I was reaching an age when some of my contemporaries at Eton were beginning to joke quite openly about their quasi-sexual interest in particular pretty boys, younger than themselves. There was dishonour in getting oneself branded as a school tart, but there was no dishonour in assuming the more macho role of would-be seducer - although it might be safest all round to keep such thoughts as a mere fantasy exercise.

Although I had now put some distance between myself and the [F] crisis, psychologically, I did not yet feel myself to be out of the woods. With my history as one of the school tarts, for which I had somehow been forgiven, I knew only too well how my clean bill of health would instantly be withdrawn if there were the slightest hint of additional scandal. I didn't feel that I could cope with anything like that.

I was made aware on more than one occasion how my reputation was still perhaps suspect. For example, there was the time when I was in the throng waiting to pass through the classroom door, with Michael, Viscount Boyne immediately ahead of me. In a spirit that was no more than impish merriment, I tweaked his buttocks. But I saw in his expression of outraged suspicion that he then turned on me, that he regarded my gesture as something akin to a homosexual assault. I was very careful to do no such thing ever again to him.

But I was still aware of my homosexual inclinations, however suppressed they might be. And there was one friend in particular, about a year younger than myself although frequently in the same division - due to the fact that he had taken Remove when still comparatively young, who had suffered much the same kind of indignity as myself in getting himself branded as a school tart, and whom I recognised to be a kindred spirit. This was Antony Rouse, who was at Hartley's. By inclination I would have made a close friend of him, but I was inhibited even from talking to him too frequently, in my awareness how our reputations would have promptly suffered.

I mention all this because my friendship with Antony was eventually, some ten years later and in less inhibited circumstances, to take root. But at this date it was merely a question of mutual admiration, with a mild flirtation perhaps, and a supposition that we might one day get to know each other better. And that was as far as either of us then dared to take it.

If choices were open, I'd richly rejoice in the scope
for amity, flamboyantly overt in fulfilment
with a willing kindred male, hailing the bond
of confraternity in like tastes and ways.
Blazoned on the badge of that culture, hot
erotic involvement solves the crude problem
of human isolation with spicey vices,
which nicely titillate my fantasy thoughts.
Caught in spot-lit shots on the shrinking brink
of a grim precipitous pitfall, I clamber backwards
to track my feet to safer moral heights,
frightened of life, and of finding who I am.
It might be prudent to postpone the hour
for letting natural friendship come to flower.

It wasn't just at school that I felt vulnerable. Caroline had by now fully graduated as a debutante, and was brim full of the psychological theories which get disseminated in such circles. She invited me to see how I fared in a series of tests; the end purpose not being revealed to me. I was told to strike a match. I did so - striking it away from me, as I held the box. Then I was told to examine my fingernails. I did so - holding the back of my hands extended, up before my eyes. There may have been other tests too, but I do not remember them. All I know is that Caroline now pronounced that I had a feminine, rather than a masculine disposition. Men were said to strike matches with the mid-finger, in a motion towards their chest; and when examining their fingernails, they clench their fingers down over their palms. I asked her if she meant to tell me that I was going to develop into a pansy. She gave me one of her mysterious little smiles, and murmured quite apologetically: "Well it is possible."

I minded this verdict enormously. I was far too uncertain of what fate might have decreed for me in my innermost sexual orientation, to have a trusted sister go pronouncing me - on psychological evidence - to be a closet queen. And I was always most careful on all subsequent occasions throughout life thereafter, to strike matches and to examine my nails in an appropriately masculine manner. But the truth of the matter is that I still wasn't at ease when I found myself in the company of women.

I felt no urge to try and charm any girls of my sister's age, and there is an instance worth quoting from my attendance at the Radnor ball. Diana Phipps who had been a childhood friend of Caroline's, was in the house party that we took along to it; and I felt alarmed at the expectation that I should dance with her. (She had been notorious as a young girl for her caustic tongue.) When I enquired from Caroline if anyone might take it amiss if I refrained from dancing with her friends, she thought not. But she was mistaken. On our return to Sturford, I announced that I was off to bed. Diana turned to me briefly and started saying thank you for the dance; then checked herself suddenly as if only then recalling that I had never offered her one. She gave an airy wave of the hand, and then completed the phrase she had started. "Oh yes, thank you..... just for going to bed." It somehow highlighted my current inadequacy with the opposite sex.

Once back at Eton however, at long last I found that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Sarah Crawley, who was one of my own childhood friends, now re-entered my life in that she started coming down to Eton, ostensibly to visit her cousin, Nicholas Cobbold. But her habit was to collect together a whole bunch of the boys she knew, and take us all out to tea together. And inasmuch that I was the eldest by quite some margin, I was aware how I was the only one that she regarded in any way as being a potential boy- friend. When in this company, I could see that Christopher was no manner of rival to me for her regard. It occurred to me, just vaguely, that my potential love life might be shaping up more encouragingly than had hitherto been the case. Or to express myself less modestly, I thought that I was at long last receiving a savour of my romantic due.

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