The Spell Read Online Free PDF Page A

from him. “Well, you should see him now.”
    “That was a long time ago,” said Alex, explaining the hairstyle, the whole look, to himself.
    “Oh god darling. It’s pre-war. I mean, it’s Julia Margaret Cameron, that one.”
    And that was a kind of comfort, along with the cold tomato-juice and its after-burn of strong spirits. All he’d known of his successor till that morning was his name, his profession, and his addresses in London and here. He had wanted as little as possible for his imagination to worry at. So it was something to learn that he hadn’t been left, in his thirty-seventh year, for a kid on a sports scholarship.
    Justin flushed and smirked like a braggart anticipating jeers. “No, he’s gorgeously old.”
    (Even so, thought Alex, I hope I haven’t lost him to a pensioner. And then dimly saw the powerless absurdity of such hopes – the muddled desire to have been replaced by someone better, which was crushing but evolutionary, and by someone inferior, which would show Justin’s weakness of judgement, and prove to Alex that he was better off without him.)
    They went up the narrow box staircase for a quick orientation of bathroom and sleeping arrangements – Alex only glanced over Justin’s shoulder into the almost unfurnished main bedroom: he saw a huge bed with an oak headboard and footboard and invalidish stacks of pillows, and the little brass clock under the bedside lamp. His own room was next door, with only a plank wall, and a single bed under a flowered counterpane. He said he liked it, although he knew the bed would give him cramps like an adolescent, and he had a vague sense of being in a servant’s room, despite the facetious collection of old brown books on the chest of drawers:
Queer Folk of the West Country, Who’s Who in Surtees, Remarkable Sayings of Remarkable Queens
. Justin hung in the doorway. “So are you seeing anyone?” he said.
    The upstairs windows were set low in the walls, and though the midday sun made a dazzling lozenge on the window-sill the room was shadowy and cool under the thatch. The atmosphere was faintly illicit, as if they ought to have been tearing around outside but had sneaked back unnoticed into the open house.
    “Not really.” Alex gave a little squashed smile. The truth was he had been too depressed, too shaken by his own failure, to believe that any other man would want him, or could ever fall in love with him. He didn’t often lie, and he was pained to hear himself say, “There’s someone who comes round; nothing serious.”
    “Is he cute?”
    “Yep.”
    “Is he blond?”
    “He is, actually.” Alex shrugged. “He’s very young.”
    “He’s another virgin blond like me, isn’t he?” Justin made one of his experienced-barmaid faces. “Of course I’m foully jealous.” And despite the big congratulatory smile that followed, Alex registered the truth in the customary hyperbole; and then saw that the congratulation itself was mildly demeaning.
    “It really isn’t anything,” he said.
    They found Robin in running-gear and oven-gloves, knocking the loaves from their hot tins on to a wire rack. The latent smell of marjoram and garlic and rising dough had bloomed into the kitchen with its own stifling welcome. Justin scuffed through to the fridge and the jug of drink.
    “Darling, this is Alex. Darling, this is Robin.”
    “Just a minute.” Then, shaking off the padded pockets, Robin turned with a smile that Alex knew already, though he doubted if he would have recognised the rest of the big handsome boy in the big handsome man. Alex was in the first freeing ease of drink on an empty stomach, and came forward and shook his hand and grinned back; and then stood close by him for a second or two, feeling the damp heat of him. The sweat on his bare shoulders and in the channel of his chest under the loose tank-top, the sporting readiness of his manner, the glanced-at weight of his cock and balls in the silvery slip of his running-shorts,