Paul Milner wondered, more and more, if the injury that had cost him his leg had wrecked something inside him, some inner calm or certainty or dullness that had been hacked away or hemorrhaged, his hasty heart forcing it from him with each shocky contraction. Since he'd come home and left hospital, he found himself altered, unpredictably. He drank the tea Jane made him, while she had stayed with him, but he'd wanted to spit it out and dash the cup against the wall, grind the fragments under his remaining heel. He was impatient with the men and sometimes he was so tired he wanted to lay his head down on his desk by mid-morning. Mr. Foyle knew something of it, because he was a keen observer or perhaps because it was common to men who had fought and only Paul had not been told. His superior steadied him, with that subtle gaze of his, the way he'd clip a remark like a perfectly peeled apple, the pause he could make at the end of the day before he sent Paul home. Paul sat alone most nights and the black-out wasn't a bother because there was no one to be with and the darkness concealed it.
Edie had returned and he wanted to trust her but he couldn't, because of Jane and Martin, because once she had waited for him and he'd come only with a crowd to where she stood alone, twisting her handkerchief, because she'd sent a card he never answered and if she had forgotten, he had not. So, even with her, there'd been no soothing and he was still off-kilter, the words rolling in his head like a gambler's ivory speckled dice, off-kilter, off killer, what he was now. And that lack of any rudder, how he could almost blow apart like a dandelion or a bomb, must be why he'd kissed Sam after the air raid, after they'd huddled in a small shelter, beyond shivering; on the street again after the all-clear, her face had caught the faint lacy bits of light the night had left in it and he had put a hand at her waist, against her cheek, his fingers pushed into the disheveled Victory Roll her burnished hair was bundled into. He'd pressed his mouth to hers, not softly, and before he could pull back, she was giving him leave, leaning into him, parting her lips. She tasted of tea and the slight chalkiness of condesned milk and she was sweet, so sweet, not terribly shy, and he was all sensation—her warm mouth and the pulse at her throat, the scent of Pears soap and sweat, the variable roughness of her wool skirt, his trousers, the bricks behind her and her hipbones defined, very lovely and undeniable against his body. He hadn't wanted a woman in so long, not so purely, and she was eager and gentle and not even a little pitying. When his hands dropped and he stepped back, she let out a breath and said "My goodness, the hour," before he could try to apologize or make any declaration, nodded smartly at him and walked off towards her boarding house. He noticed the seams of her stockings were straight and then he couldn't see her anymore.
The next morning, he did not let her begin, said "Sam, I must…last night," but the words were fumbling and he hated the awkwardness of the consonants in his mouth, how he had no idea what to say next though he'd thought for hours of nothing else, at least when he was not remembering the shape of her, the little wisps at the nape of her neck, her soft skin under his thumbs, the curve of her brow to her temple. She had done better, again, managing "Air raids, so difficult, the War…thank heavens we're among friends, wouldn't you say, Sergeant Milner. Good friends," she'd added, blinking at him a little. She'd handled it gracefully and the man he was now would accept it, even if he would still wish, in the black-out or if thunder began and sounded like strafe and shelling, for that moment again when she kissed back, when she licked at him, his lips and teeth, a hungry woman, and put a hand on the back of his neck, when he hadn't forgotten his missing leg but he hadn't quite cared because he cared so much about something else, finally. It couldn't be repeated, he didn't need Mr. Foyle to tell him, but he couldn't help wishing sometimes, even a hopeless wish, a needless wish when he married, an old wish, familiar and comforting and startling.