The Englishman

Epilogue

IT IS A YEAR TO THE DAY that we all assembled in the large auditorium at the Observatory of Ardrossan University to pay our last respects to Professor Andrew Corvin. While the President spoke of duty and dedication, all I could think of was that frantic old man in his fortress of paper. Giles reached over and, with the back of his four fingers, brushed away the tears running down my face. I slipped my fingers into his, and we sat hand in hand for the whole ceremony.

I’m not saying the following few months were easy. But the advantage of being exposed is that you no longer have to hide. Giles accepted with wry good grace the fact that all his colleagues and an unknown number of students had now seen his naked butt, even if it was only on a grainy little photo. Tim declared in gleeful tones that the term “sneaky f*ckers” had never been more apt. Yvonne came to my office and, without a word, gave me a hug; Erin stopped speaking to me. The gossip and the whispers hardly registered with me. I was too happy. If it wasn’t such bad form to kick a man who was already down, I would have sent Nick Hornberger a thank-you note. I guess they allow them to receive mail at Dillwyn Correctional Center.

Giles and I are not sitting hand in hand now. A carriage on the London Underground’s Central Line is no place for public displays of affection, at least not during the rush hour. But it is crowded enough for me to surreptitiously press my thigh against his under the cover of his briefcase and my Guardian. I sent him a text before I left my office on the Mile End Road, which allowed him time enough to walk from his office down to Holborn. Sometimes, like today, we catch sight of each other across the platform and he comes to find me in the car. Sometimes, like today, he pretends not to know me, a tall, silver-haired stranger who comes to stand or sit next to me. Catches my eye. Accidentally brushes against me. Holland Park is our stop, and from there it is just a couple of walking minutes into a quiet side street.

“I know it’s not Buckinghamshire,” Giles said apologetically when he first took me to see the white-washed, three-story Victorian townhouse. “But Reggie lives there with his family, and I can’t really chuck him out. He’s older than me, you see. So he has Bucks House, and we can have Holl House.”

“Dear old Holl House,” I said in my best plummy voice, seeking refuge in satire because I was so amazed.

He grinned. “But you wanted a posh English boy, didn’t you?”

“I can’t afford to live in a place like that!”

“You can pay rent in kind. Anyway, Queen Mary College is such a hopelessly dreary place, you need something a little more attractive to come home to.”

“As it happens, I have something extremely attractive to come home to!”

“You do? Come over here under this tree and explain that to me.”

One of the changes he made to the house before we moved in was on the top floor.

“You’re not to look,” he told me very sternly. “I want this to be a surprise!”

The builders came in and drilled and hammered for two weeks. Then, one August evening, Giles appeared in the kitchen with a scarf in his hand.

“Sweetie, we have a postcard from Tim and Martin. They’re in…” I turned over the card. “In Thailand. He says they found a cheap flight back via Heathrow, so they’re coming to see us on the twenty-ninth: ‘Threatening invasion of Holland Park love nest.’ Well, thanks for the warning, Tim!”

“Talking of love nests.” Giles twisted the scarf into a blindfold and stepped behind me. “Do you trust me, Dr. Lieberman?”

“Um…”

When I had felt my way up the stairs, which involved a lot of hands-on help from Giles, he stopped me with his hands around my waist.

“You will pretend to like it, won’t you?” he joked in that way that betrayed his apprehension. “It’s a bit silly, really, but—”

“Dude! Let me see it already!”

He led me five or six steps away from the landing.

“Careful now. Watch your shin! Lie down.”

I crawled onto a bed, feeling the smooth softness of silken bed sheets under my hands and knees.

“On your back.”

“You’re not going to tie me down, are you?”

“No. Not today, anyway.” He loosened the scarf around my head.

“Oh! It’s—oh, Giles! It’s lovely!”

“Is it really?” He smiled, shy, a little flushed, kneeling on the bed next to me.

The two small bedrooms had been turned into one large one, with a huge black metal bed in the middle. Above our heads was a domed skylight in the neo-gothic style, with Art Deco ornamentation and mulled glass panes.

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, gazing up and around.

“Could you imagine sleeping up here?”

“Sleeping—no.” I smiled and slid against him on the silken sheets. “Sleeping would be time wasted, wouldn’t it?”

It is a pleasure to see that to Giles it has a deep and peculiar significance to move back into the house his grandfather bought in nineteen eleven, and to make it his own. This is his home ground, but it took him almost twenty years abroad to want to root himself in it. He says that by leaving Ardrossan, I left far more behind than he did, but it doesn’t feel that way.

I feel that I have come home.