Page 30 of These Old Lies
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They didn’t take a cab. Charlie clearly knew where they were going, darting down winding streets with Ned trying to keep up beside him, holding the umbrella over them both.
Charlie pulled Ned against him as a large motor passed, splashing a dirty spray of water toward the men. For a breath, they were pressed against each other under the umbrella, barely sheltered from the rain, so close that Ned could have counted the freckles that dotted Charlie’s face. Then Charlie broke away and continued his determined pace through the rain, the moment over so quickly that Ned was left wondering whether it had happened at all.
After a few more twists and turns, they were on the quiet street that Ned recognised as the hat shop’s address. Charlie unlocked the door with a single quick movement. Ned gasped slightly from the relief of being out of the rain as they stood dripping in the middle of the darkened shop.
It felt oddly illicit. The soft light from the street cast shadows through the windows, creating a whole new dimension to the room. The faceless mannequins leered from every direction. Charlie reached behind one of the counters and came back with some small rough towels, passing one to Ned to dry off with. Despite the bizarreness of the situation, Ned was calm. Charlie clearly had a plan, and Ned only had to wait.
“Come with me,” Charlie said.
Still fairly damp, Ned followed Charlie through to the back of the shop. Ned’s eyes smarted from the harsh electric light that Charlie flicked on. The space was the spiritual opposite of the elegant shop. A chaotic workspace, with half a dozen different hats in various states of construction strewn across two workbenches. Unlike the hats in the front, these creations seemed to have no structure at all, riots of colours and shapes.
Charlie brought around a work stool for Ned to sit on. And then, as if hecouldn’t help himself, Charlie moved towards a work in progress.
As Charlie threaded the needle through something that resembled a nest of feathers rather than a hat, he spoke. “I learned to be a milliner from my father right on the chair you’re sitting on,” he said, not raising his eyes from his work. “He taught me what styles go with what seasons, what delicate decorations are needed for ladies, the practical lines needed for a man. I worked with my mother in the front before I could see over the counter. She taught me what colour went with what coat, what was vulgar and what wasn’t.” Charlie’s hands never stopped moving. “I don’t have any particular passion for it, but I don’t think I ever thought about doing anything else. And then it was August ’14. Did you know, until I had signed up for the army, I had never even been south of the Thames?”
This was probably the most Charlie had ever shared about himself, and Ned knew instinctively what it cost him. So he listened.
“I don’t need to tell you what the war was like. Christ! You of all people know.” Charlie paused for a minute to meet Ned’s eyes, but then returned to his hat. “I might never have been outside of London, but I wasn’t a virgin. I worked out two things pretty quick. The fear of death made me horny, and I wasn’t that particular about how I got off. And then I met you.”
Charlie put down the needle and thread. “But you had me sent away. Then the war ended. I was demobbed and came back to work at the shop. A good-looking man still caught my eye now and again, but that didn’t keep me up at night. Yet, things I never used to think about, like the rules that said men had to behave a certain way, that hats had to take on specific forms, all of a sudden, they grated on me. So I started coming here at night and making these hats. Making things that reflected the world I now saw.” He gestured around them. “Everything in this room is an attempt to figure out how to make a hat that looks as magnificent as you did in that silk robe, wearing your boots and eyeshadow.”
Charlie slumped over the worktable. “I don’t expect you, who kisses boys in your lap, and who doesn’t care about arrest or scandal, to understand that making these hats, and occasionally selling one of them, is the best I can do. This is the little way that I try to carve out my own definition of what it means to be handsome and pretty at the same time. I’m not ashamed of what we did together. Of the pleasure we shared. And yet, maybe I’m a coward since I came back from Flanders, because I can’t be more than a man making ridiculous hats in the dark.”
“You have never been a coward. And I have never been as brave as you think.” Ned didn’t want to interrupt, but couldn’t hold back those words.
“You scare me. You smile at me and expose parts of myself that I didn’t even know existed.” Charlie’s voice was almost a whisper. “Before I knew you, my dreams fit within the confines of this shop. You’ve made me want things that can never be. To be with you, to care about you. Two men together in partnership has never been possible, and so why does the idea that we can’t have it hurt so much?”
The shop’s stillness and quiet was heavy as the rain thundered outside. Ned swore he could feel the hairs on Charlie’s arms move.
The only possible response he could give was to match Charlie’s raw emotion. “After ’18, I thought I had lost the ability to feel anything, and I stand near you and I think I will burst with emotion.”
“What do we do about it?” In another man those words might be coy, seductive, but Charlie’s expression was so openly lost.
“We do what you’re doing with your hats. We break the rules of convention. We create something beautiful that is ours. If you would let me, I want to do right by you, Charlie. I want to make you laugh and share in your disappointments. I would like to make you feel adored.” Ned couldn’t bring himself to say the word ‘loved,’ but it hung in the air.
“Ned, are you asking me to court you?”
Ned instinctively bristled at the presumption. “Maybe I’m asking if I could court you?”
Charlie paused for a moment, clearly contemplating the implications of Ned’s words. “You always have done right by me.”
Ned’s heart fluttered with tenderness, but Charlie wasn’t done speaking. “I’ll do right by you, too. Although don’t start thinking you should be opening doors for me.”
Ned let out a soft laugh still audible over the sound of the rain pounding the windows in waves.
He was never sure who moved first. Maybe they both did.
Suddenly, Ned was standing and there was no space between them. Ned could have counted Charlie’s eyelashes. Muscle memory took over, Ned’s lips on Charlie’s, his hand running through his lush, thick hair.
Ned gasped between kisses. Charlie’s lips were so instantly familiar, yet Ned felt overwhelmed by little sensations he hadn’t even realised he’d forgotten. The way Charlie darted his tongue, the way he liked short, harsh kisses, how he touched Ned’s neck and face while they kissed.
Charlie nudged him back towards the wall and Ned didn’t need muscle memory to know where that would lead. Which, Christ, he wanted. Had yearned for over the past six years. But this wasn’t Flanders.
Ned broke the kiss, panting for breath. Charlie pulled away, confusion on his face.
“You know I want this.” Ned tightened his grip on Charlie’s hips. “You. Know.” Another breath as he fought the urge to return to the kiss. “But beds will be involved this time.”