Grave situation.
Grave condition.
Grave danger.
Sybbie flicks the ash from the fourth cigarette and watches it fall to the still-frosted grass. The thin winter sun warms her back and she squints against the light as she looks over her shoulder at the church. It would awaken as the village would in a few minutes, the young vicar opening the doors, first for morning prayer, and then for a funeral.
Grave.
Funny, Sybbie thinks, how casually doctors throw that word around, how easily it falls from the lips of others. For her, the word grave has been with her for her whole life, first two, then a third, fourth, and fifth, and now there would be a sixth. Only Georgie Badger, my Badger understands as she does, and Georgie isn't here.
No one knows where he is.
She should be able to find out at work, but even they did not know everything. Men had been lost, whereabouts unknown, and she does not hold out hope as others do. To the end, her grandmother said George was coming home, and even as she breathed her last, she was looking at his picture... their last picture.
He was uniformed and laughing, their arms around shoulders, and it is the last time she remembered being happy. Three years since she had seen him, three years since she had gone from school to a place in Buckinghamshire, three years since even her father believed she was a nurse at a rest home for wounded soldiers. They do not know of long days and nights in Hut 8, of her peculiar skills, of possessing knowledge that puts her in the most rarefied circles. They believe the young man who accompanied her is more than a friend.
Sybbie does not know his real name.
He stands a respectful distance away this morning, outside the gate near Crawley House. The house is dark, dark for years, and she thinks of Isobel, of tea and cakes with George's grandmother before she died, of how much Badger looks like his father, how they held hands when they walked into this churchyard and looked at the two graves, their first graves, the ones they had always known. She does not believe in prayer and neither does he, but they prayed by those graves as they had been taught.
She stubs out the cigarette and prays now, but not for Matthew Crawley, or her mother, or Isobel Crawley. She does not pray for her great-grandmother, or for Robert Crawley, or for her grandmother Cora who will be buried today alongside her Earl. It is whispered and small, and for no one's ears.
"You're up early."
The voice is deep, and many find it cold, but it sounds like home to Sybbie. "I can't sleep."
"Neither can I." Lady Mary Crawley leans forward and kisses her niece's cheek. "It's good to see you. How is that hospital treating you?"
"As well as can be expected." She exchanges a smile with her aunt, who is looking anywhere, but at the tall monument to her left.
"Your mother would have been proud," she murmurs. "As am I."
The young man at the gate lights another cigarette and Mary glances at him. "I'm surprised you brought him with you for a funeral. Not the most traditional of times to meet a family."
Sybbie shrugs. "As good a time as any. I didn't want to be alone." Without my Badger, she thinks, and she knows the flash of pain across her aunt's face.
"Come pray with me," Mary says.
"I already did," Sybbie replies.
"More than once is allowed." Mary holds out her hand. "George could use double the prayers, I think."
"I prayed for you," Sybbie says. "I'm furious with him."
Mary drops her hand.
"We had rules," Sybbie says, her voice high and tight. "He's not supposed to make you worry. It's against the rules to make you sad."
"Rules?"
"You and Papa already had so much to worry about. We aren't supposed to add to that burden." Sybbie's eyes burn and she focuses on the letters Matthew Reginald Crawley so she won't start sobbing. "And he's broken the rules, and now he's gone."
"He's not gone yet."
"Soldiers don't stay missing like this." The words make her aunt flinch. "I'm sorry, Aunt Mary, but..."
"It's true," Mary says. "But we don't know yet what happened. Come in and pray with me."
Sybbie follows her into the cool, dark church and up to the railing where Mary, after a deep breath, kneels and folds her hands.
"How can you be so calm about it?" Sybbie whispers as she follows suit.
"There's no point in raging in front of the vicar. He'll only think he can help," Mary whispers back. "And if you think I'm not as furious as you are, that education of yours was a complete waste."
Sybbie bites back a giggle as a wave of love rushes through her. At least we've got each other, she thinks to herself. Come on, Badger. At least let us know. Give us peace. Give her peace.
There is a creaking sound at the back of the church, and Sybbie glances back to see her shadow standing at the door. Go away, she thinks. I'm not going to abandon ship. She hears the whispers coming from her aunt's lips, words she has heard before, beg, sure, credit, safe, and she wonders what power Mary placed in them. She lets Mary stand first, and she is barely on her feet before she is uncharacteristically pulled into a hug.
"What are you doing, my girl?" The voice is low, a clever choice over a whisper in this echoing nave. "You're not nursing."
"No," Sybbie says with a smile against her aunt's ear, noting that her escort had turned away slightly as if to give them privacy.
"Be safe," Mary says after a long pause and a tightening of her arms around her niece. "I couldn't stand it if I lost you."
Too hangs between them as they walk back to the house together through frost and curls of fog. It reminds Sybbie of hunts and shoots, of the dumpy little pony they both learn to ride. Oddly, it makes her think of her grandfather and his patient walks with the two of them as they grew. It suddenly dawns on her that Mary is now fully orphaned, alone, and her eyes smart as the doors fly open ahead of them.
It is both a letter and a telegram, a telegram for Mary which she cannot open. She hands it mutely to Sybbie, who shakes as she sets it aside in favor of the letter addressed to Miss Sybil Branson from the War Office. The first words blind her, we regret, but the next few clear her eyes and lift her heart.
We regret that this was delivered to the wrong address.
Of course, she thinks. The hospital. And they knew where I was going when I left Bletchley. She tears at the filthy, standard-issue paper and unfolds the single sheet.
It is dated three weeks back.
My Ratty,
It seems my burrow was overrun by the weasels and stoats. I'm not dead, but I need you to reassure Mama that I'll be quite all right after they patch me up and feed me a bit. I've asked them to delay the telegram so that you'll be the one to tell her. I can't tell you much more than that.
God, Ratty, I've missed you so. No one understands as you and I do, that it is always with us.
Love to all, especially you, Mamma, and Grandmamma.
Badger
She lifts her eyes as she lifts the telegram and places it in Mary's hands. "He's all right," she murmurs, and watches her aunt's shoulders shudder with breath as she reads. Sybbie sees words wounded captured freed safe home and then her aunt gasps. "Tomorrow," she says. "He's coming home tomorrow. Mamma..."
"Grandmamma knew," Sybbie says fiercely. "And she was right."
She cannot keep the smile from her face all through the service. It breaks through in flickers at the corners of the mouth that is like her mother's, and she steals glances at Mary whose eyes glow with hope. The news ripples through the church and the yard, and even as it is somber, even as the dirt falls, there is a peculiar current of joy. In the midst of life we are in death, the man says, and yet he lives, her heart answers.
Barrow brings up a champagne with a date upon the label that makes Lady Mary's eyes go soft. "The library," Sybbie tells him, and they drink in front of the fire until the clock strikes a new day and Aunt Mary looks through the glass at fat flakes of snow. Sybbie never asks why her aunt stands in snow on nights like this, looking at the sky, but tonight, she walks out with her and stares into the blackness with her.
The snow is bright, too bright, and it is because of that they miss the headlamps on the drive until there is a great sound of a car horn that breaks the silence.
"He never did like to wait for a train," Mary whispers as Sybbie breaks into a run, through the house, calling for Barrow as she undoes the locks with trembling fingers.
He can barely stand, but he is standing, shattered, his right cheek and neck a web of ribbon-like scars, one beautiful eye gone behind a patch, and the sight of it all fills her inexplicably with joy, a laugh bubbling up as he sweeps off his hat.
"What doesn't hurt?" she asks.
"Everything hurts," he replies. "But don't let that stop you."
He leans on her as they walk to the library, his arm around her shoulder, and he tells her he knows about Grandmamma, and she tells him what Grandmamma always knew.
"Did Mamma?"
She stops in front of the library door. "You made her worry, Badger. We had rules."
He nods, ruefully, and kisses her cheek. "You're not coming in?"
She shakes her head. "She deserves you all to herself for a minute."
He looks up at her shadow, and back to Sybbie, and he squeezes her a little tighter with a sigh as he opens the library door. She watches her aunt kiss her boy, touch his wrecked cheek, those rare tears breaking through as they sit, his shattered face against her shoulder.
Sybbie slips away to bed, her heart light, and not even the sight of her shadow at the top of the stairs can take away her joy. But she cannot sleep, and so she waits for those slow steps, for that door to open that has not opened in years, and they come as the dawn begins to pull itself across the sky. She waits a moment, allows the house to grow still again, and she glides down the hall as she did countless times in the past.
He is slumped across his bed, tears flowing silently, and she crawls up next to him, his hand reaching for hers and gripping it as if there is no other line to life. "Badger, darling," she whispers.
"I wish he were here," he mumbles. "He'd understand."
She knows who, and why, and she only nods.
"Your friend," he says. "You don't have to tell me but... since when do they send escorts?"
"Since one walked," she said. "Off a cliff, actually."
"Fuck," he mutters, and she is not shocked by the word. She is not shocked by his terrible wounds, by his bones and bruises, by his pained movements. She is her mother's daughter, as he is his father's son, and no graves can change that.
FIN