Alec

by William di Canzio

“It’s a man, not a girl.” “Oh…,” he said, more seriously. “Older, then?” “Like you—just turned twenty-four.” “That old, eh?” “A gentleman.”

“If he’s a man of means, he can visit you overseas. That would show his good faith.”

“Because it’s all fakery, love this and love that. When lads have eyes for each other there’s nothin’ sweeter than sharin’, and don’t we know how sweet, we two? But love?

It’s a lie of the upper classes, a fancy for them with too much time on their hands, tartin’ up for their own delectation what for most of us couldn’t be plainer. It’s family holds folks together, property, land, not ‘love.’ Stay with him? What, here? As a servant? When so much could be yours overseas? If he truly cared for you, he’d never ask such a thing. Alec! What happens when he tires of you, or you of him?”

“Course I am. You’re all topsy-turvy now—about this big trip, leavin’ behind what you’ve always known. But you’re such a fine fellow—who knows better than I how very fine? Once out at sea, you do as I say: take a sailor-boy in your arms for the nonce; before you touch shore, I promise, you’ll have forgotten this gentleman’s name.”

He tried not to dwell on the happiness of their night in London, their second night together, richer than the first, of deeper emotion, more intimate touch, but his lover’s words, tender and brave, kept calling him back: I’ll see anyone, face anything. If they want to guess, let them … We love each other … He whispered aloud, “Maurice.” Then he banished the thought.

But there might be no Mr. Hall. To date, their love had been a contest. Now it stood at a draw and might prove a stalemate. Each had failed the other, Maurice abandoning Alec at Penge without a word, Alec threatening blackmail in London.

Yet Maurice had not laughed at him (as he deserved), had shown no disgust, not even impatience. Was that what it meant to be a gentleman? No, that’s what it meant to be Maurice.

no matter by what name he might call it, a real power had seized him when he’d locked eyes with Maurice two weeks ago on the road from the station.

his heart ached in Maurice’s absence and thrilled at his sight.

that was the strange delight he felt in his skin today, the knowledge of being loved.

In the last dying of the day, he opened his eyes. His lover was kneeling beside him. Half-asleep, he fondled Maurice’s arm between his hands before he spoke. “So you got the wire,” he said. “What wire?” “The wire I sent off this morning to your house, telling you…” He yawned. “Excuse me, I’m a bit tired, one thing and another … telling you to come here without fail.” And since Maurice did not speak, indeed could not, he added, “And now we shan’t be parted no more, and that’s finished.”

Without another word, they made love—Maurice in tears, Alec bursting with thankfulness, their ardor stoked by their ordeal. Afterward they murmured and sniffled and laughed.

“It’s no matter now. When I saw you weren’t on the ship, I’d have done anything for you. I’d have jumped over the moon.”

Upstairs, they made love and dozed. On opening a drowsy eye, Alec was met with a sight that provoked a conflict of lust and tenderness: his sleeping lover’s rump, smooth and shapely in the moonlight, dimpled, pale, and muscular.

Maurice hung his head. He giggled: “Woof.” He lifted Alec back onto the bed, where they enjoyed each other again, quietly now, and then slept for nine hours in the deepest contentment, hearts at rest in each other at last. Thus began their life together as outlaws.

Under the law they were criminals; outside it, merely young lovers. For them to live by the law would mean—what, separation? Marriage to others? Furtive meetings? No, the law was unjust. To subject themselves to it would make them complicit with its tyranny. So they would live outside it. But how?

“Fred’s always furious,” Aderyn said.

I’ve offered to advance Alec the money to repay his brother the price of his passage. We can do that much at least.”

When they locked eyes in public this way, they found the intimacy especially sweet—secret, transgressive.

“Why? There’s no place I want to sleep tonight, or any night, except in your arms. I’ll ask no one’s permission, only yours. Nothing keeps us apart anymore, not the Church or the law, much less your family or mine.”

warped and rickety spinet, once Grandmother’s treasured emblem of respectability in Cardiff;

By now their limbs were entwined in that perfect way of theirs, hearts beating against each other.

“When you followed the car that morning at Penge and I saw you there in the rain, I could have knelt in the mud at your feet, I could have cut out my heart and begged you, Here, take it. It’s already yours, it’s no good to me without you—

With this speech (whose gallantry astounded the speaker no less than the hearer), Eros triumphed. Overwhelmed by the twin riptides of youth and ardor, the lovers ravished each other, panting and gasping like drowning men who would drag their rescuer with them under the waves. Thus the outlaws abandoned themselves yet again to their unspeakable crimes. And night smiled at the

The young men were about the same height; although Alec’s frame was a bit smaller,

They made a game out of his trying things on, with Maurice as tailor standing close behind, calling him sir, reaching around to button the coat or adjust the trousers. (This skit always ended in sex.)

They’d come home and climb into the deep bathtub (their rooms’ best feature), sometimes together, for a long soak. Afterward they’d dress in warm socks and Alec’s big old homespun shirts—nothing else—and lie about spooning and playing or reading and dozing side by side for hours. It was their very highest happiness.

At twenty and twenty-four, they had achieved what nature demands at that age, but what Church, state, and family had forbidden them: union with another.

“Sir, if you please, I’m sure I’d show great improvement if you’d detain me for a private lesson in your rooms.”

he also understood how very rare was their happiness.

The concert with Morgan was the first public event the lovers attended together.

As for Maurice, nothing made him happier than seeing Alec happy. That was his nature as lover.

He did not know that music could shimmer like light or water; that it could stir him sexually, cause him chills in a hot crowded hall; carry him off to a heaven where the saints were ladies and knights, where the Virgin held court among her maidens in a rose garden, where paradise itself was incomplete without your earthly beloved, because in this particular afterlife, love of flesh and love of God were one.

In the dark, Alec found Maurice’s hand with his own, laced their fingers together, and held firmly.

Alec discerned that if she would speak thus to him, her onetime servant, the lady must be lonely.

Now Maurice marveled that anyone could feel as deeply as he did, to fear his own death less than any harm’s befalling his beloved.

These elders had much to teach them, chiefly about how to live with honor as men who loved each other.

he learned not to be ruled by the expectations of others, much less by their mores.

And the amorous bathhouse constables had exposed to him the law’s hypocrisy against his kind.

he’d developed a unique, expansive vision of justice, wherein the rights of women and workers and same-sex lovers were coequal causes in a world in need of reform.

He framed the issue with questions of science and law; he did so by the authority of his education, his talent, and his humanity.

Alec had grown accustomed to Maurice’s beauty, but now, at a distance, it struck him anew.

Their desire for each other had increased during their time together, as their lovemaking had grown more skillful. They’d learned to come together, or if one should come first, they might be so lost in each other at the moment that neither could quite tell who. Today, before that moment arrived, Maurice murmured, “I want you to enter me.” Alec knew the longing Maurice now gave voice to, a desire at once sensual and mystical and at last impossible: to incorporate the other into himself. Despite their passion, they’d not yet tried penetration, held back by a fear of giving pain. “Won’t it hurt?” he said. “I don’t care. George told me how. He gave me an ointment.”