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2 minutes 30. Again. “Thank you anyway, Alison.” the Captain said, slightly dejected after the constant plateau. “Better luck tomorrow, Cap. You’ll beat it soon enough!” chimed Pat. Captain made a low grunt and walked away from the pair.
“Does he seem alright to you today?” asked Pat.
“Of course. He’s always grumpy. Probably just annoyed about his run.” Pat nodded his head. “He’ll be back bossing you all about by this afternoon.” she said as she walked away.
But he wasn’t. Today, he was different somehow. He didn’t join in the activities Pat had arranged for the day. When he didn’t even show up for his choice for film club, Pat paused the group and went to search for him. As he walked past the Captain’s room, he looked out the window and saw a man sat by the lake. It couldn’t be Thomas as he was still arguing with Julian about some film or another around the others. It had to be the Captain.
“Cap? You alright?”
“What? Yes, perfectly fine, thank you Patrick.” he replied, avoiding eye contact with the scout leader.
“You sure, mate? It’s your turn for film club and you didnt show.”
“Oh. Right…” he stared into the lake.
“A war documentary, then?”
“Not tonight, Patrick. I’d like to stay here by myself, if that’s alright.”
“Oh. Okay, then.” Pat left a long pause before trying again. “You know you can talk to me, don’t you Cap? About anything.”
The Captain shifted awkwardly but didn’t say anything.
“Literally anything, mate. I’m there like a bullet.”
Pat couldn’t get the Captain out of his mind. It was late but Pat knew that the military man would be just finishing his nightly checks of the house. He stuck to his schedule.
“Knock, knock…” said Pat, peering through the door. The Captain was sat on his bed, his hands clenched together, eyes shut. “Didn’t know you prayed, Cap.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Patrick. I’m not praying.”
“Then can I ask what you are doing?”
“Thinking.”
Pat moved towards him and joined him on the bed. “About?”
“Life. Death. What does it matter to you?”
“Well, I guess I just worry about you, Cap. You looked sad.”
“I assure you, Patrick, I am completely fine.”
Pat knew he wouldn’t get anything else out of him. The rough exterior had been kept up for at least 70 years and it looked like it could survive another 70. He put his hand over the Captain’s and got up. “You should sleep, mate.”
The next day, the Captain was back to his usual self. Energetic on his run, sharp turns on his usual patrols of the house. Pat still thought about the night before and eventually it clicked - it must have been his death day. Everyone gets down on their death day. But the Captain’s death was shrouded in mystery. He even knew how Mary died (well, not any details, just the fact that there was a fire and she ended up in it). He figured there was no way he could break down the Captain’s walls and find out about the day directly from him so he decided he had to question the others that must have seen it happen.
He found Kitty and Mary playing hide and seek in the garden.
“Oh, are you joining in our game of hide and seek too, Pat?” Kitty said with a huge smile on her face.
“Oh, not right now, Kitty. Maybe later! But can you answer a question for me?” Both ladies leaned into Pat’s question. “Do you know how the Captain died?”
“Of course not. He would never tell us.”
“Didn’t you see anything?”
“Well we saws him around the house with his soldiers but one day he was alives and the next he was dead.”
“Well, thanks anyway, guys,” Pat said but not yet feeling defeated as there were still plenty of other ghosts roaming the house when the Captain died.
Next, he found Lady Button admiring the new roses planted just before the wedding.
“Admiring the plants, Lady B?”
“Ah, yes. Beautiful aren’t they?”
“Very! Say, do you know how the Captain died?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t. He was roaming the house alive and then he was roaming the house dead. He immediately started barking his orders at us, of course. The house had been peaceful for a while. Just him. And then louder than ever! No matter how many times we tried to tell him he still thought he was able to boss us… Pat backed away slowly as a classic Lady Button rant was in full swing and would probably last about 10 minutes.
He found the rest of the ghosts in the common room. Thomas was sighing to himself on the windowsill and Julian and Robin were playing chess with Humphrey’s head acting as a sort of referee.
“What is it, Pat?” The politician shouted as soon as Pat put one foot through the doorway.
“How do you know I want to talk to you, Julian?”
“You have that look on your face. The one I don’t like. The one like you’re about to make a speech to the group. If you are, make it short and snappy as I’m terribly busy here.”
“Well, I’m trying to find out how the Captain died. I was wondering if anyone saw anything.”
“Wasn’t here.”
“Well I gathered that, thank you, Julian. Thomas?”
“No, I was composing a poem upstairs and then he appeared. Sorry, Patrick.”
“That’s alright, Tom. Robin. You’ve been here the longest; you must have seen something.”
“Me was chasing deer in forest.”
“Of course you were. Humphrey? Did you see anything?”
“Well, I did see him go. Sort of. My head was in his room. He left in a hurry in tears. Then he was back in the room as a ghost. Mind you, I was only watching his legs.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Not a peep. Sorry, Pat.”
“No, thank you Humphrey. That’s more than I’ve found out from anyone else.”
“Look,” started Julian. “Why don’t we get Alison to give us the laptop and search him up? There have to be records of every soldier.”
“Brilliant idea, Julian!”
“I’m full of them,” the politician replied smugly.
“How? Nobody knows his name. You can’t just search for Captain. I’m sure sweet Alison would have thought of that already if she knew what to search,” piped Thomas.
“Oh… yeah…”
“Guess you’re stuck then, Pat,” said Humphrey.
A few days passed and eventually Pat got so busy thinking up new club ideas, he had almost forgotten about the Captain’s off day.
The doorbell echoed through the house so all of the ghosts gathered around Alison and Mike at the door to find out who the mystery visitor was.
“Are they all here?” Asked Mike.
“Yep. Stupid doorbell is that loud,” she replied. She slowly unlocked the door. “Hello?”
A tall man stood looking at his feet but he suddenly looked up. His light, fair hair was kept back neatly with gel, dressed in a green bomber jacket and blue jeans.
“Oh, hi! This is Button House, right?”
“Um, yeah? Who are you?”
“Oh, sorry. I’m Havers. Christian Havers,” replied the man. The Captain swallowed loudly, his eyes wide with shock. He saw Pat looking at him and instantly composed himself. “My grandfather just passed away and we’re clearing out his attack. He had a load of stuff belonging to his brother and apparently he served here during the war? He was a Lieutenant. My grandfather never really talked about him and I wondered if I could find out some more about him?”
Alison couldn’t risk a glance at the Captain without telling the stranger that she was barking mad. “Well, Christian, I’ll do some searching and I’ll see what I can find for you. Maybe come back tomorrow?”
“That would be brilliant, thank you.”
She shut the door after the man had gotten halfway down the drive. When she turned around, the Captain had gone missing from the group.
“Did anyone see where the Captain went?”
Eventually Alison found him by the lake.
“Cap! What did you hurry off for?”
“No reason.”
“Help me out, then,” pleaded Alison. “Can I find any stuff left here after the war?”
“Classified.”
“Cap, the war is over. Military secrets from the war are out now. Literally everyone knows about Turing and Enigma.”
“Who? Anyway, you won’t find anything here.”
“Why not?”
“Um…”
“Look, the kid just wants to know about his grandfather. Are there records hidden somewhere?”
The Captain left a long pause, weighing up the options in his mind. “Fine. In my old desk.”
“This one here?”
“That one there, yes. But I threw the key in the lake after the war.”
“I figured. Good thing I brought this with us.” She pulled a crowbar from her back pocket.
“Good lord, Alison!” The desk creaked as Alison prised it open.
“Aha! Wow, it’s like a gold mine in here. Now, who am I looking for?”
“Havers…”
Alison rummaged around in the stack of papers. “H.. H… H… Ah, Havers!” The Captain shifted on the spot uncomfortably. “Wow, I get you being freaked out seeing him. He’s the spitting image of your Lieutenant even though he’s a great uncle,” said Alison, staring at the photograph paper clipped to the file. “Transferred by own request? What’s that about?”
“He went to Africa to serve on the front.”
“Is there anything else in here?”
“No, no. Only the… Alison!” Alison had already begun to break into the other drawers. “Alison, may I remind you there is very sensitive information in this desk!”
“You got a bomb hidden in here as well?” She sniped back while carrying on. “Got ya! What’s this?”
“Alison, please put that back. I beg you.”
“Why? What is it?”
“It’s mine.” She glared at him. “My… diary…”
“You kept a diary? YOU kept a DIARY?” She said, causing Mike to stir upstairs.
“Alison, please.” It was the first time Alison had stopped since they had entered the room. Her hands were wrapped tightly around the small, leather bound diary. “Please don’t read it. I beg you.”
She looked up at him with genuine sadness. “What are you afraid of, Cap?”
“Of you reading that. Of the others hearing of it. Of all of you never seeing me in the same way again. Please do not open that diary.”
“Alright, then. But you should know, Cap. We would never judge you for anything. Anything.” He made a low grunting noise at her and left the room. Alison held the diary close to her chest, picked up Havers’ file and followed the military captain out of the room.
Captain couldn’t sleep that night. He had finally been caught. Sort of. He knew Alison would keep her word and not read the diary. But it didn’t feel right to have it leave his desk. It was kept under lock and key for a reason. There were no military secrets hidden in there but his secrets were all on display. The only way he kept his tough outer shell in good condition was letting his blasted emotions go into writing in that diary. He had kept one as a boy; his mother had told him it wasn’t good to keep things bottled up. But when he was a teenager, he stopped writing because of the fear that his mother or father might read the words he wrote. The feelings he felt that he couldn’t even put into words anyway. Only when he moved away from home was he able to write, his words safe from prying eyes.
~~~
“At ease, Lieutenant. Why aren’t you celebrating the day with the men?”
“I have a gift for you, sir. It’s nothing much. Merry Christmas, sir.” Havers handed a small item wrapped in brown paper. The Captain carefully took off the paper revealing a small, leather bound diary.
“Thank you, Havers. What a thoughtful gift. I’m afraid I don’t have anything to give you in return.”
“Quite alright, sir. I know how busy you have been lately.” The taller man gestured to the diary in the Captain’s hands. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, sir, but I figured you could use a diary. To de-stress. It’s never good to keep everything bottled up.” As Havers left the room, the Captain held the diary to his chest, thinking of the way Havers had repeated the words of his mother. He let out a smile larger than he would ever admit.
~~~
It had been over 70 years since the Captain had written anything. He did it in his mind, taking note of his emotions at the end of each day, but it would never be the same as putting pen to paper and letting them escape his ever-racing brain. And it was starting to show. He felt weak, like he could collapse into a ball of tears at any moment. He couldn’t stop worrying about who had seen that diary.
Alison and Pat waited in the hallway. The clock striked 8 but the Captain was still nowhere to be found.
“It’s not like him to be late to anything.” Pat said nervously, clearly worried about his friend.
“No…”
“Should I go find him? He wouldn’t want to miss his run.”
“Leave it, Pat. I had a feeling he wouldn’t run today.”
“Why not?”
“I found something yesterday.” Pat looked eagerly at Alison. “I made him tell me where I could find some stuff on that Havers. I found his file. He looks almost identical to his great uncle. I also found the Cap’s diary…”
“Cap kept a diary?!?!? What did it say?!”
“He asked me not to read it. So I didn’t. There’s got to be some stuff in there that Christian would want to know.”
Soon enough, Christian arrived at the door. Alison asked the ghosts to give her and Christian some space but the Captain had joined her at the door.
“You sure you wanna see this, Cap?” He nodded sharply at her and she opened the door. “Hey, Christian, how are you? Come in, come in. I found a few things about your great uncle.”
“Brilliant, thank you! I brought everything I could find. Some of it was really hidden away. I was hoping we could piece it all together?”
“Of course, that’s a great idea. Follow me.” As she turned around, she looked at the flustered Captain but not for long enough that Christian would notice. He followed the young man through the house, ending back in his old office.
“Thanks for doing this, Alison. I really appreciate it.”
“It was no trouble at all. This stuff was actually easier to find than I thought. I found your great uncle’s file for when he served at Button House. You look a lot like him.”
“Wow, yeah, I kinda do, huh.”
“But it seems he left here for Africa of his own accord. Then I can’t trace him, I’m afraid.”
“No, that’s perfect as I have things dating from when he came back from Africa.”
“He made it back?”
“Yeah, he made it back.” Alison didn’t see but that fact almost brought tears to the Captain’s eyes. Havers made it home alive. But the tears that almost showed were not of joy but of anger instead. He lived. They both lived. And the Captain had died thinking he had lost everything in Africa. “Why don’t I make us some tea and see if we can find anything else?” She smiled at Christian and left the room, the door barely closed.
“So, were you his Captain then?” The Captain stood still, not believing that the lookalike was speaking to him. “Oi, you in the uniform. I can see you.” The Captain slowly turned around to look Christian dead in the eyes.
“You can see me?”
“Of course I can see you. Now, we haven’t got long before she gets back. What do you know about my great uncle Havers?” The Captain stood silent. “Please. I’ll trade you for something you probably didn’t know. About after the war, maybe?”
The Captain swallowed loudly. “He was my second in command.”
“So you’re Captain Anderson…”
“How did you…”
“What did you do here during the war?”
“Well, Havers and I ran a secret operation looking into limpet mines. But he left for Africa before we finished and I… couldn’t work with anyone else… How come you can see me?”
“Car crash when I was 15. Killed my parents and nearly killed me. That’s how I ended up living with my grandfather and how I ended up with all of my great uncle’s belongings.”
“You said he made it back from Africa…”
“He did. He made it to the late 70s by the dates on these.” Christian pulled out a stack of papers from his messenger bag. “Letters. All addressed to this house. Some addressed to an E, some to ‘my Captain’. But I figured that they had to be the same person. And it sounds like that person is you. That’s actually the reason I’m here. I wanted to know who E was. I wanted to give the letters to their rightful owner.”
“But how did you know I’d be here?”
“A guy like you had to be a ghost. Constantly conflicted but by his own emotions? The house was just going to be a starting point for me to find you but you saved me some work dying here.” The pair heard footsteps in the corridor. “I’ll leave these here. They’re yours now.
Alison entered the room and laid 2 teas on the old desk, avoiding the few letters Christian had managed to sprawl out before she had reappeared.
“What are all these?”
“They’re mine,” blurted out the Captain. They both shot a stern look at him without thinking. “And you can both see me.”
“We can?” The pair said in unison. There was a stunned silence.
“Thank you, Christian. For delivering the letters to me. Very thoughtful of you.”
“No worries, Captain. If you ever want anything, just have Alison give me a shout and I’ll pick out what I can for you.”
After Alison had shown Christian out, she returned and the Captain was still bolted to the floor.
“Do you want me to lay them all out properly for you? On your bed maybe? To read by yourself?”
“That would be most kind of you.”
“Thank you, Alison.”
“It’s quite alright. Goodnight, Cap.”
“Wait.” Alison put her head back around the door. The Captain didn’t look away from the sea of papers covering his bed. “My diary. You… you can… you can read it. If you want. If you haven’t already.”
“I haven’t. Are you sure?”
“I… I think so.”
Alison ran through the corridors. She came back to the Captain’s room with the leather diary.
“Can I read it here?” The man nodded at her and they both started reading.
Alison was, of course, the first to speak.
“Cap…This is all… I mean, I thought I knew but…”
“Knew what?” Struggled the Captain through his own tears that he had finally set free.
“That you were gay.”
“I am not a…”
“Cap, you don’t have to hide it anymore. It’s fine. It’s perfectly fine. You… you loved him.”
The Captain took a deep breath, “I think maybe I did, yes.”
“All these years… You kept it to yourself. I would hug you if I could, you know.”
“I…”
“Did he? Love you back, I mean. Did he?” Alison joined him in staring at the letters, skimming them briefly. “He did…” The Captain couldn’t do anything but stay silent for a long time.
“He was just as scared as I was,” he said finally.
“Were you ever… you know…” The Captain stared at her blankly. “Intimate?”
“Good lord, no! But we thought the other men had started to notice little things. The staying a little bit later in my office. The walks around the grounds in the morning. That’s when he left for Africa. He left… to protect me.” His eyes wandered back to the letters.
“Is that why he never sent these?”
“I suppose it was… Thank you, Alison.”
“Goodnight, Cap.”
The Captain found Pat lying by the lake staring at the stars the next evening.
“I killed myself.”
Pat immediately sat upright. “What?!”
“You heard me. I know you were trying to find out.” The Captain sat down beside him.
“Can I… can I ask why?”
“I thought I had lost someone very special. But it turns out that he was just as afraid as I was to admit it.”
“He?” Pat sounded surprised.
“Come on, Patrick. You’re a smart man. I thought you would have guessed that… that I prefer… men.” He coughed in between words. “I thought Havers had died in Africa and… I didn’t want to be… without him so… I…”
“Oh, Cap…” He quickly grabbed the man for a tight hug. The Captain couldn’t stop it from happening. “Thank you for telling me.” Captain patted the scout leader’s back.
“Just don’t make me say any of that again.”