Tom and Christopher and Their Kind by Anthony McDonald

Author:Anthony McDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: france, gay sex, gay love, gay literature, gay partners
Publisher: Anthony McDonald

THIRTEEN

Although the law had changed in their favour, when it came to looking for a student flat to share it was not yet the case that a homosexual couple would be offered the same automatic consideration that would have been accorded a married pair. Yet Tom and Christopher were in no worse a situation than any heterosexual couple of the time who hadn’t tied the official knot. They wrote a carefully worded letter to the university’s accommodation office, signed jointly, in which they said they were old friends who had shared flats together for five years and, although they were going to be in different colleges, would like to be housed together. With other mature students if necessary but for preference without. They could only hope that the person in whose in-tray this landed would read between the lines and be sympathetic, not hostile, to their case. In 1967 that was still quite a big thing to hope for.

They were luckier than they had dared to imagine. There was a small house available for them in the area of the town known as Jericho. It was owned by a professor of paleontology who was taking a sabbatical year. He wanted the house well looked after by responsible adults. If Tom and Christopher felt this might suit them… But the professor would want to meet them before finalising the arrangement.

They went up to Oxford by train, travelling through London on the top of a bus. It was the first time they’d done this together, the first time they’d seen London through their double pair of eyes rather than just a single pair. The moment was surprisingly big. Then Oxford itself. Jericho turned out to be handily near the station. They walked there past the imposing classical front of Worcester College. This would be Angelo’s college a few weeks hence. This thought came sharply to both their minds. Neither of them volunteered to share the thought.

The house in Jericho was a treat. Two up, two down, a late Georgian cottage with big sash windows at the front. Inside all was impeccably kept. And there were fossils everywhere they looked.

They had rather imagined the professor would be a fossil too, but he was anything but. A small, wiry, energetic man, he was probably less than ten years older than they were. His complexion was wonderfully tanned. He was off to Africa, he explained. (To top the tan up, Tom thought facetiously, though didn’t say so.) ‘Parties are fine,’ the professor said. ‘But not wild parties. Things in glass cases that can smash.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the nearest one. ‘That’s why I wanted a pair of adults.’ He looked at them beadily for a second. ‘You are a pair, I take it? No need to explain. I understand these things.’ He snickered nervily. ‘As a bachelor boy myself.’ It was probably as close as he could let himself come to saying that he was of the same kind as Christopher and Tom.

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