Chapter 14
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
—Wilfred Owen
Dulce et Decorum Est
The moment the dirt had shaken off winter’s freeze, Ashley helped her students transform their football grounds into a muddy mess of holes dug and seeds planted. Better a garden than the marching grounds of her youth.
“Leeks, Miss?” An eager student with dirt-streaked cheeks ran up grasping a fistful of seeds.
“Just there,” Ash pointed to the spot. “In between the peas and aubergines.”
“Shouldn’t we be digging trenches instead of flowerbeds, Miss?” an older boy asked. “For when we go to war with the Irish?”
A red-haired girl goggled at him, her head whipping between her classmate and her teacher.
“I don’t think we’ll be going to war with the Irish any time soon, Sarah,” Ash told the little girl, who smiled, turning back to her broad beans.
“My dad says they’re at war with us. Bombed two Underground stations just last week,” the boy insisted.
“All the more reason to plant food,” Ash told him. “That rhubarb won’t sprout in your hands, Fred, no matter how grubby they are.”
He laughed and turned back to his work.
Another little girl tugged at Ashley’s skirt. “My mum said if there’s a war, they’ll send my brothers away to fight it, and might even send me away too!”
“I wish I was old enough to fight,” a boy said.
“The Irish?” Ashley asked, trying to make her voice sound amused.
The boy shrugged. “Maybe not the Irish. My grandad’s Irish. He said there’ll be a war with Germany because we didn’t finish them off the last time.”
“I’ll finish them off,” Fred piped up.
“Me too!” Sarah agreed.
“You can’t fight. You’re a little girl.”
“Miss says girls can do anything boys can do. Isn’t that right, Miss?”
“I’m sure the King is very grateful for your enthusiastic patriotism,” Ash cut in. “But let’s focus on our garden and pray for peace.”
“Yes, Miss,” they chorused like good little soldiers.
“War isn’t the glamour and honor you think it is.
It’s cold when you want to be warm and hot when you long for a breeze.
It’s wet socks that never get dry and itchy skin you can scratch until you bleed.
It’s mites and lice and noise so loud it blisters your ears, when all you long for in the world is quiet. It’s exhausting and painful and sad.”
“Like the poems, Miss?”
“Exactly like the poems, Madeline. Except words, unlike bullets, don’t have teeth.”
“Miss Ashley’s right,” Rook said, stepping out into the garden all freshly shaven and handsome as could be, perching on the low brick fence like he belonged there.
His trouser leg hitched up enough to reveal the prosthetic inside his shoe, and Ashley’s heart gave a little squeeze, picturing him alone in some cold, distant hospital learning how to walk all over again.
“The most patriotic way to approach a war is to try and prevent it,” he said.
“Who’re you?” the nearest boy to Ashley asked, staring openly at Rook’s leg.
“Alex Rook. Who’re you?”
“Walter Hargreaves.”
“Pleased to meet you, Walter Hargreaves.”
The children studied him, curious and solemn.
“Is that what happened to your leg?” asked little Mary. “Was it injured in the war?”
“Mary,” Ash admonished, darting an apologetic glance at Rook and shaking her head at the child, who sucked in her lips to demonstrate being quiet.
“What, this?” Rook asked, tapping the leg with his cane to elicit a soft knocking sound.
Mary shot a wide-eyed look towards Ash and then nodded her curly head.
“No,” Rook assured her. “That was from a lion.”
“A lion!” she exclaimed.
“It never was,” laughed Susan, the oldest pupil at just fourteen.
“Oh yes,” Rook insisted. “A lion. When I was performing with the circus on the continent. There was never enough meat to go around, you see.”
Ash laughed, and he glanced her way briefly—she could almost feel him wink, but he kept his face completely serious.
“Let that be a lesson to you, boys and girls,” he said, looking around at his enraptured audience.
“Always eat your veg so you’ll taste nasty and bitter to lions and they’ll eat some naughty child instead.
And if the circus comes to town, don’t run away and join it.
Oh, it’s all right for a day. But lions are restless creatures, ravenous for the taste of children. ”
Shaking her head, Ash turned back to her weeding, wiping her face on her forearm to chase away the grin.
“Tell the truth,” Fred, the oldest of the boys, said in a low, conspiratorial whisper. “Were you in the war?”
“We were all in the war, son. One way or another.”
“Were you in the war, Miss?” Sarah asked.
It wasn’t something she often spoke about directly—to protect herself from the jagged edges of the past almost as much as to protect them.
“Aye, she was,” Rook said, before she could answer. “The bravest and the fiercest of us all.”
Ash looked up at him, and he caught her gaze and cradled it tenderly, but just as staunchly as he ever had. Perhaps he’d truly forgiven her lies, and they could regain their brotherhood—or something like it.
He was the best friend she’d ever known, and at one time, she believed she’d been his. She may have fallen in love with him under false pretenses, and any affection he’d once felt would have been for Ashley the lad, but they could still be friends.
Once, she might have believed mere friendship insufficient, but she’d been wrong. Rook was back now, and she would take what she could get.
“Look, I’m planting strawberries!” Mary told him, proudly pointing out her patch of earth.
“Well done,” Rook praised. “Any cherries?”
“Cherries grow on trees! Miss, can we plant cherries?”
“We’ll see,” Ash said, raising her eyebrows at Rook, who quickly stuck his tongue out in disgust. “Children,” she said on a laugh, “I think that’s enough for one day. Clean up and head home, and don’t forget to practice your spelling.”
“Yes, Miss,” they chorused as they dusted off their dirty hands and knees.
“You must study hard for Miss Ashley,” Rook reminded them. “Every day—and twice on Sundays,” he added with a wink in her direction.
“Twice on Sundays!” A ripple of dismay ran through the boys especially, but Ash couldn’t help laughing at Rook, who wore a cocky grin and looked well pleased.
“Can I walk you home, Miss Ashley?”
He kept using her name, almost to the point of excess, like he was trying to get used to the strange feel of it again or convince himself she was real, but to Ash that Miss was a stark reminder of who she was and who she used to be.
“Will you please just call me Ash, like old times?” she begged. “And…” She glanced down at his leg. Though there was nothing she would rather have than his company on her short walk, it seemed selfish to put him through it.
“I’m fine,” he insisted. “Please let me walk you home, Little Bird.”
Everything inside of her turned to silky soft moonlight, for how could she say no to such a plea?
He hoisted himself to standing, then held out his elbow like a bird’s wing, and she snapped to his side like a magnet made of human flesh and bone.
As they walked, they passed a lad selling evening papers, and Rook offered to buy one, but she shook her head.
“I can hardly bear to read them anymore,” she admitted. “You really don’t feel the similarities to 1914?”
Rook sighed, and his voice came out a little raspy. “I don’t know. We were so much younger then. Full of gumption and grit and ideals. Like the boys in your class.”
“Girls too.”
“Especially them.”
“God willing, it’s over before they’re old enough to join up,” Ash said.
“God willing, they follow the rules.”
“God willing, no one gives them a reason not to,” she added, and he pulled his arm in, bringing her closer to his side. “Do you ever wish someone had talked you out of volunteering?” she asked.
“No,” he answered, without a moment’s hesitation. “My number would have come up eventually, but I rather think if even one second had been different, I might have missed out on meeting you.”
Ashley’s stomach performed cartwheels, which a younger version of herself might have been tempted to try right there on the street.
“You know, the first time we met, I was certain you hated me,” she teased.
“Impossible!”
“It’s true. You were very intimidating. All gruff and…” She wanted to say handsome, but the word might thrust an awkward tension into the midst of their newly restored camaraderie.
“What?”
“Grizzled and glowering and battle worn, I suppose. When the captain ordered you to help me with my gun, I thought you wanted to snap me right in two.”
“No,” he said, soft and serious. “It was only that you were so very fresh-faced and unbroken, and I knew what was bound to happen.” She felt like there was some deeper meaning, but he went on without stopping. “It was war, after all.”
“Well don’t worry. I didn’t take it personally. Much.” She let go of his arm to walk on ahead of him, but he caught up and stopped her.
“You can’t take it personally now I’ve admitted I’m glad we met. I would turn the question back on you—do you regret it? But obviously your answer would be the same as mine,” he teased.
“Undoubtedly,” she replied, never a word more true.
Even had she received news that Charles was safe in Spain, she’d not have given up her place with the Surreys for all the world.
From the moment she’d met Rook and Tom and the rest, she’d been one of them, well and truly stuck in until the bitter end.
“Here we are,” he said, their too-brief journey over as they arrived at her flat.
“Here we are,” she echoed. “Would you like to come in?”
He grew suddenly nervous, studying the ground. “I don’t make a habit of inviting myself for tea.”
“You didn’t. I’m inviting you. Rook, it’s only me… and my mother and Frau Wintter,” she added with a grin.
“When you put it that way,” he agreed, following her inside, clinging to the hand she offered like it was a lifeline leading him into battle for the very first time.
As Ash expected, the ladies were seated at the table already drinking tea.
“Charley—company?” her mother asked, scanning Ashley’s plain brown skirt and worn old cardigan with a disapproving little frown. A shame you aren’t wearing something nicer, her face seemed to say. But Rook had most often seen Ash in days-old khaki, so maybe the brown was fitting just this once.
“Alex Rook, Clara Ashley—my mother—and Frau Wintter—my Oma.”
“Please. Adele,” Frau Wintter said.
“Pleasure, ladies.” Rook clasped each of their hands in turn.
Not having received male attention in years, both women, predictably, swooned.
Ash set out another plate and poured him a cup of tea, plain, the way he drank it in the war. When she sat, her mother cleared her throat and raised her eyebrows to get Ashley’s attention, then pointed to her cheek. Confused, Ash dabbed it with a napkin and discovered dirt smeared across her face.
Rook grinned.
“You should have told me,” she whispered.
“Honest, I didn’t notice until now. You look… right… with a grimy face.”
Her mother balked at that but didn’t pursue it. “Are you a teacher at the school?” she asked him instead.
“No,” Ash jumped in, knowing the questions her mother wanted to ask: Are you single? and What are your intentions? “He’s at Temple Church,” she said, deliberately vague, hoping her mother would assume he was a rector, life dedicated to God, and leave it alone.
“Temple? How impressive. Should we call you Reverend?”
Rook didn’t laugh, but his eyes were dancing when he answered. “No, I’m afraid not. I help out quite a lot with the choir boys, but mostly I play the organ for services.”
“Oh, lovely.”
“Do you compose music as well?” Frau Wintter asked. “My husband was an admirer of Bach.”
Rook turned his attention to his tea. “Sometimes,” he answered with a little frown. “I was commissioned last year to write a piece for the twentieth anniversary of the Armistice.”
“I’d dearly love to hear it,” Ash said, though she wasn’t sure she could bear to.
“If I’m ever happy with how it turned out, you’ll be the first to know,” he said, gazing at her through hooded eyes.
“It must be difficult to write music no one’s ever heard before,” her mother said, steering the conversation back into safe waters. “You must be very clever.”
“I don’t know about that. If I were, perhaps I’d have finished it to my satisfaction.”
“Is any great artist ever truly satisfied with their work?” Frau Wintter wondered.
“I’d say that’s more a question for you.” Rook turned to Ash, all charm and grace.
“Is it?” her mother asked.
Rook held her gaze.
“Plenty of poems were jotted in the cramped spaces between shellings. Some were likely written in the doldrums with ample refinement, but many poets were cut down before their time, leaving only a draft they might well be ashamed to see in print. One can only hope they’d be pleased.”
“Surely they must know their families are proud, or they wouldn’t have published their work,” Frau Wintter said.
“Of course,” Ash agreed, sharing an amused smile with Rook. “Though I’m not sure it’s quite the same thing.”
She couldn’t guess whether her poets were satisfied.
She’d been happy enough with what she’d once written herself, though it was private, never meant for publication.
But she was more interested in Rook’s composition.
The perfectionist musician was a side of him she hadn’t met during the war, but it felt right.
It was a side of him she’d be lucky to know better now, and she was dying to hear anything he’d composed.
After tea, Rook stayed to help with the washing up.
“Come back any time, Alex,” her mother told him, patting his arm before Ash walked him to the door.
As lost for words as ever, she managed only to squeeze his hand and say, “I’ll see you soon?”
He nodded.
“Fly safe, Rook,” she told him.
A small smile tugged at his lips. He nodded once more and told her, “That’s my line.”
“Perhaps it should’ve been mine. You could never help but fly true.”
“True as steel,” he agreed.
“True as Troilus,” she replied.
“I think he’s sweet on you,” her mother said, the moment the door was locked behind him.
“He’s not sweet on me, Mum,” Ash protested like she was seventeen instead of forty.
Her mother’s eyes narrowed before sharing a knowing look with Frau Wintter. “But you’re sweet on him?”
“I…” And what could she say? She’d been sweet on him once? Could have been? It was all so very long ago.
“Who is he?” her mother asked. “Someone from the war?”
“Someone? Everyone. He was…” She shook her head. How could she sum up what Alex Rook had meant to her? Her favorite person? Her very best friend? The words all seemed too small to hold the multitudes she felt for him.
“Zwillingsseele.” Frau Wintter nodded sagely. Kindred soul.
And Ashley thought she’d never heard anything more apt. “Zwillingsseele,” she agreed.