Chapter Text
ARTHUR
"When you are guilty, it is not your sins you hate but yourself."
–Anthony de Mello
It was cold, it was dark, and it was wet. His suit stuck to his skin and chaffed, soaked through by the steady drizzle that had lasted for hours.
‘You’ll know what to do,’ said the constable. All well and good for a send off, but as things were Arthur found himself wishing he had the slightest hint of direction. He hadn’t thought it out this far. Escape Wellington Wells and find Percy.
If Percy was still…
He couldn’t make himself finish that sentence, not even in his head. He swallowed.
You really are a deplorable person, aren’t you Arthur?
The memory of Percy screaming his name as he lied through his teeth out of cowardice took shape in his mind, twisting, bending, melding itself with another memory that accosted him.
It's just self-preservation. No hard feelings.
His own words made his stomach twist. He hadn’t even stayed to hear her parting words. He’d just rushed out of there without so much as looking back. How many times had he used that excuse in his life? A coward’s excuse that’s what it was.
That’s who he was. A reprehensible coward.
A reprehensible coward with wet clothes, wet socks, muddy shoes, an empty stomach, and nowhere to sleep for the night.
Look on the bright side. No plague ridden wastrels trying to bash your brains in. Or curfew-patrolling bobbies for that matter.
...Or people at all, come to think of it.
He stopped in his tracks and looked back over his shoulder. There was still, blessedly, a little light though the sun was almost set. With such an overcast sky he ought to find somewhere to sleep for the night and was beginning to think that turn in the road a ways back had been the wrong one.
It was too late to turn back now. He had about as much luck backtracking as he did moving forward and that shadow in the distance looked something like a building.
It was truly dark by the time he arrived at the structure. Thankfully a break in the clouds let in just enough moonlight to see by. It turned out to be a barn. Well, cows were better bedfellows than rats, and beggars couldn’t be choosers.
They were big, lumbering creatures. Ominous shadows shifting in the night. When had he last seen a cow? Not since he was a boy. They ate the cows long before the dogs.
His stomach grumbled. He only had one can of victory “meat” in his stuffed briefcase and had been meaning to save it, but as the ache in his stomach grew and it was too dark to rummage about the barn, considering his torch was dead, he caved and cracked it open. Hungry as he was, rationing had become habit this past month. After precisely half the can, Arthur carefully closed it back up and tucked back into his beat up briefcase. Sturdy, trusty thing had served him well both as a Wellie and a Downer. It would continue to do as a… whatever he was now.
On some prickly stacks of hay he found a spot to lie down. Despite the uncomfortable bedding, damp clothes, and large unsettling livestock resting nearby, exhaustion won out and sleep swiftly found him.
Tomorrow would be a new day. A new start.
A new chance to make good on the promise. If there was the smallest chance that Percy was still out there, he had to try. How far away could Germany be anyway?
The sun rose, the cock crowed, and it was time for the morning chores. Or it would have been, if not for the man in the rumpled suit, passed out in the barn as unceremoniously as a rag roll tossed in a toy bin.
Tom, who was teaching the younger George how to feed the cows, had dropped his bucket right where they stood when he first walked in, then rushed off to get their parents from the house.
“Do you think he’s dead?”
“No, listen. He’s snoring.”
George peered past his brother. Tom, older of the two at nine-and-a-half years old, stood a safe distance back from their parents who were standing a safe distance back from the man in question. Their mum shushed them.
“Should we call the bobbies?” she whispered.
“Poor sod might be in a bind,” their dad whispered back. “We should wake him first. Ask what he’s up to here.”
“He could be dangerous. ‘Poor sod’ or not, we don’t know what sort he is.”
Their father, a Mr. Albert Lewis, wasn’t a stern man, but he could certainly look it when he was troubled. He mulled over the warning his wife (a Mrs. Irene Lewis) brought up, arms crossed. A moment passed. Then, on the tip of his toes, he crept up to Arthur –to them a sleeping stranger– and quietly picked up the briefcase before skittering back away.
After another nervous glance, Mr. Lewis clicked the briefcase latch. George couldn’t help himself, and neither could Tom. They both hustled up to see. Mrs. Lewis’ lips drew to a thin line. Mr. Lewis frowned. Tom and George shared a look of awe.
George had never seen so many funny-looking gadgets all in one place. There were things with coils and buttons and so many papers. Everything was basked in a faint purple glow coming from a funny-looking canister.
‘He must be a spy!’ Tom thought. ‘From the Russians. Or Germans. Or maybe even the Americans!’
Mr. Lewis took out a leather billfold. His brow furrowed. He showed it to his wife and she murmured, “ Wellington Wells? That plague-ridden toxic waste zone across the--”
“ YOU LOOK SMASHING! ”
The cheery electronic voice accosted them!
Mr. Lewis jumped and dropped the briefcase.
Arthur jolted awake. He was disoriented. Scrambling to his feet, tripping over them, fists raised--
Tom shoved George behind him. For a moment, all was still. Tension hung in the air. Then, as if remembering himself, Arthur lowered his hands and offered an awkward lopsided smile and halfhearted wave. “Sorry to impose. I’ll just be--” He dusted the hay off himself and fixed his glasses, still disoriented. “--on my way.” That was with a point to the door of the barn, but he faltered, eyes falling on the briefcase spilled out over the barn floor.
With a great deal of social discomfort, what with everyone watching with cautious bewilderment, he gathered his things back up. There was a wince on his face, his hand clutching his side as he bent, but he pushed past whatever pain struck him.
“ WHEN THEY MADE YOU, THEY BROKE THE MOLD! ”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, now the bloody thing works,” he grumbled. The electronic voice seemed to be coming from a rainbow pin of some kind. George tried to get a better look, but Tom wouldn’t let him.
With everything packed up, he righted himself, dusting off hay from his suit.
Arthur was in a sorry state after the fortnight he’d had. All skin and bones, he looked worse for the wear himself - his suit and hair no better. The way he tensed when any of them so much as moved, could have been, as the Mrs. said, a sign he had something to hide. Alternatively, it could mean he was a man who had seen quite a lot of hardship, and not much in the way of kindness.
Arthur started for the door.
“Wait,” Mr. Lewis said.
Arthur froze. His grip on the briefcase tightened almost imperceptibly, shoulders tense.
“Can we at least offer you something to eat? For the road.”
His wife hissed in his ear, “ What are doing, Albert? He might have that plague for all we know. ”
Arthur, having heard this, swiftly jumped in, “Plague? No! I’m healthy as a horse. Right as rain.”
Mrs. Lewis eyes him with unabashed suspicion. “We could point you to the nearest hospital if you need.” That look she gave him said she thought he very much needed it.
“No!” Arthur blurted out too quickly. Panic struck him at the word hospital. Cold dread he couldn’t explain. Well, no. He could. He just would rather not think about that. He cleared his throat, trying his best to act natural. “That’s alright. I’ll just be going, then.”
“At least stay for breakfast,” Mr. Lewis said, compelled by compassion.
“Albert what are you doing?” Mrs. Lewis whispered, compelled by concern .
“What our good Lord would do, that’s what,” her husband whispered back.
“That’s alright. I’m not feeling particularly hungry--” Arthur’s stomach chose that exact moment to grumble, like the filthy traitor it was.
“There’s plenty to go around,” Mr. Lewis said.
Mrs. Lewis continued to eye him with suspicion, but made no protest. Arthur’s congenial attitude betrayed none of the suspicion he felt towards them in return.
The offer was tempting, and at last Arthur gave in. He was famished and there was no saying when he’d next stumble upon a free meal. Part of him worried they were just stalling for time so the bobbies could arrive and haul him off. He shuddered to think of it. Being locked up. Being unable to find Percy. Being trapped behind bars when he’d spent decades of his life trapped in the joy-induced stupor of his own mind.
Worse still, the possibility, however slim, that he’d be sent back. It was too horrid to think of.
He resolved to stay on his guard, in case things turned south. He’d made it out of enough worse scrapes by a thread getting here, he had little doubt left in his ability to escape an ordinary old house at a moment’s notice.
Taking the gamble, he accepted the offer. “I suppose breakfast couldn’t hurt.”
The family name was Lewis. Albert and Irene Lewis, a family of six with their four kids. Betty, Tom, George, and little Dodo who was barely two years old. They were just the sort of Anglican country stock one might expect of a small English farm. Well-mannered, but down to earth with a moral, simple outlook on life. Mr. Lewis took his religious practice quite seriously indeed, to take in a complete stranger on the basis of Christian charity alone. Arthur wasn’t complaining. You didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
He sat at the table, Tom and George to his right and Mrs. Lewis to his left at the table’s end. She was focused on coaching little Dorothy (or “Dodo” as she was called) on how to properly use her fork.
The feast before him was mouthwatering, just from the smell of it. Fried eggs, rich and soft. Crisp bacon, exploding with flavor. Toast with generous butter melting on top. Each bite was transcendent. Had he ever had such a meal as this? Were eggs, bacon, and butter always this superb or had it just been so long that the novelty enhanced them to something divine?
It brought him back to his childhood, his mum making breakfast as she used to every morning before she got sick. Before the train. Before everyone wanted to forget the past to the point where they forgot to work, forgot to eat, and all began to starve. All the memories muddled together in his brain with a mix of emotions he couldn’t untangle. He grounded to the present again as he took his first sip of coffee. Real coffee. Coffee with cream! It was so rich and robust he wondered that they’d ever taken toasted chickory for an adequate substitute. Not that they had a choice.
Mr. Lewis chuckled. “I’ve never seen someone so over the moon about breakfast.”
“This is brilliant!” Arthur insisted, taking another bite of bacon, savoring the flavor. When was the last time he had meat? Real meat that wasn’t rat? “The best meal I’ve ever had.”
“Flattery won’t get you far, Mr. Hastings,” Mrs. Lewis remarked dryly.
“Are you really from Wellington Wells?” Tom broke in, before Arthur could assure her it wasn’t flattery in the least, and before he could answer that, George jumped in with his own question.
“What’s the funny talking pin from your bag?”
And easier question for Arthur, thankfully. “An adulator. It dishes out compliments so when you’re on the go with no time to be friendly, the adulator will do it for you. ” The ad copy rolled right off his tongue.
Mrs. Lewis snorted. “How ridiculous.”
Betty, oldest of the kids and the only one allowed to drink coffee, chimed into the conversation to agree, “I think that’s perfectly silly.”
“You think everything fun’s silly,” Tom said.
Betty shot him a look. “No, I just think silly things are silly. What’s the point of a compliment if you don’t mean it?”
“Can you make it say other things?” George blurted out.
“I suppose you could,” Arthur said. “With the right tools and--”
Tom cut in, laughing, “Like ‘Betty’s a boring, barmy...B…. ” He thankfully couldn’t think of a noun to end that insult.
Betty, however, could. “Tom!”
“Come now, Tom, that’s no way to talk about your sister,” Mr. Lewis said.
George giggled. “Boring, barmy, Betty.”
“That’s quite enough! Both of you!” Mrs. Lewis snapped. The sharp look in her eye and edge to her voice sobered them both right up. They murmured a ‘sorry’ in unison and went back to their breakfasts.
The people of Wellington Wells had a childishness about them culturally, driven to such behavior by their collective years-long high and hedonistic ideals. The true antics of children, however, were something else entirely. Something forgotten.
Arthur sat there through it with a blend of discomfort and fascination. Just as with the cows in the barn, it felt surreal to see them. Children were smaller than he remembered, perhaps because he hadn’t seen any since he was one. He hadn’t met anyone younger than him in seventeen years. Come to think of it, he had been the youngest person in Wellington Wells, hadn’t he? Another awful, guilt-ridden thought.
How was one supposed to act around kids? Did they always derail conversations like this?
“All done,” little Dodo chirruped. Mrs. Lewis helped wipe the baby’s face clean. Baby? Was she a baby? Toddler? Child? Arthur couldn’t guess ages anymore.
Betty was obviously the oldest of the kids, or at least the tallest. Though perhaps Tom was just short for his age.
Joy helped the people of Wellington Wells forget about children, and forget they had.
He realized the conversation had moved on and tuned back in.
“...and they just had to go on holiday, like we don’t have our birthdays together every year.” Betty was complaining about someone’s unfortunate timing. “ That’s why we have to push it back a week.”
“You should be happy for your friend that she’s getting to see Paris in times like these,” Mr. Lewis said. He had a mild manner about him that made any correction sound perfectly reasonable.
Betty sighed and slumped. “I guess.”
“It’s not worth causing a fuss over. You can share your sweet sixteen next year with all the fanfair you both deserve,” Mrs. Lewis said, no nonsense in tone.
Arthur listened as the whole interaction passed, a series of thoughts whizzing through his head.
Gone on holiday? The whole family? Poor girl. Losing a friend like that so close to her birthday.
Paris? Times like these? What were times like these? I should ask about current affairs. I wonder if there’s a newspaper lying around I could sneak a peek at.
Sixteen.
Next year is her “sweet sixteen.”
She’s turning fifteen. Why that’s just a year younger than Sally and I were when--
When she and his dad…
His stomach dropped.
Betty was a kid. At fifteen Betty was a kid. He could see that, looking at her, listening to her talk. She was a kid. He and Sally had been kids. Sally had been a fucking kid and his dad--
He felt sick. Suddenly unable to eat another bite.
He hadn’t realized. How could he have? They were busy feeling so grown up, sneaking about smoking cigarette butts, breaking into houses, dreaming up their futures and imagining all the ways they’d take on the world. The two of them together, the two musketeers.
They were children. She was a child.
“Are you alright?” Mr. Lewis asked. “You’re looking a bit… pale.”
Arthur felt dizzy. Nauseous. He wanted to throw up. He nodded, managed a lopsided smile as he stood. “Yeah. Just fine. Could you point me to the loo?”
“Just down the hall.” Mr. Lewis pointed to the second door down.
Arthur ambled as casually as he could. The second the bathroom door closed behind him, he fell over the toilet and wretched.
“Oh god,” he muttered. “Oh god, Sally.”
How could he have been such an arse to her? Yelling at her after all those years. It had never been her fault. In a way, he knew that, but knowing she had nowhere to go, coming to terms with his dad taking advantage of that, it was one thing, but this… this was so much worse.
‘How could you?!’
That’s what he shouted in her face. Those words should have been for his dad.
‘How could you? How could you look at a child like that? How could you?!’
He flushed the toilet and sat, trembling on the bathroom floor.
His dad who hadn’t cared that Percy was gone. He’d even been grateful. Grateful that it was him, Arthur, who came back instead. His dad who perverted what should have been paternal care for a child in his home. Maybe that was it.
Maybe wretchedness was just in his blood.
Arthur looked at his hands, shaking. All the things he’d done these past two weeks he’d justified as necessary for survival. Self-preservation. Nothing personal.
He thought of the ghost of his mother, speaking over her grave that night he found the photo of Percy.
‘Who saves one person saves a whole world.’
He’d saved one person, alright. Himself. The one person he saved was himself. Had he always been so awful and selfish. Mum had been so kind, so full of love and compassion. Why couldn’t he have been more like her? More like Percy? Someone good, who made good choices, and made the world a good place.
‘I suppose you must treat it as a gift,’ Constable Peters had said. ‘To know who you are. Without that, there's no hope for wisdom.’
Who was Arthur Hastings? A sarcastic, defensive, selfish, heinous coward of a man. But he wanted to be better. He did. He had to try.
Mum was always brave, she was kind, she was good. That, he supposed, was in his blood as well.
Even if absolution was beyond his grasp, he had to at least try to make things right.
Maybe, after he’d found Percy, he could go back, find Sally, and make amends --or at least apologize. Though an apology was just a band-aid to such a wound.
With a hand on the sink’s edge, Arthur hoisted himself to his feet, and washed his hands, then his mouth thrice over until the sour taste of bile was gone. Without a chance to shave yesterday, his five-o-clock shadow was out of control. He really did need a shave, a shower, and a change of clothes to go along with his change of character.
After a minute more, he came back out. The last thing he wanted was for them to suspect him of plague just for staying in the loo too long.
His appetite was still gone, which was unfortunate considering the wealth of food still on the table.
Conversation carried on casually and at the end of breakfast he offered to help clean up as thanks for their hospitality. He kept glancing at the kids as they cleared the table.
Mrs. Lewis, finally said, mistrustful in tone, “Is something the matter, Mr. Hastings?”
“No. Sorry.” Another glance at the kids as they took their dishes to the kitchen sink. “I just can’t recall the last time I was around children.”
For the first time that morning, Mrs. Lewis’ expression softened to understanding and sympathy. “They’re a handful, but a blessing.” She took his plate from him. “Don’t worry about this. It’s George’s turn to do dishes and he doesn’t need any more excuses to avoid his chores.”
She took the dish to the kitchen where George was pulling over a stool to reach the sink better as it filled with bubbly water.
“Where are you off to after this?” Mr. Lewis asked. “Can we call you a cab?”
“I--”
Arthur thought about lying. The idea whizzed by, pulling at him to follow the impulse. It was safer that way, putting people at ease.
Instead, he made a choice, frightening as it was to be honest, to be brave, and to trust that kindness may not yet be dead in this world. It had to start somewhere, didn’t it? Why not here?
“...I’m not sure, If I’m entirely honest. I--” He rubbed the back of his neck.
Mr. Lewis thought nothing of it. He just took the answer in that same kind, mild mannered way he took everything and said, “Nothing to worry over. You’re looking worse for the wear. Why don’t you use our shower to get yourself cleaned up and we can help you figure out where you’re going after the morning chores.”
Arthur released tension he hadn’t even realized he was holding in his shoulders. “Thank you.” His surprise was as genuine as his gratitude. “That’s very kind of you.”
Mr. Lewis dismissed it as nothing and went to go get his shoes, hat, and coat before heading outside, followed by Tom and Betty. Mrs. Lewis gathered up Dodo while George did the dishes.
Arthur remarked so often the past few weeks that his life felt like a dream he kept expecting to wake from at any moment.
It still felt like a dream, here in the home of Albert and Irene Lewis, with their uncalled for kindness, their impossibly rich foods, and their four healthy rambunctious children. Only now it was no longer a nightmare, but the sort of good dream one held onto upon waking, eyes closed, lingering in fantasy to the last moment before reality came crashing in.
Yet his head felt clearer than ever. This was reality. He felt like he’d stepped out of Plato’s cave and seen the light and the breadth of the outside world in just this glimpse. In all its beauty and horridness. Clarity, for all the anguish it brought, was a small mercy.
‘Life goes on,’ Constable Peters said. ‘That is the mercy.’
There was a canteen in his briefcase of Joy-laced water from the Parade. He hadn’t had a chance to filter it. It was the last of the drug he had with him. In the bathroom, he opened the top and turned it over the sink, and watched every last drop drain away.
Arthur makes a bed of a haybale.