Chapter 2: Privacy

April 1973, age 18

It was the Sunday after Easter, the penultimate day of April. The last of the chocolate eggs had been demolished, so it was much like any other lazy Sunday. Except, it was also the day after the ‘incident’ with Caity and Simon.

Conflicted was the word of the day.

On one hand, I had completely flipped-out, losing self-control in a borderline psychotic moment. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But at the very least, I had lost my cool and acted without thinking things through. Not good either way.

On the other hand, the situation had been arousing. I could honestly say that I wasn’t remotely sexually attracted to either my sister or her boyfriend. I was firmly in the category of liking girls, just so long as they weren’t related to me. And yet I had most definitely been turned on. Was that from dominating another person? Or specifically a macho thing of dominating a guy? Or was it all the nudity?

Those were the thoughts that kept swirling around my brain as I sat at my bedroom desk trying to revise flight navigation for the exam that was only days away. When Ewan knocked on my door for a chat, the last pretext of study went out the window.

“Go on then, get it over with”, I told him. “Tell me how badly I screwed up yesterday.”

“No need”, he replied. “You’ll have plenty of time to decide that for yourself while you’re spending four years at Her Majesty’s pleasure.”

I didn’t dignify that with a response. We both knew I wasn’t going to prison. MI5 would never allow it. But the situation could still be damaging.

“Caity’s bodyguard put in a report to Dan”, Ewan told me. “And Dan deputised me to have this delightful conversation. Fucking hell Finn! What were you thinking?!”

He glared at me, silently demanding an answer.

“I ... I suppose I just saw red.”

“Which would be no defence in a court of law. You’re legally an adult, and Simon’s legally a kid. You’re in a very dodgy position. If he’d gone home and told his parents, or if his parents had seen that he couldn’t sit without pain, they could easily have gone to the police alleging child abuse.”

“But it seems they didn’t”, I replied, pointedly. “And I’ve learnt my lesson.”

He shook his head and said quietly, “I really hope so, Finn. Caity’s spoken to him this morning, and he’s promised to keep schtum. Both of them understand the possible problems and neither wants to go there.”

We both silently thought things over for a moment. Then Ewan announced, “Dan wants you to see a counsellor again.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!”, I exclaimed, frustrated.

“You pulverised that boy’s rear end! And it’s not the first time that your first instinct has been to go nuclear to protect someone. He’s worried that some of the things you’ve been involved in have pushed you too far.” He didn’t say ‘over the edge’. He didn’t need to. “Dan’s also worried that the extreme protective instinct stems from losing your parents.”

He was probably right about the second part, but my answer was: “No.”

“No what?”

“No to seeing a counsellor. Too risky with everyone that’s watching me these days. Imagine if the RAF, MI5, the KGB or the effing Sun newspaper found out!”

He didn’t have an answer to that.

Easter had been the latest date it could possibly be that year, so now the May deadlines were coming thick and fast. Not only did I have a flight theory exam that week, but the deadline for my A-Level Art portfolio was the week after.

For O-Level Art, my portfolio had been on the evolution of the car, making use of future knowledge. I couldn’t do the same again, but I liked drawing/designing cars, so when I’d started planning this project many months back, I looked for something along similar lines. I wasn’t a painter, sculptor or craftsman, so I had to make do with drawing, which I was okay at, and the basic photography that we’d been taught during the course.

Once again, I found the solution in future history. My project would be about vehicles that turned into robots: Transformers.

I started by creating a montage of brochure and magazine clippings, of a range of car and lorry brands and models. Next came visits to some car showrooms to do some simple photography, followed by pencil sketches and some pastel work. Then came the clever bit. I visited a car factory (which I usefully owned) and took photos of the various components and stages of construction. Those led to more sketches and morphed into technical diagrams of ways that vehicle parts could turn into arms/legs/bodies of robots.

While I’d pinched the concept from the future, almost all of the project up to that point had been my own creative product, which I was quite proud of. The next stage was to add the backstory, and that I took directly from the future. Thus were born the Autobots and Decepticons.

The portfolio of prep-work led to two final products: a short animation and a comic-book. The animation would be Optimus Prime and Starscream transforming and having a quick fight. It would only be fifteen seconds, but at a fairly smooth twelve frames per second, that was a lot of work. Not massively difficult once you know how to do it, but fiddly and time-consuming. The 16-page comic-book would be a short story that introduced the concept and main characters. If only I had a company that could print that nicely to make it look professional. Oh, wait.

There were no written exams for Art (as there was a separate A-Level that covered art history), so this was the final big project to demonstrate two years of advanced learning. I was hoping that the ambitious scope would make up for my mediocre technique. I had worked my backside off, so I was hopeful of a decent grade.

Before the exam season started, we students had one other vital topic that demanded careful planning: the after-party.

Quite understandably, my group of friends wanted this to take advantage of my available resources. In fact, it evolved from a party to a weekend trip, and then into a month-long holiday.

It was Wednesday that week that Pete assembled 40 friends for a little meeting, split roughly 60/40 boys and girls. Peter was our natural leader, so he took the floor.

“Welcome everyone. As you know, you’ve all been invited on a post-exams holiday at Finn’s villa in Italy. This’ll be our last chance to spend time together before we go off to university, so me, Finn and Tommy want to spend a whole month with our friends celebrating the end of our childhoods. You’ve all said you’re interested in going, which is great. I know some of you can only come for part of the month, and some are only interested because it’s free and all-expenses-paid, but hey, we’re still glad you’re coming. It’s gonna be epic!”

There were smiles and murmurs of agreement around the room.

“But there’s a twist”, Pete announced, getting groans from some who knew how Pete’s mind worked. “It would be a bit boring if we just lay around sunning ourselves all month, even with water sports and trips and stuff. So we’re going to play a game. At noon each day, a task will be posted on the villa’s notice board, to be completed by midnight. Everyone at the villa will be required to do the task unless you quit the game. You will always be free to quit, and nobody will ever be forced into anything. If you quit, there’ll be a plane waiting to fly you back to England, and that would be the end of your holiday.”

A boy called out, “What kind of tasks?”

Pete grinned, “The horny-teenager kind.” That didn’t give much away, but they got the idea. “We’ll be flying out on Saturday 30th June. Tasks begin on the 1st of July. Anyone who completes all 31 tasks will fly home on the 1st of August, complete with a £100 cash gift courtesy of moneybags here”, pointing at me. That was a very nice sum in 1973. More than they’d earn from a low-paid summer job.

A girl asked, “So if we don’t like the first task, we might only get to stay a day?”

I jumped in, “I’ll answer that as you might not trust it coming from Pete.” Pete gave me an insulted look. “The whole point of this game is for it to be fun. It would be great if everyone were still there on the last day. If all the girls ran off home early, that would kind of wreck the holiday for the boys, wouldn’t it? So trust us to use some common sense. It will be a bit naughty, but definitely fun. And the tasks will start off tame, so I’d be disappointed if anyone left before day seven.”

“Who decides the tasks? And what if you quit, Finn, with it being your villa?”, one of the guys asked.

Pete answered, “I’ll be writing a long list of tasks before we go. More than we’ll need. Finn will then pick one from that list each day. But he doesn’t get the option of quitting. He has to stay, and he has to do every task he picks. And so do I, as I wrote them.”

That seemed to satisfy the group. I was perceived as being less daring (or more boring) than Pete, so me picking tasks I’d have to do myself gave a level of reassurance. There was still a frisson of excitement.

Two days later I was off school to go to Gatwick for the next tranche of flight exams. The commercial pilot’s license has a dozen theory topics, each with their own exam. Thankfully, you didn’t have to take them in one go. I had sat the easiest first, starting with Meteorology (charts, cloud formations, weather fronts, pressure systems etc), and progressing through operational procedures, human performance, communications, air law, principles of flight and performance. That week, I was taking three more: flight planning, general navigation, and mass & balance. Oh, what fun!

Actually, I was more than ready for these exams. I had been living and breathing flying for years, so to me, these were milestones rather than roadblocks.

Far more stressful were the forthcoming A-Level History papers. There were three of them, each three hours long. One on English history, one on European history, and one on specialist topics. Each would have a long list of simple-looking questions from which we’d pick four to answer in essay form. Things like ‘show how religious issues affected English politics between 1688 and 1714’. Or ‘What part did nationalism play in the overthrow of Napoleon’.

The good news was that there were so many questions to pick from, there should always be something that I knew enough about to answer. And I had become pretty good at structuring essays. Concise information, clear arguments and supported conclusions I could manage. So long as I didn’t run out of time.

During May, I found myself mentioned in the newspapers twice. One good, one bad, both interlinked.

Wimbledon Football Club won their league, which was great. With an influx of money from me, the club had bought new players (regrettably only semi-pros with day-jobs due to league rules), and the standard of play had risen considerably. We seemed to have an uncanny ability to pick hot young talent from obscurity. It was almost like we knew their futures. So the team won, and we applied to join the next tier up in football’s hierarchy, the Football League 4th Division. We didn’t expect to get in, as promotion wasn’t automatic. But applying now would lay the groundwork for future years.

The not-so-welcome headline that appeared on the front page of The Sun was: SAINT FINNLEY FIRES 10,000.

Oh, joy.

The headline wasn’t really true, but it had enough fragments of truth to keep them out of court. It was about our big toy factory down the road in Merton. The factory was vast and had indeed housed 10,000 workers at its peak. But it was run down. And the toy company had too many product lines made there that weren’t profitable. So we planned to shut it, section by section, over the next year or so.

That linked to the football club because, on the day we won the league, we had pledged to build a new stadium on that site if they got promotion.

What made the headline misleading was that we weren’t firing anybody. Every single one of our workers had their job guaranteed at newer, more efficient factories in other parts of the country. We were even offering relocation costs. But the Sun had focused on the scenario where workers didn’t want to move, in which case they’d be out of a job.

I left Dan and the lawyers to figure out what to do about my name being taken in vain. I had bigger things to worry about. I had been carefully avoiding my sister whenever she was with her boyfriend. Caity and I seemed to be fine, but we avoided that topic. The sneaking around, as Simon had described it, appeared to have continued as I rarely saw him. At least Caity didn’t seem to hate me.

Then, to complicate my home life even more, Dan knocked on my door one afternoon and told me, “You need to go talk to Harry”.

“What’s happened?”, I asked, knowing that couldn’t be good.

“Just go and talk to him.”

“Dan!”

“He got fired today, so I expect he could use a shoulder. The rest he’ll have to tell you if he wants to.”

A minute later I was banging on the door of Harry’s house. He let me in but wasn’t in a chatty mood.

“Bad day?”, I asked.

“Like ya don’t ‘ready know.”

“I know you got fired, but that’s all.”

“Best leave it there.”

“Oh come on, Harry! You know I’m here for you. You know I’ll help if I can. But I don’t have a crystal bloody ball!”

“I were caught getting bum-fucked in’t toilets, alright?!” Ouch.

I whispered, “Jesus, Harry. The person who caught you, did he report it?”

“No chance! He wouldn’t want his garage named in court. Fired us both on’t spot and were done wi’us.”

“Okay. Well, that’s something.” He looked up angrily, so I clarified, “I mean, at least you’re not going to be arrested. You’re three years underage, Harry, and the police don’t like ... you know.”

“Poofs? Faggots? Homos?”

I winced. “Don’t lump me in with the idiots that would use those words. You know me better than that. Now, what about the other guy. Was he ... is he ... erm...”

“He weren’t forcing me, Finn. He’s a decent guy. I don’t fancy him or nowt, but he’s a mate and we helped each other. It’s a stupid bloody law anyway. You can fuck who you like, but I can’t ‘cos I’m a perv. Don’t you go hunting him down. You got that?”

I had to smile. “Okay. So what now?”

“S’pose I go down’t job centre and start looking for summat else. Need to find something soon. I really need to move out.”

“What?!”

“Not ‘cos a you — mum! She’s drivin’ mi loopy! If I’m not bein’ treated like a baby, I’m tryin’ to escape the sound of her boffin’ your bloody uncle.”

I made a vomit face, which got him to laugh.

“You can move into one of the empty lodges whenever you like. That’s no problem”, I told him. “I can also offer you a job.”

“I don’t wanna work in no office, Finn!”

“Really?! I’m shocked. No, I’m really not. Okay. Let’s think. Cars. The company must own hundreds of them. I wonder who maintains them? You could do that, maybe. Or there’s the race track. I could hire you as in-house mechanic. Don’t know how much work you’d have. We’re gonna start up a youth development program there for young drivers on souped-up go-carts. You could look after those, or be a talent spotter, or run the whole program. Or you could go and work at Bentley. Not in the factory, like manual labour, but in development, tinkering with engines and designs to help improve them.”

He had a stunned look on his face.

“You’re just gonna invent a job for me t’do?”

“Course. You’re my best mate, and I want you to be happy. There isn’t much I wouldn’t do to achieve that.”

“Fancy a quick fuck then?”, he asked with a wry grin.

“Had to go there, didn’t you! I said not much. So, any of those jobs sound any good?”

“All of them”, he admitted. “Can I think about it?”

I nodded. “If you take any of the jobs at Donington, there’s a flat you could use in the old coach house behind the hall. It might need some work, but it’s supposed to be alright.”

“I wouldn’t know anyone up there”, he stated, flatly.

“You didn’t know anyone at the garage either until you started. You’d be okay. And Pete might be going to Sheffield Uni, which is only an hour up the motorway.”

“Could I come back to visit?”

Was he really dense enough to think I’d let him disappear off into the sunset, never to be seen again? “You think your mum will let you get away with not visiting?”

He smirked. Then, with a serious face, “Thanks”.

By the time the half-term holiday arrived at the end of the month, I had handed in the last of my work for Art, and I had received news of pass marks on the latest three CPL exams. I should probably have stayed at home and revised during the holiday, as the History papers started immediately afterwards. But I had to spend at least a few days visiting Charlie in Sheffield, plus I’d promised to help Harry move up to Donington that week.

I had given Harry a car for his 18th birthday — one of the new future-designed Mini Monsters that British Leyland was now building. So on the first day of the holiday, Harry packed all his worldly goods into the back of his beloved car (plus some in the security cars that would trail us), and the two of us drove up to the Midlands. We explored his new flat in the Coach House behind Donington Hall, which wasn’t all that bad, and I helped him unload his stuff. After taking him grocery shopping and promising to see him in a few days, I headed off to Sheffield.

Charlie was getting rapidly taller every time I saw him. He would be ten in August, and I would be spending most of that month with him. I was dreading the inevitable time when he would grow out of hanging around me. But for now, we had a great time doing guy things. It was only a flying visit, but I really needed that chance to act like a kid again.