Speak Its Name: A Trilogy (5 page)

“Letters were safe, Edward. It was easy to pour myself into them, and like a fool I succumbed to the temptation to do so. I could kiss your letters and not be tainted. Having the same feelings while being so close to you is agony.” He reached out again, merely brushed the wool of his friend’s jacket and shook his head sadly.

“Will you meet me tomorrow, then?” Edward’s voice was full of defeat and sadness. “Not in my room if you can’t bear it. At a café or in the bar. Anywhere. I need to talk to you.” He raised his hand, let it stop within a hair’s breadth of Hugo’s face. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Hugo nodded. He didn’t dare say anything—his treacherous tongue would betray him. He gently grazed his own hand along Edward’s, resisting clasping the fingers.

“At
The Bath Bun,
then? At eleven?” It was unlike Edward to be so forceful. Even with such a close friend.

Hugo nodded again, shook Edward’s hand and made off for his rooms, mind whirring and confused.

~

Edward half expected that Hugo wouldn’t come. He’d been having second thoughts himself, tossing and turning in his bed, mind full of guilt—not for his feelings for Hugo, he believed they were above reproach—but for the obvious strains their affection was putting on his friend. He’d gone though in his mind every conversation they’d ever had but the more he analyzed, the more he was puzzled; this wasn’t some compound that would give up its secrets to solvent or litmus paper. All he could really make out was that Hugo felt shame at being attracted to another man, that was understood, but there was something else, something deeper and more painful that he couldn’t even guess at. Something that was eating into Hugo’s heart like a worm in an apple and making the centre rotten.

But Hugo did come to
The Bath Bun
that next morning. On the dot of eleven he appeared at the café door, gave Edward a sheepish smile and made his way to the table where he ordered coffee and cakes.

“I was afraid...”

“That I wouldn’t come?” Hugo grinned, obviously not fully at ease. “I couldn’t be so rude. Again.” He looked Edward in the eye for the first time since before the Warden had started speaking the night before. “I’m sorry about last evening. I feel you deserve a full explanation, and I’ve screwed my courage to the sticking place in order to deliver it. Only not here.”

Edward felt puzzled but nodded his agreement. They ate and drank in almost total silence, passing stilted pleasantries but unable to really communicate until they’d cleared the air between them. They’d paid their bill and walked half the length of the street before Hugo began to speak in earnest. “Edward, you must think I am the most inconsistent of creatures and I apologise for it profusely. All that I told you in your room the day we...” he cast a quick glance around to ensure they wouldn’t be overheard, “... kissed was true. I can’t trust myself when I’m alone with you.”

“We’re alone now,” Edward said and immediately regretted it.

“I mean in circumstances where we could do what we liked. I don’t think that we could kiss here and now, walking along the main road.” Hugo grinned and part of his old spark of mischief, sadly missing since last term, flared again. “What you don’t understand, because I’ve never told you, is the intense regret I feel about something I did. Something that happened before I met you.” He suddenly found the pavement to be enormously interesting.

Edward couldn’t begin to guess what thoughts were going through his friend’s mind. “Do you want to tell me what it was? Is it so bad that I would turn on my heel and leave?”

Hugo looked up, then along his shoulder at his friend, his face a picture of uncertainty. “I honestly don’t know. Tell me.” He stopped, looked Edward uneasily in the eye. “Was there ever anyone before me? Some lucky man or girl who stole your heart?”

The words seemed light, almost frivolous. But Edward recognised they hid a wealth of feeling. He drew a long breath. “There’s never been anyone who’s even looked at me twice, until you invited me to that picnic. So the answer is a resounding
no
.”

“It’s not the same for me, I’m afraid.” If Hugo saw the brief look of distress that appeared on Edward’s face and was quickly hidden, he didn’t acknowledge it. “I know you’re going to be disappointed in me, but we’ve got to thrash this out. I have to tell you the truth.” He sighed. “I went to a club in London. Picked up this girl and took her out in my car.”

“Girl...” Edward couldn’t stop the word from escaping his lips, nor the obvious surprise in his voice.

Hugo seemed deliberately to ignore the remark, as if he’d started his confession now and was afraid any distraction might make it impossible to finish. “I wanted to prove to myself that I was normal, that I could feel and do as other men did. I suspect I hoped that if I tried
it
the accepted way, that it might make me want to carry on doing the same. Stop wanting to do
it
any other way.” He looked by turns embarrassed or on the verge of laughter.

Even Edward saw the comical side; Hugo sounded like a convent girl trying to discuss intimate matters without ever letting a dirty word pass her lips. “And did it?” Edward’s training in analytical chemistry might not have been a great preparation for life, but it had given him the skill of cutting through to the crux of any matter.

“I never found out. Trying to embrace her was bad enough. Have you ever tried to kiss anyone while the act made you feel physically sick?”

Edward shook his head. He’d known no such thing, but he thought again of their own first meeting, because of the association with being sick. Strange how the memory of that time was full of happiness for both of them, although it had been such an unpleasant experience.

“I had to get rid of her with a handful of cash and a lift to a cab rank. It wasn’t something I would ever want to repeat.” Hugo’s cheeks burned as he spoke.

Edward waited for the story to continue, wondering what could have happened to make his friend so flushed. When they’d gone a good hundred yards and Hugo was still silent, he knew he had to speak. “So why do you feel guilty about that? You seemed to act like a gentleman, in the end.”

“There’s more to tell, Edward, I just needed to find the right words to make it appear less tawdry than it was. I know I behaved like a gentleman but it didn’t stop her calling me
‘a bleedin’ Nancy boy’.
That was all too close to the truth. You see, I went off to another club straightaway afterwards. It wasn’t the sort of place that respectable men, certainly those who wish to keep their reputations, visit.” He cast a sideways glance at his friend. “I picked someone else up there—a young man, not yet twenty I’d have said. I took him out in my car, as well.”

“What did he look like?” Edward kept his questions clinical. He was a man used to analysis, taking and sifting facts to form theories about them and he had to apply those skills now. It was the only way he could cope with such painful revelations.

Hugo considered the query. “He was pretty enough, although not really handsome like you, and I suspect that within a few years his looks will be long gone, especially if he keeps to his present way of living.”

“What was his name?”

“I never knew. They called him Domino, because...” Hugo seemed reluctant to explain further and Edward guessed there was some dim-witted joke behind the name, “... of some stupid thing or other. That’s what he wanted me to call him and so I did.” They’d reached the road along to the river, so kept walking in the direction of the bridge.

“Where did you take him?” It was surprisingly easy just to ask simple questions, to ease the story along. Edward expected a candid answer and Hugo was obliging him.

“Out to the back of Hampstead Heath. You can see the lights of the city there but it feels like the deepest countryside to me. I used to go flying my kite on the Heath with my nanny. I think I’ll never go there again.”

“Was what happened there so bad? Why has it ruined the place for you forever?”

They’d reached the bridge and Hugo stopped to lean on the balustrade. “I think it’s ruined everything.” He looked down into the swiftly running water. “I wish that somehow this river would carry my sins away as easily as it takes the silt from the fields. Take them down to the sea and lose them.”

“What on earth did you do?” Edward was stunned at his friend’s words. What could they have done, Hugo and this strange boy, to have left such a legacy of guilt? “Did you couple with him? Is that it?”

They stared down at the river again. Ducks were dabbling, their tails sticking up and looking ridiculous and a little grebe was diving into the fast running current and hunting for fish. This was all evidence that life was going on, even if their hearts had frozen in the telling of this tale.

Edward lightly touched his friend’s arm, indicating that he’d stayed silent too long. “Tell me, Hugo. Please.”

“I paid him to... I want to say
perform certain acts,
but that’s just a euphemism and it’s not fair to you to be less than honest. We had sex. There was no affection in it, not as you and I shared when we kissed. For him it was just a matter of making a profit, a handful of money earned to spend on who knows what. It’s the only time in my life I have done such...
things
, and I’m angry I did them there and with him. There are times I feel I never want to do anything like that again.”

“Even if it were with someone you loved?”

Hugo rubbed his hand over his face. “It was pleasant, Edward, I can’t deny that it was the most exhilarating thing. To go the rest of my life and not know that ecstasy again would be hard. But I’d rather that than pile another burden of guilt on my back. What I did was wrong, and wanting to do it with you is wrong, too.” He slapped his hands on the stone of the balustrade, not seeming to notice the sting the action must have caused his palms.

“Even if it wasn’t about money? Even if you loved me and I loved you?”

“Edward, my dearest Edward.” Hugo spoke as if addressing a child. “You’re so wonderfully innocent, it’s breathtaking. You sound as if you believe all those storybooks where love makes everything right.”

“Perhaps it does...”

“What about guilt, though? What about remorse? I know you can’t find them in your books on inorganic chemistry, but they’re real and they consume you.” Hugo looked sidelong at his friend, who was still studying the Isis. “I’ve fallen in love with you, Edward—I knew it from the moment you laid your ‘precious head’ on my ‘manly chest’ or however the writers of romance would put it, that day by this same river. And I’m guessing, from the letters we exchanged and the flush on your cheeks now, that you’re quite possibly in love with me. I’m not sure if that fact makes things better or fifty times worse.”

Edward didn’t know the answer to that, of course he didn’t. Hugo had been right to say he’d no knowledge of feelings. He was in uncharted territory, and he wanted to be guided through it step by step. The only man who could do it was standing next to him. “You’ve still not answered my question. About love making all things right.”

“I’m sorry. That’s because I have no answer. I told you once that if we slept together, we would end up hating ourselves and each other. As I hate both that boy and myself for having used him. I simply can’t see any other outcome. The ruin of a life, two lives, for the sake of a few minutes pleasure.” Tears came welling up in Hugo’s eyes. He wiped his face on his sleeve, like a schoolboy might, and for the first time Edward saw not the great Hugo Lamont of Cranmer College, but someone young, vulnerable and, as always, beyond adorable.

Edward laid his hand on Hugo’s shoulder, not knowing any words he could share. He felt he should be making some wise pronouncement either to offer comfort or to persuade his friend that all his guilt and distaste was stupid, but he’d no idea what would work in either case. By accident he hit upon exactly what Hugo required; not gabbling words or advice, pious or otherwise, but a quiet companionship. All the comfort Hugo needed, he found in that light touch upon his back; all the counsel he sought was in the gentle breath playing upon his cheek.

After a moment or two, he looked up at Edward and smiled wanly as if he was broken in heart and spirit. “I know it’s a simple choice, but it’s one I can’t make. Part of me says I should say farewell here and now, taking myself away from you and all the temptation you bring. And the other half says you’re the thing I treasure most in all the world and I should just stay with you and risk everything.” He shrugged and merely patted Edward’s back. “I’m sorry. It’s me. I’m hopeless and that’s all there is to it.”

Edward remembered all the college stories about Hugo that he’d heard when he first come up to Cranmer—his being held up as the shining example, the man that all other men should aspire to. Seeing him so distraught, so lacking in any confidence in his own powers, was untenable. “You’re not hopeless. Far from it.” He tried to catch Hugo’s eye. “It’ll be all right. It will.” The words sounded so vapid, so utterly useless, but somehow they sparked a slightly happier smile from his friend.

“Whoever would have thought, when you so kindly christened my shoes with the contents of your stomach, that you would have been the one giving me the pep talk a few months down the line? You’re too good to be wasting your time on an idiot like me. Go and find yourself some nice chap who’s pure and unsullied and would make love to you without a second thought. You can discover the pleasures of the flesh together.” Hugo laid his hand on Edward’s shoulder, trembling with emotion.

“You are a bloody idiot if you think that’s what I want. I’ve never felt the slightest inclination towards anything approximating romantic activity...”

Hugo was clearly repressing a smile and Edward realised that long words were beginning to pepper his speech again. It was a sure sign he was becoming emotional, he knew that his letters had been full of them, but he couldn’t stop himself.

“... and therefore I wouldn’t be liable to be going off with anyone else.” Edward’s face flushed and he looked so pompous that Hugo’s urge to kiss him was almost irresistible.