Alec

by William di Canzio

  “Yeah, sorry, stupid of me—never thought. That night—I only wanted to be with you, like we are now.”

  “Can’t blame you. Me too. No matter, we’ll go someplace else tomorrow. But you didn’t mention my name to Simcox, did you?”

  “Think I’m daft? Not a word more than needed to Nell Nosy. Blatherin’ on about the vicar—he knew it would piss me off. Borenius, skulkin’ after me, even down at the ship. Did you see him there yesterday?”

  “Oh—didn’t I say?”

  “Would I be askin’ now, bucko?”

  “Well, yes, I saw him, even talked to him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t know—with your family there, and my own insanity, I guess I didn’t think him important at all, not to us, just more of a nuisance.”

  “Nuisance for certain.”

  “Oh, he’s beyond the Dark Ages, you don’t know, going on about how sex ought to be illegal—of course he didn’t say sex, he said ‘fornication.’ Does anybody use that word anymore? Illegal! Is that the limit? Like the Inquisition! So the Church can reconquer England. He actually said that.”

  By now their limbs were entwined in that perfect way of theirs, hearts beating against each other. “Illegal, huh?” Alec murmured against his lover’s moist neck; Maurice moaned with pleasure.

  “For half a second I thought he was on to us.”

  “Borenius?” Alec pulled away a bit. “No.”

  “They’re weird, those priests, I swear, like witches. But then”—Maurice drew Alec back closer—“then he confided in me he believes you ‘Guilty of Sensuality—with Women.’”

  “Remind me to thank him.” Now serious kissing commenced. “Wait—Maurice?”

  “Mmm?”

  Alec pulled away again. “Why would he say that to you? About me? Don’t they take an oath never to talk? Parsons? About the sins of their flock and such?”

  “You mean the seal of confession?”

  “That’s it.” Alec was peeved.

  Maurice tried conciliation: “He said he was telling me because of my ‘charitable interest’ in you—since I’d come to see you off.”

  “Charity, indeed.” Alec disentwined his arms. “Conspiracy of the rulin’ classes against the workingman. That was wrong of him, sayin’ such things about me to anybody.”

  “He seemed sincerely concerned.”

  “You sayin’ he was right?”

  “No; and I’m not saying I like him. I only believe he meant no harm.” Considering the matter now settled, Maurice nosedived for his lover’s smooth navel. Alec fished him back up.

  “Wha—?” Maurice said.

  “…”

  “Oh all right. Reverend Sherlock somehow put it together that you’d spent last Tuesday night neither at Penge nor with your parents and deduced, God knows how, that you were in London, with A Woman…”

  “He said that?” Alec was now in a full-blown snit. “And how did he suppose that might be any business of yours?”

  “What’s the harm? He already knew about you and those girls—you told me as much in your letter.”

  “That was betwixt him and me, not him and you.”

  “Well…”

  “Well?”

  “Well…,” Maurice said. “Maybe I’d nudged him in that direction a bit—without meaning to, of course—before, at Penge, when I mentioned I’d seen you with the Mildreds…”

  Alec sat up abruptly. “That was you? That tattled on us to the vicar?”

  “Alec—”

  “You? My own True Love that I stood hours watchin’ for, in the rain, like a lonesome puppy? Slanderin’ me behind my back?”

  “It wasn’t slander, it was fact—”

  In reply, Alec kicked him.

  “Ouch!” They tussled. Maurice prevailed; he mounted Alec and pinned his arms to the bed: “That was before! I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t even know I was jealous. You’d made me so crazy in love with you, like a madman, really—”

  Delighted by these protestations, Alec nonetheless made a show of meaning to get out of bed; Maurice, sensing his lover’s delight, held him fast and continued whispering urgent promises never to offend again, all the while pressing his lips to that spot near Alec’s ear that made him writhe. “When you followed the car that morning at Penge and I saw you there in the rain, I could have knelt in the mud at your feet, I could have cut out my heart and begged you, Here, take it. It’s already yours, it’s no good to me without you—”

  With this speech (whose gallantry astounded the speaker no less than the hearer), Eros triumphed. Overwhelmed by the twin riptides of youth and ardor, the lovers ravished each other, panting and gasping like drowning men who would drag their rescuer with them under the waves. Thus the outlaws abandoned themselves yet again to their unspeakable crimes. And night smiled at the end of the first day of their new life together.

  * * *

  Next morning, on their way to find breakfast, they passed Simcox and friend, who’d also spent the night in the hotel, at the front desk, checking out. “Morning, Simcox,” Maurice said, without breaking his stride toward the revolving door.

  “Good morning, Mr. Hall,” the astonished valet called after him.

  Alec halted. “Mornin’, Simcox.”

  “Morning, Scudder…”

  “Good mornin’,” said Alec to Sportive, then hustled off after Maurice.

  13

  In their hearts, Alec and Maurice had braced themselves to battle the world for the sake of their love. For the time being, however, they were busy enough with smaller skirmishes.

  They needed a place to live. Maurice found furnished rooms in an ugly building with new plumbing on Bernard Street, not far from the British Museum. (They’d grown sentimentally attached to the neighborhood, which had the added advantage of being remote from the offices of Hill & Hall.) He told the landlord that Alec, a relation from the country, would be staying with him until they could make other arrangements.

  And except for what Alec was wearing (plus a spare shirt and drawers), he had no clothes. Maurice addressed that problem by returning from his family’s house with two suitcases and more on the way. The young men were about the same height; although Alec’s frame was a bit smaller, the trousers and coats fit him passably. They made a game out of his trying things on, with Maurice as tailor standing close behind, calling him sir, reaching around to button the coat or adjust the trousers. (This skit always ended in sex.) They would share Maurice’s clothes till Alec got more of his own. This made them feel even closer, as if they were daring the world to discover the clue to their crime in plain sight.

  Alec needed work. His village upbringing condemned idleness; besides, he disliked accepting spending money from Maurice. Their big plan—i.e., to buy forestland and go off and be woodsmen together—was proving as elusive as any Happily Ever After. Nottingham? Sherwood Forest, they learned, was maintained nowadays mostly for tourists. It would take time to find any woods for sale in modern England, as it would take time for Maurice to extricate himself from the investment business his father had built. So on weekdays when Maurice was at the office, Alec hiked the city streets, always with an eye to help-wanted notices. One day on turning a corner in Knightsbridge, he caught sight of a domed building so grand he took it for a cathedral. It was Harrods. He gawked at the window displays, also the well-off clientele, plumed matrons with their tunic-frocked daughters, hardly a man in sight. Around in back, he found the delivery bays and a poster advertising for stock boys.

  The supervisor did not know quite what to make of the applicant. Alec had been to a barber at last, Maurice’s, a Milanese who rarely saw such a superb mane north of Lombardy and treated it as a work of art. The cut was perfect; it looked expensive (it wasn’t), as did the clothes (they were). On the other hand, since his bowler had sailed to South America and Maurice’s hats were too big, Alec was holding in hand an old tweed cap that had suffered not only the rains of Wiltshire but mor
e than one tug-of-war with the dachshund. His workman’s shoes were likewise at odds with the refined trousers, and the beautiful shirt was surely made-to-measure, but not for the fellow now wearing it. Nonetheless, the supervisor liked Alec’s country manners and healthy kind-looking face. The lad appeared easily strong enough to do the lifting. He offered to try him out.

  And there was that most basic matter of food. Since Alec would not have been welcome at Maurice’s club, Maurice stopped eating there, and they both went equally hungry. Their rented rooms had neither place nor means to prepare meals. Not that a kitchen would have done them any good: both Mrs. Scudder and Mrs. Hall had raised their sons willfully, even proudly, ignorant of the mysteries of cooking. Still, the lovers did survive—with takeaway, pubs, cafés, and now and then a restaurant. They were both too robust to last on a diet of Bohemian scrounging, so they ate heartily whenever they could, particularly, to their mothers’ satisfaction, at Sunday dinners with their respective families. And Aderyn always sent Alec back to “that unholy city” with a sackful of homemade provisions from her pantry. Eventually, they bought a hot plate and taught themselves to make omelets.

  But unlike Maurice’s club, the settlement house where he volunteered as a football coach welcomed Alec with open arms. When they showed up together one Saturday afternoon, the youngsters jeered at Alec’s accent, called him a bumpkin, a hayseed, a lout; said ’e was no gent like their fine Mr. ’All. Meanwhile, they clung to him like caterpillars. Two small ones each hugged a leg. Others jumped on his back or butted their heads into his gut, knocked him over, and threw themselves on him, pummeling him till Maurice blew his whistle. Alec absorbed their attack with laughter. (He knew what they really wanted, like all little kids, was to be lifted and tossed and caught in his arms, so he obliged.) He also out-mocked their mockery of his Dorset speech and was therefore a great success.

  Saturday became the lovers’ favorite day of the week. They both finished work at noon; then football with the kids at the mission (at which, unlike cricket, Maurice excelled and Alec did not). They’d come home and climb into the deep bathtub (their rooms’ best feature), sometimes together, for a long soak. Afterward they’d dress in warm socks and Alec’s big old homespun shirts—nothing else—and lie about spooning and playing or reading and dozing side by side for hours. It was their very highest happiness.

  This was the young life they were building together. A chance in a thousand we’ve met, Maurice had said—generous odds, at that. Even less likely than meeting was overcoming their prejudices about each other’s social class. But they did, thanks to the strength of their love. At twenty and twenty-four, they had achieved what nature demands at that age, but what Church, state, and family had forbidden them: union with another. When they gazed at each other, each disbelieved his good luck: to be loved by such a fellow! They wanted no more than they had. Their life was simple, but because it was theirs, it was always at risk of exposure, attack, destruction.

  Meantime, they did find an ally. As soon as they were settled, Alec wrote to Morgan about his last-minute reversal of plans. When they met for a pint, Alec told the story about being offered a job. Morgan listened, less attending to the words (which sounded practiced) than observing the speaker. He discerned a change in Alec. It wasn’t the smart haircut, borrowed clothes, and trendy address—in themselves they might have suggested a condition as crude and (given Alec’s temperament) improbable as his being “kept.” No. The change was deeper than appearance. Alec still spoke with his typical nervous vigor, but another characteristic, less attractive, was conspicuous by its absence. Last spring, when Morgan knew him as a student, an uncertainty seemed to hound him, about who he was or how he ought to be in the world. Morgan had interpreted this anxiety as having as much to do with Alec’s character as with his sexual nature. He was too honest for the life of lying that England required of men of their kind. His self-respect, Morgan believed, had underlain the plan to emigrate: Alec imagined that somehow he might live not only more freely, but also with more integrity on the other side of the world. But now that former worry was gone. In its place, what? Confidence? Manhood? Morgan soon learned the answer.

  “… he’s lookin’ to buy forestland,” Alec said, “for timber and game, which he wants me to manage…”

  “Ah, I see, and when he finds this woodland, you’ll work it together, you and he?”

  “Yeah, that’s the idea.”

  “And the two of you will leave London behind and live in the forest together?”

  Alec lowered his eyes and blushed to the roots of his hair. Morgan reached across the tavern table; he covered Alec’s hand with his own. “I’m so very happy for you.”

  “Thanks,” Alec said quietly.

  “He’d better be worthy of my student.”

  “Oh, Morgan, he’s a champ,” Alec said, getting teary. “Such a fine, fine man as I’ve no words to say…”

  “Do you think he might care to meet me?”

  So Morgan became their first visitor to Bernard Street, where they discovered that the Cambridge men had met five years before, when Maurice was an undergraduate and Morgan a visiting alumnus. Though they’d only shaken hands then, they remembered each other: Maurice because the older man was celebrated (therefore intimidating) as a writer and scholar; Morgan because the younger man looked, improbably, so like the model in the advertisements for Arrow shirts. They also discovered many mutual acquaintances. When they got to reminiscing about their teacher Harrison Grant, Alec jumped into their insiders’ chitchat: “Haw, haw, mah good chappies. You know that gamekeeper fellow, what’s-his-name—Stutter!—he too also studied poetry with old Granite-chin Grant, don’t you know. The Working Men’s College, haw, haw! It’s the limit!” And then, with fey and dead-on varsity diction, he recited:

  and the mountain shepherds came,

  Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;

  The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame

  Over his living head like Heaven is bent,

  An early but enduring monument,

  Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song

  In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent

  The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,

  And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue.

  Maurice and Morgan set down their whiskeys and applauded. Alec bowed, hand upon bosom.

  “Name the poet,” Alec charged, donnishly.

  Morgan raised his hand. “Isn’t it Shelley, sir?”

  “I’ll ask the questions. You name the poet.”

  “Shelley, sir.”

  “Good. Form of the stanza?”

  “Spenserian.”

  “Good. Modeled on?”

  “The Faerie Queene.”

  “Of course. And you there,” he said to Maurice, “you, trying to hide, what’s your name?”

  “Duncible, sir.”

  “Hmmph. Apt, no doubt. Tell us, whoo is the Pilgrim of Eternity?”

  “Um … it must be Bunyan.”

  “Wrong pilgrim. Here’s a hint: Childe Harold.”

  “Huh? Oh, I know, it’s Chaucer—he wrote about pilgrims.”

  “Wrong again. Whatever shall we do with you?”

  Maurice yanked Alec onto his lap and growled lustfully: “Sir, if you please, I’m sure I’d show great improvement if you’d detain me for a private lesson in your rooms.”

  Morgan laughed with them; he also understood how very rare was their happiness. He determined to be their friend and, much as he could, protector.

  “I’d like you two to get to know a couple of old pals of mine,” Morgan said, as he was getting ready to leave, “who manage to share a house, quite openly, in the country. They might help you find woodland for sale. Meantime, can you come to a concert with me next Friday?”

  The concert with Morgan was the first public event the lovers attended together. Alec reveled in being out and about with his two favorite people on earth. He wedged himself between them and took
each one’s arm. He led them in a game of sidling along the streets to keep their link unbroken. The autumn dusk redeemed the city’s ugliness, spangling the air with uncountable points of light: gaslight and incandescence, streetlamps, signs, windows, headlamps of cabs and trolleys. And the people! Here were thousands of young folks, away from their deadening jobs, as eager for fun as Alec, on their way to a meal or a dance or a show.

  As for Maurice, nothing made him happier than seeing Alec happy. That was his nature as lover. He had been to this concert hall before, on a date with one of his sister’s schoolmates, fairly recently (though before he knew Alec, so it seemed long in the past). He remembered he’d heard Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony. The music was special to him because of Clive. The night they’d first met at Cambridge, Clive was looking for a piano version of the symphony in another student’s rooms. When he found it, they went back to Clive’s to listen to the second movement together. That marked the beginning of their friendship. The student who owned the music would also become important to Maurice’s education: endlessly talkative, brashly queer Octavian Risley took delight in provoking those he believed had something to hide. Maurice, who at that time had lots to hide, found him both menacing and fascinating. He’d encountered Risley by chance when he was leaving the Tchaikovsky concert. Risley mentioned the name of a hypnotist. Maurice then sought the fellow out to “cure” his unspeakable condition.

  But now there was Alec.

  Tonight’s program: Debussy and Beethoven. “Wise of them to offer the French delicacy first,” Morgan said. “They hope the harrumphers will stay for the schnitzel.”

  Such highbrow music was new to Alec, whose experience was limited mostly to church and popular songs. Singing anthems and hymns (learned by ear) in the St. Osmund’s choir had moved him as a child, especially when the boy-choristers would soar into descants above the adult voices. He’d try to separate the threads of the vocal parts, amazed how they merged into one, amazed also by the seraphic sound that came out of his own mouth, he knew not whence. But then his voice changed, and he was banished to the congregation, where in his boredom he’d study the notes in the hymnal and try to match them to the pitch of the choir. As for popular tunes, he liked them well enough for dancing, but they failed to intrigue him the way that church music had.