a candle for somebody
else that I even took his name.'

Both Tim and Ben were now in tears. Ben carefully lifted his manacles over
Tim's head and bare shoulders and the two men embraced tightly. Ben
whispered in Tim's ear

`I could no more not forgive you than stop my heart. There is nothing to
forgive. I never thought there was.'

They held each other silently for a very long time.




This was not the first time that we had been to inspect the new
buildings. We had carefully involved ourselves in every detail. The old St
Tarcisius Home buildings had been well loved, but they had their
faults. Lots of them! This time we could begin from scratch. Roger,
Sylvia's husband, was the main architect, and we had chosen well. He
belonged to the school of Quinlan Terry; architects who wanted to design
buildings according to traditional principles of beauty and function, and
that suited us fine. Neither of us wanted a glass and concrete box, but
somewhere that the boys could learn to love beautiful things. There must be
proportion and elegance, we thought.

Dioceses are prone to do everything on the cheap. We had every expectation
that the Bishop would allow us only the bare minimum from the insurance
money and the sale of the old land in order to build the new home, keeping
the remainder for other purposes. But the Charity Commissioners had
intervened, and the Bishop himself had agreed that every penny could be
spent on the new building, and on establishing a trust fund to pay the
staff and provide other amenities. Since the old St Tarcisius' buildings
were in the middle of town, on a very valuable site, the sum of money was
very sizeable indeed, and it meant that we could really afford to push the
boat out.

We wandered around the echoing new corridors. The building itself was
complete now, and the plasterers and electricians had just finished. All
that remained was to decorate and furnish our new home. The boys at Turling
Park slept in large dormitories, twenty to a room, in bunk beds, each with
a little cabinet to keep whatever few small possessions they had. The old
St Tarcisius boys had done better; the old dormitories had been divided off
into cubicles, so that the lads had privacy of sight, if not sound. But,
remembering the early days when Tim, Marc and Conor had come to us and been
frightened to sleep on their own, Paul and I were absolutely adamant that
each boy should have his own room, unless he positively wanted to share,
for which purpose we would provide a number of larger double rooms. The
seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds would even have their own bathrooms.

Our own accomodation was nice, too. There was a large Warden's flat for
Paul, large enough for a married couple to live in one day, if a priest
were no longer to do the job, and a slightly smaller Chaplain's flat for me
next to the Warden's accomodation.

`When the dust has settled, my love, we shall put a connecting door through
between our flats', Paul promised me.

`Good,' I said. `But, Paul, there is one thing that we have not talked
about, and we must do it right now. What about our Tim, Marc and Conor?'

`I thought it was obvious. Tim can have the spare room in your flat, and
Marc and Conor can share the spare in mine.'

`Tim, fine. He's eighteen, and there are not many St Tar's boys who will
have known him well--we still haven't decided about finshing his schooling,
by the way--but Marc and Conor are a different matter. Presumably they will
go to school here at Turling Park with the other boys?'

`Presumably. What's your point?'

`Then how is it going to look? Our two will be loved and cherished in your
flat. While on the other side of the wall are forty or fifty boys who are
less loved and cherished, with whom Marc and Conor will have to mingle
every day. Our boys' lives may well be made hell. At the very least, the
other boys will be made to feel second-class citizens!'

`Oh shit! I hadn't thought of that!'

`It wouldn't matter so much if they weren't physically under the same
roof. There are quite a few Turling Park boys who live with foster parents
locally, but get their schooling here'.

`Well, Marc and Conor will have to have rooms with the other boys, and not
in our flats.'

`Then what are you saying to them? That they are no more special to us than
anyone else here! That is to send them right back where they came from. You
will fuck them up properly, Paul.'

`Boarding school elsewhere?'

`And having taken them under your roof, you are effectively sending them
away again. No, it won't do. And I won't be separated from them; I love
them too much.'

`Oh, Johnny! What are we going to do? This is terrible!'

`My love, what we are going to do is to pray for a solution.'

And there and then we knelt down in the beautiful but still bare new chapel
which lay at the heart of the building, and we prayed with all our hearts
for our two boys. We knelt before the statue of St Tarcisius, still wrapped
in plastic after its journey from its old home, and begged that this early
Christian boy martyr would look after our two deeply-loved tearaways and
find us a way to keep them in our family without breaking any more hearts.




Paul and I returned from inspecting the new buildings and we came in
quietly. We saw Ben and Tim crying down each other's bare backs and knew
that something special was going on here; no doubt it would all be
explained in good time. Seeing the two Tims so intimate brought a pain to
my heart. I knew that my son had first been attracted to me because I was
like his hero, but seeing his affection returned in such measure by that
same hero was a shock. I felt the first stirrings of jealousy. Paul must
have seen my face, for he slipped his hand in mine, and nodded his head
towards the door. We went outside the house, and stood on the roadway. Paul
put his arms round me.

`Sweetheart, Tim has to grow up. He's eighteen, and he has been carrying
our friend in his heart all his adolescent life. This is a fulfillment for
him. Be happy for him!'

I let a tear or two of self-pity trickle down my cheek.

`I love my son, Tim, and I also love my friend, Tim. But I have spent so
long keeping an eye out for that boy, that nobody should ever hurt him,
that I have come to think of myself as his only protector. Seeing a rival
on the scene, and somebody I love myself, is not easy, not easy at
all. That he should cry on somebody else's shoulder, hurts. I love my son
so much, so very, very much. And I'm terrified to lose him. After all he
has been through. Oh, dear Lord, he was in that house only two days ago!'

And this trivial incident suddenly opened the floodgates in me. All the
tension and the worry of the last few weeks found an outlet, and I
screamed, howled and cried in Paul's arms. He took me away quickly into the
woods, out of earshot of Tim's cottage, and held me closely while my grief
had its way. I rolled on the ground, tore at my clothes and hair, wept,
sobbed, yelled, swore, and probably blasphemed, until I finally subsided,
spent, in Paul's loving and strong arms.

`Paul, my love,' I sobbed, `He's only eighteen, scarcely a man. What did he
do that this should happen to him? In his short life he has seen so much
pain, violence and misery. He's only eighteen!'

`In the first world war, Johnny, eighteen-year-olds boys were considered
old enough to die for their country, and hundreds of thousands of parents
lost their sons forever to bombs, bullets, poisoned gas, trench fever, and
a thousand other horrible deaths. We have got our Tim still safe and
sound. He has been through a terrible time, it cannot be denied, but we
still have him. He is safe, Johnny, bar some scars on his back, and some
sore balls. And what is more, in his head he is better than he was
before. He was worked whatever it was out of his system. He was a loving,
wonderful boy, and can you doubt that he will be a wonderful, loving man?
Especially now that he has sorted himself out. This pain has been a
catharsis for him; he is clean, whole, new. And I think that now it really
is nearly over. His father cannot trouble him again while we have those
photographs safe. All we have to do is help him become a fulfilled adult,
which in many ways he has already become. Do you really grudge him intimacy
with our friend Tim? Think about how intimate we have been with Tim! Tim's
that sort of guy. If our Tim loves Tim senior, that's good, isn't it? We
love Tim senior. It's just that we have to let our Tim grow up and join our
circle of friends. He really is a man now, no longer our little boy. The
three of us will become the four of us, in other words.  That's all. And
actually, I rather think I'm looking forward to it. Something tells me it's
going to be a whole lot of fun!'

`You know what I hate about you, Paul Topham?'

`No, what?'

`Why do you always have to be so fucking right all the time?'

`Natural genius, my sweetheart!'

We kissed, hard and long, and then, hand in hand, we walked to the
waterfall, and then returned to Tim's cottage. It wasn't quite the same as
his old cottage, which had special memories, but, as Paul said to me, we
could create new memories just as easily.






Eventually, Tim said to Ben, `Having seen you that night, I can understand
why you did not want to be identified as Ben Thompson. But how did you find
out my name in order to be able to pinch it? I never told you, any more
than you told me yours.'

`It was your lucky shirt'

`Eh?'

`I had no shirt when you found me, so you gave me one of yours. It was a
blue and white football shirt, and you said that you had scored loads of
goals in it when you were my age. It had a school label with your name
inside the collar. The nurse in the hospital thought that the shirt was
mine, and so when I refused to give my name to the social worker, she told
the woman that my name was Tim Sullivan. Who was I to argue with her? If I
couldn't be your foster son in fact, I might at least be so in name.'

`I remember now. I hope the shirt brought you luck on the soccer pitch
too'.

`No it didn't. I was always hopeless. But my little brother Conor has it
now, and he's amazing at football.'

The ordinary talk had relaxed them both, and Tim got painfully up from his
long crouch to make a pot of tea. Ben clanked into the kitchen to help. As
they sat at the kitchen table with their mugs, chatting aimiably about
nothing, Ben slopped his tea; his arms were still not fully under control,
and Tim had to rush round the table to help him, and wash the scalding tea
off his chest. His kilt was soaked, too, and Ben yelped with pain as his
already outraged balls were scalded. While Tim was mopping up what he
could, he saw Ben's back again, and his mood sharply sobered.

`Ben; what happened? Your back looks even worse than it did the night you
came to me. I see it's been cleaned up and is healing, but I can't imagine
what must have happened to you. And all these chains and things? They're
not locked on, but welded, or soldered, or something. I take it you're not
on your way to a kinky party, so something awful must have taken place,
Soldier.'

So Ben took a deep breath and calmly told him everything.

By the end of it, Tim was white, shaking, and sobbing like a child. Ben was
still calm, but he got up and pulled Tim into a hug, placing his chains
over his head as before. Through his tears, Tim said

`Ben, you say you have forgiven me, but I shall never, never, forgive
myself for bringing all this onto you.'

`You didn't bring it on me, Tim! It was my father who brought it on me. He,
and nobody else. He started this whole train of consequences. You had no
way of knowing the consequences of what you did in good faith. If you had
taken me in, how would you have prevented my father coming after me as he
did when I was with my Dada, Johnny? My Dada would have done anything to
have avoided that. You could not possibly have done more. And how can you
know that we would ever have found my brother Dan? My father told me that
he ran out that night and was never seen again. He's probably dead; either
in a ditch somewhere, the poor little sod, or else my father killed him in
one of his scenes or rages. Tim, believe me, you've been one of the good
things, no, one of the very best things, in my life, even if we knew each
other only a few hours. Never think anything different.'

`Soldier, I have something else to tell you now that you should know.' Tim
spoke into Ben's bare shoulder, the tears still flowing freely. `I think
you should prepare yourself.'

`Mm?'

`Ben, Dan isn't dead. He's here at Turling Park. He's also the boy I have
been hoping to foster.'


Ben fainted again. This time his chains were around Tim's back, and so Tim
was pulled down on top of him.

Johnny and Paul, still hand in hand, chose that moment to return. Paul
said, in an amused voice

`We'd better stay; if we go off again, your son and our best friend will be
at it like jack rabbits!'





When Ben revived, he was pleased to find himself back on the couch with
Tim's arm around him, and his father and his Uncle Paul looking concernedly
at him. Then he remembered the last thing Tim had said to him before he
fainted. He looked around frantically

`Dan......?'

`...is in Scotland, soldier, with the rest of the boys. You'll just have to
be patient!'

`Patient!  After everything I've told you, you tell me to be patient!'

Johnny then spoke; while Ben had been unconscious, Tim had told him and
Paul everything.

`Tim,--my son, Tim, that is--we've got to think how to do this. If this is
a shock for you, just think what a shock it's going to be for Dan. I think
that there are a lot of things to sort out first. I'm really sorry, Tim,
but patient is what you're going to have to be. For a start, do you really
want Dan to see you like this?'

Ben looked down at his chains and his tea-stained kilt, and thought of his
ravaged back.

`No, Dada, you're right as always! I'll try and be patient. But I think
you're going to have to get used to calling me Ben. It'd be too confusing
otherwise. And besides,' he added wryly, `I'm embarrassed as all hell to be
caught using my hero's name. It sounds really pervy.'

Everyone laughed, and the tension was broken.


It was decided to wait until the following morning before going to the
metalwork room; it was only the ball collar that was really giving Ben much
discomfort; the rest was merely awkward. Ben's sodden tea-stained kilt
wasn't exactly decorative or comfortable either, but he didn't want to take
it off both for reasons of modesty and also because he knew the sight of
his red, imprisoned balls would make the others uncomfortable. So when Tim
suggested that they turn it into fun and all get naked, Ben shook his head,
smiling. Then Tim suddenly said

`I've got it!' and sprinted upstairs to his bedroom, where he rummaged
around in his impressive collection of sportsgear and returned
triumphantly.

`Breakshorts'

`Eh?'

`They've got popper fasteners all up the legs. Ben will be able to wear
these.'

And so it proved. Once in the shorts, Ben was much more comfortable. He
could sit with his knees apart, like a man, instead of having to keep them
together like a girl. And they gave a measure of support to his weighted
balls, though the crotch of the shorts did tend to push his bruised nuts
against the collar.

It was decided that they would start on Ben's irons in the morning. There
was some concern about discovery, but Tim reassured the others that The
Screw was in Scotland with the other boys;

`One of the staff dropped out, and so The Screw had to go, all of a
sudden. Poor bloody kids, that's all I can say!'




Paul and Johnny brought in their belongings from the car. Everyone was
longing for a swim, but with Ben still in his irons, it seemed unfair. So
they lay together in the late afternoon sun. Johnny offered to cook dinner.

`I'm a fantastic cook, and we deserve a real blow-out, I think.'

Everyone agreed, so Paul and Tim were dispatched to the shops to buy
ingredients and wine. While they were gone, Johnny and Ben had a long
talk. Nobody knows what they said, but by the time the others had returned,
the two were hugging with all their strength, and so everything was fine,
and Johnny went to the kitchen to start work.

Gin and tonic in hand, Tim was looking at the pile of books that Paul and
Johnny had brought.

`What's all this?'

`Definitely not pre-prandial reading. Those are the photographs albums that
we found in Tim's--I mean Ben's--Father's house.'

But it was too late. Tim had taken one of the books and opened it. He
turned a page or two. The glass fell from his hand and he choked;

`Oh my God!'

Paul rushed to Tim's side. `What is it, mate?'

`These photographs...'

`Yeah, they're really horrible.'

`No, no...well...yes, but you don't understand! They're all Turling Park
boys! I know them all!'


CHAPTER 14


The following day, the four of us set off across the meadow towards the
main block of buildings and specifically to the metalwork classroom. Poor
Ben (Ben, not Tim, I kept reminding myself) had to kind of hop along with
us; we kept forgetting his irons, walking too quickly. In the end, Tim
senior turned to him and said

`I think that on the occasions I save you, I am supposed to carry you
piggy-back. Don't you think that we ought to be deferential to tradition,
Soldier?'

`Fuck you!' said my polite son, and hopped as well as he could, the leg
irons chafing his ankles and his balls jumping up and down painfully under
their collar.

A few hundred yards further, and Ben had had enough.

`Ok, ok, I submit. Please carry me; This isn't working!'

So Tim made a back, and Ben clambered aboard. He only got a few hundred
yards, because Ben was no longer an eleven-year-old waif, but a very
muscular, and therefore very heavy, young man.

`Oooof!' said Tim, dumping Ben on the ground. `I think you'd better carry
me!'

In the end, we all carried Ben, and we got to the metalwork classroom
eventually.



It was really creepy being back there. Looking again at the various
implements of restraint on the walls, there was no longer any doubt in our
minds that The Screw and Ben's father were one and the same man. The
workmanship on Ben's irons was identical.

Tim, always the most dexterous with his hands for any job, assembled the
tools and said,

`Right, Ben. What do you want off first?'

`There's no question Tim. This fucking ball collar, that has caused so much
pain, not just to me, but to Dada and Uncle Paul, and you, and everyone I
love'.

He tore off the studs on the breakshorts and stood before us naked without
any embarrassment. We all saw him as if for the first time. He was really
magnificent; despite all his suffering, and the irons that were still on
his body; his physique was what models dream of. I could hardly believe
that this was my little boy, that I had brought up and tended, loved and
nurtured.

Tim was businesslike, however. `Right; up on the bench, Tarzan, and spread
your legs!'



I couldn't bear to watch, nor could Paul. We went out into the sunshine and
sat on a bench overlooking a cricket pitch where the grunt groundsman, the
one who had succeeded Tim, was driving a lawnmower round lazily. We took
off our shirts and sat there in our shorts watching him, shoulder against
shoulder, arms around each other.

`Paul', I said, `does it worry you that we don't have sex?'

Paul sat upright and choked.

`And they say I am the one who shoots from the hip! Worry me? `

He sat and thought for a long time, his knuckle between his teeth in the
way I loved, and then resumed

`Johnny, I have loved you for so long, but I love the whole you. Let us
assume for a moment that God, the Church and the rest do not exist and we
could do what we liked: If you were a rent boy, a hustler, as the Americans
say, would I want to bed you? The answer has to be yes, yes, yes, and twice
on Sunday! And I'd pay all that I had for the privilege. Your presence and
your body excite me passionately. When I know you are within half a mile of
me I start tingling and longing to put my arms around your amazing sexy
body. Without your shirt you are a revelation. The fact that I know you are
now going commando makes me so randy I can't tell you.

`But in the end, it is not your body that I love--I lust for your body, God
knows how much--but it is you that I love. The you that is inside your
body. If we were to tear off our shorts and fuck each other silly here and
now, no doubt we would have huge fun. But would we respect ourselves and
each other tomorrow? Could we live as Warden and Chaplain of St Tarcisius'
contentedly together? I very much doubt it. In the end, Johnny, you and I
are priests, and that is more than a job we do; it is what we are. The
priest is a part of the Johnny I love, and if the Johnny I love were not a
priest, I think I would not love him so much. My love for you is
immeasurably increased by the respect I have for you as a man, and even
more as a priest.

`My darling, you mean more to me that I can ever say. But it is the whole
you, not just your body, that I love. I want to stay close to you for the
rest of our lives, and then I want to be close to you when we die, I want
to hold your hand and share strength when we go through Purgatory, and,
please God, I want to be beside you for ever in Heaven. I never want to be
away from you, my love. If you were in Tim's cottage now, and I were here,
half a mile away, I would ache, and every second away from you would be an
eternity of sorrow. I don't intend to throw away something so precious for
the undoubted privilege and pleasure of sucking your cock!'

We held each other and talked of nothing for hours and hours. Our stomachs
were rumbling ominously when we decided to go back to the cottage, make
sandwiches, and then see what was going on in the metalwork classroom.



We were shocked when we returned to find Tim still burrowing into Ben's
groin. Both the men looked exhausted. Because of the sensitive location,
Tim had to proceed with his cutter millimetre by millimetre, and the metal
was extremely hard. Ben lay back on the hard table, his face unreadable,
beyond embarrassment, as Tim cut slowly through the metal that held his
most private parts bound. We went over; I embraced my Tim--Ben, I should
say--and kissed his sweating forehead. Paul squeezed Tim's shoulders
companionably. He asked

`Is there nothing we can do in the meantime?'

It turned out there was. Ben's other irons, because they were not quite so
intimate in location, shall we say, were much easier to deal with, if one
had the proper tools, which were all there. Though we were not as good with
our hands as Tim, we set to work willingly. I took Ben's neck collar, and
Paul his manacles. We had both finished before Tim had finished Ben's ball
collar. We all cheered as each of these horrors fell to the floor with a
clang. Now there were only the fetters to deal with on Ben's legs. While
Tim addressed himself to these, Paul and I wandered round the classroom,
discussing how we were to deal with The Screw, Ben's father.

This was not going to be easy. In the end, there was not much evidence
against him. If we charged him with assault and violence against Ben, he
could produce the `Slave Contract' and argue that even if the contract were
invalid on account of Ben's minority, it nonetheless made all the abuse
consensual, Ben being above 16 years of age. The photographs of the boys
only showed them in his irons; though if they had been prisoners, this
would have been illegal, contrary to the Geneva Convention, these were not
prisoners, and there was no photographic evidence of further abuse. It was
just the sheer quantity of photographs that suggested the man was sick. For
us, the important thing was that the man was no further threat to
anyone. His sexual and extreme physical abuse had, as far as we knew, been
confined to his son, and so we thought we had better leave the final
decision until Ben was sufficiently recovered to make a contribution to
what we were going to do. The important thing in the short term was to
ensure that the boys at the school were safe from this horrible man in the
future.

Paul sprinted back to Tim's cottage, and returned soon carrying one of the
unpleasant photograph albums we had found. We chose some of the pictures,
and laid them out along the teacher's bench in the classroom. We added
Ben's broken irons. When The Screw returned, he could not but know that
someone at the school had been to his house, and knew everything. That was
all we could think of in the short term.

There was a clatter from the other end of the classroom, and a triumphant
shout. Ben was free at last of all his irons! He and Tim were sharing a
warm embrace. I suppressed a momentary jealous pang, and went over with
Paul to join them. We filled the others in on our ideas regarding The
Screw, and they agreed that what we suggested was probably best. Ben jumped
down from the bench, revelling in the freedom.

`I just want to run and run', he said.

`Not quite like that' I commented dryly.

`Why not?' he said. Paul went and took hold of Ben's newly released balls:

`Darling, you're as naked as the day you were born!', and he threw his arms
around Ben and kissed him. `Oh Tim--I mean Ben--it's so wonderful to have
you back with us!'.

We all hugged, and everything was fine.



We determined to break the difficult atmosphere. Tim was, as before, the
master of ceremonies. He had a job keeping order at first, as Ben kept
skipping round the classroom in his delight to be free of the irons for the
first time in many weeks, not embarrassed about even flipping his balls
around.

`Right, men,' said Tim. `We've all been under a bit of tension recently,
which some might regard as the understatement of the year. So right now
we're going to let off some steam. The only garments permitted for this
activity are shorts and trainers--the trainers being optional, and, I
suppose, the shorts being optional, if some of you kinky buggers want to go
as nature intended, like our friend Ben here.'

Ben quickly pulled on the breakshorts again, and we all ran full stretch
back to Tim's cottage, leaving the classroom open. Ben came last,
unsurprisingly. His limbs had not yet returned to full use, and he had
never been aerobically very fit. He was humiliated, though, as he said, to
be beaten by all these old granddads, and challenged us all to wrestle
though, he said with a sly look at his host

`These breakshorts aren't very comfortable. Have you got any more of those
nice shiny blue adidas shorts, Tim?'

Tim blushed. `Yes, several pairs, I have to admit'.

`Well, bring them out, then, you old perv!'

These shorts had become a sort of leitmotiv of our relationship, and above
all of the relationship between Tim and Ben. We all stripped and dressed in
them, and wrestled. Ben beat us all, naturally, his muscular limbs
beginning to recover their power. But the final wrestling was between Ben
and Tim, and as the two powerful men writhed and tugged at each other,
something was clearly going on between them. This was not simply a struggle
for dominance, even a good-natured one. These two men were trying to learn
from each other, learn about each other; they ran their hands over every
part of each other's body in a way that if they had not had the excuse of
wrestling, they would never have dared, especially in front of me and Paul.

Paul and I could clearly see that these men were becoming obsessed with
each other. They made a play of wrestling, but in their own way, they were
courting. This was an ancient ritual, but these two had made it their
own. Their play went on for a very long time, and when finally Ben sat
astride Tim, their eyes were like fire, and fixed on the other. They both
had erections, and did not even notice. Paul said sadly to me

`Our little boy is growing up. I think he's going to leave us soon'.




We swam naked in the lake, we swam races in the pool. Then we all went and
stood in the shower room and washed each other. I can honestly say that
never have I felt love so strongly for those three men, or for anyone
else. Ben had truly joined us as an equal in our love.

Back at the cottage, Tim decided we were going out for a meal.

`I'm paying! Don't forget, I am a man of means these days.'

And with great care (and much changing of minds) he dressed us all in his
own suits, reserving the best for Ben, who looked so handsome and adult. We
stood silently and looked at him, so very happily; we were all in the
shadow of this boy who had come from an abused childhood in a caravan park
to be loved so very deeply by us, his three best friends. Our relationship
with him as a boy had disappeared; this was so much better.

The meal was wonderful; we all gazed at each other over the food, and
wondered what we had done to deserve such good friends.

That night we lit a bonfire as before, and Tim had another little ceremony
to perform.

`Ben: you've had the shorts, you've had the workout; but there is one other
little thing that you lack if you are going to join our outfit.'

Ben looked wary. But Tim produced from behind his back a pair of leather
trousers.

`These are for you, with my love. And that, my love, I mean.'

Tim pulled off his shorts--what need for shyness now?--and pulled on the
tight leather trousers. We all pretended we needed to help, but when
finally on, the trousers looked fantastic on him, of course. Everything
looked fantastic on my son. I was lost in admiration, until another pair
was thrust into my face by Paul.

`Come on, Johnny, it's tradition, now!'

So we all wore the trousers, and Tim sang to us. No, actually, he sang to
Ben; every word a word of love.




We had given Marc and Conor a mobile telephone between them, the cause of
many of their fights, on the understanding that they paid for their own
calls. Our first priority the following morning was to call them to let
them know that their big brother had returned. Although the ever-practical
Marc had been glad to snaffle Ben's bedroom, the two boys had missed their
brother terribly. Paul and I had to face it that Ben had been more of a
parent to them than either of us had been, and we could not supply that
combination of tender care and hero that Tim had done. The boys loved us,
certainly, especially Paul, but Tim--Ben, I should say--was the one they
really looked to and thought of as their `significant adult'. They were
overjoyed that Ben had come home, and wanted to return from camp
immediately. Paul told them to stay on, however, and Ben himself spoke to
them (he had to do some fast work to explain to them why he was no longer
Tim) and told them that there were things to be sorted out first. They
accepted this, reluctantly, but only because they had no other choice,
really.

Paul and I had another long chat, this time about Tim and Ben. It was clear
to both of us that something very important needed to be sorted out by
these two, and that our presence was making it more complicated than it
need be. So we decided to let them be on their own for a few days, and see
if that helped.

`Where will you go?' said Tim, ever the anxious, and now rather guilty,
host.

`Oh, anywhere' said Paul. `A hotel somewhere, I suppose. We could do with
some time together, and poor Johnny is still rather frazzled after the last
week's goings-on.'

And Tim offered us the use of his house in Brighton, the one he had shared
with Sylvia during their brief marriage. Apparently it was now rented out
to students, who did not use it during University vacations. So to Brighton
we went. And had a wonderful time. Brighton is the British San Francisco,
so we could openly walk through the town hand in hand, and nobody noticed;
the only close call was when we saw Canon Riordan from the Sacred Heart
Church in Hove on the other side of the road, but he did not notice us when
we ducked into a doorway. We behaved disgracefully, really. We went to pubs
and drank too much, we went onto the pier and played on all the arcade
machines. We swang on the swings (and were thrown off for being over age;
the man pompously asked us `Are you under fourteen?', and we found this so
funny that we rolled around with laughter, which made him even more angry)
and rode on the helter-skelter. We even went to `Cockatoo', entranced by
the name, a gay club run by an Anglican clergyman (and we recognized one of
our colleagues in the distance) but found it loud and too aggressively
`gay' for our tastes. We ate often in restuarants--we were thrown out of
Latin in the Lanes for Paul insisting on smoking a cigar. He never smokes,
so of course he did it deliberately. We went to the cinema, lay on the
beach for five minutes--it's stony--and even swam in the dilute sewage that
is the English Channel. But above all, we enjoyed each other's
company. Funnily enough, even though we loved each other to desperation,
sex seemed not to be much of an issue any more. Perhaps we had lanced the
problem with our conversation while Ben was being freed from his irons. But
our love was deepened in so many ways. Those few days were some of the best
in my life, and I look back on them with the deepest gratitude to God, to
Paul, and to Tim, who lent us his house.

That house was not very nice, really. It was a standard Brighton small
terraced town house, with three small bedrooms, but years of renting out to
students had made it very shabby. They had nailed up their posters on the
walls, dropped glasses of wine on the carpets and stubbed out their joints
on the soft furnishings for so long that it was like living in a sixth-form
common room. With one consent, Paul and I started work. We bought tins of
paint and slathered the walls in a new coat. We scoured the second-hand
shops for furniture, and in the end bought lots of items from a Catholic
charity in Portslade called Emmaus, giving them Tim's in return for them to
restore and sell for their work with the homeless. We scrubbed, hoovered,
and did everything to make the house liveable in. And by the time we left,
it was.




When Paul and I returned to Turling Park, it was all decided. Ben was
moving in with Tim. Well, it made sense, I suppose. I would have had to
have been blind and deaf not to have seen the extraordinary bond between
those two, initially forged before either Paul or I had even met Ben. And
Ben had assured me with tears that he was not abandoning me for Tim, that I
was and would be always his dear Dada, and that was that. Although I cried,
I didn't worry much; after all, the new St Tarcisius House was only a
hundred yards away, and we would see lots of each other. Marc and Conor's
rumbustuous return was very memorable; they had made Ben a whole selection
of woodcraft ornaments to welcome him home, each more revolting and
impractical than the last, (the pipe-rack and ash tray was a particular
favourite, especially as Ben didn't own a single pipe, nor did he ever
smoke) but Ben took it all in his stride and pretended he loved
them. Perhaps he really did, knowing whom they came from and that they were
made with love.

Watching our three sons together, a solution began to present itself as to
the boys' future. We had a quiet word with Tim and Ben, and it was agreed
that if the boys were happy, they could move into Tim's home. That way they
would be apart from St Tarcisius enough to feel special and part of a
family, but still be near us. The boys thought the idea was wonderful, and
so that was settled happily enough. Which left Dan, whom nobody but Tim had
met yet. He was going to return from holiday and find his life turned
upside down. As far as he knew, he was simply going to quietly move in with
Tim some time in the next few months. But while he had been away, he had
suddenly acquired his real brother again, as well as two foster brothers,
with all of whom he was going to be living. Tim thought it was going to be
all right, however, as Dan was a well balanced, sturdy lad, easily capable
of holding his own against Paul's two rascals, and of giving as good as he
got.

But in the shorter term, there remained the decision of what to do about
reuniting Ben and Dan. It was clearly going to be an emotional and possibly
difficult occasion, and it was important to manage it carefully. Tim knew
that the first evening the boys returned, his cottage was going to be full
of Turling Park lads anxious to share stories of their various summer
exploits in the highlands of Scotland. That was no way for Ben and Dan to
meet again. Tim thought and thought, and in the end decided that the only
thing to do was to go up to Scotland himself a day or two early and fetch
Dan home. It would spoil the surprise a little bit, since Dan could not but
conclude that something was up, but that could not be helped. And so we
took Marc and Conor back to St Edwards, inviting Tim to come and join us as
soon as Ben and Dan had met, in order to leave them space together. Thus it
was decided.


The following morning, Tim flew to Inverness, and hired a car to take him
to the school where the Turling Park boys were staying. As soon as he
entered, he was mobbed by a great crowd of lads who were delighted to see
him, and who were falling over themselves to tell him of their various
exploits over the last couple of weeks. Tim looked vainly for a sign of
Dan, but he was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly the whole group fell
silent. The Screw was standing in a doorway, looking menacingly at Tim and
the excited boys.

`The next one to speak gets the handcuffs for 24 hours!' he said. `Go about
your business silently. You do not want to see me angry! Leave now; I want
to talk to Mr Sullivan.'

The boys, abashed, left quietly.

`In here,' said The Screw coldly to Tim. They went together into a small
sitting room, and sat opposite each other, looking grimly at each
other. Tim had never before looked closely at The Screw, but now he studied
his face, trying to find some trace of likeness between him and his
sons. It was there if you looked for it; there was a sort of elusive beauty
that had become somehow corrupt and twisted. He was a kind of caricature of
his boys, their beauty seen in a distorting mirror; someone who could have
been beautiful in body and soul, but had been changed by too much
unhappiness and bitterness. Self-hatred and loathing was written into the
lines of his face; there seemed nothing but despair and unhappiness. How
did a man get like this? thought Tim. Was he ever a carefree and happy
little boy? Is this what would have become of Ben and Dan had they stayed
with their father?

Finally the Screw spoke.

`So you are the shit who thinks he can steal my son from me again! You
won't succeed; I've got him back again, and he's not going to get away.'

Immediately Tim's thoughts jumped to Ben, and how this man had left him
chained up in his house. But before he could say anything, the Screw
continued,

`Last thing I expected, to find him here, the little sod. But now he's back
with his old Dad. Oh yeah; he told me you were going to foster him, but I
told him he can forget that. We've got years of meaningful relationship to
catch up on, the two of us, and I have plans to enjoy every bloody
moment. Don't look at me like that, Sullivan; he's my son, not yours. I
have the right to do what I want with him, even if the little shit did run
away seven years ago, and what I want to do with him is not to give him to
you!'

Tim's heart constricted in his chest with fear for Dan. Why, oh why did he
let Dan come on this trip; he should have rescued him the moment he knew
that The Screw was his father.  Tim got to his feet unsteadily. Fresh air!
Think, Sullivan, think! He left the room, no longer able to bear the cruel
smirk on the face of The Screw. He walked quickly towards the boys' common
room, grabbing the first lad he met.

`Nick; can you tell me where Dan Thompson is?'

`Yes, sir; the Scr... er... Mr Thompson has put him in his own room. Sir,
is it true that he is his father?'

But Tim did not answer.

`Where's the room, soldier?'

The boy called Nick told Tim to follow him; like the other Turling Park
boys, he adored and trusted Tim implicitly. They went to a door upstairs,
and Tim knocked. There was no answer. Tim tried the handle; the door was
locked. He called out Ben's name, and there was a strange shuffling,
knocking sound at the other side of the door. Tim turned to Nick.

`Quick, Soldier, go and get a couple of your friends. I'm going to break
the door down, and I want some witnesses. Run, lad.'

Nick sprinted off, and within half a minute had returned with a couple of
curious lads. Tim set his shoulder to the door and heaved. Nothing. He
retreated to the other side of the corridor and charged. The lock broke
with a sound of splintering, but the door did not open. Tim pushed hard,
and there was a groan; he eased himself through the gap between door and
frame into the darkened room; someone had drawn the curtains. He strode
across to the window and pulled back the hangings, flooding the room with
daylight; he turned to see that Nick and his friends had come in to the
room, and were looking around puzzled. Why had Tim wanted to break into
this room?

Tim looked back at the high door, and saw why it had been so difficult to
open. Hanging on the back was a naked boy, his hands cuffed together and
attached to the clothes hook above his head. He was gagged, and Tim and the
others saw with horror that his back, buttocks and thighs were a mass of
bruises and gashes. It was Dan, of course. Finally his father had caught up
with him.

Tim groaned aloud, his eyes springing with tears. The boys gaped with
horror; some of them had been abused in their past also, and understood
something of what was going on.

The Screw chose that moment to return to his room.

`What the fuck...?'

He got no further, because Tim seized him by the throat and threw him
against the wall, banging his head again and again with one hand, while
with the other he battered his body anywhere he could reach.

Nick thought quickly; he was seriously afraid that Tim would kill The
Screw, and, though the thought brought him a certain satisfaction, he knew
that it would not be a good idea. He seized a large jug of water that stood
beside the bed and threw the contents over Tim's head. Tim gasped, and came
to his senses.

`Thanks, soldier. You did right.' He let go The Screw, who slid to the
ground, unconscious. Tim turned to one of the other lads.

`Go quickly; phone the police.' He went to Dan and removed his gag, then,
raising his body, lifted his hands over the hook. The boy began to collapse
to the floor, so Tim, shouting to Nick to find the handcuff keys, lifted
him into his arms and carried him out of the room to the nearest dormitory
bed; he could not bear to stay in The Screw's presence a moment longer.

It took a few minutes for Dan to come to himself, but eventually he
focussed on Tim, kneeling by his bed with his arms around him, and Nick and
the others. He turned his beautiful blue eyes on his saviour and simply
said

`Dad.' The tension burst out of Tim, and he sobbed as he held the boy
against him. Dan cried too, and was soon joined by Nick and the other lads,
one of whom had found the handcuff key and released Dan's chafed wrists.


The police came, and took statements, and photographs. They went to arrest
The Screw, but found the room empty; clearly when he was left alone, he had
revived, quickly packed up his things and made good his escape. They
promised Tim that they would put out an alert for him, and would do their
utmost to find him and bring him to justice. Meanwhile, they understood
that even though the Screw was his father, the court order for the
protection of Dan was still in force, and therefore he could remain where
he was, in the care of Turling Park, though they thought he ought to be
seen by a hospital.

Tim agreed, though the first step was to get Dan clean. He picked the lad
up in his arms and took him to a bathroom where he carefully washed all his
injuries; he discovered that Dan had also clearly been sexually
violated. It all became too much, and he wept again.

`How many times in my life am I going to have to do this?' he cried. `Once
was bad enough.'

`Dad,' said Dan, `please don't cry. Actually, in a way, this makes me feel
better. I always hated that Ben had had to take all the treatment; this
sort of evens things out a bit. And now I understand what he went through
to keep me safe!'

`What is it with you Thompson boys, that you feel you deserve this bloody
treatment?'



Tim took Dan on the long drive to Inverness General Hospital, where they
were seen almost immediately. There was very little that could be done;
none of the gashes were so severe that they needed stitches, though some
might leave a small scar. As Tim left the treatment room, Dan panicked and
called `Dad, don't leave me...!'

Tim choked up, remembering Ben all those years ago, and how he had left him
in a hospital.

`No, Son, never again. I'll be right outside. I'm here for you, always and
forever. '



Tim had phoned Ben to let him know what was going on, and that his return
would be delayed, though he did not go into details. Sufficient unto the
day was the evil thereof. So Ben grew anxious, waiting for the return of
his brother whom he had longed to see again for so many years. He tried all
sorts of activities, simply to keep his mind off things; he went running,
to try and build up his aerobic fitness, he worked out in the gym, and
managed to thus pass an hour or two, but the remaining hours went painfully
slowly. Would Dan even recognize him? Would he be angry with Ben for having
abandoned him?

Finally at about eight in the evening, Ben heard a car draw up outside the
cottage. He went outside and stood with the rays of the setting sun shining
through his blond hair, which was growing back nicely now. He had thought
carefully about this moment, and, remembering his last words to his
brother, had chosen his clothes with care; he wore simply a pair of Tim's
blue adidas tracksuit trousers and his--now Dan's--towel, which he carried
over one arm. As he stood there, dazzled by the low sun, he heard the car
doors close, followed by a gasp of shock and a crunch as baggage was
dropped; the next thing was a large and solid mass of blond teenager had
hurled himself at him. The brothers embraced and wept loudly, oblivious to
everything around them; they never noticed Tim quietly driving himself off
to stay with Johnny and Paul; they never noticed the sun setting; they were
simply wrapped up in each other. After a while, Dan said, chokingly,

`You came back for me, Ben! You kept your promise; I always knew you
would!'

`Yeah, well, I had one or two things to do, but better late than never,
Dan.'

And with their arms around each other, the two brothers went into the house
to talk and talk and talk.



A day later, Tim returned, as the rest of the boys were returning from
Scotland the same day. He was delighted to see Ben and Dan so happy
together. Since Ben was now an adult and the natural full brother of Dan,
there was nothing to prevent Dan moving in straight away, the need for a
foster father being now redundant, and that was done, him taking one of the
two spare rooms. But Tim remained Dad to Dan; never would he forget what he
had done for him. Ben moved into Dan's room, and the two began to build up
their relationship once more, though truth to tell, they related to one
another as if there had never been any break at all; Dan was so utterly
happy to be back with the two people he loved most in the world under one
roof. It also had to be explained to him that he had two new brothers, in a
way; Marc and Conor, who would soon be moving in as well, but Dan just
shrugged and said that he was used to sharing a house with hundreds of
boys, and so anything was an improvement.

That night there was a bonfire with the returned Turling Park boys, and Tim
sang and told ghost stories to an audience of more than fifty. Ben looked
at Tim with quiet pride and saw how much the boys worshipped him. He
thought how proud he would be if he, too, could do something like this with
his life.


On the first day of term, as Tim, Ben and Dan returned from their morning
run, they found a policewoman on the doorstep of Tim's cottage. She looked
uncomfortable, and spoke to Tim;

`Sir; would you confirm your identities, please? Am I speaking to Timothy
Sullivan, Benjamin Thompson and Daniel Thompson? Thank you. I understand
that the three of you know the man known as Bernard Thompson?' The Screw.

The three confirmed this uneasily. Had he been found?

`Would you please accompany me. I'm afraid there is an unpleasant duty
needing doing. I'm sorry to trouble you.'

`Can we change out of our running things first?'

`I'm afraid not, sir; this needs to be done immediately.'

The three walked across the meadow with the policewoman to the school; it
was clear that they were heading towards the workshops and in particular to
the metalwork room. Were they going to meet The Screw now? Ben, more than
anyone, was frankly terrified; he knew that he found resisting his father
nearly impossible; the only times he had been able to do it was when he was
defending Dan. Perhaps it was as well, after all, that Dan was coming. The
classroom door was open, and there were several policemen there, the area
having being cordoned off; The Screw's car was nearby, so he was obviously
home. The three squared their shoulders and went in; they saw first the
desk with Ben's broken irons and the photographs. And then they saw The
Screw. As befits his name, he was swinging round and round from a hook
where he had hung boys in chains. Only he was hanging by a cable around his
neck, and he was dead.

Ben knelt down and sobbed with a conflict of overwhelming emotions; Dan got
down beside him, weeping quietly, and the two comforted each other. By this
last act, The Screw had forced the very thing that everyone was trying to
avoid; publicity. Now everyone would have to know about the boys' abuse,
since it would all come out at the inquest.

`Sir' said the policewoman to Ben, after allowing him a pause to compose
himself, `I need you to confirm that this is Bernard Thompson, your
father.'

Ben just stood up and nodded, then strengthened his voice. `Yes, that is
our father, Bernard Thompson. May God rest his soul and finally bring him
peace.'

Tim looked at amazement at Ben, marvelling that he could find it in his
heart to pray for the man who had so abused him and his brother. He looked
at Ben's face; he saw no anger, but only tranquility and a real sense of
peace. He saw Ben's arm snake around his brother's shoulders, pulling him
into himself; both young men were wearing shirts to hide the wounds and
bruises both of them had received from that hateful man. Dan winced a
little, but settled into his brother's embrace, wrapping his arm around
Ben's waist.

Ben saw Tim's look of disbelief.

`Look, Tim. Look at our Dad; that is where hate gets you. Why should I hate
him now? Isn't he truly to be pitied? For all the unhappiness he gave us,
he must have been at least twice as unhappy himself. Dan and I have each
other again, and that is wonderful; I don't think Dad ever had anyone at
all. He and Mum always fought--you wouldn't remember that, Dan--and I don't
think either one of them was ever happy. I have learnt to be happy, and I
have learnt to recognize love and perhaps to give it, too. Dad never had
that chance. I hope now that he has finally found Someone who loves him,
and Whom he can love; God Himself. Perhaps death may be the very best thing
that happened to our Dad. Suicide wasn't the best way to do it, sure, but
somehow I think that God will understand.'

`And what about you, Dan?'

`Look, I don't understand all this religion stuff, but what Ben says seems
to make sense to me. Where's the point in hating him? It'll only make us
miserable, and I don't propose to let hatred win. He can't hurt us any
more, so let's just draw a line under it and carry on with our lives.'

And something melted within Tim. Years of barriers and self-protection
crumbled. He remembered the Lord's command to `Love your enemies; do good
to those who hurt you,' and the nobility and faith of the young man he
loved, and the natural goodness of his brother awakened in him once more
that love of God he had had as a young man; finally, finally, he began to
realise what he must do.

Tim walked across to the body, now lowered to lie on a bench, and made the
sign of the cross on his cold forehead. He made the Church's solemn prayers
for the commendation of the deceased, and prayed for the salvation of the
man Bernard Thompson, that, though he had taken his own life, God may yet
have mercy on his distress of mind, and find it in His heart to forgive all
his many sins. Ben, at his shoulder, answered the prayers, and Dan joined
in as best he could. All three of them found peace in the solemn and gentle
words that returned surprisingly easily and quickly to Tim's memory.

When they had finished, one of the policemen said to Tim

`I'm sorry, sir, I didn't realize you were a priest, in your running gear.'

`I'm not a priest,' said Tim. `I'm still a deacon, but somehow I think I'm
going to be a priest quite soon.'



There was a great deal of upheaval over the succeeding weeks. Tim submitted
his resignation to the Turling Park headmaster, and there was great
distress among the staff and boys, who had come to see Tim as one of the
greatest resources of the establishment. The Bishop, who had always had a
soft spot for Tim, welcomed him back among the ranks of the clergy with
open arms, and talked with Tim for a long time about his future. He was
well aware of the important work that Tim had done at Turling Park, and was
very reluctant to end it. So it was decided that instead of returning to
the Seminary to prepare for priesthood, that Tim would move in with Paul
and Johnny and study with them for a year, while continuing his pastoral
work full time among the boys at Turling Park. If it all worked out well,
he could join the staff at St Tarcisius' House permanently; that would mean
three priests on the staff, but if the Bishop didn't have to foot the bill
to pay them all, then it ought to work out all right.

The news was greeted with great relief by all concerned, and especially at
Turling Park. Tim would have to vacate his cottage, however, for the new
groundsman, though an appointment was not made for another year, which gave
Ben and Dan the chance to build their own house next to St Tarcisius with
the money from the sale of their Father's house, the house where Ben had
been tortured, and to which he wanted never to return. The house, with
bedrooms for both Marc and Conor, and a flat for Tim, was complete in a
couple of months, and was connected by a short corridor and hallway to the
Warden's and Chaplain's flats in St Tarcisius House. So the family was
united properly.



On Christmas Eve, in the big Cathedral at Arundel, Tim was finally ordained
a priest. He would have liked to have been ordained in the new chapel at St
Tarcisius House, but it was far too small to hold all the people who wanted
to be there. Almost the whole of Turling Park turned out for the occasion,
most of the boys deeply puzzled but intrigued at the complicated Catholic
ceremonial, but deeply happy for Tim, their Hagrid, who had been father,
mother and best friend to so many of them. Sylvia and her family were
there--Tim had had his marriage to her easily annulled, since she had been
having an affair with her present husband even at the time she and Tim had
married, as were all Tim's friends from the police force and the seminary.
His brothers, their wives, his nieces and nephews; all were there to share
his happiness, and all could see that Tim, finally, had come home.

The End.


Comments to nickturner@breath.org.uk