Date: Tue, 9 May 2006 07:01:22 +0100 (BST)
From: Mike Arram <mikearram@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Henry in Finkle Road -  13

  All the Michael Arram stories are gathered together now on
www.iomfats.org, if you would like to investigate further the characters
featured here.
  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.


XIII

The astonishment of discovering that Guy Worsman was Ed Cornish's new
boyfriend quite took the punch out of the awkwardness of being face to face
with Ed again.
  `You know each other?' Andy asked in surprise.
  `Hello, little Henry.'  Guy seemed genuinely pleased to see him again,
and by no means embarrassed at the meeting.
  Henry gave a broader grin than he would have thought possible.  He took
Guy's hand with some real warmth.  `Hey Guy!  Well I might have guessed.
So you've cradle- snatched Ed?'
  Guy laughed, and it was Ed who seemed sheepish.  He looked at Henry and
Henry looked at Ed.  Almost unconsciously they clinched and kissed.  And
when they broke apart, a lot of anxiety was gone.  Henry could do this.  He
was stronger than his regrets.
  They sat at the breakfast table, and began catching up.  `So you too have
a new flame, little b ... I mean, Henry?' asked Ed.
  `You can call me "little babe" still, can't he, Guy?'
  Guy laughed again.  `Yes, of course he can.'
  Henry smiled.  `The new flame's Gavin.  He might not be everybody's idea
of a perfect boyfriend, but he suits me.  We have matching piercings, it's
so romantic.  And when did you two hit it off?'
  `Oh,' said Ed, `Guy was assigned to be my mentor and it happened almost
straight away.'
  `You went off to Cambridge desperate to have it off with another gay
bloke, from what I remember,' Henry smiled at Guy.
  `And found no one I could conceivably have considered doing it with.  I
couldn't believe my bad luck.  I must have been the unluckiest gay in the
universe.  I thought I was the problem, until I walked into Ed's room and
-- wham!  We were laughing and joking as though we had known each other for
years and then ... fucking like bunnies by the end of the second week.  He
took my virginity.  Bizarre.  It's supposed to be the fresher who's the
inexperienced virgin, not the third-year student!'
  Henry laughed.  His discomfort was ebbing away.  He found he could look
at Ed Cornish without his heart lurching.  He found they could share smiles
and jokes again.  Maybe he was growing up.
  The door opened again and a small voice yelled, `Heneree!  Heneree!'
Mattie Oscott ran into the room and leaped up to kiss him.  Henry found
himself cuddling the little lad as his mum and dad pursued him into the
morning room.
  Rachel sighed, `He would hardly sleep last night knowing you were coming,
Henry.  Every ten minutes it was, "Is Heneree here yet?" "Is Heneree here
now?"  I'm sorry, Henry, he's going to want to monopolise you from now on.'
  Henry grinned.  `I don't mind in the least.  Come on, Mattie, let's leave
these boring grown-ups.  Where are your play people?  You'd better have
brought them.'
  Mattie tugged Henry away to his bedroom upstairs, and that was it for the
rest of the morning.  They constructed elaborate scenarios, and then played
hide and seek along the complicated passageways of the big house.  They
dressed up warmly and investigated the gardens.  Henry found a rowing boat
on the lake, so they had an exciting maritime adventure.  They explored the
lake islands, disturbing some bad-tempered ducks and swans.  A mock Greek
temple on one island entranced both of them.  Henry was astonished to hear
the lunch gong being beaten on the terrace.  Time had flown.
  Mattie went running up to his mother full of the morning's fun.  She
looked gratefully at Henry, mouthing `Thank you!' with real warmth.
  Lunch was good.  Oskar and Fritz, Eddie and Harriet, Ed and Guy, the
Oscotts, David and Terry, and Matt and Andy were fascinating and amusing
company.  To cap it all, Matt's brother Carl with his fiancée Katy arrived
from London halfway through.  The tribe was almost all there, apart from
Justin and Nathan, who were working at the centre, and Peter Peacher, who
was consulting with his father elsewhere in the county.
  Lunch spilled over into afternoon tea in the gallery, and Henry went off
with Andy on a tour of the house.  `You seem happy enough, little one,'
Andy smiled, holding Henry's arm in his.
  `I am.  I've got great friends, a holiday job, and I can look Ed Cornish
in the face without flinching ... what's not to like?'
  `Good.  I was a little worried as to how this would work out.  But kids
grow up faster these days, so perhaps I shouldn't have been so concerned.
Now, let's examine the paintings, like the deeply serious and pathetic
geeks we are.'
  As the cold and grey afternoon drew on, the Christmas decorations were
lit up and coal fires set to burning in all the main rooms.  It was all
very homely and comfortable, and Henry stretched out on a sofa in a side
room for a snooze.
  He jerked awake as Justin bounced on the sofa beside him.  `Hey, Henry.
Wakey!  Me and Mattie wanna play soccer in the gallery, y'know, right next
to that priceless big blue Chinese vase thing we can use as a goalpost.'
  `Yeah, yeah.  Wind up.'
  `No, seriously.  Mattie and me have got bored with our nose-picking
competition, and he's not interested in soft drugs or ciggies, so we need
you to amuse us.'
  Mattie loved Justin, who unfortunately tended to send the child into
overdrive.  That day, Justin had wound him up to the point of meltdown,
causing Mattie to miss out on his mid-afternoon nap.  He was fretful and
tearful, so Henry picked him up and carried him round till he dropped off
on Henry's shoulder, sucking his thumb.
  Henry handed him back to his dad.  Paulie grinned, saying it was the most
adult day he and Rachel had had together in months.  He put Mattie to sleep
on a sofa, covered with a light wrap.
  A bit relieved, Henry took up his edition of The Revelation of the End
Time with rather more determination.  He had a pocket notebook, and began
serious note taking.
  The book was in several sections.  The first was a meditation on the
little apocalypse of St Matthew's Gospel.  The second dwelt on the
Revelation of St John.  The third was a book of half-familiar prophecies,
and when Henry checked the footnotes, he discovered that many of them were
drawn from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Prophecies of Merlin.  Henry found those
chapters a bit impenetrable, so he just skimmed them.
  The fourth section was almost entirely different.  St Fenice was
discussing her own country.  As with many medieval nationalists, she
depicted it as the chosen of God.  `When God created the ninety and nine
nations, it was the Ruritanenses He loved best.  We were of the race of
Priam and Hector, driven from burning Troy by the deceiving Greeks.  Long
we travelled under His mighty care, through Sarmatia and Scythia until we
crossed our own Mount Nebo and found our Jordan.  There built we our Zion
by the Starel ... our holy Starelsau.'
  Convinced of God's especial care for the Rothenian people, St Fenice went
into some detail on the country's spiritual history.  There was a chapter
on the holy Vitalis, the German monk who had first preached the faith to
the Rothenians in the primitive forests of the Starel valley, together with
a recital of his principal miracles, which Henry had not known about.
  He was particularly intrigued to read of St Vitalis's interventions in
the history of the Tarlenheim family.  `A certain count of the castle of
Tarlenheim, one Ansagadis by name,' appeared as a lord at the court of the
first duke, Tassilo.  St Vitalis's intervention saved Ansagadis's son
Wictingis from the consequences of a fever.  A footnote said these were the
first references to the house of Tarlenheim, whose lineage, it appeared,
could thus be traced back to the ninth century.
  Henry was impressed.  He could trace the house of Atwood back all the way
to his great grandfather, a shopkeeper in Burnley before the Second World
War.
  The next chapter was on the duke Tassilo, friend of the Ottonid emperors.
Although not himself a saint, Tassilo appeared in those pages as a friend
and patron of holy men, and founder of the first Rothenian monasteries.  He
was also the builder of the cathedral of Ss Andrew and Vitalis, next to his
hall at Strelsau on a hill above the Starel, where Henry had seen Tassilo's
alleged tomb when he'd been there on holiday two years before.  It was this
alliance between the German emperors and the Rothenian dukes which brought
to the duchy the great treasure of the Black Virgin of Glottenberh, the
Byzantine icon which was already its holiest object of pilgrimage in St
Fenice's day, though curiously she had little to say about it.  The problem
for her was that although Glottenberh was a Rothenian duchy in her time,
Glottenberh had escaped the overlordship of the dukes who ruled from
Strelsau.  The Black Virgin had been appropriated by the rival Glottenberh
dynasty as its patron.
  Fenice spoke at length about some later dukes of Rothenia, but nothing
much which reflected on Henry's areas of concern.  At first he couldn't see
why the Rothenian fascist movement, the KRB, would have been interested in
her or her Revelation, but his doubt was resolved by the final chapter of
her book.  It was entitled `De Explicationibus et Prognosticationibus in
Temporibus Futuris' (`Commentary and Hints about Times to Come', as the
trusty footnotes fortunately explained).
  It began with a passage of scripture: `The Lord hath chosen Zion; He hath
desired it for His habitation (Ps 132: 13).'  Fenice explained that the
Lord had abandoned the Jews and cast down their Temple, but that He had not
forsaken the Christian peoples of the world.  He could still be found by
certain signs, and where those signs were, there also was Zion.
  Then she shifted into visionary mode.  `I, Fenicia, wife of the venerable
count Sergius, your sister in Christ and in his kingdom, to all those now
living and those yet to be.  Know that I was in the high chamber of my
castle of Tarlenheim, pondering the word of God and the testimony of Jesus
Christ.  It was a Sunday and I heard behind me a great voice as of a
trumpet, saying, "I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last", and
"What now thou hearest so write and tell unto thy people".
  `Hear then ye people and know that the Lord has set up His seat amongst
you, and so may ye rejoice.  For ye are His favoured ones.  He will make of
you a great people.  Kings will He give you, strong in justice and firm in
His faith.  A race of saints shall ye be, chosen of the Lord.  Though ye
doubt and quail in the eye of the tempest, yet stay faithful to the Lord
and to His anointed ones, and He shall calm the waters as once He did on
the Lake of Gennaseret.  Victory shall ye ever have.  He will forgive you
your weakness and exalt you among nations.  His countenance will shine upon
you and ye will bask in His glory.  Their hair will be red as copper is red
and gold as the sunlight is golden.  Their race will never fail in their
charge.  Their line will always be fruitful of Levites.  Impious hands may
seize your ark, but theirs will be as the fate of the Philistines, for one
will come, as bold as Samson, as wise as Deborah, and his name will be
MENDAMERO.  Yet as Samson suffered mortal loss in victory, so shall he,
though his loss shall be the Lord's gain.  For by his sacrifice will a
warrior arise, a very David to lead Israel unto great glory.  The Lord is
with thee, O my Israel.  His Ark lieth amongst thee in its chamber of
cypress wood.  His servants lie wakeful around it, as Samuel in the Holy of
Holies.'
  Ah! thought Henry.  Perhaps now I see why the Rothenian fascists would be
keen on St Fenice's Revelation.  What a goldmine for the sort of mystical
hyper-nationalism that seduced the twentieth century.  It was an
ideological license to treat their neighbours with contempt.  It gave
Rothenia a pseudo-history older than any other European nation's, and
pandered to its self-love.  It also gave the fascists a chance to
masquerade as being promised by divine prophecy as national redeemers.
  Then there was this promise of national salvation through some messenger
of God, Mendamero.  The word was meaningless in Rothenian and in any other
language Henry was acquainted with.  It was like Gog and Magog, and the
Beast of the Apocalypse: portentous nonsense words heavy with menace.
There was, however, another one of those useful footnotes in his edition.
It said that rearranging the letters would make the Latin word `Memorande',
which was probably intended to be read as `res memorande' or `things that
need to be kept in mind.'  The suggestion was that Fenice had concealed
some aspect of her revelation because it would have got her in trouble with
the Inquisition.
  Henry put down his book.  Alastair Bannow certainly knew nothing of St
Fenice's Revelation.  It was full of those equivocal references that he
would have built into his palaces of speculation and fantasy: `His
countenance will shine upon you and ye will bask in His glory,' or 'the
Lord has set up His seat amongst you.'  Had he been aware of them, Bannow
would have taken such passages as obvious references to the Holy Face.
Henry was learning to recognise the way Bannow thought and, almost
reluctantly, to sympathise with Professor Wardrinski.

Matt and Andy's New Year's Party at Castringham Hall was great fun, as
ever.  With midnight approaching, Matt looked across at Henry, cuddling
next to David and sipping at a gin.  `Any stories for us this year?'
  Ed, Justin and Nathan fell about.  They remembered all too well how Henry
had brought the party to a standstill two years ago with the ghost story to
end all ghost stories.
  `Nope, Matt, the supernatural has let me be this year.  I thought you'd
be the one with the weird story, since you're funding Professor
Wardrinski's expedition into the wackier end of the religious fruit-cake
spectrum.'
  Matt laughed.  `It'll be back to the Holy Workface for you, little Henry,
on Tuesday.  How do you think it's going?'
  Henry thought about it.  `It's a great idea, Matt.  My problem with it is
Wardrinski.  He can't keep himself from being arrogant and scornful.  That
will antagonise the viewers, and Bannow, although a nutter, will gain their
sympathy.'
  `Is he a nutter?'
  Henry smiled.  `Ask Dr Paulie.'
  Paul shrugged.  `I deal with language and logic, I don't make judgements.
It's irrelevant for me whether there's any speck of truth in Bannow's
intellectual meanderings.  All I'm interested in is the distortion in his
arguments and the gaps in his reasoning, and how conspiracy can be
generated.'
  Henry asked, `Have you signed up Bannow yet?'
  Matt shook his head.  `He's still playing hard to get, or rather his
agent is.  Money's not a real problem, though his fee would be three times
Wardrinski's.  I think he's scared of the prof.'
  Eddie shouted over, `You gotta put the dudes in a ring with gloves and
let em slug it out.'
  `What,' asked Andy, `you mean metaphorically?'
  `No way ... I meant what I said.  It'd be totally awesome to see two
scrawny old brainiacs trying to beat the shit out of each other.  I'd pay
top dollar to see it.'
  Matt snorted.  `If ever we get them face to face, it might come down to
that.  They do seriously hate each other, though Wardrinski's more upfront
about it.'

Midnight came and they toasted the New Year.  Everybody kissed and hugged.
That meant Henry got to snog Justin and David, which he always rather
enjoyed.  Terry had to pull him off Davey.
  `Henry, if you want to wrap your tongue round my Davey's tonsils, you
need to wait till I'm out of the country.'
  `Aw ... Uncle Terry.  But I did sex with him before you did.  He's my
Davey too.'
  `Who's carrying a gun here?'
  `Point taken.'
  The New Year also confirmed what Henry had noticed about Fritz.  The lad
had been smitten hard by Harriet Peacher, so much was obvious.  He was next
to her at every opportunity he could get.  That it was very serious on his
part was clear.  Fritz was actually tongue-tied, something Henry had never
seen before in the years he had known the boy.  Fritz blushed bright red
when he kissed Harriet as Big Ben rang the year's change.
  `Hey, Harriet,' Henry said as he plonked himself down next to her.
  `My turn for a kiss,' she said.
  `Mm ...' Henry smiled afterwards.  `It's not at all like kissing your
brother.'
  `You've kissed Eddie?'
  `Actually, he kissed me.  It was a sort of reward for putting up with him
for a term.'
  `He's as crazy as ever.'
  `Why is it that he's so crazy and you're so sane, Harry?'
  `No one really understands him, Henry.  He really is so very clever, and
funny and ever so kind.'
  `I know he's clever and funny, if he wants to be.  Kind?  Well, maybe.
He's different with the rest of the world than he is with you, Harry.  But
I like him a lot, and apart from his personal hygiene, I'm happy to be
living with him.'
  Harriet laughed, and Henry felt very comfortable with the girl.  He could
see why Fritz might have fallen for her.  `Er ... you've picked up an
admirer since you arrived here, Harry,' he felt bold enough to say.
  `The prince of Tarlenheim?'
  `You had noticed, then.'
  `Fritz is sweet ...'
  `... but he's just a kid, you were going to add?'
  `Something like that.  He's sixteen, Henry.  He's got a lot of growing up
to do.'
  Henry gave her a quirky look.  He knew quite a lot more about Fritz than
Harry did.  As a fourteen-year-old, Fritz had been the youngest
thirty-something Henry had ever met.  `Let's hope he sees it your way then,
Harry.'