Note. This is my first attempt at describing a gay male relationship from the time of my own youth. Please forgive my presumption but the story demands it and I am the slave of the story. I shall shortly be posting my lesbian chapter Ivy and Ginny.
Advice, criticism or any other feedback would be very welcome.
The Sacred Band. Chapter twelve - Donald and Bruno
told by Donald Bray
November 1955.
I was in the Chancery Court, sitting behind Mr Carruthers Melford Q.C. one Thursday in the Autumn of 1955, when the events began that changed my life. I might say with a strong element of truth that they began my life. Everything before that day was overture.
Melford was a well-fed, florid-faced man, whose complexion suggested large intakes of sirloin steak and claret. As an advocate, he was prolix and self-satisfied, with a command of detail that left something to be desired. I was listening to a complex breach of patent case brought by one of my firm's biggest clients.
My trip to London had been more than justified by the couple of important notes I passed forward, but, all in all, listening to the case beat watching paint dry by only the slimmest of margins.
At shortly before four o'clock, after one day of hearings, the court rose for a three-week adjournment. I kicked my heels outside the robing room for some time, before I got a brief, unsatisfactory meeting with Melford who seemed to need the flattery laid on with a butter-knife.
Restless and stifled, I decided to walk across central London from the Strand to St Pancras rather than taking the tube. I dawdled along, window-shopping along the way and arrived at the station just about opening time.
A fleeting memory of a pub just off the Euston Road between Euston and St Pancras stations tugged at my consciousness and I was in such a state of boredom and frustration that I headed towards Euston Station. After three, long, celibate years, I thrust caution aside, opened the door of the Saloon Bar and walked in.
Yes, this was the place. Not a female face in sight, but fugitive traces of lipstick on a face or two. Half an hour to drop the mask and be myself. It wasn't too much to ask was it? I took off my black homburg hat and overcoat, the uniform of the well-placed solicitor; ordered a Guinness and a cheese and onion roll and settled down to enjoy an early supper.
As a former RAF Squadron leader, now as a partner in a prominent Leicester firm of Solicitors, I am a man accustomed to keeping secrets. I keep the secrets of my clients, obviously; but the biggest secret of all, and the one I have kept the most carefully hidden, was the secret at the heart of my own life.
Moments after I sat down, the street door opened again and in walked a huge man in a fisherman's navy-blue gansey and black corduroys. He was not especially tall; an inch or two over six feet; but massive, with great broad shoulders, a barrel chest, and a face carved out of granite by an enthusiastic amateur.
Despite this bulk he seemed to vibrate with energy. A nose several times broken sat, a shapeless blob, in the centre of a face alive with humour and geniality. I have never seen a man so attractive and charismatic before or since. My eyes were riveted on him as he turned to the bar to order a drink.
His broad grin was answered with smiles flitting across the faces of the men standing by the bar. I could see at once that he was known here and well-liked, but I noticed that nobody made a move to accost him.
"Evening sergeant," the potman greeted him.
"Bruno, Benny; call me Bruno."
"Sorry, force of habit. Been playing? See you ain't got your guitar with you."
"Yes, I sat in with Tubby Hayes and Victor Feldman at the Flamingo, but I borrowed Patch's old Epiphone - it's almost as good as my Gibson. Pint of Mann's IPA., please, and whatever you're having."
"Thanks Bruno; I'll take a half and drink it later."
"Anybody in this early?"
"Mystery over in the corner's worth a once-over."
The bear-like man looked over straight at me, a long, measuring look. He strolled over to my table and loomed over me.
"Mind if I join you?"
"Help yourself. I hear you're a musician. Jazz?"
"Yes, bebop mostly. I play a bit, semi-pro. I'm a regular at a club outside Nottingham, but sometimes when I'm in London, I sit in with old friends; like last night."
"Near Nottingham? I'm a Leicester lad myself. Donald Bray."
We shook hands.
"Bruno Canelli. What a coincidence. I've been working in Leicester for a few years now."
"I'm a solicitor, mostly commercial law. Just down in London to keep an eye on one of my cases. I'm catching the 8.05 back to Leicester."
"Great - so am I."
An hour and a half later, after three more rounds of drinks, we were getting on the train for the two-hour journey to Leicester. I was feeling pleasantly relaxed and happy in his company, and he seemed to feel the same.
We began to sketch in our life stories, and soon we began to recognise a fundamental kinship; two men who had both been forced to hide their sexual identities in the hostile and unforgiving profession of arms. Our conversation was serious, but from time to time we found ourselves laughing fit to bust at some absurdity or another.
As we talked on the train, I was aware that this was not the usual chat that presaged a one-night stand. We were talking with a degree of trust and respect that was unusual. I realised that I was strongly attracted to this quiet, modest man, whose happy-go-lucky manner hid deep complexities.
Unlike me, Bruno had had his share of one-night and weekend stands in London, and sometimes in Nottingham. In the private space of the first-class railway carriage, he began, with breathtaking openness and trust, to tell me little anecdotes of his varied sexual encounters.
Some were happy tales of ephemeral, but satisfying meetings that left behind happy and grateful memories. Some encounters left him disappointed, and occasionally he carried away abiding memory of disgust and degradation. It was the luck of the draw.
At shortly before 10 the train pulled into Leicester station, and we walked the short distance into the centre of town. Bruno lived on Charles Street, right in the town centre, in a second floor flat above an Italian delicatessen. We paused at the door.
"Like a quick drink? I've got some grappa, and I think there's a drop of gin somewhere about. We Royal Marines used to put down a lot of pink gin on combined ops. The Navy floats on the stuff.
My navy friends used to say they needed three liquids to function; gin, diesel and salt water, and at a pinch they could manage without the water."
"Gin would be great. I've got about half an hour. I live with my Dad, and I usually help him into bed elevenish."
"Ok, let's go upstairs."
A green door beside the shop opened into a narrow staircase that wound its way up two stories. At the top, a door was built into the staircase. Bruno unlocked it and led the way.
The door opened onto a narrow, short corridor with fading wallpaper showing a stylised trellis with climbing purple cabbage roses. A narrow strip of patterned carpet ran down the centre of a hallway, with three doors opening off.
The end door was open, and I could see through the window to the streetlights of Charles Street below.
This room was painted white. White walls and white gloss paintwork, shining and clean. I saw to my surprise that there was almost no furniture.
Wide pine floorboards, stripped and polished to a dull golden gleam, a three-seater settee in a brown needle cord fabric, a low table, its glass top only about nine inches off the carpet, a geometric patterned rug and some large, bright-coloured cushions.
There was something almost monastic about the beautiful austerity that reminded me of pictures of Japanese interiors.
As we entered the room, Bruno gently but firmly took me into his arms and kissed me deeply. I felt weak in the knees and clung onto his broad back like a drowning man. I returned the kiss avidly.
After a minute or two, both pairs of hands moved down; trousers were unbuttoned, and the treasures within winkled out. Four experienced, knowledgeable hands lured two cocks to erection, and caressed them gently at first then progressively harder, faster and more rhythmically. We broke off the kiss as our breathing became a heavy pant and we tumbled helter-skelter towards a shattering mutual orgasm.
We stood, still, still linked by our now quiet hands. Bruno, unsurprisingly, recovered his self-possession first.
"God, I needed that," he joked. He dropped onto his heels in perfect balance like a coalminer, licked the smear of thick, pearly spunk from the head of my knob, and from his own fingers.
I had just come harder than I had ever come in my life, but that sight was making my cock thicken again. He looked up and smiled broadly and affectionately at me, standing there, breathless and overwhelmed.
He buttoned my fly.
"Now, drinkies". He rose smoothly to his feet, buttoned his own fly, and turned to the built-in cupboards barely noticeable against the white wall.
"Plymouth Navy gin," he announced, "the real thing, not the usual over-flowery stuff." He got two glasses, poured a generous slug of gin into each glass then, without asking, put a sugar lump into each.
