He couldn’t stop thinking about the day ahead. They would meet again and who could tell what joys the meeting would bring. Perhaps a kiss? He couldn’t tell whether that would feel as wonderful as lying in Hugo’s arms had done. He’d no experience of kissing, and the thought of it both intrigued and disturbed him. And after making such intimate contact, would he feel as confused as he felt now? His thoughts churned full of Hugo Lamont until he fell into a fitful sleep and then the man invaded his dreams as well.
~
Edward opened the door to his friend’s knock, wearing the broadest smile that Hugo had ever seen displayed on his handsome face. In the room there was coffee waiting, with little biscuits and cakes which looked like Edward had arranged and rearranged fifty times for perfection of display. Hugo took a seat, picked up his cup and a tiny sweetmeat, but said very little. The careless conversation of their first meetings had dissipated, leaving a hollow awkwardness that came mainly from the older man this time, not the younger.
Edward looked like he could stand the tension no longer. “You don’t want to be here, do you? You want to say this is all an awful mistake; that we should never meet again. I know what I did yesterday stepped outside the bounds of decency. I’m sorry, I’ve made a terrible error.” Tears began to well in his eyes and he wiped them on his sleeve like a little boy.
Hugo could have borne shouting, he’d half expected insults or argument, but to see his friend cry unmanned him completely. The sight of such a striking face wracked by pain and tears was overwhelming. “No, no. It’s not like that at all.” He left his chair, moved across to Edward, took the man’s face in his hands, let the last walls of defence go down. He gently kissed Edward’s brow again and again, working down his face, cheeks. The skin felt softer than he’d expected when he’d only kissed it in his imagination. “I didn’t mind a bit what happened yesterday, but you don’t understand what all this is about, truly.” He had reached his friend’s lips and their mouths met.
The intimacy of the act shattered them both. Moist, soft, tender, frightened lips meeting for a fleeting moment and then again for a longer congress. Neither had ever known so profound an act. The sweet taste of their mouths, the darting tongues that pushed against lips and made them lose all ability to think clearly. Hugo had done this just the once before, kissing that nameless boy in the back of a car, but kissing Edward was more stimulating, more thrilling, than anything he had done with Domino. Now he was close to someone for whom he had great affection mingled with desire, and now he was more frightened than words could possibly describe.
Hugo pulled away from the by now frenzied kissing, holding Edward’s face between his hands and breathing hard. “You have no idea where this might lead. I swear I didn’t hear a word of the sermon in chapel this morning. I just spent the whole time praying not to be led into temptation this day, and in your room temptation comes in droves. If I kiss you again, I’ll want to touch you, and if I touch you, I’ll want to take you to my bed. Do you understand that? Do you understand what would happen there? And afterwards there wouldn’t be any happiness left, just hatred of each other and what we let happen here. I don’t ever want to hate you, Edward.” Hugo shook with emotion.
“But couldn’t we stay with this?” Edward’s fingers traced the lines of his friend’s mouth—Hugo shut his eyes and breathed in the smells of coffee and cake that arose from those hands. “I’d be content with kisses, with lying in your arms.”
“You might be, but I can’t trust myself, Edward. Not to stop at just a kiss.”
“Then what are we to do?” Edward’s fingers left Hugo’s mouth, moved down over chin and neck, rested over his heart. “I can’t lose you, not now.”
Hugo shook his head, ruefully. “Could you be content with just my friendship? Would you come to that cricket match and just drink champagne and talk with me? If all kissing were forbidden, would you still want not to lose me?”
Edward thought for a long while, his face etched with pain and worry and looking ten years older than it had by the river. “If the choice was that or not to have you at all, I would settle for it.” He tightened his grip on Hugo’s jacket, as if he would never let it go.
“And would you still be saying that in a year’s time? In five years?” He lightly caressed Edward’s hand, trying to memorise how it felt, in case he was never able to repeat the experience.
Edward moved his hand up from Hugo’s chest, found his face again and looked into his eyes for what seemed an eternity. “I don’t know, but then I can’t predict whether in a year’s time we would still even like each other. Maybe by then we’ll have ceased all contact, or perhaps you might even be in my bed and happy with it. I’ve only known you for a few days Hugo, that’s all, and if it takes another year to reach another kiss, then so be it. I’ve waited all my life, I have patience enough.”
Hugo smiled, a real smile this time, a surge of relief filling his heart. “You might need all that patience. I have no idea when or even if I’ll lose these feelings.”
Edward took his hand, squeezed it gently, let it fall. “All I ask is to have the chance of being with you when you do.” They sat together, hardly touching and didn’t speak again until the college clock struck one, although all thoughts of lunch had flown away. Hugo took his leave—he really did have work to do—with a fond ruffle of Edward’s dark locks and a promise to meet at hall that evening.
~
Edward closed the door behind him, then rested his brow against the cool wood, pretending it was resting against Hugo’s head. At last he understood. His family bred dogs and he’d known all the mechanics of the breeding process since he was a lad, but the whining of the bitches in heat, the near uncontrollable behaviour of the dogs who came to serve them, had been an absolute mystery. Now he knew what it all meant. He burned with desire for Hugo, and it was too cruel, to have found such a fondness within his grasp and then have it snatched away. He’d have to wait what seemed an age until the man would let him come near again. Assuming he was ever given another chance.
Return to TOC
Chapter Three
The Easter vacation was looming on the horizon, horribly near for Edward, who preferred even his lonely life in college to the tense and repressive atmosphere of home. He met Hugo every day between the time they’d sat down to coffee, cakes and guilty kisses, and the end of the Easter term. Sometimes they walked, or sat together in hall—it was just friendship on the surface, but all the time the undercurrent of attraction wouldn’t go away.
On the last but one day of term, Edward stood in Hugo’s rooms, watching the man pack, desperately keeping his hands pinned behind his back so he couldn’t reach out and touch him. “I suppose you’ll be having a big family gathering to welcome you home?”
“I guess so.” Hugo didn’t look up from his packing. Edward wondered why the man looked so uncomfortable; he hoped it was at the thought of their being apart for weeks on end. “I dare say all the family will turn up in Hampshire at some point, they usually do, although it won’t be as mad as when I was a boy. Not so many Lamonts now—what the war didn’t take, the flu did, but Mama will make sure we keep up the traditional family festivities.”
Edward always felt jealous of Hugo’s family—not just because they had first claim on him. “I don’t suppose we’ll be particularly festive, we’ve never been great ones for partying.” He swallowed hard. “I’m dreading going home, really.”
Hugo put down a book he was putting in the box and looked straight at his friend for the first time that morning. “I’m sorry, truly. If I could do anything...” He tailed off. There was no point in even beginning the conversation. “You’ll write?”
“I will.” Edward felt the tears welling, turned on his heels and returned to his own rooms, where he started drafting what would be the first letter.
~
It arrived in Hampshire only a couple of days into the break, a very stiff and proper letter full of formality, but awash, to Hugo’s ey
es, with a million hidden meanings. He pored over it time and again, wondering whether last term was a very interesting and instructive one referred simply to the chemistry lectures Edward had sat through or if I look forward very much to my return to Cranmer meant that he was as desperate as Hugo was for them to meet again.
Hugo wished he’d had the nerve to ask Edward to come and visit, but he didn’t have the moral courage for it yet. His mother would have been delighted that one of his friends was paying them a call as her son rarely invited any of his acquaintances home. But it wasn’t any inconvenience to his parents which was the important issue; it was the temptation that his hands and lips would be feeling that was crucial. Having Edward Easterby half way across the college, sleeping in his little bed, breathing softly into the night, was a clear and present danger. Having the same man three doors away, down a carpeted and quiet corridor, in a large and warm guest bed, would have been the height of peril.
His letter of reply was slightly less cautious, although still within the strictest bounds of decency, and the to and froing of letters continued to the brink of their return to college and the chance of saying aloud what they’d only been able to write for the previous month. By the time the last letter appeared at Edward’s breakfast table, Hugo’s style of writing had become like his conversation that day by the river—light and full of laughter, warm and generous, speaking of a love that was burgeoning without ever using the word itself. Whatever Hugo had said over coffee and cakes, the day he had both awakened Edward’s soul and almost broken his heart, the words he used on paper told a very different tale. Perhaps their separation was making the man’s heart grow fonder, as the old saying had it.
~
“Mr. Easterby. Mr. Easterby, sir!” Edward turned around, half expecting to see Marsh again, only to see Hugo, who was grinning to himself at his impersonation of the porter’s fierce voice.
“Hugo! Did you have a good Easter?” Edward resisted the temptation to embrace his friend, settling for a handshake.
“We did indeed.”
Edward noted the “we” and felt a pang of jealousy at the other man’s obvious delight at time spent with his nearest and dearest. “You look well.”
“Did you expect me to be a mass of spots or something, like my poor nephew with German measles?” Hugo cuffed his friend’s arm. “And you look as if the break has done you the power of good.”
It was a lie. Edward knew that. He was paler than he’d been, as if he’d hardly ventured out the last four weeks and when he caught himself in the mirror, a tired face looked out. “It did,” Edward lied in return, “but I’m pleased to be back here. More than pleased.” He held Hugo’s eye for a just a moment too long, then immediately regretted it. It had been so very easy to write long letters that were filled with hidden meaning, spending happy hours in his bedroom carefully constructing them line by line, filling each word and phrase with veiled allusions. It had been an intellectual as well as a romantic exercise, satisfying on many levels. And it had been safe. With seventy miles between them, he couldn’t lead Hugo astray, there could be no touches to regret, no kisses to feel guilty about.
Now a yard of courtyard separated them and the danger of the situation became clear again. Edward had made extravagant promises to Hugo in good faith—I’ll wait a year for another kiss—like he was some poor hero in a storybook, and these had all been easy to keep during the back end of the previous term. Now a combination of separation and correspondence had made both hearts grow fonder and they couldn’t bear the thought of being no more than friends. The hero’s promise seemed like some miraculous quest now, hardly to be attempted, let alone achievable.
“Will you be in hall later?” Hugo broke the awkward silence with a stupid question. Of course every member of Cranmer would be expected to come to hall tonight unless he was in the sick bay. The Warden of Cranmer would be addressing the college and would as usual be reflecting on the sacrifices made by the students of past years, a favourite theme and one which had become increasing poignant in the last few years.
“Indeed. Would you...?” Edward left the question unfinished, suddenly unsure of his words, wanting simply to say sit next to me but feeling too shy to utter the phrase.
“Join you at table?” Hugo seemed to be struggling to wrest his words out. “I would. If the Warden is going to wax lyrical, I would appreciate your comments on his speech afterwards.”
Edward looked keenly at his friend, as if he was expecting some sign that Hugo was making fun of him, but the remark seemed genuine enough. “Perhaps we could have a drink beforehand? I have a bottle or two in my room.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t. Time’s on short commons today. We’ll meet at dinner.” He held out his hand for it to be shaken, to agree the arrangements, turned and departed, leaving Edward wondering whether he’d ever have to open the bottle of sherry and port he’d lugged up to his rooms. He heaved a huge sigh and set off for his desk and a book about inorganic chemistry he would find comfort in until dinner time.
~
Hugo almost ran back to his rooms, a great gobbet of guilt stuck in his throat. It was plain that the time Edward had spent with his family hadn’t benefited him. He’d have been far better off spending the holiday, or at least part of it, in Hampshire. He cursed, again, the moral cowardice that wrapped him up in such chains of guilt and fear that he couldn’t have offered this friend some simple hospitality. And now he couldn’t even accept an invitation to a drink because it brought such danger. They hadn’t been alone in a private place together, after dark, since they’d kissed, and Hugo didn’t feel confident enough in his own powers of self-control to risk it now.
He knew Edward would have seen his blatant lie about lack of time for what it was and suspected he would guess the reason behind it. It was all a bloody mess and if he had to be at hall then perhaps the best he could do was to avoid his friend entirely.
When the time came he dressed for dinner and reluctantly wandered over to hall, where the Warden of Cranmer was preparing to speak. Doctor Phillip De Banzie was a handsome man, erect, silver haired and with a patrician air. His students admired and feared him in equal measure, as did the members of his Senior Common Room. He began each term by addressing the entire college after dinner, and the theme, whatever its nominal title, always veered in the direction of sacrifice. The recent events in Europe had added enormously to his scope for elaborating on this. He had good right: he’d lost a nephew at Ypres and a young cousin a mile further along the line. For him the loss of the flower of English manhood was a real and present tragedy.
Hugo and Edward sat side by side, not intentionally, their having ended up among a crowd of Hugo’s friends who had swept them into hall and given them no choice of seat. They listened intently to the head of their college, even though they had heard much the same stuff before.
De Banzie mentioned those who had sacrificed their social life in the pursuit of pure academic excellence, giving up the chance of wife and family so they could make great strides in medical or scientific research that would benefit many people. The Warden then turned to men who had given their lives in many a conflict down the years so that England could remain free and unsullied from the foreign touch. Cranmer men have always done their duty—they sailed with Collingwood’s squadron into the French line at Trafalgar one hundred and twenty years ago and they were trodden into the mud of Picardy within the last few.
Suddenly a new theme emerged, one that Hugo had heard in his first year but that first year students like Edward had yet to encounter. It concerned the sacrifice of desire and self-will, the sublimation of the cravings of the flesh in order to allow for the perfection of study or the living of a perfect life. Of course, the main target of these barbed words was the small number of undergraduates who were heavy drinkers or clients of the painted ladies of Oxford and who were on a final warning as to their conduct. But Hugo felt them pierce him to the soul, as if De Banzie had a telescope which could peer into the
heart of a man and pinpoint all the sinful inclinations.
He sneaked a sidelong glance at Edward, but the man’s face told nothing. Perhaps he felt the words as keenly as Hugo did but could hide his emotions more successfully. Perhaps the only thing they meant to him was that he mustn’t overindulge in port or loose women if he wished to graduate with a shining first. Hugo couldn’t even begin to guess which of his guesses was nearer the truth.
The speech ended, the listeners all applauded, and the fellows of the college took their leave to enjoy port and fruit in their common room. Edward turned, a hopeful look on his handsome face. “Will you take a glass of port with me, Hugo? I can’t offer you sweetmeats such as our betters no doubt will be enjoying,” there was an unfamiliar air of light heartedness in the man’s voice, “but I think the vintage is acceptable. Doctor De Banzie would have been proud of the sacrifices I made to obtain it.”
Hugo stammered, for once entirely uncertain in front of his peers. It should have been the easiest thing to say either yes or no, the sort of social decision that was taken every day, but now he was paralyzed by his guilt. His desperate longing to see Edward again that had eaten at him all the holidays and been communicated in every line of his letters was counteracted by the harsh words the Warden had spoken—set not your desires above the demands of your college—and the lingering disgust he felt at his own nature.
One of his more hearty rowing friends took the decision out of his hands, slapping him on the back with a vigorous, “See you tomorrow, then, Hugo. We’re back off to Alistair’s set for a game of bridge. I know that pastime bores you rigid,” and then leaving the man, still dumbstruck, alongside Edward.
“Is that a yes then?” It seemed like the wine and candlelight had made Edward bolder.
Hugo, tortured on the rack of his own indecision, merely shook his head, looked at his friend with an entirely hopeless expression, turned and made his way out into the dark quad.
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