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“Why did you agree to this?” Ralph asked. He had shrugged on his coat and one glove and was taking great care now with fitting the other to his injured hand. “Just tell me again – why? I thought you didn’t like Sandy. I know I don’t.”
“I don’t know,” Laurie said. “I ran into him by chance at the greengrocer’s, and he looked....”
Ralph looked sardonic as Laurie ran out of words.
“Well I don’t know, he just looked....”
“You mean he was pathetic and you took pity on him; Spud really–”
“No, not that; I mean he wasn’t pathetic, he looked...well...he was....”
Ralph looked exasperated as, yet again, Laurie trailed off incoherently. “Has it dawned on you that I don’t really care however he looked? I don’t like the man – never did, even when he and Alex were together. I just tolerated him for Alec’s sake; and waited for the inevitable break-up. Given how fast and furious Alec was going through lovers at that time I knew it wouldn’t last forever. And as far as I’m concerned the best thing about that break was that I didn’t have to see Sandy again. And now you’ve roped me into going to a tea party with him! All because you felt sorry for his pathetic arse.”
“Not pathetic,” Laurie said doggedly, knowing it didn’t help but feeling duty bound to protest, while also not up to the task of explaining just how Sandy had looked. “Look I know you really don’t want to come, so don’t bother. I can go by myself. I’ll make some excuse or other why you couldn’t make it.”
Laurie had had his outer gear on long since, so now he simply turned and left. He was conscious of Ralph’s astonishment at this move. It was so unlike him. Doggedly he limped down the stairs from the flat. He half expected Ralph to follow; he could catch up easily. (Laurie never was fast on stairs, even on a good day, which this wasn’t.) But Ralph did not come running after him, or at least not until Laurie was well out the house (all the way down the street to the corner). Ralph’s car drew up next the curb.
“Get in Laurie,” Ralph said.
“You don’t have to come,” Laurie protested. “I said I’d make your apologies.”
“I’m not,” said Ralph gently. “Make my apologies. I don’t harbour the man any ill-will; I just don’t have anything in common with Sandy Reid and don’t feel like wasting a rare afternoon off. But I’ll drive you. There’s no sense in you exhausting yourself walking halfway across town.”
He leaned over and pushed open the passenger door. Laurie bowed to the inevitable and got in. There was no point in arguing in the street – or tiring himself out (Ralph was quite right). Ralph drove far too fast through narrow streets, until forced to stop at a red light. Fingers tapping on the gear stick, Ralph turned his head sideways to look at the set profile beside him.
“Sorry, Spud,” Ralph ventured. “I’ve been a bear.”
“Had you made plans for today, Ralph?” Laurie asked quietly.
“Not really.” Ralph set the car in motion as the light turned green. “I was just looking forward to a little time alone with you. God knows we have few such opportunities left these days, especially since you’ll be leaving for Oxford soon.”
“It’s only a tea party,” said Laurie. “We’ll have all evening together.”
“I don’t suppose you thought to buy a bottle to take?”
“It’s a tea party, Ralph.”
“So it is. Flowers then.” They were passing near the market and he stopped the car suddenly and dashed across the street to a stall. Laurie thought how typical this was of Ralph, how quixotic, to concern himself with providing a hostess gift to a man he didn’t like and didn’t want to visit, and go out of his way to drive Laurie there, just to ease Laurie’s way, all the while in what was clearly a foul temper because his undisclosed plans to have an afternoon alone with his lover had been messed about. He watched as Ralph effortlessly charmed the stall holder while selecting just the right bunch.
“There,” Ralph said, as he handed the bouquet of daisies and roses to Laurie, “give him those.”
Like half of Bridstow, Sandy lived in a rundown large Victorian house converted – badly – into flats. Ralph had dropped Laurie at the front door with the terse command, “ring me when you’re ready to leave and I’ll come pick you up. Don’t accept a lift with one of Sandy’s rackety crowd; they’re bound to drink too much, even if it is the middle of the day.” He sped off within seconds, an action Laurie deeply regretted as he knocked and knocked without getting an answer. He was sure this was the right number. He was sure Sandy had said today, hadn’t he? He felt like a fool standing there with flowers.
“His landlady is deaf.”
Laurie turned to find Theo parking his Austin 7 just outside the property; Peter had already alighted, gin bottle in hand. He looked hard put not to laugh at the bouquet in Laurie’s hand.
Theo tooted the horn loudly. Above a window pushed up and Sandy stuck his head out. “Be right down,” he shouted. The window banged down loudly; clearly the sash had gone.
But Sandy was pre-empted. The rude noise of the window roused his landlady where all Laurie’s polite knocking had not. The door opened and she peered short-sightedly at the young men on the doorstep. Laurie got the impression she would have pretended her lodger wasn’t in; but Sandy bounced down the stairs and waved them through, pointing the way upstairs while he explained to the elderly woman. Following a few steps behind Theo, Laurie couldn’t help overhear how her grumbles were soothed by Sandy, who helped her to find her glasses, and apologised lavishly for his friends, while thanking her for unsolicited advice about the best way to coax open a sticky window. Laurie wondered how often Sandy had repeated this same conversation, probably pretty frequently if one considered how glib he sounded.
Once Sandy joined them upstairs, Laurie stumbled through an explanation for Ralph’s absence, pretending he’d received a last minute phone call requiring him to report to the naval base, and offering the flowers as his apology. The explanation sounded entirely lame, even as he said it. Theo’s shared smirk with Peter told him just how hopeless he was at lying.
“You don’t have to, ducky,” smiled Sandy sympathetically. “I never really expected Ralph to come. And you should ignore that lot–” He jerked a thumb at Theo who was helping himself to a glass from the sideboard and opening the bottle Peter had brought. “The flowers are lovely, and entirely proper.”
“Given his views, had Ralph really chosen them, he’d have bought pansies,” came the arch comment from Peter.
Laurie flushed; he remembered Peter from last year. Well known within the Bridstow scene, he had turned up at most of Sandy and Alec’s parties. Laurie had been shocked one time to meet him by chance outside of this milieu. All the man’s effeminate affectations, so prominent at queer do’s, had been suppressed. In uniform, he had looked like anyone else; Laurie recalled him whistling at a couple of passing Wrens; and, when they had not responded favourably to this overture, laughing at his mate’s off-colour joke about lesbians. He supposed it was a kind of protective colouration, rather the way a chameleon changed colour when moving from a brown wall to green. He had not thought the better of Peter for it. Laurie wished deeply he had listened to Ralph, and rung to make his excuses. He should have known what to expect from one of Sandy’s parties. (He remembered the pairings at Alec’s birthday last year.) He might have to stay long enough to be polite; but he did not have to tolerate such rudeness about Ralph. Laurie drew deep breath, preparing to make a scathing retort; but defence came from an odd quarter.
“Not at all,” Sandy said quietly. “Ralph knows daisies are a favourite of mine. Come with me Laurie, while I find something suitable to put them in.” Laurie trailed him toward the kitchen.
As Sandy bent to look in the cupboard beneath the sink for a vase, Laurie looked round the room. Actually, calling it a room was really a misnomer. Like a lot of converted places, the kitchen was really just a large nook off the main living area; but it did have plumbing for a sink, plus a gas cooker (not just a ring). There was a miniscule table, plus two tall open bookcases with unusually deep shelves, one containing saucepans and other cooking utensils, plus a complete set of dishes, the other food supplies. It looked surprisingly well stocked; after several months of war-time making-do in civilian life, Laurie was well aware of the difficulties of cookery on the ration-book, enough to know he wasn’t very good at it – enough to know Sandy must be pretty knowledgeable about how to stretch the coupons, without resorting to the black market. (There were no tell-tale signs of rations bought under the table.)
“I doubt Ralph knows it,” Sandy remarked as he arranged the bouquet, back to Laurie, “but daisies mean one’s sentiments are shared, something I always thought very apt where he and I were concerned, given our only real connection was Alec.” He turned around to notice Laurie’s bewilderment. “The language of flowers,” he said, without affectation. “The Victorians could have whole conversations through exchanging bouquets. When I was a kid, I had an aged aunt who took great pains to teach me. She said it would come in handy when I was courting my sweetheart someday; little did she know. She’s long since dead; but she was right: it does come in handy when working with elderly patients, some of whom still remember the old associations. Speaking of which,” he added, “you mustn’t mind old Peter. He’s just lost his brother at sea, so my guess is he is doing that whole ‘why-him-when-you-just-got-injured’ thing where you and Ralph are concerned, plus feeling a bit guilty that he’s safe – relatively speaking – on shore.”
Laurie nodded; it wasn’t an uncommon story these days.
“Pansies, by the way, mean ‘thoughts’ – not something I would have guessed Ralph would ever dream of saying to me, had he any idea what flowers mean, which of course he doesn’t. Here.”
Sandy passed a plate to Laurie. He had fashioned some sort of watercress sandwiches. Laurie remembered his mother making them for tea, years ago, the delicately bitter flavour of the greenery contrasting against the blandness of white bread; he’d never really liked them. Sandy’s sandwiches had brown bread, all that was available these days, and looked a bit dry. Laurie resigned himself to drinking lots of tea to wash them down.
“Oh, and take these in too please.”
Sandy handed Laurie five small plates, one of which had a few plain biscuits on it. “It’s nothing like the lavish teas I remember from my childhood but it’s the best one can do in these benighted times.” Sandy picked up the flower arrangement, and returned to the sitting room.
What followed was, to Laurie’s surprise, quite a pleasant afternoon. There was the usual gossip about who had hooked up with whom (which he had expected). But there was more than that. Laurie had not fully appreciated until then that Theo also was connected to the hospital. He said as much, to get the arch response:
“But of course,” from Sandy. “It’s how Alec and I met!
Theo, it turned out, was in surgical training at the hospital; and Alec and Sandy had met at one of his parties. Laurie had rather assumed they had met because both were medical students.
“Yes, but one year different,” said Sandy. “One has quite separate rotations at the beginning of training,” he explained. “In fact you see more of the upper year students at the beginning – like Theo here – than the ones in the next year ahead. Though Alex is a high flyer, so he hobnobbed with the surgeons right from the start,” he added. “He joined up as expected the moment he qualified; but I have no doubt he’ll specialise after the war, particularly given what he’s been dealing with in the field.” Sandy gestured, to Laurie’s surprise, to a V-mail envelope.
Laurie recognised the handwriting; he had seen the same on a letter Ralph had received only that morning. He hadn’t realised Alec and Sandy were keeping in touch, had rather assumed the relationship was over when Alec left Bridstow, particularly given odd comments Ralph had let drop. However, he now realised he didn’t really know. Ralph’s relief when Alec had been posted to Scotland, a relatively safe destination, had been palpable. Laurie had known Alec had once been Ralph’s lover. Their romance was clearly over (and he was not so inexperienced he did not know there is nothing deader than an old romance); but he had never before been so conscious of that old love affair as he was when he saw the visible relief on Ralph’s face when he learned about Alec’s assignment. Laurie had been guiltily aware of relief that Inverness was so far away, relief he’d felt duty bound to disguise, particularly when Ralph had been so understanding he still corresponded with Andrew.
It was on the tip of Laurie’s tongue to ask the status of Sandy and Alec’s relationship; but he had enough tact not to. The whole conversation sensitised him though, to an undercurrent that had been bothering him throughout. Pleasant conversation aside, there was something decidedly ‘off’ about this tea party. Not what he had feared: it wasn’t a repeat, albeit in the afternoon, of Alec’s birthday last year, despite the way Peter had been steadily drinking since he arrived. Ostensibly Peter was fragile over the loss of his brother, and in need of a little comfort; but while Theo seemed protective, it wasn’t Peter he was watchful of, it was Sandy. It was as if, somehow, the other guests were concerned on Sandy’s behalf. As Peter refreshed his glass; offering Laurie a drink, the oddity of Sandy’s sideboard struck him. He had no alcohol, save that which had arrived with Peter and Theo. There was a nice crystal decanter (worthy of his own mother’s sitting room), but nothing in it, not even the meagre remains of a bottle, carefully saved as, in these times, one could never be quite sure of finding a replacement. Laurie had been offered a drink, but not Sandy, who had stayed assiduously by the teapot. The bottle had not been brought as a hostess gift. Living with Ralph had forced Laurie to develop his radar about these things. His gaze shifted from bottle, to the glass in Peter’s hand, and back to Sandy. There were a few lines around his eyes Laurie didn’t remember, though admittedly it had been a few months. But he remembered Sandy as looking rather young for his age; now he looked quite a bit older.
Sandy’s conversation had moved away from medical matters; he and Peter were now earnestly discussing some show they had both seen in London. He found himself watching closely as Sandy carolled a chorus, and Peter danced a few steps. Both were actually quite good; it was surprising. Had he been asked he’d have guessed they’d be hams. But Sandy’s voice was a nice clear tenor, and he sang the song straight; and Laurie had seen a lot worse tap dancing on stage. Theo, it turned out, had a mother on the stage, and wide knowledge of the acting community, and contributed a few funny stories. Nonetheless it was not long before conversation circled back to the hospital. They earnestly discussed that odour, peculiar to the very old, of mothballs and urine combined (with Peter contributing some quips about his grandmother) before the topic circled back to health care for war injuries. Theo and Sandy dominated with technical chat about various traumas to limbs and spine. Laurie sat and sipped tea; this was a Sandy he’d not seen before.
“If they’re right, in a few years time they’ll be able to replace that wonky knee of yours.”
Laurie was surprised to find Peter’s comment addressed to him. But, of course, like Laurie, Peter had no medical background.
“Replace?” Laurie looked wonderingly at his leg.
“Definitely. What: you don’t believe me?” Peter shrugged his shoulders. “Theo’s had me making him models of joints in the workshop at the back of our house.”
“You?” Laurie was frankly astonished.
“You don’t expect a surgeon to be forging bits of metal do you?” Peter mocked. “When they finally get round to putting knees or elbows into people, you can bet it will be surgeons who’ll get all the glory; but behind them will be the engineers like me who designed whatever it is they insert.”
“I hadn’t thought,” Laurie looked again at Sandy. Technical conversation had given way again to banter about rationing, which was now clearly winding down. To his surprise Laurie realised he’d been there over two hours; the tea party was drawing to a close.
He expected some awkwardness in declining the offer of a lift from Theo; but one was not forthcoming. Theo’s roadster didn’t even have a rumble seat. Ralph answered on the first ring; Laurie thought it likely he’d been waiting by the phone all afternoon. He felt a twinge of guilt at having used up one of his last afternoons in Bridstow to spend time with these people who were not, when all was said and done, important to him. Using them to make a point to Ralph had perhaps not been his best decision.
Theo and Peter did not linger; Theo was due on shift. Laurie felt awkward, alone with Sandy, awaiting his lift, without the buffer of the other two. Inwardly he cursed his inability to make small talk. But Sandy took the lead, asking politely if Laurie had everything in hand for Oxford, easing into general conversation about college life as if there had been no difficult long pause.
“I expect you’ll find Oxford changed,” commented Sandy. “One always looks at things differently after a break, even without the pressures of wartime.”
Laurie supposed so, quoting Heracleitus, and, without really thinking, uttering some platitude about the need to accept things as he found them.
Sandy shook his head slightly. “You are decidedly a prime example of a man who lives to one’s self.”
“I beg your pardon?” Laurie was clearly puzzled.
“Not that that’s a bad thing to be. On the contrary, given all the egos I encounter in medicine, I find it quite refreshing to meet someone who accepts the world as he sees it, and knows his place within the grand scheme of life. Doctors all want to change the world – in rare cases, to make it a better place. But more often, notwithstanding all the rhetoric about selfless medical men, I see a lot of self-aggrandisement in hospital, and no one is better at that than the consultants. The world revolves to meet their needs. Alec will be a consultant one of these days with a whole team circling round him; he has the mark of it already.”
The last remark was said without malice, simply as quiet, accepted truth. Laurie remembered his impression last year that Alec was more doctor than queer, and, somewhat stiffly because, notwithstanding the pleasant afternoon, he still didn’t really like Sandy and he did Alec, said something in Alec’s defence, while feeling very awkward (after all he had just accepted this man’s hospitality).
But Sandy once again smiled, not offended by this mild rebuke. “Well I certainly expect Alec to do something more than just puff himself when he reaches the top of the tree. I don’t know that it will be giving people new knees and such like; that seems to be Theo’s thing. Alec’s latest letter waxed on about burn victims. But charging about changing the world – yes that’s Alec, and Ralph. It’s something they had in common, and probably why they didn’t work out together. (You can’t really have two of those types in a relationship.) But it’s not you. I appreciated that difference about you the moment I saw Andrew.”
“I didn’t realise you had ever met,” said Laurie, somewhat stiffly. Even now, several months after his last almost meeting with Andrew, he still found himself bristling at the thought of his friend being subject to gossip amongst Sandy’s set.
“You forget: last year I did rounds at the EMS hospital as part of my training,” explained Sandy. “I wouldn’t precisely say we met, but I had heard about him through Alec (who no doubt had it from Ralph) and recognised which one he had to be: there couldn’t have been that many queer orderlies at the hospital. Andrew seemed like a nice young man. Perhaps a trifle naive; but so are many idealists at that age – quite unlike moi.” Sandy’s voice was a peculiar mixture of matter-of-fact and camp. “I know it relieved Alec immensely when you and Ralph became a couple; that was my only real interest in the matter. I never said anything to him, or about him to anyone else, if that has you worried.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Laurie denied, somewhat untruthfully.
“No, well,” said Sandy, “he certainly wasn’t the sort to give me the send up the way you did. Totally unaware, I thought, though perhaps I had that wrong?”
“No, you didn’t,” said Laurie, slowly.
“And you left him that way.”
“Yes.”
“As I said,” explained Sandy, “a man who lives to one’s-self.”
He could still see Laurie’s puzzlement, and walked to a small bookshelf and pulled out a small olive green, linen-backed edition of Table Talk, which he handed to Laurie. “Hazlitt wrote an essay about it; read for yourself sometime.”
“But I can’t take your–”
Sandy cut him off. “Yes you can. I’ll be joining up as soon as I’ve qualified. I can’t very well take that along on bivouac, now can I?”
There was considerable illogic to this; Laurie well knew Sandy had another year to go before his finals. There was no urgency to him having to find new homes for old, and now unwanted, belongings. But he refrained from pointing that out. “Your people could keep it safe for the duration. Anyway, when you go, you could be anywhere – somewhere quite stable where you’d have rooms and the space,” Laurie protested.
“Not likely,” said Sandy. “No, take it; I have no use for it now. It’s not as though it was something Alec gave me. It’s just an old school book,” he added, “and will only go to some second hand shop if you don’t take it off my hands. Give the poor book some chance at finding a worthy home. If it isn’t on your reading list it’s bound to be on another student’s.”
When put that way, Laurie could not refuse; he tucked the little volume into the right outside pocket of his coat, just as a loud honk from the street announced Ralph’s arrival.
“I don’t suppose we shall meet again,” said Sandy as he held out his hand. “I have a lot of swotting to do if I am to catch up, given all the drinking I did over the summer.”
Laurie identified in himself some slight regret at that assertion. It was quite true. The connection between them was tenuous at best: through Ralph to Alec – who was nowhere close-by – and thence to Sandy-the-ex (and less than loved) lover. His and Sandy’s paths had not crossed for months after Alec left town; they had only run into one another by chance, after Laurie had tried a new shop in search of something special for tea (one he doubted he would ever go to again).
He certainly had nothing in common with Sandy, bar the fact they both preferred men to women. When they’d met in the past he’d always found his affectations irritating, and his pale blond prettiness unmanly and vaguely offensive. But, somewhat unwillingly, he found he had more respect for him. Ralph had been right; he had accepted Sandy’s invitation from pity – pity combined with a certain curiosity, which he didn’t like to admit but which his own uncomfortable honesty demanded. But Ralph had not been right in one thing: Sandy had not looked pathetic; and Laurie could put a name to it now. He had looked as if he had fought his own war – resolutely – and won back the self-respect that the failed relationship with Alec had eroded. For the first time Laurie acknowledged that Sandy probably had been more the loser in that relationship than Alec, for all he hadn’t appeared so at the time.
Laurie took Sandy’s hand in firm handshake, and said the usual polite farewell, then limped down the stairs to Ralph’s waiting car.
“Nice afternoon?” Ralph enquired as he put the car in gear the moment Laurie closed the door.
“Yes,” Laurie replied, “in fact I thoroughly enjoyed myself.”
“I managed to scrounge some cheese to go with that old heel of loaf,” Ralph said, “so we’ve Welsh rabbit for supper tonight.”
“That will make a nice treat.” Laurie refrained from commenting about the number of treats Ralph had scrounged over the last week.
For once there was a parking space close to digs. Normally fiercely independent, this time Laurie leaned heavily on Ralph’s arm as he made his halting way upstairs, recalling the discussion about knee surgery. Away from the medical optimists, and biting his lip to hold back a moan when he stood the wrong way, it seemed like one of Jules Verne’s fantastical tales.
“No, don’t be so sceptical,” counselled Ralph. “They’re doing marvellous stuff these days, Spuddy. Who knows what medicine will be able to do in a few years time.”
“Above my price range, I should think,” Laurie said, “unless Alec can get me a discount from one of his Harley Street friends.”
“They might do some deal for ex-soldiers,” Ralph speculated. They were in the flat by now, and Ralph had his boot off and was deftly massaging the offending leg. “There,” Ralph gave it one last stroke before propping it on a cushion. “You sit while I grill some cheese.”
Thoughtfully, before leaving the room, Ralph had turned the radio on. Typically it was tuned in to jazz; he’d developed a taste for it before the war during a trip to New Orleans. Laurie preferred Mozart and Bach, his taste fixed in youth after his mother enrolled him in the church choir. ‘Stormy Weather’ was accompanied by the percussion of Ralph banging utensils in the kitchen; but eventually the croon of Lena Horne gave way to swing, which only reminded Laurie anew of his inability to dance these days. Fatigue made him stumble slightly as he got up to change the station.
“Careful old chap.” Ralph put out a hand to steady Laurie, nearly upsetting the balance of the tray he was carrying as he too stumbled. He settled Laurie back in the chair with food and a glass of beer before bending to pick up the book that had fallen out of Laurie’s pocket.
“Hazlitt?” Ralph’s eyebrows raised. “I didn’t know this was on your reading list.”
Laurie shrugged. For some reason he couldn’t quite bring himself to tell Ralph it was a present from Sandy, any more than he’d told Ralph when he’d found the slender volume of Wilfrid Owen’s verse that Sandy had tucked into the elephant several months ago. They’d enjoyed reading those poems together though; and now.... Now he watched Ralph sit across from him munching his cheese toast; unhesitatingly, he opened the book close to its end.
“Which one?” he asked.
“What?” Ralph replied. “Oh, the book? ‘On the Disadvantages of Intellectual Superiority.’ A bit ponderous, but I remember finding it apt back when I worked below decks.” He grinned. “I dare say they’ve set you, ‘On Living to One’s-Self.’”
Laurie nodded slowly. “How did you know?”
“It’s the one they always go for. Not reading that one would be a bit like taking a course about the 19th C novel and not reading Jane Eyre. That’s when they bother to put Hazlitt on the reading list at all; his morality is not popular nowadays. I suppose they want you to read it so you can compare his technique as an essayist with Pope and Swift and such like.”
There was a pause as Laurie wasn’t quite sure how to respond; he wasn’t exactly lying but he appreciated he was being less than completely truthful, and rather uncomfortable with it. But he still felt reluctant to say the book had been a present from Sandy. Ralph bent his head back to Hazlitt, leafing through the pages. Clearly he was revisiting an old friend. It would disturb the convivial atmosphere to mention Sandy.
“Here, listen to this,” Ralph said. “It’s close to the end.
“Do you really believe that?” Laurie protested, remembering the boy who years earlier dissuaded him from setting up a protest about his being expelled – the man who later accepted responsibility for Bunnie’s trick on Andrew.‘Rules stand in the way of expediency. Many a man has been hindered from pushing his fortune in the world by an early cultivation of his moral sense, and has repented of it at leisure during the rest of his life. A shrewd man said of my father, that he would not send a son of his to school to him on any account, for that by teaching him to speak the truth he would disqualify him from getting his living in the world!’"
“Let’s just say it resonated with me when I found myself below decks in a trawler,” Ralph said cynically.
He tossed the book to one side and disappeared into the kitchen, reappearing a minute later with two glasses and a bottle. He sat on the footstool in front of Laurie’s chair, carefully moving his friend’s leg slightly to accommodate him, before pouring and handing Laurie a finger of whisky. Ralph tossed his own drink down quickly, refilling his glass promptly. This second he sipped slowly, watching as Laurie, with a troubled look on his face, also sipped.
“Those golden rules we learned to live by at school got a bit tarnished for a while,” Ralph said softly, “but they shine bright with polish now.”
Ralph leaned forward, pulled the empty glass from Laurie’s hand and set it aside, and kissed. They were gentle kisses: tender, inviting, seducing. Laurie could not help but respond, and gathered Ralph close in his arms, running his hands through the pale hair. Presently they moved toward the bedroom; presently Ralph slept, contented.
Laurie could not, however; and after a while rose, pulled back the curtains and sat in the window seat staring out at the night sky. His mind kept turning over the events of the day. Chance had steered him to a better appreciation of a man he cared little for, and through this, revealed something Sandy and Ralph – chalk and cheese in so many ways - had in common: a peculiar fondness for an old-fashioned Christian moralist. Sandy and Alec’s love affair had not survived. But, Ralph’s and his had. Newly minted in the Autumn last year, their relationship had been bright and free from scratches. After the anxieties and misunderstandings that preceded them getting together, neither had really wanted to be apart. But they had steeled themselves to it, knowing Laurie needed to resume his studies. The delay before Laurie going up to Oxford almost a year later had allowed them to settle into married life, for the surface to become scratched, but, nonetheless, for the coin to prove durable and useful tender. He knew he would miss Ralph in Oxford like the very devil; but they would manage. They would manage the better now for having spent several months living together. Ralph would get weekend leave; Laurie would visit Bridstow between terms. Unlike Sandy and Alec, familiarity had not bred contempt; and he expected absence to make the heart grow fonder.
Laurie realised exhaustion had him thinking in clichés. He took care not to wake Ralph as he climbed back into bed, spooning against his lover’s back. Ralph mumbled something in his sleep; his shoulders twitched. Laurie reached round and gathered the damaged hand in his own, stroking it lightly, soothing, warding off phantasms. Over the months he had learned Ralph’s nightmares all somehow were linked to drowning, natural enough he supposed in a man who had spent so much of his life a sea. Gradually his own breathing slowed, synchronised with Ralph’s. He should be able to sleep now.