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The second he managed to get a leave slip signed, he was on a train south.
Collins had to go and see the Dawson family. He hadn’t said anything of what he wanted to say on that damned boat, and it had been eating him up inside ever since he stepped on that train with no more than a handshake with the father of his best friend. His best friend who was now gone, immortalised along with all the other hundreds of pilots already dead.
He had no idea where to start, except Weymouth. Walking around the town he couldn’t help being reminded of Dawson. Everything he’d ever said about the place, Collins was finally seeing. The little coloured coastal houses which Collins had never experienced coming from an inland town, the way the air smelled of the sea, the way the cars seemed to drive slower, everyone seemed a little happier than anywhere closer to the bombings.
It was a nightmare asking around for ‘a family who own a boat, had two sons but now have one, and that went over with the little ships to Dunkirk’ because as it turned out, it wasn’t an uncommon situation at all.
He found them by accident. Collins had found the harbour where all the boats were moored, including a large handful he recognised from seeing them in the channel, including the one which saved his life and it just so happened that Mr Dawson was currently on said boat. Collins cursed himself for not even knowing the man’s name, he felt like he should, considering how close he was with his son, but at the same time it felt too personal; apart from Dunkirk he’d never actually met Dawson’s family. The blonde walked down to the boats along the pier, treading lightly and feeling like he stood out even though he wasn’t in uniform. The old man was in the cabin, soft sounds of him organising floated through the sunny air and for a second, Collins almost forgot there was a war on. Almost.
“Ahem. Eh, excuse me,” he said from next to the boat.
“Be out in a moment!” came the answer, clearly not recognising the voice as anyone familiar.
When he stepped out of the boat all the man did was stare for a minute. He shook himself of the shock that had come over him and walked up to Collins.
“Didn’t expect to see you again, son,” he said, shaking the blonde man’s hand.
“Well, there’s something I didnae tell you on the boat, sir. I think maybe we should sit down?”
The sentence worried Mr Dawson endlessly, and the house was close enough that it warranted taking this man in for a cup of tea.
“Ye see…” Collins began, but it was harder to say than he thought it would be. The house was empty except for the two men sat at the dining room table.
“I flew in Alexander’s squadron. I was his wingmate.”
The old man put his cup of tea down at this. His eyes swam with too many emotions to pick out just one,
“So you’re the ‘Collins’ he wrote about.”
His words were faint, distant.
“I… Didn’t know Dawson wrote about me in his letters,” Collins said, standing to reach for the biscuits on the bench which he’d been offered earlier and declined. He didn’t expect the man to stand with him and pull him into a hug.
“Why didn’t you say something at Dunkirk?” the man asked into his shoulder.
“Wasn’t sure you’d want to know.”
The two sat, Collins never reached the biscuits.
“Losing a child is a unique pain. One I hope you never have to feel,” Mr Dawson said quietly.
“But, Alexander lives on in all those he touched in his life, and that means you. Today, you have given me a miracle.”
Collins wasn’t sure he felt like a miracle, but the look on the old man’s face assured him that he’d done the right thing coming down here.
The following conversation was difficult and heavy, even if they were talking fondly of Dawson. It had happened years ago now, though it didn’t feel like it to either of them. The pain was duller now, but it would never go away. Not the pain of losing a child, nor the pain of losing a best friend, and even if Collins had been witness to many more deaths during the war, Dawson was the first.
Then the door opened and Peter was hanging his coat up yelling down the hall to his father about some new literature he needed to be reading.
“Oh,” he stared at Collins as he entered the dining room.
“Afternoon,” Collins said stiffly, mentally cursing himself for saying it as soon as he had, last time he’d said that to this boy he’d been fished out of the channel with a boathook. His father ushered him into the hallway and Collins overheard hushed voices. They both reappeared in the dining room, Peter’s face visibly shocked from what his dad had no doubt just told him.
“I was about to head over to the library actually when you caught me, Collins. Wife’s waiting there for me to help her carry some books home. I’ll let you two get to know each other,” the old man said, and suddenly Peter really didn’t want his dad to leave him with this man. He looked enough like Alexander as it was.
“So I’m assumin’ he just told you,” Collins said. Peter nodded and sat down at the table.
“I remember him mentioning you in his letters.”
“Aye, we were close, me an’ him. I’m sorry, Peter,” Collins said. He had never been very good at consoling people, he never knew what to say and what to do, Peter just nodded, so it wasn’t bad at least.
“You… Flew Hurricanes too?” he asked,
“Yeah I did, but I was transferred into a different squadron shortly after… Shortly… Early in 1940,” Collins arrived at.
“Mm. He would talk about you and this funny sounding man called Timson,” Peter said, and that brought a chuckle out of Collins.
“Timson sure was hilarious. He flies bombers now, so I donnae see him as much,” the Scot said.
“Are ye interested in joining up?”
“Me? Uh, I don’t know.”
“Are ye old enough?”
“Yes, I’m 20.”
“Surprised the army hasn’t scooped you up,” Collins hummed.
“Well, I’m in college. That’s the only reason I was exempt from the drafts. See, if you’re learning something they deem worthwhile you don’t have to join up at all,” Peter said, fiddling with his sleeve.
“Oh a college, now that’s fancy. What are you learnin’ then?”
“I’m learning to be an English teacher, secondary level.”
“That’ll be good, can see ye doing something like that,” Collins smiled.
It was strange talking to this boy. He hadn’t said much on the boat except for his very unhelpful words on his friend who had fallen down the stairs. Collins tried not to picture the dark red stain on the bottom of the boat’s hull in his mind. Tried not to remember the white sheet over the body hauled out after him that night. He might have been exposed to plenty of death, the air force having the shortest life expectancy out of the three branches, but that didn’t mean he had seen a lot of bodies. In the air, sometimes it was a lot cleaner. See the metal bird plummeting, that’s that. Or, you just hear word that someone never came home, you didn’t have to see them bleed out in front of you. You didn’t have to see them breathing, go and help scrambling oily soldiers onto the boat and come back to them completely lifeless, no. It was easier, in that sense.
“want to do?”
“Pardon?” Collins asked, only hearing the tail end.
“Oh, I just asked what you would have done if you hadn’t joined the RAF,” Peter said, nervous that the man had loudly said pardon at him, in the way his father sometimes did, in the way that meant he was seeing things in his head.
“I wanted to be an artist, didn’t have very high ambitions, maybe just do some local painting, I dunno.”
Peter looked at him then, not understanding why that wouldn’t count as ambitious, why Collins didn’t seem to think that was a very good idea, even if he was willing to admit he used to have it as a goal.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Collins said, looking away from Peter’s face.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re thinking about telling me that bein’ an artist would have been fine, that I wasn’t selling myself short and that it wasn’t a useless profession.”
“I-“
“Donnae look at me with that hope for me in your eyes. You’re reminding me too much of him.”
“…He was my brother.”
“And I couldn’t save him.”
That shut them both up, Collins wasn’t sure why he’d said that and wished he could eat his words.
“Peter, I… I’m sorry, alright? I didnae-“
And then the door opened once again, a cold draft blowing through the hallway as Mr and Mrs Dawson returned, arms full of books which were plunked down in the hallway next to the stairs.
When Mrs Dawson entered the kitchen, Collins stared. They had the same eyes, she and Alexander.
“You must be Collins. We’ve heard so much about you, love. And to think we didn’t know you were at Dunkirk!” she said, Collins made some sort of weak excuse as to why he didn’t make himself known on the Moonstone.
And then once again the Dawson household had four people in it.