Forth into Light (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (3 page)

That the dazzle had begun to dim in recent years was the only possible explanation for her having succumbed to Ronnie. Her faith in George hadn’t wavered but the world’s had, making her question perhaps, without even knowing it, her complete and exclusive commitment to him. Whatever the reason, Ronnie had made her feel young and at the same time stirred an acute consciousness of the swift passage of years. George had been away on business in New York, a rare separation, she had caught Ronnie looking at Jeff in a way that made her feel that, as a woman, she could play a crucial role in his life, but nothing altered the fact that she had taken him knowing that he could offer her nothing that George didn’t give her, except physical novelty.

Was it as simple and degrading as that? Was Pavlo the logical next step? Had Ronnie’s rather ethereal romantic quality enabled her to disguise with sentiment what was in fact an animal hunger for new bodies? There was no fooling herself about Pavlo. She was obsessed, quite specifically, with his body, with the part of his body contained in his swimming trunks. His prick. His cock. His dick. She forced her mind to shape the words baldly in an attempt to exorcise its spell, but her lips parted and her breath quickened as she thought of seeing it naked, of holding it, of feeling it inside her, of surrendering to its massive power.

She straightened with an effort and brushed the hair back from her forehead and carefully poured herself another drink. More of George’s work. He had been encouraging her to drink ever since he had found out about Ronnie. She couldn’t remember when they had last had a sober evening together. Drink helped. She lifted the glass to her lips and swallowed the neat brandy in one gulp. She waited as the floor rocked gently beneath her and then some spring within her seemed to snap and her thoughts became loose and remote.

No, there wasn’t the slightest connection between Ronnie and Pavlo. She had been touched by Ronnie’s need and had responded as any woman might, offering herself to help him enter fully into his manhood. She couldn’t excuse her infidelity, but there had been nothing base about her motives. Her obsession with Pavlo was loathsome. She hated feeling like a sex-starved bitch in heat, but what normal healthy woman in her thirties wouldn’t be sex-starved if her husband denied her intercourse for a year? Normally, she might look at Pavlo and admire his superb body, as women ogled Charlie Mills-Martin’s impressive crotch, without wanting to fling herself on it. Sex on such a gross functional level had never had any meaning for her. Yet she could not check the beating of her heart when Pavlo presented himself for her inspection. That was what it amounted to, recognized by both of them almost from the first time he had appeared down on the rocks two weeks ago. He had apparently caught her eyes on him in an unguarded moment and had looked at her with a lazy, complacently knowing smile and thereafter had offered her a generous display of his person. When he climbed out of the sea, he had a habit of darting his hand into the front of his trunks to arrange himself. He soon took to seeking her eye simultaneously and when he caught it, his hand would linger a second longer, his sex would stand out more pronouncedly where he lifted it upright against his belly. When he squatted beside her to exchange some banality, his hand would stray to it, not reticently or for concealment but proudly, thumb and forefinger curved lovingly around stout columnar flesh to define its contours, his eyes willing hers to look. She resisted always, and always gave in, but permitted herself only the most fleeting glances.

Yesterday, he had strolled over to her, the contemptuously knowing smile on his lips, holding a towel casually in front of himself. When he was standing over her, he had dropped the towel to his side and put a hand low on his hip so that the tips of his fingers just touched something she refused to look at and said something about the weather. She felt all the muscles of her face tightening, her head seemed to swim and she found herself staring open-mouthed at what he had revealed for her inspection. It was clearly outlined, partially or fully erect, held against his groin by the stretched confinement of the trunks and barely contained by them.

Pavlo stood over her while she still stared, his remark about the weather unheeded, and swayed his hips slightly in cautious imitation of copulation. He had laughed and lifted the towel in front of him again and sauntered down to the sea.

What had he expected her to do? Get up and ask him to take her somewhere? She took a deep breath and shook her head angrily and refilled her glass. This one would get her safely to lunch. She drank it more slowly, in measured sips. When she had finished it a little smile played about her lips. Thank heavens for the heat. It put one right off the whole idea of sex. He would probably be quite disgusting naked. All that great male paraphernalia. Grotesque. Anyway, he had shown her all that he had to show, short of dropping his drawers. Perhaps they would move on to a purely spiritual relationship. She giggled as she recorked her bottle and returned it to its place among the condiments.

Up at the Mills-Martin house on the eastern promontory of the port, overlooking the whole town, the day began in cheerful tumult. The two adult male members of the household were, as was their wont, in bed together. Because of the heat, there was space between them but each held the other’s rigid sex in his hand, the grip firm and caressing when they drifted into consciousness, relaxing as they retreated once more into sleep. A sheet haphazardly covered their loins, their lean, smoothly muscled, heavily tanned torsos sprawled across the bed, tousled blond hair lay on the pillows, Peter’s golden, Charlie’s graying but streaked now with gold by the sun. They breathed deeply each other’s odors, to both of them the sweet odor of contentment and security and time-tested passion.

They awoke with a start as the children erupted into the room. Charlie rolled quickly onto his stomach, prepared for the onslaught. Peter was gathering the sheet more securely around him as Little Pete charged him and began to drum on his hip with his fists.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” the child shouted.

A glancing blow struck Peter’s subsiding sex. “Hey. That’s Daddy, all right,” Peter protested with laughter. “Cut that out.”

“Mummy says it’s time to get up,” Charlotte said.

Charlie groaned. “As usual, Mummy’s probably right,” he said from the depths of his pillow. The girl leaned over him and found an ear to kiss. He stroked her pale hair as she did so.

Little Petey had propped himself against his father’s slightly turned hip and dropped his arm over his thigh so that it rested near his crotch. Expecting this move, Peter had managed to tuck himself out of reach; the little boy had a way of exploring private areas, leaning against them, letting his hands stray to them. (“His father’s own son,” Peter had commented when the three parents had discussed it.) A small hand patted his stomach. “Where’s your toy now?” the child inquired secretly, conspiratorially, peering up from lowered brows.

“It’s vanished. It has a way of doing that.” The toy had been invented when Little Pete’s hand had made unequivocal contact with his erection one morning; he had claimed to have a toy in bed with him.

The wide inquiring eyes grew lively now in anticipation of a new game. Little Pete shook his head uncertainly, torn between skepticism and the will to believe, and smiled slyly. “No, it hasn’t. How can it?”

“It just does. It comes and goes. I never know when it’s going to turn up.”

Petey settled more of his weight on his father’s hip and plucked excitedly at the sheet. “That would be interesting. Why can’t I have one like it, Daddy? You said you’d give me one.”

“Later. You have to be older to have any fun with it.”

“Will you give Lottie one before me?”

“No. A girl wouldn’t want one. It’s strictly for boys.”

The bed began to shake with Charlie’s silent laughter. Petey threw his head back as he gazed adoringly at his father and heaved a great sigh as if he could scarcely contain his delight. Peter was constantly struck with wonder as he caught glimpses of himself in the lively eyes, the tilt of the nose, the generous mouth, the shape of the golden head. Everybody found his son beautiful.

“He’s so
dumb
,” Charlotte said, coming around to the bed to kiss Peter on the cheek. She was a poised, grown-up young lady of nine. Peter put his arm around her and seated her on the edge of the bed beside him. Little Pete went racing off around the room making dreadful noises in his throat. He was a jet or a rocket or perhaps the hydrogen bomb.

“Are you really going to be forty your next birthday?” the girl asked Peter.

The doleful note in the question made Peter laugh. He lifted his hand to her face and let his fingers linger on her cheek near her eyes where she was unmistakably Charlie. “Somebody’s been giving away my secrets,” he said. “I have a whole month still to be thirty-nine.”

Charlotte gazed at him with commiseration. “It sounds so old. I just can’t believe it.” Her incredulity was shared by everybody who knew them. They had taken good care of their bodies and could still wear clothes they had had for ten years; they kept a few serviceable museum pieces that dated back to when they had first met and fallen in love. Charlie was acquiring a slightly weathered look and his graying hair marked him with years, but in the right light Peter retained an unearthly youthfulness that made people’s mouths drop open when they learned his age.

Peter laughed at the lovely solemn little face that was studying him with such concern. “Just wait. There isn’t all that much difference between us. When you’re fifty, I’ll only be about eighty and then the joke will be on you.”

Little Pete exploded in a series of fearsome detonations and ended up on Charlie’s side of the bed. He smoothed the sheet over Charlie’s bottom so that its contours were precisely delineated. “Hey, Daddy,” he said, stroking a buttock. “Why do you and Daddy sleep in the same bed? Kyria Tula says daddies usually don’t.”

Charlie heaved himself over onto his back. “Because we like to, dopey,” he asserted.

“Why else?” Peter agreed. “Why do you like to get into Mummy’s bed? It’s nice sleeping with people you love.”

“He doesn’t understand anything,” Charlotte pointed out with slightly bored forebearance.

“Then why don’t you let Mummy get in with you?” Petey persisted. His sturdy little body was largely hidden by the bed. Eyes full of mischief searched for an answer across Charlie’s sheeted and blameless stomach.

“She doesn’t like the way we snore,” Peter explained.

The look of eager anticipation lighted the child’s face once more. “Show me, Daddy,” Little Pete urged, already beginning to do a jig of hilarious appreciation. Peter snored hideously. Charlie joined in. They all dissolved in paroxysms of laughter and rolled around on the bed together.

They had expected questions from the moment they had decided to create a family with the unorthodox material at hand (
decided
to live with and for these miracles? what loss would they be answerable for if they had failed to do so?) and had resolved to answer them as truthfully as possible. Martha had already explained to Charlotte that Charlie was her father, but that she had been married to another man so that when she was free she had married Peter in order to have Petey.

“It amounts to the same thing,” Martha had pointed out, unconscious that there was anything extraordinary in what she was saying. “They’ve always been together. They’re like brothers, only even more so. When you’re older and understand more about love you’ll realize how rare and wonderful it is.”

The adoption of a common name had consolidated the family. It had been Peter’s idea to go through the legal formalities of combining his and Charlie’s surnames into a hyphenated amalgam so that the children, with Martha’s former husband’s consent, were legally brother and sister, Martha was legally the mother of both, and Charlie and Peter achieved a sort of official sanction to their extralegal relationship. This had so nicely confused the situation that few remembered for long who was what to whom. There were those who believed that Charlie and Peter really were brothers despite the fact that they were openly and unabashedly in love with each other. Some people were convinced that Martha had worked it out somehow so that she was in enviable possession of both husband and resident lover, though they were inclined to be vague about which was which. On the island, having notably failed to live up to their explosive and scandalous potential, they were regarded as the essence of sanity and respectability. It was generally and reassuringly felt that as long as the Mills-Martins were there, everything would be all right.

“All right now,” Charlie said, disentangling himself from immature arms and legs. “Go tell Mummy you’ve made complete nuisances of yourselves and that we’ll be down in a minute.” Charlie swung Charlotte into the air above him and Peter caught her and landed her on her feet. Petey planted a hand firmly and painfully on Charlie’s genitalia as he pushed himself off onto the floor. The children scampered off across the big, white, shuttered room and disappeared.

“I’ve always thought the Mills-Martins sounded like a circus act,” Charlie said with a chuckle. They joined hands under the sheet. “God. That’s all I needed after last night. What are we going to do about the Leightons?”

“I don’t know. I think maybe we’re going to have to start keeping them in separate cages. I haven’t had a chance to tell you. Young Jeff sidled over to me in the heat of the battle. He wants to have a serious talk.”

They turned their heads simultaneously on their pillows and exchanged a look. Charlie lifted his brows. “Has the hour struck at last?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Dimitri?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“I hope not, poor kid. I’m afraid Dimitri is not one of our greatest successes. Could it, by any chance, be you he’s interested in?”

“More likely you—more of a father figure,” Peter said with a spurt of laughter.

“Well, as the elder statesmen of international homosexuality, we have our responsibilities. I hope you’ll be able to help. Jeff’s a good kid.”