Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 15:28:02 +0100
From: Mike Arram <marram@wanadoo.co.uk>
Subject: Terry & the Peachers 23 and end

This story follows on from an earlier Nifty story published on the College
site -- 'The Decent Inn'.  It follows up on some of the loose ends and some
of the marginal characters in the earlier story, as well as continuing the
story of the rocky romance of Matthew White and Andy Peacher, and the story
of their friend Paul Oscott.  The institutions named in it are (almost) all
imaginary.  Matthew's home university is in an entirely fictional
university city in England somewhere between Reading and Swindon and its
resemblances to any real university are simply generic.  The persons
described in the story are also fictitious and bear no resemblance to any
living person.

The story contains graphic depictions of sex, mostly 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.



XXIII



Matt bit his lip nervously.  People were filing into the lecture room and
his heart had just disappeared somewhere down near his boots.  This was it,
his first conference lecture to an audience of fellow academics.  He had
made the interesting discovery that talking to cameras and the millions of
people behind them was nowhere near as scary as talking to his peers, face
to face.
  'Are you alright, Matt?' asked Dr Faber, smiling.
  'Sure, Jeremy.'  They had finally got on to first name terms.
  'I could flood you with advice at this point, Matt.  Speak slowly and
clearly.  Don't look down too often at your script.  Pause every now and
then if you can. Time is going faster for you than for your audience.  I
could give you all this advice but I'll bet you're not hearing me at the
moment are you?'
  Matt was, but he was having the panicky feeling that key information was
going into one ear and straight out the other, and he couldn't hold on to
it.  'No, s'alright, really.'
  'You're last on, after me and Tony Phelps.  You'll be great, trust me.
And look at the audience you've pulled in, wonder boy!  They're not here
for me and Tony, believe me.'  It was true, the small lecture theatre had
filled up rapidly with graduate students and lecturers, preponderantly
female, Matt noticed.  The session was No. 125 at the London International
Conference on Early Modern Studies, and it had the unpromising title of
'Aspects of Royal Sacralisation in the Protestant State'.  The level of
attendance could only be curiosity to see how the new media history hero
performed in person.  There was also the groupie aspect amongst a certain
sort of female graduate student.  A bunch of them were down the front,
chattering excitedly and openly sizing up Matt.  Then Matt's heart lifted.
Waving from the back was Rhiannon, a broad smile across her beautiful face.
Suddenly he didn't feel so isolated.
  Jeremy Faber and Tony Phelps, old and mutual friends, gave their papers.
They were relaxed, practised and amusing pieces, looking at coronation
rituals in seventeenth-century Sweden and Denmark.  Matt's sense of panic
returned in force as Professor Phelps sat down to polite applause and the
presider, a senior Oxford academic, introduced Matt.  He was very amusing
on the subject of media comments about Mr Matthew White, with a certain
determined stress on the fact that he was still 'Mr' White.  Matt pretended
to smile at the jokes directed at him.  He knew enough about academia to
know that you always had to be mild, amusing and amused, even under
provocation.  Just wait till I review your next book, you bastard, Matt was
saying in his head.  Matt stood to a ripple of applause, and took the
podium.
  He had decided against Powerpoint, as Sod's Law meant that it was bound
to go wrong.  He smiled at the audience, which was the best thing he could
have done.  The female majority were instantly in love with him and totally
on his side.  He sensed it from the front.  So he began his modest little
paper about what the bishops of England thought they were doing when they
crowned Charles I.  He was very funny on the eccentricities of Archbishop
Laud and very accomplished on the theology of the Calvinist bench.  He
pulled off his party piece with a devastating little conclusion which
pulled in unexpectedly the views of Bourbon Catholic bishops and court
theologians to demonstrate how the needs of the State imposed the same
theology on bishops, Protestant and Catholic alike.  There was a brief
silence at the end, which unnerved him until it turned into very generous
applause.  In the succeeding questions he got the lion's share of them and
defended himself very well.  Dr Faber was ecstatic.  'So proud of you,
Matt.  No one here will take you for a media bimbo now!'
  'Gee thanks.'
  'Tony Phelps will be happy to be your external examiner, too.  He was so
impressed.  He can do it before Christmas.'
  'Excellent.'  A horde of young women descended on him at this point and
he was forced to autograph several conference programmes.  But, for all
that, he was very charming and it was quite a while before they let him go.
  Rhiannon loomed up behind them, for she was tall as well as good-looking.
They hugged and kissed, much to the evident disgruntlement of one or two of
the Matt groupies.  'Dinner, Matt?  I know a decent place on Goodge
Street.'
  'Love to, and the tab's on me.'
  'No argument. We've just taken out our first mortgage on a terraced house
in Norwich.  I feel as though I've signed away my life.'  Rhiannon's York
boyfriend, a musician, had just got a job teaching at the cathedral school,
and they were being thrown into adult life with a vengeance.
  They walked arm in arm on to Malet Street, and eyes were following them
as they went.  'You were great, Matt.  I could see you were nervous, but as
soon as you stood up and you gave them the Smile, they were yours, some of
the men too.'  Rhiannon in her day had been a victim of the Smile, as she
called it.  'Even I could follow what you were saying, though it isn't my
period.  Frank Andrews, the early modernist in my department, was taking
notes so fast the end of his pen was smoking.  He seemed to think you were
saying something important.'
  'Time will tell.  We're not always the best judge of our own work.'

  'So Dave,' said Matt, 'what're we doing today?'  It was the morning after
the conference and Matt was slowly relaxing.
  'It's the Beeb at six to record an interview.  Got a car coming for you
at five.  Should be alright since the traffic will be coming out of town
and you'll be going in.  But the important thing is that Andy will be
arriving at Heathrow in two hours and do you want to go and meet him, if so
I'll have a cab ticking downstairs in twenty minutes.'
  'You're good at this, y'know.'
  'Ta.  My great grandmother was a housemaid for a doctor in Tredegar, it's
probably genetic.'  Dave Evans grinned, 'So what is it going to be, Matt?'
  'Umm.  I'll go meet him off the Peacher jet, so get a cab.  I really do
need to buy a car, but I'm not here often enough to make it worthwhile.'
  'Yuh, well, love to see you Matt, y'know that, but it's a lot quieter
when you're not in town.'
  Matt had moved his British base up to London.  With a huge sense of
foreboding and a lot of advice from his father, he had bought a rundown
house at the back of Highgate Hill.  After his father had finished with it,
the house was no longer rundown.  In fact it was worth three times what he
had paid for it.  But his fingers still trembled at the size of the cheque
he had written last year.  It was a town house two streets away from the
Green, and when his father had got to work, stripping away the horrible
seventies modernisations, they had been stunned to discover an intact
eighteenth-century structure beneath, which had now been reinstated.  The
windows and doors had to be renewed in the old style, and the place
re-roofed, but with his father in charge and his superb team of mates on
the job, the end result was nothing short of wonderful.  A designer had put
the finishing touched to the decor and the garden had been planned and
replanted.
   Matt stood with his coffee steaming from a John Adams College mug (Go
Patriots!), looking out on the back garden through the fine French windows.
It was mostly finely clipped lawn, but it had borders, a raised patio and
at the back was a former garage, now an office and flat.  The office, and
flat above, was occupied by his temporary PA, no less than Dave Evans, and
his live-in lover, Steve Wharton.  Dave and Steve had finished successfully
at university, but had then endured a year's unemployment, living off
benefit and Steve's earnings at the Queen's.  While Matt was completing on
the house Steve had got a job on the London Underground as a trainee
manager, although Dave was still at a loose end.
  Neither of them had anywhere to live other than on friends' floors and
were facing a long separation, so Matt had offered Dave a temporary job in
his office, and he and Steve had the flat above rent free, for the time
being.  It was only one bedroom, but, as Steve said, one bed was all they
needed and Steve was happy to keep the garden tidy when he was between
shifts.  It was a comfort to Matt that when he was away, which he often
was, his two friends were there to look after things.  It was an
arrangement that was working and Dave was icily efficient on his behalf.
  With his modelling and media career on the rise, Matt had found his
Californian agent too remote from the European centre of affairs and
desperately needed a London representative.  Dave seemed as good at it as
Terry had been for Andy.  It's a gay thing, Dave had snorted.  They went
through the mail together.  Matt got a huge amount of it, a lot of it fan
mail sent on by the broadcasters he worked for.  Dave sorted into three
piles.  The biggest by far was the uncomplicated fan stuff, to which Dave
sent an acknowledgement, which Matt signed.  He even sent signed photos
when requested.  Most of this went to females, despite Matt's well-known
sexuality.  Dave said he kept the fan mail sent by gays, especially if they
sent photos.  Matt half believed him.  The second biggest pile was the hate
mail, of which there was a depressing amount.  Some was sheer uncomplicated
spleen, half-bestial ravings; some was homophobic; and some was definitely
threatening.  Dave filed this last pile carefully and passed the more
persistent and disturbing productions on to the police.
  The smallest pile was a special one that Matt answered personally, a lot
of it sincere letters from troubled adolescent gays asking advice; others
were from students in financial trouble.  They needed to talk and
communicate with someone and Matt was clearly the last resort for a lot of
them.
  As the taxi took him along the M4 through Hammersmith, Matt pondered the
amount of lunacy in the world, and the way it forced itself on you.  People
might well regard him as privileged and lucky, but you paid your price for
success in the world, and indeed there was a price to pay even for the deep
and fulfilling love that he had found with the boy he was racing along the
motorway to meet.
  'Doan' I know yer, mate?' came the inevitable question from the front
seat.  He had watched the taxi driver sizing him up in the mirror since
Kentish Town.  He was a youngish man, Matt's own age.
  'Dunno.  I'm Matthew White.'
  'Corst.  Thass who you are.  See you on telly all the time and you do
adverts too dunn yuh?'
  'Yup.'
  'You orf to meet sumwun at Heathrow?  You got no bags.'
  'Yes, I'm meeting my boyfriend.'
  'Oh yeah, you're gay aintchuh?'
  'Right on.'
  'Yuh, me too.'  Matthew smiled.  'You got a boyfriend then?'
  'Nah.  Got no time for a boyfriend, not wiv the hours I work.  I get sex
from pick ups ... hey, fancy a BJ?  It'd be an honour.  Yuh could even
autograph me dick.'
  'Uh ... no offence, and you're a good-looking bloke and all, but no.  I
don't do casual sex.'
  'No offence taken, mate.  But yuh gotta ask anya?  Hope it woan' affect
the tip!'
  Matt laughed, the guy was young, cheerful and engaging.  They chatted the
rest of the way more comfortably than he usually did with London
taxi-drivers.  He tipped him heavily, way past the American level.
  His heart began thumping as he reached the private terminal exit, as it
always did when he was about to rejoin his lover after a long separation.
His heart almost was at bursting point as he saw the smiling young man
bobbing along towards him with his distinctive walk, one bag slung over his
shoulder.
  Stuff the world, he thought.  He reached out, hugged and kissed Andy, and
didn't even bother to check what were the reactions around him.
  They separated and smiled happily at each other.
  'How's my Andy?'
  'Not too bad, my Matt.  How're you?'
  'All the better for seeing you.  No Jenna?  No Mark?'
  'It's only going to be a couple of days.  I'm only here to see your
house, see my mum and potter round before going back to the academic
grind.'
  Matt took Andy's bag and they wandered off, 'It's not that bad is it?  I
hoped you wouldn't find being a student again a strain.'
  'No, it's not a problem ... I'd just forgotten how disorganised I was
about deadlines, and I can't cheat by letting Mark organise me.'  He paused
and looked around.  'Let's get the tube, huh?'
  They found their way to the Underground and boarded an eastbound
Piccadilly Line train.  It was full of returning tourists with masses of
baggage.  At Earl's Court more people surged on.  Andy and Matt were
crowded into a small corner of the carriage with people pressing hard on
them and the murmur and chatter of any number of foreign languages in their
ears.  Finally they spilled out at King's Cross, into another surging
crowd.  So Matt was taken off balance and was pushed into a passing young
man, spinning his briefcase out of his hand and causing him to swear.
  'Bloody hell!  Easy!  What you doing?'  He recovered his case stood up,
and turned to confront Matt.
  'You!'
  Matt stood open mouthed, 'Sorry ... Oh God!  It's you Zav!'  Andy spun
and there indeed, looking eerily like Matt, was his estranged cousin,
Xavier.  The crowd had dispersed and only isolated commuters were moving
past.
  Andy was uncharacteristically fierce and direct, 'Come on, Matt ... leave
the homophobic cunt, and let's get home.'
  But Matt hesitated and put out a hand.  From irritated, Zav moved to
aggressive and slapped Matt's hand away.  'Of all the people to bump into
in this city it would have to be you.  Too many fucking poofs in this
place, you can smell them everywhere you go.'
  Matt wouldn't let it go, however.  'Zav, I ...'  He moved towards his
cousin, who went white, balled his fist and struck Matt a very hard blow in
the face.  Matt went down in a heap, cracking his head against the lip of a
step, and Zav, shouting incoherently, now began kicking him in the side
with sickening and heavy thumps.  Andy had frozen, but with a terrible cry
he now threw himself on top of Matt and took one of the kicks meant for
Matt on the side of his own head.  His vision exploded in stars, and the
next thing he knew he was being lifted off Matt by an Underground worker as
a concerned crowd looked down.  He sat up groggily and with a sudden surge
of panic looked over at Matt.  He was unconscious and a pool of blood was
around his head.  Two men were crouching over him.  One looked panicky.
  'I don't think he's breathing.'
  'I've called an ambulance.'
  Andy moaned and pushed them aside.  Matt was on his back.  His face was
very white and his eyes were closed.  His lips were bluish.  Blood was
oozing thickly out from his long dark hair.  Andy knelt over him unable to
say or do anything.  A young woman pushed past.
  'Scuse me love, I'm a nurse.  Let me get at him.'  She knelt over Matt's
face.  She checked the pulse in his neck and began applying emergency
resuscitation.  Andy slumped in horror against the tiled wall of the tube
passage.  Police appeared rapidly and people directed them to Andy.  They
helped him stand.  Who was the man on the ground?  Did you see the
assailant?  Are you hurt?  They didn't get much to the point out of him.
Other bystanders chipped in.  The boy had been assaulted unprovoked by a
random attacker, who had run off.  He had left his briefcase. 'Unusual
white collar crime, this one,' an officer observed.
  Paramedics arrived and Matt disappeared under an oxygen mask and behind
reflective green suits.  The police cleared the crowd and ushered the
stretcher and Andy up the escalators and out on to Euston Road.  'You can
travel with us mate', said an officer, putting him in the back of his car,
'that head of yours needs looking at.  We're going to the Royal Free.'
  The nightmare trip through North London seemed to last for ever.
Somewhere around Camden Andy's mind began working.  He began explaining to
the police his relationship with Matt, and who his assailant had been.  The
officer in the front passenger seat listened intently and began talking
into his radio.  Andy found his mobile and wondered who to call first.  He
raised Dave first, told him what had happened, what was going on and to
ring Matt's parents.  There was an appalled silence at the other end,
followed by a small voice, '... Is he going to live, Andy?'
  Was he?  Andy's world lurched and crumbled, and with tears running down
his cheek faced the possibility that this was the end of the story for him
and Matt.  He pulled together.  'He's bad, Dave.  But he's strong.  I'll
let you know from the hospital when there's news.'
  The ambulance and police car screamed into the Casualty area.  The
stretcher trolley carrying Matt disappeared at speed inside, while the
police took Andy to register himself and Matt at reception.  When he was
asked what his relationship with Matt was he said, firmly, that he was his
partner, and that he was the next of kin.  After twenty minutes a doctor
appeared and took him into a screened cubicle.  He inspected Andy's wound
and told a nurse to take him to X-Ray.  He didn't know anything about Matt
other than that he was in theatre and had not regained consciousness.
  Andy met the police officer outside.  'Mr Peacher?  The assailant
surrendered himself to the Transport Police at Euston twenty minutes ago,
sir.  He's been charged and committed to custody.  Hope that's some comfort
to you.  Any news?'  Andy shook his head.
  A stranger accosted him moments later.  'Mr Peacher, I'm from the Evening
Standard.  We just heard that your partner Mr White has been seriously
injured in a gay-bashing attack at King's Cross.  We understand it's touch
and go.  Can you tell us anything?  How serious are his injuries?  Was it
an unprovoked attack?'  Andy muttered that it was very serious and had no
other comment.  The reporter made a bee-line for the police.
  Andy sat waiting outside the X-Ray suite.  He flipped his mobile and
checked his address list.  There were a lot of people who needed to know
what had happened before the attack was reported in the press.  He began
the painful process of ringing round.  Then he made the call he was
dreading to the USA, where it was the middle of the night '... that you,
Paulie?'

Andy dozed in his seat in reception, his body in reaction.  He had mild
concussion, the doctor said, and had got off lightly.  Take these pills and
no alcohol for a week.  Paul's sobs kept welling up in his head.  The boy
had broken down completely on the phone, crying like a child.  He had never
experienced Paul in agony before, and never seen him lose it.  But lost it
he had, with a vengeance.  Oddly, it gave Andy strength of a sort.
  He got up and paced the reception area.  He saw a sign pointing to the
Chapel, and for the life of him he would later swear that he felt Matt at
his side at that precise moment, even felt his scent in his nostrils and
his familiar breath on his cheek.  A warmth welled up deep inside him and
an unaccountable peace took hold of his mind.  He shook his head.  This was
his mind screwing with him.  But he followed the coloured line to the small
chapel nonetheless.
  Andy sat in the empty chapel at the back, contemplating the big wooden
cross above the bare stone altar.  He was alone, but he still felt
improbably in company.  Again the feeling of peace took full possession of
him.  Without any surprise at all he heard, if not with his ears, a voice
say to him quite clearly that he, Andy, was in the deep dark of night, and
though the owner of the voice said that he had once been there alone at a
time of trial, yet no one else need be, for He was there always with him,
beyond the time of trial and to the end of time.  Andy picked up a pew
bible.  It was marked for the Twenty-third psalm.  He read it and suddenly,
as never before, he knew the power of words.  He put the bible back and for
the next twenty minutes found he could pray, and pray easily, saying all
that needed to be said and finding both comfort and reassurance in the act.
   Dazed, he made his way back to reception and took his seat again.  In a
minute or two, he felt someone next to him; a kiss was planted on his cheek
and an arm took his as a body as small as his own nestled next to him.
  'Lo, Katy.  Thanks for coming.'  She was there in her court suit with a
pin-striped skirt, a wig still clutched in her hand.
  'How long's it been?'  she asked quietly.
  'He's been in the theatre for five hours.  Apparently they've lost him
twice, but he's stabilising.'
  'Where's his mum and dad?'
  'They should be here any moment.  Carl's on his way too.'
  'Oh Andy ... I'm so sorry.'  They hugged and kissed.

Andy looked over at the clean bed with the sun shining on it.  Matt looked
unusually thin and drawn, he thought.  The bandages were all gone now and
there was no hair underneath it, just blue stubble except for the scar at
the back of his head.  Still, he looked beautiful, as an ascetic young monk
in the middle ages could look beautiful, he thought.  His heart full of
love, he got up and kissed the pale cheek.  Matt was breathing gently but
easily, like he was asleep.
  Three weeks, and Matt was still unconscious.  A blood clot had formed on
the brain.  The doctors had no idea how much damage it had done or where
the damage was or whether they had got to it in time.  But at least his
body was reacting normally to stimulus, and he would not be paralysed, if
he ever woke up.  That was the big question now, if and when.  Andy hardly
left the hospital and usually only to eat and change his clothes; he mostly
slept on the sofa in the anteroom of the private ward he had taken for
Matt.  Shifts of friends and family kept him company and filled in when he
was absent.  Matt's mum had been quite as assiduous as Andy was in her
attendance, but she had had to go back home for a few days.  Andy generally
timed his absences to the visits of the physiotherapists.  Everyone was
stunned at his strength.  He too was surprised at himself, but he thought
he knew now that the strength was not his, but had been given on loan.
  The media circus had run its course.  Matt had made the national news for
over a fortnight.  He would be so amused, Andy thought.  Laments about the
growing violence on London's streets and the homophobia that was corrupting
civic culture soon gave way when the more peculiar nature of the attack was
understood.  Matt had been the victim of an internal family feud.  So
families and their tensions became the lead story instead.  The press also
fell in love with the idea of the doomed romantic nature of Matt's life.
The papers were clearly warming up to some spectacular obituaries.  Andy
smiled - which he managed to do surprisingly often, all things considered
-- at least the pictures of the departed would be sensational.
  He picked up a book Paul had lent him.  But he could not concentrate.
Instead he sat next to the bed, took Matt's hand, and held it, feeling
oddly happy.  He heard movement behind him and a young hand was rested
gently on his shoulder.  He clasped it as his brother Peter kissed him
lightly on the top of his head.  Peter asked the usual question, 'Any
change, bro?'
  'None.  He just sleeps.  It'd be nice if he snored from time to time,
just for variation's sake.  I'm glad you came Petey.'
  'He was there for me when I was in hospital.  Can't do no less, can I?
Can I take a turn?'
  'Sure.  I need to stretch my legs.'
  Peter had come across the Atlantic under his own steam as soon as he
heard the bad news.  He wanted to be there for Andy.  He looked over at the
beautiful man who was his brother's lover.  He kissed him as Andy had done.
With a quirky grin he began talking.  The doctors had said that Matt needed
stimulus and that he might well be hearing what was said at his bedside.
So Peter began telling Matt of how his relationship with Tim was going.
Then, warming to the subject, began on an account of his long history of
lust after Terry.  He told him about spying on Terry and Ramon's rutting in
the woods at Courcon and what Ramon had done to him.  He told him about his
attempted seductions of Terry and the incident at the Faculty Club with
Travis.  Then, checking out whether anybody was listening, he gave Matt a
detailed and unexpurgated account of the group sex at Terry's flat in Santa
Barbara and precisely what Terry had done to him and he had done to Terry.
He was close to Matt's face when he did this and he ended up by saying
'... and do you want to know the big confession, Matt?  The big one is that
I've always wanted to see and touch your dick.  Andy says it's huge and
wide and he needs to do Zen exercises before he can get it in.  I reckon
that now's as good a time as any to find out the truth.'
  His hand crept under the covers, where Matt was naked except for a smock.
He touched Matt's wiry pubic bush and felt down to where Matt's penis was.
He caught his breath, it really was huge ... and it was erect.  He grabbed
a handful of its hot length and stroked up it, his heart beating hard.  He
let it go as he heard a sudden intake of breath which was not his own.  He
shouted 'Andy!  Andy!'.  He stood and looked down at Matt.  His eyes were
still closed but his face was working as if he was trying to say something.
Andy was next to him, mouth open in surprise.
  'What's he trying to say?'  he asked urgently.
  'I dunno!  Wait!'
  Matt's eyes flicked open and blinked.  He focussed on Peter and he said,
quite distinctly, 'Little pervert.'  Peter laughed so loud the nurses ran
in.

It took a little while for Matt to regain full consciousness, but once
improvement had begun, it continued.  Physically, he was weakened but his
high level of fitness made recovery rapid.  Xavier's assault had cracked
three ribs and bruised his left kidney, but these injuries had quickly
healed.  The doctors reckoned that the clot had not affected anything other
than temporarily interfering with his autonomic functions, which was why
his body had tried to shut down.  His memory was intact apart from the
period of the attack.  The last thing he remembered was the taxi ride to
Heathrow and the randy cab driver.  He claimed not to have remembered the
stimulus that woke him, but he caught Peter's eye when he said it and
winked.  Peter blushed scarlet.  When they were alone, Matt wickedly got
him to go through it all again, which Peter did shamefacedly, but it caused
Matt to give his first laugh since the assault.
  Within a week of coming round Matt was discharged in a wheelchair.
Pushed out of the hospital by Andy, and escorted by Carl, Peter, Katy, Paul
and Dave, he was shifted by private ambulance to his home in Highgate.  Mrs
Jenna Rudat was in attendance as Andy's aide, and she made sure the press
kept its distance.
  They put Matt in the back lounge with the view of his sunny garden.  Andy
looked him over.  'You make a good skinhead, love.  I don't like the
stubble round the face though.  It's itchy.'
  'Every man must grow a beard once in his life, Andy, just to see what it
looks like.  It's a rule of nature.  Now's a good enough time, while I'm on
an enforced sabbatical from displaying myself publicly.'
  'I think it's good, although it totally changes your face.  Also it makes
you look old,' Dave concluded with his customary charity.
  'Wow, thanks,' Matt replied.
  'You made the front page of the Standard again,' Katy observed,
flourishing the paper which showed Matt being escorted from the hospital.
  Paul had piled up drinks and eats on the lounge coffee table.  'None for
you, Matt.'
  'Aw great ... what was the point of leaving hospital then?'
  'So we could laugh at you of course,' said Steve as he lifted Matt
effortlessly out of his wheel chair and put him gently on the sofa.
  'I could have done that,' Matt protested.
  'But then I couldn't have fondled your bum.'  Matt's parents and his
brother arrived at this point and it turned into a relaxed social afternoon
for family and friends.  Later, Carl took him for a push around the garden
in the sunlight.
  'Matty, I went to see Zav in Pentonville.'
  'Yeah?'
  'His dad wouldn't go to see him, and none of the rest of the family would
go either, not even our dad, and you know how soft he is.'
  'So ... how is the stupid bastard?'
  'Odd.  I don't think he's all there half the time.  He thought I was you
sometimes.  I think he's on Prozac or something.'
  'Why did you go, Carl?  You never liked him anyway.'
  'I know.  He was a stuck up sort of kid, I thought.  Treated me like dirt
because I was two years younger than him.  He always used to hang round the
older kids.  He wanted you as his special friend.  Look, this is an odd
question, and you don't have to answer, but did you two ever get up to
anything ... er ...sort of gay when you were kids?'
  'No, we didn't.  Given half a chance I might have.  We got to see each
other naked once or twice and I would have done it if he had asked, but
there's no way I would have blown my cover by making a pass at him.  He
might have told on me.  Why do you ask?'
  'It might have been the drugs, but he began at one point to talk to me as
if I was you.  He couldn't shut up.  He was talking about some night you
two slept together in your bed when you were kids, and he ... not to put
too fine a point on it ... wanked you off.  He was talking as if you had
been awake when he did it.'
  'Crazy.  It never happened ... unless.'
  'What?'
  'Well ... unless he wanked me while I was asleep one night.  I certainly
used to wake up with sticky pyjama bottoms when I was a kid.  Maybe he
helped it along one night.  Where's all this going?'
  'Nowhere really.  It's just that it occurred to me that Zav's problem was
not that you came out, but that you didn't come out with him.  That he
wanted you and that he hated himself for wanting you.  He was terrified of
acknowledging that he had sexual feelings for you, but lusting after you
all the time.  Basically I think he's out of his head, Matty.  Driven nuts
by the contradictions inside himself ... hence the deranged nature of the
violence that morning.'
  'Disturbing theory, Carl.'
  'Look at it this way. He was on his way to work in the City that morning
a million miles away from you and your world and then -- bingo -- he bumps
into you.  But the worst thing was not just that it was you, but you were
there being a couple with little Andy.  So he had to deal with jealousy
too.  Wham.  All the baffled lust and suppressed feelings explode and you
do the worst possible thing, you apparently make a pass at him, or so he
interprets it.  He loses it and down you go, bruv!'
  'Er ... you did A Level Psychology didn't you?'
  'So?'
  'Nothing.  Actually it makes more sense than any theory that's occurred
to me.  I hope it occurs to his barrister too.  He's facing a long time in
prison otherwise.'
  'Will you go and see him?'
  Matt stared at his brother.  'Carl, the bloke nearly killed me.  You just
said the reason why he did it was because I had made such a determined
effort to talk to him and tried to take his hand.'
  'That was then, this is now.  He's had a complete breakdown.  However
fucked up he was, he's really pathetic now and even his mother won't go and
see him.  At the very least, if you go, the rest of the family might rally
round him a bit.  You know what Fr Jenkinson would have said.'
  'Below the belt, bruv.'
  'So I'll take you down tomorrow afternoon, OK?'  Matt grimaced at his
little brother, now so much taller than he was, and in some ways, so much
more mature.  'You've grown, halfling.'
  Carl laughed his boyish laugh and for a moment he looked quite as
handsome in the sunlight as his brother.  He wheeled Matt back into the
house.

Jenna had the car ready out the front in good time for church.  'You want
to go through with this?' asked Matt.  He was standing well now without a
need for the stick he had been using.  His beard had finally disappeared
under Andy's pained protests, and his hair had grown to the length of an
overgrown crewcut, which gave him back his familiar boyish beauty, indeed
it was more boyish than usual.  Andy saw once again the boy he had met in
university, fantasised over, slept with and loved so very much ever since.
The scar at the back of Matt's head could be felt, but no longer seen.  He
was a little thin and pale in the face, but otherwise he was Andy's beloved
Matt once more.
  'I do want to go through with it,' replied Andy, giving his firm look.
  'This is amazing, y'know.  Are you sure it's not just because you've been
so long in America that religion has rubbed off on you?'
  'No, it's because of what happened in the hospital.  I don't know exactly
what happened, but whatever it was, it didn't belong to this world.  I can
either try to forget it, or I can face up to it, and I think you know which
is the more honest course of action.'
  'I have to say that I've often prayed for this.  I just wish I hadn't had
to get beaten with an inch of my life for it to happen.  God does move in
mysterious and very inconvenient ways.  So I'll talk you through the
service.  You'll have to get baptised in the end, y'know.'
  'I know.  I can do it ... I think.  Let's get to the car.'
  Jenna drove them to the Dominican priory in Muswell Hill, where Matt had
already settled into the Sunday congregation.
  On the way, Andy asked him how his meeting with Zav had gone.  'He knew
me OK.  But I don't think he could remember what it was he had done to me,
either that, or he didn't want to remember.  We talked about the old days
when we were boys, which is where his head wants to be most of the time, I
think.  Poor kid.'
  'Poor kid?'
  'Yeah.  I'm glad I went just for that.  You can't hate a boy that fucked
up.  Carl's right.  It wasn't homosexuality that he got fixated on, it was
me.  He's living a fantasy where we are both kids again and where we had
become boy lovers.  He talked of things we'd never done and nights we'd
never spent together; he tried to hold my hand through the screen.  He
looked in my eyes like ... like you do, my lover'
  'Sorry, Matt.  Sounds like he'll end up in an asylum, not in prison.'
  'I hope someone can sort him out.  His brother Mikey broke into his
laptop and found all sorts of weird stuff.  There were scanned nude
pictures of me asleep in my bed as a sixteen-year-old boy, which I can't
imagine how he got unless he stripped me of my boxers when I was deeply
asleep one night on a sleep over, and took the shots himself.  You know how
deeply I sleep.  I've got copies.  I look really quite cute.  I thought I
was ugly as a boy, but wow, was I the pretty one.  His parents have finally
realised that he's a basket case, not a homicidal maniac.  They're visiting
him, and the family has rallied round.'
  'Well done, Carl.'
  'Yeah.  The boy did good.  So here we go.  It's the priory.'
   Jenna opened the door for Andy.  'But I'm the sick one!' protested Matt.
  She smiled at him, 'You don't pay me, Matthew.'
  Grumbling, Matt took Andy's arm and entered the cool interior of the
Victorian church, gloomily built of grey London stock brick.  The ten
o'clock mass was reasonably well attended, and a fresh-faced young priest
celebrated.  There was no attempt at liturgical splendour, but the mass was
well said and the homily was both deep and accessible.
  'I felt as though I'd found the place I should be,' Andy confessed as
they left.
  Matt looked at his lover fondly.  'It's a place we can go to together,
whenever we want,' he answered, and then his heart bubbled over.  'Oh, I'm
so glad we can share this at last.  It was the one thing that we couldn't
talk about, the thing that separated us!  But no more.'
  They smiled at each other, their souls without barriers to each other.
In what they felt at that moment there could not have been a more perfect
union on earth.

THE END