Chapter Text
London, 1943
"I'm sorry I'm late home," said Andrew as soon as he came through the door. "We had some shocking news at Meeting. Tom has enlisted in the Army."
"If that's what you call shocking news…" said Ralph mildly.
Andrew submitted himself to be kissed, as he always did, but Ralph could tell that his mind was still running on the question.
"Oh, but Dave is aghast," Andrew continued. "Tom's family are all Friends, you see, as far back as anyone can remember. If it had been me, perhaps no one would have been surprised. But Tom… do you remember how I told you about his brother? Richard was in the FAU in Greece when the Germans took him prisoner. It's eaten away at Tom, not being able to do anything. I expect that's what decided him in the end."
"You once told me not to spare your feelings," said Ralph. "So I'll say what I really think. Good for him. I take back anything I might have said about Tom."
"He's off to start training next week. Royal Artillery. They're making him an officer."
"Even better."
Andrew looked at Ralph. His mouth set into a narrow line, as if he were the one being asked to give the order to start the barrage. He nodded once and then looked away.
They didn't speak again until they had sat down to Sunday dinner. Ralph had done his best with the limited materials available to him, but the roast, which used most of their meat ration for the week, still seemed very meagre compared to the quantity of un-rationed potatoes. Both of them ate most meals at their respective work canteens, so it was not deprivation as anyone could reckon it in those days, but it still was difficult not to be able to offer Andrew more.
"Does it ever make you think about enlisting?" asked Ralph.
"I think about it all the time." Andrew put down knife and fork, gazed at his plate as if he could find an answer there congealing with the ersatz gravy. "Tom isn't the only one, you know. Several of ours have gone. It's impossible having to wait like this, we all thought that we would be on the Continent long ago. Not that the ones who are there have had the chance to do much. And then there's all this news..."
Ralph did not have to ask what news he meant. Like everyone else they had seen the headlines the previous June. In the Telegraph: 'GERMANS MURDER 700,000 JEWS IN POLAND.' And in the Times: 'MASSACRE OF JEWS--OVER 1,000,000 DEAD SINCE THE WAR BEGAN.' Andrew had read through all the articles with great care, white-faced, and then had gone very silent.
"Yes," agreed Ralph.
Once he would have said more, told the boy off in no uncertain terms, but Ralph had learnt from painful experience that nothing was more certain to get Andrew's back up and ensure a long campaign of dogged opposition. For a pacifist his instincts were surprisingly combative.
"On the other hand, one asks oneself what good it would do to add more killing to the score."
"You can't pretend that all deaths are equal. They're not."
"Can I pretend to know otherwise? Can any of us?"
Ralph had no answer for that. It seemed a lot of flim-flam to him.
"I try to tell myself that I'm doing worthwhile work here in London," Andrew continued. "Not as worthwhile as Alec, perhaps, but no one expects him to feel guilty for having remained a civilian."
Andrew's continuing fondness for Alec was, Ralph had once felt, one of the great mysteries of life. Now it had become clear that Alec was one of the few men Andrew knew, outside of his circle in the Society of Friends, who did not trigger for him that instinctive, helpless sense of inferiority which was ingrained so deeply that one wondered whether even the end of the war would suffice to wash it away.
Andrew was no coward. Ralph knew this; he had never questioned it. He just wondered whether Andrew knew it.
"You don't think Alec feels it?" said Ralph. "I'm sure he does."
"I've never asked."
Ralph shrugged. "I do, and I'm still in uniform. Why wouldn't he?"
"I know you would be out there if you could," Andrew said in a soft voice. "But I can't fight on your behalf, whatever I might decide to do."
This hit home. "I wouldn't ask you to," said Ralph stiffly.
Andrew had got up from the table and come around to Ralph's side, his empty plate in his hands. He leaned over to kiss the top of Ralph's head, then turned away, embarrassed, and busied himself at the sink.
"Shall we have tea?" he said, rallying after a few moments of feeling silence.
"Please," said Ralph, though it was not what he wanted at all.
***
"I didn't know that it bothered you," said Alec, reclining on the divan in his small Bloomsbury flat. "Him being a conchie, I mean."
"Of course it bothers me," said Ralph. "Why would you think it wouldn't?"
"Well, you've been with him for over a year. That's permanence as far as anyone can reckon it, these days. I suppose I thought otherwise it would have blown up between you by now."
"He isn't like Sandy was. Just because he has feelings about something doesn't mean that he goes and slits his wrists over it."
Ralph paused. The subject of Sandy was still a sore point between them; even now Alec could not admit that it had all been a mistake, though the fact could not have been more evident either at the time or afterward.
"Sorry," added Ralph. "Unfair."
"No, it's perfectly fair," said Alec.
For a moment his dark eyes were far away. Then they focused once again; he looked at Ralph with his usual kindly, perceptive expression.
"He does good work, you know," Alec continued. "I see him at Barts all the time. It's all very well, having women as ambulance drivers, but we're always grateful to have Andrew when there's heavy lifting that needs doing. And from the amount of brick dust he tracks into the place, one can tell that he does as much in the line as any of the Heavy Rescue chaps. He's a good man to have at your side in a crisis."
"I know," said Ralph. "Better than anyone."
"Well, look around you. There's a war on. Andrew and I are on the home front, that's all."
"It's the principle of the thing," said Ralph. "Hell, Alec, I would never say any of this to him, but I hate it. The way people look at him, and the way he gets to expect it from them. I can't do a bloody thing. I wish I could protect him from it all somehow."
"By sending him into battle?"
Ralph could feel his jaw muscles clenching. "I just don't like the way he gives them something on him, right from the start. They can call him a coward without having to ask him the time of day. Everything after that they see in the same light."
"Ah," said Alec. "Yes. It all falls into place."
"Does it?"
"You want him to be you, Ralph. The perfect queer. Not a flaw, not a crack. Nothing the 'normals' can reproach you for. Only we both know that's the fastest way to crack up."
When it came to the subject of cracking up, Ralph had the distinct suspicion that Alec knew more than he was telling. How he had come by that knowledge, whether through intuition or through some more circuitous route, he had no desire to learn. He would not let Alec tempt him into asking, however pointed the hint. It was strange to think that, for all their long acquaintance, Andrew now knew him better than Alec ever would.
"Don't put anything on Andrew," added Alec. "He'll make his own way. And his own decisions."
A real drink would have been very welcome at that moment. Ralph was drinking weak, milkless cocoa and his mug was still three-quarters full. It had gone cold and viscid, like oil on the surface of the sea. One could hardly imagine anything more revolting.
"Can't I get you anything else?" Ralph asked superfluously, wanting only to change the subject. His voice sounded loud and abrupt in his own ears. "More cocoa?"
Alec looked down at his own half-finished cocoa and shook his head, as if he were pronouncing over a patient whom he had never expected to live. It was a sign of the friendship that Alec still bore for Ralph that he came to visit, time and again, never expecting anything more than this from him.
A thought suddenly occurred to Ralph.
"You said earlier that you had something to tell me, didn't you?"
Now it was Alec's turn to look shifty. "Oh. Yes, but it's nothing really."
"Don't take that line with me, my dear, I know you too well. And after all my maunderings too. Go on and tell me, if you're going to."
Alec sighed. "As it happens, I've had another letter from Sandy."
"He never did stop writing, did he?"
"This time he actually has news. Somehow, I don't know who he slept with, he's been offered a post at a general practice in Finchley. He'll be moving down here any day now."
"Oh," said Ralph.
"Oh," Alec confirmed. He shook his head. "The worst of it is that I'm glad. For all his faults I find that I've missed him."
"No accounting for taste."
Alec smiled sadly. He looked as though he were going to reach out and touch Ralph's shoulder, but then he withdrew his hand.
"No, Ralph, there isn't."
***
By the time that Sandy moved down to London it was getting on for October, and Alec's birthday. The first that Ralph heard of his arrival, and definite reappearance in Alec's life, was when a card arrived through the post. It was addressed in Sandy's characteristically illegible, doctorly hand.
Dr Sandy Reid
has the pleasure of inviting
Mr Ralph Lanyon
and
Mr Andrew Raynes
to a soiree
on the occasion of
Alec Deacon's twenty-seventh birthday
Marchmont Street, Bloomsbury
from 7pm until late
RSVP
"Hell," said Ralph, half to himself. "You'd think he'd have the decency to absent himself from all future parties, after the way he behaved that time in Bridstow."
Last year a major bombing raid had coincided with Alec's birthday. He'd been on duty for the better part of twenty-four hours and there had been, to Ralph's knowledge, no celebration at all. Perhaps now he was simply making up for lost time. Or perhaps Sandy had presented it to him as a fait accompli. Ralph's disapproval of the relationship meant that he was, once again, no longer privy to the smaller details of Alec's personal life.
"How wonderful," said Andrew. "Of course we'll go."
"You haven't met Sandy," Ralph said. He was struck by the challenge of summing up Sandy Reid in such a way that would make him comprehensible to plain-speaking, undramatic Andrew.
"No, I haven't. It's good of him to have remembered me, isn't it?"
"The thing is, Sandy's friends..." That didn't seem the right way of approaching it at all. Ralph tried again. "You ought to know that Sandy isn't like Alec."
Andrew looked as though he'd been handed an interesting philosophical question. "I don't suppose a person would say that you and I were at all alike."
"Don't you? I do."
But Andrew had taken the card now and was turning it over in his hands. Ralph didn't suppose that the boy had been invited to many soirees in the course of his twenty-two years.
"Will you write the RSVP?" said Andrew. "Or shall I?"
***
Ralph did not raise the topic again until they were on the Tube going to Alec and Sandy's party. They were alone in a corner of the carriage and the noise of the train was enough to keep them from being overheard.
"You know," he began, shifting his umbrella so that it would not drip against the leg of his trousers, "it was at Alec's twenty-fourth that I met Laurie."
"I remember," said Andrew unexpectedly. "He was so late that night that I worried he'd been caught up in a raid. When he did get back he was rather drunk and would only tell me that an odd thing had happened. Though I wondered whether I ought, I said that it must have been a big day for him, meeting his friend again."
Ralph frowned. "How did you know?"
"I'd seen your name on the Phaedrus, you see. And when you rang the hospital, I was the one who answered the phone."
"Imagine that. I hadn't the slightest idea."
"I was so jealous," said Andrew quietly. "So terribly jealous and the worst of it was that I hardly even knew why. And then the next day when he told me that you had rescued him at Dunkirk, it was worse. I even asked him whether you were married, hoping that perhaps I'd got completely the wrong idea."
"Well, you hadn't."
"He hardly said anything about you, really; that told me all I needed to know."
"He said enough about you," said Ralph grudgingly. "Eventually."
Talking about Laurie with Andrew always made Ralph feel as if a shell had just exploded between them. The concussion left him stunned and bruised, unable to think clearly. When he remembered Laurie at school the image was clear enough, and his alone, but more recent epochs were painfully confused. He found that he half resented Laurie, for... for what? For staying silent? For dying? For separating him from Andrew even now?
(Once, when they were in bed together, Ralph had let slip Laurie's name. Andrew's only response had been a sort of longing sigh; that simple revelation of common feeling, which should not have come as any surprise, had raised in him a confusing flare of jealousy.)
Andrew stayed silent as the train passed through Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road. He was in one of his contemplative moods, from which he could be roused only with difficulty. Ralph had no idea what he might be thinking.
When they left Holborn it was still raining, a cold, persistent October drizzle. Ralph unfurled his umbrella and Andrew stepped underneath. The intimacy of walking shoulder to shoulder--into the lion's den--helped Ralph nerve himself to make another attempt.
"This won't be like your Quaker parties. Too many queers about for that."
In the blackout he couldn't see Andrew's face, but he thought that Andrew had moved a little closer to him.
"I think," Andrew said, "that I shall be glad of it, glad not to have to pretend for once. About you and I."
This statement seemed, to Ralph, another unwelcome distraction from the task at hand.
"You wait till you meet Sandy's lot. Don't say I didn't warn you. We won't stay long."
Andrew brushed his hand against Ralph's, as if in reassurance, and said nothing.
Together they climbed the four flights of stairs to Alec's attic flat. Andrew took the steps at a fast, efficient clip, almost faster than Ralph would have done if he had been alone. Never again, thought Ralph, would he have to wait for Laurie to catch up.
Alec was at the door as soon as they knocked. "Come in, you two," he said, then turned confidentially to Ralph: "I told him that it had better be a small party. So far it seems to be as advertised."
"Bloody well hope so."
"I gave him the guest list. He doesn't know very many people in London."
"How long has he been here, a week? That's plenty."
Alec clicked his tongue lightly. He turned to Andrew, who presented the bottle of tonic water which was their sole contribution to the festivities.
"Happy birthday, Alec. Another year wiser."
"Too kind, thank you. Now let me introduce you... where has he got to..."
As if he had been summoned (speak of the devil, thought Ralph), Sandy suddenly appeared at Alec's elbow. He seemed at once proud, blissfully happy, and entirely unwilling to meet Ralph's gaze. Instead he looked glancingly at Andrew from under those white eyelashes of his.
Introductions were made. Only afterwards did Sandy seem to remember that he was holding two glasses. "This is for you, Ralph," he said, handing one over. "Don't worry, I remember, I haven't drowned it. And do you...?"
"He doesn't either," said Andrew, to whom the last had been addressed.
Just as he spoke, Alec reached out to pluck the glass from Ralph's hand. The rapturous scent of gin and bitters wafted upwards; he could hardly bear to see it go.
"So sorry," said Sandy cheerfully, "how could I forget? That'll be your tonic then."
It was not so much that Ralph wished the ground would open up and swallow him. He wished it would swallow Sandy. Once and for all.
"My tonic as well," said Andrew.
"Don't let's stand here by the door," put in Alec. "Do come through. I'll introduce you around."
It was certainly a small party, as such things were reckoned, barely more than a dozen men fitting themselves into Alec's cramped studio flat. (In the corner, a folding partition discreetly screened Alec and Sandy's bed from the fray. It seemed, mercifully, to be unoccupied.) There were a few colleagues from Barts: another doctor, a pharmacist, and one orderly who seemed to know Andrew already. A young man, the brother of a Bridstow friend, who said he'd had pleurisy as a child and was reading economics at the LSE. A musician from one of the flats downstairs, who performed with ENSA. A scattering of officers on leave.
All in all it felt far more a circle of friends than Sandy's Bridstow open houses had ever been. The only false note was struck by a young Welsh guardsman, who said he'd been treated by Alec at Barts, though Ralph suspected that more than medical attentions had been involved. There was also a pair of faded old queens whom Sandy had apparently collected at Sadlers Wells, but they didn't seem the sort to do anyone any harm.
"He does have a way of bringing back strays," said Alec when Ralph got a moment alone with him. "He feels for them."
Neither of them needed to mention the fact that one of those strays had been Laurie.
"You're honeymooning again. You make him sound as though he were St. Francis of Assisi."
"People do grow up, Ralph. Besides which, it's been lonely without him. You of all people ought to understand that."
"I wouldn't have thought you'd had the time to be lonely," said Ralph wryly.
They looked over to where Sandy was in the middle of an elaborate story, surrounded by Alec's medical colleagues, his manner full camp. "She sat there on the examination table and said, 'but, my dear, I'm never seen anywhere without my wig.' To which I replied, 'well, duckie, you should see me in mine'..."
Alec looked back to Ralph. "How is Andrew finding it all?"
It occurred to Ralph that he'd been several minutes without wondering how Andrew was getting on. He felt abruptly that he ought to be arraigned for dereliction of duty. Glancing around, he saw that a few couples had begun to dance, a stage in the evening that he had hoped to avoid. Then he spotted Andrew at the other side of the room, deep in conversation with the musician and the two queens.
"Did you know," the boy was saying earnestly, "that Tchaikovsky was...?"
The last word was lost in general laughter.
"Darling," said one of the queens, "everyone knows that."
One could see the scarlet of Andrew's blush from halfway across the room.
Ralph made a rapid sortie, fetched up at Andrew's side. He was unable to keep himself from placing a protective hand at the small of his back, earning for his trouble a knowing look from the musician in addition to Andrew's usual affectionate smile.
"We'd best be going."
"Had we?"
"It's late."
Ralph had used as imperative a tone has he dared. Andrew followed him instinctively halfway to the door; then he stopped and looked back at the little space that had been cleared in the middle of the room. Andrew's orderly friend was dancing with the LSE student. The song was 'People Will Say We're in Love.' Both their eyes were closed, shutting out the world.
"Don't let's go yet," said Andrew. "I had never thought of being able to dance with you. Isn't that odd? It shows what assumptions we make about the world."
Ralph had no ready answer to give. So many things which one never thought.
"But I think I'd like to," Andrew added, more decisively. "Am I meant to ask you? Or you me?"
"Either way," said Ralph. "Hell, why not. Shall we?"
As they stepped together there was a brief moment of confusion, a collision of hands.
"Here," said Ralph, "you-- No. I'll follow. It's simpler."
It would give rise, he suspected, to all sorts of gossip, only some of which would be untrue. Certainly it would have done in Bridstow. But he didn't much care.
Andrew lost some of his awkwardness once he had been granted the familiar role. It was more difficult for Ralph, not having tried things this way round since a rather wild party on a passenger liner bound for Quebec City in 1938. Being sober helped, though he hated to admit it.
"Sorry," said Andrew.
"My fault," said Ralph.
As the song wore on they relaxed into one another. Ralph drew Andrew closer, overcome by that fierce, protective love which overwhelmed all self-consciousness. Andrew, though he was leading, forgot himself and laid his head on Ralph's shoulder. Someone put on some Glenn Miller. They carried on dancing.
Out of the corner of his eye Ralph could see Alec and Sandy standing and looking on. Sandy's arm was around Alec's waist.
"Ralph must really love him," said Sandy, his tone half bitchy and half wistful.
"He does," said Alec. "Of course he does. Sandy, would you like to dance?"
Ralph let slip not a flicker of expression to show that he had overheard. He made not a whisper of complaint when, waltzing with more grandeur than subtlety, Sandy elbowed him in the small of the back. For the moment he could feel generous even towards Sandy Reid.