The truth is that of course it did. It made me feel uncomfortable. I like to think I know languages, but this was a language I barely knew—the dialect of intimacy. I didn’t like Harry any the less for what he’d just admitted to me, but to know that I’d been his friend for ten years, and never even suspected—

Was I really so naive? The thought was profoundly disturbing. I’d always thought myself rather a good judge of people. So how could I have overlooked something so fundamental—something, I now realized, so blatantly, stupidly obvious?

It occurred to me then that I too could be seen in the same light. I too was unmarried. I too spent my lunchtimes with the boys. Plus, I made no secret of the fact that I enjoyed Harry’s company. Could anyone—a colleague, perhaps—have ever considered that I might be gay? Could the boys have believed it? I am not proud of admitting it, but the very thought filled me with horror.

No, I am not the most liberal of men. I never had the chance to be. My parents were ordinary northern folk, the products of their generation. My upbringing was St. Oswald’s, via a School bursary, then a dull university, then teaching in two lesser schools before St. Oswald’s claimed me again. By the time I was forty-two, I was as institutionalized as my parents—both of them long-term residents at the Meadowbank old people’s home, not far out of Malbry.

Perhaps for that reason I appeared older than my years to Harry, whose background was very different, and whose lack of ambition and disregard for convention made him seem much younger than I. It strikes me now that one of the reasons I’m fond of young Allen-Jones is that he reminds me a little of Harry Clarke, especially in the eyes.

Harry took another Quality Street. “You have that look on your face,” he said. “That anywhere-but-here look. It only makes a difference, you know, if you allow it to matter. We all find comfort where we can, and who’s to say that one kind of love is better, or more worthy?”

Of course he was right. I took his point. But this was all too personal, too unexpected for me to digest. We Tweed Jackets don’t like to talk about our innermost feelings. It’s one of the reasons I’d rather teach boys than a gaggle of Mulberry girls. Boys have a pleasing lack of depth; an emotional inarticulacy that means they talk about football; books; music; TV; computer games; but rarely matters of the heart. Of course I know they feel things; but, thank gods, they seldom share.

I said: “It’s none of my business, old man. It won’t make the slightest difference.”

He smiled, a little sadly, I thought. “Have another chocolate.”

Chapter 7

7

September 12, 2005