Beached

How did I come to be sitting there? I was on the shingle of a beach on the Kent coast, not even in my home town, which was 8 miles away, I'd missed the last train home, though that was the least of my worries at that moment. I was sitting just above the high water mark, a line of seaweed and driftwood delineating the boundary between land and sea, although it was only half tide then, I could only just see the edge of the calm sea through the darkness that enveloped my lonely outpost. Even my best friend had deserted me. I'd known him since the first day we started at grammar school, almost seven years earlier, we'd both turned 18 within a few days of each other over the previous week or so, we'd always been there for each other, as best friends are, played football and cricket together, each in its season, watched each other's backs, helped each other with homework, me helping him with the more academic subjects, him helping me with more practical things, according to our different capabilities, but he'd left me alone, because I'd just shared the one thing I'd never been able to share with him before, who I really was. If I hadn't been bigger than him, I think he would've hit me, he accused me of lying to him all these years, but I hadn't lied, it's just that I hadn't chosen to tell him the whole truth, and he'd never asked. If he'd asked when we were 11 and first met, I wouldn't have known the truth, if he'd asked me at 14 I wouldn't have been sure, but if he'd asked me in the previous eighteen months, then I would've told him, told him the truth, but he never did ask, I doubt the possibility even entered his mind.

****

"Morning, Rob."

The boy smiled, a thin line of gum showing above his teeth. "Morning, John."

I'd been waiting at the top of the steps for a few minutes, steps leading up from the railway station to the top of the hill through which the railway line disappeared into a tunnel, the first of many on its way to London. This meeting had become a part of the schoolday routine, I'd get up and do my paper round, back home for breakfast, change into my school uniform, then leave the house five minutes or so earlier than I strictly needed to, to make sure I arrived at the top of those steps before Rob, although I'm sure he would've waited for me had I not been there. But I always was there. The meetings had been contrived at first, contrived by me, made to look like a coincidence, a 'fancy seeing you here' moment.

The first time our paths had crossed at that point had been a coincidence, though. He was looking back, worried, as three boys, slightly older than him, but younger than me, were approaching him from behind, with what were evidently less than benign intentions. It was an occupational hazard of being a grammar school boy, we were 'snobs', 'smartarses', 'poofs', because we had either the native ability or the capacity to work harder, or a little of both, to have risen above the run of the mill, to have been selected to go to a better school where we received a better education than our peers at primary school, who were consigned to what had once been called 'County Schools', but which by our era had been glorified with the title of 'Secondary Modern'. Our school had a Secondary Modern right next door, and there were numerous incidents where boys from our school were beaten up by gangs from the neighbouring school, often by those who had been the friends of the victims a few months or years previously. On this occasion, the 'gang' looked at me, already over six feet tall at the age of sixteen, nearly seventeen, and substantially built with it, wearing the same uniform as their intended target, and decided that discretion was the better part of valour, jostling their way past the boy and I and going on their way.

"You OK?" I asked.

"Yeah, thanks."

"I know what it's like, I got beaten up when I was about your age, someone I knew from primary school and his older mates caught me on the way home, I thought they were going to kill me. Talking of primary school, didn't you used to go to St. Margaret's?" My old primary school.

"Yeah, I've seen you around at school and I thought I recognised you, but I wasn't sure."

"I think your brother and my brother were mates, Dave's your brother, isn't he?"

"Yeah, he's a year younger than me. He goes to Castle Hill now." Another of the Secondary Moderns in the town.

"Same as my brother. Shall we get on, I don't want to be late. What's your name, anyway?"

"I'm Rob."

"I'm John. Do you normally come this way to school?"

"Yeah, it's the quickest way from home."

"Have you seen those kids before?"

"No, it's always been quiet before, I've never seen anyone much - except you sometimes."

We talked about teachers at our old school, a few people we both knew, general chit-chat, for the fifteen minutes or so until we arrived at the school gate.

"Thanks for what you did, John."

"No problem - all I really did was glare at them anyway! See you around, Rob."

I did see him around as well, over the next few days, more than I could remember seeing him in the previous two and a half years that he'd been at the school, and, indeed, in the three or four years we'd overlapped at primary school. Maybe it was just that, having met in the circumstances we had, we were looking out for each other, but, in my case, I began to get an impression that there was a bit more to it than that. As I'd navigated the difficult waters of puberty and on into adolescence, I'd increasingly had the feeling that I wasn't quite like my friends. They were full of talk about girls that they were going out with, and what they'd allegedly done with them, or to them, but I didn't seem to have the same interest. I'd never had a girlfriend, hardly even knew any girls, apart from my younger sister and her friends, but it wasn't something that bothered me. My parents didn't raise the subject, they were very strait-laced, I couldn't have imagined them giving me 'the talk', presumably they expected me to wait until I was married and then know everything I was supposed to know by magic. The only chink in the curtain I can remember was at a relatively early age, 12 or 13, when a friend of my brother's, who was four years younger than me, asked me if I'd ever had a 'wank'. I didn't know what one was, and said so, and he laughed at me, saying I didn't know much. I didn't think much of it until about a year later, when I'd gone to my cousin's house, finding that he was out but that he was expected back half an hour or so later, so my aunt suggested I wait in his room until he came back. He was a year older than me, and his parents were much more progressive than mine, so it shouldn't have been a surprise when I found a sex education book, written by a well-known 'agony aunt', on his bookshelf. I learned more about sex in that hour than I had in the previous thirteen years of my life, including an insight on the question my brother's friend had asked me. Needless to say, that night I had to try it for myself - I was lucky enough to have the privacy of my own, small single bedroom - finding to my surprise and delight how it worked, and like many a pubescent boy before and since, I became an ardent devotee immediately. What the book hadn't said, though, was what was supposed to be in my head while I was practising my new-found skill, so I was more than a little confused when I found most of the mental pictures accompanying my activities were of boys rather than girls. With no-one I dared talk to, and no other obvious source of information - the internet was undreamed-of in that far-off era, and my local, small town library not exactly awash with 'gay' literature - I just carried on being confused. I'd thought of myself as 'different' in some ill-defined way, but I'd never thought of myself as a 'poof' - they talked and acted like girls, and dressed in flowery clothes, like the 'Clarence' character in 'The Dick Emery Show' on TV...didn't they?

Nothing much had changed in the intervening two or three years, I still didn't have a girlfriend, it still didn't worry me, most of my fantasies were still about boys, but I hadn't the slightest idea of what, if anything, I was supposed to do about it. I wasn't the almost total innocent I'd been at 13, but I was, even by the standards of the 1970's, pretty naïve. I covered up my ignorance by becoming something of a loner, watching Open University programmes on TV, going for long bus journeys on my own at weekends, reading voraciously, getting a reputation for being the eccentric class intellectual - a nerd, in modern parlance. I did have a few friends at school, but I hardly ever saw them anywhere other than at school, even one who only lived a few hundred yards away from me. I'd never been in love, even puppy love, apart from a very brief, very chaste crush on a female cousin when I was 11, before she and her family emigrated to Australia a few months later. In the days following my encounter with Rob and his would-be bullies, though, I began to realise that something had changed. As I said, I contrived to meet him on the way to school most days, and found myself becoming frustrated on the odd days when I didn't see him. What did it all mean? Looking back, the answer was there, as clear as if it had been in six foot high neon letters, but I didn't, couldn't see what was happening.

****

It all came to a head during the summer term. One sunny afternoon, we had a games lesson, and were just getting ready to play cricket, when one of the sports teachers rushed out of the gym and jumped into the school minibus, parked nearby. The battery was flat, and the vehicle wouldn't start, so he yelled at us to come over and help him push start it. Between the dozen or so of us there, we easily managed to do what was necessary, he thanked us, and drove the minibus to the outside door of the gym, while we headed off in the opposite direction carrying our cricket gear. We obviously wondered what had happened, and, after a while, news filtered through that a boy had fallen from a climbing rope in the gym and had a suspected broken leg, and that he'd been taken to hospital in the minibus. No-one seemed to know who it was that had been involved in the accident, and it was another day and a half before I found out, and when I did, it was in the living room of my house.

Rob hadn't been at our meeting place that morning, and I hadn't seen him at school either, so I assumed he was ill. His not being around didn't do anything for my mood, so that by the time I got home, I was feeling pretty fed up. The last thing I needed at that point was an intervention from my smart-mouthed brother.

"They should start paying you danger money to go to your snobs' school," Peter said.

"What are you on about now?" I replied, with barely concealed contempt.

"People falling from high ropes and having to be carted off to hospital with broken legs."

"How do you know about that?"

"Dave told me at school today - it was his brother that broke his leg. Lucky git, he's going to get six weeks off school."

I was stunned. "Six weeks?" I said weakly.

"At least. He'll probably only have to go back for a couple of weeks, and then he'll get another six weeks off for the summer holidays."

I felt like the bottom had just fallen out of my world. It had been bad enough not seeing Rob for a day, but six weeks? My mother walked into the room at that moment.

"What's the matter with you?" she asked me. "You've got a face like a wet weekend."

Only one thought was stuck in my mind. "Six weeks."

"What about six weeks?"

"I'm not going to see him for six weeks."

"Who?"

I wasn't thinking very clearly at that point, because if I had been, I'd have made my excuses and just walked away "Rob."

"Who's he?" My brother chose this moment to chime in.

"His brother is in my form, he was in the year above me at St. Margaret's, he goes to that snobs' school that John goes to."

"So he's what, 14?" my mother asked. Jigsaw pieces seemed to be assembling themselves in her head. "What is he to you?" she asked me, sharply, accusingly.

"He's my friend. What is it, am I not supposed to have friends now?" I was close to tears.

"It sounds to me like he's more than a friend, if you're that upset about him."

"Haha, John's a poof, Rob's his boyfriend," Peter gloated.

I tried to grab my brother, with every intention of punching his lights out.

"Don't you dare!" my mother shouted, "John, answer my question, what is this boy to you?"

"Leave me alone," was all I could say as I blundered out of the room and dashed upstairs, slamming my bedroom door behind me before bursting into tears. I heard my mother following me up the stairs, and I didn't have a lock on my bedroom door, so I dragged the chest of drawers across, a barricade to keep the world away from my desolation. My mother tried to opened the door, failed, and shouted again.

"John, open the door this minute!"

"Go away and leave me alone," I sniffled.

"You just wait until your father gets home, you'll be sorry."

I'm already sorry I was born, I thought, there's not much that can make it worse. All the while, though, I was thinking about my mother's question ; "What is he to you?"  What was he to me? I didn't really know myself, hadn't thought about it until then. All I could say was that I felt good, felt happy, when I was with him, and felt disappointed, as though my life was somehow incomplete, when I didn't see him. Was this love? I had no idea, it had never happened to me before. And if it was love, what did that say about me? Maybe my brother was right, maybe I was a 'poof' - I did fantasise about boys, but I'd never fantasised about Rob, not even once. I just didn't associate him with sex at all.

I stayed in my room as long as I could, but eventually I needed to go to the toilet. I'd heard my father arrive home from work some time earlier, and, given that it's pretty difficult to move a chest of drawers quietly, by the time I was able to open the door, he was standing outside.

"Excuse me, please," I said, "I need the toilet."

"You've waited this long, you can wait a bit longer. What's all this about this boy?"

"What about him? He's my friend, he wasn't at school today and then Peter told me that he was the one who had the accident in the gym yesterday. I was a bit shocked, that's all."

"Your mother said that you were nearly in tears when you found out he was going to be off school for six weeks. Why should that be such a big problem for you, you've got other friends, haven't you?"

"I like him, I was upset that he was hurt. Wouldn't you be upset if one of your friends hurt themselves?"

"Not to that extent. I don't think you're telling us the truth about this...Rob."

"What else do you expect me to say? He's my friend, one of my best friends. That's the truth."

"Can't you cope with boys your own age? Why do you have to hang around someone so young?"

"He's only two and a half years younger than me, it's not like he's at primary school. Anyway, Mum is five years younger than you, and that doesn't seem to make a difference."

"Don't be cheeky. Your mother and I were both adults when we first met. Listen to me. I don't think it's right for you to have such young friends. Stick to people of your own age. If I hear that you've disobeyed me, you'll be in serious trouble."

"So you're picking my friends now, then?"

"I'm losing my patience with you, young man. Don't tempt me. As long as you're a minor, and you're living in my house, you'll do as I say. When you're 18, if you're so desperate to live your own life, you can leave school, get a job, and find your own place to live. If you want the benefits of living here, you've got to accept the rules as well."

"Yes, Dad. Can I please go to the toilet now?" There was no point in trying to engage him in discussion, there never was, with either of my parents. They were products of their generation, when children were seen and not heard, and did what they were told or risked a clip round the ear, or worse.

He stepped aside. "Go and apologise to your mother when you've finished in the toilet."

"Yes, Dad."

I couldn't believe that my parents were telling me that I couldn't be friends with Rob. It was none of their business, in my opinion. I simply couldn't understand why they were making such a big issue of it. Despite what my brother had said, Rob wasn't my 'boyfriend', that thought had never even crossed my mind. But, the doubts nagged in the back of my mind, why was I so upset about the prospect of not seeing him? There must be a reason why I missed him so much when he wasn't around. I was just as confused as I had been when I was 13, and there was still no-one I could turn to for advice. Life stank.

****

Rob did eventually return to school for the last 10 days before the summer holidays, but he couldn't walk to school, coming on the bus instead, so I still saw almost nothing of him. On the last but one day of term, I managed to talk to him for a few minutes at lunchtime.

"What are you doing during the holidays?" I asked him.

"Nothing much. I've still got to have a load of physio, the hospital say I'll be lucky to be walking without my stick by the end of the holidays. What about you?"

"Working, mostly. I've got a part-time job shelf-stacking at that new supermarket near the seafront. At least I'll have a decent amount of money, for a change. That paper round pays peanuts."

"Dave told me that your mum & dad said that you weren't supposed to see me. Why?" Peter had obviously been speaking to Rob's brother.

"I don't know. My Dad said he thinks I should only have friends my own age. I can't talk to my parents about anything, it's like 'We've decided, you do what you're told, end of discussion.' I honestly don't understand what their problem is."

He looked at me intently, seemed to be about to speak, then changed his mind, then changed it back. "My dad...said..." he began hesitantly.

"What?"

"It doesn't matter, I didn't believe him, anyway. Look, I've got to go, I need to go to the secretary's office before the bell goes, I've got to give them a note about hospital appointments next term. See you later, John."

"See you later." I was more confused than ever, what could Rob's dad have said, presumably about me, from the boy's hesitancy - I'd never met the man, wouldn't have known him if I'd tripped over him in the street.

That situation changed shortly after school had broken up, though. I was at work, pricing and stacking tins of cat food. A man and woman, followed by a boy I thought I recognised, came into the aisle where I was working. I heard the boy say "That's him, there."

The man, who wasn't quite as tall as me, but much more powerfully built, came up to me and jabbed a finger into my chest. I glared back at him, although I was pretty scared.

"Listen to me, you poofter. You leave my son alone, or I'll rip your head off."

"I don't know who you are, or who your son is, and I'm not a poofter," I said, as firmly as I could in the circumstances.

"Don't lie to me, you know Robert Rhodes, don't you."

"Yes, he's my friend, he goes to my school."

"Yeah, well I'm his dad, and I'm telling you to stay away from him, or I'll kick your head in. I don't want him around your sort."

"What sort? Intelligent people who want to be his friend?"

"Don't get smart with me, or I'll sort you out here and now." Just then, the store manager appeared at the end of the aisle.

"Is there some sort of problem, Sir?" he asked Rob's dad.

"Not to do with your shop, just with...the likes of him." He jabbed his thumb in my direction. "Just remember," he shot at me, "stay away from my son." As he turned on his heel and left, I saw Rob's brother smirking. Yes, I thought, you'll get your comeuppance, you little shit.

"What was that about, John?" the manager asked me.

"Your guess is as good as mine, Mr Dixon. I've never seen that man before." At least the last sentence was the truth.

****

The encounter with Rob's dad, unwelcome as it was, at least resolved any confusion about what at least one set of parents thought. I wondered if my parents thought the same - I guessed they probably did. Nice to know that your parents thought you wanted to go to bed with a 14 year old boy, I thought, pity they haven't got the bottle to say it to your face. It all seemed so unfair to me - I'd never even thought about doing it, I'd never said or done anything untoward to Rob - as he'd said himself, he didn't believe what his dad had said.

After what had happened, I wasn't in the mood to put myself in the firing line by going anywhere near where Rob's home - I didn't know his exact address, anyway, just the block of council flats that he lived in, near the docks. He knew where I worked, though, and a few days later, I was working near the front of the shop when I saw him limping past the big front window. It was immediately obvious that he was going to come into the shop, and I saw him looking over his shoulder before he came through the doors, presumably to see if anyone had seen where he was going. Given where I was working, he saw me almost straight away, and came over.

"Hi, John. Look, I'm sorry about what happened with my dad - Dave told me all about it, he was laughing his arse off. It was him who told my dad what your brother had said, you know, about me being your boyfriend, and you being...a...poof." He was almost whispering.

"Don't worry about it, Rob, it's not your fault. You know and I know I've never done anything to you, and we're still friends - at least, I hope we are - it's just that some people have got dirty minds, or, like our brothers, just want to cause problems. You'd better go - I don't want you to get into trouble, and I don't particularly want your dad coming after me again. I'll see you when we get back to school."

"Thanks, John, Of course we're still friends, see you around." I was treated to his trademark smile, and my heart felt like it was melting. I could hardly bear the thought that, unless we chanced upon one another in the street, it was going to be another 4 weeks or so before I saw him again. Another element of the confusion in my mind had just disappeared - I was undoubtedly in love, whether or not sex came into it.

****

As I began my A-level year at school, things settled back into a quieter routine. Rob was still going to and from school on the bus for the first few weeks of term, but his limp had almost disappeared, and one Friday, he came up to me at break, smiling broadly.

"John, I'll be walking to school again from Monday - usual time and place suit you?"

"Great, Rob, I'll see you there!"

Needless to say, Monday morning brought heavy rain, but, nothing daunted, he appeared coming up the station steps.

"Great day to choose to start walking, eh?"

"Yeah, lovely," I replied, "let's get going before we drown!"

Christmas came and went, and with it, my eighteenth birthday was rapidly approaching. I would've liked a big party, but my parents had decided - no discussion, as usual - that we were going to go out for a family meal, instead.

"You can invite one friend," my dad told me - thanks a bunch, I thought - "how about that boy you've been friends with since the first year, it's his birthday soon as well, isn't it?"

"Yes, Martin is eighteen about ten days before me. I'll ask him if he can come." No chance of it being Rob, I knew, so no point in causing an argument I could never win. Martin was pleased to be asked, so it was about the best solution I could've expected.

The next day, I told Rob what my dad had said.

"I would've loved to have invited you, but my parents would never agree in a million years, and I doubt if yours would, either."

"I know, it's a pain how they are. John...I've never really asked you, and...I don't know if I should..."

I could feel a big moment suddenly rushing towards me.

"Ask what, Rob?"

"Are you...I mean, what do you really think of me."

"I like you a lot, you're one of my best friends, I would've hoped you knew that."

"I know, but that's not really what I mean...do you..." He ground to a halt, but if he wanted to ask, he had to say the words, I wasn't going to put them in his mouth. "Do you...fancy me?"

I took a deep breath. At least, I thought, I could tell him the truth, I wanted to tell him the truth. "Rob," I said, looking him straight in the eye, "I can honestly say I've never thought about having sex with you, if that's what you mean. I like you very much, though, more than just about anyone, I really missed you after you broke your leg."

"So...are you saying...you love me?"

"I don't know," I said, blushing, "I've never been in love." It was a lie, the first I'd ever told him, as far as I could remember, and I was ashamed of myself, but I couldn't, despite everything, bring myself to say the irrevocable words. His expression was completely unreadable - if I live to be a hundred, I could never say whether he was happy or sad, relieved or disappointed, about to laugh or cry. In the event, what he said next hit me like a bullet in the chest.

"I've got a girlfriend."

"Good, I'm pleased for you." Another blatant lie, and this time he knew it, the wavering of my voice must have given me away.

"I don't think you are, John."

"Not what?"

"Pleased for me. You're in love with me, aren't you?"

I sat down on a garden wall, fighting back tears. It was a fight I quickly lost.

"I'm sorry, Rob, I can't help it."

He didn't say another word, he just walked away, leaving me crying on that wall. I felt that all the pillars of my life had just fallen away in that moment.

****

I didn't go to school that day, the first and only time I'd played truant in my whole school career. I walked up to the cliffs overlooking the harbour, and sat there, all day, even though it was March and freezing cold. The weather exactly matched how I felt inside, frozen - too numb to even cry any more, I couldn't see any escape from the pain that seemed to be eating me alive, from within. My first love, my only love, I thought, had rejected me. Life couldn't get any worse.

Except that it could. I shuffled and mumbled my way through the next three weeks until my birthday, feeling like an empty shell, avoiding everyone, spending most of my time in my room when I wasn't at school or work, especially avoiding Rob - I even changed the way I walked to school, going a longer way round, so I wouldn't accidentally bump into him. No-one at school really took much notice, they were too used to me being a weird loner to think my behaviour especially unusual. Martin was probably the only one who suspected something was wrong, but I wouldn't, couldn't open up to him. Until the day after my eighteenth. He'd come for the meal on my birthday, and during the evening, suggested that, since it was now legal for both of us, we could go out for a beer or two on the following night, a Sunday. I wasn't keen, but he was pretty insistent, so I eventually agreed. He lived in the next town, so I arranged to go over on the train and meet him at 8:00 outside his local, on the seafront. As I walked to the station, I was just about to cross the High Street, when a cyclist came towards me. As I waited at the kerb, I recognised who was riding that bike - Rob. I was just about to say hello, when he looked straight at me, with an expression on his face that I can only describe as naked hatred. I stepped back, as though he'd physically hit me - I'd never experienced anything like it in my life. I went to catch my train in a daze, and was still in much the same state when I met Martin about an hour later. He knew straight away something was badly wrong, and, to his credit, tried his best to draw me out, but I wasn't biting. The whole evening was excruciating, and I don't think either of us were sorry to see the clock ticking around towards 'Last Orders'.

"Come on," he said, "I'll walk up to the station with you."

"I'd rather go for a walk on the beach."

"OK, whatever, Don't forget it's Sunday, though, the last train's earlier tonight."

"Yeah, thanks."

We walked across the road to the beach, crunching our way over the shingle.

"Are you going to tell me what the problem is, John? I've known you for years, and I've never known you to be like this."

"I don't know if I can - I don't know if I can even explain it to myself."

"It can't be that bad, surely."

"It seems that bad to me."

"What's happened? Has someone died?"

"Only my heart."

"Oh, God. I didn't know you had a girlfriend, have you been dumped?"

I hesitated - once again, irrevocable words seemed to be lurching towards me. "I didn't say anything...about a girl."

He stopped dead in his tracks. "Are you trying to tell me...tell me you're joking, please."

Now he 'knew', there didn't seem to be any more point in prevarication.

"I'm in love...with...Rob, and he hates me for it." I gave him a 90 second potted history, up to that dreadful look earlier that evening, before slumping down on the pebbles, tears streaming down my face.

"You're a queer, is that what you're saying? You've lied about yourself, all the years I've known you."

"I haven't lied, you've never asked me. You've just assumed I'm the same as all the rest of you. Anyway. I didn't even know myself until I met Rob, and that was only about 18 months ago, and, even then, I didn't know straight away. It wasn't until he broke his leg in that accident in the gym and I didn't see him for weeks that I realised how I felt about him."

"You're a joke, pathetic. Go to hell." He stormed away across the shingle, leaving me...

Beached.

****

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B