The Low Road by James Lear Page B

not to say that I told you?’
    â€˜I promise nothing, old man.’ He was transfixed by what he saw. I think he would have sold his soul to the devil.
    â€˜Very well. I had seen you and Alexander together a few times, in the stable, in your room...’
    â€˜You mean you spied on us?’
    â€˜Yes sir. I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. Once I knew what you were doing I spent all my time trying to catch you at it again. When you moved him into the house I knew that I could creep outside the
window and watch you whenever I wanted. It was too much to resist.’
    â€˜All right. What’s done is done. Is that all?’
    â€˜That’s all, sir, I swear.’
    â€˜You’re a liar.’ I made as if to pick up my shirt and leave him.
    â€˜No sir, please, there’s more. One day your mother called me into the house and asked me what I had been doing in the garden. She’d seen me, you see, crouched outside your window. I was so ashamed. I didn’t know what she thought... whether she’d actually caught me...’
    â€˜Wanking.’
    â€˜Precisely, sir.’ His hand went to his cock and jerked it two or three times. ‘I was always greatly given to it.’
    â€˜So I see. Go on.’
    â€˜She asked me what I had heard. I didn’t understand at first, but she asked again what conversations I had heard coming from your room. I said I thought you were alone, and so how could there be any conversation? But then she became angry, and said she knew that you kept Alexander in your room. I was going to defend you, sir, I swear it, to tell her that nothing happened between you, but she didn’t seem to care. She only wanted to know what was said. Nothing, I told her, just idle conversation. It was the truth; all I had ever heard pass between you were words of friendship. She looked at me for a long time and then swallowed, as if there were a bitter taste in her mouth.’
    â€˜And then?’
    â€˜She told me to go back there night after night, to make my bed beneath your window no matter how cold the air, to listen to every word that I heard and to report them to her every morning.’
    â€˜And what did you hear?’
    â€˜You know, sir, that for many nights there was nothing but the... perfectly natural expression of... your friendship with the young man.’

    â€˜You listened to us fucking.’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    â€˜Until that last night.’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    â€˜And so you went and told my mother that Alexander had betrayed her trust and spoken to me of my father.’
    â€˜I’m sorry, sir.’
    â€˜What did she say?’
    â€˜Very little at the time, sir. That man was with her.’
    â€˜Lebecque.’
    â€˜Yes. Your tutor.’
    â€˜You needn’t protect him, MacFarlane. He is no friend to this family.’
    â€˜I told your mother, in his hearing, what Alexander had said to you. She was alarmed; Lebecque was quite businesslike. “It has happened at last, then,” he said. I was dismissed from the room and I heard no more.’
    â€˜You? A spy like you? Come on, MacFarlane, what did you hear at the keyhole, at the window?’
    He looked up at me with genuine shame on his face. If he could have escaped from the trap now, I believe, he would have done - and relinquished the taste of my young cock once and for all.
    â€˜Tell me, MacFarlane, or I swear that on my majority I will have you clapped in prison.’
    â€˜I heard a few more words, just by mistake, sir. Lebecque told your mother that she must leave you entirely in his charge, that the safety of more than just the family was at stake if she attempted to interfere. She cried and begged him to leave. That was all I heard, sir, I swear on my mother’s life.’
    â€˜Very well. I believe you.’ With so much to contemplate, I had lost interest in the immediate prospect of MacFarlane’s admiration. He, clearly,