While England Sleeps (17 page)

Astonishing, isn’t it, that given the fullness of my dance card, I still found time to go cottaging? How did I have the stamina for it? I ask myself now. But I was only twenty-two. I could come five or six times a day without trouble. And I needed sex for pleasure, sex for its own sake—something I wasn’t getting from either of my lovers.

I visited the lavatories in the afternoons, when Edward was at work, or in the evenings, after seeing Philippa. Sometimes even on the nights I spent with Edward. I’d tell him I felt restless, that I needed to have a walk and think about my novel, but in fact I’d steal over to Dartmoor Walk, a long narrow pathway that aligned Dartmoor Park and was a notorious homosexual meeting place. There were always good-looking men and boys lingering around Dartmoor Walk in the evenings. I’d find a partner (or two, or three), and we’d hoist each other over the fence into the dark murmuring treescape of the park, which was closed at night: the park with its gravel paths and soft animal stirrings. And what rare, elusive camaraderie we experienced during those moonlit escapades! We were boys lost in the forest, boys from a novel we’d read as boys. Treasure hunters. And the treasure was that rapture among the fallen leaves, sealed in its own moment, cocooned from the rush and whistle of time.

As for the engagement ring, I put it away. I locked it away in the locked drawer in my desk, the same drawer in which I kept the journal. It is a man’s delusion—never a woman’s—to think he can partition his life, like the famous bigamist who managed to juggle five wives in four cities for ten years without any of them catching on.

He must have been a very good liar, the bigamist—either that or his wives really loved him.

At first I made excuses when I went out with Philippa; then I stopped making excuses; then I not only stopped making excuses, I stopped even offering explanations. Edward, prideful creature that he was, never asked for any. We still made love, but less often, and only at his instigation. I think he realized this at a certain point and stopped instigating things in order to test if his hypothesis might be correct. Then we didn’t make love at all.

One night I arrived home from dining with Philippa to find him reading on the sofa. As soon as I walked in the door he dropped his book, stood, and put his arms around my waist; Philippa lingered in my mind and on my hands, however, so I told him I wasn’t feeling well and took to bed.

I was still awake when he climbed in with me an hour or so later. He did not touch me at first but instead lay flat on his back, his body as far away from mine as he could manage. Then I turned over; my foot brushed his. He must have taken this accidental contact as a signal, for a few seconds later he rolled over onto his side and put his arms around my chest. I neither said a word nor moved. I lay perfectly still while he pressed against me, nuzzled my neck, kissed my hairline. Finally he reached inside my pajamas, but my penis was shriveled and cold, as far indrawn as possible, and he pulled his hand away as if he’d been bit.

The next evening I dined with Philippa in an Indian restaurant. A young man with a rather elaborately coiffed mustache approached our table. Philippa’s face went red.

“Simon,” she said grimly.

“Philippa.”

“I must say it’s a surprise running into you here,” Philippa said after a pause. “I wouldn’t have thought this place nearly grand enough for you.”

“You know I like something hot now and then.”

She smiled and looked away. I coughed.

“Oh, forgive me. Simon Napier, Brian Botsford.”

I stood. “A pleasure,” Simon said manfully. He was taller than me by at least four inches and had absolutely immense hands, which led me to wonder about other parts of him. “I’ve certainly heard a lot about you,” Simon went on, looking into my eyes in a way that gave me an instant erection.

“And I about you,” I responded, wondering from whom he’d heard whatever he’d heard—and what it was. I doubted the source was Philippa, since as far as she’d let on she hadn’t kept up much contact with Simon.

“Well, I must be off. A friend’s waiting. Delightful to see you, Philippa—and to meet you, Brian.” Then he was gone, rushing toward a back table at which a pretty young woman sat playing with her rings.

“So that’s the famous Simon,” I said after he had left.

Philippa looked away. “He does rather enjoy scenes.”

“How long has it been since you last saw him?”

“What? Oh, let’s see—it was Saturday.”

“Saturday!”

“Yes, at Jane Caldicott’s drinks party—remember the one I told you about?”

“You didn’t mention Simon having been there.”

She shrugged. “Nothing much happened. It’s just a bit hard to resist Simon; he does have such a—such an air. I’m sure you recognized it.”

“Yes, I suppose I did.” I drummed the table.

“What, are you jealous?” Philippa laughed. “But don’t worry, we didn’t actually
sleep
together. Anyway, it was for old time’s sake, nothing more.”

I opened my mouth to say something more, then stopped myself. I had no right to complain.

“Well, Philippa, I suppose I’m just a bit more old-fashioned than you are,” I said. (One of the few
true
things I’d said in weeks.)

“You are quite charming,” Philippa said. “I could get used to you.” She patted my hand in a maternal way.

“Could you?”

“Oh, yes.”

Relief flushed my heart. “I’m glad to hear that,” I said. “I really am.”

Philippa smiled beneficently and fussed for something in her purse.

Aunt Constance rang. Did I have any news? “All in good time,” I said.

Edward, sitting across from me on the sofa, never took his eyes out of his book.

In the middle of the night, Edward woke me—his hands on my stomach. I knew what he wanted: a kiss, an embrace; reassurance. And I lay stone still. I couldn’t give it to him.

Eventually he took his hands away. His breathing—steady, anxious—kept me awake, however, so I got out of bed.

“Where are you going?” he called.

“Just to the sofa.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to keep you awake.”

I lay down on the sofa. I could hear him across the room thrashing, twisting. I closed my eyes, counted my breaths, fell eventually into a troubled sleep. Then it was morning; the bed was made; Edward had gone to work. I had an early date with Philippa in the evening, which required me to leave the flat an hour or so before he got home. (Uncharacteristically, I traveled by bus.) When I returned—well after midnight—he had already gone to bed. Once again I made my bed on the sofa. Once again I slept through his morning departure. Thus twenty-four hours passed in which we literally never spoke to each other.

The next night I dined with Philippa, then went cottaging, and didn’t get home until four in the morning. There Edward sat, fully dressed, on the edge of our caved-in bed. He had switched on all the lights in the flat, even the ceiling light. Under its cruel unflinching gaze every stain on the coverlet was illuminated: salmon spread and tea, mineral oil and snot and piss and spunk.

Edward looked up at me. In his lap he held his precious copy of
The Communist Manifesto
. A thin streak of blood ran down his cheek from where he’d cut himself shaving (shaving at this hour?), and sitting down next to him, I wiped it away with my finger, noticing how the blood illuminated, briefly, the coiled rings of identity around the tip.

“Edward,” I said.

“Where were you?”

“Out to dinner. We got to talking rather late, that’s all.”

“Late! It’s four in the bloody morning.”

I lifted the book from his lap, put it down on the bed, took his face in my hands and stroked his cheeks so that tears came into his eyes.

“What’s happening?” he asked, his voice hushed, desperate.

“Quiet,” I said, touching my lips to his forehead. “Everything’s fine.”

“What—”

I kissed him. I pushed him down on the bed, pulled his trousers and his drawers down, took the bottle of mineral oil from the drawer and smeared it over his cock and started rubbing. But his cock was soft, and when I lifted his legs and tried to bugger him, my cock was soft too and kept slipping out.

Finally I rolled off him. We lay like this for some minutes, quite still, our faces to opposite walls. He still had on his black socks, his shirt and tie and sweater.

“What is it I’ve done?” he asked after a while.

“You haven’t done anything.”

“Have I irritated you? Taken too much of your time?”

“No, of course not.”

“Is it that I had John Northrop up to tea? I’ve been thinking about that, and I’ve decided, really, perhaps I stepped out of bounds, this is your flat—”

“No!”

Brutal silence.

“Are you in love with someone else, then?”

I sat up. “What?”

“Are you? You must tell me if you are. You must.”

“Edward, what gave you that idea? Of course I’m not. And what’s ‘in love’ anyway? Are we ‘in love’?”

“I thought we were.”

“I never said it.”

“No, you didn’t, did you? So perhaps I was a bloody fool.”

I leaned away from him. “Edward—everyone has his own way of saying things. The point is, we’re still young, we’re too young to be—to be having this conversation. I need—
we
need—to be freer with each other.”

“Freer! You never let me go anywhere with you or do anything with you. More and more your life’s out there, while I sit in this bloody bed-sitter listening to the water pipes rattle.”

“Edward, you’re making too much of this. It’s natural that I should want to have my own social life. It has nothing to do with my feelings for you. Nothing.”

He looked away. It was as if he suddenly understood that we could talk and talk and it would do no good, because one of us was lying.

The blood on his face, I noticed, had started scabbing.

“Look, it’s late,” I said finally. “Let’s go to sleep.”

“As if that’s any solution.”

“I’m just going to wash.”

I went into the bathroom, where I ran the tap, splashed cold water on my face, examined it in the looking glass. This cannot be happening, I told the looking glass. I am altogether too young for this to be happening. Fuck off, the looking glass answered. You are not, and it is.

I went back in. During the interval Edward had unmade the bed and taken off the rest of his clothes. He was now lying, eyes clenched closed, body S-shaped, tightly packed beneath sheet and blanket.

Very quietly I picked up my pillow and tiptoed to the sofa.

As if it mattered. As if he weren’t watching my every move.

Chapter Nine

Of course, when the end came, it came hard, and suddenly.

First Philippa asked me to a weekend at her family’s house in Oxfordshire. Two of her younger sisters would be there, she said, as well as some school friends.

Thinking that this would be an ideal opportunity to make my marriage proposal, I accepted immediately. (Edward, I’d decided, I would deal with only once I’d received Philippa’s answer.)

With great trepidation I told Edward “a friend” had invited me to the country, but by this time he’d become so used to my going off without him that instead of becoming angry he reacted with a kind of glum resignation. “And what weekend would that be?” was all he asked.

“This next one.”

Suddenly his expression changed. “But, Brian, that’s the Friday you promised you’d come to Upney for dinner! If you don’t, it’ll break Sarah’s heart!”

I reassured him that as I wasn’t expected at my friend’s until lunchtime on Saturday, there would be no need to cancel the dinner with his family.

“All right, then,” he answered in a tone that suggested he’d have been happier if I
had
canceled and thus given him a good reason to be cross with me.

We took the tube out to Upney on Friday evening. It had not been such a long time since our last District Line journey together—Edward scrubbed and nervous, me stinking of Aunt Constance’s cheeses.
Then
I’d been eager; now I only wanted the dinner over and done with, and Edward could tell. So we just sat there, side by side, not speaking.

After a long time we pulled into Upney station. We got off. Once again Edward led me along the circuitous network of small, drab streets that led to his home. Everything was as I remembered, except that now it was almost Christmas, so wreaths and nativity scenes had been set up in front windows, hesitant displays that suggested a fear of “putting on airs,” as if Christmas belonged, by rights, only to other streets, better neighborhoods.

At Lil’s house we hung our coats on the coatrack. This time the never-seen dog did not bark. Perhaps he had gone to Walthamstow with Headley and Pearlene. (Two weeks before, their mother had finally come back from Glasgow and reclaimed them.) We slunk into the kitchen, and Lil—overburdened and influenzaed the last time we’d met—stepped forward from the stove, the picture of womanly vigor. She had her blond hair neatly done up in a bun, had rouged her cheeks, and wore a clean white apron over a black frock. Real or fake, the pearls that rested contentedly on her bosom seemed to confirm the old myth that the oils of a woman’s skin will give to those jewels a special luster. She kissed me with a warmth that suggested Edward had told her nothing of our troubles, then sat me down at the table with a glass of sherry. Across from me, silent Sarah furiously peeled potatoes. Someone had taken a curling iron to her flat brown hair, which now scalloped upward in large, artificial-looking waves. Sarah too had makeup on, though applied in a childish and inexpert way, as well as incongruous seahorse-shaped earrings that weighted down the lobes of her ears. She wore a brown party dress patterned with bluebells. When I said hello she blushed furiously and continued peeling.