Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd Read Free Book Online Page A

but I find Alexander Pope almost incomprehensible – not like Keats or my favourite, Tennyson. The gardeners and the boys are out in the long herbaceous borders weeding and greet me as I pass: ‘Good day, Master Lysander.’ I say hello – I know most of them by now. Old Digby the head gardener, Davy Bledlow and his son Tommy. Tommy is a couple of years older than me and has asked if I would like to go out hunting rabbits with him one day. He has a prize ferret called Ruby. I said, no thank you. I don’t want to hunt and kill rabbits – I think it’s cruel. Tommy Bledlow is a big lad with a broken nose flattened on his face that makes him look strange – a threatening clown. I leave the walled garden and cross the fence into Claverleigh Wood by the stile.
    The sun shines down through the fresh green leaves of the ancient oaks and beeches. I find a mossy angle between two gnarled buttressing roots of a big oak. I am lying in a patch of sunshine and enjoying the warmth on my body. There’s a faint breeze. In the distance I can hear the sound of a train chuffing along the Lewes to Pevensey line. Birds are singing – a thrush, I think, a blackbird. It’s ideally peaceful. A warm summer’s day at the beginning of the new century in the south of England.
    I open my book and begin to read, trying to concentrate. I stop and remove my boot and socks. Flexing my toes, I read on.
     
‘Sol through white curtains shot a tim’rous ray
And op’d those eyes that must eclipse the day.’
     
    In eighteenth-century London, a beautiful young woman is lying in bed, about to wake up, dress herself and start her social life – that much was fairly clear. I ease back so my head is in shadow and my body in sunlight.
     
‘Belinda still her downy pillow breast,’
     
    Not ‘breast’, I see, but ‘prest’. Why did I read breast? The association of downy pillow, a girl in her night clothes, disarrayed and open enough perhaps to reveal – I turned the page.
     
‘. . . Shock , who thought she slept too long
Leapt up, and wak’d his mistress with his tongue.’
     
    Who’s this ‘Shock’? But I am thinking of the downstairs maid – isn’t she called Belinda? – I think so, the tall one with the cheeky face. She has ‘downy pillows’, all right. That time I saw her kneeling, relaying a fire, with her sleeves rolled up and her buttons undone. I know what a ‘mistress’ is – but how did he wake her with his tongue? . . .
    I feel my penis stirring agreeably under my trousers. The sun is warm in my lap. I glance around – I’m quite alone. I undo my belt and fly buttons and pull my trousers and my drawers down to my knees. The sun is warm. I touch myself.
    I think of Belinda the downstairs maid. Think of breasts, soft like pillows, of a tongue waking a mistress. I grip myself. Slowly I begin to move my fist up and down . . .
    The next thing I remember is my mother calling my name.
    ‘Lysander? Lysander, darling . . .’
    I’m dreaming. And then I realize I’m not. I’m waking slowly, as if I’ve been drugged. I open my eyes, blink, and see my mother standing there silhouetted by the sun-dazzle. My mother standing there looking down at me. Very upset.
    ‘Lysander, darling, what’s happened?’
    ‘What?’ I’m still half asleep. I look down, following her gaze, my trousers and my drawers are still bunched around my knees, I see my flaccid penis and the small dark tuft of hair above it.
    I drag up my trousers, curl up in a ball and begin to cry uncontrollably.
    ‘What happened, darling?’
    ‘Tommy Bledlow,’ I sob, god knows why, ‘Tommy Bledlow did this to me.’
     
     
    10. A Peculiar Sense of Exclusiveness
     
    Lysander stopped reading. He felt the retrospective shame blaze through him, like the driest tinder burning, writhing, crackling hot. His mouth was parched. Come on, grow up, he said to himself, you’re twenty-seven years old – this is ancient history.
    Lysander sat quiet for a moment. Bensimon