The Secret Catamite Bk 1, The Book of Daniel

“
A very emotional read.
Your book was v enjoyable, emotional and sad. How I wished I could
have been there to help so many times.” - Brad Durham

"It is about need, caring and
love. There is something beautiful even nurturing about this
growing friendship and love.” - Carol Powney

“
I could not put it down,
I read many, many books, and this hand on heart is the best thing I
have read. Follow anything this guy writes, this book is a
classic." - Rob Bassindale

“
It is a tender story, it
is a loving story, at times funny, at times sad, at times sexy - a
bit like life." – P. J. Leeson

Episodes from inside a life

A Biographical Trilogy

by

Patrick C. Notchtree

Book 1: The Book of Daniel

First published 2012 by Limebury
Books

www.limebury.com

ISBN 978-0-9572361-6-5

@pcnotchtree

Copyright © 2012 Patrick C.
Notchtree & Limebury Books

Formatted and set by Limebury
Books

Smashwords Edition

Foreword

This is a work of fiction. It is
an account of one person's struggle with the demons within, and not
always successfully. It was originally written as a form of
therapy. If others wish to read it, perhaps they too may gain
something from it. They may condemn it and the characters within.
That in a free society is their privilege. But one thing the author
has learned is not to rush to judgement, heeding the advice of St
Matthew, "Judge not, that ye be not judged" (Matthew 7.1), and also
the sound advice of Islam, "Good deeds annul evil deeds." (Qur'an,
11:114).

Inevitably it draws upon the
life experiences of the author and of others but should not taken
as a factual autobiography of the author. The names used are also
fictitious and where they coincide with real people, those real
people have no connection whatsoever with the fictional characters
of this novel.

"Let us have the honesty to see
things as they are,

since to see things as they
ought to be is to miss them entirely."

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)

For my dear wife,

for whom my love knows no
bounds,

for her devotion and
forgiveness;

and my family,

the greatest blessing a man can
have.

Also for my close friend

Stephen

whose tragic life could so
easily have been

my own.

&

For ‘Daniel’

1. 1949 First
   Memory
   

Simon felt the increasing panic
well up in him. He knew that he was not going to make it in time.
He ran up the stairs, nearly tripping over a loose stair rod that
was failing to keep the worn, rough, red stair carpet in place. The
bathroom door was closed, and Simon reached up for the handle
struggling to turn it. Perhaps it was the way his small body had to
stretch up, but he knew then that he had lost. As he stood inside
the bathroom, his body could contain its load no longer and he felt
the wet warmth as it slithered out of his little shorts and down
the back of his left thigh on to the linoleum floor.

"Mummy!" Simon cried out in
despair. And then the tears started to flow. Mummy appeared, and
calmly set to clearing up the mess.

"I couldn't wait," wailed Simon
through his sobbing.

"Why don't you go earlier?"
asked Mummy irritably, as she carefully deposited the smelly lump
into the pan which had been its intended destination.

"I didn't know I wanted to,"
explained Simon, now racked with guilt at having let Mummy down and
caused all this upset.

Steadily, Mummy removed the
stained clothing, dropping it into the bath which stood on its
little iron feet next to the pan. While the tears subsided, Mummy
wiped her son down with a warm wet flannel, removing the evidence
of his failure.

"Are you cross with me?" asked
Simon, pleading for her not to be.

Mummy regarded the three year
old, and her love for him watered her eyes.

"Of course not," she replied,
and she took him into her arms. There, on the bathroom floor,
mother and son re-affirmed their love and mutual dependence. She
looked at her son, as ever worried about him. Since his very
difficult birth which had nearly killed her, he had been a cause of
concern, born blue, his slow development leading to him being
labelled in the terminology of the day as Mentally Deficient, a
crippled spastic. But now he was walking and talking, even if he
had not yet mastered bowel control. She hugged him again and his
sobbing subsided.

Later, Daddy came home, and was
cross with him for making a mess. To Simon, Daddy was a part of his
life. Some of the other, older children in the street said he was
bad because he had been divorced from another woman so wasn't
properly married to Mummy and they would go to hell, but Simon
could not understand that. Going to hell was something to do with
God, and that was far too remote for him to deal with. Perhaps the
older children had met God; after all, Mummy said that when people
were old, they did go to meet God. Maybe some of the biguns already
had. Simon kept away from the biguns as much as he could. They made
him cry by calling him names, and some of their mummies said that
they were not to play with him because his Daddy swore, and that it
was all very wrong. Sometimes, when he went out to play in the
street, in his pedal car or on his battered old green tricycle, the
nasty ones would shout names at him like "Simple Simon". When it
wasn't that it was "Little bastard!" One or two had started calling
him this, and it had taken hold and was a regular taunt. Simon knew
from the tone in which it was said, or often shouted, that it was
not nice, whatever it meant. He asked his older sister, Frances,
what names she got called. She didn't seem to know what he was
talking about. But Frances was five years older and rarely played
with Simon. She had her best friend, Jennifer, with whom she spent
lots of time.

Once, when a little older, Simon
asked Mummy what a bastard was, and she started to cry. So he did
not ask the question again, but he felt sure that it was something
about him that the biguns knew, that he did not. The mystery
remained unsolved in Simon's mind, and the situation became one of
the accepted factors of his existence. The problem did not go away
and with each hurtful name-calling, it was again brought to the
fore. But he never mentioned it to Mummy in case that made her cry,
and when Mummy cried, Simon could not bear it.

Simon had to bear it though,
because Mummy seemed to cry sometimes for no obvious reason, and
would not tell him why. Frances would not tell him why either, and
told him not to worry. Mummy sometimes said it was the war, but
Simon did know that the war had ended just before he was born. And
anyway, he knew Daddy had got a medal for flying in the war and
that was supposed to be good. So Simon cried too, and he and Mummy
would cling to each other, sharing their joint misery, hers caused
by the natural injustice of the lottery of life, perhaps for her
precipitate wartime marriage, his for no better reason than Mummy
was unhappy. Simon could never discover what he had done to make
Mummy cry, and although she always said it was not his fault, he
knew that it must be. What he did not know of were the tears shed
in the loneliness of the nights after his bedtime when Daddy came
home very late, or not at all.

As he grew older, Simon started
to be frightened of Daddy. He often came home in a very bad temper,
and would shout at Mummy and him for no real reason that Simon
could see. If he was really in a bad temper, he would make Simon
bend over a chair and hit him with one of his old black, leather
soled slippers. Mummy would protest sometimes that he was being too
hard, and that the offence that Simon had committed did not merit
such treatment. Daddy's response was always either one of two.

"Spare the rod and spoil the
child!" or,

"My father used to beat me when
I did something wrong, and it never did me any harm!"

Simon used to wonder how it was
that anyone could be beaten and it not hurt them. He found a way of
coping with this by pretending it was someone else. It was as
though he was outside his body, watching Simon being beaten as
though in a film. But it hurt and after the punishment, he would go
upstairs to his bedroom and cry, while the raised voices of
argument could be heard from below.

Yet Daddy could be loving. He
took Simon aged almost five to London to see the Festival of
Britain, which Simon found exciting and stimulating, the image of
the delicate Skylon apparently magically suspended in mid air
remained fixed in his mind. Daddy also took him the Battersea Fun
Fair associated with the festival. Simon knew Daddy was important
because when they went to get a meal first in a restaurant,
suddenly Daddy said, "Stop eating."

Simon stopped eating.

"I've come out without my
wallet," said Daddy. "I can't pay for the meal."

Daddy called the waiter over and
explained. The manager came over and Daddy explained again.

"I'm sorry, sir," said the
manager. "Perhaps if you had some form of identification?"

Daddy looked in his pockets and
found some small white cards with printing on, his business card.
The manager looked impressed.

"Certainly, sir. Send us a
cheque. Please finish your meal." The manager paused. "Were you
planning to take the boy on the funfair?"

"Yes, I was actually."

The Manager reached into his
pocket and took a note out of his wallet, and gave it to Daddy.

"Please allow me to lend you
this, sir, and I hope your son enjoys the fair."

"Thank you very much," said
Daddy. "That is extremely kind of you. I will send a cheque as soon
as I get home. Come on, son. Eat up!" Daddy smiled at Simon, who
was thinking how special Daddy must be, ate heartily. And then he
enjoyed the funfair.

1. 1951 Starting school,
   Daniel
   

Starting school was an upset for
Simon. Firstly, he had to leave Mummy, and he worried about whether
she would be even more unhappy. Secondly, he was frightened of how
he would be received by the other children.

He liked his teacher, Mrs.
Hastings, because she was a bit like Mummy, except that she did not
cry. He did not like Miss Harvey, the headmistress, because she
never smiled and used to get cross with the children. She had a
bamboo cane that she would hit children with. The girls were hit
across the palm of the hand, but Miss Harvey made the boys bend
over while she caned their bottoms. Simon did his best to keep out
of her way.

His sense of isolation did not
diminish at school. The other children called him names still, and
so he retreated into the security of his own company, clutching his
teddy bear at night for comfort. One solace to which an isolated
Simon clung was that he could meet Frances at playtime in the
school yard. The juniors were supposed to play in a different area
from the infants, but she would come to meet him. Simon liked the
reassurance, but he knew that soon Frances would be leaving the
juniors and then he would be friendless again.

The exception was Daniel. He was
almost two years older than Simon, and therefore not in the same
class, but he did live near Simon, in the next street. He could see
Daniel's house from his bedroom window. He had become aware of
Daniel not long after starting school and his quiet self-confidence
attracted Simon. He was good at school and at sports, and, with his
dark hair, kind face and deep blue eyes, the girls said he was he
was dishy. Simon thought so too.