At a meeting of republican sympathisers in London, Brian Botsford, a young middle-class writer and Cambridge graduate, meets Edward Phelan, an idealistic self-edcated London Underground worker. They share a mutual attraction. Across the dicisions of class they begin an affair in secrecy.But Edward possesses an ´unproblematic capacity to accept´ Brian and the love that dare not speak its name, whereas Brian is more cautious and under family pressure agrees to be set up with a suitable young woman. Pushed to the point of crisis, Edward threatens to volunteer to fight Franco in Spain.á