For many years I was the master of the most beautiful manor. It hadn't always been mine, there were many who owned it before me, and there would be many after, but whilst it was mine, it was an honour and I was duty-bound to stay there and take care of it, keeping the wish to my late father and brother and be the best man I could be. My name is Toby, short for Tobias, and I wish it were as simple as the shortening of a name to describe my role within that household and the manor which I presided over. For many years upon this Earth I had rarely a day that was straightforward, or a time when everything ran smoothly. In some cases, you could say, mayhem followed me everywhere.
For I, Toby of Elmwood Manor loved a man named George and he most certainly loved me. And although we were married to two wonderful ladies- Meg and Sophia- we still loved each other firstly. My cousin Meg was in love with Sophia, and Sophia equally in love with her, and under our roof we lived the life of two married couples, seemingly the same as everyone else, two husbands and wives- two in love pairs. Except in our case we were in love with the wrong people. Well, to the world we were. In our hearts however we were very much in love with the right people and over the years there was never a doubt in my mind that all the mayhem that ensued, all the caution, all the lies, deception and madness was all worth it; for our lives at Elmwood Manor were the most memorable and wonderful of my existence.
The spring of 1925 was the season of our weddings. The Great War was a fading memory which could never entirely be forgotten, and our vows, though very much for convenience, were none-the-less still true as I so wished to honour Sophia and take care of her as much as a husband should of a wife. But it was Georgie I made those specific vows to in my mind, thinking of him as I uttered the words in the church whereupon I vowed to be there through richer and poorer, in sickness and in health until death parted us all in the end.
And so we began our married lives as a falsehood, a pretence to those around us, and by the May of that year we were still newly-weds who had yet to show society what we were made of. We decided it'd be correct to host a party to honour our nuptials and also our living arrangements. Society already thought it strange that Meg and George were to live with Sophia and myself but over the years that followed, it was going to appear stranger and stranger in our attempts to be as 'normal' as possible. So, we decided as odd as we were, as alien as we felt- to live our chosen lives as best we could.
...
The day of the party started off as any ordinary day with a scrambled egg breakfast and a leisurely walk in the grounds mid-morning followed by some tedious estate paperwork after a small luncheon had been consumed. As the afternoon drew to a close, I sensed the atmosphere in the manor change as the servants scurried about to-and-fro, decorating the hall and the dining room as the four of us sat upstairs, attempting to dress for the occasion but not quite managing to be ready on time. It was only half and hour before we were due to have guests that we were all still dreadfully unready and dreadfully anxious. It was dreadful all round.
I hurried into the girls' bedroom without thinking, flinging open the door to find my cousin Meg about to undress from her tatty day clothes. She still had a smear of mud on her cheek from where she'd been planting flowers to help our gardener Duckett.
"Out!" she yelled in her usual booming voice as I covered my eyes, trying not to see her as she slipped out of her clothes and was left, I supposed, standing in her undergarments. Meg was never one for being shy but even she had her limits.
"I'm dreadfully sorry, Meg," I said from behind my hand and trying to find the door handle without looking. "I forget which room I'm in these days."
As I turned to the door, or where I thought it was, my wife Sophia rushed past me and laughed. "What are you doing here, Toby dear?"
"I have no idea. Trying to find Georgie."
"He's in his own room." She spun me around into the right direction and I was out of the door finally, standing in the hall.
I still felt rather disorientated when I entered the next bedroom and found George sitting on the bed, dressed from the waist-up in his finest dinner suit but in true George fashion having neglected his trousers. A grown man sitting in underwear and socks. It was a sight to behold.
"Georgie, dear, haven't you forgotten something?" I asked.
He smiled up at me as if he only just realised I was in the room.
"I've forgotten why we're having this party."
I approached him and placed my arms around his shoulders, kissing the top of his nose. "We're having this party to celebrate our marriages."
"To other people." George sighed.
I smiled sympathetically. I felt the same. I longed to share my love for George with the world and I knew Meg felt the same for Sophia. It was going to be difficult to ignore all our feelings, shut them away like old love letters in a box and never able to bring them out in front of people for fear of embarrassing them or frightening them away.
"I know, I know. But for tonight can we at least appear to be normal. And normal means wearing trousers."
"Who's not wearing trousers?" George asked before finally looking down at his hairy white legs. "Whoops. I knew I shouldn't have distracted myself by playing with the cat."
I scooped up George's little ginger cat into my arms but it hissed. It always hissed! "Come on Bartholomew the Second, time for you to vacate and let your owner change."
"He's Bartholomew the Third!"
"Really? What happened to the second?"
"I think you know." He sneered and then I remembered. How could I have forgotten? It was last summer and it was my new car which had resulted in his new cat. I smiled apologetically and then shoved the newer cat out of the door.
"Oh darling, your trousers, put them on."
He then got up, hobbling with the pain from his war injury, unable to stand properly, and stood in front of the mirror, still trouser-less and instead staring hopelessly at his reflection as he leaned on my arm for support. "How old I look."
I placed my arms around his waist and nestled my head under his chin. "You look forever young to me."
He smiled, still not wearing trousers, still standing with bare legs, socks and suspenders, still the most precious little creature in all of existence. He leaned on my arm as we admired ourselves in the mirror.
"I suppose I shall have to be romantic with Meg for the guests," he said.
"Of course you will, she's your wife!"
"She scares me. Don't get me wrong, your cousin is a peach but I'm not used to having a lady wife."
"You'll get used to it. It's only been a month."
"You already seem to be the professional. When Meg and I go to kiss, our heads collide and we look at each other as though we were long lost siblings. When you kiss Sophia, you look like you've been interested in girls since you were twelve."
"It's an act, darling. I'm a better actor than you. Besides aren't all men a little afraid of their wives?"
"Are they positively afraid of them?"
"Don't be silly. Meg's a kitten really, and you know how you love cats. And she's also so much of a tomboy and we know you love boys, so what's the problem?"
"That's another thing, Toby. I saw someone bent over the bushes outside, thought it was you. Got closer and closer for a pinch and found Meg doing the gardening. Really, girls shouldn't wear trousers like us chaps."
"You're not wearing trousers!"
It was at that moment the aforementioned Meg burst through the door, singing, causing George to stagger to the bed and fall upon it.
"Hello Meg," he said, trying to get his breath back as like a tortoise he lay on his back, flailing, unable to get back up again.
"Hello George," she said, not looking at him. "I'm looking for my earrings, think I left them lying around somewhere in here."
"Oh Meg, you really ought to tidy things away," I said.
"Well, it's hard having two bedrooms. I can't keep track."
There was a little knock at the door. "Hello, everyone decent?"
"No, but come anyway," George said.
Sophia entered a second later looking marvellous in an emerald green dress that displayed her fine back and was decorated so she looked like a glorious peacock. She wore a matching peacock feathered headband over her strawberry blonde curls.
"There you three are," she said, "as usual I'm the only one ready."
"I'm ready too!" I protested.
She straightened my bowtie. "Alright, now you're presentable."
"Oh George, really!" Meg said, tutting at him as she finally looked at her husband. She folded her arms. "Why are you not wearing trousers?"
"Because people keep interru-
"-put them on! I absolutely refuse to enter a room with a man wearing no trousers."
"Don't bully him, Meg," I said, pinching her, "you're also not ready. Your dress isn't even done up and your hair is messy."
"I'm trying to find my earrings."
"Here they are," Sophia said, taking them off the dressing table. She grabbed Meg's hand, sighed and pulled her behind the dressing screen. "Let me adjust you, you beautiful doll."
I laughed as I saw their heads peeking over the top of the screen and as I glanced quickly, they were a mass of arms. Then I observed that Meg, like I had with George, placed a little kiss on the top of Sophia's freckled nose. I spun back around to my own love and to no surprise there he was, still trouser-less, causally and slowly reaching for the coat hanger that held his trousers but which for George may as well have held prison overalls.
Finally, he placed them on and the ladies appeared from behind the screen making final adjustments to each other. All four of us stood together in front of the mirror.
"There," Sophia said, "don't we all look fine."
"I suppose so," Meg replied, shuffling and adjusting her dress under the ribcage and touching her own bosom.
"I don't feel fine," George added.
"Talk to me when you're wearing a corset!" Meg, still fiddling with her dress, snapped back.
"As a matter of fact," he began in protest but I placed my finger on his lips. That was a story for another time.
"No time for squabbles. The guests will be here soon. Have we forgotten anything? Oh god, what if we've forgotten something?" I said.
"Everything is under control, there's no need to panic. When the road ahead seems perilous, Sophia is here to guide us along to the other side."
I always had to laugh whenever Sophia referred to herself in the third person.
I admired us then as we all stood together looking in the mirror. I linked arms with Sophia, and Georgie linked his arm through mine, who also linked his other arm through Meg's, who then linked her arm with Sophia until we were standing quite unproductively in a circle.
"Well this won't work, unless we want to greet the guests like a revolving door," I said.
George grumbled. "I quite like that idea, then we'd only have to do one quarter of the introductions."
"Nonsense," Sophia said, the first to break away from the spot we were in, or the circle in our case. "We can do this. We've done worse. I mean for goodness sakes, you two were in the trenches, how bad can one dinner party be?"
George and I exchanged glances but left her sentence unanswered. But she was right, she usually was. If the four of us were together I felt we could get through anything.
"Alright then, let's get this show on the road," I said.
...
Not before long we stood rather ridiculously in a line by the front door next to our butler who was aghast as to why we were acting so peculiarly. Our butler Fettis had been with us many years and known Meg and I since we were children, and even he hadn't become accustomed to our eccentricities. I think secretly he found it all rather amusing but to the day he died he never said a word about it.
There was a sudden ring of the doorbell and Sophia jumped forward. "Fettis, get the door, get the door! Please get the door, goodness they're here!" she said betraying all her earlier comments about guiding us calmly through the evening.
"Very good ma'am," he said as she stood inches from him, gesturing bizarrely with exotic hand movements which nobody could understand.
Sophia had a whole hand language but refused to explain it to anyone!
"Oh, great it's someone with a very tall hat," George observed. The silhouette of something long on someone's head was all we could make out through the glass panel on the door.
I nudged him. "What have you got against tall hats?"
"Nothing particularly. It just usually means it has a tall person inside it to make me feel inadequate."
"You're five-feet-six inches of delight, my love," I said, whispering the last part as I heard the guests on the steps.
The door was opened and it was as though the entire guest list arrived simultaneously as they all poured into the room, crashing past us like waves passing over rigid, unmoving rocks. We were those rocks, glued to the spot, standing still in case we were knocked down by the force.
The tidal wave of questions and statements began to ring out around us:
'How are the love birds?' 'What a lovely home for lots of children.' 'Why do you live together instead of in two different houses?'
It felt around twenty minutes later before I was able to rest from shaking all the gentlemen's hands and answering the abundance of awkward questions.
"Wells, how fine your house is looking," Major Gutteridge said loudly to me as if I wasn't standing right next to him. "And how fine your pretty wife is looking." He slapped me on the back and to my surprise I laughed like an idiot of the highest degree.
From the corner of my eye I spied George and Meg rolling their eyes to the heavens.
I took Sophia's hand. "She is a delight indeed."
This was not a lie. Sophia was a wonderful wife. She was as dear to me as Meg was my cousin and George my true love but she was simply not dear to me in the way she was supposed to be.
We made more polite inane conversation before dinner but even Sophia who was the most professional at blending in was beginning to tire of the charade. She slipped her arm through Meg's and the two disappeared to the kitchen with the pretence of checking on dinner but I knew very well they were slipping off to the pantry for a cuddle. I still hadn't had the opportunity to talk to Meg about George's fear of her but that would have to wait.
For now, the rest of the evening awaited us. The tide was coming in and we would soon see if we would drown.
...
Socialising with my peers and keeping up the pretence of being a devoted husband was, as you've heard a tough game, but there were always a few ways I knew of to cope with the madness of our double lives.
Number 1. Was drinking a lot. Number 2. Silently screaming to oneself in the lavatory. And number 3. A good old sing song when one starts to feel plastered and has repeated steps 1 and 2.
Meg and I, after a few drinks needed little convincing to join Sophia at the piano to begin step 3.
Sophia was an accomplished pianist and played exquisitely as she placed her fingers over the keys and produced a familiar piece of up-tempo music. Normally she stuck to these classic standards but since she'd fallen in love with Meg, traditional Sophia had begun to enjoy the not-so-traditional jazz music that Meg had discovered at this time. Of course, jazz was deemed inappropriate for our party, so to cater to our class and their delicate sensibilities, we stuck to the old favourites.
So, there we stood, cousins, more like siblings, belting out a tune whilst everyone gathered around in good cheer and it helped us for a while. People were happy. No one was mocking us or staring, asking those dinner questions such as 'Why do you all choose to live together?' 'When will you start a family?' and 'when did you fall in love?' but wanting to answer the truth and having to conceal that part of oneself. True, the life of the upper-class Englishman was mostly concealing oneself but this was worse, it was the very essence of who I was that I was supposed to be ashamed of. But was it bad, I didn't feel ashamed, not even one little bit?
I looked at Georgie, stood leaning against the piano with Bartholomew III in his arms and our eyes caught one another's. And for the first time that evening he smiled. I knew it was even harder for him, from a man who stayed out of society and normally amused himself in a flat in the city where he chose not to socialise with any of his own class. He'd given that all up for me. He'd married my cousin who he was afraid of, all for me. I adored him.
I don't know why I craved this approval from my peers but I did. I wished I could be more like George and not care a morsel but I didn't know how to survive any other way. This was a jungle; we were the animals and I was going to be the hunter not the hunted. It was the only way to survive and the only way to protect those I loved.
"Bravo!" cried Mrs. Patterson, an elderly captain's wife as she downed another glass of scotch whiskey. "You play wonderfully, Mrs. Wells. Mr. Wells, you must be so proud of her."
"Yes," I said, placing my arm around her shoulder. "She is very talented at everything."
There I was over-doing it again. Sophia was an ordinary woman with many great qualities but also flaws and I seemed to have placed her on some kind of pedestal in my foolish attempt to appear in love with her. Meg meanwhile, was scowling at me for I knew it was really she who wanted to talk about Sophia's talents.
"And what about our singing?" Meg asked, "Should Toby and I join the operatic society?"
The room fell deathly silent.
"Only if one wants it to close!" George quipped.
The room suddenly filled with laughter and had the joke not been at my expense, I might have enjoyed it more. I was, however, proud of George for managing to engage the other guests. He always did have such a wonderfully dry sense of humour.
...
After the jolly old sing-song, Meg suggested we played a game of hide and seek but knowing Meg as I did, it was simply an excuse for her to lock herself away somewhere and wait for nobody to find her. She always knew the best hiding places and I even suspected she'd go as far as to use the secret tunnel that nobody else knew about.
Lord Hendon was chosen as the seeker and we all scurried to find places to conceal ourselves. George and I headed upstairs and flung open the door of the cupboard. It wasn't the most difficult location to find but honestly, we couldn't be bothered with the rigmarole. We sat side by side in the dark, not much room to move as all the storage inside squashed us.
"Well this is much better than being down there with all those idiots," George said.
"Oh, you really must learn to play with others."
"I only want to play with you."
I couldn't see his face but I sensed he was smiling. He was so mischievous when he wanted to be.
"I know some of them can be a little dull but others are really quite charming, George."
"I suppose that's your way of telling me I need to be more accommodating?"
"Well you could make a little more effort."
"You could make a little less."
"What does that mean?"
"Oh, Toby dear, you are trying so hard to get these people to like you. You were hanging over Peter Bennett's words so much, you were practically in his lap."
"I'm a people person. I want them to be my friends."
"Do you? Or do you not want them to know your secrets?"
"That too."
"Our secret is not going to come out. We're not sharing it with the world, Toby. One only wishes we could."
I grabbed his hand. "I know."
At that inconvenient moment, light streamed in and I let go of George's hand and smiled widely. "Lord Hendon you caught us out!"
"Yes. Out you two, time to come out the closet! I might have known you'd be in here together."
I felt the anxiety surge through me. Why did I think it was a good idea to hide with George?
"I beg your pardon?" I spluttered.
"Thick as thieves eh? Well game over." He called to his wife who had emerged on the landing. "Found the hosts, Winifred, dear. Now to find the others."
Lady Hendon was a petite woman with a permanent smile painted on her face like a chilling clown doll.
"Isn't this fun?" she cooed. She cast her eye over George and I as we dusted ourselves off. "Oh, it's you two. I thought maybe you'd be in there with your lady wife, Tobias. But I suppose you two boys are inseparable. Always with your rough-housing- boys will be boys. I say, are the girls together then?"
"Yes," the Lord answered. "Found the ladies together, huddled in the laundry hamper. They were rather squashed but I think they found it rather amusing when we discovered them wrapped up under clothes and sheets, giggling away like giddy schoolgirls."
I glanced at George. He was grinning from ear to ear. We knew our wives only too well!
Feeling the awkwardness set in I clapped loudly. "What a delightful game this is!"
As Lord and Lady Hendon resumed their hunt for more hidden guests, George and I headed downstairs to where we spied Meg and Sophia now giggling in the hall with the other few discovered people, though not quite so discovered as we were.
"Hello dear," I said to my wife as I linked my arm through hers. "Being naughty?" I whispered into her ear.
"Of course not," she said.
George followed suit and linked his arm through Meg's. "Hello lovely wife. Enjoy the game?"
Meg laughed in an over-the-top fashion, unwittingly exactly as she had mocked me for earlier that evening.
"Why yes husband of mine, it was quite exciting."
...
As we said our goodbyes and yet again my hand felt it was going to fall off from the amount of shaking- it was with relief when the four of us collapsed on the settee together with four cups of coffee on the table beside us. The party was finished. We'd survived. The four of us had brought our ship to shore with only a few splashes of water.
Meg sighed loudly. "I'm glad that's over with. Our first party together but I'm sure there'll be many more."
She slipped off her heels and draped her bare feet over Sophia who began to massage her toes. We were all so tired. George and I snuggled next to each other at the other end of the settee, he removing his bowtie and discarding it onto the floor and I checking the door to make sure the servants were not witness to us cuddled up like cats to the ones we were not married to!
"I don't know why we were so worried," Sophia said, "I thought it went splendidly. A few hiccups here and there but no one suspected anything amiss. Good work team."
"I'm not convinced we came off well," I said.
"Everyone at the party was as nutty as a fruitcake," Meg said, "why should we have seemed any different?"
"Well, come on, it's been a long day, time for bed," Sophia said.
So off to bed we went but as we travelled up the stairs our butler saw us on the landing and with nervous laughter as though he knew all our secrets, I took Sophia's arm and led her into the bedroom. "Come dear lady wife, time to retire together."
I wasn't sure if I saw a raised eyebrow from Fettis or it had been my imagination but I wondered if George's reluctance to take Meg's arm was becoming too obvious to the staff though I reasoned that there were many marriages in England in which the couple barely knew one another or perhaps didn't even like their spouse. At least Meg and George had the advantage of a care for one another that I hoped would only deepen with time, even if George was still scared of her!
Sitting on the bed, I took Sophia's hand in mine. "Thank you for organising a wonderfully successful evening. You really are better at running this house than Meg when it was just we two after Charlie died."
Sophia laughed. "Poor Meg, oh I do love her silly ways of doing things."
I fidgeted and there was silence. "Well, goodnight, my dear." I kissed her cheek and she smiled lightly.
I then crossed to the bookcase, pulled on a copy of The Scarlet Letter and a little secret door opened. The only ones who knew of this doorway that led to a crawlspace were the four of us. It had been installed by my father, and Meg and I used it to sneak into each other's bedrooms as children so we could spook each other with ghostly tales.
Now many years later, no longer venturing in the dark to see Meg to scare her silly, I crawled through to be with my lover on the other side. I shimmied in the small space until I felt Meg emerge beside me in the other direction.
"Hi cousin, fancy seeing you here," she said with a chuckle.
"You can't see me at all, it's too dark."
"No, well we've done this routine before. Goodnight, Toby."
"Goodnight, oh wait, before you crawl away, I just wanted to say, please be careful with George tomorrow."
"What do you mean?"
"He frightens easily and it's quite alright for a gent to be slightly fearful of his wife, but it's not normal for him to jump when you so much as come into a room."
"Oh, so that's why he keeps doing that! Look, well, I'm sorry Toby but this isn't easy for me either. It's hard living with a man who can't say boo to a goose and it's also hard that he can't pretend to worship me the way you idolise Sophia in your platonic romantic sense or whatever."
I touched her arm. "Georgie needs time to get to know you. He takes ages to really know people. He's better with cats. It was the trenches that brought us together. Had we met under different circumstances I'm not sure it'd have been the same. But he's tender and loving, Meg. He's just not social and outgoing."
"I understand. Well, I'll let you go to your tender, loving man and I'll go to my talented pianist woman and all will be alright in the morning."
"Goodnight dear Meg."
"Goodnight dear Toby."