The Young Desire It by Kenneth Mackenzie

with narrowed eyes at the white heat of the sky, chewing pieces of grass while they talked and argued as incessantly as ever. Some of them called out after him; Saunders, who lay on his back with his knees drawn up, turned his head lazily.
    â€˜There’s a swim this afternoon, Foxy. Coming?’
    â€˜I might,’ Charles said shortly. He was in haste to get out of the sun.
    One of the half-doors was swung back, and he went in quickly, without troubling to listen to what they had to say further. Inside, in the vestry, there was a coolness; the creamy stone and the oak looked fresh in the sudden shadow. Sunlight fell in long broken blades across the dimness in the spiral stone stair that turned up from the right-hand tower base towards the organ loft. Here, to his embarrassment, he came upon his music master, sitting on the lowest choir bench with his elbows on the rail and his face smothered in his fingers.
    â€˜Oh—I’m sorry, sir,’ he said.
    â€˜It’s all right,’ Mr. Jones said, looking up and feeling for his spectacles. When he had put them on he looked again at Charles, who remained at the entrance to the loft, in hot uncertainty as to whether he should withdraw from what he knew was an intrusion.
    â€˜Oh, it’s you, Fox,’ Mr. Jones said. ‘What are you going to do here?’
    â€˜I was going to read, sir.’
    â€˜All right. What are you reading?’
    Charles showed him. As he came close he saw with great confusion that the organist’s hectic thin cheeks were wet in places, under the eyes.
    â€˜Ah,’ Jones said. ‘Well, you couldn’t do better than read Shakespeare in a lovely place like this. Away from—away from interruption.’
    â€˜I’m sorry if I interrupted you, sir,’ Charles said in a hurry. ‘The light in the library is so bad; I thought I’d—I’d come up here.’
    â€˜Stay, stay,’ Jones urged him, kindly. ‘I was going, in any case. It’s too hot to practise…’
    Charles believed he heard him add ‘in this damnable country’ under his breath; but he was smiling, although the smile was rather rueful. He had a charming quick smile with a whimsical sharpness and twist in it, suggesting a happy wit, which he had. From the low opening into the stair he said, turning back, ‘I’m going home. If you care to come over to my cottage in an hour, when you’ll have finished that, we could have tea together and talk about it. Mr. Penworth is on duty; I’ll see him on my way.’ He went on down the stair without waiting for an answer; and when he had disappeared Charles heard him call out in a voice that strained at light-heartedness, ‘My wife went back to England yesterday, so there’ll be no one there’.
    And yet again, above the clatter of his own descending heels, he said loudly from below, ‘She couldn’t stand the climate…’ and in a moment there came up the fading sound of his feet going quickly away down the Chapel path.
    The echo of these words died in Charles’s mind when he began to read. It was hot in the loft, though the long blinds had been drawn down over the tall, narrow windows whose leaded panes, farther up the Chapel, broke into fragments of sullen gold the sunlight slanting in. Charles unbuttoned his coat and his waistcoat, and stood leaning against the northern wall. In the silence of the great vaulted roof his heart beat heavy and slow; the seductive, strangling murmur of pigeons floated down from the belfries above him. After some minutes these sounds too became the silence.
    Perhaps half an hour after he had started to read King Henry the Fifth there was a noise of feet coming lightly but slowly up the narrow stair. Charles, however, was so concentrated upon the page that not till Penworth had spoken twice did he look up. Then, when he realized that he had heard him speak once already, the blood came quickly