He reached out his hand.
“I’ll find something special just for you, Isaac,” said Stanley, attempting to put humor in his voice, his expression. “Just for you. Now will you please all move over here next to me?”
“We are next to you,” said Rex, even as he started walking to go where Stanley wanted him to.
“On this side, damn it,” said Stanley, pointing. “Thisside.”
He could hardly breathe as they trooped over to sit on his left side, with Isaac right next to him, and Bertie and Rex on the other side of Isaac, all in a row. Isaac was so close that Stanley could feel the warmth of his body, the press of his thigh, and the smell of sweat on the back of his neck.
Stanley closed his eyes and wanted to place his palms over them to stay in the blackness where an image of a low light danced, illuminating the top of a stove, a tiny green dot in the darkness. A place where he stirred to get more comfortable so he could fall asleep on the couch in the cottage. The clean pillowslip rustled. Warm air touched his skin, and somebody was typing. There was the scent ofdark coffee brewing, but it was so distant he could barely smell it. The harder he tried, the faster it faded until it was transparent in his mind and disappeared completely.
The loss formed an ache in his chest, but he had to ignore this and move on because there was something else he needed to do.
Stanley opened his eyes with a snap and turned to his buddies.
“Close your eyes,” he said. “Turn your heads, look towards the chaplain. He’s coming this way, he’s got news to tell, look at him,lookat him—”
At the urgent, strident sound of Stanley’s voice, and with their eyes wide, they all turned their heads just as a mortar shell exploded over the trench, sending black shrapnel digging into the muddy sides just where Bertie, Rex, and Isaac had so recently been sitting. Broken metal screamed as flak tore into the radio and spun into the air. Huge silver clouds descended, bits of metal pattering into the mud as leftover powder exploded, sending more metal flying.
Stanley felt his arm start to sting and looked down. There were tiny holes in his uniform. Dark red blood began to soak into the brown wool, but it wasn’t very much and didn’t spread very fast. He’d keep the arm, and maybe he’d get some R&R to recover and maybe his buddies could stay with him and maybe they’d all walk into the village again, their boots clanking on the damp cobbles as they wandered about and listened to French voices.
Only the French voices had been silenced, and the village had been bombed to bits. Somebody had told him that, and also that a new community had been built around the foundations of the old village, left as a war memorial. He couldn’t remember how he knew that, but the thought of it filled him with a growing sadness, and as he turned to look at his friends, he scrubbed at his face so they wouldn’t see the tears.
Except as the chaplain went into the bunker and Lt. Billings came out to meet him, Isaac, Bertie, and Rex were all looking at Stanley with eyes round as saucers.
“We werejustsitting there,” said Bertie.
Rex was studying him as if he’d been a newsie who’d just sold all ofhis papers at full price in under half an hour. As for Isaac, he was as white as iced paper, his eyes the color of ancient moss that has grown over a stone.
“We were, Stanley,” said Isaac, almost accusing, pointing at the place where they had just been, that the chaplain was gesturing to while he talked urgently to the lieutenant.
Stanley couldn’t understand why he couldn’t hear what the chaplain was saying when the chaplain was as close to him as Isaac was. But he couldn’t.
“It was like you knew,” said Isaac. “Did you?”
“You accusing me of being a German spy?” asked Stanley, jokingly serious to cover up the growing sense of panic within him.
“No, of course not,” said Isaac. He shook his head and reached out his hand.
“Please don’t touch me,” said Stanley, half-choking on the thickness in his throat. “I don’t think I could bear it just now.”
His friends were alive, and though the war would have continued with or without them, Stanley knew there was no price too dear to have them with him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Heartsick, Devon stood in the middle of the cottage, looking at his laptop, his pile of notes, his old-fashioned canvas notebook, thinking what a waste it all was with nobody to share it with. And how it had become, in a single moment, less important than it had been. He was tempted to take the whole mess and dump it in the nearest trash bin and just leave it all behind him. But that would be throwing away two years of work, which was ridiculous. What he needed to do now was to find Stanley.
The idea of a search was a distraction. He knew that. But he couldn’t just sit there and keep working on his paper, not if Stanley needed to be found. The alternative was that he’d been dragged back in time and was now suffering through the war all over again. Devon didn’t want to simply go on the internet and check the records because he was afraid that the truth of it would be more than he could bear. So he would search. But how?
He’d calledles gendarmes,and they’d been worse than useless. The act had only brought Devon himself into a circle of interest, wherehewas the lunatic who escaped from the asylum, and Stanley, his imaginary friend. No, not imaginary.
With a sudden thought, Devon pulled out his phone, tapped the Photos file, and thumbed through the images. There were pictures of sunrises and sunsets, and of the stones of the cottage etched by the morning’s frost. The expensive bottle of wine he’d bought when he’d first arrived. The shop window that contained every kind of cheese imaginable. A few selfies that he’d sent, embarrassed, to his old college buddies; he never did take a good selfie.
There were no images of Stanley, only black frames, one after the other. The most recent photo had a white blob in the middle. That could have been caused by anything, probably the flash from the phone, and it was no proof that Stanley had been there.
Devon turned off the phone, closed his eyes, and was instantly flooded with the memory of Stanley, so close and so warm, so sweet, the last dregs of innocence clinging to his smile like the act of a desperate man. War hadn’t destroyed him completely, but his last mission had come close. Or maybe he was mentally incapacitated and lost, and all Devon needed to do was to find him.
He knew he was retreating into his old obsessive habits, letting one thought take over everything else. The urge to find Stanley held sway. His heart was breaking because it had been better to share things with Stanley than be on his own. Better to let someone else in his life than to always be buried in a book, better to find balance in Stanley’s eyes.
