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∞*∞
There’s this saying, isn’t there?
Alte Liebe rostet nicht.
Old love never dies, and, according to that saying, doesn’t rust either.
The Germans are a rather poetic bunch if you let them. And if you’re not trying to blow their brains out, of course.
But, to have an old love to never die you need it to be a new one, some time when you’re younger.
I wasn’t particularly young when I met this love.
No, thirty-nine really doesn’t count as unseasoned and fresh anymore.
This love, this only love to me, came to me in the form of a startlingly beautiful young man with eyes like lobelias in June.
We didn’t know back then, didn’t know anything beyond our wanton desire for each other— side effect of the war, I’d say— that those few months were all we were to have for a long time.
Though, truth be told, we made most of it.
George visited me every other day (or almost), made me laugh, made me happy and a better man, before he returned to his trench fellows who’d never even guessed after that awfully stupid ruse Blackadder pulled on me.
I wonder sometimes what he’d say.
Be disgusted, most likely.
But he’s gone.
As so many others are.
For years I wallowed in my guilt of having all of them sent over the top.
George, of course, who’d never had the chance to grow up, get to know the real world that lies in the wake of Oxford and a war and who lost his youth first to me and then to bullets, fired by equally young and stupid, educated and beautiful German soldiers.
Darling, who, boot-licking arrogance aside, had been lovely and kind in his own way.
—Although his Doris had never existed, I inquired after the truce.
Even Blackadder and his batman.
Blackadder could have ruled this bloody country had he survived and been born into more wealth than his lousy ancestors had graced him with.
In all this feeling sorry for myself I married Judith.
She was… well. Not quite the Hollywood Beauty I’d imagined to marry being Lord Melchett and everything, but, and this was a quality never to be underestimated in a woman, clever and discreet.
Not a looker, but graced with a pleasant face and nice, wide hips that could bear and birth heirs like organ pipes.
We managed two organ pipes, after all.
Tiny little creatures, thank god boys, that loved their compassionate and quiet mother and despised the father who, I’ll admit it, had been absent from the moment they’d announced their arrival.
Anthony and Gregory, heirs to the cursed throne of the house of Melchett, and both with the dreadful visage I called my own.
The elder, Anthony, even broke his nose one summer and resembled me like some weird Dorian-Grey-esque parody.
Gregory died.
The little worm, not quite five years old, succumbed to some sort of seizure, witnessed by Judith, Anthony and the maid, I think her name was Joan.
I had been away, don’t even remember where.
With him died what had been left of Judith’s placidness.
It was nobody’s fault, really.
Ours, Judith’s and mine, perhaps, for being related to one another.
God’s, maybe, for taking him, the genuinely good one of us, rather than me, who lay awake at night, dreaming of a lithe and sinewy body next to me instead of Judith’s aged one.
Punishing me for all the glances at the newspapers, desperately searching for any sign of George Colthurst St. Barleigh, obituary, marriage announcements, even ennoblement.
Anthony left home as soon as he could, craving every opportunity to stay away from home, from where his little brother had died in his arms, from where his mother drowned in her sorrow and from where his father only eyed him with the faintest glint of acknowledgment.
-I am, obviously, not on speaking terms with my own son.
Perhaps he’s passing his time in Oxford or Cambridge, sucking dicks like everyone else, unknowingly mimicking me.
Or he’s doing something proper. Something with his hands, to make himself feel alive and useful, so very different, so very much not his father.
Judith and I remained in the house. Quietly, though not softly, we settled into an existence of ignorance and hostility.
I had once believed that I could love Judith, could make her and my life better just by trying to be a decent human being. I made it worse, so much worse.
The thought was so inherently protestant that I sometimes cursed the portrait of my elizabethan progenitor and wallowed in the childish fury of not being able to confess to my sins, only to be absolved in exchange for some little act of penitence.
-I contemplated conversion, if only for about a week. Judith, bless her, merely laughed at me.
She had a lover, I knew probably right from the start, and once they’d started sneaking around the gardens she bloomed once again like some forgotten rose bush. It was a true delight to see the colour returning to her cheeks, posture lifting like she’d finally been watered and the spark that had made her eyes even greener than the trees under which she kissed our chauffeur. His name was Robert or something and I wished them well.
Some time in 34 I even asked her if she wished for a divorce, which she furiously denied.
Only after I had told her that I would neither cut her nor Anthony from my will, she finally accepted it.
I do honestly hope that Robert made her very happy, she deserved it.
There was only me left in the manor.
Me, some servants, the old valet Willis and his wife who was a decent enough cook. She pitied me with glorious pies and Victoria Sponge and even Lamingtons, though she never revealed her Australian connection to me, and I found myself, if not happy, at least contented.
Happiness, I told myself, was something I had had, lost and not yet deserved to have again.
And then the Boat Race of 1938 happened.
Being a member of several affluent clubs I could choose a spot to watch the race from.
Neither the start nor the finish line would have suited me well, too noisy, too many drunk younglings with pretty faces and a disturbing naiveté.
I hadn’t touched anyone since the day Judith’s second pregnancy had been obvious.
Not for any moral obligation, after all I was a mostly healthy male in a gruesomely lonely marriage, but for… opportunity.
And maybe, though the thought seemed so utterly romantic and silly I cast it aside immediately, for George.
To stop my memory from tainting itself, from losing the thought of George’s hands on my skin, the sounds he made while I sucked him off, the tightness of him and all that really was him.
As I wandered along Chiswick pier, ignoring the howling masses of drunkards and enthusiasts, I remembered Christmas 1917.
After the improvised service held by one of the army chaplains I had ordered Darling to get us a nightcap.
He had returned with a bottle of Merlot, probably stolen from the village, and George, wearing subtle makeup and a smile, brighter than anything I’d ever seen.
Once Darling had retreated (to get shitfaced on some ridiculously hideous gin or other), George and I had become a tangled, heated mess, impossible to separate.
I had told him that I loved him more than my own life, right when I hit his prostate and tasted his slicked sweaty skin. George had howled in return, screaming my name and sobbing love confessions into my shoulder.
Two weeks later I had ordered them to go over the top.
Two weeks and five hours later I sat huddled in the bathroom, trying to keep the overwhelming nausea and heartbreak at bay, knowing none of them were likely to have survived.
I flushed my Victoria Cross down the toilet and trashed my bedroom before I more or less lost consciousness.
Couples, not all of them affluent or well-to-do, lined the streets, kissing, smiling, being oblivious to the world or even the race around them. I tried to avoid jostling into them and failed several times (the crowds made it nearly impossible to walk peaceably), only to hear…
What, exactly was it?
At first it seemed to me as the voice of yet another pie-eyed student of the classics roaring parts of Wagner’s Liebestod.
But then I heard it. Really heard the voice.
Older, deeper.
Tainted by reason and adulthood, by what lay in the wake of Oxford and a war, by years and years of being part of a world this voice had no use in anymore.
He was singing.
Not the Liebestod, but something French.
J′ai rêvé de l’étrangerEt, le cœur tout dérangé
Something more fitting in the streets of Paris, melancholic and doused in red wine and cigarettes, wholly inept in the cheering masses of The Boat Race on a sunny April’s day.
I turned to see the face attached to this grotesque voice only to be hit by eyes as blue as Lobelias in June.
There he was.
My George, my precious, lovely boy, sitting on a bench nearby and fixing me with his gaze.
Par les cigarettes
Par l′alcool et le cafard
Son souvenir chaque soir
M'a tourné la tête
Mais on dit que, près du port
On a repêché le corps
My French was abysmal, but still good enough to catch some of the words.
Mainly something of cigarettes, booze and melancholy that doesn’t end too well.
Would it be safe to move towards him?
Was it him?
Or was my mind playing tricks, bestowing George’s eyes upon some poor French tourist?
Would he even want to see me?
Me, who’d sent him into certain death, right after he’d had the balls to tell him he’d loved him?
I have always been a coward.
I turned and walked away, convincing myself of a mistake, when the voice seemed to come nearer.
Il avait un regard très doux
Il s'en allait je ne sais où.
I did not want to turn around again.
Could I bear looking him in the eye, only to realise that he was not my George anymore?
-He couldn’t be, not with twenty years of a life between our last good-bye.
Could I bear looking at him and knowing I had never been a part of these twenty years?
Could I bear being an old man while he was still so very vigorously alive and young?
How old was he now?
Forty?
I had never dared asking, back then. I’d known him as a little boy and the particular shame that lay in this I had never quite overcome. Still I’d be old enough to be his father and not even a young one.
For the first time in all those years I felt guilt creeping up my ankles for having fallen in love with George the way he’d been back then. Young, not even graduated, innocent in so many ways.
„It is you, is it not?“
Not French.
No.
And so different, so utterly different from…
„Anthony.“
There was a hand that lay heavy on my shoulder, heavier even than that one word.
I spun around to look, to see, to finally recognise him.
„God, it is you. It really is. It…“
I was awestruck.
Lobelia-blue shone even brighter when it was mixed with sunlight and tears.
George’s grip tightened until it was almost painful and I feared he might choose to hurt me.
He didn’t, though.
Instead, his hand fell from my shoulder only to grip my sleeve.
„Come with me, would you? Just… somewhere. I…“
I nodded, unable to speak.
We walked. Step by step, separating the crowd like Moses did the sea, and it seemed so much easier now, now that he, my George, walked by my side.
The silence between us fluttered like agitated birds and lay heavy like a tombstone.
My heart, usually of a more tombstone-y quality, surged and twittered like a canary.
He didn’t ask where we were headed, just followed along, always at my elbow, always in my orbit, close enough to never lose sight of him, never close enough to calm my heart.
Just around some corner, away from the promenade of cheering, watchful eyes, was a pub, dingy thing, but quiet, somewhat dark.
The landlord didn’t even seem to notice us (though he most likely did), and we settled ourselves in an alcove, before I rose again to get us something to drink.
I could have waited for the landlord to tend to us, but I needed a moment to clear my head.
Over there, uneasy and wary, sat George.
The one person on earth I’d longed to see and the one person I had wronged so greatly it churned my insides.
I loved him still. I longed for him, yearned for him, wanted him by my side, in a glass casket, never to be touched by the world again, only to be risen by my doing.
Jealousy, that’s what it was.
Jealousy towards time and unknown people who’d lived alongside George and got to know him.
Once the landlord drafted the two pints and handed them over, I walked back, glad for the distraction of my own thoughts.
We sat there, close enough but also not, silent for a moment, drinking quiet sips of some kind of beer.
When I dared a look at him, he averted his gaze and blushed.
„It’s difficult. Somehow.“ That was him, having a courage I merely dreamed of, „I have wished for this to happen, believe me, but now… I can’t find the right words.“
I nodded, taking another sip to hide my lack of words.
„Should have written you a letter as soon as I had been discharged from hospital. But I had no words, then, either. I saw the marriage announcement in the papers, the announcement of the births of your sons and somehow just lost all hope.“
Hope? He’d still have hope I’d be a petter person than I was? That I’d not sent him over the top into certain death, but Haig; an order, nothing more, to be obeyed?
What had I done to him, what had I done to deserve so pure a love?
„But by then I met someone.“
My heart sank. Of course, George, the innocent, beautiful creature, rolling in the stuff by birth must have found someone to shower with his love. His parents would have given him free reign over a suitable partner, wouldn’t they?
I finally found my voice again and said:
„I never saw an announcement. Looked for it, though, if only to send you my honest congratulations.“
George smiled at me, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
„You couldn’t have read it, Anthony. I was a rich man, or rather boy, when I joined the war. But I am not, anymore. My parents have lost everything but the manor I was raised in.“
I stared.
„But they…“
„Yes. They were friends with all the right people, with all the wrong ones, too. I came home, wounded, barely able to keep myself upright even with a cane and morphia and my parents had dismissed all of the staff, stopped heating the manor bar two rooms. Ate whatever bread there was to be had for whatever little money they found in loose floorboards.“
Of course I had heard stories like this. Gentlemen and Families of nobility and wealth that had lost everything in the wake of war, because they had stuffed all their funds in some stupid risky stock exchange venture only to see it all crash and burn by 1929.
„What did you do?“, I asked and looked at him even more closely. No sign of emaciation, his clothes were simple but very clean and well cut. Not even his hands showed any sign of him being anything less than a dandy and a gentleman.
„I…“, he gave me a crooked smile, „I cried and then I ran away. Well“, there was something of that boyish humour in his mouth again, „I didn’t run exactly. Walked, not even very dignified, but I left. I got some money from the pension funds, looked for a room. Hoped to find you, but I told you of how utterly speechless all this drab had made me.“
If he had only written.
The shame I had felt earlier crept up again, like something cold.
„Don’t look at me like that, dear“, he said softly and the sad smile clenched my heart, „It wasn’t bad, you know? Sure, my body betrayed me more days than I care to remember and no, I won’t tell you in how many ways, but…“, his voice trailed off again and his cheeks reddened slightly.
„I… I met Ethel. She was gorgeous, you see? Tiny person, but with a lioness’s heart.“
I saw.
Clear as day I saw that George had fallen in love again, deeply, lived a life so worth it that I felt even more morose looking back on my own.
He told me of their time. How they’d met, how she had pieced him together again, with care, love and sarcasm.
He had worked, first in one of the factories, then, when his back had been too bad to carry on, as a florist, a bartender and lastly as a street artist, singing, painting.
„We wanted to have children together“, he sighed, draining the last of his beer, „never happened, though. Can’t say whose fault it was, but we carried on. Not as happy as we might have been, mind, but we… liked each other well enough to not resent ourselves for being sterile.“
Then he looked at me.
„I hated you. Honestly. You had what I thought I wanted. Children, money, a home, no, manor, to call your own and I hated you for it.“
Before I could appease him, tell him how unhappy I’d been, he merely smiled his sad, beautiful smile and continued.
„Don’t worry, Anthony. I read about the divorce. As relieved as I was, as… demonically happy as that made me, I found no joy in it. You know, Ethel died. No… No-one’s fault, really.“, he sighed, and I heard the tears that made his voice thick, „People die everyday. Darling died, and Baldrick. So many did in the last… twenty years.“
But no one, I gathered, had died as unfairly to him as Ethel had.
„Were you with her?“ I asked.
He shook his head.
„Didn’t make it in time“
His voice was so brittle now, stripped of the thickness, so low and whispery, that I couldn’t help but take his hand.
The first touch in twenty years.
It surged through me like an electric shock, like thunder and lightning and fireworks all at once.
The guilt that followed made me release this fine, slender hand again.
To my surprise, George almost immediately grasped my fingers.
„Don’t flinch away from me, Anthony. We both have seen enough death and tragedy to still be afraid of it.“
„I… I am sorry, George.“
Again, there was this sad smile creeping up towards his eyes, intensifying the lines of happiness and laughter in an obscure fashion.
„Don’t be. I just wanted to let you know."
When had he become so wise?
Not even a war had him lose his boyish naiveté.
A marriage, a grown-up, adult life with all its tribulations.
Where I, cocooned in the shambles of a world that so stubbornly refused to vanish, had not changed at all.
Merely had become bitter in my longing for him.
I wondered whether there had been a time in all those two decades where I had not compared, thought, remembered everything and anything and anyone and everyone to George.
Wondered whether I had put him on an unfair pedestal, up in the clouds, safe but far away and lonely.
I wanted to go home, drink myself into a sorry stupor to simply forget this adult, sensible creature that sang French songs and still grieved his wife.
George, my George at least, would have had a wobbly lip and an endless tirade of almost incomprehensible lingo.
This George, this forty-something ghost with lobelia-blue eyes sat in front of me with a clenched jaw and air of anguish, proper and at last at home in his gangly body.
-I couldn’t fathom him in a pink sequinned frock, probably he’d even look out of place with so much as a colourful tie on him.
But, and this realisation made me want to kiss his every finger, despite all that he wasn’t anymore, I loved him no less.
Pedestal be damned, I wanted him right here and there, with me, sitting next to me on a bench in a dingy pub.
Time be damned, I wanted those twenty years gone, to have never happened, but to have happened all the same.
I wanted to get to know him. This George.
This older, wiser, more serious version.
„Drink up.“, I said.
The look he gave me was one of hurt.
I understood and shook my head.
„No, George, don’t even think I’d let you go, heavens, send you away. Just drink up and let us get out of this hole.“
He merely nodded and emptied his glass with stubborn thoroughness.
That’s when I saw the cracks in his proper façade.
Him, drinking even the last, warmish and stale drops of ale; his worn-out and almost threadbare cuffs.
He didn’t even wear proper cufflinks, but a pair of those cheap silk knots that already started to fade.
And, this made me smile almost fondly, he still wore the watch he’d had back when we were.
„Where are we going?“
The caution in his voice startled me.
He was afraid, I could see it, afraid of what I’d do to him.
„Home. If you wish to.“
„Isn’t your wife…?“
„She’s living in some pretty townhouse here somewhere; hasn’t set a foot in the manor in years. I… I mean I could understand if you preferred to stay here, but…“
There was no courage left.
I faltered terribly.
„No. No, Anthony. Take me home. Take me somewhere I don’t have to be like this anymore.“
So I did.
I walked him to the car, never taking my eyes off him.
Thought of the evening before our first rendez-vous and how I’d practised what I’d tell him (her) in front of a mirror.
How Darling had looked at me. How horrified he’d been.
I allowed myself a private smile.
The Drive from London was quiet, heavily so and I wondered, worried, if we were unable to speak or unwilling.
Wondered where that bond had gone that I had thought to be unbreakable.
Sure, I still loved him, I felt complete here with him by my side, but a certain fear crept up.
Did he love me still?
Or had finding and losing Ethel relieved him of the burden of loving a man who’d sent him into certain death?
Why had he agreed to come with me?
George looked out of the window, with heavy lidded eyes and a lazy hand that barely kept his chin up.
„You’re tired, what?“, I asked like the fool that I was.
He nodded and smiled.
„It’s been a while since I have had time to feel tired.“
Since he’d had a chance to feel tired, more likely, but I let it slide.
By the looks of him he probably shared a bed with several other lost souls in one of the ghastly parts of the city, never secure, never alone and never to be called home.
„I’ll need some time, perhaps“, he whispered and blindly fumbled to find my hand on the gear knob.
„Time“, I echoed lamely.
„Yes. Time to sleep, sleep all of those years away. Next to you, maybe, I’d like that. Waking up, just for a few moments, blinking once or twice just to see whether you’re still there.“
Something in my chest twisted itself into tight and painful knots.
„You sure?“
No words, but a firm grasp around my hand.
∞*∞
His body is as lithe as I remember it. Older, yes, less gangly.
A scar, a ricochet, he tells me, paints his thigh purple, draws a lovely pattern on his soft skin.
„Will you undress for me?“
His voice is soft and rumbly, like soft stones on a seabed in August.
But I shake my head.
„Not yet.“
The smile he gifts me doesn’t reach his eyes.
„You never liked it“, he whispers.
I nod once.
My body has never been a comfortable topic for me and I crave, today more than ever, the security of trousers, shirtsleeves and a waistcoat. Tailoring does make me bearable.
„I won’t force you, Anthony, don’t worry“
How can his voice be so gentle?
He’s annoyed, always has been when my reluctance to undress had surfaced again, and yet his voice doesn’t show it.
„It’s just… I miss you. Every single inch of you.“
He cups my face with his hands.
Back then they still had traces of this silly upper class softness, muscles merely built to press piano keys or hold a pencil.
The fingers that caress my cheekbones now are different. Rough in skin and in built, stronger than my own ever were.
„You… you could break me“, I admit and lean into the touch.
I feel a kiss, softly, on my forehead, a smiling mouth that traces the lines and bags around my eyes.
„Oh, I could, surely“, his voice is livelier now, almost twenty years younger, „ and maybe I should. Just because I still love you doesn't mean I can’t despise you for what you did.“
He tugs at my belt, forcing the buckle open without so much as a look down.
A second later he grabs me, harshly, and I can’t help but wail.
It’s not so much the pain as it is the wound he tears open with his admission.
I’m back again; Headquarters, the bathroom, the Victoria Cross and my own voice howling in agony about what I had done.
„You could have spared me. Spared us, you know? Told Haig that his Idea’d been complete and utter horseshit. But to keep up appearances… you didn’t.“
I dare not look at him now. Can’t bear the earnest eyes that look up at me, waiting for an honest answer.
„No“, I croak instead.
„No. No, Anthony. Because you were, as always, a coward“, he tugs at my cock and the force of it shoots tears in my eyes, „but you know…“
His voice trails off, leaves me hanging, panting, tearing up in the air, until I can’t bear it and twitch and writhe in his hands.
„Look at me“, there’s still no heat in his voice, no anger. Just amusement, even warmth maybe? Another tug, another almost brutal rub against too dry skin.
I follow suit.
„Look here, my love, my Anthony.“
The pressure from his hand eases slightly and I breathe in.
„Look“, he demands a third time and I finally follow suit.
His eyes are wide and bright with tears.
They’re adoring me still, though and I just fail to understand.
„I ran away, I met a girl, married her, loved her, made love to her and buried her but I never forgot you. Neither what we were back then nor what you did to me, to us. I never forgot how that ugly monster reared in me when we heard it. How I wished for it to be untrue. How I still thought you’d come and save me once that blasted bullet hit me.“
I never came. I never even thought of leaving headquarters, least of all running into No-Man’s-Land to search the oceans of dead and dying soldiers for this one, maybe also among those dead and dying, to each for lobelia-blue eyes and a soft hand and tousled curls.
„You never came, Anthony. And yet, yet, yet, I loved you. Love you. Not even Ethel was good enough“, now his voice breaks.
The tears had finally started to fall, contorting his face into a mask of grief and anger, making him even more beautiful and honest than he ever had been.
„Not even Ethel made me forget you, you understand? She was worth a thousand Generals, a hundred thousand Privates, Captains, Lieutenants and whatnot. I loved her, but there was this piece within me that just knew, once I’d see your face again, I’d leaver her. Without a doubt.“
He sobs now, choking on his tears and words.
His hands grab the sheets forcefully and he tugs and lets go and tugs again.
„I never told her about you, about the war. She never knew that she was only second best. That night she died I wanted to come clean, I had just read about your divorce and finally wanted to be honest to her. She died thinking that I loved her. Only her. Forever her. And…“
The howl rings painfully loud and I almost cover my ears.
A wounded animal, that’s what he is, wounded lethally.
I don’t do anything. I never do.
I sit there, look at him, feel for him and do nothing.
Like I’d do with a wounded animal.
Watch him.
Watch over him, so he won’t escape me again.
Like I’d do with a wounded animal.
„I love you“, it’s out before I know it.
Have I spoken? Have I formed words when I had to? Did this happen?
Has there really been some courage left?
„I love you, George, I love you now as I’ve loved you then. And“, now I choke on air and words and cough embarrassingly long and loud, „And I wish I was someone else, someone who’s braver, wittier, younger and prettier than I am and not so full of himself. Deserving of your love.“
He chuckles. It’s thick with tears and residues of anger.
„Dreamed about this, Tony. You apologising. Not exactly like this, with you crying and sniffing and all, but you telling me that you loved me and were sorry for what happened. I’d then make love to you, sweet and docile and warm and tender, take you apart, watch you come undone for me, naked as on the day you were born. Dreamed about this, Tony, when I lay awake in the lodging house and couldn’t sleep because someone was being sick next to my bed. Dreamed about this, when I got up the next morning and dragged myself to work.“
The urge to touch him, envelope him in my arms, cradle him like a precious heir to a throne of some forgotten kingdom, rises and I wish for courage that does not belong to me.
Is used up already.
I’m not a full chalice anymore, in any sense of the word.
„I want you. Want you with all your cowardice and loveliness and shame and pride. I don’t care how old you look or are, I don’t care about what’s happened two, twenty, a hundred years ago.“
Then take me, make me yours I want to scream, but, being me, I don’t.
„But there’s my bones that have never left that field in No-Man’s-Land, still heavy and yearning for an evening that won’t ever return. I have no choice but to ask you to go fetch them for me and patch me up like Frankenstein’s Monster. I have no choice but to surrender myself to your hands, your care, your nimble touches to heal me and make me something akin to George again.“
And that, being the soldier that I’ve always been, I can do. I can collect him in my arms, obey his order of loving him, fuck sanity into him again; or so he tells me.
Each thrust makes him scream and howl and cry and he tells me later, that it’s been the best thing he’s ever had.
Katharsis I think but I shut my gob.
Instead I kiss him and thank whoever gave me this second chance.
∞*∞
It’s some months later when I wake up next to George on a slow morning. His spent body is almost glowing in the sunlight that reaches through the curtains, the bruises I kissed there are bright on his creamy white skin.
I'm naked and I find that don't mind. For once in my life I don't mind my body.
I don’t think I've ever been happier in my life. Not even back then, in the war, when we’d been young enough to spend the whole night exploring how many orgasms we could fit into six hours, had I been this content.
He’s with me, older, wiser, still as wonderful as he’d been.
We’ve visited Ethel’s grave, together.
Nothing much to see there, not even a proper headstone. A poor woman’s grave.
George cried for hours after we’d returned home.
I had put him to bed later, washed his tears away and stayed with him, until he’d finally fallen into a deep and heavy sleep.
When he’d woken up (a good sixteen hours later), he’d looked at me with bleary, tearstained eyes and told me that he’d loved me.
She'll get a proper headstone, soon. I owe her as much for keeping George for me.
There’s this saying, isn’t there?
Alte Liebe rostet nicht.
Old love never dies, and, according to that saying, doesn’t rust either.
It takes a lot to care, painting it with colours and drying raindrops off of it, abrade it every so often.
We’re like a wrought iron fence, like the one that guards the manor, elegant and sturdy, high-maintenance and guarding what is ours.