While England Sleeps

by David Leavitt

  I staggered out of bed and peered through the curtains. It was still raining; the sky was the color of cold porridge. Anyone who would willingly drag himself out of a warm, sticky bed and a warm pair of arms on such a grim morning as this had to be mad, which I suppose I was.

  I sat on a chair, pulled on my socks, stood, felt suddenly and acutely dizzy and had to sit back down.

  “Are you all right?” Edward asked. (He had stopped pretending to be asleep.) I nodded and stood again, this time successfully.

  I pulled on my drawers and trousers. Edward got out of bed and started to dress as well.

  “You know you don’t have to go with me,” I said. “Really, I’ll be fine on my own. You can stay here and get a few more hours’ sleep.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Edward said. “I told you I’d see you off at the station, and I’m going to.”

  “But really, it’s not necessary.”

  “What, don’t you want me to?”

  “Yes, of course—”

  Edward turned away. “I don’t think you do. I think you’d rather go alone, in case one of the other guests at your smart weekend party sees you at the station.”

  “Edward, please. I just don’t want you to have to go to the bother—”

  “It’s no bother.”

  “All right, then. Fine.”

  And I strode into the kitchen. There was Lil, in her dressing gown, making tea. “Hello, lovey,” she said sunnily. “Did you have a good sleep, then?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “A bit headachy, ain’t you? Never mind. A little tea will do the trick.”

  She handed me the steaming cup. How fresh she smelled! Amazing, considering the indecent hour and the cold.

  “Are you always such an early bird?” I asked.

  “I’ve never needed much sleep. A blessing, I suppose. More time to live. Good morning, Edward.”

  “Good morning.”

  Lil handed him his tea, which he took without a word. She raised her eyebrows.

  For a few moments the three of us just sat there, silently sipping. Even for Lil it was perhaps too early to say much. And Edward seemed peeved.

  Finally I announced I had better go if I was going to get to Paddington in time to catch my train.

  We bade Lil goodbye and walked to the underground. On the train, sad-looking East End girls sat all around us, barmaids on their way to Knightsbridge to look at things they could never afford to buy. Those who expected nothing, I was learning, could be content to breathe in the steam that rises off the accoutrements of other people’s wealth. They all got off at South Ken to switch to the Piccadilly.

  Rain was still plunging when we got back to the flat, where I pulled a few clothes and books into a suitcase. We would have to hurry, I realized, if I was going to make the train I’d told Philippa I’d be arriving on. Of course I would rather have made the trip to the station alone, but after the morning’s scene I didn’t dare ask Edward not to accompany me. So once I had my things collected we got back on the tube and rode to Paddington.

  And then, at the station, I had a vivid premonition that this would be the last time we would see each other in a very long time.

  I looked at Edward. As I recall, I felt the need to take him in, fix him in memory. He had on a black-and-red-striped waistcoat, a wrinkled blue shirt misbuttoned by one button, my red-and-yellow school tie. His leather satchel kept slipping off his shoulder, so that he kept having to hike it up. He hadn’t combed his hair.

  “And what will you do with yourself this weekend?” I asked him.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Read. Potter about.”

  I looked at the ground; the lace on one of his black work shoes was undone. And very spontaneously I got on my knees and did it up. There I was, on my knees at Paddington station, staring up at Edward’s foreshortened figure, his befuddled face, while I laced his shoe.

  A voice over the loudspeaker announced that the nine forty-five to Oxford would be leaving from platform number six.

  I stood. “Well, that’s my train,” I said. “I’d better run.”

  “Goodbye,” Edward said.

  “Goodbye.”

  I patted him on the shoulder, turned around and headed for platform number six. Some impulse, however—perhaps, again, that premonition of finality—turned me back. Edward got bigger and bigger, more and more surprised-looking, as I strode toward him; when I got there, I kissed him on the mouth. He didn’t say anything, nor did I hear any particular reaction from the crowd, though I noticed an old lady putting on her spectacles and peering at us as if we were fornicating monkeys at a zoo. “Goodbye,” I said again, and left.

  From the front of the platform I looked to see if he was still there. He was. Staring after me, his green eyes wide, his lips parted. The battered satchel had fallen off his shoulder, its contents spilling out over the tiled station floor: a pen, an underground map, a toothbrush, and a copy of The Communist Manifesto, which fluttered open in the wind of fleeing trains.

  Chapter Ten

  A driver—not Philippa—met me at the station. Me and a big-toothed couple from Highgate, whose favorite adjective was “sporting.” The wife said she’d known Philippa since they were two.

  The sun had briefly emerged. We drove through fields of wheat and verdant loping hills from which erupted occasional villages, farms, quaint old cloches that looked like roofs without houses. Hale, oddly springlike weather. Rotting marrows littered the ground, split apart, spilling their seeds. Then we were on the long drive leading up to the manor. Cypresses lined it like sentries, and at its terminus stood Philippa, waving wildly.

  The house was huge, elegant, freezing cold, with rooms opening onto rooms, and all of them filled with heavy specimens of Louis XIV furniture—sofas with claws, burnished armoires it would have taken five men to lift. There were servants—fewer than there had been ten years earlier, more than most people in those days could afford. Philippa’s younger sisters, in my mind, blur together into a single ringleted unit wearing a pinafore and at one point announcing, “Father, I should like someday to ride in an airplane.” “And very soon you shall, my dear,” the bearded father jovially assured her. His wife—Philippa’s mother—behaved perfectly but seemed indrawn, as if she were obliged to meditate every moment on private troubles her good breeding forbade her to mention. As for the school friends, they were, as school friends tend to be, charming, opinionless, given to drink. Two boys and a girl, in addition to the couple from Highgate. I have lost their names.

  After lunch Philippa and I took a walk in the grounds. It really was a lovely place. There was a rose garden, trellised and fragrant, a pond filled with ancient carp, perhaps most notably a topiary garden that re-created the Sermon on the Mount. Rows of carefully sculpted bushes ascended in staggered hierarchy to the bush that was Jesus, above which loomed only hills, hills so smooth they might have been upholstered in green velvet: more furniture than geology.

  On the sloping lawn that led up to this monument we sat. The wind was brisk, unseasonably warm. Philippa took her hat off and lay back to look at the sky.

  “When I was a child,” she said, “this was my favorite place. The topiary, I thought, would protect me.”

  “Protect you?”

  “Yes. I was very frightened of dying, then. Dying, or being abandoned. I used to walk around all day in the clutches of a nameless dread.” She hoisted herself up on her elbows and gazed at the garden. “We didn’t build it, of course. Believe it or not, it dates back to the eighteenth century. It was commissioned by some wife of an earl who was rich and terribly pious. Unlike me. I was utterly impious. I loved to hide in Jesus’ shadow. And once I stood in front of Jesus and pulled down my knickers and played with myself. I felt so dreadfully wicked.”

  She picked a blade of grass and began shredding it. In truth I could hardly hear her for the thumping of my heart. You see, I was trying to find just the right words to ask her to marry me . . .

&nbs
p; “Brian, is something wrong?”

  “Wrong?”

  “You seem nervous, suddenly.”

  “Do I? Perhaps that’s because there’s something I want to ask you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes.” A strangled pause. “Philippa, for a long time now—that is, since we met—” I looked away, agonized. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at this.”

  “Brian, is something the matter?” Taking my hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Then I reached into my pocket for the ring.

  “This is for you.”

  “For me! Brian!” She opened the box. “Brian, it’s lovely.”

  Then she looked at me.

  “What does this mean?”

  “It means I’m asking you to marry me.”

  She snapped the box shut.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Well, no, it’s just—I’m just a bit taken aback, that’s all.”

  “I don’t see why you should be. After all, I think I’ve made my feelings fairly obvious—”

  “Of course, of course. It’s just—it’s the last thing on earth I was expecting.” She brushed a hand against her hair. “Look, it’s very sweet of you to ask me this, but—Brian, dear, I can’t marry you.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, first of all—because I don’t intend ever to marry. And second of all—because I don’t love you.”

  I gazed at her. She had said these words with such tenderness, so, well—lovingly, that at first I thought I’d misheard them. But I had not.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, standing hastily. “I must have misunderstood.” And stumbled.

  My leg, having fallen asleep under me, hummed with static. Philippa stood as well. “Brian,” she said, “please listen. You’re a charming young man, and very intelligent, but I have the impression you take our relationship, well, a bit more seriously than I do. I’m delighted to know you. But I’m not in love with you. Is that cruel of me?”

  “Not cruel exactly. Just . . .”

  “You must not take this personally. Nothing’s wrong with you. It’s more that something isn’t right with us. Oh, I’m not making much sense, I know.” She took my hand. “Dear Brian, have I hurt you horribly? Am I a beast?”

  “No, of course not,” I managed. “In fact, I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure this will be best.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “No.”

  We started walking again. “You must think me a fool,” I said.

  “Oh, of course not, Brian. To be fair, in fact, I suppose I have led you on a bit. I suppose I really have given the impression—well, that I felt more than I did. But Brian! Marry! We’re both much too young to marry, with the world as it is and so much to do!”

  She picked a leaf off a tree and pretended to examine it.

  “Anyway, you must admit, there wasn’t really that passion, was there, between us, that we’ve had in other love affairs?”

  “You mean you had more passion with Simon?”

  “Oh, yes . . .” Seeing the stricken expression on my face, she added, “I’m sorry, Brian. But you must have felt it yourself. Really. You never did seem to enjoy yourself, for all the effort you put in.”

  “You didn’t say anything.”

  “Women often don’t know how to put these kinds of things into words.”

  A breeze came up, fluttering away the leaf she had been playing with. She handed me the box with the ring.

  “Has it occurred to you,” Philippa said next, “that you might be happier in a homosexual relationship? Oh, I know you’ve never tried one. But you might.” She clasped my hand again. “I think you only thought you were happy with me, Brian. I could tell you weren’t.”

  I looked her in the eyes. Her eyes seemed to me, at that moment, the intensest, most liquid, cruelest eyes I’d ever seen.

  And then—I have no idea where he came from—another being claimed me. Some horrifying jolly chap who was like one of Philippa’s school friends. “Now don’t you worry,” the jolly chap said. “Just my bad luck, in the end. I suppose you could say my loss is another fellow’s gain. Tell you what: how does a nice cup of tea and a game of cards sound?”

  “All right,” Philippa said doubtfully. “If that’s what you want.”

  “I could do with a rubber.”

  The jolly chap escorted Philippa to the house, whereupon she excused herself to take a nap.

  Later, I tried ringing Edward. No answer.

  I find it difficult, in retrospect, to sort out the many emotions that laid siege to me that afternoon. On the one hand there was a terrible dread, almost a grief, as if I had just failed one of those examinations the results of which determine the very outcome of one’s life. Then there was embarrassment—acute embarrassment—at having misread Philippa so thoroughly. And finally, above and beyond both of these reactions, there was an overarching sensation of relief, because now, at least, I no longer had to lie; now I was face to face with the truth, and the truth was proving in its own way to be a source of comfort. Cold comfort, yes. But at least the chill hand of reality against your cheek is steady.

  I understood that I would never marry Philippa; I understood that I would never marry any woman. Instead I would lead a homosexual life, but it would be a life without lies. What folly to imagine one can somehow transform the idea of desire into desire! Perhaps women are capable of such Pygmalionism. Men are not. And while the prospect of a homosexual life still frightened me, I knew it could not be worse than a life built around delusion. Lies corrupt you, they provoke you to acts of cruelty your ordinary self would find shocking. Yet you commit them. You hurt people desperately in order to protect your lies, which have become like children to you—gnawing, desperate children not content to suck every drop of milk from your breast, because they are always hungry. So they bite into the nipple itself, they devour the flesh itself, and still you protect them. The problem ceases to be that you cannot live without your lies so much as that your lies cannot live without you.

  Viscerally, as if for the first time, I realized just how much I must have hurt Edward. I felt the sting of my own betrayal. I had lied to protect him, but instead my lies ate away at his sense of security until it must have seemed to him that even the ugliest truth would have been preferable to this misery. Yet when he pleaded with me to tell him the truth, I denied him even that comfort, in effect saying, You must go on suffering. I will not let you free. What kind of monster had I become? I wondered. And what must come next?

  At dinner that evening the food was tasteless. Nonetheless, by dividing it into equal portions and forcing myself to put one forkful into my mouth every minute, I made a respectable show of clearing my plate. I also managed, I am proud to say, to keep track of the conversations, even to utter a passably witty remark or two. No one guessed a waxwork sat with them at table.

  We had drinks after dinner, which gave my obliviousness an excuse. Philippa looked very pretty, and a remote part of me thought that perhaps I should try to seduce her, but we had been placed in rooms at opposite ends of the house. I very much doubted that in my drunken state I’d be able to determine which door was hers.

  Around eleven-thirty I excused myself and went to bed, where I must have slept, because when I woke it was just past seven. A strange, wordless panic had gripped me. Suddenly it seemed there was very little time. So I got up, tiptoed into the foyer and tried ringing Edward; once again, no answer. A railway timetable had been posted next to the telephone, presumably as a hint to guests who were thinking of overstaying their welcome. If I hurried, I saw, I could still catch the nine-thirty train to Oxford.

  I went back to my room, packed my things and wrote a quick note to Philippa:

  Very sorry to leave before Sunday lunch but a family crisis requires that I return immediately to London. Please thank your mother for her hospitality. B.

  Other than the serva
nts, no one had yet risen. I spoke only to the gardener on my way out. He was clipping leaves from the nose of the topiary Jesus. “Top of the morning,” he said. “Top of the morning,” I said.

  And then the walk—five miles—to the village; the wait at the station; the very slow steam-driven ride to Oxford through wintry landscapes. Edward, poor Edward! I was thinking. How I longed to fling my arms around him, embrace the breath out of him! And yet can the inflicter of injury ever be the source of comfort? I could not undo the lies I had told Edward. Nor could I dissolve the membrane of class that separated us. Nor could I see my way clear to offering him the kind of “marriage” he seemed to want. (Indeed, though I had cast off my delusions about Philippa, it would be twenty years before I came around to the idea of “marriage” between men.) Still, tender feelings for Edward flooded me. (But dared I name them?) I wanted, more than anything else, to hold him and not let go, not for hours or even days. (But what about years?)

  The train pulled late into Oxford station. With seconds to spare, I made my connection to Paddington, where I caught the tube. Even though it was only a five-minute walk from Earl’s Court station to the flat, I had no patience: I ran the whole way, down the high street, where flowers bloomed along the pavement, through the door to my building, up the stairs, past my old neighbor, who was on her way back from church. “Good morning, Mr. Botsford,” she said. “Good morning,” I said, breathless, heaving, trying my key in the lock, stepping inside. “Edward?” I called. “Edward?” But of course there was no answer.

  I suppose the first thing I took in—aside from the fact that Edward wasn’t there—was that the flat was much cleaner than when I’d left it. The floor had been swept, the mantel polished. A shelf was empty on the bookcase—Edward’s shelf. After that I checked his drawer, but of course by that time it had all come together in my mind; I knew what I would find—the journal, open on the desk where he had read it—as well as what I wouldn’t: his clothes, his toothbrush, his razor and shaving mug, any proof that he had ever lived here or known me.