第 25 页

'Matthew tells me you are going to Harvard next year,` she tried again.

'Yes, I am. I mean, would you like to dance?'

'Thank you,' she said.

The steps that had come to him so easily a few minutes before seemed now to forsake him. He trod on her toes and continually propelled her into other dancers. He apologised, she smiled. He held her a little more closely, and they danced on.

'Do we know that young lady who seems to have been monopolising William for the last hour?' said Grandmother Cabot suspiciously.

Grandmother Kane picked up her pince-nez and studied the girl accompanying William as he strolled through the open bay windows out on to the lawn.

'Abby Blount,' Grandmother Kane declared.

'Admiral Blount's daughter?' enquired Grandmother Cabot.

'Yes.'

Grandmother Cabot nodded a degree of approval.

William guided Abby Blount towards the far end of the garden and stopped by a large chestnut tree which he had used in the past only for climbing.

'Do you always try to kiss a girl the first time you meet her?' asked Abby.

'To be honest,' said William, 'I've never kissed a girl before!'

Abby laughed. 'I'm very flattered!'

She offered first her pink check and then her rosy, pursed lips and then insisted upon returning indoors. The grandmothers observed their early re-entry with some relief.

Later, in William's bedroom, the two boys discussed the evening.

'Not a bad party,' said Matthew, 'Almost worth the trip from New York out here to the provinces, despite your stealing my girl.'

'Do you think she'll help me lose my virginity?' asked William, ignoring Matthew's mock accusation.

'Well, you have three weeks to find out, but I fear you'll discover she hasn't lost hers yet,' said Matthew. 'Such is my expertise in these matters that I'm willing to bet you five dollars she doesn't succumb even to the charms of William Lowell Kane.'

William planned a careful strategem. Virginity was one thing, but losing five dollars to Matthew was quite another. He saw Abby Blount nearly every day after that, taking advantage for the first time of owning his own house and car at seventeen.

He began to feel he would do better without the discreet but persistent chaperonage of Abby's parents who seemed always to be in the middle distance and he was not perceptibly nearer his goal when the last day of the holidays dawned.

Determined to win his five dollars, William sent Abby a dozen roses early in the day, took her out to an expensive dinner at Joseph's that evening and finally succeeded in coaxing her back into his front room.

'How did you get hold of a bottle of whisky while Prohibition is on?' asked Abby.

'Oh, it's riot so hard,' William boasted.

The truth was that he had hidden a bottle of Henry Osborne's bourbon in his bedroom soon after he had left, and was now glad he had not poured it down the drain as had been his original intention.

William poured drinks that made him gasp and brought tears to Abby's eyes.

He sat down beside her and put his arm confidently around her shoulder.

She settled in to it.

'Abby, I think you're terribly pretty,' he murmured in a preliminary way at her auburn curls.

She gazed at him earnestly, her brown eyes wide. 'Oh, William,' she breathed. 'And I think you're just wonderful!'

Her doll-like face was irresistible. She allowed herself to be kissed.

Thus emboldened, William slipped a tentative hand from her wrist on to her breast, and left it there like a traffic cop halting an advancing stream of automobiles. She became pinkly indignant and pushed his arm down to allow the traffic to move on.

'William, you musn't do that.'

'Why not?' said William, struggling vainly to retain his grasp of her.

'Because you can't tell where it might end.'

'I've got a fair idea.'

Before he could renew his advances, Abby pushed him away and rose hastily, smoothing her dress.

"I think I ought to be getting home now, William. But you've only just arrived.'

'Mother will want to know what I've been doing.'

"You'll be able to tell her - nothing?

'And I think it's best it stays that way,' she added.

'But I'm going back tomorrow.' He avoided saying, 'to school'.

'Well, you can write to me, William." Unlike Valentino, William knew when he was beaten. He rose, straightened his tie, took Abby by the hand and drove her home.

The following day, back at school, Matthew Lester accepted the proffered five-dollar note with eyebrows raised in mock astonishment.

'Just say one word, Matthew, and I'll chase you right around St. Paul's with a baseball bat.'

'I can't think of any words that would truly express my deep feeling of sympathy.'

'Matthew, right around St. Paul's!'

William began to be aware of his housemaster's wife during his last two terms at St. Paul's. She was a good-looking woman, a little slack around the stomach and hips perhaps, but she carried her splendid bosom well and the luxuriant dark hair piled on top of her head was no more streaked with grey than was becoming. One Saturday when William had sprained his wrist on the hockey rink, Mrs. Raglan bandaged it for him in a cool compress, standing a little closer than was necessary, allowing William's arm to brush against her breast. He enjoyed the sensation. Then on another occasion when he had a fever and was confined to the infirmary for a few days, she brought him all his meals herself and sat on his bed, her body touching his legs through the thin covering, while he ate. He enjoyed that too.

She was rumoured to be Grumpy Raglan's second wife. No one in the house could imagine how Grumpy had managed to secure even one spouse. Mrs. Raglan occasionally indicated by the subtlest of sighs and silences that she shared something of their incredulity at her fate.

As part of his duties as house captain, William was required to report to Grumpy Raglan every night at ten thirty when he had completed the lights-out round and was about to go to bed himself. One Monday evening, when he knocked on Grumpy's door as usual, he was surprised to hear Mrs. Raglan's voice bidding him to enter. She was lying an the chaise-longue dressed in a loose silk robe of faintly Japanese appearance.

William kept a firm grasp on the cold door knob. 'All the lights are out and I've locked the front door, Mrs. Raglan. Good night.'

She swung her legs on to the ground, a pale flash of thigh appearing momentarily from under the draped silk.

'You're always in such a hurry, William. You can't wait for your life to start, can you?' She walked over to a side table. 'Why don't you stay and have some hot chocolate? Silly me, I made enough for two, I quite forgot that Mister Raglan won't be back until Saturday!'

There was a definite emphasis on the word 'Saturday'. She carried a steaming cup over to William and looked up at him to see whether the significance of her remarks had registered on him. Satisfied, she passed him the cup, letting her hand touch his. He stirred the-hot chocolate assiduously.

'Gerald has gone to a conference,' she continued explaining. It was the first time he had ever heard Grumpy Raglan's first name. 'Do shut the door, William, and come and sit down!' - William hesitated; he shut the door, but he did not want to take Grumpy's chair nor did he want to sit next to Mrs. Raglan. He decided Grumpy's chair was the lesser of two evils and moved towards it.

'No, no,' she said, as she patted the seat next to her, William shuffled over and sat down nervously by her side, staring into his cup for inspiration. Finding none, he gulped the contents down, burning his tongue. He was relieved to see Mrs. Raglan getting up. She refilled his cup, ignoring his murmured refusal, and then moved silently across the room, wound up the Victrola and placed the needle on the record.

'Nice and easy doesiewere the first words that William heard. He was still looking at the floor, when she returned.

'You wouldn't let a lady dance by herself, would you, William?'

He looked up. Mrs. Raglan was swaying slightly in time to the music. 'We're on the road to romance, that's clear to say,' crooned Rudy Vallee. William stood up and put his arm formally round Mrs. Raglan. Grumpy could have fitted in between them without any trouble. After a few bars she moved closer to William, and he stared over her right shoulder fixedly to indicate to her that he had not noticed that her left hand had slipped from his shoulder to the small of his back. When the record stopped, William thought it would give him a chance to return to the safety of his hot chocolate, but she turned the record over and was back in his arms before he could move.

'Mrs. Raglan, I think I ought to...'

'Relax a little, William!'

At last he found the courage to look her in the eyes, He tried to reply, but he couldn't speak. Her hand was now exploring his back, and he felt her thigh move gently into his groin. He tightened his hold around her waist. 'That's better,' she said.

They circled slowly around the room, closely entwined, slower and slower, keeping time with the music as the record gently ran down. When she slipped away and turned out the light, William wanted her to return quickly. He stood there in the dark, not moving, hearing the rustle of silk-, and able only to see a silhouette discarding clothes.

The crooner had completed his song, and the needle was scratching at the end of the record by the time she had helped William out of all his clothes and led him back to the chaise-longue. He groped for her in the dark, and his shy novice's fingers encounted several parts of her body that did not feel at all as he had imagined they would. He withdrew them hastily to the comparatively familiar territory of her breast. Her fingers exhibited no such reticence, and he began to feel sensations he would never have dreamed possible. He wanted to moan out loud, but stopped himself, fearing it would sound stupid. Her hands were on his back, pulling hiro gently on top of her.

William moved around wondering how he would ever enter her without showing his total Lack of experience. It was not as easy as he had expected, and he began to get more desperate by the second. Then, once again, her fingers moved across his stomach and guided him expertly. With her help he entered her easily and had an immediate orgasm- 'I'm sorry,' said William, not sure what to do next. He lay silently on top of her for some time before she spokei 'It will be, better tomorrow!

The sound of the scratching record returned to his ears.

Mrs. Raglan remained in Williazn's mind all that endless Tuesday. That night, she sighed. On Wednesday, she panted. On Thursday, she moaned. On Friday she cried out.

On Saturday Grumpy Raglan returned from his conference, by which time William's education was complete.

During the Easter holidays, on Ascension Day to be "act, Abby Blount finally succumbed to William's charms. It cost Matthew five dollars and Abby her virginity. She was, after Mrs. Raglan, something of an anti-climax. It was the only event of note that happened during the entire holiday, because Abby went off to Palm Beach with her parents, and William spent most of his time shut away indoors with his books, at home to no one other than the grandmothers and Alan Lloyd. His final examinations were now only a matter of weeks away, and as Grumpy Raglan went to no further conferences, William had no other outside activities.

During their last term, he and Matthew would sit in their study at St. Paul's for hours, never speaking unless Matthew had some rnathernatical problem he was quite unable to solve- When the long awaited examinations finally came, they lasted for only one brutal week. The moment they were over, both boys were sanguine about their results, but as the days went by, and they waited and waited, their confidence began to diminish. The Hamilton Memorial Scholarship to Harvard for mathematics was awarded on a strictly competitive basis and it was open to every schoolboy in America. William had no way of judging how tough his opposition might be. As more time went by and still he heard nothing, William began to assume the worst.

When the telegram arrived, he was out playing baseball with some other sixth formers, killing the last few days of the term before leaving school, those warm summer days when boys are most likely to be expelled for drunkenness, breaking windows or trying to get into bed with one of the master's daughters, if not their wives. William was declaring in a loud voice to those who cared to listen that he was about to hit his first home run ever. The Babe Ruth of St. Paul's, declared Matthew. Much laughter greeted this exaggerated claim. When the telegram was handed to him, home runs were suddenly forgotten. He dropped his bat and tore open the little yellow envelope. The pitcher waited, impatient, ball in hand, and so did the outfielders as he read the communication slowly.

'They want you to turn professional,' someone shouted from first base, the arrival of a telegram being an uncommon occurrence during a baseball game. Matthew walked in from the outfield to join William, trying to make out from his friend's face if the news were good or bad. Without changing his expression, William passed the telegram to Matthew, who read it, leaped high into the air with delight, and dropped the piece of paper to the ground to accompany William, racing around the bases on the way to the first home run ever scored without anyone actually hitting the ball.

The pitcher watched them, picked the telegram up and read the missive himself and then he threw his ball into the bleachers with gusto. The little piece of yellow paper was then passed eagerly from player to player around the field. The last person to read the message was the second former who, having caused so much happiness but received no thanks, decided the least he deserved was to know the cause of so much excitement.

The telegram was addressed to Mr. William Lowell Kane, whom the boy assumed to be the incompetent hitter. It read : 'Congratulations on winning the Hamilton Memorial Mathematics Scholarship to Harvard, full details to follow. Abbot Lawrence Lowell, President! William never did get his home run as he was sat heavily upon by several fielders before he reached home plate.