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1. High Life Below Stairs
With a resigned sigh, Bunter rose and moved toward the bar. It was his shout, because somehow...it never *was* Cyril's. "Same again," he told the publican at the Junior Ganymede, receiving one pint of Theakston's Bitter and one creme de menthe frappe.
Bunter often wondered whether Cyril made more problems for himself than he needed to, with the less than discreet maquillage ("I look so *pale* without a bit of slap," he was wont to say), the waft of Mitsouko, and the suede shoes, but he thought Cyril was a good enough chap and, perhaps, distracted attention from the less flamboyant. Cyril (ne Wilf) was a Mayfair hairdresser, where such things passed current.
Their betters supposed that the membership of the Junior Ganymede was limited to upper servants, but the name reflected the fact that, to the great heaviness of the realm, books were provided to Board Schools, and sometimes they were even read.
Cyril sipped demurely at the tiny straws stuck into the mass of verdant ice. "So I suppose that would make you the dragon, dearie. If you decide to go ahead."
"It would be bloody foolish, I know, but...I can't help looking at him and wanting to shag him stupid."
"But what would you do with the REST of your tea break?"
Bunter grinned. "He's got a lot more to lose. I can't really see him blackmailing *me.*
"Dunno, I'd wager that you've got hundreds and hundreds in your Post Office Savings book and he's got a huge...overdraft. Anyway, it doesn't necessarily answer. They could catch him with the wrong Guardee, and then to save himself he'd find a way to make you carry the can. It's the woman that pays, you know."
2. When You Were a King in Babylon
{{Oh, dear God, just PUSH OFF}} is what Bunter wanted to say.
“May I assist your Lordship?” {{You can’t be too bloody stupid to find the drawing room. Even you.}} Bunter further secured the apron that protected his jacket from silver polish.
“Oh, I thought I could assist you,” said Viscount Saint-George. “I’m awfully good at making toast.”
“Very good of you, sir, but it’s all in hand.”
“I like the sound of that,” Saint-George said with a leer.
“I’m sure I don’t understand what you mean, sir, and shall go on not understanding it.”
Saint-George sat down on a corner of the table and picked up a freshly polished epergne. “When the youthful members of the ruling classes are shipped off to school and assigned a regimen of cocoa, buggery, and the lash, sometimes during the interregnum before they move on to the Senior Service and rum, they hang on to their earlier habits.”
“I see, m’lord. I shall make certain that there is a pot of cocoa on the drinks tray before dinner,” said Bunter, who had not observed an excessive commitment to Latin hexameters among the privileged classes.
“Oh, don’t tease, Bunter.”
“Certainly not, your lordship. It would be most unkind to tease someone who was not accustomed to it, having always received everything he ever wanted.”
“It’s not all champagne at the Ritz, you know.”
“Yes, sir. A point which the miners are very deficient in understanding, no matter how often it is presented to them.”
Saint-George continued as if Bunter hadn’t said anything, a phenomenon with which Bunter was quite familiar. “Today, after we all got soaked through and Mamma opened the fete, we were entertained, if you’d like to call it that, by the local Players at the church hall. It was some bloody silly play by that Peter Pan chap. You know—well, you would know, you know everything—where they’re stranded out on a desert island, and the ingénue has a pash on the butler because he’s the smartest chap around. I like smart chaps.”
Saint-George put down the epergne. Bunter stoically restored its luster. Saint-George picked up a freshly polished pair of sugar tongs and goggled his eyes at his hideously distorted reflection. “I mean, it’s only natural, isn’t? Or unnaturally natural. Chaps who like girls, like them because they’re different. So chaps like me fancy chaps like you. Because you’re different. You’re strong and you go around having adventures. I’m just blown around by the breeze.”
“This is a sceptred isle,” Bunter said. “Not a desert one. They had to go back.” And Bunter thought that that would be the end of it, wanted it to be the end of it, but the word “adventures” made him wish for adventures of his own, not the ones obtained by trailing around after Lord Peter.
Blokes ended up in prison for this, but then, quite a few things at Lord Peter’s behest (from breaking and entering to impersonation to breach of promise) could have landed him in quod, and for once he wanted to have the benefit himself.
Verifying that he no longer held a polishing cloth or an item of someone else’s silverware, Bunter reached forward. Saint-George came into his arms. Reminding himself to tilt his chin up instead of down, Bunter kissed Saint-George, and it didn’t matter that the strength had been bred out of them, because the beautiful hands touched the front of his shirt, and then his face, gently, so gently.
3. That Horrid Thing that Freud Calls Sex
Cyril snapped open his compact, pursed his lips, and fluffed at the back of his hair. He thought it could go another day or so before sending his hair quite gold from grief again.
“Gin and water,” he called out as Bunter headed for the bar. “I’m banting madly these days, so I’m on the Mother’s Ruin to wash down my Woolton Pie. I suppose it’s nothing but pheasant for you lot, the gamekeepers shoot it or you shoot the gamekeeper.”
“Oh, well, the nice plump gamekeepers are in the Forces,” Bunter said. “The ones that are left, hardly a bit of crackling on them, you’re better off jugging them like kippers.” Bunter reached into his pocket and took out a photograph he had been unable to resist developing when he was pressed into service to record Uncle Paul Delagardie’s birthday party.
“Oooh-er!” Cyril said. “Quite the Deb’s Delight. I think I’ve seen him in the society pages. You’re in with a chance and you’re pushing him away?”
“If brains was—were—Gentleman’s Relish, there wouldn’t be enough inside that pretty head of his to make a canapé,” Bunter said.
“Lovey, even if it’s the library fire, you don’t read the gilt-stamped leather-bound editions of the classics when you’re poking it,” Cyril said. “I know you can’t try anything on with your Guv’nor, it’d be too, too hideous when it all went tits-up.” (Cyril had often been told about heterosexuality, much as he had been told about Father Christmas, but he had stopped believing in the latter at about the same age at which he had been instructed about the former, and belief had not blossomed.)
4. Go Slowly, Come Back Quick
The moon slept sweetly on the blackout. A small, heavily shaded Coleman lamp offered a bit of light, the coal of a shared Balkan Sobranie offered a bit more.
Saint-George was home on leave, and of course Peter and Harriet and their infants managed to find some petrol to visit as well. Or rather, adequate petrol was found for them, and they were driven to Duke’s Denver.
There was no reason for Jerry to write to his uncle’s valet, but if he sent postcards, then the bits the censors spared could be read by the person who placed the post on a silver tray and conveyed it to its destination. And perhaps a moment could be snatched between the time that the telephone was answered and the time the call was re-directed to its nominal object.
A hurried conference as Bunter unloaded the cases from Mrs. Merdle set the rendezvous here, in Saint-George’s room. On the one hand, there was Saint-George’s license to go anywhere he liked in the house; on the other, Bunter’s invisibility (although, as Jerry said, it would take a bit of face to claim that he was investigating possible burglars or mending the fire at three a.m., starkers). Ruin was ruin either way, so they might as well go where the bed was bigger and more comfortable and the cigarettes were better. There wasn’t a fire either place, but there were more blankets abovestairs.
Bunter pushed himself up on one elbow, his other hand tracing his lover’s torso like a bandolier. “You’re a bobby-dazzler, Lord Loam,” he said.
“Soon’s my back’s turned, you’ll take up with one of those G.I.s,” Jerry said. “Overpaid, oversexed, and over here.”
“Don’t talk soft,” Bunter said. The Duke said that war nowadays was nearly luxurious, nothing like the trenches, especially with the bloody Yanks (and their endless materiel and cornucopia of petrol) involved. But Bunter gave that just as much credence as the average Ducal utterance, or the never-jam-today wireless broadcasts promising the war would be over by some Christmas or other.
Bunter had friends who went cottaging. He never did, himself anymore. He’d tried it but it was not just risky as hell (even before the Blitz and the curfew) but he’d thought it cold, without the friendliness or the human element. He wondered if it wasn’t worse to get landed with a chap you couldn’t really care about but couldn’t get rid of, never able to share a bed with him and always starting out of bed in the middle of the night worried about the bullet or bomb or bacterium that would get rid of the man for you.
“I’d best go now,” Bunter whispered, stubbing out the cigarette. He dressed quickly.
“Bring me my tea last,” Jerry said sleepily. “I’ll be madly randy in the morning, knowing you’re here.” He grasped at Bunter’s wrist, the hand that wasn’t holding his shoes, dangling to be re-assumed once he reached the carpeted stairs. “Do you love me, even a little bit?”
Bunter kissed Jerry’s forehead, then straightened up and started to back away. “’Course I do,” he said.
5. They Will Not Grow Old As We Grow Old
“In America, they would call me a ‘Gold Star Mother,’” Helen Denver said querulously. “And give me a nasty little banner to hang in the window.”
“It…somehow it makes it worse that we can’t have a real funeral,” the Duke said. “If anything could make it worse. I mean, we’ve had to get used to these damned memorials, but it’s different when it’s your own. It’s bad enough when a man has to bury his son. When there’s nothing to bury….well, what use is the family vault? What use is anything?”
When Harriet had brought the telegram into Peter’s study three days earlier, she sat down in an armchair and leaned back, expecting him to bury his head in her lap once again. He just shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s so much closer, of course. But it’s not my fault.”
Peter told Bredon that they had to have a man-to-man talk. “This terrible news about your cousin changes everything, you know. Your uncle and Aunt Helen are far too old to start again, and your other cousin is a girl. So there’s a good chance that you’re going to be landed with the strawberry leaves. Your uncle’s older than I am, of course, but I still might pop off first, or I might be the Duke for a while and then you’d inherit.” {{People like Gerald don’t divorce, and I don’t think he’d trust his arm to the point of risking another murder trial, so it’s likely to be either young Bredon or the barricades.}}
The Hon. Bredon, who was allowed to read everything in his father’s library, adjusted the knot of his black tie, and said, “Like Planty Pall.”
“Is that what you’ve been reading, old chap? Seems like it would be full of silly old things that adults worry about.”
“He’s very sound on hunting, sir.” Bredon remembered what they had just studied at his preparatory school. “Might he put Aunt Helen aside in order to have a male heir? And would that mean we’d have to go to a different sort of church on Sundays?”
Peter smiled a little and shook his head. “Dukes have a good deal of power, but not so much as that. Nowadays even the King can’t do that.”
A soundless silver tray floated into the drawing room at Duke’s Denver. Its contents included one glass a quarter-full of a pre-phylloxera port; Peter nodded to Bredon that he could take it (although, once he had it and sipped, he made a disgusted face and put the glass down as soon as he could). Gerald was about to remonstrate, but if a man has no son, why must he preserve his cellar intact?
Lord Peter touched the black band on Bunter’s sleeve. “O, you must wear your rue with a difference,” he said, not unkindly.