Chapter 27
Thomas had been in Dover for the best part of a week.
Why Dover, he hardly knew, only that it felt right.
He was sure Micha would not have gone to London, not after his previous experiences there.
And this was where the last man Micha had loved had left him.
It made sense he might return here, on being left again.
Or on being the one to leave, though Thomas had not helped him stay.
It was on his second day of walking unfamiliar streets without direction that Thomas had realised that he had no real hope of finding Micha.
But he kept wandering, kept looking, his heart stumbling in his chest for dark curls glimpsed at a distance, the certain set of a spine, every profile that could have been Micha’s.
He enquired at boardinghouses and cheap hotels, scoured the manifests of departing ships.
And, after dark, followed less reputable paths to dank rooms, full of smoke, or the moving bodies of men.
Everywhere he went, memories of Nettlefield and Micha clung to him, intermingling with desperate fantasies of a future that, even now, he knew could not be theirs.
Soon it all began to feel like the same dream, one he could never fully wake from and, like Caliban, would weep for all his life.
At some point, his steps would take him down to the shore, to the beaches, and coves, and bays, where the waves churned themselves through shades of grey and blue and green beneath the equally protean sky.
With the horizon unbound like a ribbon from a dancer’s hair, and the vastness of the world laid softly at his feet, it was easy to feel God, but Thomas didn’t pray.
He just searched and waited. And, eventually, one day, he did see Micha, sitting on a rock, looking out to sea, his hair ruffled by the breeze.
It was impossible. A miracle. Everything Thomas had not dared to hope for. And, yet, in the moment, he felt no surprise at all. And, from the expression on Micha’s face as he turned towards him, neither did he.
“I can’t do this.” The words came from Thomas without thought or even volition.
Micha’s gaze was sharp and unreadable. “Do what?”
“Anything. Without you.”
“You can’t do anything with me either.”
“Then let’s do it anyway.”
With a clumsy, convulsive movement, Micha was on his feet, his face as grey as the sky and his curls as wild as the waves.
“We’ve tried this, Thomas. Fuck knows we’ve tried.
You won’t, you can’t, come away with me.
And I won’t, I can’t, stay with you. Play housekeeper and whore while the world calls me your friend.
And eventually, when the bishop escalates from suggesting to demanding, someone else your wife. ”
“I’ll never marry, Micha.” Of this, at least, Thomas knew he was certain. “The worst the bishop can do is look askance and tut.”
“What about your Mrs. Clark?”
“I don’t think she’s much for tutting.”
“She’d marry you in a heartbeat.”
For the first time since Micha had left Nettlefield, Thomas felt calm. Felt like himself. “She wouldn’t. And she’d be right. As would any woman.”
Micha’s lip curled. “You sell yourself and your pretty parish too short, Thomas.”
“Were I to wed anyone, it would be adultery. Because in my soul I am married to you. And I will be until death do us part.”
For long moments, Micha just stared at him.
Then he lifted his wrist to dash away a glitter of tears.
“For fuck’s sake, Thomas. Don’t do this to me.
Not when . . . not when I’d almost begun to bear being without you.
Besides, I know you want to be a father.
I see the yearning in your eyes every time you look at that girl. ”
“What do you see in my eyes,” Thomas asked gently, “when I look at you?” And then, when Micha seemed unable to hold his gaze, he went on, “Nobody gets everything they want in life. We all pay prices, make choices, accumulate regrets. There will always be paths we didn’t, or couldn’t, take.
But I fell in love with you. I wouldn’t change that, even if I could.
Even for every other dream in my heart.”
“And your God?”
Thomas’s lips twitched. “My God made me. He’ll work it out.”
“He may,” Micha conceded. “But will Nettlefield? Will your family?”
“I suppose we’ll see.”
Micha’s face was a mess of raw hope and pained disbelief. “This is madness. You know it is.”
“I don’t care,” Thomas told him.
“There’ll be rumours. Potentially a scandal. Fuck.”
Micha curled his fingers into his hair, the gesture achingly familiar. Thomas reached out and caught him by the wrists, and, suddenly, they were embracing, frantic for each other, as they stood ankle-deep in the icy surf.
“It’ll be the ruin of you,” Micha muttered. “I’ll be the ruin of you.”
Thomas clung to him, breathing in salt, tears, the scent that was only and forever Micha’s skin. “Then take whatever steps you must. Come when you can. Depart when you wish. Return when you’re able. I’ll wait for you. I’ll never stop waiting for you. Just . . . don’t leave me.”
“And what do I do,” asked Micha roughly, “when I’m not with you? Scratch the days off on my cell wall?”
Lifting his head, Thomas pinned Micha with his eyes. “You live as freely and truly and with as much love when you’re without me as when you’re with me.”
“Thomas, no. That isn’t—”
Possible? Reasonable? Right? Fair?
Thomas didn’t know what word Micha might have chosen.
But it didn’t matter. “I wish I could give you everything I want to give you,” he said.
“And I wish I could ask you to give me everything in return. That’s the life I’d have chosen for us, Micha, if it was up to me.
If I had the power to create it. But I don’t.
So this is what we have. What we can have.
If we . . .” He swallowed, remembering the church at night, and Sheba, who had brought him answers after all. “Compromise.”
Above them, a seagull wheeled against the endless canvas of the sky, its widespread wings flashing a black as defiant as Micha’s eyes.
“Please,” Thomas tried. “It’s better than—”
“Nothing,” Micha finished for him.
Thomas nodded. Suddenly, it seemed a small and paltry offer. Love like a handful of pebbles when he held a world of it inside him.
But then Micha smiled. One of his slow, rare, entirely unpractised smiles, intended neither to disarm nor to deflect, but simply to express what he was feeling.
It was a little lopsided, a little cynical, because Micha always was, but tender too.
“Well,” he said, “if it was good enough for Persephone, I suppose it can be good enough for me.”
“I’m not sure I have much in common with Hades.”
“Oh, don’t you?” asked Micha, still smiling, his eyes at their most gleaming. And, seeing the understanding in them, Thomas shivered, soul-bared, because he suddenly realised how well Micha knew him. Better, perhaps, than Thomas would ever know himself.
In ways only a lover truly could.
And then Micha embraced him and kissed him, heedless of any who might be watching, and the sky enfolded them both in the vastness of its forever.