The Dinner Guest B Walter (readict books TXT) 📖

and sexual frustrations. That was where I bumped into Rupert who, also alone with a bottle of wine, settled on a bench near the woodland, seemed to be doing the very thing I aspired to, except in a far more adult way. A few minutes into our conversation, he remarked that I seemed nervous and asked if there was anything wrong. That was when I confessed, telling him I’d loved him for years. He listened, smiled, took a sip of his wine, then put a hand on my knee. ‘I really had no idea. And I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to give this a couple of years before we do anything about it. But if you’re happy to wait, I am too.’

I am too. Those words would stick in my mind for years to come – a promise of something coming later on, a little into the future, the thought that all may not be lost, all may not be over. And in that moment, all I could do was nod. Then Rupert continued, and my whole world lit up like gunpowder.

‘Do you know, Charles Allerton, you’ve rather made my night. I was in a bit of a bad mood earlier. My sister and I had an awful row. But now you’ve cheered me up.’

He still had his hand on my knee and let it rise a few inches. It felt like his skin was mainlining electricity into my entire body. ‘And for now,’ he said, ‘I’ll leave you with this.’

In one deft movement, he took his large, athletic frame off the bench, bent over me, and brought his lips to mine. The kiss was both long and fleeting, momentous and light. And then he was gone, away in the dying evening light back towards the house.

The year that followed could only be described as exquisite agony. I only saw Rupert three times, although each moment became seared into my memory. One was at the Ashtons’s annual Michaelmas supper the following autumn. Once people had eaten and retreated to other rooms for drinks and chats out of sight, he pushed me up against the wall of the drawing room and kissed me with a passionate zeal that set my heart racing, his hands wandering around my body, making me breathless with my need for him. The Christmas that followed brought with it another turning point for me. That December had been unseasonably mild and after the usual polite dinner conversation, Rupert had suggested to me we take a walk outside to enjoy the evening air. I’d, of course, accepted, and he led the way around to the side of the house. We kissed passionately again, as we had a couple of months previously, and while doing so I felt Rupert guide my hand to his crotch. Then I became aware that he was putting pressure on my shoulder, as if trying to lower me down. I looked at him and he looked at me, a flame alight inside his eyes, and I allowed myself to be guided down. With hands trembling with anticipation, unable to fully believe what was happening, I undid his belt.

We then saw each other whenever we could over the following twelve months, and then finally became an official couple when I was eighteen. Our families were initially shocked at first and then, with remarkable speed, became generally fine with it. The whole thing felt simpler and easier than I had ever imagined. But relationships for couples at different stages in their lives can be difficult, and by the time I was twenty and in the midst of my degree at Oxford, Rupert was thirty and heading up a company founded to invest and encourage hybrid and electric-car development. His work was taking him all over the world. He had set up offices in California, Texas, and Paris, and even though my uni days were spent just a handful of miles from his countryside home, he was frequently at a distance of thousands more. When I was twenty-one, we separated properly. It was tearful, distressing, filled with that heart-wrenching sense of shock and loss that accompanies the end of many first relationships.

In the years that followed, we kept up an image of friendship so as to make things as easy as possible for our families, then as time healed the wounds and arguments were confined to the past, if not entirely forgotten, we properly became friends again – friends who had managed to shed the awkwardness of the end of our once very intimate acquaintance, and instead used the hundreds of hours we’d spent together as fuel for our friendship. All that time spent laughing, fucking, cuddling up together in front of old 80s action movies on the TV wasn’t all for nothing. And things were fine. He came to my wedding. We caught up with each other’s news at parties and events. Everything was OK. Grown-up. Platonic. That didn’t stop Matthew from maintaining a slightly suspicious air whenever Rupert was around. Perhaps slightly intimidated by and aware of our shared past, Matthew often acted a little oddly when confronted with him, although this usually resulted in him making himself scarce rather than keeping a watchful eye on us. I don’t think he ever feared adultery. I suspect he was more afraid of being compared to Rupert in terms of intelligence and charisma and success, and being found wanting.

And so, when we attended the Ashtons’s golden wedding anniversary party on a golden July afternoon, it took Matthew just a few minutes into our journey to Oxford to ask, ‘Will Rupert be there?’

The question triggered a pang of annoyance within me. ‘Yes. I think his parents would be disappointed if their only son didn’t turn up to their golden wedding anniversary.’

I heard Matthew sigh. ‘I was only thinking he might have some business or something – some flying-car demonstration he had to be at in Seattle.’

This was a regular thing Matthew did – small digs, little