Murder Most Fab Read online

  I enjoyed school and was moderately good at all subjects, but I had become so used to being responsible for everything at home that I was a little bemused by authority when I had the misfortune to encounter it. If I was told off at school, I raised my eyebrows and smiled — but I wasn’t told off very often. It wasn’t in my nature to be rebellious so I didn’t clash with authority, which helped to disguise the fact that I had no respect for it whatsoever.

  Besides, my mother’s illness and curious behaviour were common knowledge. I sensed that the teachers were particularly kind and tolerant towards me on account of the ‘situation’ at home.

  It took a while for the rumours to reach me — rumours that my mother would leave her bicycle in a hedge if a shirtless farmhand caught her eye. Then she’d trudge across the field to reach him, discarding her clothing as she went. The boys at school teased me about it, of course. I defended my mother’s honour in a couple of playground scraps, but my informers were full of admiration rather than scorn. They were hoping I’d invite them over so they could see what a brazen hussy looked like.

  Then she was said to have been spotted emerging from behind a haystack with three ‘Folkestone-type lads’. That she had come home a few nights previously and asked me to help her pick out the straw clogging her bicycle chain seemed to back up the story. And there was straw in the bath plughole next morning, too.

  It was true, then. Mother had rediscovered the free love and going-with-the-flow she had found in her youth — and after her breakdown she went with the flow in a big way, seemingly at the mercy of her sexual desires.

  The village was scandalized. She had always had a reputation for strangeness, but now she was regarded as little short of a loose-moralled nutcase. The shops along our modest high street were abuzz with sharp intakes of breath and the hurried exchange of fresh information, and always fell silent when my mother and I walked in.

  Mother wasn’t bothered to find herself the subject of village gossip. ‘I always have been. It’s nothing new. Pardon me for not having a blue rinse and cobwebs between my legs.’

  As a consequence, I wasn’t bothered either. I knew that my mother was part of nature, so whatever she was doing must be natural. When the winter cold kicked in and the marsh was bleak and windy, she enticed men home to do the deed. ‘This is Peter’ she’d say to me, or ‘Meet Bob,’ or ‘Charlie’s come round to inspect the joists,’ while she pulled some bewildered-looking man into the sitting room. ‘Why don’t you go and change your library books?’

  I was a bit put out that she didn’t have as much time to spend with me as she used to, but I was of an age now when I wanted to lock myself away and play records anyway.

  She applied the same come-one-come-all approach to men as she did to her garden. If it was green she’d nurture it, if it had feathers she’d feed it and now, if it wore trousers, she’d show it a good time.

  I grew accustomed to my mother’s menfriends and their frequent visits. I was fascinated by her never-ending quest and the variety of booty she brought back. After all, the village was agog and I had a ringside seat. I was even quite proud. If my mother did something, she did it well.

  It was with a curious synchronicity that my mother’s nymphomania coincided with my own sexual awakening. But while she was bright and blatant about her activities, puberty had darkened my private thoughts. They were as salacious as any other teenage boy’s, but I was confused: was I going through a phase or was I a homo? I didn’t think about girls sexually. I tried to, but nothing happened as it did when I thought of boys. Meanwhile hair sprouted in all sorts of places and my penis grew and grew I locked myself into the toilet several times a day to check its progress.

  Growing fast, clear-skinned and happy despite, or maybe because of, my secret gay fantasies, I was a sporty youngster, gregarious and handsome. Inspired by the outing with my grandmother to the Chinese State Circus and the lithe athlete who’d caught my eye, I spent what little spare time I had at the athletics club and found I was particularly good at the horse and the rings. I knew I enjoyed being among those well-honed young men, and I was aware that I looked forward to the showers — but I hadn’t yet joined the dots.

  I became best friends with a classmate called Vincent, the curly-haired, rough-and-ready, yet roguishly good-looking son of a family from Essex. They lived in a mock-Tudor house in a much-loathed new estate on the outskirts of the village. His mother —Vincent referred to her as ‘my old lady’ — drove a sports car while wearing a head scarf with dark glasses, and although he never said as much, I guessed that his father was spending a few years in prison. Together we talked about our absent fathers and the responsibility we felt towards our mothers. Most of all we talked about girls and sex. Or Vincent did.

  ‘I can’t wait to shag a bird.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said.

  ‘Beverley Dean let me feel her tits.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I’m gonna finger her next time.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Do you want to see a dirty magazine? Look at this bitch. She loves taking it up the arse.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said, then hurriedly corrected myself. ‘I mean, er, wow!’

  Vincent gave me a suspicious look and put away the magazine.

  With his cheeky grin and laddish swagger, Vincent had a starring role in my sexual fantasies, but although we sometimes stayed at each other’s houses, and my mind was filled with all sorts of fruity scenarios, I didn’t dare touch him. From his frequent comments about queers and poofs, I got the distinct impression that my attentions would be violently rebuffed.

  My heart would sink when he suggested we hang out at the village bus shelter — a mecca for local teenagers. Vincent would chat up one of the girls, back her against the graffiti for a snog and a grope. I was so worried my jealousy would show that I would slouch off home before a girl made a move on me.

  By the time I was sixteen I knew for sure where my feelings lay. I was gay and that was all there was to it. But how on earth was I going to meet a like-minded lad while I lived in a quiet Kentish village?

  Little did I realize that an innocent stroll down to the post office one Saturday morning would answer that question, and awaken enough powerful emotion to last me a lifetime.

  On that sunny spring morning, I was doing some shopping for my mother at the village post office and I took the opportunity to buy myself an ice lolly. I lingered outside the post office, working away at my raspberry Mivvi, idly seeing how much of it I could get into my mouth without gagging, when my eye was caught by a printed card in the window. There were plenty of others alongside —mostly scrawled in near-illegible biro and advertising an old fridge, a car or a cot for sale — but this one stood out. It was printed on thick cream card with a gold embossed crest at the top:

  Wanted: Enthusiastic youngsters required to work as weekend gardeners. No experience necessary, training will be provided. Apply the Head Gardener, Thornchurch House.

  My interest was pricked. I knew a lot about plants from helping my mother. Besides, Thornchurch House was the oldest and grandest residence in the village. Sitting high above us mere mortals on a majestic hill, it was painted a pale yellow, had a sweeping drive leading up to it, and grand pillars on either side of a large, oak double front door. The Thornchurches had lived there for generations, surrounded by their ample acreage of farm- and woodland. The current lord and lady were decidedly aloof, seen once in a while driving through the village in a Land Rover or Daimler; they never stopped for a chat with anyone. They seemed to think of us villagers as their inferiors and were so intimidating that if they ever pulled up outside the post office we would scatter out of their path like the pheasants they shot in the fields.

  Every Sunday Lady Thornchurch was to be seen in church, sitting in the pew reserved for the family, and giving off the cold, heartless air of the fervently religious. After the service, she shook hands curtly with the vicar but never lingered, although some of the more aspiration
al village ladies bobbed hopefully into her line of vision, trying to engage her attention. She wore a fur coat — a mortal sin to my mother, who hissed whenever Hilary Thornchurch’s name was mentioned. Lord Thornchurch was never seen in church but he once opened the village fête, and was a tall, stately, handsome man, as one would expect a lord to be, but brusque and standoffish.

  There were two Thornchurch offspring, a son and a daughter, but they were not allowed to play with the village children and seemed to have been away at boarding-school since they were about five. They were posh and mysterious. Regina, the eldest, was now working in London at a Mayfair art gallery, and Timothy was finishing his A levels at Eton.

  I read the card in the post-office window again. Here was an opportunity to get a glimpse inside the closed aristocratic world that lay behind the huge wrought-iron gates, and it appealed to me. Some pocket money would be welcome too, and I rather fancied the idea of myself as a son of the sod, sowing seed in the fertile earth.

  I finished my lolly, dropped the stick into the bin and decided that I would write to the head gardener that very day.

  Before long I was interviewed for the position, and the Sunday after that, I was set to weeding the flowerbeds adjoining the stables. It was a fresh, late-spring morning and I was chopping away dead daffodil leaves when I heard someone approaching. I stood up, secateurs in hand, and turned round.

  I saw a tall, beautiful boy with curly blond hair, piercing blue eyes and full lips. His eyes flickered as he looked me up and down. ‘Hello. I’m Timothy Thornchurch,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m Johnny,’ I said. ‘I’m gardening.’

  He hadn’t needed to say who he was — I already knew. I’d seen him once or twice, sometimes as a shaggy mop of blond hair in the back of a speeding Daimler, and once larking with his pals by the canal during the annual village raft race. He was fit and muscular, and I’d admired him from afar but never thought of talking to him. After all, I was a simple country lad and he was a sophisticated public-school boy, boarding at Eton in term-time and shut away in the grandeur of Thornchurch House during the holidays. Although we were almost the same age and hailed from the same place, I had barely given him a second thought. Before now I had never looked into his eyes. Even if I had, he was way beyond my reach — not that I was reaching.

  Now he stood in front of me in all his patrician glory. We stood five yards apart but remained motionless and stared for an inordinate amount of time. Then, almost unconsciously, I imitated one of my mother’s flirtatious little tricks: I licked my lips, pushed out my chest and half smiled. A moment later, Timothy said carelessly, ‘See you around, perhaps, Johnny,’ and walked off.

  I returned to my work and started to hum with excitement. Delightful chills were thrilling me all over. He was the most desirable thing I’d ever laid eyes. Steady on, I thought. Timothy Thornchurch wouldn’t be interested in me in a million years. After all, I was a nobody, someone employed to weed the garden — and not the whole garden at that. This wasn’t Lady Chatterley’s Lover, I reminded myself.

  But a few hours later, as I was walking down the poplar-lined driveway on my way home, he pulled up in a battered Land Rover. ‘Do you live in the village, Johnny?’ he said, with a grin. ‘Hop in, I’ll give you a lift.’

  ‘Thanks. I live in Cherry Lane.’ I climbed in next to him, and we roared off down the drive.

  Over the sound of the engine Timothy said, ‘I’m going to check the sheep on the knoll. Do you mind if we go up there first? Then I’ll take you home.’

  ‘That’d be great,’ I said, trying not to sound too enthusiastic. The idea of spending time with this beautiful boy enthralled me and sent quivers of pleasurable anticipation right through me. ‘Sheep are … lovely, aren’t they?’

  He gave me a bemused sideways look. ‘I don’t know if “lovely” is the word. One got her head stuck in a fence the other day. They’re too stupid to pull backwards.’

  ‘You’d think Mother Nature would tell them to do that,’ I said, anxious to agree with him.

  ‘No fences in the wild, I suppose,’ he said. His voice was posh, and with a languid, confident drawl that I guessed must come from his school. My own accent wasn’t as rural as it might have been — my grandmother’s influence — so I didn’t feel awkward. Besides, Timothy was friendly enough.

  I had the curious tingling feeling that something was about to happen, though I couldn’t guess what it might be.

  He parked on the grass verge of a narrow country lane where the trees formed a green canopy overhead. We got out of the Land Rover, climbed over a stile and made our way across several fields.

  ‘All this is ours,’ Timothy said, with a careless wave. ‘I don’t know where the boundary is but it’s pretty much as far as you can see.’

  ‘Goodness.’ I tried to imagine what it must feel like to own everything within sight, but it felt too strange. How could anyone own hedges and trees, fieldmice, clouds and the wind? I knew what he meant — the land itself— but he seemed to imply that every last thing on it belonged to his family and I didn’t see how that was possible.

  We walked in companionable silence until we reached one of the local landmarks: a craggy, ancient burial mound, grassed over and dotted with rocks, ferns and sheep droppings.

  ‘Is this yours too?’ I asked as we climbed up it.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not sure. Probably.’

  When we reached the top we looked out across the woodlands to the marshes and the still, grey sea in the distance.

  ‘So, Johnny, what about you? What do you plan to do with your life?’ he asked. ‘Are you going to be a gardener?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. I’m not very good at anything. If I was a sheep I wouldn’t have to do anything at all, just eat grass all day and sit in the shade in the summer. That would suit me.’

  ‘You could be a hippie. That’s the nearest you’ll get. Smoke grass and sit in the shade.’

  ‘That sounds nice, but I suppose I’ll have to earn a living somehow. Make some money to look after my mother. We live together, just the two of us.’

  Timothy looked envious. ‘You’re lucky not to have it all planned out for you. You have the freedom to do anything you like, be anyone you want to be. I have to fulfil expectations, or else.’ He gazed out to sea, then talked quietly, intensely, as if he was reciting a boring list. ‘It’s been drummed into me. Oxbridge, the law or politics, marriage, children, keep the family name going, inherit the estate continue the lineage … Everything must be just as it’s always been. Nothing less will do.’

  ‘But isn’t it nice to have money?’ I ventured. ‘It must be lovely to be rich.’

  ‘You’d think so — but it’s strange how little it matters when you’re unhappy.’ He sat down suddenly on the grass. ‘Do you have to rush off? Why not sit here for a bit and talk to me? I’ve got nothing to do at home.’

  I’d have cancelled a date with Tom Cruise to be next to him for five minutes. I sat down, already alive to his physical nearness in a way I had never been to anyone else’s. I inhaled surreptitiously. He had a grown-up smell, a combination of furniture polish and russet apples. ‘I’ve got nothing to do either,’ I said.

  ‘What makes you happy, then?’ asked Timothy, as if he already knew the answer.

  ‘Oh, well …‘ I was desperate not to say anything stupid.

  ‘Have you got a girlfriend?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ever had one?’ I shook my head, wondering where this was leading.

  ‘Have you ever been kissed?’ he asked softly, looking away from me, fiddling with a bit of flint and digging it into the ground.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you like to be? Because I’ve got the strongest urge to kiss you right now.’ He spoke casually.

  A delicious shiver ran right down me. ‘Feel free,’ I said. ‘Try it.’ At last he turned to me.

  We were sitting close enough for him to kiss me from where
he was, but he took his time. First he smiled, then an arm reached behind me and stroked the back of my head. He pulled me towards him, his face angling itself to the right slightly so our noses didn’t bump. Just before his mouth touched mine, his blond curls fluttered across my eyes like a dragonfly. I shivered as the kiss began. It was the softest, sweetest feeling. At first his lips brushed across mine from side to side. Then they pressed against me as he held my head firm. His tongue darted quickly into my mouth, but once there it began to swirl and wiggle, cajoling mine into activity too, until they were writhing about like two lizards having a mudbath.

  He pushed me on to the rough grass, and in the process slid down to my neck, which he bit and nibbled, not stopping even when I arched my back and giggled. Breathless, I opened my eyes and the sky was a brighter blue than it had been before.

  After I don’t know how long, he rolled off me and we lay panting side by side.

  ‘That’ll do you for starters,’ he said, eventually.

  Starters? I thought. Already I knew that my life would never be the same again. The implication that a main course might follow was, well, mouthwatering.

  Timothy jumped to his feet, as casually as if we had been sunbathing. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop you home, if you like.’

  Once up and strolling across the fields, we were again teenage boys who had only just met. Back in the car I wanted to stroke his thigh or hold his hand, but somehow I didn’t dare. The only hint of what had happened between us was the wink he gave me when I jumped out in front of the cottage. ‘See you soon, Johnny,’ he said with a big, open-mouthed smile.

  Later that night I lay in bed drumming on my lips with my fingers to bring back the electrifying tingle I had felt on the knoll. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t stop smiling even when I did. I woke up with my face aching, my heart fluttering, after blissful dreams of Tim kissing me, then kissing me some more. He filled my thoughts. I could think of nothing but him. What would happen next? Had that kiss been a moment of madness or the beginning of something wonderful? Never having been in a romantic situation before, I didn’t know the rules. I just knew I wanted another kiss.