Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

Instead, the man sat down on the bench, the far end from him. John looked at him and quickly away. The clouds had massed and darkened and the moon had gone behind them. He couldn’t see much. When the man lit a cigarette, the flame seemed very bright. John lit another. They sat at opposite ends of the bench, smoking, and John thought again, When this cigarette is finished, I’ll go; I’ll leave then and go home.

The man leaned back. He left his cigarette in his mouth, hanging from his lip. John’s eyes were accustomed now to the new darkness and the light from the two cigarettes helped. He saw the man begin massaging himself. His eyes were closed, so he couldn’t see John looking, but John knew he knew he was looking. He saw him put his hands inside his trousers and those hands slowly moving, expertly moving, he thought. He didn’t know what to do, though do something he must. Going home now was impossible. It was as if to go home now would be an abnegation of everything, a denial of all hope and possibility, an absolute death. He must do something, so he began to do what the man was doing.

He had done it before but never like this. Never in company. Never had he even dreamed of this, of two men sitting at opposite ends of a bench, their cigarettes extinguished, the silence more profound and telling than any sound could be, their hands rhythmically busy. The man had turned his head and opened his eyes. They gazed at each other.

“Let’s go over there.”

John got up and followed the man in among the trees. He would take the other’s lead; he would do nothing on his own initiative; he would learn. The man was young, in his early twenties, ordinary-looking, thin, smelling of soap. The voice had been rough working class. John thought he would kiss him. That was how you began with girls, with a kiss, always with a kiss.

Dark in the wood, warmer. Eyes looking at him for a short moment, what light there was caught on their glassy convex surfaces. Then the lids falling, hands touching him, no kiss. He began to do with his hands what the man was doing with his. Prostitutes don’t kiss, they say—kissing is too intimate—but somehow he knew that wasn’t the reason the man didn’t kiss him; there must be some other. He thought those things while he could think, before the power of thought slid away into a deep mindless well of sensual pleasure.

2

The world was a different place. He was more alive than he had ever been, and more afraid. One evening in the spoiled forest had done that. There could be more evenings, and once he went back, looking for the man whose name he didn’t know. He sat on the bench and looked at the water and at last someone did come. People came. Two policemen.

They were walking side by side. They stopped by the bench and one of them came over to him. “You waiting for someone?” the policeman said, and when John said he was just sitting there, he was just out for the evening, the policeman said, “Get along home now, son.” The other one said, “You’ve been warned.”

John went home. Later on, he understood he had been lucky. They had been kind to him. The police used agents provocateurs. If they had known why he was there and what he hoped for, they might easily have set him up with one of their own. For John knew now that if he had met a man and that man asked him back to his room, he would have gone. Happily, delightedly. But the two policemen had only warned him and sent him home.

It wasn’t long afterward that he was sent to report a case at quarter sessions. Two men, one very young, the other in his fifties, charged with gross indecency. While awaiting trial, the older man had attempted suicide in his cell. Both were sent to prison, though the offenses had been committed in the total privacy of the older man’s isolated house.

One of the results of this case and others like it was that John’s editor set him on researching homosexual activity. It alarmed John at first because he thought he must have been picked for a specific reason, something about his appearance or speech, some mannerism unknown to him but which betrayed him. But he was soon reassured. The choice was made on grounds of experience and his good qualities as a reporter alone. Some of the others in the office commiserated with him and there was more advice about keeping his back to the wall. One of them had recently interviewed a biologist who had produced homosexuality in male rats by segregating a group of them from females. This proved that men only wanted to be “queer” when they didn’t mix with women. Everyone in the office, including John, fell about laughing.

Perhaps only John’s was genuine derision. He had tried mixing with women but preferred now not to think of it, to forget it. He started his research by going to coffee bars the editor said he’d heard queers frequented. The only queer he had ever spoken to was the man in the forest and then only to say “Yes” and “Thanks” and “Good-bye.” He wondered if he would know one when he saw him, but in fact he had no difficulty. The two men at the next table were what someone later told him were known as “screamers.” It was easy to see why. They had shrill voices, affected manners, and made exasperated gestures when they talked. John wondered if he ever made a similar impression on people, and he resolved to be more careful, to restrain his laughter, to keep his voice down and be more low-key.

At home with his mother and stepfather and the children, it was a different world. In that house, in spite of the overcrowding, everything was orderly, neat, bright. It seemed always as if truth were spoken and words transparent in their honesty. Anyone who derided family life, called it, for instance, a cover-up of ugly secrets, skeletons in cupboards, should have to come to see their family. More than anything in the world, he would have liked to make such a family for himself. One day. To have that sanctuary, that peace, the absolute safety.

All that was strong and powerful and big about his mother was her physical size. Her spirit—once, he would have said her soul—was gentle and tender, timid and innocent. He was as nearly sure as he could be that she had never heard of men loving men, that if told, she would barely believe it. Experts—so-called experts, doctors, psychologists—were saying that it was strong, dominant women who made their sons into homosexuals. They ought to see his mother, humble, quiet, compassionate, deferring to the male viewpoint, yet she had two sons who were queers.

He was sure Desmond was. Just as he knew his eldest brother was not and his youngest brother was not. The youngest was only fourteen, but still he could tell. He would have been able to tell if he were only eight or only six. Did it matter? Not if it could be hidden and the hiding be maintained, if not forever, for years. So that his mother need never know and Joseph need never know. In the climate in which they all lived, keeping it secret was obligatory, anyway. He was beginning to find out that it would be preferable for him to have syphilis or be certified as mad than to admit his homosexuality.

3

The consultant in contagious diseases he went to interview at the local hospital called himself a liberal. He told John he was opposed to anything that might curb prostitution because that would turn more men toward homosexuality. John asked him if he thought of homosexuality as an illness and, if so, whether it was one of the diseases he was a specialist in.

“Venereal disease is my subject,” the man said none too pleasantly. “But, yes, I do think of inverts as sick men. You notice I call them ‘inverts’ and not ‘perverts.’ In my opinion, they are to be pitied, not condemned. Our task is to cure them, not send them to prison.”