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March 27 - March 31, 2024
He might not have much experience with either, and thank God for it, but he knew trees were not the natural habitat of either class of person.
As far as he was concerned, he was serving his God by repairing fences and helping round up stray lambs.
But there was no escaping the fact: Captain Dacre’s eyes were a pretty blue, and Ben rather wished they weren’t.
“Naturally,” Ben said, ashamed to have been the recipient of regretted confidences.
He tended to think that when the Bible condemned something practically everyone did, whether it be tossing oneself off or eating pork, there was likely some nuance that had been lost either to history or to translation. And then he didn’t think about it anymore. He wouldn’t do the people of Kirkby Barton any good by thinking about bacon or wanking, so he didn’t think about either and had to imagine neither did God.
The vicar seemed to have his own personal ray of sunshine following him about, casting light in his path and drawing people to him, while Phillip was ever under a storm cloud.
If there was a way to resist this man, he hadn’t found it.
This wanting felt like such a part of Ben’s soul that it had to mean something, had to carry with it its own kind of moral gravity.
He was waiting, he realized, for this to feel wrong, for it to feel shameful or traitorous, but it only felt good, and safe, and honest.
all he could think was that it had all been so easy, so right, and that it would have been a good deal simpler if that hadn’t been the case.
Peace, Ben knew, was a series of small things, each insignificant but together making landmarks for a life:
This was some unholy combination of desire and friendship and something else, because apparently when you took workaday lust and combined it with affection and threw in garden-variety honesty, you got something new and totally different.
“It’s just that there are times one forgets to shave because one is happily distracted and there’s nobody about to impress, and there are times one forgets to shave because one is too down in the doldrums to give a damn.”
“The important thing, Mr. Sedgwick says, is to remember that during brown studies our minds are not particularly honest. That if you want to know the truth, you need to wait.”
They weren’t happy, but they were together, and maybe this was truer than the dark whisperings of his mind.