Alec

by William di Canzio

  If only he’d not been a servant. He was nearly nineteen now. Servitude troubled him more than when he was younger, and more still in this new place. The Wentworths, with their untellable wealth, had been distant, almost unreal, easy to ridicule. Here, in a house smaller than any wing of Michaelmount, the Durhams were always close at hand. Alec judged the widow a decent woman, and this sharpened the insult of her not knowing his name, even after months of employment.

  Little as she must have cared about her servants’ names, she took great care to manage their souls. She insisted on churchgoing. And the squire’s young wife proved worse than the old lady. She had a new vicar appointed, Reverend Borenius, who brought High Church pomp to little St. Simon’s in the village, where he caused candelabras to blaze on the reredos, bells to jangle at weekly Communion, and incense clouds to rain odors of sanctity on all the faithful, Durhams and others alike. Alec didn’t mind the theatrics: they made the service less boring. Borenius, however, was a stickler not just about ceremony, but about policing the morality of his flock as well, which meant nosing into their business.

  And Penge’s isolation irked Alec. The place was remote, the village dismal—no lively fairs, let alone an annual footrace for naked boys. As he matured, his loneliness was growing more urgent. He saw no one for himself, nothing. There were others of his kind at Penge, to be sure, Clive Durham for one, he was certain. The squire had been busy at his desk when Alec arrived for his interview. Clive set down his pen and looked up: his eyes widened on seeing the candidate. He reddened, lowered his gaze, pretended to reread the recommendation. Alec knew immediately; his knowledge was confirmed within his first month on the job. Simcox, the valet, filled Alec in on the gossip: Hadn’t one of the maids walked in on the squire, two years ago, before he was married, while he was caressing his friend from Cambridge, the fellow with the dashing black hair, in a most affectionate manner in the bedroom adjoining his own? And hadn’t others seen the two of them lying among ferns in the woods, embracing? Simcox was reliable in this matter: he was certainly one of them himself.

  One evening after supper, Alec sat in the boathouse and smoked the briarwood pipe his mother had sent for his birthday. She had written in her note, “As a young wyfe, I woud so injoy the cent of your father’s tabaccoe…”

  A generation had passed. Now he himself was on the cusp of manhood. What did Penge hold for him? A promotion to head gamekeeper when Ayers retired? A small pension after a solitary lifetime serving the Durhams? Couldn’t he do better elsewhere? Argentina…? He let the idea take shape in the pipe smoke: the immense scale of that western land—mountains, rivers, plains, a seacoast stretching toward the world’s end. Maybe he could work with Fred awhile and then strike out on his own. And what about love? Surely he’d find one like himself in such a wide-open place, an honest, passionate man. Free from scowling gentry and vicars and the law, they’d share their lives, their bed … The nicotine made Alec woozy. When he stood, he stumbled over the sleeping spaniel that had followed him and now yipped and needed soothing.

  Next morning, though, clearheaded after a strong pot of tea, he did not find the idea of emigrating absurd. He wrote to Fred, who responded by inviting his little brother to join him and his bride on their journey, scheduled to begin on August 30, 1913, with the departure of the SS Normannia from Southampton.

  Alec accepted. Fred broke the news to their parents. Elwood received it with equanimity; not so their mother, who, Fred wrote, “cryed that her heart was cloven in two.” Nonetheless, the brothers pressed on. Fred offered to help with funds for the ticket. And Risley’s guinea, saved along with most of Alec’s earnings, went a long way toward outfitting him with a kit of cheap ready-made clothes. He felt he’d taken hold of his life.

  As part of his plan he decided that since (like Van) he might one day need to marry, he ought to make some effort with girls. There were two cousins in service at Penge, both seventeen and both named Mildred after their grandmother. One called herself Mill; she worked in the dairy. The other, called Milly, worked with the cook. The girls had trim figures and pretty skin; they took pride in their grooming and liked to laugh: that was attraction enough for Alec. And they were happy to play along when the handsome under-gamekeeper started to pay them more notice. Because they were three altogether, the girls understood that it was about fun, not serious courtship.

  When they were alone, there was kissing. (Once, the girls even kissed each other to show Alec how a brigand would ravish a lady. That demonstration brought on all three a falling-down fit of giggles.) In the shadows there would be groping and fondling: breasts, privates, etc. Alec discovered that when the girls touched him a certain way, he’d become aroused. It was nothing like the spontaneous overpowering rush of excitement he felt for certain men, but it sufficed to encourage him: if need be, he believed, he could perform the duties of husband.

  He also started to open his mind beyond the limits of rainy Wiltshire. The Working Men’s College was offering courses at nearby Wilton. The teachers, young idealists with degrees from Cambridge and Oxford, were advancing the founder’s vision of university-style learning for men of the working classes. The scholars made regular trips from London to regional towns to deliver the goods.

  Most of the men who came to sign up for school sought practical training in mechanics or drafting, with an eye to getting ahead in business. They were disappointed to find that those subjects were taught only in the city. Rather, the Wilton extension offered courses for “enrichment” in the humanities: literature, history, art, and political philosophies. Alec chose two classes that met on Tuesday evenings—The English Poetic Tradition and Italian City-States.

  Harrison Grant’s course in poetry was crowded with clerks with ink-stained fingers, who spent their days copying contracts, their backs hunched over desks. Word had gotten out that this particular teacher was a genuine Cambridge don volunteering his service pro bono. He was older than the other instructors—fifty, Alec guessed—nice-looking, with brown hair going gray and clean-cut features. At the first meeting, he mapped their course of reading, emphasizing Milton and Shelley, and introduced the men to the college’s mission: they were to acquire knowledge through hard work, but he hoped they would also form friendships, essential to education, with their teachers and one another, by meeting outside the classroom and enjoying sports together.

  The men liked the message and they liked him. As the room grew stuffy, he removed his jacket, inviting them to do likewise, loosened his collar, rolled back his cuffs, showing a figure not just trim, but fit and strong. Here was a man for whom learning was by no means at odds with virility, a man for his students to admire and to imitate.

  He gave the assignment for next week—they were to read Milton’s “Lycidas,” make notes, including questions, and be prepared to discuss. If they had time they might look ahead to their second pastoral elegy, Shelley’s Adonais, with an eye to contrast. He also announced that, to encourage their forming friendships through sport, he would offer basic instruction in boxing on several consecutive Sunday afternoons. The men applauded him when class was dismissed.

  Italian City-States met next in the same room. All but two of Grant’s students left—Alec and a lumber-mill worker. “I’ll stay for the first meeting,” the lumberman said. “No one says I have to come back.”

  A haberdasher’s clerk joined them. He told them that his shop “caters to a cultivated clientele,” many of whom traveled abroad, and he hoped having some knowledge of the Continent might impress the customers and thus his boss.

  The instructor, named Morgan, was much younger than Grant, thirty or so, and seemed unfazed by the size of his class. Rumor had it that he had been the older man’s student at Cambridge. He was therefore acquainted with his dashing teacher’s allure and aware he possessed little himself. His face was triangular, broad forehead tapering to a narrow chin; his figure was triangular too, but in the wrong way—shoulders narrow, hips wider. Still, Alec found his manner appeal
ing. When he spoke or listened, which (unlike Grant) he did in equal parts, Morgan made you feel that he wanted to know you more than he imagined you could want to know him (or maybe more than he wanted you to know him). This self-effacing quality, mixed with his kindly demeanor, assuaged his homeliness. Plus, Alec judged, his mustache was excellent.

  He explained that their course would draw on several disciplines: history, literature, politics, philosophy, but particularly art and architecture in Milan, Venice, and Florence. He opened a portfolio of art plates. He proposed to “read” the images for what might be discerned about each city’s character. He beckoned the students forward to join him at the teacher’s desk, where he spread the pictures: from Milan, Leonardo’s Last Supper; from Venice, Giorgione’s The Tempest; from Florence, Botticelli’s Primavera.

  In these latter two, Alec saw the figures that Risley had cynically compared him to. But there was nothing cynical in Morgan’s appreciation. When he analyzed the compositions, revealing their underlying geometry, the men were first amazed, then gratified. In order to view the images more closely, the lumberman and Alec leaned over the desk together. Engrossed, they knocked heads, and everybody laughed.

  Through the spring and early summer, Alec’s spirits rose. The secret knowledge that he’d soon give notice lent him power over the Durhams and raised himself in his own eyes. Tuesday nights brightened his week. After Morgan’s class, the haberdasher would go right home, but Alec and the lumberman and their teacher would go for a pint together. Morgan seemed so at ease in the pub among workingmen that Alec found himself reevaluating the upper classes, or at least admitting there might be one or two decent folks among them. Mr. Grant, on the other hand, for all his preaching about friendship, could not dismount his Cambridge high horse. Still, Alec managed to attend three of his Sunday boxing lessons, where, for the small price of getting his nose bloodied, he learned how to land a fair uppercut. He also enjoyed the poetry, which, but for the requirements of Grant’s course, he might never have discovered.

  But just as important to his education was Alec’s understanding that both of his teachers were like him. This enriched his knowledge of himself and his kind: of himself, because he found he possessed this particular insight by nature; of his kind, because he now saw there were many of his sort, throughout all livelihoods and social classes, as different from one another as were folks who called themselves normal. Both these men, he likewise intuited, were trapped. That understanding was also part of his education. He hoped he would avoid their mistakes. Clearly Mr. Grant became aroused when his students stripped down to spar at his Sunday gatherings; yet he seemed to disapprove of himself on their behalf for doing so. He’d try to disguise Eros as sportsmanship by showing them some new punch or footwork, but what the man truly craved was their touch and affection. Alec figured he was too knotted up inside to admit the desire, much less to act on it. Alec wished he could say, It’s all right, sir, go ahead, feel us up—we all think you’re grand and we’d feel you right back.

  In contrast, Morgan, whom Alec deemed genuinely kind, seemed shackled by this kindness, or a misunderstanding of it. He seemed to fear that he might somehow harm others if he pursued his own desires.

  “May I write to you, sir?” Alec said to him in the pub after the last meeting of Italian City-States, after the lumberman had said goodbye to them, leaving the two by themselves.

  “I’d be very happy to hear from you! Yes, please write and tell me everything—about your adventures in the Argentine, about the loves and triumphs, and when there’s nothing to write about, well then just write about nothing.”

  This warmth, this effusiveness, was what Alec liked best about Morgan. In the months they’d known each other, his lively humor had emerged from his reserve. Alec was also gratified that such a learned man as Morgan would care to know him. “Truly?” he asked.

  “Truly.”

  There were things he wanted to say but did not know how to, or even if he should. He loved Morgan, and felt his love reciprocated, but he was not attracted to the man sexually. Alec sometimes wished it might be otherwise, because he knew that Morgan was attracted to him and would have liked to please him, but there was no forcing or faking such feeling, least of all with someone as insightful as his teacher. Did the man understand his quandary? Yes, Alec believed, and the tension was fruitful for both of them, allowing Alec to love him without the entanglement of sex; at the same time making their friendship, tinged with Eros, tolerable for Morgan, whom Alec sensed had no sexual experience and (for reasons more complex than he could fathom) might not wish it.

  “Except for my folks,” Alec told him, “there’s few people I’ll miss when I leave England, and none more than you.”

  * * *

  So in due time, in the last week of July, Alec gave a month’s notice at Penge. He was promptly called to the squire’s study. It had been less than a year since their first and only meeting, yet he was surprised by the change in Clive Durham: he was losing his blondish hair and gaining fat in the middle. With his blue eyes and his rosy cheeks going plump, before long he might serve as a model for a “country squire” in Staffordshire china, made to squat on the mantel in Granny’s parlor.

  “Leaving us, Scudder?” Durham said.

  “Yes sir, emigrating.”

  “Seems sudden and drastic.”

  “P’rhaps Mr. Ayers told you about my brother, sir … He was goin’ abroad by hisself with his bride, but then invited me.”

  “The three of you? Odd. No girl of your own?”

  “No luck that way yet, sir. Perhaps I’ll find someone there.”

  “Not a Spaniard, I hope, or some half-breed. Best seek your own kind, a good English girl to settle you down. Though please don’t make off with one of our maids.” He laughed, then assumed the manner of older man to younger. “Marriage, believe me, improves us men immeasurably.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “We’ve been satisfied with your work. You’re a sharp fellow. You ought to have given more notice.”

  “Without meanin’ offense, sir, I couldn’t risk it, gettin’ dismissed early, if you’d got unhappy about me leavin’.”

  “Now, that’s low thinking. Have you ever known any servant to be treated unfairly in this house?”

  “No sir.”

  “If you were patient, one day you might follow Ayers as head keeper. You know what life holds for you here, but you’ve not a clue about the hardships you’ll face overseas. It’s like trying to build civilization all over again. Consider the lives of your children.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Think about what I’m saying.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Good luck to you, then, and here.” He gave Alec an envelope. “It’s a reference about your work and character.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Alec closed the door behind him. He’d been dreading this meeting, as if the squire had the power to hold him back. Now that it was over, he felt he was truly advancing toward his future.

  The next weeks were the busiest of his life, what with his work to keep up while getting ready to go. Mill and Milly, saddened at first by his news, soon turned to playacting heartbroken maidens who vowed to throw themselves into the sea after his ship. One day, near the back road to the train station, the three of them found a quarter hour to practice dramatic farewell kissing. But their play was interrupted when a car drove by, bringing a guest to the house, who scowled at them from within. The girls snickered and turned away.

  Alec locked eyes with the man, a handsome fellow with black hair and a mustache. He felt a sudden charge. Just as suddenly—and to his surprise—he understood it was mutual. The guest’s expression softened, unwillingly, it seemed, from anger to mildness. What was Alec seeing? Desire, loneliness, longing, even helplessness? The man’s lips parted, as if to speak, but he did not. When Alec realized they were staring at each other, he lowered his gaze and touched the brim of his cap. The car continued on toward
the house.

  II

  KINGFISHER

  5

  Their fun spoiled, the dallying maids went back to their duties, but not Alec. Although his chores likewise needed doing (before he was free to tend to his own pressing business of preparing to leave England), he could make himself do nothing. What had just happened?

  In some ways, the silent exchange had been familiar. How many (uncountable) times he had noticed a fellow, undressed him with his eyes in a flash, then, in another flash, forgotten him. Nearly as often the game was a contest, the two players dawdling and dithering between steamy stares and feigned indifference to see who would back down first. These fantasies always came to nothing. Was that what had just happened?

  If so, then why was he dumbfounded?

  What had he seen in the stranger? The motorcar, the angle of the man’s chin, and what could be seen of his clothes expressed privilege. Was that what had attracted Alec? Wealth and what comes with it? Could he be so small-minded? He had reason to hope not, because (to give himself credit) Risley’s money and trappings had held no allure for him, nor, for that matter, did Clive Durham’s.

  Could it have been the man’s appearance, then, that beguilingly handsome face? Alec’s head would have turned to look after him had he passed by anywhere, no denying that. Yet it was the rare face and form that could surpass Van’s or excite a more urgent desire. For certain the pleasure they’d shared back home was ravishing, but it went no further than that for Alec: an unforgettable pleasure enjoyed with a friend.