It was a pleasant evening, and Harry whiled it away down by the sprawl of the pier, sipping at his drink and enjoying the bustle and laughter of the men around him, listening to the clink of glasses, taking in the scent of beer and ale and all the rest. Whenever the door opened up and men filed in or out, he could smell sea salt from the air outside, smell vinegar and frying oil from people’s fish and chips.
“You don’t think he’ll be offended at not having been invited this evening?” Harry asked, and Ulysses gave Harry a very serious look, tapping out his cigarette.
“Good Lord, no,” said Ulysses in his rich, serious voice, ash falling into the tray. “You and I could offer as much money as we might think of – forget ten shillings, forget a pound. You might offer the man a guinea, and you couldn’t get my employer in the same room as Cherry Flintman once forewarned he might be present.”
“You and I both know young Samuels is best left allowing you to manage his purse strings anyway,” Harry replied.
They both laughed, Harry leaning back in his seat and drinking from his glass, and across from him, and Ulysses eased off into a wry chuckle. He’d been far more expressive once upon a time, Harry well-remembered – was always laughing and joking when they were each still young, and neither of them tried and tested – and scarred – by war.
Harry had known Ulysses Valentine since he was first coming up as a hall boy years ago – when he’d been just a young lad starting out in the most junior position there was serving the Darnels, Valentine had seemed a towering and mammoth figure, sleeping in a draughty corridor and awake hours before dawn every day, tiny compared to all the grown men and women about him. Valentine was not, of course, the vision of towering wisdom Harry had thought him to be at that age of nine or ten – at the absolute eldest upon their meeting, he would have been eighteen.
Less than a decade separated them in age, and yet there was something tremendously comforting about the man, even now. There were pints between them now, and a ripped open packet of pork scratchings, but some part of him still felt the cherished warmth of the fire in that first house of his heating his back, Valentine showing him some new task element by element, teaching him how to polish shoes or repair a shirt collar or brush a coat.
Every other man he’d learned from in that house was dead now. John Denton, the butler, dead of a heart attack at the age of fifty-nine; Thomas Carr, the under-butler, and John Hound, the gardener, both dead by mustard gas; Anthony and Raymond and Robert and Liam, footmen or valets, at different times, otherwise dead in the trenches.
There had been three of them at the end of the war itself – Ulysses and Harry had each come home from the trenches and so too had Tristan Short, a butcher’s third son, who had been a senior footman and had been training eagerly to be a chauffeur.
He’d been a suicide.
“I visited your uncle this month past,” Ulysses said in a quieter voice now – they could hear one another around all the chatter about them, each of them keen-eared as they were, though it was a close thing. “On my day off when Mr Samuels was a guest of the Darnels. Retirement suits him.”
“It does,” Harry agreed. “Suits him better than it does many a man of our profession, I will say – which isn’t to say the man is idle. Every letter he sends me seems to indicate some new scheme or other, managing his garden, involving himself in one of my brothers’ or cousins’ embarkations, or gardening, or whittling – that was short-lived, he’s never been of an artistic nature, no matter what they say about men like us—” (Ulysses laughed from deep in his chest, muffling the sound with another drink.) “—or reading a good deal. And posing for pictures, I’m given to understand?”
“And very grateful for the model Mr Samuels was too,” said Ulysses. “There are few things he enjoys more than flirting with someone posing for an illustration. Few things other, of course, than—”
“Yes, yes, thanks kindly, but I hardly need to hear about your employer and his attempts to seduce my uncle, unsuccessful, I should hope,” Harry stopped him, and Ulysses smirked, his jowls shifting and shadowing about his lips. “I’ve never much liked feeling I’m in competition with the man – not in this area, at least.”
“Mr Samuels enjoys a commanding figure,” Ulysses said. “As does your Mr Fox, I wouldn’t wager.”
“He does, although he’s more flexible in that arena than Samuels is,” Harry said quietly. “He’s a student of classics rather than any complex science, but there is a great hunger in him, a curiosity, for all the mysteries of intimacy and the bedroom, of all the games and dialogues as might pass between such men as us.”
Ulysses’ expression was one of not at all disguised disapproval as he shifted slightly in his seat, setting his powerful knees together under the surface of the table. “I wondered what might compel you to introduce him to, of all people, Larry Kidd.”
“You’ve a soft spot for Larry, and you’ll hardly convince me otherwise,” was Harry’s accusation, and Ulysses made a dismissive sound, but in the turn of his head Harry could see the hidden shadow of his smile. “What does bring the two of you down here, dare I ask, if not this party?”
“Oh, he’s here for the theatrical crew, certainly, he just deftly avoided an invitation to dinner. He’s painting the poster for the show.”
“Ah, in the same style as the covers he does for Mr Kidd’s novels?”
“Precisely.” Now when Ulysses smiled it was a faint thing, but there was a heavy depth of emotion in it, and Harry felt himself smile slightly himself. On their return from the front, Ulysses had taken time to recover from the injuries to his feet – he’d lost most of the toes on his left and two, if Harry remembered rightly, on the right – and had been a little slow at first to return to work.
Harry recalled that he’d been anxious – as anxious as Ulysses ever appeared – to find a new position, uncertain he would find one appropriate to his skills. Friends and old coworkers had tried their best to find him positions in big houses – two different acquaintances of the Bisphams had actually mentioned to Harry whilst he was in their employ that they had heard Mr Valentine was still in fine fettle, and asked if he might pass on their interest in taking on his employment.
As a child, Harry had looked on Ulysses and thought him a butler ready-made, so tall and square and imposing as he was, and it was no surprise to him that so many others had the same expectations of him, but Ulysses had had no interest in returning to a big house after the constant noise and bustle of the trenches.
Being a valet suited him, he’d said at the time, and a valet he would be.
He’d worked in an agency for a while, covering other valets’ work as they went away – particularly working with veterans of war slow to recover, or more retiring young men – and the work had hardly seemed appropriate to a professional of his skill and dedication.
Harry had been there on the night the two of them had crossed paths with Vincent Lucas Samuels – he’d been drunk and flushed pink with it, his hands still stained with his paints, as he’d laid a banknote on the bar top and insisted on paying for a round for all in attendance.
It had hardly been an illicit place, only a quiet little pub in Selby – Ulysses had been working there, and Vincent had just painted a young woman’s portrait and finished the job, taking payment for it.
“I don’t know that it’s entirely wise to throw your money around in that manner, sir,” Ulysses had said, and Samuels had leaned on the bar and looked up at him, blinking quite coquettishly – even more unwisely.
“Is it not, my friend? Well, seeing as how you are neither a parent of mine, a nanny, nor even my valet, I hardly see why it’s up to you to keep my unwise behaviour in check.”
“Who is your valet, if I’m to charge a man with the responsibility?”
“I’m between men, I’m afraid. The war has yet to harden a man enough to take up the challenge of valeting for me.”
“You don’t strike me as too difficult to whip into shape,” Ulysses had said quietly, and Samuels’ eyes had widened, his mouth opening in delighted astoundment.
“I beg your pardon, sir?” he’d demanded in a hushed tone, all but quivering with drunken excitement, and he’d stood away from the bar and stumbled on his feet – Harry had jumped to help him, but despite being farther away and with his own scarred and imbalanced feet, Ulysses had been faster.
Samuels had looked up wonderingly at Ulysses’ face from where he was held in his arms.
“I’m a valet in need of employ, you know,” Ulysses had said richly, and his smile, in that moment – that was the first time Harry had seen him smile, since the war had finished. It had been genuine and warm, and in the moment a cold shock had run down his spine like someone had poured ice water down the back of his collar. He’d realised he was witnessing a moment of stars reaching alignment.
Ulysses had been Samuels’ devoted valet – and rather more than that – ever since that night.
“He’s enjoying the work,” Ulysses said now. “Much as he abhors Cherry Flintman, he doesn’t mind sketching him from afar.”
“Most of us find him more bearable from afar,” Harry said, and Ulysses laughed.
“Quite,” he murmured. “You seem content in life of recent, Harry. As content as I have been in mine for some years – your Uncle Reg has played the cards on the table quite rightly, it seems to me. You’re a man in love.”
Harry’s heart fluttered in his chest, and he thought of Alexos laying kisses on the backs of his knuckles, on the palm of his hand, thought of Alexos’ hands sliding over his chest, not only to cup his breast or squeeze admiringly at the swell of his generous belly, or touch worshipfully over his tattoos and piercings, but also to settle over his heart and rest there, feeling the beat of it under his palm.
Whether his hand was there or elsewhere, whether his hands were on Harry’s body or buried in the guts of one of his machines, it seemed to Harry that Alexos ever had Harry’s heart in his hands, these days.
“Is it so obvious?” Harry asked.
“To an old friend, I think so,” Ulysses said softly. “Reg did mention that your letters are quite soppy over the man, as he’d hoped they might be – but I wouldn’t have needed your uncle telling me about his plans to know something had been set in motion. One sees it in the set of your features, your shoulders, even the light in your eyes, old friend.”
Harry’s heart went from fluttering to heating from within, the warm spreading throughout his chest, and Ulysses let out a long sigh of satisfaction.
“How does he feel about the ink under your clothes?”
“Adores it,” Harry murmured. “I thought he might be shocked, even horrified – the first he saw me not even undressed, but rolling up my sleeves—” When Ulysses raised his eyebrows, Harry muttered, “Well, I don’t always have my sleeve cuffs attending the young master in his bath, do I? He was ensorcelled. Rather forgot about intimacy for a while – nothing compared, of course, to his response to my piercings.”
“Oh, of course, you mentioned he has a fondness for machinery and putting bits of metal in his hands,” said Ulysses dryly, sardonic in his judgement, and Harry made a dismissive noise, nudging him under the table. “Did he even remember what he was looking at, or just get so distracted by the barbels he got a screwdriver in one hand and…?”
Harry made no attempt to hold back the shift of his expression, and when Ulysses saw the affirmative writ across his features he nearly fell over himself laughing, his chair creaking under his weight and his hand falling to his belly as it ripped right through him, his head tossed back. Not an expressive man any longer, it was something to see him laugh so openly and obviously – and more than that, it warmed him that Ulysses so easily took on second-hand affection for a man he’d never met.
To Ulysses Valentine – like-minded and like-hearted as Harry himself – this was no matter of perversion, but a quirk of personality that evoked love and charm. Harry well-recollected Ulysses frustrated fondness early in his relationship with Samuels, that he was so often interrupted in trying to drag his lover into bed, or attend petty errands in the intimacy of their household alone, because of the insistence he should stop still and let Samuels commit his expression or a particular angle of his body to paper or canvas.
“I did have to remind him the purpose of the organ, and indeed, our shared intention with it,” Harry said, and Ulysses sighed, wiping tears from his eyes.
“What a beautiful idiot your uncle has affianced you to,” he said with tenderness and sentiment many of Samuels’ friends never believed him capable of – this sort of softness was for the domain of men he loved and was truly friendly with, not the genuine idiots Samuels liked to fill his home with, though not so complete in their idiocy, perhaps, as Flintman. “You’ve long deserved one of your own.”
“It’s him that deserves it,” Harry murmurs. “He was so closed off when I first came to serve at the Foxes’, but with time and care, he’s opened to it, bit by bit. To me, to Lawrence Kidd – and now, at a party of actors. Even Cherry Flintman among them.”
“You might experience a recession in his openness to social engagement following that particular pill,” Ulysses commented dryly, and then turned his head. His expression was serious, but not unfriendly as he said, “Ah, there you are, Andrew, I wondered if you might be joining us. Come along and sit down – would you prefer a cup of tea, or will you assent to something stronger?”
“A half-pint of cider, perhaps, Mr Valentine, thanks much,” said Riggs as he came to take his seat to Harry’s right, and Harry gave the young man a smile as Ulysses stood to his feet to order the three of them another round.
“All errands attended to, Mr Riggs?”
“Yes, sir, thank you,” Riggs said as he settled down. He was holding his book to his breast, and now laid it down on his knees, his palm resting on top of it. “I appreciate the invitation – I had no idea Mr Valentine was also to be here in Brighton.”
“Nor did I, although it was a rather happy coincidence for me, Ulysses and I are old friends.”
“Ah,” said Riggs, and then said in barely more than a whisper, not much of a breath behind the words, “the three of us being, erm… of a similar keel.”
“A smooth and even one, at that,” said Harry in slightly louder voice, although not with so much volume as to give the poor young man a conniption. “Much more to read of your book?”
“I just finished it, I only had twelve pages left before I made my way over,” Riggs said, his fingers resting against the cover and stroking against the cloth-wrapped card. He sighed and then said, “I know it’s Hugo, and it’s not as though I expected a happy ending, but it is a profoundly sad book, Mr Sutton.”
“A good read, though?” Harry asked, gentle in his invitation for the younger man to go on, and Riggs’ smile was sad but genuine as he nodded his head.
“Very,” he said. “What have you been talking about?”
“Oh, you know,” Harry murmured. “Love and poetry, and such ridiculous matters as that.”
Riggs furrowed his brow, and glanced toward the heavy figure of Ulysses at the bar, casting the other smaller men about him in shadow. “With Mr Valentine, Mr Sutton?” he asked innocently.
“I was speaking on them, in any case,” said Harry diplomatically, and shared a secretive smile with Ulysses as he turned toward them, the smile showing in his eyes but not below the nose, that Riggs should neither notice nor comment on it.
“Now, Andrew,” said Ulysses authoritatively as he sank into his seat. “Do tell us how you’re getting on with Mr Kidd.”
“Very well, Mr Valentine,” said Riggs, and conversation turned to matters of craft and professionalism, and no more said about the other half of life.
