Page 63 of These Old Lies
The busybody nodded. “Of course, of course. Although, you might wantto remind them that this isn’t East London. We do have a dedicated servants’ entrance.”
Ned’s temper flared, and he shifted to hold his groceries with as commanding a presence as he could muster. “Mr Villiers and his family are staying with me as guests. I would be very offended should anyone ask them to use anything other than the main entrance.”
“There’s no need for rudeness, Pinsent,” his neighbour answered primly.
“Exactly, none at all.”
The lift shuddered to a stop at their floor and Ned strode off towards his flat.
After so many years of living alone, it was peculiar to open the door to his flat and find lights on and voices coming from inside. At least this evening the voices didn’t immediately hush as he opened the door. In the week since the Villiers family had moved in, Ned kept trying to be a gracious host, but he couldn’t seem to get the Villierses to stop trying to be invisible house guests.
He found Charlie and Betty in the kitchen. They kept congregating in the only room the architect had assumed the owner would never use, as demonstrated by the kitchen’s tiny windows and plain white tile.
“Good evening,” Ned mumbled as he finally managed to put down his bags on the counter.
“Is it evening?” Charlie rubbed his eyes. “Maybe we’re just getting old, but I swear with Betty working nights and me days it is worse than when the children had colic. One of us is always waking the other.”
With Villiers Automotive closed indefinitely, both husband and wife had started at the munitions factories. They certainly looked exhausted, Charlie’s whole body slumped against the wall, and Betty’s eyes were ringed with dark circles.
“We can’t have Britain’s best munitionette on the production line tired.” Ned’s words masked a very real worry about the injury and death statistics for munition workers. “Should we re-examine sleeping arrangements?”
Ned’s flat only had two proper bedrooms, and there had been somedebate about who would sleep where. In the end, Charlie and Betty settled into the narrow, windowless room at the end of the hall that had been built for a live-in servant, while Frank and Ellie slept in the guestroom. Ned was a bit ashamed that everyone had insisted he stay in his cavernous master bedroom, but surely no one could debate the swap now.
Charlie broke out into a broad grin and said, “Not a bad idea for me to bunk in with you. Leave Betty to sleep through the day without interruption.”
That was most definitelynotwhat Ned meant.
“Might actually help Ned rise at a decent hour,” Betty teased as she started to sort through Ned’s grocery purchases. “You sure you wouldn’t mind?”
Would Ned mind having Charlie sleep beside him, night after night? Laugh with him as they turned off the lights? Bask in the heat from his body under the covers?
Had he learnednothingfrom ’32?
“Of course not,” Ned answered as he tossed a potato from hand to hand.
Everyone must do their part, after all.
???
That evening, Charlie knocked politely on Ned’s bedroom door at ten o’clock, already changed into a pair of slightly overlarge tartan pyjamas. After the briefest of greetings, he’d calmly climbed into the right side of the bed, discreetly turned on his back away from Ned, and promptly fallen asleep, seemingly unperturbed that the last time they had been together in this bed, they had fucked the night away, gasping words of love into each other’s mouths.
Ned had tried to match that same casualness, but his body refused to cooperate, reacting to the familiar way the mattress dipped for that specific person, the disconcerting smell of his former lover. Ned’s body ached with lust and the desire to feel Charlie’s skin against his own again.
Ned shifted onto his side and fought the urge to give his cock more than a quick squeeze.
He would survive this. He just needed to remember to have a wank beforebed.
???
As the weeks turned into a month, Ned learned to cope with more repressed sexual frustration than he’d felt since his boarding school days.
He didn’t know if he could ever train his body to not react to the sight of Charlie shirtless in the moonlight, however.
Ned had woken slowly, dragged away from sleep by the slow realisation that the space beside him was empty. He cracked his eyes open to Charlie in front of the window, black-out curtains open and the low light casting a silver glow on his torso. After giving himself a moment to enjoy the sight, Ned hauled himself out of bed, pulling on his silk dressing gown and reaching for Charlie’s plaid.
He wordlessly placed it around Charlie’s shoulders, as if the flannel could banish whatever demons were keeping Charlie from sleeping.
Charlie pulled the gown around his front but didn’t turn away from the window. “Sorry for waking you.”