The Secret Tunnel (20 page)

Another door opened, and there stood a rotund, well-dressed man in his 60s, bald-headed, bespectacled, exuding an air of slightly seedy geniality. It could be none other than Herbert Waits, the owner of the British-American Film Company, the hapless husband of Daisy Athenasy, the man I’d heard referred to in the waiting room as “Bertie.”

He was holding a cigar—more as a prop than anything else, I suspected—and waved it toward us. “Gentlemen, gentlemen! Don’t stand there as if you’re waiting for a bus! Come on up!”

True to the company name, he spoke with an unplaceable mid-Atlantic accent.

Clive, Sean, and I followed him up the dark staircase. Two doors opened on to the landing. One was slightly ajar, and through it I had a brief glimpse of entwined naked limbs. I heard the click of the shutter, saw the dazzle of lights, before Waits blocked my view with his considerable bulk, softly pulling the door closed.

“This way to stardom, folks.” He gestured to the door across the landing, through which we obediently filed.

“Good to see you again, Clive.” Waits shook Clive’s hand, for all the world like businessmen at a conference. He referred to a clipboard. “And our two newcomers, Mr. Hanrahan and Mr. Mitchell. Welcome to fairyland.”

We shook hands in turn, and sat, the three of us in a row.
Waits paced up and down, gesticulating with his cigar, rarely smoking it.

“Now, gentlemen, I suppose you know why you’re here. We’re casting today for a variety of films, hence the open audition, and I guess you’re all aware of the nature of the material that you may be required to shoot. Have you filled them in, Clive?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“The first question I have to ask you is, do you want to be famous?”

“Yes!” answered Sean, as eager as a puppy. “I do!”

“Good boy. And you, Mitchell? They tell me you’re an American.”

“Yes, sir. From Boston.”

“Got any picture experience?”

“No, sir.”

“Good, good. You’re just the type we’re looking for. Handsome. Outdoorsy. The athletic kind. You play football?”

“Sometimes. I rowed at…er…college.” I didn’t think he needed details of my postgraduate medical studies at Cambridge.

“A rower, huh? Good. Builds up the shoulders. Audiences like strong shoulders, don’t they, Clive?”

“I suppose so.”

“Take Clive, here. Very much a man’s man, to look at him. Every inch a man’s man, you might say. Look at the shoulders on him. Stand up, Clive.”

Clive stood; he was a good six feet tall, and built like a swimmer.

“That’s what we want,” said Waits, holding the cigar between his lips and squeezing Clive’s shoulders with both hands. “A bit of muscle. You boys think you can match up?”

“Sure,” said Sean, jumping to his feet. By now, I was aware
of the kind of “acting” that was required of us; I’m not sure that Sean was. He still seemed to think he was auditioning for some kind of action caper. Well, there would be action, of that I was confident. ”I built these muscles working on building sites. Lugging around bricks, putting up scaffolding.”

“Impressive, son, very impressive.” Sean bunched up a bicep, and Waits squeezed it appreciatively, his lips working around the cigar. I began to see that, perhaps, Daisy Athenasy’s infidelities might not have caused her husband too many sleepless nights.

“So, let’s get down to business.” Waits picked up his clipboard again. “You first, Hanrahan. Off with your shirt.”

“Here? Now?”

“Yes. C’mon. I haven’t got all day. People to see. This may be your only chance.”

“Yes, sir.” Sean unbuttoned his jacket and threw it aside. His shirt, pulled over his head, followed it to the floor.

His physique was impressive, the skin milky white, his back and shoulders dusted with freckles. There was a little patch of reddish hair on his chest, and his nipples were as pink as rosebuds. Waits licked his lips—and so did I.

“Good. Great.” He paced around Sean like a connoisseur at an auction room—or a butcher at a meat market. “Very nice indeed. You’ll photograph well. Lift your arms above your head.” Sean obliged, exposing his underarms, the hair red and slightly damp with sweat. Waits inhaled.

“Okay, Mr. Sean Hanrahan. You’ll do.”

“I got the job?”

“You passed the first round.”

“Wow.”

“Now, Mr. Mitchell. Your turn.”

I followed suit, and stripped to the waist. Both Waits and Clive eyed me appreciatively.

“Good. Dark. Kind of hairy. You’ll make a good contrast. An Arab sheik, perhaps.”

“Oh, God, Bertie, not another
Desert Song
—”

“You’d better strip as well, Clive. To make sure you haven’t let yourself go.”

“I was under the impression that I would not need to audition.”

“It’s all about teamwork, Clive. I’ve got to see how you work together. Skin tones, body types. Facial features. Chemistry, boy. That’s what audiences want. Chemistry.”

Clive sighed and stripped. His body was as beautifully proportioned as a Greek statue, and just as smooth, his skin tanned to a light, even gold. He must have traveled abroad, I thought.

“There we go. Three of the finest specimens of manhood it’s been my pleasure to view for a long time.” Waits was delighted, scribbling notes on his clipboard. “Now let me see. A young boxer, that’s you, Hanrahan, is training for the big title fight. Can you box, by any chance?”

Sean threw a few punches; they looked convincing enough.

“That’ll do. His trainer—that’ll be you, Clive—puts him through his paces, then gives him a rubdown before the fight. A thief breaks into the changing room…” He was pacing about, his eyes closed, drawing absurd images from the air. “He steals your shorts. We don’t need to see that, just the discovery that the shorts are gone. So when you face your opponent in the ring you’re only wearing your boots.”

Sean looked puzzled, trying to work out the plot.

“And the opponent,” I said, “would be me, I presume.”

“Yes. We’ll bill you as something like “The Great Effendi.” I don’t know—something exotic. You strip down to your shorts, but then in the interest of a fair fight you lose ’em, bla, bla, bla, and so on in the usual way until the end of the reel. Clive is there to ensure a fair fight, no hitting below the belt. Hey, that’s it! Good title!
Below the Belt
. Okay, stay there.”

He bustled out of the room, and we heard him yelling in the corridor. “You guys done yet? I need the studio!”

“Surely we’re not going to shoot the movie here and now, are we?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” said Clive. “Waits doesn’t waste time on rehearsals.”

“But I thought British-American was a legitimate film studio.”

“So it is. But these pictures don’t go out with the British-American name on them. It’s all strictly hush-hush.”

“But why? Surely he doesn’t need to make this kind of stuff.”

“Are you kidding? How else do you think he finances those terrible Daisy Athenasy pictures? She’s box office poison. If she wasn’t blackmailing him, he’d have divorced her years ago. Hell, he’d never even have married her. But there’s a girl with an eye for the main chance. She knew there was no future in skin flicks…”

“Gentlemen,” said Waits, returning to the room and holding the door open, “if you would be so good as to come through to the studio. There’s no need to bring your clothes.”

 

Below the Belt
will never go down in the annals of film history, and I sincerely hope it will never be screened outside certain small but lucrative circuits, but, if nothing else, it serves as a record of a very enjoyable afternoon. My “costars” were both attractive men whom I would have been happy to have in any combination and under any circumstances—but, having them both together, our encounter spiced with exhibitionism, made this a truly epic fuck, almost worthy of D. W. Griffith himself. Waits and his cameraman—a harassed fellow in shirtsleeves and pegged pants—watched us with a kind of appreciative detachment, never touching us except to rearrange a limb or measure a focal length.

The plot, such as it was, progressed roughly along the lines described by Waits. The entire set was a black back-cloth tacked against the wall, a couple of chairs, and, for the massage scene, a towel-covered table, which wobbled alarmingly when Sean lay on it. Costumes were produced from a couple of enormous wicker baskets bursting with shoes, boots, shirts, and various bits of uniform. Women’s garments mingled promiscuously with men’s. Waits catered to all tastes.

I watched the first scene from behind the camera. Sean warmed himself up with an impressive display of shadow boxing, until the sweat was dripping from his brow and chest. He had still not, perhaps, grasped the exact nature of what was to follow—and I greatly enjoyed the look of surprise on his face when Clive took control of the action, peeling down Sean’s shorts. For a moment, it looked as if the startled young redhead was going to bolt—but Clive’s experienced hands put him at ease, and soon he had developed an impressive erection, as rosy red as his nipples, standing out in an elegant curve from his ginger bush. He stepped out of the shorts, never removing his boots, and allowed himself to be led to the massage table.

“Cut!” yelled Waits. “Reset.”

The cameraman did his measuring and repositioned his camera while Sean got comfortable on the table.

“I hope this never gets shown in Ireland,” he said, before succumbing to Clive’s caresses. The camera was running again, and soon the massage had turned into a blow job. Sean groaned loudly, burying his fingers in Clive’s long chestnut hair; what a shame, I thought, that we were not shooting with sound. Perhaps Waits would cut in suitable intertitles.

Just before Sean came, Waits yelled “Cut!” again. The cameraman shot a few close-ups of Sean’s glistening wet cock and beefy ass.

“Now for the discovery. Look, Sean, where are your shorts? You can’t find them. You look surprised, then shocked. Someone has stolen them. That’s good. Now you hunt around for them, both of you. No, you can’t find them. You scratch your heads. Clive, you turn out your pockets. Maybe he’s got them hidden down his pants, Sean. Have a feel. What’s that? Wow! That’s a big one! Look surprised! You’ve never felt one that big! Good boy, you’re a natural. Okay, Mitch, get ready for your scene.”

I changed into my shorts and boots, making no effort to disguise the erection that had sprouted sometime during Act One. Any misgivings I may have had about committing my indiscretions to film had been blotted out by lust. I bounded into the ring, threw off the robe that Waits had wrapped me in (I think he was hoping to summon up some flavor of the exotic) and bounced around on the balls of my feet, as I’d seen boxers do. Clive stood between us, keeping us apart, and instructed me to take my shorts off. I needed no second bidding.

The second Clive stepped back, the boxing theme was abandoned in favor of a form of freestyle wrestling. I grabbed Sean around the neck and pulled him close, pressing my hard cock against his sweaty thigh. He responded by tripping me up; I landed on my back, with him on top of me. Soon we were sucking each other’s cocks, hands grabbing asses, fingers penetrating holes. If this was Sean’s first time with another man, he
was
a natural.

Waits kept up a stream of “direction” that was far too repetitive to transcribe here, consisting mostly of the words “yeah,” “cock,” and “ass,” plus a few appropriate verbs. Eventually Clive took off his pants and joined us.

For the finale, I fucked Sean up the ass while he sucked Clive’s cock. We took turns coming; I pulled out and sprayed over his back and ass, Clive came copiously in his upturned face, and finally we held Sean up between us in a seated
position, slipping fingers in and out of his hole, while he jerked himself off to a messy climax.

“It’s a wrap!” yelled Waits, handing us towels. “Pick up your money on your way out. Thank you, gentlemen.” We cleaned up and started dressing.

“Right, Ron, what’s next?” asked Waits, returning to the office.

“Welcome to the stable,” said Clive, patting Sean and me on the back. “If you ever feel like getting together for a spot of rehearsal…”

“I need a beer,” said Sean, his face still flushed and sweaty. “Will you join us, Mitch?”

“Sorry, gentlemen. Another time. I have work to do.”

I descended the stairs slowly, pondering what I had learned about the British-American Film Company and its boss, Herbert Waits. Where did David Rhys fit in the picture? And Peter Dickinson? How much did Hugo Taylor know about his employers—and how much did his employers know about him?

There was much to consider, but little time in which to do it. I took a bus back to Chelsea. There was barely time to dress for the theater.

BOY WAS PACING THE HALL WHEN I ARRIVED. “WHERE THE hell have you been, Mitch? We’re going to be late. You’re not even dressed.” His bad mood was not entirely due to the hour; he knew all too well that while he had been at work, I had almost certainly been at play.

“Won’t take me a moment!” I shouted, bounding up the stairs. I threw off my clothes, rinsed myself fore and aft, and was dressed in my evening wear in moments. We were leaving the house and giving final instructions to the babysitter within five minutes of my arrival.

I desperately needed time to think. If only I had Morgan to myself: he was a good sounding board for ideas, as well as being a top-quality fuck. Or Bertrand, who was proving himself to be an equally serviceable sidekick. What fun the three of us could have…

No! Focus, Mitch, focus!

The cab trundled along the Embankment, while Boy and Belinda chattered about the events of the day, the baby’s latest exploits in the nursery, the chances of Boy
securing a desirable promotion.

I tried to review the latest developments in what I still thought of as “the case.” But with every passing moment, it was slipping further from my grasp. I might as well have been one of the millions who would read about it in the newspaper tomorrow, for all the influence I had on events. If something did not come to light tonight, I would be nothing more than a bit player, a bystander in the drama that had unfolded right under my nose. I might as well forget all my sleuthing pretensions, and concentrate instead on being a good doctor to my patients and a good partner to Vince. He had laughed often enough about my detective mania; this would give him the biggest laugh of all. A murder, two movie stars, diamonds, drugs, a suspicious policeman, even an outrageous dowager, straight out of Agatha Christie. All the pieces of the puzzle were there, and what had I made of them? A muddle. A sperm-soaked mess. I’d fucked it up, in more ways than one, distracted at every crucial point by my restless dick.