Chapter Two

"Actually, maybe you were right. This place isn't half bad."
Alec walked his toes across Maurice's chest while Maurice silently praised heaven for bathrooms with capacious baths. Said toes were very pink, and slippery with lather. The bath was too hot and so full that water slopped over the side onto the floor with every small movement. They didn't care. Alec leaned back against the far end of the tub and looked around the small bathroom through the haze of steam, all chequerboard navy and white tiles with a ship's anchor thrown in for good measure every now and then. His face was a picture of contented wonderment.
"Amazin', how the other half lives."

It had been surprisingly easy to find a place, they'd been lucky. A modest yet pleasant furnished house in an anonymous middle-class part of town, home to respectable commuting businessmen and their respectable families. Best of all, the problem of their living in the same house had been neatly solved by the fact that the original kitchen had been converted into a basement flat. Maurice had simply taken on both, the flat ostensibly for Alec, the house for Maurice.
"So I'll be living down there," said Alec when Maurice first took him to see the house. Still determined to be unimpressed.
"Of course not, you'll be living with me."
"But I'll have to put all me things down there."
"I suppose so," said Maurice with some exasperation. "Is that such a terrible hardship?"
"And I'll have to skulk around down there too if anyone comes to call."
"Hopefully no-one will."
Thankfully, Alec had changed his tune when he saw the bathroom.
"Indoor plumbing." He turned the hot tap on and off experimentally. "Now this is the life."

For appearance's sake and because neither of them possessed the time nor the necessary skills to upkeep a town house, Maurice had felt compelled to employ a housekeeper. (Live-out naturally, with hours arranged to coincide with when they were both away at work.) Although the woman had initially expressed surprise when Mr Hall had instructed her she was to prepare sufficient dinner for himself and Mr Scudder every night, once he explained that they had been comrades during the war she had smiled warmly and acquiesced without another question. In a very strange way the war had actually made it easier for them to be together, had provided a reason for men of such different classes to have developed a bond, a friendship of some sort.
A sense of mutual obligation, even.

Maurice secured a position at a medium-sized shipping concern without too much difficulty. The owner had been so thrilled at the idea of employing a Cambridge old-boy and such an obvious gentleman to boot that he hadn't even bothered to ask about references, which was almost a shame as Maurice had concocted quite a good story about his old employer moving overseas and dying and Maurice's own copies of the references most unfortunately having been destroyed in a fire. Never mind - he could save it for another time.
It had been difficult at first to re-inhabit an image of his old self, and he balked at it anyway - the old suburban ways of dressing, talking, being. It was oppressive, but he took comfort in the fervent belief that none of this exterior rubbish could change what was inside: he and Alec's thoughts, their feelings, their love - all those things belonged to the Greenwood, no matter where they actually were. Yes, the Greenwood could just as easily be a state of mind as a physical reality. That belief was all that had got him through the war with his sanity intact, truth be told. Through those three terrifying, interminable years of separation from his friend.
Maybe, just maybe, they really could have the best of both worlds here in town: the comforts and conveniences of modern life without the stultifying conformity that came with it. Surely they, if anyone, could achieve that.

Mr Stanton, proprietor of Stanton & Co., was a thoroughly decent man and Maurice quickly distinguished himself sufficiently to gain a promotion to a position of some responsibility. He'd fallen on his feet it was true. He wished he could say the same for Alec.
Game-keeping positions being few and far between in the city Alec had eventually resigned himself to butchery. He'd learnt enough of the basics of the trade helping out in his dad's shop to get a job as a hand in a large bustling meat-market near the middle of town. He hated it. Alec had always thanked his lucky stars that he hadn't been the first born son and therefore expected to take on the mantle of Father's business when he grew too old to run it himself. That had fallen to Robert, Alec's older brother by some twenty years. The fact of Bob's inheritance had always been bitterly resented by Fred, second-born and burning with ambition. But not Alec, oh no. Stuck all day indoors hacking up carcasses and passing the time of day with housewives? Always smelling slightly of raw meat no matter how hard you tried to scrub it away? Give him the woods any day, he'd told Maurice as much many a time. Yet now, here he was, working in a place that to Maurice's ears sounded akin to some kind of hellish abattoir. As far from the freedom of the open air as could be.
Maurice worried about Alec. Every day, he wondered if he'd made the right decision. For both of them.

"Mr Hall, I'd like to introduce my daughter Edith."
Maurice actually jumped at the sound of Mr Stanton's voice; he'd been miles away, looking out at the port and the grey choppy sea beyond. He often caught himself doing this, drifting when he should be working. Stanton & Co might be situated in a plain, modest building, nothing like the grandiose colonnaded porticoes of Hill & Hall, but the view was superb.
Of course it stood to reason that an importer/exporter be situated near their client base, and Mr Stanton was nothing if not practical. Beneath that mild exterior - a small, bespectacled fifty-ish man, kindly and complaisant in manner - beat the heart of a true businessman. And Maurice himself hadn't been a successful stockbroker for nothing. Mr Stanton and Maurice had hit it off at once, and Maurice was quickly promoted from clerk to agent. He'd been happy to accept the offer though it had stirred up some discontent in the clerical office amongst those who had been there much longer. Two months had passed and he felt that things were going well; his salary paid the bills and they hadn't had to dig too far into their savings to get set up.
It felt strange, handling shipping bills from the Argentine - every time he expected that maybe the name on it would be Fred Scudder. That thought would send him off into another reverie and he would muse on the capriciousness of fate, the ever-branching paths that every life takes with decisions at every turn that can take a man down an entirely different road. If he or Alec had just said or done one little thing differently eight years ago it might be "Alec Scudder" whose name appeared on documents from that far-away place. But in that case Maurice wouldn't be here to read them even if they did - he'd be back at Hill & Hall presumably, possibly married to some poor girl, both of them discontented, both of them withering up inside a little more by the year. And that was the best-case scenario. At the very moment his employer addressed him he'd been tracking the swooping, scavenging flight of a seagull with his eyes and thanking providence yet again that Alec hadn't given up on him during those fateful few weeks when they first met, that he'd kept pushing despite Maurice's obtuseness, his snobbery, his fear and refusal to communicate.

Snapping back to the present, Maurice stood up and briskly extended his hand. "Very pleased to meet you, Miss Stanton."
"And I you." She had a firm grip, for a woman. "I've heard quite a lot about father's indispensable new colleague. It's nice to put a face to the name."
"It was kind of him to say so. I'm very much enjoying working here."
Miss Stanton had a great deal of thick chestnut brown hair piled up on the top of her head, wore thin, steel-rimmed spectacles perched low on her nose, and attire that bespoke a certain desire to be admired for something other than a pretty figure set off by feminine flounces.
"Now, Edith," Mr Stanton, who had stepped out of the office briefly as Maurice and Edith introduced themselves, returned now with his coat and umbrella. "Have you asked Mr Hall about Thursday? No? Well, Mr Hall, I'm having a few colleagues round for a modest repast and we'd be very happy if you'd join us."
"Well - I - there might be -"
"Oh, do, Mr Hall," Edith whispered. "Most of them are about eighty! It would be nice to have someone young to talk to for a change!"
"Eighty, indeed! Well, if you're not sure let me know tomorrow. Now I'm taking my daughter out for tea. Owner's prerogative, I'm afraid. Hold the fort will you; I'll be back in an hour."
They left and Maurice sat down again, glad to be granted time to think of an excuse.

Outside, Edith took her father's arm.
"Decent young chap, that Mr Hall," he said in an offhand kind of way.
Papa's matchmaking again if I'm not mistaken.
She did feel sorry for him; he was of a different generation and seeing her twenty-four and not married he worried that she would end up on the shelf. With no mother or older sisters to guide her matrimonially Father somehow felt it behoved him to find her a suitable young man, and Edith knew he considered her rather a bluestocking and therefore an even more difficult match. Of course, all that was actually quite true and if she was honest with herself sometimes she did worry about ending up as the proverbial old maid in the garret.
All the same, this Mr Hall was a much better proposition than any of the other men from Papa's office he'd ever-so-not-discreetly paraded before her. Very nice looking, with a beautiful charming voice. But why would such a prepossessing man of thirty or thereabouts not be married already? There weren't enough of them to go around now as it was, thanks to the war.
Don't prejudge, Edith. You're not such a fabulous catch yourself and see.

Alec hosed the last of the blood, fluids and tissue scraps down the grating, took off his blue and white striped apron with a sigh of relief. It was seven o'clock and Matheson's the Butcher's back room was emptying out rapidly as the last of the workers finished cleaning and scrubbing and locking away the undressed carcases in the cold-room, white marbled fat and red muscle hanging from meat hooks and awaiting their turn for the knife on the morrow.
"Hey Alec -" Jimmy Franks, a tall and rangy ginger-headed man about Alec's age called out to him just as he was heading out the door. "A few of us are going down the Star and Garter for a pint. Care to come along?"
It was the first time he'd been asked though he knew they went there most nights. He was starting to be accepted. He thought of Maurice waiting at home, dinner warming on the stove. He knew he oughtn't to but the thought of a few pints in a convivial atmosphere was very appealing and, if he was honest with himself, he missed the company of his own kind of people. This job was bad enough without being on the outer as well.
"Why not?" he said.

The pub was crowded, smoky and loud, but not so different from the Crown back at Osmington or the local at Penge on a Saturday night, really. Except everyone here didn't necessarily all know each other and there was a certain undercurrent - especially as the night drew on and the punters got drunker - that murmured, softly and menacingly, one wrong word and there could well be a fight. In fact half the people here seemed to be spoiling for one. But at Alec's table all was most congenial, and Jimmy was free with cigarettes and rounds, having won a packet on the gee gees the other day.
There were meat pies too which weren't half bad and soon Alec forgot all about going home. He didn't have to work tomorrow, after all so why should he? Then, would you believe it, Bert Trawler showed up. Alec had served with him in the war. Naturally they had to catch up too, turned out Bert was a regular here, and before he knew it time had been called and they'd all been tipped out onto the street.

It was near-midnight when he finally got home, going in as he always did through the basement flat, though he could barely get the key into the lock and half-wondered if he'd end up sleeping on the doorstep and get thrown into gaol for vagrancy. He stumbled, coughing a bit, up the internal stairs that, luckily enough hadn't been removed, only a locked and bolted door between the residences. It had been easy enough to get the landlord's agent to unlock it for them.
In the kitchen his covered plate of dinner was still on the stove, on top of a pan of water that had boiled dry. He turned off the hob, thankful that at least he wasn't so rotten that he'd let them burn to death in their beds.
In the parlour he found Maurice, fallen asleep in his chair. Alec crept as carefully and quietly across the room as he could in his state, and looked down at his friend. The dying firelight glimmered mahogany red on his dark hair - he looked like an angel asleep, always had. Maurice's head had drooped to the side, his shirt open at the throat, leaving the tender curve of his long neck exposed. Alec longed to kiss him there. He swayed on his feet.
You're drunk, Alec. Leave him alone.
He oh-so-carefully put the screen in front of the fire but somehow managed to catch the fire irons with his foot. The poker fell out and clattered across the hearth.
"Bollocks." He glanced anxiously at his sleeping friend.
"Alec." Maurice sat up, blinking.
"Sorry, was trying not to wake you."
"Where've you been?" Maurice didn't sound angry. That was a good start.
Alec sat down heavily on the hearth rug; put his head on Maurice's knee."I went for drink with the lads."
"Ah."
Alec had been so sure he'd have to justify himself that even though he hadn't been questioned, he looked up and continued on a bit defensively, "I've got to get on with my workmates, you know."
"Yes, you do." Maurice's voice was still blurry with sleep. Alec felt safe and wanted in the warm embrace of that low, beautiful voice as surely as if he was in Maurice's arms. "As a matter of fact," Maurice added, "Mr Stanton keeps asking me to dinner at his home as well. I can't keep making excuses, either."
"Well there you go." Alec felt totally vindicated and rested his cheek back against Maurice's leg. Maurice ran his fingers through his hair. After a long silence Alec spoke again.
"Maurice?"
"Hmm?"
"I hain't got brewer's droop or nothing, you know."
"Pleased to hear it."