Dom and Sandro Ch. 03

I missed Sandro and Dom when they left Camford, but it did mean that for the first time for years, we only had young Tommy in the house. The three of us spent every weekend out of term at Rockwell's Barn, with an hour in the pool each day. One day I would cook, the other day we would eat at the Jellycotes Arms. We walked a lot, swam a lot and after Tommy had gone to bed or before he woke up in a morning, David and I fucked a lot. We still wanted one another as much as we had done thirty years before. Tommy knew not to disturb us when our bedroom door was shut! We told him to ring on his cellphone if he needed us.

He still found having gay parents a bit embarrassing, but he participated in all sorts of after-school activities and we supported him by attending school music events and cheering his school teams from the touchline, much as we hated football. David had become artistic adviser to the Royal Bristol Opera, and was in Bristol about once a month. While there, he used to stay with Dom and Sandro at Womble for a couple of nights and got to know his great nieces very well. They showed signs of being musical.

Tommy was now nearly sixteen and approaching his GCSE exams. He had gone out with a few girls, and did not show any signs of being gay. He was also quite musical, and had reached grade 7 in his piano exams.

Chapter XLI Tommy: Tommy's holidays in Womble

Three times a year, every school holiday, I would spend at least a week with Dom and Sandro in Womble. It was a big break from school. While I enjoyed school and had started to study mathematics, classics and Italian for A Level, the two latter being specialities of Winton College School, I had always had a deep affection for the two men who had rescued me when I had run away from the sadistic creeps who were my birth parents. However, in no way was I like the boys in Womble. They were not only gay, they had both specialized at University in disciplines that were rich in jobs. I had chosen to study subjects that had little relevance to everyday life.

I got to love the Cotswold countryside almost as much as that of Ixfordshire. My cousins would be out most of the day, and after my two little cousins-once-removed had started school, I was left alone with them and Mrs Hambleton. In order to let her get on with household jobs, I used to go off on my own for most of the day. She would give me a picnic pack and a bottle of water, and off I would go to explore the Cotswold countryside, either on foot or on a bike. I visited Fairford, and gazed at the amazing medieval stained glass in the church, I visited Bourton-on-the-Water, with its model village, I explored Tetbury and Cirencester, and once or twice went into Swindon on the train.

I was that very unusual person, a teenage believer. My parents had brought me up to acknowledge the rule of God in our lives and taught me that the credit for my rescue from parental abuse was due to Him, not to them or Dom and Sandro. I was conditionally baptized and confirmed at the age of twelve and went to church with them every Sunday when we were in Camford (sometimes to Saint Boniface's college chapel), and I always went to Womble parish church on my own when I was staying with Dom and Sandro. I had always been a solitary boy, with a lot of acquaintances, but few friends. At the weekends, when Sandro and Dom were at home, we would either go out with the girls as a group, or one of my cousins would take me off by myself to see or do something interesting.

As the girls got older, I was allowed to take them for walks, and this was much more fun than going out alone. I even used to take them to church, where they were as quiet as mice. It was a big break from the all-male atmosphere of Camford. I enjoyed the company of the girls and Mrs Hambleton so much that it soon became clear to me that no way could I be gay. At sixteen, I told my fathers this, and they encouraged me to spend as much time as possible in Womble, and even paid my cousins an allowance to keep me when I was living there. The guest bedroom in the attic became mine except when other guests were visiting, when I slept on a sofa-bed in the family room. I loved the little room under the eves. It was especially cosy when it was raining and I could here the rain beating on the roof.

Every day in Camford when I got home from school, I would pop round to Auntie Caterina's, and talk to her as she was preparing dinner. One day, she told me that one of her Italian granddaughters was coming to study in Camford, and outside term would be staying with her. The girl, whose name was Beatrice Semperamini was nearly nineteen, and, like my cousin Sandro, had managed to get a place in the University, at Islip College. She was to read European History. It would not always be practicable for her to go back to Italy for the short vacations, and she would be staying with Caterina. Beatrice would arrive in July to polish up her English before the Martinmas term, and Caterina hoped that both I and my fathers would show her all that she needed to know about Camford before term began. She said to me, "I hope you will continue to call in each day when Beatrice is here. When my own daughters were teenagers, they were a real headache! If Beatrice proves as difficult as her mother was at that age, I will welcome your quiet and hassle-free conversation!"

I tried to keep an open mind about this change in our lives in Octavia Avenue, but hoped that the Italian girl would be nice, and not fat and ugly. To my relief, when Beatrice arrived, she was very attractive, slim and dark-haired. Her English was extremely good, which was just as well, as my schoolboy Italian was rather halting and not very grammatical. In fact it would need to improve a lot if I was to make a success of university-level study. Beatrice seemed very sophisticated to me, who did not know a lot about women. I hoped that she would not treat me as a child, indeed, I very much wanted her to like me. I did not exactly fall in love with her at first sight, but I certainly fancied her!

Chapter XLII Dom: Christmas in Italy

In November we took the twins and Elizabeth into Swindon one Saturday to have passport photographs taken, and in December the five of us flew from Bristol to Valerio-Catullo-Villafranca airport, where both my parents were waiting with two cars to take us all home. Bianca was already there and had come with them to meet us. It was well over a year since we had last seen them all, and it must have been a bit of an ordeal for Elizabeth to meet the children's second set of grandparents for the first time. The girls, however had no reservations, and were soon chattering away in a mixture of Italian and English to Nonno and Nonna. Bianca listened in fascination. The girls were on the brink of being bilingual.

Massimo could scarcely believe his ears. He had been brought up to think of the English as unmusical, cold and passionless as well as bad at languages. Not even the evidence of his own wife, who had none of those qualities, could dissipate that illusion, nor could Tom, with his excellent Italian and his quiet but passionate nature. But when he saw these two sweet and loving little girls chattering away in their broken Italian, he finally began to realize how wrong national stereotypes are. We had explained to the girls that Christmas is rather low-key in Italy, and there would be less tinsel and carols. However, there would be presents and a Christmas dinner with a Christmas pudding specially made by my mother. One night, after the girls had gone to bed, my parents told me how thrilled and happy they were with their two new granddaughters. "It's wonderful that you are teaching them Italian!" they both said.

We told the girls that their uncles Luca and Tom would be there, and would be bringing presents for them. The two boys arrived on Christmas Eve and immediately fell in love with our sweet daughters. They joined us in the hotel, leaving Elizabeth and the twins in the charge of my parents. Christmas Day was very enjoyable and the girls went to bed exhausted, as they had not had their afternoon sleep. On San Stefano, we all went for a walk and the girls got their first real glimpse of Italy.

This year, Luca had managed to get three days off work, so on the day before they left, we four men managed to get an evening together. Tom and Luke could talk about nothing else but Jane and Anne, and how they envied us. They told us that they could not adopt in Italy, and would have to come home if they wanted to adopt a child. They also said that they could not leave Italy for at least another two years. Sandro kissed them and said that when the girls were a bit older, we would try and organize a visit with them to Trabizona, or perhaps better, rent a villa for the seven of us. When they had gone, we had just one further day before we had to fly back to England.

The day after we landed, Sandro was back at work. There had been a very long length of track renewal on the outskirts of London. It had been necessary to close several kilometres of track to train services for a whole week over the holiday period, to many loud complaints from the travelling public. The work was nearly complete, but before the line could be reopened, the whole length needed to be checked by Sandro's special track-checking train. One set of new points at a key junction proved to be faulty and it was an all-night job to replace and check the work. Sandro said to me, "I like my work, but I wish that I could see more of the kids." This of course is a complaint of many fathers. We were just glad that we had Elizabeth to play the role of a loving mother.

Chapter XLIII Sandro: Anne's and Jane's schooldays

Soon after Christmas, it was time for the girls to start school. We renewed our efforts in their spare time to keep up their Italian. Every Friday afternoon, Dom would leave Elizabeth at home and walk to school to meet the girls, who would walk home with him, each holding his hand. On these occasions, fragmentary Italian would be spoken. We now tried never to use English when we spoke to them, even though they often replied in English. We had come back from Italy loaded with simple books and lots of other Italian educational material. At the same time, Dom was far enough advanced with Italian to sit one of the lower level Chartered Institute of Linguists exams, which he passed with distinction. He said that it was a welcome distraction from code-writing and checking. Even so, there were times when one or other of the twins would gleefully correct his Italian!

We spent our Easter holidays at Loxton with my grandparents. They were delighted to entertain the five us, it made the house the hive of people that it had been when David's and Jeroen's children were younger. It gave the girls a few days to speak just English. We decided not to take the twins to Getheringthwaite until the summer.

The girls' primary school was very caring as well as effective at teaching, and they soon began to learn to read. We tried to find out how the school taught reading, because we wanted to apply the same techniques in teaching them to read Italian. This was of course rather a problem as the pronunciation rules are quite different. However, the girls were rather bright, and once they learnt the spelling rules, they made rapid progress in reading simple Italian books. Through the school, we got to know a lot more of the younger villagers with children of the same age as Anne and Jane, and began to play more of a role in local life. It was an educational experience for most of the villagers to meet a gay couple with children, and as usual the children broke down a lot of the reserve and suspicion that had greeted us when we first moved into Womble.

It was clear to us that if we were to keep up the girls' progress with Italian, they would have to spend some time in Italy every year. I was sure that my parents would be happy to have them, if we could find someone to go with them on the journey.

In August, we took the girls to Getheringthwaite to meet their great grandfather. We had waited until they were at school before going, because their mother was still living in the village, but we reckoned that by now they would probably have forgotten her. The Marquess was beginning to show his age. He only played golf once a week now, and although he swam in the pool most days, Robert had to help him into and out of the water. But he was delighted to meet the two little girls, and like everyone who met them, fell at once under their spell. We took them for walks in the Park, they spent an hour daily in the pool, and they enjoyed themselves thoroughly. By now they could talk well in both English and Italian, and read elementary English and Italian words. Elizabeth always dressed them nicely, without being extravagant.

We had contacted the Vicar of Getheringthwaite before our visit and arranged for the twins to be baptized. The chapel had its own tiny seventeenth-century font in which most of the Overton children had been baptized ever since the days of the third Marquess. Indeed Dom himself had been baptized in it. "I bet you were a very sweet baby and didn't pee in your napkin during the service!" I said to him.The girls were much too big to be dipped into the water, so the water was poured over them. We had fitted them with little plastic capes to keep their clothes dry and Elizabeth was at hand with a towel to prevent their wet hair from dripping. The girls were as good as gold during the ceremony, and afterwards they were thrilled to have tea with iced buns and mince pies. They had helped Mrs Harrison to bake the buns and ice them. The godparents were Michael, Liz and Cathy for Anne and Luke, Maria and Bianca for Jane. We had decided not to go outside our families for godparents, mainly because most of the women we knew were too old. Of the godparents, only Cathy, Bianca and Michael were present, and Elizabeth and Mrs Harrison stood proxy for the other godmothers and Robert for Luke. Bianca had come over from Paris specially for the occasion and it was good to see her. She came back to Womble with the five of us and stayed for a week in our new house. The girls were still on holiday from school and Bianca took them out for a walk each day. At the weekend before she went back to Italy, we took her on several walks in the beautiful Cotswold countryside.

Chapter XLIV Tom: Routine work and aspirations

Time went by. Arturo invited me to give a short lecture course to undergraduates, which seemed to be quite well received. In spite of my (to them) strange accent, the feedback was quite favourable. I also had to do two weeks additional demonstrating work in the teaching lab, because Ben had two weeks on paternity leave. Leonora had given birth to a large, healthy baby boy, whom they decided to call Francesco. In spite of not being a Roman catholic, I was honoured to be invited to be godfather to the baby, and at his baptism in the village where Leonora had grown up, there was a big party to celebrate the new arrival. My darling Luke was directing revival productions at the Teatro Musicale, but at least with new principals, he could at no great expense make the productions have a new slant and emphasis. Even the very conservative conductor Maestro Lindorini could be persuaded to try new ways of presentation if one worked hard on him. I've not mentioned it before, but of course I attended every one of the productions at the Teatro Musicale, even though it meant sitting on my own. When young Francesco was nearly a year old, I used to babysit for Ben and Leonora. The boy was very good. He very rarely woke up, and when he did, I was easily able to see to his needs. That enabled Leonora to resume her opera-going.

Babysitting strengthened my desire for children. But we had the major problem that neither of us, even given a baby, was in a position to give up our job to care for it. Costanza, who had become very fond of us, was too old for the responsibility of caring for a child full-time. She would make an excellent babysitter, but not really a substitute mother.

Occasionally I had to go away and leave Luke alone. Once it was to a meeting of the Italian Chemical society at which I presented a paper and a poster on our work. A couple more times were short visits to Camford in connection with our joint research project. On these visits, I stayed with David and Jon, and I made sure that they and Tommy came out for a meal at the Venezia with me. Tommy was now very tall and energetic and fit, and must have been an attractive figure to both girls and boys, but he was firmly on the 'straight' side of the divide. He was hoping to get into a Camford college, though he had not yet decided what subjects he wanted to read. On my second visit, several months later, Tommy brought along to the meal an Italian girl, who turned out to be Caterina's granddaughter, who would be starting at Islip College a few weeks later. I wondered if a relationship might be forming between the two young people, or whether it was just politeness to her to introduce me as someone who could speak Italian.

When I got back to Trabizona, I realized how much I had missed my fag-boy. I had no sooner got into the flat (it was mid-afternoon) than I grabbed him and started to undress him. I stripped him down to his underpants and began to play with his nipples. The sight of his golden-brown chest filled me with lust, and I began to pull gently on the hair round his nipples with my teeth. I smothered his chest with kisses before running my lips over the hard lump that was distending his underpants. Even before I put my lips to the silk, a moist patch was spreading from the tip of his cock, outlined by the stretched silk. Carefully, I pulled the silk slip over his hips and down to his ankles, revealing his brown, rock-hard dick projecting from his silky smooth pubic bush. I applied my lips to its tip and kissed it before beginning to lick it with my tongue. An ecstatic smile spread over his face. "I've missed you my darling boy! I have a hollow and empty feeling in my back passage that urgently needs to be filled!"

"Don't worry, my hole-filling equipment is all ready, but I must get undressed!" I tore off my clothes, dropped them on the floor and pushed Luke on to our bed. I resumed my attention to his man-stick. I licked the sides and moved down to his balls and began to suck and lick his hairy ball-bag. Then I moved back up his shaft and took the head into my mouth. He groaned in delight. I could feel the precome oozing from my dick as I chewed his cock. He began to push excitedly at the back of my throat. I felt his slimy prick sliding to and fro in my welcoming mouth. After a few minutes, he came violently and shot his load into my mouth. As he slowly withdrew his prick, I struggled to swallow his huge cargo. I then turned him over and the sight of his delicious brown arse reinvigorated the hardness of my cock as I began to kiss and lick the wonderful warm, smooth, hairless skin of his lovely curved rump. "You are beautiful, my pretty youth!" I told him. Every time we made love, whichever role I was playing, top or bottom, I never forgot the time that he first told me that he wanted to be mine. I also never forgot how he saved me from a premature departure from Camford in a period of total lack of self-confidence in my second undergraduate term. Now it often seemed that he was the one who was struggling, trying to establish himself in a badly defined and badly paid career role.

"Come on, my sweet stud, put it in! You're miles away! Get back on to the job! I want you up my arsehole. Fuck me silly!" he said. I put my anxieties for the future out of my mind and concentrated on the job. I took a dollop of lubricant gel on my fingers and poked it inside him, while he unrolled a prophylactic on to my cock. I pushed him on to his back on the bed, put his legs on my shoulders, and entered his poop-chute smoothly and gently, before setting to work fucking him. "My darling boy," I told him, "you are still all I have in the world. Anything you want from me you can have, but all I can give you apart from love is spunk! I bent and kissed his face as I worked my dick in and out.