Chapter Two


I arrive at the hospital again at about half past twelve, the main room is a flood of chaos just like a month before. Another lot of freshly wounded soldiers from the front are slowly being sorted. I hear their muffled and sometimes sharp cries of pain, the smell of wet bandages, and the sharp scent of too many men in one room all in need of a good bath. The ones with focused eyes look out at me pleadingly, judgmentally, accusingly. I feel like a fool standing about holding a basket in one hand, my chauffeurs cap tucked under my arm. I deserve their stares, I'm not broken like they are, but I could well have been in another life.

I search her out finding her up to her neck with helping some poor lad no older than 17, his bandaged arms and legs a pristine white. I watch her neatly tuck a final bandage into place then quietly telling the boy to lie still and try and get some rest, "the doctor will be around to check on you as soon as he can." Then she makes the move to start in on helping another hapless man.

I put aside any insecurity I'm feeling and speak from behind her.

"Milady, I've brought you your lunch."

She startles at my voice, she was so engrossed in her tasks and the clamour of the room. I see her place her hand over her heart, like she's trying to calm its beating.

"Branson?" She turns and looks at me "you gave me a start, but I just don't have time for that right now, leave it at the nurses station like before, please."

I shake my head, watching her attack another task, gently scolding a man whose head dressing has started to unravel as he's obviously kept fiddling with it. I stand dumbly by holding the damn basket.

"I'm sorry, but I've been given strict instructions that I bring the basket back by half past one, empty."

She stands up straight looking at me exasperated.

"That's ridiculous."

"There are a lot of things that are ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as I am standing here holding a basket, begging you to take care of yourself."

She was scowling before, now her face breaks into an incredulous smile. Then she seems to give in.

"All right, meet me in the garden in ten minutes."

"Very well, but if I don't see you in that time though, I'm coming back to find you."

She tries to suppress that her smile is growing bigger by forcing an exaggerated frown on her face.

Ten minutes later she comes around the corner of the entrance to the garden, I'm sitting on a low brick wall, a raised bed filled with what will eventually be flowers again, everything is still green though, everything stays green here. I immediately rise to standing, I can't stay seated in her presence if we're not in a car, or if I'm not invited, not in public anyway, and there are at least two soldiers and a nurse milling about the garden as well as her and I.

"I can't believe they're making you watch me eat, it just seems superfluous. I'm sure you have better things to do than this." She says this walking to me, then sitting down on the edge of the raised bed.

"I don't think it's superfluous at all." The garden has emptied out as I finish the last word. "Besides, I'd rather ensure that you don't run yourself into the ground like before."

She eyes me, then looks down looking slightly embarrassed.

"Really, that was nothing"

I'm referring to less than a week before being tasked to pick her up after her evening shift, and having to stop at the side of the road and strongly encourage her to drink from the never opened canister of water in the same basket sitting on the wall now. She'd dehydrated her self to the point where she nearly passed out. When we finally made it back to the house, she'd walked in looking so worse for wear, that sometime later her mother came downstairs and interrupted a few of us sitting about the dining room having a cup of tea. I was reading one of my papers of course. But, she came in and we all had to scramble up from our chairs, she told us to stay as we were and not to get up, but that if she could speak to Mrs. Patmore and to me? We both said yes of course, and I knew it had to do with Sybil. In my head she's still Sybil - even though after that day in York I've never called her that once to her face, only in writing.

We'd exchanged maybe a dozen or more letters in the time she was away at her course. I tried to keep things light as did she, we wrote about our daily lives, but sometimes the heaviness of our real lives would creep onto the pages, sometimes the words in ink just didn't feel like enough. And then her course was over, and I did pick her up, and I did drive her home, but the words stayed in the courtyard and on those pages.

I feel it's coming undone though sometimes, like I'll unravel like one of her tightly wrapped bandages and I'll say it all again, the words will weep out of me- I can sense my resolve withering away with the months.

Coming back to the moment at hand, I reach into the basket and hand her a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper. "It may be nothing, but it could have been something." She scoffs then takes the neatly wrapped packet, unfolds the paper and starts eating the hardy sandwich with delicate bites.

"Don't hold back on account of me. I've seen dogs fighting over scraps in the street, and my own brothers downing fish and chips like they'd never see a chip again in their lives."

She stops mid bite and looks at me with her wide blue eyes. She cocks an eye brow and takes a surprisingly large bite of her sandwich, her cheeks full up, then she starts chewing. Her mouth closed, but you can tell she's struggling a little bit.

"Bit off more than you can chew, literally - eh?" She rolls her eyes, and takes the canister of water I hand to her gratefully. Washing down the mouthful of food.

"Don't challenge me, I'm likely to take you on - and then choke to death on it." As the words leave her mouth, she realises their double meaning and has to look away.

"I'm, I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

"It's all right - I can read the subtleties. I'll wait at the car, you can bring the basket out when you're finished." I'm not thinking as I do all this, just reacting. I always do this, this is what my mum always called me being hot headed. But I can't help it in this moment - her words hurt.

I turn to leave as she still attempts to apologise for her misspoken words. "Branson, genuinely... I didn't mean anything doubly, nothing hidden, I promise."

I've fixed my hat back on my head and look her square in the face. "Nothing hidden, but plenty said, milady."

I make my way towards the entrance of the garden, I feel her eyes on me, and then I hear the rustle of her skirts, and her hand on my arm. I pull my arm out from her grasp and turn to look at her, her eyes pleading, her mouth open.

"I didn't mean them." She says forcefully. "You challenge me, you always have - that's one of the best things about you. And I never want you to stop being that, or doing that for me, never." I cross my arms over my chest, I still feel raw.

I give up and drop them, weighing my words before I say anything. "It's the same for me," I look her square in the eyes emphasising my meaning, "you're exactly the same for me."

"It's settled then." She turns to walk back to the wall where she left the basket and the barely eaten sandwich. She sits back down and stares at me - waiting. "Are you going to join me or not, eating alone is bad for digestion - you don't want to make me ill, do you?"

"No, never..." I settle down next to her and take off my hat, I've been invited - it's allowed.

"You wouldn't happen to like pudding, would you?" She smiles at me and picking her sandwich back up and taking a more reasonable bite.

"I don't know any body who doesn't like pudding." I tell her, I can hear the lilt of suppressed laughter in my own voice.

"Good, because Mrs Patmore always gives me too much when she makes it, we can share." She continues to eat her sandwich, chewing thoughtfully and swallowing diligently.

"But there's only one spoon." I tell her.

She finishes swallowing, and shakes her head "I don't mind sharing, if you don't?" She picks up an apple that's nestled next to the custard container that holds the pudding, and takes a bite, it crunches loudly in the empty garden, and she smiles around the mouthful of fruit.

"I don't mind." I say.

She nods and hands me the custard container, and the lone spoon Mrs Patmore had one of the kitchen maids pack. She indicates with her head that I can start, but she doesn't speak around a new portion of apple.

I tuck into the pudding, chocolate pudding at that - and take the first bite. I feel her watching me more than see it, because I close my eyes around the flavour of the chocolate. Mrs Patmore doesn't tend to make rich deserts for the staff, we get biscuits occasionally - maybe some nice preserves, a cake every now and again, but rarely chocolate.

"How is it?" She asks.

"Honestly? It's divine."

She lets out a tiny laugh. "I never thought I'd ever hear you use that word to describe something as benign as food."

I quirk my eye brow at her. "Food is not benign, food is essential. That's why when there's a shortage or the threat of one, people react - they revolt, or they emigrate en masse to save them selves. Like the French, they revolted and over through the monarchy - why, essentially because the bare bones of it was food or the lack of it. Food is not benign, it's the life blood of a nation."

She continues to chew her apple, then in a very un-lady like manner says "I know, that's why I said it - I wanted to hear you pontificate." All whilst still chewing on her apple.

"You mean rant." She then surprises me once again and lets out and even less lady like snort.

"Yes, exactly... your rant. I love your rants."

I look her in the eyes, taking in that she just used the word love in context with something about myself.

"And I love ranting to you..." I should add milady to the sentence, but I don't - I don't think I ever can say it to her again. She's not a lady to me anymore - she's something different and better. I can only hope she'll reciprocate and call me Tom again. I miss her smokey tones saying it, I think I miss it everyday.

By ten past she's finished, and the garden is peopled by patients and nurses again. When a nurse came around into the garden wheeling a man with bandages wrapped around his eyes, I looked over at Sybil and she nodded. Our equal footing would have to be put aside in front of others, so I stood and dawned my cap again, clasping my hands behind my back, and waited politely for her to finish her lunch. I watched her, trying to not seem transfixed when she took up the spoon I'd used only minutes before and finished off the pudding. She closed her eyes just like I did as she tasted it the first time, but then she hummed. Her pink tongue edged out of her mouth and licked her lips as she swallowed, and I had to look away, if she saw my eyes in that moment - she'd know my thoughts had ventured very far off course, so off course that that spoon was no longer a spoon. I steeled my self once she was finished, and handed me the basket.

"You'll be back tomorrow I gather?"

"Yes," Then stepped up a closer to her, looking about to see if anyone was noticing us or could hear us, "but only if you'll have me."

She says nothing, only smiles the smallest of smiles and nods.

I nod in response, look about again and say it. "Good-bye, Sybil."

I don't wait to hear her say my name back, I just turn and walk out of the garden. I can feel her eyes on me as I walk away, and I know she's smiling as she's does it.