· · ·
Out of the depths of his nightmare, Freddie heard a voice, and it was saying“Wilfred,”oddly careful. His head cleared a little. The door had closed behind Laura and there was only Winter. Freddie didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to say it.
Winter looked strangely foreign, with his stiff fairness, his single arm, standing by the bed; utterly out of place. Winter said, “I—fall asleep and I dream it’s the pillbox, and there’s no way out.” There was half a question in his voice.
“So do I,” said Freddie.
Winter said, “But we got out.”
Freddie wasn’t sure he had. The hotel had held it all in abeyance, but it had mended nothing. And he’d opened every single door in the place to get out, and now all his worst memories swam round and round his mind.
Winter sat down, very gingerly, on the bed beside him, not touching. Freddie felt the heat of his feverish body. There was no music here, no oblivion. There was the familiar sound of Winter breathing.
“Winter, I—”
Winter said, “It’s all right, Iven.”
“I was a coward.”
“You were a man. I’d have gone with him, if our positions were reversed.”
“I’m a ruin,” Freddie said. “I let him have—my mind, myself. And I got back—only the worst things, I can hardly remember anything else.”Except for you,he didn’t say.I remember you.
“You came back, though,” said Winter. His spine was more rigid than ever.
“You stayed,” said Freddie.
“I swore,” said Winter, “that you weren’t going to die. I knew it was the last thing I was ever going to do. I don’t break my promises.”
“I promised the same thing,” said Freddie.
“And we are alive,” said Winter.
“Are we?” said Freddie, with bitterness. “I might as well be dead.”
Winter said with sudden ferocity, “Do you dare say that, Iven? Do you think I stayed because I believed that? Do you think your sister came back searching for you because she believed that?”
Freddie was silent, but his silence was resentful. He wasn’t looking at Winter anymore, and so he started in surprise, when Winter caught his chin in his hand. His eyes flew up and found Winter’s. “He filled your ear with poison, didn’t he?” said Winter. “Faland.”
“He said the world had ended and that I am a coward,” said Freddie. “And he wasn’t wrong.”
He could see the muscles tense along Winter’s jaw, but Winter said nothing, for a moment. “No, perhaps he was not wrong,” said Winter at last. “But that doesn’t mean he told you everything.”
“What else is there?” said Freddie.
Winter had let go of Freddie’s face, and Freddie found himself wishing that he hadn’t. Winter was real in a way Faland had never been.
Slowly, as though thinking it out for himself, Winter said, “That there’s no such thing as a coward, or a brave man—not out there. There’s no man’s will stronger than the war. He might as well have called you an angel as call you a coward, the—distinction—is just as valuable. That is to say, not at all. And of course the world ended. But it went on too.”
Winter had turned a little as he spoke, drawing one knee up so they were facing each other. Each watching the other, a little wary, measuring. Hedidstill have a soul, Freddie thought, in some wonder. For what else could it be, the thing inside him, linked to Winter, like interlaced hands? It was not a kindly bond. They’d lied and suffered—even killed—for each other. With Faland, whatever you did, there were no consequences, not really, except for the single, great consequence: the utter loss of self. But that hadn’t seemed to matter. The war already made him forget he was a person.
But he was a person and there were consequences now. Reach a hand to Winter, and Winter might draw away.
Reach a hand to Winter, and he might be angry.
Reach a hand to Winter, and he might reach back, in equal, drowning desperation, and Freddie didn’t know which frightened him most.
“Winter, what happened? After—at Brandhoek. After I left. What happened?”
