Quandary
based on Mary Renault’s The Charioteer

“The problem with gossip, thought Hugh, is that one doesn’t actually know.  Then again, he doubted if anyone actually did except for those directly involved.

Assuming, of course, that anyone was.

Now, little though Hugh liked to think about it, he had to admit (if only to himself) that Ralph did seem interested in Odell.  By which Hugh meant “interested”.  It was not a taste that Hugh himself shared.  Nor, for that matter, was it any experience he’d suffered, which perhaps simply meant he’d been lucky in the prefect he’d fagged for.  But he and Ralph had been friends since prep school, and told each other almost everything.  If not in detail (and certainly not that sort of detail), he was sure that Ralph would have complained to him about anyone in Senior School who bullied him.  And buggering the fags was bullying.  Well, a sort of bullying.   But it was a sort of bullying that wasn’t part of school tradition, not at this school.

Now Ralph woudn’t bully Odell:  it would be completely out of character.  Anyway, Odell didn’t act like a bullied twirp (and, as a prefect, Hugh knew the signs).   He was a bright, confident lad; a good athlete, too.  Not in the spectacular way like Ralph, but a good all-rounder.  In so far as Hugh took individual notice of the Middle School, he thought Odell had promise.

That Ralph might see more … care more … in that way….

It was a disconcerting thought.  But Hugh had walked past Study Four and heard the voices of the boys within, caught Ralph’s name, and—to his shame—tarried outside the door for a few minutes too long.  If they talked, even secretly among themselves, about how “Lanyon likes Odell” then the tale had gone too far to be stopped.  Indeed, any attempt to do so would backfire.

Hugh remembered last year’s middle-school play.  Sword fights were always popular with schoolboys; and Hamlet did oblige.  He’d been told to coach the actors in fencing; but, when he’d been ill, he’d asked Ralph to take over.  Afterwards, his friend had talked about Odell:  he’d been hard on the lad, he said; and sounded guilty.

“Well, if he needed it,” Hugh had said mildly.

“No,” was all Ralph said.

Hugh had looked at him quizzically; and Ralph had flushed.  Yes, flushed.  It had been so disconcerting that nothing more had been said, not by either of them.  Still, Hugh had not forgotten.  In bed that night he had puzzled over it:  why would Ralph blush for Odell?  No doubt there were innocent possibilities; no doubt he did his friend a disservice by not being able to imagine them.  Nevertheless (and perhaps just because the minds of schoolboys tend that way), Hugh had never been able to come up with any reason—except for the one reason.

It was not, after all, as though things like that didn’t happen at school.  Were, in fact, an endemic vice at public schools.  As a prefect, Hugh was quite well aware of the subtle policing of dorms and studies; bogs and baths were set up to be as public as possible precisely so that such things would not be easy to conceal.  He thought he had a pretty fair idea of all that went on—who did and who didn’t, you might say.  One had to consider the morale of the school.

And now this.  Had Ralph been too hard on Odell?  Perhaps to cover his “interest”?  Since then, though, especially when the subject of Odell’s swimming might come up, it had become all too obvious.  He actually rather likes the boy, Hugh admitted (if only to himself).  Or rather, he “likes” the boy.  Yes, thought Hugh, Ralph maybe feigned being hard on Odell to cover up how he really felt.

On the other hand, there was nothing about Odell to suggest that he knew how Ralph felt.

This sudden realization came as reassurance:  the Ralph Lanyon whom Hugh knew was still honest and honourable:  he’d not spoken to—or done anything untoward with!—young Odell.  Whatever he felt, he kept to himself.  Oh, hinted to Hugh, perhaps.  (They had, after all, known each other since prep school.)  But he’d said nothing explicit, not even to Hugh; and, Hugh suspected, he never would.

Nevertheless, Hugh worried.  The signs that he had to admit, albeit reluctantly, he saw in Ralph were signs that were also discernable to others.  As witness Study Four’s gossip—and, if one coterie of friends dared talk about the Head Boy in such terms, then others undoubtedly did so as well.

Should I have a word with him?  Hugh flinched from the notion.  He wanted nothing less.  But surely, as Ralph’s friend of such long standing, did he not have a duty to warn him?  Should he not put him on his guard, so that he might avoid any situation, however innocent, that might be misinterpreted?  There was no point in letting him continue innocently exacerbating the situation.  (But how did one go about starting?  “Are you buggering a Middle School boy, Ralph?”  It was not exactly a topic of idle conversation.)

The funny thing, thought Hugh, is that—if you’d asked me last term—I’d have said Ralph had something going in the lighting room.  God knows, he spent far more time there than I’d ever have thought anyone would want to.  Admittedly, the equipment was rather ambitious.  Also, the end result had been noticeably imaginative.  Nevertheless, he did spend much more time there than mere stage-lighting could ever justify.  Also, the door locked—and Ralph and Hazell had spent an inordinate amount of time in the lighting room behind that locked door!  Nevertheless, there was no gossip about their activities.  No one had sniggered and gossiped in Study Four.  Or any of the other studies for that matter—well, not that Hugh had ever heard.

We’re talking about Hazell here, he thought sensibly.  Ralph couldn’t possibly actually like Hazell.  Not in the honest, decent sort of meaning of the world.  No one was friends with Hazell.  It was impossible.  On the other hand, if one were inclined that way (and, in his heart of hearts, little though he wanted to admit it, Hugh had a faint feeling that it might be possible that Ralph might actually be like that), then there was one thing that Hazell could offer:  an easy arse.

If it were true, it would be damned unfair if Ralph got crimed for gossip about Odell.