Readers will be glad to know that after an episode without any sex, sex eventually appears in this piece.
*****
Chapter VIII John Pitsmoor arrives in Italy
John Pitsmoor arrived in Trabizona at the beginning of October. He was welcomed by Luke, who introduced him individually to each member of the chorus at the Teatro Musicale. Luke was anxious not to create the impression among the chorus that John was a favourite of his, so he assigned him to a mentor in the chorus, a lady by the name of Margherita Aspergilloni, a married lady in her 40s, in the hope that she would mother him and help him to settle down quickly. This had been suggested to him by Pauline van Houtenstok, the opera house's répétiteuse, who, although she had not seen John win the competition in Landewi Mawr, thoroughly approved of Luke's decision to appoint him. "He's the best English tenor since your father!" She told him.
John's ravishing good looks made him the target of a lot of attention from the younger women in the chorus. John must have been rather embarrassed by this attention, because after a couple of weeks he sought Luke out and confessed to him that he batted for the same side as Luke. Luke was rather surprised by this announcement, because he himself had a very low sense of gaydar. Accordingly, Luke introduced him to Lorenzo and Paolo, the two members of the chorus whom he knew to be gay. After a week or two of their company during the chorus's leisure breaks, the rest of the choir quickly got the message that John was gay. This revelation had no effect on Margherita, who continued to mother him as if he were her son.
For the first month in the chorus, Luke had arranged for John to have private lessons in conversational Italian, because although John's pronunciation was excellent, thanks to his year at the National Opera Studio in London, his vocabulary needed a lot of enlargement. Luke from the very day after John's arrival took him home twice a week to eat at lunchtime, and Olivia always welcomed him, and soon the children got to know him as well. Secretly, Giovanni, their eldest child, wondered if John was his mother's new lover, but realized after a while that John never stayed the night!
For John's visits, the family rule about only speaking English to English visitors was suspended, because it was important to get John into the habit of conversing in Italian. However, Bernardo, Tom's son, persisted in practising his English on John, and eventually the bizarre situation arose in which Bernardo would speak to John in English and John would reply in Italian! John loved to talk to the children in Italian, because he found that he could learn new words more quickly from their limited vocabularies than he could in adult conversation.
John was kept extra busy in his earliest weeks, because in addition to learning the choral parts of the first production of the new season, he was also learning as understudy the role of Alfredo in
La Traviata
, which was due to be the second production. Tom talked about him to Professor Arturo Sescantante, his former boss, now a colleague since Tom and also Ben Curtiss had now got chairs, though Arturo remained chairman of the department. Arturo was the man who, partly thanks to his great inherited wealth, had made gay scientists respectable in Italy, due to the number and scientific ability of gays in his department. Arturo was a prominent figure in civic life in Trabizona, and enormously popular in his department and in the gay community by his twice-yearly parties attended by all the chemists and all the gays in Trabizona at his villa just outside the city. He at once told Tom to bring John to the next of his monthly dinners, limited to his inner circle of gay colleagues.
Tom noticed that on his visits to their house, John seemed rather lonely, and Tom suggested to Luke to arrange to invite him to dinner on a Sunday to which he, Tom would bring a boy from the lab who was gay and without a partner. "Maybe the two boys might hit it off together," said Tom to Luke. Tom was always close to his Ph.D. students, who often confided in him without him ever asking nosy questions. This particular student had just finished his Laurea Magistrale, and had been accepted to do a Dottorato. He was a close friend of Luke's younger brother Tommy, who had met him in Padua where he had been a chemistry undergraduate, when the two shared an apartment during Tommy's Erasmus year. His name was Matteo Leotantini, and on one occasion when he had had a little too much to drink, he had confided in Tom that he was lonely. "Matteo is a sweet boy, rather a loner," Tom told Luke, "a brilliant chemist, but a shy personality."
Luke experienced a pang of jealousy, as he always did on the rare occasions that Tom expressed admiration of another male. He knew that his feelings were totally unjustified, as Tom was blindly, some might say obsessively, faithful to his partner. Luke seemed unable to recognize that Tom's comments on younger men were due to his fatherly feelings, rather than sexual lust.
Chapter IX Matteo and John visit Tom, Luke and Olivia
The following Sunday, Matteo and John arrived by bus in the early afternoon as the household had just got back from one of their regular visits to worship at the English church in Bologna. They were to dine and stay the night before leaving for work the next day. Maria, Olivia's housekeeper, was cooking a late lunch (or early dinner), which they tended to eat about 4 pm on a Sunday. Both the two younger men had previously been to eat separately, but not on a Sunday, so the children knew them, and the kids entertained the visitors with lively chat as the men drank Prosecco before the meal with their three parents. Caterina had taken a great liking to John and sat on his knee as they talked. Maria cooked typical Italian meals. On the weekends when Tom cooked the main meal, he varied the menu with both Italian and English dishes.
After they had eaten, they all went for a walk in the Parco Emilio Guzzone. Tom and Olivia walked ahead, and Luke followed closely with the children, leaving John and Matteo to follow at their own pace. The children wanted to feed the ducks on the park lake, so they had brought along some suitable food (not bread, which is bad for ducks). When the two young men reached the lake, they sat on a seat and talked together for some time before Giovanni and Bernardo dragged them off to throw food to the ducks. They then started to skim flat pebbles on the surface of the water under the guidance of John.
When they got back to the house, the two visitors assisted in putting the children to bed. The two boys needed a bath, but Caterina escaped with just a quick wash. While Olivia was busy making coffee, the four men divided the task of reading bedtime stories to the children between them. Each child could choose a reader and a story: Giovanni chose John, Bernardo chose Tom and Caterina chose Matteo. Bernardo insisted on an English story, the other children were happy with Italian. Caterina was first to be put to bed, and when she learned that they were staying overnight, she created huge embarrassment to the two visitors by asking if they were going to share a bed, "come padri nostri" (like our dads).
It was 8 pm by the time that the children were settled down to sleep. Luke dominated the evening's conversation by telling stories of the difficulties he had had with visiting artists. As some of them were international names that even Tom and Matteo recognized, and some of the happenings were very indiscreet, it was quite an entertaining evening. They drank Marsala until 11 pm, and then it was time for bed.
John and Matteo entered their bedroom and closed the door. "Would you like to do use the bathroom first?" said John politely to Matteo.
"Grazie" said Matteo and went into the bathroom. He was not long gone. John could hear the sound of him peeing, farting and cleaning his teeth and in five minutes Matteo reappeared wearing only a pair of underpants. "I hope you don't mind me to sleeping in my underpants," said Matteo. I didn't bring any pyjamas with me. At home I usually sleep naked in any case."
"That's okay" said John "I'm going to the bathroom now. I sleep naked too." John disappeared into the bathroom and again finished within a few minutes and emerged wearing underpants and carrying the rest of his clothes. Each got into their respective beds, having looked the other up-and-down. Each felt a sense of appreciation of the other's attractive figure, but hesitated on such a small acquaintance to make any kind of move. 'After all,' each of them thought, 'we do not know how the other one would feel if I made a pass.' Both were conscious that an embarrassing situation was possible if sexual advances proved unwelcome. Each was also old enough to realize that they had to be nice to one another, because at that stage in both their careers, their hosts had power over them and wanted them at least to be friends. Moreover, however attractive a superficial glance might seem, each was conscious that he did not want to upset or disturb the other, but each resolved to ask the other for another date at which no third party would be present.
Chapter X An embryonic relationship?
The weeks went by. John and Matteo had kept in contact and were going out together once or twice a week. They were of course limited to Wednesdays and Sundays, because John worked every other night. This was exactly the same problem that Luke had until he became Manager of the opera house.
Because they were both intelligent and thoughtful, they did not rush to get into bed together, but on their second meeting started to hold hands in the cinema or concert, and regularly kissed. It was clear that they were already more than friends, although they had never discussed their relationship. Neither had a large circle of friends in Trabizona.
