The Sacred Band Ch 12

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.

Taking an orange from the fruit bowl on the low table and opening a jack knife from his pocket, he cut the orange in two and squeezed each half, neatly into a glass. He wiped the blade carefully on a handkerchief, swirled the coloured liquid around in the glasses and handed one to me.

"Try that. Here's to us, and our first meeting."

We drank to that.

***

We began to meet after work every evening after work. Often at my local, the Durham Ox on Bowling Green Street, sometime at the Town

Arms.

As often as possible, after a couple of convivial pints, we would part company, and meet up at Bruno's flat half an hour later. Bruno soon gave me my own key, and I could slip in quite unobtrusively.

We met for sex, of course, but, after the first frenzy had died down, it became one pleasure among many. Bruno loves to cook, I love good wines, and I brought along carefully chosen burgundies and clarets.

Soon our chief pleasure was simply sitting and talking, about books we had read, films we saw together, places we had visited, and, inevitably, the parts of our lives that we had never been able to talk about.

I had often mentioned my cousin and dearest friend Denise in our conversations. I knew I had to tread carefully, because Bruno had already revealed a deep distaste for sado-masochism, born of many repellent encounters.

"These sods come on to me in one of two ways", he explained. "Either they want me to make them my slave and beat and humiliate them, or they see me as a Mount Everest to climb, and set out to conquer and subdue me. Either way, I didn't want to take the card they are offering. Sometimes, when they just wouldn't take no for an answer, I've had to pick them up bodily and throw them out."

So I was a bit gingerly in my approach to the topic.

"Bruno; Denise is the one person who knows me as I am. I told her everything when I was going off to join up. In fact, she was the one who taught me what I know about passing as a straight.

She dissected the way I walk, my speech mannerisms, and everything. She ought to have been on the stage - she has that amazing awareness and she taught me to look at myself from the outside.

I've told you that when I was in Hong Kong, I had sex with more women than men. I had three girlfriends, and two of them had no idea I was queer. Well, I am as sure as eggs is eggs that I owe Denise my career."

"Ok Don; now for Christ sake drop the second shoe."

I want you to meet Denise, and I want you to meet the other people I'm close to; Philip, Laura and Jenny, Ivy and Ginny, Jamie and Dolly. I want you at the centre of my life, and that means being part of their lives too."

"Fine with me; but what's the catch?"

"Well, I know how you feel about the leather and chains side of things, and as far as my own life is concerned, I agree. But Denise has been in one submissive relationship or another since she was sixteen. I hooked her up with Philip, and she introduced him to the life. He brought Laura and Jenny along, and introduced them too. Not that it took a lot of persuading on their parts.

Ivy and Ginny are lesbians, and, again, Laura introduced them and takes on a sort of mother hen role. Jamie and Dolly are also friends of Laura's. Jamie is a lifelong ritual magician and Dolly was married to another until he died a couple of years ago."

Bruno burst out laughing.

"God, you had me going there. You were frightened of shocking me. I thought you were coming from the other direction - warning me to keep my head down and avoid giving offence.

You've got me all wrong. I'm the last bloke on earth to be sniffy about other people's foibles. If they want to play spanking games, all power to them.

Don, I am going to try to express what I really believe at the bottom of my heart. And I must tell you that I have never said any of this to anybody before in my life.

People tend to say, glibly, that it wouldn't do for everyone to be alike, but they mostly haven't thought it through. To me though it's an absolute truth. I see sexual diversity as an aspect of the triumph of the human spirit. I think it's as lovely and valuable as all the other sources of difference between human beings.

I'm glad there are different races of mankind, all with unique qualities to contribute. We need all of those qualities to make us fully human.

I'm glad men and women are different from each other, not just superficially but deep, deep down.

I am glad there are fetishists and transvestites; may they have joy of it. I'm glad there are bisexuals. I'm glad there are sado-masochists who can say 'let pain be my pleasure.' That is a wonderfully life-affirming statement.

The only line I would draw, (and I suppose I'm a bit of a hypocrite in drawing it), is that I would protect children against being used for sexual pleasure, and put the people who do it out of harm's way. Pederasty is a sexual preference I know; but it is a cruel, unclean one.

Anyway, I've been a bit long-winded and I'm sorry. Here's the fundamental point. The men and women who chill my blood are the ones who seem to be in a perpetual state of festering self-hatred. They either take it out on others, or they're always seeking to be punished and humiliated.

My feeling is that, like heroin addicts, they are seeking out their own deaths, whether consciously or not.

Your friends will not be like that, I know. You wouldn't feel any more comfortable with the self-haters than I do. I'm have no doubt that I shall love your friends and I hope they take to me."

***

A phone call to Denise was all it took. She welcomed Bruno with delight, and hugged him ecstatically, arms most of the way around his waist, and head just a few inches short of his shoulder. It might have been comical if it had not been so moving.

Half an hour of breathless conversation in her company and Bruno might have been her oldest friend. I just watched quietly and happily as my dearest friend and my lover bonded. Bruno and Denise both looked at me now and again to see that I was all right, then turned back, reassured, to their conversation.

Denise, being Denise, had to organise an impromptu party to introduce Bruno to her small group of intimate friends. Being Denise, she did not tell them anything in advance, rightly judging that her friends would be as welcoming as she. If she rationalised it at all, she felt that anyone who could not welcome Bruno wholeheartedly did not deserve any consideration.

Years of concealment had left their mark on me, and I could not take such a cavalier attitude. Bruno was daily making me feel better about myself than I had ever felt in my life, and I never doubted Denise's loving support for a moment.

But I was frankly scared stiff at the thought of exposing myself in this public manner, especially to people I had been thinking of as close friends - yet I knew I had to take the chance. It as all very well for Bruno to laugh it off - he had little or nothing to lose. But I risked losing my business partner and closest male friend.

Five minutes after we arrived at Denise's house, with a couple of bottles of good vintage champagne, and Bruno's beloved Gibson guitar. Philip and Laura were already there, with their friend Judy.

Denise introduced them gaily.

"Darlings! I want you to meet Donald's smashing new friend Bruno. Bruno this is Philip, and his girlfriends Laura and Judy."

The girls smiled. Philip looked blank and then chortled loudly.

"Well Donald me lad. You've certainly kept this quiet. I wouldn't have guessed in a million years."

He slapped me on the shoulder with a big grin on his face, and held out both hands to take Bruno's in a warm handshake.

I gave centre stage to Bruno. He was more than ready to make the running. Bruno knew better than to respond to the hint of patronage in Philip's first words. This was just a manifestation of surprise, with maybe a bit of embarrassment mixed in.

What was important was what came next. He shook hands with the girls, impulsively hugging them both and kissing them on the cheek They giggled and blushed, and the atmosphere lightened immediately.

Then with Mediterranean style, he bowed to Denise, and kissed her hand. Even I could see that the battle, if there had been a battle, was won.

Just then Ivy arrived with Ginny, and a fresh round of introductions were made. It had been a real pleasure to me to meet them both a month earlier, when Laura brought them to a party.

Ivy, away from work, substituted her heavy horn-rims for discreet rimless spectacles, and immediately took ten years off her age. Her slightly curly auburn hair was dressed in an elegant French pleat.

She was immaculately made-up and dressed in a style that suggested that she did not have to live on her librarian's salary. Tonight she was wearing a creamy-coloured bias-cut raw silk sheath dress, with a little stand-up collar and a deep v neck that displayed a double row of beautiful pearls, matched by the pearl drops in her ears.

Ginny, on the other hand, looking as if she had just left the University campus, took off her camel-coloured duffle coat, to reveal a purple turtle-neck sweater and tapered jeans. The two women looked at each other with evident mutual admiration, and smiled broadly.

"We just met up five minutes ago," said Ginny amiably. "I nipped home to spend the day with Mum and Dad. Ivy met me at the station and we caught a taxi here."

"I don't suppose it made a blind bit of difference," Ivy teased. "It takes a general anaesthetic to get you out of those jeans."

"It didn't take any effort last night, did it? I couldn't get out of them fast enough."

Everyone laughed, and whilst they were still laughing, Denise introduced them to Bruno as Donald's lover. They both hugged him and me, murmuring congratulations to me with total and evident delight.

Ten minutes later, everybody had a drink to hand, and we were all eying one of Denise's delicious buffets on the side-table. Philip and I were discussing the Conservative plans to denationalise the Iron and Steel industry with Laura listening intently.

Bruno was sitting in the corner, on a straight-backed chair he had snaffled from the dining-room. Smoke was rising from his cigarette as he worked through the chords of All the things you are, humming quietly to himself. I noticed that Ivy and Ginny were sitting on either side of him. After a couple of choruses, Ivy began to sing in a sweet contralto: