Dulce Et Decorum Est (Naughty or Nice) (4 page)

George laughed, delighted for his friend. “Congratulations! Does it work, by the way?”

“What, the ointment? Blowed if I know—or did you imagine I was actually some fifty-year-old roué, counterfeiting my youthful looks with the aid of some proprietary preparation?”

“If that were true, you’d be an astonishingly good advertisement for the stuff all by yourself!”

“Now there’s a thought. And quite an enticing one. Just think—there’d be pictures of me adorning every billboard. They’d quote me in newspaper advertisements, extolling the virtues of Marley’s Miracle. Now, all I have to do is persuade my reverend father to lie about my age….”

He broke off, laughing, as George threatened him with a boiled potato while Mrs. Mac tutted and rolled her eyes at the manners of young people nowadays.

After supper, they drank tea in the sitting room, Marmaduke condescending to sit on George’s lap and be stroked. “You know,” George said idly, “I always imagined a cat called Marmaduke would be ginger. I haven’t the faintest idea why.”

“It’s probably the association of words,” Matthew said with a smile. “Marmaduke does sound a lot like marmalade, after all.”

“Why did you choose the name—I assume it was you who named him?”

“Oh, yes! He turned up here, oh, at the end of summer, it must have been, looking terribly thin and forlorn. Mrs. Mac wasn’t awfully keen to keep him at first, but we had a very timely infestation of mice which made up her mind for her.”

George gave his friend a sidelong look. “If I were a more suspicious man, I’d wonder if you’d arranged that infestation.”

“The prisoner pleads ‘not guilty,’ m’lud! No, although I might not have been above exaggerating the severity of said infestation and may perhaps have laid undue stress on the deleterious effects likely to ensue therefrom. Marmaduke did me proud, though—we haven’t found a single mouse-dropping since.”

“And the name?”

“Oh!” Matthew grinned. “After a fifteenth-century bishop of Lincoln. Never let it be said that I have no respect for Mother Church.”

I
T
WAS
a few nights later that Matthew walked into the sitting room, his shoulders slumping in dejection. “I can’t find Marmaduke anywhere. And it’s
hours
past dinner time. This really isn’t like him.”

“Where have you looked for him?” George asked, looking up from his newspaper. He’d wondered where his friend could have got to. It was rather lonely in the sitting room without him.

Matthew shrugged helplessly. “Oh, all the usual places—’round by the rabbit hutch, next door’s chicken coop, you know.”

“Maybe we should take a walk and see if we can spot him?” George suggested, more out of a desire for Matthew’s company than any real concern about the animal, which had always given every indication of being well able to look after itself.

Matthew’s ready agreement to set out on a bitter midwinter’s night was testament to how worried he was about his pet. They wrapped up as best they could in coats and scarves, then braved the icy air, George rushing back at the last minute to fetch Marmaduke’s dish. “I thought we could bang it on the wall, like you did the night we first met,” he explained, his face feeling a little hot at having described their first encounter rather as a lover might have done.

“Good idea,” Matthew said gratefully, apparently oblivious to George’s embarrassment.

They walked along the street, calling Marmaduke’s name and banging the tin, but to no avail. The only reaction they got was from the odd passer-by, muffled up to the eyes and hurrying home. Undaunted, they carried on their search until Matthew flung out his arm to stop George in mid-bang. “Wait—hush a minute. I thought I heard something.”

They stilled, ears straining. George was just about to pronounce it merely the whistling of the wind when it came again—the soft, plaintive yowling of a cat. “This way!” he cried, and they both sped down the street heedless of the ice.

They came to a stop at the foot of a large sycamore tree, almost at the end of Marlbury Crescent. “He’s there—look!” Matthew pointed, and George could just make out a pair of bright green eyes in an area of black-on-black. “Oh, you silly animal! How am I going to get you out of there?”

“Maybe he’ll come down if you call him?”

“Don’t you think he’d have come down by now if he could?” Matthew’s voice was anxious.

“Well, it’s worth a try, isn’t it?” George said practically.

“Marmaduke! Marrrrrrmaduke! Din-dins!”

Both of them called for what seemed like hours, coaxing and wheedling and banging the tin for all they were worth, but Marmaduke merely yowled at them and refused to budge. Matthew looked around for a moment. “There’s nothing for it. George, would you give me a leg up?”

George stared at him in disbelief. “Have you lost your mind? It’s dark, and it’s icy, and in case you’ve forgotten, you’ve only got one arm. And you want to go climbing trees?”

“I can’t leave him there all night! He’ll freeze!”

“I wasn’t
suggesting
we leave him there. Come on, if you go down on one knee I’ll use you as a ladder until I can reach the lower branches.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Now, come on, before we
all
freeze.”

A strange look on his face, Matthew did as he was bid.

Jamming his hat down firmly on his head, George clambered awkwardly up, instinctively attempting the impossible feat of standing on his friend’s leg and shoulder without actually putting his full weight on the man. It was doubtless a relief to both of them when he finally managed to swing himself up into the branches of the tree.

There was already a thin layer of frost limning the branches. George’s leather gloves were slipping on the bark, so he pulled them off with his teeth and let them fall, only to discover that frozen fingers were little better. Nevertheless, he climbed grimly onwards, determined to reach his goal if only to prevent Matthew trying anything ridiculous. Marmaduke yowled encouragement, while a faint “Be careful!” warmed his heart from below. His hat becoming an early casualty, twigs snagged George’s hair and caught on his woolen scarf, pulling out great loops of wool and impeding his progress. Still he struggled on.

It seemed like an eon before he was able to look up and see Marmaduke’s eyes not three feet away. George inched along the branch, its protuberances digging painfully into his stomach, queasily aware he was now level with the second-story windows of the nearest house. As he got within a foot of his quarry, it suddenly occurred to him that he had absolutely no idea how he was going to climb down with a cat in his arms.

Marmaduke solved that problem neatly by employing George as a sort of human bridge, gratefully digging his claws into George’s flesh as he went.

George was vaguely surprised to find that there were actually parts of him that hadn’t gone numb. He watched the cat disappear into the darkness below and heard Matthew’s cry of welcome before steeling himself to attempt the descent, his arms shaking a little with the unaccustomed effort.

Halfway down, his foot slipped. George let out an involuntary yelp and wrenched his arm painfully grabbing onto a branch with all his might to stop himself falling.

“George! Are you all right? Look, stay there—I’ll get a ladder, it’s what we should have done in the first place.” Matthew hardly sounded like himself, his voice was so high and frightened.

“Don’t be an idiot, I’m fine,” George shouted down, hoping his tone sounded more reassuring to Matthew than it did in his own ears. “I’ll be down in two ticks.” More cautiously this time, he eased his way down, grimacing every time his injured shoulder took the weight. He dropped the final few feet with a strong sense of relief, hoping he wasn’t about to land on anyone.

He didn’t. Matthew stood a few feet away, his face pale in the dim glow of the streetlights and Marmaduke nestled in his arms. “I can’t believe I let you do that. You could have been killed!”

“Don’t be silly—it’s only a tree,” George said, pleased to find his voice didn’t shake.

“Yes, but the ground’s like iron. Next time I get idiot ideas about climbing trees after cats, for goodness’ sake let me be the one to risk my neck!”

Marmaduke yowled as Matthew’s arms tightened upon him involuntarily, and George felt absurdly gratified. “I was never in any danger, silly,” he lied fondly. “Now come on. Let’s get this troublesome animal back for his dinner.”

A
S
THE
days became shorter, thoughts at 21 Allen Street turned inevitably to Christmas. Picture-frames sprouted wreaths of holly, brightly-colored cards bearing seasonal greetings appeared on the mantelpiece, and George walked into the sitting room one evening to find Miss Lewis attaching a sprig of mistletoe to the door frame with a decided air of mischief. Feeling discretion to be the better part of valor, he fled back upstairs and didn’t go down again until Matthew was with him.

“Will you be going back to your family for Christmas, George?” Matthew asked as they sat after supper sharing a copy of the Daily Mirror. “I’m off to mine on Christmas Eve and shan’t be back until after the New Year.”

“I don’t have any family.” George’s tone was shorter than he meant it to be, and he flung an anxious glance in the direction of his friend. But it was a decided blow to discover that he’d be bereft of Matthew’s company for so long.

“Dreadfully sorry to hear about that, old man. It’s a rotten time to be without people.” Matthew’s face grew solemn—then unexpectedly brightened. “I say, why don’t you come and stay with mine? I’m sure Mother will be delighted to have you—she always says the more the merrier.”

George froze. “I couldn’t possibly—”

“Nonsense! Look, I’ll wire her and ask—I won’t mention I’ve said anything to you, so she won’t feel under any pressure to say yes. But she will, anyway.”

The subject was dropped for a few days, allowing George the leisure to explore what he really felt about the invitation. On the one hand, it was his natural inclination to avoid meeting new people, with their inevitable curiosity about his past. On the other….

On the other hand, there was Matthew. George was desperately aware that he felt far more than he ought for the cheerful young man. Yet at times, he was half convinced that Matthew felt the same for him. He vacillated between despair that he was merely mistaking Matthew’s natural friendliness for something more—and despair that he couldn’t, in conscience, allow anything to develop between them in any case. To have any sort of relationship with another man involved a great deal of risk—how could he allow Matthew, even a willing Matthew, to undertake such a risk for someone like him? He couldn’t, and that was all there was to it. Matthew deserved more, so much more.

He had all but determined that he would turn down any invitation flat (not that any invitation would be likely to be forthcoming; obviously Matthew was merely being polite) when Matthew bounded into his room one evening brandishing a telegram. “Look at this, George: ‘Re friend, stop. Would be delighted, stop. Love, Mother, stop.’ So you see, you simply must come!”

Matthew waited, his expression so bright and hopeful that George found himself giving his assent almost without conscious volition.

“Now, you needn’t worry if you don’t have any evening wear,” Matthew carried on. “Father’s always a bit of a stickler for the formalities at this time of year, but a dark suit will be perfectly acceptable.”

“I—actually, I do own a dinner jacket,” George admitted. He’d brought it from home against his better judgment, imagining he’d have little use for it in his new life but somehow not wanting to leave all thoughts of pleasure behind. It was gratifying to find he’d get some wear out of it after all.

“Splendid! I bet you look awfully dashing in evening wear,” Matthew said with a sly look at his friend.

George flushed. “No more so than anyone else.”

“Nonsense! I’m sure you must have the ladies throwing themselves at your feet. You’ve got just the coloring for it. Dark hair, pale skin, that air of mystery about you—”

“There’s absolutely nothing mysterious about me!” George broke in a little more abruptly than was perhaps polite. “And anyway,” he added in an attempt to deflect Matthew’s interest, “if you were in the room nobody would even give me a second look.”

“What rot!” Matthew said, laughing. “Contrary to what you may think, I do look in the mirror from time to time. It’s rather hard to shave if one doesn’t.”

B
OTH
of their offices taking a half day on Christmas Eve, George and Matthew set off for Surrey soon after lunch, waiting only for Matthew to say an excessively fond farewell to Marmaduke and extort a promise from Mrs. Mac to feed him a prime cut of goose for his Christmas dinner. They travelled to Matthew’s family home by train, a journey of a little under two hours, including changes. Fortunately for them, as they waited on draughty station platforms, the weather had, with a perversity all too familiar to residents of the British Isles, turned unseasonably mild. The snows of a fortnight ago seemed now a distant memory.

“It’s a bit of a shame Christmas wasn’t two weeks ago,” Matthew commented wistfully. He’d managed to bag the two window seats for them on the final leg of their journey, and they were now watching the countryside as it flashed past in dull shades of green and brown rather than sparkling white.

“Yes, but on the other hand, at least the trains have been on time!” George countered. “I’ll take a swift, trouble-free journey over being stranded in the snow any day, be it ever so picturesque!”

“True enough!” Matthew laughed. “It would have been an awful bore being stuck in London for Christmas.” Obviously delighted at the prospect of seeing his family again, he chattered away excitedly, telling George all about his younger brothers and sister, his mother’s passion for Good Works, and his father’s for obscure theological texts. “And, ah, George?” he said hesitantly, laying a hand on his friend’s knee that sent a warmth coursing throughout George’s body. “I’ve written to Mother and told her you don’t like to talk about the war, so you needn’t worry about anyone bringing all that up.”