Free Plague Bomb by James Rouch Page B

strange though, despite the obnoxious attentions of Gross, despite the unexpected exertion and the dishevelment it brought, she was kind of enjoying herself.
    Just why was hard to figure. She just felt sort of, well elated, real happy. Maybe it was because at last she was going to grab all the headlines, maybe because using the axe it reminded her of when she was a kid, when her only worry was being left alone with Uncle Harry, when he used to pull up her nightdress and rub against her, but that apart all had been well with her world.
    All was going to be well with her world again. When they reached the Russian lines the gamble she had taken, the risks of short term unpopularity with the audience and the studios back home, all that would be wiped away. Within a week she’d be bigger than Fonda, bigger than anybody. Swinging the work brightened blade high she brought it down hard and severed the branch she’d been working on.
    In the unaccustomed physical exertion Sir Julian Webb found an outlet for his irritation at the delay, and also a release for some of the pent-up anger with life in general that seethed inside him. It was that incident the day before he’d left from Heathrow, when he’d returned to his rooms in Chelsea a little earlier than usual, and found Raymond with that pimply paper-boy.
    Never a voyeur, only ever a participant of the homosexual act, he’d been struck by the vulgar ugliness of it all, on finding Raymond standing with a jar of Vaseline in one hand, and his stub of an; erection in the other, trying to fit the lubricated organ into the youth’s tightly rounded pink backside.
    The scene stuck in his mind; the youth’s soiled pants tangled among the patched jeans around his ankles, the resigned look of boredom on his acne etched features, the crumpled five pound note clenched hard in his fist: and Raymond, his plump face red with excitement and anticipation, mouthing crude obscenities to encourage the boy and prepare himself.
    It was not Raymond’s betrayal of their thirty year relationship that had hurt; it had not been active, had hardly been affectionate for a long time. No, it was. whom he chose to do it with. Had he known about him and the youth? Webb could hardly believe it, Raymond had been away the week he had ... when the youth had come in for a drink of tea. The flushed thrill of that first accidental brushed contact was with him still. Every action of the youth’s had been so obvious, so blatant a come- on ... It had been the youth’s greed for money that had frightened him into ending the tawdry affair before Raymond’s return, and in all truth he’d not been sorry. After that first time he’d not really enjoyed it. Perhaps he was getting old, perhaps he was just old fashioned, but the act had been so casual, so bereft of any ... romance ... that the mechanics of intimacy had not been sufficient alone to make him want to continue the relationship.
    Any last lingering doubts he’d had as to whether or not to make this trip had been cast aside at that moment when he’d walked in and caught them ...
    ‘I’m absolutely fucking knackered.’ Gross straightened and put a hand to his aching back. ‘That bloody bus must have the guts to shove aside what’s left. For Christ’s sake give it another go.’
    ‘Wait, wait. Before we go on ...’ Father Venables experienced an all too familiar sensation, and trying hard not to look as if he was clutching himself, shuffled off the road and a little way into the straggling undergrowth that bordered it. ‘Ah ...’ That was good. He had adjusted his clothing only just in time. Really, this condition was too unfortunate, too embarrassing. Possibly it would help if he reduced his fluid intake.
    He coughed at the slight irritation caused by dust-like wisps that rose from a fungi covered rotting log his dark coloured urine hosed across. Fastening the last of his buttons before starting back, as he pushed through the pliant branches he felt a