Crazy

Normally Rob Neil hated going to the mechanics’ stores, but after spending every other evening with Will Mallon and Padric O’Casey for the last week, he was actually excited at thought of seeing them again.

Without them the whole weekend had appeared dull. Not even the thrill of lying in bed and daydreaming about a stolen kiss between Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood behind a Rawhide wagon could dull the craving he felt. All he could do was mooch around the house, making a nuisance for everyone. Finally, on Sunday night, he had come home from a party, drifted to sleep in a paralytic sulk with the TV’s little white dot, then woke on Monday morning to the sound of the Light Programme’s Oranges and Lemons theme. But now, at last, he was wearing a broad grin.

‘I don’t know,’ his father tut-tutted at him as he sprawled across an armchair.
‘He’s O.K,’ one of his sisters tousled his straggling hair.
‘How can he keep down a decent job with that kind of lifestyle, eh?’
‘He’ll only be young once!’ Rob’s sister muttered at their father’s retreating back. ‘Unlike him,’ she whispered to Rob, jagging at the air with her thumb, ‘he was never young.’
‘Wanna dance, babe?’ Rob asked, taking hold of his sister’s hand.
‘You asking?’ She giggled.
‘I’m asking!’

Rob sprang from his chair and waltzed her across the room. ‘You’re as rich as a king, when the girl in your arms is the girl in your heart.’
‘Get on with you,’ his sister tickled him as he too beat a retreat. ‘Your clean stuff’s up there, Robert. And make sure you wash behind your ears. We’re not having dirty hallions leaving this house!’

Thinking of the pleasure that awaited him almost caused Rob physical pain. It wasn’t like he was used to being so satisfied for so long. As he stood in front of the bathroom mirror staring at himself through the steam streaks, all at once he felt anxious. For once things were going well. It was running all too smoothly, no excessive complications seemed to pile up ready tumble. Yet Rob couldn’t wait to feel Will inside him again. And the thought caused a tight band to tighten around his chest, so he tried to resist his mounting excitement. ‘Bad boy!’ he said, smacking the bulge in his trousers.

Will was the first sexual encounter to genuinely interest him since Johnny had been sent to prison. Rob knew perfectly that Will, just like Johnny before him, didn’t feel the same way about him. Still, Rob dreamed it could be different.
Steam covered the mirror, and Rob let it. Dreams were just dreams, after all, and they didn’t get the baby bathed.

‘Hey! Susan,’ Rob called down the stairwell. ‘Susan! Where’s my new striped tie?’
‘Hush!’ Susan appeared behind him, making him jump. ‘Here. Now take this cup of tea into mum. You know she likes to hear all your news.’
Sat perched up in bed, his mother looked more like a forlorn sparrow than the woman who had almost single-handedly seen them through blitz and buzz bombs, U-boat blockades, winter blackouts and ration books. Yet it was the same woman, silently telling her rosary as she waited on death.

Rob kissed his mother’s head when her beads stopped. ‘Here’s a cuppa, mum.’
‘Thanks, dear.’ His mother drew him in for a lavender scented kiss. ‘So, tell me everything. How did the party go?’
‘Yeah. It went fine.’ Rob said, while he checked that he’d put his tie on straight.
‘Did they like you and the boys?’
‘Yeah! Good!’ Rob smiled at the good looking guy in the full-length wardrobe mirror. He saw his mother smile too. ‘Done, do you think?’

His mother patted the bed, wanting him to sit beside her even for a few moments. ‘Anybody important there?’ she quizzed, half-teasing.
‘Not like the gig we did at that big Country House,’ Rob shrugged. ‘But you remember the Russian attaché fella, the one I told you about.’
‘The spy from the embassy in London? Yes!’
‘Oh! Mum, I don’t know that he was a spy,’ Rob laughed, ‘but he was there. And this time he was with that pretty model.’
‘That Corrine, or whatever you called her?’ His mum sniffed her disapproval.
‘Umm, something like that anyway.’ Rob shrugged, then went to stand beside her. ‘We got them all up raving about that new dance, kinda like this.’
His mum laughed at the gyrations. ‘All that twisting about looks rude, to me.’
‘I guess.’

Rob glanced over at the bedroom window, where sharp, short rattles cracked at the panes. He went over to look out and saw his sister reprimanding one of his work colleagues. Her boyfriend’s younger brother.
‘That’s Georgie, I’d better go.’
‘Give me a wee hug, Robbie,’ his mother almost pleaded. Her vulnerability frightened him, rooting him to the spot. Only a laugh coming from the garden path below impelled him forward and out of his fears. ‘There now, run on. Don’t want to miss your bus, do you?’

‘Did you hear about wideboy O’Casey, then?’ Georgie Maxwell scrutinised Rob. And as they walked for the bus, he couldn’t contain a self-righteous grin. His family’s black-hearted puritanical hatred for all things worldly, papist or Irish ran deeper than any friendship with Rob’s family, or his own criminal tendencies.
‘What do you mean?’ Rob asked. He had passed Padric Sunday afternoon, on the way back from the party. He was fine. He was out in his car, smooching up a new girl.
‘They say he’s hurt bad,’ again a smirk rippled across Maxwell’s face. As Rob said nothing he went on, ‘In a pile up on the London Road, last night, about ten.’
Rob shook his head.
‘S’true, I swear!’

The bus to work was packed, so Rob and Georgie squeezed together into the last two vacant places. Yet only half-listening to the story of Padric’s accident, Rob longed to be away from the steamy crush pressing around them.

‘Bloody kids, eh!’ A woman moaned as she plonked down in a seat. The man who got up for her tipped his trilby, ‘No respect anymore.’ The woman nodded as she filled all the available space to tighten her turbaned scarf over her curlers, ‘The war did for that, ducks.’ As if prised from a dream the elderly gent sitting beside her chipped in, ‘And the TV. Like these ruddy new buses, useless. Should’ve left the trolley buses alone. Them in power’s all talk.’ With a loud cackle the woman replied, ‘If you ask me, they’re all talk an’ no trousers!’

Rob stared out through the grimy window behind the back row seats until he heard Maxwell mention Johnny Barton’s name. Rob turned to face Georgie Maxwell, ready for an instant bust up.
Looking at Georgie, he found it hard to believe they could pass even this journey to work together without a fight. He had the most obvious faggy mannerisms. And from his own reactions it was clear that Rob struggled not to despise him. Or at least not to throw a punch when he opened his mouth.
‘Sorry, I didn’t hear that,’ Rob’s voice all but growled.
‘Nothing really,’ Georgie noted the tense response, and sulked.
‘You were saying something about Johnny Barton.’

Now it was Georgie’s turn to tense up. ‘I only said that he was friends with Padric O’Casey.’ The air frosted between them before Georgie spoke once more. ‘I forgot you were all friends,’ he lied. ‘Didn’t you all bunk off school to go to Germany with a band,’ Georgie quizzed, already knowing the answer.
‘Yeah!,’ Rob turned back to rub a clearing in the trickling steam on the window. He snubbed Maxwell. Knowing Georgie, he too would’ve jumped at the chance if he’d been asked. ‘It was fun. Hamburg was a gas.’

Georgie’s baby-boy good-looks and casual freedom with his body made him seem a lot younger than his eighteen years. He was smiling now as he looked at Rob, so Rob shifted slightly, uneasy sitting so close beside him. Even just looking at him without saying a word was a purgatory he would rather avoid.
Georgie kept right on smiling as the bus juddered them to work, but Rob drifted into pool of his very own misery.
OK, Georgie had a good smile, Rob thought, distracted for a moment. But it was Padric that concerned him at that moment. Rob only wanted to know what Georgie knew. ‘So what did you do this weekend?’ he asked.
Georgie looked like a rabbit caught in headlights. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothin’ much,’ Rob realised Georgie had been up to no good. ‘Just wondered how you knew about O’Casey’s accident.’
‘Right.’ Georgie relaxed. ‘Will and me...’ A blush stole across Georgie’s neck.
‘Sure.’ Rob stared back at Georgie for a few telling seconds, then looked away.
Clearly Georgie had been with Will and Will had told him what had happened over the weekend.
‘You?’
‘This and that,’ Rob answered in a daze.

As they heaved off the bus with a groan, Rob saw Will was hanging around outside the factory gate. His heart sank. Will’s girlfriend and a few other girls were with him, their sympathetic shock was obvious even from that distance.
‘Ever wondered where O’Casey got the money for a car?’ Georgie sneered, trying to draw back Rob’s attention.
Of course he did, they all did. No one their age in Brighton had a car. Even men in great jobs didn’t, unless they’d saved for years. That or they were serious gangland criminals from London. ‘His dad won the pools,’ Rob said.

‘Yeah! And when did old man O’Casey ever give his family anything but more sprats?’ Georgie laughed, then stopped in his tracks as Rob swung round and squared up to him. ‘No offence, mate. But look, your lot can’t use condoms,’ he grimaced. ‘Besides, you know O’Casey. His dad never gave him the money, you know it.’
Rob did know, but like everyone else he ignored it.
Before he could think of anything to say, a couple of lads dive bombed Georgie. ‘Maxey,’ they roared, as they piled in and carried Georgie off in front of them. Georgie looked round at Rob, helplessly fending of the pummelling that the lads dished out.
‘See you on bus home?’ Georgie called over the racket.
Rob merely shrugged.

Will Mallon was kissing his girlfriend goodbye but looking over at Rob. He leant against a wall at the factory gate, head cast down, hands tucked in his jeans, with one leg cocked up behind him, and he waited for Rob to approach him.
‘Well,’ Rob broke the ice.
‘You heard, then?’
‘Georgie told, me’ Rob answered with a sharper tone than he intended.
‘Sure.’
Will and Rob exchanged a few silent seconds of eye-contact, before their pain became too unbearable.
‘Georgie says it looked bad,’ Rob said as Will looked away.
‘They wouldn’t let me in,’ Will almost sobbed his reply.
Rob put out a hand toward Will, but Will broke away from him. Far enough to keep up appearances, yet not so far that Rob felt entirely shut out.
‘Let’s get away from here,’ Will said, finally walking away from Rob, not even looking back to see if Rob followed him as he punched his time card and strode off.

Without letting Will out of sight, Rob nodded at a few stragglers from the machine shop who came in to factory grounds beside him. Will was heading for the warehouse stores, that much was plain.
‘Here! Barbara,’ Rob called to one the secretaries who was sweet on him. ‘I have to do the stock take this week,’ he said, whisking her around him. ‘Tell Graucho I’ve gone straight to the store.’
Barbara called after him as he hastened to catch up with Will, ‘Robbie, you doin’ the youth club dance, Friday?’

Rob nodded a thumbs up to her and disappeared behind the closing door of the store room entrance. The stairs up to Will lay ahead, to his right the stores office.

‘You’ll find the paperwork there,’ a gruff voice coughed through a haze of tobacco smoke. Bootsie and Snudge were huddled over a steaming brew of tea and the rustle of their morning papers. ‘And mind you don’t get them chits out of place,’ Mister Fraser-Snudt called after Rob as he snatched up a clipboard and headed for the stairwell.

Will said nothing when Rob opened the heavy door to the supplies loft. He walked passed Rob, took the stock take clipboard and tossed it aside. With a look back at Rob, Will reached up and switched on the ancient radio. As it whirred into glowing life, once again he passed Rob, this time to lay a large tea chest in front of the door.
‘Are you all right, Will?’ Rob asked, unnerved by Will’s stare.

Pop music suddenly blared from the radio and Will tested the door to see that it wouldn’t shift without a struggle.
Rob’s heart made a leap; above them his current favourite teenage idol wanted someone to take good care of his baby, while in front of him Will tensed up like a cat ready to pounce.
‘Do you want to talk about Padric?’

Rob’s words seemed to fall on deaf ears, because Will walked toward him slowly then with a swift advance grabbed him. A gasp pulled tight over Rob’s chest.
Rob leaned back from Will, their faces almost touching nose to nose. But Will’s hold was too firm to escape, Rob could only force a edgy smile as Will pulled him back toward him. Will’s mouth breathed close up, and it wasn’t marked with Rob’s own tingling fresh feeling, but by the sour sweet odour of beer and cheap cigarettes.
‘Look Will, you’re upset..’ Rob’s protests were stifled as he spoke.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Will snapped before laying a deep French kiss in Rob’s mouth. Will forced one of his hands inside the seat of Rob’s pants, squeezing gently on his buttocks and searching Rob’s buttcrack for access to his hole.

‘Hey!’ Will pulled back. ‘I’ll need something more than your fingers to prepare me, if you’re gonna want that monster up there any time soon.’
Will said nothing but nodded.

Rob straightened his jacket and shirt when Will let go his grasp. The resentful look that stole across his face was soon replaced by amazement; Will started to strip in front of him. Not a shy hidden affair, somehow innocent, but full on, knowing what was just the right kind of sexy tease. Down to his socks and pants, Will threw his string vest at Rob’s face, and once more he reached out and pulled Rob to him.
This time Rob relaxed as Will groped him. He felt Will’s rough hands smooth over his body while he peeled away layer after layer of Rob’s clothes. Naked before Will, Rob blushed, looking and feeling hopelessly vulnerable.

Will gave him a leery look then bent forward to draw in the scent of Rob’s skin, clean as soap against his own oil-stained hands. Yet it wasn’t a feminine scent, not like his girlfriend. Rob had an intoxicating, dangerous smell, that of the forbidden: a man stripped naked and ready for sex with another man. Will kissed Rob’s neck.
Pressing harder against him as Rob flinched slightly, Will took hold of Rob and squeezed the struggle out of him. With a tight grip on him his lips caressed Rob’s body.
‘Fuck, man!’ Rob sighed when Will nibbled expertly on his nipples.

The sighs turned to groans as Will worked along Rob’s belly and down to his throbbing cock. After a few teasing licks on his ballsack, Will slid his tongue up along the shaft and opened his mouth to cover the head.

Rob’s knees buckled as Will swallowed every inch of cock, down the roots of its hairy bush. Rob trembled. Rob whimpered. Eventually he had to pull Will away from licking under his foreskin, he had brought him too close to cumming.

Giving Rob’s hips a little jolt, Will nudged him. ‘Turn ‘round,’ he whispered, but Rob had already started to curve about face.
Rob’s smooth, firm bum invited kisses and sharp smacks from Will. The red marks glowing against the pristine white. Prising the cheeks apart, Will eased his face in and began to eat at Rob’s pink hole.
‘That is one sweet cunt, baby,’ Will said. Looking up into Rob’s eyes, he smiled.
Saliva trickled across the back of Rob’s thighs as Will went back to burying his tongue inside Rob’s ring. Leaning back, Will spat at the puckering hole and drew the lubrication into Rob, gently pushing in with wet fingers and licking more spit into place.
‘I need to do you bad,’ Will spoke between licks. ‘Right now.’
Rob arched his back, braced against some chests, and nodded.

A surprising tenderness accompanied Will’s efforts to get his knob into Rob’s arse. He bent over Rob’s back to lay kisses on it, and gentle murmurs encouraged him to give up his asshole. Will seemed suddenly to lose confidence, he fumbled at Rob’s back passage but couldn’t quite get in the right position to penetrate.

Rob bent further to take a light hold on Will’s spit moistened pole. Twisting back on to it, Rob managed to impale himself onto the knob before he had to stop to draw in short gasps of air.
It was enough. Will spat some more lube on his cock and pressed in slow but sure. The tight clenches of Rob’s ring only temporarily bringing his rocking to a halt.
Rob bit against his knuckles then his wrist as Will filled him. Yet this time it wasn’t followed by the wild ecstatic thrusts that Will enjoyed most. Long steady strokes piled up his arse. When he relaxed more into the rhythm, something made Rob look over his shoulder. Will was crying.

‘Man?’ Rob asked, then bit his lip as hard thrusts tore up inside him.
‘Shut up!’ Will sobbed aloud. ‘Shut up, shut up!’
Rob noticed the now familiar grunts of building orgasm rise in Will’s throat, but before he had a chance to wank himself to a climax Will exploded a cumload into him.

A couple of moments of hush, filled only with a guitar group on the radio and little half-strangled sobs from Will, soon passed. Will pulled out of Rob, and without another word walked over to his clothes, got dressed and headed for the door.
‘See you soon, mate?’ Rob said almost joking. But Will’s glance back as he heaved the packing case out of his way sent chilling daggers through him.
Rob frowned then looked down at his own nakedness, and he too reached for his clothes. Just as he fixed his tie and polished his winkle picker shoes he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs outside. It wasn’t Will coming back, that was for sure.

‘Hi!’ A lumbering, harmless brute came in to help with the stock take.
Rob nodded, but his attention had been caught by a tune blaring from the wall. He sang along with the melancholy Country and Western artist, ‘I knew you’d love me as long as you wanted…’
‘Eh?’ Big John quizzed, looking around, and not seeing Will a broad grin stole over his face. ‘Just us, then.’

‘Looks like it,’ Rob couldn’t help smiling back.
‘Say,’ John shrugged a good humoured laugh. ‘You’re a good singer. Do more.’
Rob almost burst into tears, but he sang with the record instead, ‘…Crazy!’