Dom and Sandro Ch. 02

One of the reactions that the press notice evoked was an E-mail to Sandro's Camford Alumni address from Jack Meredith, who wrote Hi Sandro, I see that you caught a bigger fish than I would have been. But I bet that he does not enjoy you as much as I did! Have a good time with your noble stud. Jack M. Sandro was indignant. "That shit obviously thinks that I am your permanent bottom!" he said to Dom. "I hate him nearly as much as I hate my biological father. I hope that Mario Contadini never sees that press notice." Dom told Sandro firmly that his short relationship with Jack Meredith had given him valuable sexual experience and that he should not be so hasty in condemning a man who had been part of his gay education. "What you learnt from him was valuable when you used it to charm me!"

Chapter XXXIII Dom: the 'newlyweds'

After all the fuss was over and before we resumed work, Sandro and I met Tim Ingledown at his London office to draw up wills. Neither of us had much money of our own. My income from the family trust fund was mine for life and the income that I drew could be increased at any time at my request, but I could not touch the capital, which would go to Michael on my death. We arranged to double the income that I drew and to invest half in a trust fund for Sandro, of which the income would accumulate. The other half, together with our two salaries, was comfortable enough to live on and David had promised that when we wanted to buy a house, he would buy it for us, so we would not need a mortgage. So our wills were quite simple. Our total individual estates were left to the survivor, on whose decease it would go to any children we might have. In the absence of children, half the estate would go to Bianca or any children that she might have left, the rest would go to Saint Boniface's College. Sandro's new name was registered with the College of Arms and he received the grant of a coat of arms: gules three unicorns rampart argent within a bordure ermine, and the motto Amor virilis optimus est (male love is the best). We agreed to display our arms impaled together like those of a married couple, Sandro's on the sinister side, mine, the Ovenden arms differenced by a label of five points argent, each point charged with a mullet sable, on the dexter side. We had notepaper, business cards and E-mail signatures prepared bearing our new coat of arms.

Time went by. We both gained experience and promotion in our jobs. Sandro became an expert at track diagnosis, and developed modifications that improved the equipment. I got involved with several of the projects at YTS, and one night I got back to Swindon to inform Sandro that I had just signed the Official Secrets Act. YTS did quite a lot of work for Cheltenham-based GCHQ, all of which was top secret. GCHQ is part of Britain's intelligence network. "It means that not only have they done checks on my background, they will also have looked into yours!" I told him. "So don't get involved in any shady activities, because we will still be checked over from time to time! My boss and the HR department at YTS know my identity. The others just know me as Dom Ovenden the gay!"

Early the following year, I went home one day and announced to Sandro, "No swimming for the next six Saturdays, Sandro. We will go to London each Saturday to sit for our portraits! Tim Ingledown recommends an artist called Sir Jeremy Fisher, who has painted members of the royal family and numerous celebrities. But Tim says he is very discrete. He will not want to use the picture in any public exhibition. The finished work will hang in the Portrait Gallery at Getheringthwaite, where it will be seen by the public on the six occasions in the year when the Hall is open to the public. The room is protected by closed-circuit television cameras and unauthorized copying will be detected. Our commission means that we own the copyright of the painting, and unauthorized copying or other reproduction will be prosecuted in the courts. Tim's firm has a specialist intellectual property lawyer, and any sneaky paparazzi photographers will be pursued in the courts. It's not that we want to be secret. If they seek permission and pay £100 to a nominated charity, they will be able to publish a photo of the portrait."

The sittings each lasted about three hours and afterwards we went to the opera, on one occasion with my grandfather, who happened to be in London. We went to see the London première of Anna Veronica, for which David had come out of retirement to sing the role of Capes. Fisher was a great guy, and told us that he was gay himself, so he was very happy to paint us holding hands. As it was a very formal painting, we chose to wear academic dress, myself in my M.A. gown and hood, Sandro in full-dress doctor's robes, to make the picture colourful, and our subfusc suits were both by Armani. Fisher painted the background from some interior photographs of Getheringthwaite Hall. Lord Wakefield, when he saw the finished work, was very impressed. He said that it was much better than the portrait of himself in military uniform, which had been painted before he succeeded to the title, although Robert loved that painting, because it reminded him of the days when they first became lovers. There was a separate portrait of the late Marchioness in the gallery: indeed only a few of the previous Marquesses had been painted as married couples, most had had their wives painted separately. The Perverted Lord, the sixth Marquess, was portrayed with a young black ex-slave dressed as a page, who was his bedmate at the time of the painting.

Looking back over the previous few years, both Sandro and I could record them as the most wonderful period in our lives. We had enjoyed together three years of student life, six years of joyous love together, and seven years of growth from boyhood to manhood. We did not know what the future would bring, but we hoped that before Dom became a courtesy Earl, we would have started a family, either by adoption or surrogacy.

{Eventually there will be a continuation to this story.]