Archive of Our Own

Ralph took another drink. "Well, Spuddy, it's your life. Will he mind you going away?"
"Yes, he will."
"As much as you?"
"Oh, well ... He will mind, though."
"If he's honest with himself, when it comes to the point he'll know. Why do you want to help him tell himself lies?"
"I don't. It means something different to him, that's all."
"Different my foot. Don't fool yourself, Spud. He'll come back in a year or two and tell you all about his boy friend. That one's a classic, didn't you know?"
Laurie hadn't believed he could ever have felt so lonely with Ralph in the same room. He said, "Once you wouldn't have talked like that."
Ralph looked at him across the table. For one extraordinary second he seemed about to throw back his head and laugh.
"Wouldn't I? Well, in the meantime I've been around."

God, who wants to be right about a thing like that? It was a damned awkward conversation. I didn't want to know that Laurie resented me for revealing his sexuality to him in the way that I did at school. Certainly his comments about this conchie orderly were pointed at me, at what I'd done to him. Done to him--what a joke, I hadn't done anything, and even then, even in school, I wanted him desperately.

Awkward to hear him talk about how he was in love with someone else.

It did happen, though not precisely as I'd joked it would. It wasn't a year, exactly, until Andrew Raynes came back into our lives--it was nearly fifteen years.

Alec invited me to a meeting in London to hear a speaker from the American Mattachine Society. Spuddy wouldn't come, of course; he was working on a book, and in any case, could ill afford to be caught if there were a raid on the pub where we'd rented the room. Not that any of us could afford to be arrested in a raid on a queer pub.

We were cautious men, after the war, all of us--all the former officers whose courage had won Britain and human decency their twin victories. We were circumspect, fearful--it was a damned shame. I should have been able to stand up and tell anyone I met, "I love this man, Laurence Odell," and I couldn't do that, not even having loved him over half my life.

It was Raynes who said this aloud and it shocked me. As much as anything else, I was taken aback at how much Raynes was like a younger version of me. I had thought he would be more like Laurie. I looked through a telescope the wrong way, and there I was, speaking of love in a loud voice.

"They act as though it was love between men that caused treason, when it was their own bias that created the fear of blackmail."

His spine was straight as a man at parade rest. No one would have known that he was a pacifist who had never served. His eyes were blue, like mine, and his hair was fair. It wasn't only his complexion but his expression that reminded me of myself, though of course I only see my expressions in the mirror when I shave. Perhaps it was a certain self-control that I see in myself in the morning, when the routines of Navy life have their strongest hold on me.

He held forth for twenty minutes before I recognized that he was the speaker; I had been waiting for an American. Apparently he had been living in America.

"On what basis do we argue for these rights," Alec asked, "when we cannot participate in the mainstream of society? Isn't homosexuality an illness that we cannot cure?"

"Human rights are not something people earn," Raynes answered. "We can't accept the idea that human beings are inferior because of whom they love. I'm not persuaded that there is anything wrong with loving men. It may be inborn, but it is not an illness, any more than the color of one's eyes."

"But most people believe homosexuality is a sin, a crime, or an illness, and that we are sexual predators. How can we campaign for equality from this position?"

"What most people believe--do you know about lynching? Do you know that most people in the United States accept the basic social inferiority of the Negro based on the color of his skin? Most people in the world believe that violence is the best way to solve problems. That doesn't make these things true. Our obligation is to the truth, and to the dignity of the human individual--not to what other people think."

Something thrilled through my spine. He was like Spud that day, standing on the threshold of the Head Prefect's study, willing to take a risk for a just cause. Willing to make my life his just cause. It takes a certain courage to do the wrong thing: to be a C.O., to leave your country to live in America, to promote homosexuality as a cause, to be a Communist. I'm almost certain he was one. I listened to him with perverse admiration.

Afterward we all stood about with cups of tea. I longed to be away from them, but I couldn't move. Raynes turned toward us and extended his hand. "Andrew Raynes," he said.

"Ralph Lanyon," I said. We shook hands; his face lost its colour.

"You're the real one," he said.

"Ah, good," I said, "You know about that."

His expression was closed to me. "Are you still in touch with Laurie Odell?"

I wanted to say something sarcastic. I wanted a drink. "Yes."

"I wrote to him at his publishers when I saw the book, here." Laurie's first book was in the shops that spring.

"How long have you been living in America?"

"I went over just after the war ended," he said. "It's been nearly ten years."

He spoke for awhile about the cities where he had lived. I couldn't focus.

I thought of Spuddy, at home with the dog. He hadn't said anything about a letter. He didn't hide things well--his face was still as open and frank as when we were at school.

"I'm sorry," I said to the man who had come to steal my happiness, "I can't stay. I have to catch a train."

I don't know why I didn't expect it. A man had followed me into the loo and embraced me from behind as I stood tucking myself back in at the urinal. Adrenalin and arousal fought in me, so that I was hard and angry-- my arms stiff, my ruined hand fisted in its glove. He nuzzled my ear and put his hand on me, the other arm bracing me against him. The man's erection pressed against my buttocks, and I was frozen, unsure whether to strike him or lean back against his shoulder and shiver with the pleasure of being touched. I don't lean on Spuddy; he's smaller than I, and I don't want to hurt his game leg.

In that moment, I saw the other man's face in the mirror over the sink.

"Raynes! What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?" I pushed him away from me.

"Did I misread the signals?"

"Signals? Good God, you speak for half an hour about the dignity of the individual and then you're up for a bit of cottaging!"

He leaned against one of the sinks, laughing quietly to himself. I could see that he still had an erection tenting the front of his trousers.

I washed my hands and dried them, and left.

It's true that it's easier to resist catting about when you have someone at home. Sitting alone in the train compartment at midnight, I thought I deserved no credit for resisting Raynes.

How could I talk with Laurie about it? I couldn't. There was nothing to say.

If he left me, would I die? No, that's something that people think when they are young. If he left me I would live; I would probably find someone else.

I didn't know where my service revolver was, in any case.

I did; it was under the guest bed in Laurie's childhood home. I'd put it away oiled and cleaned.

I wouldn't use it, though, because I didn't need to escape that way. I do my duty. I would never.

I looked out of the window, but I couldn't see into the darkness--only my own face reflected in the surface of the glass.

By the time I was home I was holding myself up by will. I remembered finding Spud when he was wounded after Dunkirk and how I was numb all over, and then he'd made me laugh and I was weak with relief and chagrin. I'd immediately returned to being an officer. Tradition and duty had sustained me.

This was a bit like that.

He was still up, writing, fully dressed except for his open shirt collar. The dog was at his feet, her nose on her paws, snoring. The room was dark and he was in a pool of light, reading, his fountain pen flying over the manuscript. The door shut behind me as softly as I could manage. "Ralph!" He got up to greet me, his hands and face wide open, smiling, and stopped short.

"What's the matter? I thought you would spend the night in London."

"Nothing. Everything's fine." With an effort of will, I went to him and embraced him. He looked into my face.

"Does your hand ache?"

"No, nothing like that."

I touched his hair, with the good hand. He reached for my other hand and rubbed the sore knuckles of my remaining fingers. He looked up at me, as he must because I'm taller, and in his eyes was the same combination of admiration and compassion I'd always seen in them. He must be the only person I've ever known whose face can show compassion without pity.

"Have you ever wished that things were different?" I said. My voice was abrupt and harsh.

He looked at me thoughtfully and didn't misunderstand or pretend to. "No."

"I saw Andrew Raynes tonight," I said. "I have to tell you because I know that telling the truth is the most important thing to you."

"No--" he put out his hand. "No. The most important thing to me is you, not some abstraction."

"It seems Raynes isn't an abstraction."

Laurie sighed.

"Do you want me to leave, Spuddy?"

"Why?"

"Didn't Raynes write to you?"

He shrugged. "He's written to me more than once in the last fifteen years. He's grown up into quite an interesting person. We'll talk about him in the morning. Come to bed now; you're too tired. I don't like to see you so tired."

People think that the deep happiness you feel when you fall in love doesn't last. Those moments of the first kisses and embraces, the first exploration of the body of the one you've desired, you think you're the happiest you'll be in your life.

Happiness is also more mundane. When you share responsibilities, that's one happiness. Seeing him every day when you know you could have lost him more than once is another. Yet another comes each time you remember that this man is not only your friend, but your lover.

I woke up with Spuddy's fingers in my hair, then on my body, and then on my prick. "You wake up hard when you don't drink," he murmured. "I like that." He bent and put his mouth on me.

He is still so beautiful. His eyes, looking up at me as he sucked me, had a tender expression, something calm, considering. This even though I was fairly convulsing with pleasure.

"Wait, Spuddy, stop."

He moved up the bed to hold me. He lay full-length on top of me, his groin hot, and we kissed. I found the jar at the bedside table and smeared my fingers with grease so that I could part his cheeks and tease him.

"Yes," he said, "Please let's." He rolled onto his back, pulling me on top of him. He folded his legs out of the way.

"Don't hurt your knee," I said, my voice still a bit hoarse from sleep.

"A rod like that and you're worried I'll hurt my knee?" Old joke but it never failed to make me laugh. Then I sank into his body, a feeling like coming home.

For a long time we didn't say anything, only looked at each other. He was concentrating on the feeling of me inside him, his eyes unfocused, his mouth open, panting. It has got a bit easier not to come immediately, but I still have to think. With each thrust his body jolted as though current passed between us. I thrust my hips, trembling all over, and we met each other in a concerted movement.

In the end we broke our silence, voices rising together. I could see the jets of his spunk on his belly and my body shuddered, sensation overwhelming me. I leaned forward and he pulled my head down to his, to kiss.

When he says he loves me, he knows just what he means. No one knows love as well as a scholar who writes about the nuances of the words for it in Homeric and Attic Greek. I've been difficult for him, and I know it; I am damaged and not right. This is what everyone wants in Laurie, what I have always desired: the calm and quiet appraisal, his even gaze. He sees me whole.