Chapter Seven

They were throwing the last of the dust covers over the furniture in the drawing room when the knock came at the door. It was their last day in the house: everything was cleaned, most of their accumulated belongings sold or given away, and Mrs Moxley had been let go, with a generous bonus in hand. She'd said a curious thing as Maurice shook her hand farewell. "Look after him," she said, meaning Alec. "You're everything to him, you know." And with a smile and a squeeze of his hand she was gone.
She's known all along, he thought with some wonder. We were nowhere near as clever as we thought we were.Thank God their housekeeper had been the sympathetic type. He'd watched her retreating back - clad in a sensible, drab, slightly down-at-heel looking brown coat - with different eyes. When would he learn, once and for all, that servants were real people with thinking brains just as much as anyone else? Even after Alec, he sometimes forgot.

"Who is it?" Alec called from the landing, where he was bringing down the rucksacks. He sounded slightly annoyed that anyone should be bothering them this close to escape - as was Maurice.
Maurice glanced out the drawing room window.
"It's a man...don't know him. There are two old people with him...Oh."
The older man's hair had been salt-and-pepper grey the last time they'd met. Now it was all but white, and he leaned on a cane for support. The frowzy-looking woman with red hair dyed several shades too bright for her age likewise appeared somewhat more bowed down by age or care than he remembered her. But they were unmistakable all the same.
"Oh, God."
"What is it?"
"Alec...it's your parents."
Silence from the passage. The knock sounded again.
Another pause. Alec descended the stairs, opened the door.

"Alec!" Maurice heard the lady shriek.
"Mum..."
Maurice moved to the drawing room door like a man in a dream, and saw his friend wrapped in the embrace of the stout little woman, holding her tight.
"My baby..." She was sobbing now.
"That's enough, Hannah," said Alec's father in a tight voice. He would look neither at Alec nor Maurice but instead kept his eyes fixed on some point on the far wall. "Let's not have a scene in the doorway, make a spectacle of ourselves."
"Well? Are you just going to leave us standing here?" The younger man spoke up in a tone of annoyed impatience. Alec's brother Robert, it surely must be. The family resemblance was strong between the two brothers. Though he was twenty or so years older, Robert shared something of Alec's pleasing aspect - unlike poor old Fred, who seemed to have missed out entirely on both looks and charm. No wonder he had found it so necessary to torment and dominate his younger brother as an outlet for his frustration at being the overlooked middle son.
Robert's eyes were dark with anger, though. And worse. Shame.
"Come into the parlour," said Maurice and they all did, though not one of the visiting Scudders acknowledged him or that it was he who had spoken. Alec extracted himself from his mother's arms and led her through, casting a helpless look at Maurice as he passed him in the doorway.
"Sit down, please," said Maurice.
Mrs Scudder, after a momentary hesitation, sank gratefully down onto a cloth-covered chair but the men remained standing.
The silence stretched out uncomfortably until at last Alec broke the spell. "How're Nance and Alice?" he asked of his mother in a small voice. He spoke of his sisters.
"Very well. Nancy sends her best, she has another little one on the way or she swears she would have come -"
"That's enough, Hannah," repeated Mr Scudder.
"This isn't a social call as you must have realised," added Robert, his eyes drilling into Alec's. "So. I'm fascinated to know how you're going to try and explain yourself."
"I took a job with Mr Hall instead - instead of the Argentine," said Alec. Maurice could hardly believe his ears. It was as if Alec had absorbed into his subconscious Maurice's own words at the hotel all those years ago, and now they emerged verbatim. Even Alec looked somewhat surprised at what he'd just said.
And what did I say next? "Let them guess, I don't care." Do I?
Robert laughed disbelievingly. "Is that the best you can come up with?"
Whatever else Robert had been about to say was forestalled by Mr Scudder senior, who was looking properly at Maurice at last - though reluctantly, as if could hardly bear to lay eyes on him.
"It is you." He seemed to be forcing the words out. "From the boat. The gentleman. We couldn't work out why the hell you were there. You had a damn cheek showing up the way you did. Trying to spoil Alec's farewell."
"It's just as well Alec didn't show up then, isn't it."
Maurice's voice was as cold as he could make it - and that was very. Alec shot him an unreadable look.
Robert took a step toward Maurice.
"Bob," said their father quietly, and that one word was enough to stop him in his tracks.

"Who told you where I was?"
"That doesn't matter," said Robert shortly. "What matters is what we're going to do now."
"It were Milly. Wasn't it?"
No one answered.
"I know it. It was her. The spiteful - never mind. You're right, it don't matter. So. Why're you here, Bob? You've never given a damn what I do."
"I'm not here for you. I'm here for Mum and Dad. For some reason they still feel some responsibility toward you. Dad's not well as you can probably see. I didn't want Mum to come at all but she insisted. We weren't to know what sort of sordid set-up we'd find you in when we got here, were we."
"Robert!" Hannah Scudder blanched.
"Sorry Mum. Anyway, Alec. We've come to take you home."
"You're not taking him anywhere." They all jumped at the sound of Maurice's voice. It was almost as if they'd forgotten entirely that he was there, once they'd all got properly settled into their little family confab.
"You'll keep quiet, sir, if you know what's good for you. We've already made a note of the location of the closest Police Station."
"You'll not go to the police," said Maurice. It was a statement of fact. Robert's eyes dropped. They all knew it would go worse for Alec if he did. Some things never changed.
"I won't leave Maurice," said Alec.
"You will."

Alec shook his head. Robert took a deep breath and deployed his big guns. "If you don't come quietly home with us there's only one other alternative...we've already been in correspondence with a sanatorium near our house. They'll take you for treatment. It would only take the word of two doctors and you'll be sent there for your own good. And we already know they'll co-operate."
Alec went white.
Maurice leaned his head back against the wall. Sanatorium? Asylum, more like. He'd heard rumours about the kind of treatments their sort got subjected to in places like that. The aversion therapy...he closed his eyes.
Alec started coughing, his terror of the cures that would be visited upon him stark on his face.
"You're sick, lad. You need help," added his father quietly.
"I've heard enough of this. Let's just go, Alec." Maurice stepped forward. "If we leave now we'll be long gone before any doctors can find you."
"If you're wise you'll back off, sir." Robert looked straight at Maurice for the first time. "Should be ashamed of yourself, leading a simple lad astray like you did."
"It was me led him astray, if you must know - Bob," Alec shot back.
At those insolent words, Robert snapped. His until now barely contained rage burst out of him and he struck Alec full across the face, sending him reeling. That was enough for Maurice. In two long strides he was on Robert and with a hard shove sent him stumbling backwards. He collided heavily with the corner of a table and Maurice was on him in a moment.
Mrs Scudder shrieked.
Rage such as Maurice had never felt before in his life was on him.
"You'll - never - touch - him - " he thought he could hear himself saying, and then he felt Alec's arms wrap around him from behind, pulling him away.
Mr Scudder was tugging on Robert's arm, too, hauling at him, as the man, red-faced and panting, looked very like he was going to go at Maurice again.
"Don't!" said Alec in Maurice's ear. "It's not helping - "
Mrs Scudder cried out again."John!"
Scudder senior had dropped his son's arm and was clutching at his chest, breathing heavily.
Alec let Maurice go and threw his arm around his father, holding him up. He sagged heavily against his son's side.
"We've got to sit him down," he said. Maurice pulled the cover off a settee and they managed to manhandle him down onto it, semi-prone and with his legs up.
Hannah Scudder knelt at her husband's side, her hand on his sweat-beaded forehead. "It's his heart," she said. "His heart."
"I'll go for a doctor," said Maurice and went at once. Luckily there was a good doctor not too far distant - in fact, the same one Maurice had been hoping he could persuade Alec to see.
Fortunately the man was at home. He came straight away. By the time he and Maurice returned Mr Scudder was looking somewhat better, he was sitting up and he and Mrs Scudder were sipping at cups of hot tea. Even Robert had sat down.
Alec went to Maurice's side and watched as the doctor examined his father. "It's all my fault," he muttered.
"Don't." Maurice squeezed his arm.
The doctor finished examining Mr Scudder. He pronounced the incident as, fortunately, nothing more serious than "a turn", and prescribed some pills, along with bed rest.
"See your own doctor when you get home," he said, before adding sternly, "and no more excitement or travelling. Also no more undue stress." He looked around meaningfully at everyone in the room. You could no doubt have cut the atmosphere with a knife.
Maurice saw him to the door, and paid him out of sight of the Scudders.

When he came back Robert had started up again.
"Now, Alec," he said, his voice somewhat more measured this time. "See the aggravation you're causing? Come home with us now and there'll be no more trouble."
"No."
"You selfish little bastard. Look at the state of our father. Now you listen to me - " He actually made to rise again. Maurice tensed, watching for any sign of Robert making a move towards Alec. Ready to stop him again - as many times as need be. Aggravation be damned.
"That's enough!"
As one, the men turned shocked eyes towards Hannah Scudder. She had risen to her feet and stood now, fearless, facing down all the men. She seemed to have gained in both height and stature.
"That is enough, all of you." For the first time Maurice caught a glimpse of the strength of the woman. The kind of strength his own mother never had. She would sit back in womanly meekness for only so long, but when she finally chose to make her stand every man in the family would shut up and take notice.
"There'll be no more of this. Don't you see we're doing more harm than good? I won't have it."
"Sit down, Mum." Alec pushed her gently back down into her chair and passed her her cup of tea, which she accepted with shaking hands. She looked up at her youngest son with tears starting in her eyes "It seemed like such a good idea, love. We only wanted to help you because we - we love you, Alec. But now I've seen you here with...him..." She still couldn't bring herself to say Maurice's name or look at him properly, "I understand that you're here of your own free will."
"Mum -" Robert made a last-ditch attempt to regain the initiative.
"No, Robert. I thought we could persuade him but Alec's decided. We can't move him. The only way would be by force - real force, with doctors. And I'm not putting my son in no hospital. That's final."

They left soon after, with little fuss. All the fight seemed to have gone out of them - Alec's parents literally sagged with exhaustion, his father pale and dazed-looking. Maurice stood in the drawing room doorway and watched them leave, still unacknowledged but at least no longer threatened.
Alec hailed a cab to take them back to the station. In the doorway his mother held back, let the menfolk get a few steps ahead, Robert supporting their father on one side while he leaned heavily on his cane on the other.
"Can I write to you, son?" Maurice heard Mrs Scudder say in a low voice. "I'm sorry I didn't reply to your letter before."
"We're moving away, Mum. Today. But I'll write to you."
"All right." She patted his cheek fondly and sadly as if she wasn't sure if she would ever see, or indeed hear, from him again. Maurice made a pledge there and then to make sure Alec wrote - and soon.
Alec stood on the top step and watched the cab drive away. No-one waved.
Then he closed the door and leaned back against it, face stricken.
Maurice went to him.

"All compromise was perilous, because furtive."
Maurice recalled them again, his very own words to himself, during that last conversation with Clive. He had seen everything with such crystal clarity then - when had it all become clouded again? Because he had been right. Living in the town was perilous, maybe not physically like out in the woods, but in a worse way - perilous to the spirit, and it was the compromise, the constant deceit and obfuscation, that did it. It all seemed so obvious again, now.
They sat together in a train carriage, leaving again for who-knows-where. But Alec had done one last thing before they left. He had seen the doctor, at last. He'd examined Alec thoroughly and found that his lungs were indeed damaged from the Spanish Flu - but that it wasn't tuberculosis.
Maurice had almost fainted from relief when Alec told him. It had been his unspoken fear all along.
"So, what are we going to do now?" Alec looked at Maurice and raised an eyebrow.
Maurice shrugged. "I don't know." The sheer relief of getting away was enough for him just now.
"That's good. 'Cos it's my turn to choose this time. And I've got a plan."

THE END