Three Weddings Part 1
Chapter 29
A/N: Wow, 217 reviews! I was a little shocked that everyone liked yesterday's chapter so much. I put it up thinking it was a filler. Just goes to show how hard it is to see your own work. Thank you to everyone who commented therefore. Your feedback always enlightens me.
(You can see a picture of the house I used as inspiration for Sandon Court, Mycroft's house, on my Livejournal and Tumblr accounts, at evenlode1967 dot livejournal dot com or evenlode dot tumbr dot com.)
So now the crunch comes for Greg...
A weekend away in the country, Mycroft had said. At my place, he said. I've got a house in North Oxfordshire. As if it was nothing special. No big deal. But Greg knew that Mycroft taking a weekend off was a really big deal. Especially now, with all this renewed dissident Republican activity. Never mind the fuss being made about Sherlock in the papers. And the state Mycroft was in.
Those ribs. That nose. It broke Greg's heart just to look at him. No flying, the consultant had said. Mycroft was booked in for the operation on Tuesday morning. He'd be out of hospital the next day. Probably back at work that afternoon, even if he was still groggy from the anaesthetic. That was Mycroft.
Greg was sad to miss out on Antigua, but there would always be another time, and he was in the middle of a big armed robbery investigation, so it was probably a good thing that he was only away for the weekend. A bit of country air would do them both good. The weather was excellent too. The new limo cruised along the M40 smoothly, while Greg and Mycroft sat in the back holding hands. It was all going to be wonderful.
Late July. English summer. The combine harvesters in the fields, the landscape blotted with dry gold and the bloody flashes of poppies. They coasted through narrow lanes edged with flowering brambles and the last of the dog roses, under a lapis sky. Greg rolled down the window and let the hot breeze blast his face. Presently they turned off, between monumental gateposts, and crested a ridge. Below he could see parkland laid out, and a huge house of honey-coloured stone, its roofline crested with heroic Classical-style statues.
'Tea at a National Trust property on route?' Greg said, turning to his lover. 'You didn't say.'
Mycroft did not look at him. In a very purposeful way.
'Not National Trust?'
'No.'
'Are we visiting a friend of yours?'
'No.'
Greg looked out of the window as the limo trundled down the drive, gravel crunching under the wheels. Roses climbed up the mansion's magnificent portico. He suddenly found he wanted nothing more than to be a million miles away right now.
'Stop the car,' he shouted.
Mycroft looked startled.
Greg banged on the partition behind the driver. 'Stop the bloody car, I said!'
Before the limo had even come to a halt, he had opened the door and sprung out, staggering about in the long grass in circles, his head spinning. Every time he looked up, there was that bloody great house looking back at him, all manicured gardens and swagged windows, and what the fuck was he doing here?
'Fuck. Fuck.' He was mumbling. Puffing. Suddenly hyperventilating. 'Fuck.' He bent over, trying to breathe, hands on thighs, trying to think, trying for all the world to pull himself the fuck together.
Suddenly aware of Mycroft beside him, a long hand resting on his back, but he flinched away.
'What the-'
'Greg, please?'
'I mean, when were you fucking planning on telling me, eh?' he panted, dragging his hands through his silver hair, feeling how damp it had become. 'Come over for the weekend, Greg! I've got a little place in the country, Greg. Christ, Mycroft! What the fuck do you think you're doing? What the fuck am I doing?'
'Greg, calm down.' Typical Mycroft. So calm and collected. He'd be Zen-like if his arse was on fire!
'Calm down? Calm down? Do you even have the first clue what is going on here? I'm from bloody Chingford, for God's sake! I was a punk! God Save the Queen and all that? Remember?'
Something snapped inside Mycroft then; Greg virtually heard it, a crack inside the taller man that seemed to echo across the golden hill.
'For fuck's sake, get a grip, Greg! It's just a house!'
'It's not just a house, you idiot! It's a fucking stately home! It's a whole bloody class system inside four walls! How did you expect me to react? I feel like Eliza bloody Doolittle!'
They stared at each other.
Greg shook his head. 'I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know why I ever agreed to this. I don't know what you are doing with me.'
Mycroft recoiled.
'You are here because you are the only clean, decent thing in my life,' he screamed.
Then they both stood there, shaking, taken aback by what had just happened between them. Mycroft seemed to collect himself slightly, but when Greg looked into his eyes as he spoke, he saw a different man to the one he knew.
'You have no idea, no idea at all what my life is like! I have done things, terrible things, things a decent man like you would abhor. A decent man should have locked me in prison and thrown away the key years ago, but because I do it for my country they say it's acceptable. But it isn't, Greg and it never will be. Every day I make decisions. I decide who will live and who will die, who will suffer so that the majority of decent, honest people can live in peace and ignorance, and I do it for them, because if they knew half of what goes on in this filthy world of ours, they'd never dare leave the house. I lie and I kill and I steal and I cheat every day to preserve that ignorance, and I've been doing it for so long I hardly know who I am. I'm a man of shadows, Greg. There is nothing decent or honest or truthful about me except my love for you. You are the only clean thing in my life, do you hear?'
He flailed his long arm about in the direction of the Stately Home.
'That? You know what built that? The money for that house came from the slave trade, from buying and selling and torturing and killing innocent people because of the colour of their skin. And after that, the money to keep it going? Exploiting men and women and children in factories and foundries and mills and pits, first in this country, and then all over the world. Ordinary people, maybe your ancestors, paid with their lives so that my ancestors could live in this luxury. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?
'You think you've gone up in the world, but let me tell you, you've walked into a sewer more cut-throat than the worst third world favela. All the depravity, all the cruelty, all the deceit you could ever imagine, and more besides, is soaked into those walls. So if you don't want it Greg, just say the word and it's gone. I don't care. All I care about is you. My cousin can inherit the lot, title, estate, everything. I can walk out on it right now, and I'd do it for you because it means nothing to me. But you have to know. It's time you knew. This is what I come from. The real criminal classes.
'I am Viscount of the Realm. I have £23 million in the bank, the house and estates here, the London flat, the house in Antigua, a villa in Cap Ferat and a small Scottish Island. But I'm worth less than the coins you have in your pocket. So just say the word, and it's gone.'
There was defiance in his eyes, but also fear and pain. He set his jaw back, and straightened his neck, and became again the man Greg knew. For a moment, the policeman wondered if his lover was actually two men, the one urbane and restrained, who dined with Presidents and paladins the world over, the peer of the realm and the exceptional politician; the other a man of passion and ruthlessness, who could kill easily to protect those he loved (Greg had seen that in the stairwell in the City only a few days earlier), who despised his background and his ancestry, whose sensitive, turbulent nature had led him to a life of ethical struggle, and yet who had to be hidden and repressed to allow the other Mycroft to operate. It was a paradox being lived out in that Saville Row-clad frame, and it was tearing Mycroft apart. He had never appreciated just how truly damaged Mycroft was. Now he had seen a glimpse of it, the rubble beneath that composed exterior, and it shook him. For a few minutes he could not move. He looked at Mycroft. The Viscount was shaking, his eyes sharp and glittering with emotion, the throbbing pulse visible in the column of his throat.
Greg saw for the first time the truth. Here was a man mired in shadows who longed for light. And whatever Greg thought of himself, Mycroft saw him as the light. Reflected in his Viscount's eyes, he saw himself as a rescuing angel. And what man can resist such an image of himself?
He reached out and took Mycroft gently in his arms, and held him there. For several minutes the taller man was stiff with fear, unsure and unstable. He held himself upright in order to hold himself together. But Greg had learnt a great deal from watching the way John managed Sherlock's instability, and he followed that fine example. He stayed quiet. He regulated his breathing. He was simply there. And eventually, Mycroft's body did what his mind could not. It softened. With a faint expiration, he loosened against Greg, and his head came to rest on his shoulder, and they stood together in a tender and silent communion while a sky lark trilled overhead and bees buzzed lazily in the clover at their feet.
Tomorrow, the Viscount and the butter dish…
