Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 23:23:37 +0000 (GMT)
From: Mike Arram <mikearram@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Henry in the Outfield 17

This is my fifth gay erotic novella on Nifty.  The four earlier ones
chronicle -- in different ways -- episodes in the same love affair: They
are, in order: 'The Decent Inn' and 'Terry and the Peachers' in the Nifty
archive under the College section; 'The Heart of Oskar Prinz' in
Beginnings, and 'The Chav Prince' in High School.  This, however, is a very
different kind of story.  But different though it is, I have to confess
that I went under to the temptation to include some earlier characters of
whom I am particularly fond.  Nevertheless this is the story of Henry and
Edward, who, as Justin unkindly says, may sound like refugees from Thomas
the Tank Engine, but they aren't.
  The story contains graphic depictions of sex between young males.  If the
reading or possessing of such material as this is illegal in your place of
residence please leave this site immediately and do not proceed further.
If you are under the legal age to read this, please do not do so.


XVII

  'Dad?' asked Henry, 'Who lives in Launde House in East Hamme?'
  'Er ... I should know the answer to that question,' Dad replied, 'It's a
family called Macmillan.  I haven't had much to do with them, they're
Methodists.  Why do you ask?'
  'It's part of my graveyard project, I'm trying to map burials from
particular gentry families.'
  'Oh, right.  Interesting.  I think the Macmillans have been there for a
few generations.  Old Mrs Macmillan lives there now.  She's a friend of Dr
Mac.  I think they're bridge partners.  Ask him.'
  Dr Mac was in his garden that Sunday afternoon.  Ed had gone back to
school after lunch, and it had suddenly occurred to Henry that there was
one lead he had not followed up in his investigation.  He knew that the
Corners had long died out in East Hamme, but had forgot to check out the
current occupants of Launde House.
  'Hello young Henry.  I take it that there's something you'd like me to
help you with?'  said the warden.
  'Yes please.  I'm interested in Launde House.  Could you get me in to see
it?'
  'I can do better than that, I can take you there later this afternoon.
Our bridge circle meets there at three, and I'm going there before
evensong.  Come back in an hour, and I'll ring Nellie Macmillan to see if I
can bring you.'
  'Fantastic Dr Mac ... and could you ask her if she knows anything about
the old Corner family who used to live there?'
  'Oh, you're still on the track of the death of the Scudamore boy are
you?'
  'Yes I am.'
  Ed and Henry had intensely discussed the last vision before they had left
London, and then they had told it all to Justin and Nathan, when they could
get them down to earth after the euphoria of the party.  The older pair
were driving down from London on Tuesday and staying over the crisis
period, which was going to be Wednesday, the 5th November.  They were
coming down for bonfire night, was the story given to Matt and Andy, who
shrugged and agreed.
  So now Henry was marking time, with growing nervousness, till the sparks
began to fly on Bonfire Night.  Launde House was a desperate attempt to
distract him from his fears of what was coming.
  Mrs Macmillan was very sweet.  She made him a mug of tea while he told
her about the information he was looking for.  She thought a while.
  'Well now Henry, I am of course descended from the Corner family.  My
greatgrandfather inherited it just before the Great War when the last of
the Corners died.  There are papers.  Most of them have gone to the Record
Office, but they probably wouldn't be much use to you ... wills and deeds
and suchlike.  However, my father kept some of the nineteenth century
papers in tin trunks in the estate office.  You're welcome to go and have a
look while Neville and I play our bridge.  Come this way.'
  So Mrs Macmillan took him down an old flagged passage and into an
abandoned office, full of junk with an ancient railed desk, at which Henry
guessed the tenant farmers paid their rents.  A series of black painted
trunks occupied a wall.  Two of them had the name CORNER painted on them in
white.  The old lady took her leave and left Henry standing there wondering
where to start. He did the eeny-meeny-miny-mo thing and went for the left
hand one.  He hauled it out, knelt down and opened the trunk, with a
growing sense of excitement.
  Inside was a mass of old letters, tied up in bundles by faded pink tape.
There was no order or system that he could see.  But they were generally of
the same period, so he began checking dates cursorily.  He stacked them on
the floor by decade, and he found some going back to the 1830s.  There was
none from the time when Jed was alive, but that would have been too much to
expect.  He concentrated on the 1840s when Sir Nathaniel was in residence
at Launde.  There was a lot of his correspondence, but all incoming, none
outgoing.  They dealt with the affairs of the local hunt, the presentation
to East Hamme church and field drainage.  It was tedious stuff.  It went
all the way up to October 1845.  The last item was an elaborate funeral
card for Nathaniel with weeping angels and a draped sarcophagus, giving the
funeral date as 14th November 1845 and the time of gathering at eleven 'for
hippocrass and refreshment' followed by interment by torchlight, with no
explanation for the unusual arrangement.
  The rest of the 1840s was the correspondence of Nathaniel's heir, Alfred,
and the correspondence after the death talked of nothing other than his
settling into the affairs of the East Hamme estate.  As Henry was putting
things away, however, one miscellaneous bundle caught his attention.  He
opened it and it was a collection of the letters of Letitia Alice Corner,
Alfred's daughter, 'returned by her husband after her death in childbed' as
a slip of paper noted.  They covered the period from 1842 to 1847, and
mostly were addressed to her betrothed.  He riffled through and found a
letter for what seemed to be the end of 1845.
  'My Dear James,' it began,' we are now installed in our new home in
co. Salop, and mama is fully extended - and not a little flustered - by the
need to get in new servants and clean out this dusty old place.  The old
general seems to have let things slide these last years.  It is said he was
quite the tartar when first he arrived from Chelsea.  Father is overwhelmed
with business, for the general had not left his affairs in the best order.
That his death forestalled him can hardly be believed in the circumstances.
He was they tell us fit for purpose up to the end and seemingly not weighed
down by any illness of a physical nature.  But that he was depressed and
melancholic must be assumed from the way that he chose to end his life, for
there can be no doubt that he had long contemplated the self- destruction
he carried out upon himself.  The gun that was in his hand when he was
found in the woods was not one used for sport, but a new repeating pistol
of the American sort that he had ordered from London last year.  Father had
a great to do with the rector of Trewerne yesterday about the tombstone.
The rector flatly refused to allow a suicide to be commemorated in a
Christian graveyard.  He said that he had only allowed the burial because
it was specific in the old general's testament, and that had it not been
done at midnight it had not been done at all.  Such a row there was.'
  Henry dropped the letter from his hand.  So the mystery of the burial was
now cleared up.  Nathaniel had shot himself in Trewern wood, and the
authorities had not allowed a daytime burial, but insisted on a torchlight
funeral, perhaps without the funeral rite.  Suicide at the time was a
serious sin, and even a Knight of the Bath and a general could not evade
its consequences.
  There was no further reference to the death of Nathaniel in either box,
but he was able to give Dr Mac a full report on it in the car going back
home.
  'Well done, Henry.  You're quite the researcher.  You might think of
doing history at university.  You have the gift, it seems clear.  You are
dogged and don't give up.  So that's the mystery now cleared up.  You might
even think of a little article on it in the parish magazine.'  Henry said
he would think about it.
  As soon as he was home he was on his mobile to Ed about what he had
discovered.  Ed's view was in the end his.
  'Old Nathaniel killed himself on the fiftieth anniversary of Jed's death
and in the same place that Jed had died, although it is clear that by 1845
nobody remembered Jed's death in the woods.  Looks like Nathaniel was
driven by guilt and grief that finally overwhelmed him after he'd fought it
for years.  Poor kid couldn't live with it any more and topped himself.'
  'Poor kid?'
  'Yeah, whatever Justy said, I think the loving, tender Nathaniel survived
inside the crusty old general.  I think he remained at heart the kid he had
been in 1795.  The death of his beloved Jed must have been his fault and it
must have warped his life, so he went off to war hoping never to come back.
But whatever he did, however reckless, he survived, grew older and more
distinguished, and he occupied the hollowness of living by being busy and
active.  When he finally retired in 1841 all he had was his empty heart and
the guilt that had grown and grown over the years.  In the end it just
swamped him, so yes, he was a poor kid.'
  'So what's going on, Ed?'
  'The guilt and grief is still there, Henry.  He never told anyone what
had happened when he was alive.  Perhaps he couldn't, but now at last he
has found people he can talk to, he has found us.  And you Henry, gay,
dark, slim and attractive (well I think so) is who he has focussed on.
He's telling you his story because you're just too like his Jed.  He can
talk to you.'
  'Great ... so he's literally going to talk me to death then.'
  'Er ... not what I said.'
  'What're we going to do on Bonfire Night?  We can't escape him.  He
reached out to us in London.  Have we got any weapons we can use? ... holy
water springs to mind.'
  'It'll be our wits and reflexes, little babe, that's all.'
  'Another thing ... they both planned to go off and be soldiers if they
could.  Couldn't that be mixed with the death?  Maybe it wasn't Nathaniel
who killed Jed, maybe Jed despaired when Nathaniel said he was going and
topped himself because he couldn't go with him.'
  'Mystery, isn't it.  We will find out though, I'm pretty sure of that.
Henry, I think we should confront it.  We could barricade ourselves in and
try to hide from them, but I think the best thing is to go to Trewern Woods
and wait for it there, at the centre of where it's all coming from.'
  Henry shrugged, 'I've got no better ideas.  I assume you've remembered
that Wednesday is a school day?'
  'No.  It isn't.  Don't you remember that November 5th is always a day
holiday at Medwardine?'
  'Oh yeah.  There's a daft reason why, isn't there.'
  'William Campion, one of the Gunpowder plotters was an old boy of our
school.  So we don't celebrate bonfire night, but in compensation the boys
get a day off.  It's a tradition I can support.  So I'll be coming back to
Trewern on the minibus with you on Tuesday night.'

  'Are you two OK?' Mum asked, 'You haven't had a row have you?'
  'No,' said Henry, 'we're adolescents, we can't be bouncy and chirpy all
the time ..'
  'Yeah,' Ed agreed, 'you gotta have a dose of moody sullenness from time
to time, or it wouldn't be fair to you, would it?'
  Fortunately at that moment headlights swept the front of the rectory and
Nathan's Clio pulled into the yard.  The two older boys piled out of the
car, as the door opened and the Atwood household came out to meet them.
  'Mum, this is Justin Peacher-White, who we told you about.'
  Justin gave Mum a charming smile and a cheerful, 'Pleased ter meetcha Mrs
Atwood' that melted Mum in an instant.  Nathan shook Dad's hand with his
powerful grip.  The parents were momentarily taken aback when the older
teens exchanged friendly kisses on the mouth with the two younger boys and
gave them close hugs, but they rallied.
  Henry and Edward took their bags up to Richard's room, where Nathan and
Justin were to stay, and they sat around for a while.  Henry filled them in
on the latest developments and they pondered tomorrow's strategy.
  Justin agreed with Ed, 'Yer right.  Iss stupid sitting here and waiting
for it ter happen.  If there's going to be trouble yer might as well go out
looking for it and meet it on your own terms.  Thass what I think anyway.
Have yer got a strategy for when it -- whatever it is -- happens.'
  'Yeah,' Henry said, 'it's you.  Nathaniel's only so far taken us when we
are alone.  Things might be different if there're witnesses.  You may at
least be able to monitor what's going on, and be there to offer support.
You can also intervene maybe if you have a chance.'
  Nathan nodded his head, 'OK Henry, when do we go to the woods?'
  'We know Jed died there in the afternoon of 5th November 1795, so that's
when we'll be there, from about two onwards, I think.'
  So two o'clock found them winding through Trewern Great Wood.  It was a
dull afternoon, but not too cold for the time of year.  Henry and Edward
were wearing thick sweaters and jeans, and holding hands as they looked
edgily around them.
  Henry whispered to Ed to ask if he thought getting naked was an idea,
'No, Henry, let's not make it too easy for Nathaniel.  Sides, Justy is
kinky enough to get off on it.'
  Henry led them to the little clearing and they sat down on the ground,
Henry next to Edward and Justin and Nathan opposite.  They chatted in a
desultory way.  Henry gave the other pair a report on the latest
speculation.  Time passed, and the sun began to dip down as the afternoon
progressed.  The cloud lifted and sunlight began to break through the
leaves, but that meant it got cooler, although not in the supernatural way
that had happened previously.  'Wish I'd brought a book,' Ed remarked, but
as he did Henry noticed something faintly odd.  He had been idly watching
feathery motes drifting in the late afternoon sunlight.  One he had
focussed on seemed to slow down and then surprisingly it gently stopped in
midair.
  Henry looked round.  All three of his friends were still there in the
clearing with him, but they had gone strangely rigid, not even blinking.
He moved his arm to reassure himself that he too had not become paralysed,
and it obeyed his command.  Also, it was his own arm, not that of Jehoiadah
Scudamore.  He stood up and looked around.  As he switched back to the
group, he was aware that a fifth member had joined it, a darkly handsome
Byronic boy in the clothes of Lord Byron's day.  The boy gave him a shy
smile and put his finger to his lips.  He came closer and took Henry's
hand.  The hand felt warm and alive, and tugged him away from the others.
  Silently they walked away through the frozen woodland.  Henry had a
strange feeling that when he brushed past twigs that they did not part for
him, but went through him.  But if the wood seemed phantom like, the boy he
was with remained perfectly hard edged and real, indeed he seemed the most
real thing in the universe at that moment.  They stopped at another
clearing and Jed stood directly in front of him.  He put up his right hand
and drew Henry's face to his own.  They kissed deeply, and the other boy's
tongue slipped into his mouth, feeling as warm, real and wet as Ed's did.
They broke off, Jed smiling rather seductively at him.
  'What do you want, Jed?' was all he could ask.
  Jehoiadah seemed about to answer, but then his face took on a concerned
look.  For now a third person was in the clearing, a rather angry looking
old man.  Henry remembered him from the ancient daguerrotype.  It was
Major-General Sir Nathaniel Corner, not the boy Nathaniel.  His yellow and
heavily-lined face was imperious and deeply annoyed.  He moved quickly
towards Henry, but Jed stood between them.  He seemed to be remonstrating
with the old man, but he was pushed aside, and it seemed to Henry that it
was not by physical means that Jed was moved, but by the sheer force of the
man's anger.  The old Nathaniel seized Henry's arm and he cried out,
because where it touched him he felt a burning as if it was being seared
with the cold that lurks between the stars.  The pain was so great, he
fainted, or appeared to do so.
  When Henry opened his eyes, he saw a concerned green pair looking back at
his own.  He was in Jed's body once again, and he panicked.  It was almost
as if he was in chains and gagged.  Young Nathaniel stroked his cheek and
kissed him lightly.  'Jed, are you alright?  You seemed to fade away almost
for a moment.  Are you fevered?'
  Jed sat up, 'I don't know what came over me, dear Nathaniel.'  He
grinned, 'You are eager for me I see.'  There was certainly no doubt from
the pattern in Nathaniel's breeches, that he was highly sexually excited.
'Always so very eager, Nathaniel.  Moderation in all things is not an idea
that much appeals to you, is it?'
  'Not where you are concerned, my Patroclus.'
  'Then Achilles, my lord and my master, use me as you will.'
  The boys laboured to get out of their rather involved clothing, grinning
at each other the while.  Jed made a comment about it being so much easier
for the real Achilles, and they laughed.  At last naked, they lay together
on the grass, goose bumps appearing on their flesh in the cold air.  They
moved close and began kissing together.  At the back of Jed's mind, Henry
reflected that Justin and Nathan must be seeing quite a show in the
clearing.  It was erotic enough witnessing it here.
  Eventually they began rubbing their erections together, and Jed spurted
very quickly with a great shout.  Nathaniel pulled off him, his erection
straining for attention.
  'Your mouth, oh please Jed, give me its sweet relief.'  Jed rolled on to
his back, and Nathaniel straddled Jed, facing towards his feet.  His large
member was hanging down above Jed's eyes and he caught it, feeding it into
his mouth, straining to accept it.  He heard Nathaniel's urgent groans
above him, and then discomfort turned to alarm as Nathaniel thrust hard
down into him.  Jed struggled and kicked his legs, gagging on the large
penis still thrusting down into his throat.  Nathaniel seemed oblivious and
began fucking Jed's mouth hard.  Henry felt the deadly panic rise in Jed,
he could not breathe and his nose was blocked and streaming with mucus.  He
arched with Jed and blacked out.
  There was blackness and an indefinite period of time followed.  Suddenly
there was an approaching light, and colours streamed past Henry.  He was
sitting in a woodland clearing.  The air was warm; he was naked, as was
Jehoiadah Scudamore beside him.  The other boy looked apologetically at
him.  'Henry, I am so sorry,' he said.