“You see,” he said, “two chairs. Which shall we sit on?”
They were huge overstuffed ones covered in tapestry. Ralph sat on the arm beside him. “All right, Spud, all right. I know this is going to be difficult. Just be quiet for a minute. It’s been so long.”
It wasn’t what Laurie had planned. There had not been time to discover, till now, the sensation of coming home again which is one of the more stable by-products of physical love. One can see sometimes in a crowded railway carriage at night two lovers, lethargic, travel-grimed, and bored, weary beyond the dimmest stirrings of desire, but by instinct comfortably adapting their bodies to cushion and support each other, making a little refuge from the crush while the strangers or even friends around them rub elbows and knees, stiff with apologetic constraint and inward resentment. It was with almost a shock that, after a minute or two, Laurie felt Ralph get up abruptly and move away. He crossed over to the other chair and said, “All right, then, Spud, let’s have it. Well, come along, shoot.”
Wakened harshly out of the illusion that the conversation which had just taken place had somehow explained everything, Laurie now realized that since the moment of entering the room he had scarcely uttered a word.
Stumblingly, he began saying the things he had planned. But much of it seemed impossible now, much had to be qualified or softened; there was much that he could no longer imagine having ever meant to say. “Ralph, don’t ever think it was because I didn’t care enough. I—”
“Don’t be silly, Spud. I know you love me, and so do you.”
Laurie looked up. Ralph’s blue eyes were fixed on his face, but not in doubt or entreaty. They were watching him: closely, carefully, with absolute concentration. He understood now how sentimental and unreal had been his picture of Ralph as a passive victim whom his rejection would instantly crush. He was looking into the face of a resolute quick-thinking man used to authority, to measuring other men’s strength and asserting his own, to a swift reaction in moments of danger. He stood on the bridge now, going into action: and, as long as Laurie’s resolution held, it was he who was the enemy.
“Don’t waste time, Spud. It’s childish to start an argument about whether we love each other, the moment I go and sit on the other side of the room. Get down to brass tacks. What does all this rigmarole add up to, really? You met me at Sandy’s party and you can’t forget it. You surely don’t still think I went there for the conversation, do you?”
He waited, as if expecting a reply; a disciplinary trick so old and simple that no doubt he was scarcely aware of using it.
“I went because I was on the town, like everyone else in the room. Yes, that includes Alec too, you don’t know as much about Alec as you think. Surely Sandy told you it was a queer party before you went there; you knew what it meant?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I don’t just mean that queers would be there. A queer party: something between a lonely hearts club and an amateur brothel. You expected that, didn’t you?”
Much of that evening had been a surprise to Laurie, but he didn’t want to sound pious, so he said, “Yes.”
“And are you going to tell me you’d have gone yourself if you’d been happy and satisfied, even if you did know I’d be there?”
“Yes. I’d have gone to see you.”
“Would you, Spud?” Ralph’s face had softened; there was a kind of respect in it too. “After all those years. Yes; I expect you would.”
He lit two cigarettes, gave Laurie one, and stood for a while looking down at him in silence.
“I’m not romantic,” he began. From his lack of emphasis Laurie saw that he believed this to be true. “When I saw you lying on the deck in all the muck and dunnage, I don’t know what I felt, really. You had a two-day beard, you were dirty, you smelt worse than the others because your wound was going bad. I suppose you stood to me for something or other. When you sent me up, I was almost too busy to think about it at the time; but it seemed to sink in later, when I was lying in hospital with nothing to do. So I wrote, because one can’t swear to every impression one picks up on a day like that, and I wanted to settle it one way or another. When I heard you were dead, it seemed inevitable, somehow. And after that, so did everything else.”
He had spoken in the intent, rather muddled way of a man who is defining his thoughts to himself as he goes along. He had done better for himself, it seemed, than he wanted; for when he saw Laurie’s face his own hardened at once.
“Well, that’s past history.” He added, with the clear colorless decision that told nothing, except that the subject was closed, “You can leave that out of it. None of that could happen again.” Laurie remembered suddenly the contempt with which he had gazed down at Sandy on the bathroom floor.
“I wasn’t thinking that.”
“Well, seeing some of the things you do think …” As if it were unnatural for him to meet an emergency except on his feet, he took a quick turn across the room, came back to the hearth, and stood there, poised to move again, looking out across Laurie’s head. Laurie could feel how the walls of the room were cramping his eyes. He looked at him, measuring his own resolve against Ralph’s courage and his pride, and scarcely realizing that there had been a subtle reorientation. He was feeling now that if he weakened Ralph would respect him less.
Suddenly Ralph smiled, and came back across the room again. As if for the exchange of confidences, he settled himself cozily on the chair-arm. His voice wasn’t insistent any longer, but intimate, reassuring, a voice Laurie remembered all too well. “Relax, Spuddy. Don’t be so tense. How you like to make things difficult, don’t you? We weren’t long enough together, that’s where the trouble is. Dashing off after a few hours and leaving you to mill over all the reaction and everything by yourself. This bloody war! It won’t always be like that. I like you the way you are, Spud; why would I want to make you less yourself? I’m not attracted to people I can push around.”
Laurie gathered himself together with a hard, unwilling effort; it felt like dragging oneself up from a warm sea onto a harsh rocky shore. He said, “But you’re trying to do it now.”
Looking at Ralph’s face he saw how quickly the man on the bridge resumed command. “No. You’re about to make a decision. I’m putting the facts on which you’ve to make it.”
With painful determination Laurie said, “Half the facts. You don’t know the other half.”
Ralph was silent for a moment; but his face hardly altered. He said quietly, “That’s true; I’m putting the half I know. But I’ve a right to do that.”
“Yes,” said Laurie. “I know you have.”
“Spud,” said Ralph softly, “you break me up when you look like that. What are we fighting over? What nonsense it all is.”
“Sometimes I—I wish there were nothing else but this. But—”
“Spud.”
“But there is, and if I don’t do what seems right to me, it won’t be any good in the end.”
“And if you do, and it turns out to be wrong, that won’t be any good either. I can do with a drink, and I should think you could.”
The bottles had become respectable in a fumed-oak sideboard. Laurie realized that a drink was what he needed badly. While Ralph was seeing to it he looked around at the thick Turkey carpet, the crushed-velvet curtains, the coal fire and brass fender, the patent convertible divan. But he had guessed already that Ralph had been sharing the rent of Bunny’s room and had added the attic when Bunny’s personality got too pervasive; this, no doubt, was costing him less. It was strange how dim, how dead-and-done-with, Bunny seemed.
“Isn’t it a fantasy?” said Ralph. “The love-nest of a city councillor, is my guess.”
Laurie looked at the room again, and couldn’t help laughing. “They called each other Mr. Potter and Miss Smith in bed, like people in an Arno drawing. What were the pictures like?”