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‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ – Winston Churchill
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” - Shakespeare
It was the longest, hottest summer, yet there seemed to be little joy in it. The days were filled with the heat of theatre rooms, the stench of burnt flesh and blood on my hands and gown. They would bring a new one in every day it seemed, some poor young sod shot down and dragged from the burning wreckage of his tin can aeroplane. Sometimes they came in half dead already and we would wonder what miracles the men expected us to do – we were only men and women ourselves. Other times they would come in screaming, crying out for their mothers, fathers or lovers, and we would have to press the masks to their faces to quiet their sobs.
We did our best – it was all any of us could do – but at times it felt like it was barely enough.
When all of this filled our days, it was little wonder that at night we liked to escape away from it all. The bases would put on all kinds of evening entertainments, undoubtedly in an effort to keep the mood as light as it could be and remind us all that there was something in this life that was worth fighting for, and that night there was to be a dance. Some local band was playing and it seemed that almost everyone was turning out. I’d had a long day in theatre and hadn’t been intending to come out, but Lysa had persuaded me that it would be foolish to stay in my room and read while every man on the base was bound to be there.
So I’d donned my only pencil skirt, tucked my dress uniform shirt into it and spent almost an hour securing my hair with what seemed like half a million Kirby grips and joined my sister in the queue to get in.
Lysa was bubbling with excitement and as we crept forwards in the queue and the music grew louder, she started singing and swaying her hips. “Come on, Cat!” she laughed, throwing her head back so her long auburn hair flicked over her shoulder. “Aren’t you going to dance tonight?”
“If the music’s right and someone wants to dance with me,” I said, non-committedly. “I don’t even know if there’ll be anyone here that I’ll know.”
“Of course there will be!” she exclaimed. “Everyone who’s anyone is going to be here. All the pilots, all the engineers, the doctors… everyone!”
I took a long look at her tight-fitting cocktail dress and her glossy black high heels and smiled. “Is Peter coming?” I asked innocently.
She shrugged, but the mention of the name of the little communications officer she had been fixated on for the last few months made her bridle a touch. “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably.” Her lips turned into a pout. “But I know, I know, he’s not worth it.”
“I never said that. I just think it’s weird how he’s always hanging around but he never seems to make a move, even though you’ve made it clear you like him.”
I knew why, of course, but I wouldn’t say so outright because it would upset her and spoil her evening – Peter was far more interested in me than he was in Lysa. She chuffed under her breath then fell silent. For a moment, it seemed like she was about to say something else, but then the queue moved forward again and we were at the door. We flashed our smiles and we were in.
Inside, it was warmer than the late June evening had been outside and there was already a haze of cigarette smoke in the air. The music was blaring out over the laughter and chatter of several hundred people, some already dancing, others simply standing about in vague circles conversing. We made our way through the crowds to the bar to get drinks and then found a quieter corner where we could wait for people to ask us to join the dancing. A Glenn Miller tune started up and the dance floor filled to capacity in a matter of seconds, the mood ebullient. Almost too ebullient, if truth be told. But that was nothing new – these events always had an air of exaggerated enthusiasm, as if everyone was over-compensating for the war that raged on around us.
For a few moments, we stood there awkwardly, listening to the music and drinking far too quickly. A couple of familiar faces passed by, smiling or shouting out hellos over the music, but then Lysa was swept away in a fit of giggles by someone I’d never seen her with before, leaving me alone. I tried to show an interest in the couples dancing before me, but the truth was that I wasn’t really in the mood. I was tired and my back ached from having been in theatre all afternoon.
Shifting my weight from one foot to the other in an attempt to ease the pain, I looked about for someone I knew, but everyone I recognised seemed to have already found a partner. As I scanned the room, I noticed a dark-haired man standing by the wall almost opposite me. He looked thoroughly fed up and was staring hopelessly into his barely touched pint of bitter as if he could drown in it. There was something vaguely familiar about his face, but I couldn’t place the reason why. I certainly hadn’t seen him before. Perhaps he had a cousin who worked in the hospital or I’d treated his brother or something like that – it was, after all, quite common for family members to be posted to the same bases.
I was trying to figure out why I knew his face when he raised his head and looked straight at me. Almost immediately our eyes caught, he glanced away again, a picture of nerves, and I smiled into my gin and tonic. I was half considering going over to him and starting up a conversation when Peter came sidling up to me, grinning in that slightly obsequious way he had. I sighed inside. “Hey, Cat,” he said, slipping his arm around my waist and squeezing. I stiffened at his overfamiliarity.
“Hello, Peter. How are you?”
“Oh, I am fine, thank you. I saw Lysa had left you on your own so I thought I’d come over and take pity on you.”
I didn’t want his pity, I wanted to say, but something always stopped me from speaking my mind in the presence of this man I’d known since we were children, and so instead I just smiled tightly and kept my hands wrapped around my glass. Peter had lived three doors down from us for most of our childhood and when Lysa and I had left home to do our nurse training, Peter had suddenly found a reason to join the RAF too. If it hadn’t been Peter, it would have been creepy. Perhaps it still was a bit.
I feigned something stuck to the bottom of my shoe and asked him to hold my drink while I flicked a non-existent stone from the leather sole. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to notice how the action had forced him to remove his arm from around my waist and instead offered me another drink. I accepted, if only just to get him away from me for a few minutes.
Once he had left for the bar, I looked for the quiet, nervous fellow I’d seen standing by the wall a moment ago, but he was gone, and despite scanning the crowds for him, I couldn’t see him anywhere. Before long, though, Peter was back, armed with two double-strength gin and tonics. I thanked him and took mine, swigging down a huge swallow straight away.
We stood for a while in silence, both watching the couples moving about on the dance floor. Several times, he tried to start up a conversation, but like always these days, I really didn’t have anything to say to him. Instead, I ended up downing my drink far quicker than I ought to have done, even though I felt the alcohol going straight to my head. I wasn’t used to it. We were told to be ready for anything at any time, so I rarely had more than one. I didn’t want to be that person who couldn’t scrub in because there was alcohol on my breath and a shake in my hands.
Eventually, even Peter seemed to grow weary of my lack of conversation and drifted away with another man he knew from communications. I shared a dance with one of the surgeons I assisted and then another with the chap who worked in the radio tower, then found myself alone once again. I was warm from the dancing and the drink and yet Lysa was still on the dance floor and still lost in the music. I called to her that I was going outside for a breath of air, but she was in the arms of one of the new orderlies and didn’t hear me. She was laughing wildly at whatever he was saying to her and seemed utterly entranced, so I slipped away without bothering to go over and tap her on the shoulder to explain where I was going. It was getting late anyway, so perhaps it was best that I was on my way back to my room.
As I slipped out of the doors, and the music dulled behind me, I realised that it really had been hot inside that hall. I could feel the sweat drying along my neckline as the gentle evening breeze washed over me.
A good-looking man was standing with his foot resting on the low wall just outside the door, dressed in an expensive wool suit, with a brown felt trilby crushed beneath his arm, and his braces undone and dangling down behind him. A cigarette drooped from his mouth in lackadaisical manner and in his other hand he swirled a shot glass of whisky. He looked up as he heard my footsteps. “Evening, Miss.” His voice betrayed his origins: he was a Yorkshireman, for certainty.
“Hello,” I said in return. He took the cigarette from his mouth, tapped the ash on the floor and flashed a smile at me, showing a set of even, white teeth.
In a heartbeat, his eyes were sizing me up, passing over my face and figure like he was a hunter deciding on whether or not I was a sufficient prize for him to attempt to land. If I hadn’t been a little bit drunk, I wouldn’t have felt quite so flattered by his attention, but the fact was that I was, and the sensation of being looked at and admired was even more intoxicating than the two large gin and tonics I had already consumed. Since I’d been posted here, I hadn’t had much opportunity for romantic entanglements – we were kept far too busy for that.
I stopped and smiled back at him and he took that as encouragement. He put the cigarette back in his mouth and held out his hand to me. Out of habit more than anything else, I took it. “Have you come from the dance?” he asked. His tone was easy, casual, and I nodded in response. “Cat got your tongue, hey?”
“No, I…” I stopped, realising that he was grinning now and the grin was suddenly reminding me that I’d seen him somewhere before, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall when or in what circumstance. I swallowed and added, “I’m Catelyn Tully. I’m a nurse here.”
“Oh.” He sounded vaguely interested. “My name’s Stark…” He paused a moment, the grin widening again, as if waiting for his name to resonate with me. “Brandon Stark.”
And then it hit me. Of course I had seen him before. He was one of three Flying Aces we had on the base and as familiar to the men as the King or Churchill himself. I cursed myself – no doubt he thought me slow now. I straightened up to my full height and lifted my chin. My only chance of recovery now was to seem disinterested in his celebrity, so I raised my brows and said, “I know who you are, Flight Lieutenant.”
His response was another grin – he seemed to know that the expression was compelling and was quite content to use it to his own advantage. He tossed the last of his whisky down, then put his trilby on and adjusted the brim down over his eyes. “Fancy a drink at the local?” he asked me.
I hesitated. It was late and I was on the early shift in the morning, starting at seven. I didn’t want to be too tired to concentrate. “Oh, come on,” he encouraged, taking a long final drag on his cigarette, then dropping it and stubbing it out under his foot. “Just the one. I promise I won’t keep you up past midnight.”
My resistance melted as he grinned again at me. “All right then,” I agreed.
We walked the half a mile into town and he led the way to the pub on the corner as if he knew the way like the back of his hand. He asked me questions the entire way, stupid things like what my favourite colour was and what kind of Sunday roast was best. I wondered if he was genuinely interested in my answers or whether he was just trying to make small talk in any way he could. Either way, I found myself opening up to him in a way I didn’t usually do with men I’d never met before.
He chose the public bar, which was a little seedy and down at heel, but he didn’t seem to care, even despite his expensive suit. He didn’t bother showing me to a table and instead simply hoisted himself up onto one of the bar stools and called the landlord over. “The usual, Ron,” he requested. “Two single malts. Don’t care what they are, just don’t give me any of that blended crud.”
I opened my mouth to say that I didn’t usually drink whisky, but before I could get the words out, two tumblers had landed on the bar and Brandon had downed one of them straight away and started on the second. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t ask you what you wanted. Tell Ron and he’ll sort it. Anything you want. It’s on me.” He grinned again.
Bewildered, I ummed my way through a request for another gin and tonic, my eyes full of this bold, unusual man before me, and my heart thumping. My father would be shocked by my girlishness, I knew. Being swept away by someone was not the kind of thing I usually allowed myself to do.
Ron thrust a glass towards me and I took it, smiling over the rim at Brandon Stark.
It ended up being well past midnight when we finally left the pub and started to walk back to the base. We’d gone through just about every ridiculous question both of us could think of to ask the other, and despite another three whiskies, he’d never seemed to become any drunker. Me, on the other hand… well, that was another matter entirely. He was as intoxicating at the gin and tonic, his focus on me total. He laughed at me, seemed interested in me, wanted to know what I did on the base and why I’d joined up. So when he offered me his arm as we left the pub, I took it and didn’t even think twice.
The night was still mild, but the searchlights had gone to bed and the lack of moon in the sky had turned the streets and lanes darker than ink. Despite this, he seemed to know his way almost intuitively, making me wonder how often he had made this journey in the dark. I was glad of his arm, though, as I was not as sure-footed in the darkness as he was and several times I stumbled, only to have him catch me and set me right again.
When we finally got back to the base, he took me to my building and said that he’d enjoyed himself and did I want to do it again sometime, next Friday perhaps, as there was a darts match going on at the pub he’d kind of agreed to take part in and he thought I might like to come along.
It was a bit of a garbled invitation and darts wasn’t really my thing, but there was something about Brandon Stark that was almost magnetic and so, just like before, I found myself nodding and saying yes. He grinned at my acquiescence, then swept up my hand and kissed my knuckle in an almost medieval kind of way. I couldn’t help myself – I laughed.
“What are you laughing at?” he asked, standing back and looking mildly offended.
I shook my head and restrained my amusement, no doubt heightened by the drink, and explained, “Well, no-one’s ever kissed my hand like that before. I didn’t think men did that anymore.”
He shrugged and the casual air was back again. “Some men still do,” he said.
Though it was almost one, the air was still warm and carried the scent of honeysuckle from the tiny garden across the courtyard. I smiled at him and he stepped forward again and took my face in his hands. “Thanks for a lovely evening, Cat.”
His use of the nickname only my family used surprised me; I didn’t correct him.
“I thought that dance was going to be terrible and it turned out to be anything but, and I have you to thank for that.”
I blinked at him, my surprise deepening still further. “Good night,” he added and kissed me lightly.
His mouth was dry, warm, and when he turned and walked away and I passed my tongue across my lips, I could taste the ghost of whisky he’d left behind.
***
I didn’t hear from him all week, and by Wednesday, I was pretty certain I’d never hear from him again, then out of the blue, I found him standing waiting outside my billet when I returned home on Thursday evening. He was dressed in his flying gear, blue-grey trousers tucked into black boots, his jacket unbuttoned to reveal a cream roll-neck jumper beneath. He’d shed his sheepskin flak jacket and Mae West already, but his hair was still crushed down from where he’d worn goggles and mask and there was a rather fetching oily streak on his right cheek.
I remembered the siren sounding early, barely an hour after dawn, and I’d heard the rattle and spit of machine gun fire at several points throughout the day. We’d been rushed off our feet by mid-morning, dealing with the injuries flooding in and that had suited me just fine. I preferred to be kept busy rather than have to stand about listening to the sound of an engine choking in the sky above or the high-pitched whine as something careened to a fiery grave in a field.
“Evening,” he greeted. “Sorry for the state of me. Bloody busy day. Biggest bunch of them I’ve seen for weeks up there this morning, but we set them straight. Took down three of the bastards myself… pardon me, I shouldn’t swear in front of you.”
He didn’t really look that sorry for cursing. “But you’re all right?” I asked him.
“I’m fine. We lost a couple and Little Jon Umber nearly took the top off the huts as he limped back in.” He paused, appearing to think through his next question, then added, “There was a lad, name of Glover, who got himself shot down over the airfield. I saw him bail, saw his parachute, but…” His voice trailed off.
I frowned, mentally searching back through the day’s theatre list for his name. “I didn’t see him come in, but that doesn’t mean anything. He might’ve been seen by one of the other teams. It’s not just us in there, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” he said. “It’s just that… He was a lad, that’s all. I kind of trained him up myself.”
The swagger was gone all of a sudden and I felt a surge of sympathy for him. It was hard for the ones left behind, and the thought of being the squadron leader or command officer and having to do that headcount when everyone was back on the ground was sickening. “I can check tomorrow and let you know,” I offered.
He smiled wanly, pulled a silver cigarette case out from his inside breast pocket and took one out. He offered the case to me but I shook my head – I’d never dared to smoke myself. He lit up and took a few contemplative drags, before adding, “So, I was just calling by to check that you were still good for tomorrow. My brother’s coming along too, but you’ll like him. Ned he’s called… he’s not much like me, but he’s a good bloke.”
“A pilot too?” I asked.
“Yeah, but he’s still earning his spurs, so to speak. Not quite the Flying Ace yet.” He grinned at me, as if expecting me to be impressed.
I ignored the comment. “Provided I’m finished with work, I’ll come along.”
“Oh that’s good; I was hoping you’d say that.” He paused, turned and made to leave. “No need to dress up, though. It’s just the local and a few boys playing darts.”
***
He picked me up at seven on the dot the following evening and offered me his arm as we started to walk into town. I’d dressed casually, as he’d said, in a navy blue tea-dress with a deep red pattern of tiny leaping fishes in the material, t-bar shoes and a cardigan in case it got chilly later. If it was possible, he looked even more attractive than he had outside the dance hall the previous week. A picture of suave sophistication in corduroy trousers, white shirt and shiny black brogues, he’d swept his hair back and oiled it with Brylcream so there were little tramlines left by the comb in it. There was the unmistakable smell of cologne about him too.
So much for not dressing up, I thought.
We didn’t talk much on the way to the pub, but as we entered the town, he asked, “What do you know about darts, then?”
“Not a lot,” I admitted. “I mean, I know you have to throw little arrows at a round board, but I don’t really understand what you have to do to win.”
“Ah, then let me explain. I can’t have you sitting on the side waving your handkerchief for me if you don’t understand whether I’m winning or losing.”
He stopped in the shadow of the spreading limbs of a big beech tree and explained the basic rules, from the starting scores to the values assigned to the different sections of the board, and then stood back and asked me if I understood now. It seemed to matter to him that I did, so although some parts of his explanation were still a little fuzzy, I nodded.
“You look like you’ve got it,” he said with a chuckle. “Absolutely, 100%”
I made a face. And then he leaned in and kissed me. It was a step further than the kiss he’d given me outside my billet the previous week – this time, it lasted and I found myself sinking into him, my muscles going weak. He was rather good.
When he pulled away, he was grinning. “Sorry,” he said, not looking remotely apologetic. “You just looked rather gorgeous right then.”
I looked down, with a feeling like I was blushing madly. “Thank you,” I whispered.
With a shrug, he reached for my hand. “Come on, kiddo, or we’ll be late.”
As we approached the pub, it was obvious that we were indeed late and the place was already full to bursting. People were spilling out onto the street, smoking and laughing and drinking, and even from across the road it was possible to hear the sound of cheers going up, presumably as someone hit an important score. Brandon held the door open for me and I stepped into the crowded room. He followed close behind me, one hand pressed firmly on the small of my back to guide me through the hub-bub. He was scanning the room and after a moment, his eyes seemed to alight on someone he knew.
“Ned!” he cried and pushed through the crowd to clap a dark-haired fellow of middling height on the back.
As the man turned around, I stopped dead. It was the same person I’d seen at the dance standing by the wall, the one with the despondent face and the untouched pint of bitter. He wasn’t wearing a suit anymore, but there was still no mistaking him. His gaze flickered towards me, but he didn’t seem to recognise me. Up close, I saw how he was plainer than his brother, less flashy-looking, and about half a head shorter. In fact, everything about him seemed to say that this was a person who took life far more seriously than he should, and probably lost out as a result.
Squeezing my shoulder gently, Brandon introduced me. “Ned, this is my girl, Catelyn Tully.”
I tried not to show my surprise at the unexpected form of address, for although this was officially, I supposed, a second date, I hadn’t really thought of him in that way yet. I didn’t object though and I couldn’t help how flattered it made me feel.
But, as he smiled in greeting at me, Ned Stark’s face never melted a drop. He leaned towards his brother and hissed under his breath, “Another one?”
Obviously, I had not been meant to hear that comment, but nonetheless I had done so. I guessed that I wasn’t supposed to see the scowl that Brandon threw at his brother then either, as the second he caught me looking at him, he flashed a winning smile at me again. “Ignore him, Cat,” he told me. “He’s just sore because I brought a girl and he doesn’t agree with it.”
Suspicion arisen in me, I wanted to ask why, but bit my tongue. Maybe his brother was just a bit sour – his face certainly looked as if he was.
With some reluctance, Brandon’s brother held out his hand. “Ned Stark,” he said. His tone was distant, polite and a little bit formal, nothing like his brother’s.
For a moment, I looked into his eyes – wide-set, grey, looking straight at me in a calm and measuring kind of way – then he turned away, somewhat rudely, I thought, and Brandon chuckled.
“See what I mean?” he said. “My brother’s a bit of an acquired taste, but I promise you, he’s a good bloke underneath the grimness.”
I said nothing and instead studied the back of Ned Stark’s head. Of course, it shouldn’t matter to me that he had turned away from me like that, but somehow it did. I frowned and looked back at Brandon. He was standing on his toes trying to see over the tops of all the heads in the room towards the dartboard, but as he decided that he was too far away, he grabbed me by the arm and tugged me forwards. “Come on, we need to get a bit closer. I need to see what I’m up against.”
What he was up against appeared to be a lean, blond man dressed all in black, and frankly, he was in a different class to his opponents. He was as silent as the grave as he stepped up to the line, aimed and threw and hit his target what seemed to be ninety per cent of the time. A circle of other men of varying ages surrounded the board as they took it in turns to challenge the blond-haired champion. It didn’t seem to matter, though. Whoever it was and whatever the level of their skill, he destroyed all comers with the ruthless efficiency of a professional.
“Who is he?” I asked after we had stood and watched awhile.
Brandon scoffed in his throat and glanced down at me. “His name’s Targaryen. He’s Polish, or Lithuanian, or something like that. He’s been coming here on and off over the last few months and walking away with the prize pot every single damn time.” He sighed. “It’s starting to get rather annoying. I didn’t think he’d be here tonight – someone told me his father was really ill.” He looked at me and mimed turning a circle with his finger by the side of his head.
I thought about telling him that it was only a game of darts, but that seemed unwise given how interested they all seemed to be in the action going on around them, so instead I said, “Perhaps you should challenge him yourself?”
A laugh bubbled out of his throat. “Challenge him? You haven’t even seen me play yet, Cat! I might be total rubbish for all you know.”
“You might, but somehow I don’t think so. If you can shoot down all those German fighter planes, you must have a decent enough aim.”
That seemed to please him and he swelled a little bit with pride, before tugging me to him and kissing my forehead. “Let me get some drinks,” he said, and slipped away. I took a few steps back until I was standing out of the immediate crush of bodies and tried to watch over shoulders. The man by the name of Targaryen was inspecting the flights of his darts with meticulous intensity and appeared completely unaware of the attention he was attracting. It seemed strange, though, that none of the crowd of men watching him actually said anything to him – they were all speaking to each other, but not him, almost as if they daren’t. I wondered how good his English actually was. In the last few months there had been a number of foreign pilots brought into the RAF and while some of them had mixed in well with the natives, others, mostly the ones whose grasp of English was not so good, were left very much to their own devices. I imagined such circumstances might make for a lonely life.
I was deep in thought when I felt a familiar pair of hands clutch my waist and breath smelling of Wrigley’s gum whispered in my ear. “Cat, what are you doing here?”
Peter.
I turned and faced him and fixed him with a smile. “Hi,” I said, glancing around the crowded room. He was right up close to me and I wanted to step back, but there was no room behind me to do so. Not for the first time, I wished he would let me be. He was a friend, and we’d grown up as close as family, but things were different now and he didn’t seem to understand that.
Realising that he was waiting expectantly for a reply to his question, I explained, “I’m here with a date. He’s gone to the bar for some drinks.”
My words hadn’t been intended to wound him, yet for a moment it seemed as if he’d been struck through with a sword. He gaped at me. “A date?”
My eyes flickered towards the bar and I silently willed Brandon to return quickly. This had the taste of turning into something quite toe-curling, I could tell. “Yes, why are you here?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
But he wasn’t falling for it. He frowned and glanced about at the crowd of men all around us. “One of these chaps?” His voice was tight, tense.
I nodded. From out of the corner of my eye, I saw Brandon approaching, two glasses in hand. Someone stopped him when he was just a dozen paces away and he was swept into a momentary conversation.
Peter slipped his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “Who?”
“Oh, just someone I met at the dance the other week,” I said with a shrug. I didn’t really care what Peter thought about me having a date, but right at that moment, there was something about him that begged to be baited. It was childish, but it was awfully tempting. Behind me, I heard Brandon’s laugh over the noise.
“Is it someone I might know?”
“Maybe…” I didn’t want to elaborate; there was something a bit too cruel about that. After all, Brandon Stark was what he was and, Peter Baelish, well, he was what he was too.
But Peter was not to be thrown off. He glanced about the room again. “You said he’s at the bar?” he asked.
I opened my mouth to reply, but something told me that Brandon was now standing behind me. I stepped aside, and glanced up at him, smiling. When I looked back at Peter, I saw that his face had clouded.
“Him?” There was no mistaking the incredulity in Peter’s voice.
And then, in the time it took to draw in a breath, the air was filled with tension, prickling and sparking like static electricity.
“I beg your pardon?” demanded Brandon. Something quietly threatening was loaded in his words; he passed me my drink and I took it, suddenly wishing that I’d not come here tonight.
The room had gone quiet, as if someone had sucked all the laughter and jokes out of the air, leaving behind only awkward silence. All eyes were no longer on the dartboard, but on the three of us, standing there in the middle of the room.
Peter took a step backward, but at his sides, his hands curled into fists. “Nothing, I--”
“No, you said something,” Brandon continued. “I thought I heard you quite clearly, but I just want you to repeat it to make sure.” He took a step forwards, cancelling out Peter’s attempted retreat. “Go on…”
“Brandon…” I said, in warning. My hand went out and touched his forearm. He ignored me.
“I saw you when I was over at the bar, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to move in on my girl.” His head tilted slightly, questioningly.
Something changed in Peter. It happened in the blink of an eye, and before I knew it, the ground was suddenly fracturing beneath us all.
“She’s too good for the likes of you,” he said.
Brandon’s lip curled and then slam, his fist connected with Peter’s jaw and I watched as my old childhood friend, the one I’d played Kissy Cat with in the street and teased and bossed around, was sent pin-wheeling backwards.
“No!” I cried out. I made to rush out between them, but somebody behind me had grabbed me and was holding me back.
A couple of blokes in the crowd that now surrounded us caught Peter before he could hit the floor and hauled him back to standing. The blow had split his lip and blood was already running down his chin in a thin, red line. “You bastard,” he cursed, wiping the blood away with his hand and feeling at his teeth. “I think you loosened one of my teeth.”
A snarl rippled out of Brandon’s throat. “Well, stay the fuck away then.” He started to turn away, presumably satisfied that he’d left enough of an impression, but Peter shouted after him.
“I think it’s you who needs to stay away from her! You think she doesn’t know what you’re like, what you’re going to do to her. She’s smarter than that. She’ll see through you.” There was a pause. “And if she doesn’t, I’ll make sure she does…”
If the atmosphere had been tense before, Peter’s words had lit the touch paper. You could practically hear the sound as the charge fizzed up Brandon’s fuse and the explosion ripped out. He wheeled about and grabbed Peter by the collar, lifting him fully off the ground. “You need to shut up and keep the hell away from her,” he growled into Peter’s face. “Or I’ll make bloody sure you do.”
Peter was over half a foot shorter than Brandon, yet what he did next was the action of a mad man. Just as Brandon was setting him down, Peter spat in his face.
And that was it. Brandon slung him to the floor and then was on him in half a second, raining down blows on his face and chest. At first, the crowd all backed off in shock, then something seemed to change and they all leaned forward, suddenly desperate to see the action. I couldn’t help it – I screamed, and then, as I caught sight of a flash of blood, felt hot tears begin to flow.
“Brandon, don’t!” I cried. “Don’t hurt him!”
My voice may as well have been lost in the wind, for Brandon barely even paused. But a heartbeat later, Ned Stark was beside his brother and pulling him off, yanking him away with full bodily force. He said not a word, but bullied Brandon out of the building, yelling back over his shoulder for someone to see to Peter.
For a long moment, I stood there helplessly, staring at Peter as he rolled and moaned on the floor. The landlord had pushed a way through the crowd and was on his knees beside him, trying to persuade him to move his hands away from his face so the damage could be assessed. Torn, I didn’t know what to do – should I stay and see that Peter was all right, or should I go to Brandon? Neither of them deserved my attention, I knew, but I was Brandon’s date… I should be with him.
I looked down at Peter. His eyes were open now and he met my gaze. “You shouldn’t have done that,” I told him and turned and walked out of the door.
Outside, I found Ned had dragged his brother over the road and shoved him down on the grass verge. Brandon’s feet were scuffing in the dirt by the kerb and Ned was standing over him with a face as hard as iron. Uncertain as to whether my presence was even wanted, I walked slowly over to them. Brandon looked up and saw me approaching. His hair was dishevelled, his shirt untucked, and there was the faint sheen of sweat still on his face. One of Peter’s defensive blows had obviously connected as there was a smudge of blood beneath his nose.
Ned turned to look at me and his eyes narrowed.
“Cat,” Brandon began. “I’m sorry, I--”
I cut him off. “He deserved it,” I said dully. “But that doesn’t mean that I think you did the right thing. You should’ve just ignored him.”
“Yes,” agreed Ned. “What good sense that would have been.”
Brandon looked miserably down at the yellowing grass he was sitting on. A thick silence hung between us until finally, Brandon hauled himself to his feet and dusted the dirt from his trousers. He looked at me and for the first time, I saw something other than confidence in his eyes. “I really am sorry,” he mumbled. He glanced at Ned. “I’m going back to my room.”
Without another word, he started off down the road that led out of the town, towards the base. Part of me felt like I should follow him, but as I made a step to do so, Ned reached out and grasped my arm, holding me back. “Don’t,” he said and there was a softness in his voice that I hadn’t heard before. I stopped and he released me. “He doesn’t need your sympathy.”
“But I should--”
“No, you shouldn’t. It’s fine.”
He turned to watch Brandon disappearing into the darkness at the edge of the town. The silence hung a moment longer. I stood there, feeling a strange sense of sadness engulf me. Eventually, Ned turned back to me and smiled wanly. “Let me walk you home,” he said.
The journey back to the base was conducted mostly in silence, with only the distant drone of bombers in the sky overhead. Ned walked an arm’s length away to my side, head down as if concentrating on not making a false step in the blackout. Several times, I felt like he was about to say something, but then chose not to. The silence was awkward at first, but the further we walked, the less unwieldy it became, until by the time we arrived at the doors of my building and Mrs McDougall flicked her curtains to see who was out late this time, it was remarkably comfortable.
“Well, here you go,” said Ned.
“Thank you.”
He nodded at his shoes. “He was right, you know…” he said quietly.
I frowned. “Who was right?”
He looked up and met my gaze directly. “That Baelish bloke. You are too good for Brandon.”
And with that, he turned and walked away, leaving me standing on the stone step of my billet in a cloud of confusion.
***
Nothing happened for a fortnight, then two things happened in very quick succession. I hadn’t seen either Brandon or Peter in those two weeks, but then one morning I came down to breakfast to find a letter sitting on my plate waiting for me. I recognised the hand immediately. After all, I’d seen it hundreds of times before on secret notes passed in class and on left on my pillow – it was from Peter.
I sat staring at the letter while I ate my bowl of porridge oats and then took it upstairs to my room where I left it on the dressing table, resolving to read it later, after work when I would be less busy and distracted. But, the day proved to be quiet and my thoughts kept turning to it as the hours past, so that when it was time for me to leave, I found myself walking much quicker than usual back through the gathering dusk to my billet.
As I rounded the corner, I saw him. He was sitting on the stone wall outside my building reading the newspaper and looked up as I walked over.
“Cat,” he greeted, quickly folding the paper up and setting it down on the wall beside him. The bruising that had no doubt coloured his nose and cheek was almost gone and now little more than a yellowish mark.
“Hello, Brandon… What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I came to apologise. I’ve been thinking about the whole thing and I thought it was probably high time that I apologised for upsetting you.”
I said nothing. His lack of expressed regret had not surprised me, but I could not hide my true feelings now. He should have apologised before. “Yes,” I agreed simply.
He had obviously not being expecting me to agree with him so readily, for he laughed nervously. “I deserved that, I suppose. Anyway, I will understand if you say no, of course, but I was wondering…” He cleared his throat and stood up. “I was wondering if you’d consider another date with me. I know I haven’t exactly endeared myself to you, but I haven’t been able to get you out of my head and, well…” He grinned at me, with some of that familiar bravado come back again. “What do you say?”
I thought about the fight in the pub, but I realised that I’d already forgiven him for that. And I’d been thinking about him too. For two whole weeks. “Well,” I said. “All right, then.”
His face split with an even broader grin and he came over and, quite unexpectedly, picked me up, spun me around and kissed me. When he set me back down on the ground, he held my face in his big hands and said, “You are beautiful, Cat.” His hands fell away. “My little sister’s coming to stay next week. I’ve booked her a bed and breakfast room in the town and I thought it might be nice if we all met up for dinner – you, me, Ned and her. She’d like that.”
“Of course,” I agreed. “That would be lovely.”
“Brilliant,” he said. He made to turn away then stopped, took my face in his hands and kissed me once again. “Good night, Cat.”
I watched him walk away with a smile on his face, knowing that I was smiling in return.
Upstairs in my room, I paced about for a good five minutes, feeling as giddy and light-headed as a girl, until my eyes alighted on the letter Peter had sent still sitting on my dressing table. With carefully deliberate hands, I picked it up and ripped it slowly into four pieces, then cast the pieces on the fire.
Strangely cleansed, I laid back on the bed, still dressed in my uniform, and thought about the man who’d just walked away from me, about the dark hair that fell in front of his eyes, his warm, expressive eyes and that ridiculous smile. My father would like him, I knew. I sighed and closed my eyes and started to imagine the dinner we’d just arranged.
Little did I know, that dinner would be the last time I would see Brandon Stark alive.