Wilberforce (31 page)

Right nodded cautiously, but, Right wanted to know, what about the other one? That relic, the child at Morgan's elbow? Oh, him, Morgan replied. He wasn't worth bothering about. On the contrary, Right rejoined. That other one, that sickly soi-disant spiritualist, he would not simply vanish when Morgan stood up at the end of the lesson. Wouldn't he? Morgan replied. Not a bit! Was Morgan deaf or simply stupid? What had Right been speaking of the whole time? What did Morgan imagine this crossroads was, a crossroads literally broadcast from the rooftops? Morgan assured Right that he comprehended the options before him and had already taken a decision: Right was right, no more need be said.

The bell jolted Morgan in the pit of his stomach as the room burst into commotion. Right vanished, and the other boy was no longer there when Morgan looked.

*   *   *

After tea they adjourned, per the Flea's new timetable, to yet more cricket. At eight o'clock, the sun only just dipping behind the woods, they dismissed to Prep. Nathan hurried to the study, eager to catch the last of the London programs on the wireless, and Laurie paid his customary visit to the library. Without consulting either one, Morgan made for the woods, and the Keys.

Polly was behind the bar wearing another alluring frock, this time in pale green. She nipped into the kitchen as he approached, so he was forced to give his order to her father. Pa (as Polly called him and as Morgan always thought of him) pulled Morgan's pint but did not banter with him as he did with other men. Perhaps Pa did not consider Morgan a man. If that was the case, then Pa did not know Morgan. And if that was the case, it would serve the brute right if Morgan did seduce his daughter then and there! Not that he was the kind of man to deflower a girl to spite her father (not, if he was honest, that he was the kind of man to deflower a girl, full stop), but the evening had a charge about it, a charge Morgan recognized, one that always accompanied great events. The last time he had felt such a charge was the day he and Spaulding—
What
was the point of cultivating sanity if it flew out the window at the most haphazard junctures?

Polly returned from the kitchen carrying a tray of pies, which she delivered to a group of men clad in rural fashions. Morgan flagged her as she passed. She hesitated only briefly before approaching his table.

—Evening, Polly.

—Evening.

They exchanged pleasantries in call-and-answer fashion. Morgan inched his stool closer to her, and when she dropped her napkin, he fetched it. When she asked if he'd like anything to eat, he asked her to choose something for him. More flustered than ever, she returned to the kitchen.

He wasn't going to get anywhere toying with the poor girl, Right said. Had Morgan learned nothing since Rosemary? Morgan froze, disconcerted by Right's refusal to remain a lesson-time daydream, and embarrassed by the allusion to his failure with girls. Right helped himself to Morgan's pint and suggested Morgan refer to him in continental style as Droit. Morgan liked the sound of it. Did that make the other one Gauche? he wondered. Droit exhorted Morgan to concentrate on the matter at hand, namely Polly (the scrumptious piece) and not childish figures or his missteps with Rosemary.

Morgan cringed at his own ineptitude, though in his defense, he'd been a boy then, only fourteen, and incapacitated by a broken arm, a concussed skull, and six cracked—

Droit declared his medical history monotonous and his memory inflated. But Morgan remembered Rosemary perfectly! Everything about her, especially her strawberry lips and her devastating tennis game. There had been tennis all holiday at Longmere that spring. Eventually he'd recovered enough to return her balls, almost, and then—

Yes, yes, she was a nymph with a fatal serve, but what Morgan most needed to remember—what Droit urged him to recall—was that while Rosemary had allowed him to kiss her (once) and to fall instantly in love with her, she had never let him any further than the outside of her blouse or the vestibule of her mouth. Morgan felt it was unfair to expect him to have conquered a sixteen-year-old siren when he was still in the Third Form, not even entirely out of Silk's—

Droit implored Morgan to make an effort with linear thought. If he
would
insist on summoning the past, he'd forever remain its captive. The point of it all was that Rosemary had marred his record, but now if Morgan would simply concentrate, everything would come right. Now, here, tonight, if Morgan would take himself in hand, ho-
ho
, he could and would enter the invigorating reality he had just that afternoon envisioned.

Morgan threw back the rest of his pint, strode nonchalantly to the bar, and asked Pa for a whiskey. Pa pulled a second pint. Morgan took it with a smile, as if he'd only been joking about the whiskey. He drank half of it at the bar and then set it at his table and went down the back of the pub. He glanced at himself in the glass of the hunting sketch. He looked irresistible. He cut out the back, but instead of proceeding down the garden to the toilets, he leaned against the heavy door of the kitchen.

Polly was there. Her face flushed over a gargantuan stove as she dished something out to a plate. When she saw him, she gave a little gasp. Morgan flashed her a fifty-watt smile:

—Hallo, gorgeous.

She failed to mask an embarrassed grin and fumbled the spoon she was holding.

—That for me? Morgan asked, sidling up to her.

She nodded.

—You haven't spoken to me at all, Poll. Why's that?

She looked away. He leaned over the table and retrieved the spoon for her.

—Whatever I did, can't you forgive me, Poll?

—It weren't nothing you did, she protested.

—Weren't it?

—No!

He proffered the spoon, and when she took it, he grasped her hand.

—I'll be in an awful mess if they find out I'm here tonight, he said.

Concern flooded her face.

—Oh, no, pet. What was you thinking?

Morgan mirrored her expression:

—Only of you, Poll.

—Me?

The flush now flooded down her neck and across the bit of her chest that escaped the clutches of her spinster-aunt frock.

—You know they sacked me from school, didn't you, Poll?

—Oh, no, pet! Whyever for?

—Something happened, Poll, something bad. And they think it was to do with me, but it weren't.

—Sommat in paper?

Morgan wasn't sure he approved of this glimmer of shrewdness.

—The point, Polly, is that I'm back now, and if I can tell you a very great secret…?

—Aye.

He inhaled, as if preparing to leap off a cliff.

—I haven't been able to stop thinking about you.

A grave expression came over her. She asked him what he meant.

He didn't need shoving. He'd had enough of being a boy, enough wafting about, a bystander in other people's stories. She gasped as their lips touched, but then she was melting against him, or perhaps he was the one melting. Her lips parted and he didn't know what to do with his hands, but again he could only think,
I want it
—
it
her mouth,
it
her waist,
it
her frock and what lay beneath—her chest, her legs, her …

Her tongue reached for his, and his cock was hard, which didn't distress her as it had Rosemary—linear thought,
linear thought
—but his mind suddenly fixed on the problem of what to call it, that place between her legs where boys were supposed to go. The authors of
The Pearl
called it several things, but Morgan was having trouble thinking those words towards Polly. Polly was not Lady Pokingham. Neither was she one of those first-name-only victims of male lust, fit only to flog, deflower, and sell into white slavery. Polly was wholesome. Polly's mouth tasted of ale, and her hair smelt of the mouthwatering scents in that kitchen.

They paused to breathe and he wondered what to say, but she set upon him again, running her hands through his hair in a way that gave him shivers. Then she was running her hands down his back and touching the back of his trousers.

He gasped. He was meant to be running his hands over
her
. She took his lower lip between her teeth and bit it. He yelped, his mouth in hers, and she gave a kind of laugh. Was he succeeding with her? She took hold of his hand and guided it to the buttons on the front of her dress, which she hastily unfastened, continuing with his hand past the edge of her frock, beneath it, beneath yet more fabric, her chemise probably (what did girls call their inexplicable bits of wardrobe?), to the indescribable part inside. It was soft, malleable, warm, like … thinking had no place! This was the time for feeling. Her hands fumbled with his flies, and he pressed his hand farther into her chemise as she conquered his buttons and released him. A moment of panic ensued as he wondered whether Polly would admire his cock quite as much as some boys seemed to, but whether she admired it or not, she took it in her hands.

She didn't handle him as he handled himself, and her touch quickly pushed him to the point of—

—Wait, he begged.

—Polly?

Pa's voice from without—she froze.

—Where's that pie?

She hesitated.

—Coming.

And as she pulled away, her sleeve caught his buttons. Morgan tried to help but only succeeded in banging his head against hers. When she finally pulled free, he could see her pulse beating in her throat.

—You're gorgeous, he said.

—Go on.

He did up his trousers. Blood coursed across his face and down the back of his neck. He ached.

—When can I see you again? he asked.

Polly hauled two pies out of the oven and clattered them onto a tray. Winking, she hoisted the tray to her shoulder and disappeared with it through the door to the bar. Morgan, too dazed to think, stumbled into the back garden, through the gate, and into the street. The town clock informed him Prep had just ended. He forced himself to jog to the woods, where he slipped into its darkness and broke into a run.

*   *   *

As Prefect of Hall, Kilby demanded to know where Morgan had been. Morgan opined that it scarcely seemed any of Kilby's affair as Morgan was in the Upper School and had therefore been trusted to do his prep independently all year. This weak-chinned item refused to accept Morgan's rational defense and pressed for details. It appeared Morgan's studymates had not been able to enlighten the flunky, and he claimed Morgan's whereabouts had become his business when Morgan had failed to turn up for prayers. Morgan suggested that Kilby have his eyes checked, for Morgan had indeed attended evening chapel, but due to having been detained in consultation with Mr. Grieves—perhaps the bobby-in-training would like to question their illustrious history master? Oh, had Mr. Grieves departed? How inconvenient—due to their protracted conference on the subject of cotton mills, Morgan had been forced to sit apart from his companions. Kilby considered this alleged state of affairs implausible seeing that he was rigorous with chapel attendance, always making sure to check boys on exit as well as entrance. Morgan confessed this difficult to believe as he had on several occasions noticed Kilby's esteemed eminence conferring with his counterparts in other Houses on the matter of wagers. Perhaps he had been similarly engaged this evening when Morgan had passed into and out of the chapel amidst the Academy's two hundred and twelve other denizens? Kilby lost his patience at this point, and unfortunately, Nathan and Laurie chose that moment to emerge from the washrooms and utter sounds, albeit brief, which betrayed their surprise. Morgan was therefore invited to visit the JCR at his earliest convenience upon changing for bed and performing his evening ablutions.

—Thanks a lot! Morgan said when Kilby had left.

—Where on earth were you? Nathan demanded.

Morgan glared at them both and began to undress. Laurie sprawled across the bench:

—I thought you said you weren't going to the Keys alone anymore.

—It was spur-of-the-moment.

—A promise is a promise, Nathan insisted.

—It was a solo expedition.

Nathan and Laurie took great exception to this claim. They followed Morgan into the washroom, which was emptying as Lower School lights-out was called.

—Whatever you call it, Laurie said, I hope it was worth it. Kilby looked incandescent.

—Sod Kilby, Morgan said. It was worth ten JCR whackings.

They drew near, curiosity fired. Morgan wet his toothbrush and dipped it in powder:

—Polly.

—What!

Nathan looked as though he'd forgotten how to breathe.

—Did you…?

Morgan began to clean his teeth.

—Don't imagine you're stopping there!

*   *   *

Something was seriously the matter with his balls. They'd ached countless times before, but this was another order of magnitude. Having to see the JCR was a massive impediment to the release his body so urgently required. He sauntered downstairs but his lungs failed to pump with conviction. It had been a long time since he'd had the cane and even longer since he'd had it in pajamas. He cared nothing in principle for the JCR's fatuous displays, but he had not been prepared to suffer them today.

JCR be hanged, it was worth it for Polly. Her lips, their heat, their strength, the fullness of her tongue, the aggression of her teeth, and—God!—the agility of her fingers and the unspeakable flesh beneath her buttons. Even thinking of her was returning him to—

—Wilberforce, what the hell are you doing?

Morgan pressed against the window and composed his face before his Captain of Games.

—Pondering the ecstasies of cricket, Barlow.

—Don't you think you're in enough hot water? Move, so we can be done with this wretched day.

As Barlow hauled him down the stairs, Morgan tightened the cord of his dressing gown and hoped his cock would get itself under control. It wasn't the worst thing to feel that kind of hunger before being whacked. The worst thing, Silk taught him, was to spunk first. Everything hurt worse after spunking. Still, it wouldn't do to be obvious with the JCR, that meddling, self-important trio of morons.