This new series covers the stories of Tommy Singleton-Scarborough and Dom and Sandro and their daughters. There is both gay and straight sex.
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Chapter 1 Tommy enters Saint Boniface's College
When Thomas Albert Singleton-Scarborough matriculated at Saint Boniface's College, Camford, it was actually the first time that he had left home on his own since he had been adopted at the age of ten, apart from short stays with relatives. The brutal treatment that he had been subjected to by his biological parents had led to his new parents being rather over-protective. He had gone to school in Camford at Winton College School, and now here he was starting at University in his home town. Not many students start at a college a five-minute bus ride from their home. But his parents had made it clear to him that while he was welcome to call in at home at any time, they really hoped that they would not see him again until the end of the Martinmas Term. He was now eighteen, and it was time for him to learn to live independently. He would get all his meals provided in college, so they had no worries about his diet and he had a generous allowance of £1000 per month, which was essentially pocket money for him to buy clothes and books, entertainment and drink. They had enrolled him as a member of the Camford Men's Fitness Centre, so that he could go swimming whenever he had time. But Tommy was rather a loner, and his fathers feared that he might have difficulty in making friends and settling as a student.
Tommy had excellent grades in his A Levels in Latin, Greek, French and Italian and was to study the first two languages for his first two years at University. He had been uneasy at first about applying to a college of which both his parents were honorary fellows, but as the subjects he was studying were far removed from their fields of interest (David taught singing and Jon first-year chemistry), it was decided that no conflict of interest could possibly arise. His brother Luke had studied at Buckingham College, but many people regarded that men-only college as a place for gays, and since puberty, because of his family background, Tommy had avoided anything that might suggest gayness. His interview at Boni's, as the college was usually referred to, had been something of a formality, since he had good grades and the college was anxious to have some male students studying classics.
As a preliminary to his going up to university, there had been an intensive and very enjoyable three weeks of the summer in which his two fathers had given him instruction on how to drink sensibly and how to appreciate beer and wine. "You will spend a surprising amount of time at university drinking, and it's important that you should do something that is basically very enjoyable in a way that does not damage your health and does not interfere with your work," his father David, whom he called Dad, told him. "The other thing is that you should learn to appreciate and enjoy proper beer and not the gassy rubbish that many of your age-group consume! The multiplicity of pubs in the town, the variety of small breweries in Camfordshire and the diversity of their products means that a pub crawl in Camford is a very enjoyable was of spending an evening."
Taking advantage of his position as a Fellow, David had given Tommy a detailed tour of the college, including many parts that undergraduates do not normally see. He showed him the beer cellar, which was open daily at lunchtime, but only for a couple of hours in the evening. "You won't meet me or your Pop in here," David told him. "Most tutors avoid drinking here. You might meet research fellows and non-teaching staff here, but it is an unwritten rule that those involved in undergraduate teaching do their drinking elsewhere. We have recently got a bar selling decent beer in the Senior Common Room, so now the non-gin-and-tonic drinkers no longer have to go out to a pub! That in itself was somewhat risky, because pubs are much frequented by students, especially the Lion, which is the nearest pub to the college. The beer cellar sells two good traditional draught beers, as well as one fizzy rubbish beer that has had all the flavour removed from it by pasteurization. Camford is an excellent place to drink beer, as long as you don't overdo the alcohol."
"That's something I hope I will never do," said Tommy. "My birth father was always at his most brutal when he had had a lot to drink." This remark startled David, because it was not often that Tommy mentioned the cruelty and abuse that he had suffered before he had run away from home and been rescued by his gay cousin Sandro and Sandro's boyfriend Dom Overton.
Tommy had been brought up to consider homosexuality normal. Both his two fathers and his adoptive brother Luke were gay, but his fathers had always emphasized to him that his background was no reason why he should not be a heterosexual adolescent, and indeed when he was in the sixth form at school he had spent a lot of time with Beatrice Semperamini, his auntie Caterina's granddaughter, but had not met anyone who really attracted him. Beatrice had made it clear to him however that after her term had started at Islip College, she did not want to see him during term time. He sometimes wondered if the rather crude way that his parents talked at home had in some way diminished his personal attractiveness to women, but decided that calling a spade a spade was in no way offensive except to persons with an exceptionally delicate upbringing. He had never been taught to use baby-words or euphemisms for parts of the body below the waist or for the natural functions that involve those lower parts of the body. So he habitually thought in four-letter words, or at least traditional Anglo-Saxon words.
A major change in Boni's since his cousin Sandro had been a student was that since all but one of the staircases in the college now had en-suite bathroom facilities, the need to segregate men and women on separate staircases no longer existed, and the college had started gradually making all the staircases co-educational, except the single staircase with communal bathrooms, which remained men only. It was thought that mixed staircases might make the residential parts of the college less noisy in the evenings, and this had proved to be the case. There had been a lengthy discussion about whether duplex rooms (which shared a sitting-room and bathroom) should remain single sex, or whether couples should be allowed to share a bathroom. Eventually it was decided that because there was no evidence that academic performance was adversely affected by male and female students sharing, mixed duplex rooms should be permitted to those who wanted them. The take-up was not massive, but several couples who were items, same-sex as well as mixed sex, opted to share each year. The remaining duplex rooms were then assigned to freshmen students.
The trees in Jesserod Meadow were showing their autumn colours as one misty October morning early in the twenty-first century, Tommy climbed out of his fathers' 4x4 outside Saint Boniface's and the two them carried his luggage into the porter's lodge. Then David, who was driving, left him and went home.
The first thing that Tommy did when he staggered through the college quad with suitcase and backpack to his staircase, number XIX, was to look at the list of names inside the front door. Of the ten rooms on three floors, five were occupied by men, and five by women. His room was on the top floor along with two others and the other two were both assigned to women. He was glad about this as it meant, he hoped, that it would be quieter on the top floor. His room had a magnificent view. It was high enough to see not only the whole of the college quad, but over the roofs to the dreaming spires of the Camford churches and colleges.
Chapter 2 Carol enters Saint Boniface's College
Later that day, Carol Hampton arrived at Boni's from Camford station in a cab. The driver helped her to unload two large suitcases and a backpack at the college lodge, and then drove off. She staggered into the lodge and the porter told her that she was on staircase XIX and showed her where the mail pigeonhole was. She asked to leave two of her bags in the lodge while she found her room. As she crossed the quad to staircase XIX, a young man emerged from it. He saw her approaching and asked if he could help her with her bag. She agreed gratefully and said that she was in room 9. "That's on the top floor, next to mine," the boy said. As they climbed the stairs, Carol noticed his lithe figure, his small round compact arse in his relatively skinny jeans, and his short, crew-cut dark hair. What she saw pleased her. She unlocked her door and he carried her suitcase into the room. The ancient stairs had prevented them from using the suitcase wheels.
"There's another two items in the lodge," she told him.
