Title: Through a Glass, Darkly
Book: Mary Renault's "The Charioteer"
Pairing: Laurie Odell/Andrew Raynes (Ralph/Laurie implied)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Laurie learns that love isn't always a soft option. Takes place a few weeks after the culminating events of the book.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or make any profit from them, although I love them dearly.
Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Tehta for the thorough and thoughtful beta, and to Capella for the Britpick.




Laurie's train did not get into London until nearly six o'clock -- uncomfortably close to dusk and the inevitable air raid.  He hurried towards a phone box, anxious to ring the man whose name Ralph had given him.  

"He's a friend of mine, Spuddy -- a journalist, and well connected; he'll get you into a shelter at one of the better hotels," Ralph had said, making a night in the most heavily bombed city in England sound like an evening out on the town.  Laurie had smiled at the prospect of champagne and cabaret girls, and wondered just how well connected this friend was.  

He dialled the number, trying to imagine the sound of his voice.  The line was dead.

Cut telephone wires were common enough, and need not signify the worst; Laurie glanced at the man's address:  the East End.  Venturing into the neighbourhood which had borne the brunt of the raids was hardly appealing, but there was no other way of contacting the man.  Laurie set off, cursing the Army, which had insisted he report for a final examination before his discharge and then given him an 8 a.m. appointment in the heart of the bombed-out city.

The tram let him off at a wide thoroughfare; he crossed the tracks and turned into an alley.  Next a left, around a corner, and then he'd only have to check the house numbers to find...

He stopped, stomach twisting from the sudden sensation of vertigo.  The house wasn't there.  Or, rather, a part of it was:  it had been cleaved straight through, half of it in ruins, the other half exposed like an obscene parody of a dollhouse.  Pictures still hung against the backdrop of patterned wallpaper.  On the third floor, a shattered bathroom disgorged a cast-iron tub, one claw foot hovering over the precipice.

Laurie felt the chill seep through his clothes.  Wherever Ralph's friend was, he certainly wasn't here –- or so Laurie hoped.  Either way, Laurie was on his own.

The sky, darkening and streaked with clouds, seemed all of a sudden to bear down on him with a menacing pressure.  No matter where he looked, there it was above him:  a bland expanse from which in a few hours fire and death would rain.  He turned up his collar and set off in search of shelter.

At first he walked aimlessly.  Soon, however, he saw groups of people with blankets in their arms making their way towards a solid-looking building.  At the door, a large woman seemed to be in charge; she looked Laurie up and down appraisingly.

"Is it all right if I come in?" he asked.  Preoccupied as he'd been with the East End's tactical disadvantage as a location, it hadn't crossed his mind that its shelters could be exclusive.

The woman's forbidding demeanour vanished when she smiled.  "Of course.  Just a bit surprised to see a soldier here; we're used to our regulars."

Down in the cellar, her words proved true enough.  If he hadn't known what purpose had brought all these people together, he might have supposed that it was an odd sort of neighbourhood party.  Mattresses had been laid side by side; on them, women sat, chatting, and boys were admiring a toy Spitfire.  An old man, propped up in a corner, was wheezing audibly.  It was both more crowded and more comfortable than the other shelters Laurie had seen:  less of a place to spend a few hours, and more of a temporary home.

He found a vacant chair by the wall and tried to keep out of the way.  It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling, by now, to be on the outside of things.  In a sense, it was almost a comfort, like the twinge the knee gave him whenever there was a sudden change in weather.  It anchored him to a sense of self, flawed but reassuringly his own.

Gradually, more people trickled in:  men in rumpled suits, an old woman with an astonishingly violet hat, a young girl with a baby.  The baby fussed and cried; the boys with the Spitfire began to run around the room in circles.  More noise than the hospital, thought Laurie, resting his head against the brick wall.  He closed his eyes.  If this kept up, he'd never get any sleep.

He woke to the wail of the air raid siren.  There were distant explosions, and for a while it didn't seem that different from the raids back in hospital -- until the wall behind him started to tremble like the surface of a puddle when a heavy lorry drives past.  It made his body vibrate, as if he were attached to some sort of machine, transmitting an electric current.  Hastily, he moved his chair away.

In France, after the guns had started, the fresh recruits had looked around furtively, trying to gauge what they should and should not fear without letting on just how terrified they actually were.  Laurie glanced about him now.

"It's mostly incendiaries this time of night."  The man to his left caught his eye.  He was folding his jumper into a makeshift pillow.  "Jerry won't drop anything big until after midnight.  It's early yet."

"I see."

"Hear that, there?  That's our boys, giving 'em hell.  Better than the sweetest music, those guns.  You just listen to that -- it's what I always tell the missus."

Laurie felt his face heating.  "Oh, I wasn't--"

"Best thing for it, you know, is to get a pint or three at the pub beforehand.  Make you drowsy-like; sleep through any raid.  I swear by it, myself."  

Laurie, who had been preoccupied with the echo of far-off bombs, only now noticed the alcohol on the man's breath.  It made him long for a tot of gin.  Ralph had the right idea, there:  staying sober was fine if one had a job to do, but waiting for fate to make up its mind hardly qualified as an occupation.  

The man wedged the jumper under his head and began to snore; none of the other occupants of the shelter seemed very concerned about the raid, either.  Determinedly, Laurie picked up the newspaper he'd bought earlier.  The night was likely to be long, and he wouldn't do the uniform any credit if he kept jumping at the slightest sound.

"War Will Make Men of Them Yet," one of the headlines read.  He scanned the tiny print.  "It is a fortunate by-product of this nation's time of hardship that those one would not previously have taken to possess much in the way of mettle should show themselves more courageous than expected.  In recent years, the fashion among cinema stars--"

There was an explosion aboveground.  It made the walls of the shelter shake; a child screamed.  Laurie's body instantly shifted into a state of high alert:  muscles tense, heart beating quickly, every cell straining to anticipate the next bomb.  But only silence followed.  After a few minutes, he smoothed out the newsprint.

"In recent years, the fashion among cinema stars seemed to favour pretty-pretty types with affected speech and an effeminate manner -- something this writer found taxing beyond words.  It turns out, however, that one of the worst exemplars of the cinematic leading man--"

"Charlie?" someone said loudly.  Laurie's nerves were taut with strain; he flinched.  But it was only a woman bending down to the old wheezing man.  

"...one of the worst exemplars of the cinematic leading man, a person whose every second word in the days before the war was 'darling' and 'my dear' -- is now a pilot with the RAF.  A film director I met at a party a few weeks back has also chosen to serve his country, giving up his beloved bright silk in favour of an Army uniform.  Seeing such transformations take place in Britain's hour of need is enough to give one hope in humanity.  After all, if such people are able to--"

"Charlie!"  This time it was a scream.  "Someone help me!  Help me, he's stopped breathing!"

The shelter came alive then, like an anthill defending its own from a poking stick.  Someone fetched water, someone else pounded the old man on the back.  Voices were raised, the contralto of the woman who had guarded the door booming above them all:  the ambulance unit was to be sent for at once.  

The unit must have been close by, for it was prompt in arriving.  Laurie, sharing in the crowd's relief, looked up to see a group of young men in worn flannels running down the stairs.  Then something in his chest wrenched and twisted and squeezed:  he found himself looking at Andrew's face.

For a moment he felt as if he'd received a physical blow whose force must surely be apparent to all eyes.  The shelter receded into the background like the darkened corners of a stage set, while the path between himself and Andrew seemed lit with a spotlight, forcing them into an embarrassingly public intimacy.  It took him a moment to realize that no one had noticed a thing; Andrew, in fact, had not seen him at all.

The ambulance workers surrounded the old man and began tending to him with gentle efficiency.  Laurie, on the sidelines of the drama, had time to collect his thoughts.

He had wondered what he might say if he ever saw Andrew again, but the words he rehearsed inevitably fell short and were discarded.  Now his mind was a paralysing blank slate, and, anyway, his imaginings had taken for granted a cosy tête-à-tête somewhere, and this seemed more like making hand signals across a crowded railway platform.

In the end, the impetus to act was external.  Andrew was standing with a small group of Friends, tactfully keeping out of the way, when the young man beside him leaned closer and, saying something, put a hand on his shoulder.  The answering smile sent a pang through Laurie.  Without thinking, he rose from his chair and shouted, "Andrew!"

Andrew turned.  His expression was alert and expectant -- until he saw who it was that had called his name.  Then his decisiveness fell away.  

"Hello," Laurie said.  "We meet in the oddest places, don't we?"

"Laurie?"  Words seemed to be slipping out of Andrew's grasp.  "You're...  Why...  Oh, what a lovely surprise."

The look of happiness that stole across his face was familiar, though it still held enough wonder to make Laurie's heart contract.  But the twinge of self-consciousness was new, as was the hesitation to speak.  It felt as if a serpent had cast a shadow over their sun-dappled orchard.

"Come over here and talk to me," Laurie said.  "If you can spare the time, of course."  

Carefully, Andrew navigated his way between mattresses.  He seemed more at ease now they were face to face.  "It's good you can sit.  Easier on the knee."

"Oh, the knee's a bit better now.  They've even discharged me from hospital.  The army's turn is tomorrow, I have an appointment in the morning."

"I see.  Is that why you've come?"

"Yes."  

Laurie had perceived in the question nothing more than a simple request for information, and only when Andrew's smile faltered did it occur to him that it might have concealed a different query altogether.  He fumbled for the right words, but contradicting himself now would only make things worse.

"You look well," Andrew said, and then, "If you aren't used to the heavy raids, this noise must be difficult to take."  His eyes never left Laurie's face; they had the look of an expectant waiting.  

As a boy, walking with his mother in his Sunday clothes, Laurie had sometimes yearned to clamber over the old bridge railing and dive into the water.  What he felt now was similar -- and yet, "I haven't been able to get you out of my mind" was impossible to say with children brushing up against his trouser leg and a man snoring at his feet.  

"I didn't know you were doing ambulance work," he said instead.

"Oh.  Oh, that."  Andrew looked like someone had shaken him out of sleep.  "Yes, the raids keep us busy.  Peter was trained as a male nurse, you know, so we do actually have some real expertise."  

"Well, he seems to have got that old man's attack in hand."  Indeed, the wheezing of the damaged lungs was regular again.  Laurie could feel the seconds slipping by with intractable cruelty.  He took a breath.  "Andrew, listen.  I'd been hoping--"

"I've been reading your book."

The weight of the words seemed to conjure up silence around them.  Andrew was looking at him as if they were in a room, alone.  Stupidly, Laurie said, "Have you?"

"Dave gave it to me.  I wanted to thank you.  The things it says--"

"Andrew!" someone shouted.  "Time to go."

And, just like that, their meeting was over.  Laurie had found it difficult to believe they were standing face to face; he now found it inconceivable that they should be parted so abruptly.  

Andrew put his hands in his pockets.  His breathing was rapid.  "It was kind of you to give it me.  Now I know what you were reading that day under the trees. I--"  

"Andrew!  Come along, we don't have all night."

"You have to go," Laurie said numbly.  

Andrew nodded.  He looked like a schoolboy watching the approach of a train that will take him away from everything he knows and holds dear.  Even the set of his shoulders betrayed readiness for a blow about to be delivered.  "Goodbye, then," he said.
 
A clatter on the stairs, and the ambulance unit was gone as quickly as it had come.  The shelter settled down and released its collective breath:  the night's first emergency had passed without great incident.  Laurie sought the stability of his chair.  His hands were trembling.  

Had he been a fool not to arrange another meeting?  Such a fortuitous encounter was unlikely to occur again -- and yet the reasons why he had not sought out Andrew before were still firmly in place.  He felt as if countless eyes were watching him, trying to divine his innermost thoughts; desperate for even a shred of privacy, he reached for the paper.  

As he moved, he glanced at the man lying at his feet, expecting to see a sleeping figure -- but the man was awake:  he had raised himself on an elbow and seemed to be listening, as were the other shelter occupants.  They were all holding still, watchful and silent, as if tension had gelled the air in the cellar.

Cold dread prickled Laurie's neck.  A second later, the bomb hit.

There was a curious sensation of air leaving his lungs and rushing back with rapid, steady force.  He thought, so it's true, you really don't hear the one that hits you, but his mind must have been muddled because he felt as if he were thinking in slow motion.  Then the chair under him was gone, and someone beside him was moaning.

A handful of torches clicked on, criss-crossing the darkness with their flimsy beams.  "Anyone hurt?" a voice called out, and Laurie wanted to shout, "Over here, next to me," but he coughed instead.  His mouth was full of plaster dust.

Other voices answered.  Their words in the dim room seemed like flares sent up from crippled ships at sea.  One person had had both legs badly broken, the rest of the injuries were mostly minor.  Someone volunteered to fetch the ambulance unit.

"Got off lightly this time -- excepting poor Hazel, that is," a woman said somewhere in the vicinity of the stairs.

From close beside her, a man answered, "If that's our bomb, then we're damned lucky.  Must have hit next door, not directly, else we'd..."  He fell silent.  "What's the matter now, Harry?  Couldn't find the ambulance crew?  They can't have gone far, surely."

A torch was pointed at the steps:  in its narrow line of light Laurie saw a man in a torn raincoat -- presumably the person who'd gone to get help.  The man looked around as if blinded.  Then he said, "Couldn't get through; the stairwell's collapsed."

Laurie experienced a moment of pure horror as he pictured Andrew falling, Andrew screaming, Andrew's limbs twisted under the debris.  Then, one by one, flannel-clad figures began to descend the stairs.  When at last Andrew's face appeared, Laurie's gratitude was so staggering that it dwarfed all else.  It didn't occur to him until a moment later that they were all trapped underground.

"Heavy Rescue will dig us out," someone said, and this view was immediately echoed by a chorus of "Yes, certainly," and "It won't be long."  In the silence that followed the threat was even more palpable than before.  The ambulance crew dispersed throughout the cellar.  Laurie, glad to finally be of use, shouted, "Someone needs help here!"  

"Laurie?"  Quick steps sounded in the dark.  "Are you--"

"I'm fine.  It's the chap beside me that's hurt."  

Laurie had not anticipated that the sound of worry in another person's voice could bring so much joy.  But it seemed a small-minded pleasure; he chastised himself at once.  

Andrew crouched above the wounded man.  Though his movements were uncertain, his innate kindness soon took over, and Laurie watched him bandage a shoulder with hands that may have lacked medical expertise, yet brought no less comfort for their inexperience.

When he had offered what help he could, Andrew sat by Laurie's side.  Without preamble, he said, "After the blast, I didn't know what had happened to you.  I thought..."  

"Yes, so did I.  It was awful."

They shared a look.  The strain of the situation had made forthrightness seem perfectly natural; there was no awkwardness between them now.  How odd that the aftermath of terror should bring with it a sense of such inevitable calm.

"Are the stairs really gone?" Laurie asked.

"A part of them, yes.  It was the floor above us.  Fortunately we hadn't walked too quickly, and were able to take cover."

"You're not injured, are you?"  Laurie shifted closer.  It was dark, after all, and difficult to see.  

Andrew didn't move away.  "No, only rattled.  And covered in dust."  

"Never mind about that; can't see a thing in here anyhow."  

Laying his head on his drawn-up knees, Andrew muffled a laugh.  This, for some reason, touched in Laurie previously untapped stores of tenderness.  Ardently, almost violently, he found himself saying, "Thank God you're all right."

Andrew didn't answer, only looked.  In his eyes and about the set of his mouth was an expression that Laurie would have recognized had it not been so incongruous with what he knew of Andrew's innocence.  It made him appear altogether different:  older, sharper, less pure.  Time slowed.  The moment felt at once familiar and utterly foreign -- the way a shirt, when turned inside out, reveals a thousand tiny secrets in its stitching.

Then the man beside them loudly cleared his throat, and Andrew glanced at his feet.  "I think we're in for another round.  The planes are returning."

For a while the bombers had retreated, leaving the neighbourhood in relative peace.  Now they were back.  Detonations could be heard, underground tremors increased in intensity as they crept closer.  With most of the torches shut off to save batteries, the absence of light only emphasized sound, both in the crowded cellar and above it.  

"Do you think they would do much damage, were they to hit us again?" Laurie asked.

"Yes, I should think so."  Andrew didn't have it in him to lie.  "The building's structure has been weakened.  Another bomb could bury us here for good."

"They do say the chances of it striking twice in the same spot are slim.  I suppose we'll just have to trust our luck."  

Laurie had aimed for a light-hearted note, but his voice wasn't steady.  Familiar cries, hoarse with terror, rose up in his memory -- men calling out from beneath the rubble of a flattened building.  In De Panne, during the mad retreat towards the coast, a group of his fellow soldiers had taken cover in the cellar of a farmhouse, only to be buried alive seconds later.  Rescue was out of the question; Laurie had shut his ears to their pleas, and moved on with the rest of the battalion.  Afterwards, with the white walls of the hospital a backdrop for endless speculation, he had wondered how the men must have felt.  He didn't wonder anymore.   

The drone of the bombers grew louder, though not enough to drown out the pounding of Laurie's heart.  He could sense them coming closer, huge and threatening, and was aware of little beyond the fact that he was very small, and yet not nearly small enough -- a helpless insect tacked to a board.  He covered his eyes with his palms and pressed hard.

"Laurie."  Andrew touched his shoulder.  "Are you well?"

Laurie tried to answer, but found that his throat was too tight.  Then the first bomb exploded, and panic shot through him, a million nervous synapses firing at once.  "Oh, God..."

"It's all right, I'm here, lean on me."  

"I can't...  I can't stay here, underground.  I've got to get out!"  Laurie curled in on himself, shaking.  He had enough presence of mind to feel ashamed.  

"On my first night in the East End I was terrified," Andrew said.  "It's only natural.  Trust in God is easier when it's not being tested."

"He oughtn't to test us like this.  It's cruel."

"That sort of thing isn't for us to decide.  Laurie?"

But Laurie was beyond the reach of words.  Somewhere in the space of an endless minute he had passed into the realm of instinct, of raw human impulses.  It was as if he'd withdrawn into a small room and secured all the windows against the storm, but the wind kept rattling and breaking them one by one.  All he could do was shut his eyes and endure.  

"Please be calm," Andrew was saying.  "You're all right.  Laurie..."

There was a sound of laboured breathing; Laurie realized it was coming from his mouth.  The darkness around him had got darker, more sinister, the hellish noise aboveground was directed at him now, flying right at him, boring into his skull, soon he'd be crushed, blasted to bits, pulverized, he'd...

And then Andrew's hands were touching his face, and Andrew was kissing him.

It all happened so fast.  Later, Laurie would give much to remember the precise instant their lips met -- how Andrew moved, the way it all felt -- but just now his fear had him wrapped in such a cocoon that it took a few seconds before he was properly feeling anything.  

By rights, it should have been awkward.  There was a brick wall at Laurie's back, and people all around:  one could hardly find a place less private if one tried.  And yet the cellar was dark, above them the city was falling to pieces, and in the midst of the pandemonium Andrew's body felt solid, reassuring and right.  Laurie's fear gave way to desire.  Andrew's mouth was demanding; what had begun as a desperate act of kindness on his part was quickly drifting into waters far less altruistic.  Though inexperienced, he wasn't timid, and Laurie had no trouble imagining his soldier ancestors charging into battle with their hair flying and eyes alight.

Plaster crumbled from the ceiling, dislodged by a strong blast.  Andrew flinched and moved to wipe it from his face.  He looked at Laurie, and suddenly it was no longer possible to let darkness muddy the necessity for conscious choice.  

"Andrew--"

"Is it all right?"  Andrew's voice was uncertain, but his bearing was not -- this, despite the lack of light in the cellar, was clear.  His shoulders were stubbornly set, as if saying, I won't back down now I've made up my mind.

It occurred to Laurie that facing society's scorn on a daily basis could not have come easy.  "Yes," he said.  "Of course it is."

It was slower after that, and more deliberate.  Andrew's body was acting on instinct, half copying Laurie's motions and half questing for pleasure on its own, every touch a discovery.  This was as powerful a thrill in its pauses as in its bold advances:  doubly so, since Laurie could sense Andrew's amazement at the unfamiliarity of it all.

They were both leaning against the wall, pressed close.  Andrew's hands were in Laurie's hair, and Laurie was kissing his neck.  He'd got a shirt button undone; under the flannel, Andrew's skin was warm and salty.  His hand cupped Andrew's knee and slid up to his thigh.  Andrew tensed mid-breath.  Laurie moved his hand higher.

"Oh," Andrew said in a small voice, "oh..."

And then someone close by flicked on a torch, and they jumped apart as if caught in a crime.

Other torches followed.  For a few dread-filled seconds Laurie was certain the shelter was about to turn on them with fists and jeers.  Please, he thought, please not Andrew.  Andrew had never heard the insults before; he wouldn't know how to take them.  He wasn't Ralph.

"Are the buggers finished, then?" a male voice said, and another replied, "Looks that way."  

Laurie closed his eyes, hands clutching at his sleeve cuffs.  He wouldn't stand a chance against a mob, not with his lame leg.  If the stairwell were clear, things might not be as grave, but the lack of escape route sealed his and Andrew's fate.  They were, all of them in the cellar, like animals shut together in a cage.  Enclosed spaces do not make animals kind.

All of a sudden someone shouted, "Cheerio, Jerry!  See you tomorrow night!" and people began to cheer and clap.  Astonished, Laurie looked up.  Only then did it dawn on him that for some minutes the street above had been silent.  Now the All Clear was sounding:  the raid was over.  

Andrew was huddled by the wall, face whiter than the nurses' uniforms back at hospital.  Laurie would have given the use of his other knee just then to be able to comfort him, but it was impossible.  If they had had little privacy before, they had even less now.  Besides, the ambulance unit was needed to help get the injured out; heavy Rescue was already working up above.

A few moments passed before Andrew got his bearings.  He was still sitting on the ground when one of the ambulance workers walked up to him and held out a hand. It was the same young man who had touched Andrew's shoulder earlier in the night, and his manner was no different:  he had smiled then, and was smiling now -- clearly, they were friends.  Only, before, Andrew had looked up with pleasure and an easy sort of trust, and now his expression was wary, as if he had things to hide and feared himself transparent.

"It would spoil everything for him," Laurie had said to Ralph once.  Now his words came back to him with the solemn ring of a remembered prophecy.  Under his boot, the torn pages of the newspaper rustled, a testament to the way society viewed "such people."  He felt the world's truths settle on his chest with the crushing weight of gravity -- indifferent, ageless, immutable.  Spud Odell's crusading would do no good here; had already done enough harm.  Severing Andrew from a community he loved, forcing an allegiance on him which he need not himself have chosen...  Cruelty came in many guises.  The serpent, too, had presented his knowledge as a boon.

In the crowded cellar, Andrew went about his work:  tightening bandages, speaking comforting words to those in pain.  He had always seemed happiest when helping others; Laurie supposed it was his faith that kept him from needless introspection.  Stooping now here, now there, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, Andrew looked himself, if a little careworn.  

After a while, he crouched beside Laurie.  His hair was limp, his face bright with the anticipation of a new day.  "It's almost morning, did you know?  They'll be starting to lift people out any minute.  And word has it they have hot tea up there."  

"I'm looking forward to a cup," Laurie said, forcing a cheerful tone.  In his mind, he saw a quiet hospital kitchen and heard the clatter of spoons dropped on the cold, hard floor.

The rescue was efficient:  within the hour most of the shelter occupants were milling about on the pavement above, or gone home.  The ambulance workers were the last to come up.  Laurie lingered in the early-morning chill until Andrew emerged from the doorway of the building.  

"All finished?  Everyone safe?"

"Yes, they're in more competent hands now, I'm glad to say.  I can barely put a bandage on properly, let alone mend broken bones.  What time is your appointment?"

"Eight o'clock."

It was barely half past five; the intervening hours stretched out ahead, slow and indulgent.  Andrew smiled.  "We can have some tea."  

They joined the queue.  The darkness in the cellar had hidden most of the ravages of the night, but now it was evident just how dusty their clothes were.  Andrew's shirt was wrinkled, the top button still undone.  With a flush, Laurie remembered how it had got that way.  Something of the memory must have shown in his face, for the girl at the mobile canteen held his eye a little too long and slipped him an extra lump of sugar.

"It isn't the beech wood," Andrew said a little while later, "but it will have to do."  They had settled themselves on a stack of wooden boards, in the corner of a tiny and overgrown front garden.  The fence had been pulled down, but the place was still somewhat private.

"Won't the others wonder where you've gone?" Laurie asked.

"I can find my way.  And I asked them to tell Dave not to worry."

"Won't he?"

"Why should he?"  

Laurie's memory of Dave's voice against the background of the dingy kitchen was clearer than ever.  He said, "He'll know you're with me."

Andrew stilled, his expression uncertain.  Laurie could almost see dozens of assumptions shifting in his mind, no longer self-evident now their premise had changed.

"He thinks well of you," Andrew said after a moment.  He had picked up a twig and was weighing it in his hand, cradled like an offering.  

"That may be, but when last we talked it was clear he felt that my seeing you was a bad idea.  Writing was all right, provided I wasn't selfish about it."

Andrew's fingers curled around the tiny piece of wood.  Quietly he said, "You haven't written."

"I've the capacity to be rather selfish, you'll find."

They had been looking mostly at the ground, but now Andrew turned to face Laurie.  His chin was tilted upwards, and his eyes were hard.  "I don't believe that.  It's just a thing you say to put me off, like the way you kept things to yourself, before.  I'm no fool, you must see that.  You oughtn't to feel that you have to...  Not after..."

He was too overcome to go on; this, coupled with his proximity, had the effect of momentarily wiping all honourable resolutions from Laurie's mind.  Hardly aware of the words he was speaking, Laurie said, "I expect Dave only felt it would be easier on us both.  It wasn't as if--"

"I don't believe the way to deal with a thing is to run from it, that's all.  Dave knows that.  He understands it."

"Probably only too well."

There was a pause.  Andrew said, "He told you?"

"I think he thought it would help."

"I see.  It surprised me at first, when he told me -- mostly because he and Cynthia were happy.  They didn't quarrel, and they worked together well:  half the things our community managed to accomplish before the war would never have happened if not for them.  I always thought of that as something to strive for."

He was looking out over the street, eyes half-hidden by his fringe.  The sun, sluggish and anaemic, had finally risen after a long night; it caught his hair at just the right angle, making it shine in an unearthly, beautiful way.  Sitting there, motionless, he looked like a saint in an old stained-glass window.  Laurie almost expected him to spread his hands and raise his eyes to the sky.  

A minute passed.  Andrew turned; the sun found a new object for worship.  "Laurie?  What is it?"

"Nothing.  You looked peaceful, I didn't want to disturb you."

"You see, now I'm the one miles away."  He smiled.  "I was thinking about Dave."

"He was fortunate, all things considered.  To have been happy."

"I asked him about that.  He told me he'd merely chosen well."

The words were spoken lightly, despite the seriousness of what they implied.  This was something Laurie had noticed about the Friends before:  the way they treated both the divine and the weighty with the matter-of-fact ease of the everyday.  To someone raised on Chapel and Evensong it was as disconcerting as meeting Christ in the street and finding he wore corduroy trousers.

He said, "Dave believes in choice, doesn't he?  You mentioned it in a letter."   

"Did I?  What did I say?"

Andrew had bent to set his teacup on the ground.  His flannel shirt, stretched across his back and arms, emphasized the lines of his young body.  Laurie had to clear his throat; on his first attempt to speak the words would not come.  "That temptation is the opportunity for choice."

"Oh."

"Yes, well...  Perhaps that wasn't the best example to give just now."

"It's all right.  You needn't try so hard to be careful."  Andrew's face had drained of colour.  "I know what you must be thinking:  that I've badly mismanaged the life I chose to lead.  I told you once not to judge the Friends by me, that I wasn't a very good one.  I'd no idea at the time how true that was."

"If that's the way you look at it, I should think I'd be the one to blame, not you."

"Why?  It isn't as if I was led to it unwilling, and I am the one answerable, in the end.  Every man has his own conscience.  I'm not enough of a clod to think that my beliefs are the only ones people turn to for guidance."  

"Dave mentioned something about exalted paganism," Laurie said, but did so out of a reflex:  remaining silent was too treacherous a ground.  He remembered the book with the torn and bloodied cover, and the peaceful, reverent feeling he'd had that long-ago summer while reading the words on its pages.  The memory awoke a pride in him that had long served as a sort of anchor; he felt it imperative to behave well.  "Surely even Dave will admit that people aren't perfect," he said.  "The thing I've always admired about the spirit of Christianity is its willingness to give second chances."

"That's true.  Only it isn't as simple as it ought to be, and I seem to be tangled up in it all wrong."  Andrew ran a hand through his hair.  More quietly, he said, "This isn't about a thing being painful, you know.  Once a decision is made, once you can see your way to a course of action, the difficulty is half over.  Suffering would be quite beside the point, by then."

It was clear that there was more to it, but Laurie didn't press him further.  In the street, a man was pushing a cart full of scrap metal, clanging and jangling with every step.  For a few moments, they both watched the cart's slow progress.  Then, hesitantly, as if he were stepping out onto a sheet of ice he feared might break under his weight, Andrew said, "Do you know what the worst thing is?"

"What?"

"I can't seem to feel regret.  Not sincere regret -- or at least not sincere enough."  He paused, and in a softer voice added, "There can be no forgiveness without it."

Laurie didn't answer; he had no idea what to say.  Andrew's words were not scathing or hateful or even final.  With enough careful interpreting one might even make of them a declaration of sorts, a reluctant admission of feelings felt and possibilities not yet abandoned.  Someone more skilled in persuasion might go as far as to think of this impasse not as a defeat but as an opportunity.

Deprived of his bearings, Laurie tried just that.  He promptly felt ill.   

"Have I upset you?" Andrew asked.  "I have, haven't I?"

The suffering in his voice was plain; it seemed cruel not to ease it.  Laurie said, "Don't worry about me, I'm all right."

In his first month as Head of House, he had had the unpleasant job of telling a third-former that the person who had stolen his beloved world atlas was none other than his closest friend.  Handing over the book, Laurie had watched the student's face brighten, then fall as he was told the news. It was a necessary thing to have done, he reasoned later, but it had left him feeling hollow.  He had wondered what manner of dilemmas Lanyon had tackled in that very study.

The onset of adulthood mitigates absolutes, blending sharp contrasts into shades of grey; Laurie was well aware that taking responsibility sometimes involved wading into murky waters.  But, back then, the boy had been just a boy, and presenting him with unwelcome knowledge didn't feel like doing violence to one's very nature.

Outlined against the morning sky, Andrew's silhouette looked solitary and sad.  Paradoxically, Laurie felt closer to him than ever, filled with a love that was as deep as it was unselfish:  rooted not in what he could get, but what he could give.  He knew now what needed to be done.  That it seemed too horrible for words did not in any way alter its necessity.

"It was very kind of you to do what you did, back in the shelter," he said.  "I imagine it went against most of what you stand for, and yet you did it regardless, because I needed to be shaken up."

"Oh.  I...  Well..."  Andrew's cheeks were flushed; his fingers picked at a loose thread on his sleeve cuff with enough violence to make the shirt unravel before long.

"It saved me a good deal of embarrassment, not to mention my sanity.  I wanted to thank you.  I shall never forget it."

"Nor shall I."  

Andrew looked at Laurie.  Though he would never say it out loud, or perhaps even consciously think it, his eyes seemed to be asking, didn't I please you?  Laurie had to halt for a moment; the pain he felt was so keen it actually stopped his breath.

After a minute, he went on.  "There is something I never did explain, mostly because of circumstances, although I meant to.  Now that we're talking I think you've a right to know.  The man who went to see you, the one you hit -- he wasn't Ralph Lanyon.  I know he claimed to be, but he lied:  in part because he meant to hurt Ralph, and in part, I suppose, for sport.  He is a dreadful sort of person, and the fact you had to come in contact with him at all makes me more sorry than I can say."

The wind blew across the empty garden, mussing Andrew's hair.  He brushed it out of his eyes with an automatic, impatient gesture.  Laurie continued, "Ralph would never do such a thing, you see.  He'd rather cut off his own arm, I'm sure of it.  I admired him back at school, you know that, and -- well, anyway, I wasn't wrong.  He gave me that book because the things for which it stands meant something to him.  They still do."

For a minute, silence stretched out between them.  Andrew had the air of someone who'd just seen a train derail and still felt the ground shaking under his feet.  At last he said, "If the man lied, then what he told me about you and Ralph wasn't true either?"

"Not everything he said was a lie."

There was a pause.  "Ralph is fond of you?"

"He is."

"And... you of him?"

Laurie felt as if he were aiming a gun and looking into Gyp's accusing eyes.  "Yes."  

"I'm glad for you, then."

The falsely cheerful tone was almost too much.  Laurie looked straight up at the sun, thankful for an excuse to run his hands over his face.  In the end, however, his resolve proved equal to the task:  he was able to keep his breathing even and his voice steady.

They said something about the upheavals of war and people crossing paths unexpectedly after a lengthy separation, then fell quiet.  After a moment, Andrew began nervously grinding a stray weed into the soil with his shoe.  "Back there..."  He cleared his throat.  "You mustn't think I was in any way trying to take advantage.  I don't really know what I...  That is, I -- I can't think what I--"

"It's all right," Laurie said quickly.  "It's hard to keep one's mind on proprieties when one feels the city about to fall on one's head."  When that did not ease Andrew's mortification, he added, "It's fortunate we're friends, you know.  We'll be able to laugh about the whole business before long."

Andrew let out a breath.  "Do you think so?"

"I'm certain of it."

The silence that fell then was almost comfortable.  It was as if they had both struggled over a rocky path and could glimpse the road ahead, wide and even.  Laurie's objective was achieved, his ordeal nearly over; he thought he ought to be feeling relief.  Instead, he felt a sense of loneliness so great he feared it might choke him.  It had been quite a different thing to share in Andrew's distress.  This private grief was his alone to bear.

"What time is it?" Andrew asked.  

Laurie glanced at his watch:  it was seven.  Oblivious to their petty concerns, time had been moving steadily forward.  Now the dregs in his cup were cold, and his responsibilities loomed larger by the minute.  "I ought to be going," he said.

"Of course."  Andrew could not hide the tremor in his voice.  "It was wonderful to see you.  Maybe you'll write now.  I mean, now that things are clear."

"Yes," Laurie said.  "I'll write whenever I can."

They parted ways at a spot where the narrow lane met a wider thoroughfare.  Even their surroundings seemed to augur a farewell; each house they passed, each grime-covered railing felt as if it were steeped in a profound sense of loss.  Laurie was aware of two things:  that Andrew's nearness made him ache, and that he did not want that pain ever to end.  All too soon it did.

Half-blindly, he made for the tram.  The queue was long, and the conversation lively with accounts of the past night's events, but the press of humanity only heightened his sense of alienation.  He had thought, from his days in hospital, that he knew what to expect of pain.  It had not occurred to him until now how much harder it would be to bear when stripped of all possibility of public acknowledgement.  For the first time, prompted by the morning's errand, he perceived what his future was likely to be without a uniform.  The khaki he'd worn, while not easing his physical affliction, had at least given it meaning:  he had been a wounded soldier.  From now on, he would simply be a cripple.

The queue moved forward.  Caught off guard, Laurie stumbled.  The knee seized up in a spasm, and in his effort to bear the pain with grace he remembered Ralph's gloved hand on the gear-lever, saw once again its silent struggle.

There are times when recognition of a truth does not come until the events surrounding it are long past, as if one's consciousness had stored observations away until a key to them could be found.  That night in the car, Laurie had admired Ralph's courage from a distance, caught up in the memory of days when Lanyon's name had had to his ears a nearly mythical ring.  Now, in a moment of self-awareness, he saw himself and Ralph not for what they had been but what they had become:  two men beset by similar trials, fighting shoulder to shoulder against the world's cruelties.  

Around him, people were sharing stories of bombs and incendiaries, drawing what comfort they could from the commonality of experience.  It was like a language, he thought, like deciphering the symbols of an alphabet.  The whole world did not need to understand; so long as a single person did, one wouldn't feel like the last member of a dying tribe.

The wind had picked up from the east, bringing with it clouds, grey and ragged.  Andrew didn't live far away, would surely be home soon.  Dave would make tea and toast.  The other Friends would draw round, talk of the night's raid, make Andrew feel like one of their own.  

When Laurie got back that night there would be tea, too.  Ralph would pour the cups with a steady hand and, in that careful voice he had used since the events of a few weeks past, would say, "Tell me about it, Spud."  Laurie would talk then, disclosing or concealing details as he chose, and it wouldn't matter either way, because Ralph would look past the signals to the meaning within, like a sailor gauging the weather from the colour of the sky.  

There would be no forced confessions, no entreaties for further confidences:  only a look of understanding, and the breadth of space they allowed each other now –- companionable and cautious.  One day, Laurie might tell more.  In the meantime, he would have the certainty, resonating like a message transmitted on a wire, that beside him slept a man to whom the dark corners of Laurie's experience were not alien.  It would be enough.

A hand tapped Laurie on the shoulder.  He started, turned round to look.  "Yes?"

"Aren't you getting on?"

"I beg your pardon?  Oh, sorry."  The tram had arrived; the queue had moved forward.  Hastily, Laurie closed the gap between himself and the man in front.  People were gathering their bundles, picking up babies, calling out to older children.  The woman behind him looked annoyed.

"Standing there like you didn't know where you were."  She hefted her bags, and followed.  "The tram could have come and gone, and you wouldn't even notice.  Like a sleepwalker."  

They had come up to the tram doors.  After his exhausting night, the steps seemed to Laurie rickety and steep; he hesitated.  The woman looked at his boot.  Laurie saw her face soften, understood that she wasn't really ill-tempered, merely tired.  

"Will you be all right, love?" she asked.

Laurie glanced up.  Above, the sky was a steel blue space behind bright-edged clouds; the sun glimmered through patches of mist.  Morning was gradually turning into day.  He nodded.  "Yes.  I expect I will."



END

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