Dulce Et Decorum Est (Naughty or Nice) (5 page)

George felt rather overcome by Matthew’s kindness—he’d in fact been worrying about that a good deal. “That’s very decent of you,” he said inadequately.

“Not at all. I don’t suppose anyone will want to talk about that sort of thing in any case—Christmas is a time for being happy, not sad.” Matthew was silent a moment. “I’m so glad you’re coming down with me.”

“I—well, thank you for inviting me,” George said. He was painfully conscious of Matthew’s hand still resting on his knee but simultaneously aware that his friend could mean nothing by it. They were in a carriage full of people, for Heaven’s sake! Still, he felt a wrenching sense of loss when, after a moment, Matthew withdrew.

T
HE
rectory, when they finally reached it by taxi from the station, was an imposing old building set in a large garden. It all looked exceedingly well kept up, suggesting the Reverend Connaught was not quite the poor country parson George had been expecting. Any questions as to whether Matthew’s father depended entirely on the Church for his income would, however, have been fearfully impolite, so George could only conjecture.

As so often, Matthew appeared to read his friend’s mind. “Father was the only son, so by rights he shouldn’t have gone into the Church at all. But the old man has a genuine vocation for it, so my grandfather relented in the end. Father’s always encouraged my brothers and me to make our own way in the world and not rely upon any prospective inheritance. He says he intends to live to a ripe old age and keep us all waiting in any case! I hope he does,” Matthew added in a quieter tone, his hand on George’s shoulder proof he hadn’t forgotten his friend’s loss. “I should hate to lose him.”

The Reverend being occupied with a crib service for the village children, it was the lady of the house who welcomed them. Matthew’s mother was an unusually tall woman, thin as a beanpole and as energetic as a whippet. She greeted her son with a kiss that left him with powder on his shoulder and a faint lipstick mark on his cheek. She then proceeded to bestow the same honor upon George, rather to his discomfort. “Welcome to our home, dear. So glad that Matthew’s found such a good friend in London—a mother does worry so, particularly when—”

“Mother!”

“Sorry, darling. Now, was your journey all right, George? I may call you George, mayn’t I? And you must call me Evelyn, of course.”

“Oh, ah, fine, thank you,” George said, not quite certain which question he was answering.

“Now, Agnes and her husband have got her old room, so I’ve put you two in Jimmy’s room—I hope that’s all right with you, George?—and Jimmy’s sleeping in with Peter.”

“Is Agnes here already, Mother?”

“No, she and Gerald are motoring down and won’t be with us until tea time. Now, why don’t you two boys go hang your things in your room, and I’ll go and chase up some tea?”

They escaped up the stairs. “Sorry about that,” Matthew murmured under his breath. “I forget how overwhelming she can be if you’re not used to her. This way.”

The room he led George to was large and cheerful-looking, and very tidy. It held twin beds—“I used to share with Jimmy, before I left home,” Matthew explained. “Really, it should have been he and Peter, I suppose, as they’re the youngest, but we were all quite happy this way. Actually, I had the devil of a time when first I moved out, getting used to not nodding off to someone else’s snores!”

George nodded sympathetically. “I know what you mean—after sleeping in the dorm all term, I always found it rather eerie to have a room to myself in school holidays.” Having made this rare, unguarded reference to his past, George tensed, sure that Matthew would take the opportunity to enquire as to which school he’d attended.

But Matthew simply smiled at him and said, “Come on, now—let’s get our things sorted out and go and have some tea. I’m spitting feathers, as Mrs. Mac would say!”

By the time they returned downstairs, more guests had arrived: a tall, cheerful-looking man with dark hair and a moustache who was just divesting himself of a motoring coat, and a very pregnant young lady in a cloche hat. Matthew greeted them with a fond cry. “Aggie! Gerald, old man! Good Lord, Aggie—look at you! You’re the size of a small house!”

“You know, Matthew, dear,” the lady said, striding forward and pulling off her gloves to give her brother an awkward hug, “most people just offer congratulations and enquire when the happy event is expected.” Close up, George could see that she had Matthew’s sparkling blue eyes and ready smile.

“Oh, I’m sure there’s some ordinance exempting brothers from all that sort of thing. But when
is
it due? By the look of you, we should be sending for the midwife without delay—and then getting ready to saddle the poor infant with one of those dreadful Christmas names, like Noel or Emmanuel. And by the by, I am extremely cross that you’ve kept this such a secret from me!” He didn’t, of course, look in the least cross—in fact he was as flushed with pleasure as if it were the birth of his own child he were anticipating and not his sister’s.

“I just couldn’t resist surprising you, I’m afraid,” Agnes admitted with a dimpled smile that made her appear barely old enough to be married, although Matthew had told George she was only three years younger than he. “And anyway, I’m not as far along as all that.” She shot her husband a fond glance. “The doctor is certain it’s twins, and they aren’t due until March. Now, manners—aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend?”

“I don’t know! You spring such a thing as my imminently impending uncle-hood upon me and then expect me to remember the social niceties! This is George—Aggie, Gerald. George, this is my sister Agnes and her husband Gerald Dorland. Gerald’s a banker, but he’s not a bad sort really.” Matthew grinned at his brother-in-law, who took the gentle teasing in good part, no doubt used to it.

They shook hands. “Hear you’re in the legal business,” Gerald said gruffly. “Good, solid profession—you can’t go wrong with that.”

George shrugged, a little self-conscious at the way Gerald managed to make it sound as if he were a senior partner in the firm, rather than just being an articled clerk of only a month’s standing. “It’s certainly very interesting. I’ve learned an awful lot since I started.”

“Good, good,” Gerald said vaguely. “Now, best get ourselves settled in—we’ll see you later on.”

“Not that I have a thing fit to wear for dinner,” Agnes lamented. “These days, even my shoes are tight!”

“Poor old thing,” Matthew said with mock sympathy. “You know, I’m sure one of the church choir would lend you a cassock if you asked….”

“Very funny. Don’t expect either of the twins to be named after you, that’s all I can say!” With that, Agnes linked arms with her husband and made her way upstairs, and Matthew and George made for the drawing room and tea.

G
ETTING
dressed for dinner in front of Matthew was a heady mix of pain and pleasure. George had to constantly remind himself not to stare when he’d have liked nothing better than to sit back and watch his friend undress.

As Matthew shed his shirt, George couldn’t help looking at the stump of his right arm. It was the first time he’d seen it unclothed.

“Not pretty, is it?” Matthew said wryly. Actually it looked a great deal better than George had imagined, with very little scarring.

“Does it still hurt?”

“Not really. Well, not how you’d think. Sometimes I get sort of shooting pains, which just come out of nowhere, and sometimes I get the oddest feelings, as if there’s still a hand there. But the stump itself—no, that doesn’t really hurt. I know chaps with artificial legs can get blisters and all sorts—but you really don’t want to know about all that, do you?”

“I wish I could be as brave as you,” George said without thinking, and he could have bitten out his tongue.

“Me? Lord, I’m not particularly brave. Now, we’d best get a shift on, or Mother will be coming up to look for us.” Matthew pulled on his dress shirt with an awkward-looking maneuver that George supposed must be well practiced and changed his trousers with the same efficiency. George hastened to follow suit, marveling at how well Matthew managed despite his handicap and trying not to dwell on the glimpses he’d caught of Matthew’s body.

It wasn’t until he stood at the mirror, tying his bow tie, that it occurred to him that this, surely, was something Matthew couldn’t possibly manage alone. And indeed, when he turned, he found Matthew waiting for him, tie loose around his collar. “Sorry to be a bother, but I don’t suppose you could tie this for me? I can manage perfectly well with a normal tie—I just don’t bother to unknot them at the end of the day—but I’m afraid this little beastie is beyond me.”

“No bother at all,” George assured him, stepping closer—and only then realizing he hadn’t the foggiest idea how to tie the thing from the front. He wasn’t sure, when he thought about it, that he really knew how a bow tie went—his
hands
knew what to do, but his brain had long since forgotten the intricacies of it all. He stood there with the ends in his hands, wondering what he was supposed to do with them.

“Maybe it would go better if you stood behind me?” Matthew suggested. “I’ll stand in front of the mirror, and you put your arms round me and just pretend you’re tying your own tie?”

George stared at his friend’s face—but it was as open and free of guile as ever. Mutely, he did as he was bidden. It was more than a little awkward—George’s arms didn’t seem quite long enough, and he was obliged to stand as close to his friend as he dared. He could feel the warmth rising from Matthew’s neck, smell the scent of him, woody and rich. The urge to close the final fraction of an inch between them and press Matthew to him was almost overwhelming, and George’s fingers fumbled with the knot of the tie.

“Sorry to be such a bother,” Matthew said, and George could feel the rumble of that light, warm voice in his fingertips. Such a wretchedly complicated business, breathing, when one thought about it. One did it all day, every day, without any problems—and then all of a sudden, it seemed absurdly difficult to control one’s breath, not to pant down one’s friend’s collar in a most unseemly way.

George swallowed and finally managed to force his disobedient hands to finish the knot. It wasn’t, by any means, the neatest bow he’d ever tied, but it would serve. He stepped back. “No bother at all,” he said rather belatedly and with a painfully obvious hitch in his voice.

Matthew turned slowly. “Thank you. You know, I was right—you do look awfully dashing in eveningwear.” His smile was bright and seemed full of promise. George stood paralyzed, fearing that if he did anything, said anything, he’d be unable to control himself and would take what he hardly dared believe might be on offer.

What he didn’t deserve, and could never have.

Could he?

A knock on the door broke the spell. “Yes?” Matthew called.

George almost groaned aloud, whether from relief or despair he couldn’t have said. He was light-headed, a feeling halfway between having had too much wine and desperately needing a glass.

Matthew’s mother opened the door slightly and poked her head around it. “I just came up to see if you needed any help with your tie, but I see you’ve managed. Now, come along, you two! Don’t keep everyone waiting.” She disappeared.

“Well,” Matthew said, “I suppose we’d better go down.”

D
INNER
at the rectory managed to achieve the almost impossible feat of being both formal and relaxed. It brought back bittersweet memories of dinners at Illingham, back before the war when George’s father had been alive. When he’d died, all the life had seemed to go out of them all, George thought. His mother in particular—she’d been much less… stern, while his father was alive.

Realizing he was becoming maudlin and reminding himself firmly that that life was dead to him now, George attacked his lamb chops with renewed vigor.

Matthew’s father, the rector, had turned out to be an erudite and entertaining man who leavened his obviously deeply-held religious beliefs with a strong sense of humor. George was left in no doubt as to whom Matthew had inherited his affinity for fun from and could easily imagine the reverend being very well-loved indeed among his parishioners. He had the gift of making almost any story into an amusing anecdote, even those with more than a pinch of piety. When drawing George into conversation, he did so with tact bordering on genius, managing to avoid the past entirely without once making it obvious he was doing so.

Others, unfortunately, were not so successful. “Your own people not protesting your absence today, George?” Agnes’s husband Gerald asked as he passed the carrots, and George almost dropped them from his suddenly numb fingers.

“George doesn’t have any people, Gerald,” his wife said quickly, and George realized the family had been carefully primed about more than his dislike of speaking of the war. He wondered where they imagined he’d sprung from—most likely they assumed he was the by-blow of some wealthy man who’d done the decent thing by educating George and securing him a job and then washed his hands of his offspring. George could hardly fault them for that—after all, Johnson was a not unlikely surname for a child of such an informal union.

“Ah! Terribly sorry and all that,” Gerald muttered, looking abashed. “Still, at least one doesn’t have the wrangle of keeping everyone happy, eh?” There was a faint sound, as of a shin being kicked under the table, and Gerald started perceptibly. “More wine, Agnes?” he asked abruptly.

Looking across the table, George caught Matthew’s eye and smiled at him in gratitude.

They retired after dinner to the drawing room, where they listened to gramophone records until Matthew’s brothers pronounced themselves bored and insisted upon a game of charades. Jimmy was a fresh-faced boy of eighteen in his last year of school, Peter a couple of years younger. Both boys, unlike Matthew, seemed to favor their mother in their appearance—they had certainly inherited her height—but George found Matthew’s features more appealing and appreciated not having to crane his neck to talk to his friend.