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Collins dashed off a short note to Farrier upon the approval of his weekend pass, and borrowed the mess officer’s bike to barrel down to the village and catch the last post. Farrier’s reply, in the affirmative, came by telegram the following afternoon, and Collins had just enough time after his last test flight to throw a couple of shirts and an optimistic pair of shorts into his duffle before catching the bus to Chichester.
The bus station was swarmed with holidaymakers making for the coast, and Collins could feel the stirrings of a headache throbbing in his temples. They were becoming more frequent; he’d given himself a serious concussion botching a landing near the end of the war, and his vision had been prone to occasional blurring since.
Collins spotted Farrier’s Hillman inching its way up the high street and made his way down to meet him, weaving around small children waving their buckets and spades.
“Traffic’s horrendous,” Farrier said without preamble, leaning across to open the passenger door. “Get in; I daren’t stop long.” Sure enough, the row of motorists behind him was already beginning a fanfare of honking.
“World and his wife off to Bognor this weekend,” Collins said, peering out at the bustling street as Farrier navigated the square.
Farrier grunted vaguely. It was hardly a response. Where he’d gotten the petrol was anyone’s guess; Collins imagined inquiries to that effect would be unwelcome.
“I suppose I ought to have met you at Winchester or Guildford, saved you coming this far south…”
Farrier threw him a brief glance. “Hmm? Oh – well, we’d arranged Chichester. Not like I had much else to do.”
“You’ll be done in when we get there, Ken.”
Farrier made no reply. There was a tight sourness in the car; Farrier’s mouth was oddly thin and the furrow in his brow had deepened in the weeks since they’d last seen each other. Collins consulted his watch – it was gone seven. They’d be lucky to make Exmoor before midnight.
“Want me to navigate?” he asked, more brightly than he felt.
Farrier seemed again to wrench himself out of a distant thought. “Navigate? Well – if you like. Unless they’ve changed the roads substantially, I should manage.”
Collins relented. He slumped back in the passenger seat and watched the town fade. Farrier, beside him, changed gear irritably. It was hardly the start to their weekend he’d anticipated. They had been planning it for months, though in truth Collins had been imagining it since January of 1940, when he’d first heard Farrier talk about the small guesthouse on Exmoor where he’d spent a week each summer as a boy. The best-laid plans were apt to buckle under seven years’ hope, he supposed, picking at the stitches in the upholstery while they sped towards Portsmouth.
Several times he thought of something mildly interesting to say, and each time a swift look at Farrier’s forbidding, closed-off profile stopped him before he could open his mouth. The understanding and the vacillating love between them had never rested much on words, but Farrier’s reserve had seemed measured, once – deliberate and arrogant in its economy. Since his repatriation it had become brittle, and sometimes bespoke a raw uncertainty, perhaps a fear of having changed too much, or conversely of ossifying, that Collins found hard to reconcile with the man he’d once and briefly known.
On the edge of the New Forest, after nearly two hours in almost total silence – broken only by Collins occasionally saying something unnecessary in the vein of “I think you want the second exit here” or “watch him; he’s merging across” and receiving little in the way of thanks in return – Farrier pulled into a layby along a deserted stretch of road. They’d not seen another vehicle since the villages beyond Southampton.
“Need a piss,” Farrier said shortly without looking at Collins, and climbed out of the car. Collins watched him disappear over the lip of the hill, then fetched the map from Farrier’s satchel to trace their progress, and the miles left before them.
Nothing but moorland as far as the eye can see, Farrier had said, years ago, when they were newly lovers. He’d probably had his arm around Collins’ shoulders, halfway between companionable and gut-stirringly intimate, and they’d probably been sharing a last cigarette in the dark before heading back to base – though Collins knew he was prone to fabricating the finer, sweeter points of his own memories. It’s like you’re completely alone in the world.
Sounds grand, Collins had probably said, or something equally dull. He’d sometimes felt dull, around Farrier, then – though that had faded, just in time to lose him.
And Farrier had probably replied, it is, in a wistful voice now hard to imagine.
Collins drummed the dashboard with his thumbs. The sun was beginning to set. Another three hours, surely. The darts board in the officers’ mess, and the bad ale they served there, seemed almost enticing prospects. He sighed, and climbed out of the car.
He spotted Farrier after a minute’s thrashing through the bracken, his salmon shirt a wound against the treeline. Farrier heard him coming, and turned around, fastening his flies.
“I can take a leak without your supervision,” Farrier said, and the same sour note was still there.
The urge to conciliate was automatic. Collins opened his mouth to placate, to say yes, he realised that – and then thought better of it. Without looking around him he reached out and pulled Farrier towards him, his palm against his neck; Farrier made an aborted sound of surprise before Collins kissed him.
They kissed for several long seconds, their bodies joined only at their mouths and where Collins’ fingers snagged in Farrier’s hair. Slow, and soft, and heavy with memory. Farrier shifted then, and lightly touched Collins’ forearm, not quite pushing him away. Collins watched him carefully as they broke apart. Farrier was not smiling, but the frown was mostly gone.
Farrier held his gaze for several seconds more, before glancing back to the crest of the hill where the scrubland met the road. “Best be getting on,” he said, rusty-voiced. “If we’re to make it before nightfall.”
Collins trudged after him, back to the road, and they climbed back into the car in silence. Just before he turned the ignition, Farrier leaned across the gap between the seats and kissed him deeply again, his hand solid and heavy on his shoulder. When he started the engine and peeled back onto the road, he was nearly smiling.
They drove into the dusk, and as the villages petered out, and the hedgerows towered taller and tighter and thicker around them, Collins reached across to rest his hand on Farrier’s thigh. After negotiating a blind corner, Farrier took his hand from the wheel for a moment and briefly rubbed his thumb across Collins’ knuckles, before taking the wheel again, his eyes fixed on the road and the falling sun. The hours passed easily again, and the silence between them felt safe and secret and absent its earlier strain.
The guesthouse stood alone on the moor, as Farrier had described it years ago, soft lights in the windows. There were no other vehicles on the gravel drive.
“Reckon they’ll do us some toast?” Collins mused as he unfolded his limbs and fetched his duffle from the boot.
“Shouldn’t wonder,” Farrier said. His steps were stiff as he lurched to the entrance, and Collins again cursed his own thoughtlessness. A night in Southampton would have done just as well – after all, what mattered was Farrier and the chance to be alone with him, with the lamp turned low.
The landlady obliged with toast and dripping and a pot of strong tea, which they took in the deserted dining room, their duffle bags at their feet. Farrier barely looked up; Collins had forgotten how quickly he ate these days, and how much it hurt to watch him.
Once they were finished, the landlady led them through a crooked, low corridor lined with doors to their room. She left them an old Vapalux lantern and informed them that breakfast was served at seven.
The room was in the eaves, and a large oak wardrobe made the place seem cluttered, but there was still space, just about, for two beds, a foot and a half or so apart. Farrier threw his duffle onto the one closest to the window and sank onto it with a creak of bedstead and limbs.
“Long day,” Collins said softly, seating himself opposite Farrier on the other bed. It was still strange to be alone with him, and to have time, and to have hope.
“Long year,” Farrier replied, raising his eyebrows in a gesture of wry exasperation.
Back in 1940 they’d barely have waited for the door to click shut behind them to gasp and pull and paw at each other. But they had been young then – even Farrier – and every minute had been a surprising gift, and the harder they’d screwed the easier it had been to ignore the bald fact of their combined and dispensable mortality.
They were wrung out, now, and the urgency was gone, and in its place ghosts and scars and doubt, and behind all that, the question of the future.
“Erudite conversation in short supply today, I’m afraid,” Farrier said, scratching his chin ruefully.
“If you think that’s what I came here for…” It begged the question of what he had come for, but Farrier didn’t press him. Instead he leaned across the gap between the beds and took Collins’ hands between his.
“Dunc,” Farrier said quietly.
“S’alright,” Collins said thickly, because it was, after all - at least by comparison to the first six years of their acquaintance.
Farrier rubbed his thumb across Collins’ wrist, as though trying to erase a mark.
“Shouldn't have dragged you all the way out here,” Collins said. “Could just have met in town. You didn’t have to –”
Farrier made a strangled sound of dissent in the back of his throat. He was looking down at where their hands met, and not at Collins’ face.
“No – I wanted – I want to be here. It – feels good to be with you. You know how – you make me feel good.”
Collins laughed nervously. “Any warm body’d do, I reckon.” He tried for jocular, but he was voicing his worst fear, and it was plain in his voice, and on his face, no doubt.
“No.” It came out sharp – an admonition. “That’s not what I – this,” Farrier said more softly. He raised his hand to graze his fingertips down Collins’ cheek. “This face. You. This –” he pressed his palm scantly against Collins’ sternum, and Collins didn’t know if he meant to touch his heart or his soul, or simply the whole of him.
“If I could always be with you,” Farrier murmured, as though to himself. “That’s what I want. Just – that.”
Collins leaned closer, across the gap between the beds. He hid his face in Farrier’s collarbone, and his breath came in a shudder. “Me too,” he said against Farrier’s skin, and felt Farrier’s breath hitch.
They stayed like that for several minutes, before Farrier stole his arm under Collins’ shoulder and tugged him awkwardly onto the bed by the window, so Collins was half astride him.
“I was losing my mind, knocking about Haddenham. Your letter –”
Collins barely remembered what he’d written. Something stilted and chaste. I remember fondly your stories of summer fishing expeditions. Something innocuous. Are you still game for a weekend in the country?
“Didn’t know if you’d still want –”
“Duncan,” Farrier hissed, tightening his arm and frowning up at him. “I – if you don’t know – I – darling, I don’t know how to –”
He looked agitated, and the circles under his eyes were darkened further by the yellow light of the paraffin lantern.
Collins adjusted his seat so he was beside Farrier, and not atop him. “We don’t have to –” Collins began – talk, he’d thought of saying. Or maybe, fuck. Or carry on. None of them would have been sincere.
“Come on,” he said, more firmly than he felt. “Let’s go to bed.” He got to his feet and began to undress, without ceremony or embarrassment. Soon, Farrier followed suit, with laboured movements.
They didn’t speak again as they prepared for bed, though there was language in Farrier handing Collins the toothpaste as they stood hunched together over the small washbasin, and in Collins shutting the lantern, and pushing aside the eiderdown so that Farrier could lie closest to the window. Farrier lay rigid on his back, but when Collins lowered himself onto the bed beside him, on his side with his hand curled lightly on Farrier’s chest, he felt the stiffness seep out of Farrier’s body, and soon Farrier slipped his arm around Collins’ shoulder so he could pull him closer.
The last time they’d shared a bed – an ostentatious four poster at Leslie’s pile in Shropshire; they’d fallen into it drunk and tired of conversation – they’d both twitched their fitful way through the night, chased by nightmares and woken by each other’s muffled shouts of terror. Farrier had finally slipped out of bed at five and dragged a pillow and a blanket to the window-seat, and had been dozing crook-necked there when Collins had arisen. They’d not spoken of it afterwards, or of a great many other things.
This bed was narrower, and harder, and they’d no alcohol in their bloodstreams to douse them into unconsciousness. Collins slept well and dreamlessly, however, and awoke briefly only once, when it was nearly light, as Farrier mumbled and rolled onto his other side, pulling Collins’ arm across his chest.
They drifted into wakefulness in the early morning, and made love lazily, without agonising about it, stubbled and sour-breathed and quiet, slowly rocking against each other with their mouths sometimes meeting, sometimes murmuring tenderness into each other’s skin. It was simple and sweet and candid and not at all the great and solemn declaration it had seemed the night before.
Collins must have drifted off again afterwards – when he next opened his eyes, the sun had risen further, and Farrier was pottering about the room with his chest bare and clean and a towel about his neck. His hair was damp and uncombed and boyish in its unruliness, and the weak light of morning made him softer at the edges, and younger. Something in Collins ached, looking at him.
“I know you’re awake,” Farrier said casually, still busy with his pack. “Stop watching me and make yourself useful; this bed needs messing up.”
This was a well-rehearsed game, and sure enough, after a few minutes of non-compliance, Farrier bent over Collins where he was still stubbornly cocooned in the eiderdown, and nuzzled his nose firmly into the nape of his neck.
“If you don’t get up,” he growled, “I shall eat your helping of bacon myself.”
Collins knew his part by now – he feigned a great deal of reluctance, and made a great show of stretching athletically as he clambered out of bed, and was delighted to see, as he stirred up the sheets and jumbled the pillows on the other bed, that Farrier was laughing at him.
He laughed at him over his cup of tea at breakfast, too, and took his time eating, putting his fork down frequently to gaze out of the window at the heathered moorland stretching as far as the eye could see.
“Warm enough for shorts, d’you reckon?” Collins said, and Farrier turned back from the view and grinned, spearing a piece of mealy black pudding.
“If it’s not warm enough, we’ll just have to walk more briskly, won’t we?” He reached down to pull his battered OS map from his duffle, and made a great fuss of clearing the cruet and the toast rack out of the way so he could explain their projected route. Collins was forcibly reminded of mission briefings, and of the line that would appear on Farrier’s brow, and the nervous jiggle that would start up unbidden in his knee as they received their orders. He was surprised to find it was not an entirely unpleasant memory.
The landlady set them up with half a loaf of bread, a jar of potted shrimp, and a knife, and they liberated a few under-ripe apples from an overgrown orchard they passed as they struck out for the wilderness.
Collins set a deliberately ponderous pace as they began – Farrier was too stubborn and too proud to ask him to slow down when his hip began aching, as it invariably would, after a few hours’ walking. The moor was bleak and beautiful and vast, and the paths had not been re-cut for several seasons, so it was hard going, pushing through the heather and stepping over gnarled roots.
By noon they were too breathless to talk, and Collins’ calves were tight and sore.
“Lunch?” he suggested, spotting some likely-looking boulders ahead.
By a stroke of luck there was a stream hidden there, and they dipped their canteens into the clear cold water and gulped until they were nearly sick and their chins were numb and streaming. Farrier, not usually prone to chivalry, used his hat to brush the flattest part of the boulder clear of leaves and dead moss and woodlice, so that Collins could sit.
The food was good, though by that time Collins was ravenous and would happily have resorted to air force slop. Farrier munched his way through his apple, and ate the core for good measure.
Spitting a pip into the undergrowth, he asked, with a studied air of nonchalance, “How – Tangmere suits you, then?”
Collins looked up; he was trying to saw a slice from the loaf, and was making a pig’s ear of it.
“Aye,” he said carefully – Farrier did not, as a rule, ask about his work. Collins recognised that this was in large measure self-preservation, rather than lack of interest, and cooperated by revealing as little as possible about his continued service in the RAF. “They’re good lads,” he continued circumspectly. “And you – your parents – what have you –”
“My mother wants to start up with the horses again,” Farrier said. He sounded appalled at the prospect. “Army took most of them, but she has a pretty young mare she wants to put to stud. Apparently I’m to supervise goings-on at the stables.”
“Oh,” was all Collins could say. He passed Farrier a crooked wedge of bread smeared unevenly with shrimp. Farrier took it, and chewed for a moment, staring sightlessly at the stream. Still looking slightly dazed, he began to speak again.
“There’s a – I suppose it’s a tackshop – in the village. Feed and brushes and bridles and so on. Gregory and Sons. Except there was only one son, and he died at Tobruk. There’s a suite of rooms above the shop.” Farrier seemed to lose his train of thought momentarily. He was now watching Collins intently. Then he shook himself and continued. “Well, I was in there last week, talking to the owner. He’s – the thing is, he’s getting on for eighty, and – well, I thought, maybe…”
Collins realised what he meant a split-second before he said it, and without thinking he laughed out loud.
“Farrier, I don’t know the first thing about horses, and – tack, or whatever it’s called! You know that.”
Farrier’s face shuttered. It dawned on Collins too late that Farrier had been waiting all day to say this, that this was the reason he had driven for hours across Hampshire and Somerset – to ask Collins to give up the RAF for him. It must have taken a colossal effort.
It’d never work, he nearly said, but he suspected Farrier knew that too well, had puzzled it over in his blunt, careful brain, and was instead begging to be deceived, if only for a little while longer.
Instead of saying, so, you’d sneak down to the village after nightfall and have me in the back room among the leather and the brass? Collins smiled and said, “I’ll think about it, Ken. Okay?” and Farrier nodded firmly, before getting to his feet to dip his canteen in the stream again. They had both decided to pretend, and now the charade was established, they set off for their final destination, the coast, with renewed energy, carefully avoiding any conversation that might destroy the fragile illusion.
It was two before they caught sight of the sea, impossibly green in the distance. Gulls and gannets swooped low. There were small sailing craft far out with their sails full. Farrier and Collins stood side by side on the clifftop and looked out at the horizon in companionable silence.
Feeling sentimental, as he always did when surrounded by the sky, and when with Farrier, Collins crouched and used his pen-knife to pluck a few blue sprigs of heather. He tucked them into the laces of his boot for safe-keeping. They would dry well enough pressed between the pages of his battered old copy of Elementary Flying Training, which had been some poor doomed fucker’s before it had been his.
“Come on,” Farrier said finally, turning back from the sea. He took Collins’ hand briefly, and in the knotting of their fingers Collins felt the shadow of what could be – a lifetime of it – and when Farrier moved his hand away to adjust the strap of his bag, Collins felt oddly bereft.
Farrier squinted at him; he’d caught the sun across his nose and cheeks, and Collins’ eyes felt swimmy and unfocused after staring at the water for so long.
“Ready?” Farrier asked, his thumbs tucked into the straps of his bag.
“Ready,” Collins agreed, and followed him.
Warm are the still and lucky miles,
White shores of longing stretch away,
A light of recognition fills
The whole great day, and bright
The tiny world of lovers' arms.
-- W.H. Auden (1939)