Alec

by William di Canzio

Nurse Hall, now that she had nothing to hide from her brother, readily agreed to meet again. She suggested a tea parlor in the Abbeydale section of Sheffield, near St. John’s Red Cross Hospital. Alec waited in a park around the corner, where raw drizzle was yielding to sunshine so warm that the hyacinths seemed to open while he looked at them. Alec had prevailed in their dispute by reminding Maurice of his own courage, of the night when he’d taken leave of Clive Durham and told the squire frankly that he loved the gamekeeper. That was that. No second thoughts, no hesitating for fear of possible consequences. He’d simply spoken the truth. “But family…,” Maurice protested, “complicates everything. Besides, much as you dislike him, Clive’s a gentleman and so I could trust him to be straight up in our quarrel and not try to knife me in the back later.” “All right, then, let’s be gentlemanly ourselves.” “How so?” “Judgin’ from what you tell me, Miss Hall is likewise someone to be trusted—I mean that a lady like her should choose, choose, out of a sense of duty or kindliness or great-heartedness, to slop around in hospitals and tend the sick and wounded and dyin’. That’s fuckin’ noble, if you ask me, even heroic. And now she’s been truthful with her brother, though she might rather have done otherwise.” “But—” “Granted, she had little choice in the circumstances. But that accords you the chance to speak the truth in return, freely, by no force of necessity.” So they were here to...