Page 16 of The Last Kiss

“Boyd.” Dalton looked sallow, his smile strained. “Miss Allen, m-may I present my good friend W-West? West, this is M-Miss Olive Allen.”

Miss Allen studied him. She was a well-built woman with carelessly pinned dark hair and an uncomfortably direct gaze. “Hello, West. Ashleigh talks about you all the time.” And then, to his surprise, she offered her hand to shake.

“I — ” He glanced at Dalton, who gave a slight shrug, before wiping his hand on his trousers and shaking Miss Allen’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Miss.” This, he thought, as she gave his hand a firm shake, was the woman Dalton’s parents wanted him to marry. It was ridiculous that he should envy her. And yet…

“You should persuade him to try riding again,” Olive said — her opinions apparently as direct as her gaze. “He won’t listen to me, but it would be good exercise for his leg.”

“Yes, it would.” He glanced at Dalton. “Don’t see why you can’t, sir.”

“W-well, you wouldn’t. You st-still have t-t-two legs.” Dalton looked away as soon as he’d spoken, as if ashamed of the outburst, fingers flexing on the head of his cane. He was leaning on it bloody hard and Harry hadn’t missed the worsening of his stammer, either.

“Oh, that’s no excuse,” Olive said, either ignoring or oblivious to the awkward tension. But Harry caught the concerned look she darted at Dalton and liked her better for it. “There’s plenty of men in your position, and worse, who can ride and bicycle and all sorts of things. I’m a VAD at the auxiliary hospital at Chewton Lodge,” she explained to Harry. “It’s where they send officers to convalesce. We’ve one poor chap who’s lost both legs and one arm.”

Dalton flinched. “B-b-basket case,” he said, laughing and looking at Harry with desperate eyes. “That’s w-what we used to call them, remember? Poor chaps, evacuated from the front in a b-basket. Can you imagine?”

Into the awkward silence, Harry said, “Don’t have to.” Then he turned to Miss Allen. “Perhaps you’d like to see the horses, Miss? I expect Boyd can show you.”

Olive stared blankly at him for a moment, then caught on. “Oh. Yes, well, I don’t know much about horses, more of a motorist myself, but we do have a couple of beasts for the men at Chewton...”

Boyd led her away with only a quick glance over his shoulder at Dalton, who stood rooted to the spot. Harry took him by the elbow and felt the iron tension in his muscles. “Come on, let’s take a little walk.”

Dalton didn’t move, staring after Olive. “Christ, I n-n-need a gasper. D-do you have one?”

“Aye, but you ain’t smoking it in here. Come on, outside.”

Harry half guided and half pushed Dalton out into the afternoon sunshine, then reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. Dalton’s hand shook so hard Harry was surprised he got the fag to his lips, but he did and leaned in as Harry struck a Lucifer. Dalton took a long, deep drag and then another, eyes closed. He didn’t seem to want to talk, so Harry just stood with him and watched the way his shaking fingers held the cigarette. Musician’s fingers, he’d always thought, slender and elegant like the rest of him. He knew Dalton played the piano, or had done. He’d heard him once at Toc H, hammering outHanging on the Old Barbed Wireto raucous applause from the men and pinch-faced disapproval from his fellow officers. Not that Dalton had ever much cared what the other officers thought.

“Hell,” he said eventually, opening his eyes, “w-was I just t-t-terribly offensive?”

“Aye.”

He took another drag, eyes fluttering closed again. His lashes were very long for a man, cheekbones sharply defined. Harry wasn’t sure whether he’d noticed that before, or, if he had, whether he’d just tried not to pay too much attention. “It’s my b-bloody father,” Dalton confessed at last. “Sets me off. D-d-doesn’t mean to, just — I feel like I c-c-can’t b-breathe around him.”

“Reminds me a bit of General Lowe, your old man. Remember him?”

“W-with that infernal sword? Yes, hard t-to forget. Poor b-bastard. I hope they buried him with it.” Flashing Harry an over-bright smile, he looked like he was held together by spit and grit. “Olive means w-well. I shouldn’t have said that about the b-b-basket cases.”

“She doesn’t strike me as easily shocked.”

“God, no. She’s an oddity. Tough as old b-boots. That’s why Mother think’s she’ll be g-good for me. Able to n-n-nurse me, you see.” His smile wobbled. “Christ, w-what a thought.”

Harry snorted, half in derision and half to mask the sharp contraction in his gut. “You don’t need nursing.”

“D-don’t I?” Another drag on the cigarette. “Not m-my leg. That’s a b-bloody nuisance, of course, b-but…” He blew out a long, smoky breath. “You know, I c-can’t even get on a train. C-c-can’t even bear the station. It’s not the crowds. That’s what p-people think, but it’s not. I’m n-not afraid of being jostled, falling over or b-bashing my leg.” He gave another brittle smile, knocked the ash off the end of his fag, and said no more.

It had started to cloud over, the stiff breeze ushering in a grey bank of cloud from the west. The vanguard was just creeping over the sun, filtering the colour out of the day. Harry took a guess. “It’s the whistles.”

Dalton’s gaze snapped to his, dark and despairing. “Yes.”

“Takes me that way too, sometimes. Gets me thinking about things I’d rather forget.”

“W-w-what — ” His voice rasped through the stammer. “What do you do?”

“Think of something else.” Harry cut off Dalton’s budding protest with a hand on his wrist, the bones delicate and strong beneath his fingers. “It’s different for me. I never had to blow the thing. I never had to give the bloody signal.” Dalton’s pulse raced under his fingertips where they pressed into the soft flesh beneath the cuff of his shirt. It made Harry’s own heartbeat accelerate, his thumb moving in a slow sweep across the inside of Dalton’s wrist.

His eyes widened, dark pits in his ashy face. “I c-can’t bear it sometimes,” he whispered. “Remembering their f-faces before we went over. I can’tbearit.”

Harry tightened his hold on him. “Yeah, you can. You are.”

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