An Italian boy in Camford Pt. 08

"Would you like to meet him?" asked Arturo, "I know him quite well. He's an administrative assistant in the academic office , the very last sort of man you would think would engage in fisticuffs! I could invite him and his friend, the boy that they came to blows over, to come to dinner next time you and Luca come. I believe he's quite musical. I went out with him a few times when I was fancy-free. I never realized that he could get violent!"

"It's probably a sign that he's deeply in love," said Tom. "I shouldn't worry about it, unless the police or Lavini try to take him to court for assault. I would hope that Lavini is not a person to bear grudges, because he is at least 50% responsible for what happened. Any Italian man whose girl had been approached by a stranger would react in the same way, and would get a lot of public sympathy. But it would be interesting to meet him in a non-challenging situation, such as your dining room!"

"Right, I'll see what I can do," said the Professor.

Tom went back into the town with Ben and Leonora, Luke joined them on his return from the hospital,and they all went out to a trattoria to eat. Somehow, none of them wanted to rejoin the party at the villa.

Chapter Fifty-four: Sandro visits Dom's home

When my placement finished at the end of August, my boss said that he was impressed by my progress, and that there might be a job for me as a graduate trainee after I had graduated, and that in any case, I could use him as a referee. I phoned Dom and asked if I could come to his home the following day. He said that he would ring me back. He did so, and told me that I should get a train from Victoria the following day to Paradise Bridge in Kent and if I phoned him from the train, he would come and meet me.

I got out of the train to find Dom waiting on the platform. We embraced briefly, without kissing, as it was a public place and we had not come out. The car journey to Paradise Place, as Don's house was called, only took about ten minutes. I was introduced to Don's mother and, fortunately as it turned out, did not have the opportunity to speak to her by name. It would have been embarrassing, as I subsequently realized, if I had called her Mrs Overton. Dom showed me to my room. It was a big house, so there was no question of me sharing a room with Dom, to my great disappointment!

"Get changed into something more casual, and bring your cozzie and we'll take a turn in the pool," he said. I did as I was told, and we walked to a large converted barn across the spacious back yard which held a fifteen-metre indoor pool with a bar. Outside the pool building, facing open countryside, was a sun terrace and after we had each swum about twenty lengths, Dom poured us large glasses of Campari-orange, and we sat on the terrace and enjoyed the September sun. "When my father gets home, he'll probably come over here for a turn in the pool, so you can meet him before dinner. He's a professor at Home Counties University in Swanbridge. Then at dinner-time, you will meet my two brothers, Michael and Richard. Michael is eighteen and will be starting at Oxbridge in October. Richard is sixteen and has just finished his GCSE."

Dom's father was a handsome, slim and fit man in his late forties, and the family resemblance to Dom was quite striking. He smiled and shook hands with me before diving into the pool. Again, I had no cause to address him by name, so there were no embarrassing moments. Half an hour later, wrapped in a towel, he joined us on the terrace with a glass in his hand. "Dom tells me that you are in your second year, Sandro," he said. "What are you reading?"

"Engineering, sir," I replied.

"That's a good manly subject!" he replied. Why had he said that? I wondered. Did he have suspicions about my relationship with Dom? What would he have said if I had said I was reading fine art? He next asked me why I had come to Camford instead of studying in Italy. I explained as I had to Dom the previous October that my mother was English and that my uncle her brother was an international artist, who among other languages, could speak fluent Italian because of his work as a singer. "What's his name?" I was asked.

"David Singleton-Scarborough," I replied.

"Oh yes, the gay tenor! I'm a great admirer of his singing," he said. "I know his financial adviser Tim Ingledown very well, as I am another of his clients. Tim is normally very discrete about his clients, but he just happened to mention your uncle's name to me once. Tim also acts for his partner as well."

"Yes, my uncle Jonathan. He's the one with the really big money. I stay at their flat in Camford if I'm there out of term, and Dom is welcome to stay there too at any time, if he wants. It's such a nuisance that the college throws all its undergraduates out as soon as term ends to make way for the conference trade. Uncle Jon is first-year chemistry tutor at Boni's, which is why their son went to Buckingham College, and their daughter to Oxbridge. Their son is working in Italy at the moment. We are all one big Anglo-Italian family. I'm looking to get a job in England. I want to live here long enough to get rid of my Italian accent!"

"It's only the accent that gives your nationality away. Your spoken English is better than what many natives speak!"

"I can thank my uncle Jon for that. He spent three months teaching me colloquial English and enlarging my vocabulary. What is your academic discipline, sir?"

"I'm a professor of European languages, which means that I have to cover every West European language except Welsh, Irish, Gaelic, Breton and Basque! In practice, most of our students are in French, German, Spanish and Italian. Basically our approach in a small department is to teach the techniques of learning a language, and to leave the students to get on and learn vocabulary, literature and grammar by audiovisual techniques. It's a demanding way of learning, and we don't have lot of students! One of our objectives is to promote minority languages like Romansch, Catalan and Friesian."

"My uncle's son Luke read French and Italian at Camford, and his Italian is about as good as my English. He had to get competent, because he wanted to work in Italy." The three of us went back into the pool and swam ten lengths together before getting dressed for dinner.

At dinner I met Dom's two brothers. They were not blond like Dom and his father. I felt them scrutinizing me minutely, and I thought that with their public school background, they would soon guess that Dom and I were an item. The evenings were still fairly light, and the four of us after dinner walked down to the village pub for a drink. His brothers knew that Dom was not interested in football, so the conversation got on to the other universal male topic of women. Things soon got sticky. Both the boys were going out with young ladies, though whether they had any interest in marriage was not apparent.

When neither Dom nor I volunteered any information about girlfriends, they asked Dom directly if he was going out with anyone. This would have been an ideal opportunity for Dom to come out to his brothers and say that he was going out with me, but he flunked it and made a feeble excuse that he was too busy with his studies. Fortunately for Dom, they did not ask me the same question, because I would have made an honest answer! But I knew that before the week was over, there was a serious risk that Dom's secret would be out. It only required us to be caught kissing or holding hands, and he would have to confess! But I liked both Dom's brothers. Despite their English public school background, they were not snobbish or stuck up.

"What's the food like here?" I asked.

"Very good," Dom answered.

"In that case you and I must come here one night to eat at my expense to celebrate your scholarship. Your brother is in the top 5% of students in St Boniface College!" I said to Michael and Richard. "They don't give away scholarships like sweeties! He's done very well."

"Hark to the pot calling the kettle black! You're a scholar as well!" Dom said, and gazed at me with a telltale look of affection. I noticed that Michael and Richard exchanged glances. I thought that Richard was very mature for his age, and seemed to have a sense of gaydar. I wondered how long this charade would last. I hoped that if Dom was set on deceiving his family, the deceit would at least last until I had gone home to Italy!

Chapter Fifty-five: Revelations

Next morning, Dom and I arranged to go for a walk to a local beauty spot. While I was waiting for him in the hall, the post arrived. Helpfully, I picked up the pile of mail and put it on the table. As I did so I caught a glimpse of the address on one of the envelopes. The addressee was Professor Edmund Batley at Paradise Place. We set out on our walk.

The Kent countryside was beautiful. The trees were just starting to change the colour of their leaves, and the woods were yellow and brown as well as green. After about an hour in the woods, Dom stopped. He threw his arms round me and began to kiss me violently, and to caress the seat of my jeans. "I love you Sandro! Why have I got myself into a maze of deception? I'm sure my brothers have guessed that we are an item."

"Why don't you tell them then? You had a good chance that night at the pub. Or do want to tell your parents first?"

"I don't know. It's all such a mess!"

"Dom, I picked up the post in the hall this morning to put it on the table. Why is your father called Batley, when your name is Overton?"

"That's the secret I said I would tell you about. We both have the surname Overton, but he is Earl of Batley and I am Viscount Overton."

"Does that mean that you are noblemen?"

"It means that the family is noble, but only my grandfather is a nobleman or peer. The rest of us are just commoners, but as heir my father has what's called a courtesy title, and I as the next in line have a courtesy title too. But I don't want to use it in Camford, and as far as the college is concerned, I'm just Dominic Overton, which is the way I sign my name. Similarly my father is known by his signature as Edmund Batley. If you ever have to speak to my mother by name, call her Lady Batley."

"Do your brothers have titles then?"

"They are called the Hon. Michael and the Hon. Richard Overton, a bit like American congressmen. But it doesn't affect how you speak to them. And in any case, most people in England don't understand titles. If we ever become civil partners, you won't get a title, whereas if I married a woman she would be first called Viscountess, then when my grandfather snuffs it, she would become Countess of Batley, and after the death of my father she would become Marchioness of Wakefield, and my brothers would become Lord Michael and Lord Richard Overton. All this business of inheritance is the reason that there may be problems about us coming together as civil partners. There's no provision for gays in the traditional system."

"But couldn't we adopt or have a surrogate baby?"

"No good! The heir must be a boy, born in wedlock, not adopted. Nobility is all about getting a male heir. There's no power left, now that most of them have been chucked out of the House of Lords, so their resources are concentrated in keeping what they have still in the family. Personally, I don't mind. Michael or his son will inherit the title after I snuff it, which is OK by me, and as far as I am concerned, he can have the money. I can earn my own living. I don't want to run the family estate, I just want to live quietly and comfortably with you! I certainly don't want to be obliged to marry a woman just to provide an heir to the title. My brother can do that!"

"Dom, at some stage you will have to put your cards on the table and tell your parents. If there is a row, your love for me will be tested. If you are made to give me up, I won't mind as long as you tell me honestly!"

"Sandro, you're lying when you say that you wouldn't mind. You got me into this mess, and I love you too much to walk away from it. But what I want to do will look as if I'm setting my face against years of history and tradition. There have been gay ancestors in the family before, but most of them married and begot an heir. I refuse to do that!"

"I don't think that your parents or your brothers will say anything to you when I am here. So as soon as I have left, you must decide what to do. If you decide that you don't yet want to come out, even to them, that's fine by me. We will just continue as we have been doing, but we will have a duplex college room with a shared en-suite bathroom next year, so we will see more of one another and have much more opportunities to be intimate. If you do decide to come out you must tell your parents first. But it's much more likely that it will be your brothers who ask you, so it's up to you to have a good story ready. You can't avoid the risk that if you admit anything to your brothers, they might tell your parents, who would be enormously upset that you hadn't told them first. It might be better if you spent less time at home during the vacations. You can always come and stay with me in Fountain Street, or even at my uncles' place at Ixton. As long as you can pay my uncles some rent, you will be welcome to stay as long as you like. And your parents won't cut your money off at once. It's more likely that they might try to buy me off. But you can be sure that I don't want Overton money! I want you!"

We decided that there was little point in discussing the matter further. As it was a warm day and was now lunch time, we settled down under a tree to eat the sandwiches we had brought with us and indulge in some heavy petting. I promised Dom that I would tell nobody about his identity, not even my parents

When we got back home that night, I said to Dom, "Shall I ask your mother if we can go out tonight for a meal at the pub? Just the two us?"

"OK," he said. So I asked Lady Batley if it was OK for us to miss dinner, as I wanted to take Dom out for a celebratory meal to mark his scholarship.

"I'm glad that Dom is making friends in Camford," she said. "He was getting more and more solitary, at one stage I was wondering whether he might be developing mild autism. But he's been a lot better since he went up. It was noticeable as early as Christmas."

"A lot of the men in his year in computer studies are very geekish," I said, "but I have always found him very friendly and open. And intellectually, he's in the top 5% that got college scholarships, so there's no need for you to worry about him. We're getting a duplex set of rooms with a shared sitting room next term, so I'll be able to keep an eye on him."

"Thank you, I would be grateful if you could!"

"It's no trouble, because I'm very fond of him," I said, hoping that not too much would be made of the comment! "I owe him a lot. He got me to hospital quickly after I was concussed during a street robbery in which my iPhone was stolen, and he sat with me when I lay unconscious overnight. I don't know whether he told you that!"

We had a wonderful evening at the pub. Dom had shaken off the gloom about his family's possible reaction. We had a large mixed grill each and a bottle of wine. The pub actually had Italian wine. With the drinks before, and a glass of sweet wine with the dessert, we were pretty fuddled as we stumbled the short distance back to Paradise Place, hand in hand, pausing every few yards in the dark for a kiss and a grope! It was midnight before we got back and Dom said to me, "Sleep with me tonight. I want you near me!" So I did as he asked, and fell asleep spooned up to him, the sweet warmth of my aristocratic boyfriend's body warming me. As I dozed off, I remembered the words of Uncle David's gay anthem Hug you close and keep you warm.

Next morning, Dom said to me, "Are you in a rush to get back home?"

"No, I said, "I'm going by train and I haven't got any tickets yet."

"In that case, I'll come with you as far as London. I want to go up North for a quick visit to my grandfather."

"Let's go to London on Friday then, spend the weekend together at the flat, and both leave on Monday from St Pancras International, me for Lille, you for Sheffield!"

We had a glorious weekend together. We went to the opera at Covent Garden on Saturday night, and spent most of Sunday in bed before going out to dinner at my uncles' favourite Italian restaurant, where I introduced Dom to Alberto the proprietor as my boyfriend. Alberto was gay. He had inherited the restaurant on the death of his father a few years before. Dom told me that he was going to see his grandfather and discuss the difficult matter of him coming out as gay. "My grandfather will be more understanding than my father about my desire to pass the estate and most of the money to Michael. It's important, because it will affect Michael's career choice after graduation, for example he might want to do a diploma in estate management. If I can get the Marquess on my side, I'm sure my parents and Michael won't object to us becoming partners. I want to resolve the issue before term begins in three weeks time, if I can."

"Shouldn't you talk to your parents first?"

"Not if I can get my grandfather on my side. I'll ask him not to get in touch with Dad until I've got back home and talked to him myself. It's my experience that grandparents are always on the side of the young against their parents." In this, I think that Dom was right. My Scarborough grandparents were always sympathetic to me. As for my Mascagnoli grandparents, I had not seen them since I came out to my parents.

We parted company on the Monday, and after about 15 hours or so of rail travel, I reached home for the first time in four months.

Chapter Fifty-six: the Marquess of Wakefield

Three days later, there was a phone call from Dom. He said, "Sandro, please can you come back to England a few days before the beginning of term? I need you to come to Yorkshire with me to meet my grandfather! If you're flying, take the train into London from the airport and leave all but essential overnight baggage in the left luggage store at Saint Pancras station. I'll meet you there and we'll take the train to Sheffield."

I made arrangements to fly to London-Gatwick five days before term began, and when the day arrived, Dom met me at Saint Pancras as arranged. From Sheffield we took a stopping train into the heart of the Yorkshire countryside and got out at a small country station, where we were met by a car driven by Dom's grandfather's chauffeur, Robert, who drove us to Getheringthwaite Hall.

Dom had told me in the train from London what was happening. It seems that when he had visited the Marquess, the old man, instead of exploding in anger when Dom had told him that he was gay, was delighted. He told an amazed Dom that he himself had really been gay all his life, but had been forced by his father into marrying and having one child, Dom's father. However, since his wife had died a few years ago, his grandfather had been sleeping secretly but regularly with Robert his chauffeur. Apparently they did not share a bed every night, but just when either of them felt a need, but the need was quite frequent! Robert knew that he would not be a beneficiary of the Marquess's will, but he was paid a generous salary, and a house and very generous pension awaited him on my father's death or on Robert's retirement, whichever happened soonest.

The old man had said that he wanted to see me to establish whether I met with his approval, which seemed to be based on my physical appearance and general demeanour. If they were to his satisfaction, he would tell Lord Batley that the estate and most of the money was to be transferred to Michael instead of Dom when their father died. There was no doubt that Michael would be happy with this arrangement, as he loved country pursuits. Dom would have the title, and a small house on the estate, but would be expected to earn his own living. However, that whole business was well ahead in the future. The Marquess was amazingly fit for his age, he swam daily in a heated indoor pool, he played golf twice a week, he made regular trips to the opera in London and he got lots of exercise from his antics with Robert in bed!