Chapter 19 Gifts and Promises
NINETEEN
GIFTS AND PROMISES
TOM
Boxing Day dawned cold and bright, sky scrubbed clean by overnight wind until it looked like polished glass.
Most of the estate was still sleeping off Christmas celebrations, which meant the grounds were quiet when I made my way toward the lake. Snow crunched under my boots, each step loud in the stillness, and my breath fogged white in air sharp enough to sting my lungs.
Art was already there when I arrived, bundled in his coat and that eternal scarf, sitting on our bench with his legs stretched out in front of him.
Peaceful. He looked peaceful.
“You're early,” I said, settling beside him.
“Couldn't sleep. Too quiet.” He glanced at me, and his mouth curved into that soft smile I was beginning to think of as mine. “The hut's empty. No typewriters, no chatter, no Ruth telling me to eat something. It felt strange.”
“Strange good or strange bad?”
“Just strange.” He shifted slightly, his shoulder pressing against mine. “Better now.”
We sat in silence for a while, watching the light change on the ice.
The lake had frozen solid over the past week, surface smooth as glass in some places, ridged and buckled in others where the cold had worked unevenly.
A family of ducks had gathered near the far bank, huddled together against the chill, occasionally letting out disgruntled quacks at their frozen circumstances.
“Do you think they're cold?” Art asked.
“The ducks?”
“They look cold. All puffed up like that.”
“They've got feathers. Built for it.”
“I know that scientifically. I'm asking if you think they're cold anyway. Emotionally.”
I turned to look at him, found him watching the ducks with genuine concern. This man. This ridiculous, brilliant, soft-hearted man who cracked Nazi codes by day and worried about the emotional wellbeing of waterfowl.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think they're probably a bit miserable. But they're sticking together. That helps.”
“Does it?”
“Always does.”
Art nodded slowly, like I'd said something profound instead of obvious. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small paper bag.
“I stole biscuits from the kitchen,” he announced. “Mrs Parker left them out to cool and I took six. Possibly seven. I lost count during the heist.”
“Art. You committed biscuit theft.”
“I committed biscuit theft.” He looked enormously pleased with himself. “In my defence, they're ginger nuts, and ginger nuts are worth a life of crime.”
He opened the bag and offered it to me. Inside were indeed ginger nuts, slightly misshapen but smelling of spice and warmth. I took one, bit into it, and the taste of Christmas flooded my mouth.
“Good?” Art asked.
“Perfect.”
We ate biscuits and watched the ducks and didn't talk about the war or codes or anything that mattered. Just sat there like two ordinary people enjoying an ordinary morning, and the simplicity of it felt like a gift.
“I want to try something,” Art said eventually, brushing crumbs from his coat.
“What kind of something?”
“The ice looks thick enough to walk on. At the edges, at least.”
I looked at the lake, then back at him. “You want to walk on the frozen lake.”
“I want to see if it holds.” His eyes were bright with something that looked almost like mischief. “I've never done it before. Frozen lakes weren't exactly common in Hampstead.”
“And if it doesn't hold?”
“Then I get very cold and very wet and you get to say I told you so.” He was already standing, brushing snow from his trousers. “Come on. Where's your sense of adventure?”
“I left it in Normandy along with my sense of self-preservation.”
But I was standing too, following him down the gentle slope toward the lake's edge. The snow was deeper here, drifted against the bank, and Art's shoes weren't really suited for it. He stumbled twice, grabbed my arm for balance, and didn't let go even after he'd steadied.
We reached the edge where ice met land. Art crouched down, studying the surface with the same intensity he brought to ciphers.
“See the colour?” he said. “Darker ice means thinner. We want the pale blue sections. Those are solid.”
“How do you know that?”
“I read it somewhere. Or made it up. One of the two.” He straightened, grinning. “Shall we?”
He stepped onto the ice before I could stop him. One foot, testing, then the other. The surface held. He took another step, then another, moving carefully toward a patch of particularly pale ice a few feet out.
“Art. If you fall through, I'm going to be very annoyed.”
“Noted.” But he kept going, arms slightly outstretched for balance, feet shuffling in small careful movements. “It's solid. Come see.”
Against every instinct that had kept me alive through three years of combat, I followed him onto the ice.
It was strange, walking on water. Even frozen water. The surface was slicker than I'd expected, and I had to concentrate to keep my footing. But Art was right. The ice was solid here, thick enough to hold both our weights without complaint.
“This is mad,” I said.
“This is wonderful.” Art had stopped a few feet ahead, standing in the middle of a smooth patch that reflected the sky like a mirror. “Look. You can see the clouds.”
I looked down. He was right. The ice was clear enough in places to show the sky above, pale blue scattered with wisps of white. Like standing on glass. Like standing on nothing at all.
“When I was a boy,” Art said quietly, “I used to dream about walking on water. Not in a religious sense. Just... the impossibility of it. The way it would feel to do something that shouldn't be possible.”
“And? How does it feel?”
He looked up at me, and his expression made my chest tight. “It feels like this. Like us. Like something that shouldn't be possible but is anyway.”
I didn't know what to say to that. Didn't have words for the feeling that swelled up in me, too big for language. So I just stepped closer, until we were standing face to face on our impossible mirror of ice and sky.
“You're going to make me say something sentimental,” I warned.
“Would that be so terrible?”
“Might ruin my reputation as a hardened soldier.”
“Your reputation is safe with me.” His hand found mine, cold fingers threading through mine. “Say something sentimental. I want to hear it.”
“Fine.” I took a breath. “This is the happiest I've been in years. Maybe ever. Standing on a frozen lake with a man who steals biscuits and worries about ducks, and I don't want to be anywhere else.”
Art's smile could have melted the ice beneath our feet. “That was very sentimental.”
“Told you.”
“I liked it.”
“Good.” I squeezed his hand. “Now can we please get off this lake before we fall through and die of hypothermia?”
“One more minute.” He tugged me toward another clear patch, this one showing darker depths beneath. “Look. You can see fish.”
I looked. Sure enough, a few dark shapes moved lazily beneath the ice, suspended in their frozen world, waiting for spring.
“Do you think they know we're here?” Art asked.
“They're fish. They don't know much of anything.”
“That's very dismissive of fish intelligence.”
“I'm comfortable with that.”
He laughed, the sound bright and startling in the quiet morning. A real laugh, unguarded and free, and I realised I'd never heard him laugh like that before. Not really. Not without the edge of anxiety or self-consciousness that usually accompanied his rare moments of humour.
This was just joy. Pure and simple and directed at nothing more significant than a bad joke about fish.
I wanted to make him laugh like that every day for the rest of my life.
“Alright,” he said, still smiling. “We can go back now. I've fulfilled my lifetime ambition of standing on a frozen lake and judging fish.”
“A worthy ambition.”
“I thought so.”
We made our way carefully back to shore, helping each other over the rougher patches, and collapsed onto our bench with the relief of survivors.
“My feet are freezing,” Art announced.
“Should have worn better shoes.”
“Should have, yes. Didn't think of it in the excitement of my criminal biscuit activities.” He pulled his feet up onto the bench, tucking them under him like a child. “This is nice. Just being here. Not thinking about anything important.”
“When's the last time you did that? Not thought about anything important?”
He considered. “1936, possibly. I had a very good afternoon at the British Museum looking at coins. Nothing important about coins.”
“Nothing?”
“Well. Historically important, perhaps. But not urgently important. Not lives-at-stake important.” His fingers found his scarf, working the wool in that familiar rhythm.
“That's the problem, isn't it? Everything feels urgent now.
Every minute I'm not working, people might be dying because I chose to rest instead.”
“Art.”
“I know. I know it's not rational. I know I can't work every minute of every day. But the guilt doesn't listen to reason.” He looked at me. “How do you manage it? The weight of it all?”
“Badly,” I admitted. “I drink too much when I can get it. Don't sleep enough. Think about all the men I've killed and wonder if any of them had people who loved them.”
“That's not managing. That's suffering.”
“Same thing, some days.”
He nodded slowly, like I'd confirmed something he already suspected. “We're both rather broken, aren't we?”
“Completely shattered.”
“And yet.” His hand found mine again on the bench between us. “Here we are. Eating stolen biscuits and walking on ice and talking about fish. Despite everything.”
“Despite everything,” I agreed.
We sat there holding hands while the morning brightened around us.
The ducks had relocated to a patch of unfrozen water near the bank, paddling in satisfied circles.
A robin landed on a nearby branch, red breast vivid against the snow, and watched us with the fearless curiosity of a bird that knew it was too small to be worth hunting.
“Tell me something,” Art said. “Something that has nothing to do with the war.”
“Like what?”