Work Text:
The Portrait
At the request of the house’s owners, they took the portraits off the walls. The Captain wasn’t sure how much safer the old paintings would be in the event of a bombing raid if they were in an attic room as opposed to hanging in their usual spaces, but they were being given use of this grand old house by the Button family, so really it was the least that they could do.
He carried one of the newer portraits up - a severe looking elderly woman from around 1910. Green followed close behind, lugging up a Regency era painting of a young couple.
‘You got the Grey Lady,’ remarked Green as the Captain finally set down the painting in the attic.
The Captain steadied his breathing. It wasn’t that he was out of puff simply from carrying a painting up some stairs, he was still a very sprightly man for his age, thank you so very much, it was just that the air up in the attic was so wretchedly dusty.
‘What was that?’
Green nodded at the painting. ‘The Grey Lady. Lady Francesca, I think her name was. Topped herself in front of her husband, poor fellow. They say she still haunts the place. Some amateur photographer back in ‘32 reckons he caught her on camera.’
The Captain huffed. ‘Yes, well, I’ll thank you not to repeat such fanciful poppycock in front of the rest of the men, Green. We’ve got a war to win, and we won’t do it telling one another silly ghost stories.’
Green shrugged. ‘Just interested in the house’s history. Did you know they found one of Europe’s oldest cutting tools on the grounds here?’
‘If you’re talking about the cutlery in the kitchen, some of it certainly could do with a sharpen.’
‘No, I’m talking stone age axes. Mesolithic, possibly even Paleolithic. Makes you think, Sir.’
‘Does it, now?’
‘I think so, Sir. How we’re just… passing through, Sir. That is… not that our part to play isn’t important, beating old Adolf and whatnot. But in old places like this, well, you feel a bit small, a bit fleeting. Like this whole blasted war is just a part of something bigger. It’s comforting in a way, Sir.’ He put the painting he’d been carrying down, and indicated to the couple on it. ‘Like these two. The first Lord and Lady Button. They had no way of knowing that less than 150 years from when this was painted, their Button House would be a military HQ. Probably thought it would be fancy balls and so on forever. But here we are.’ Green picked up the painting again. ‘Come along then, Isabelle.’
The Captain followed Green over to a corner of the attic. ‘What the blazes are you doing now?’
‘I thought Isabelle would probably want to be with the rest of her stuff.’ Green nodded over at an old trunk with ‘Isabelle Higham’ written in gold filigree.
‘Green, you really are being utterly ridiculous.’ And rather sweet, the Captain allowed himself to briefly think. That was Green for you, soft and thoughtful. He’d make someone a bally good husband one of these days.
Green rested the painting on the wall next to the trunk, which, the Captain noticed, was unlocked.
Green noticed it too. 'Shall we take a peek, Sir?'
'I really don't think that's proper.' All this talk of history had rather piqued his interest, though.
'I don't think Lady Isabelle will mind,' smiled Green. He opened the trunk. 'Coo, Sir, some pretty jewellery in here.' Green held up a silver locket.
The Captain took it from Green, gingerly. 'Indeed.' It really was quite lovely. Perhaps Green had a point. In amongst the immediacy and the Spartan necessities of war, perhaps it was important to ground oneself in history, and appreciate the beauty of the past. Carefully, he opened the locket.
Oh!
Inside the locket was a miniature portrait - not of Isabelle, nor of her husband from the grand painting, but of another man.
(The beauty of the past, indeed.)
The errant thought slipped into his mind before he had chance to stop it.
'What is it, Sir?'
It was a soulful looking young man. Big, brown eyes and romantic curls, and… and…
He showed the picture to Green. 'This isn't Lord Button, surely? He looks nothing like the other painting…'
Green peered at it. 'Oh! I think that must be Thorne!'
The Captain frowned. ‘Thorne’?
'Never read any Thorne, Sir? Count your lucky stars if you didn't, Sir, he wasn't terribly good. Poet, Sir. He was rumoured to have briefly wooed Lady Isabelle before breaking it off suddenly to pursue Mary Shelley.'
The Captain raised his eyebrows. He liked Frankenstein - at least, he liked the bit on the boat before all that nonsense about bringing back the dead. 'I take it from the fact that we don't celebrate the great writer Mary Thorne that it didn't end well.'
'Certainly didn't, Sir, he was actually killed in a duel on these very grounds.' Green smiled, cheerfully. 'See what I mean? Fascinating, all this stuff.'
'Quite.' He couldn't tear his eyes from the miniature. (Lovely). A poet, was he? He'd have to find some of the works of this sad, soft looking fellow… after the war, of course. Perhaps this tragic man with his gentle expression might have written some verse that would speak to the Captain, a loneliness reaching out across a hundred years and more.
After the war. There would be time for all of this once the fight was won.
Green turned to go back down the stairs. The Captain followed, and - and to his dying day and beyond he couldn't say quite why he did this - he slipped the locket into the pocket of his jacket.
Funny thing, dying. In life, he'd feared it would hurt, and in fact it didn't at all. What troubled him instead was a tremendous sense of regret. He hadn't seen out the war. Had never managed to get a good pop at Jerry.
(Never been loved. Not in the way he'd wanted, deep down.)
It wasn't fair! He still had so much to do, so much he could offer! As he died, his hand slid into his pocket, and his fingers curled loosely around the locket, still there, and the picture within of the lovely young man who had died, like him, alone in the grounds of this old house. A connection, in death, more than a century apart.
For a moment, there was nothing, and then there was the voice, and the voice said 'BOO!! Ah ha ha, you dead now.'
The Captain found that he could look around. A few human shapes - or at least mostly human shapes - drifted into view, like clouds.
'What the deuce??'
'No worry bout it,' said the voice, 'shit happen. You probably get suck, it come most time.'
He discovered that he was able to sit up. 'Suck? What??'
'Takings its time with thisun,' said another, faltering, female voice. 'aintnt it?'
'Ooh,' squeaked a girlish voice, 'does that mean he's staying?'
'I should most certainly hope not,' barked another, older woman. 'It's bad enough those army louts have been allowed to stay here and move everything about during this silly little scrap with Austro-Hungary, without one of them deciding to stay on in the long term! Go on! Shoo! Be off with you!'
'No, is no light,' said the first voice. 'Would be here by now. You stay.'
His eyes started to adjust to the cloudy shapes. The three women were all in different period outfits. Two were clapping their hands. The third looked furious, and strangely familiar.
'Good Lord,' he managed. 'You're the Grey Lady.'
'I have a name, you know,' huffed the Grey Lady.
'I'm Kitty,' cried the frilliest of the women.
'Long story short,' said the Grey Lady, 'you're dead, so are we, you're stuck with us until you move on, nobody's quite sure how one goes about moving on, not even Robin…'
'Ullo,' said the owner of the first voice, at his side, making him jump, as was understandable when one was informed that one had just died, and had been greeted by an actual devil.
'Don't worry,' continued the Grey Lady, 'he's not a demon, just a beast.'
'Not beast,' grunted the obvious beast.
'By the way, he's the reason you kept having to rewire the place, he's just recently discovered electric lighting and thinks it's hilarious to play merry havok with it.'
'Tiny fire in glass pots go BZZT,' leered the creature through snaggled teeth.
'Is nobody going to help the poor fellow up, then?' asked a new voice. Gentle. Well spoken. A fifth figure stepped forward, and oh!
An angel!
His angel!
(Soft brown eyes! Curls! Long limbs and hello stockings, hello knickerbockers, hello close fitting waistcoat and diaphanous dress shirt, thank you, early 19th century men's fashion!)
The Captain reached out a hand to the angel.
'Fine,' grunted the stinking simian creature at the Captain's side. 'Hupsydups, soldier man.' It hauled the Captain to his feet, a spark of understanding igniting in its deep set eyes as it caught the Captain's expression. 'Me know,' it muttered quietly into his ear. 'Me think him woman first too, is girlie shoe and hair, yes? But him male. Is OK though, lot of females.' It leaned in even closer and dropped its voice further. 'Keep hand off smokey one, she big issues to work through but when do, me got dibs, me see first. Frilly one and shouty one fine by me though. Fill you boots.'
‘Ah,’ was the Captain’s only reply. The angel approached. He’d died here too, he had to be stuck here as well. Thomas Thorne. Thomas Thorne. Thomas Thorne, long-dead and lovely and…
‘Thank you, Robin,’ said Thorne. He stood nose to nose with the Captain. ‘And now that you’re here for the foreseeable, and on your feet, Sir…’ Thorne slapped the Captain limply across the face.
What??
‘I saw you, damn your eyes,’ railed Thorne, ‘thief! I watched you steal from my Isabelle’s effects! And you allowed that oafish fellow you were with to disparage my life’s work and spread some ridiculous fallacy that I pursued Mary Shelley, I mean, I never even met the woman, but I tell you, Sir, no friend of Byron is a friend of mine, oh no, Sir!’
‘What be a Diss Sparrow?’ asked the singed Stuart era woman.
‘Disparaged, Mary, I was disparagéd!’
‘Him friend say him poems big pile of poo.’
‘Fair,’ sighed the Grey Lady.
Thorne squeaked with indignance. ‘This will not stand! I was celebrated as a genius in my time! I will not be disparaged by an ape…’
‘Me not ape, me Pale-Ee-Limpic, him friend say so.’
‘Nor will I be disparaged by some stupid common soldier, nor a…’
The Captain took a step towards Thorne. Thorne, disappointingly flinched back.
‘Now look here, Thorne, Private Green is one of the brightest lads to come out of the East End of London, and I won’t have you disparage him or any of my men, simply because they don’t like your poetry.’
‘All these Dissed Sparrows,’ muttered the roasted Stuart.
Frilly Kitty raised her hand. ‘I liked your poem about my birthday, Thomas.’
‘That was “Happy Birthday To You”,’ snapped the Grey Lady, ‘and he overheard people singing it to my grandniece, and the only things that even rhyme in it are “you” with “you”.’
Thorne drew breath to angrily reply, a finger raised. He paused, panic entering those eyes, which didn’t seem so soft or soulful any more, they looked… a bit daft, to be honest. Self pitying and pretentious.
‘AHHHHHHH,’ cried Thorne. ‘AHHHH LALALALALALA NOT LISTENING, NOT LISTENING TO YOU, LALALALALA’. He stuffed fingers in his ears and ran away.
Oh, no.
The angel in the locket was an idiot. A preening, talentless, snobbish popinjay.
And he still had his portrait hidden in his pocket.
It was a while before he was able to sneak back up to the attic without any of the others following him. The trunk was closed again, still unlocked, but he couldn’t open it. He couldn’t touch anything in the living realm. He took the locket from his pocket.
‘Sorry, Isabelle,’ he said, ‘whatever reason he had for breaking things off, there’s a good chance you dodged a bullet, as it were. However, the decision to keep his portrait was yours, and I shouldn’t have taken it from you.’
He placed it on the lid of the trunk. It sank straight through, disappearing into the trunk as a fine mist. Ah. Of course. This wasn’t the real locket. This was a ghostly memory of a locket. The real locket was probably buried with the rest of him. Still. It was the thought that counted, right? He had gone through the physical motions of giving back the portrait just as he had given the locket back in his heart - or whatever counted as a heart for a ghost. He gave the trunk, and the long departed woman it represented, a respectful nod, and turned to leave.
Something jingled faintly in his pocket. He patted it. There was a lump there, the exact size and shape of a locket, with, no doubt, a picture of an idiot inside.
Bugger.