‘Degenerate,’ Danny breathes. ‘I’d heard that word before. The music hall is a safe haven for many people who don’t fit in with the rest of society. There are lots of folk like us there, working as performers, singers, acrobats. But for all that, I wasn’t like you, Stephen. I couldn’t be comfortable with who I was. Not then. I had mates outside the world of the halls, you see? Street kids who’d judge me if I ever let on that I was different. I hadn’t told Tilly either and so him saying that word not only made me angry, it made me scared. Anyway, my blood was already up after what he’d done and so I didn’t hesitate another second.’
Danny looks at me with such shame in his eyes. ‘I hit him. Hard. And I went on hitting him. I knocked him into the same mud where the remains of Tilly’s bonnet lay. I broke his nose, his jaw. And I’d have gone on and on hitting him, if his friends hadn’t managed to haul me off. All I could think of during that blinding rage was the unfairness of it all. My mum’s life, her death, how she’d treated me, the contempt this toff had shown Tilly. The shame of what I was.
‘The toff recovered all right, and no one pressed charges. I think Tilly and the showmen might have paid him off. But it scared me. That anger, that fury. I could feel the attraction of giving into it completely. Of losing myself in the rage. Because I’m my mother’s son, you see? But I don’t want to hurt people like she did. I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘You won’t. Danny, of course you won’t.’
‘I will. You’ve seen it in me, don’t pretend you haven’t.’ He stares down at his knuckles. ‘So tell me, do you still think I’m worth saving?’
‘You’re right,’ I say softly after a pause. ‘Ihaveseen glimpses of your anger. But, Danny, we are all angry and confused and frightened out here. Every one of us, all the time. But do you know what else I’ve seen in you? The care and the kindness that eclipses all of that. You took the blame for Percy and Robert about the camera. You suffered because you didn’t want to see any harm come to them. You cared for Ollie and you spoke up for him after he died.’
Danny covers his face with his hands, his shoulders heaving.
‘This is why you missed the sniper, isn’t it?’ I ask. ‘Why you don’t think you can fight?’
He nods. ‘If I give into it...’
‘I’m so sorry, Danny. But if you want to survive, if you want to help your friends to come through this madness, then you’ll need to fight. But you should also know this – the heart of you will always be that same heart that made me fall in love with you.’
I cross the room and pick up the half-finished drawing. I look at it for a moment, the clear lines of his beauty, the spirit I’ve tried to capture, before walking back to the window and handing it to him.
‘You are not your mother’s son,’ I say. ‘Not in the way you imagine. You could never be a monster. Don’t let these fears haunt you any more. I think you’re the most kind, beautiful, compassionate person I’ve ever known. So yes, Danny, you’re worth saving.’
Then, very gently, I take his hand and guide him back to the bed.
31
We rise early and in the privacy of the predawn shadows, bathe together in the rain-filled shell crater behind the house. The tangled garden around us breathes silence. Not a murmur of breeze to disturb the branches of the elm that twists overhead. That perfect body which I had first glimpsed here, naked in the moonlight, presses against mine. We don’t speak. We’ve talked all night and, for now, words appear to have run dry. We don’t need them anyway. We hold each other, fingers coiling into wet hair, lips lingering together.
I feel exhausted and energised, happy and tearful, full of hope and despair. Contradictions that only make sense when you know you’re in love. I once thought that we’d never have this time together. That before we could consummate whatever feeling there was between us we would be consumed. That this ever-hungry war must grip us in its jaws and devour us first. Now I’m both grateful and sorry for the night we’ve just shared. We’ve expressed our love in a dozen ways but love, like war, is never satisfied and I want more. More nights with him whispering my name, more dawns wrapped in each other’s arms. But the guns and the mud and the slaughter await us, patient as the grave.
‘Thank you,’ he says, holding my face between his hands.
‘For what?’ I smile.
‘For saving me already. For believing that there’s good in me.’
‘You’ve saved me too.’
And he has. Although my ghosts might always haunt me, I can at least face them now without the desire to bury myself in the same Somme soil that is their grave. Danny has given me this freedom. And he has allowed me to reclaim my old self from the shadows of the past. Sometimes I even feel like the schoolboy I used to be, not all that long ago.
He holds me now as the sun crests the villa and the sparrows that share our attic room explode from their hole in the rooftop. We watch them, a scattershot of dark flecks flying like shrapnel against the red sky. And then they are gone and the world wakes around us.
But the dream won’t let us go. Not quite. And so we take our time climbing out of the pool and drying off in the warm summer sunlight. Our clothes lie on an old stone bench nearby, the drab khaki of cap and tunic that can’t be denied forever. Eventually we dress, but defiantly, Danny pulling my trousers around my waist, me tucking in his shirt, fingers lingering in folds and over buttons.
‘I’m hungry,’ Danny grins, plonking my cap sideways onto my head.
‘You’re impossible,’ I tell him.
And he kisses my nose. ‘I know.’
There’s no food in the house and the only rations we’ve brought with us are a couple of tins of sardines and a few hard biscuits, and so we head out in search of the nearest field kitchen. We race each other through the quick-waking streets of Albert – or what is left of them – weaving around one another, jumping from pavements, kicking through puddles. In the end, it doesn’t take long to find a large, greasy-haired man sweating over a huge cauldron set up under an archway. Porridge grey as dishwater bubbles as he stirs, his fist clamped around a rusty ladle. A long line of men wait for their portion without much enthusiasm.
‘Come on,’ Danny says, tugging at my sleeve. ‘Let’s see what else is on offer.’
We race on through the town, picking our way over doors and window frames that lie in the road like the shattered remains of giant dollhouses trampled by some monstrous infant. Boulders of rubble block our path, forcing us into narrow alleyways where black-frocked women gossip in doorways and a little girl in a faded summer dress hugs a billowy white loaf to her chest. Eventually, Danny spots what was clearly once a prosperous boulangerie. After a little haggling, a chunk of warm bread, some decent cheese, a few hardboiled eggs, a couple of ripe tomatoes, a bottle of milk and four fresh apples are packed up and paid for.
Back at the villa, we take our picnic to the bench in the garden. It’s peaceful here, the bulk of the house muffling the hubbub of the street. Insects chirrup in the long grass while the scent of bougainvillea honeys the air.
