Edmund nodded.
‘Hmm. The land as victim,’ Alex said, and his voice took on a teasing tone. ‘You would see it that way, as a bloated aristocrat, a member of the land-owning classes.’
‘Of course. And the sonnet?’ Edmund’s words came out hoarsened with doubt: Alex had not yet mentioned the second poem, the one addressed to him. He wished he had handed over the poems and left Alex alone to read them, not stayed here to register every eye-flicker, every compression of the lips. To offer his verses was to show Alex his thoughts and, he saw now, to expose himself to the possibility of hurt and rejection.
‘The ending, of course. Thank you. I like the way the last two lines bring in something different entirely, something personal.’ Alex looked back at the poem, at Edmund’s neat handwriting. ‘The rest, I don’t know—maybe you’ve made it a little too easy for yourself?’
‘Easy? If you knew how I struggled!’
‘All the same, that structure, the repetition of
when
, and each line complete and self-contained—it means you can put them in any order to suit the rhyme-scheme.’
‘Is that a criticism?’
‘I’m being honest. Isn’t that what you wanted? I love them, of course, because you wrote them. It’s easy for me to criticize—I’m no poet myself.’
Edmund lay back and looked up at the sky, trying not to nurture a small and unreasonable disappointment. He had wanted Alex to say:
They’re wonderful,
they’re brilliant, they’re flawless
. Yet he knew that his poems were none of these things: they were competent at best. Did he want Alex to be a liar? Or to be so dazzled by emotion that he lost all critical awareness?
I must try harder, he told himself. One day I will write the best poem of my life, for him, and it will say everything I struggle to put into words. It will be dedicated To A.C.—cryptic, so that it can openly be a love poem, but only he will know who it’s for. And into his mind slipped a picture of a slim, leather-bound volume, privately printed, with marbled end-papers and gilt lettering on its spine. Critics and scholars would speculate who A.C. might be, in the way they puzzled over Shakespeare’s Dark Lady of the Sonnets.
‘The thing about it, that sonnet,’ Alex said, still considering, leaning back on braced arms, ‘is that I don’t think it’s true.’
‘You don’t believe me?’ Edmund was dismayed.
‘I don’t mean the ending.’ Alex gave him a sidelong glance, a look that smoothed away misgivings. ‘I mean the rest of it.’
‘But—’
‘Why don’t you admit it? The war is the best thing that’s happened to you.’
‘Here, I might think so.’ Edmund waved a hand to encompass the orchard, the slow-flowing river Lys that threaded through pollarded willows. His return to the 5th Epping Foresters had coincided with a period of rest behind the lines, which he had not deserved.
‘Not just here,’ Alex insisted. ‘The front. The fighting. All of it. The things you wrote about. If you could choose now—this, or banish the whole war and go back to your old life—you’d choose this, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Edmund said after a moment’s thought. ‘It’s changed everything. If it weren’t for Kaiser Wilhelm, I’d be following my father’s route. Cambridge, marriage, Graveney.’ He lay back and looked up at the sky, wondering whether to tell Alex about Philippa Fitch being dangled in front of him like a baited hook.
‘I’d despise you,’ Alex said lightly, ‘if we met, which of course we wouldn’t.’
‘I was quite sure at first that you did.’
‘That was only testing. You know that. It wouldn’t be fair of me to hold your upbringing against you.’
Without the war, Edmund knew that his path would not have crossed Alex’s. A year older, Alex came from an East London family which had moved out to Woodford; he had won a scholarship to study Mathematics at London University. He was all that Edmund was not: cynical, sharp, socialist. When they had first met, at Officer Training Camp, they had disliked each other. Edmund saw Alex as a threat: clever and outspoken, with quick darting eyes that missed nothing. But attraction had grown between them against the odds. Where at first Edmund had seen only abrasiveness, he now found warmth, tenderness and humour. Alex was not handsome in any obvious way, but he had a powerful physical presence—tall, lanky, with fox-red hair that curled and kinked, intensely blue eyes and a smile of dazzling fierceness. There was something feral and dangerous about him, Edmund often thought, unable to take his eyes off him.
It was Alex, of course, who had dared to lead the way beyond friendship to intimacy. Edmund, who had always thought himself deeply conventional, reacted first with shock, then with joy and enthusiasm. He knew by now that Alex had had a previous lover; for Edmund it was Alex, only Alex. He had no interest in anyone else, male or female.
‘Why? Why do you love me?’ he had asked earlier, when dawn lightened their attic and house martins stirred in the eaves.
‘You know why! I love your money, your wealth, your family fortune,’ Alex said, rarely serious, ‘your country seat, and the aristocratic blood that flows through your veins. And for condescending to notice a humble London boy like me.’ He made a forelock-tugging gesture.
‘Humble! I’ve never met anyone more sure of himself.’
Edmund thought that Alex would ask, ‘And why do you love me?’ in return, but he did not. Nevertheless, Edmund prepared his answer: because you’re proud and strong, more vividly alive than anyone I know; because you have led me where I would never have thought of going; because you have taught me how to love.
Alex had taken out a stub of pencil and was writing in Edmund’s notebook, his lips compressed in a secretive smile.
‘When I was convalescing,’ Edmund told him, ‘I had the idea of writing verses about my home, as a way of showing it to you. The lake, the gardens, the summerhouse statues, the trees . . . but I hardly made a start. Perhaps I can do it more easily when I’m not there.’
‘A poetic tour? Yes, I’d like that.’
‘We could start at the grotto by the lake—that’s my favourite place. My retreat.’ Edmund closed his eyes to see the swirling patterns of tiles; he heard the trickle of spring water, smelled the dampness of earth and stone. ‘My grandfather built it in memory of his first son, who died as a baby. Grandfather used to spend hours there, sitting by the lake, thinking and daydreaming. Now I do.’
‘What do you daydream about?’ Alex twirled a grass stem to tickle Edmund’s nose.
Their eyes met; Edmund smiled. ‘Every day, when I was at home, I went down there to read your letters and write mine.’
‘While I wrote mine cramped in a dugout, with my feet in a puddle,’ Alex said drily, ‘and hid them quickly whenever Boyce came in with a mug of oily tea.’ He picked a ripe damson out of his cap. ‘I wish I could see you at your Graveney Hall. It would be amusing to see you as future lord of the manor, Little Lord Fauntleroy that you are.’
‘I am
not
little Lord Fauntleroy, thank you!’
‘I can just see you in your little velvet knickerbocker suit, with your perambulator and your nursemaid. Young Master Edmund. Here—’
He pinched the damson to make it split, flicked away the stone and held the fruit to Edmund’s lips. Edmund opened his mouth, felt the brush of Alex’s fingers, then the soft fleshy fruit, warm with sunshine. He ate, swallowed. ‘Maybe you will see Graveney. Not yet, but maybe. When all this is over.’
‘If?’
With the grass warm at his back Edmund looked up at the dazzle of blue sky, thinking that Alex was right: he really did want the war to go on for ever. ‘My parents are planning for me to get married,’ he said.
‘Really? And who’s the lucky girl?’
Edmund propped himself up on his jacket-pillow and looked at Alex for the pleasure of looking: at his sharp profile, his thin nose and well-defined cheek-bones, and his hair the colour of autumn. His shirt collar was unfastened and his shirtsleeves rolled up, his jacket slung on the grass.
‘I’m not
going
to,’ Edmund answered. ‘You don’t seriously think I meant—’
‘I hoped not. But is there a candidate?’
‘Yes. Unfortunately. Her name’s Philippa. Philippa Fitch. She’s the daughter of my parents’ closest friends, and they’ve all decided it would be the perfect match. She’s pretty, educated, plays the piano, sings, rides to hounds, speaks fluent French, dresses elegantly, has perfect manners—oh, she has everything possible to commend her. I should imagine most young men in my position would think themselves very lucky.’
‘And is Philippa herself one of those who think it the perfect match?’
‘She’d be willing enough. I don’t delude myself that it’s on my account—the house and estate are fairly large enticements, wouldn’t you say?’
‘So she’s a fortune hunter?’ Alex plucked a stem of grass.
‘Not exactly. We’ve known each other since we were children. It would be more a matter of convenience, of everyone knowing what they were getting from the bargain.’ Edmund looked at Alex, reached a hand and laid it on his knee. ‘
Would
be, I said. I’ve no intention of complying, however much pressure Father puts on me. It’s my duty to provide an heir for Graveney, and Philippa comes from good stock. That’s how he sees it.’
Alex laughed and gently removed the hand from his knee. His glance said,
Careful—we might be seen
from the windows
; it also said,
Later
. ‘So it’s all about breeding when it comes down to it. She might as well be a brood mare or a prize cow.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But if you don’t do the decent thing and produce a son and heir . . .?’
‘It will all go to some distant cousin, I think. It’s the war that’s made Father impatient. If he had his way I’d already have produced, and the son and heir would be safely at home in his nursery. Then, if I got blown to bits, at least the future would be assured.’
‘That’s a callous way of looking at it.’
‘Yes. But that’s how it is when there’s property involved.’ Edmund gazed across the orchard towards the alder-fringed bank of the river. ‘I love the place, Graveney. Not the house so much as the land itself—the trees, the earth. Yes, I know, it’s my landed gentry upbringing, before you say. I’ve never lived anywhere else, or wanted to. I’ve been brought up with the expectation of taking it over and living there till I die. But can you imagine me explaining?
I’m
afraid I can’t marry Philippa, Father, because I love
someone else, and his name’s Alex
.’
Alex pretended to consider this seriously. ‘No, if you really want to be lord of the manor I’d say that was rather unwise.’
‘I might never have known.’
‘Well,’ Alex said, ‘a lot of people don’t. Or don’t let themselves admit it. After all, there are powerful incentives not to.’
‘I’d give everything up, Graveney and all that goes with it—the land, the inheritance—to be with you.’
Alex looked at him steadily. ‘I’d hate to be the one to make you do that.’
‘You wouldn’t make me. It would be what I chose for myself.’ Edmund lay down again and stretched out both arms. ‘Let’s not go home! Let’s stay here after the war. We could rent a small farmhouse, and keep chickens, and grow apples and plums and turnips.’
‘Yes, this one will do nicely. I’m sure the present tenants won’t mind giving it to us,’ Alex said airily, turning this way and that to survey the orchard and its surroundings. ‘We can go to the market, and speak French, and buy cheese and sausages, and sit smoking in the café. We can be two eccentric Englishmen.’
‘No-one will bother us. Wouldn’t that be perfect?’
‘No-one will require us to produce sons and heirs, because there will be nothing to inherit.’
They were speaking flippantly, but as Edmund lay gazing at the cloud-flecked sky the idea began to take hold. If they survived the war they’d have the right, surely, to choose what future they wanted for themselves? Maybe he would choose to keep a few chickens, grow a few potatoes, instead of managing the great, sprawling, magnificent encumbrance that was Graveney. Choosing Alex as his partner was rather more contentious, but if they stayed here in rural France, where no-one would know them or expect anything of them, it would be far easier than in England.
‘I’m not really joking,’ he said, turning his head towards Alex. ‘I mean it. I can’t imagine a future without you.’
Alex looked down at him and said softly, ‘Nor I.’
At moments like this, Edmund had the sense of everything settling into place. This, then, was love—not love as his father wanted it, all tied up with property and respectability and procreation. This was love that demanded nothing except itself.
If his father found out . . .
Perhaps, Edmund sometimes thought in his wilder moments, his father finding out would be the easiest solution. If he were disgraced, disinherited, turned out of Graveney without a penny to his name, he could live with Alex as he wanted. More immediately, they were occupied with making sure Captain Greenaway didn’t find out. Here at the farm, the men slept in a cow-barn converted to makeshift dormitory; Edmund and Alex slept in the house with the other officers. As the two youngest lieutenants they shared a room in the attic and, secretly, a bed. Every morning, before Boyce, the orderly, knocked on the door with hot water for washing and shaving, one of them would get into his own unrumpled bed, roll around in it and feign deep sleep. For Alex the risk was part of the pleasure, but Edmund was convinced that one morning they’d oversleep, fail to hear Boyce’s knocking and be discovered. With every detail of their lives so closely regulated, they found secret fulfilment in something that was theirs alone, up in the roof of the house, where martins twittered in the eaves and dawn came softly through threadbare curtains.
Lying in Alex’s arms at night, listening to the boom and splutter of artillery to the east, Edmund thought that time behaved in peculiar ways. These days and nights at the farm seemed everlasting; he would remember them for ever. With Alex’s breathing soft against his neck and the curtains stirring with cool night air, he could hardly believe that time was passing at all. And simultaneously the week was racing by, their week of rest and reprieve: four nights left, three nights, two. Alex always slept heavily—dreamlessly, he said. Edmund often lay awake.