Chapter Text
Sweetheart, is that you? There are no tears,
no pictures of him squarely. A seaside framed
in glass, and boats, those little boats with
sails aflutter, shining lights upon the water,
lights that splinter when they hit the pier.
— Richard Siken, Saying Your Names
The cottage is rather a simple thing, just big enough for two.
Anthony fancies that the whitewashed walls are coastal rather than bleak, as is the door’s blueish-grey paintwork. And besides, the inside is cosy enough to make up for any external chill.
He has spent years dreaming, in abstract, of this place. Of the blankets thrown over the mismatched sofas in the sitting room, of the humming of the gramophone in the corner, of the almost-wild garden that he has just begun trying to tame.
Although, that wasn’t exactly the point of those dreams.
Yes, there were sofas and blankets, and yes, there was a gramophone and a garden, but that was not all. In his dreams, the blankets were not his. He was not standing in the garden alone. And when he closed the curtains for the night and put the needle down on the gramophone, a hand would reach out, offering a dance.
So, yes, the cottage is rather a simple thing, just big enough for two. Enough room for himself, and the memory of —
Well. Of a man he cannot bring himself to try and find.
Anyway, he isn’t entirely alone. In the quiet of his room at night, so far removed from the constant buzz of a city at peace or at war, the murmur of the not-too-distant sea lulls him to sleep. The murmur of another voice, once-familiar, greets him as he dreams.
Without ever actually saying the words, he makes himself out to be a widower. While he wears no ring, there is a marked difference in the timbre of his grief to the all too common haunting of a man who has seen combat. (Although, obviously, there is that, too. The scars that run like rivulets across his face are hardly subtle, and nor would be the way he screams himself awake at night, sometimes, if he had neighbours.)
The friends he has made here have not asked of his past of that sort. There is none of the joshing, as there is amongst the other men who frequent the local pub, as to wives or sweethearts or flights of fancy. Not exactly out of a wish not to reopen an old wound, when the wound in question is quite clearly still raw and smarting.
Their avoidance is almost amusing to Anthony, when these sorts of questions are ones he has spent his life carefully constructing answers to.
Although only almost. Amusing in the light of day, perhaps. At night, when the sprawl of the double bed feels very cold and very empty, he curses himself for it. How he is living as though he is in mourning while James — James is still living somewhere.
He must be.
James cannot be dead. Anthony knows, almost as certain as a fact, that he would not have seen active duty. After all, he recalls with a fond smile, the cracking of his knees throughout his ‘physical jerks’ regime could not have been best placed in the trenches. He was, however, a brilliant mind. Erratic, and liable to panic, perhaps, but their work together on William had given Anthony glimpses of the streak of bright innovation behind the stern moustache.
In all honesty, it had allowed him a view of another side of the man entirely. Of the way he would light up and become animated in discussion of anything he took interest in, from the limpet mechanisms of the mine to, on one memorable occasion, how to make tinsel look at all tasteful on a Christmas tree. He can’t remember exactly why they were discussing that. As far as Anthony can recall, the conversation had occurred in May. The fact that it had occurred was no surprise, however, knowing their tendency to stray off-topic any which way during their meetings regarding William.
Occasionally, the Captain – James, he corrects himself – would bring out a bottle of brandy, technically contraband, from his desk drawer. They would pass it between them, fingers brushing on the bottleneck, and he would tell himself that the heat igniting somewhere in his throat was simply the burn of alcohol. He would pretend that James was not studying him with any sort of intensity, that it was just the glow of the oil lamp that softened his features into, dare he say it, fondness.
Fondness. A strange word. James had never exactly said what he felt for him, even at the end of things, and he had been just as inarticulate. There was certainly no begging him to stay when he, on an impulse of duty, put in for a transfer and departed from Button House to be shot at in various places, equally offensive in either their heat or their mud, for the next few years. No, any sort of begging – or even asking – would have been indecorous. Unbefitting of their positions. Not something to linger on, not a bitten-off what if (what if he’d asked me? What if I’d stayed? What if we lived, if we bally well survived, and I didn’t have to scrabble to remember if the colour of his eyes was closer to the sea in tumult or at rest? If I could open my eyes in bed to find him looking already, there and real and —)
No, such things didn’t do to dwell on.
I shall miss you, Havers, he had said. He took it back, of course, but it left its mark all the same.
At the end of things, they had only acted on it once.
(A miracle, really, that anything had come of it at all.)
A Sunday afternoon stroll, framed within duty as a patrol of the grounds, securing the perimeters, suchlike. They had walked through the woods, straying from topic to topic, challenging each other to name birdsong as they went.
Then, James picked out a crow.
“Ah,” Anthony had started. “Aren’t those supposed to be rather unlucky birds, sir? Omen of death and suchlike.”
The Captain’s mouth – and he was still the Captain then, his captain – curled into a half-smile.
“Not necessarily, Havers. They’re very intelligent birds too, you know. They mate for life.”
“Wiser than me, perhaps.” At the slight inquisitive look the Captain sent his way, he elaborated. “Not exactly the marrying type, sir.”
The Captain had swallowed, and then smiled perhaps a little wider than the answer, on the face of it, merited.
He hadn’t kissed him then, but that was what Anthony tended to place as the start of it, whenever he allowed his thoughts to linger.
No, that had come several weeks later, after another walk. There was something strangely elating about their conversation that day, almost giddy when combined with the glorious turn of the weather. Their arms had brushed rather more than was proper, and neither had flinched away, and when they returned to the Captain’s office, they decided that William could wait for a while.
Papers were pushed aside, and they found themselves sitting on the same side of the desk, and at some point the Captain had placed his hand on Anthony’s knee to emphasise a point. He had forgotten the point rather quickly, but the hand had stayed.
Summoning the courage of a battalion, Anthony had placed his hand upon the Captain’s. They had both inhaled, sharply, at the contact. Then, more so as if they were falling into one another than simply leaning in… well. Anthony tries not to think about it. When the memory surfaces, he purses his lips and takes himself off for a walk along the coast until he can taste nothing but the brine. But he cannot forget, cannot unlearn, the way James had breathed his name into his mouth, little more than a broken whisper, as though it was something sacred in the space between them.
And then, it never happened again. They had never spoken another word of it. Probably for the best, Anthony thinks, resolutely. After all, he had put in for that transfer the day before. He does not let himself wonder if, had the kiss come two days earlier, he would still have done the same.
(Only, they had spoken of it, the day afterwards. Only once, mind. But still, once.
“...Nevertheless, I rather think it’s best if that sort of… business doesn’t happen again. Don’t you agree, Havers?”
“Yes, sir,” Anthony had said, monotone, not brave or foolish enough to argue. “I quite agree.”
“Although…” the Captain had begun again, hesitantly. “When it is just the two of us, I wouldn’t object to, ah, slight dispensation of formalities.”
“What are you asking of me, sir?”
“That, when we are in this office, you could call me James. If you wish, that is to say.”
“Is that wise?”
“Bally hell, no.” The Captain had laughed, then, before something in his expression seemed to shrink a little. “But, you understand, it is all that I can…”
He trailed off. Anthony grasped onto the lifeline thrown.
“Well then. I suppose it may be good for morale and suchlike, being a little unwise at times.” He paused. Swallowed. “James.”
“Anthony.”
A shared smile. Brittle, perhaps, but there all the same.)