The Young Apollo and Other Stories by Louis Auchincloss Read Free Book Online Page A

originally of moodily casting covert glances at Billy's handsome profile, now burgeoned into a flame that seemed to consume his whole being. He chose to deem their now more intimate relationship a high and noble union of souls; they were Damon and Pythias, or Orestes and Pylades, and he did not hesitate to fill his weekly letter to his mother with glowing accounts of his new idol. Lila wrote back to urge him to invite Billy to stay with them at Meadowview.
    That July the two boys ranged over the whole of the Dalys' vast estate. They fished in the ponds; they climbed to the top of the old windmill; they ran away from the angry Black Angus bull, whose field they had invaded; they captured and killed snapping turtles. And then one afternoon, finding themselves alone at the swimming pool, Marvin suggested that they dispense with bathing suits. Stripped and lying on their bellies in the sun after a swim, Marvin felt the swelling in his groin and rose boldly to expose himself to his friend. Billy, grinning lewdly and not in the least surprised, jumped up to reveal himself in the same condition, and the two embraced.
    For Marvin what ensued was a supreme moment, a kind of near sacred ritual appropriate to the Greek temple on the little hill above them. It even seemed to fit in with Meadowview, even with his mother's beauty. For Billy it was simply the dirty nocturnal game that he had played with others in his dormitory at St. Luke's.
    Let me put my patient's reaction to what happened when the boys went back to school in Marvin's own words. I had a tape recorder in my office which I could switch on at particularly revealing moments of a patient's free association—always, of course, with the patient's permission.
That September I found that Billy had considerably changed toward me in the month that had elapsed between his visit to Meadowview and the reopening of school. He had been invited in August to visit Dicky Brown, one of the more popular and outstanding leaders of our class, in nearby Oyster Bay. Dicky was not a particular friend of Billy's; his bid had really come from Mrs. Brown, Dicky's mother, who was some sort of cousin of Billy's father. She had been reminded of Billy's existence seeing him at a lunch party at Meadowview and had insisted that Dicky ask him to stay with them, as the poor boy would otherwise be stuck in the hot city when his visit with me was over. So I had, after all, proved of some social use to Billy.
    Billy had succeeded in worming his way into Dicky's affections as he had into mine, and back at school he was taken into Dicky's set, of which I was only a fringe member. We continued to be on outwardly amicable terms, but our intimacy was over, and there was certainly no idea of any repetition of the incident by the swimming pool. Such an incident did take place, however, between Billy and one of his new pals, and so indiscreetly that they were caught in the act by a snooping master, who reported it to the rector of the school. It might have been grounds for expulsion but for the extremely unpleasant publicity that such an action would inevitably evoke, and our whole class was summoned before the headmaster for a severe lecture. He excoriated the guilty pair in violent terms and thundered against what he called depravity and decadence and unmanly conduct. I was appalled.
    To me it was as if the big dirty paw of some huge brute dipped in shit had smeared my mental vision of Meadowview, of the Greek temple, of love. But it was not any brute who had done it; it was I who had done it! I had defiled my home, my haven, my ideal, my mother! And I had had the ultimate gall to see beauty in what I had dared to call love! I was awash with guilt.
    That Christmas vacation something happened that made me feel even worse. My family had decided to spend the holidays at Meadowview, and one evening before dinner, when my sisters happened to be all out of the room, Father availed himself of the moment to tell Mother