Chapter 30
For weeks the rains of sorrow have soaked
The wood in my heart’s cold hearth;
And the windows and doors of my soul are choked,
And sunbeams can find no path.
—John Brown
[Untitled]
July marched on, and Ashley’s students marched with it, continuing to spend a few hours each day at school. By August, they could all write and address correspondence so they’d be able to send letters home, and they’d begun bringing in rags to tear and roll for bandages during history lessons.
“Why are we doing this, Miss?” Fred asked when she distributed the supplies one day.
“It’s an old habit I picked up long ago,” she halfway lied.
“Busy hands help your mind stay engaged in the subject matter—especially when you find the subject dull,” she teased to a round of self-deprecating giggles.
“Besides all that, they’re dead useful to have around. Once prepared, twice rewarded!”
“I’m going to need a lot more rags,” Walter moaned. He’d never been a particular fan of history.
A few of the older students saw through her lies, but they kept it to themselves for the sake of the younger ones.
She also finally faced the ghastly shadow in the corner and asked them to bring in their government-issued gas masks so she could teach them how to wear one properly.
For homework, they had to show their parents what to do and report back, grading their family’s efforts.
Despite the nightmare of it all, Ash slept better knowing if the time came, they’d be ready.
It was exhausting, though. The forced cheerfulness left her hanging on by a thread.
Or perhaps it was merely September creeping ever closer.
She could feel it, heavy like the air before a storm—the anniversary of being severed from Rook at the Somme.
It was always difficult, but this year felt different, wringing out every ounce of joy she’d tried to soak up in the country and store away for winter.
It was like trying to carry water in her hands.
Rook noticed of course. He was too perceptive by half, but unsure how to fix it beyond distracting her and sticking close.
At first she claimed to be too tired and busy to join him for a meal during the week because she hadn’t any appetite, and then when they did step out on Saturday, she declined an invitation back to his flat for dessert, knowing this time he offered more than German pastries, and for some reason she couldn’t explain, she needed to keep such offers at arm’s length.
But Rook wasn’t willing to return to a state of mixed-up signals and halfway truths.
“Tell me.”
“What?” She tried to play it off with a laugh.
He stopped walking and took her hand, stepping into an alleyway. “Are you having second thoughts? Do you regret our time at Collingwood? I would understand if you were simply swept up in the—”
“No. I only regret our time there couldn’t last forever.”
His face softened and he tilted his head to better see her eyes. “It can, you know.”
She shook her head. “For a moment the world seemed bright and full of color, and I could pretend we weren’t teetering on the edge of a precipice about to fall.”
He pulled her close, tucking her head under his chin. “The world may be. We’re not.” Somehow even his comfort made her heart feel so much heavier.
“How can I finally have everything I ever wanted, only for war to come and rip it all away again?”
“We won’t let it,” he assured her.
“When has war ever given us a choice?”
“Christmas,” he reminded her. “We chose joy.”
“And Cooper was punished for it. One night, out of how many thousand?”
“Come now, Little Bird. There were others. Card games and confidences. Friendship. Franzbrotchen.”
It broke her heart how those memories were all tainted with regret.
“Let’s go,” he said, offering her his elbow and re-entering the thoroughfare.
“Go where?”
“You need to see something beautiful.”
They took the Underground to Trafalgar Square, and though Ashley protested most emphatically, Rook began to make his slow and steady way up the many stairs to the entrance of the National Gallery. “I think you’ll find I’m even more stubborn than you are,” he teased her as he climbed.
Laughing, she dashed to catch up and gave him her arm to make his way a little easier.
Inside, however, they were met with an unexpected sight: abject chaos everywhere they looked, as paintings were propped against the wall, wrapped and loaded into boxes, all in various states of their removal.
“Just a precaution,” a docent said in an overly chipper voice as a man walked by carrying Vermeer’s Lady Seated at a Virginal, while nearby a woman wrapped heavy paper around a Seurat.
The empty walls and fleeing portraits were all too much, and Ashley burst into tears.
“Oh, don’t worry my dear! They’re only going on a little journey to keep them out of harm’s way. It’s a whole lot of trouble for nothing, I’m sure, but better safe than sorry. Only imagine how you’d feel if the place were turned to rubble. Now there would be a reason for tears.”
The docent’s words were kindly meant, but they made Ashley cry harder, and she hated crying, especially in front of an audience.
Especially in front of Rook. But since the dam had broken at Collingwood Park, she seemed close to drowning in her sorrow every minute of every hour.
She didn’t even know who she was these days.
“I’m sorry,” she told him as they made their way back down all those stairs.
“As well you should be. How dare you insist I drag you off to see paintings knowing full well they were being packed and sent away? Quite thoughtless of you.”
She choked on a tiny laugh.
“That’s better.”
Still, she hated it—all of it—the paintings and the crying and most of all, his seeing her be weak. She was not the Ash he fell in love with during the war, and she didn’t want him to realize her true form and turn away.
“Where to now?” she asked, as he headed lazily back down the Strand.
“I promised you something beautiful, and damn it, I’m going to deliver.”
It was a long, slow walk to Temple Church, but the simple act of strolling with her hand tucked in the crook of his arm brought Ashley’s emotions back under her control. After all the tears, she felt a certain sort of peace in moving and breathing and existing alongside her fondest friend.
“I really do apologize for the waterworks,” she whispered.
He made a pish sound. “Sometimes I’m surprised we’re not all underwater from crying twenty-four hours a day.”
Inside the church, he looked around as though drawing strength from the hallowed walls.
“It is a beautiful church,” Ash agreed.
“It is, but the church isn’t the surprise.”
“There’s a surprise?”
“Course there’s a surprise. Come this way.”
He tossed some coins in the collection box and lit some penny candles. Then he led her to the organ and patted the bench for her to sit.
Settling himself alongside her, he clenched and then spread his fingers and began to play, just a warm-up at first, before moving on to something different and rather wonderful.
“Perhaps it’s hubris for me to call this beautiful,” he said softly. “But it’s finally finished, and I wanted to share it with you before anyone else.”
And then it dawned on her what he was playing. “Your piece for the Armistice? When did you finish it?”
“I rewrote the last movement the night we returned from the country. You were my muse.”
“Me?” she asked, turning to study his handsome face in profile, though his eyes were closed as he continued to play.
“The original ending was far too somber. You helped me write a hopeful one instead.”
Ash didn’t know quite what to say. He was the hopeful one between the pair of them these days. How could she have helped him do anything of the sort?
He finished playing and kissed her cheek. “Just like in the war.”
“What?”
“I was closed off by the time we met. An island. I didn’t want to be, exactly, but I was. I’d lost too much, and I was afraid to let anyone new inside. And then along came you.”
“Whom you detested.”
“Told you before. I knew what you were in for. And I knew you’d be trouble for my worthless heart.”
“You didn’t.”
“I absolutely did. And I was right. You were… magnificent. Magnetizing. And you didn’t even know it.
Turns out, you were more trouble than I could have possibly imagined.
You cracked me open and crept inside. You made me love again.
Showed me how to let the others in. I haven’t always been successful, but at least since returning to London, I’ve tried to live every day in the same brave, bold, beautiful, loving way that you showed me how to do. ”
“Now it’s me who’s closed off,” she choked.
“No. You only think you are. Maybe you want to be, but that’s all right. It’s my turn now. Lay down your troubles and I’ll carry them. Stand by the doors and I’ll open them. I’ll do whatever I can to help make this old world a little bit less grey for you.”
“You always have,” Ash said. “I think I loved you from the first moment I met you,” she admitted, her heart swelling large enough to fill the whole church.
“I know. I believe I felt it too.”
The next morning, a note arrived when Ash was finishing her tea and toast.
Tonight: The Philharmonic. Pick you up at 7. Wear what you like. —AR
She smiled, supposing they must be officially courting now, though she wasn’t sure she had anything smart enough for the Philharmonic. Her blue check skirt would have to do.
“What’s got you looking like the cat who ate the cream?” her mother asked.
Ash shook her head, still smiling. “Suppose I’ll be out a bit late tonight. Try not to worry.”
“Is it that Alex Rook?” her mother asked.
Ash didn’t miss the knowing look she shot to Frau Wintter before taking a sip of tea.
“He’s invited me to hear the Philharmonic,” she admitted, her stomach doing a little flip when she said it out loud.
Frau Wintter returned her mother’s look, but simply asked, “Is it Bach?”
“He doesn’t say.”
“He came here looking for you the other day. After your trip,” her mother said.
“He found me.”
“Darling—“
“It’s—” She was going to say, It’s nothing, but she couldn’t do it. The lie felt disrespectful both to Rook and to whatever it was.
“I only wondered,” her mother pressed on, covering Ashley’s hand in a way that made her throat feel thick. “Is he the we from the war?”
“What?”
“When you used to write, you would so often write we instead of I. We’ve had a bout of stomachache, but we’re finally on the mend. We saw Charlie Chaplain’s new picture. We requested leave but were denied again.”
“Did I?” Ash hadn’t realized she’d written that way, though she’d come to think of herself and Rook as inseparable back then. “Suppose I might have been speaking for the whole unit.”
“It felt more personal than that,” her mother said. “You never wanted to talk about the war, but I know what heartbreak looks like.”
A denial was ready on her lips, but Ashley didn’t want to deny it any longer, even if she was afraid to seize it for all it was worth. “Do you have some sage words of advice for me?”
Her mother smiled, and Ash braced herself.
“Wear your burgundy floral dress. And have a wonderful time.”
It turned out, Ashley’s burgundy floral dress, while very pretty, was in no way glam enough for the sponsor’s box at Queen’s Hall.
Ash had been a girl in men’s clothing tromping through the mud of France, and somehow she’d never felt more out of place than she did that night, surrounded by men and women in the height of fashion, wearing glossy furs and dripping with gemstones.
“You look lovely,” Rook whispered reassurance, sending a thrill down her back even as he pressed his warm hand there to guide her to her seat.
“What are we doing here? I thought we’d be in the cheap seats.”
“Disappointed?” he teased.
“Not exactly disappointed, but—how?”
“Davies gave me the tickets.”
“Of course he did.”
“It’s the New World Symphony. I’m on a mission to fill your life with beauty, remember?”
“So you stole his tickets?”
“His mother was a donor. He continues the sponsorship in her memory, but he very rarely attends since her passing.”
“Oh,” Ash said with a pang of regret. “That’s rather sweet. Did you ever meet her?”
“I did once or twice. She mostly left us to ourselves while we were convalescing. I think they’d had words about a mother’s tendency to hover.”
Ash chuckled sympathetically as the orchestra finished their warm-up and the lamps dimmed down low. In the darkness she found herself reaching out, and as always, Rook was there to catch her hand.
The first movement was stirring, alternately light and airy and boldly breathtaking. Ashley knew the name Dvo?ák, but she’d never heard his work before. She’d never even seen a whole entire orchestra before, all moving together in time like soldiers on the march.
The conductor was a marvel, just about dancing with the rhythm and keeping time, telling them all, somehow, what he wanted them to do.
When the movement ended, the entire assembly came to their feet in a thunderous roar. Rook and Ashley finally released each other’s hands to join in the applause. She’d never experienced anything like it.
The second movement was hauntingly beautiful and ultimately triumphant. The third was confident and determined, like coming to a long-fought decision, as the fourth propelled them forward, the promise of a future in that brave new world.
It reminded Ash of her brother and the new world he created for himself in Canada. It reminded her of Rook, and the new world he believed worth fighting for right here. It made her feel a million different ways, like she could soar without ever needing to land.
She was quiet as they made their way back home together.
“Another miscalculation?” Rook finally asked, his face a pensive frown.
“No.” She shook her head, trying to put into words all that she was feeling. “It was gorgeous. For a little while, I forgot about everything else. I even forgot to feel sad that war might make nights like this one impossible.”
Rook chuckled ruefully.
“Truly,” she said, squeezing his arm. “After your composition, it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever heard. Or at least my second favorite.”
“You humble me, but what on earth could bump Dvo?ák from second to third?” he teased.
“That Christmas. When we all sang ‘Silent Night.’ Have you forgotten?”
“Never.”
“Thank you for taking me tonight.”
“There’s no one I’d rather be with, Ash. Every second of every single day. I hope you know that.”
“Every second of every day?”
“And twice on Sundays.”
She smiled, her heart full up with warmth and hope and very little room for the doubt and fear that usually threatened to choke her like poison gas.
“To the brave new world,” she said, “whatever it may look like.”