Read Online Fatal Glamour by Paul Delany - Free Book Online

at this time meant that Rupert would have to look elsewhere for friends who would share his political beliefs.
The Dance of the Sheets
    Rupert moved to Grantchester in July 1909, and his friends came to frolic with him in the river and under the apple boughs. But by October the light was fading and he began to suffer from lonely nights. A few months before, James Strachey had given up on the hope of Rupert going to bed with him, or with any other young man. “I found out something about him,” James told Duncan Grant, “which
did
make me despair. He’s a
real
womaniser. And there can be no doubt that he
hates
the physical part of my feelings
instinctively
 . . . just as I should hate to be touched by a woman.” 14 James, however, was only half right. Rupert wanted to lose his virginity, but not through a surrender to some older, predatory Apostle. Nor, whatever his “womanising” instincts, could he expect Noel or any other young woman he knew to surrender to him. His solution was to invite Denham Russell-Smith to come and stay, for the weekend of 30 October. Rupert had been closer friends with Denham’s older brother Hugh, but found Denham more physically appealing. He was two years younger than Rupert, which fitted Rupert’s pattern of being attracted to younger boys. If he was going to be initiated into sex, it would not be by an act of submission. It was not until his nervous breakdown, three and a half years later, that Rupert told the story of that weekend to James Strachey. It was probably the most revealing letter he ever wrote:
    How things shelve back! History takes you to January 1912 – Archaeology to the end of 1910 – Anthropology to, perhaps, the autumn of 1909. –
    The autumn of 1909! We had hugged & kissed & strained, Denham & I, on and off for years – ever since that quiet evening I rubbed him, in the dark, speechlessly, in the smaller of the two small dorms. An abortive affair, as I told you. But in the summer holidays of 1906 and 1907 he had often taken me out to the hammock, after dinner, to lie entwined there. – He had vaguely hoped, I fancy, – – – But I lay always thinking Charlie [Lascelles].
    Denham was though, to my taste, attractive. So honestly and friendlily lascivious. Charm, not beauty, was his
forte
. He was not unlike Ka, in the allurement of vitality and of physical magic. –oh, but Ka has beauty too. – He was lustful, immoral, affectionate, and delightful. As romance faded in me, I began, all unacknowledgedly, to cherish a hope – – – But I was never in the slightest degree in love with him.
    In the early autumn of 1909, then, I was glad to get him to come and stay with me, at the Orchard. I came back late that Saturday night. Nothing was formulated in my mind. I found him asleep in front of the fire, at 1.45. I took him up to his bed, – he was very like a child when he was sleepy – and lay down on it. We hugged, and my fingers wandered a little. His skin was always very smooth. I had, I remember, a vast erection. He dropped off to sleep in my arms. I stole away to my own room: and lay in bed thinking – my head full of tiredness and my mouth of the taste of tea and whales, as usual. 15 I decided, almost quite consciously, I
would
put the thing through next night. You see, I didn’t at all know how he would take it. But I wanted to have some fun, and, still more, to see what it was
like
, and to do away with the shame (as I thought it was) of being a virgin. At length, I thought, I shall know something of all that James and Norton and Maynard and Lytton know and hold over me.
    Of course, I
said
nothing.
    Next evening, we talked long in front of the sitting room fire. My head was on his knees, after a bit. We discussed sodomy. He said he, finally, thought it
was
wrong . . . We got undressed there, as it was warm. Flesh is exciting, in firelight. You must