On Loving Josiah

by Olivia Fane

  ‘These aren’t Latin names,’ observed the clever Josiah.

  ‘You’re right, they’re Greek. These pastoral idylls are directly modelled on Greek lyric poetry. There’s the shepherd Corydon and Alexis.’

  Josiah considered the first line. ‘Are they both male?’ he asked.

  ‘They are,’ said Thomas, who didn’t even dare look up.

  ‘“The shepherd Corydon burned for the beautiful Alexis.”’ Josiah translated with equanimity. ‘Why “burning”?’

  ‘That’s was good, Josiah, well done. “Burning” means “in love with” – aren’t there pop songs about “feeling the heat”? The next line’s more difficult, but we’ve just done the subjunctive – which verb is in the subjunctive?’

  ‘Was homosexuality quite mainstream, then?’ asked Josiah.

  ‘Corydon would not have called himself homosexual. He would have thought of himself as a man in love. Alexis is formosus, he is beautiful. The Greeks and Romans loved beauty wherever they found it. See what you make of the second line, Jo.’

  ‘I can’t do it,’ said Jo. ‘“Domini” means “of the master”.

  ‘Alexis was the “delicias” of his master, his master’s darling.’

  ‘So his master was in love with him too?’ asked Josiah, incredulous.

  ‘This is a story of unrequited love,’ said Thomas, using his sensible voice. ‘Now, which is the verb in the subjunctive?’

  ‘“Speraret”,’ said the good pupil.

  ‘And “spero” means?’

  ‘“Hope”,’ said Josiah. ‘He did not have a why he might hope, a reason to hope.’

  ‘That’s right, Corydon hasn’t a hope in hell, because Alexis’ employer is also in love with him.’

  Josiah paused and said, ‘This is really strange, Tom. Is this normal life in Roman times?’

  ‘Among the upper classes it probably was.’

  ‘What, you mean they were all gay?’

  ‘They weren’t gay. But the culture was freer than ours, looser. The Romans didn’t categorize people like we do. As I said, they delighted in beauty, wherever they found it. See here in line fifty-two, he’s in full pastoral flow, picking downy apples and chestnuts, “mea quas Amaryllis amabat”, which my Amaryllis used to love, because once he might have been picking apples and chestnuts with her and the mood, Josiah, just carries over: boys, girls, narcissus, fragrant dill and marjoram – it’s all in the one poem. And here, right at the end: “me tamen urit amor: quis enim modus adsit amori?” “Love is consuming me, for can one set bounds to love?” For that is what sets love apart from everything else in this life, don’t you think, Jo? For love is limitless, timeless, eternal. Because it’s not an act of will, it’s a surrendering, it’s an act of faith. Love is in the realm of the divine. Can you understand that yet, Jo?’

  ‘I’ve known that forever,’ said Josiah.

  That afternoon Thomas had a surprise for Josiah, for the theme of the day was smell, soft bilberries and yellow marigold, laurels and myrtle. And when Thomas said, rather seriously, ‘Sometimes man forgets he has a nose’, and Josiah laughed at him, Thomas announced with some passion, ‘Today, young Jo, I’m taking you to the Botanical Gardens. And then you won’t be quite so sniffy about noses.’

  The day was the 21st March, when even officialdom recognizes a change in the seasons. And this first day of spring obliged them, the air was warm and sweet, it was a true gate between the seasons, and while they walked together to the gate on Hills Road, Thomas suddenly broke into Latin: “iam ver egelidos refert tepores” – there, you wanted Catullus – “Spring brings back warm days from cold” – do you notice the seasons changing, Jo?’

  ‘There’s a large beech tree in our garden. It’s a great, solid beautiful thing, beautiful in every season, naked and clothed, with or without its leaves.’

  ‘But you drew it naked, as far as I remember.’

  ‘That was the winter version. There’s a Summer one too, and an Autumn. Next week I’ll bring you the Spring.’

  ‘Do you write as well as draw? Have you ever tried your hand at poetry?’

  Josiah shook his head.

  ‘Then I shall introduce you to John Clare,’ announced Thomas, and then he began to recite poetry right there on the pavement:

  ‘Come luscious spring come with thy mossy roots

  Thy weed strewn banks – young grass – and tender shoots

  Of woods new plashed sweet smells of opening blooms

  Sweet sunny mornings and right glorious dooms

  Of happiness…’

  Then Thomas stopped in his tracks and said quite suddenly, ‘That is the point, dear boy, I’m happy. I know the quality of it. Catullus was happy too when he wrote that poem. He says he wants to go abroad to distant Asiatic lands. But perhaps we should go to Italy, what do you think? Would your Dad let you?’

  ‘I should think so,’ said Josiah.

  ‘I don’t see why we can’t bring him along with us.’

  Josiah paused and said, ‘He doesn’t like the heat.’

  ‘Well, I shall ask him along anyway. I would want him to know this is all above board and with a view to your education, Jo. I think we should go to Italy, don’t you? To the gentle hills of Tuscany, and its rows of cypresses? Have you ever thought what a wonderful thing a future is? To have a future, and not to know the contents of it, but occasionally to glimpse and hope?’

  ‘I would like to go to Italy with you very much,’ said Josiah.

  ‘Well, I shall knock out some dates with your Dad,’ said Thomas. ‘I should very much like to meet him, you know, and tell him what a gifted son he has.’

  ‘He would like to meet you too,’ said Josiah, because it seemed like the right thing to say. ‘But he’s quite ill at the moment.’

  ‘The warmer weather will soon sort him out. Perhaps in a couple of weeks, what do you think? Invite me to tea. I should like to see that beech tree of yours in the flesh, as it were, on the cusp of getting dressed.’

  ‘I’ll fix something,’ said Josiah, distractedly. As they crossed the threshold between pavement and grass, Josiah said, ‘I never knew this place even existed.’

  ‘But your father was a gardener. Did he never try and inspire you?’

  ‘Of course he inspired me,’ said Josiah defensively. ‘When I was a boy…when I was younger, he would always consult me.’

  ‘He would consult you?’

  ‘Oh yes. He would say, “So shall we plant geraniums next year?” And he would blindfold me and teach me the different scents, even of leaves. I remember, he would tear them in two and make me smell them very hard.’

  ‘So do you think you could recognize the smell of a beech?’

  ‘We didn’t have a beech tree.’

  ‘But…’ began Thomas.

  ‘We moved house when I was about seven.’

  ‘But didn’t you smell things any more in your new garden?’

  Josiah shrugged. ‘You know how it is, I felt too old to smell things.’

  ‘What a sophisticated seven-year-old you must have been. Well, I shall unsophisticate you. Here you are, Jo. A beech tree to dwarf even yours, I imagine, and one which existed well before any botanical garden was even conceived of.’

  Josiah spontaneously thrust his hand into Thomas’ and was as much in awe of its hugeness and majesty as if he’d been a child of three.

  ‘As fine a tree as there is in the whole of Cambridge,’ agreed Thomas. ‘It’s a good metaphor, a tree, I’ve always thought. It is both moved by wind and storm, but nonetheless holds steadfast. The perfect stoic philosophy. Buddhists would have us stay out of the wind altogether, but how can you know anything of life if you simply hide yourself away? Or at least, hide your mind away, which is almost as cowardly. Some knowledge you can only experience.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Josiah. ‘Excuse me while I experience it.’

  And immediately Josiah took his hand away and lay down amongst the daffodils and bluebells beneat
h it. ‘Lie down with me,’ said Josiah.

  And he said it in such a way that Thomas almost did, but he pretended not to have heard him.

  ‘The Romans, of course, loved beech trees. Beech trees featured in both the eclogues we read, of course. “Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi,” Tityrus, lying under the spreading beech…’

  ‘Was Tityrus gay, too?’

  ‘No, Tityrus wasn’t gay.’

  ‘Does our word “fag” come from “fagus”?’

  Thomas laughed anxiously. ‘No, it doesn’t,’ he said.

  ‘Please come and lie next to me,’ Josiah pursued.

  ‘This is a fagus sylvatica, a woodland beech. Have you noticed how all the names of the plants are in Latin? That some are fruticans, others fragrans or even fragrantissima? Those Victorian botanists must have had a field day.’

  ‘Can’t you come here,’ yawned Josiah. ‘What is grass made for but to lie in? Herba est iniacenda. Grass ought to be lain on. Isn’t that right?’

  So Thomas looked around him nervously and obeyed his pupil. ‘You’ve persuaded me,’ he said, sitting down stiffly on the grass about three feet away from Josiah.

  But Josiah immediately rolled over the grass towards him and took hold of his hand. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Now, lie down and look up through the branches.’

  Thomas did as he was told; after all, any passers-by would assume they were father and son.

  ‘Do you know,’ said Josiah, ‘I used to think I could talk to heaven lying under a tree. I would watch the movements of every branch, and imagined it was some kind of sign language. I just had to crack the code. But then I wondered if it wasn’t a language like ours at all, but a language which contained all languages, and was over and above them.’

  ‘I think you might be right,’ said Thomas. ‘Do you know about Plato?’

  ‘I don’t want to know about Plato. Not today,’ said the boy. Then he lay, if it was possible, even closer to his magister. ‘I’ve often wondered whether buds are even more beautiful than the leaves which they promise. Look how sharp they are! They’re as sharp as needles, Tom, and bound so tightly. Then one day they’ll just burst and give birth, with leaves so fresh and green you could eat them.’

  Thomas, aware that his body felt quite as tight as any bud, moved away, and said, ‘There’s a herb walk here, you know. I think I’m going to give you a test.’

  ‘A test?’ sighed Josiah.

  ‘Yes, I’m going to blindfold you with my scarf, and see whether your olfactory cells are as good as they once were.’ Thomas stood up, and part of him wished he hadn’t contrived his escape so soon.

  ‘Have you ever been completely in someone else’s power?’ asked Josiah, while he followed his master obediently whither he led him. Josiah was walking with eyes half closed, the sun warming his cheeks and eyelids. ‘I feel so loose today, like I’m all flesh and no bone. Have you ever felt like that?’ Thomas was dutifully pointing out the trees and shrubs as they passed them, and Josiah said, ‘It’s no good, I have no eyes today.’

  ‘Well, you don’t need eyes for the scent garden,’ said Thomas. ‘Now, I want to see how well you can smell – how old were you when your father used to blindfold you?’

  ‘He never did. He just told me to shut my eyes.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can trust you. I want to make absolutely sure you’re not sneaking a look at the labels. Here, stand still while I wind my scarf round your head.’

  Now there really were onlookers: a mother with three young boys and two old ladies. But Josiah and Thomas were oblivious to them.

  ‘I’m going to steer you into the path. Are you ready, Josiah?’

  ‘I’m ready,’ said Josiah, passively.

  But Thomas in his eagerness to begin let him trip on a large stone; Josiah fell but, happily, was caught. ‘I was right to trust you,’ said Josiah quietly.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Thomas brightly. ‘Now, we’re coming up to the first scent, are you ready?’

  ‘Jasmine,’ said Josiah.

  ‘That’s very good, very impressive. And now for some herbs.’

  ‘Rosemary.’

  ‘Well done!’

  ‘Mint.’

  ‘That was an easy one!’

  ‘Thyme.’

  ‘You’re very good at this, you know. You really are a gardener’s son. Now, thrust your nose into this.’ And Thomas took hold of his hand and took him to a tarragon bush. But when he looked round he saw that the boy had shrunk into himself, and his pretty face was all scrunched up; and when Thomas removed the scarf with a sense of urgency, as though it were suffocating him, he saw it was wet with tears.

  ‘Josiah,’ he said, gently, ‘tell me about your father.’

  Josiah wiped his eyes roughly and stood up tall. ‘He wanted to come today,’ he said.

  Thomas considered this, or tried to. But his overwhelming sense was of a man deceived, and he said, coldly, ‘No, Josiah, he didn’t want to come. He didn’t even know we were coming here. You didn’t know. I didn’t even know.’

  Josiah was quiet. Thomas had an expression he hadn’t seen before, angry, unforgiving. Finally he said, with a trace of defiance, ‘It’s time I went home.’

  ‘You know what? I don’t even know where your home is. In fact, I don’t even know the first thing about you. For all I know, your name’s John and you fancied calling yourself after a Jewish King.’

  ‘You do know about me,’ said Josiah, the struggle between tears and no tears playing itself out over his face.

  ‘So why don’t you take me home with you?’

  The boy stood there, sobbing, too vertical, his body begging to be taken hold of. Still, Thomas didn’t touch him.

  ‘Follow me, then,’ he said, suddenly turning away and running as fast as he could.

  But Thomas stayed where he was.

  Full term ended for Thomas, but Josiah’s was to continue for a further fortnight. Thomas was quite brazen now; every morning and afternoon he waited at his study window, and often didn’t get so much as a glimpse of the boy. And when he did, he neither smiled nor waved at him, as he used to do, but looked stern, like a captain on his ship. And when Josiah saw him standing there, he looked away and hid himself amongst throngs of schoolchildren.

  But on the Saturday morning, when Josiah didn’t turn up for his Latin lesson, Thomas’ mood softened. He waited the whole weekend for a knock at the door, and quite often he would randomly walk out onto the street to see if he could see him coming. And by the Monday afternoon, nine days after their confrontation in the Botanical Gardens, Thomas was quite determined to follow him home.

  It was a game they were both happy to play, but it was a sad one. Josiah knew that Thomas was following him and let him: he was too listless to resist. Though occasionally, just to add interest, Josiah would pause on his journey to rip leaves from bushes, which he would tear in half and smell; but then, just as Thomas caught up with him and their eyes met, Josiah would accelerate away. When they eventually reached The Hollies Josiah neither talked to Thomas nor invited him in, but stood momentarily and tantalizingly in the doorway and shot Thomas a look which said now you know and are you satisfied? before turning away.

  Thomas was not satisfied. For ten minutes or so he stood staring at the austere Victorian building and at all those who entered and left it. He watched while two thuggish older boys had their hands on the collar of a child about ten years old, pushing him along as though he were a shopping trolley; the child was giggling nervously. He watched as a young girl, plump, ugly and caked in make-up, left the house in a mini-skirt and see-through blouse and made her way to the bus stop. Three boys, all about twelve, left the house with handfuls of jam sandwiches and even seemed happy. He looked up at the large first floor windows, and the smaller windows under the roof, waiting even now for a wave or at least a glimpse of him. Wasn’t Josiah even curious to know if he was still waiting there? It seemed that he wasn’t.

  By the t
ime Thomas was in bed that night, a self-loathing had possessed him such as he had never known. His ignorance, his brutality, his lack of generosity; his lack of faith in a boy who was so good, so sensitive, so unutterably beautiful. He could not imagine how he might begin to make amends. So where were his parents? Were they alive or dead? Was the boy an orphan? If so, since when?

  ‘I am a clambering idiot,’ said Thomas, out loud. ‘No punishment is bad enough for me.’

  There were a hundred scenarios Thomas tried out that night. He decided that Josiah’s mother was probably dead, and his father was probably alive. But whether he was mad, bad or simply incapable of looking after the boy, he hadn’t a clue. His mother was a classicist, his father, a gardener: he saw no reason why Josiah should lie about that. But then, how strange that they should ever have married! And wasn’t there a clue in that? And for a while it seemed perfectly clear to Thomas that Josiah’s father was serving life for the murder of his mother.

  In the cold light of day Thomas decided to find out. His first instinct was to phone the Cambridge Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths, but the question he might have put to them, namely, ‘Has a man called Nelson, a gardener in a Cambridge college, died in the last fifteen years?’, seemed risible. So his next project was to ring up the Social Services Department in Burleigh Street, and the receptionist asked him whom he wished to speak to.

  ‘I have an inquiry,’ he began.

  ‘Which area would this be?’ asked the receptionist.

  ‘It’s about a boy, Josiah Nelson.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘Cherry Hinton. In a Children’s Home, The Hollies.’

  ‘One moment. I’ll put you through.’

  A moment was a minute. Thomas thought he’d been cut off and was about to try again, when a flat voice said:

  ‘June Briggs.’

  ‘Ah, hello,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘I want to make an inquiry concerning Josiah Nelson.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What’s your name?’