Chapter 29 Thiepval Gate #2
Charlie stepped forward, so close that he could have embraced Ned if he had dared.
“Did I ever thank you for saving my life? That’s what I choose to remember about that day.
I don’t think about why I refused to retreat, but rather that in my darkest moment, you saved me.
Every good moment is a gift that you gave me.
When I bring tears of laughter to my sisters’ faces.
My children’s eyes. Exhaustion after a long day’s work.
All of it is you, and I’ll never forget it. ”
“You saved me just as many times.” Charlie was startled to see the glimmer of wet streaks down Ned’s face. “You kept me whole.”
Then something caught the corner of Ned’s eye and he quickly brushed away his tears. A half dozen men stood at the foot of the memorial, clearly waiting for someone important. For Ned.
Charlie cleared his throat. “Go. You’re needed.”
Charlie could feel the other man draw himself into what Charlie remembered as his officer stance.
Shoulders back, chest out, head held high.
The mask of the expected gentleman that Ned forced himself to wear when his emotions were near the surface.
Ned started down the steps, then stopped and turned back to Charlie.
“Thank you for being with me today. In all the war took from me, it also gave me an exceptional friend.”
The words hit Charlie like a gut punch, and any response stuck in his throat. Instead Charlie met Ned’s eyes, with all their blues, greens, and golds. Ned nodded in response, understanding all that Charlie couldn’t say.
Ned walked down the steps, growing smaller and smaller before he disappeared into the crowd.
Charlie let himself wander around the pillars. He had likely already missed most of the cars back to Arras. What did it matter if he stayed up here a bit longer?
He faced the fields again. Waves and waves of grain. John Henderson’s grave was out there somewhere. Charlie had helped dig the grave himself.
He’d asked Betty about going to see John on this trip and she’d gone quiet for a moment before saying that her John wasn’t to be found beneath any white stone. He was with her when she walked in Regent’s Park, made his favourite stew, and re-read his letters.
Charlie couldn’t begrudge John and Betty their love. Perhaps because of his own lost love, Charlie never thought that his life with Betty was any less because she had shared her heart with someone else.
So he hadn’t gone, but now, as he looked out over the fields, he now regretted it. He’d like to have talked to John a bit, tell him about how beautiful Betty looked in her wedding dress and what the children were like. Maybe ask John advice about the right mess he had made of the past days.
Down below, another car pulled away from the memorial, a reminder that he really did need to come down the steps.
Except that once he descended the stairs of the monument, this trip to France was over.
He was headed back to London, and London meant seeing Betty, which meant keeping secret that he had almost kissed an ex-lover.
An ex-lover with stubble.
Charlie almost wanted to laugh. Wasn’t this the irony of his life? Only minutes ago one of the great secrets of his life lifted off his shoulders, for him to immediately take on a new load.
Fuck his miserable excuse for a life.
Fuck France.
Fuck the world that made him kill people but declared that he was a deviant for having a broken heart over a man.
The wind whipped around him, blowing his hair in his eyes and the sides of his jacket up around him. With it, Charlie could practically hear a sensible Yorkshire accent asking, “If it’s giving you this much trouble, why not tell her?”
Charlie snorted out towards the former battlefields-turned-farmers’-fields. John always did like to give advice.
Why not tell Betty? Perhaps because she might divorce him, take his children, and scream his secret from pillar to post, leaving him a shamed man in the community he had grown up in.
Charlie slumped down on the steps and lit a cigarette.
The wind and John didn’t have any answers now. Dead men had it easy.
Where’d fear got Charlie, though? If he’d been less afraid fifteen years ago, he might have told Ned about the dark hopelessness of battle, might have asked for help to move to a stretcher unit. Might have not ended things with Ned the way they did, with years of pain and heartache…
Ned had accused Charlie of not trusting him. Wasn’t Charlie just repeating the same error? Betty was his business partner, the mother of his children, his wife.
Did he really believe she would ruin him?
Charlie pondered that thought as he smoked, the tobacco burning down with each breath. Charlie was careful to have the ashes gather on paper he could fold up. He’d smoke here, but he wouldn't leave a mess.
When he finally stood, he knew what his answer was.
Shoulders back, face to the sun, Charlie gave a final farewell to the names on the pillars and walked down the steps of the memorial.
It was time to go home. Time to return to life as the owner of Villiers Automotive. Father of Frank and Ellie. Husband of Betty. Luckiest bastard in all of London.