My cousin was a year or so older than I, but he looked considerably more in his uniform — khaki jacket, jodhpurs, high-laced boots, peaked cap. Peter was a big bland fair-headed fellow, with round unformed features and permanently rosy cheeks. We made a strong contrast side by side — almost two different ethnic types: prototypical Celt and pink and ruddy Anglo-Saxon. He was perfectly friendly but I instinctively disliked him, despite all the help he later gave me. I have no idea why; it was an honest — or rather, a simple — prejudice. Perhaps it was just his soft burliness, his unwarranted easy manner, as if to say, “Life holds no surprises for me.” However, we shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. Faye told him I wanted to join a public school battalion and, to my vague embarrassment, he energetically shook my hand again and said, “Congratulations.”
Thank God, he declined to come on the picnic, despite his mother’s entreaties. But I should have recognized that his arrival altered everything. Here was her son; my role as “nephew” was firmly reestablished, just as her’s was as “aunt” and “mother.” All this was lost on me: that is the kind of person I am.
We hired our punts at the boathouse at the bottom of Bardwell Lane. The sky was cloudy but the air was sweet and cool. There was a faint breeze. Thrushes and blackbirds sang in the horse chestnuts, great green continents of leaves.
It took me about ten minutes and about the same number of collisions with both banks of the river to gain some sort of insight into the dynamics of punting. Eventually we made our way cautiously but not too erratically upstream. My clumsiness had afforded Faye and the girls much amusement and our mood as we set off was, I thought, ideally merry. They laughed again, but more circumspectly, when we were overtaken by a punt energetically and skillfully propelled by a one-armed soldier (Oxford was one large convalescent home).
We punted for half an hour up the placid Cherwell as it wound through the fields and water meadows of Kidlington. Presently, we found a suitable spot and moored the punt. We spread two traveling rugs on the bank and unpacked the wicker picnic basket. We ate cold chicken and game pie, Stilton and apples. The girls drank fizzy lemonade, Faye and I a cider cup. The weather improved, grew milder; we got some sun. The day seemed summery but there was a latent spring coolness that made it invigorating and kept away the flies and wasps. I drank too much cider cup deliberately.
After lunch I played a furious game of tag with Alceste and Gilda while Faye read a book. I ran and shouted, twisted and turned, tiring myself and them. Soon I felt flushed and sticky with sweat. I persuaded the girls to wander some way down the bank to feed a family of ducks that were swimming there. I went back to Faye. She had erected a small ivory-colored parasol with a long fringe and sat beneath it, her back resting against a pollarded willow. She was wearing a flared sand-colored golfing skirt and a coral blouse with a scalloped collar. A wide straw hat lay on the rug beside her. She looked cool and serene. I looked at her. The dark shadows beneath her eyes. I gulped cider cup. A mild fire of alcohol flared in my body. Now or never.
“Isn’t it lovely?” she said. “It’s ages since I’ve done this. I’m so glad we came.”
I sat down beside her, panting slightly.
“You look hot,” she said.
“I think I’m going to have a dip. Coming?”
“No fear!” she laughed. “Brave you. Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
We had brought swimming costumes as more of a gesture than indication of serious intent. Faye halfheartedly tried to dissuade me, but I snatched up my costume (Peter’s) and went farther down the bank, away from the girls. Behind a clump of hawthorn I slipped off my clothes and pulled on the costume. It was a little large; the shoulder straps kept slipping off. I thought about diving, but I did not want to distract the girls from their duck feeding, so I waded in. The water was icy — it seemed to drive the breath from my body. Here the Cherwell flowed torpidly; there was barely a perceptible current. I sank beneath the brown water up to my chin and felt the cold band my skull like steel. Out in midstream I looked over to Faye. She was watching. I waved.
“What’s it like?”
“Freezing!”
“Told you!”
I felt my throat contract in shocking anticipation of what I was about to do. I gave it no thought; there was only one path I could take. I swam to the side and hauled myself out. Behind the hawthorn I stripped off my costume. I looked down at myself. The black hair on my chest and stomach was slicked into a flat wet pelt. I could hardly see my cock and balls, so shrunken were they from the cold. My head was entirely empty of thoughts. I was a creature of guts and glands.
I heard a bird call, the distant quack of ducks, Gilda and Alceste’s thin cries of pleasure. I massaged myself back into some approximation of virility, feeling the warm blood surge. I still kept all thought at bay. I had to show her I was no longer a boy.
“Aunt Faye? Could you bring me a towel, please?”
Through the screen of leaves I saw her get to her feet, take a towel from a canvas bag and saunter over, smiling. I held the sodden costume in front of me. She came round the bush. Her face instantly tightened with surprise. She offered me the towel.
“There you are.”
As I took it I let the swimming costume drop. Just for an instant there was nothing there. She saw. I wrapped the towel around me.
“Faye, I—”
She slapped my face. Once, very hard, jerking my head round.
“Foolish … stupid …” she said in a clenched trembling voice, and walked away.
I tasted the vomit in my throat. Game pie, cider cup. I actually retched once or twice. I threw away the towel and dressed, hauling my clothes over my damp body. I tried desperately to draw up from my numb shocked brain something that would stand as a plausible explanation. I walked over, toweling my hair to hide my face. The cheek she had slapped felt pulsing and scorched. I was shivering, but not from the cold.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I … I just wasn’t thinking. It was a terrible mistake. You see, at school we … It just fell from my fingers. I was cold. It was a mistake, Aunt Faye. Honest, I swear.”
She would not look up from her book.
“Very well. Let us never talk about it again, John. It’s forgotten. Nothing.”
But it was not forgotten. How could it be? Thank God for the girls. They allowed us a formal passage of communication; we could busy ourselves with them and their demands. Faye very quickly seemed as normal as ever, and so did I, I suppose, in an attempt to sustain the credibility of the excuse. But the incident stood between us like a wall. What was worse, she contrived never to be alone with me again. I never had the opportunity to elaborate on that first feeble explanation. I could not apologize, could not explain.
Why did you do it? I hear you ask. What in heaven’s name did you think would happen? I know, I know. It makes no sense. I put the ghastly blunder down to that dangerous flaw in my nature and my naïveté. All I wanted, desperately, was to make love to her and my time was running out. But I cannot condemn myself utterly. I may have been a fool, but at least I was an honest one. I think I can safely say that this unhappy combination has held true for the rest of my life.
I think now I would have survived the shame and indignity if I had had enough time to reimpose the original basis of my relationship with her. After all, I was flesh and blood, her dead sister’s son, and she was genuinely fond of me. I am sure that if only for her own peace of mind she would have come to accept my explanation uncritically. People do make mistakes. And adolescents are notoriously and spontaneously fallible when it comes to affairs of the heart. Perhaps — even — she might have allowed herself a quiet smile of pleasure, of female pride, at her nephew’s evident infatuation. Perhaps she might even — in a private moment — have tried to recall the incident itself. My muscled, slim, glossy-haired body, dark glistening loins, the pale pendulous dripping genitals … But I needed time. I needed days at least to engineer such a rapprochement, but that was exactly what I did not have. Donald Verulam was coming.