THE MASTERY OF TABLE-TURNING
[THE STORY SO FAR - Forced to relive his humiliating rugger-field exposure for the unblinking lens of the television camera, Alan Watson is further unsettled by unchannelled signals he is picking up from fellow colleague and games master, Dave Whalley. How much does the man know? What does he suspect? And where does Alan's future stand if Whalley's suspicions are confirmed? In the meantime, there is Richard Mayhew to bother about.]
CHAPTER EIGHT - Page Three Pin-Up
"Alan? It's Angela. Angela Mayhew. Didn't you get my message?"
I apologised, and told her there had been several distractions since I had received the note at school informing me of Richard's migraine and asking that I ring her back.
"How is he?" I asked.
"He's much better, but he's not right yet, Alan. He doesn't want to go back to school though. It's not like him to want to stay off. It's almost as if he doesn't want to face something - or someone. I wondered if you'd any idea if there was something that had upset him."
I was so glad this conversation was happening over the telephone. I could not have disguised the expression on my face from her.
"I can't think of anything in particular, Angela," I lied, that mental picture of Richard and me both stripped naked, on the floor of her lounge and being forced to masturbate each other to a shuddering climax, flashing like a beacon in my brain.
"I was wondering if I could ask a favour, or is it the most colossal cheek?"
"What?" I asked, very much on my guard.
"I was wondering if you could just pop in, apparently casually, to have a word with Donald and me - just a social call, you understand. You were in the area, say, and thought you'd call, to see how Richard was, perhaps?"
"I - I don't know. I think he might smell a rat," I countered warily.
"Please, Alan. He's definitely got something on his chest. He might tell you if you came by."
I upbraided myself for the mental image I had conjured up of his bare chest the moment Angela had mentioned it. I had to concur it was just feasible that seeing me privately might just make his return to school easier.
"I have an essay of his. I could just pop in on the pretext of dropping it off, I suppose, before our next private lesson," I suggested hesitantly.
"You're a darling man, Alan. There'll be a large Scotch waiting for you."
Donald Mayhew came to the door when I got there.
"Come in, man, come in!" he said excitedly. "You're on the news!"
With an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, I followed him through to the lounge. Richard looked up from the sofa, startled at my arrival.
"I was just passing," I began unconvincingly, "and I had this marked essay of yours. I didn't know whether you'd be back in school tomorrow, so decided to pop in with it so you could work on it at home in case you weren`t." I ended, smiling lamely.
"Well, isn't that a kind thought?" Angela added, full of false bonhomie. "Donald, get Alan a whisky for his pains."
I looked at Richard. He was wearing a pair of light marl grey jersey jogging or sweat pants, I think they are called, with elasticated ankles, and he had on a short-sleeved white pique polo-shirt which most becomingly showed up the bronze tan on his muscular forearms dusted with golden sun-bleached hair. He looked gorgeous.
"How's the invalid?" I asked him.
"Fine, thanks," he offered a bit gruffly, avoiding my eyes. He was definitely uncomfortable in my presence.
"He's not fine at all, Alan. He'd be at school if he were fine," his mother interjected. "Anyway, what's all this about you being the hero of the hour, Alan ?" Angela wanted to know, tactfully changing the subject - as well as the object of interest - at the same time.
Apparently there had been some film clip of me haring up the rugger pitch as a taster for the item coming up later in the broadcast. I briefly explained what had happened during the match two days earlier, and ruefully admitted that I had had to undergo the whole embarrassing ordeal that very afternoon for the benefit of the television cameras as well as having had to pose for the local paper the previous day.
"You had to be naked?" Richard asked, an expression of horror on his anxious face.
My heart missed a beat. He coloured a little and looked back at the television screen. Donald returned with my whisky.
"I see you're a Page Three Pin-up as well, my lad!" he said, laughing as I accepted the glass from him.
I was in fact front page news. Across three columns was a full length photograph, in colour, of me wearing absolutely nothing except an oval rugby ball held in front of my vitals.
"Oh Alan!" Angela screamed in glee, grabbing the evening paper from Donalds grip. "I must have a copy of that and get it framed. Why, you sexy beast! I remember thinking Cor!' when I saw you in your wet undies coming out of the pool!"
My insides were churning.
"There's more inside," Donald said.
My heart sank again as I caught sight of a rear view shot of me running - nothing concealed at all.
"Oh my! Why, Alan, you have the cutest bottom ever!" she cried with enthusiasm.
I was squirming with embarrassment. So was Richard. I could sense he was as he sat alongside me on the sofa.
"Quick, Richard!" Angela ordered. "Put the video onto `Record'. We must catch Alan's moment of glory for posterity."
I sat in a silent daze as that afternoon's events were played out again before me on the small screen like a recurring nightmare. Donald and Angela hooted and screamed their appreciation of every further revelation. The long shot of me belting up the field to the loud strains of the Chariots of Fire theme-tune had been, I must grudgingly admit, been most cleverly intercut and smoothly edited to great effect. My clothing apparently dissolved, item by item. As I ran towards the camera, the over-stretched pouch of my jock-strap in slow motion bounced from hairy thigh to hairy thigh provocatively and suggestively, and in remarkable detail considering the director's assurances that I should be spared graphic exposure with it being a family programme.
Angela whooped in delight at the shot of my jockstrap flying through the air and landing on Geoff's head. I felt Richard react and snatch a startled look at me as he realised the significance of who, for one, it was, responsible for my uncovering. His mother hooted in girlish glee at the final whirling close-up of me stark naked lying on the ground.
"Oh just look at Watty's gorgeous botty! I could just bite it! Its so lovely and furry!" she almost screamed. I heard Richard groan. I cast him a look. He was scarlet in the face with embarrassment for me. My heart softened. "Donald's backside looks like so much cold tripe that's been left out on the butchers slab all night," she added with a sideways smirk. Donald took it in good heart.
"You can have a chew on it whenever you like, my darling," he said with a laugh.
I nervously swigged back my whisky as the programme came to an end.
"Oh re-wind it, re-wind it. I want to see it again!" Angela cried, almost beside herself.
"Well, I shall pass on that, if I may?" I said, a touch frostily as Donald, grinning, crouched before the set to carry out her command. "I wonder if I could just have a moment of Richard's time to discuss his essay with him before I go?"
I felt his reluctance to be alone with me, but it was measured by his equal reluctance to sit beside me and watch a repeat of such humiliating footage, so reminiscent of our joint experience of enforced nakedness. We moved into the small room across the hall that they rather pretentiously called the study. It had an antique bureau and a long bookcase that qualified it for such a sobriquet, I suppose. Richard ushered me in and closed the door behind us.
In a rather brusque, business-like manner I began summarising my thoughts on his piece of work immediately as I handed it back to him, pointing out various omissions and suggesting suitable appendages. He stopped me with a raised hand, a look of anxious urgency on his handsomely troubled face.
"Have you received a photograph from them . . . . of . . . . us?" he asked with much effort.
I nodded. I knew to which one he referred and was grateful for the lack of description.
"What are we to do?" he almost whimpered in abject helplessness.
I shrugged.
"As I see it, there is not a lot I can do without risking my very livelihood," I said solemnly. "I have reached the inevitable conclusion that I have no option but to go along with their demands until they tire of the hold they imagine they have over me."
"Just to grin and bare it, you mean?" Richard added with a touch of gallows humour.
I vividly recalled my enforced stripping in the pub toilets the previous night.
"Exactly so. I just want you to know how awfully sorry I am that you were involved in what was my humiliation," I began.
"The thing I can't get over is how excited I was," Richard interrupted.
He cast his eyes downwards and then met mine again. I followed his gaze and saw with amazement the fabric of his jogging trousers stretched out before him.
In puzzled awe, I searched his face, trying to read every tiny nuance of his expression. Gently, he took hold of my hand and guided it towards his bulge.
"You have caused this right now. Seeing you stripped on the rugby field on television. Alan, if I'd have had to sit through it again then, when Mum wanted a replay, I'd have come in my pants - I know!"
There was a definite break in his voice. His bottom lip was trembling with suppressed emotion. He pushed himself towards my hand and my instinct was to recoil in horror.
"It's been bad enough replaying in my head what happened between us - what we were forced to do to each other, but I found it one hell of a turn-on. I'm so hard nearly all the time - every time I think about it, and I think about it a lot! That's why I can't come back at the moment. They'd find out - make things worse."
My mind was seething. As he rubbed himself against my hand, I snatched it away.
"No, you mustn't, " I began.
"Mustn't what?" He filled the pause with a question.
I didn't know. My brain was physically hurting, swelling, about to explode.
"You must stop thinking about it, " I stammered.
"Can you stop thinking about it? Every time I think of you now, I think of you naked. Looking at you standing here - it seems so wrong that you've got clothes on. So wrong that I`ve got clothes on too. We should be naked together."
"Stop it! Stop it this minute!" I was panicking.
Suddenly I jumped as I felt his hand touch me. I grabbed his wrist in alarm and, wracked with guilt at my arousal being discovered by him, held it away from me.
"You see? You're as excited by all this as I am!"
"I must go," I said with determination, turning swiftly away and moving towards the door. Smoothing down the front of my trousers firmly, my back to him as I got to the door, I opened it.
"Read my comments and try a re-write of the marked passages, and I think you'll be able to see for yourself that it is comparatively easy to conspicuously improve your structure," I rattled off in business-like fashion as I stepped into the hall.
"Alan," he pleaded soulfully. "Please! We must talk this through. It's doing my head in!"
I strode on and popped my head round the lounge door.
"I'm off now, both of you. Thanks for the whisky," I called jauntily, belying my inner feelings.
"You're sure you won't have another?" Donald called back.
"Stay to dinner, Alan. It's a casserole. There's plenty," Angela called after me.
"No thanks. I can't, I'm afraid. Places to go; people to see," I lied.
As I walked back past the open study door, I heard Richard say urgently:
"Alan! I think I love you!"
I turned, horrified.
"Nonsense!" I said after a long pause.
My eyes ran up and down him, registering that he was still sexually excited. And then I said the silliest thing of all.
I said:
"It's - it's . . . . just hormonal. That's all."
He stood there, looking wounded, and I turned and left the house.