The First of July(39)
The newspaper he’d bought at Paddington was a special edition. Things were moving so fast on the Continent that the news was already out of date. Tomorrow, the next day, or next week, they would be at war. He glanced up and the outskirts of London were just the same: small lives, shabby houses, little businesses: the foundations of an empire. He looked down at the tall dark headlines that threatened it all. The printers’ ink stained his damp hands.
Theo threw his book aside.
“Look, we’re carrying on as if I was a chancer who’d stolen a kiss and you were a well-mannered and very chaste maiden.” He was speaking fast as he sometimes did when he was drunk, although he was sober now.
Benedict began to protest but Theo went on determinedly. “I am sorry. I am truly sorry and embarrassed and anything else you want me to be. Perhaps I’m just a bad character, but I can’t bear any more of this politeness. I mean, we’re chums. We’ve each been all the other’s had in the face of the sheer ghastliness of choir practice and lunchtime recitals and endless pernickety exercises. Of living in Gloucester forever.”
Benedict found himself halfway to a smile. “Actually, I wasn’t thinking about anything much.”
Theo was running his long fingers through his hair. The sun was in his eyes and he crinkled them against the light. Benedict stood up and pulled the blind halfway down.
“It’s all right. It really is all right,” he said. “Of course we’re friends. You made a mistake—”
“Oh for God’s sake,” Theo said. “You know it wasn’t a mistake. I’m a thief. A failed thief. If you’re my friend, then that’s the sort of friend you’ve got. And now I’m at your mercy—my reputation, in Gloucester at least, is in your hands.”
Benedict inhaled deeply. Sat back. Looked at Theo, uncertain whether he was sincere or acting, whether he was on the edge of tears or laughter, and wanting, more than anything, to take Theo in his arms. To make it all right. To bury his face in that tawny hair and breathe in the smell of Theo. Just to run a finger along the curve of Theo’s mouth: the line that separated the rough afternoon stubble from the softest skin of Theo’s lips. To peel a lip back and touch the blunt edge of his lower teeth. To feel what he could see daily. He couldn’t allow himself to think further. There was a sort of terror in imagining even this much, and an even greater terror that one day he might respond to the dreadful hunger in himself.
“And you’ve got a friend who spends his days being something he’s not,” he said. “Who isn’t sure there’s a God. No, who’s damn sure there isn’t, yet who sits at an organ playing psalms and hymns, knowing his closest friend is infinitely, unimaginably better at playing the organ than he’ll ever be.”
Theo’s face lit up. “Two days in London, one mad Russian,” he said, “and you’re a changed man.”
The train shuddered over two sets of points. Theo gazed out of the window. He was like quicksilver, Benedict thought, his attention and ideas always changing shape and direction, his enthusiasms contagious. His hands lay limply on his lap, the book flat, the bony knuckles on boyish, long fingers that were capable of creating such beauty, the nails a little grubby.
“Are you going to get engaged to Agnes?” he said, more to focus his own thoughts.
Theo looked amused and rueful. “I think so. Though not yet. Soon. I mean, to be honest, I think I’ve rushed things a bit. It was a sort of joke, but Agnes doesn’t really understand jokes and her mother certainly doesn’t.” He sat back again, sticking his legs out so his calf almost touched Benedict’s. “I can’t afford a ring and I haven’t said to a word to Father. Mind you, a bishop’s daughter—he’d not be likely to be against it. Might even give me some money. Or one of my poor mama’s rings. If he hasn’t given them to my various prospective new mamas.”
“When are you going to tell him?”
“She’s pretty enough, don’t you think?” Theo went on as if he hadn’t heard.
“She’s very pretty. You’re a lucky man.” He wondered if Theo had ever spoken to Agnes about his plan.
“Don’t laugh at me, Ben. I know you’re a better man than me. But actually I’m beginning to think I just can’t face another two years of Gloucester. I used to dream, sometimes, of signing on as crew down at the docks. Letting my lily-white hands grow gnarled and brown. Sail away to the South Sea Islands. I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide, is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied, and all that.” He looked down at his hands. “But most of the boats were going to Liverpool. The longest journey was only taking pig iron to Antwerp. I could deny that quite easily.”