Page 49 of These Old Lies
Yet pushing Charlie into a safer post would be exactly the sort of high-handed behaviour Ned had vowed to Charlie that he would never do.“I will never violate that trust.”Trust that Ned would treat Charlie as a man and not a pawn.
Charlie would likely never forgive him. Ned would be alone again, trapped in a permanent mask of being the perfect English officer.
Ned had a classical education, and he knew all the different ways to sacrifice oneself. Charlie's anger would be worth it if Ned got to live in a world where Charlie breathed instead of winding up dead in a cold French grave.
Ned would need to work fast, start pulling in favours now. His mind was already thinking through who he could contact on the telephone lines.
There was one last important thing he needed to do. He had to say it. He couldn’t not.
“I love you, Charlie Villiers,” Ned whispered. Then he laid one last kiss on Charlie’s lips before sweeping out of the dressing station.
17 Devil’s Bargains, Again
London, January 1924 / Charlie
Charlie jumped on the packed red omnibus as the doors were closing, almost certain to be late meeting Ned and George at the Lilypond.
As the bus inched through the streets, Charlie stumbled up the stairs to find a seat in the upper level and squeezed between a window and an elderly woman with what looked like a month’s worth of grocery shopping.
Normally, Charlie would be seething in frustration—at his father for dragging his feet closing up, at the customers who couldn’t make up their minds, at the fact that all of London seemed to be determined to take this omnibus. But he couldn’t muster the energy to displace the warm happiness that filled him. Not for the first time, Charlie asked himself if he had ever been as content.
The shop was doing well; he had even sold more of his custom hats. Kitty had gotten engaged over Christmas, thank Christ. Then Labour had won the snap election. Sort of, with the support of the Liberals, but Charlie wasn’t going to split hairs.
Most important of all, Charlie had Ned. Magnificent, aristocratic, brilliant, exasperating Ned was in his life and in his bed, making Charlie feel like a god when they fucked, making him laugh when they weren’t, and generally making life more colourful, all because half a year ago, on a perfectly ordinary day, the shop bell on the door rung, and a customer with an unpaid bill strolled up to the counter. Charlie had thrown away Ned’s card three times before he’d finally sent the note asking for a drink.
The brokenness of the tall man sitting across from him at the pub had spoken to all the pieces of Charlie that were also splintered. The confident golden boy had been replaced by a man with dark circles under his eyes who spent more time thinking than speaking. Neither one of them was the man they had been six years ago, and if Charlie didn’t want to be judged by his choices, he could hardly do the same to Ned.
The ease of being with Ned had caught Charlie off guard as well. Ned already knew all the secrets Charlie worked so hard to keep from everyone else. About what he had done in the war. About who he liked to fuck. Their conversation in that pub had been everything that the coming months would turn out to be: terrifying, exhilarating, liberating, and wondrous.
The bright lights of Piccadilly Circus shone through the misty bus windows and brought Charlie back to the present. He probably looked like a right idiot to the rest of the passengers, grinning to himself. Or like a man in love. Charlie pulled the bell for the next stop and scrambled down the narrow stairs of the omnibus into the London crowds, the exhaustion of the day replaced with the joy of seeing his Ned.
???
The Lilypond was a haven for the queer men who lived and worked in West London. Ned had assured Charlie it was as safe as such a place could be, and that nothing about the decor or the behaviour of the patrons revealed that it was welcoming for men with a certain tilt. Charlie thought that was a bit of a shame, even as he appreciated the safety it brought.
Ned and George were already in deep conversation when Charlie arrived. The three of them met for drinks fairly regularly since Ned’s birthday. Charlie liked George a lot more than Ned’s other friends. He worked for a living, had a decent sense of humour, and agreed with Charlie about football. Charlie didn’t like the way that George stared at Ned’s arse, but it was really a very impressive arse, and Charlie spent a lot of time staring at it himself, so he couldn’t really criticise.
Fighting his way through the crowd of other patrons, Charlie caught George’s last sentence as he sat down on the bench with Ned. “Consider it, Edmund. They won’t wait long for an answer.”
Charlie squeezed Ned’s thigh under the table, a form of a hello kiss. For reasons that didn’t make any sense to Charlie, Ned looked like a spooked cat. “Sorry for running late, it took forever to close up and the omnibus nearlydrove backwards.”
The conversation carried on to the usual updates of their respective Christmases. It was a good hour before they stepped into the cold and Charlie could properly ask after Ned. “Are you going to tell me what is bothering you? Or do I need to go get you drunk first? Because it's after Christmas and I don’t have that kind of money, so you might need to wait a few more weeks.”
That at least got a laugh out of Ned and an apologetic smile. “My conversation with George discombobulated me.”
That was posh, even for Ned. “He didn’t declare his undying love for you, did he?”
“You think everyone is in love with me because you are.” Ned paused. “George wanted to warn me that my name is apparently being discussed for a role in the incoming government.”
Charlie had always found Ned’s existence as a man of leisure bizarre, but Charlie spent his days selling hats to old ladies, so he wasn’t going to start throwing stones. “I thought you weren’t interested in slaving away in the ministries?”
“Apparently my recent efforts to help veterans find work made an impression on certain figures. That, and my reputation as a one-time radical. They want to hire men who share their vision for Britain, men who want to challenge the way things have always been done. It would be a very prestigious post, advising the Cabinet. Exactly the type of role that I imagined for myself when I was at Oxford.” There was an almost youthful wistfulness in Ned’s tone.
“So, take the job and fix the country. God knows we could use the help.” A part of Charlie wanted to burst with pride that his lover was being singled out personally by such powerful men.
“It might not be that simple. This government has big dreams, but without a majority in the Commons they will be threading a needle in the dark to get anything done. They need advice about which ambitions might actually be realised, strategies about who needs to be convinced and who needs to be neutralised, and then making sure that the plans actually happen…” The wheels in Ned’s mind were already whirling away, exactly like they used to in the trenches.
Before Charlie could respond, all of Ned’s enthusiasm seemed to deflate like air out of a balloon. “Who's to say that Labour’s aims could even be realised? We’re talking about remaking society, overturning centuries of custom.”