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James flinched away as an old brass key attached to a small block of wood came flying at his face. Arthur reached out and snagged it from the air.
“There we are.” Mrs. Wylit stumbled over the heel of her shoe, a bumbling gesture at odds with the noble medieval facade of the Angel and Royal inn that rose behind her, the gilded face of a placid seraphim hovering overhead.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just lob that at my face.” James heaved a tired sigh that seemed to rack his whole body. The train from King’s Cross was delayed, and the afternoon was unbearably muggy. They’d arrived in Grantham in the evening — too late to take the bus to Welby.
“Too bad my mother isn’t here.” Lance ground out his cigarette on the walk. He’d smoked more on the journey, James noticed. Out of boredom while they were waiting, surely, but also as a response to kind of underlying irritation. Well, this was his first time dealing with Mrs. Wylit. James half wished he smoked if it would make wrangling her easier.
Lance went on, “She loves these old carriage inns.” He gestured through the archway to the courtyard within, where, long ago, carriages had come to unload their rich passengers and stable the horses for the night.
“We could have easily stayed at the guest house we passed near the station.” James hefted his suitcase in his limp, tired arm.
“Not so.” Mrs. Wylit pulled out a cigarette and raised an eyebrow at Lance. He leaned over and lit it for her, careful to avoid igniting the wisps of hair that escaped her pins. “Something like seven kings and queens have bedded down in this old place through the years. Let me see.” She counted them off on her yellowed fingers. “King John, Edward III, Charles I, George IV, Edward VIII... I can’t remember them all. But history is about to be made again.” She leered at them with a sly little smile. “King Arthur is going to add his name to the royal registry tonight.”
Arthur could not contain a guffaw of laughter. James sighed, entirely exasperated with Mrs. Wylit’s tiresome antics.
“Anyway, I could only afford one room.” Smoke shrouded her face as she exhaled. “So we’re all together. I told ‘em you’re all my nephews, so if anyone asks...” She shrugged. “All right. Come along, I’m knackered.”
The room was small, with only a double bed, but it was theirs — a private washroom even. Lush red carpet matched the bedspread and the heavy drapes, accented with gold and creamy white.
Arthur fell face-forward on the bed with a mighty thump and a satisfied sigh. Lance jumped on as well and shoved his elbow into Arthur’s ribs. “Shove over, you hog.” Arthur responded by putting him in the kind of good-natured headlock that male friends often share.
“Lance, you’re on the floor.” Mrs. Wylit tossed him the cushions from a nearby armchair. “Let James and Arthur...” she wiggled her finger indistinctly at the bed, “you know.”
“And you, Vi?” James asked, his cheeks red at her implication.
“Be a dear and throw a blanket over me where I fall.” She lit another cigarette. With a groan of dismay, Lance leaned over and cranked open the window.
After a hasty fish-and-chips and a pint (several for Mrs. Wylit) they collapsed to sleep. Arthur waited until he could hear Mrs. Wylit’s snores, and no noise from the floor next to the window where Lance lay. Then he pulled James into his huge embrace, and promptly began to snore.
The street through the open window was quiet. James lay in the dark for some time. Why can’t I sleep? He suppressed a moan of aggravation. At last, he was back in Arthur’s arms. It felt like ages since they’d been free to really touch each other. Shouldn’t his boyfriend’s embrace lull him to blissful sleep? James was exhausted from travelling and his restless night in Lance’s bed.
Lance. The name made his stomach flip into a knot. He ignored it, pretended it was too much vinegar on his fish and chips. James peeled himself out of Arthur’s arms and wiggled down to the end of the bed to go to the loo. When he climbed back onto the bed the same way he’d left, he turned to carefully fold himself in to Arthur’s arms again. Something through the window snagged his attention. He squinted. Across the street from the Angel and Royal was a corner building with a mortgage broker’s office. Standing in front of it, beneath a streetlight, was the figure of a man wearing a warped fedora hat that shaded his face into blackness. A long brown coat in an old-fashioned cut hung from his thin silhouetted shoulders.
James' throat eked out an audible choking sound. He kept his eyes fixed on the man beneath the streetlight, and slid off the bed toward the window.
He stumbled and fell back on the mattress as his foot sank onto something soft. Lance grunted and sat up with a book in one hand and a small extinguished torch in the other. His eyes travelled from James' astonished face to the window. “What is it?” Lance reached up to clasp James' wrist. “What is it, what’s wrong?”
“It’s him,” James hissed. Arthur and Mrs. Wylit continued to snored as he threw his black suit jacket over his pajamas and slammed his feet into his shoes.
Lance watched the man under the streetlight shuffle his feet, and rub his arms as if he were cold. “James, who is that?”
“No time — please come with me!” James yanked open the door to the room and dashed out into the dim hallway.
Lance burst out after him, shirtless, his shoes in one hand, a bathrobe slung over his shoulders. As they ran, he managed to hop on each foot long enough to shove them on. James led him to the end of the red-carpeted hall, to the stairwell, and eventually through the lobby where the desk clerk glanced up sleepily to utter a muffled question.
As they burst out the front doors, James uttered a bark of frustration. “Where’d he go?”
The street was empty as far as they could see. James took off across the street to investigate the mortgage broker’s and the streetlight. There was no alley, and no sign of where the man could have gone. “Damn.” James pounded his fist against the light pole. “I can’t believe this. He’s gone.”
“Easy, mate.” Lance put his arm around James' agitated shoulders and led him back across the street. “What’s going on?”
“That man, the man in the coat—” James sputtered, the words bursting out in unintelligible spurts.
Lance pulled the door to the lobby open and ushered James inside. “Sit down, sit down,” He eased James down into one of two red plush armchairs positioned near the dead fireplace.
“What’s the matter?” The clerk put a sleepy chin in his hand. “Need to call the bobbies?”
“No, thank you,” James said immediately. That was the last thing they needed.
“Right, then.” The clerk sat back in his chair and put his legs up on the counter. By the time Lance returned from the room where he’d tiptoed in to fetch James a glass of water, snores floated through the air from behind the front desk.
“He’s louder than Mrs. Wylit. I didn’t think that was humanly possible.” Lance handed James the water and shrugged on the bathrobe that he’d slung over his shoulder. This deprived the lobby of his shirtless spectacle and curly reddish-gold chest hair.
James smiled, but it felt weak. He swirled the water in the glass after taking a sip, staring at the tiny whirlpool he’d created.
Lance settled into the chair opposite James’, and waited a respectful moment before posing his question. “Do you want to tell me what happened, mate?”
James spat out a self-pitying little laugh. “You won’t believe me. It’s total rubbish. I know it is. I can’t explain why I’m so paranoid. And now I’ve dragged you into the little spy novel I’ve created in my head.”
“Spy novel?”
He nodded. “It sounds daft when I say it aloud.”
Lance slid free of the red plush chair and onto one knee. “James Wilde,” he proclaimed, one hand over the part of the bathrobe that covered his heart, “I swear on my good name that I will not laugh at whatever it is you have to tell me.” He regained his seat. “All right, seriously,” he went on, “please tell me what’s going on.”
“I woke up for a wee, and I looked out the window. I saw a man standing under the streetlight in front of the mortgage broker’s.”
“I saw the man you saw,” Lance validated. “Who do you think he is?”
James sighed impatiently and tapped his fists on his knees. “Let me start over. All right, now, my mum — she’s been getting these strange phone calls. Someone rings and then breathes into the phone.”
“Right. And?”
“She told me about the calls, and that must have shaken my nerves. I can’t explain it — but after we heard about Mr. Marlin and were planning our trip to the funeral, I saw a man loitering about not far from where Arthur and I live with Mrs. Wylit. He was wearing an old brown coat, from before the war I should think, and there was... something about him.” James studied Lance’s face a moment, the downturned mouth and concerned brows. “You think I’m nutters.”
“No, no, not at all. Please, keep going.”
“Well, I saw him again.” James took a sip of water. “I saw him get on the train that Arthur and I took to Meopham. That’s when I told Arthur about it. And then he went through all the cars and looked, but he didn’t see an old brown coat like I’d described.”
Lance rubbed his lip with his thumb. “I’m not sure of how seriously to take most of what Mrs. Wylit says,” he said, “but she mentioned something to me while you and Arthur were buying the tickets at the station. Something about Arthur chasing a man dressed for winter into a bookshop.”
James' eyes popped into green saucers rimmed in white. “What? Arthur never said anything to me. When did this happen? While they were at the shops?”
Lance’s straight shoulders lifted in a little rueful shrug beneath the blue terry cloth. “I’m not sure, mate. You’d have to ask him.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?” James leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and clasped his fingers into a worried ball. “It’s not like him to keep a secret.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to worry you.” Lance squeezed James' shoulder with his warm hand.
“I suppose...” James rubbed his face. “I’m still going to ask him.”
They sat for a minute, listening to the clerk’s oddly syncopated snoring. Then, “Do you two really tell each other everything?”
“Arthur and I?” James straightened his back to look Lance in the face. His friend’s usual bright humor had melted away, and Lance pensively picked at the lint on the arm of the chair. “Well, yes. Of course. We haven’t had a secret from one another since we were children.” He paused to ensure the desk clerk was as deeply asleep as he seemed. The drool and slackened jaw made a safe bet. “Isn’t that true for couples?”
“Not my mum and dad.” Lance did not meet James' glance. “They lie to each other all the time. I used to call them out as a child, but they'd be angry with me. Both of them can dish out a real ear bashing. You see, well, it’s like, Papa doesn’t know Mum spends money on snake oil products to make her look younger. He thinks that money’s going in the collection plate on Sundays. Or my dad will say he has to go in to work on paperwork at the station, and then go off for a pint with the lads.” He shook his head. “I suppose I consider all that normal. But you and Arthur... never tell a lie? Never even a little fib?”
“Well,” James spread his hands. “I’ll admit that once he bought me a jumper for Christmas that I wasn’t... overly fond of. But of course, I didn’t let him know that. Oh, and once he got a haircut — tried a new barber, you see — and well, the lad was just starting out, and it was... lopsided. But we both pretended that it wasn’t.”
Lance pshawed, and hiked up his heel to rest it on the cushion of the chair, wrapping his arms around his leg. “That’s nothing. Are you barmy?” They laughed. “No, what it sounds like to me... is that you and Arthur, well... it’s special.”
A string inside of James, already taut, felt plucked. His cheeks were hot. “It is,” he said, averting his eyes from his friend’s steady gray gaze.
“Now, I see why it would bother you that Arthur didn’t say anything about chasing a man in an old coat.” Lance dropped his leg down again and scooted their chairs closer together. “Besides, I know the two of you have to be... careful about drawing attention.”
“Look, I don’t want you to... well, I mean, it’s not like we aren’t argy-bargy once in awhile.” James traced his finger around the rim of the glass. They listened to the faint sound and slipped into separate thoughts.
Around the corner from the front desk was a grandfather clock, and it suddenly struck midnight, giving them both a start. “It’s so late,” said James, rising. “Don’t you think we ought to try and sleep?”
“Think you can?” Lance flipped his wrist to look at his watch.
“In all honesty, no.” James cracked his back on one side, and then the other. “But I can lie there in the dark. Count my blessings, as my mother always says. You should get some rest.”
“I’ll be lying there staring at the ceiling, too.” Lance reached out and snagged the sleeve of James' suit jacket, and tugged gently until he sat down again. “After that stunning feat of athletics, it’ll be hours before I’m tired again.”
James' lips curved up in the hint of a smile. Lance winked at him and he laughed. “All right. So, here we are, serenaded by snoring — shall we play cards? There’s a deck in Vi’s purse, I promise you that.”
Lance laughed, but shook his head. “I had something else in mind. If it’s all right with you.”
James' stomach bounced in a trampoline-like jerk. “W-what did you have in mind?”
“I was eleven or twelve when my granddad started to tell me about the two of you and Pied Piper.” Lance absently smoothed his hair. “But he only told me little bits at a time. Eventually I think I pieced together the whole story, but one thing I’ve been dying to know — well, what I want is to hear the... well, the whole thing, I guess. From start to finish. From you. Because I’ve only heard it from Grandad’s view, what he saw, what he thought. I never thought I’d have the chance to actually meet you, to be mates, to hear it all.” He looked at his watch. “I mean, I’m so dreadfully awake. Would you...”
“Tell you?” James blinked rapidly and leaned back, as his mouth scrambled for the words. “Well... I — well, I suppose I could do that, yes. I mean, Arthur and I have talked about it over the years, told our side of things to one another. If you’re sure you really want to hear it. Of course, I think it’s incredible because it happened to me, but I’m afraid I’d bore you, Lance.”
“You won’t,” he insisted. He must have caught James’ glance at the clerk, for he said, “He’s dead to the world. This whole place is asleep. I think we’re safe. Please, say you’ll tell it.”
James took a drink of water. “Well, I hope I can tell it properly.”