Epilogue #2
Robert gripped my shoulder, just for a moment. ‘Last I heard, he was in the land of the living. Soon after your trial, Captain Jackson had him transferred to another company. For his own good. A fresh start, you see? No gossip following him around.’
I closed my eyes, grasping this sliver of hope as hard as I could. When I opened them again, Robert had left the room.
Private Billings wasn’t my only visitor. My mother paid her call in the rains of that first autumn, shaking out her brolly and avoiding my gaze. We sat in silence for a long time.
‘Your father wants you to have this,’ she said at last, pushing my medal across the table.
‘He said he didn’t want it in the house and that.
..’ Tears flashed into her eyes, pity for herself and anger for me.
‘Said he doesn’t want you in the house either.
Never again. I suppose you know what you’ve done to him?
To us? The whole village gossips about nothing else.
The vicar’s son thrown out of the army for being a.
.. I can’t even say it.’ Her lip curled in disgust. ‘I always defended you, Stephen. After that incident with the Greaves’ boy—’
‘Michael,’ I insisted. ‘He died for his country. You can at least do him the courtesy of using his name.’
‘Oh, I know his name,’ she spat. ‘I had his mother at the door only last week.’
I stared at her. ‘What did she want?’
My mother bristled. ‘Wanted to give her opinion, that’s what.’
I had shivered at those words. Did Michael’s mother think I had forgotten him or betrayed his memory by finding someone else to love?
‘She said that you were my son and that she’d give anything to have her boy back again. The woman had the temerity to stand there and tell me that you’d done nothing wrong and that we should love you, just the way you are.’
‘And what did you say?’
My mother didn’t answer. She just snatched up her umbrella and made her exit. It was the last I ever saw of her.
Now I begin to climb slowly up the steps towards the grand building that dominates Trafalgar Square.
It’s hard-going. On cold days like this my old wound still aches, and two years’ hard labour hasn’t helped.
Crossing from the Strand, I’d caught my reflection in the window of an omnibus idling at the pavement.
I’m only twenty-one, but the man staring back at me looked nearer fifty.
My back is bowed, my skin is grey, my bones ache from an eternity of splitting stone and shovelling dirt.
When I walk, I shuffle like an old man. But there are those worse-off.
Under the soaring columns of the National Gallery, I pause for a moment to drop a penny into a tramp’s tin mug. Another man aged before his time, he grins up at me, his mouth practically toothless. He starts to offer his thanks, then seems to catch something in my eye.
‘What was your regiment?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t care to remember.’
‘Memories are all I have,’ he says, looking down at his ragged clothes and the stump where his right leg used to be. ‘Royal Ulster Rifles, for what it’s worth.’
‘It’s worth a lot.’ I grip his arm and move on.
Beyond the imposing portico, I step into the great gallery’s entrance hall with its red columns and domed glass ceiling.
Then on past the German and Dutch galleries and into the British School with its collection of English masters.
As I walk, I check my grandfather’s watch.
It was Captain Jackson who had the timepiece repaired for me after the glass was broken at the Somme.
His brother, who lives in Greenwich, was another of my visitors at the Glasshouse. A friendly one this time.
‘Gordon sends his regards,’ the man said, taking his seat and offering me the same charming smile as his brother.
‘He told me that you’ve been treated rather shabbily.
I’m sorry for it. He also asked me to return this.
’ He handed me the watch, which was quickly confiscated by the guard on duty with the promise that it would be returned upon my release.
‘Only eighteen months or so to wait then,’ Mr Jackson said ruefully.
‘Speaking of which, when you do get out, please drop by my gallery on the King’s Road.
Gordon tells me that you’re quite the artist. It’s possible that I might be able to send some work your way. ’
He was as good as his word. After finding a small bedsit in North London to call my own, I visited the Chelsea gallery and, handing over a couple of my recent sketches, found myself with a half-dozen commissions for portraits and the promise of more to come.
I couldn’t yet afford a new suit but perhaps that day wasn’t too far off.
I come to halt, a little breathless. The painting hangs on the same wall where I first saw it as a boy.
Then, I had been ashamed of my emotions.
Now, taking in its melancholy beauty again, I let my tears fall.
It’s almost closing time anyway and there isn’t anyone around to stop and stare.
The Fighting Temeraire, sad and majestic, a ruin of war forgotten and thrown away by the country it had served.
The fate of the tramp on the steps outside, the fate of Michael and of Ollie, of Taffy and Spud, of Percy Stanhope, of Stanley Beddowes, and of myself.
The fate of hundreds of thousands of men who lost their future in some foreign field.
Footsteps behind me.
A shadow falls onto the painting.
‘The boy I love is here in the gallery
The boy I love is looking down on me
There he is, can’t you see...?’
Heart soaring in my chest, I turn to face him.
Danny. My Danny. Here and alive and beautiful.
I had been tempted to put off this afternoon’s reunion until I might look a little smarter. But when his telegram arrived this morning, I couldn’t wait another hour.
Home at last STOP
Meet me at Nat Gallery STOP
Closing Time STOP
TBYL
TBYL. The Boy You Love.
I guessed that Captain Jackson’s brother must have given him my address. All I know is that the joy that flooded through me, reading that telegram, knowing that he was safe – knowing at last, at last – made me collapse to the floor, weeping with relief.
‘Danny...’ I murmur. ‘My Danny.’
He doesn’t hesitate. He grins that warm, infectious grin and, stepping forward, wraps his arms around me.
I breathe in his smell, his warmth. Another question that haunted me during my time in prison wasn’t only Is he alive?
but Did I save him? Save him in the way I’d intended, preserving something of that innocent boy I had first met on the train at St Pancras.
Perhaps that was always an impossible idea – to stop this vicious war from taking its toll upon his soul.
In the end, he had been forced to kill and will possibly have killed again in the years since.
But now, as I hold him close, feel his lips against the side of my face, hear the voice I’ve missed so much, unhardened by the years, I believe that this is the same man I knew.
‘Hello,’ I whisper.
‘Hello, Stephen,’ he says. ‘I’ve missed you very, very much.’
I smile and hold him tight. There is no point in kidding ourselves.
There can be no happy ending for us, I know that.
The world we’ve fought for isn’t made that way.
Not yet, at least. But if the war has taught us anything, it’s that happiness exists and must be treasured in the moment.
I will treasure it now, however briefly, safe again in his arms.