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Alison’s mission to visit all of the ghost’s graves had started out as a joke really, just a passive comment to Mike that she didn’t expect to ever execute. But Alison’s Sunday morning was empty and Mike was probably still passed out on his friend’s sofa after a well-earned night out; a night out with friends that Alison had banned from Button house for the foreseeable future. Therefore, Alison found herself alone with a list, the car keys, a map and a mission.
Thomas and Kitty’s graves were a formal affair, surprisingly not far from each other on the same site, a testament to their wealth, but of course Alison had no information regarding Robin or Mary’s burial sites, and even Humphrey’s seemed to not exist anymore. On the other hand, Pat’s gravestone was a modest one in a small graveyard in Guildford, not too far from Button House. Fanny happened to be buried in the same place as Pat, though her gravestone was fraction more decadent. Unfortunately, Julian was buried in London, courtesy of his, albeit tarnished, political status, so Alison had decided to keep his for another day, leaving The Captain’s to last, for his was the closest. Alison had half expected The Captain to be buried in a military cemetery, but no, there was nothing special about where he was buried, it was unassuming yet silently dignified much like the man himself.
***
As Alison crouched by The Captain’s grave, reading the inscription that spoke of Captain Edward T. Dwight’s military prowess, a shadow darkened her surroundings. Living with Robin for so long had minimised how jumpy Alison was by a large margin, but something about spending all day around graves had made her jump more than she usually would’ve. She straightened herself up as she turned, not expecting to find such a fragile looking old man behind her.
“It’s an awful shame isn’t it? To make it through a war just to pass a few years later. Are you family?” The old man spoke with a manner that reminded Alison of The Captain: all quiet certainty shrouded in a placating tone that made you feel like you were safe from any harm.
It was an odd question to answer really; Alison had come to think of the ghosts as a family in some respects, but she couldn’t claim any actual relation to The Captain, especially not to a stranger. “No, just a friend of the family, I suppose,” she offered in reply, “I’ve heard a lot about him over the past year so I suppose I just wanted to visit. To see where he ended up.”
The old man gave Alison a calculating look under his white brows, but there was a small smile on his lips so she didn’t feel the need to concern herself too much. She wondered why he was hovering, who he was here to visit, perhaps a friend who had passed, or a lost wife perhaps? Alison made note of his lonely eyes. “I made it back from the war myself, The North African Campaign, but by the time I was well enough to reunite with the one I loved, they were gone.”
Alison had grown accustomed to people presuming she cared about their life stories, but something about the man’s countenance made her genuinely interested. They took a seat on the nearest bench and the man, William he had told her his name was, had rested his walking stick against his slightly tremoring leg. The stick was covered in various mounts, different countries and military badges filling the length of it and revealing a history of a worthwhile life lived. William divulged the tales of his life and Alison listened intently as he told of Teddy, his lover, and the thoughts and feelings that concerned his love for the man he had come to know and eventually lose. William spoke so animatedly and emotionally that Alison could feel the tragedy of their forbidden love, and its loss, as if it were her own. She didn’t know how she would cope were she to lose Mike, it was a thought she pushed away as quickly as it came.
When William had seemed to finish his story, a sad smile on his face and perhaps a little teary eyed, Alison gestured to the single red rose he held in his hand with a tilt of her head, “Is that for him? I could walk with you to his grave, if you like?”
The man huffed a small chuckle and used his stick to pull himself up from the bench, looking over to The Captain’s grave with a wistfulness that startled Alison into realisation. William’s Teddy was The Captain. Captain Edward T. Dwight, or Teddy, it seemed, to the people he had loved. Alison struggled for words as she tried to reconcile the playful Teddy from William’s stories with the man she knew today, not looking up until she heard William laugh again, a little more heartily this time. “I guess they never found out,” he said, amusement clear in his tone. Alison wondered if he meant about him, or about The Captain being gay.
Once Alison had composed her thoughts, she shook her head the slightest bit, reaching into her bag for the tiny pride flag she had intended to place upon The Captain’s grave. She hadn’t expected the moment to be so poignant. “He let his secret out eventually,” she said as she placed it beside the rose William had put down as they spoke, thinking back to the day Cap had admitted the not-so-much secret out loud for the first time. They had all been so proud of how far he had come. It turns out it probably took more for him to admit than Alison had previously assumed.
Alison wished she was able to tell the old man that Cap was alive, in some meaning of the word, but who would believe an almost stranger that they could interact with the dead? “Would you like to come back to my house for a coffee? I can promise good conversation and some cookies.” The offer was past her lips before she could stop herself. Really, half of her wanted him to say no because she knew she couldn’t warn The Captain ahead of time if he said yes, but the other half wanted to see how The Captain would react to his apparent old flame turning up at Button House.
***
Five minutes later, Alison had an old man she had met only half an hour ago in the passenger seat of her car and they were en route to Button House.
***
When Cap rounded the corner of the central hallway, swagger stick tucked under his arm as it so often was, he was affronted by the sight of Alison ushering an old man in through the front door. It was a curious sight to him really, Alison had not mentioned any planned visits, and it wasn’t someone who had been in the house before: as far as Cap could remember there hadn’t been any old men in their house since the wedding. The memory of the wedding made Cap smile just a little, in that subtle way of his, as he walked further down the hallway.
Alison glanced up from the hunched over man at the sound of The Captain’s approach, a guilty look passing over her face as she finally let go of William’s forearm as he straightened himself up. She clearly wanted to say something to The Captain, but thoughts of provocation quickly left Cap’s mind when he really looked at the man beside her. His posture had lines of a soldier’s in it, without the harsh edges that must have been weathered by his age. There was also a familiarity in the face that made The Captain pause for a moment: a familiarity as if it were one Cap had seen before, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t place it.
As The Captain tried to place the face in his sea of memories, the man spoke, suddenly bringing what Cap was searching for to the surface of the otherwise murky depths, “You know, this entryway hasn’t changed in the slightest since I was last here,” was all that William had muttered.
The Captain didn’t need a word more to know exactly who was stood in front of him. Alive. He would recognise that voice before anything else. He had said once, in the rushed whispers of the twilight, that he would know each inflection and intonation as he knew his own, in life and in death, in every waking moment that plagued his mind, and so much was true in that moment. Lieutenant William Havers, his Havers, was in front of him, and he must be nearing one hundred years old. For once, The Captain was utterly lost for words and simply stared between Havers and Alison as she showed him through to the kitchen.
The Captain was obviously quick on their heels as they had made their way through the house, “Alison. What is he doing here? Where did you find him?” The Captain’s voice was betraying his mind with how much desperation had seeped into it, “How is he alive?” He hadn’t taken his eyes off of the now obviously familiar face from the moment he had taken a seat at the kitchen table. The Captain had half the mind to walk through him, to try and touch him, just to feel him again, in spite of the sickness it would bring. But he had to compose himself for he knew it would hurt even more to watch Havers leave again, if he did.
“I have to tell you something William,” The Captain cringed as Alison spoke his name, so unused to hearing his forename from another’s lips: it had previously been his privilege, and his alone. It was odd, but comforting, how Havers’ mannerisms had not changed in over half a century: he still listened more than he spoke and he still dug his nails into his palms when he didn’t know what to expect and he still even maintained an almost eerie amount of eye contact when someone was speaking to him, something that made so many people they had served with uncomfortable. It had never made The Captain uncomfortable in the slightest.
“You see, I know this might sound extremely crazy, but some of the people that died in this house have stayed in this house… as ghosts… and I can see them, and talk to them. They can talk to me,” Alison continued quickly, her speed implying how aware she was of how crazy she really did sound. She knew how much it had taken to persuade Mike, and he was her husband- he was coerced by their vows to believe everything she said.
The Captain didn’t miss the hopeful glint in Havers’ eyes, in disbelief himself that the man would even jokingly believe what Alison had said, what kind of sane man would? The Captain couldn’t let that happen, so he spoke out, eyes regretfully leaving Havers for a second to look at the woman in question, “Alison, you can’t play with his emotions like this. What happened to not interfering with the living?” The Captain’s walls were still up but his defensive logic was not enough to save the burning in his unbeating heart that was giving him hope that Havers would know he was there, right across the table from him.
The Captain, when he was still alive, had been told Lieutenant William Havers was missing in action, presumed dead, and it had been the last straw for Cap, regretfully leading to a relative lack of care for his own wellbeing, something he was yet to admit to the Alison or the other ghosts, though some of them had seen his gradual dissent into death with their own eyes. Perhaps he could claim he was killed by his broken heart, though he would never admit it for fear of Thomas finding it all too good of an excuse for them to bond. To see Havers alive now, albeit probably near the brink of death himself with how old he had gotten, was truly an abolition of everything Cap had previously thought he’d known. If he had held on until he had heard news of William’s survival, perhaps he would have made it past the age of forty one.
Alison was pointedly ignoring The Captain in favour of trying to convince William of her truth, but she was stopped by William’s uncharacteristically quiet voice interrupting her tangent, “Is he here? Now?” Alison lifted her eyes to The Captain’s face as she muttered her confirmation.
“Tell him The Button House 11 missed his cover drive terribly enough to stop playing altogether,” The Captain said, defeat and acceptance mingling in his voice.
When Alison relayed what The Captain had said, Havers’ lonely eyes looked about his person with the look of a man whose whole world had been configured incorrectly for years and had finally fitted back into place. The Captain thought Havers had stopped breathing. Alison, who had been glancing between the two men, could not see a dry eye in the room. There was no doubt in William’s mind that his lost love was in the room with them, glancing in roughly the same direction Alison seemed to be looking as he spoke, “I missed you terribly, Teddy.”
Alison felt like she was intruding on a truly intimate moment when she saw the way the last trace of The Captain’s resolve drained from his face in the tear that trickled down his cheek. For once she was glad it was only The Captain in the room with her and none of the other ghosts had interrupted this moment for him.
“I followed you to North Africa, you know, I got that service revolver I always wanted.” Alison could tell The Captain was trying to keep his speech light-hearted, like this wasn’t a moment he was waiting for his entire life, but she relayed what he said word for word, trying to adopt each inflection of his voice.
As The Captain’s words were spoke aloud by Alison, he saw the moment Havers registered what that had meant – it was clear to him now that Haves had not known that he had followed him to the front line. He felt like he had almost proven himself to Havers in that moment. The pair had shared so many nights where Havers had spoken aloud his dreams of having a swing at Fritz and attempted to prod The Captain into wanting to go to the front himself. Havers had wanted them to go together, Cap knew that even then, but Cap felt safe and secure with what they had at Button House, with their weaponry project a good excuse to spend as much time together as they did. The front line was inevitably what The Captain had always known would take Havers from him.
Havers was struggling speaking to the emptiness in front of him, wishing he could stare into the oh so very blue eyes that he missed so dearly. As much as they were imprinted into his own eyelids, imagining them in front of him just wasn’t the same, “I never knew,” he admitted, “when I finally made it home and out of hospital… you were gone... I came looking for you. I even spoke to your family.” Havers didn’t want to think about the exchange he had with The Captain’s family. It wasn’t pretty, even without them knowing that Havers was more to their son than simply his brother in arms and second in command. The Captain seemed to imagine exactly what Havers experienced without having to be told, if his grimace was anything to go by.
Alison watched the Captain reach out his hand to cover William’s where it rested clenched on the table, wishing with all her heart that William could feel his touch, but it was obvious enough that he couldn’t. The Captain awkwardly coughed, attempting to hide the sickness Alison knew he would be feeling from his own action, “I love you William. I don’t think I ever told you that enough.” The Captain’s voice was fragile, as if saying anything else would break him past the point of repair. He was quick to remove his hand and push himself away from the table, looking desperately to Alison once again, reaffirming the expression’s place in her mind as an expression that didn’t suit the man in the slightest.
“He said that he loves you and that he doesn’t think he ever told you that enough,” Alison announced quietly, her concerned eyes still on The Captain as he seemed to remove himself from the conversation consciously. She couldn’t bear to repeat his words verbatim when they clearly meant so much to him. “I think he’s done for today,” she added, looking back to William with a reassuring smile. He thankfully seemed to understand as he finished his otherwise neglected drink and once again used his stick to pull himself up to a standing position beside the table.
Havers was unsure as to where in the room Cap was at that point, having understood the man had withdrawn himself, but he knew he couldn’t leave his reply unsaid, so he spoke it to the room in hope that he would still hear, “I am eternally yours, Teddy, and I love you with every breath I have breathed and every breath I have left in this tired old body. One day I will join you, and we will be together, I promise you that.” Alison had never heard a person sound so certain in their words.
The Captain was by the window, his back to the room, and to Havers, but Alison didn’t miss the tremble of his shoulders that suggested his body was being wracked with sobs as he heard Havers’ parting words. It was unspoken, but obvious to them all, that Havers could return should he want to, for Alison was sure the pair had plenty more to say to one another, but for the time being it was yet another goodbye.
Alison nodded placatingly to William, showing him out with a comforting hug after exchanging contact information and directions to the bus stop outside. When she finally returned to the kitchen it seemed Fanny, Mary, Kitty and Thomas had found The Captain, and The Captain had found his resolve. If Alison didn’t know better she would’ve thought that she had imagined the sight of The Captain sobbing in the window.
He was currently staring at his hands in bewilderment as Mary worried about him, exclaiming hurriedly, “I remembers it, s’like what happened to Annie, the same glows!” The Captain did not look impressed, and nor did Fanny. They both shared a deep look of concern.
“My God, this cannot be happening,” Cap muttered, folding his hands behind his back as he was so accustomed to doing. Alison had not quite worked out what the scene in front of her meant, and The Captain looked like he wished he hadn’t been able to work it out immediately. He didn’t want to say anymore goodbyes.