A/N:It seems to rain an awful lot in my stories. I do love rain, but this time it is based on fact: 1917 was the rainiest summer in Belgium in 30 years. It rained almost constantly, a fact which had dire consequences during the battle of Passchendaele. You see? Fanfic can be educational!
Many thanks to louella.
CHAPTER FOUR
It started on July 17th, just before daylight.
There was an explosion, shaking the house to its foundations. She awoke with a jolt, sitting upright in bed and fully awake. Shaz was sitting in the bed opposite hers with a look of wide-eyed terror.
Alex flew from the bed to the window of their attic room. There was another explosion. Close, too close. The first light of morning was just beginning to break over the horizon, and the sky flared with the burst of each shell in the distance.
It had begun. The offensive Gene had told her about. The big push that would not end the war by Christmas.
She turned back to Shaz's bed, but it was empty now. She had moved from the bed and was curled into the corner of the room with her hands cradled around her head. Alex went to her, and they huddled together in the corner as the world exploded around them.
"It's all right. They're going to be all right," she repeated again and again like a prayer.
She could feel Shaz shaking and sobbing against her, and they sat clinging that way to each other until the noise receded, moving away from them, focused now on some point in the distance.
They grabbed their dressing gowns from the wardrobe, and were still tying their belts around them when they hit the ground floor landing. Matron was already there, fully dressed, and the doctor was not far behind, dazed and blinking himself awake after his customary nightly descent into the bottle. They moved together into the ward, tending and reassuring the wounded.
When the men were settled, they ran through the house, securing doors, re-taping windows as dawn broke. Matron shouted orders to them, barely audible above the noise.
It was mid-morning when they were finally able to run upstairs and change into their uniforms. Later, after last rounds, Alex stood by the window in the ward. The house was still now, but the sounds of the war could still be heard in the distance. Shaz stood behind her as she peered through the curtains, both of them thinking of two very different men at the front.
They climbed the stairs to their room and fell onto their beds. Alex had thought sleep would be quick in coming, but an hour later, she was still awake, listening to the muffled sounds of Shaz crying softly in the bed opposite hers.
Finally, she rose and slid into bed next to her, wrapping her arms around her the way she had always done Molly after a nightmare.
"I'm so scared, miss."
"I know. I'm scared, too."
"What if something happens to him? What if he doesn't come back?"
"He will."
Shaz sniffed back tears. "When Chris was here last time," she started in a halting voice, "We…I let him. Well, I wanted him to."
Alex only stroked her hair rhythmically in sympathetic understanding.
"It wasn't my first time, me and Chris." The words spilled out of her like a confession in the darkness. "There was a boy from my street joined up right after the war started. He came round my mum's in his uniform to say goodbye the night he left. Everyone was saying what a lark it all was, but I couldn't keep from crying. He kissed me, and we…" She stopped, and there was a beat before she went on again. "He was dead by Christmas."
They lay quietly in the silence. Alex let her go on. "I told Chris he was my first. It felt like it to me, anyways. Do you think that's wrong? To lie like that?"
"You've got nothing to be ashamed of. Having had two lovers hardly makes you a scarlet woman. But no. I don't think it was wrong."
She could feel Shaz sigh with relief, but then her body tensed again. "My mum. She's Catholic. She'd die if she knew. She thinks it's an awful sin if you're not married."
"I think there are far worse sins in wartime," Alex said gently.
They listened to the distant sounds for a moment. "Have you…? I mean…I saw you and Captain Hunt that night."
"It's not like that," she said quickly. It was her automatic response when someone asked her about her relationship with Gene. It sounded strangely hollow now.
There was a brief silence in the dark room. "Why shouldn't it be?"
Shaz finally drifted off, and Alex left her sleeping there in her bed. She stood at the window looking out at the horizon. She remembered a documentary she had seen once in her old life. Respectable old grans in cardigans and pleated skirts talked with wistful frankness about their wartime lovers. Anonymous young men during air raids. Frightened soldiers about to ship out to Normandy. She understood it now. Fear, pain, all of it, so close to the surface. Young men, full of hope and promise, cut down. You had to cling to any moments of happiness you could find.
She thought of Gene, out there somewhere. She had imagined kissing Gene before. Imagined much more, in fact. It had always seemed – what had she told Gene about her conversation with Jackie Queen? – a silly, girly thing. The kind of thing you would do on student work experience. A harmless flirtation with your boss. But it wasn't silly now. Perhaps it never had been. She can't have been brought here, to find him in 1917, only to lose him so quickly, could she?
She finally fell asleep, and they awoke the next morning to the sounds of persistent shelling. It went on that way through the next days until the noise of battle became as much a part of the backdrop as the birds and the buzz of insects.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.
They were on early rounds when it happened. The silence was eerie, and they looked expectantly out towards the horizon.
"What is it? What does that mean?"
"They'll be going over the top soon," Shaz said ominously.
"How will we know when it happens?"
Shaz looked toward the row of empty beds along the ward and then back to Alex. "We'll know."
The Matron had come in behind them then, and she watched the skies with them for a moment. "Make sure we have plenty of clean sheets and bandages," she said looking back and forth between them. "I daresay we'll need them."
They spent the next twenty-four hours boiling linens and strips of bandages, and Alex scrubbed the small operating theatre until her fingers were cracked and bleeding.
Summer had never quite settled on them, and the sky had begun to cloud over the next afternoon. She had taken an armload of sheets out to dry on the line when the clouds opened up. She frantically pulled at the sheets and turned to run back up the hill, trailing the wash through the fresh mud behind her. One end of a sheet tangled around her leg as she ran, sending her sprawling onto the ground.
The rain beat down on her as she picked herself up and dashed into the potting shed at the edge of the lawn. She stood just out of the rain, futilely trying to bundle the laundry onto her lap. It was ruined, of course. There were long streaks of mud running down them, and blood, she realised, from her skinned knees.
She collapsed on the little bench then, wiping the grit from the raw palms of her hands and knees as she cried exhausted and frightened tears.
"Sitting down on the job, eh? If I was your boss, I'd give you the sack."
He was standing there in the door of the shed. She looked up, too surprised to say anything for a moment. She jumped from the bench and threw her arms around him, holding him close. He made a startled noise but then responded by curling his arms around her waist.
"If I'd known I was gonna get this reception, I'd have stayed away longer."
She pushed away and looked up at him. "You're all right. Chris and Ray, they're all right?"
"Yeah, they're as all right as you can be knee-deep in filth and human waste," he snorted. "I've got to go to battalion headquarters. In St Vrain. Wouldn't say no to some company." She watched him there, leaning casually against the doorframe, his hands in his pockets, as if he were asking her to join him for a drink at Luigi's, but she could see in his eyes how important her answer was.
"I…can't. I've got patients."
"Patients? What patients? You've got a subaltern with ingrown toenails and a couple of lance corporals with a dose of the clap." He came further inside the shed. His face grew dark. "You'll have all the patients you can handle in a few days, Alex."
"Matron would never let me go."
"You let me have a word with the dragon lady. She can't be completely immune to my charms."
He grinned, and she forgot for a moment her skinned knees and ruined laundry.
They went back into the house to stand in front of Matron like schoolchildren in front of the headmistress. She looked back and forth between them with a disapproving glare, her lips pinched together colourlessly, but in the end, she had agreed on Captain Hunt's promise to be on his best behaviour.
After throwing some things into a bag and a quick goodbye to Shaz, they had started off, but not before Matron met her at the door and pressed into her hand the address of a women's rooming house in St Vrain with a nine o'clock curfew.
They left before she could change her mind, hurrying out the door and into the rain. They were able to hitch a ride on a farmer's wagon that was making the bone-jangling trip to St Vrain for market day, but at least the back was covered, and they were able to stay dry in the unrelenting rain.
Despite hitting every rut on the road to town, he fell asleep almost immediately, and it occurred to her with a pang that this was probably the most comfortable sleep he'd had in weeks. She left him to his few, fleeting moments of peace and looked out onto the rain-soaked countryside.
She knew what he needed from her tonight. What she was less sure of was what she was willing to give. She was coming to him with a year's worth of emotion. Not just desire, but fresh anger and hurt. Had she only let herself get swept up in the romance and uncertainty of the time?
And what was she to him? For all she knew, she was nothing more than some posh, obliging nurse with a pretty face and willing smile.
No. That wasn't true. Whatever force had sent her here hadn't brought them together for some random, anonymous coupling. They meant something to each other, whether in this time or another. She could think of a hundred reasons why she shouldn't be riding in the back of a farmer's wagon to some little Belgian town with Gene Hunt, but it was all overcome by the one reason she should: because she wanted and needed him. She knew, in spite of promises to Matron, she wouldn't be spending the night in the women's rooming house, and the thought of it made her shiver with a mix of anticipation and apprehension.
The wagon finally slowed to a halt, and the farmer dropped them in the centre of town, muttering something in some hybrid of French and Dutch. Gene slipped him a few coins as they jumped out of the wagon and into the rain.
St Vrain was a tidy market town that had been spared most of the damage of war. It was serving as battalion headquarters, at least until the frontline moved again, and the streets were filled with soldiers of the Empire.
"I've got bloody paperwork to sign and arses to kiss." He nodded across to a café across the street fro m the town square. "I'll meet you there in two hours."
Then he was gone, dashing across puddles in the street to a vacant building that had apparently been turned in battalion headquarters, leaving her standing there in the rain before she could speak.
She hurried down the street and into a bakery on the corner. There were only a few puny loaves on the shelves, but Alex bought a bun and a cup of dreadful coffee that tasted as if it were made of anything but coffee. After the rain let up, momentarily by the looks of the sky, she wandered through the market, filled as it was with withered fruit and vegetables. When it was time, she went to the café and sat at an outdoor table until Gene arrived.
She could see him coming down the street with his customary swagger. He had got a fresh shave and haircut, and he looked like nothing so much as Gene Hunt, her Gene Hunt, handsome and turned out for a fancy-dress party. But then he came closer, and she could see the faint stains of blood on his tunic, and she knew the reality of the situation.
They sat and talked over wine and a homely meal of chicken stew. He had been tense and distracted when he had arrived at the chateau that morning, even if he had attempted to hide it, but she could see the weight of the war gradually roll from his shoulders. By the end of the meal, they were both relaxed and warm with wine.
"So. This bloke." He swirled the last of his wine in his glass. "If I was to guess, I'd say it was all over even before he shot you."
She looked down. "Yes. I suppose it was."
"Who ended it? You or him?"
"Why? Is it important?"
"Not important. Just wonder who would be stupid enough to let you walk away."
"I don't know. It was him, I suppose." She rubbed at her temples with a pained sigh. This was the last thing she wanted to dredge up tonight. "It's complicated."
"What happened?"
She picked for a moment at the label on the wine bottle. "He asked me to tell him the truth about something important. So I did. And he didn't believe me." She waited for him to speak, but he only looked back at her, brows down, lower lip curled out. "He said some things. Some horrible things I don't know I can forgive."
"Well, that was your first mistake."
She blinked. "What was?"
"Telling him the truth." He emptied the last of his glass. "That's the problem with women. When men say we want you to tell us the truth about something, that's the last thing we want."
"How can men and women trust each other if we can't tell the truth?"
"What's trust got to do with telling the truth? Trust isn't about telling the truth, it's about telling us what we want to hear."
"This from a man whose wife left him for the milkman."
He looked away in hurt fished in his tunic pocket for his cigarettes. She regretted saying it. She reached out and touched his hand, trying to make amends.
"It occurs to me I don't know what you did before the war. No, wait. Let me guess. You were…a police officer."
He leaned back and draped his arm around the back of the chair with a smile. "Inspector."
"Told you I had a crystal ball."
"Me and Ray and Chris. Joined up as part of the Pals Battalion. There's not many of us left."
"Will you go back? After the war?"
"Probably be too busy pushing up daisies."
Stinging tears immediately pricked at her eyes. "Don't say that. Not even as a joke."
He took a long drag from his cigarette and flicked out the ash in the tray. "Do you know what the life expectancy for an officer in the trenches is, Alex? Six weeks. I've been on the line nearly three years. It's only a matter of time."
"Don't say that!"
"What if I do make it? What then? You really think there's any kind of future for you and me? Is that what your crystal ball tells you?" He stabbed the cigarette out. "You can get the idea out of that pretty little head of yours."
"What have we got, then?" she said, her voice a cracked whisper.
"We've got now, Alex," he said without sentiment. "That's more than some poor bastards got."
It was dark when they finally rose from the table. He picked up her bag and looked up and down the moonlit street. "Women's rooming house is that way," he said nodding toward the corner. His voice was low and questioning.
"Don't want to go to the women's rooming house," she said in a murmur.
She could see his face register. He swallowed hard. "You sure?"
She shivered against him in the cool air, and he slid an arm around her waist. "I'm sure."
They turned and headed in the opposite direction. She had hoped the wine would do something to ease her sense of dread, but it had been only partially successful. It had begun to drizzle again by the time they reached the officers' billet. She felt like a teenager tiptoeing up the stairs and sneaking into his room. She fell inside the room giggling and shushing him, but the laughter caught in her throat as he turned to face her and crossed to where she stood just inside the doorway.
They stood for a brief silence, close without touching. She ached for him in the clash of emotions, and then he kissed her, so hard she couldn't breathe, as if he were trying to tamp down the memory of anything else.
She moaned as he pulled at the buttons of her dress and his fingers found their way into her camisole and the soft skin beneath. His tunic came off, abandoned on the floor, and they both pulled at his uniform, desperate and breathless.
Boots were kicked away, puttees unravelled, trousers peeled off. He sat on the edge of the bed, and she stood between his knees. There was the sound of the ripping of her cotton stockings as he yanked them away from her garters and down her legs. He had her foot propped on his knee, and he kissed at her inner thigh as she worked on the maddening layers of undergarments. She popped the fastenings of her corset and pulled the camisole over her head and slipped her lacy underpants off.
She straddled him then, finding his mouth with hers, as he fell onto the bed and rolled her onto her back. His drawers came off in one motion until they lay naked against each other, bodies damp with sweat.
Fingers and mouths ran across skin, as if they were trying to etch every detail into memory. An unbidden thought flashed into her mind. I'll never see him again, will I? But she shut it out, pulling him down to her as she lay back on the narrow bed.
His mouth found the curve of her neck, down to the hollow of her throat and across to her nipples, hungrily pulling at them. In another time, she would have wanted to draw this out, to make every kiss and teasing touch last, but now she only wanted to feel his body pressed against hers, for him to glide over her until they reached that small moment of release when all the world would stop for an instant.
She dug her nails into his thighs impatiently. "Yes, Gene. Please. I need you." The raw need in her voice surprised her. She moved her fingers back up and took his face in her hands, holding his eyes for a moment. "I need you."
He entered her in one movement. She let out a raw noise and let her body curl into his, urging him on.
"God, Alex," he said in a ragged moan as he began to move above her. "Want you…" She lifted her hips to his to meet each thrust.
They moved together, in a moment that was at once raw and fragile. "Yes, I want you. I need you. God, yes," she said as they built toward a frantic climax. She wrapped her legs around his body, pulling him down, feeling her own heat spreading from her core as she exploded around him, and he emptied into her with an almost wounded howl.
He fell against her then, and he lay with his head against her breast as cradled his head and stroked his damp hair. She wanted to speak. To beg him not to go back to the front. To tell him all the things she had felt about him. But they both lay still and silent, not wanting to break the delicate spell.
He clung to her that way until he finally fell asleep, but she lay there awake, staring up at the ceiling. It was bittersweet, this brief moment with Gene. It had left her body tired and satisfied, but it couldn't fill the need or ease the fear. Still, she wouldn't regret it, and she still lay with her arms wrapped around him as she drifted asleep.
When she was awoke in the morning, he was standing with his back to her. He was doing up the last buttons on his tunic, and when he turned to face her, he was Captain Gene Hunt again. Her heart sank as she rose quickly and retrieved her things from where they had been abandoned on the floor the night before.
He paused to help her as she fastened her corset. He pulled at the laces at her back, his fingers lingering at her shoulders and resting at her narrow waist. So many hooks and fastenings, wrapping herself in layers. It felt like the buttoning up of emotions again, a return to the old life.
They rode back in silence. She sniffed back tears as her body almost throbbed with fear for him. He sat in the wagon across from her, eyes down. He would never let on how he felt. That was always his way, but his face was grim.
The wagon slowed to a halt in front of the chateau, and a feeling of foreboding suddenly churned in the pit of her. He muttered in broken French for the old farmer to wait for him. He jumped from the wagon and then helped her down.
"Goodbye, Alex."
"I won't. I won't say goodbye."
"You should forget me."
"No," she said in a sob. "I won't. Don't say it. We'll see each other again. We will."
He cocked his head back and looked down at her. "Now why do I get the feeling you know something I don't?"
He gave her a shallow smile and then leaned down to kiss her a last time. Finally, he unwound himself from her arms and jumped back onto the wagon. She watched him as it slowly lumbered back toward the village and became just a dot in the distance.
xxXXxx
The roof of their dugout had caved in from the weight of water, so they sat shivering in the mud on the floor of the trench. They were soaked through to the bone, but a no fire order had been issued. Not that it mattered. No fire would stay lit in the unrelenting rain. They were calf-deep in it now, and Gene looked down indifferently as a rat floated by.
They were silent, huddled together in a futile attempt to stay dry and warm. Up and down the line, men were writing last letters to sweethearts while other feverishly rubbed at rosary beads. The waiting was the worst part.
Another shit-and-piss filled trench to climb out of, another No Man's Land to be crossed. They all blended together after awhile. But he was one of Kitchener's Mob, and he'd bloody well do his duty, even if he was no longer sure what they were meant to be fighting for.
He pulled his watch carefully from his breast pocket and looked quickly up at Chris, who was stabbing with disinterest at his tin of cold beans and sausages. He looked back down with relief. Chris hadn't seen him. It was better that way.
"How much time, boss?"
"Five minutes," Gene said gently and tucked the watch back into his pocket. Chris blinked and swallowed hard. "Eat your beans, son."
Chris shook his head and dropped his fork into the tin. "I can't."
"Give it here," said Ray, dropping the end of his cigarette into the mud.
"That's right. They want a gas attack, we'll show 'em a gas attack, eh?"
Chris managed a nervous smile as he passed the beans to Ray, who devoured the rest of the tin.
"We've got them on the run, eh, boss?" Chris said in unconvincing eagerness. "They won't know what's coming, will they?"
"Of course they know we're bloody coming," Ray sneered. "We've been shelling them for two weeks. They're just waiting for us. Twonk."
"Shut your gob, Ray."
"Sir…" Chris began after a moment. "If I don't make it…"
"And what makes you think the Hun would waste a bullet on the likes of you, Corporal Skelton?"
"If I don't make it," he repeated, "will you tell my girl I loved her?"
"Don't you get soft on me, Christopher. You can bloody well tell herself."
"Tell her…tell her she was the last thing I was thinking about before I went. Please, sir."
Chris' chin had begun to quiver, and his eyes were damp. It mattered. Gene nodded. "I'll tell her, son."
Chris' shoulders dropped in relief. He looked away and wiped his eyes when he thought the others weren't looking.
Gene pulled out his pocket watch again. It was time. There was a momentary rumble of fear in his gut, but he tamped it down and rose to his feet with a nod. The others rose, fixing bayonets. It was silent except for the muffled sounds of tears and someone's voice whispering the 23rd Psalm.
He nodded again at Ray, who picked up the whistle from around his neck and placed it between his lips.
Alex. He tried to chase her from his mind. It was dangerous. Thoughts of women and home and the future. Things like that got you killed. But she stubbornly lingered at the front of his memory. The feel of her. Her mouth on his, her body beneath him . The strange familiarity of her he couldn't shake. His fingers snapped the watch shut again, and he wondered if she would be the last thing he would think before he went.
The sound of the whistle pierced the air.
"Over the top, lads! Over the top!" he bellowed.
Voices screamed on in a mixture of bravado and terror. They hoisted themselves up the ladders and charged across No Man's Land toward the unseen enemy.
END CHAPTER FOUR
