Chapter 1: Stratford, England; 1939
There's talk of a war and his friends can't stop laughing.
They're in a dingy pub, in the middle of gloomy England, drinking awful Irish beer, completely lost, and his friends can't stop laughing.
Usually, Francis would give in but this time, he's so peeved that he can't even muster a smile.
"Turn left- and then the idiot says- whose left?- my left?- and slams the car into the farmer's shed," Gilbert is crying at this point, slamming his fist on the table. "And then- to make everything worse- you scream at him in fucking Spanish- and he chases us- with a rake-"
Antonio, who is the butt of the story, is laughing too and Francis doesn't know if that annoys him more than the story itself.
They were driving in the middle of nowhere in the English countryside, trying to get to London, and Antonio, who is an utter idiot behind the wheel and a complete imbecile when it came to directions, ran over a lamb, panicked, then slammed into a farmer's shed. The farmer came out, a massive English man with a spade, and Antonio, so horrified by running over an innocent animal and for damaging this man's house, raced away, screaming apologies from the window, only to run over the barbed wire fence and mow down an entire acre of rapeseed and cabbage.
By the end of it, Francis wasn't too sure who was crying the most: Antonio or the poor farmer whose harvest was destroyed. Gilbert hadn't stopped laughing since.
"Classic," Gilbert wipes away tears.
"I feel really bad," says Antonio. He's nursing his beer but hasn't taken a sip. "Do you think God is going to punish me for this?"
Gilbert sprays them with beer. "You bet He will!"
Francis wrinkles his nose. "Next time, I'm going drive."
"Why? So Antonio can give us a goddamn commentary throughout he whole ride?"
A headache begins to throb at his temples. Right. He had forgotten about that. The only reason they let Antonio drive was because it was the only thing that shut him up. Francis couldn't drive if there was incessant chatter and Gilbert was so easily distracted by anything that moved for them to consider letting him drive.
So that left Antonio, delightfully airheaded, who couldn't tell his left from his right, who couldn't get it through his thick skull that the goddamn English drove on the goddamn left and not the right.
"I don't like it when it's quiet," says Antonio. "It makes me feel sad, you know? Road trips are meant to be fun-"
"Tell that to the fucking farmer who's probably cursing your country to hell for giving birth to you," snorts Gilbert.
Francis brings the beer to his lips but can't bring himself to take a sip. He can hear his taste buds screaming at him, begging him not to give in and, as per usual, he caves and pushes the pint as far away from his as possible. What he would give for some good French wine, deep red, beside a fine cutlet of steak.
"Who gets to ask the freaky barman for a spare room?" asks Gilbert.
The pub they are in, the White Lily, is gob-smack in the middle of nowhere, probably as far away from London as could possibly be. The night had long fallen and the skies are covered in rumbling, roaring clouds. Rain splattered against the windows, casting shadows on the floor from the orange, gasolier light.
The three of them turn around to see said barman and Francis felt his stomach churn. The man could've been handsome if it wasn't for those god-awful caterpillars for eyebrows and the sullen expression on his face. He was smoking, an ear tilted to the wireless that buzzed beside him.
"I vote Francis," says Antonio quickly.
"What do you know? So do I!" says Gilbert and the two infuriatingly high-five.
Francis shoots them both a glare, fingers the both of them and cuffs Antonio upside the head as he skirts around the table.
He raps twice on the counter and to get the Englishman's attention.
"It'll be a shilling," said the Englishman, not even batting an eyelid.
"For drinks and a room?" grins Francis, "that's generous. I guess they're not wrong about the English and their hospitality, oui?" or lack thereof, he wants to add.
The man's vicious green eyes slide to meet him and Francis decides that he hates him already. There's something… so English about him that makes him want to tear his hair out.
"Not a hotel, froggie," says the Englishman with a mocking grin. "So you and your mates can see yourself out."
Despite the cigarette and the array of scars on the man's knuckles- the Brits were famed for their intoxicated bar fights and drunken insanity more so than their disgusting cuisine- Francis has a feeling this one is as uptight as you could get, from his buttoned shirt to his neat little cuffs.
So, he leans forward, grins and, almost purring, says: "Or you can see me up to your room and I'll make this a night you won't forget."
The Englishman turns a vicious shade of red so fast that Francis almost doubles over. The man sputters and Francis winks, tells him to be a dear, find a bit of mercy in that heart of his, and help them out, just for one night.
"Get out," says the man.
"Quoi?"
"OUT!"
Francis wonders if maybe kissing the man will do the trick but, before he could climb the countertop and grab the seething Englishman, he's shoved aside Gilbert. He thinks that Gilbert's going to do something reasonable and explain that their car broke down and that they were tourists, completely lost, but, that would've been the sane thing to do.
Instead, Gilbert grabs the Englishman by the shirt. "Do you know who we are? Do you know what we do to people like you? Empty your till-"
Before Gilbert could continue the threat, the Englishman yanks the crowbar hanging behind him and literally beats Gilbert off.
"OUT!"
Francis tries to grab holding of the Englishman's arm while Gilbert screeches on the floor. Antonio is sitting on the far table, humming, his eyes tracing the droplets of rain on the window. Francis debates getting onto his knees and begging- Gilbert is sporting a wonderful bruise on his face- before a little voice cuts through the chaos.
"Arthur? I heard loud sounds and it woke me up."
It is a little boy in a long, white night gown. He has a stuffed eagle tucked under his arm and his big, blue eyes are heavy lidded with sleep.
Arthur, who has Gilbert underneath his polished shoe, a crowbar over his head, unsuccessfully restrained by Francis, gives the boy a diplomatic smile and, in a merry voice that didn't suit the situation in the least, tells him to be a good boy and go back to bed. "I'm just doing a bit of work, the usual. You tuck yourself in and, when I'm finished, I'll come read you a story. How's that?"
Alfred squints. "Are they your friends?"
"Heaven's no!" laughs Arthur merrily as Gilbert desperately shrieks, "yes! We're best friends! We even have a present for you!"
Alfred's eyes are gleaming platters of blue. "Really?"
"Go to bed, Alfred," says Arthur warningly.
"But I want the present! I love presents! Can I have it now?" Alfred gives a little gasp. "I'll tell Mattie to come down too! He likes presents!"
And the little boy was off in a patter of small footsteps. The bar is motionlessly tense for a moment. Arthur's vicious green eyes slide to meet Francis'. "You'd better have a bloody present ready because I swear, if you make him cry, I'm going to beat the life out of the lot of you."
"So, I guess we're staying for the night?" says Francis.
They end up staying the night.
Gilbert procures a iron cross from his pocket to give to Alfred and, with the boy on his knee, begins to tell him a farfetched story of how he was once a knight and he had to wrestle the cross off of an ugly, Austrian monster who used the power of music to control minds.
Alfred's twin brother, identical to the pore, is a much harder to lure. But, in the end, it takes handmade chocolates Francis realizes he has in his coat pocket from the last few days they spent in France that coaxes the boy out of the shadows. Matthew takes a chocolate for himself and one for his stuffed bear and, when he thanks them for the present, Francis decides that he likes this one, the one with manners, over the exuberant, bubbling flamboyance that was his brother.
Antonio steers clear of both children. He smokes with the Englishman instead. Francis doesn't blame him.
"We usually drive around in the holidays," he explains, lighting the stick between his lips and taking a drag. "We're going to start university soon in Scotland, so we decided to drive up from London."
"I don't know who gave you directions, but you're nowhere near London. This is Stratford." Arthur locks the front doors and blows out the gasoliers. It is past midnight and the rain is incessant. "Shakespeare's birthplace?" he offers, when he notices the lack of recognition.
"Ah, to be or not to be," exclaims Francis from where he sits on the floor, Matthew beside him, making the polar bear dance. "That is the question."
"To hear the words of the great bard in the mouth of a frog," scowls Arthur.
Francis winks. The Englishman threatens to beat him with a crowbar. Gilbert nurses the bruise on his face and asks for a packet of ice.
Arthur gathers the children into his arms and carries them upstairs. If it wasn't for the crowbar he hung off his belt strap, the sight is almost motherly. He returns with a duvet and a pillow and tells them that they'll have to share, wake up at the crack of dawn and get the hell out of his sight.
"That's the hospitality we've been waiting for," says Francis, slinging an arm around Arthur's narrow shoulders.
"Touch me again and I'll make sure you sleep in a barn."
They try to sleep on the hard floor, under a single duvet and, after a poorly executed game of rock, paper and scissors- that Francis is quite sure Gilbert cheated in- the pillow is shared between Antonio and Gilbert, leaving Francis to try and manage with his arm under his head to cushion the floor.
"Those kids can't be his," says Gilbert. "He looks our age."
"He's cute, non?" says Francis.
"I don't think that answers the question," says Antonio.
Francis finds a few pillows pressed against one of the bar booths and throws it at his friends. The floor is still hard but it's a victory to not have his head on the ground. He turns to his side and pulls up his knee to get comfortable- accidently Antonio in the groin- who accidently elbows Gilbert in the stomach- who decides to give a war cry and throw himself at the both of them.
"For someone so thin, how are you so heavy?" hisses Francis, shoving him off.
"It's my sexiness. It's too much to handle so it weighs me down."
There is a rumbling behind the eerily quite bar counter and Francis realizes that the wireless is still on.
"I vote Francis gets up to close it," pipes Antonio.
"Me too!" says Gilbert.
And Francis swears at the both of them.
"- war does some imminent… assurances that Poland will be defended… after what was…"
"… Czechoslovakia, under the control of the Germans, making us wonder…"
"… our government doing?"
"… after the atrocities of the Great War, I don't believe… that war will be the answer… hope that we have learnt from the mistakes of the past…"
"… agree…"
Francis is quiet. He turns the dial and the wireless follows suit. He can almost feel what Antonio is going to say before the Spaniard says it.
"Guernica was bombed two years ago and they act like it didn't happen," says Antonio softly. He is on his side, facing the dying fire, shoulders drawn up and tense, green eyes as dull as burnt olives. "Like that wasn't a war."
It had been this time two years ago, now that Francis thought about it, when he heard about the bombings. He remembered the nauseous knot in his stomach, the vicious lightheadedness that made him almost faint. He remembered the way his vision blurred, his head throbbed, his heart twisted when he heard that there were two thousand people dead. That Antonio could be dead.
But a cruel twist of fate killed his entire family and Antonio was left wandering the bombed, empty streets: shocked, bleeding, orphaned, alone.
"War sucks," says Gilbert.
And, for some reason, that simple statement seems hilarious. Francis finds himself laughing and soon enough, Antonio joins him. Gilbert is left confused.
"Alors, it's not like it'll have anything to do with us," says Francis, settling back down beside Gilbert. "Ugh, you smell like that disgusting Irish beer."
"If you think that's disgusting, wait until you smell this," says Gilbert and before Francis can protest, suddenly gets a noseful of armpit.
Francis pushes him off and Antonio gets kneed in the stomach. It takes another round of apologies, an argument on who keeps pulling the covers and Antonio launching into a worried ramble on how he's afraid that poor farmer whose field he destroyed was going to find him, kill him and pray for God to smite him off the face of the earth for them to properly settle.
Francis is the last one to sleep but he relishes the deep breaths of Gilbert on his right and the shallow mutterings of Antonio on his left. There is talk of a war, but he couldn't care less; his world is within arms length, sleeping on either side of him, secure, safe, and Francis, a true Frenchman, believes in love before he believes in war.
In two years time, when he will wait for an informant in enemy occupied Paris, a suicide pill underneath his tongue in case he's arrested, Francis will remember this raining night in particular: the malty odor of the English bar, his lost friends on either side of him, the peculiar thick-browed barman, the peculiar children, and how he thought things would never change.
But the war will change more than he imagined.
AN: It's been a while, but, alas, I find myself back! Hope you enjoyed the read!