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1.
They had been lying blissfully tangled in one another on a mattress of boat cushions on the boathouse floor – bare-legged and bare-arsed, kissing and whispering and pressing together as a kettle kept warm on a little stove – when Maurice almost spoiled it.
The morning sun had found its way through the dense window facing the lake, landing on Alec and catching the glow of his skin. He rolled through the shaft of warmth to hug Maurice hard – legs splayed, laughing delightedly – landing curled around his lover, his head coming to rest on Maurice’s shoulder.
My stubborn, ingenious dark angel, Maurice thought, dizzy with happiness and gratitude, still dazed and boneless from yesterday’s events and the myriad, unfolding intimacies and joys of their night. His answering grip held Alec tight; he nuzzled into the headful of lawless dark curls – knowing well, by now, that no number of kisses would ever tame them – and broke into a huge, contented smile which Alec could feel. Alec’s breath brushed the sensitive curve where Maurice’s shoulder met his neck. There followed a bold, brazen flick of Alec’s tongue – then another, deliberate and seductive, swirling, circling, slowing right down, accompanied by other movements which Maurice was powerless to resist and a pleasing swelling rising against his thigh. Joy quivered through him, his body reawakening everywhere at once as it – he, they – recalled everywhere else Alec’s tongue had been that long warm night. For the hundredth time since Alec’s triumphant failure to embark for the Argentine, Maurice was undone, and he couldn’t help himself.
‘Licky,’ he whispered, the hard tip of his own tongue caressing the hollow behind Alec’s ear.
‘Oh, for—’
Alec wrenched away sharply; surprise, annoyance and embarrassment clouded his face.
‘Don’t. And how the fuck—’
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2.
Their first morning truly together was shaping up into a bright late-August Sunday. Even from their temporary safe haven – the sweet isolation of the locked boathouse – a whisper of trees could be heard; and the distant call and response of woodland birds, as if hailing Maurice and Alec to the new life that awaited them – unknown and not yet decided, but somewhere out there in the big spaces beyond Pendersleigh’s derelict façade and broken fences. The louder squeaky-honk of coots on the lake disturbed the idyll a little. But at least the noisy little birds (like a toy car-horn from his childhood, Maurice thought) served to drown out the intrusion of church bells, calling the village – and what remained of Clive’s servants – to morning prayer. Following yesterday’s terrifying encounter with the Reverend Borenius at the docks – he had not yet told Alec – the sound alone was enough to make Maurice’s chest tighten with fury at the cleric’s sickening war on ‘sexual irregularities’ and near-entrapment of them both. At times during the night, his acts of sharing with Alec had taken on a violent intensity in his need to exorcise the memory.
Maurice was snapped back to the here and now by the sight of Alec, raised on one elbow, still glowering down at him, his glorious face thunderous, dark eyes indignant, mouth petulant. Something in his manner reminded Maurice of their bitter confrontation a few days earlier at the museum – but also that Alec’s cussedness and threats there had been a bluff: not so much blackmail as a muddled, perverse courtship to be discharged in bed rather than court. Each time their peril seemed to escalate, Maurice had won his lover – first, won him over; yesterday, protected him from harm; and now won him for good – by facing down fear. The insights gained as the pair of them had conquered true threats and true foes guided Maurice’s response now. He felt contrite – he had had no idea that the pet name caused Alec such offence – but mingled with a glow of affection and amusement that he could not hold down. Alec’s show of temper was too self-dramatising to take quite seriously. It reminded Maurice that his lover could be childish as well as heroic – and how closely all his combustible passions were intertwined.
Alec continued to glare, with a hint of aggression that both the boxer and the lover in Maurice found indecently appealing.
‘Who the hell told you that?’
Maurice propped himself up to face Alec directly in the shaft of sun, his long athletic frame mirroring the pose of his lover, and gazed steadily into Alec’s eyes.
‘Guess. It’s not difficult.’
‘Well, don’t! It’s ’orrible.’
Maurice sat up fully, shuffled closer, and reached out to clasp Alec by his shoulders, maintaining a respectful physical distance but continuing to hold his gaze.
‘Alec. I’m truly sorry if I’ve upset you. I thought it was sweet.’
‘Oh I bet you did. Lucky my people won’t never meet you, eh … or not meet you proper.’
Alec had been too absorbed in his strop to remember, until just now, that Maurice had met his Ma, Pa and Fred, yesterday, at Southampton docks – albeit only sort of, and only briefly.
‘It was your Ma who called you that – Licky.’ Maurice gave Alec’s shoulders a little squeeze.
‘What she’d make of your filthy mind I don’t know.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk about filth. How ever would I have learned such things if not from you?’ Maurice’s voice seemed solemn, but his eyes sparkled with suppressed amusement.
Despite Alec’s mood, Maurice took the plunge and pulled him closer. He really wanted to wrap him tight in his arms and kiss him hard – until Alec stopped whingeing, and pressed back against him as hungrily as they had when they’d finally found each other here last night – but he was prepared to wait for Alec’s show of annoyance to crumble first.
‘Bad enough that you showed up there at all.’
‘If I hadn’t I might never have found you here.’
Even though Alec had sent a wire to his home, Maurice truly feared and believed this. He had been in such agony yesterday morning – sleepless with longing for Alec, consumed by grief that he would never see or feel him again – that when he set off from suburbia he had had no idea where he was heading, nor whether he would ever return. He had not even decided consciously to travel to Southampton to see Alec off – his desperate body and aching heart had taken him there. If Alec had been on the boat and sailed, as he had insisted he would – ‘facts is facts’ – Maurice could not bear to think about what he himself would have done after.
Thinking all this, Maurice could no longer stop himself from pulling Alec as close and tight as he could and simply holding him. Forgetting his strop, Alec embraced Maurice in return and hugged him so hard that their ribs creaked. Breathing gently with relief, Maurice buried his face deep in Alec’s hair again, kissing the tangle of curls, inhaling everything about his lover as they allowed themselves to relax into the happiness they both deserved.
‘You know what your Ma said?’ Maurice murmured, his lips sliding down again behind Alec’s ear and in a stripe down his neck, his flow of speech punctured by wet kisses. ‘“If Licky says a thing, Licky means it”.’ She doesn’t know you very well – does she – my sweet – darling – Alec? And thank goodness she doesn’t. Thank goodness she was wrong about the one thing that matters.’
Alec turned Maurice’s head gently so that they were face to face and directed a serious dark look straight into his eyes.
‘Well that proves I’m not Licky, don’t it. ’Cause every word I said to you last night I meant. With all my heart, Morrie.’
‘Oh god. Don’t call me that. It makes me think of my mother.’
Alec’s expression turned mischievous. The cloud had lifted and the other Alec was back.
‘I’ll have you not thinking on her soon enough.’
‘Likewise,’ Maurice whispered, aroused instantly by the lazy-voiced promise, followed by mutual delighted moans as Alec lunged to pin his wrists and they competed to wrestle each other down onto the long-suffering mattress for another round of thrilling, throbbing Sunday-morning sexual communion.
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3.
‘So, what next for us now, boy? And where?’
Pleasantly warm, entirely naked and not a little sticky, they lounged together against the piled cushions – smoking, each with one arm around the other, exactly as Alec had hoped and ached for on the nights he’d waited here alone.
Maurice slipped one of his cigarettes between Alec’s ready lips. Lighting it carefully for his lover, he was flooded by a great rush of joy at being able to share this simple intimacy – at being together like this as they now were. They had smoked together before, at the shabby hotel in London; but the mood of the moment, like the place, could scarcely have been more different. There, cigarettes had provided a respite, briefly soothing their frayed emotions in the interludes between rough lust, tender passion and misery. Here, they smoked because they were happy.
But this present perfection, too, could only be temporary. I could happily spend the rest of our lives with you, here, exactly like this, Maurice thought. Naked, embracing, talking, sharing; taking a break when whey needed to eat, drink, hunt, fish or forage; their own place in the world; no one to censure, threaten or disturb them. But this wasn’t their own place. It was boathouse, Pendersleigh – Clive’s property – and if Maurice and Alec didn’t agree on a plan fast and get away…
To defer such thoughts, Maurice reclaimed the cigarette from Alec and inhaled and exhaled hard.
Alec tilted his head and gave Maurice the sweetest smile.
‘Well – first up, I reckon both of us needs a proper wash and some fresh air.’
His free hand approvingly explored the perfectly sculpted muscular terrain of Maurice’s chest. Like Alec’s own skin, it was marbled with little rivulets of sweat.
‘Alec. You know that’s not what I meant. This is heaven, being here with you –’ Maurice set down the cigarette, and kissed him – ‘but we can’t stay here, or anywhere near Pendersleigh or your family. If we don’t leave as soon as it’s safe, we’ll be putting ourselves in grave danger.’
‘Ah – true, Maurice.’ Alec sighed.
He was more than keen to put many miles, or counties – only a few days ago, it had been continents – between himself and the Durham family. But, as far as Alec was concerned, the boathouse was his, not theirs – and, now, his and Maurice’s. In the entirety of Alec’s short employment on the estate, the stuffed-shirt squire and his class had almost never been near this wild, wooded, overgrown, place by the sipping water. Almost from the start, Alec had adopted it as his own, retreating here for a smoke and other private pleasures. And, since the strange day Alec had first caught sight of Maurice – that queer stare, reciprocated, from a gentleman of all people; the powerful, puzzling feelings that changed everything – the boathouse had become a larger and larger part of him. It had grown into the place of Alec’s dreams, and his place for his friend.
Leaving it would be a wrench for them both. But, not for the first time, Alec knew something.
‘But, if being here pleases you’ – Alec was certain that it did – ‘I reckon there’s no great rush. From what I hear, we’re safe for a few days yet.’
Maurice felt anxiety rising. Yesterday’s encounters – with Borenius, with the Scudders, with Clive – made him doubt this. Still more unpleasantly, the proposal reminded him of his earlier – class-prejudiced, shameful, but real – doubts about Alec himself.
‘Alec, how can that be so? Clive will never split on us, of that I’m sure – he has too much to lose. But – I didn’t tell you this last night – when I arrived at Southampton yesterday to see you off, Borenius was there. Of course, your family know you didn’t sail. But so does Borenius, and I feel sure he suspects something. Alec, it was horrible. I can’t tell you some of the things he said. I didn’t reply. I just feigned surprise and kept smoking, but inside I was so angry. If you had been there I fear we’d have been sniffed out – and trapped.’
‘Maurice – my poor brave pet.’ Alec hugged him. ‘Bore-Arse is a right meddling hypocrite. Forever sticking his thin white fingers in everyone’s business – and not the only place he’d be fingering given half a chance, I reckon. Only reason he’s so het up about fornication is ’cause he don’t get none. Them sanctimonious types is all the same. A menace to the likes of you and me, but right pathetic if you come to think of it. That whole time after the cricket when you kep’ ignoring my letters he made my life hell! And then to turn up at the Normannia! Cheeky bugger. Another good reason to miss my boat, eh! Bet my people didn’t give him the time of day? Maurice, don’t you fret – you won’t catch me sticking around anywhere we’re at risk from the Reverend B, nor asking you to.’
‘Now that you mention it … your Ma and Pa didn’t seem at all keen on him, no.’ Nor on me, thought Maurice, but his shoulders felt lighter. ‘But Alec, what makes you think…’
‘Well – thanks to Sunday prayers and the Reverend B, I doubt there’s a soul anywhere on the estate right now except us.’ Alec’s face lit into a very naughty smile.
‘Used to be the case that the squire never went – or so I’m told: you’d know – but that’s changed. And used to be that refusers like me had their ways of staying behind without anyone kicking up a fuss. But that’s all changed too since Bore-Arse arrived as rector. He started to pressure the squire and old Mrs D that all us servants must be forcibly confirmed…’
‘The Clive I used to love would have refused any such thing,’ Maurice said.
‘Be that as it may, it got worse and worse here after you’ – Alec reached forward and kissed Maurice sloppily on his nose, then mouth – ‘scarpered off to London. Mostly on account of me, as the Rev B had got a right old bee in his bonnet about me supposedly corrupting the girls – when truth is I was pining and desperate hot for you’ – another, dirtier, kiss. ‘And, any road, Mill, Sal, Fanny and the rest are all grand girls as knows how to get their pleasure with or without Bad Alec leading anyone astray – but can’t tell that to the Rev. Poking his nose into my natural feelings and calling it fornication! He didn’t get much from me – how could he, when you was my secret? – so now he’s been picking on the girls instead. Now I’m gone, it’s compulsory Communion Class for all this Sunday, the chastity sermon, and confessions all round – pretty much all day, say my sources.’
‘So you’re saying we’re safe for most of today – and that we might even have a free run of the estate?’
‘Safest this end: the woods, out Station Road way, and below the tree-line where we are now. Can’t see down here at all from the house and lawns.’
‘I walked to you from the station last night,’ Maurice said. ‘That back end of the estate is a mess: derelict where it’s not overgrown. Fences broken. Then, the other side of the road, a real forest…’
‘Gentry don’t go near there. Ever notice how Durham always brings house guests in round the so-called scenic route – through the village, past the church? Takes ten times as long, even by motor car...’
‘But Alec … You said “a few days”.’
Maurice still mistrusted what he was being told. It was all far too good to be true.
‘The whole of Pendersleigh won’t be at church forever – and then what? What about your replacement as keeper? And keeping ourselves fed? And don’t tell me the boathouse doesn’t have other sets of keys…’
‘Maurice.’
Alec rummaged for his cigarettes, wrapped a warm arm back around his lover’s broad shoulders, and offered him one, first stealing a kiss for good measure.
‘Aren’t yer a worrier? No need for that now, boy – you’re with me, and we’re in this together, for keeps. Once I was certain you was mine and would be joining me here without fail, I wasn’t idle in making the place ready for you – and safe as houses for us both. The new keeper don’t start for another three weeks – staff is terrible hard to come by. Old Ayres never ventures here, nor the indoors servants. Durham is out electioneering again from Monday, and his lady wife with him; Mrs D barely stirs from the drawing room. No house guests due till election-day eve – and that lot won’t swim or fish. And, anyway, the gentlemen never can find their way down here without a keeper to lead them … you included, it would seem.’
Adoring any excuse to tease his lover, Alec resumed his caresses, then stopped to withdraw the cigarette – slowly, sensually – from between Maurice’s lips so that he could kiss him again.
‘I found my own way,’ Maurice protested breathlessly, once their long, deep kiss was broken.
‘As for food and drink – if you fancy poaching from the orchard and pantry – for sport, like – we can. But notice the boathouse has another room, same as this, over the other side? Another boathouse, you might say! I’ve put ample provisions for us in there: apples and apricots, tea, beer, wine, cold cuts, game pie … a flask of whisky for you … nothing but the best, and no cause to go hungry.’
Or to get dressed, Maurice thought, trying not to chuckle aloud at his lover’s schemes.
‘As for the keys…’
Alec rolled away and stood up – slowly, luxuriantly, his arms raised in an athletic stretch above his head, pulling the rest of his physique into a pose that displayed every lean muscle, every line of him, to best advantage – then walked tantalisingly, almost languid, towards a hook by the door, and turned, holding something at hip level. Maurice could do nothing but stare, lips parted, caught between breathlessness and breathing too hard: hypnotised and enthralled by his lover’s naked grace; by so much living, breathing perfection, flesh and blood and heart and soul; his own heart and blood and flesh all pumping wildly.
With a cheeky, provocative smile and love blazing in his eyes, Alec returned to Maurice, stood over him and straddled him, dangling and swaying a bunch of keys – including two little sets each bound carefully together with threads of red twine.
On this strange, triumphant Sunday, in one small corner of Clive Durham’s estate, love was the only law – and Maurice and Alec did as they willed.