They sat in silence, both in their own thoughts, enjoying the warm sun after a couple of rainy days. Anna started to feel stiffness creeping into her muscles, or rather, stiffness and weakness, as the first session with Macklin had proved just as "deeply touching" as Bodie had warned, although the trainer had only taken her to a gym and put her through a test-cycle, for all her muscle nexus and for her mobility, as well as her lung-capacity. The only part of her body that Macklin had spared was her still bruised shoulder. She didn't know what else the man would have made her go through, unless Dr Hoskins, who had wanted to supervise out of curiosity, had demanded them to stop after a good hour and had checked her heart, lungs and blood pressure, roaring that he didn't know which one of the two was more sick in head, the one pushing or the one allowing it.
That had made Macklin laugh which was rare, and he only had patted the grey-haired doctor on his shoulder and complimented him for being one of the few quacks who were able to use plain English. And he had promised he would stop each excercise before Anna would black out, and she had promised to tell if she was going to do that. That had made the doctor to give them a model example of sarcasm, deciding that the two absolutely deserved each other. Macklin had assured him though that it wasn't his meaning to kill Anna because he needed her at work dammit, and the two men had negotiated for a while, as if Anna wasn't there at all, about the reasonably healthy limits they should keep in the training, as Macklin wanted to go beyond physiotherapy. Anna hemmed by herself, happy that she had taught both Bodie and Ray how to give massage, as she certainly would be needing it the coming weeks. She quickly brushed away from her mind her fear of combat, and tried to focus on the sun on her face, warming her from beyond the garden and the pond...
Colonel Malcolm Fairfax was sketching the pond, and the lilies, and the ducklings paddling around their parents, happy that his young friend had brought him there to enjoy the sense of teeming life, and the colours of this late Spring day. It would be full summer soon, and some of this freshness would be lost for another year. He didn't know if he would be there to see that any more, sensing fading which he couldn't quite explain. And he was ready. Now he was ready. It wasn't that he wanted to go, no, but he rather wouldn't want to wait until he would beg to be allowed to. Or be too poorly to do even that.
It had been very hard to lose his mobility. In the beginning, it had felt devastating. But eventually, he had learned to fly, in his dreams. And he still climbed. Like last night... he stole a peek at the woman, sitting half-asleep on the ground, her back leaning against the trunk of the oak, a couple of yards from his wheelchair. Last night they had climbed the Snowdon. She had been with him for the first time, her first climb, and he had taught her it all and she had understood it all. And they had tamed the proud Welsh Yr Wyddfa. Ach, the marvels of dreams...
The old man smiled, out of the pure pleasure of the memory. It had taken him years to learn to rejoice of his dreams, before that they only had reminded him of what he had lost. He had learned to control his dreams, his flight and his climbing, and the pleasure was immense... so much so, that he usually remembered it for a long time even after he woke up, and was able to summon the feeling if he was in peaceful place. It made his days bearable. It, and those friends who still were around him. And the pencil and colours and paper and canvas... His eyesight had deteriorated the last years, but what he didn't see, he imagined.
Without thinking of it, he started to sketch Anna's face. Her frowns and smiles and winks and grins he had got familiar with during the months of their aquaintace... their comeraderie. Aye, he could so well understand his old friend's fondness for this extraordinary young woman. Malcolm only wished he could teach Anna to control her dreams the way he was able to control his own, to teach her to fly and climb, to teach her to find her way out from the dark space he knew she sometimes sank into, the darkness where she had lost her child, where she herself had been assaulted, where she had killed...
Maybe he indeed should tell her about the dream about climbing. Maybe he should try to teach her. She might understand, she had it in her... he didn't know what it was, what it should be called, but he sensed it. Malcolm had sensed it the first time when Anna had come to meet him after Christmas, a dark and dull day. They had sat in front of the huge windows watching the sudden snowfall, her eyes filled with a sense of marvel for the sight she hadn't seen in years, and he had told her to go out and feel the snow on her face, and had opened the French doors for her and had seen her laugh out there, and then give him an embarrassed, yet exhilariated grin when she noticed him watch, and the confession that she had felt childish and had wanted to make a snowball and throw it at someone.
After all that death she still was able to feel snowflakes.
Malcolm chuckled fondly to that memory, and with a few quick lines, sketched his memory of Anna's face that precious day and moment, grinning and biting her lip, which was something she easily did if being embarrassed or pondering, or simply feeling like laughing. Och, there were so many nuances...
He wished he had had children, maybe a daughter like this lively lass; or that he would at least have got to know his nieces and nephews, and their children... but he had no use for self-pity, so he shrugged off the thoughts of the sketches and drawings that were never to be, and instead turned his attention back to the pond, letting one of the sketched ducklings climb on the back of its mother and look straight back at him. He smiled at that tilted head on the page of his sketchbook, and suddenly added more colour and markings to that duckling, so that it would be wild and learn how to fly.
The old man dropped his sketchbook on the tent-chair beside him and closed his eyes for a moment. He wished he could feel the warmth in his legs. Yet he still could imagine it, and enjoy. Sun was still sun. It had been that even on that cursed POW-camp, although there it also had been a way of punishment. But the sun wasn't to blame, only the ever inventive homo sapiens...
She was born after the war, the old officer remembered, and he opened his eyes again to watch his companion, fast asleep in the comfy shelter of the ancient oak, weary after the exercises of the test she had told him about. Aye, they all had thought there would be peace after the war, but the war only had changed shape and form, from crossing the borders to rotting the society, as the greed and will for power had never vanished. And even this lass had been drawn into that filthy, never-ending war Malcolm had continued in the ranks of MI5, and he couldn't help feeling sad and sorry for it, even if it was his George she was allied with.
But then again, she was like many of the lads he had known in that first war of his, those who had already lost everything else, but some one last meaning for their lives, some one last hope. At least now she had something to live for, some comfort that allowed her to fall smiling asleep in the sun, her blonde head against dark bark of the tree.
Malcolm picked up his sketchbook again, and after a while, he moved his wheelchair to get a better view. For a while he simply watched, before carefully and quietly setting his easel and taking another paper, and the equipment he needed. And although he knew that according to public opinion, or maybe even to common decency, he should be ashamed of himself, his hand moved gently along the body of the sleeping woman, tenderly caressing the forms and figure, ignoring the clothes, ignoring the chains of not-seeing. He knew he only had the time she slept, and he pushed the world away, focusing on what he saw in his eyes and in his mind. And finally he let his arm down, leaned back sighing deep of loving satisfaction, and closed his eyes, allowing the sun to take him away for a moment.
Walking briskly down from the house, the agent found them there, one snoring lightly, the other still completely silent. Out of curiousity he crept to have a peek on the picture on the easel, and gasped.
As quiet as that sound was, it woke up the old Colonel, and he quickly turned his head to see the man he had never met in person before. "Och... hello." The old man looked at him, and then at the paper. "I wish you don't mind."
The younger man swallowed, not knowing what to say, unable to make any sound as his throat was thick.
"This is what I saw her dreaming of. Please, do not mind." And the old man, although embarrassed, looked lovingly at the picture, where smiling Anna slept in that exact position, her body sheltered by an embrace and her blond hair against a dark one Bodie recognized to be his own.
THE END