Winter Without Sirens
ART
Snow fell on London like forgiveness.
Not the ash-grey slush of wartime, churned to mud by boots and blood and bombs, but proper snow.
Clean and white and silent, drifting past the window of our third-floor flat in lazy spirals that caught the streetlight glow.
I stood watching it accumulate on the sill, one hand braced against the cold glass, and tried to remember the last time I'd seen snow that wasn't a backdrop to terror.
We hadn't died. Somehow, impossibly, we'd survived.
“You're doing that thing again,” Tom said from somewhere behind me.
I glanced back. He was sprawled on our battered sofa, one arm draped over the back and his stockinged feet propped on the trunk we used as a makeshift table.
His hair had grown out since demobilisation, curling slightly at the ends in a way that made him look younger, less haunted.
He wore an old jumper with holes at the elbows and trousers that had seen better days, and he was beautiful in the way ordinary things were beautiful now that we had the luxury of ordinary.
“What thing?” I asked.
“The brooding at windows thing. The cataloguing ghosts thing.” Tom's mouth quirked. “Want to tell me what you're thinking about, or should I guess?”
“The estate. The bombing.” I turned back to the window, watching my breath fog the glass. “How different the snow looks now.”
Tom was quiet for a moment. Then the sofa creaked and his footsteps crossed the room, solid and familiar. His arms came round my waist from behind, chin hooking over my shoulder, and I leaned back into the warmth of him.
“It's been two years,” Tom murmured against my temple. “War's over. We won. You're allowed to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“I know.” I did know, intellectually. Germany had surrendered in May of '45, Japan in August. The war was done, finished, relegated to newspapers and memorial services and the occasional nightmare that had me waking in a cold sweat.
But some part of my brain hadn't quite accepted it, kept waiting for sirens that never came, kept bracing for bombs that would never fall.
Tom's arms tightened. “What do you need?”
That was his question now, the one he asked when he saw me spiralling. Not “are you all right” because we both knew the answer to that was complicated, but “what do you need” which was actionable, grounding.
“Distraction,” I said. “Tell me what you've been working on.”
“My writing?” Tom sounded surprised. He still wasn't used to the idea that anyone cared about the stories he scribbled in the notebook I'd bought him last Christmas. “It's nothing special.”
“It's not nothing.” I twisted in his arms so I could see his face. “You're good at it. Better than you think.”
Tom's ears went pink. Even after two years together, compliments made him uncomfortable in a way that was endearing and slightly maddening. “It's just... memories, mostly. Trying to get them down before I forget.”
“Are you writing about the estate?”
“Some. Not the classified bits, obviously.” Tom's hand came up, fingers threading through my hair in a gesture that had become familiar, comforting. “Been writing about after, mostly. About us figuring out how to be people again.”
My chest went tight. “Can I read it?”
“Not yet. It's rough.” Tom pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Maybe when it's finished.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it's always rough.” He grinned, that crooked smile that still made my heart stutter. “Besides, you've got your own writing to finish. How's the paper coming?”
I grimaced. The paper in question was a mathematics journal submission, my first attempt at returning to academic work after two years of lying about what I'd done during the war.
“Colleague at university” was the official line, vague enough to be meaningless, and most people didn't push.
They assumed I'd been shuffling files in some dreary government office, not cracking codes that helped end the war.
“Slowly,” I admitted. “Keeps turning into cipher work in my head. I have to consciously stop myself from encoding it.”
“Old habits.”
“The worst kind.” I pulled away, moving to the shelf where my Black Book sat wedged between a dictionary and Tom's growing collection of notebooks.
The cover was more frayed than ever, spine cracked, pages threatening to fall out.
I'd started a new notebook months ago for actual work, but the Black Book remained. A relic. A reminder.
Beside it sat a small wooden box Tom had made, sanded smooth and stained dark.
Inside were our war things: my broken spectacles from the bombing, Tom's dog tags, a crumpled photograph of the estate staff taken just before Christmas '44.
Ruth and Noor were in the back row, grinning.
Peter stood to the side, young and doomed and not yet a traitor.
And there, barely visible, were Tom and I at opposite ends of the frame, carefully not looking at each other.
“Do you ever regret it?” I asked, not turning around. “Giving up the army. The structure.”
“No.” Tom's answer was immediate, certain. “I did my bit. More than my bit. I'm done killing for king and country.”
“And the nightmares?”
“Getting better. Some nights I sleep all the way through now.” His voice softened. “Helps that you're there. Makes it easier to remember I'm home.”
Home. This cramped flat with its creaking pipes and draughty windows and neighbours who played the wireless too loud.
It wasn't much, but it was ours. We'd scraped together the deposit with demobilisation pay and my modest university salary, signed the lease as “friends sharing accommodation costs,” and built something small and safe in a world that had tried its damnedest to break us.
A knock at the door interrupted my thoughts. Tom crossed the room in three strides, checked the peephole out of old habit, then opened it to reveal Mrs Chen from downstairs holding a paper-wrapped parcel.
“Postman left this,” she said in her clipped accent. “Too big for your letterbox.”
“Thank you, Mrs Chen.” Tom took the parcel, hefted it. “Heavy. You shouldn't have carried it up.”
“Bah. I'm not so old I can't manage stairs.” But she smiled, pleased at his concern.
Mrs Chen had adopted us as her unofficial tenants-to-worry-about, appearing periodically with leftover soup or offers to mend torn clothes.
She'd never asked awkward questions about why two men shared a one-bedroom flat, and we'd never offered explanations.
Tom closed the door, turning the parcel in his hands. “Postmark says Birmingham. That's your sister, yeah?”
“Bea.” I felt a smile tug at my mouth. Bea had married an engineer and moved to Birmingham last year, much to our mother's dismay. She wrote regularly, long chatty letters full of gossip and sketches in the margins. “Let's see what she's sent.”
We moved to the sofa, Tom settling beside me as I worked the string loose and peeled back brown paper. Inside was a tin of biscuits, actual sugar biscuits that must have cost a fortune in rations, and a thick envelope addressed in Bea's sprawling hand.
To my favourite brother and his better half, the envelope read, and I could hear the laughter in her words.
Bea had taken to Tom immediately, from that first Christmas Eve when I'd introduced him as my partner and waited for the world to end.
Instead, she'd hugged him fiercely and whispered in his ear something that made him blush for the rest of the evening.
Inside the envelope were two letters, one for each of us, and a photograph of Bea and her husband standing in front of their new house, both grinning like fools.
“She looks happy,” Tom observed.
“She is.” I scanned my letter, smiling at Bea's updates:
Dearest Art,
The house needs work but has potential. Edward is teaching me to drive, which is going about as well as you'd expect.
I've joined a book club and am causing trouble by suggesting “inappropriate” novels.
Mrs Whitmore nearly fainted when I recommended Lady Chatterley's Lover. Worth it for the expression alone.
Mum asks after you both constantly. She's knitting Tom another jumper, this time in blue because she says it matches his eyes. Dad pretends to grumble about having another mouth to feed at Christmas but we all know he's already bought Tom that chess set he was admiring last year.
I still can't quite believe it sometimes. That you found him. That you get to keep him. That our family expanded instead of contracted, despite everything the world tried to do to people like you. It makes me hopeful, Art. Properly hopeful, in a way I haven't been since before the war.
Give my love to Tom. You're both expected for Christmas. No excuses. I'm making pudding and I refuse to let it go uneaten.
All my love, Bea
Tom read over my shoulder, his breath warm against my ear. “Your mum's knitting me another jumper?”
“Apparently. Blue this time. To match your eyes.”
“I liked the green one.”
“You complained the green one was itchy for three months.”
“It was itchy. Doesn't mean I didn't like it.” Tom's hand found mine, fingers interlacing. “Your dad really bought me a chess set?”
“Bea says so.” I leaned into him, feeling the solid warmth of his presence. “He likes you. They all do. Even if Dad shows it by grumbling and Mum shows it by producing an endless supply of knitwear.”
“Strange way to show affection.”
“We're a strange family.”
“I've noticed.” But he was smiling, that soft smile he saved for moments like this. Private moments. Ours.
Tom reached for his own letter, unfolded it, and his eyebrows rose.
“What does yours say?”
He cleared his throat, looking faintly embarrassed.
Dear Tom,
Since my brother is terrible at accepting compliments, I'm writing to you directly.