Chapter 10

When Andrew got back to Cambridge he sat with everyone at brunch, just catching up. He hadn’t been a hermit but he had been pretty single-minded all term. But it was the second half of Lent Term and all his friends were feeling the pressure. Matt & Navya were the only steady couple out of any of the groups of friends. They had been seeing each other on and off for three years and been an exclusive couple for more than two. It was never discussed explicitly but there was a sense amongst everyone that they were going to get married. Mixed race couples in Britain were rare. The unspoken sense was that if they were going to deal with the scrutiny, the pressures both from society and from parents, then they were in it for the long haul. But other than them, Andrew’s arrangement with Catherine was the next most stable, and that was starting to fray. Which goes to show that Justin and Pedro hadn’t changed. Pedro had confused everyone by going out with the same woman for two and a half weeks before inevitable sluttiness on his part shattered that construct. Mandy had decided that they were both role models and it seemed that they were keeping a running tally between them. Andrew’s social circle at College was getting smaller and tighter and given his manic studying it was not going to change now. But he still said hi to a lot of the hockey players from the previous year, including Daphne who had finally gotten over her issues at the start of the year. As for Abi? Nothing more than a disinterested nod every now and again. They were two years removed from any closeness.

Having sat and chatted over brunch, all of them taking a moment to draw breath, Andrew returned to his room and caught up on neglected correspondence. He was going to talk to his Grandma later but he wrote her a quick letter as well. Often if he called later in the afternoon the sherry dulled her memory the next morning. But he sent short notes to Meredith in Cuzco, who was having a considerably more interesting time than him; and Helena for the last time at her parent’s house, she had finally found a flat in London and was moving in shortly. He sent letters to France, Heloise, Renee and Manon all got variations on the same letter while with Marilyn Andrew updated her on his thoughts on continuing. The final letter was to Nikki and Fran, who got most of their info from Suzanne now, but he filled in some of the details. His letter writing duties done he walked over to the library, found a quiet payphone and called his Grandma, Maggie, Leslie and Suzanne. None of the calls were long, but it was good to speak to all four of them. As he had suspected his call with his Grandma was shorter, the sherry had been broached, but they still spoke for a couple of minutes. There was nothing really to talk about with the other three, it was just good to keep in contact. Neither Leslie nor Maggie talked business on the calls, it was all kept until they could talk face to face. And just talking to Suzanne relaxed Andrew. Which he knew was also stupid. Nothing had changed, she still needed more than he could give, and part of his being relaxed was that she was happy and chatty with him. One day it wouldn’t be so easy.

After all that Andrew had a quiet dinner, and sat and worked in the evening in his room. Catherine arrived a little earlier than usual and they chatted while he recovered.

“Things are different with you this term. I still see you a couple of times a week yet we haven’t really talked.”

“You have come over later, especially in the last three weeks, and you don’t stay here anymore. Is there something specific you have in mind?”

“No, nothing at all. It was more of an observation than a complaint. Can I ask you about your studying?”

Andrew shrugged.

“Sure.”

“Since you returned from the Christmas break you have been very focused and putting in insane hours. Yet all the chat round the dinner table is that you are really smart, near the top of the course. Why are you working so hard?”

“It is my nature. I have been challenged, in a good way, by my project. I didn’t do as much at Christmas as I should have and so I felt I needed to pick up the pace this term. That was the catalyst. Then as the project started to show and prove some things I have got caught up in it. Two of my four courses this term have no coursework, it is only the final exam, so I have used that time to work on the project. But this weekend was a needed break. I needed to step back from it, clear my head in the run up to the end of term. Another thing is that I am away for the next two weekends, and I want to stay on top of stuff. What about you? How are you finding your course?”

“Pretty good. I scraped a First last year and I am just about on track for the same this year. But when I see how hard you are working, and your friend Olivia over at Newnham, I have upped my studying this term. I think it is paying off but I am not as committed as the two of you.”

Catherine paused and looked at him.

“Do you think that you miss out on things because you study so hard?”

“Oh without a doubt. I haven’t managed to make a secret society meeting in all my time here.”

They both laughed at the oxymoron of Cambridge secret societies that everyone knew about.

“The one thing you can never defeat is time. There is not enough time in the world to be good at everything, to know everything, to be up to date on everything. I don’t train with my running, I don’t train with my swimming. They are ways to keep me fit and healthy and in the case of swimming it is relaxing, it helps me think, clear my mind. Look at the hockey. I only have ever played one year, my first year here, I have coached for the final two years at school and last year with the 2^nd eleven. Taking it to the extreme with my personal life, I have very little game when it comes to chatting up women. This arrangement with you, and with Meredith last year, saves me wasting my time at the bar or Cindies.”

Catherine thought about all this.

“You have called yourself, and this arrangement, lazy but it is more than that. It is an efficient use of time. I wasted so much time last year, chasing something. And half the time I was too drunk to really remember anything about it.”

She shook her head at the memories. It turned out to be the last intimate conversation Andrew had with Catherine. She skipped going to Cindies the following Wednesday and Andrew was away at the weekend on his last OTC training weekend.

In the two weeks before Andrew’s attendance at Briefing he was quietly but pointedly tested by the permanent staff. The preparedness of a potential officer candidate was a reflection on the OTC and they wanted to make sure that he would represent the unit well. Andrew didn’t mind this as the final training weekend was spent mainly talking with the officers assigned to the permanent staff. There was a lot of listening to them reminiscing, learning by osmosis almost.

Meredith Young and Andrew had a drama free year and their relationship endured through until he and Helena kissed her goodbye outside the gates of Newnham College after the May Ball. But Andrew didn’t drive her away. Looking back Andrew realised he drove Catherine Vickers away. Two thirds of the way through Lent Term their arrangement ended. She wasn’t unkind but she was blunt. She wanted more and had been discretely sounding out replacements for Andrew. She had found someone.

And the good thing was that she didn’t immediately ignore Andrew in Hall or around the College, she still often sat with him and Matt in the morning or as part of the group at dinner. But Catherine had discovered that she liked sex, didn’t need a boyfriend, and wanted more than Andrew had either the time or the conscience to give her. It felt very much like 5^th year at school all over again. But between his project and the approaching Briefing Andrew literally didn’t have time to think about it, let alone care.

The weekend of his Briefing was a blur. The course was run at the Assessment Centre in a small town on the western edge of Salisbury Plain. There were a series of tests, discrete individual tests that applicants undertook, partly in a group, partly on their own. But the course is about leadership. The tests and interviews were about assessing the person as someone who can lead others. It was too important to be enjoyable but Andrew was surprised by how comfortable he was for two thirds of the time. The weekend started late morning with an introduction from the Colonel in charge of the centre. After lunch there were a series of mental aptitude tests, the physical tests and then a series of interviews. The following morning it was all group exercises, a discussion about current affairs, unstructured but time limited, seeing how everyone interacted, whether everyone got their point across. Then there was a series of group exercises, all of them in their group of eight taking a turn leading one of the exercises. After lunch there was a long discussion about planning an exercise, the key thing that would be assessed at Main Board that was only talked about at the Briefing. And then just to remind them that they were applying to be commissioned in the Army, they had the obstacle course to complete the day.

The mental and physical tests were not an issue, Andrew completed them, and in the case of the physical tests met the standard, without any problems. They weren’t easy, the time pressure was real on both of them but it wasn’t stressful. The interviews were short, not perfunctory but they were not in depth chats either. The one with the Colonel was fine, and the one with the Captain in charge of their group was where the Army asked why you wanted to become an officer. But both were short practice versions of the longer more probing interviews of the Main Board. The third interview, chronologically the second to take place was with an education interview. The officer asked him some mental arithmetic questions and a couple of speed, time, distance questions. That Andrew had a degree already caused him to ask a few questions but overall the interview was easy. But Andrew could see a lot more questions being asked at the Main Board. The one thing he was pulled up for was the obstacle course. He was told he wasn’t pushing himself hard enough. Andrew had been warned by the permanent staff back at the OTC that the assessing staff would be providing feedback, things to improve upon, so he listened, nodded appropriately and moved on.

All the things where it was just Andrew were straightforward. Where he had to work harder was in all the group and leadership exercises. That was when he felt the tension of the course. It wasn’t a mess and he didn’t screw anything up but the dynamic was different. What made it weird for him, and in talking to a few of the other blokes before they left they had felt it as well, was the artificiality of leading your peers. These weren’t the new recruits Andrew had seen at Bassingbourn, it wasn’t even the more junior cadets back in Cambridge. These were people, at the time he was there all men, who were looking to become officers as well. But it was also where the Briefing was the most beneficial. Because it was drummed into them that there was no a quota and that only a certain percentage were going to pass. There was an objective standard and those that met it were classified as Category 1 and allowed to proceed to Main Board. Main Board was the same, if the candidate met the standard then he or she had passed selection and was off to Sandhurst. The discussions at the end of the course, amongst themselves, were the realisation that they were all in it together. Andrew had been told this between applying at the OTC and the Briefing but there is being told and then there is seeing it in action. Just as at the ward at Addenbrooke’s the message can take a while to sink in.

The final thing Andrew took note of was the advantage of his height. Tall people are deferred to. Not universally, not in every situation but there is an inherent societal conditioning that makes people listen to them. Jack had been giving him shit for years about being a big, miserable, Scottish bastard. Vestie had said the same thing to him, but it was at Briefing, in an intense group session with people Andrew had never met before that it really sank in, he finally started to believe it. Just as he had gone through life standing out because of his height, so he saw the other side of that lack of anonymity. It gave him a small edge, probably only 2% or 3% but every little helped. At the end Andrew was pleased to hear he was a Category 1 candidate and had been approved to proceed to the Main Board. The first step was done.

But back to back weekends away were not ideal in staying on top of his coursework and getting his project finalised. Other than the Tuesday night at OTC Andrew hardly thought about the achievement of passing Briefing. Jack was pleased, he was getting ready for his Main Board in less than three weeks. The permanent staff, Captain Miles and the Lt. Colonel in particular, were pleased that he had passed. But there was only one more week at the OTC before he would be away until May. The exam timetable had been published and all Andrew’s exams were in the second week of examinations, finishing on Friday May 1^st.

Ara and Andrew had talked about him coming down with Pedro and Justin and her potentially inviting along Gwen and another woman but in the end it was too much pfaff, too much being on. He sent her a short note suggesting a quiet weekend just the two of them. Andrew wanted to spend the weekend with just her. He didn’t want to share the time and so at 9.25 on the Friday night Ara turned up at the house. It was an oasis of mental calm for 36 hours. The weekend was all but identical to the one three weeks earlier. They were tired, just totally relaxed, and nearly fell asleep on the couch. They went to their third Spurs game on the Saturday afternoon. He could pretend that it was careful planning on their part but it was the exact opposite, sheer good fortune. But it was something different, and importantly, something that they had discovered together. And again like their previous weekend together their lethargy on Friday night was more than compensated for all day Saturday and Sunday morning. They fucked themselves silly. It had been two and a half weeks since his last time with Catherine so in addition to being emotionally hot and horny Andrew was physically full to the brim. He woke Ara by crawling up under the duvet and eating her to a quick orgasm.

“I have said it before and I will say it again, that is a hell of a way to wake up. Yum.”

Ara reciprocated clearing Andrew’s pipes of an unhealthy backlog. But then he lost himself in Ara’s pussy for what seemed like hours. She was clearly still swimming regularly and he revelled in the experience of her taut core thrashing under him. Once youthful vigour was restored he let go and power fucked Ara for the first time. He folded her in half, Ara’s knees almost touching her shoulders and put everything into the fuck. She goaded him on and he felt totally at peace. He had stopped fucking models, he had stopped fucking at Cambridge, and now he needed to be honest. Most of all with himself. He grunted to Ara that he was going to come and she pulled him even closer to her, her body folded completely, and dragged her nipples across his chest. Synchronised coming all but guaranteed. Andrew gently lifted himself off Ara and she unfolded her body and stretched her abused muscles.

“It couldn’t be like that all the time but you took me to a very happy place. That was the epitome of being taken.”

Ara suddenly giggled.

“If we filmed that the girls at my school would never have got out of bed. What’s the saying, a picture is worth a thousand words. Well a 10 minute film of that would be worth a million words.”

She stretched again then pulled herself onto his body. She lay her head against his shoulder and settled there. It was incredibly intimate.

“I love how you see me as this strong woman. I like being that person, using that strength. But then the other side of it is like this morning where I can cope with someone your size. It was great that you let go, let me see the real you.”

It was a day of lying in bed, fucking, or recovering from fucking. Other than going to White Hart Lane it was hedonistic in the extreme. The two of them went straight back to bed when they returned from the game. There were some terrible ‘spurring me on’ puns so soon after the match but they just laughed and fucked harder.

“Andrew, does it turn you on that women like looking at your body?”

They were back in bed on Saturday night.

“Does it turn me on? Women generally, no it does not. But it does turn me on that specific women like my body. It was something that took me a long time to understand. It surprised me, confused me almost, for the longest time. Why do you ask?”

“I thought about the last time I was here. When you asked me to sit around topless for you. At the time it made me feel uncomfortable. Mainly because of the whole general objectification of women. But I thought about it some more, thinking about what you said to me, and how you did objectify me, but as part of the whole me. Too much of society thinks of women as nothing more than pretty little things who should do what men tell them. Half the men who buy the Sun do so to see a woman’s breasts every day. But I think I was in danger of going too far the other way, almost trying to repress my femininity. So I have been thinking about that quite a bit. But then I tried to turn it around, to look at men, well you specifically. You are not vain, at least as far as I can tell, and yet your body has turned heads for years. You have posed in, what? 40 or 50 commercials where there is nudity, both male and female, yet you don’t go around thinking that you are god’s gift to women. I think that might be why they are struggling to find someone to replace you. So I had all that swirling around in my head and then I realised that I liked you looking at my body. I all but dragged you back up here it had turned me on so much. So I wondered if it worked the other way.”