Johann and Daniel
by Charles Lacey
Chapter 12
Johann.
But I was greatly troubled. Was it wrong, what we were doing? I had never heard, then, of two boys being in love. But it felt so right. When I held Daniel in my arms, he felt so small and slight and vulnerable that I wanted to protect him. Eventually I made up my mind. I remembered the good Father Moritz; he used to say often, if you are in doubt, kneel and pray for guidance.
There was no Chapel in that house where I could go to pray, but I could kneel in our bedroom and so I did. I put the whole problem before our dear Lord, and asked him to guide me. And then I heard Papa's voice in my mind: "Always do what is true, and honest, and kind." And I thought, It is true that I love Daniel above all other people. And it is honest in me to say that I love him. And how could I be kinder to my dear Daniel than by looking after him and doing those things with him that give us both pleasure?
And then I remembered Father Moritz reading to us from Saint Matthew's Gospel, where Jesus said, "This is the whole of the Law: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength; and love your neighbour as yourself." Well, I had always tried my best to love the Lord, and I still did, and if Daniel was my neighbour then I loved him even better than myself. So I thought, I will leave it until I have the chance to make my Confession, and then I will ask the good Father for his advice. But until then, I will love Daniel and we will be comfortable together, and perhaps one day we can even be happy.
We were in England. And although we were properly enemy aliens, we were safe. We knew that in England even the policemen did not normally carry guns, and that no-one could be put in prison without a proper trial. Not that we had done anything wrong, anyway! We were going to tell the English government everything we knew, in the hope that it would help them to win the war. After the war, we hoped, we would go to live together in Denmark, where we need not hide who we were.
But for now I needed to work, to prove myself. Fortunately, I had the opportunity. The grounds around The Hotel were very overgrown and untidy as no-one had really bothered to do anything about them. So I took up gardening. I found tools, rather neglected and rusty, but still usable, in a little shed. Mrs Freeman kindly lent me a couple of books, and I made a start.
Of course, I'd never done any gardening before, as we had always lived in a city apartment, but no-one was watching to see how good or bad a job I made of it. Little by little, I cleared the undergrowth, and everyone was delighted when I found some fruit trees. They were badly in need of pruning, but we had some delicious fresh apples and plums each summer thereafter.
I found I enjoyed gardening, and often Daniel would come out and help, which made it better still. The physical exercise was good for me, too, and I gained weight as I put on muscle. At first, I could only manage a few hours at a time, but once I grew used to it, I could work through the day with only a short break for luncheon.
Authors deserve your feedback. It's the only payment they get. If you go to the top of the page you will find the author's name. Click that and you can email the author easily.* Please take a few moments, if you liked the story, to say so.
[For those who use webmail, or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead: Please right click the author's name. A menu will open in which you can copy the email address (it goes directly to your clipboard without having the courtesy of mentioning that to you) to paste into your webmail system (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). Each browser is subtly different, each Webmail system is different, or we'd give fuller instructions here. We trust you to know how to use your own system. Note: If the email address pastes or arrives with %40 in the middle, replace that weird set of characters with an @ sign.]
* Some browsers may require a right click instead
