“But,” said Ralph, “he is wrong, so then what?” There was a silence. He said in a different voice, “You don’t feel any doubt on that point, do you?”
“Yes. When I’m with him, sometimes I do.”
“Really, Spud,” said Ralph quietly. “At a time like this.”
He spoke as one rebukes a child who is old enough to see with what dangerous irresponsibility he has been behaving. He had talked often about the war, never about the feelings he had brought to it. Laurie had supposed that his bitterness at his forced inaction had been chiefly for the waste of his own powers. Now, looking at his face, one could see that this wasn’t so; and there was nothing more to say.
“You see, Spuddy, my dear,” said Ralph, speaking with great kindness and with care that Laurie shouldn’t be hurt, “you have a very sweet nature, really, and you let it ride you a bit sometimes. You say this boy has guts, but what you’re trying to do for him is to keep him like a mid-Victorian virgin in a world of illusion where he doesn’t know he’s alive. He mustn’t be told he’s a passenger when human decency’s fighting for survival, in case it upsets his religion. He mustn’t be told he’s a queer, in case he has to do a bit of hard thinking and make up his mind. He mustn’t know you’re in love with him, in case he feels he can’t go on having his cake and eating it. If he amounts to anything, he won’t really want to be let off being human. And if he does want it, then he isn’t worth all this, Spud. I’m sorry, but there it is.”
“But—” As soon as he started he knew it was no good. He could have said that Andrew was essentially more realistic and less sentimental than Ralph himself. He wanted to say, “But he does know that I love him, and I know he loves me.” But as soon as his mind formed words around these things, he saw that they could only hurt Ralph for nothing without enlightening him at all. “It isn’t quite like that. I mean, Christianity on weekdays isn’t really such a soft option. I believe enough in him to feel I’d like to help him be what he wants to be. Not hinder, anyway.”
“Anyone can see that you weren’t brought up in a Christian home.”
Ralph’s face had altered. It looked impenetrable, and no longer even kind. He had taken his hand away and had begun to tap Morse on the arm of the chair.
Laurie paid scant attention to the actual words. He had heard behind them the voice of an unknown boy who wasn’t Jack in The Coral Island. As if it were possible to reach into the past, he took hold of the restless hand that was tapping the chair-arm and said, “I don’t think that’s how it was meant to be.”
“Well, anyway, that’s how it comes. The pagans did recognize our existence, at least. They even allowed us a few standards and a bit of human dignity, just like real people.”
He was silent for a moment, frowning; but it was in concentration more than anger, for the hardness had gone from his eyes. Looking out across Laurie’s head he said slowly, as if the words were being salvaged from deep water, “ ‘If a city or an army could be made up only of lovers and their beloved, it would excel all others. For they would refrain from everything shameful, rivalling one another in honor; and men like these, fighting at each other’s side, might well conquer the world. For the lover would rather be seen by anyone than by his beloved, flying or throwing away his arms; rather he would be ready a thousand times to die.’ ”
Laurie couldn’t say anything. He had neither the power nor the wish to hide what he felt.
“It’s only since it’s been made impossible that it’s been made so damned easy. It’s got like prohibition, with the bums and crooks making fortunes out of hooch, everyone who might have had a palate losing it, nobody caring how you hold your liquor, you’ve been smart enough if you get it at all. You can’t make good wine in a bathtub in the cellar, you need sun and rain and fresh air, you need a pride in the job you can tell the world about. Only you can live without drink if you have to, but you can’t live without love.”
Laurie said, “I know,” and then a little later, “Ralph, I’ve got to be alone for a bit, after I get back, and make up my mind about things.”
“Why? You’ll only get all tensed up again like you were before. I know what you’re like without me there; you’ll get into this morbid state when you think if you want something, then you shouldn’t have it.”
“No; I’ve got to find out what it is I really want. You said something once, it was at Sandy’s party; you said it isn’t what you are, it’s what you do with it.”
“At a party? Christ, I must have been stinking.”
“And just now in a different way you said it again. And it’s true, of course, and that’s how it is. I know what I am and I’ve got to think what to do with it. You’re not angry, are you?”
“No,” said Ralph quite quietly. “I’m not angry. But don’t be gone too long.”
Laurie knew, from a closeness that already seemed inevitable, what it was that he was resolving not to say.
“I won’t see Andrew again either, until I’ve decided something; that’s only fair.”
“Do what you feel, Spud. I wouldn’t have asked you, you know that.”
“No, I promise I won’t.” As soon as it was out of his mouth he knew he had been wrong. The feeling of justice had been an illusion, he had felt only the emotion of tenderness for Ralph’s pain, and a sentiment, strong but confused, born of all they had shared together, which had made him yield easily to a boyish sense of fair play and had blunted his adult perceptions. There was no real parallel between seeing Ralph and seeing Andrew; for Andrew’s cause was more than his own cause, and if he argued it, it would only be by the fact of being himself.
But it was done now; and as they were changing and collecting their things to leave, he felt that he wouldn’t recall his promise if he could. He couldn’t have borne to deliver Ralph so coolly to the pains of jealousy: at least he could be saved the tension and bitterness of feeling that everything was being won back from him in his absence by someone on the spot. Laurie thought: Yes, if we must part altogether that will be different, a clean cut, finis, the end. But with this thought in his mind he looked around the living room, at the swept hearth, the divan reassembled under its covers against the wall; and a memory, which had been imperceptibly transforming itself into an anticipation, gave a long sigh of protest and whispered, “Never again?”
14
IN THE BED WHERE the old man had died there was another one, who seemed to be having the same treatment for the same disease, and talked much more about it, his monologue from behind the screens making them, indeed, almost redundant. But the boy Mervyn was delighted at Laurie’s return, and he was glad that at the last moment he hadn’t forgotten.
“Here; I’ve brought you something for tea.”
“Coo. What a super birthday cake.”
“Wedding.”
“Go on. You been and got married?” Good manners struggled with disesteem in his face; it was a much better color, mauve-pink instead of blue.
“No—my mother has.” He could say it, he found, as if it were years ago, as indeed it seemed.
“No kidding, Spud?” He considered Laurie gravely, then said, with a mature kind of tact, “Have an acid drop.”
“Thanks very much. You look better.”
“I’ve been having the Wonder Drug. Honest. The doctor said. What sort of a night did you have last night?”
“What did you say?”
“I said what sort of a night did you have. You look kind of tired. I thought you might have had a noisy one, like what we had here.”
“Oh. Was there a raid?”
“Was there a raid? We had an incendiary right on the roof. One of the doctors put it out.”