Love and War Read online

  I dreamed of us last night, standing at the Pearly Gates, in front of God. But he wasn’t angry or upset. He hugged us both, and simply said “Thank goodness you two found each other. I’ve been waiting thousands of years for you to meet.” I don’t know how Blaine feels about God, or morality, or where we go after we die. I don’t know how he feels about what we did last night, or if he’s angry at himself for giving in, or disappointed, or frustrated or…

  “Good morning Charlie…” His deep coffee eyes are open, still groggy from sleep. He yawns, stretching, and twisting his body, before it finally comes to rest with an arm draped over my shoulder. How could I ever have resisted him?

  “You did some great work last night…” He chuckles, gazing me up and down. “You may not even have to continue coming for our appointments, but I would very much like to continue our ‘private’ sessions, if that would be okay with you?”

  His deep laugh, one that previously shook me to the core, lights a fire in my soul.

  “Is that all I am to you, Blaine?” I ask, mock-hurt. “Nothing more than an every-day run of the mill patient?”

  “You, Charlie, are mon amour. You always will be. From this day forward, if you’ll have me. Je t’aime, Charlie.” He chortles, and rolls over, sweeping me up into a longing, loving embrace and planting a wet kiss of morning breath on my mouth. I don’t care, I’d take Blaine’s morning breath any day over waking up to yet another day in this hateful, blasted world alone. We could all be wiped out tomorrow. I for one, fully plan to take each and every opportunity that comes my way. I love Blaine and nothing will stop me.

  “Would you like some breakfast, mon amour?” My breath catches as I hear him say those words. My French language skills have suffered greatly from my school days, but I know enough to know exactly what he’s saying. “My love.” I know that, from the way he’s talking, I mean a great deal to him. This wasn’t just some avid fumble in bed, a man working out his aggressions and anxieties from work or society or anything else. This was more than just sex and nothing more. Was this really love? Maybe, this was the plan God had set for me. Maybe we, the two of us, could change public opinions, maybe not now, but someday? I realise that he’d asked me a question before my mind started to wander.

  “Oh, I haven’t done shopping in an awfully long time. I think I might have eggs, or…”

  “Ah, let me take you for breakfast? I know a lovely little cafe not far from here. I wonder did you ever pass it, while I was sitting outside in the sunshine having a morning cup of coffee…I wonder did you ever notice me?”

  “Oh Blaine, trust me when I say, I would never not notice you!”

  ~~~

  He moves the chair out of the way from the table and a waitress promptly removes it from the middle of the floor. I dressed in my Sunday best, as if we would be heading towards a meeting. We know how we feel, and we know it isn’t as wrong as everyone makes out, but we also know, and fear, that the Great British general public aren’t as forgiving. We discovered that Blaine and I are the same size shoe – how ironic! – but at least he can get some wear out of those that I never will again. He asks me what I want to order – but this is a French coffee shop and the names just confuse me. I hear him order an ‘americano’ whatever that is, but I trust him; as well as a small bowl of porridge and ‘compote’, which I’ve been led to believe is just a fancy word for jam. I overhear the total – 6 pounds, 4 shillings. The amount staggers me and I know that Blaine isn’t earning enough to be able to afford a breakfast of almost £7 every day. He was adamant about not letting me pay, but I feel guilty. He easily hands over the six notes and four bob, and a wave of nausea over comes me. I don’t want him thinking that I only feel the way I do because of his job, or his income, since I have none. If the war wasn’t ongoing, and rations weren’t commonplace for every man, woman, and child, I may have starved in months gone by.

  Blaine appears back at the table with two cups of steaming black coffee, a sugar bowl and a small amount of the purest white milk I’ve ever seen. It almost looks unnatural, and although it’s sitting in the same milk bottles as always, it looks out of place. Blaine is watching me examine the bottle and laughs.

  “Take a sniff! I promise you it’s edible.” It occurs to me that it’s possibly just some form of fancy bleached powdered milk, but as I raise the bottle to my nose, an unusual and unfamiliar whiff greets me. What is in that bottle is definitely not milk.

  “What in under God is that!?”

  My shock obviously amuses him, and he starts to laugh again, that chortle that still sends reverberations into my very core.

  “It’s a new type of Chinese milk, made from plants. Soymilk.”

  “Soymilk?”

  “Made from soybeans. I promise – it makes the coffee so much rawer, so much…better! Take a splash, won’t you? Easy does it now…here, let me.”

  He takes the bottle from my hands, and I slide the coffee cup closer to him. He tips the glass, and a small river flows from the lip only for a second before he rights it again.

  “Now add your sugar.”

  I dutifully agree, lifting one sugar cube with those fancy little tongs, which then slips and shatters on the table. Blaine dips his head and sniggers at my inability…

  Determined, I try again, and this time the cube makes it into the coffee, floats for an instant and then is dissolved in the warm, creamy water.

  “Only one?” Blaine tries to stifle a laugh, knowing fine well that I probably couldn’t have a second even if I wanted to. Those tongs aren’t exactly designed for those with a constant murmur in their hands. Before I can retort, the same waitress that moved the chair approaches, sets Blaine’s money down on the table – minus the amount for the coffee.

  “Can you leave, please?” she whispers, as if she doesn’t want the other customers to know.

  “If you go quietly, I won’t report you to the police. But I know what you are. I won’t have your…perversion…here.”

  The heat rises to my cheeks, and if I could, I would have stood and asked her what exactly she was accusing us of. Actually, just because I can’t stand doesn’t mean I can’t stand up for myself…for us!

  “Excuse me…but what exactly have we done? We’re paying customers, on our way to a business meeting, wanting to enjoy a cup of coffee. Is that so wrong?”

  “Sir, with all due respect…”

  “Don’t do that to me. Don’t you know it’s rude to deny paying customers a service?”

  “I’d rather be broke in a ditch than take money from the likes of you.”

  She’s still being very careful about keeping her voice down, but we haven’t done anything wrong! Yes, okay, if we were kissing or holding hands, that I could understand, but she’s making assumptions about us. Albeit, the assumptions are correct. But that doesn’t mean anything!

  “Do you refuse the money of a war veteran? Don’t you see the way I am, defending our country, leaving myself an invalid, so the likes of you! – can continue running your sweet little coffee shop with fancy names and Chinese plant milk? Don’t you have any respect?

  “I don’t respect faggots, sir.”

  ~~~

  Blaine brought me home from the cafe, and has tried his best to calm me down but it hasn’t worked so far. We never even got to finish our coffee that we were charged for.

  “Blaine, can I ask you something?”

  We’re curled up on the sofa, away from the prying eyes of waitresses with too much time on their hands.

  “Of course, mon amour, what is it?”

  “Is this who I am now? Nothing more than a dirty faggot to be poked at, stared at and goaded like some sort of circus freak?”

  My words take Blaine by surprise, possibly even wounded him.

  “Is that how you think of me, mon amour?”

  “No, not at all! But I just…I used to be like her, you know. I used to think that people like us, like me, were…disgusting. A stain on society. And if you had of been anyone
else, if you had of been someone else, in a different time or a different place, then I know I would have done exactly what that waitress did. Maybe I still would. Maybe we are repulsing and sickening and nauseating, maybe the rest of the world is right? I have never felt like this about anyone, ever before. I’ve loved plenty of women, but not like this. And I’ve never, ever even dreamed of loving another man. But there’s just something about you…you’re different.”

  “Charlie, you must understand something.”

  He moves across the sofa towards me, legs crossed, so close that his knees touch my stumps and his hand rests on my thigh.

  “Charlie, I have been at peace with who I am for a long time. Maybe it is because I grew up in Paris, maybe it is because my father…he never truly loved my mother and brought seven children into this world with her because he thought that that is what was best, and what was right. But my father knows how I feel, Charlie. He has known about the man before you, that I never really loved. But Charlie, I also know about the man after my mother.”

  “You mean…”

  “Yes, Charlie. My father…he is like you. He loved a woman very much, but as a friend. He brought children into this world with her, and he fed her and clothed her and brought her happiness. And now that she is gone, and the children are all grown, he is really, truly happy. I’ve seen how many years it took my father to accept who he really is. I’ve seen all the tears and the fights and the worries that my parents had. I know my mother knew, before she died. The way he looked at her was so different to the way he looked at the men at work, when they stopped by the house to ‘talk shop’ for hours and hours on end on the weekends, alone in the basement. Charlie, I don’t want to live like that. I don’t want to hide my lover from my wife and children in the basement.”

  He looks into my eyes and smiles, like he knows a secret I don’t yet know about myself. He tells me that it is okay to feel foreign in my own body, my own mind, without words. He understands who I am, even though I don’t quite understand myself.

  Chapter Five

  It’s been a long time since the war. A long time since I first met Blaine in that hospital, since I first laid eyes on him. It’s also been a long time since I ever went to church. The world has changed, and I have too.

  I was born on a slow December night in 1920. My mother told me that the wind was howling and there was a blizzard. Many mothers had chosen to deliver their children at home because of the weather. It was just too dangerous to make it to a hospital, a haven of medical supplies and well-read physicians. The midwives attending my mother had reveled in the fact that she had braced storm and snow and rain just to ensure that I made it into the world safely. My mother said she knew that I was going to be a special person. And maybe I am.

  It’s only been in recent years that I’ve talked about what really happened during the war. Up until then, it had simply been too painful. The man I knew who had been sentenced to life-imprisonment for sodomy was later cleared of his charges after spending countless years in a prison. He committed suicide a year later, unable to cope in the outside world. Although he was free of charges, his emotional turmoil never left. Although it was no longer illegal to be gay, thanks to the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, he was still a pedophile. He was punished enough for that, by what he had to live with every day.

  I bumped into Betty a few months ago, when she was out with her daughter, being pushed along in a wheelchair, and could hardly string two sentences together. It was difficult seeing her like that, but then again, she is almost 90.

  I celebrated my 93rd birthday just two months ago, with Blaine by my side. We are both old men now, with no children or fake-wives to leave behind. But I fall in love with him more and more each day. We don’t live in London anymore, instead deciding to relocate to Cornwall. For many years, we ran a successful bed and breakfast hotel for the increasing number of tourists choosing England as their holiday destination. Blaine lost his French accent, but never forgot his love of traditional Parisian cooking, and any guest that stayed was guaranteed to leave with a love of patisserie and three stone heavier.

  The news comes on the television (which is in full technicolor – that took me a while to get used to – a full technicolor television in my room!) and the usual BBC headlines stream across the page, but one catches my attention.

  “Here are your top headlines at midnight today, the twenty ninth of March, twenty fourteen. Gay marriage is to become legalized tonight at midnight in England and Wales. Many happy couples are already planning for the big day, with three couples to be officially wed at twelve oh one am, being the first to be officially married, and not civil-partnered, in the UK.”

  I hear a plate drop in the kitchen, and I call out “Blaine, are you okay?” I stand up, if a little wobbly, from my new fiberglass prosthetics. Like a new pair of shoes – they take a while to get used to. I make my way into the kitchen, concerned that if Blaine has dropped a whole tray of macaroons, he will never forgive himself. For years I’ve watched the way he slaves over the hot stove, refining the temperature needed to give the impossibly precise domed rise from the perfectly piped circles of batter on parchment. His batches keep getting better and better, and even though he is almost 96 years old, his first love will always be patisserie, and God help the man who tries to take that away.

  “Blaine!”

  Blaine is down on his hands and knees, head in his hands, mounds of a light Victoria Sponge cake in shatters across the floor, cream splashed up the walls and the jam oozing from the remaining sponge like blood from a murder victim. He looks up at me with tears in his eyes and starts to gather up the cake and cream, as if he would be able to rebuild it. With pounds of fluff in his hands, he gets on one knee to raise himself up. We are no longer young men anymore, who can bounce up from the floor without even a thought.

  The cake starts to fall from his hands, crumbling with the heat from his body. Tears swell even more than before, until he looks towards me.

  “Charlie. You and I have been in love for almost 70 years. From those early days in 1944 when we hid from the world, to being able to live together without fear from police in 1967. We’ve seen many things happen on this great planet, from the defeat of Hitler to the rise of the UN, a woman prime minister and the death of a royal. We’ve seen people who were downtrodden and beaten and thrown in jail rejuvenated with a sense of freedom. You wouldn’t agree to be my civil partner, but will you be my husband, tonight, at one minute past midnight?”

  As the final pieces of cake fall away it is clear that he ruined the cake on purpose, because buried inside was an engagement ring.

  “Blaine…your cake…”

  “I don’t care about any goddamn Victoria Sponge! Just please…” He gets up from the floor and stands in front of me, an elderly, weary man.

  “For all these years, I’ve wanted to ask you. And now I can. The world has changed so much, and so have we. We’re old now, so much so that every day is a blessing. But I know I want to spend my every day with you.”

  “Yes Blaine. I’ll marry you. I’ll marry you!”

  ~~~

  Midnight chimes to mark the thirtieth day of March and a cheer goes up in the chapel. Gay marriage is finally legal in the United Kingdom. It only took Blaine and I seventy years to finally reach this point in our relationship, where I could officially call him my husband. With all our friends and family gathered in rows of chairs, the service begins.

  Obviously, it isn’t a religious service. Blaine and I stand side by side at the front with the civil servant tasked with marrying us today. Blaine obviously knew I would say yes, because how else would he have rallied the troops and booked the venue in just twelve hours.

  The civil servant begins. “We are gathered here today to witness the joining in matrimony of Charlie Harris and Blaine Avery. I believe the couple have written their own vows?”

  I have agreed to go first, and it is only now I realize I should have thought about what I was going to sa
y. Maybe it’s best to speak from the heart in a situation like this. With a lump in my throat, I start as best I can.

  “Blaine. From the second I saw you, I knew that you would be special to me. I had no idea just how special though. I’ve loved you every day for seventy years, and like you said earlier, we’ve been through everything together. We’ve become godparents together…”

  I glance towards my goddaughter, Celine, who’s sitting in the front row with her three-year-old son. She smiles and nods at me, trying desperately not to start to cry.

  “…we’ve bought houses and painted bedrooms, even painted a nursery once, for a child who never arrived. But through all the changes of life and everything in it, you’ve been my one constant. You’ve been my one thought, my first thought, every morning and every night. Every day with you is like a dream I never want to wake up from. I love you, Blaine Avery. Now, and forever.”

  Blaine’s in floods of tears, and can’t even read his own vows. The civil servant takes over.

  “Blaine Avery, do you take Charlie Harris to be your lawfully wedded husband, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?”

  “I do.”

  “Charlie Harris, do you take Blaine Avery to be your lawfully wedded husband, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?”

  “I do.”

  *THE END*

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