Chapter 6 Confessions #2
“Now, my loves, a moment of gravity before we return to our regularly scheduled frivolity.” Her voice had changed, the theatrical purr giving way to something rawer.
“Some of you know that we lost one of our own last month. Billy Marsh. Caught in a raid on a cottage in Soho. The lily law took him away, and they gave him two years.”
The room went quiet. Somewhere, a glass clinked against a table.
“Two years in Pentonville for the crime of existing.” Madam Fortuna's painted face was hard now, her eyes glittering.
“Two years of hard labour for being bold enough to love. For meeting another omi in a place where he thought he would be safe. For nothing more than wanting what every straight person takes for granted.”
Two years. It could have been me. Could still be me, any day, any moment. One wrong word, one careless glance, one person who decided to ask questions.
“The sharpies are everywhere,” Fortuna continued.
“Police. Informers. Ordinary citizens who think they are doing their Christian duty by destroying our lives. They hide in the shadows of cottages, waiting. They pose as trade to trap us. They read our letters and listen to our phone calls and follow us to places like this.”
The room had gone very still. I thought about Tom, somewhere outside in the dark, and felt my stomach clench.
“We do what we can for Billy's family,” Madam Fortuna said.
“We look after our own. Because God knows no one else will.” She smiled, but it did not reach her eyes.
“So tonight, my darlings, we dance. We sing. We remember that joy is its own form of resistance. And we drink to Billy Marsh, who loved too brightly for this dim world to bear.”
“To Billy,” the room murmured, glasses raised.
“To Billy,” I whispered, though I had never met him, never would.
Dilly beside me was crying openly, tears cutting tracks through his rouge. Maurice had an arm around him, solid and steady.
“He knew Billy,” Maurice said quietly when he saw me looking. “From before. They worked in the same shop in the Dilly, before the war. Lost touch after, but still.”
“I am sorry.”
“It is all of us, is it not? Every time they take one of us, they take something from all of us.” Maurice's voice was low, fierce. “But we keep going. Keep gathering. Keep speaking the parlyaree even when they want to silence us forever.”
The show continued. More songs, more jokes, more moments of defiant beauty.
A young man with dark skin and a voice like honey performed a ballad that made several people cry openly, no longer bothering to hide it.
Two women danced together, their movements precise and passionate, telling a story that needed no words.
Between acts, Dilly and Maurice taught me new words I had not heard before, regional variations that had evolved since I had last been in these circles.
“Zhoosh,” Dilly said, demonstrating by adjusting his hair. “To fix up, to make pretty. Zhoosh your riah before the sharpy sees you.”
“Ajax,” Maurice added. “Nearby. Keep bijou, love, there is sharpy ajax.”
“And if you need to scarper fast,” Dilly said, leaning close, “you say the bats are flapping. Everyone knows to varda their own and get out.”
I filed away each word like the precious currency it was. A language to survive in. A language to love in. A language to live in when the one the world spoke had no room for us.
The show wound down. People began to drift toward the door, back to the world outside where they would button up their coats and their identities and become whoever they needed to be to survive another day.
Madam Fortuna found me as I was finishing my drink.
“Arthur Pembroke.” She had wiped off some of the stage makeup, though her eyes were still ringed in kohl.
Up close, I could see the stubble beneath the powder, the strong jaw, the adam's apple that the high collar of her gown could not quite conceal.
“Julian mentioned you might turn up eventually. Said you had been posted somewhere hush-hush.”
“Julian talks too much.”
“Julian talks exactly the right amount to exactly the right people.” She settled into the chair across from me, movements graceful despite her size. “How are you, love? Really?”
“I am...” I started to say fine, the automatic response, the safe response. But something about her gaze, knowing and kind, made the word stick in my throat. “Tired. And scared.”
“We are all tired and scared, darling. That is the baseline these days. What else?”
I looked down at my hands, at the ink stains that never quite washed away. “I think someone followed me here tonight. Someone from the estate.”
Fortuna's expression sharpened. “A sharpy?”
“No. A soldier. He is...” I struggled for words. “He is not lily law. But I do not know what he is. I do not know if I can trust him.”
“Do you want to trust him?”
The question cut too close. I felt my face heat.
“Ah.” Fortuna nodded slowly. “That kind of trust. Is he one of us?”
“I do not know. Maybe. I think maybe. But I am not certain, and being wrong could...”
“Destroy everything. Yes.” She reached across the table and took my hand, her grip warm and surprisingly gentle. “That is always the gamble, is it not? Every time we reach for someone.”
“How do you do it? Keep reaching?”
“Because the alternative is living with my hands at my sides. And that is not living, love. That is just existing.” She squeezed my fingers.
“Go talk to your soldier. Find out what kind of man he is. And if he proves safe, if he proves to be family or at least a friend to family...” She pressed something into my palm.
A small card with an address in London. “There are people who can help. Safe houses. We look after our own.”
I stared at the card, at the lifeline it represented.
“Be careful, Arthur Pembroke. But not too careful. Careful is another word for lonely.” She kissed my cheek, leaving a smear of lipstick. “And you have been lonely long enough.”
Then she was gone, swept away to bid farewell to other guests, and I was left alone with a card in my hand and a heart full of terrified hope.
The walk back to the estate felt longer in the dark.
I took the lane slowly, my mind churning. Every shadow could be Tom. Every footstep behind me could be the moment everything changed. I was so tired of being afraid. So tired of calculating odds and risks and consequences. So tired of living in the narrow space between desire and disaster.
The estate gates loomed ahead. I passed through, nodding to the guard on duty, and made my way not to my room but to the bench outside Hut X. I needed to sit. Needed to breathe. Needed a moment to gather myself before facing whatever came next.
The bench was cold, the wood biting through my trousers. I sat anyway, pulling the Black Book from my pocket and holding it against my chest like a talisman. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called. The sound was lonely and beautiful, and I felt tears prick my eyes for no reason I could name.
Footsteps on the gravel path.
I did not look up. Did not need to. I knew those footsteps now, knew the particular rhythm of them, the weight and pace that belonged to only one person.
Tom came around the corner of the hut and stopped when he saw me. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The night stretched between us, full of everything we had not said.
Then he crossed the distance and sat down beside me on the bench, leaving a careful six inches of space between us. Close enough to feel his warmth. Far enough to maintain the pretence of propriety.
“You knew I was following you,” he said. It was not a question.
“Yes.”
“You went anyway.”
“Yes.”
Silence. I could hear him breathing, slow and steady, the breath of a man who had learned to control his body even when his mind was in chaos.
“That place,” he said finally. “The back room of the pub. What was it?”
“I think you know what it was.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
I turned to look at him then, really look, searching his face for any sign of disgust or judgment or the cold calculation of a man about to report me. But there was nothing there except exhaustion and uncertainty and something else, something that looked almost like hope.
“It was a gathering place,” I said slowly.
“For people like me. Men who love men. Women who love women. People who do not fit the mould the world has made for them.” I swallowed hard.
“It is illegal, of course. All of it. The gatherings, the performers, the language we speak. Being what I am is a crime punishable by prison. You know that.”
“I know.”
“So.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “Are you going to report me?”
The question hung between us. I could feel my pulse in my throat, could feel the Black Book pressed against my chest, full of every secret that could destroy me. Everything came down to this moment. This answer. This man with winter eyes and careful hands who held my future without even knowing it.
Tom turned to face me fully. In the dim light from the hut's windows, his expression was impossible to read.
“No,” he said.
Just that. Just no. No hesitation, no qualification, no careful parsing of duty versus desire.
“No,” he said again, softer this time. “I am not going to report you, Art. Not now. Not ever.”
Something in my chest cracked open. I felt tears spill over before I could stop them, hot against my cold cheeks, and I pressed my hand over my mouth to muffle the sound that wanted to escape.
“I thought,” I managed, voice breaking, “I thought you would. I thought when you saw where I was going, what I was, you would...”
“Would what? Hand you over to Finch? Watch them drag you away for the crime of wanting to be yourself for one bloody evening?” Tom's voice was rough, angry, but not at me.
At the world. At the laws and the fear and the whole rotten system that made this moment necessary.
“I have done a lot of things in this war that I am not proud of. I have killed men. I have followed orders that made me sick. But I will not do that. I will not destroy someone for loving wrong.”
“It is not wrong.” The words came out fierce, fiercer than I intended. “What I am is not wrong. What those people in that room are is not wrong. We are not criminals, we are not sick, we are just people who want to love and be loved and that should not be a death sentence.”
“I know.” Tom reached out, slowly, giving me time to pull away if I wanted to.
When I did not, he laid his hand over mine where it rested on my knee.
His fingers were cold from the night air, but I did not care.
The touch was so gentle, so careful, that it made me want to weep all over again. “I know, Art. I know.”
We sat there in the darkness, his hand over mine, and I let myself feel it. The warmth of him. The steadiness. The impossible gift of being known and not rejected.
“I have never told anyone,” I whispered. “Not outright. Not like this. There have been others who knew, who guessed, but I have never said the words out loud to someone I...”
I stopped. Could not finish the sentence. Could not name what Tom was to me, what he was becoming, because naming it would make it real and real things could be lost.
“Someone you what?” Tom asked, quiet.
I did not know what to say. Did not have words, in English or Polari or any language, for the enormity of what he was offering. So instead I leaned into him, let my head rest against his shoulder, and felt the solid warmth of him holding me up.
We stayed like that for a long time. Long enough for the cold to seep into my bones. Long enough for the tears to dry on my cheeks. Long enough to feel something shift between us, some wall coming down that could never be rebuilt.
When I finally sat up, my body ached and my eyes were swollen and I had never felt more wrung out in my life. But beneath the exhaustion was something else. Something that felt almost like peace.
“I should go,” I said reluctantly. “Early shift tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” Tom stood, then offered me a hand. I took it and let him pull me to my feet, and for a moment we stood there face to face, close enough that I could see the faint lines around his eyes, the places where the war had carved itself into his skin.
“Thank you,” I said. “For... for all of it. For following me. For not running. For being here.”
“There is nowhere else I would rather be.”
He said it simply, like it was obvious, like it cost him nothing. And maybe it did. Maybe for him, this was easy, this loyalty, this steadfast presence in the face of everything.
For me, it was a miracle.