book arousing; it was like a menu, a cat-
alogue of beauty. He handed me my
whisky and tapped his finger on a pho-
tograph. Then he flipped the pages to
show me a before and after. The boy
was frowning in the first, looking mur-
derous under a lit marquee. On the next
page his hair was gelled away from his
face and he was smiling. “I bought this
one a whole set of top teeth.”
“But I like my teeth.”
It was a stupid thing to say. William
wheezed as though he were tired. Then
he tugged the book away from me as if
it were a dinner plate I wasn’t quite
finished with.
W
e spent every moment of that
first weekend in each other’s
company. I stopped pretending to be
useful. He emerged from his tailored
suits, and the whole outline of him be-
came softer, more fluid. We never spoke
about the photographs again. All week-
end I expected him to make romantic
demands of me, but instead of feeling
relieved I felt ugly when he did not.
On Saturday, we rode the District
Line into the city. It amazed me how
the people in the train carriage stared at
their shoes in order not to look at you.
At home, people would wave to you
from four fields away. At the end of the
day, your mother could tell you exactly
where you had been, how you had spent
your time.
William took me up to the West End
and offered to buy me anything that held
my attention for longer than three sec-
onds. When he saw that I wasn’t that ex-
cited by the fancy boutiques, we ducked
into a cinema to see a matinée. People
were staring as we drank champagne from
a paper bag. I was embarrassed by him
at first, but with the bubbles in my belly
I found myself happy to be near him.
Later that evening we saw a play
about two inner-city boys finding their
first love. More than once, he needed
to put his hand on my arm to remind
me to sit back in my seat. I’d never been
in a theatre that wasn’t a church hall.
William sat through the play with his
left foot bouncing, as though he had
seen it a half-dozen times before. When
the lights came up he produced a dis-
posable camera and took a quick snap
of us. I wiped my eyes and smiled.
On Sunday afternoon, he lowered
the soft top on his E-type. He took sev-
eral photos of me behind the wheel, pre-
tending to drive. Then he toured us
around central London, my hangover
screaming as we went careering pastSt. Paul’s. William talked so fast it was
hard to connect what he was saying with
what I was looking at.
When we reached Soho he parked
and led me into a pub that looked and
smelled like any workingman’s pub.
Throngs of men stood drinking pints
of bitter, every one of them dressed in
bleached denims and a white T-shirt,
heads shaved to a shine. William was
conspicuous in his cable sweater and
baby-wale corduroys. I felt out of place,
but he made me pose for some photos.
He seemed proud to be seen with me.
I was drinking a sweet, crisp cider. I
liked to drink things you couldn’t get on
the isle: gin, Calvados, limoncello. Under
my father’s roof it was all flat lager and
peaty uisge beatha—you wouldn’t dare
profess a desire for anything foreign.
All evening the records kept chang-
ing but it felt like one long song. The
d.j. was working his hardest, increasing
the b.p.m.s, getting the bald men in the
mood for the clubs later. William started
to twirl around the floor.
I finished my cider and was warmed
by the drink. I had wanted to know
more about the men in the photographs
and was expecting William to mention
them again. Now that the weekend was
ending, I found that I would have to
bring the subject up. It sounded clumsy.
I couldn’t help it. “So, do ye always take
boys for the summer?”
William kept on shimmying. He
raised his eyebrows. “No. Also the win-
ter, and Easter breaks.”
From what I could make out over the
pumping music, he preferred to “hire”
university students. It was a way to guar-
antee that the young men could hold
some form of basic conversation. His fa-
vorite boy to look at had been an ap-
prentice plumber from Glasgow, but after
two days he found he could not bear to
hear him talk, and so he sent him pack-
ing eight weeks early. “It was a shame,”
he explained. “It takes more legwork to
bring a boy south than you would real-
ize. It’s almost a full-time job in itself.”
William said that it was mostly art
students who came to him now, but
that he had had his fair share of law
and political-science undergraduates—
and seemingly little in between. He
undid the top button of his shirt. “You’re
the first forestry student I’ve had.”
Stupid that this comment should