Fic: Always: Time Will Bring Their Hour
Jan. 3rd, 2008 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenazTitle: Always: Time Will Bring Their Hour
Fandom: The Charioteer by Mary Renault
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kenazfiction (kenazfiction@gmail.com)
Beta:lorie945
Pairing: Alec/Sandy
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters are the property of Mary Renault; I'm borrowing them.
Summary: At that moment, there was nothing more important than going home, if only because there was someone to go home to, with all that this entailed.
Author's Notes: Written for athousandwinds in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge. Thanks again to Lorie for the excellent beta!
To the F-list: This isn't my usual fare, but it's a piece of which I'm particularly fond, and I hope on that merit alone you'll give it a once-over. If you have not read The Charioteer yet, I beg you to do so. I guarantee you'll finish it, finish your cathartic weeping and say to yourself "Now, that... *THAT* is how it's done."
Alec left Toto's flat directly upon hearing the news and too quickly for good manners, something he knew he would be called to account for at a later date, although he thought Toto's rolling eyes and murmurs of complaint were more an affectation than legitimate disappointment. Pillow talk and lengthy discourse, after all, fell well outside the purview of their meetings. Peter and Theo, as the bearers of bad tidings, seemed to feel it was their lot to stick around and immerse themselves in reminiscences, thus cleanly eliminating any lingering compunction he might have had to prolong his stay. He should be the one to tell Sandy, he explained unnecessarily, but he knew it was more than that. For all that he fought for, and faithlessly pursued, a life of his own, he longed now with vicious clarity for the very existence that had chafed him: at that moment, there was nothing more important than going home, if only because there was someone to go home to, with all that this entailed.
Bim's death was not a surprise. In light of last week's showing, Alec considered grimly, it was a foregone conclusion. One could only take so much before snapping, and the odds had been against him in any case. He could imagine how it had gone: the dark, rippling sheet of the channel passing almost imperceptibly into the jagged silhouette of the French shoreline, the drone of the engine interrupted by staccato gunfire, and the inexorable end. The images played out in an unrelenting stream in his mind, the private newsreel of an extinguished life projected against his closed eyelids. For Bim's sake, he hoped that he had been dead before the plane went down, but he knew better. There must have been a second of shock or of pain, reprieved by the instantaneous coalescing of all consciousness and the taste of ash and iron as his teeth, ground down under amphetamine clenching, finally shattered in his mouth. Perhaps, after months of nerves stretched taut as piano wire, the screaming free-fall and the promise of solid earth rushing up to meet him were a blessed relief: the long day's task is done, and we must sleep.
He found the funereal grandeur of the house oppressive today. The late afternoon light spilled in uneven patches across the terrace, illuminating the overall shabbiness of it, like one of the old soldiers who lined the halls at the hospital with thin, palsied hands edging out of faded service dress. The patterns on the rug in the hall made his eyes swim, and at this hour he hadn't even the angle of the sun to blame. On the bus, he had chewed his thumbnail to the quick as his urgency had transmuted into indignation with a simmering undercurrent of directionless anger seeking a target. He stopped on the half-landing and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, but it did little good, and so he continued upward, shaking off the gravity that tugged at his heels until he reached his door.
The faucet was running in the kitchen, which meant that Sandy was at the dishes. They had been slovenly in the calamitous aftermath of the party, recrimination and remorse leaving no time for the smaller business of life, the unsavory detritus of desperation swilling like sludge in the bottom of the sink. Sandy knew better than to get his sutures wet, but Alec, for whom the picking of battles had become a daily exercise in triage, hoped that perhaps a return to the mundane heralded a restoration of what passed, for them, as domestic bliss. He draped his Burberry over the back of the rocker, his eyes darting about the room, taking inventory as a means of stalling his entrance. Sandy had likely heard him come in even over the running water. He always had an ear cocked for Alec's footsteps.
Sandy was laboring away with a tea towel tucked into his trousers like an apron and shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. The bandage around his wrist was wet at the edges, but though he handled the dishes gingerly to favor it, he seemed to be applying himself to his task with fervor. The clean plates gleamed with cheerful sterility in the drying rack. To Alec, it brought to mind the false hopefulness of the hospital, all good lighting and the bracing scent of carbolic. The bulb overhead called out the gold in Sandy's hair and the ends had begun to curl from the humidity. He looked almost cherubic in that light, and Alec was unprepared for the deep pangs he felt when he looked at him now, the oppositional aches of affection and frustration. In the mean time, Sandy had shut off the spigot and wrung his hands dry in the towel, his smile radiating ignorant devotion like a dog who's so eager to see his master that he forgets he's been hemmed in the kennel all day alone. Above him, like some invisible, chastening hand, Alec felt the atmospheric weight of guilt bearing down, and it seemed that speech was the only prophylaxis against its imminent descent.
"Bim's gone," he announced without preamble.
The smile snuffed out like a candle. Sandy went very still and his eyes turned feverishly bright. Alec watched his face begin to crumple, his chin dimpling, and the familiarity of that expression filled him with vague irritation so that he did not start forward and go to him, but rather lingered in the kitchen doorway, shoring himself up against the jamb and rhythmically kicking at the doorstop. The linoleum had begun to crack and pull away where it met the wooden slat, revealing the rough, unvarnished stock of the sub-floor beneath. By the time he fully registered his own annoyance, Sandy's transitory features had reshaped themselves into a simulacrum of composure.
"How?" he asked simply.
"Over Calais," Alec told him.
"Oh." Sandy bowed his head with long-suffering resignation that made Alec's teeth grind. "It was bound to happen, I suppose, poor sod," he added presently, and right before his eyes Alec could see, as if examining some textbook illustration, the information being taken in, digested and committed to some less immediate place in Sandy's mind, as if it was commonplace and one mustn't dwell on it.
The galling bit of it was that it was commonplace; the only wonder was that it hadn't happened sooner, one way or another. At the moment, however, such solid rationale flew in the face of Alec's grief, disregarded utterly his anger at finding his world shrinking man by man. Bim and Sandy had been thick as thieves once, before Bim started falling apart, before the Benzedrine had made him brittle and before the entirety of his squadron had been blown to bits on one mission after another. It wasn't an association Alec necessarily encouraged, but Bim had made Sandy laugh, naughty schoolboy sniggers, and Alec had decided perhaps it was good for both of them to chum around a bit. Given those circumstances, Sandy's subdued response felt offensively inadequate. Unable to countenance the watery blue of Sandy's blandly uncomprehending gaze, Alec looked down and watched his fine-fingered hands twisting in the tea towel. Staring at the bandage, his own fingers recollected the tension of silk passing between them as he stitched Sandy's wrist right there at the table. He could conjure the pungence of blood, vomit and Dettol as effortlessly as he could recall the whisky, cake, and cologne that had preceded it. In this light, Sandy's facile acceptance of another's self-destruction bordered on the obscene. Yet had he dissolved into hysterics it would hardly have been better. Poor Sandy, awaiting his response dumbly, was caught between the Scylla and Charybdis.
Alec's next words were carried on the rising tide of his frustration. "He didn't bail out." He sounded vicious and accusatory: an alternative had been offered, and Bim had made his choice regardless. Alec aimed his voice like strike to the jaw and waited almost greedily for it to connect, yet almost expected Sandy would be too obtuse to draw the parallel.
The mindless hand-wringing wound down now and Sandy pivoted back toward the sink, bracing with his good hand against the counter. A drip from the faucet battered an irregular cadence against the basin. He took a deep breath and slowly released it; Alec watched the deflation of his back as he exhaled. Sandy nodded, and it seemed not a gesture of resignation, but of determination. Determination, Alec penuriously amended, as Sandy defined it. But then Sandy looked up and met his gaze directly, and utterly without guile said, "Alec...oh, Alec, I am so sorry." The silence that hung between them when Sandy's voice trailed off had all the presence and density of some critical portent. He decided to believe that Sandy wasn't as colossally thick as he appeared, and that the stark subtext of his message had been received and duly noted. Whether it would be remembered in the maelstrom of one of Sandy's turns... well, it didn't much bear thinking about now. Face to face, they looked at each other helplessly, as if the distance between them had suddenly become unbridgeable.
"Settle in," Sandy directed with subdued efficiency after far too long a pause, "I'll put some water on."
"All things considered, I'd prefer whisky."
Sandy did not look up from the sink, and his voice was dampered by the span of the room and the rushing of the water into the pan. "You're on call."
Alec countered, "We haven't got sugar." He was not ready for armistice, or for Sandy's sudden application of reason. His overwhelming feeling of impotence turned his voice waspish and sulkier than he had intended.
Sandy's head tilted to regard him gently and he said, "I've kept back some of mine for you." A quiet pride had crept into his voice.
Alec didn't have the heart to reject him in his moment of trivial heroism. "Well then," he said, the white flag of surrender listlessly rising, "I'll leave you to it." He retreated to the nursery and picked up the reproduction carriage clock on the bookshelf. He hadn't wound it since before his birthday, but it hadn't begun to drop minutes yet. Regardless, he gave the key a twist for good measure. The low metallic clicking was very nearly a comfort in its predictability. Beside the bookshelf, a corner of the blackout had come untacked from the window sash and proclaimed the inevitable encroachment of night. Mundane noises of domestication reached him from the kitchen, and he envisioned Sandy presiding over the tea with high ceremony. It was difficult to remain unhappy with someone so fundamentally defenseless.
"Milk's on the verge of going off," Sandy warned as he came in and set the service down. Alec glanced at the little pitcher. There was hardly anything in it. He picked it up and sniffed it indifferently while Sandy turned the handle of the pot for Alec to pour. He used a heavier hand than he intended with the milk, and when he took his first sip, he noticed that Sandy's cup was barely a shade lighter than it had come out of the pot because he hadn't really left enough to share. All the same, Sandy made show of relishing his cup, as if it was just what he had wanted. Alec felt his brow begin to furrow, a symptom of his unclean conscience. Despite everything, Sandy always looked after his creature comforts. When Sandy had first moved in, he had immediately assumed all the drudge work, and it had seemed to Alec to be a gesture acknowledging their inherent inequality, which made him, egalitarian that he imagined himself to be, distinctly uncomfortable. "We aren't schoolboys, Sandy," he had said, "I don't expect you to fag for me." Sandy's response had been a bewildered smile. "But I like to do things for you," he had said, and as his voice had been eager nearly to the point of pleading, Alec didn't like to have dissuaded him. He always means well, Alec thought. It's just that he's so young.
Without the divertissement of conversation, his mind flashed on an invented image of Bim in his plane at the moment of impact. He had spent enough time in the surgery to have an idea of what the aftermath of that looked like. Shutting his eyes tight, he tried to picture Sandy to put his mind to rights, but the only image forthcoming was that of him naked and shivering on the bathroom floor, bloody water following the grout lines in the tiles. He forced himself to remember Toto's arching back and pale shoulders instead. The vulgarity of this vision heightened his feelings of disloyalty, but it was an improvement over fire and death. The rattle of Sandy's cup in its saucer brought him back to the present; Sandy had just asked him something but he hadn't heard what. Schedule be damned, Alec decided, he needed a drink.
"Alec, what's the matter?" Urgency modulated Sandy's voice. This must have been what he had asked before.
Alec didn't answer, because he didn't rightly know. With the appearance of purpose, he stood and strode into the kitchen. Sandy's concern was unbearable in its earnestness, and it thrust Alec headlong into a vortex of guilt for misdeeds past and those not yet committed; but then, he reasoned, Sandy responded in kind, raising the stakes with each encore, so that about cleared the books, didn't it? He fixed himself a whisky with the barest splash of soda as much out of spite as out of his pressing need to dull the edge of his unhappiness. What the hell am I to do with him? he asked himself, but the question was rhetorical. It wasn't as if there had been a better option. The Sandy he had met in the ward eighteen months ago had been as pink and sweet and witless as a kitten, and likewise lacking in all but the most rudimentary survival instincts. It wouldn't have done to just turn him out, a Christian to the lions, with Bunny and that crowd; they'd have eaten him alive. Sandy hadn't had the first clue of where to go in Bridstow, and was just the sort to look the wrong way at the wrong person. He'd needed--still needed looking after, and no one else was up to it, it was as simple as that.
And yet, it wasn't. He shot back half of his drink and topped it off again.
He brandished his glass when he returned, daring Sandy to tut his disapproval, but Sandy did not rise to his provocation, or did not understand that he had been provoked in the first place, poor dear. Instead, he left his chair and settled himself next to Alec on the divan. He said nothing, but lifted a hand to knead the back of Alec's neck. It surprised him-- always surprised him-- how strong Sandy's hands actually were, and how he knew exactly the right spots. He knew them because he had made it his business to know what Alec liked. Alec gave himself over to self-pity and helplessness, and to the intent caress that moved now and then up through his hair and raked his scalp. He disliked how much it soothed him, but in abandoning his resistance the restiveness he had felt all afternoon gave way to a blank sort of calm.
After a time, renewed by Sandy's attentions, he spoke. "We should go 'round to Ralph's." His voice was low and toneless, but his mind had already turned, as was its habit, from contemplation to action. "He ought to be told."
It was only then that he realized that Sandy was crying, and had been for some time. Not the harsh, gasping sobs of hysteria, but silently, as if sorrow had robbed him utterly of sound. He had only borne up earlier, Alec understood now, because he believed that was what Alec wanted of him. He always tried to please Alec, and it was when he was confronted with irrefutable evidence of failure that he came apart. To Sandy, there was little that tasted more bitterly of failure than infidelity. And yet, Alec grimly acknowledged, he had mapped a path through bars and backrooms and bedrooms right under Sandy's nose with a posture of brazen entitlement that, now, in the warm, welcoming light of their rooms and shorn of all distractions, seemed appallingly cruel. He thought of Toto's dark hair, mussed and falling into unruly curls, and of Toto's expert mouth, which made no demands on him beyond those of immediate gratification. His stomach soured. Christ, Sandy didn't know the half of it.
"Come here," he whispered, guiding Sandy into his lap, as if physical contact might offer an anodyne to his guilt. Sandy's composure failed at the last, and he burrowed his face in Alec's neck and wept. He wept, it seemed, for Bim, and for the others who had gone before, and for all those who would follow before the war's end.
Alec said, "I'm sorry," and let the words stand as a universal apologia, heartfelt and insufficient.
"It's only that we haven't got much time," Sandy rasped.
Alec knew he wasn't referring to his pending shift. He'd have his finals next summer and be done with Bridstow and packed off to God knows where; Sandy wouldn't be coming with him. It wasn't something they had discussed, but rather an inevitability made conspicuous by their dedicated avoidance of it. Days marched on, one after another, and the future would be upon them soon enough, and there was nothing to be done to avoid or forestall it. Sandy would have to make his own way then, a thought which was as necessary as it was implausible. He held Sandy tighter, reflexively pressing a kiss to the crown of his head, and glanced surreptitiously around the room at the toy cupboard and the rocker. He had been filled, earlier, with such a consuming need to come home, to return to Sandy and to all of this, and it was suddenly crushing to confront the knowledge that for him-- and for Sandy, and for all of them-- home was merely a transient dream. It was a profoundly lonely thought.
As if registering Alec's unease, Sandy shifted in his lap. Alec could see the bandage with its damp edges nearly dry now and remembered the wound like a screaming mouth, articulating all the pain and accusation that Sandy did not yet have the words to express. It suddenly seemed clear to him why Sandy thrashed and clawed so desperately at the fabric of their worst hours: when the walls closed in around him and his misery was unbearable, he could hold, if only briefly, those hours in his hands and keep them there together, circling in the present. Sandy's outbursts and violence were punishment for Alec, of course, and were meant to be. But they were also Sandy stalling for time in the only way he knew how. They spoke, those nights, in the language of demands and denials. Sandy's actions, crass and violent as they were, demanded an accounting of Alec's role in their circumstances. Likewise, Alec's culpability, the fundamental dishonesty of his actions, reaped just rewards for what they sowed. Perhaps, Alec considered, the real consequence of action is that it brings us what we believe we deserve, and in so doing, opens for us the impassable chasm between what we want and what we can expect to receive. He recalled a line from Lawrence: "There seemed no straight walking for us leaders in this crooked lane of conduct, ring within ring of unknown, shamefaced motives canceling or double-charging their precedents."
"I imagine sometimes," Sandy said in the measured tone of one cautiously offering up a confidence, "what would happen if the hospital was hit. I've been caught out so many times in a raid, and nearly always it's been all fuss and panic over nothing. Sometimes it doesn't even feel real. But we won't..." he paused and took a breath. "We can't always be so lucky, I know it. And I don't know what I would do."
Alec gently extricated himself and lifted Sandy's chin. His eyes, even red rimmed and glassy with tears, were a beautiful shade of blue. "You would rise to the occasion, my dear."
And despite all, he was certain somehow that Sandy would. Or at least that he could. In the hospital, Alec had watched, when he knew Sandy wasn't looking, the kind and thorough way in which he managed the patients. He applied himself to his medical training with a show of care inversely proportional to the violence he showed himself, and the sensitivity that made him so vulnerable now might with time and patience evolve into the empathic bedside manner of a very good doctor. He was brighter than was assumed, by himself not least of all, and he would do himself credit in the ward one day, or in a field hospital if it came to that: he only needed to believe it, and to live long enough to give himself the chance. And that was one of the reasons Alec stayed, after all. So that Sandy might have a chance. Someone needed to believe in him until he could believe in himself.
"Would I, do you think?" Sandy's face had brightened, his smile poignantly hopeful. His gratefulness for even that small crumb of approval broke Alec's heart a little.
"Yes, you would."
Sandy kissed him, shyly at first, and then with greater conviction. His weight, his taste, his scent... their inherent rightness of Sandy at this moment, the perfection of his familiarity, was humbling, an undeserved laurel to which Alec willingly clutched. He stroked Sandy's cheek and watched a smile blossom.
"I suppose we should go, then," Sandy said, generous, now that his standing had been reasserted. "To Ralph's, I mean. It's best that he should hear it from you."
"No," Alec whispered, pulling Sandy closer. "Let's not go quite yet."
Afterward, they dressed and made ready to go without speaking. The silence was gentled now, no longer fraught with weight or meaning. Sandy walked out ahead, leaving it to Alec to close and lock the door. On the landing, Alec heard the carriage clock mark the hour within, consigning the humanity of the moment to memory, the pale echo of its bright and hollow chime lingering in the close air of the hallway.
***********
Notes: The title comes from the Song III ("June 1935") of W.H. Auden's Twelve Songs. The second stanza of the poem seems particularly appropriate for Sandy. "There seemed no straight walking for us leaders in this crooked lane of conduct, ring within ring of unknown, shamefaced motives cancelling or double-charging their precedents" comes from T.E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, another line from which Alec quoted to Laurie in Chapter 6 of the book (the infamous party scene).
Fandom: The Charioteer by Mary Renault
Author:
kenazfiction (kenazfiction@gmail.com)Beta:
lorie945Pairing: Alec/Sandy
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters are the property of Mary Renault; I'm borrowing them.
Summary: At that moment, there was nothing more important than going home, if only because there was someone to go home to, with all that this entailed.
Author's Notes: Written for athousandwinds in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge. Thanks again to Lorie for the excellent beta!
To the F-list: This isn't my usual fare, but it's a piece of which I'm particularly fond, and I hope on that merit alone you'll give it a once-over. If you have not read The Charioteer yet, I beg you to do so. I guarantee you'll finish it, finish your cathartic weeping and say to yourself "Now, that... *THAT* is how it's done."
O but the unloved have had power,
The weeping and striking,
Always: time will bring their hour;
Their secretive children walk
Through your vigilance of breath
To unpardonable Death,
And my vows break
Before his look.
- W. H. Auden
Alec left Toto's flat directly upon hearing the news and too quickly for good manners, something he knew he would be called to account for at a later date, although he thought Toto's rolling eyes and murmurs of complaint were more an affectation than legitimate disappointment. Pillow talk and lengthy discourse, after all, fell well outside the purview of their meetings. Peter and Theo, as the bearers of bad tidings, seemed to feel it was their lot to stick around and immerse themselves in reminiscences, thus cleanly eliminating any lingering compunction he might have had to prolong his stay. He should be the one to tell Sandy, he explained unnecessarily, but he knew it was more than that. For all that he fought for, and faithlessly pursued, a life of his own, he longed now with vicious clarity for the very existence that had chafed him: at that moment, there was nothing more important than going home, if only because there was someone to go home to, with all that this entailed.
Bim's death was not a surprise. In light of last week's showing, Alec considered grimly, it was a foregone conclusion. One could only take so much before snapping, and the odds had been against him in any case. He could imagine how it had gone: the dark, rippling sheet of the channel passing almost imperceptibly into the jagged silhouette of the French shoreline, the drone of the engine interrupted by staccato gunfire, and the inexorable end. The images played out in an unrelenting stream in his mind, the private newsreel of an extinguished life projected against his closed eyelids. For Bim's sake, he hoped that he had been dead before the plane went down, but he knew better. There must have been a second of shock or of pain, reprieved by the instantaneous coalescing of all consciousness and the taste of ash and iron as his teeth, ground down under amphetamine clenching, finally shattered in his mouth. Perhaps, after months of nerves stretched taut as piano wire, the screaming free-fall and the promise of solid earth rushing up to meet him were a blessed relief: the long day's task is done, and we must sleep.
He found the funereal grandeur of the house oppressive today. The late afternoon light spilled in uneven patches across the terrace, illuminating the overall shabbiness of it, like one of the old soldiers who lined the halls at the hospital with thin, palsied hands edging out of faded service dress. The patterns on the rug in the hall made his eyes swim, and at this hour he hadn't even the angle of the sun to blame. On the bus, he had chewed his thumbnail to the quick as his urgency had transmuted into indignation with a simmering undercurrent of directionless anger seeking a target. He stopped on the half-landing and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, but it did little good, and so he continued upward, shaking off the gravity that tugged at his heels until he reached his door.
The faucet was running in the kitchen, which meant that Sandy was at the dishes. They had been slovenly in the calamitous aftermath of the party, recrimination and remorse leaving no time for the smaller business of life, the unsavory detritus of desperation swilling like sludge in the bottom of the sink. Sandy knew better than to get his sutures wet, but Alec, for whom the picking of battles had become a daily exercise in triage, hoped that perhaps a return to the mundane heralded a restoration of what passed, for them, as domestic bliss. He draped his Burberry over the back of the rocker, his eyes darting about the room, taking inventory as a means of stalling his entrance. Sandy had likely heard him come in even over the running water. He always had an ear cocked for Alec's footsteps.
Sandy was laboring away with a tea towel tucked into his trousers like an apron and shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. The bandage around his wrist was wet at the edges, but though he handled the dishes gingerly to favor it, he seemed to be applying himself to his task with fervor. The clean plates gleamed with cheerful sterility in the drying rack. To Alec, it brought to mind the false hopefulness of the hospital, all good lighting and the bracing scent of carbolic. The bulb overhead called out the gold in Sandy's hair and the ends had begun to curl from the humidity. He looked almost cherubic in that light, and Alec was unprepared for the deep pangs he felt when he looked at him now, the oppositional aches of affection and frustration. In the mean time, Sandy had shut off the spigot and wrung his hands dry in the towel, his smile radiating ignorant devotion like a dog who's so eager to see his master that he forgets he's been hemmed in the kennel all day alone. Above him, like some invisible, chastening hand, Alec felt the atmospheric weight of guilt bearing down, and it seemed that speech was the only prophylaxis against its imminent descent.
"Bim's gone," he announced without preamble.
The smile snuffed out like a candle. Sandy went very still and his eyes turned feverishly bright. Alec watched his face begin to crumple, his chin dimpling, and the familiarity of that expression filled him with vague irritation so that he did not start forward and go to him, but rather lingered in the kitchen doorway, shoring himself up against the jamb and rhythmically kicking at the doorstop. The linoleum had begun to crack and pull away where it met the wooden slat, revealing the rough, unvarnished stock of the sub-floor beneath. By the time he fully registered his own annoyance, Sandy's transitory features had reshaped themselves into a simulacrum of composure.
"How?" he asked simply.
"Over Calais," Alec told him.
"Oh." Sandy bowed his head with long-suffering resignation that made Alec's teeth grind. "It was bound to happen, I suppose, poor sod," he added presently, and right before his eyes Alec could see, as if examining some textbook illustration, the information being taken in, digested and committed to some less immediate place in Sandy's mind, as if it was commonplace and one mustn't dwell on it.
The galling bit of it was that it was commonplace; the only wonder was that it hadn't happened sooner, one way or another. At the moment, however, such solid rationale flew in the face of Alec's grief, disregarded utterly his anger at finding his world shrinking man by man. Bim and Sandy had been thick as thieves once, before Bim started falling apart, before the Benzedrine had made him brittle and before the entirety of his squadron had been blown to bits on one mission after another. It wasn't an association Alec necessarily encouraged, but Bim had made Sandy laugh, naughty schoolboy sniggers, and Alec had decided perhaps it was good for both of them to chum around a bit. Given those circumstances, Sandy's subdued response felt offensively inadequate. Unable to countenance the watery blue of Sandy's blandly uncomprehending gaze, Alec looked down and watched his fine-fingered hands twisting in the tea towel. Staring at the bandage, his own fingers recollected the tension of silk passing between them as he stitched Sandy's wrist right there at the table. He could conjure the pungence of blood, vomit and Dettol as effortlessly as he could recall the whisky, cake, and cologne that had preceded it. In this light, Sandy's facile acceptance of another's self-destruction bordered on the obscene. Yet had he dissolved into hysterics it would hardly have been better. Poor Sandy, awaiting his response dumbly, was caught between the Scylla and Charybdis.
Alec's next words were carried on the rising tide of his frustration. "He didn't bail out." He sounded vicious and accusatory: an alternative had been offered, and Bim had made his choice regardless. Alec aimed his voice like strike to the jaw and waited almost greedily for it to connect, yet almost expected Sandy would be too obtuse to draw the parallel.
The mindless hand-wringing wound down now and Sandy pivoted back toward the sink, bracing with his good hand against the counter. A drip from the faucet battered an irregular cadence against the basin. He took a deep breath and slowly released it; Alec watched the deflation of his back as he exhaled. Sandy nodded, and it seemed not a gesture of resignation, but of determination. Determination, Alec penuriously amended, as Sandy defined it. But then Sandy looked up and met his gaze directly, and utterly without guile said, "Alec...oh, Alec, I am so sorry." The silence that hung between them when Sandy's voice trailed off had all the presence and density of some critical portent. He decided to believe that Sandy wasn't as colossally thick as he appeared, and that the stark subtext of his message had been received and duly noted. Whether it would be remembered in the maelstrom of one of Sandy's turns... well, it didn't much bear thinking about now. Face to face, they looked at each other helplessly, as if the distance between them had suddenly become unbridgeable.
"Settle in," Sandy directed with subdued efficiency after far too long a pause, "I'll put some water on."
"All things considered, I'd prefer whisky."
Sandy did not look up from the sink, and his voice was dampered by the span of the room and the rushing of the water into the pan. "You're on call."
Alec countered, "We haven't got sugar." He was not ready for armistice, or for Sandy's sudden application of reason. His overwhelming feeling of impotence turned his voice waspish and sulkier than he had intended.
Sandy's head tilted to regard him gently and he said, "I've kept back some of mine for you." A quiet pride had crept into his voice.
Alec didn't have the heart to reject him in his moment of trivial heroism. "Well then," he said, the white flag of surrender listlessly rising, "I'll leave you to it." He retreated to the nursery and picked up the reproduction carriage clock on the bookshelf. He hadn't wound it since before his birthday, but it hadn't begun to drop minutes yet. Regardless, he gave the key a twist for good measure. The low metallic clicking was very nearly a comfort in its predictability. Beside the bookshelf, a corner of the blackout had come untacked from the window sash and proclaimed the inevitable encroachment of night. Mundane noises of domestication reached him from the kitchen, and he envisioned Sandy presiding over the tea with high ceremony. It was difficult to remain unhappy with someone so fundamentally defenseless.
"Milk's on the verge of going off," Sandy warned as he came in and set the service down. Alec glanced at the little pitcher. There was hardly anything in it. He picked it up and sniffed it indifferently while Sandy turned the handle of the pot for Alec to pour. He used a heavier hand than he intended with the milk, and when he took his first sip, he noticed that Sandy's cup was barely a shade lighter than it had come out of the pot because he hadn't really left enough to share. All the same, Sandy made show of relishing his cup, as if it was just what he had wanted. Alec felt his brow begin to furrow, a symptom of his unclean conscience. Despite everything, Sandy always looked after his creature comforts. When Sandy had first moved in, he had immediately assumed all the drudge work, and it had seemed to Alec to be a gesture acknowledging their inherent inequality, which made him, egalitarian that he imagined himself to be, distinctly uncomfortable. "We aren't schoolboys, Sandy," he had said, "I don't expect you to fag for me." Sandy's response had been a bewildered smile. "But I like to do things for you," he had said, and as his voice had been eager nearly to the point of pleading, Alec didn't like to have dissuaded him. He always means well, Alec thought. It's just that he's so young.
Without the divertissement of conversation, his mind flashed on an invented image of Bim in his plane at the moment of impact. He had spent enough time in the surgery to have an idea of what the aftermath of that looked like. Shutting his eyes tight, he tried to picture Sandy to put his mind to rights, but the only image forthcoming was that of him naked and shivering on the bathroom floor, bloody water following the grout lines in the tiles. He forced himself to remember Toto's arching back and pale shoulders instead. The vulgarity of this vision heightened his feelings of disloyalty, but it was an improvement over fire and death. The rattle of Sandy's cup in its saucer brought him back to the present; Sandy had just asked him something but he hadn't heard what. Schedule be damned, Alec decided, he needed a drink.
"Alec, what's the matter?" Urgency modulated Sandy's voice. This must have been what he had asked before.
Alec didn't answer, because he didn't rightly know. With the appearance of purpose, he stood and strode into the kitchen. Sandy's concern was unbearable in its earnestness, and it thrust Alec headlong into a vortex of guilt for misdeeds past and those not yet committed; but then, he reasoned, Sandy responded in kind, raising the stakes with each encore, so that about cleared the books, didn't it? He fixed himself a whisky with the barest splash of soda as much out of spite as out of his pressing need to dull the edge of his unhappiness. What the hell am I to do with him? he asked himself, but the question was rhetorical. It wasn't as if there had been a better option. The Sandy he had met in the ward eighteen months ago had been as pink and sweet and witless as a kitten, and likewise lacking in all but the most rudimentary survival instincts. It wouldn't have done to just turn him out, a Christian to the lions, with Bunny and that crowd; they'd have eaten him alive. Sandy hadn't had the first clue of where to go in Bridstow, and was just the sort to look the wrong way at the wrong person. He'd needed--still needed looking after, and no one else was up to it, it was as simple as that.
And yet, it wasn't. He shot back half of his drink and topped it off again.
He brandished his glass when he returned, daring Sandy to tut his disapproval, but Sandy did not rise to his provocation, or did not understand that he had been provoked in the first place, poor dear. Instead, he left his chair and settled himself next to Alec on the divan. He said nothing, but lifted a hand to knead the back of Alec's neck. It surprised him-- always surprised him-- how strong Sandy's hands actually were, and how he knew exactly the right spots. He knew them because he had made it his business to know what Alec liked. Alec gave himself over to self-pity and helplessness, and to the intent caress that moved now and then up through his hair and raked his scalp. He disliked how much it soothed him, but in abandoning his resistance the restiveness he had felt all afternoon gave way to a blank sort of calm.
After a time, renewed by Sandy's attentions, he spoke. "We should go 'round to Ralph's." His voice was low and toneless, but his mind had already turned, as was its habit, from contemplation to action. "He ought to be told."
It was only then that he realized that Sandy was crying, and had been for some time. Not the harsh, gasping sobs of hysteria, but silently, as if sorrow had robbed him utterly of sound. He had only borne up earlier, Alec understood now, because he believed that was what Alec wanted of him. He always tried to please Alec, and it was when he was confronted with irrefutable evidence of failure that he came apart. To Sandy, there was little that tasted more bitterly of failure than infidelity. And yet, Alec grimly acknowledged, he had mapped a path through bars and backrooms and bedrooms right under Sandy's nose with a posture of brazen entitlement that, now, in the warm, welcoming light of their rooms and shorn of all distractions, seemed appallingly cruel. He thought of Toto's dark hair, mussed and falling into unruly curls, and of Toto's expert mouth, which made no demands on him beyond those of immediate gratification. His stomach soured. Christ, Sandy didn't know the half of it.
"Come here," he whispered, guiding Sandy into his lap, as if physical contact might offer an anodyne to his guilt. Sandy's composure failed at the last, and he burrowed his face in Alec's neck and wept. He wept, it seemed, for Bim, and for the others who had gone before, and for all those who would follow before the war's end.
Alec said, "I'm sorry," and let the words stand as a universal apologia, heartfelt and insufficient.
"It's only that we haven't got much time," Sandy rasped.
Alec knew he wasn't referring to his pending shift. He'd have his finals next summer and be done with Bridstow and packed off to God knows where; Sandy wouldn't be coming with him. It wasn't something they had discussed, but rather an inevitability made conspicuous by their dedicated avoidance of it. Days marched on, one after another, and the future would be upon them soon enough, and there was nothing to be done to avoid or forestall it. Sandy would have to make his own way then, a thought which was as necessary as it was implausible. He held Sandy tighter, reflexively pressing a kiss to the crown of his head, and glanced surreptitiously around the room at the toy cupboard and the rocker. He had been filled, earlier, with such a consuming need to come home, to return to Sandy and to all of this, and it was suddenly crushing to confront the knowledge that for him-- and for Sandy, and for all of them-- home was merely a transient dream. It was a profoundly lonely thought.
As if registering Alec's unease, Sandy shifted in his lap. Alec could see the bandage with its damp edges nearly dry now and remembered the wound like a screaming mouth, articulating all the pain and accusation that Sandy did not yet have the words to express. It suddenly seemed clear to him why Sandy thrashed and clawed so desperately at the fabric of their worst hours: when the walls closed in around him and his misery was unbearable, he could hold, if only briefly, those hours in his hands and keep them there together, circling in the present. Sandy's outbursts and violence were punishment for Alec, of course, and were meant to be. But they were also Sandy stalling for time in the only way he knew how. They spoke, those nights, in the language of demands and denials. Sandy's actions, crass and violent as they were, demanded an accounting of Alec's role in their circumstances. Likewise, Alec's culpability, the fundamental dishonesty of his actions, reaped just rewards for what they sowed. Perhaps, Alec considered, the real consequence of action is that it brings us what we believe we deserve, and in so doing, opens for us the impassable chasm between what we want and what we can expect to receive. He recalled a line from Lawrence: "There seemed no straight walking for us leaders in this crooked lane of conduct, ring within ring of unknown, shamefaced motives canceling or double-charging their precedents."
"I imagine sometimes," Sandy said in the measured tone of one cautiously offering up a confidence, "what would happen if the hospital was hit. I've been caught out so many times in a raid, and nearly always it's been all fuss and panic over nothing. Sometimes it doesn't even feel real. But we won't..." he paused and took a breath. "We can't always be so lucky, I know it. And I don't know what I would do."
Alec gently extricated himself and lifted Sandy's chin. His eyes, even red rimmed and glassy with tears, were a beautiful shade of blue. "You would rise to the occasion, my dear."
And despite all, he was certain somehow that Sandy would. Or at least that he could. In the hospital, Alec had watched, when he knew Sandy wasn't looking, the kind and thorough way in which he managed the patients. He applied himself to his medical training with a show of care inversely proportional to the violence he showed himself, and the sensitivity that made him so vulnerable now might with time and patience evolve into the empathic bedside manner of a very good doctor. He was brighter than was assumed, by himself not least of all, and he would do himself credit in the ward one day, or in a field hospital if it came to that: he only needed to believe it, and to live long enough to give himself the chance. And that was one of the reasons Alec stayed, after all. So that Sandy might have a chance. Someone needed to believe in him until he could believe in himself.
"Would I, do you think?" Sandy's face had brightened, his smile poignantly hopeful. His gratefulness for even that small crumb of approval broke Alec's heart a little.
"Yes, you would."
Sandy kissed him, shyly at first, and then with greater conviction. His weight, his taste, his scent... their inherent rightness of Sandy at this moment, the perfection of his familiarity, was humbling, an undeserved laurel to which Alec willingly clutched. He stroked Sandy's cheek and watched a smile blossom.
"I suppose we should go, then," Sandy said, generous, now that his standing had been reasserted. "To Ralph's, I mean. It's best that he should hear it from you."
"No," Alec whispered, pulling Sandy closer. "Let's not go quite yet."
Afterward, they dressed and made ready to go without speaking. The silence was gentled now, no longer fraught with weight or meaning. Sandy walked out ahead, leaving it to Alec to close and lock the door. On the landing, Alec heard the carriage clock mark the hour within, consigning the humanity of the moment to memory, the pale echo of its bright and hollow chime lingering in the close air of the hallway.
***********
Notes: The title comes from the Song III ("June 1935") of W.H. Auden's Twelve Songs. The second stanza of the poem seems particularly appropriate for Sandy. "There seemed no straight walking for us leaders in this crooked lane of conduct, ring within ring of unknown, shamefaced motives cancelling or double-charging their precedents" comes from T.E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, another line from which Alec quoted to Laurie in Chapter 6 of the book (the infamous party scene).
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