Page 23 of The Last Kiss

“The war?”

“All of it. What was it for, if everything goes on the same?”

Harry stretched out his legs, let his arm uncurl along the back of the bench behind Dalton who had hunched forward, elbows on knees. “Some might say this is what we were fighting for.”

“Yes, exactly. That’s what my f-father thinks. But y-you weren’t fighting for village greens and sodding p-p-ponies, were you?”

“Nah, I was fighting for seven and six a day.” More money than he’d ever earned.

“And the men,” Dalton said after a pause. “That’s who-who-who we were fighting for in the end, wasn’t it? The other men.”

He looked so dejected sitting there, shoulders hunched, as if he’d been transplanted straight from the line to this pretty English hamlet. Or as if he’d brought the bloody front line with him; Harry could practically see the Verey flares arcing over his head. And he couldn’t help himself, he let his hand drift away from the bench to touch Dalton’s back, knuckles grazing his shoulder blade. Dalton stilled. “We were,” Harry said softly. “That doesn’t make it futile, though, does it? We fought for our company and for each other — we fought to bloody survive. What does it matter what the old men at home think?”

With a sigh, Dalton leaned into the scant pressure of his touch. It made Harry’s chest squeeze tight. “Because they think it was glorious. ‘Our Glorious Dead.’ It m-makes me sick. If they’d seen — ” He didn’t go on; there was no need. Harry flattened his palm against Dalton’s back, rubbed up and down. “And n-nothing has changed. Nothing.”

“That ain’t quite true. I can vote now, for one thing, and so can the women.”

“Some women.”

“That’s progress, though, isn’t it?”

“Hardly a land fit for heroes.” Dalton gave him a sallow smile. “D-don’t tell me you think it’s enough.”

Harry smiled too, couldn’t help it. Dalton’s intensity had always made him feel so bloody affectionate. “I’m saying it’s a start. And you know that’s a load of old tosh, anyway. We ain’t heroes.”

“Youare,” Dalton said with a flicker of that reserved smile. “To me, anyway.”

Christ alive, he wasn’t making this easy. Or — a heart-thumping notion — maybe he wasn’t trying to make it easy. Maybe he was trying to make it something else. Harry’s arm twitched as if to pull Dalton closer, but the familiarities of the trenches were absent here and anything else would be impossible. They couldn’t risk it, even if Dalton wanted to. Could they? And what if Harry was wrong? What if Dalton was just battered and lost and all he wanted from Harry was companionship? He pulled his hand away, sick at the thought of damaging a friendship that meant the world to him.

Dalton stayed quiet and still for a while, then he pulled out his pocket watch and glanced at it. “Better get back, I suppose. I’m in for it already for missing luncheon. But thank you” — a brief glance — “for-for-for getting me back in the saddle.”

“We’ll do it again. Maybe go further next time, see how you get on with a trot or a gallop.”

“Yes, I’d like that. W-we could make a day of it if you have time.”

“You’re the boss,” Harry said, but the joke fell flat and Dalton’s smile faltered. He turned away, put his hands on the bench and pushed himself to his feet, standing for a moment staring out across the green. Harry stood too, with a swift flare of anger at the bloody injustice of it all. “Sorry, didn’t mean to — ”

“To t-tell the truth?” Dalton shook his head, shoved his hands into his pockets. “It’s alright.”

Harry touched his elbow. “That ain’t the only truth.”

Their eyes met and held, and held and held, but Harry couldn’t interpret the expression in Dalton’s searching gaze. “It’s not,” Dalton said at last, “but it rather overshadows the rest.”

That felt like a blow, all the sharper for hitting a tender spot. “Look, I never wanted to ask you for work, and if you want me to go — ”

“Christ, no. I want you here. I w-want — ” He turned his head, frustrated. “I don’t c-care about any of that, only that w-we c-c-c-can’t — We c-c-c — ” He flung his arms up. “Oh for God’s sake!”

Harry took him by the shoulders, turning him around. “Wecan.We can be friends, alright? I won’t be taking tea with your mum, but wearefriends. And, as your friend, I’m telling you to stop picking at the whats and whys of the whole bloody world and just…just live your life. You bloody well earned it.” Dalton blinked at him, eyes wide in his pale face, and Harry was suddenly very aware of his shoulders under his palms, of how close they were standing. But he decided to take his own advice and not give a fig. “You could start,” he finished quietly, “by calling me Harry, when it’s just us. If you’d like to.”

A smile, that sweet smile that turned him inside out. Jesus, but it was going kill him one day. “Harry,” Dalton said, testing the word, shoulders relaxing and his weight swaying forward. “Yes, alright. Harry it is. That’s — Thank you, Harry.”

“You’re welcome — Ash.”

And God help them both.

CHAPTEREIGHT

Ash slept with the window open and the curtains wide enough to let in the moonlight. He couldn’t bear to wake in the suffocating dark, unable to see who and what was around him. And he woke a lot, his nights disturbed by troubled dreams and circling thoughts. Sometimes he still shouted out, found himself sweaty and bolt upright in bed with the dreamscape vivid around him. No one came anymore. He’d told them not to because his mother’s white, harried face in the dark, the need to reassure her, just made it more difficult to cope. She couldn’t offer comfort and he was in no shape to comfort her.

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