Chapter Text
Dawson was pushing the Moonstone’s engines so hard that Georgie had to hold onto the rails to keep from losing her footing. They’d seen the Spitfire go down with no chute, but it hadn’t fallen far. Behind her, Peter was yelling that the pilot was likely dead, but his father wouldn’t turn. The pilot might be alive, and if he was, there was no way Dawson would leave him.
Georgie’s hair was whipping across her face. She cursed it, wishing she’d had the foresight to put it up that morning, but she hadn’t anticipated that she’d be careening across the Channel on a desperate rescue mission when she’d woken up that morning. Beside her was one of the blankets they’d loaded for the journey, a corner ripped by the scrambling feet of the shivering soldier they’d pulled out of the water earlier. She reached down and grabbed the scrap of fabric, pulling a length loose across the bottom of the threadbare cloth and wound it around her head to keep the curls out of her eyes. When she looked up again, she could see the plane in the water.
It had landed in one piece, floating on top of the water as if sitting on a runway waiting to be boarded. From here she couldn’t even see the damage that had caused it to go down. But as they got closer they could see that the shutter was still shut tight. Maybe the pilot had managed to glide the plane down, but he hadn’t ejected, which meant he was most likely dead.
Dawson’s eyes met hers as she felt him slow the engine. She didn’t want to say that Peter had been right, that their diversion off course had been for nothing. If the pilot had survived, they would have seen a chute.
Barely three yards from the port side now, the plane was filling with water and began to sink. Georgie crossed herself as she watched the vessel slowly being submerged, her thoughts invariably going to the poor family who wouldn’t even have a body to bury. She kept her eyes trained on the plane when she saw it.
Movement.
A hand. No, a fist, punching desperately at the glass.
He was alive.
He was trapped.
“Dad!” she screamed to Dawson, who had just begun to turn the Moonstone away. “Dad, look! He’s alive!”
The three Dawsons moved with fury at the realization that the pilot was still alive, trapped inside his cockpit as his plane rapidly filled with water. Peter grabbed the boat hook and scrambled to the edge of the boat. Georgie readied a blanket as Mr. Dawson put full speed ahead to reach the plane.
The top of the plane was just drifting under water when they reached him, and Peter swung the boat hook with all the force he could muster, Georgie gripping the edge of his jumper to keep him from going over. The glass broke and the pilot shot up and out and when his head broke through the water Georgie froze.
The uniform was covered by his life vest, but the color and insignia were instantly recognizable. His hair, his eyes, his skin--the resemblance was so exact that for a moment Georgie felt like she’d been plunged over the boat into the ice cold water right beside him.
If Peter had noticed, he hadn’t had the same reaction, barely missing a beat as he pulled the boathook in and thrust out a hand to the floundering pilot. The man reached up gratefully, looking for all intents and purposes like he was using his last ounce of strength to grasp Peter’s outstretched fingers. But when they clasped hands and Peter pulled him in, the man let out an irreverent, “Afternoon,” as if he were taking the last empty seat in a train car.
The voice was different, with a lilting Scottish accent that was evident even in that single short word, and it shocked Georgie out of her trance. This man was not who she’d thought he was. That man was gone, lost in the cold water as this one had almost been--but this one now had a chance to live.
If they could get him onto the boat.
Georgie stumbled forward to help Peter, who was struggling to get the waterlogged pilot over the side of the boat. She reached down and pulled, and the three of them collapsed on the deck, the pilot gasping for breath and slumping against the rails. Peter went back to his father, and Georgie crouched down beside him, wrapping the blanket around his shaking shoulders.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
The adrenaline wearing off and the cold setting in, he shook his head, but Georgie peeled off his soaking wet gloves and saw that his knuckles were bloody. She swallowed hard at the sight of that bloody hand, doing everything she could to keep her own from shaking. The last thing she needed was for Peter to see her blanching at the sight of blood--he hadn’t wanted her to come in the first place. But it wasn’t the blood that was making her heart pound.
God, this man looked so much like him. Had his hands been bloodied like that as he clawed at an unforgiving machine, desperate to escape? Or had it been over too quickly for him to know the difference? She didn’t know. They’d never found out what happened.
The pilot saw her staring at his hand and clenched his fist. “It’s nothing, lass,” he said, voice shaking with the cold.
Georgie scoffed, snapping out of it. Barely pulled from a watery grave, this man was trying to reassure her when she should be the one offering comfort to him. She steeled herself, shaking the memory of a dead man’s face out of her head and stood, reaching down to pull him up.
“On your feet, soldier,” she said. “It’s warmer below.”
The sandy-haired pilot exhibited none of the reticence that the shivering soldier had shown in going below decks. He followed her dutifully, clutching the blanket tightly around his body. Georgie poured him a cup of tea and handed it to him. He took it gratefully, collapsing onto the bench seat and inadvertently sloshing a little of the warm liquid over his red fingertips. As he sipped it, he managed a small chuckle.
“Long way from home, you lot,” he said.
Georgie busied herself with putting on another kettle so she wouldn’t have to look at his face, still so much like his that it shocked her to hear that unfamiliar voice coming out of his mouth.
“A call went out,” she told him, echoing what Dawson had said earlier. “We’re headed to Dunkirk.” She said the last sentence slightly softly, still wary of the soldier who was resting in the adjacent bunk. Whatever this pilot had seen did not seem as emotionally scarring, because the pilot took the news in stride, nodding his head as he sipped his tea.
“Good,” he said. “We need all the help we can get.”
Georgie reached into a cabinet and pulled out the boat’s first aid kit. She fiddled with it in her hands a moment, considering just tossing it over to him and letting him fend for himself. But she shook her head again, trying to tell herself that this was what she came here for. She’d been the one to jump aboard the Moonstone at the last second, insisting that she wanted to help. Granted, she hadn’t anticipated an encounter with a ghost in an RAF uniform, but she couldn’t let that get in the way of what she came to do.
She sat on the bench seat next to the pilot and opened the kit, taking out a rag and some iodine. “For your hands,” she said simply, and he held out his injured hand, still shaking slightly from exhaustion.
He didn’t wince when the stinging antiseptic touched his scrapes, but he refused the bandage she attempted to put over his knuckles.
“Don’t bother, lass,” he said. “I imagine it won’t stay dry.”
She nodded and began to pack the first aid kit away and the silence grew longer between them. She tried to think of something she could say but everything she thought of seemed either far too familiar or woefully inadequate. In the end, he was the one to interrupt the quiet, looking over his tea.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
She looked up at him, but for the life of her couldn’t think of what to say to that. You’re welcome? Don’t mention it? All of the standard responses seemed to come up short. But at that moment the door to the cabin burst open and the shivering soldier stumbled out, looking every bit as unsteady as he had when Peter had pulled him aboard.
Georgie instinctively jumped up and pulled away. The solider had gotten combative on the deck earlier when he’d found out their destination, and only came short of physical violence when Georgie had put herself between him and Peter. She’d had to convince Peter not to lock him in the cabin, knowing that it would only make things worse. The soldier had been able to get control of himself, but looking at him now Georgie worried that he might be losing his grip again.
“Alright, Soldier?” she asked, using a very particular voice. Georgie volunteered whenever she could at the hospitals in town, helping to tie bandages and launder linens when they had an influx of patients. Injured soldiers who no longer needed to be cared for at the busy London hospitals were often sent to the smaller towns to convalesce, and Georgie often heard the ward sisters speak to them this way. The no-nonsense tone seemed to cut through to them, and Georgie assumed it has something to do with their training.
The soldier nodded and held out a shaking hand. In his fist he clutched the mug of tea Georgie had given him earlier. Wordlessly, Georgie took the cup and refilled it, handing it back to him.
“Are we still going to Dunkirk?” he asked.
“Yes,” Georgie replied.
The soldier began to shake his head, muttering a soft “no” under his breath over and over. The pilot was watching him with a wary eye, and stood very slowly as if trying not to spook a wounded animal.
“Steady on, Private,” he said gently.
The soldier looked up at him, pleading in his eyes. “No, I can’t go back.” He turned to Georgie. “You have to bring me home. Just bring me home first and then you can go on without me. Please.”
Georgie tilted her head to the side, her fear of this man replaced with sympathy. He was still so young, only a few years older than Peter. The war was barely a year in and already he would never be the same.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “We have to go. We have to help--”
The soldier put his hands up, cutting her off. “I’m not stopping you. You just can’t bring me back there. You have to let me off. I need to get off this boat.”
Georgie could tell that the soldier was unravelling again. She lifted her hands instinctively as if to show that she didn’t have a weapon. “I know--” she began.
“YOU DON’T KNOW!” he shouted, throwing the cup of tea violently to the ground, sending the metal cup bouncing across the floor. “YOU WEREN’T THERE! YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT WAS LIKE THERE. YOU DON’T KNOW!”
The soldier came forward at her, a fist raised in her direction. The pilot sprang forward, his blanket falling to the floor as he put himself between Georgie and the unstable young man. He put his hands out onto the soldier’s shoulders, taking firm hold of them and stopping him in his tracks.
“Stand down, Private!” he barked, and Georgie jumped. She couldn’t tell based on his uniform if he outranked the solider in front of him--if anything he looked younger--but at any rate the order seemed to get through to him. “She wasn’t there, true. But she’s on her way. These people are willing to put themselves in danger to save our boys. That’s just as much as I signed on to do, and you as well. So this boat is going to Dunkirk and the only way off it is over the side. Am I clear, Private?”
The soldier was shivering again, but Georgie thought it was from a different reason than the cold. Keeping his eyes down, he nodded before looking up at Georgie. “I’m sorry, Miss.”
Georgie nodded, acknowledging the apology. “They could use some help on deck,” she told him, and he took her suggestion, heading up the steps. Truthfully she didn’t know if he would be welcome on deck, she just wanted to get him away from her for a moment.
When he was gone, she turned to the pilot. “Thank you,” she told him, picking his discarded blanket up off the floor.
He took it from her and wiped it across his face. “Least I could do. Jack Collins. Collins.”
She took his offered hand and shook it. “Georgiana Dawson.” His hand had warmed with the tea and his cuts had stopped bleeding. She slipped hers from his grip as soon as she could without seeming impolite, and stooped to pick up the discarded mug. He’d stepped closer to her when he’d offered his hand, and she needed an excuse to stop looking at him.
She’d expected that he would leave her to clean up the mess and follow the solider up onto the deck, or take the opportunity to rest once more on the seat or lie down in the now vacant bunk. But instead he found a rag in a cabinet above the kettle and crouched down next to her to sop up the spilled tea.
“You don’t have to--”
“Och, it’s nothing lass. My mother didn’t believe a woman alone should keep a home clean. I’ve three brothers at home and we all spent our share of days scrubbing the floors just as our sisters did.”
Despite herself Georgie smiled, wondering just how many Collins siblings there were. “Where’s home?” she asked.
“Swanston. It’s mostly dairy farms. There’s more cows than people. Beautiful though. You could walk for hours through the heather and not see a single soul.”
“It sounds lovely.”
“And you? Where are you lot from?”
“Weymouth, in Dorset.”
“And that’s where you sailed from? I can’t say I expected to see civilians headed where you are.”
“We shouldn’t be. The Navy wanted to requisition her. We were just unloading her to make room. But Dad--but Mr. Dawson said none of them could handle her the way he could.”
“Lucky for me.” There was that smile again, the one that was so much like his that it made her heart ache. No teeth, just lips and puffy, rosy cheeks that made him look ten years younger.
This time, it made her smile in turn, rather than sink into sadness. “He and Peter weren’t happy with me coming aboard though.”
“I wondered that they’d let you.”
“It’s not for them to let me do anything. I’m a grown woman, after all.”
His smile grew. “Oh, my mother would like you.”
That was too far. She tried to match his joy at the idea, but was met with a quick stab of pain instead. She looked down at the shards of broken cup in her hand to hide the fact that her face had fallen so abruptly.
“I can manage down here.”
He didn’t take offense, smiling again before getting up, being sure to ring the tea-soaked rag out over the sink before he left. As he made his way back up to the deck she looked after him. When he’d told her his mother would like her, she had felt excited. She’d felt that tickle of excitement she hadn’t felt in so long. She’d had to resist the urge to giggle and blush.
Cold dread followed. Shame coiled down her throat into her belly, knotting her insides together. She couldn’t deny that what she was feeling was attraction, plain and simple. Talking to him was natural, and pleasant, and the closest she’d felt to normal in a long time. For a moment, that heavy feeling in her chest had felt lighter, almost like it wasn’t there at all. But the second she realized what she was doing, the sadness returned, blindsiding her again.
She clenched her fists, taking a deep, steadying breath. Just get through today, she told herself. Just get through today and you’ll never have to see him again.
Somehow that thought didn’t bring her the comfort she’d hoped it would.