After the War

Michael McLaren lay in bed in the dark room, made darker by thick brocaded drapes that were closed against the summer morning. There was nothing but ash in the fireplace, no heat. Summers in Scotland, he thought, were in name only. He pulled the blanket close around himself and wondered what the day would bring. He thought of Thomas, wondered if he could lure him upstairs again. He thought of Thomas' lips.

He shook his head. It was tempting fate. He pulled himself out of bed and found yesterday's clothes folded neatly by the bed by Richardson who always seemed to be able to find the time to straighten up after he had flung everything on the floor. He hadn't heard him come in, or leave. Another morning had begun, another summer was well underway and he had nothing much to do.

In the breakfast room, his mother glanced up from her kippers and smiled. She had the newspaper beside her.

“Morning, Darling.”

“Mother. Any news?”

The room echoed from their voices. Pictures lined the walls: bucolic scenes from the past, flowers, cherubs. Ridiculous.

“The usual drivel. The Germans are being pushed back at last. After all that...well, you know...in Flanders and such...it's about time.”

They could only talk about the war. It was what everyone talked about. Jokes about Kaiser Wilhelm. The unspeakable losses in the Somme, Ypres and the rest. His days with the math tutor, the music master had been filled with nothing but talk of death. But it seemed the Germans were flagging at last as the Russians, the British and Belgians all pushed them beyond their capabilities.

Here in Scotland, the war seemed impossibly distant even if it was just across the Channel.

“Any word from Father?”

His mother looked pained for a second. “No, darling. But I expect we'll hear from him shortly...”

Michael looked at his plate, then his tea, swirling with milk. They had not heard from his father in some time. His mother had forbade him from re-enlisting but to no avail. He wanted to serve and serve he did, even as a Colonel which in theory made him less likely to be shot, but they both had worried for years now and the last they had heard from him, or about him was two weeks past. Some sort of secret about his whereabouts they were told. People of their class did not get killed, at least since the African campaigns before Michael was born.

He left the breakfast room and wandered out of the house, wondering what he would do.

“Michael.”

It was Thomas calling from a window above him, his own, he realized.

“Thomas...” He was afraid to say more.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, not very much, as always.”'

“In the stables in an hour when I finish the bedrooms.”

He smiled up at the blond-haired boy, feeling a rush in his belly, and lower. He wondered if the power of his attraction, the force of his feeling was in any way normal. He was another boy, after all. Was this even possible to feel? To feel what he knew was supposed to be for some chaste young girl his mother would present to him. The daughter of Lady Such-and-So. Dreadful.

Excitement led him inside to the newly installed water closet where he cleaned himself up. Such modern things! Indoor water gushing from a tap! The modern world had finally reached Scotland. He looked up to a large gilt mirror. His brown curls were untidy, but he didn't care. He looked at his lips soon to be untwined with Thomas' and reached into his trousers and gripped himself.

He stood in the stable in an empty stall at the back. Horses were making quiet sounds: snuffling and chewing, shifting their weight on the long legs. He leaned against the wooden wall, anxious and excited. He heard the stable door open and close and then footsteps. Thomas appeared at the entrance, smiling.

“Michael.” He bowed with mock formality.

“Oh, get off. Come here.”

Thomas crossed the space between them and stood very close so their noses almost touched. He stuck out his tongue and licked Michael's chin and he could hear and feel the rasp of Thomas' wet tongue on his growing whiskers. He shuddered in excitement and their mouths met, both their tongues meeting, entwining. He tasted of tea and something sweet. He reached down and pulled Thomas' body to him, feeling the hardness, the warmth of his body.

Thomas' mouth moved to his neck, licking the hollows, dragging his lips down. He felt a hand slide down his chest to his pants and grip his cock through the fabric, rubbing slowly as his mouth found the hollow at the centre of his neck.

Michael moaned and pushed himself back then knelt in the straw so that his face was in Thomas' trousers, taking in the warmth and sharp tang of soap and young man. He undid the buttons, the braces and slid his trousers down. As the last time, Thomas wore no drawers which excited him more than he expected. His cock sprang out of the fabric, hard and hot. The end was red and thick, the shaft rippling with veins and extended from a forest of red curls. He placed his mouth in the space between the base of the cock and Thomas' balls, tasting the pungency of his sweat, while gripping the base of his cock.

He felt Thomas' hands in his hair.

“That's it. Make little Thomas feel nice. Take him.”

Michael almost laughed at Thomas' words: so ridiculous, but also exciting. He liked it when Thomas took charge, and his excitement grew thinking of what might come.

Into his mouth went the length of Thomas's cock. All the way to the base and at the start of his throat. He could feel the red hair tickling his nose as his lips met Thomas' groin. He felt the other boy's hands on the back of his head, keeping him down. Michael heard a gasp above him.

“You got some kind of mouth...”

His own cock trembled at the words. He reached down and undid his pants, pulling out his hard cock. It was slick with juice that ran from the top. He smeared as much as he could get onto his forefinger and lifted his arm so his hand was near Thomas' chin who looked down at the proffered hand.

“Nasty boy.” He took Michael's finger in his mouth and sucked it clean. Then he reached down with both hands and pulled Michael up, their mouths meeting again more hungrily, their cocks writhing against each other.

Thomas pushed him back, grinning. “You ready?”

Micheal didn't answer, but instead, remembering the last time being fucked against the wall of the stall, and he slipped out of his pants completely and got down on the floor of the stall, straw poking him in his ass. He lay down and raised his legs. “Do it here.”

With this order, Thomas got down between Michaels legs. He spat onto his fingers a few times and in a circular motion rubbed it into Michael, each circle going deeper until his fingers slipped inside of him, exploring and stretching. Michael shut his eyes and moaned, writhing on the floor.

“You're a sexy bugger.” And Thomas laughed. The sound, to Michael, was so simple and clear. Like the summer. Like his life. He choked as Thomas began to push himself into him, his cock stretching his ass, stretching that most intimate part of himself. He didn't know if Thomas was bigger than other men but he felt enormous as he continued to slide forward until he felt Thomas' balls meet his skin, prickling.

Thomas looked down at him, smiling. “You all right?”

“I'm very much all right.”

And he pulled Thomas face down to his and their mouths met yet again and Thomas' tongue began to force its way into his mouth, exploring his teeth at the same time pushing his hips forward so his cock found deeper parts of him, then he felt it slide back and almost out. Thomas' hands were on his legs, finding traction as he pushed forward again, more insistently, measuring him with his length. His own cock seemed to inflate with each of Thomas' thrusts, and seemed to be running like one of the new faucets and he could feel it drooling onto his stomach.

Both their bodies began to move with Thomas' efforts and each time Thomas thrust forward, Michael moaned. He seemed, he thought, to be teetering on the edge of pain that never quiet slipped over into actual pain and instead transformed into streaks of pleasure that ran from the centre of him outward to his limbs, to his cock.

He felt a drop of sweat from Thomas' face land in his mouth – salty – then another. Thomas was starting into his eyes even as he grew hotter, more tense. Their bodies were becoming slick as Thomas ground into him more insistently still, and he pulled Michael's face into him again, kissing with less precision: sloppy and wet.

Thomas leaned back a little and looked at him again. “You want this?”

Michael knew what he meant. “Give it to me.”

Thomas leaned back, his body slowing, then becoming still. He slid out of him, his cock looking wet and red in the half light of the stable. He shifted forward on his knees until the head of his cock was at Michael's lips, then slid in to his open mouth. He began to fuck Michael's face, his hands braced on the stable wall. Michael reached up and held Thomas' ass in his hands and pulled his cock further into his mouth just as Thomas gasped and froze. He felt the cock in his mouth begin to spurt into his throat, and, as Thomas adjusted himself, onto his tongue. Salty, acidic, warm. Three burst of it coated his tongue and then Thomas pulled back and sat on his haunches gasping, his cock dribbling onto Michael's chest.

“You got a taste for me, don't you?”

Michael swallowed it all down, then laughed.

“It seems you're right.”

He looked at his own cock now underneath Thomas' balls. It was hard and burnished, aching for release.

“What you plan to do with that?”

But before Michael could answer, Thomas slid his hand across Michael's chest and belly, collecting all the juices that lay there - sweat and semen – and smeared them into his ass. Then, gripping Michael's cock, directed it at the cleft of his ass and sank down onto him. He felt himself encased in Thomas' warmth. With a wicked grin, Thomas began to raise himself up, then push down a few times. He seemed to know it would not take Michael long.

Michael choked and gasped and his body, already primed and tingling, began to catch fire and he drove his hips up into Thomas with a few low moans. He felt his cock becoming wet and slippering as his own cum began to leak out of Thomas' ass.

Breathing heavily, his eyes closed, he felt Thomas lay his body on top of his own, their sticky, softening cocks nestling together between them. They were both breathing heavily in tandem, their lips in contact but motionless. Michael felt Thomas' breath on his face. He could still taste Thomas and he felt safe and warm having taken in the essence of this boy, this man, really. At eighteen they were no longer boys. Especially after what they had just done, what they had been doing for months.

Thomas looked into his eyes. “You are my boy.”

Michael's skin began to tingle with pleasure. Not sexual this time. Something warm and deeper.

“I'm your boy.”

Thomas leaned down and kissed him very softly. He slid his hands, then arms, underneath Michael's back and pulled him up so they where on their knees, face to face. They held each other and Michael couldn't tell for how long, but he didn't care.

He awoke with a jolt at what he felt was dawn, to his dark bedroom. He could hear voices in the hall, voices from downstairs. He reached for the clock but it was too dark to see. Dragging himself from his bed, he fumbled for his robe which lay on the floor beside the bed. He felt a flutter in his chest, a hint of a possible meaning that wouldn't completely articulate itself sat there, and it spurred him to leave his bedroom and walk quickly down the hall.

He followed the sound of the voices into the large sitting room. His mother was in a chair with some lamps lit around her, the fireplace bright but seeming to give off no heat and the morning sun was just beginning to colour the trees in the distance. She was leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, her head down. He felt a kind of pain at the sight of her bedroom slippers: so vulnerable, so intimate.

“Mother?”

He realized her maid Judith was standing beside her with a hand resting on her back. Judith just looked at him, pain suffusing her face.

“Judith...?”

“Your father, dear...”

“What about him?”

There was silence in the room. He knew, but didn't want to know, but he also wanted someone to say it.

“The Germans...”

It was his mother. She was speaking into her hands. “They overran the trenches...”

It was enough. Between Judith's face and his mother's words, he knew enough. He ran from the sitting room. He desperately wanted Thomas but was afraid to find him since he didn't know if he could restrain himself from an unmanly display which would invite questions. He stopped in the hall, catching his breath, swallowing his sobs. Thomas would be in the servants' hall. Upstairs.

He knew where Thomas' room was. They had stolen an hour or two there over the months. He slipped up the back staircase to the hallway where the staff slept. He crept along the corridor until he found Thomas' door and opened it very slowly.

Thomas was on his back, his sheet half on the floor, his naked chest illuminated by the faint sunlight coming through the little window. Without a word, he pulled off his robe and his nightclothes and slid into the little bed, wrapping his arms around the sleeping man – for he was a man, as much as he was – and Thomas pulled his arm closer as Michael tucked himself from top to bottom into Thomas' back. He heard a sleepy voice.

“You make sure you leave before Mrs Robins rises.”

But he didn't want to. “My father has been killed.”

Thomas' breathing stopped, then he tuned around in the bed until they were face-to-face.

“My God!” He pulled Michael into him, who began to weep silently.

For weeks his mother rarely left her bed. When she did – to attend to some matter on the estate, or to give instructions to the butler who had also become the de facto manager of the estate – she was dressed in black. Her face was pale, her voice low and quiet.

To make matters worse, the Spanish Flu was now present in Scotland having moved from Lanarkshire north in May. Several estates of some of their friends were almost emptied by the waves of sickness. It was levelling out the classes, killing rich and poor alike. Michael found himself afraid to leave the house. He spent many nights in Thomas' bed since it would have been unthinkable for Thomas to be in his. He always managed to sneak out in the wee hours before the kitchen maids and Cook arose to begin their day.

He also knew that everyone knew something was going on between them. But that was how it worked. Everyone knew things about each other, but as long as no one actually spoke them, things went along as if nothing was happening. He got the occasional glare from Cook, or from one or two of the other staff, but that was it. He wondered if Thomas was treated any differently.

His mother seemed to flag over the months and as the war seemed to be about to end as October passed, his mother sank further into a dark haze of grief. And then the flu struck.

His mother's funeral came and went and Michael barely remembered any of it. She had died in a few days of contracting the it, along with half the staff and, for a day or so, there was a question as to whether he himself would survive. And Thomas. Losing his mother was one thing, but Thomas was like the end of the world. He found he could understand his mother's grief now that he had his own.

At the end of his mother's funeral Charles Fenn, the family lawyer, had came up to him in the little chapel on the estate. He had stood by Michael patiently while village folk and family friends alike paid their respects. He wondered at the risk they all took of being infected. When the last person left, the lawyer – who Michael only knew slightly – had cleared his throat.

“Michael. There are matters to discuss. Shall we sit?”

He indicated a pew beside them. The air was still and the smell of extinguished candles filled his nose. He sighed and sat down heavily on the hard wood. “What is it.”

The lawyer cleared his throat. “Your mother...well...she spoke to me before she died. I mean...it was clear she wasn't going to make it...in any case. She wants you to attend the University of St Andrews.”

“But...I'm to go to Oxford...”

“Yes, well. She said since you were to be the head of the household with all the duties thereof, she felt you needed to be closer to home. St Andrew's isn't that far a journey, and from Oxford it would take days and days.”

Michael could find no words. His dreams of Oxford, being so close to London...well they had filled his mind for years. He had even fantasized about bringing Thomas as his “valet”.

“But...”

“Your mother was quite firm on this point. She says you have a duty as head of the family...and she stipulated this in her will. If you were to deviated from this plan, the inheritance would go elsewhere.”

The lawyer looked guilty, but somehow steadfast.

Despite the outrage a part of him felt, he also felt a sense of obligation – the obligation that his father had carried and that he must now carry: to carry on the McLaren name and house. He sighed, fighting tears. Childish tears.

“Well...I guess that's settled. Not that there's anyone else alive to inherit, I might add.”

“There are in fact distant cousins in Canada. And your father's third or fourth cousin, Baron Aberconway, but that connection is too distant.”

“Canada? I've never heard of them.”

“Nonetheless.”

“As I said, I suppose I accept these terms, even though I'm to be the head of a household of one. But I will make the trip to St Andrews and see what I can do.”

“There's a boy. I'm glad.”

Michael mumbled, “I'm gratified that someone is.”

He arranged for one of the smaller carriage to take him to St Andrews and there enrolled himself at the University. This was a task his father would have done for him, but now that he was the only one in the family – he still had trouble with this thought – there was no one else to do it. And he wanted to see the place, not just exchange mail deliveries.

The campus was old and seemed quite austere. He was able to register in one of the residence halls – John Burnett Hall – and spent some time speaking with the registrar who, he was not surprised to learn, had known his father. It was a small world and this all felt surreal as if he was an imposter trying convince everyone he had indeed become an adult.

His next task before moving the St Andrews for the term was to deal with his house. His house. Ten bedrooms, sitting rooms, dining room, vast kitchen, several thousand acres. And yes there were no one but him to live there now. No siblings, no wife...no Thomas. Richardson was gone, Cook was gone. And he was about to be absent for the best part of four months.

He put a notice in the Edinburgh and Perth newspapers for someone to be a jack-of-all duties: part butler, part manager. He sadly let  most of the remaining staff go with good references. He felt confident they would find other situations.

On the Friday before he was to decamp to St Andrews, he met with the few applicants who responded to his notice and who agreed to make the journey. Of them, there was only one he felt was capable, since the rest were too old, too feeble or too untrustworthy. John McTavish he was named. He was tall and dark-haired and young enough, Michael thought, to take care of himself. He imagined him to have thirty or so summers behind him. James was quiet and seemed grim, but his references were impeccable since he contacted them beforehand, receiving glowing reports by mail.

“Well John, I know this is an odd business being in charge of this place. I wonder if you wouldn't be too lonely.”

“No sir, I would be right as rain.”

His accent was familiar to Michael. “You're from nearby...I can hear it in your voice.”

John looked surprised. “Aye. I lived by the Loch when I was a wee boy, but we left for Edinburgh.”

Michael couldn't help but smile. He pictured Loch Leven and John as a small boy. “Well, you are in familiar territory and I hope you find it comfortable. I will miss this place, but I be back for Christmas. I'll write when I know the date.”

“You're giving me the position, sir?”

“That's what I'm doing.”

John, for the first time, smiled and a little colour rose to his cheeks. Michael was struck suddenly at how handsome he was...he inwardly shook his head. Not here, not now, one doesn't take such risks.

John looked around the sitting room, then back at Michael. “I'm very pleased...” He seemed embarrassed.

“That's a good thing. You will take care of the place. I'll be back as often as possible and when I have my degree I will make a proper house of this again. Perhaps you will still be here when I do.”

“We shall see, sir, but I will do my best.”

In a few days Michael left the house in John's care, heading east to St Andrews and, at least for a few months at a time, a different life. He wasn't sure if he should thank his mother or not for forcing this upon him. Time would tell.