Wondering how the first conversation between gaunt and ellwood about Aldworth moving to Brazil went.
Ellwood told Gaunt that Aldworth was inverted in his letter about the Ardents in 1915.
Gaunt found out Aldworth planned to move to Brazil from Pritchard major at the prisoner of war camp in 1916.
Roseveare offered places for them in Brazil that summer, and when Ellwood hadn't put two and two together, Gaunt said "Aldworth planned to move to Brazil" wink wink nudge nudge shy eyebrow waggle with face burning red, do you get my meaning yet darling?
But what was their first conversation about that like? Gaunt read all of Roseveare's letters to Ellwood that summer at Thornycroft. They must have spoken about what life could await them - either separately or together - even before meeting Roseveare at Preshute... especially because Ellwood hated England so much that summer and would have been raring to go anywhere else.
Was Gaunt reserved and noncommittal, refusing to discuss life beyond the war until it was over? ("Things he didn't want to think about until he was sure he could have them again.") Or did Ellwood simply skirt the issue, mentioning Brazil only as bait and hoping Gaunt would say he'd come along without Ellwood having to actually ask? Typical them, to discuss all the details without actually saying anything at all.
It's Gaunt who breaks at the train station, a contrast to the dugout where Ellwood poured his heart out - Withhold no atom's atom or I die! Gaunt couldn't express himself before, not in speech nor writing (My dearest, darling Sidney...), but he's a changed man now.
So what way does Gaunt choose? What will be easiest for Ellwood to understand? Or rather - what is the best way Gaunt knows to not only tell Ellwood, but show him how he feels?
Poetry. He takes a leaf out of Ellwood's book, literally, and gives him Keats.
Which leads to Ellwood standing on the platform and pouring his heart out in the only way his broken self is able to at the time - not with endless lines of poetry, but with a short, clipped, old-Gaunt-like request that sounds more like a demand:
"Come to Brazil with me. After the War."
He says he went up to the rooftop and tried to feel the country rapture, but felt nothing. But Ellwood does feel things still, deeply. He's angry and furious, but he's feeling. He is even able to explain a little about how he feels to Gaunt, right there in public! He's telling Gaunt that there's something missing, and Brazil is the only way he knows how to find it again. That's longing. That's regret. That's fear and terrified panic that he's losing himself day by day, and losing Gaunt as a result. "Brazil. Promise me" is not a demand, but a cri de coeur, just like the one he said in the dugout ("Promise we'll talk about it when we get back.")
So it seems that until this point, it had all but been decided that Ellwood would go to Brazil, taking Roseveare's invitation up, but Gaunt withheld. We've already seen that Gaunt thinks Ellwood will have changed his mind about even loving him at all (that stunning line about Ellwood's love being phosphorous-bright and phosphorous-quick), but that was before Ellwood even knew about Brazil as an option!
So what about after this invitation from Roseveare? Why doesn't Gaunt commit?
He talks a lot about not wanting to leave England, missing it after he has. I love Winn's line about Gaunt missing England like it was a person - there's such reverence and respect in there for the different ways grief affects people, and this is particularly good fodder for those who think Gaunt is autistic. But by August 1916, Gaunt's self-protective defence mechanism of disbelief in Ellwood's feelings holds more sway over him now than it did in the POW camp, because he's no longer in danger.
It's always easier to make bold choices when life feels like it could end any moment. Back in what is comparatively peacetime for Gaunt - sunbathing at Thornycroft, off to train officers in the rolling Yorkshire dales - doubt comes in... (Alexa, play the Hadestown soundtrack. Our Classics fiend Gaunto knows alllll about Orpheus 'turning around'.)
Gaunt is scared of the depth of Ellwood's love for him as much as he's scared of Ellwood never being capable of loving him that much again. He's perhaps more terrified still of the depth of his own love. Brazil is not just a conventional commitment like marriage, already something he never thought he'd do, it's an upheaval. And Ellwood, rashly making his choice, had a history of changing his mind even before the war changed him.
So it seems they both suffer from some abandonment trauma, and they way they might accidentally inflict that on each other by evoking their relationships with their parents (and therefore their national identities and belonging in the world) is fascinating:
Ellwood's father seemingly dying when he was young, and then Ellwood losing Gaunt on the mission across No Man's Land.
Ellwood's memories of a Jewish funeral might not be real ("a dark house... a funeral he had attended as a small child... images so eerie he wondered if he had made them up"), but if they were, would they have been for his father, who was seemingly Protestant British? It's his mother who is Jewish.
Gaunt felt ignored by his father ("do you think Perseus ever forgave his father for not caring when it mattered?" - "No"), and found Ellwood's behaviour caddish and callous, a sign that he didn't truly care about anyone, including Gaunt (Maud: "He's very silly isn't he? Of course, he doesn't care about anyone.").
It's also interesting that both of them have foreign mothers and seemingly stuffy, rich, British aristocratic fathers. The surnames are Anglo Saxon - Gaunt with distant Belgian origins, and Ellwood with English (meaning Elder Wood). They could definitely bond over this as a way to process the exile to Brazil.
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