4.
~ "So you grew up in California? Why didn't you go to Japan?" Anna asked.
"Because I spoke French very well and I wanted to stop the Nazis." he said.
"Why? I mean, it was Japan who attacked."
William gave her a little smile and shrugged. The afternoon light was fading away. It would be dark soon. They had eaten all they could, had two glasses of whine each and trie to ignore the sounds coming from Eliza's bedroom.
"The Second Great War? Who was I to say no?" he said at last. "Tell me about the bombings."
"Dreadful." she said. Her attention not willing to be detoured for a second from her American. He was evading the subject. He didn't want to talk about the war and she didn't want to talk about the blitz.
"Tell me about the war." she challenged.
"Dreadful." he said.
He leaned back in his chair, his thin body still muscular despite his obvious weight loss. She glared at him and he only glared back at her. It seemed a stalemate had been reached.
"I hate to be rude." he said at last. "But I think I might need to sleep myself."
"Oh." Anna said with a start and stood to clear the dishes away.
"I've got my bed roll." he offered loudly over the clatter of her putting the four plates in the deep kitchen sink. She and Eliza were both lazy about doing the dishes.
"Right." she said taking the tea cups to the sink next.
"I'll sleep by the fire?" he asked.
"Sure."
"Won't be in the way."
"No, of course not." she said distractedly.
~ Her American slept in his uniform. Even his boots were laced back up, his helmet next to his head, his pack serving as a pillow and his jacket for a blanket. His rifle, which she hadn't noticed before, lay next to his body. Hidden from the view of an enemy till it would have been too late.
Anna hadn't expected him to fall asleep so quickly. She had changed into her night clothes in the tiny bathroom, and by the time she re-emerged, her American was laid out in front of the fire, a olive green winter scarf wrapped over his eyes. A thing that mostly would have been done from habit than anything else. Take away the crowded, cluttered apartment, and her soldier would have looked like he was still sleeping rough in a war zone.
She was filled suddenly with intense pity for him. That perhaps like her, like all of them, he would never really escape that war. That all of them would be lost orphans in a world that had gone so insane for so long, that they wouldn't recognize how to come back.
They would be like sad little ghosts roaming about, dreamlike and never understanding what happened.
'Don't be so morbid.' she scolded herself before tiptoeing to her little bed behind the cheaply made screen and throwing her once fashionable bedspread over her body.
It was effective enough to cut the chill, the fire still keeping the real cold away.
She watched the snow falling in the dark sky outside her nice window. The white snow seeming to glow brightly in the dark night. She didn't dare turn on a light. Memories of the black outs were still too vivid and she had learned to exist in darkness. Besides, it seemed better this way. To pass into sleep in a home full of slumbering bodies, a good fire dying a slow death. It had been a better evening than she had thought it would be. One of unexpected company, but still a pleasant evening.
She heard William snoring slightly and burrowed deeper under her cover. The ticking of her old clock, another artifact salvaged from the bombing of her life, lulled her to sleep, and she knew nothing more.
~ It wasn't yet dawn when dreams told her she had to wake up. A sudden, irresistible urge griped her body and made her muscles go tense. Her eyes opened to the dark flat and she knew why couldn't go back to sleep again.
William was sitting in her reading chair. His rifle leaning over his leg as his eyes were trained into the snowy darkness outside.
"Captain?" she whispered.
"I was just watching a cat on the street." he said softly. His face still turned away from her. Only the moonlight illuminated the room now.
"They never seemed bothered by the war, do they?" he asked.
"Who?" she asked.
"Cats." he said. "It's just another day for them. The politics of man doesn't concern them."
"Captain." she said and tried to look for the clock to see how late it was.
"It was snowing when we found the first camp." he said to the darkness. "Snowing just like this. We took it without a fight from the Germans. All the bombings, all the showboating, and they just rolled over like dogs in the end."
She sat up in bed a little. Her bedding pulled up high to her chin. No one ever spoke about the camps. The papers giving only hints as to the horrors. Such talk was too terrible for ladies to hear and was better left unsaid.
"I looked at those human skeletons, those men and women with horror." he whispered. "They looked like monsters. I was afraid they would touch me. The way they looked, the way they smelled."
His last words came out in a hiss of self disgust.
"William?" she questioned when he was silent for a long time. She didn't want to hear about the camps anymore. Her curiosity had always been high since news broke, but she didn't want to think about them now. Hadn't they all suffered enough?
"Sometimes, I wonder when it's going to end. Will it ever end?" he asked.
"Someday." she whispered hopefully.
He kept looking out her window.
"When the bomb hit, I was knocked down into the basement. I could hear my neighbors dying around me, but I couldn't move." she said suddenly.
He finally turned back to her. His face looking as if it were carved out of stone.
She gave him a slight shrug.
"I've never told anyone that." she said guiltily. "I suppose someone should now."
William turned back to her window and watched the snow again.
"Captain, it's late. Go back to sleep." he told him.
"Can't." he said. "I have a hard time sleeping through the night."
"Try." she told him. "It's not our way to let Hitler get to us. Not in London."
She thought she saw him smile again. Heard the springs of her reading chair protest as he stood and walked back to his spot by the fire.
His boots, still laced up, made stomping noises as he walked.
"I'm sorry, Anna." he sighed as he made his nest in front of the still glowing ashes. "I won't bother you again."
She let out a long sigh.
"Surely you can't be comfortable on the floor." she said softly. Half hoping he wouldn't hear.
Her soldier turned slightly and looked back at his feet.
"Take your boots off. Put your rifle up." she nodded.
She held her breath while she moved to the far end of her bed. Her covers, including her winter coat folded down to invite him for sleep.
"Ma'am." was all he said.
"We're both tired." she interrupted harshly. "We're just going to sleep. You look like you need it."
She nodded at his boots and rifle. Soundlessly, William placed his weapon by her bed. Still ready to use at a moments notice. The springs of her mattress creaked when he sat down to take his boots off. The noise seemed to break the stillness in the air.
She couldn't help but watch him easily remove such worn out boots and place them noiselessly on the floor.
She had never shared a bed in her life, much less with a man. His body, though thin, took up too much room and she had to almost touch the wall to avoid touching him.
He seemed to have been holding his own breath, because when he laid back and covered their bodies, he let out a long breath.
"Thank you." he whispered.