The Master (14 page)

‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that every moth in New Hampshire has visited this shrine. It looks as though it came with the founding fathers.’

‘Is your cousin Minny wise?’ Holmes asked.

‘Yes, she is,’ Henry said.

‘In that case, I am sure she has found us another room.’

Henry went to the small window and looked out. The day was still bright and the smell of pine filled the air.

‘In the meantime,’ he turned to Holmes laughing, ‘I don’t mind if you don’t, as the lady said when the puppy dog licked her face.’

‘It is, I fear, going to be a long month,’ Holmes said.

M
INNY AND TWO
of her sisters were sitting on chairs on the back lawn when their cousin and his friend arrived. Henry was deeply conscious now of what
Minny must look like to Holmes. She was not beautiful, he thought, until she spoke, or until she smiled. And then she managed a sympathy for her company and exuded a deep seriousness and a high
good humour at the same time. Henry instantly thought that Holmes preferred her two sisters, Kitty and Elly, who were more conventionally pretty, more polite and shy than their sister.

As soon as they sat down, Henry noticed that Holmes became a military man, a Civil War veteran who had seen many battles and come close to death. Suddenly, military tactics were no longer a
joke. The three Temple girls, whose brother William had been killed in the war, and their great-aunt stared at the soldier sadly and admiringly. Henry watched Minny carefully to see if all
Holmes’s talk impressed her as much as it seemed to, but she gave nothing away.

After supper the two young men walked back to their room, happy with the news that Minny had found them other quarters to which they could move when John Gray arrived. Holmes was in good
spirits; he had enjoyed the girls’ company and knew that he had a receptive audience, young and graceful and cheerful, for the duration of his stay. He made jokes and laughed, working out
further methods of unsettling the landlord and winning the battle for the extra bed.

Neither of them had discussed how they would actually sleep, whether one of them would try the floor, or whether they would sleep head to toe, or alongside each other. Henry knew that Holmes
would decide, and he lingered at the window while he waited for him to do so. Holmes, in the meantime, made brave efforts to light the lamp.

When it was lit, the room, in all its spareness and its shadows, seemed larger, more inviting; the quilt took on a new radiance. Holmes became serious, as though he were concentrating hard on a
difficult subject. He moved to the basin with a bar of soap and a towel he had taken from his bag. He poured water from the jug into the basin and then quickly undressed until he was naked. Henry
was surprised at how large-boned and strong Holmes seemed, almost fleshy in the quivering, shadowy light. For a second, as his friend remained still, he could have been a statue of a young man,
tall and muscular. As Henry watched him, he forgot his moustache and his craggy features. He had never imagined he would see him like this. He supposed undressing as Holmes had done meant nothing
to someone who had been a soldier for so long. Yet surely he knew that it was different, in the silence of the night in this strange, bare room, to undress completely in front of his friend? Henry
studied his strong legs and buttocks, the line of his spine, his delicate bronzed neck. He wondered if Holmes would put his underwear back on before he went to bed. He too began to undress, and he
was almost naked when Holmes opened the window and flung out the dirty, soapy water. Holmes replaced the basin and walked naked to the bed, moving the lamp close to him.

Henry did not know if Holmes was watching him as he stood, naked now, at the basin. He was acutely conscious of himself, lacking the ease and confidence which Holmes had just displayed. He
washed himself slowly, and when Holmes spoke to him he half turned to find his friend lying in the bed with his hand behind his head.

‘I hope you don’t snore. We had a way of dealing with people who snored.’

Henry tried to smile and turned away. When he had dried himself and thrown the water out of the window, he knew that he would have to turn and that Holmes was now nonchalantly and casually
watching him. He was embarrassed and still did not know if Holmes expected him to lie naked in the bed beside him. He was unsure if he should ask if this was the plan.

‘Can you put out the lamp?’ Henry asked.

‘Are you shy?’ Holmes asked, but he did not put the lamp out.

Henry turned and moved slowly towards the bed with his towel hanging loosely over his shoulder, half covering his torso. Holmes’s eyes were amused and involved. As Henry dropped the towel,
Holmes leaned over and turned off the lamp.

They lay side by side without speaking. Henry could feel the bone of his pelvis hitting against Holmes. He wondered if he could suggest moving to the bottom of the bed but somehow, he
understood, Holmes had taken control and silently withheld permission for him to make any suggestions. He could hear his own breathing and sense his own heart beating as he closed his eyes and
turned his back on Holmes.

‘Goodnight,’ he said.

‘Goodnight,’ Holmes replied. Holmes did not turn but lay flat on his back. To make sure that he did not fall out of the bed, Henry had to move closer to him, but then moved away,
keeping near the edge, yet still touching Holmes, who lay impassive.

He wondered if he would ever again be so intensely alive. Every breath, every hint that Holmes might move, or even the idea that Holmes too was awake, burned in his mind. There was no
possibility of sleeping. Holmes, he thought, must have his arms folded on his chest, and there was no sound from him. His very immobility suggested that he was lying awake and alert. Henry longed
to know if Holmes were as conscious as he was of their bodies touching, or if he lay there casually, unaware of the mass of coiled heat which lay up against him. The following day they would move
to other rooms, so it would not be like this again for them. It had not been planned, and Henry had put no thought into it until he had seen Holmes by lamplight moving naked at the washstand. Even
now if there was a choice, if another bed became available, he would go there instantly, creep out of here through the darkness. Nonetheless, he felt his powerlessness as a kind of ease. He was
content not to move or speak, and he would feign sleep if he needed to do so. He knew that his remaining still and his silence left Holmes free, and he waited to see what Holmes would do, but
Holmes did not move.

Since leaving Boston with Holmes he had felt a strange lack of tension and this had remained with him all evening. He knew what it was. William was not with them, having gone on a scientific
expedition to Brazil. His older brother’s absence had, he knew, lightened things for him, removed a source of pressure which often became oppression, however mild. Holmes was William’s
friend, a year older than William, yet Holmes had none of William’s ability to undermine him, or allow him to feel that every word he said, or every gesture, would be open to censure, or
correction, or mockery.

Now suddenly Holmes moved towards the centre of the bed. His movement seemed to Henry like an act of will and not the unconscious movement of a man in his sleep. Quickly, without leaving himself
time to think, Henry edged his way closer to Holmes, and they lay thus without stirring for some time. He could feel Holmes’s breathing presence, his large bony frame, close to him now, but
he was careful to keep his breathing as shallow and quiet as he could.

When Holmes turned away from him, as he did now as suddenly as he had turned before, Henry realized that it would be his fate to lie here through the night, his mind racing, with this figure
beside him, who was perhaps unaware of him, used to the company of men at close quarters. Holmes had, he now believed, fallen asleep. Henry did not know whether he was disappointed or relieved, but
he wished he too could fall unconscious so that he would not have to think again until morning.

After a time, however, he became sure that Holmes was not sleeping. As they lay back to back he could feel the carefully tensed presence against him. He waited, knowing it was inevitable that
Holmes would turn, inevitable that something would occur to break this silent, slow, deadlocked game they were playing. Holmes, he felt, was as consciously involved as he was in what might
happen.

He was not surprised then when Holmes turned and cupped him with his body and placed one hand against his back and the other on his shoulder. He knew not to turn or move, but he sought to make
clear at the same time that this did not imply resistance. He remained still as he had done all along, but subtly he eased himself more comfortably into the shape of Holmes, closing his eyes and
allowing his breath to come as freely as it would.

He dozed and woke briefly and dozed again. When he woke finally, the room was bright with sunshine, and what surprised him now, with Holmes already awake, was how unafraid his friend was to
catch his eye or come close to him again. He imagined that what had happened between them belonged to the secret night, the privacy that darkness brought. He knew that this would never be mentioned
between them, nor mentioned by either of them to anybody else, and so he presumed that daylight would make all the difference to them. Also, he knew enough about what Holmes had been through in the
war to know that he had stared evenly at death, had suffered painful injuries, and, more importantly, at the ages of twenty-one and twenty-two had learned a steely fearlessness. Henry had not
supposed that this fearlessness could make its way so completely into the private realm, but it did so now in this rented room in New Hampshire in the bright morning.

By eleven the two men were washed and dressed, their luggage repacked, their landlord paid, and they were ready to present themselves at the court of the Temple sisters. They sat once more on
the chairs on the back lawn and made plans for walks and outings. As the tea was served and the conversation began, Henry felt as though he had been dipped in something; what had happened lingered
as an obsession importunate to all his senses; it lived now in every moment and in every object; it made everything but itself irrelevant and tasteless. It came to him so powerfully as he drank his
tea and listened to his cousins that he had to remind himself that it was not still in progress, and a new day had begun with a new day’s duties.

As time went by, he noticed that Minny was remaining apart from the plans and seemed unusually quiet and reserved. He spoke to her alone when the others were busy with further talk and
laughter.

‘I did not sleep,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I did not sleep.’

He smiled at her, relieved that her distance from them was something which could be rectified.

‘And did you sleep?’ she asked.

‘It was not easy,’ he said. ‘The bed was not comfortable, but we managed. Despite the bed perhaps, rather than because of it.’

‘The famous bed!’ She laughed.

W
HEN
J
OHN
G
RAY
arrived that afternoon, Henry noticed that Holmes, who, even in the short time away from other soldiers, had lost some of his military
glow, now continued his role as the veteran of a war, and Gray did everything possible to complement that role and take it on, indeed, himself. They were led to an old farmhouse a few miles from
the Temples’ quarters where each of them was given an attic room by a friendly young farmer’s wife. The floorboards creaked and the beds were old and the ceilings were low but the fare
was reasonable and the husband, when he appeared, offered to ferry the young gentlemen through the neighbourhood should they require transport. Indeed, he added in a friendly, earnest tone, should
they require anything at all, he would provide it if he could at the most reasonable rates in all of North Conway.

Thus began their holidays, the two men of action settling into the world of easy civilian life. It was a little realm of relaxed and happy interchange, of unrestricted conversation, with
liberties taken while delicacies were observed, allowing the discussion of a hundred human and personal things as the American summer drew out to its last generosity.

Henry basked in the afterglow of his introduction to North Conway. It played for him the part of a treasure kept at home in safety and sanctity, something he was sure of finding in its place
each time he returned to it. He watched his friends, waiting for a pattern to emerge, conscious that he wanted his two fellow guests to appreciate Minny Temple as he did, to differentiate her from
her two sisters, sweet and charming as they were, knowing that Minny was the glittering spirit among them. He found himself silently promoting her, attempting also in various small ways to quicken
their appreciation of her. When he saw Holmes engaging with her, he felt deeply implicated in what passed between them, and wanted nothing more than to witness their growing interest in one
another.

Gray’s tone was dry; in his regiment and in his own domestic setting he had obviously been listened to a good deal, and his study of the law now added to his language a Latinate vocabulary
of which he grew fonder as the days went on. He had much to say about books, and each day would cross his legs and clear his throat and talk to the ladies about Trollope, how droll and excellently
drawn his characters were, how fascinating his situations, how strong his grasp of the rich public life of his country, what a pity no American novelist had emerged who could compete with him.

‘But does he,’ Minny interjected, ‘does he understand the real intricacies of the human heart? Does he understand the great mystery of our existence?’

‘You have asked two questions, and I will answer them separately,’ Gray said. ‘Trollope writes with precision and feeling about love and marriage. Yes, I can assure you of
that. Now, the second question is rather different. Trollope, I believe, would take the view that it is the function of the preacher and the theologian, the philosopher and perhaps the poet, but
emphatically not that of the novelist, to deal with what you call “the great mystery of our existence”. I would tend to agree with him.’