Chapter 4

Andrew had just committed to modelling for three months, to let these women complete their final projects. Andrea thought there was no time like the present to start some sketches. He was taken aback but had just agreed so as the three of them grabbed their pads and some pencils he was directed to get undressed. No clichéd screen in the corner to hide his modesty it was just get them off so they could see what they were working with. A little to the point but why drag it out. Andrew had not brought any swimwear to change into so it was tight white underpants. He stood while they arranged chairs in a semi-circle around him and then settled down. They had barely started when there was banging on the studio door announcing the arrival of the long lost Flo. She took the (much) abbreviated story in her stride and was sitting beside the others within minutes.

Andrew was now a model, an impulsive decision but one he was comfortable with. The discussions and semi-negotiations were over and it was all business. Although Lynn was going to sculpt him she was making some preliminary sketches. Andrew would later find out that there was a separate studio where she worked, although the others had space to paint or draw in there as well, but the sculptors because of the mess and different materials had their own studio. Most Sundays were in there and she would occasionally miss the Thursday session. But as Andrew stood there, conversation was over. It was the equivalent of watching him study in the library. Andrew would be oblivious to the world concentrating on a problem or an exercise and nothing distracted him. Here, the four of them had a lot more movement, their head’s flitting back and forth between the page and him but there was no interaction, this was serious. Very quickly Andrew realised he needed to find something to occupy his mind. That first evening it was scattergun, all over the place but as the weeks passed he would bring a textbook or some notes and stare at a problem and work through an exercise or do some revision. The conflicting demands of his being able to study and maintaining a pose were always there, on one occasion they even had a first year student turn the pages on his notes for him. Andrew would stand scanning through his notes and after he had completed the two pages open in the binder than this other student, it was a woman called Lily, she would flip to the next page of his notes. It felt very 18^th century at first but he got used to it. Most importantly, with the silence other than the noises of painting, he was able to both concentrate on the notes and learn and retain the knowledge. It was a very odd tableau but it was effective. That first night Andrew was standing in his underwear being scrutinised by four women but it was a very sexless experience. Yes it was his body that drew Deborah to him but this was a serious part of their degree, and as she had explained a chance to demonstrate their talent with a model different than the norm. Andrew thought about if the roles were reversed and it was a woman in her underwear standing in front of four men how different the dynamic would be, especially the power. He knew that four men would act very differently. In all the time he modelled he never felt threatened, he had to deal with some subtle flirting and innuendo but it was no worse than comments he would hear at the pub or club, he just happened to be standing in his swimwear or underwear. Maybe it is due to his size, the fact that he was doing this to help rather than for money but Andrew never felt powerless or weak. Being a model as a career as opposed to, frankly, a lark meant to deal with this power imbalance. These thoughts and ideas became more observed and reasoned as Andrew got older but that first evening was when he started thinking about some of these concepts. Life is about dealing with power, nearly always applied to you but as Andrew got older he was minded of this power imbalance as he became the one with the power. He was introduced to the writings of Lord Acton and was ever after conscious of his dictums.

Andrew could tell his mind was wandering that first night. He only posed for 40 minutes before they had all completed a first sketch. As he dressed he was relaxed although now that the excitement of getting started on their final project had worn off the four of them looked nervous all of a sudden. Although it had been Deborah that spotted Andrew and approached him, it was Andrea who was the leader of the group.

“Andrew, this was great and I know that we are all feeling relief that we have found a model. But now we are at your mercy. You will follow through with this and model with us for three months? Our final projects have to be submitted on Monday May 14^th, which is 13 weeks on Monday, not that we are counting.”

“I have made a promise to you and I stick by my word. The timing dovetails with the end of my lectures and I will be into full study mode. Six hours a week for the next 13 weeks. I will be here next Thursday at 6.55 and we can get started, okay?”

Nobody questioned why he could not come on the next Sunday and so Andrew walked home in the pissing rain thinking about how he was going to study while posing for them. The weekend was a jarring counterpoint to standing in his underwear in front of a group of women. He was at best damp but mostly soaked for the whole two days and two nights of the training. The cadets had managed to complete the map reading, basic fieldcraft, first aid and communication aspects of their training and had all passed, although with varying degrees of competency. Andrew was not that great at the sight of blood so in a real situation it would be better to have someone else applying a field dressing. But when it came to map reading he was excellent and would definitely be a better option than Rollie, who nearly failed that test.

This weekend also highlighted the dilemma of assisting others. Andrew had gone through life mostly avoiding this situation, you see the classic tropes of nerdy kids being bullied or flirted with over homework or assignments at school. That never happened to him, and now that he was at Cambridge, all the nerdy kids were gathered together and encouraged to be nerdy. The closest he had come to assisting others had been the little comments his lab partners would give to each other while working on their labs. And Andrew had been more of the beneficiary of these comments than the giver. Olivia had an aptitude for experimental work, especially careful set-up, that they all benefited from. But they all chipped in and it was not all one-way. In the same way the four of them at OTC also looked out for each other, helping each other get through the tests and the preliminary training. They were a squad, even though it was completely unofficial, and covered each other’s backs. Where things became more complicated was the line between assisting someone learn and doing it for them. On that exercise weekend it was not so much doing it for them as showing them how to do something so that they could pass. And this is where Andrew’s personal prejudices come into play. He didn’t care about sex or race, hell’s teeth he definitely had a thing for Indian women. What he did have a problem with was ‘takers’. Ever since Tony had explained to him all those years ago the concept had stuck with him. School had a few people like that but it was more pervasive at Cambridge. And to make it even worse, they were loud, full-of-it takers. These were people who Andrew defined as not giving a fuck about anyone else, obliviously being loud and obnoxious, but also with weasel traits as well. Fake best buddy, alleged camaraderie, but clearly with a zero sum attitude to life. If they were to be up, then you had to be down. That winter in the OTC Andrew saw and experienced it up close. And it was very closely tied to the whole ‘don’t you know who I am?’ syndrome.

As the four of them were a tight group neither Andrew nor any of the others suffered any consequences for failing to provide the answers when demanded, bullies pick on the isolated and lonely. But you didn’t have to have bat ears to pick up ‘fucking Jock bastard’ comments being tossed around. Thinking back over it Andrew realised he was fortunate to have avoided this until now but this was not book learning, this was the application of concepts in the real world environment. As he sat there that night pondering some of this, and it was something he gave a lot more thought to later as opposed to at the time, he realised this was also his attraction to engineering, the application in the real world rather than just the theory. But dealing with the ‘takers’ all came back to his confidence and leadership. Andrew was still an introspective person prone to overthinking any and every thing, and these spots where he felt he lacked leadership or confidence always stuck in his mind. Improvement was glacial, at least so it seemed to him. Takers all have an iron-clad belief that they are deserving of the best, ‘don’t you know who I am?’ Everyone has their prejudices and these people were Andrew’s. An unassuming person who made a genuine effort would always get his help, he was standing in his underwear for just such a group of women for instance, but the obnoxious and entitled got what they deserved. Over the course of his life, this got worse rather than better.

Monday to Thursday was set for the rest of term, Andrew’s life in a structured routine that soothed him. Olivia was still talking a good game when it came to dates with Newnham hockey players but he was more and more convinced it was all baloney. Monday night at the hospital was calmer than the prior week but the dynamic was still unsettled and the connection or spark from term one was missing. He kept busy, talked to as many children as possible and got some okay interactions. There was nothing missing yet there was something missing at the same time. He was trying to help and provide hope and wasn’t going to force anything. Andrew did wonder if the winter darkness was making a difference. During the autumn although the days were getting shorter it was still light out during his time at the ward. That term it was dark the whole time and he speculated that it changed the energy. Peggy never said anything else to Andrew about attending Eric’s funeral although some of Ron’s workmates would watch him every so often but Ron himself was quiet and they did not talk again that term.

At hockey the team tried to maintain the carefree attitude of term one but the match against Newnham was looming and was in all their minds. Plus, they toned down talking shit to the teams that were Olympic wannabes which also took a few percent of the joy out of the game. They had more fun at training than at the matches that term. They could be themselves, play hard but not intensely. This was their chance to blow off some steam and relax, they trained hard but the team’s defining characteristic was not caring about the game. Camaraderie and exercise were more important than how they did.

As for the modelling, it became part of the routine very quickly, and Andrew was able to get some studying done. His mental mood fluctuated over the course of the session but if he had study materials then he would get immersed back into a maths or engineering problem. His OTC weekend, the third training session at the end of February, exposed some interesting opinions. Most students tend to be politically left-wing and art students are typically even more left wing than other students. So when they discovered that Andrew was in the OTC and would be away on a training exercise at an Army camp they were horrified and were not quiet about it. They were also four sessions into the project and there was no way they could change but it did confuse them for several weeks. It was with the four of them that Andrew first seriously engaged in political debate. They were convinced he was some horrible right wing reactionary and it took several weeks for them to realise that Andrew was mostly apolitical and willing to listen to their views. The only thing that they nearly came to blows over was nuclear weapons. The four art students were all members of CND and staunchly against nuclear weapons. While Andrew obviously had little detailed knowledge of nuclear weapons, he understood the basic physics, and nothing about the policy on the use of nuclear weapons, he had been around Army camps and messes for the last four years. After a few beers if the group started to talk about dealing with a Soviet invasion, it was still the coldest of the Cold War, how the NATO armies would deal with the overwhelming numbers of tanks and men attacking West Germany, Andrew had heard several officers talk in a very matter of fact way about how NATO would need to use battlefield nuclear weapons to stop a Soviet invasion. This did not make him rabidly pro nuclear weapons, personally he felt they come under the category of ‘shit, we have invented this, what do we do now?’ and they just had to deal with them, but at the time he was not in favour of unilateral disarmament. But it was also one of those arguments that never changed anyone’s opinion. Debates like that, everyone getting worked up but ultimately no minds changed were always a waste of time in Andrew’s opinion. The four of them were not going to get him to join CND and he was not going to get them to give up their membership, so agree to disagree and move on. Eventually, and it took a while, they realised that they were never going to reconcile or agree but looked at the world very differently. The one thing Andrew did realise was that without the chance to study he could never have modelled, he would have got bored very quickly. The lack of a common world view also limited the flirting at least that term. All of them wanted to get as much work completed as possible. He would be away for a month and then there would only be four weeks left for them to complete their work.

So the weeks of the second half of term flowed by with a regularly repeating pattern for the most part. It was life at Trinity that became much more involved over that time. It started with the coursework that term, naturally there were assignments on both maths and computer science. The maths was not a problem, most of the students on the course had already covered the majority of the syllabus at school and what little was new did not trouble Andrew. But on the computer part of the coursework it was clear he had a significant advantage, hardly surprising given he had a degree in Computer Science! Andrew completed all the assignments quickly and without issue. The Supervisor for that part of the course was a second year PhD candidate who only had a year’s more experience than Andrew did. Andrew had known that this would be an easy part of first year for him and took advantage of it to concentrate on structural engineering, the discipline within engineering that interested him the most and also part of the syllabus that term. It was Keith, Olivia and Matt who first noticed that he was getting through computing without his normal manic note-taking and revision. Andrew played it off as just a misspent childhood and that he had done a lot of computing while at school. All three of them knew he had a computer in his room, very rare at the time. Suspicions were raised when he and Matt were talking one morning at breakfast about an assignment and Andrew mentioned a technique that he had learned in the penultimate module of his degree. This was not something that undergraduate engineering students would have any knowledge of. It was just his bad luck that Abigail was sitting further down the table from him but she heard him talk. He didn’t really think much of it at the time but one evening, having just returned from Addenbrooke’s there was a knock at the door. Andrew yelled that it was unlocked, assuming that it was Navya or Helena but it was Abigail, standing uncertainly in the doorway.

“Oh hello, what’s up?”

He assumed that she was letting him know that a group were going to the bar.

“Can I ask you something please Andrew?”

“Sure, come in.”

Andrew indicated the chair and sat on the bed. He waited expectantly for her to say something.

“How do you know so much about computers Andrew?”

Her rushed and blunt question took him aback, but he was tempted to smile as well. Abigail seemed to take his knowledge as an affront somehow.

“I have had a computer for nearly five years. A friend and I did a lot of coding at the weekends, trying different things out. Why does it matter? I never talk to you about your course and you are the person I know the least well on the corridor. We hardly talk at all now that I think of it. So what is the big deal if I know something about computers?”

Andrew’s equally blunt, borderline rude, retort on the state of their relationship, and the fact that there was not one, had little reaction other than a startled blink. Then he saw the barriers come down across her eyes and the usual aloof Abigail was back.

“You are right, what does it matter? Sorry to have bothered you.”

Without another word she left the room leaving him thinking about the enigma that was Abigail. They had never clicked, not even slightly. She was an active member of the corridor social scene, around more than he was, but Andrew had never warmed to her, and vice versa. She was the most beautiful woman of the four on the corridor, it was not even close, but there was a lot of the clichéd ice princess about her to his eye. The fact that she was comfortable and friendly with others meant that the problem was mostly of his own making. Andrew had never bothered to flock round her at the start of the year, in fact he thought she was swarmed to the point of harassment during Fresher’s, and they had just drifted since then. That he knew more than her on her degree subject was just another mark against him. As always he shrugged and promptly forgot about it.

The third of the four training weekends passed without incident. It was devoted almost entirely to marksmanship. Shooting practice at the rifle range had been a regular part of CCF training especially during the annual camps but the weapons given to schoolchildren were modified for training purposes. The OTC weapons were now standard infantry rifles as used by the rest of the Army. They were more powerful, the recoil and kick was an unpleasant surprise, and with a much longer range. Andrew was okay but nowhere near an expert shot; some of the guys in the platoon were perfect at 400m. He was competent and proficient enough to comfortably pass the test but no more than middle of the pack. They spent as much time on care and cleaning as they spent on the actual range but were able to return to the TA centre for much of that part of the course and thus avoided sitting out in a field in the rain. At the end of the weekend there was only one training weekend left, the weekend after term finished.

There were now only 16 guys playing regularly for the 2^nd eleven having lost six from the start of the year for various reasons. As the week of the match with Newnham arrived the team were trying to be relaxed but the comments from others at the College as well as the general scrutiny were starting to wear on everyone. Andrew knew that personally he could have done without the match, it was just too much of a recurring conversation, there was nowhere to escape from it. But it gave him something to talk about on the cancer ward on the Monday evening, sparking some rivalry between the guys and girls. He was pleased for anything that raised their energy or passion that winter. The final training session was downbeat, they were not playing in the Varsity match against Oxford, rather it was a group of guys playing social hockey for fun and none of them were having much fun. On the walk back to the College everyone was quiet, all of them just wanting to get the damn match over with. It took a couple of beers at the bar for them to relax. From the chat at the bar it was clear the biggest source of tension was they had no idea how they were going to do, a 6-0 shoeing on Saturday was not something to look forward to. Andrew headed back to his room and met Helena coming back from a Union meeting all fired up. He rarely was one to initiate anything but suddenly the idea of burning off some energy with his friend seemed a very pleasant solution.

“Can I come over this evening? I need to chat to you.”

Helena looked at him and Andrew just smiled wryly and nodded.

“Of course.”

Despite being keyed up Andrew lay on the bed with Helena for a while just chatting. As ever talking a problem out with another person helped and the air of despondency lifted. But Helena was a smart girl.

“So what were you going to do, come over here and use me to relieve your tension?”

“You make it sound so tawdry but yes.”

Helena just laughed, pulled him up and stripped first him, then herself. Kneeling on the floor in front of Andrew she caressed his dick before slurping the head into her mouth. Technique was much less important than her eyes, Helena always stared at him intently but let a variety of expressions play across her face. The look of corrupted innocence was Andrew’s favourite, he could hear her voice in his mind, and it always had him coming within minutes. He sagged onto the bed for a second before scooping Helena up and flinging her down on her back. She squealed and giggled and the tension within him just drained away. This is all he needed, an engaged and willing partner who he could bring pleasure to, tease and torment for a while before they both slaked their lusts. That is why Andrew have never been able to understand guys who wouldn’t eat pussy, for him it was a challenge, to use your skill and knowledge of a woman’s body to bring her so much pleasure she has to cry enough. After Helena had come twice, he paused to wrap myself, but then Helena pulled him down with a fierce look on her face. The fuck that followed was equally fierce and passionate, Helena had her ankles hooked behind Andrew’s back and was pulling him deep into her. When her own orgasm hit it seemed to catch her by surprise and he fought to control himself but the flexing of her pussy and her arched back undid him as well and he too quickly popped. Helena had quickly adopted his favourite position and so when Andrew climbed back into bed after cleaning up she lay along his body smiling.

“I feel so used.”

Her mock pout was ruined by a sweet giggle and they kissed for a while. She broke apart with a sigh.

“You bring out the oddest feelings in me, do you know that? I know that you care for me, we are fairly successfully negotiating a friendship with a bit of fucking thrown in, but I am lying here all confused. You never pressure me, it is nearly always me that initiates our fucking and it is great to not feel pressured into doing something, but there is a part of me that wants you to initiate more, like tonight. You have told me you can’t enjoy sex unless your partner does, it would be just like wanking into a human rather than sex, so I know that you will take the time to make me come and I will lie her afterwards glowing. I find myself confused about wanting you to be more demanding whilst at the same time loving the fact that you are not.”