Work Text
New Year’s Eve, 1938
- - -“And that’s Nigel,” Bim added, waving his hand vaguely in a more or less correct direction.The tall, dark young man whom Bim was addressing – an actor, Bim had told Nigel, and soon to be quite a famous one – offered a yet vaguer nod. This did not surprise Nigel or even particularly offend him – he had been ushered in for the introductions alongside Howard Roe and Player, and no one could really expect anyone’s eye to leave Player once you’d seen him. Nigel himself was not unattractive – this he had concluded after stern examination of himself in his small mirror one morning. It was simply that, when placed in direct comparison to a great many other men, he faded away. If there was nothing offensive in his features, there was apparently nothing remarkable either. So at this party – a gathering in a London townhouse, all draped fabrics and exotic flowers and sidelong glances – Nigel quietly took himself away to a corner without any ill will. He had not long been a part of the London ‘scene’, in any sense. Whilst still at his boarding school in Yorkshire he had encountered a young man with whom he would, quite gladly, have spent the rest of his life, and had had the delight of the feeling being returned. Neither of them attended University and they had lived together quietly in the Dales for several years. Then, five years ago, had come the car accident. His friend had died, and Nigel had gone as far as his budget would take him to get away from all possible associations of memory. London in 1933 had been as distracting a place as might be hoped for. Just before Nigel could reach the very bottom of his savings, he’d had the good fortune to come to know (via a chance encounter in the Sports Writing department of a newspaper for which he did piece-work) two co-habiting gentlemen in their seventies who were seeking a breed of secretary/handyman/valet unlikely to ask difficult questions. He still worked now for Mr Raffles and Mr Manders, and it had been them, in fact, to whom he owed his introduction to the little-known pubs and bars via which he had first met Bim. “Life is far better lived, you know,” Mr Raffles had told him, encouragingly. For Nigel, who wanted company but not much more than that, had demurred at first from exploring the places mentioned. “Taking a little risk, here and there, playing not always quite by the rules – except, of course, in cricket – can be surprisingly interesting.”“I’m not sure Nigel would agree with your definition of ‘interesting’, my dear,” Mr Manders had interjected. “Some of us have not your constitution for frequent and extreme nervous tension.”Mr Raffles raised an eyebrow conspiratorially at Nigel, and took another sip of his tea. “Do not let Bunny fool you, Nigel,” he said, smiling, “he is much braver than ever he lets on. And far less proper than anyone would suspect.”Mr Manders had choked on his tea, and Nigel had been left intrigued, amused and more than a little wistful. And so now, at the age of thirty-one, a good ten years older than most of the debutantes to the world he had entered, he was stepping forward somewhat cautiously into a new world and, thus far, had been really only an observer on his own part, added to which, of course, the role of co-conspirator in the endless labyrinthine complications of Bim’s affairs. For having not progressed beyond mere presence, he forgave himself easily. To think of flirtation in abstract is one thing, to prepare in any real way to undertake it, and with a stranger, and in semi-public, is another. Nigel did not think he would have been more confident if the objects of his interest had been female, though in that, at least, he might have had some assistance from the families of said objects, in the usual social way. He smiled to himself a little, reflecting that, in his proclivities at least, he could know himself to be remarkable. Although not, of course, in the context of this room. He looked round. There were some of the usual couples, and then the groups gossiping and murmuring behind their hands. The young, dark-haired actor appeared to have been efficiently hypnotised by Richard Player, the two of them leaning against the cocktail cabinet in deep conversation, the actor blushing and preening artlessly, and Player with his peculiarly original grin, the one which spoke of unspecified yet unmissable delights to follow. If this was Player in his early twenties, Nigel often thought, heaven help them all over the next decade. If the ever-threatened war did come, the War Office might do worse than simply send Player to the Reichstag and let him try and talk the German High Command out of it all...“I’m sorry darling, are you very bored?” It was Bim, perching on the arm of the chair where Nigel had stowed himself, rousing him from his reverie. Bim carried a cocktail glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other, his arms extended outwards like an ancient votive statue, the pose with only the slightest suggestion of being studied. “Not in the least,” Nigel reassured him, grinning. He loved Bim in the comfortable, indulgent fashion with which one might love a younger cousin or much younger sibling. Bim, who was striking if not handsome – his make-up and couture saw to that – and if not always kind he never meant to be cruel. Bim, outrageous, marvellous, buoyant Bim, had been kind and welcoming to Nigel when others had no time for him and he was still grateful for that. And where Bim lead, others followed; he was an unstoppable force. “Well, if you’re not too totally engrossed in that,” said Bim, pointing at the magazine Nigel had picked up from the side table – he realised he had let it fall open half-way through an article on Exciting New Projects With Crochet – “you wouldn’t be a love would you, and do me a favour?”“What is it, Bim?” Nigel asked, sitting up, already smiling indulgently and sighing at the same time. “Or should I say: Who is it?”Bim grinned and clapped his hands together. “Hector Ponserrat, darling! He’s just too too too, you know, and he’s here! But he’s come with some other chap – oh not a fling or a thing, nothing of the kind, just arrived with him, you know – and they don’t seem inclined to budge from each other, and so I need you to distract the chaperone so I can talk to Hector.”Nigel stood up. That didn’t sound so very bad. “Fine,” he said. “But what am I going to say? You’re not expecting me to chat this fellow up are you?” The word ‘chaperone’ had not had a warming effect on his mind. He had visions of someone dull; ancient, demanding, difficult. The rare kind of man left alone at one of these all-engrossing parties (but then, Nigel had been left alone). “Oh no, no,” Bim protested, although he did look slightly guilty. Flirtation, being his own panacea for all ills, had probably been what he assumed Nigel would try. “You can talk to him about anything, really.” Bim frowned for a moment, clearly attempting to bring ‘anything’ to a more helpful specification, and then brightened: “You like aeroplanes and things don’t you Nige? Well this chap – Triggers he’s called, Oswald or maybe Owen Triggers – he was in the Flying Corps in the Great War, that’s why he walks with a stick, someone told me. So you can talk about that.”“I’m sure he’d just love to talk to a complete stranger about his infirmity,” Nigel muttered. “But, alright, Flying Corps, I’ll bite.” He scanned the room quickly. “Where is he?”“See, I knew you’d want to talk to him,” Bim smiled. “Over there, by the fireplace.”“The man standing?”“No! That’s Hector. The one and only most beautiful Hector. Captain Triggers is the one sitting in the chair talking to him.”Nigel couldn’t quite make the man out – a vast floral arrangement on a table in the middle of the room blocked his view. Wondering, and not for the first time, why he didn’t put up more of a fight at moments like this, he allowed Bim to lead the way over. “Hector! It’s been too long!” was Bim’s opening salvo. Probably, they’d never spoken before, Nigel thought, but Bim favoured an aggressive strategy and generally it worked surprisingly well. “And this is Nigel Wilde,” Bim added.“Oh, how do you do?” Hector looked confused and offered out his hand to Nigel. Nigel took it and grinned sympathetically. Shaking hands was not the Done Thing at these places, as he’d learnt himself. He rather thought that Hector scarcely knew where he was. “Pleased to meet you, Nigel,” Hector added. “This is Owen Triggers.”Hector’s seated companion was looking up at them all with a keen, appraising eye. Nigel had supposed at first that he would be really quite old, one of the ageing queen bees of the circle. Then, as they’d come closer across the floor, he’d thought Triggers to be much younger, more his own age, and now, in close proximity, he wasn’t sure. There was something about the man’s face that made him look very tired, more than any precise age lines.“Nigel’s just dying to hear about Captain Trigger’s flying career, aren’t you Nigel?” Bim gathered up Hector’s arm in his own and patted his hand consolingly. “We won’t get in the way, will we? Let’s go and find the drinks.”Bim the unstoppable force, Nigel reflected, as he watched them leave, and couldn’t help smiling again. And then Nigel and Triggers were alone. Nigel was still standing, Triggers still sitting down. For two who knew each other well, this would be awkward, for they who had just been introduced it was deeply uncomfortable, or so Nigel felt. Triggers was giving him the same impassive, silently appraising gaze. For grinding, awful seconds, Nigel just stood there, trying to think what to say.“Do you always get your friends to make your advances for you?” Trigger’s voice was cool and calm and not in the least friendly. “No! This wasn’t, I mean, it was Bim who... Not that I wouldn’t...” Nigel bit his lip and closed his eyes for a moment. Oh this was horrible, he was going to have to make Bim buy him at least two rounds of lunch for this. Bim of course would have coped with this moment. Bim could flirt his way through just about anything, could flirt the paper off the walls and the stars down from the sky. Bim could talk a bomb out of exploding, a cloud out of raining and a London Cabbie out of his fare. It was an underappreciated art, being charming, and Nigel only wished he had the first clue at some imitation of it.Triggers was still staring up at him, eyes narrow. Nigel had a suspicion that in fact the man knew precisely why Bim and Nigel had come over, and whose idea it had been.“I really am very interested in aeroplanes,” Nigel said as the pause became stiflingly awkward, clinging to the truth of it. “Bim told me you were in the Flying Corps.”At this, Triggers winced, and Nigel followed suit. Had Bim got his information wrong? Or did the man have some kind of shell-shock or something that meant this subject was not approachable? Nigel had assumed, from Bim’s tone, and simply from his own previous experiences with veterans, that the man would enjoy telling at least some anecdotes. “Did he indeed?” was all Triggers said. Nigel tried again to guess his age, to deduce from it what the man’s experience of the war might have been – scant months at the end, or the whole show? He was past thirty, definitely, but was he nearer forty or fifty? Hard to tell when he was seated, but he looked, despite the walking stick, quite fit and lean, with no softness of middle age, and there was no noticeable grey in his hair though it receded a little. And his eyes were so bright and fiery, and rather hard to bear up under. “So tell me, what do you think of the new Tiger Moth then?” Triggers asked the question quite suddenly, and Nigel twitched in surprise, and then felt annoyed and even slightly angry. He might tell the odd white lie socially, as much as the next man, but he was not in the habit of outright fibbing or bare-faced ingratiation. Particularly not with someone this rude. “Totally the wrong aspect of the wings to have developed,” he shot back, have rapidly thought over several articles he’d read and compared on the topic. “The modern fighter aircraft will have a profile with much less projection than that.”“Do you think so?” Triggers raised his eyebrow. “I suppose you got that out of Aeronautical Monthly?” “No, Aeronautical Monthly favours the design in almost every particular,” Nigel retorted. “They ran an editorial simply gushing over the thing. Frankly, I think someone paid them. But if you compare it to the machines that they’re building in America, it’s quite clearly at a disadvantage. It’s like...like the hot air balloon, people will look back and wonder how anyone thought it was the direction of progress.” Triggers held his gaze. “In your extensive research, did you notice that those wings are after the design of a man sharing my name who was, in fact, my father?”“I did not, and I have no wish to cause offence,” Nigel said, bluntly, “but you’ve asked me a question and I’m giving you my answer. It’s not a good design.”Triggers stared at him a second, then grinned – it was not entirely a nice grin. “Quite right. Dreadful idea from start to finish. Killed many in testing, that wing profile, damn near killed me too. Now,” and here Triggers stood up, with the assistance of his stick, and standing he was almost a foot the taller of them. “I think your friend has entirely engulfed poor Hector, so there is no need for you and me to trouble each other further.” There was a sound nearby of a fit of giggles, abruptly and badly stifled. Nigel looked towards it and saw three men he recognised - three of the youngest in the room, all the worse for alcohol - laughing and grabbing onto each other, occasionally glancing guiltily back at Nigel and the Captain before bursting out again. Nigel would not have spoken, but he could see Triggers had taken a rapid, perhaps reflexive look down at his walking stick, and a wave of pain had passed over his face before being carefully smoothed away. “You must excuse me, Captain Triggers,” he said, therefore, quietly. “Those pig-headed boys, I have been informed, have made rather a study of me and determined that I am unable to hold any man’s attention for more than a few minutes. I think your rather loud and abrupt departure has warmed them to their theme. Perhaps you might tell them for me that you’ve been quite as rude as I have.”For a long moment, Triggers stared at him, eyes narrowed. Then, slowly, he resumed his seat and, with measured deliberateness, hooked the leg of a nearby stool and dragged it over the carpet towards Nigel. Nigel folded his arms, and felt himself blushing a little. “I don’t need your pity.”“Well that much at least we have in common, then.” Triggers was leaning forward on his stick now, resting his chin on his hands and regarding Nigel over them. Not without some misgivings, Nigel sat. “Any idiot can flirt his way through a room,” Triggers observed, in a low voice. “And it takes nothing to be young, and being beautiful is a gift, not a skill. Being interesting is all of which a man can truly be proud.”Nigel raised his eyebrow. “You don’t count goodness for much, then?”Triggers gave a short laugh. “There is no goodness, not in us, not about us, not around us. There is pleasure and pain, and a short enough time to try and keep outweighing the one with the other.” He looked away for a moment, down at the carpet. Nigel felt his own ripple of melancholy, and bit his lip. Perhaps Triggers caught the moment – his expression, when Nigel looked up again, had softened very slightly. “I don’t like to talk about the war, about the planes, about the blasted leg, because none of you young men understand one damn thing about it. What war means. What it can take and also what it can give. And then take away again. You may look at me like I’m a raving lunatic for all I care, but the truth is that when this next war comes, everyone in this house will be swallowed up in it, one way or another. And see how useful goodness is to you then.”“And therefore we must sin whilst we still can?”Triggers grinned at him. He was, for all his roughness, more than a little handsome, and his eyes flickered, glinting. “Now that, at last, sounds like a proposition.”Nigel blinked. His skin was heating again, all over his whole body, a strange subtle burn that seemed never to have ceased since first Triggers had made him angry, and now began to grow and hum through him. “I don’t know that I...”“If you never go home with anyone, Mr Wilde, you must be more than impatient by now. And I’ve told you, clear and upfront, what kind of person I am. I shan’t want to see you after the morning, I dare say, but I’ll tell you that now. You’ve been refreshingly blunt with me, if I may say so, and I’ve returned the favour. Can’t we continue in this way a little longer?”He looked at Nigel, and Nigel, not quite able to draw a breath, looked back. His mouth was dry. He could feel his pulse bounding in his neck. Small rivulets of sweat were running down his back. How had this man, this strange, half-demonic man reached and grabbed this part of him, this part Nigel had thought, had genuinely believed, to have died long ago when Thomas had?“Nigel! Nige, darling!” It was Bim, bouncing Bim, arriving at his elbow. “Oh Nigel, can you imagine? A whole trainload of them, just finished some kind of Naval Reserve weekend or something, and every one of them in those delicious Guernsey sweaters, you know, the kind that tickle?”“I’m sorry, Bim.” Dazedly, Nigel stood up. Triggers, rising with him, was grinning. “I’ll have to leave you to it, we’re going to go and eat something.”The gasp of surprise Bim emitted could not be stifled and perhaps was easily excusable. He rallied quickly, smiled and widened his eyes approvingly. “Well darling, do enjoy it. I keep saying a proper... meal would do you the world of good.”Nigel rolled his eyes at him, and Bim laughed. “New Year’s Eve, and a nice man taking you out, it’s an omen! A good omen for 1939!”But Nigel was scarcely listening. Triggers had held out his arm and Nigel, terrifyingly, deliciously conscious of eyes on him (of an exclamation across the room, Player gasping “Bravo Nigel!” gleefully), was taking it and being lead, or leading, out and onwards and into something that, for good or ill, had every likelihood of being extremely interesting indeed.