A Woman and Two Men

The story covers the three-year undergraduate period in the life of Eleanor Butterfield. She goes up to Saint Boniface’s College in Camford University to study theology with a view to becoming an Anglican priest, like her father, a retired Professor. She meets and takes a fancy to a fourth-year student, Tommy, who turns out to be gay. He invites Eleanor to go out on a threesome date with him and his boyfriend Martin. Both boys seem to enjoy her company, and Eleanor decides that she would like a long-term relationship with both the two men. The following term the threesome go out regularly to eat or to the cinema or to concerts. After a summer term of hard last-minute academic work, all three have exams, Eleanor her first year qualifying exam, the boys their finals. Eleanor gets a scholarship and Martin gets first-class honours. Eleanor spends two weeks with the boys in a rented villa in Arezzo in Italy.

In their year after graduation, Tommy starts a one-year teacher training course and Martin registers for an M.Litt. Their threesome relationship continues, although it has not so far led to any sex. The three spend Christmas at Tommy’s home at Ixton, where Eleanor tells the men that she wants a sexual relationship with both of them, even though Martin says that he is sexually impotent with women. Tommy spends the Candlemas term on teaching practice in various schools and Martin rather petulantly refuses to go out with Eleanor. In the June, Tommy passes his Teaching Diploma exams and finally lets Eleanor give him a blow-job. He gets a teaching job for the following September and Martin gets a junior college fellowship to teach first-year students and to do a Ph.D. On a one-day visit to Camford, Eleanor finally persuades Martin to let her give him a blow-job. The three go on holiday to the North of England, where both boys separately sleep with Eleanor, and discover that Martin has no difficulty in copulating, despite his claimed impotence with women. They finally round off the holiday with a sexual threesome. Not surprisingly, by now Eleanor has decided that she will not seek ordination, but try to get an academic job and do an M.Theol.

In the September, Tommy starts his job teaching at the Wyverne School, and Martin gives his first student tutorials. Eleanor works very hard in her final year, as she must get a first to have a chance for further study. Nonetheless, she has time for regular sex with Martin, who seems delighted to have forgotten his fears of sex with a woman. The three spend Christmas at Ixton, where Eleanor meets Sandro, Tommy’s brother Luke’s biological brother and his partner, Lord Batley and their twin daughters. Just before Christmas Tommy and Martin take their B.A.degrees and Eleanor starts to wonder whether she should have an alternative career in mind if her current academic ambitions fail to get her accepted for a masters degree. She is advised to consider publishing as a possible outlet for her skills, and gets a part-time job as a Hebrew proofreader and copy-correcter for a small publishing firm in Camford. When the exams finally come along she is successful in gaining a first class degree and is accepted by the professor of ecclesiastical history to do an M.Theol. degree. She, Tommy and Martin spend a couple of weeks at an attractive holiday resort on Lake Garda in Italy, where Eleanor has a chance to review her three years of study and contemplate her future with the two boys, which looks as though they will all move to Italy.