Archive of Our Own ^beta

London in August is like a furnace. I sit on a canal bank writing my latest mendacious letter home and illustrating it with sketches of the people whom I see walking over the nearby bridge. Nannies with perambulators, young ladies in dresses that my mother would consider scandalous and that my sisters would covet, and from the canal-side itself, boys leaping into the water all creep down the margins of the page, as if I have to prove that I can draw. I know my parents will shake their heads yet again over my foolishness and will pray I come to my senses soon.

"Didn't you have enough of Europe?" my mother wailed when I told her my plans, clinging to my arm as if she were the child and I the adult.

"I want to see it now things are better."

I don't like it when people allude to the war, for I know they pity me and whisper what a young fool I was, getting involved in something that should not have concerned me. I watch the people passing by, my mood sinking at the thought of dead friends. I am lucky, I know, luckier than I deserve. A fortuitous case of influenza, and even before I had developed pneumonia my family's money and diligence had me spirited away from military hospitals. The truth about my poor vision was quickly revealed, and I was discharged for medical reasons. I remember little about my illness other than it revealed me as a coward, lying in bed feverishly insisting that the friends I had abandoned would never return home. By the end of the war I was the only one left of my little group of comrades; I haven't been able to look my friends' parents in the face since.

Europe isn't so easily banished. As a boy I dreamt of Paris, of painting under a French sky. What I saw of France wasn't anything I dreamt of, and I told myself I'd come back in happier times. A month before I finally left home I realised I wasn't brave enough, and bought a ticket for England instead. A friend of my mother has a cousin in London to report back on me. I had rooms in her house waiting for me when I arrived in May 1922. I am expected every evening at the dinner table and I am asked kindly how my work is progressing. I don't have to worry about speaking a foreign language. No one knows me, no one knows I left my friends behind. I despise myself. I am twenty-three years old.

My eye is caught by the boys swimming. Their skins are startlingly white, but reddening under the sun as they plunge into the water and come up gleaming. I'm sure they'll be moved on soon, for the nannies and passing ladies look down from the bridge at them in horror and quickly look away. Most of the boys are swimming in their underwear, their chests and lower legs bare. The one causing most scandal is tanned in the body as well as face, as if he is often exposed to the sun. As I watch he stretches and suddenly removes even his underwear, as if being naked in public means nothing to him. I fold my letter and wait for him to be arrested. It is a pity, for the polished copper of his hair against his tanned face is a bright contrast to the sad and dirty grass, more yellow than green. I catch sight of a gentleman on the bridge gesticulating towards the boys and speaking urgently to a policeman. I seize up my letter again and sketch the boy quickly on the final page, adding notes about colour. It's a mere whim that makes me gather my pencils and paper, and go down to the water's edge.

"I think that policeman will come over here at any moment," I say as the red-haired boy slides from the water again and flings himself down in the grass. "You're indecently exposed, all of you. I shouldn't be surprised if he arrests you."

He looks up at me, shading his eyes with a dirty hand. "Do you think I'm indecent?" he says. His voice is a little nasal, some slight foreign intonation under the English accent. His eyes are wide and startlingly blue.

"I think you should leave if you don't want to get in trouble," I say. I don't think him indecent at all. I spent a long time learning to draw the human form and have seen naked life models, despite my mother's protests. He could stand in for a faun, I think, looking at his body, lithe and firm with youth, or satyr. I am tired of my insipid watercolours of London landmarks and yearn for something more interesting.

"Are you free now?" I ask peremptorily.

His grin is horridly knowing, as if he is used to men asking him such questions and is sure what my next words will be.

"I'd like to paint you," I say and see with some satisfaction that whatever he expected of me, it was not this. "I'll buy you dinner," I say as his gaze slides past me and he grabs up his clothes, pulling on his almost dry underwear quickly.

"Up there," he says, nodding. "At the next lock." Then all the boys are gone, the last of the water droplets gleaming on their backs and limbs.

I look behind me to see the policeman almost with me. "Young thugs," he says. "Bothering decent people – women could see them from the bridge." He looks at me quizzically, as if he will say it is odd I should have been speaking with such people.

"Yes," I say. "I told them they should be ashamed of themselves. One boy was impertinent in his reply."

"No point in reasoning with that sort, sir," he says, reassured that I am a gentleman. "A taste of the birch, that's what they need." He touches his hat to me and leaves, his duty done and the towpath secured for the good and boring people of my earlier sketches. I go back to where I was sitting and gather my satchel, making sure the sketchbook's pages are straight, then walk off smartly in the opposite direction. It is only a brief walk to the next lock, and I find the boy waiting for me, abandoned by his companions. He is dressed in unremarkable clothes and his hair, already half-dry in the fierce sunlight, is wild and uncombed.

"Where do you want to go to paint me, then?" he asks, his grin lewd and contagious.

I find myself smiling back as I tell him where my studio is. We walk there through the hot streets in almost perfect silence, broken only by his occasional attempts at whistling. There is at least another hour before people will start to leave their work for their homes, I think, and another hour after that before my landlady will wonder why I am not sitting at her table. I feel a moment's guilt, and think that if I work quickly I can take the boy for an early meal, and be only a little late. I will plead exhaustion to avoid a second dinner. My thoughts are interrupted as we reach the house in which I have my studio.

"Come on," the boy says, when we're in the hall, and he bounds up the stairs to the door I indicate. When we are in the room he turns round and round, his gaze surprised again. The sight of the easels and paints seems to have brought him up sharply. "You really want to fucking paint me?" he says, a small frown creasing his forehead as he walks up to a canvas and inspects it suspiciously.

"Yes," I says. "Very much."

"Two guineas," he says promptly.

I blink. He has a high opinion of his value, it appears. "Come now," I say, "Didn't we agree I would buy you dinner?"

"Did we?" he says. He looks around again. "No one's ever wanted to paint me before. All right, then. Dinner'll do, if it's a good dinner."

"Yes," I say absently, already mentally composing a picture. A faun, I think, remembering my earlier thought. In a classical landscape. "Do you mind being drawn naked?"

"It offends my fucking dignity," he says, peeling his clothes off.

He strikes a pose both ridiculous and heroic and I laugh as he means me to do. Having more opportunity now to study him I think my original idea will do very nicely. The coppery hair on his head shades into light gold on the back of his neck, the same colour that dusts his arms and legs, pooling to a deeper reddish brown at his groin. He is already a half-wild creature, I will but complete the transformation. I take his arm and lead him to a patch of sunlight, letting him stand there, shifting back and forth. The motion does not perturb me, adding rather to the urgent quality of my quick sketches. I capture the sharp line of his jaw as he looks about him, the ease with which he raises a hand to scratch his scalp, the long line of his legs before moving on to my watercolours, roughing out studies of the way he looks sidelong at me, the shifting colours of his hair.

"It's dinnertime," he says at last, the first words he has spoken in hours.

"Good heavens," I say in some alarm, looking at my watch, "it's almost eight o'clock! It's still so light –"

He looks at me in some amusement, and bends to collect his clothes. I can not resist making the swiftest of final sketches as he dresses, catching him tying his bootlaces in a pose that any classical sculptor might have used for a boy doing up his sandals. I tidy away my materials as he paces about. I shall just have to go home very late and face my landlady's wrath, I think and decide that there is no point in changing for dinner. Any restaurant that expects it would be unlikely to allow the boy entrance. Instead I take him to a small restaurant I visited once before that survives on a clientele of artists and musicians. I had felt like a fraud on my previous visit, and find myself nervous now as other diners look our way. What do they think of him? I wonder.

"What's your name?" I ask as he looks at the menu. He can clearly read, something I find an odd relief in.

He gives a short, dry laugh. "Nothing you'd like. What's yours?"

"Crawford," I say. "Bradley Crawford. I'm from America."

His look is deeply amused. "Yeah, I worked that out. You don't have many home comforts in your flat, Bradley Crawford. One ratty old couch? Where's the rest of your furniture?"

"Oh, I don't live there," I say. "My landlady says the smell of paint gives her a headache, she won't have me working in the house. She's one of my mother's friend's relations, I don't want to upset her; I took the studio separately."

"You pay another rent, just for your paintings?" he says, shaking his head in disbelief. "Rich, are you?"

"No," I say cautiously. What do I know of this boy, after all? "I came into a little money from my great-aunt's estate, but it's not much."

"Oh, your great-aunt's estate," he says mockingly. "You can afford to buy me wine."

"Are you old enough to drink it?" I ask, laughing.

He looks at me as if he is sizing up the perfect place for the blow. "How old would you like me to be?" he asks, and laughs as I retreat into silence. "I'm eighteen. They'll fucking serve me." When the wine comes he drinks in a manner that lets me know he's had wine before, and smiles over the glass. "Are you sure you just want to paint, or are you looking for something else, so far away from home?"

"Art is important," I say, cutting into an indifferent steak. "It's what makes us human."

"Ah," he says, "and I was told that was our souls. But what does a fucking priest know, huh?"

"You swear a lot," I say, sounding even to my own ears like my mother.

"I'm toning it down, I know you Americans are genteel," he grins. He doesn't say much more as he eats, and finally we are standing outside in the very last dregs of twilight.

"Thanks for dinner," he says, turning away.

"Thank you for letting me draw you."

He turns back. "Are you going to do a painting?" He looks younger, somehow, a little hopeful. "Can I see it?"

"Come back in a week, around about lunchtime," I say. "I'll have at least a first version done. Maybe you wouldn't mind posing for me again."

"Maybe," he says, and steps back. "Good night, Bradley Crawford."

"Good night – " I say, but he's already walking off, fading into the evening. I still don't know his name.

I work feverishly all week long, glad to be out of my landlady's reach. No apology for being away from her table without due warning seems to suffice, and I am happy to avoid her on-going disapproval and tell her I will not be in for dinner for the next seven days. My studio is swelteringly hot, but I don't care. Finally I bring several days' worth of clothes over and sleep on the uncomfortable sofa, dedicating each hour of daylight to my work. The first study isn't right – his expression seems too coy, too simpering. The next is better, his gaze disconcertingly direct, but the colours are wrong. I will need to do this in oils, I realise, and spend half a happy day buying new supplies. Most of the week goes on a version in oils, a medium I am not as versed in as watercolours. The paint seems to meet the canvas of its own accord, the colours are rich and perfect. I find I am in the end somewhat unsettled by what I have produced, for the being in the painting is disturbingly both the boy who stood in my studio and something utterly otherworldly, the golden hair on his legs thickened into curls of fur that do little to disguise his phallus – I should paint a spray of leaves there, I think – the joints of his legs arching backwards like an animal's. Even though he is not smiling, I feel it is obvious the creature in the painting has sharp teeth, sharper than any human's. It is not that I am disturbed to see my fantasy caught so neatly – rather I feel that this is how the boy truly looks, and somehow I have caught him unawares, when he thought his disguise was perfect.

He comes back to see my work at the time I specified. He does not have a job, I think, glad he is free to see what I have made of him. At first he looks at the watercolours, saying nothing, and laying them aside quickly. He stands before the version in oils for a long time, then leans forward and squints at it from close range.

"Is it dry?" he asks. "Will I smudge it?"

"Be careful," I say, "touch the left edge if you want to feel it."

He puts one careful finger on a painted flower, then straightens up and grins. "Thanks for the compliment," he says, jerking his thumb at the canvas. "I like how you've made me look nice and big."

I flush, unable to help myself, and he laughs. "I assure you, I meant noth-"

"I'm not fucking offended. It's –" he pauses, and seems lost for words. "No one ever wanted to paint me before," he says. "You're an odd sort, Bradley Crawford." He looks at me, askance. "What?"

"Nothing," I say, wondering what it is he sees in my face. "Will you pose for me again? Perhaps in morning light, if you're free then?"

"You should buy me lunch and I'll think about it," he says, and leans in again to admire the work I have lavished on his alter-ego's private parts. "How would you like me?" he says slyly, his gaze sliding to meet mine.

"I'd like to paint you as different mythological creatures," I say. "From Greek myth – have you heard of satyrs and fauns and so on?"

"Yes, I've heard of them," he says, sarcastically. "I've also heard of the Cyclops, the minotaur and all those other fucking things. You could give me wings and call me Icarus. If you've heard of him."

"I'm sorry," I say after a moment. I try again to distinguish the undertone to his accent. Sometimes he sounds almost cultured, but then the strange sound he gives to some vowels and the swearing disabuse me of that notion. "I didn't mean to be rude. Let me wash and we can go out for lunch." He watches me wash my hands and face and change my shirt. While I'm neatening my tie he comes over and lifts my washcloth, lightly running it over my earlobe.

"You missed a bit," he says, showing me. Then he drops it and puts a hand on my chest, leaning up towards my face, his smile slyer than before. I realise he is going to kiss me a split-second before it happens, and move back hurriedly so that he must take an awkward step to keep his balance. "What's wrong?" he asks in annoyance. "I was just being nice."

"We should go or we won't find a table," I say, still feeling the brief pressure of his lips on mine. A – a person like him understands things in only a limited number of ways, I think, and do not look at him until we are safely in the street and I feel the security of public scrutiny.

He condescends to speak to me once more when we are eating sole and drinking a light wine that is delightfully cool in my mouth. He is sitting half in shadow, the light glinting from his silverware and glass as he moves, illuminating his face in a way I hope I can remember once I am back at work. I don't listen much to what he says, merely adding small interjections to keep him speaking animatedly so that I can watch his face move.

"Come back with me now," I say suddenly. I cannot bear the thought that I might lose the vague ideas that have been running through my mind if I must wait until another day. "Come back and pose for me now."

He smiles as if he has won a victory. "Yeah," he says smugly. "I'll come back and pose. You pick the position and I'll see if I like it."

I feel strangely elated on the way back, and laugh a little at myself for my eagerness. I was tired indeed of painting landmarks, it seems. I'm so caught up in telling him how I made mistakes in mixing the pigments at first that I don't immediately notice that he is no longer speaking. Finally I look to the side and catch him looking out of the corner of his eye at a man walking a little ahead of us who looks back at us from time to time. His face is set and pale beneath the tan.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Nothing."

"You want to watch yourself with him, Yank," the man says suddenly. "Don't you know what he is?"

"Thank you for your concern. Excuse us," I say crisply and am rewarded with the boy's quick smile.

The man sniggers. "Like your Yank friend, do you? Why don't you tell him the truth, you bloody Fritz?"

The boy stops dead and lets fly with what is clearly a string of invective, though neither I nor the man understand the language in which it is spoken. The undertone to his accent is suddenly clear to me.

"You're German?" I say.

"Does it matter?" he asks. "What, the last time you saw a German you were waiting to jump out of a trench?" As I stare at him his expression changes, going blank and hard. "Fuck your scribbles," he says.

"Wait," I say as he turns, and I put a hand on his arm. "It's all right, I don't mind."

"You don't mind?" he says, and the look he sends my way is poisonous. Part of my mind files it away to be attempted later on paper. "Fuck you." He pulls his arm free and stalks off, leaving me with the man.

"You're well rid of him, the whole family's trouble," the man says. "I don't know why they can't throw all the Krauts out of England."

"He would have been too young to fight," I say, unsure whom I wish to convince. "And his accent – he must have lived here his whole life."

"Still one of them, isn't he?" the man says. "Ship them all out of the country, that's what I say." He nods politely to me as if we're friends and walks off.

I stand there, watching the only subject I wish to paint walking into the distance, not quite fast enough to be running away. His shoulders are hunched a little, as if he expects a blow and the afternoon sunlight gleams on his hair. I spent a lot of time trying to mix pigments that would capture the colour of that hair. He rounds a corner and is gone.

I still don't know his name.