Pages out of Order
      a novelette by Ben Jeapes 

      "Pages out of Order" is vaguely autobiographical in that I went to a not 
      dissimilar school from 1978-1983. I emerged relatively unscathed but could 
      never take the place seriously: the chorus of the school song went "Vivat 
      Rex Eduardus Sextus", which I thought rather showed a lack of awareness of 
      current affairs.
      ---Ben Jeapes

      Pages out of Order
      Third form, Winter term, 1978
      Tom's arrival in my life was preceded by the sound of his mother.
      It was a sunny September weekend and most of our year had already arrived 
      at our new school; we had shaken off our parents and were unpacking our 
      trunks in the dormitory, casting covert glances at our neighbours or 
      making shy conversation.
      Once, a summer ago, we had known who we were. Good little public 
      schoolboys, the future administrators of a dead empire; diehard 
      Conservatives, sworn enemies of Callaghan's Labour government. Two months 
      beforehand we were kings at prep school and the pinnacle of maturity was 
      the grand age of thirteen. Now we were little boys again, dwarfed even by 
      the mountainous fourteen-year-olds in the year above us. We were longing 
      for an object on which to vent our new-found insecurity, and then the 
      Meltons arrived.
      We heard Mrs Melton coming down the corridor and suspended our unpacking 
      to listen better: "Is this the way? Doesn't anyone know anything? You, are 
      you a prefect? Can you direct us to Thomas's dormitory?"
      She was a brassy woman in a fur coat, who glided in like visiting royalty 
      while two conscripted fifth-formers struggled behind her with a trunk. 
      Absorbed in this spectacle, it took an effort to notice the small, 
      red-haired figure in his mother's wake: misery incarnate, in a too-big 
      suit.
      "Now, where's your bed?" Mrs Melton stalked about the dormitory, squinting 
      at the nameplates above each bed, and homed in on the bed next to mine. 
      "Here it is. Put the trunk there, will you?"
      She turned to her son.
      "Well, dear, I'll be off so you can settle in. Be good." She gave his 
      cheek a quick peck and looked around. Her eyes settled on me. "This is 
      your neighbour--" [she peered at my nameplate] "--William Sutton. William, 
      this is Thomas. Remember everything I told you, Thomas. Ask a prefect if 
      you need anything and if anyone offers you a cigarette go straight to the 
      housemaster." That line sealed her son's fate. "Are you coming to see me 
      off?"
      We all realised, the two fifth-formers included, that we were staring at 
      Tom, who followed after his mother with his face a flaming red that 
      matched his hair. The fifth-formers tactfully vanished and left us 
      sharpening our claws with glee for Tom's return.

      9.30 pm, Day One of term. Bed time for little boys. The ribbing had eased 
      off and we were still sorting out who would be the leaders of the year, 
      who the followers of the leaders and who would be more or less 
      independent. This last group had two sub-categories -- acceptable and 
      unacceptable. I knew from experience that my big ears would exclude me 
      from the first group unless I showed a lot more bravado than I had in me; 
      the best course was to lie low and hope no one noticed me. I therefore 
      found myself in the second group, kidding myself that this was in fact 
      acceptable independence. Tom, because no one else would dare take him, 
      found himself squarely in the third, independence quite unacceptable.
      I didn't have the heart for the prolonged persecution campaign that the 
      far end of the dormitory had set themselves on (several voices had already 
      broken up that end, which gave them a head start in the maturity stakes). 
      Preventative alliances were forming in the squeaky-voiced camp and I 
      decided to do my bit. Tom was curled up in his bed, nose buried in a book.
      "Hi," I said. No answer. "Thomas?"
      ("Tha-maas!" came a cry from the far end, in the tone used by the woman in 
      Tom and Jerry when the cat has just wrecked the house again.)
      He glared back at me.
      "Tom," he said, and turned back to his book.
      "Oh, sorry." Tom, eh? I had always been William, even to my friends. Time 
      to grow up. "I'm Will," I said.
      "Oh."
      I resented this treatment: maybe no one else had seen the teddy bear he 
      had almost taken out of his trunk, but I had and I hadn't said a word.
      "Good book?" I asked. He held it up -- The Spy Who Loved Me. "Oh, right! 
      Is it as good as the film?" The latest epic to feature Ol' Eyebrows had 
      come out the previous year.
      ("Want a cigarette?" someone called. "If anyone offers you a cigarette, go 
      straight to the housemaster," someone else answered, falsetto.)
      "It's far better," he said loftily. "It's a proper love story. It doesn't 
      have any submarines or undersea bases."
      "Not even a Lotus?" I asked hopefully.
      "'Fraid not."
      ("Hey, Melton! You queer?" "That's it! He's bent!" "Move your bed away 
      from him, Sutton!")
      "Is there any ... you know?" I said, even more hopefully.
      "There is a bit, actually," he admitted, with a bashful grin. He showed me 
      a couple of choice passages, of which between us we understood about half, 
      and we chatted a bit more about James Bond. By the time the prefect came 
      in to turn the lights out at 10 o'clock we were 0.1 of the way towards 
      being friends.

      Winter, 1978. Another generation of schoolboys navigated its way by 
      instinct through the tricky passages of adolescence; selfish, arrogant 
      prigs without a care in the world beyond proving our maturity. A boy's 
      worth was judged by his prowess in sport and his body's testosterone 
      count. You sank or swam, which meant you grew up fast. There was no point 
      in running to Mummy because Mummy wasn't there and Matron, lovely lady 
      that she was, wasn't quite the same. Outside our artificial, unreal 
      environment the country suffered the Winter of Discontent. Margaret 
      Thatcher would be the nation's salvation. James Callaghan was a Communist 
      (no one was too sure what a socialist was). Liberals were all bent.
      Tom Melton could do nothing right. He was small and his fair skin made him 
      look even younger than he was. His voice refused to break, lodging itself 
      in the higher registers (he left the choir to get away from this stigma, 
      in vain). He had an accent so refined that even we noticed. He liked 
      reading books and he played a musical instrument (the clarinet, and well 
      -- he was a Music Scholar). He was a sensitive, emotional boy and he was 
      targeted for destruction.
      We were placed in the same form, where his unpopularity and my cultivated 
      nebbishness drew us together and we moved from shy liking to proper 
      friendship. Since anyone who failed to come up to scratch was tagged as 
      bent or queer ("gay" hadn't entered our lexicon yet), we both acquired the 
      label. I did sometimes wonder, in the way that adolescents do, but since 
      the sight of Tom in the shower did nothing for me I decided the others 
      were wrong.
      Half term came and went, and Tom refused to talk about it. I imagined a 
      week alone with Mrs Melton and sympathised. I had learnt, to my 
      fascination, that his parents were divorced and his mother had custody of 
      him, though Daddy paid the bills. His father, an unspecified businessman, 
      had left for another woman. I still hadn't got used to the idea that 
      adults (especially parents) had sex even when they didn't want children.
      The second half of term was much like the first, and then the threat of 
      the holidays loomed. After his reaction to half term, I could guess how he 
      felt about four whole weeks at home.
      "Come and stay with us," I invited, after consulting with my parents up in 
      Hereford. His face split into the biggest grin I had seen.
      "Can I? How long?"
      "As long as you like, really."
      Mrs Melton didn't give in without a fight but we got Tom for the week 
      before Christmas, at the cost of my spending a week with the Meltons in 
      the new year.

      Third form, Spring term, 1979
      One term down, fourteen to go. I pitied Tom, torn between an unhappy home 
      and a school he loathed. I had mentioned his unpopularity to my father, 
      who shrugged. He had been through the system himself thirty years 
      previously.
      "He'll have to learn to cope," he had said with rough sympathy. "And you 
      can stand up for your friend, can't you, son?"
      Well ...
      "Of course," I said quickly. Dad shrugged.
      "So there you are. Perhaps things will get better when his voice breaks."
      This happy day was still a way off when things changed.

      The true bane of Tom's life was a boy called Stephen Gale. Perhaps because 
      he never quite made it at anything: he wasn't quite good enough for the 
      team, he wasn't quite accepted as a leader of our year. Older boys smirked 
      slightly when they spoke to him. The main reason for his general 
      unpleasance I didn't learn until later, but all these little things piled 
      up and made him an obnoxious bully.
      Hockey was the sport for the Spring term, and whenever Gale found himself 
      near Tom on the field his stick always managed to catch itself around 
      Tom's ankle and send him flying. On this day he was spotted by the umpire 
      and given a ticking off in public, which only made him worse.
      We got back from games and showered. Gale turned Tom's hot tap off when 
      Tom wasn't looking and tripped him up when he tried to leave. I came out 
      of the showers a few minutes later to find Tom sitting by his locker with 
      his towel still round his waist. His face was buried in his hands and his 
      shoulders were shaking.
      "Tom?" I said. He jerked his head up and the vicious hatred in his look 
      make me take a step back.
      "Fuck off!" he hissed.
      "Hey, Tom, it's me," I said. I noticed the tears in his eyes and heard the 
      rattle in his throat. He was trying very, very hard not to cry.
      "This isn't like you, Tom," I said.
      "I don't give a fuck." Two fucks in ten seconds was definitely not like 
      Tom. He hugged his knees and his voice still shook.
      "I've had enough. I hate this place, I hate this life, I ..." He broke off 
      with a choke. "I'm going to flip, Will. I really am. I am going to flip."
      I towelled myself dry quietly, got dressed and went to lounge in the third 
      form dayroom, waiting for afternoon lessons to start.
      Tom came in shortly after me. He seemed to have got himself under control.
      "It's the queer boy!" Tom ignored Gale. He went to his locker, took out a 
      book, sat down and started reading. His ears were burning despite the show 
      he put on.
      "Hey, did you hear? Melton thought he had a pubic hair, until he peed 
      through it."
      Cue general hilarity and mirth. Tom's ears burnt brighter and he studied 
      the book even more fixedly. To my surprise, I found myself flushing and I 
      buried my nose further in the work I was doing. There was going to be a 
      fight and that wanker Gale was going to bully my friend again. Oh shit oh 
      shit oh shit.
      Shut up, Gale, just shut up! Not Oscar Wilde, but it would serve. It 
      probably would shut him up, too, if only out of surprise. And I would be 
      his next target. No thanks.
      "Is it a nice book, Tommy? Ooh, I do hope Mummy would approve." Gale 
      grabbed the book and held it up above him.
      "Give it back, please," Tom groaned. Gale danced away with the book held 
      up in the air. Tom jumped up, shouting, "Don't--"
      He froze. I could see his face: his expression went blank for a moment and 
      he staggered forward into Gale.
      "Get off me, queer boy!" Gale shouted, knocking Tom away. Tom fell over 
      backwards and landed in a sprawl. He shook his head and slowly climbed to 
      his feet again.
      "You all right, Melton?" one of the braver boys asked. Gale glared at him.
      Tom smiled: it was the creepiest thing I had ever seen because there was a 
      most un-Tomlike glint in his eye.
      "Ah, yes, Gale. The original cock-sucker."
      Gale stood stunned and his cheeks reddened at the burst of laughter. This 
      had to be revenged. He stood over Tom, using his height to dominate.
      "Listen, queer boy--"
      "Oh do be quiet, Stevie-poos," Tom pouted and minced at him. "You'll make 
      Evans jealous."
      Evans? Evans was the captain of the Firsts and surely as straight as they 
      come. Couldn't Tom have picked a better target?
      But Gale was gaping, mouth open. Then he recovered and stepped forward, 
      dangerously close to Tom and looming over him.
      "One last chance, Melton--"
      "One last chance, Melton," Tom mimicked perfectly. "Go squeeze your zits, 
      Gale."
      Gale's hand shot out-- Tom's grabbed it and pulled Gale into a tight 
      embrace. Gale bellowed and writhed to escape, but somehow Tom was hanging 
      on to him and seemed to be whispering in his ear. Gale stopped writhing 
      and stared down at Tom in horror. Tom released him and Gale, white faced, 
      took a step back.
      "I ... you ... wouldn't!" he gasped.
      "Want a bet?" Tom said evenly. Gale fled.
      The rest of us were a frozen tableau, still awed by the extraordinary 
      exchange. Tom seemed to have forgotten about us; he stood still, looking 
      at his hands, then down at the rest of his body. Then he, too, left.
      I found him in the washroom. He was standing motionless, looking in the 
      mirror. Not squeezing blackheads or zits, just looking. Sometimes he would 
      move his head from side to side, never taking his eyes off his reflection. 
      Then he saw my reflection behind him and turned round, grinning.
      "Will. Hi," he said, and put his hands on my shoulders. I was terrified he 
      was going to pull me into an embrace too, but he just stood and took me in 
      as though he had never seen me before.
      "What was all that about, Tom?" I said.
      "Hmm? Oh, Gale, yes. I just mentioned a couple of names, that's all. I 
      shouldn't have made fun of him." He smiled and actually put an arm round 
      my shoulders, for all the world like a big brother. "He won't bully anyone 
      again, that's what counts. I've done him a favour, really, 'cos now he's 
      going to have to learn to make friends."

      That was all it took. Tom didn't want universal popularity, just to be 
      left alone, and it worked. He could live his life his way and when it 
      suited him he could be on good terms with anyone. He was not a violent boy 
      and he despised bullies. He remained independent of cliques, but now it 
      was the acceptable form of independence. He was open to everyone; he could 
      mix with anyone if he so chose, and if he wanted to he could have been a 
      leader of the year in his own right.
      One of the boys he could have led was Stephen Gale, who now practically 
      worshipped his footsteps. Funny old world.
      With the Easter holidays on the horizon, I thought we should make 
      arrangements for visiting again.
      "We're going to Scotland for the week before Easter," I said, "but we 
      could squeeze you in any other time."
      "Ah ... yes," Tom said. "Will, would you mind if I didn't come at all? I 
      mean, do come and stay with us, I'd really like that, but I want to be 
      with my mother."
      "What?"
      He smiled and shrugged sheepishly.
      "She's lonely, Will. Dad's treated her like shit and she deserves a bit 
      more than she's getting from her only child."
      "Then why did she send you here?" I demanded.
      "Because, my dear, one does," he said in his best Noel Coward. In his own 
      voice, he went on, "It would never occur to her not to. Her family have 
      been going to public school since 1066 and the stiff upper lip's been 
      genetically inbred. I'm going to change all that."
      "Yeah?"
      "Yeah. Look, give me your diary."
      I handed it over and he riffled through April.
      "When do you get back from Scotland? The sixteenth? Fine. Not a lot of 
      holiday left after that, but ... say, come on the seventeenth, and see for 
      yourself."

      Both Meltons were waiting for me at the station and Mrs Melton swooped on 
      me.
      "William! How nice to see you again." She kissed me. She kissed me! I 
      could see Tom grinning over her shoulder. She was smiling and animated and 
      as she drove us back to the house, a vast palace in the gin-and-Jaguar 
      heartland of deepest Surrey, she chatted about all the lovely things she 
      and Tom had been doing over the holidays. When she left us in my room it 
      was a relief. Tom was still grinning. He sat in a chair and let me unpack.
      "You've drugged her food, haven't you?"
      "I've been nice to her, that's all."
      "'We've done so many lovely things, Thomas and I--'"
      "Fancy coming up to London this evening?" he said, changing the subject.
      "Sure." I had discovered in January that the local nightlife -- at least 
      for two boys of fourteen who weren't really sure what a good time was 
      anyway -- left a lot to be desired.
      "There's a girl I've been seeing, and she's got a sister--"
      "Yeah, yeah." I stopped unpacking and looked at him. He was serious.
      "Don't tell me, it's your baby cousins, right?"
      "Will! No, Maria's sixteen, and Alice is fourteen, same as you."
      I must have gone pale. The thought of girls -- real girls -- was 
      terrifying. Tom hooted with laughter.
      "You're scared!" He ran over to the window and shouted out of it, "He's 
      scared--"
      "Tom!"
      "Ah, relax." He turned back to me. "You'll hang on to your virginity for a 
      few more years."
      "Tom!"
      "Will, they're a really nice couple of girls. We'll go up after tea, 
      right?"

      My toes still curl at the memory of my fears. It was a totally innocent 
      evening. Maria and Alice were the daughters of a friend of Tom's father; 
      they were good looking, intelligent and thoroughly pleasant to be with. We 
      met up in Leicester Square, went to see Superman and afterwards went to 
      their home in Kensington for dinner. Just the four of us, and when their 
      parents came home we had a couple more drinks and the party broke up.
      It was still the first time I'd talked to a girl other than my sister -- 
      yuk! -- or one of her friends -- yuk! -- for years; certainly the first 
      time since girls had become something more to me than inferior imitations 
      of boys, flat all the way down, to be avoided and despised. Alice and I 
      circled each other like a couple of teenagers on a first date, which is 
      exactly what we were, but we got on well enough and enjoyed each other's 
      company. Just before setting off to catch the tube we managed a quick, shy 
      kiss, and it was like heaven.
      I had been much too absorbed in Alice to think of how Tom was getting on 
      with the sixteen-year-old Maria, much less wonder about how he had managed 
      to bridge the age difference so effectively. There is a lot more than two 
      years between a sixteen-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy. On the 
      train back, it occurred to me to comment in as tangential a manner as 
      possible.
      Tom grinned and gave his one comment on the subject.
      "It's company I'm after, not sex, Will," he said, "and that's just a 
      question of knowing the right words."

      Fourth form, Winter term, 1979
      Tom and I finished our first year as the closest and best of friends and 
      made arrangements to keep in touch over the summer holidays. When we 
      returned for the fourth form we had progressed from the dayroom to shared 
      studies. We got to choose room mates and inevitably we shared together.
      This was more like it! A year older, several inches taller and much, much 
      wiser than the previous Autumn, and (best of all) one step up the maturity 
      ladder from the new third form. We had passed through the worst traumas 
      and adjustments that adolescence could throw at us and we weren't so 
      worried about flaunting our heterosexuality at all and sundry, but again I 
      began to wonder about myself. Had Alice (who I hadn't seen since) been 
      just a flash in the pan? I was the only really close friend that Tom had; 
      he seemed to make a deliberate effort to seek out my friendship, which I 
      found flattering, but ... I put it down to the fact that I had been his 
      friend even before his volte-face the previous year.
      But even so ...
      I plucked up my courage one evening to tell him my fears, in the privacy 
      of our study with no one else about, and he laughed.
      "You're not gay, Will," he said. He was the first person I knew to use 
      that word, and he said it with such conviction that I was paradoxically 
      hurt.
      "How do you know?" I demanded, and bit my tongue when I realised how I 
      sounded.
      "You're not," he repeated. He turned back to his work, then looked up 
      again. "Gale is."
      "Gale?"
      "Sure. What made him such a dork was that he was terrified of anyone 
      finding out and so he had to act like he thought a strapping hetero 
      should. He'll come ... I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if he came out at 
      university. In fact ..." He looked about, as though afraid of 
      eavesdroppers, though no one else could be in the same room. "... in fact, 
      and if you repeat this to anyone else you die, you remember Evans?"
      "Yeah." Our school's rugby hero had left at the end of the last year for 
      Cambridge.
      "I happen to know that he and Gale ... well, did it, as t'were, last year. 
      Or rather, Gale had it done to him, and found he liked it. And he has, so 
      to speak, done it with a couple of other boys too. And I'm not just 
      talking adolescents tossing each other off, I'm talking the whole hog."
      "No!" I was shocked, horrified, fascinated, and I wanted to know 
      everything. It didn't occur to me to doubt him. "How do you know."
      "Because he ... has told me. And, no Will, I'm not telling you who the 
      others are. You'd refuse to go in the showers with them if you knew."
      There was a look in his eye -- a cold look, as if he was challenging me to 
      disbelieve him, and I didn't dare.
      "You sound as if you don't mind," I said.
      "Mind?" He seemed to muse on it. "I suppose I mind sixth formers buggering 
      third formers, but on the other hand, why fight what's inevitable?"
      "I can't believe it!"
      "It's understandable," he said. "These are the most potent years of our 
      life, Will, did you know that? You and I should be out there spreading our 
      seed about and instead we're here with nowhere to spread it except each 
      other."
      This conjured up an image so revolting that it wasn't difficult to push it 
      away. Without looking up from his work, Tom carried on:
      "And we're cooped up here with nothing but other boys for company, if 
      we're seen talking to a girl it's regarded as subversive and unnatural, 
      and they're surprised when places like this get a reputation as hotbeds of 
      buttocks and buggery. You wait 'til I'm dictator, Will. The public school 
      system will burn. It serves no useful purpose and gives its victims grief 
      for the rest of their lives."
      "So--" I said, but there was no stopping him now.
      "Anyone who has ever sent an adolescent to a single sex boarding school 
      will be forcibly confined in a room with members of whichever gender they 
      would least like to shag, and pumped full of hormones until they feel 
      they'll burst if they don't have it off with someone. Let them see how 
      they like it."
      "I don't understand you, Tom."
      He looked up at me and gave that grin again. His usual confidence.
      "You will."

      Fifth form, Spring term, 1981
      In the fifth form, I got expelled.
      Towards the middle of the year, with "O" level exams looming, the school 
      was hit by a drinking spree. Getting paralytic was the trendy thing to do.
      When, for three weekends running, boys had been hospitalised for alcohol 
      poisoning, the headmaster made a speech to the whole school. Just 
      possessing the stuff was to be an expulsion offence. That was all.
      Two boys from our year were expelled a fortnight later, for just that 
      crime. Tom, in public, was as shocked as the rest of us. Privately, he was 
      disdainful.
      "Boys will be boys," he said. I was angry.
      "Doesn't it bother you?" I demanded. "Just for a little drink--"
      "If they didn't want to go," he said, "all they had to do was not get 
      drunk. And as for getting in to intensive care, nearly getting yourself 
      killed, using up a good hospital bed which someone deserving might need 
      ..." Then he grabbed my shoulders and looked me straight in the eyes.
      "Will, promise me now, you'll never, ever be so stupid, right?"
      "Well, I ... I mean ..." I stammered.
      "Promise!"
      "Sure, I promise."
      And it was a safe promise. I'd never been drunk in my life and I wasn't a 
      rebel. I didn't go out of my way to break the rules.
      Then I had more important things on my mind, like "O" levels. I'd first 
      heard of these mystical institutions when I was eight, which meant I had 
      been dreading them for half my life. The crucial bits of paper that would 
      affect the rest of my time on this world. Never mind your degree or your 
      "A" levels or even just practical experience -- without a good crop of 
      "O"s, no prospective employer will even look at you. When you've had that 
      hammered into you for half of your existence, getting through them is 
      worth celebrating.
      Which a group of us did, with a couple of bottles of whisky. Don't ask me 
      where it came from. I just remember being flattered by the invitation to 
      join a group of the lads who had got the magical fluid from somewhere. We 
      retired behind the bushes in the park and drank it.
      Choose your friends. I passed out first and they left me there.
      I was woken up by Tom, shaking me.
      "Will! Will, for fuck's sake, Will!" He slapped me, hard, and it didn't 
      hurt a bit. He was muttering to himself, something like:
      "Too late, Melton, too fucking late--"
      The fact that this was the first time in ages that I had seen Tom worked 
      up about anything, or even swearing, failed to register. I looked blearily 
      up at both of him and burst out laughing.
      "I'm pissed!" I squealed, and fell onto my back, quivering with mirth. It 
      was the funniest thing ever.
      "Will, you berk," he said more softly, and pulled me to my feet. He 
      supported me back to the house.
      "Wha'going?" I demanded.
      "Back to the study for some coffee. The housemaster's on the prowl and 
      he's not going to find you. He's not."
      "The housemaster!" I called. "Hello, Bugsy! I've ... hee, hee, hee, I've 
      had a whole bottle ..." I collapsed laughing again, dragging Tom down.
      He got me to the study with the help of a passing third former. The kettle 
      had just boiled.
      "Drink," he ordered, thrusting a cup of coffee into my hands. I sipped it 
      reluctantly.
      "Tastes soapy," I objected.
      "That's because you're pissed. Finish it."
      I shrugged and did as he said.
      "Still soapy." He looked thoughtful.
      "It could be the shampoo, of course," he said.
      I finished throwing up an hour later; it took a day for the retching to 
      die down. During that time, Tom was more agitated than he had ever been. 
      He couldn't sit still but paced about constantly. Word circulated; one of 
      the three boys I'd been with was in hospital, intensive care. The other 
      two, apparently, hadn't been caught.
      So what was the problem? I was sober, no one had seen me, it was a day 
      later, and anyway, friends don't rat on friends, do they?
      The long hand of the housemaster, Mr Buckingham -- Bugsy -- caught up with 
      me at tea time the next day. I was summoned to his study.
      "You've heard about Langton?"
      "Um -- yes, sir," I said, trying to sound puzzled. Langton was the 
      hospital case.
      "He's named names, Sutton." I gulped; Buckingham scowled at me. "Morgan, 
      Robson and ... you. I know you're not a troublemaker and I think I can 
      trust you. So I'll ask you to your face. Were you drinking yesterday?"
      Oh, please! All I had to say was-- But ... he was looking at me just a bit 
      askance, just a bit too carefully. I lowered my head.
      "Yes, sir," I said. He nodded.
      "I'm glad you said that, Sutton, because that's what Morgan said too." Was 
      there sympathy in his look? "I'll see what I can do with the headmaster 
      because I don't think you deserve expulsion, but don't hold your breath."

      I had never seen Tom so upset. He seemed to fold in on himself as though 
      all his strength had left him; as though he had been hit by a terrible 
      tragedy.
      "But it's not so bad," I said foolishly. "He's going to speak up for me, 
      they won't sack me for one offence--"
      He was almost in tears.
      "They will, they will. I'm so sorry, Will! I tried to get to you in time, 
      I really did, I tried to change it, but I got held up and I couldn't get 
      away ... I'm sorry!" When he looked up there were tears in his eyes. He 
      seemed so convinced of my fate that I began to believe it too, despite all 
      my desperate optimism to the contrary.
      "You weren't to know, Tom! I mean, I was stupid ..."
      "You were," he agreed. We held each other's gaze.
      "Thank you for sobering me up," I said eventually.
      "A pleasure."
      "You don't seem surprised."
      "No."
      I was silent for a bit more. Then-- "You really think they'll throw me 
      out?"
      "Yup."
      And they did.

      We stayed in touch, of course, and still exchanged visits during the 
      holidays. His last words to me as a co-pupil of the same school were:
      "If you had a choice, I'd advise you to go to a decent sixth form college 
      and unlearn the damage this place has done. But since you don't, I expect 
      you'll be sent to somewhere just like this."
      I was; the only real difference was the lack of Thomas Melton about the 
      place. All the other characters were there, with different names. And now 
      I stood on the touchlines at matches and cheered my new school on against 
      my old.
      The sixth form, lower and upper, passed mostly in a blur. The world moved 
      into 1982 with not a war cloud to be seen; those who had heard of them at 
      all thought that the Falkland Islands were off Scotland.
      The Argie scum invaded, and we raged at the swine who invaded our 
      sovereign territory and applauded the sending of the task force. It was a 
      military-oriented school with a lot of officers' sons, so a lot of fathers 
      were sent down to the South Atlantic. Some were killed.
      The world moved on. The upper sixth dawned and the end of my school days 
      was in sight. Margaret Thatcher won her second election victory in 1983, 
      cruising on the Falklands factor. I was old enough to vote and gave mine 
      to the fledgling Social Democrats. Three million unemployed were beginning 
      to wear, even on my far-right conscience.
      Back at the old place, Tom of course became a prefect. Not so for me -- 
      one thing I had carried with me to my new school was my determination not 
      to be tied down by responsibility. The independence that I prided myself 
      on manifested itself for the first time in an outright refusal to take on 
      obligations.
      "A" levels loomed; we sat our prediction exams in the Easter term. On the 
      strength of my predicted two As and a B, I was encouraged to try for 
      Cambridge. Tom set his sights lower; in those days you still had to stay 
      on for an extra term to take the Oxbridge exam and Tom, in one of his 
      letters, said he had no intention of staying incarcerated for a minute 
      more than necessary.
      Tom rung me the day my actual results came through and was politely 
      sympathetic about my disastrous three Cs. I didn't know what had gone 
      wrong with me in the exam room. He had two Cs and a B. Reluctantly I 
      turned to the shortlist which I had drawn up in the unlikely event of not 
      making it to Cambridge, and we ended up at the same Midlands redbrick, 
      back together again. I had forgotten how much of my life had depended 
      simply on his presence about the place. It was good to have it once more.
      Tom, to my surprise, eschewed maths -- his strongest point -- completely. 
      Instead he did politics. Politics! He looked almost apologetic.
      "It's a change of direction," he admitted, "but so's going to university, 
      in my family. I thought of doing sociology, but I'd be disinherited."

      Freshers' year, Winter term, 1983
      University life was wonderful. I relished the new environment and gladly 
      sloughed off all the old snobberies, the old prejudices, the old attitudes 
      that had been ingrained in me by school. From being a despicable snob I 
      became an equally despicable inverted snob. I could flatten my vowels and 
      drop my aitches with the best of them. I experimented with growing long 
      hair and a moustache ("What will you do when you grow up, Will?" Tom said) 
      but chickened out and reverted to normal the day before my parents came to 
      visit.
      Tom fell into the whole thing like a fish returning to water. He didn't 
      change because he didn't need to. Tom Melton at almost nineteen was just 
      the same as Tom Melton at fourteen -- a mature, well balanced character at 
      ease with the world. He knew he had nothing to prove and so never bothered 
      trying to.
      Another familiar face was Stephen Gale, of fond memory, who I had actually 
      found I could like. It's amazing what a leveller just growing up can be. 
      But it was still an eery feeling when he nervously, and with an 
      embarrassed smile, told me over a cup of coffee that he had joined the Gay 
      Society, he felt happier than ever before, I shouldn't feel offended but 
      he didn't really fancy me ("too gangly"), and could I think of a good way 
      for him to break it to his parents?
      I fell in love with a dark-haired girl called Joanna Hughes, who I met 
      through Tom (she was on his course), and by the end of term we were 
      inseparable. Tom didn't seem to mind that I had poached "his" girl, and 
      when Jo and I became a fixture he gave all the encouragement he could and 
      refused to be a gooseberry.
      The most surprising thing was the nondevelopment of Tom's own love life. 
      He remained a bachelor. When I mentioned this, as casually as I could, he 
      shrugged.
      "I believe in lasting relationships," he said.
      "So do I," I said, a bit self-virtuously.
      "I know but ..." Tom actually seemed flustered. "However hard I tried, 
      Will, it wouldn't last. That's all."
      Tom's nerve giving out on him? Surely not.
      "How do you know?" I said.
      "Because I'm clever."

      It was towards the end of summer, 1984 that Tom and I had our biggest 
      disagreement. Second-year students traditionally lived off-campus and we 
      three were such good friends that surely, he said, it would be good if we 
      moved in together?
      I was adamantly against it, and my reasoning must have been transparent. 
      My relationship with Jo had still, despite my best efforts, a bit further 
      to go. She was determined to be a one-man-per-lifetime girl and had just 
      about convinced me that sex isn't the be-all and end-all of a 
      relationship; possibly a bonus, which we had yet to enjoy, if I indeed 
      turned out to be said man. I wasn't exactly pawing the ground, but on the 
      other hand, given a year in a flat together, the possibility couldn't be 
      ruled out, could it?
      So, much as I liked Tom's company, much as I could even admit to myself 
      that I loved him, I could conjecture times when his presence might not be 
      welcome.
      Jo thought it was a great idea ("he'll be someone to talk to if we split 
      up," she said encouragingly), so grinding my teeth as quietly as I could I 
      put my signature next to the other two on the application form.

      Second year, Easter holidays, 1985
      Tom's twentieth birthday came and went. That was March 1985, the last 
      normal month I was to have for a long time.
      One April evening I came up the stairs to our flat and to my surprise 
      smelled chicken roasting. When I went into the kitchen, there was Tom, 
      happily preparing a full Sunday-type meal. He had blown a fortnight's 
      budgeting.
      "What are we celebrating?" I asked. He waved an arm about him.
      "Roast chicken, roast potatoes, gravy ... my favourite meal!"
      "Since when?"
      "Not for a long time," he admitted, "but when I was a boy I loved it. 
      Mummy always cooked it to welcome me home."
      "But--"
      "Here, this is for you." He handed me a brown paper package, the size of 
      an exercise book. It had TO TOM boldly inscribed on the front.
      "It's not for me, it's for you," I said.
      "It will be. I want you to give it to me at eight o'clock this evening. 
      Promise?"
      "Why?"
      "Just ... just an experiment, Will. Please? Put it up there for safe 
      keeping, if you like."
      I shrugged and put it up on the shelf he had indicated.
      "All right," I said, and set my watch for eight.
      Jo came in a while later.
      "How lovely!" she exclaimed. "What are we celebrating?"
      "It's an experiment," I said, a bit sarcastic, looking up from the 
      potatoes I was slicing.
      "We eat at quarter to eight. Okay?" Tom said.
      "Fine," she said.

      Tom was a prompt cook. Jo and I sat down and Tom took the chicken out of 
      the oven. He carved it up and served the food onto the plates. We started 
      eating.
      Tom had taken three bites when it happened. He choked.
      "--Gale!" he shouted, leaping up and spraying food across the table.
      "Tom?" said Jo. Tom dropped his cutlery and stared about him, eyes wide 
      and a look of utter bewilderment on his face. He looked down, saw his 
      chair and dropped in to it heavily. He jerked his gaze all around the 
      room, as though desperately trying to find a familiar reference point. 
      "W-where am I?"
      "Tom, don't be--" I said.
      The look in his eyes stopped me. I knew Tom's eyes and it wasn't Tom in 
      there now. There was a stranger, frowning, trying to recognise me.
      "Where am I? Who are you? How did I get here?"
      "You're Tom Melton," Jo said soothingly. "You know that."
      "Yeah, I know who I am ..." He peered closely at me, then recoiled. 
      "S-Sutton?" he squeaked.
      "It's all right, Tom," I said foolishly, trying to be soothing. 
      "Everything's fine ..."
      "You ... you're Will Sutton, aren't you? How old are you?"
      "I'm twenty, like you."
      "Twenty!"
      He went sheet white and looked around in horror. For the first time he 
      really seemed to notice Jo and he blushed.
      "Hello," he said shyly. Jo had got her bag and was holding out a mirror.
      "Look, Tom. Remember?"
      He squinted at himself in the three square inches of glass, and his jaw 
      dropped. He looked up.
      "Have ... have you got a bigger mirror anywhere?"
      "Bathroom's first on the right," I said. He bolted, and Jo and I stared at 
      each other.
      "What's happening?"
      "Some kind of breakdown?"
      There was a scream from the bathroom. We found him, sobbing, staring at 
      his reflection through his fingers.
      "Look at me!" he choked. "Look at me--"
      I had a sudden flashback -- a memory that was six years old. Tom Melton in 
      the washroom at school, looking in the mirror ...
      I was about to pursue the train of thought when my watch beeped. Was this 
      how Cinderella felt? It's amazing how doom-laden a clock striking the time 
      can sound. Somehow I knew that Tom, earlier, had been expecting just this 
      to happen. I led Tom gently back into the living room, sat him down and 
      gave him his package.
      "This is for you," I said.
      It was a red-cloth exercise book, of the type we had had at school. 
      Battered and old, but cared for. Tom opened it and began reading, while we 
      watched. At first he seemed absorbed, then his lips began to tremble, and 
      then with a wail he dropped it and curled up into a corner of the sofa, 
      sobbing again. It was a pathetic sight.
      Jo comforted him and I picked the book up. The writing inside was in Tom's 
      own hand, and the first words meant I had to keep on reading.
        "GREETINGS, TIME TRAVELLER!!!
        Yes, that's right. Time traveller. You are Tom Melton, aged almost 14 in 
        a body aged 20. I'm Tom Melton, aged 20 in a 14-year-old body, and it's 
        a bummer for both of us.
        It's 1985, and you're in your second year at university. But take heart, 
        you'll survive. It won't be easy, but you have the best friend any bloke 
        could ever have in Will Sutton. That's about the only good news I have 
        for you; the next best thing is that you're not going to die in the next 
        six years, are you? Think about it, Tommo--"
      It made sense. Just. I could remember the scene that Tom went on to 
      describe, back in the changing room in 1979. Tom Melton, bullied and on 
      the verge of a breakdown, trembling and muttering that he was about to 
      flip. And flip he did -- to six years in the future. His own, personal 
      future.
      Tom even produced an analogy.
        "Look at it this way. Your life is a book, and every year is a page. The 
        book has a beginning and a middle and an end. In your case, the book 
        looks OK from the outside and it has the right number of pages, but when 
        you read it you find it was badly bound and twelve of the pages are out 
        of order. You start at the beginning and read up to page 13, but instead 
        of page 14 it has page 21. You read on to page 26 and find the next page 
        is 14. After another six pages you find they're all in order again.
        I've been through everything you're going through now and I know exactly 
        how you feel reading this. You're frightened and you're the loneliest 
        boy in the world. Well, you're also the world's leading authority on 
        time travel.
        There, that got a smile, didn't it? Keep it up ..."
      I browsed on through the book. The middle pages were blank, then I came to 
      writing again. He had started from the back. It was a simple listing, he 
      said, of everything he could remember about the six years that lay ahead 
      of Tom now. There were laptop computers, jacuzzis, Yuppies, all recently 
      impinged on my consciousness. Names and places and events I'd never heard 
      of -- Kylie and Jason, Challenger explodes, Warsaw Pact breaks up, 
      Lockerbie, Hillsborough, the Gold Blend couple, massacre in Tiananmen 
      Square, Berlin Wall comes down, Madonna, Oliver North, AIDS hysteria, the 
      condom comeback, glasnost, the Brighton bombing, Fergie and Andrew, 
      Mikhail and Raisa, George and Barbara, Thatcher's downfall, Chernobyl, 
      Herald of Free Enterprise, Terry Waite, Live Aid -- no particular order, 
      with no particular consistency of significance, and some (like the Warsaw 
      Pact and the Berlin Wall) that I just couldn't take seriously as 
      predictions. The complete iconography of the eighties and the two years 
      after, past and present and supposedly future, jumbled up at random.
      When Tom had calmed down, I gave him the book back to read and retired to 
      my room with Jo. We sat on the bed and I told her what the Tom from the 
      past had said.
      "I don't know if it was time travel or what," I said, "but I'm sure he did 
      change when he was fourteen, somehow. I mean, I know he changed, I was 
      there! He seemed so well balanced because he had to adjust himself to the 
      world, anchor himself in reality like no one else, because otherwise he 
      was so unsettled. Does that make sense to you?"
      Jo had a habit of seeing everyone's point of view.
      "And being a teenage boy who suddenly had to be an adult would make anyone 
      grow up fast, wouldn't it?" she said. "So what happens now?"
      "According to the book, he lives until--... no, hang on ..."
      It was mind boggling, but once we had sketched it out on the back of an 
      envelope it made sense. Tom's mind/soul/karma/whatever and his body were 
      going to last together for another six years, until 1991, when his mind 
      would be 20 and his body would be 26. Then his mind/soul/etc. would jump 
      back, aged 20 and with all its memories, to his nearly-14-year-old body, 
      where one of his first acts would be to cling to Stephen Gale, whisper the 
      names of his various amours in his ear and threaten him with blackmail 
      unless he stopped being a poisonous bully. Six years after that, when his 
      mind was 26 and his body was 20, Tom imagined (and hoped) that his mind 
      would jump forward again and he would be reunited with his body in 1991, 
      when both body and mind would be the same age. That was where the Tom who 
      had cooked tonight's meal was now.
      Hopefully.
      We looked at each other.
      "Shit," I said. "We've got a fourteen-year-old in there, Jo."
      "And we're the only people he's got," she said. She held my gaze.
      "Oh, shit," I said again. I fell backwards onto the bed to think about it. 
      So this was what it was like when your thoughts whirled.
      There was a gentle, timid knock at the door, and Tom poked his head round.
      "Um ... Will?"
      "Hmm," I grunted.
      "Come in, Tom," Jo said kindly. He sidled in, clutching the book.
      "It ... it says here ..." He held the book out, like a supplicant 
      illustrating his point to the Lord with a reference to the scriptures. "It 
      says you'll help me."
      He was still trying not to cry. Tom Melton, who had been a pillar of my 
      life for so long, needed me.
      "Does it?" I said, as discouragingly as possible. Jo poked me; there was a 
      twinkle in her eyes.
      "Look, dear, we've got a boy," she said.
      For the third and final time, I said, "Oh, shit."
      In front of me was a badly frightened boy, totally alone, dependent purely 
      upon me. I had lived for twenty years without being responsible for 
      anything, but at long last I took on a challenge. And what a challenge! I 
      made a list mentally. Someone had to teach him all his course work, who 
      his friends were, how to drive ...
      "I'm scared, Will," he said.
      "Yeah, me too," I grumped. I waved a hand at a chair. "Sit down, Tom." He 
      sat on the edge of the chair, hardly daring to move. I grinned.
      "Sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin ..." 

      © Ben Jeapes 1997, 2001. 
      This story appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 
      September 1997.