Page 34 of These Old Lies
Charlie’s words kept pouring out of him. “I think you are one posh tosser,posher than even the other officers. Why are you even here when you could have a post in London that would allow you more options to live as you would like to?” Charlie had thought about that a lot. When having to hide himself so completely was such a burden on Ned, why didn’t he get himself out of Flanders?
Ned muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like “Intuitive bastard.”
“I don’t expect you to understand, but yes, I do need to be here in Flanders.” It wasn’t lost on Charlie that Ned had repeated his own words. “I wake up every day with the horror of knowing that my decisions will decide the fate of dozens, if not hundreds, of men. I’m here because I know I can lead. I know I can make this scrappy bunch of cockney Londoners as good a platoon as any in the BEF, and that if I can figure out how to keep you trained, persuade the higher-ups to give us the right sort of missions, then I think I can get a good number of you home to England at the end of this war. Even more, I think we might be able to deliver some meaningful blows to the Germans. Maybe it’s all hubris, but I feel it is my duty to put my abilities at the service of my country and my countrymen.”
Charlie gripped the steering wheel, moved by Ned’s explanation, even if he wasn’t quite sure what hubris meant. He found himself reaching out and squeezing Ned’s knee, the kind of gesture they only engaged in during the stolen moments after getting off.
They could have ended the conversation there, with a recognition of how the other man saw the world, but they both seemed drawn to return to the sensitive areas the other had just exposed, as fraught and risky as an artillery shell.
Of course Ned tackled the most explosive. “I hate disciplining you.”
“I thought officers got hard off of that sort of thing.” Ned tried to jump in, but Charlie wouldn’t be cut off. “Before you say it, bugger to the regulations limiting us Tommies to rum rations. Officers are allowed to drink as much as they want. You know as well as I do that half of the officers’ corps have gin with their morning tea. So explain to me why Smythe, why those new recruits, deserved that brandy any less?”
“Don’t you see, that’s the problem? Despite what my duty tells me, I think you are right!” The map that Ned held was becoming increasingly crumpled. “I hadn’t expected it to be like this, being with someone outside my class.”
“Never been on your knees with riff-raff before?” Charlie couldn’t hold back his smirk.
“The fellows I was with before, they were always of my class, my age, my schooling, and my interests. Our lives were hard to distinguish from one another’s. That’s what allowed us to discover we shared a very particular preference in the first place. I appreciated that sense of being part of a secret association of like-minded men. We all agreed on the important things, like the beauty of a heroic death, and the need for a struggle in victory.”
Charlie snorted his disgust. Ideas like that got men killed, and not only those who thought about whether death was poetic.
Ned continued, “And you keep blowing up all of these ideals, one after another. You don’t debate me, you just stand back and show me the hypocrisy of it all. You think I didn’t know what you were doing, helping those lads? Making sure they might get some training that would actually help them survive? But fuck, Charlie, I can’t have half a section so drunk they can’t stand.”
This all felt too big and too complicated for Charlie. If he had ideals, he didn’t know what they were. What mattered was survival, staying alive and whole. “I didn’t think that fucking an officer was going to be like this either.”
“What do you mean?” Ned’s head snapped over to look at Charlie.
“No surprise that a lieutenant on his knees sucking my cock would make me as horny as hell.” Charlie glanced over to see Ned blushing properly now. “Then you made me actually respect you. You wrote to command about the biscuit tins and stood shoulder to shoulder with us when we dug those trenches. You trust me, you trust your men, to have a mind of our own. So I trust you to see what I can’t.”
Telling an officer that he understood the need for military discipline? Charlie hardly recognised himself, but Ned wasn’t Pemberton.
This time it was Ned who leaned over to squeeze Charlie’s knee. “I’m honoured. And I promise you, Charles Villiers, that I will never violate that trust.”
???
They arrived at HQ early in the afternoon. Of course, nothing more than their destination had been shared with lowly Corporal Villiers. Ned was quickly whisked off to do whatever it was that had brought them there, and Charlie found a few familiar faces to play cards with.
They ended up leaving later than Charlie would have liked, but overall it had been a very good day. He got to drive, at no point had it rained, and he had won some cigarettes and chocolate in cards.
Charlie half expected Ned to tell him about the meeting when they were back in the motor, but he didn’t want to seem desperate enough to ask. He was about to crack when Ned said, “After the conversation this morning, this feels even more egregious to say, but I really can’t tell you anything about what I was doing today. You really shouldn’t tell anyone where we went, either.”
“That's bollocks.”
“In ways you can’t even imagine.”
The sun was slowly setting over the fields of France, and the flashes of shellfire at the front were becoming more distinct, for all that they were miles away. Like fireworks, if Charlie didn’t know better.
“Do you ever want to discipline me?” Ned’s voice was so low Charlie almost couldn’t hear him.
Different answers flashed across Charlie’s mind:of course, never, I have no idea. What he said was, “Do you deserve it?”
“Yes.” The certainty in Ned’s voice made Charlie harder than it should have. A glance over to Ned’s lap showed that Charlie wasn’t the only one feeling the intensity of the moment. Maybe he shouldn’t have told Ned that the idea of an officer on his knees made him horny.
Without asking or even looking over to Ned, Charlie pulled off the road near what might have been a stone barn at one point over the past hundred years. Still gripping the gear shift, Charlie said, “Get in the back seat.”
Ned swallowed loudly but obediently opened the door. Only once he sat down did Charlie come around to join him in the back bench. Ned was stilllooking straight ahead, hands clenched on his thighs.
Charlie hadn’t kissed Ned since he had returned from field punishment. He tried to tell himself that there simply hadn’t been any opportunities, but Charlie also knew he hadn’t looked for any either. He had told himself that it was for the best, that he didn’t want Pemberton to suspect Ned any more than he already did. Didn’t want Pemberton to start suspecting Charlie. It was the best way to protect them both.