They reached their rooms and pushed open the door, and Alec was struck as he always was by pride at their shared space. It was two rooms, well furnished he thought with piece they had bought together, a table and three chairs, a chest, even a bookshelf with a few of Maurice's books which Alec was determined to make his way through. In the second room, through a half-opened door, a single bed on which he noticed Mr. Durham's glance linger.
"Here was are. Not so different from school, really," Maurice said, and Alec felt a pang of jealousy at the shared history. Oxford. Maurice had gone to Oxford, and though he did not discuss his times as a student often Alec knew those memories were there and wrapped together with Clive Durham.
"I would beg to make a distinction from the rooms at Oxford. You can't mean to live like this, Maurice."
"I do mean to, Clive. I am living like this."
"A mite better than a boathouse," Alec said, earning himself a smile from Maurice and a bonus look of confusion from Mr. Durham.
"Boathouse?" Mr. Durham said.
"Never mind, Clive. What brings you here? You will not try to tell me you happened to be in the area?"
"I might have been driving these ways looking for you, yes."
Alec felt a jolt of jealousy. It had been a year. Why would Mr. Durham still be looking after a year? Alec had taken for granted that the meeting had been by accident. But it seemed not.
"I want you to come back," Mr. Durham declared. It sounded like a proclamation. Some not-yet buried part of Alec felt the inevitability of anything declared in that voice. It would happen, he would even have to help, if ordered. Alec shook off the feeling. Maurice was not affected, Maurice just sat smiling a thin, tired smile.
"To what?"
"To, everything. Your family, your job. Or if you fancy something different I can get you a separate post."
"I had heard of your election. Congratulations."
"Thank you."
There was an awkward silence, as long as any yet, as Alec tried and failed to remember the election in which Mr. Durham had run and won. They had never talked about it. Maurice must have been watching on his own. The thought made Alec ill and angry, even while his seeming solid resistance to Mr. Durham's request for a return made him something else. Grateful?
"I do not need a position, new or otherwise. I am content to stay here."
"Now you may be. But what of the future?"
"You know I have always said I do not need name and position."
"You have said that. But you cannot mean it," Mr. Durham turned them suddenly, unexpectedly to Alec. "You. You can't mean to keep Maurice here," Mr. Durham's hand gesture encompassed the room, the apartment, their life together. "You must know what it is to be poor. You won't pull him down into this."
Alec was still. Realizing he was expected to speak, and that what he would say would not be what Mr. Durham's wishes, he wanted to say it well. "I think it is Maurice's decision how he wants to live, sir. We are doing well enough without position."
"You know I do not speak only of position," Mr. Durham said, and he was speaking mainly to Maurice again. There was a fission of anger in his tone that had not been there previously. Alec imagined it was due to his reply, and decided to ignore all other feelings but pride. He would not be nervous to talk. This concerned him as well.
"What then?" Maurice asked softly, after giving Alec an approving smile.
Mr. Durham's eyes flickered again to the room, the bed with their great blue blanket partly visible through the door. Alec had not made the bed this morning yet - the virtues of living on their own, no one there to tell him to straighten the bedding. Maurice did not care. The result was the sheets and blankets were still tangled from last night's lovemaking. Alec was fairly certain he could pick up a faint scent on the air as well.
"What of lord Ridley? Of Oscar Wilde?"
Maurice's thin smile slid closer to a frustrated scoff. Alec was holding his breath.
"The accusation shall not come against me. I have no intention of seducing any wayward lords with vengeful fathers," Maurice paused, and Alec's skin crawled at the look that passed between them. He was reminded again that Mr. Durham was not a disinterested friend. Jealousy churned in his stomach like a live thing, like he had drunk too much of Maurice's dark coffee. Mr. Durham was not looking for Maurice in this part of London because they were friends. He was looking because they had been some kind of lovers. And Maurice had been unhappy, frustrated, and rejected.
"Did you two never have sex then?" Alec asked, and was rewarded by a look of horror from Mr. Durham. But the momentary thrill of victory left quickly. Instead of answering Mr. Durham sat heavily on one of the chairs, draping his coat across the table. He did not look at Alec, did not look at much of anything, instead locking eyes on the books in shelf as though reading and re-reading the spines.
"Never," it was Maurice that answered, and quietly. The pain that was in his voice made Alec regret his question. He had meant to make Mr. Durham uncomfortable, not Maurice. "Alec, I am sure we would rather not discuss it. It might be easier if you went to the other room. This will not take long."
"Sorry," Alec said, and meant it. It was painful, watching this discussion. The words were heavy and underlain with a time he did not know, like a language he did not speak. He did not like it. He stood, deciding on his own to move into the other room. The door was not yet fully closed behind him when he stopped, hearing voices start again in the next room. He knew listening was wrong. But it was a small wrong, and so he remained by the door.
"I wanted to," the words, from Mr. Durham, were quiet and still, like a fragile flame exposed to the elements. "I badly wanted to. Many times I badly wanted to."
"I know," the reply, equally soft and equally flickering. "But that is in the past."
"Yes," a pause, and the next words were less proculatory and more beseeching, though the answer was already known. "You will consider coming back? Letting me help you?"
"I cannot, Clive. You know I cannot."
A pause. "Then can I see you, on occasion?"
"You cannot think that a good idea."
"We are not so weak we cannot be friends."
"I was never as strong as you thought I was."
"No. You were stronger," a pause again, in which Alec could hear blood pounding in his ears like a second heartbeat. "That boy. Alec."
"He is not a boy, Clive. He is the same age as I."
"That, man, then," the pause this time was heavy. Alec wanted to push in the door and step through, see the faces, but dared not for fear of missing the words. "You are happy?"
"As happy as I have ever been."
"Truly?"
"Truly."
Happy. That Maurice was happy with him Alec did not really doubt. But that Maurice had missed Clive Durham had also been plain. Alec was not so simple as to expect single minded devotion - it would have been strange, unnatural even, to receive something like that from someone like Maurice. But over time, carefully, they had built this thing between them that Alec had himself been calling happiness. As happy as I have ever been Maurice had said - Alec spun the words in his mind, thought he knew them for what they were, that Maurice would not trade what they had for whatever had existed between him and Clive Durham in the past.
This was new truth for Alec, and he would need to let it settle in. Mr. Durham spoke again.
"I am not happy, Maurice. I thought I might be, with time. I am aware my life is one many would envy. Anne often says as much, to attempt to cheer me up. It is difficult to discern one's own state of mind accurately - the lack of any real objective criteria by which to measure makes it impossible. But if I were to measure my state now with myself at prior times in my life, I am not happy."
"You are over thinking again. Men are often less happy once their school days are finished."
"It is not just that."
"I know."
Another extended silence. Alec focused on the crack in the door, through which he could just see Maurice's hand, resting on his knee. His fingers were curled, slightly, into the fabric of his pants leg.
"You were not happy when we were together, either, before Greece. I have often thought how I might have driven you to that illness. It pains me."
"I know."
There was another extended pause, in which Alec listened to his breathing and the pounding of his heart. The room around him was darkening. Often in this room, at this time, they were already naked and wrapped together and Alec's thoughts were less tangled. He felt Maurice's absence like a missing limb, noticeable in its absence.
"You do not miss me?" Mr. Durham's voice came. It sounded tired. Without seeing the man, hearing just the voice, Alec could almost imagine him as something other than the imperious overlord or Maurice's cruel friend. Could almost feel sorry for him. The feeling was new, unexpected, and twisted strangely though not unpleasantly in Alec's chest.
"That is hardly a fair question."
"I suppose not. You suppose that boy of yours is listening?"
"His name is Alec," and then in a voice only slighter louder. "Alec if you are listening you may as well come back. There is little reason for subterfuge at this point."
Subterfuge? Even having Mr. Durham around for a half hour had gotten Maurice using fancy words again.
Alec stepped out from behind the door. He refused to look abashed, or even acknowledge he was listening. It was his right. Maurice was his lover. His. He walked over and placed a hand on Maurice's shoulder, remembering how the bare skin felt against his palm when he gripped Maurice there when they had sex. His fingers tightened.
Frequent, often, sometimes multiple times and recently in creative positions. Maurice loved him, spent time with him, talked with him and read to him. They had money enough, and here in this part of town there was no one to care about what they did. Alec was not given to flights of introspection, but he knew he was happy.
Mr. Durham watched the hand Alec had placed on Maurice's shoulder.
Alec had though of Mr. Durham more as a concept, a position, than as a human being. Flesh. Blood. He knew that he had been Maurice's friend and supposed he had a personality, an individuality that Alec had just never been allowed to see. But here, in the soft light of falling night Alec could see the man seemed beautiful, even fragile in a way he had never associated with the titles and properties. Behind the prickly intelligence that bit like barbed wire was something soft and vulnerable. Weak.
Mr. Durham stood, pulling on his long jacket with precise through tired movements. "I should leave, and attempt to make my second appointment. I may indulge myself by telling Ada I have heard from you and you are . . . happy. But I shall not tell them where you are."
"Thank you."
They looked at each other, Maurice in his under sleeves and this man in full evening dress. Then Mr. Durham stepped pass them and through the door, the sound of his footfalls echoing back to the room as he descended the steps.
Maurice did not stop Alec when he went down the stairs. Alec caught up to Mr. Durham when he was already on the street. The falling darkness cast their shadows long, laying them together against the pavement.
"Mr. Durham," the man turned, his figure obscured by jacket and darkness combined. The light of a lamp flickering alive lit his face in a wavering brightness. "If you felt all that, why didn't you figure out a way to have him?"
Mr. Durham sighed. "I suppose it has to be amusing that it turned out this way. I thought I could keep him by locking us both in a garden of my making, but he could not help but eat the fruit and now appears to be happy in his position of expulsion."
Alec figured this was some kind of metaphor, not his realm so he ignored it, continued on with what he needed to say.
"I do not know about all that, sir. But I think he will be happier now that he has seen you. As happy now as he has ever been. I guess what I mean to say sir," Alec stopped, took a breath, and said loudly and looking straight at the gentleman in front of him, "Thank you."
Mr. Durham looked startled, then smiled. It was thin, and a bit forced, but it lit up his features. Alec wondered that he had never noticed the dimples, never noticed the way they altered the severe lines of Mr. Durham's face and made him seem almost a schoolboy. A sad, world-weary schoolboy.
"It seems you are stronger than I am, Alec."
"Not stronger, sir, I think. Freer."
Mr. Durham looked at him for a long moment, and Alec felt here in the falling dark was the only time Mr. Durham had ever really seen him. Then the man turned, pulled his coat around his neck, and blended into the night.