Halstock (Part 1 of 2) (c) Oliver Jennings, 2004
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When I was in my mid teens, a few mates and I would sometimes earn a bit of holiday money doing odd jobs on a farm near Halstock. The farmer, a guy called Blakely, was always pleased to get some extra help stacking up bails of hay or picking a few rows of potatoes, and he'd pay us a couple of quid for every hour we worked which seemed like a lot of money to us ten years ago.
This story is about something that happened at Halstock when I was seventeen. It was October half term and it must have been the last time I worked at the farm: by the following Spring I was far too immersed in my A-Level revision to think about earning extra money and the following Autumn I went of to university.
Only two of us were there: me and a guy I knew from my Physics class called William. He was a tall, scrawny lad - not the kind of guy you'd normally expect to find helping out on a farm - and I think he only turned up because his mum was a friend of Blakely's wife and she'd pressurized him into it.
William was definitely a William: you just couldn't make yourself call him Will or Bill. He seemed perfectly matched to his full name's length and angularity, being long and pretty angular himself, and obviously enjoyed the slight air of formality occasioned by its use. That's not to say the guy was stuffy or boring: I guess he was pretty cool in his own way. He was just a little different: a guy who followed his own ideas and who was comfortable with his own style.
He turned up that first morning listening to some heavy metal band or other through his Walkman headphones, staring blankly into thin air as his head bobbed almost imperceptibly to the tinny rhythm.
Blakely walked straight up to him, sharply yanked off his headphones and started taking the piss out of him, ridiculing the name of the band on his black tee-shirt and the newness of his Doc Martin boots. William just stood there, shrugging and sneering. Eventually, when Blakely had finished, William replied, "This is called style, mate... I wouldn't expect a farmer to be able to appreciate its finer nuances..."
At that, Blakely had howled with laughter and the two of them, whether despite or because of the unpromisingly direct start, seemed to hit it off.
I noticed straightaway, even on that first morning, the dramatic impact William's presence had on Blakely. He was normally a no-nonsense kind of guy - a graduate agriculturalist in his early thirties with clear ideas about how a farm should be run - who'd tell us, as soon as we started slacking off, that he had a wife and young daughter to support and didn't have money to waste on freeloaders. "You don't come onto my land just to piss around making jokes about combined harvesters," he'd shouted at one of my mates before telling him to sling his hook. No work, no pay: that was his oft-repeated motto.
But as soon as William appeared that all seemed to dry up. William could stand and chat with him all morning - in fact, that's pretty much all he did - and Blakely just lapped it up. The most he managed was to mutter, "Hey, we better get on, mate..." But then, five minutes later, the two of them would be at it again. Meanwhile, yours truly was hosing out the manure skip and disinfecting the milking cups. Nice.
While we were eating our packed lunches on that first day and Blakely had gone off to get us some mugs of tea - another first - William said, "Rob's pretty cool..."
I swallowed my mouthful too hastily and spluttered, "Rob?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Blakely. That's his first name."
"No-one ever calls his Rob," I coughed, clearing my throat. "I didn't even know that was his name. He's always Blakely. Always has been."
William shrugged and muttered, dismissively, "Well apparently he isn't. He's called Rob. At least, that's what he said I should call him."
Blakely reappeared with the tea and I said, "Thanks, Rob."
He did a double- take and through me look as if to say, "Who gave you that right?" But he couldn't exactly say anything about it, after he'd been so buddy-buddy with William on the first day of meeting him, and so after that he became known as Rob.
It suited him more, actually. The name Blakely made him sound like he might be a cantankerous old fart - probably because that's what his dad, the notorious "Old Mr Blakely" had been - but calling him Rob made him sound a little more human. Which, for all his faults and foibles, he definitely was.
It was on the second or third day that the first thing happened between the two of them. It was pretty much nothing, in itself, but it stands as the first indication of what was about to develop between the two of them. The first hint that the no-nonsense, family-orientated farmer might actually have a bit of thing for seventeen year old lads.
I'd been rubbing a veterinary ointment onto a couple of cows while William did fuck all as usual. Rob was cleaning out the milking stalls while William chatted to him, the two of them giggling at odd intervals like conspiratorial schoolgirls. Occasionally Rob would ask William to fetch him a fresh carton of disinfectant or a bucket or something, but I think he did that entirely for my benefit - just to show that William was supposedly earning his money.
I must admit I was starting to get a bit pissed off by this stage.
I remember feeling like calling over to them, "Hey, William, why don't we do a swap, mate? You rub the mite lotion around these cows' arses and I'll flirt with the farmer. Since we're both getting two quid an hour, that seems pretty fair to me!" But I held back. I kind of knew something was happening, but I didn't really think it was a sexual, or even emotional, thing. I just thought Rob was being nice to William because of the friendship between his wife and William's mum.
But then Rob started going on about William having a 'ginger bush'. It was true that William did have ginger hair, or at least brown hair with a distinct copper-coloured hue to it, so I guess it was reasonable to expect his pubic hair to be of a similar colour. The fact that it might hadn't really occurred to me as an issue, but it seemed to have made a big impact on Rob.
He went on about it, joking that he'd always been a big fan of ginger nuts and other comments like that, while William giggled away.
It would die down and then Rob would start it up again. He tried to draw me into it but I just got on with sorting out the cows' arses. I was pleased I hadn't actually suggested a swap: this was getting a little too heavy.
Eventually Rob said the thing I knew he'd say: "Come on, then, mate. Let's see it. I've got to see how weird it looks..."
It had just been a matter of time.
William laughed, "I'm not showing you my bits... well, not for free..."
Rob grinned. "I'll give you a bonus!" Then he saw the look I threw him from behind the cows and added, quickly, "No, that's just a joke... but you could show us your ginger pubes without getting your dick out if you'd be embarrassed... I've just never seen red hair down there... it seems weird..."
William shrugged. "It's not weird. If I've got red hair on my head, it's obvious I'm gonna have red hair down there..."
Rob kept on. "Yeah, I know. But I've never seen it... I can't imagine how it looks."
I emerged from behind the cow, pulling my rubber glove off.
Rob tried to draw me again, saying, "Have you ever seen a ginger bush, Ollie? You want to see it too, don't ya?"
I shrugged. "Whatever..."
William laughed again. He was loving this. "Come on guys, I'm not gonna put on a peep show..."
I muttered, without being able to stop myself, "Yeah... we can't expect you to actually move to earn your wage, can we?"
William glared over at me while Rob just smiled, perhaps too carried away with the idea of seeing William's pubic hair to realise I was being catty.
Then William's annoyance turned to a sneer and he said, probably to piss me off, "Okay, then, Rob. I guess, if you insist..."
Rob nodded eagerly and William unbuttoned the bottom of his shirt and hitched it up a little. His stomach had a fine fuzz of red hair on it which looked slightly lighter than the hair on his head.
He undid his belt and the top button of his jeans. Then he looked up at Rob and asked, "Are you sure this won't freak you out..?"
Rob laughed, "Come on, mate. We've got to set up the thresher before dark. Get on with it..!"
William turned his back on us and fumbled around inside his jeans. He muttered, "Sorry, I'm just checking which pants I'm wearing... oh shit..."
Rob was insistent, "Come on... we don't care about those... just get your bush out..." He laughed, "Jesus! I never thought I'd be saying that to another guy...!"
He looked at me but I didn't smile.
William tucked his underpants down into the confines of his jeans. He said, "Those ones aren't for public view... a Christmas present from my mother..."
Then he turned back to face us, the top three buttons of jeans undone, and showed us the sprouting hair which crowned his pubes. The short tight curls of his bush were so orange they almost looked unnatural. The base of his cock and the tops of his balls were just slightly visible, but other than that it was all twisting red hair.
He laughed, "Cool, huh?"
Rob was agog. He said, "Jesus... I can't believe how red it is... do you dye the hair on your head?"
William shrugged. "No."
Rob reached out and stroked his fingers through William's pubic bush, like it was the most natural thing in the world to do. He muttered, casually, "I guess your head hair must fade more 'cause it gets more light on it. It's not as bright... this stuff's as orange as carrots..."
William smiled. "Yeah... not so much carrot top as carrot cock!"
Rob laughed and looked up at me. "Hey, have a feel of it, Ollie? It's so surreal..."
I shook my head. "No thanks, mate. I can cope with cows' arses, but this is going too far..."
William glared again.
Then Rob's hand jerked and yanked William's fly open. It was supposed to look accidental but it wasn't even vaguely convincing. The fact Rob said, "Sorry, mate... oh shit..." at exactly the same time that he did it, like it had been planned, didn't exactly help the illusion.
William's cock flopped out through his fly, looking heavy and swollen even though it was clearly predominantly limp. He called out, "Whoa..." and quickly pushed it back in through his fly.
Rob apologised again, saying, "Hey, sorry, mate... my hand just kind of twitched..." and William's face went as red as his pubic hair.
He buttoned himself up quickly, looking at the floor with embarrassment, but he said, "It's okay... don't worry about it..."
Then Rob said, "It's not like you've anything to hide though... that was a hell of a cock, mate..."
At that William stared up at his face. I'd have done the same after a comment like that, but on my face the expression would have been horror. On William's it was delight.
Rob smiled and nodded. "Yeah... I mean, not like I've seen too many..."
William laughed. "Well... er... thanks..."
Then Rob said, much more quietly but I still heard it, "Maybe you shouldn't have put it away so quickly..."
And I thought, "Oh shit. You've got a bit of thing going for young William, haven't you, Mr Blakely?"
The next thing that happened at Halstock took place a couple of days later.
I'd been given the enviable task of replacing the filters on the silage tank while the two of them got stuck into some heavy giggling and whispering in the barn. The story was that Rob was trying to fix some of the slats on the barn wall to stop rats getting in, but it didn't look like very much in the way of work was going on.
To be honest, I was pleased of being left on my own as it meant I didn't have to listen to the two of them talking crap to each other.
Problems started, though, when I accidentally unscrewed the wrong cap on the outlet of the silage tank. Filth started spraying everywhere, including over me, and I called out in panic for some help from Rob. He rushed in and, on receiving a good blast of muck over himself, commanded William to help me stem the spray of bilge from the outlet of the tank while he tried to re-attach the cap.
After a few minutes, during which the three of us became caked in pig manure to depth of several centimeters, the cap had been reattached and the spray subsided.
It pissed me off that Rob tried to pin the whole thing onto me. His instant response was to get angry and to try and blame me.
I reminded him, "Look, mate. I've no training in this and you know that. You should have been with me, telling me what to do... not with him..."
I emphasized the 'him' and we both knew why.
That shut Rob up for a few seconds.
William threw me a dark, ominous look.
Then Rob said, more brightly, "Okay, guys. No worries. We'll just get cleaned up and forget it..."
We walked over to the farmhouse - well, it was more like an ungainly, shivering waddle in our freezing cold shit-soaked clothes - and stripped off as quickly as we could in the back yard. Rob's wife nodded wearily as we filed through her kitchen in our underwear, our faces, hair and hands brown and stinking. She said she'd sort out some clean, dry jeans and shirts for William and I to go home in.
We piled into the bathroom and Rob took a bottle of antiseptic from the cabinet. He soaked some cotton wool with it and passed it to William, making soothing comments as the younger man cleaned around his eyes and nostrils. I didn't really appreciate the fact that he sorted William out first, even though I'd bore the brunt of the outflow, while I just stood there in my paisley boxers feeling like a gooseberry.
Then he passed me the antiseptic and switched on the shower to warm up. The cold room rapidly filled up with steam.
When William had finished cleaning his most vulnerable areas, Rob gestured for him to get in the shower. "Okay, mate, you take shower while we sort ourselves out."
William pulled his briefs off and got under the pouring water.
Rob was - quite literally - transfixed by the sight of William standing naked in the shower. He stared intently as the teenager washed the silage out of his hair and lathered shower gel into his arm pits, chest and around his cock.
I passed Rob the antiseptic but he just held it in front of him at an odd angle, unaware that the contents were almost spilling onto the floor. His mouth was open like he was mesmerized.
William looked over at him and smiled, perhaps a little self-consciously.
Rob seemed to come to his senses a little by the look William had thrown him and he quickly righted the bottle of antiseptic before anything was spilled. He said, as if to excuse his initial reaction, "I can't believe you said you haven't got a girlfriend, mate... it all looks pretty top-notch to me..."
William smiled broadly. "Well, you know what girls are like... they have some pretty narrow-minded ideas about how guys should look... they're not as easily pleased as you obviously are..."
Rob laughed. "Just 'cause I work around cows all day, doesn't mean I'm easily pleased... I just appreciate a nice body... whether it's on a guy or a girl..."
William's face flushed a little. He was a little too awkward to accept compliments easily.
Rob continued, "I mean, don't think I'm being weird. I just don't think it's wrong for one guy to say that another guy has a nice body..."
William smiled again and said, "No, I don't think that." Then he turned his back to us and rinsed his chest and crotch under the spray of water. His arse was fairly squat but the cheeks were round and firm.
Rob stared at it. His thoughts were reflected in the increasing size of the front of his plain white briefs. The mound in them, which had from the outset been quite impressive, began to swell further and the outline of his thickening cock became more clearly discernible inside them.
He turned to me and said, "You don't think that's weird, do you, Ollie... one guy saying another guy has a nice body?"
I smiled. "Of course not. William has a nice body. And a nice arse. It's just not having the same effect on me as it's having on you..."
He looked puzzled and I glanced down at his steadily-developing bulge.
I expected embarrassment but instead he grinned broadly. He laughed, "That's even more natural. If you find something attractive, you get aroused. You can't knock that..."
I shrugged. "I'm not knocking it. Just pointing it out."
William turned back towards us to see what we were talking about. He looked at Rob's crotch which now tented outwards at an angle of forty-five degrees. The hardening cock inside the farmer's underwear was now clearly visible as it strained to rise upwards and lengthen outwards against the white material.
William smiled and I saw that his own cock looked significantly longer than it had just seconds before. It had appeared small and shriveled when he'd climbed into the shower, an inconspicuous two-inch mushroom dwarfed by his bushy red pubic hair and his large, round ball sac. But now it hung down over his balls, four or five inches in length, still limp but clearly developing steadily.
Both Rob and I stared at him and he saw what we were looking at.
He continued rinsing his hair and back in the stream of water, and peered down at his cock. He muttered, "You guys talking about my body has had an effect on me too..."
His cock began to rise upwards from his balls, lengthening to six inches and thickening slowly.
Rob laughed, "Come on, William... admit it... you're getting turned on by the sight of the two of us standing here in our skimpies..."
William looked at him and smiled. He muttered, gazing intently into Rob's eyes, "Well... maybe that's half true..."
Rob chuckled and William got out of the shower, grabbing a towel to conceal his developing erection as quickly as he could.
Rob gestured me in but I demurred. I said, "You first, mate... it's your shower... unless you'd be embarrassed by showing us your stiffie...?"
Rob immediately pulled his briefs down, shrugging and saying, "Like I said, it's natural... I've no worries about that..."
His cock bobbed upward, thick and stiff and pointing outwards from his body at a right angle. It was six or seven inches long with a bulbous red head.
Now, as Rob stepped under the running water, it was William's turn to be mesmerized. While Rob rinsed the slurry from his hair and washed his face and body, William just stared at him; in particular, at the thick, stiff pole rising from between his legs. William continued drying himself and called over to Rob, "So you think it's natural for guys to get aroused when they see something they find attractive?"
Rob looked over at him, his eyes wincing beneath the pouring water from the shower. He nodded. "Yeah... of course..."
William nodded. He muttered, "Yeah. I do too." His back was towards me, the towel wrapped around his waist and lower abdomen, but it was obvious that he pulled the front of his towel open, giving Rob a flash of his cock.
Although I couldn't see it, it's appearance was made clear by the broad grin that appeared on Rob's face and by the lurch upwards that Rob's own cock made.
Nothing else happened in the bathroom that day. William pulled his briefs back on, with some difficulty, concealing the state of his cock from me by continually turning his back to me. Rob continued showering with his own erection raging unashamedly until a sharp knock at the door from his wife, depositing the clean clothes for us all on the landing, caused it to wither and die almost instantly. Perhaps that was the effect she always had on him; perhaps that was the reason for his developing interest in William.
I guess the two of them started - how shall I put it - exploring the physical side of their relationship sometime between that afternoon in the bathroom and the following Sunday. I don't actually know how it started - like I said, I let them go off on their own as much as much as I could - but I imagine it was pretty soon after the teasing conversation that had gone on while they were showering.
I suspect that, after I'd gone home that day and William had stayed on to do a bit of "overtime" (ironic chuckle), the two of them had driven off in Rob's Landrover and they'd had their first tentative gropes in some secluded layby.
But I don't know that for sure.
I just know that the next day was business as usual - that is, me doing the work and those too canoodling around like a couple of love-smitten rabbits - with me noticing a few more private jokes than usual and odd serious-sounding whispered comments being exchanged when they thought I was out of earshot.
In fact, I didn't notice anything concrete going on between them until the last day on which the three of us worked together...
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In the second, concluding, part of "Halstock", Rob and William become progressively closer.
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Comments/suggestions always welcome: southwest_ollie@yahoo.co.uk
Ollie's website (with photos to accompany the stories!): http://stories.remoworld.com