Will took the book off him and read the lines again, and then the next verse, which sent his eyebrows up sharply. “This is by a bloke, right? To a bloke? While they’re at it?”

“Exactly so.”

He read it again, slower, to take the words in. “Blimey. Private printing?”

“A hundred copies, in Amsterdam. Most of them were seized and destroyed by Customs recently. Try this.” Kim found the page.

“‘To feel him clamber on me, laid

Prone on the couch of lust and shame,

To feel him force me like a maid

And his great sword within me flame—’”

“Blimey.”

“The refrain is ‘A strong man’s love is my delight’,” Kim said. “As one who shares that point of view, I can safely say he knows what he’s talking about.”

Will’s experience of poems about buggery was limited to limericks in the trenches and on lavatory walls. He’d never seen anything about two blokes together written with artistic aspirations, and he wasn’t sure how to think about this level of—he searched his mind for a word, and came up with respect. “Let’s have another look?”

“Be warned, that was the high point. It’s mostly appalling.”

Will flipped through the book, came across a poem called ‘With Dog and Dame, an October Idyll’, read two stanzas, and said, “What the bloody hell is this?”

“Is that the dog one or the corpse one?”

“The what?”

Kim grinned. “The author has a truly childish urge to shock. Hardly surprising when one considers who he is.”

He was obviously waiting to be asked. “Go on, amaze me.”

“Aleister Crowley.”

Will dropped the book as though it were on fire. “You’re joking. That lunatic Satanist traitor?”

“He’s without doubt religiously eccentric, or eccentrically religious, but I have it on good authority he was a double agent. One of ours, I mean.” Kim picked it up again and flipped through the pages. “And while this is in large part a pit of filth, it does contain these occasional diamonds. A couple of them are very close to things I might say myself, if I could write love poems—physical, emotional, spiritual.” He gave Will a tiny smile. “So I wanted you to read them.”

Will took the book from him. “I’ll do that. Thanks.”

“Not the dog one, though.”

“No, best not.” He leaned forward, cupping the back of Kim’s head. “What was that line you liked again?”

“‘A strong man’s love is my delight.’” Kim’s eyes smiled into his. “Would you care to delight me before dinner, at all?”

“Christ, yes.”

***

WILL’S EXPERIENCE WITH men had been pretty limited before Kim. They knew each other deeply now, had learned the rhythms of mutual desire over the months together, and he could confidently say that familiarity didn’t breed contempt.