A/N: Many thanks to oiseaus, swarleyy, and dubiousculturalartifact for their encouragement on this one.
iv
A new mould of men has been cast.
September 1941
"Some birthday present."
Ralph crouched in front of the dispersal hut's stove, lighting a scrunched piece of newspaper and watching mesmerised as it curled and burned. The smell of soot filtered into the air. He shuffled forward, leaned into the heat of the stove's open door and blew gently on the flame. It cracked on kindling, orange turning his uniform to a dull grey as he stood and took up another match for his cigarette. "I couldn't point Malta out on a map until this morning," he said, shaking out the light.
"Such a tiny scrap of land to be so strategic," Aldridge murmured, burrowing further into his flying jacket.
William could see his breath, and leaned closer to the warmth. "Happy twentieth."
Ralph joined their huddle of chairs around the stove. "My twentieth was in a pub in Maidstone," he said. Laughed. "1935, god."
Something closed in Ralph's demeanour did not easily allow for imaginings of his youth; his face may be boyish but his eyes could be black, every look careful. Far away. Focussed on the fire. His cigarette hung from his lips and his hands locked under his jaw, a sort of mock prayer.
Fourteen. William had been fourteen in 1935, in the maddening heat of that particular summer, so hot that Downton's stone itself radiated and burned. Sybbie tiptoed the line to adulthood; they became separated by their genders. He'd batted in the spring's cricket, and remembered his mother's face at the side of the pitch: her pride edged with memory, making him pause, worry, as so often that look felt like a burden he had caused.
Autumn rain lashed the hut windows in their silence. Fog had rolled in from the coast, a thick bank of it pushing through the tree line. Ralph stood to tend the low coals again. "At least there's sun in Malta," he muttered.
They took off from an aircraft carrier. In the Mediterranean, from the vast hall of a hangar to a deck that seemed too short, Hurricanes were pulled up, taxied out. The flight deck dipped at its stern, and atop his wing William could view the sea churching out a white froth over the ship's propellors. His own plane prop was reluctant in high wind. Fifth out, he watched others depart, bank sharply to the left once clear of the boat, and the plane become a slight, glimmering creature as it ascended. There was a snap of cloth, voices, before he shut the hood on his cockpit. His inventory began. Throttle. Brakes off. Ground crew cleared. A slow roll forward turned into patching juddering beneath his wheels, quicker, then the platform was gone and he lifted into smooth air and sea below. Apprehension left him. The islands spread as a gold chain in blue water. Cobalt. It had a beauty, that colour, a clean cut, but upon landing he knew it would look a different place.
On the ground, the first William saw of Luqa was sandbags, three high walls of them with a Beaufighter in their recess like a boat in dry dock. "Safest spot, till we can get her coastal," ground crew said. "We took a bad hit some months ago."
The Hurricanes matched the desert, brown and green, a neat line of wheels on the dust. Beyond them lay a series of huts and tents, the only irregularity on flat ground, setting up their own type of geography. Eastwards was the town itself, and beyond a ramshackle wall the twin spires of Luqa's church rose in amongst the flat-roofed checker of other buildings.
Another Beaufighter was taxiing around a curve in the roadway; slow progress with the engine ambling, shadow splayed to the burnt grass below it. Two men walked backwards in front of its wings to direct the pilot's passage. It wheezed up an incline, propellors near idle. They were forced several feet back, halfway into a gully of prickling grass. As it passed them its black matte body took on a strange sheen, and William realised the sun was dimmed beneath cloud. He took off his cap and looked up.
Thick drops of rain hit the ground. The smell was hot, petrol and damp and cordite.
November, 1941
They were not used to such perfect, glassy skies. They could see miles out, below, above; it felt freer, but it also meant enemy planes could see them just as easily. Even as autumn became winter most days the sky was clean, palest blue. Ports were their main arena; dogfights were fierce, and Aldridge's words came back to William: this strategic scrap of earth. The land itself was scarred by Heinkels, Stukas, Macchis. Ship after ship was lost. Supply stopped, started again, trickled away and back like a river drying out.
Every day below him, in Grand Harbour or otherwise, plumes of foam were sent up by cannon fire, strafed lines of disturbed water next to billowing Navy boats. Bells and raid sirens punctuated each morning and night. Sleep might have been elusive because of the heat, but bombing too kept them awake, and William was certain the deficit would eventually catch up.
No matter where he was, it seemed fighting would always follow the same tireless pattern.
March, 1942
She wasn't salvageable, crumpled out of a tailspin and succumbed to an engine fire after he'd bailed, port flank ripped clean to reveal a webbed skeleton. It was a sorry mess a few miles from the sea, on clean marbled land. William knew he was lucky, and made it to Luqa with his left shoulder numb, immovable as he'd undone the parachute, pain hitting his neck with every step on uneven road.
Sun was relentless. Injury made him dizzy. He needed water.
"You idiot," Ralph said harshly when he saw him. "Do you know how long you were gone?" He took in William's ragged appearance. "Christ, Crawley," he sighed, guiding him to the shade of a supply tent and sitting him down on some spare crates. He stood unsure for a moment, hand carding his hair. He swore. After deliberation he tugged William's arm from his shirt sleeve, peeling away fabric where blood dried rust-red against the khaki. "Two hours," he said. "I was ready to write the letter." William stared at his strained face, a paler tan in the recess of his eyes, until he turned away and marched to the edge of the tent. "Medic!" he shouted.
"Didn't get the Macchi," William said.
He hadn't looked on his tail, hadn't turned before the Italian caught him. Then the world flipped itself into latitude, gravity took hold, thousands of feet becoming hundreds in a spin where elevator flaps were useless. William's throat stuck when he swallowed. A pulse radiated in his arm, fierce along his collarbone, prickling at his fingers. His hand tangled in his fallen sleeve.
Andrew Hobson ducked into the tent, pointed face gaining shadow, and Ralph took a step back to stand at the perimeter of shade and watch ground crew mill between planes.
"Ah," Hobson said after a cursory look. "No shrapnel. Dislocated shoulder, though." He smiled. "Standard rugby injury." He gently held William's arm, resting it against his stomach. "Breathe," he said, then pushed at his elbow, shoulder rolling forward, back, and William bit down on swearing, bone grinding before it found its socket. The ache switched off almost instantly, and in a lungful the air smelled of stale canvas and sand. "You'll need to rest it," Hobson said, swabbing iodine over the grazes on William's chest. "Off ops for the rest of the week."
William cautiously rotated his arm, and said sarcastically, "Cheers, Andy."
Ralph turned back to them and gave a terse smile. "You'll never get that Macchi now," he said.
He spent days in limbo. Ralph returned from each sortie irritated, jumpy. William questioned him, but he only shook his head and smoked. He had gained a new perspective and Ralph was at its centre, an embodiment of the toil William was not yet fit to endure again. He couldn't say he missed it, not the dogfights, but the plane itself he did. He was slower to think on the ground. Quicker to find emotion, memory. Eric passed through his thoughts. Hannah. In idle time he wrote two letters, one to her and one to Downton, but sent neither. What could he say that wasn't vague, or better done in person? He resolved to send Hannah a telegram next he was on leave, and to see her in London.
Finally he was cleared, and took off in a heat wave, in the cockpit of a scarred Hurricane, in the dust kicked up from the scramble. When the engine shut off with wheels firm on desert ground he realised he had been nervous; nervous it would happen again, he would be shot again, and it would be worse. The planes were a patch-up, and it felt as though they were making do until something better.
"Where are the Spits?" became a daily question.
"Soon," they were told.
Waiting. That's what his life had been the past two and a half years. Intermittent spikes of adrenaline, a good shot, feeling ancient the moment the plane shuddered back to land. Sleep was weightlessness, dreams were blank, or of home, never taking place in this dust bowl but always at the steep drop from cliffs to Channel, under a thick rain. He dreamt in altimeters and prop drones. It was not Downton his subconscious sought, though he did miss it, in an ingrained way.
"Shot that Macchi you were after," Ralph said one evening, over the glow of a kerosene lamp and horrible, bitter beer. "Tricky bastard." In the flicker of light his eyes were dark hollows, face unshaven, unkempt. The last match had been taken from the packet and he folded the empty cardboard in his fingers, flipping it from thumb to index, index to middle, middle to ring. It scraped on his nails. He had the look of the weary and unsteady; as though he had slipped, with some final action, and could not regain his place.
April, 1942
"It's nothing she hasn't seen before, sir," one of the ground crew said, squinting down from a stepladder next to the Hurricane's nose. The engine door was open, panels lifted away to reveal metal veins, arteries, electrics, guns dismantled atop the wing, eight men milling about in a dance that didn't seem to need instruction or interference. William touched his hand to the plane's tail, passing his fingers across the hastily painted-out identifiers of another squadron. The paint had a rough feeling, as though bristles were caught in it. There was the clatter of the cockpit being slid back, plane shuddering as one of the men lifted himself to check the instruments. William left them to their maintenance.
Rounding the tail's rudder he saw Andrew Hobson's fair head inclined in the direction of Luqa's town, Ralph leaning beside him on a beaten Land Rover. The day still held a hint of morning's coolness, though it hissed too with dark plumes, ash, the black smog moving south west. "It's worth a recon," William heard Ralph say as he neared. "Supply won't have come inland yet."
"I'd imagine they're in a bad way," Andy replied. "If we could see the blasts."
Four miles out, under the beginnings of pink dusk, Valletta had burned. Their own airfield damaged earlier that day, the city's fires had pushed smoke inland from the sea; a bright orange glow reflecting as the air thickened, an eeriness settling as the occasional Stuka siren carried towards them. He and Ralph had sat on the wing of a spare Hurricane, morbid fascination in their silence. That high-pitched scream on warm wind. Again. Again. Bombed again.
Ralph caught sight of him. He put a hand up to shield his eyes. "We'll walk in." Without opening the door, Ralph lifted himself into the passenger seat. "Crawley!" he called.
Valletta, that small peninsula of land, gone.
Slowing at its outskirts, past blue-lit fields and arid scrubland, dust settled from their tires as they were caught at an impasse of rubble. At an angle, the road was just visible beyond, continuing until a steep drop, a man-made tier along the cliff face. Andy shut off the idling engine. In the quiet ticking of it cooling down they leant with elbows on door frames, Ralph's head tilted past the windscreen, William looking between their shoulders with a straight view. It was like looking at the ruins of Persepolis, Rome, crumbled together with a savagery not of time's doing but a split second impact. The Stuka scream came back to him. Now it was silent as a mausoleum.
"It's not worth this," Andy hissed, breath caught in an incredulous laugh. Ralph jerked his door open and the car shuddered when he slammed it. They watched him pick his way over the rubble, small rock slides beneath his boots. His hands wavered either side of him in balance. Then he rounded the slope, uniform's beige blending with stone, skittered down the other side, and as he disappeared they were forced to follow.
The street opened up on the other side, but along its straight tract debris was strewn, crossing a gulf of pavement like a child carelessly tossing marbles. They walked in silence, three abreast, scanning down bleached alleyways.
"Surely the Army have come in," Andy said. "Red Cross, someone." They were coming up on a square, and as the street opened into a white expanse people began to appear, huddles and snaking lines, hushed speech.
William could feel eyes following them. His own gaze went to a mass about a parapet, young men crouched, frantic. He realised they were digging. Pulling rubble away. He imagined a person buried, a child...
Andy saw too, and he stuttered. "Jesus," he said, starting towards them. "Jesus."
He shouted, and a woman on the edge of the crowd looked sharply at him. Relief flooded her features; she began to wave, beckon. "Ingliż armata," she called behind her. Other people turned. The scrabble stopped.
"Doctor," Andy said, pointing to himself.
The woman nodded. "Tabib, tabib."
"Andrew!" Ralph's voice cut across. On what remained of the building's steps Andy stopped. Turning, his face was thunderous, the squint of his eyes hooded, shoulders rounded forward.
"We're heading back," Ralph said.
"Back?" William snapped.
Ralph's gaze was steady, seemingly unfazed. His voice was clipped. "I was wrong, boats won't have got anywhere near the harbour in this state." He looked to the scene, Andy near being engulfed by the crowd, men within digging again. "You can't help them, Hobson. You haven't got supplies."
Their shadows bent and joined as Andy pivoted back to him. William watched Ralph's head tilt up in a way he recognised; patient authority in his relaxed stance observing Andy's agitation, and for a moment William saw in him those pompous head boys he'd known at Eton, the echelons of Oxford, all that Downton's earlier age might had bred him to be. A brief disgust flared in his chest.
"He looks as though he's going to hit me," Ralph preened. "His CO. Go on."
The provocation founded a decision in Andy's face, a clenching in his jaw before he acted it out and stepped away, past them back towards the mouth of the square. They were enacting a private drama in the midst of a greater, more important destruction; their catalyst looked to lie in the unsteady cobbles beneath their feet but William couldn't be sure if perhaps it had come before, the edge of rivalry in both of the other men's eyes suggesting a prior disagreement brought out by the strain of strangers' desperation. And now they would retreat. The grate of following orders moved in Andy's long stride, one hand on the back of his neck as though to hold his head up to the broken street, to retain his pride, to apologise. Ralph walked grim beside William.
As it is wont to do, the walk back seemed far longer than when they had arrived. Again they passed alleys, shops, a turquoise-painted door that was the single colour on a street. Over hillocks of rubble, around them, imprinting their boots on the silted fringe of piles. Andy carved a path and William stalked between, sure not look back to Ralph a few feet behind. They reached the high walls of Kingsway and the stone took in their echo.
Over a final slated wall the Land Rover came into view. Each man retook his place and Andy turned the vehicle in a severe, snarling arc, joining the road to the airbase. People, families jostled roadside, an exodus from Valetta, becoming a blur that thinned as they sped past. Andy's eyes flicked in the rear view mirror. Abandonment, or guilt for it, rung high in William's throat, snagging any words of protest.
October, 1942
"Vector one five zero, bandits twenty plus, angle three five."
Over the wide, southern scoop of harbour and port, the 109 William tailed curved away from its counterparts, entering a slow dive. He banked after it, cursing as it dove steeper, coast hurtling beneath them. Where was it going? William's attempt to catch up proved futile with the long drop, and while it was still in his sights he was forced to curve down at a gentler speed, half-rolling so the engine wouldn't choke. It was a German advantage of engineering, and he wasn't about to force the plane into cutting out; he could give up, turn back, but the chase had him curious. They were well away from the centre of fighting now. There was little cloud, only wisps of condensation that were barely of consequence, and he could see the yellow cone of the Messerschmitt's propellor, her black-cross wings. He banked downward again.
At 10, 000 feet they came level. It would be easy now. Shoot it into azure water. But it swooped up, like a gull in search of a current, William slipstreaming in its exhaust, and they flipped to find his tail before he could regain even bearings again.
He felt the bullets shudder into fuselage. Through the thin tip of elliptical wing; behind the cockpit; under the belly, and he felt that hit in him, cannon shell ripping through metal and into his leg. He felt the tip of gravity dragging the plane's nose down, and it was uncontrollable then, the only option to get out. Later, he would be certain he was quick, but the plummet was quicker and he seemed sluggish in comparison, pulling the hood back to a rush of air that was nothing like as mild as on the ground. In turning his body crashed forward, chest to the lip of the cockpit. Something cracked. Hauling himself away, undamaged leg first, he managed to get onto the wing. It was his left calf, without pain yet but the hot slick of blood against his boots. If he could sit on the wing he'd be able to slide off... How close was he to the ground? Hard to judge, but it glinted fiercely. There was a horrible whine at his back, engine or the rapid movement of air, he couldn't tell. He pushed on her flank and slid, fell away from the machine.
The last he'd read the altimeter it had said 4,000 feet. Must be 2,000 now. He pulled the ripcord. It was violent, the snap, taking him under the arms and jolting his limbs before the gentle descent. He watched the Spitfire hit water at the speed of several tons, under a veil of black smoke. If he looked up all he saw were pleats of white canvas; below, an ocean disarmingly clear where it met land. A crosswind had him drifting out, and he guessed it was hundreds of feet now. He threw off his boots. He felt sharp pain again, in his arm and leg diagonal to each other, a sear across his abdomen. He shut his eyes and began counting. Wind was becoming more lateral, western.
Ten. Twenty.
Then... heaviness. Warm salt. He was in the sea.
"Tell me how it happened."
Ralph sat at his bedside, leant forward, hands on the bedspread. Behind him through the thin window was a vista that looked pristine, city and farmland untouched. William's eyes would not quite focus; light was harsh, Ralph's voice patient, and when he lifted his head his to take the water Ralph gave him his neck ached with the weight.
"I followed him straight up the coast," he said slowly. "A 109. He peeled away soon as he got a bullet into me, saw me losing height. I suppose I parachuted just offshore, because I woke up at Ta Kali. I don't know, really."
He had recollection of hitting the water, the drag of massed waterlogged canvas before he detached it; remembered the corrugated ceiling of a Nissen hut, overrun by a haze of pain. "Where are we?" he asked.
"Mtarfa," Ralph said. "Do you want the report?"
William shut his eyes to white, cracked plaster above him. "Mm."
"Fractured collarbone, three cracked ribs, shrapnel in the leg. No burns, you're lucky for that."
He tried a small laugh but it turned into a grimace as his ribs ached.
"Will," Ralph said.
Something came back to him, not Ralph's voice saying that but another that belonged on the Embankment at St. Thomas', a voice firmly from home, a voice long gone, perhaps warped by memory. William suddenly thought how odd it was, that he had been given the very picture of his own death in the plane and the sea; how he had not had a moment of resigning to it. How quickly life could confront, happen, finish for other people.
"Don't call me that," he snapped. Or maybe whispered.
Ralph's eyes widened, and he must had sounded harsher than he meant. Before he could apologise Ralph was speaking. "When we send you home," he began gently. William's eyes shut again. "Hey." Ralph shook his good arm. The light of the room fractured. "Morphine's catching up with you, mate," Ralph said, with one of his rare bright smiles. He continued. "When we send you home, it's for recovery time over Christmas. Then you're moving on to Heston."
William looked at him for a long moment without blinking, and Ralph glanced away, absently looking to the window, down the ward. "Training," William said dully.
A pause. "It is, yes."
William let out an unhappy sigh.
Ralph shifted nearer in his chair. "Look, an OTU is a welcome break," he said, back bent like he was begging, eyebrows raised and palms up. "Proper recharge."
"You're taking me off the front line," William hissed. "It's finished here and Italy's the next option. Are you saying I won't be part of that?"
"Not at first, no. I won't be either." Ralph uncomfortably ran a hand through his hair, shifted again, eyes that strange and eerie ochre, the colour of burnt summers and Maltese ground, of Whitby's cliffs. They were creased and smudged by lack of sleep, and closed for a brief flicker.
"What?" William asked.
"I go back to England, same as you." Ralph said. His mouth twisted but the gravel tone of acceptance in his voice was relieving, a shared sentiment; neither knew how to return. It had been too long. He stood up, and William listened to his footsteps leave, pause, turn and muffle until they were gone.
November, 1942
It was a curious thing, to long for home so fully, but upon arriving there wishing to be away again. The dreary weather of England weighed him down, held him fast to its grey, recovering streets. The muscles in his leg still felt tight. His collarbone ached. London, in comparison to Malta, was whole.
By telegram he and Hannah had agreed to meet in Green Park, a midway point between them. After the last time they had met he supposed neutral ground might be best. She had fled to Fairford that August, and the day they learned of her brother's death had been the last day he'd seen her before she left. She was expected a period of grief, he allowed none; they hadn't spoken of it, not in any correspondence. Eric's name was not mentioned. So he was nervous to see her now, nervous she would break or that he would, and that whatever security they had individually felt in moving on would fracture.
He imagined her in Fairford, stewing in that small village where everyone would know what had happened and wish to console. He might have thought she would stay at the hospital, but her mother demanded her home; perhaps for reassurance that her one remaining child was well, or to coax her father from his silent embitterment, or to share the burden of minutia that came with a death. William knew what a house in grief was like. How cavernous it could be.
From his bench he saw her round the long avenue of trees, coming from the direction of the Mall. She was not in uniform. A dark houndstooth coat engulfed her, her hair bright against it, face pinched. She walked precisely, and only saw him at a few feet away when he stood. The stayed at that distance for a moment, before she took several steps forward, hand outstretched. He had a sudden thought that to anyone observing they would, at a glance, only look like acquaintances, about to introduce and shake hands. Could they really be so cold? Fifteen months. That gap spread between them as they sat, looking between trees to the bare grass of the park, fractions of brick buildings beyond. The rush of roundabout traffic outside the Palace faintly intruded. They both spoke.
"You look – "
"Did the – "
She gave a gracious smile, nodding for him to continue. He asked if she'd been given leave. "Yes, I'm going up for Christmas. I suppose you'll go to Downton." She stared at him for a steady second, and in her stillness he saw green in her eyes he never had before. "You look different, William," she murmured.
He said nothing. They watched one another, an inventory of the other's face, and he took in the faded freckles on her skin, the set of her mouth relaxing, the edge of a flower-printed collar beneath her coat. They both returned to the each other's eyes.
"You know, I would much rather not go home," she said, turning back to the path. "Mum prattles on about what a waste it all is... Eric's potential. 'Who would shoot a clever, handsome boy like that,' she says. I just don't want to hear it again."
An elderly man moved past on a bicycle, fallen leaves cracking under his tires. He looked straight ahead, spectacled beneath his cap, and did not acknowledge them. Nearer to Piccadilly he disturbed a group of pigeons who noisily flapped into the trees. Hannah watched, amused.
"To my parents, I was only expected to marry. Marry well, and for love," she said. Her gaze stayed far down the path for a moment, and then she looked pointedly at him.
He wasn't entirely certain how they had progressed from that comment; they walked towards Lambeth in late afternoon light. Crossing St. James, through the townhouses of Birdcage, she drew closer to him, arm looped in his. Was that a precursor, a regaining of trust in touch? They cut across a green by Westminster in a conscious effort to avoid the particular stretch of Embankment between the two bridges, and away from the river the south side melded into long roads of Georgian terraces, low squat brick buildings and picture windows. It was closing in on dark when they reached her street. Treed one side, picture windows the other. The decision was to be made here, after their long trek through the city. It had been a stall, and excuse, but she had held his arm and her hip had bumped his. There was no remarkable sequence of events. Silently they tread a carpeted staircase, her flat was unlocked; two rooms cramped by dark panelling. No light was turned on until the blackout curtains were firmly shut. He watched by the door as she went about a routine, barely aware of his presence.
She crossed the room, and her lips and nose were cold as she kissed his cheek. "I do miss you," she said. He took this as a final permission. They kissed, and again it was different to the last, arms pressing around his neck. He felt sharp pain in his shoulder, and pulled away. "Sorry," he whispered. A reassuring touch of lips. "Sorry. I was just in a bit of a scrape."
Hannah's eyes were alarmed, hand hovering. "It's fine," he said. Her palm fell over the edge of his collarbone. He ducked his head and kissed the soft flesh next to her thumb. Her hand followed his jaw back up, and she was careful to hold his waist when she kissed him again. He felt the slow draw of her breathing. His hands found the low dip of her back, and her mouth curved up.
It was a moment in which they no longer had an intertwined history, but simply a shared desire, and he thought again of her taking his hand in the park. He thought of it as they reverted to nothing but touch, mouths, limbs, shed clothing. Whatever of life's trappings had kept them from this seemed far off in the moment of its happening. There was no longer a sense that they needed approval; for the first time since Oxford's spring they kissed with the purpose of beginning something else.
Morning broke cold and clouded. As they woke Hannah told him about the Cotswolds, river races, the grand church, the quiet traditions, a childhood of nineteen-twenties insular life. It was a comfort to hear about, that nook of her and Eric's lives that he had never thought to ask after. They were playing catch-up. Tragedy had set them back and now they must familiarize again, teach and learn and listen. Her fingers moved in his hair as she spoke, a tickling above his temple before her hand smoothed flat.
"Was it odd?" she asked. "Growing up at Downton?"
"Mm? No," he murmured. Under his cheek was warm cotton, the curve of her thigh. The brush of her hand over his head was hypnotising. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes to the whitened room. "I didn't know anywhere else." He rolled over and her hand fell away.
"I wanted to let you sleep," she said.
He smiled in thanks, reached up to draw the fabric of her dressing gown over her shoulder where it had fallen. His fingers brushed the inside line of her neck. "Downton won't stay untouched, you know," he said.
"Nothing has," she whispered. He felt her sigh, and with it the world threatened to rush in beside them, spoil their tranquil moment with a sun up, the city moving outside as rain wished to fill the rubbled gaps between buildings that had yet to be cleared, the foundation holes. He was so tired of seeing things fragmented.
Hannah's arm balanced across his shoulders as he turned, lips finding her jaw. "Not just now," he said, hoping it was a reassurance. "Forget it just now."
Marry well, and for love.
Throughout the day that phrase came back to him, and it was difficult to read her. That evening she took him dancing, to a hall that could have been abandoned by the jazz age, remnants of posters tacked to the walls, old paint and dust and the twang of music through thin doors. Half-submerged from the street, it would be easy to forget the war here, if it wasn't filled with various uniforms amidst smoke and alcohol. Mostly army, though William caught sight of one or two airmen. Hannah clung to him in the snug space. She looked away every time he tried to hold her gaze, holding her head to the side so that their cheeks were near touching. Maybe it was the amount of people, but she was reluctant, shy. Eventually the crush became claustrophobic, and he led her out.
They left the hall as music soared and a new dance struck up. In the corridor's comparative shadow Hannah looked at him curiously, reaching up to resettle one of her hairpins. "Did you want to leave?" her voice placated, though he could see disappointment in the shine of her eyes, behind the youthfulness that had filled her face again. "No," he said. He leaned on the opposite wall to her. A staccato of trumpet filled the air. William took a breath, knowing he was acting restless; out with it, he thought.
"Where do we stand, Hannah?"
The previous evening had been a reconciling, his mind still on Malta's time. There was a sort of pleading in her patience, a residual grief that they hadn't had time for fifteen months earlier. They knew each other, relief, relearning, remapping. Waking, he'd thought that they were equal, that it was what they both wanted with their hands linked in sleep. But tonight there were moments she had been so infectiously unabashed, this person he did not recognise, as though her brother's uninhibited nature had translated to her. Maybe it was a welcome lightness. But then this sudden reticence; William sighed as music filtered out to them, the slow, sultry mourn of a clarinet.
"Eric said he wished he could think of the future." He crossed his arms, looking down at the floor. "And the longer I surv – I've come to terms with it. But I do think about peacetime." His gaze came level with hers and he stepped across the corridor and took her hands. "So?"
"I don't know what you're asking," she said over a confused laugh.
"Yes you do," he said gently. He leaned and kissed her, focussed only on that, her hands on the back of his shoulders, the need in her response that reminded him of the halcyon days of Oxford, that honest feeling of life in his nerves. He pulled away only slightly, nose to nose, and with his arm around her waist it was as if they were dancing again, closer than would be dared inside the smoke of the hall. Her eyes were still closed. "Will we have a future?" he asked.
"Because Eric can't?"
"Because we want to."
Her eyes opened. "I've forgotten what wanting feels like," she said. Then blushed. "Well," she amended, curving her palm over the back of his hair. She drew him closer again, kissed him sweetly, in a still way with their breath falling into a matched sync, and what drew them apart was muffled applause, laughter, then silence as the band finished its serenade.
It wasn't a definitive answer.
tbc.