“Besides, a guy doesn’t take a girl for a walk in the countryside and then to a romantic old ruin, and then to the top of a crumbling wall, unless he has something pretty important to say.” She laid a hand gently on his cheek, her fingertips barely grazing his skin, and he just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t hide it any longer. He didn’t care about Jeeves. Screw Jeeves.
“I realize this is grossly inappropriate,” said Arthur, “and I beg you not to give it a second thought and to fly back to America and forget this entire conversation, but as you seem especially eager to know, the fact is I am . . . I am rather . . . I’m afraid I’m in love with you.” Arthur had expected a surge of panic as he uttered these words, but he felt instead relief. He had held this terrifying, wonderful secret so tightly that releasing it seemed to release him. She could reject him now. Everything would be fine. He would have an ache in his heart for the rest of his life, but that put him in very good company, literarily speaking. For the first time in weeks, maybe years, Arthur felt giddy.
“I thought so,” said Bethany, patting his cheek and giving him a little smile of triumph.
“So,” said Arthur, taking her hand and giving it a little squeeze before letting go, “as you seemed to want to know, I mentioned it, but now you must finish up your work and go back to America and forget all about it. No need to discuss it further.”
“No need to discuss it further?” said Bethany, grabbing Arthur’s hand back. “For God’s sake, Arthur, stop being such a milquetoast. You bring a girl up here, you tell her you love her, the next thing is not, ‘no need to discuss it further’; the next thing is this.” She put her free hand around his neck, pulled him to her, and a second later Arthur was as confused, and as elated, as he had ever been. Bethany Davis was kissing him. Not a soft peck on the cheek or even a quick dry kiss on the lips but wet lips and tilted heads and bodies pulled close together and tongues darting and eyes closed and so dizzy he thought they might both tumble off the wall and he didn’t care.
After the longest, loveliest minute of Arthur’s life, Bethany let him go and they fell apart and stood for a few seconds, breathing heavily and staring at each other, and he could tell that she desperately wanted to do exactly what he wanted to do and so they both burst out laughing. Arthur had no idea why. There was absolutely nothing funny about this situation, but somehow the release of laughter made them comrades even more than that amazing kiss had done.
“That was very kind of you,” said Arthur when the laughter had run its course.
“Very kind of me? Goddammit, Arthur, you still don’t get it, do you?” She stood on tiptoe and gave him another kiss—this one so quick it was over before he even realized it had started. “I love you, too.”
“You what?” said Arthur, stumbling back against the railing, all of his fear surging back.
“I love you, Arthur Prescott.” There was not a hint of irony or fear in her voice. If anything, she sounded happy. How could that be?
“You love me?”
“Yep.”
“Bollocks,” said Arthur.
“Oh, Arthur, you’re so romantic. You should write greeting cards.”
“It’s just,” said Arthur, reaching out and taking her hand again, feeling calmed by the mere touch of her skin, “what . . . what the hell are we going to do?”
“It’s not that complicated,” said Bethany. “We’re going to climb back down the steps, and we’re going to walk back to Barchester holding hands, not caring if anyone sees us, and at that one bend in the river, where the path goes under the branches of the willow tree, we’re going to stop and kiss some more and then we’re going to go about our day. And maybe we’ll meet for dinner.”
“But what about . . .”
“That’s all we’re going to worry about right now, Arthur,” she said, squeezing his hand hard. “Promise me.”
Arthur stood in silence looking at her, still trying to comprehend what had happened but unable to think of anything except what would happen under the willow tree.
“Promise me, Arthur,” she said. “For today, we think only of today.”
“I promise,” said Arthur.
The dew was almost gone from the grass when they reached solid ground once again. They walked in silence for a few minutes, holding hands comfortably, Arthur doing his best not to let his mind wander past today, or even past the next few minutes. And they did stop under the willow tree and kiss, and it was wonderful, and Arthur employed every ounce of his mental strength to banish all thought of the future and simply live in that glorious moment.
When they rounded the last bend in the path and saw the cathedral towering in front of them, Arthur instinctively dropped Bethany’s hand.
“Fair enough,” said Bethany, stepping slightly to the side so that they walked a full three feet apart. “We’ll keep it a secret for now.”
Even if we keep it a secret for always, thought Arthur, I will be happy. Even if we only have a few lovely days of being in love and you go home and find some nice American man your own age and forget all about me, I will remember you always and take this walk every year on the morning of the Feast of Corpus Christi.
He had not spoken any of these thoughts, yet Bethany seemed somehow to hear him. She turned to him as they walked and asked, “What’s the Feast of Corpus Christi? I saw it on the calendar for today.”
“Well,” said Arthur, happy to have something to talk about other than love, “Corpus Christi is Latin for Body of Christ. It’s a feast that celebrates the Eucharist, and in the Anglican Church the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ’s body and blood in the bread and wine.”
“Yeah, we don’t celebrate that in the Jubilee Christian Fellowship Church,” said Bethany. “Sounds far too Catholic for my dad. He hardly even uses the word Christ. To him it’s always Jesus, like they’re on a first-name basis or something. But I don’t suppose he would want to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Jesus either. Not that they would ever call it that. I mean they couldn’t have, because there was no J in classical Latin, right? Anyhow, it’s Communion tonight instead of Evensong. Does that mean I won’t see you there?”
“Wait a minute,” said Arthur, pulling her to a stop. “What did you just say?”
“I said it’s Communion tonight.”
“No, before that?”
“I said my dad would never celebrate . . .”
“You said there is no letter J in the classical Latin alphabet. Bethany, you’re brilliant.” Arthur threw his arms around her and held her tightly for just a second longer than would have been appropriate for friends.
“Uhm . . . thank you?” said Bethany.
“The classical Latin alphabet has twenty-three letters; we’ve been trying to crack the code with the modern alphabet of twenty-six. That’s why it’s not working.”
“And that’s why you did get some words once in a while,” said Bethany. “Because the alphabets are the same up to the letter H.”
“So any word that’s spelled with just the first eight letters of the alphabet would decode, but words that use letters that come after H would just translate as gibberish.”