While England Sleeps (11 page)

Edward kissed me. The record stopped. I bent onto my knees, I started kissing his chest, his stomach, going further down . . .What I wanted to do I knew was depraved. I should have been thinking, It will shock Edward, he’ll run screaming away . . . but his indrawn breaths, as I kissed his body, encouraged me, and then there was his cock, hard and springy as a mushroom, the tip pearled with glistening dew, just inches from my lips. God knows I felt ashamed—really, I thought, I should go and hand myself over to the sexologists right away—and so I started making my way back up his stomach, toward his mouth, but he pushed my head down again, and said, “Do it,” his voice raspy.

“Edward, do you know—”

“Do it.” There was need and anger in his voice. He pulled my head toward him; the tip of his cock skidded my teeth. I took it in. His cock ballooned, Edward jolted and shuddered and came without warning, suddenly flooding my mouth with his semen, warm and slightly thickened and tasting a bit like a sauce of milk and flour that has had too much salt added to it. Then he pulled back, he dropped to his knees, his chest shivering, his eyes huge and hungry, and ran his fingers through my hair and, kissing me, sucked his own sperm from my mouth, licked the spillage off my face, so that I knew there was no limit, no distance we could not go with each other.

I ran into John Northrop one afternoon at the grocer’s. To my amazement, he recognized me, though whether from school or from the meeting he’d presided over, I couldn’t be sure.

Northrop, as I recalled, was from Shropshire, and physically he was a proper Shropshire lad, right out of Housman: big, blond, hale, though the muscle that braced his huge chest and abdomen was running to fat, no doubt the result of one too many beers. Irretrievably heterosexual, too. And yet there was something both sexy and reassuring about his bearishness. You felt you could trust him to do something absolutely filthy to you without causing permanent damage.

He suggested a pint, and I accepted. “I’ve been following your career since school,” he told me, once we were settled at the pub with our beers. “Oh, I know, you’re thinking, That Northrop, he’s probably illiterate, but the fact is I do read a novel here and there, or a short story in a magazine. And God knows your friend Nigel Dent’s become famous enough lately, not only with his piano-playing, but also those letters he writes for the newspaper. Where is he now?”

“Utrecht.”

“Fellows like you, with a talent for the word, I don’t have to tell you, you’re just what the Brigade needs. Those pamphlets we’re always publishing, for example. I always say they really could be something, if only those leftist hacks knew the first bloody thing about putting one word after another. I’m no exception. Oh, yes, stand me in front of a podium and I can whip a room into a frenzy. But ask me to write a pamphlet? I’m a wreck. I tear my hair. I throw the typewriter out the window.” He laughed, shook his head, took a sip of his beer. “Now, if we had fellows like you and Dent writing, that could make a difference.”

“I’d have to think about it,” I said.

“Of course,” Northrop said. “By the way, are you still planning on going over to Spain? Things are getting pretty hot over there, let me tell you. The stakes get higher every day.” He lowered his voice. “I did notice you didn’t sign up at the end, at that meeting. You left with that other fellow instead. Young fellow.”

“Yes?”

“Friend of yours?”

“He shares my digs.”

“What’s his job?”

“Works at the tube station. He’s a ticket taker.”

Northrop smiled broadly. “You see? You’re a Communist already! By asking that young fellow to share your rooms, you challenged bourgeois complacency.” He raised his glass in a toast. “Balls to the class system, I say! Workers of the world, unite!”

“Cheers,” I said.

Northrop coughed.

“So why didn’t you sign up, in the end?” he asked next.

“I suppose I got cold feet,” I admitted. “I mean, really, men like you and me—what do we know about battle? All the fighting we’ve ever done was on cricket fields.”

“They say once a gun’s in your hand you’re a soldier,” Northrop said.

“I suppose you’ll be going over.”

“Oh, yes. And I’ll tell you why. Because someday, when all of this is over, among those of us who are lucky enough to survive, there’s going to be a reckoning. We’re going to look each other over and say, Where were you when the chips were down? What did you do? And when that day comes, I want to be able to answer, I fought. I risked my life and fought, and I’m proud to have done it, no matter if I’m legless or eyeless or like that fellow in the novel by Hemingway.” His teeth gleamed. “Sometime in the next two years someone’s going to change the world. Someone’s got to. What’s at stake is whether it’s going to be us.”

Grimly I stared into the dregs of my beer.

“Spain’s our chance. I intend to be there even if I have to die there.”

“And if we lose?”

He looked away.

“We won’t lose,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“We can’t afford to,” Northrop said. “
They
can afford to. They can always afford to.”

I looked at the clock. “Gosh, Northrop,” I said, “it’s been wonderful chatting with you, but I’ve got to run. The market’ll be closing in half an hour.”

I thrust some coins at him. He didn’t refuse them.

“Think about what I said,” Northrop called to me as I headed out the door.

“Oh, I will,” I said. “You can count on that.”

“And mention it to Dent as well, if you see him! I’d love to have the chance to chat with him next time he’s in London; did you see that piece of his in
The Gramophone
?
Quite extraordinary.”

“I’ll pass on your regards,” I muttered grimly, wondering why I hadn’t realized all along it was Nigel he was really after.

Aunt Constance got me a job, tutoring a cretinous fat child with bulbous lips and just the faintest trace of a mustache. The child was stupid and had an obnoxious habit of parroting its parents’ views—“It’s the opinion of my father that only the lazy and useless are unemployed,” etc. Still, that same father paid well, and as the child had as little interest in learning as I had in teaching, our afternoons together, while always dull, were never strenuous.

The child—I forget its name—left at four. Then, around five-thirty, Edward came home, bearing groceries. We drank our tea, he washed up, we made love. We almost always made love in the afternoon, Edward and I. Rarely at night, when shadows claimed the furniture, and a mysterious softness enveloped the bleach-cleaned atmosphere of the flat. Never in the morning, even though, as is usual with young men, we woke with erections. Either the sun was too merciless; or we had overslept and Edward was late for work; or we were hesitant to kiss until we’d brushed our teeth, at which point we found ourselves awake, our minds on other things.

No, the tea hour was our time: the hour, in England, for starched collars and crumpets. How thrilling and dirty it was to strip off at five in the afternoon, to stand naked and hard in the immodest light, while upstairs our lady neighbors spread their toast with Marmite and spoke of the Royal Family! I liked to fuck Edward against a particular wall where the sun came down in louvered columns. Bars of light bisected his rump while he leaned there, hands in the air, his mouth against the wallpaper. As cooking smells wandered in from neighboring flats, I’d take him like that, bugger him relentlessly, until he came in a wet patch against the wall. It was always dark by then. Half naked, I’d rush to the kitchen for a cloth to wipe up the stain. Then we’d clean ourselves off, turn on the wireless and cook supper.

It is curious to me, in retrospect, that though I fucked him routinely, Edward showed little interest in doing the same to me. I wondered about this. I never had been buggered, although once I’d experimented with a carrot from the larder—the sensation I recalled most vividly, from that attempt, was numbing cold. And certainly I hadn’t experienced anything like the paroxysms of pleasure that claimed Edward, those afternoons against the wall—paroxysms so intense I couldn’t help but wonder what I might be missing. A carrot, after all, is not a cock—at least, judging from the way Edward carried on.

One afternoon we were horsing around on the bed. I lifted my arse in the air and just stayed like that. At first Edward seemed taken aback. He did nothing. Then he wrestled me around onto my stomach.

Another time, when he came home from work, I arranged myself against the wall where I fucked him, in much the same position he usually assumed. “Doing stretching exercises?” he asked as he headed into the kitchen to pour himself some tea. “Stretching exercises, yes,” I said. If indeed Edward understood what I was trying to tell him, it appeared he was not going to let on. Indeed, I couldn’t help but wonder if, having discovered in me a dependable source of pleasure, he feared lest I should become so addicted to the joys of taking it up the bum that I’d lose my interest in “being the man” for him.

In those days I enjoyed an active social life. There seems to be so much to do when one is young! Dinner parties, salons,
soirées . . .
A wealthy dowager who enjoyed the company of clever homosexuals invited me regularly to her Thursday afternoons, and I usually went, if for nothing else then for the food, which was good and plentiful. Then there were those little suppers concocted by my Cambridge chums—clumsy, drunken evenings where one ate spaghetti off mismatched plates, standing up in the kitchen, and argued politics. And I had other friends, wealthy friends like Rupert, who hosted balls at country estates where the lawns glistened wetly and hundred-year-old carp swam in the ponds. These activities I relished—I think all writers do, trapped as we are most of the day in the solitary confinement of our brains. Indeed, until he came to live at my flat, it never occurred to me that Edward’s arrival might curtail them. Now, however, with each invitation I received, I found myself obliged to make a choice: should I bring Edward along (and in so doing offer our relationship up for public scrutiny)? Should I continue going out alone (and risk hurting him)? Or should I simply stop going out altogether?

I confess that for the first few weeks I opted for the third, and easiest, alternative. It hardly felt like a sacrifice; my relationship with Edward was still so new that even the most alluring proposal paled in comparison to the prospect of a night alone with him. The bloom, however, must eventually fade from every love affair, even the most durable, and ours was no exception. I remember waking one morning feeling just the slightest tinge of boredom, like a child who balks at having to eat the same thing day after day for breakfast; a satiation, if you will; the tiniest, most tentative bud of wanderlust . . . Then I knew it would be only a matter of time before the invitation arrived that was just too tempting to pass up.

It came soon enough. One afternoon, out of the blue, Louise Haines, with whom I had been friends in Germany, rang up. I was delighted and surprised, not having seen or heard from her in almost two years.

“Darling, how
are
you?” she exclaimed in her signature raspy contralto. “I’ve just arrived a week ago. I’ve been dying to call you, of course, but you know how things are—so much to do. Yes, I’m here with friends from Paris, and there’s been just all of London to show them, and then on Saturday, of course, I had to go to Ruislip to visit Mother—too trying! Can you ever forgive me? Now, you must meet us tonight at the Savoy. Seven-thirty. No, I shall
not
take no for an answer; we’re going to the most
fabulous
party—it’s in an opium den.”

It was already four-thirty. I had spent the morning trying to write, the afternoon with my horrifying pupil; Edward wasn’t due back for another two hours, and when he arrived, what would we do? Drink tea, read, have a fuck . . . It all seemed, suddenly, so boring, so cozy and domestic! (How angrily I thought those words, not knowing a day would come—this one—when cozy domesticity would be the thing I longed for most!)

I had a bath and shaved, wondering the whole time how I might best resolve the situation. What if I brought Edward along? I tried to envision the group that would result—me, Louise, her undoubtedly very sophisticated Paris friends, and Edward, in his ungainly, ugly, too-small suit. Surely he would throw the rhythm off, make everyone uncomfortable. They would look down on him, which would pain me—and Edward as well. On the other hand, he might regard the evening as a grand adventure; Louise might find him rustic, charming; her Parisian friends might flirt with him .
.
.

No, under either circumstance, it would never do.

I put on a suit and brilliantined my hair—I looked quite dapper, I thought—then headed down to the station to have a talk with Edward and catch the train.

“Well, what a surprise,” he said when he saw me. “Are you going out somewhere, then?”

“I’m afraid so. Remember I told you about my friend Louise? Well, she’s come into town on the spur of the moment. I’m to meet her at the Savoy, and then we’re going to a party.”

A whole spectrum of emotions passed over Edward’s face as he realized I wouldn’t be inviting him along: regret, anxiety, jealousy, anger, envy.

“All right, then,” he said. “I was wondering why you were so dressed up.”