Not for the first time, Micha wondered how his love alone could be enough to replace a whole world. To become one.
The doors to the church stood open, flung as wide as arms, and Micha paused outside as music and voices raised in song came flowing over the threshold. “Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea. Come, Friend of sinners, thus abide with me.”
Micha’s lip curled. It had been a long time since he had felt any desire to enter a church. In truth, he felt no desire to do so now.
But then the music died away, and he heard Thomas begin to speak. “‘Beloved, let us love one another: For love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.’ John 4:7.” A pause, and then Thomas went on in a more conversational tone, “I’ve had occasion recently to think back on all the sermons inflicted on you over the years”—a ripple of gentle, if slightly knowing laughter—“and I realised I’ve never once spoken of love.”
Micha, who had been about to retreat, paused. And then, unable to help himself, came slowly, reluctantly, into the church. It was a plain building, white walls and wooden beams, high arched windows and a few simple stained-glass scenes. This was English country Anglicanism at its most traditional and austere, but for the lavishness of the light that swept the little room, silver-gold and butter-soft, and the flowers, oh the flowers, riotous in their abundance, brazen in their beauty, as invincible and perfect as the secret laughter of lovers.
“In my life,” Thomas was saying, “it’s always been a word both over- and underused. I know I’ve said on far too many occasions that I love my first cup of tea of the day.” He smiled so delightedly at this very small, and not very amusing, joke that Micha wanted to run up the nave and kiss him. Then cringed, internally, at the direction of his thoughts. But no lightning came to strike him down.
“And yet,” Thomas went on, “if you have never known love, the love of your father, the love—as a parent—you will feel for your child,or even the love for a sweetheart or a spouse, how can you even begin to understand the love of God? A love that’s as gentle as it is strong, as tender and as intimate as a lover’s embrace, as warming and wonderful as that first sip of tea. It seems impossible to comprehend, but it’s the nature of love to be all these things, all these things and more, both in heaven and in earthly counterpoint.” Thomas paused, his eyes shining like the sky. “And that is what I wish to think about today. The miracle of love, in all its multiplicity.”
Micha cared little for God, but he loved Thomas and so he listened, believing not in the benevolence of the deity but, instead, in the conviction of the man who stood before them.
“Love is not a ...”—for the first time Thomas stumbled, seeming to search for words—“a static thing, like a piece of wood you can hold in your hand, and say, ‘There, that is love.’ It’s fluid, changeable, endless; it grows, and we grow with it. I think of Philippians 1:9: ‘And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgement.’ The more I live, and the more I love, the more I know that this is what I want. It’s what I pray for, above all else. Simply, that I may grow in love.” Thomas was silent a moment, then continued. “When I was writing this sermon, I thought about everything I’ve done here and I asked myself, ‘Is this love? Is this a work of love?’ And I think this is how the Lord answered me. That loving Him, and loving the world, is mediated through the ways we love the people around us, as partners and parents and lovers and friends. All love flows together, from Him and to Him. The multiplicity of love keeps multiplying.”
Thomas’s quiet voice filled the little church, rich as the light, as sweet as the scent of flowers. Micha was more than half-entranced. The man at the pulpit was still Thomas, still very much Thomas, diffident of manner, careful with his words, but surety infused him like flame. And there was such passion in his eyes.
Oh fuck,Micha thought, understanding at last,oh fuck.
That’s how he looks at me.
He heard nothing more until the very end.
“I shall simply leave you with this,” said Thomas, smiling. “1 Corinthians 16:14: ‘Let all that you do be done in love.’”
Micha stumbled out of the church, into harsh sunlight that burned his eyes and a sky that suddenly seemed a vast blue nothing. He had not been smote, or turned into salt, but he might as well have been. For love had vanquished him, as it always did, and the pain of it was as deep and sharp as the spring.
Once he’d loved Thomas without recognising it, in fear and need and desperate avarice. Now, though, all that was gone, and all that remained was the love, stripped down to some bare, pure quintessence, bright as an unquenchable flame.
He had told Thomas these were his decisions, faith or love, Nettlefield or Micha, when, in truth, they were Micha’s decisions too. Unused as Micha was to having choices of his own, it had perhaps been easier to let Thomas bear the burden of their future alone. Yet he knew now, with a terrible certainty, that Thomas would never leave Nettlefield. Of course, he believed he would—he sincerely thought that he could—but asking him to give up his small quiet future was no better than asking Isidore to give up his brilliant one.
Then again, unlike Isidore, Thomas would insist he wasn’t being asked.
But how could he take Thomas from Nettlefield? Because it would be taking. And it wouldn’t be love. It would be selfishness.
Limiting, not multiplying.
If Micha had been a braver man, a better man, he would have slipped away quietly. No tears, no protestations, no goodbyes. Let Thomas think him faithless. But he couldn’t do it. He had, almost without noticing, learned to stop counting. The kisses and touches and love words had gathered between them, innumerable as grains of sand, as precious as opals. But there were not enough of them. Not nearly enough. There would never be enough.
Every day he woke with the same thought.One more kiss. Just one more kiss. Tell me you love me. One more time.
Onelasttime.
He sat down on the edge of a sarcophagus to wait, fingers playing idly over the moss-riven surface of the gold-grey stone.
And, finally, came Thomas, an angular figure in sober black, picking his way through the snowdrops, smiling the smile meant only for Micha.
Micha tried to contain the longing that rose up inside him like it wanted to choke him. “I think,” he managed, “if I believed in your God, I’d love Him too.”
Thomas reached out and curled his fingers—those smooth, perfect gentleman’s fingers—around Micha’s wrist, though only for a moment. This was how they touched, like traitors sharing a conspiracy. “I thought I saw you at the back. Then I thought I must have imagined it.”
“No, I was there. For a little.”
A trace of pink warmed Thomas’s cheeks. “I was thinking of you.” He pulled himself onto the sarcophagus, next to Micha, aligning their shoulders, their thighs, the edges of their hips. And Micha tried not to imagine sitting like this, together in some other place, beneath a different sky. After a moment, Thomas reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out an envelope, addressed to the bishop. “I managed to ... find the words. And today seems as good a day as any to tell our friends that we may soon be leaving them.”
Micha stared at the envelope, and at the precise, modest script that was as essentially Thomas as his anxious hands, his lean, pale body. When he spoke, his voice sounded unfamiliar even to himself, as eerie as distant brass. “You’re not going to send that letter, Thomas. And we’re certainly not going to speak to our friends.”
