Free In the Time of Greenbloom by Gabriel Fielding Page B

forwardto it. I was going to meet—” John hesitated; it was no good, he just could not mention Victoria’s name to Marston.
    â€œWho were you going to meet? Your people?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWell you’ll be seeing them in four weeks’ time, so why blub about it?”
    â€œDon’t you ever want to see your people before the end of term?” John asked.
    â€œOf course I do; but I don’t blub about it. I’ve got my friends.”
    â€œYou mean Fleming?”
    â€œYes—and someone else.”
    â€œWho else?”
    â€œYou, of course.”
    â€œ
Me
? Do you think I’m your friend?”
    â€œOf course I do.” One of Marston’s arms came swiftly round his shoulders. “You’re a funny devil, still an awful kid considering that this is your last term, but I like you. I nearly asked you home to Madeira with me last vac, you know.”
    â€œ
Did
you?”
    â€œYes. If only you weren’t such a wet at games I would have asked you with Fleming.”
    â€œI see.”
    Marston’s body was warm against his own, the intimacy of his breathing filled and made wonderful the blackness within the bed. It was unbelievable that everything could have changed so much in so short a time. Gratitude leapt up in him as though a prayer had been answered. A few minutes ago he had been alone, had wickedly longed to die by throwing himself out of the window; and now, in a matter of minutes, he had found a friend, someone whispering to him and understanding him, confessing to liking him and holding him in his arms.
    â€œWhat are you thinking about?” asked Marston.
    â€œI was thinking about the ‘Doctor’.”
    â€œThe ‘Doctor’? What on earth for?”
    â€œI was wondering whether that
was
his grave in the rose-garden.”
    Marston laughed. “You ass! Of course it isn’t. The ‘Doctor’ was expelled years ago.”
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œCan’t you guess?”
    â€œWas it for—for—?”
    â€œYes,” breathed Marston, “for this” and suddenly he kissed him softly on the cheek.
    John lay still; his delight stealing over him as swiftly as his tears had done, and like them leaving him suddenly cold and shrunken in its wake. But he remembered them and all of the confusion that had accompanied them. If this were wrong then so were they.
    â€œWere you really going to invite me to Madeira last Hols?”
    â€œ
Yes
.”
    â€œWell then I love you, Marston: I love you.”
    Marston said nothing, but his arm about John’s neck tensed and for a moment they lay in silence under the pillows. John thought suddenly of Victoria, of the whiteness of her body as she had stood above the lake, and of the softness of her skin against his own as he swam with her to the bank. Girls always wanted to be loved; they were always wondering about it. Men were supposed to love them. But he wanted to be loved as much as she wanted to love. Who was Victoria and who was he? This, he realised suddenly, was what he had wanted all the time; this which was happening now was the measure of his greed for her and its only true expression; and the wedding, the marriage of their two selves, of the self that wanted only to be loved and the self that wanted only to love must end like this. In some mysterious way the self that was him and the self that was Victoria could only finally unite into a self that was them both, in a darkness, a secrecy, and a delight that was like this.
    Marston’s hand stole over his chest, stroked the skin over the muscles gently and hesitated. Like a bell alarming a sleeping household something quivered in the rapture of John’sthoughts. At a touch the whole dream of Victoria vanished and the intimation of that other world of weddings and blossom and ships rocking over foreign seas was dissolved like sugar disappearing in vinegar.
    He hurled the pillows from