The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst Page A

made a bigger pond; in high summer it could be too shallow for bathing, but the recent rains had filled it up again.
    ‘The lowest pond is deeper than it looks,’ said George.
    ‘Aha . . .’ said Cecil.
    ‘If you want to have a dip . . . ?’ He felt he shouldn’t show how much he wanted him naked again, and then he would get it. The weekend so far had been hobbled and hampered by dropped trousers and half-unbuttoned shirts.
    ‘You go first, and report on conditions,’ Cecil said.
    George gave him a sideways smile, ready but a little disappointed. ‘All right,’ he said; and he started to unlace his shoes.
    ‘Do it slowly,’ said Cecil. ‘And keep looking at me.’ He went over to the great oak above the pond, scanning its twisted and bulbous trunk for footholds, then in five seconds scrambled up to the low landing where it divided, and eased himself out on his bottom a short way along a broad almost horizontal branch. He sat there, suddenly owning the wood as much as George had believed himself to do. ‘I can see you,’ he said.
    ‘And I can see you,’ said George, unbuttoning the top of his shirt and then pulling it over his head.
    ‘I said slowly,’ said Cecil.
    George was slower, accordingly, when it came to his trousers. He found a certain shyness clouding his desire to please. Cecil maintained a provoking half-smile, arousal masked in amusement. ‘You’re like some shy sylvan creature,’ he said, ‘unused to the prying eyes of men. Perhaps you’re a hamadryad.’
    ‘Hamadryads are female,’ said George, ‘which I think you can see I’m not.’
    ‘I still can’t really see. You look a bit like a hamadryad to me. I expect you live in this oak tree I’m sitting in.’
    George folded his trousers loosely and laid them on an old stump; but he turned away to slip off his white drawers, and saw with a twinge of regret that they were stained with mud from the tussle ten minutes earlier. ‘Oh, you are shy,’ said Cecil, almost crossly. George glanced over his shoulder, and forgot his anxiety about the mud in the larger strangeness of his nakedness, in the dappled woods, where any other walker could see him, and with Cecil, in his shirt and trousers and shoes, watching him steadily. He stepped down carefully across the dead leaves and oak mast towards the loose ellipse of water. The day was warm, but in and out of the patchy sunlight he shivered at the air on his back. He saw he was excited by the part he was playing, the new little scene of obedience, in which none the less his own worth and beauty were enhanced. It was something to know you were what Cecil wanted more than anything. He crouched down, still with his back to him, and peered into the water, which was brownish, loamy, stirred gently and continuously by the little rill that fell into it. Sunlight sparkled on the far side, twenty feet away. He slid a leg through the cold surface, and at once, when he felt the gripping chill of the water, flung himself in too. He circled and steadied and gasped out, ‘It’s delicious!’
    After that it was his turn to watch Cecil, a readier and more practised undresser. Cecil’s way was just to be out of his things with a tug and a wiggle and a kick. He pranced down the leafy slope like a satyr, sun-burnt and sinewy, calves and forearms darkly hairy. Then he leapt into the little pond almost on top of George, drowned him for a second or two, their legs tangling violently as George gripped at him, frightened and excited. He wanted to calm Cecil and keep him. They circled each other, spitting out water, laughing, the surface settling and bubbling. Underneath, their feet kicked branches, stirred up leaves and slime. Cecil reached for him, had an arm round his shoulder, then closed with him inexorably underwater.
    They lay out to dry for a few last minutes at the edge of the wood, where the sun shone in under the high fringe of leaves. The field beyond had already been ploughed, and the tussocky grass of