While England Sleeps

by David Leavitt

  Edward stood waiting by the door. He looked nervous, as if he was afraid of losing me to the crowd or, worse, being seen leaving with me, thus provoking a scandal.

  We stepped into the street. It was a humid night. Lamplight reflected in oil puddles on the murky pavement. Edward’s loping gait, as we walked toward my bed-sitter—our unspoken but obvious destination—thrilled me inordinately. As it turned out, he possessed a wealth of technical information about the underground, and so we talked about the design for the escalators in the new Southgate station on the Piccadilly Line and the process by which the arrival of Wimbledon and Ealing Broadway trains into Earl’s Court station is, and occasionally is not, successfully orchestrated. It seemed to make him more comfortable to know he had some expertise in an area I found of interest. Still, I adjusted my vocabulary in order not to use words he might not understand.

  We arrived at my bed-sitter and were barely inside the door when he reached his hands around my neck, pulled my face toward his and kissed me. He tasted of honey and cigarettes. There was something compelling, almost needful about his kiss. Then he pulled away. I switched on the light. He pushed me across the room, onto the bed. The old springs squeaked; he pried open my mouth and once again thrust his tongue down my throat. I groped the front of his trousers. What I felt there was a hot trembling, and he cried out, and I pulled my hand away. I hadn’t even unbuttoned him.

  He lay back, heaving. “I nearly burst,” he said.

  “Get undressed,” I said.

  He looked at me intently. Then he stood, threw off his jacket, tugged his sweater and shirt simultaneously over his head, roughly undid his belt and pulled down his trousers. His body was pale, mostly hairless, lean and tightly strung. A zealous erection tented his white drawers, a wet gray stain spreading from the tip. He pulled the drawers down, and his penis swung out and snapped back, hitting his abdomen with an audible slap. Then he tried to step toward the bed, but he had neglected to take off his shoes, and since his trousers and drawers were still tangled around his ankles, he stumbled and with a bewildered cry fell next to me, his legs held fast by a complication of leather and cloth.

  “Here,” I said, laughing a little, “relax.” Delicately I unlaced his shoes and pulled them off, along with the trousers and drawers. His socks were narrow and black and left grooves in the skin of his calves when I peeled them away. I opened the drawer of the bedside table and took out a bottle of mineral oil. He stared at the thick oil as if he wanted to drink it. “Lie on your back,” I said. He did. I brushed a finger against his testicles, which had formed a single walnut-sized globe, drum-tight and cleaved in the middle, and he let out a moan so loud I had to put my hand over his mouth, fearful he might wake my neighbors. “Now relax,” I repeated, opening the bottle, pouring the oil and rubbing my hands together, to warm it.

  Then I touched my slick palm to his penis, and he opened his mouth as if to scream, but held his breath. Three steady strokes and he came, the semen spurting out in thick streaks, some of it landing in his hair and his mouth. His abdomen rocked like a stormy ocean as the orgasm subsided. He heaved. I was afraid he might choke.

  “It’s all right,” I said, brushing back his hair, which was slick with sweat. “It’s over now.”

  His breathing grew quieter. He sat up. I lay on the bed, my hands behind my head, still fully dressed, even my shoes still on, my erection visibly outlined in my pants.

  “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to—”

  He looked embarrassed, so I took his hand.

  “Don’t apologize. It was enough, watching you.”

  “I’m not usually that quick, it’s just—it’s been a while.”

  Then he bent over me and groped my crotch in a friendly way. I let out an unintended cry.

  “Got quite a big one, you have,” he said.

  “Like to see it?”

  “Wouldn’t mind. But I’ve got to go now. My mum’s expecting me for supper.”

  He stood, pulled on his drawers and trousers and buckled his belt, then sat down on a chair to put on his socks.

  “I live in a bigger room than this,” he said.

  “Most people do. But I’m without a job right now, you see, and this was all I could afford.”

  For a moment he was silent, as if trying to unpuzzle the mysterious relation (or lack thereof) between my seeming rich and being poor.

  He stood again and wandered over to the bookshelf, which was buckling and spilling.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many books in one room except at the library.”

  “Do you like to read?”

  “Oh, I love to read. I believe in improving myself, even though I’m not highly educated. I go every week to a concert or a recital. I very much enjoy music. And every Sunday I go to the National Gallery and try to copy a painting, though I’m not very good at it. And I try to read three books a week. How many books a week do you read?”

  “It depends. Sometimes none.”

  “I could read a lot more than three except as I have to get up so early for work and sometimes my mum needs me to do work in the house. She’s got her hands full these days. Who’s your favorite author?”

  I pondered. “Shakespeare,” I said finally.

  “I’ve read Shakespeare,” Edward said. “ ‘When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes / I all alone beweep my outcast state / And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries.’ I’ve memorized six of the sonnets.”

  “That’s very good. And who’s your favorite author?”

  “First, Charles Dickens. Second, Jules Verne. Third, I would have to say, is either Jane Austen or that American fellow Hemingway. I do like his books. But I couldn’t decide for third. I never can make up my mind. If my mum says, ‘Edward, which of these materials do you prefer for a tablecloth, the gingham or the lace,’ I say, ‘Mum, I like them both equal.’ ”

  “I can never make up my mind either,” I said, and smiled. He looked across the room at me, as if the tenderness in my voice surprised him, but he did not turn away from it or change the subject. I supposed he was suddenly realizing that I could be falling in love with him and not just wanting to use his body, and was finding, to his surprise, that this knowledge pleased him.

  A needle of light from the narrow window pierced his eyes, which were suddenly moist. Then he turned away, toward the books, and ran his hand through his hair. He still had his shirt off. Spots rose on the upper cords of his back.

  “I could visit you again, maybe,” he said. “After work. We could talk more about books. This week I’m reading Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Central Line Tube Stock: An Illustrated History. The last one’s different, though. That’s for work.”

  I stepped toward him and handed him a card on which I’d scribbled my address. He took it. Our lips grazed.

  “And how will you get back tonight?” I asked.

  “The underground.”

  “It’s a long way.” Reaching into my wallet, I removed a pound note and handed it to him. “Why not take a cab?”

  “I don’t want your money,” he said, stepping back from me.

  “I’m sorry, I just thought—”

  “You think I just did this for money? I’m not like that.”

  Hurriedly he pulled on his shirt and buttoned it, gathered his jacket and satchel.

  “I’m sorry, Edward,” I said. “I only wanted to give you the money so you could take a cab—”

  “The tube’ll be just fine, thank you.”

  “You know, if it’s ever late and you’re too tired to go home, you’re welcome to stay here.”

  “No, no, that would never do,” he answered swiftly. “My mum would miss me.”

  “Well, then, I do hope you’ll come again.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  He looked at me, though guardedly.

  “You have very green eyes,” I said. “Very beautiful.”

  “So are yours,” he said.

&nbs
p; “Really?”

  “Beautiful. Not green. I think you’re very handsome, but then everyone must tell you that.”

  “No, no, they don’t do. I’m glad you think so.”

  We both blushed. I kissed him. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he looked at me, and I guided his hand to my erection, which he squeezed.

  Then he pulled his hand away.

  “What brought you to that meeting?” he asked.

  I thought about it for a moment. “I suppose,” I said finally, “it’s because I lived in Germany for two years. I’ve seen what the Nazis can do. And I don’t feel I can stand by, the way most people in this country seem prepared to do, while Hitler takes over Europe. But if the forces of democracy could win in Spain—well, don’t you think it would make things a lot tougher for the Nazis? That’s why I went to the meeting.”

  Edward frowned. “I see what you’re saying,” he said. “I see how you could look at it that way. Myself, I never thought about it in connection with Germany. In my case, what it was was my brother Frank. He died in a factory accident last year—he was with the union and got mangled up in a big printing machine. Suspicious-type accident. And since then I’ve been thinking, what did he die for that I shouldn’t fight in Spain? That’s a real workers’ revolution over there.”

  “So you’re a Communist, I take it.”

  “Well, I haven’t joined the Party, if that’s what you’re asking. But in my heart of hearts, yes, I suppose.” He looked up at me cautiously. “And you?”

  I had a prepared answer to this question. “Though I’m in sympathy with the goals of the Party in specific instances,” I said, “no, philosophically I do not consider myself a Communist. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t fight alongside Communists, however. To achieve a common goal.”

  “All that keeps me from signing up is my mum,” Edward said. “It would kill her to lose her second son.”

  “Is that what stopped you tonight?”

  “I suppose. What stopped you?”

  I considered for a moment. “I think,” I said finally, “it was meeting you.”

  He looked into my eyes intently, as if searching for a clue that might help him interpret this remark.

  Then he turned brusquely away.

  “Well, I must be off. See you again, I hope.”

  “I hope so too.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye.”

  And he was gone.

  I closed the door behind him. What a strange encounter! I thought. And yet I wasn’t surprised. There had been something so mysterious, so almost spectral about the swiftness of our meeting, that it seemed appropriate he should disappear as suddenly as he had first come into my range of vision.

  I sat down on the sofa and lit a cigarette. I was thinking back to those nights when Nigel and I had sat and drunk and imagined for each other the ideal “friend” each of us hoped someday to meet. Was Edward that friend, I wondered now, that Nigel conjured for me on cold Cambridge nights? In a physical sense, certainly. And there was something extraordinarily tender about his naive aspirations to better himself. He made me want to guide him, to take him to places that amaze and silence: that church in Rome with its Caravaggios; Notre-Dame. Suddenly I was lost in fantasy, spinning a life out of our one night, envisioning us, Edward and me, living together, traveling together. Nights in sagging beds in pensions in Corsica, looking at the stars from a houseboat in Amsterdam. What bliss that would be! And how mad of me to imagine!

  He was on his way back to Upney, I supposed. If indeed he lived in Upney, if he wasn’t lying, if indeed he really worked for the underground and was who he said he was. Upney: so far from Richmond, from everything I knew! That he was of the working class, I had to admit, thrilled me inordinately. No public school boy would have been capable of such raw sexual display. Yet Edward was not embarrassed. His need was unsuppressed and unsuppressible; it had not been detoured into collections of rare eighteenth-century teacups or encyclopedic research projects or money counting in the City. And that was why I wanted to find him again: I longed for that rawness that had been bred out of me. Nigel could insist until he was blue in the face that homosexuals should constitute a classless society; the fact remained that for both of us there was no place more exciting than the servant’s hall.

  I stood from the sofa. I took the towel with which Edward had wiped himself. With one hand I held it to my mouth, the smell still strong, bleachy and metallic, and with my other hand undid my trousers and in a matter of seconds brought myself off.

  Needless to say, I did not go to war until later.

  Chapter Three

  It continued, unremittingly, to rain. Then one morning, for just a few moments, the sun came out. In the street old women looked into the sky with amazement, deflated their umbrellas, then shook them out like wet dogs. For ten minutes or so the sun shone smugly in the slate-blue sky, as if to mock their hesitation, their lack of faith—and then a drop of water fell, and another, and another, and in what seemed a matter of seconds the sky had clouded over, rain was sheeting down as the disumbrellaed populace, victims of a heavenly prank, rushed madly for shelter.

  I woke early. I always woke early in those days—dragged from sleep by a panicked need to switch on the wireless and hear whether the war had started yet. In the post box was a letter from Nigel. He had fallen in love with a nineteen-year-old Bavarian boy called Fritz and with him had fled Berlin for Paris.

  The last week things got so bad I started fearing for our lives. Each night I could hear screams coming from the street, and in the morning I would step outside to find fresh blood spilled on the pavement. Nearby the Nazijugend practiced their absurd little calisthenic drills, almost like a taunt. What bothered me, however, was not the sight of the blood but the smell of it. Faintly metallic and salty, like semen. By the way, the Nazis do not like homosexuals primarily, according to everyone, because a number of the Party’s original high officials were homosexuals themselves and believed they could combat the threat of exposure by practicing excessive brutality. Few of them survived the purge. And do you remember the little florist’s shop where we used to buy those glorious roses? The couple who ran it? Both handsome, rugged fellows, their arms corded with muscles, their hair thick and blond and blazing. They walked to work each morning holding hands, and told Horst that their love for each other was as unwavering as their faith in the great Aryan nation. Together they joined the Nazi Party. Horst begged them not to do it, but they insisted that the party objected only to decadent homosexuals, whereas they themselves were not decadent homosexuals at all, they were Aryan brethren, united, their love an exalted flame. A few weeks later they disappeared. The flower shop was sacked, the windows smashed, the roses torn and ravaged. No one has heard from them since.

  The station, by the time we left, was a Gomorrah, a hell. Who was a Jew, who was traveling on false passports, who would and would not be allowed to leave the country? I saw a family: an elegant-looking man wearing a pince-nez and a smooth black suit, his wife carefully buttoned into a sable coat, rocking a baby whose nose was running, while their other child, a miserable-looking little girl in a green pea coat, sat stone still on a curb. Nervously they guarded boxes and trunks and suitcases piled haphazardly like an Italian hill town. There was a smudge on the man’s cheek, a stain on his shirt. On closer inspection I saw that one of his eyes had been blackened. Clearly they needed quite desperately to get out of the country. And would they? In such a situation you can only think of yourself.

  Fritz and I boarded the train. I was treated cordially—the Führer does so love the English—though I worried for Fritz, who had hinted his papers might not be entirely in order. Whatever problems there were, however, the inspector either failed to notice or chose to ignore. He had a more important priority, that being the hunting out of those attempting to flee on false passports.

  Across the platform from our train was one bound for Amsterdam. As it left, smoke puffed up in billows. I caught a last
glance of the man with the pince-nez. He was arguing with an inspector, while his elegant wife and sick baby and stoic little girl stared at the departing train. They got smaller and smaller until they disappeared into the smoke. Thus we left Germany.

  Paris is a relief, by comparison. We have rooms in an old pension near Saint-Sulpice. No plumbing and an elderly neighbor who appears to be a leper, but at least here we have escaped the smell of blood—forever, I hope, though I doubt it. We make love obsessively, madly. Our energy is undepletable. Last night I had seven orgasms.

  This is not natural. This is the end of the world.

  I folded the letter inside the envelope. I needed to walk, even though I had no umbrella, even though the rain was pouring down now with a force that made me wonder if that brief spasm of sunlight had been a dream. On the street, in spite of the downpour, a boy was picking his girl some flowers that the council had planted along the pavement. An old woman approached them, shaking her umbrella. “You don’t do that!” she shouted. “Maybe in Germany, yes, but this is England! You don’t pick flowers in England!”

  The rain was coming down so powerfully I had to keep my head bent in order to see where I was going; rainwater sheeted the lenses of my spectacles. I was thinking of Rupert’s terrorized maid, heedlessly shattering some irreplaceable piece of china. What would Rupert do? Shout at her? Fire her? Doubtlessly. So Rupert fires the maid, the maid must move back with her mother, the two of them, together, hate Rupert and his precious china. Rupert, in the meanwhile, buys another piece of china, hires another maid, watches the maid break the china, fires her and hires another maid and fires this maid as well. Soon all the maids hate Rupert, while Rupert hates his mother and his schoolmasters and me, though he dares not say so. Hitler, Nigel told me, wanted once to be a painter but failed to gain admission to an art academy. If Hitler had been admitted to art school, might he now be a contented watercolorist, and Europe at peace?

  I was no innocent. I was cruel to Rupert, those evenings when he came to me, longing to be loved. I enjoyed rejecting him. Rejecting him excited me. Losing his umbrella, perhaps, excited me.