it’s perfectly comfortable for Will to visit as much as he likes,” Martin said. “And I’ve hired a girl to look in on me so Will doesn’t need to feel like the only one responsible for me when I’m ill.”
“Visit? He means to stay. If you’ll have him.”
“If I’ll—you must have hit your head. Of course I will. But I never meant to take him away from his life. He has you and his friends and I hate that he’s going to walk away from that.”
Hartley, who had taken a cup of tea, held it halfway to his mouth and stared at Martin. “He didn’t walk away from anything. His friends will still be there. Martin, he’s happiest with someone to look after. He always has been. Especially if that someone is you. And Martin, you pillock, you like looking after him when he has the sullens. You know,” he said, staring at his mug of tea as if it contained important answers to life’s mysteries, “he’ll be devastated if you die. So please, for his sake, don’t do anything reckless. You didn’t see how he was last autumn.”
“As much as I’d like to promise that I’ll live out my three score and ten with him at my side, that’s not a promise I can make.” He didn’t add that it wasn’t a promise anyone could make, because while other couples could indulge in the fantasy that forever would last the same amount of time for both of them, Martin and Will would have to deceive themselves more than most in order to participate in that delusion. “All I can promise is that while I’m alive, your brother will be loved, and that I’ll do my best to make sure that after I’m gone he doesn’t regret having loved me. I know that he’ll grieve me, maybe for a long while. But he’s strong and it won’t ruin him. He has other things to be happy about, other people who love him.”
“I see.” Hartley’s voice was thick, and he turned to the windows, his back to Martin.
“I believe that’s quite enough sincerity for one day,” Martin said.
Hartley snorted. But he drank his tea, still standing, both of them eying the chairs as if sitting in them would be admitting some fatal weakness. “I ought to go,” he said, long after his cup was empty, “if I want to catch the mail coach up to London.” He put his cup on the table, brushed his trousers clean, and made for the door.
“Come back, though,” Martin said, after Hartley passed through the door and was a few yards down the lane. “You don’t need to only meet him at the inn. If this is his home—” He swallowed. “You’re welcome here, regardless.”
Hartley looked over his shoulder and gave Martin a quick nod. Martin rinsed the teapot and fed the uneaten crumpets to the pigs, then he swept the floor and took his medicine and did all the needful things that shaped a day.
Thanks to muddy roads and a broken axle, Will didn’t reach Sussex until a full week after he had first left London for Cumberland. Just outside Manchester on his trip back south, he gave up trying to sleep in the coach and paid for a private room at an inn, then paid even more for a bath, and by the time he climbed back into the stagecoach he thought it might have been the best money he had ever spent. No use showing up at Martin’s door—their door—looking like death warmed over, was there.
By the time he reached the Blue Boar he decided he’d be happy never traveling further than London for the rest of his life. Several minutes after the coach deposited him in the inn yard, his bones still rattled as if in memory of every pothole and rut from Carlisle to East Grinstead.
“There you are,” said Daisy, materializing from behind the bar. “We’ve all been wondering when you’d show up.”
“How is he?” Will asked.
“No worse than when he got here. He’ll be glad to see you.” Will could almost hear the unspoken finally, you horse’s arse, and could not disagree. “Since you’re headed that way, you can bring his supper. There’s enough for two.” She brought a hamper out from behind the bar. “Sandwiches, a couple of cakes, and a jug of ale. Now be gone with you.”
He had been away for less than three weeks, but three weeks in the springtime was the difference between a