[fic]: the kings and queens of england

the kings and queens of England

The Kings and Queens of England, names and dates and key events, no longer counted as real history, not even in 1983, not even at Oxford, or at Cutlers’ Grammar School. Dakin had memorised the dates, though, out of some vague need to be thorough before interviews, and because the absurd, pompous cadence of the Victorian rhyme was funny, the sort of thing that drove Hector insane. He'd performed it for Hector for a laugh, but he’d been half-serious about memorising it. You never knew what those bastards up at Oxford would want. That was before Irwin, of course, before he’d been shown the twisting, shifting possibilities of real history.

“Questions not answers,” Irwin had said, the afternoon light striking his glasses, stiff and upright by the blackboard. It was Posner, as usual, who had frowned and asked,

“But what’s the point of questions without answers?”

“Well, and what's the point of questions that have been answered?”

Pure Irwin, that, glib and slippery - and young, Dakin realises now. It’s the sort of clever answer that became rote for him in tutorials as an undergraduate, years ago. God, Irwin had been so young, with his bad haircut and gleaming glasses and quick answers, so sure of his own cynicism. I know how the world works, he’d said, and Dakin had believed him; when, truth was, Irwin had barely known how Oxford worked. Let alone the real world.

First William the Norman (1066 - 1087)

In the real world, Dakin knows now, nobody gives a fuck for questions that haven’t been answered. Or worse, that can’t. The Inland Revenue want answers, numbers, dates, projections; he provides them. He’s bloody good at his job.

Then William his son (1087 - 1100)

He’s good at his job; he does all right at life too. He has all the right clothes, a bargain of a flat in the heart of the City, friends. A succession of poised and pretty girlfriends, none of whom manage to defeat him at the game he learnt he was a master at when he was seventeen. Of course, when he was seventeen - watching Irwin lick his bottom lip and turn scarlet - he’d thought the game was life, that that one victory meant everything was won. One fucking thing happens after another, he thinks sometimes when he’s drunk. Usually, it makes him laugh.

Henry, Stephen and Henry, then Richard and John; (1100 - 1135), (1135 - 1154), (1154 - 1189), (1189 - 1199), (1199 - 1216)

One fucking thing after another. His father dies in the autumn of ’91. His mother remarries in ’94, decentish bloke whose name Dakin can never quite remember. Late in the February of ’96, Scripps turns up at the door of his flat, colour fierce in his face and eyes glittering, to announce he’s getting married, fuck, married to some girl who is it, the soul-mate, the other half, she plays the violin and makes the best jokes and knows, really knows him, she’s French and her hair and she said yes, Dakin, actually yes, could he have a drink? Dakin gets him a drink, makes a few filthy jokes in his best man’s speech at the wedding and makes brief eye contact with Akthar, with Rudge. No one’s heard from Crowther or Timms in years and Lockwood’s dead. One fucking thing, he thinks, staring at Waterloo Bridge, lit over the river, that night. It doesn’t make him laugh.

Next Henry the Third, Edwards One, Two and Three; (1216 - 1272), (1272 - 1307), (1307 - 1327), (1327 - 1377) 

He’s on the tube on his way to work, his mind mostly on the morning’s meeting, when he suddenly realises that the skinny narrow-faced bloke opposite, in the faded T-shirt and jeans and crappy trainers, is Posner.

It’s the shock of recognition that makes him say it aloud and then he’s not sure until Posner blinks up from his contemplation of his hands, dreamy eyes suddenly focusing, and stammers, incredulous, “D-Dakin?”

It’s not just the name, though no one much calls him that any more; it’s his tone, so startlingly familiar it’s like a punch to the chest. It may as well be 1983 and the back of the class, Posner’s eyes dark and wide and hopeful, his whole body charged with longing whenever Dakin had so much glanced at him.

It steam-rollers him, the nostalgia, with Posner just staring like that, so utterly disbelieving, and even though he knows it's stupid he has to take him home and fuck him, pretending that he can taste chalk, that tomorrow morning Scripps will give him hell for this and Hector will get Posner to sing and Crowther and Timms and Lockwood will nearly kill themselves laughing.

It can’t last, of course, even with his face buried in Posner’s narrow shoulder, Posner’s fingers in his hair. That’s cigarettes in Posner’s voice, years of practise in his hands, and his eyes are stripped, unflinching, adult. He still remembers his Auden, though, and he starts, voice dry and low in the still room, without Dakin having even to ask. Lay your sleeping head, my love. He halts, darkly emphatic, on human and faithless, sounds out the syllables in individual beauty, and Dakin thinks maybe all Posner’s been doing, all these years, is learning to properly read Auden.

Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

“I,” Dakin says into the long silence after he finishes and Posner kisses his forehead once, dry, and then releases him, reaches for his trousers.

“It’s all right,” he says, “good to see you,” and he’s dressed and looking for his socks by the time Dakin can more than sit up, offer him a cup of tea or a drink or something.

“That’s - polite of you,” Posner says, amused, almost, except for his eyes which are sharp and cataloguing and disturbingly naked. “You have changed.”

“You too,” Dakin answers, not sure how true it is or isn’t, still, and Posner looks away, down at his bare feet on Dakin’s expensive, gleaming hardwood floor.

He stays for the drink and the conversation is strange, mundane, Dakin talking about work and the flat and Scripps in the South of France with Posner fingering the knee of his jeans and fidgeting.

“What about you?” he asks, finally. “What do you -”

“Teaching, I think,” Posner mumbles into his drink, shrugs nervously. “I’m taking the course. I don’t know.”

“Teaching what, history?” and Posner smiles for the first time, his new, incontrovertibly different smile, shockingly sharp on his still-soft face.

“Or General Studies, I suppose. I don’t much fancy history, all the dates and things.”

“That’s not -” Dakin starts and then stops, laughs at himself. He caught Irwin on the telly the other day, talking about Tudor latrines. “I can still do the Kings and Queens of England, you know.”

Posner laughs too, meets Dakin’s eyes again. “Oh, you did that to piss off Hector, I remember. I can only remember the last bit, though, Queen Victoria. May she long be the last.”

“1837 to 1901,” Dakin replies automatically and then maybe it’s the beer but he hears himself say, voice gone unexpectedly rough and jagged, “I can’t, I don’t remember anything else.”

Posner says nothing for a while, just studies Dakin’s face while Dakin takes another pull of his drink to hide the way he’s flushing. He’s about to try for a joke or something when Posner leans forward, intent as ever, and says, “tell me.”

Dakin opens his mouth to say, “what, all of it?” and “you’re joking,” but the names and dates spill out instead. Two Henries, sixth Edward, Queen Mary, Queen Bess. The Jamie, the Scotsman, then Charles who they slew. 1625 - 1649. “And then the Interregnum,” he says, laughs self-consciously, and Posner shuts his eyes, hard, like Hector used to over Shakespeare, over tragedy.

“Finish,” he says softly, a teacher’s voice, and Dakin breathes out, breathes deep, and, finally, Lizzie Two is still alive, does.