Chapter 2: Bradford, Stanton Reach, Malaya

I was shocked when I heard that Jane had married the family solicitor, James Feathergill. She was now bound to a man quite a few years older, one I did not respect as a man, and one I knew her parents, Stephen Stanton and his wife, Maude, would never have approved of for their daughter. I had known them well enough to be certain of that. Had the Stantons not availed themselves of the Feathergill firm as their solicitors for generations, I am sure a man of James’s unsavory personal reputation would not have been given access to their lives.

I also wondered why Jane’s brother Damian was coming to Malaya with them, when he should have been going on to a prep school in a year, at fifteen. I would find that all out when they returned to Malaya, and Stanton Reach.

While Stephen had paid scant attention to his daughter, he had been closely attentive to his son and had, I know, been worried at how shy and otherworldly the lad was. Once he had told me that his son was too pretty by far, and I suppose only I could understand why that bothered Stephen so.

When they arrived, I discovered the blossoming Damian was all blondness and patrician beauty recalling the Michelangelo statue of the same name. The daughter, Jane, was raven-haired and alabaster skinned, the spitting image of her mother Maude, whom I adored. And thus I was never able to look at the delicate young Jane without seeing her mother and smiling.

I had been at the Stanton Reach plantation almost from the beginning and had known Jane and Damian as small children before Stephen and Maude took them back to England. The family had returned there to provide the children a proper education, and because Stephen wanted a bigger hand in the financial side of the rubber business. After eight years as a planter Stephen had become a force in the Malayan rubber industry.

When Henri Fauconnier and Franck Posth disembarked in Singapore in 1905 to become rubber tree planters, Michelin had just created rubber tires to be used on motor cars, and the demand for rubber was booming.

Henri and Franck promptly saw the advantages Malaya had to offer for rubber planting and quickly settled in Rantau Panjang beyond the Selangor River. This was the first plantation outside the swampy and poor lowlands of the coastal area, and Stephen Stanton, along with many others, saw the opportunities in what Henri and Franck were doing and were not far behind them.

Malaya was a place for young men wanting to make their fortune, or find adventure away from home, and Stephen was in Malaya to do both.

We had met at Summerville boarding school in England, I had been fourteen and in my first year and a shy, easily teased young boy and Stephen had been a top football player and dux of the school and in his penultimate year. In his final year, when I was fourteen, he had taken me under his wing, protecting me, and making me his own sexually as often was done in English boarding schools. He gave me a standing in the school that had lasted for my whole time there, and I had idolized him. When he left, I took over the role of mentoring and bedding the younger boys. Surprisingly, we had kept in touch when Stephen left.

After university Stephen had gone to Malaya to spend some time with his father who was an adviser to one of the sultans there, and not long afterward I went up to Oxford University. But while Malaya agreed with Stephen, Oxford did not agree with me. And when the death of my father meant a sudden fall in the family fortunes, I left Oxford, and against my family’s advice, but encouraged by Stephen, I sailed for Malaya to join him.

Stephen and his wife, Maude, were well known among the English residents and Stephen knew the country, so when he decided he wanted to start his own rubber plantation, he had easily obtained the lease of a large parcel of suitable land along with a sizeable investment from his father and several of their English acquaintances. He wrote me then that his estate was to be called Stanton Reach, and would one day be one of the finest rubber plantations in Malaya, and he invited me to join him as his overseer.

When I arrived at Stanton Reach three months later Stephen greeted me like a long lost brother. We had both changed, but I still recognized him. I was now a young man, not a boy, but he was still a man I could idolize—mature, confident, and bronzed, well muscled from outdoor work and immensely happy. We’d barely shaken hands when he hurried to show me about what seemed to me, a young man who had never left England, a huge estate. I saw too that he had been working hard, as a large part of the land was already cleared and planted, and more was being cleared even as we toured the property. A wooden four-roomed bungalow had also been built by a small lake.

“It will do us for now,” Stephen said, when he finally showed it to me. “After we’ve built the great house, over there, across the lake, this can serve for the overseer.”

“Where is Maude?” I asked when I realized the house was empty apart form an old Malay.

“She has stayed in Kuala Lumpur with the children. She will come out when the plantation is established and we have built the main house. Till then I will go back to Kuala Lumpur every couple of months to collect more rubber tree seedlings and spend some time with her.”

In his letters Stephen had mentioned two children being born, but they really meant nothing to me until that moment. All the years between I had still seen him as the young god I had idolized at school.

“That will be hard for you,” I replied, but actually feeling elated I would have him to myself for months on end, and feeling guilty at my elation.

“Yes,” he said with a shrug, “but now you are here it will not be so hard as it was,” he added, smiling at me, and for a moment I imagined there was some other, dangerous meaning in his smile.

Later that night, in that small bungalow by the lake, I discovered I had not imagined there was another meaning in his smile. That first night at Stanton Reach I was overwhelmed by everything, the jungle, the heat—and Stephen.

I had come straight from Singapore, stopping there for only a night before heading inland, and I was still easily exhausted by the heat. As soon as we had eaten I excused myself guiltily and collapsed into bed beneath my mosquito net, and immediately fell asleep. But I woke in the night to find a hard body slipping down on the bed beside me.

“It’s lonely here, and I have missed you,” Stephen whispered.

“Missed me?” I murmured, stunned to have Stephen’s body pressed against me, and more, to feel his hard cock hot against my hip, rubbing gently up and down against my skin.

“Yes. I knew the first day you arrived at school that you would like men. And I knew that you were too shy and gentle to cope with the teasing and rough handling of the other boys. And you were too young to know it yet.”

“You knew that? But ... but you ... I never thought of you...”

“I love Maude,” Stephen said firmly, “but she isn’t here. And I have always loved you too. Don’t make me try to explain it. If you don’t want to stay, you can leave anytime, Bradford.”

Then his mouth found mine and he kissed me, gently at first, but then more insistently, forcing his tongue between my lips and into my mouth where mine met his. And like two lovers they rolled against each other, and stroked the walls of my imprisoning mouth.

Meanwhile, Stephen’s hands had traveled over my body, as mine had wrapped about his neck. His hands came to rest on my hips as he eased himself up and turned me onto my back beneath him.

He broke the kiss. “I want to see your face, see how much you want me,”

“I want you,” I moaned, “I’ve always wanted you. But never...”

“Have there been others?” he asked, “of course. I am sure there were at university.”

I was embarrassed, “One or two,” I murmured, “but...”

“But ... not too many, nor too often.” With a chuckle he finished for me what I might have said myself if I had been capable of talking coherently, and then he reared up and knelt between my spread thighs.