The Stars’ Tennis Balls by Stephen Fry Read Free Book Online

won’t be forced to go on kibbutz August. Three, they’re British, I won’t have to talk about my “feelings” like I did after Mom died. Four, these guys are obscenely rich. Aunt Hillary’s family were multimillionaire retailers or something, so I won’t be in that shotgun shit-hole in Brooklyn. I’ll have a car. We’ll vacation twice a year. Barbados and Hawaii.’
    But oh no…
    ‘This will be your bicycle. We don’t believe in cars.
    ‘E. P. Thompson is delivering a lecture on Cultural Imperialism to the Fabian Society, we’ve forty-five minutes to get there.’
    ‘We booked a villa in the Tuscan hills. Porsh wants to see the Duccios in Siena and Hills is collecting material for her next novel.’
    ‘Gordon, let’s consider how you feel about Rose and Leo’s death, yeah?’
    ‘You’ll enjoy it! CND marches are always good fun. And they’re making a difference too.'
    What a fucking joke. But worst of all was …
    ‘I’ve got this boyfriend…’
    ‘His name is Ned …
    ‘There! That’s him, sitting in the middle, holding a cricket ball …’
    ‘Look, Gordon! He’s done a drawing of himself bored in the middle of a French lesson…’
    ‘Look at that smile…’
    ‘Look, another letter already…’
    ‘Look…’
    Ned fucking Maddstone.
     
    Ned leant over the
Orphana’s
gunwale and felt the spray fly up into his face. The sea glistened like wet coal under a sky heavy with stars. It was Ned’s private ocean tonight. Below, the school sailing instructor Paddy Leclare and the five other boys on the trip were asleep in their berths. When it had become clear that, because of the extra hours spent in the Giant’s Causeway, they were going to have to sail back to Scotland through the night, Ned had offered himself at once for this watch. In the past he might have done so out of duty or good citizenship, but Ned knew that he had volunteered on this occasion because he so relished time alone with himself, time to think about Portia and time simply to take pleasure in being. On nights like these, in a good boat running free, a person could imagine himself the king of the world. On land, it seemed to Ned, man was always inferior to the animals and disconnected from nature. Cars and machines might be clever, but they bullied the natural world. At sea, man was using nature, but not using nature
up.
He would put this point in his next letter to Portia. Love was turning him into something of a philosopher. The clever ones, Ashley Barson-Garland for instance, would think him immeasurably stupid, but then Ashley might not understand that Ned liked being a little stupid. It was sometimes a comfortable thing to be. After all, Ashley’s cleverness was no kind of solace to him. In fact it seemed to make him deeply unhappy. Unhappiness to Ned, especially in his present condition of unassailable elation, was an incomprehensible and alien thing to afflict a fellow human, like acne or bad hand-eye co-ordination. He knew there were people who suffered from these plights, but he could only wonder why they didn’t snap themselves out of it and have more fun.
    To be a lover was to be part of a group singled out by fate for special attention. Ned had never imagined that he might have possessed such pleasure in simply being himself. His skill at sport, his good looks, his easy-going nature, his popularity – he would never for a moment think of those with satisfaction – if anything they were sources of embarrassment. His being a Lover though, a Lover with the most capital of Ls, made him burst with so much pride he could scarcely recognise himself. He wondered for the millionth time if Portia really felt the same. Perhaps her feelings were stronger. Perhaps his were stronger. Perhaps she imagined that hers were stronger and would never believe how strong –
    A sudden sound from below made him turn in surprise. ‘Maddstone!’
    Peering astern Ned made out the shape of a head appearing in the hatchway.
    ‘Hello?’