All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

86: Uncertainty

"You okay?" John asked, glancing at her once before returning to watching the last few stragglers board the ship.

Posey nodded, trying to smile. "Yeah. I'm ready to go now, I think."

"Me too," John said. She was glad he felt that way; she knew very well how it felt to be dragged to America against your will and also knew how it was likely to end - that was, in utter disaster. This time she'd be going willingly and she was glad that John was with her, that he wanted to be with her. They had to stick together now.

But still there was the fear. What would she say to Mrs. Daniels? How would she go about making a new life? What if she got there and it was different to how she imagined? What if, after everything, she still wasn't happy?

Posey felt sick with uncertainty. There was no life for her in England anymore but what if there wasn't one in America either?

"Lets go find our cabin," John said, and laid a hand on Posey's shoulder to encourage her away from the railing and towards the ship's interior.

Posey nodded, trying to work on breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. Once she was inside she'd feel better. Being inside was safe and quiet and comfortable. Being outside was scary.

The cabin they had inside the ship was small but cosy, plain but comfortable. The sun shone brightly through the one, tiny window, determined to push its way in, and blanketed the floor in warmth. Posey took her shoes off and stood in the pool of light, closing her eyes and letting it warm her.

John told her he was going out to scout out the ship and would come back with food, and Posey nodded, already in the process of dragging the desk chair over to the window. She wanted to watch the water ripple and glimmer in the sunlight but the view wasn't as pretty as she'd hoped.

It took a while for the ship to leave but it didn't take long at all for Posey to get bored. With the ship stationary in the water there wasn't much to look at outside the window, and the blue of the water this close to the port was murky and dark. She turned on her chair to face the rest of the room and took it in, her eyes sweeping over the place she'd be calling home for the next fortnight and the belongings neither her nor John had packed away yet - her shoes left out in the middle of the floor, both of their small suitcases thrown haphazardly onto the beds they'd claimed.

Sighing, Posey got to her feet. She didn't like to unpack her things with each new place she went to, for she always ended up leaving in the end, but she knew she'd have to get it over with at some point. She made quick work of unloading the clothes she'd acquired since being with John and placing them in the wardrobe, and then stacked her books on the desk. Her shoes she placed on the rack by the door and her makeup and vanity equipment she left in the bag. When she was finished she pushed the suitcase under her bed and sat down on the edge, the silence in the cabin hanging restlessly on the air, a spark about to catch light.

Posey gazed at her hands as they fiddled with her skirt before tucking them beneath her thighs, then looked up and met her own eyes in a mirror she hadn't noticed before.

The person staring back at her wasn't someone she knew well. She looked older than her twenty-one years, matured by all she'd seen of the world prematurely. She should have been too young to know loss as intimately as she did. She should have been oblivious to the horrors of war, both military and civilian. But she wasn't. She knew pain and suffering and loneliness and fear better than she could remember safety and happiness and love and warmth. Posey had met the dark parts of life and shaken hands with them, but try as she might to free herself they wouldn't let her go. She knew them too well by now to feel anything unmarred by their presence, for how could she ever feel true happiness after having felt true pain? How could she ever feel safe when she knew just how easily it could be taken away?

The blonde of her hair was as dull as she remembered John's being when she'd first seen him in hospital. Back then she'd wondered whether her own had looked the same, completely naïve as she was, but it hadn't. Her locks had been golden and bright, but now the colour had been stripped out of them. The only colour she could find in her face was the hazel of her eyes and the painted-on red of her lips.

Posey bent to pull her suitcase back out from under the bed and rouged her cheeks, applying the product liberally to make herself look more alive. When she looked at herself again she looked even more hollow than before. Was it better to be void of colour or vibrant with what was fake?

Sighing, Posey sat back on the bed and rubbed at her cheeks harshly to remove some of the blush. She was feeling sorry for herself, a habit she just couldn't seem to shake. So many people had suffered so much worse than her during the war and yet she filled her days by revelling in her own self-pity. She was sickened by it. What claim did she have to the land of the free if she was still living chained to her past, bound to things she wished hadn't happened but had?

Life had to go on, and it would go on until it didn't anymore. She would have to make the most of it. When she sat down at the chair by the window again, the ship's horn wailed and they began to move away from port.

She was off to start a new life but it didn't feel new at all. It felt stale already, disappointing, empty. Already she wanted to return to the hotel room in London they'd been living in for the past few months.

When John returned Posey plastered on a smile and accepted the food he'd managed to scavenge for breakfast. He told her all about the size of the ship, the grandeur of the upper decks, and the huge number of people who were on it. Posey nodded along, smiling at all the right moments and agreeing with him where she felt she needed to. He, at least, seemed excited to be leaving.

A while later Posey returned to gazing out of the window, watching the waves on the sea as they carried her away from one home and towards another. How was it possible to feel so insignificant and so important at the same time? How could everything feel so little and so big at once?

Resting her elbows on the windowsill and her chin in her hands, Posey allowed herself a tiny, fragile smile. Life would go on because it had to, and it would go on until it didn't anymore. Until then it would guide her wherever it wanted to and she'd go along willingly, innocent to whatever might lie in her path, as impassive as a swan gliding gracefully over the water with its feet kicking frantically below.