Guy Bennett is just the same as ever -- his awful smirk, and the sound of his voice. The ambassador's party goes on in a whirl, all that clinking of glasses and the dull roar of music -- there will be dancing soon, as there regrettably often is. Greetings and addresses, a speech on Wagner, squab and rissoles and gin in mass quantities. There's always absolutely cracking vittles at these things, and while Fowler lacks the ambassador's taste for political agitation he is more than happy to drink his gin.

He is about to excuse himself to the courtyard for a desperate smoke when he hears that voice, clarion-sharp and distinct. At the sound of it, it is as if every drop of alcohol in his system has utterly evaporated all at once -- he is sober as a judge and lit with a low steady fire of hate, down in his belly like a cast-iron stove.

Guy Bennett is here, Guy Bennett of all men -- how had he not known? Why hadn't he been informed? It's not the business of their host to know all the petty litigations of boyhood, but a professed pervert like Bennett shouldn't be seated at the same table as diplomats' wives and clergymen. It'd be like sneaking Mata Hari onto a bus full of nuns.

The hostess murmurs in Bennett's ear, grasping his sleeve conspiratorially with her white and lacquered hand. Raising her head, she asks brightly, "Do the two of you know each other?"

"We were in school together," Bennett offers graciously. "But by all means, introduce us -- I scarcely recognized you, old thing."

Fowler coughs a startled acknowledgment, and ducks his head; Bennett makes a gracious gesture, like a Plantagenet king before his deposition, and turns away.

When Bennett rises from his seat, just as the conversation turns to desirable qualities in an experienced whipper-in, Fowler's eyes flash. From the way the man's unsteady steps proceed from table to carpet and from hallway to doorway, he is very drunk already. Does he think these parties are a laughing matter? Sensible people are here to discuss practical matters.

Fowler waits a decent while to follow him -- stalking him down the corridor with measured tread until his quarry stops short and Fowler nearly trips on the hall rug.

"Ah, Fowler."

"You absolute delinquent."

Bennett lights a cigarette, quite careless of the wallpaper. He is stinking drunk -- it can be seen in the man's shuffling steps, in the unfocused tilt of his head and the saucy parting of his mouth.

"I hope I didn't frighten you. When she introduced me, you looked as if you'd seen a ghost."

"You weren't so brave bent over with your trousers down."

"I am bravest with my trousers down," Guy says, saucy as a woman. "It's been too long, Fowler, old thing. Are you here to relive your school days, or to talk politics like a reasonable person?"

"I should drag you back by the collar and thrash you here and now, in front of everyone. What are you playing at?"

"I'm not playing at anything. Old Eddy knows I'm terribly interested in good old English venery, so he invited me along to be charmingly ornamental."

It is difficult to believe that a man like Guy Bennett can be passionately dedicated to anything as sober as hunts and hounds. He'd always been so terribly flippant about the war -- it's plain enough even now he'd make no soldier, and he is the least plausible acolyte of English outdoorsmanship imaginable. So what in God's name is he doing here, with his perfect teeth and his creased suit-jacket and his sneers? Kissing up to his betters, or -- what?

"His Lordship has made a regrettable error. I'll see he doesn't make it again."

Bennett flicks a bit of ash on him. "He's not such a bad sort. He might have made an upstanding fellow out of me after all these years. I've simply grown up, that's all."

"What must that Bolshevikky friend of yours think? Or has he come around at last?"

Bennett's face flashes with a wicked amusement; his nostrils flare, and his jaw takes on a mercenary thrust. "Come now, at least have the decency to call him by his Christian name. You haven't forgotten his name, any more than I have. You've always had a keen memory for social defectives. What did you come out here for?"

"I'm wanted here, and you aren't!"

"You didn't come out in hopes of seeing me, did you? I'd find that terribly disappointing."

"I shall call to have you escorted out."

"Would you, Fowler?"

The cigarette drops to the carpet.

How he wants to destroy that terrible body, to smite that terrible face until the look of saucy cruelty is gone from it and a proper discipline is displayed. He scarcely has time to sneer. In a flash Bennett is pressing him against the door with a hand around his throat -- Fowler sputters, but his erection is as conspicuous in his trousers as an iron bar, and Guy thrusts a long thigh between his legs with a vulgar little laugh.

"Oh, you bastard. Here, let me help you with that, you can't let our hostess see you in that condition or she'll want to climb aboard and have a go herself. I've had it on good information that she's absolutely savage with her men."

Fowler bites his mouth, and Guy thrusts him back.

All this is going on only rooms away from a gathering of England's finest and their wives. Guy presses his face to the wallpaper with one great spidery hand clamped over his mouth -- he can taste nicotine and the sticky residue of a cocktail glass. Fowler bites him, and it must thrill him like a lover's pinch because it sends Guy pressing him into the wallpaper with the lean weight of his body, his erect cock gouging. He was surely never so fit in his school days, so athletic -- what on earth has he been doing, in the turn from boy into man?

Bennett's voice is an insufferable sweet purr in his ear.

"You'd thank me for it, wouldn't you? You've got a stiffy like the Eiffel tower."

One big hand reaches around for Fowler's own prick, relishing a sustained grope -- Fowler burns with anger and desire alike.

"Goddamn you--"

"They should see you like this -- all those complacent little men with their cigars. They'd see you for exactly what you are."

Guy forces down his trousers with a blissful roughness, leaving his braces dangling against his thighs -- Fowler twists around with a grunt, struggling to face him.

"Shut up", he hisses.

Fowler sinks his teeth into the side of Bennett's throat and feels him jerk and vibrate with anger. Guy tears him away, grinding his erection against him punitively. Fowler is so excited by this that he may humiliate himself yet; he rocks against him, seething with anger.

Bennett's fists grip in his shirt. The exquisite friction tears an awful raw sound from his throat that Bennett smothers in a kiss -- that vulgar tongue is darting against his teeth, and his hands can rove over Bennett's gorgeous awful body as freely as he wishes.

The two of them grab at each other like brawlers, kissing and biting. Think of Bennett the boy shorn of his aspirations, thrust face-down with the scarlet welts rising on his bare buttocks -- the thrill of subjugating him, at last, to rule and discipline. But he is not there but here, in a paneled hallway with oily finger-marks on the door frames and a stiff collar ringing his throat fit to choke him in all the boiling-over of his wild desires. Fowler spills his stuff with an awful groan, and it is as if all the frenzy has gone out of him -- he is completely enervated, scraped clean of the marrow of his anger in a single sharp action. The helpless whine he makes is pathetic as a child; Bennett's knuckles stroke the side of his ribs, almost tenderly.

He has done something unconscionable. He has lowered himself beyond all reckoning, and he'd do it again in a heartbeat.

"You swine," Bennett laughs. "You haven't changed a bit."

Fowler is breathless, with flecks of saliva in the sides of his mouth -- head swimming, guts awash in something curiously like joy.

"I hate you," he breathes, seething with spit. "I hate your whole vile type."

"Where's your sense of fair play?"

"I never want to see you again. If I saw you in the street, I'd run you down."

Fowler fumbles his shirttails, burning with fury. Bennett kisses him squarely on the mouth and releases him to a juddering drop.

"Is that how you talk to a fellow man of Gascoigne's? Go in and wash up, you look like you've been well-fucked."