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By Root 1196 0

cricked his neck both sides, ran a hand through his hair. He had a way of distancing himself at once, and seemed almost to counter the bleak little minute of irrational sadness by pretending that nothing had happened. His words might have followed a merely adequate meal, his thoughts already on something more important. He squared his shoulders, smiled and snuffled. The squirrel twitched its brown tail, scrabbled up its branch, watched him again. Perhaps it had watched his whole performance. It seemed to be applauding, with its tiny hands. George, still lying in the leaves, watched them both. He was amazed each time by Cecil’s detachment, unsure if it was a virtue or a lack. Perhaps Cecil thought it rather poor form of George to be so shaken by the experience. The tender comedy of George’s recovery, the invalidish wince and protesting groan at his ravishment, were ignored. Once in college he had been back at his desk within a minute, with a paper to finish, and seemed almost vexed when he turned a while later to find George still lying there, as he was now, spent but tender, and longing for the patient touch and simple smile of shared knowledge.

“Funny little creature,” said Cecil whimsically.

“Oh … thank you,” said George.

“Not you,” said Cecil, raising his chin and mimicking the rodent’s spasms of nibbling.

George gave a rueful laugh, and sat forward with his hands round his knees. He wanted Cecil to know how he felt, but he feared that what he felt was wrong; and even so, to tell him would be to praise him, since he had produced this wild effect in him. “Help me up, sir,” he said.

Cecil came back and took his raised hands and pulled him up. And he wasn’t so distant—they kissed, for a second or two, long enough for reassurance but not to get anything started again.

THE STREAMS RAN DOWN at two or three places in the woods, threading and pooling and dropping again, among the huge roots of the oaks. They were hardly noisy, you came on them by surprise, just when you heard their busy trickling. They brought down leaves that caught and gathered on twigs and roots to make little grey-gold dams, with clear pools behind them. At a low point, by the wood’s edge, two streams ran into one behind the dike of a fallen tree, silted and half-submerged, and made a bigger pond; in high summer it could be too shallow for bathing, but the recent rains had filled it up again.

“The lowest pond is deeper than it looks,” said George.

“Aha …,” said Cecil.

“If you want to have a dip …?” He felt he shouldn’t show how much he wanted him naked again, and then he would get it. The weekend so far had been hobbled and hampered by dropped trousers and half-unbuttoned shirts.

“You go first, and report on conditions,” Cecil said.

George gave him a sideways smile, ready but a little disappointed. “All right,” he said; and he started to unlace his shoes.

“Do it slowly,” said Cecil. “And keep looking at me.” He went over to the great oak above the pond, scanning its twisted and bulbous trunk for footholds, then in five seconds scrambled up to the low landing where it divided, and eased himself out on his bottom a short way along a broad, almost horizontal branch. He sat there, suddenly owning the wood as much as George had believed himself to do. “I can see you,” he said.

“And I can see you,” said George, unbuttoning the top of his shirt and then pulling it over his head.

“I said slowly,” said Cecil.

George was slower, accordingly, when it came to his trousers. He found a certain shyness clouding his desire to please. Cecil maintained a provoking half-smile, arousal masked in amusement. “You’re like some shy sylvan creature,” he said, “unused to the prying eyes of men. Perhaps you’re a hamadryad.”

“Hamadryads are female,” said George, “which I think you can see I’m not.”

“I still can’t really see. You look a bit like a hamadryad to me. I expect you live in this oak tree I’m sitting in.”

George folded his trousers loosely and laid them on an old stump; but he turned away to slip off his white drawers, and saw with a twinge of regret that