Any Human Heart by William Boyd Read Free Book Online

girl turned stable lad that was stimulating him, it was the very absence of sexual allure that was arousing. I told him so and he seemed nonplussed. ‘You are two manual workers,’ I said, ‘she sees you as some sort of farm hand, a fellow groom and equal. How can you ever become lovers if you allow this to go on?’
    Then he confessed, or rather he blushed, and sipped his tea noisily. ‘She lets me kiss her,’ he said, ‘when we finish. In fact it was Tess who made the first move. She lets me touch her breasts — but only when we finish with the horses.’
    ‘Please don’t lie to me, Peter,’ I said. ‘It’s too shaming.’ But he protested and I could sense, from something in his demeanour, that he wasn’t lying. He swore to me that everything he said was true and this was why he had fallen in love with her. ‘She’s a bold, rare spirit,’ he said, and I felt the sour, bilious grip of envy around my heart. Well, you’ve won the challenge, I told him, congratulations. All you have to do now is find a way of letting Ben and myself witness your love-making. He nodded seriously: he seemed truly relieved to have told me all this. In fact he seemed all at sea, lost in this strange romance with the farmer’s daughter. Ben and I had a good, sophisticated laugh about it all later, but I was aware that Ben was as surprised — and vaguely irritated — as I was. This sort of thing, this fantastic good luck, was not meant to happen to Peter — it was meant to happen to us. But we agreed we felt sorry for him: poor old Peter Scabius suddenly face to face with sex. Perhaps we have done him a favour.
     
     
25 February 1924
     
    Second XV match against Uppingham. Freezing, icy day with a strong east wind. I was extra man and ran the touchline and brought on the quartered oranges at half-time. I suppose what I have achieved in these few short weeks is extraordinary enough (even the Lizard congratulated me for my ‘unforeseen sporting zeal’), but, as ever, my predominant emotion is one of disappointment. The Second XV hooker is a blond oafish fellow called fforde who, I’m sure, in the fullness of time, I could supplant: he doesn’t have anything like my dash, my insane audacity. But beyond him lies the First XV, whose hooker is a man called Vanderpoel — small, wiry, sporty — who is also captain of the squash team. The term has a few weeks to run and I wonder if I can possibly advance beyond the position I have reached now, if I could supplant a real athlete — I wonder if it is even worth trying… A horrible thought: could this be the pattern of my life ahead? Every ambition thwarted, every dream stillborn? But a second’s reflection tells me that what I’m currently experiencing is shared by all sentient, suffering human beings, except for the very, very few: the genuinely talented — the odd, rare genius — and, of course, the exceptionally lucky swine.
    Peter Scabius, at the time of writing, seems extremely well placed in the second category. He has gone as far as to specify a location for the ‘witnessed kiss’. This will take place, according to him, the day after tomorrow on a bridle path in a wood near the farm — he will tell us exactly where to position ourselves. Ben, meanwhile, is as frustrated as I am: Doig has turned hostile again and has insisted that the meetings be moved from Mrs Catesby’s to the rectory at St James’s. Ben is convinced that this is merely a form of test, Doig’s thinking (transparent, according to Ben) working along the lines that if Ben is truly sincere then the effort of making his way to the rectory will not be an impediment.
    H-D told me this afternoon that Le Mayne had found me ‘diffident, but with underlying charm and intelligence’. Stark nonsense: I cannot think of a more inaccurate description of my personality.
     
     
26 February 1924
     
    Ben and I met after second tea and hurried off to observe the famous ‘witnessed kiss’. Peter had been very