1918
"Two weeks Styles. Can you believe it? Just two more weeks!"
I shake my head slowly, trying to absorb the news we've just been given.
The dug out is filthy, crowded with damp, musky smelling bodies. All the men are chattering excitedly, sharing round rum rations, smuggled whiskey and cigarettes as though it's a party. In a way it is, or it will be soon
It'll all be over.
In just two weeks this hellish place I've come to call a wretched version of home for so long will be gone. It doesn't seem possible. Can I really have only been here for four years? It feels like a lifetime.
Jimmy is in one corner, talking to a group of soldiers, casually using the tip of his cigarette to burn the lice from his jacket.
It's something I do myself, we all do, many times a day but somehow the sight of it suddenly seems obscene.
I stare down at my unclad swollen, peeling feet. Not the worst case of trench foot, but still enough to pain me. The sight of the it seems to hit home further.
Are we even men anymore?
We live in a world where lice crawling across our skin is an everyday nuisance, barely thought of, dealt with openly without shame. Where fleas bite into your body on a night, rats share your sleeping quarters. We eat near the stench of latrines. I know many officers who treat their dogs better than we have lived, in the name of king and country.
Inexplicably, tears well in my eyes. Are they for me? A pitiful excuse for a man, crawling with lice, stinking to heaven and suddenly realising the pitiful deaths to which I have sunk? Or are they for Luke, gone in his prime when he was so close to the end after all?
Or is it because I'm scared?
The trenches are hell, but it's the hell I know. Outside of here... Going back to England and living a new life free of it... Does that scare me?
I know the answer. Wincing at the sensation I pull the boots over my swollen feet and limp outside the dug out, needing to be away from my fellow soldiers.
Sergeant Marks is already out here and he nods briskly when he spots me. He's oddly detached from his men, few noticed him slip out after he'd delivered the news about the treaty.
"Trench foot, Styles?" He nods towards my limping gait.
"Yes sir."
"Try soaking them in warm water for a few minutes before bed. Make sure you dry them properly after." He nods again at his own advice and continues staring out at the wire that separates our trench from no mans land.
"I will, sir." I lean back against the wall. Several minutes pass before Marks offers me his tin of cigarettes. Once I've taken one he shoves them in his pocket and clasps his hands behind his back, not looking at me once during the whole exchange.
"I should have thought you'd be in there celebrating with your fellow men."
I don't answer. I stare up at the point of the wire that has his full attention. The white mist embraces it almost tenderly and we spend several long minutes staring up at nothing.
"11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. It'll be signed and then this will all be over Styles."
"So they say sir."
"You don't believe it?" He glances at me for the first time.
"It's not my place to believe anything. I just follow orders." I say flatly. "I'll believe it's over when my feet touch English soil again, sir."
"Ha. You're no fool boy. I daresay that's why you've survived the entire four years. Very few soldiers have done the entire time. If the guns, gas or shells don't get you the madness will, sooner or later. Takes an odd sort to thrive in this environment and last the distance."
"No doubt sir."
He glances at me again, as if to check if there's any cheek in my comment but finding none, he turns back to staring ahead, rocking on his heels with his hands clasped behind his back.
"Bet you're scared, aren't you lad?"
"No less than anyone else."
"Liar." A smile tugs at the side of his mouth. "Otherwise you'd be in there with the rest of them. You're the only one in my battalion who has fought the full war. Bet you have no idea how to cope or what to do outside these trenches."
"I'll find out soon enough sir." I say quietly.
"Let's hope." He sighs. "You've got two more runs over the top first lad."
This time he does snap me from my leathgy and I stare at him in confusion.
"But... The treaty-"
"Doesn't mean anything until it's signed." He breathes deeply. "We're to keep up normal warfare until the very minute it's signed-"
"But what's the point? Why waste more lives if it'll be signed soon?"
"I don't know Styles." He sighs and turns to face me fully for the first time. I've never seen him so closely before and I realise that despite the premature lines, he's a lot younger than I thought he was.
"I don't know lad. What's the point? We may as well ask the point of the whole damn business. I have to lead you over the top until the very minute the names are signed on that treaty, even though everyone knows it's coming."
"That's not right." I say before I can stop myself.
"Few things ever are." He shakes his head sadly. "We're all just following orders, me as much as you. The treaty will be signed on 11/11. Two weeks from now. In the meantime... It's into battle as usual. And that means going over the top."
***
Evelyn
"Two weeks. It'll all be over. At long last."
I glance over to my father, noting for the first time the changes in him. He looks smaller somehow, older. His hair has thinned but it's the prominent lines under his eyes that I linger on.
I wonder how many of his sleeplessness nights can be placed at my feet. We were always so close, I accepted his innate weakness, I exploited in it my childish way, but I never doubted that he loved me. Doubt came later.
"Thank god. We need life some normalcy around here. The gardens have suffered terribly without the groundsmen to tend them." My mother sniffs archly.
I bite my lip to stop me speaking out of turn. They tell me she was a great beauty in her youth but all traces of it have long been lost under the deep lines of disapproval etched on her face.
I was her biggest disappointment. The child she finally managed to bear after 20 years of marriage was a girl and I've never been forgiven for that accident of birth.
The clock ticking slowly in the stifled, over warm room is driving me to insanity. Custom dictates that I must spend an hour an evening with them before running to where I long to be, Bobby's nursery. I never speak to either of them unless they speak to me first.
I've been staring down unseeingly at the same page for the past 15 minutes.
Harry will be back in England in two weeks time, after so many years away. Ellen tells me that he plans to return with James to Yorkshire and urges me to contact him.
I won't. I can't. It has been too long. What we had was so perfect, so untainted. It's easier for us both if it remains memory of a different time, rather than sully what it was with what it is now.
I seem to have inherited my fathers cowardice, for I am afraid to look in Harry's eyes and lay my mistakes in front of him. If he could not forgive me then the fragile pieces of myself I'm desperately trying to hold together will be torn to shreds. Better to leave it as it was. In my weakness, I couldn't help but write to him. The letter was delivered to Ellen and will be given to him when he reaches Yorkshire. A last letter, I owe him that at least.
"I have been thinking." My father speaks suddenly, in the pretence of an offhand manner. He waits for me to incline my head in his general direction before continuing. "I've been thinking that perhaps young Bobby would like to learn to ride. Ashbury boys have always had their first pony at around his age."
"The child is not an Ashbury boy." My mother says sourly. We both ignore her.
"I was thinking perhaps I could teach Bobby to ride." My father says again. He has tried many times of the months to allow me to accept a gift or trip for myself of Bobby but I have politely refused every time.
I raise my head to face him fully for the first time in weeks, meaning to refuse again.
The look on his face stops me. There is such a deep plea in his eyes, such a fear of rejection on his lined face that I hesitate. It's as if he is a child and I am the adult.
"I think Bobby would like that." I say quietly. I turn my head from the sheer relief that washes over him.
"If you would allow it, I could take him to market to choose a suitable pony?"
I nod, looking into the fire.
"Perhaps... Perhaps you would like to accompany us, Evelyn?" The need in his voice prickles across my skin and I shake my head quickly.
"The crowds would be too much for me. You may take Bobby." I add to soften the blow. "Forgive me, I must retire. It is past Bobby's bedtime."
I walk quickly past them, not stopping to kiss them as I once would have.
My fathers shy joy doesn't affect me. I cannot change the past, change his mistakes... But I do not have the fight within me to punish him further. There is no way back, but perhaps there is a way forward. Perhaps.