She hardly sleeps the night before his ship is due, trying to come to terms with what she will tell him when he asks how she’s spent the last few years. She knows she looks different, not least because of the sun her pale skin couldn’t avoid in the tropics regardless of her efforts. She knows she is different, after so many years of war and absence. But he must be different too, after everything. Finally she gives up altogether and takes an early train into London. She would rather wait at the docks than wring her hands anywhere else.
The crush of sailors and dockworkers reminds her of her own travels, and she can’t help but hope that the troopship bringing Alec to London is less infested than the one that took her to India. She straightens the cuffs of her jumper, running her fingers around the ring he gave her all those lifetimes ago. She remembers Alec’s face when he proposed, and his hand pressed against the small of her back, the bright London sun, the warmth of him coursing through the yellow silk blouse she’d been wearing, the softness of his mouth when he kissed her afterward in the darkness of the shelter.
When the ship docks, the thud of the hull against the dock echoes in June’s heart, and she can hardly breathe. She had sent a telegram to the port in Gibraltar, hoping to tell Alec she would be here, but there’s no way to know if he received it, and that adds a layer of unease to her excitement. There is a flurry of activity, and then at last the gangway lowers, and men begin to come off the ship. They’re all so thin, and while a few have tilted their hats to jaunty angles, they all look out of place somehow, relieved and wary all at once.
Just as she steps closer, hardly able to bear the waiting, Alec appears at the top of the gangway. He’s wearing a too-large coat hanging open and a flat blue cap, with a worn rucksack slung over one shoulder. He looks like part of a crew of some kind of tramp steamer, not a pilot. June nearly doesn’t recognize him—he looks cold and alone, not at all like the Alec she used to know.
He steps onto the gangway, treading hesitantly down to solid ground, and June moves forward to meet him as he reaches the end. His eyes widen as he spots her.
“Alec,” she whispers. His eyes have locked onto hers. His cheekbones are too sharp. All of him is. Alec is emaciated, perhaps only ten stone now. How has this happened to him? She tries to take him all in, tries to see all of him at once, but he’s got his hands behind his back, and he’s still just looking at her the way he would regard a ghost.
A moment of panic—what if he no longer wants her? What if the war has broken what they had? Her heart quails away from the idea that after everything, they might be over. How can they take apart something that lit them both like the sun? But then, at last, his face opens, and she can see that boy again in his face.
“June,” he says, his voice ragged.
“Yes, Alec,” she says. “Yes.”
He comes to her then, his arms tight around her, his face pressed to her shoulder like an animal looking for its burrow, trembling.
June had thought they might stop in London, find lunch or a cup of tea, but Alec is skittish and pale, hewing close to her even while he seems almost to inhabit another world entirely. When she asks him if he’s hungry, he shakes his head, his face uncertain. “Not just yet.”
“All right,” she responds, although she can only imagine he must be ravenous. But he’s likely overwhelmed—perhaps once things are calmer and he is less absorbed by the urban maelstrom surrounding them he will want something. She had hoped for a more triumphant return, which seems unfair now that she has seen him. And forcing him to sit in a crowded café, with all its noise and humanity, seems more complicated, and more fraught, than she would have guessed, and so instead she hails a cab and directs the driver to King’s Cross. She had tried to be prepared for scars, visible or otherwise, and for the immutable changes that a POW camp might wreak on a man, let alone one camp after another.
In the taxi, she turns toward him, meaning to say something about Fenbourne, but then she sees his hands, bundled on his lap, and something creaks in her heart. His right hand, especially, bears the marks of whatever has been done to him, and it has curled into itself like a paw. The left is better, but still mottled with scars, two of the fingers crooked and gnarled. How can this be? Those lovely long hands, broken now. She can only imagine the pain and misery he must have gone through. She was ready for so much, or thought she was. But she had not girded herself against the sound that comes from her at the sight of his hands, or for his face, crestfallen and defensive, when he hears her.
She reaches for his hands. When he flinches, she feels it all the way through her. But then he lets her cradle them in her palms. She wants to hold them to her lips. She wants to heal them with her touch. It’s another thing she has no idea how to navigate. And underneath her sorrow for him, an ache of confusion—how could she not have known? She goes cold when she thinks of his letters from Italy and Germany, and that unfamiliar penmanship, and wants to strangle him—banged up my hands is all he had had to say?
At the station, Alec shrinks into himself, his face closed and wary. June takes his arm, keeping him close to her. When last they had walked like this, her hand had tucked neatly into the crease of his elbow, and now her fingers vanish into the folds of his outsized topcoat as if his arm is not even there. Her Alec, that sweet boy with stars in his eyes . . . How could this have happened to him?
“I’m sorry,” Alec says. “All the people, and the trains . . .” His shoulders jerk in a shrug.
“I’m right here,” June says. She squeezes his arm. “I won’t let go.”
He nods, but he’s shaking all over, the effort he’s putting into following her almost visible. As gently as she can, she shepherds him onto the platform, then onto the train, holding her breath when he freezes midway through stepping into the carriage. Every moment brings something that makes him flinch—the metallic thud of a compartment door closing, the rattle of chains between the carriages, the shriek of the whistle. When the train rumbles into life, Alec shudders, his jaw clenched so tightly she imagines she can hear his teeth grinding together.
“We’ll be home soon,” she says as the train emerges onto the rails outside the station.
Alec turns to her, his eyes searching her face. “I don’t . . .” He pauses.
“I’ve been staying at your aunt’s cottage,” June says softly. “Getting it ready for you. Mrs. Hubbox has been helping me. So we’ll go home, and then we’ll see if we can suss out what comes next, all right?”
His gaze clouds when she mentions Constance, and June takes his hands gently into hers, sitting as tight against him as she can. “I’ve got you now, Alec. I’m here.”
Alec nods, his shoulders loosening. “All right.”
He’s quiet then, watching her when he’s not eyeing the landscape rolling past outside. When the train emerges into the countryside, he relaxes a bit more.
“Quite a thing, having a compartment to ourselves,” he says. His leg jitters nervously, and he goes back to looking out the window.
It’s not much later that an older woman appears in the doorway with a trolley laden with hot beverages, pastries, and sandwiches. Alec regards the trolley hungrily, and June’s heart pangs for him. “Would you like something?”
“I don’t know,” he says helplessly, and after a moment June realizes he doesn’t know how to choose.
“Ah, he’s moithered, the poor lad,” the old woman says to June in a lilting Welsh accent. “What about a cup of tea, then?”
“That would be lovely,” Alec says, his voice soft with relief.
“Righto,” she says. She bustles about to get them each their tea.
“A couple of sandwiches also,” June says. “Do you have the cress today?”
“Gosh,” Alec says. “I haven’t had a proper sandwich . . . I don’t know when.”
“Two cress,” the trolley attendant says, nodding, and hands the two paper-wrapped sandwiches to June, followed by the cups of tea. She pauses to regard Alec, her lips pursed. “Would you like something sweet as well?” She points to the simple pastries that occupy the top tier of the trolley. “The sticky buns I do like, but the seedcakes are rather better.”
“Caraway,” June says to Alec, setting the china teacups and their saucers on the small table that juts out just beneath the window. His eyes light up, and she smiles and asks the woman for two of those as well, thanking her for the recommendation.
“Glad I am to do it,” the woman says, beaming. “Just a small little thing can help a day.”
“Indeed it can,” Alec says.
June thanks her again when she pays for the food. When she’s gone, June sits down across from Alec and lays out the food like a picnic, arranging the sandwiches and cakes. At her elbow, the spoons rattle in the saucers as the train moves along the track. Alec stares at the sandwiches, and her brow furrows. Hoping to encourage him, she picks up the egg and cress sandwich and unwraps it to find better bread than she would have expected, and more butter. “Go on,” she says to Alec with a smile. He pauses and reaches with his left hand, awkwardly clutching the sandwich in the rough vise of his thumb and first two fingers. His right hand stays in his lap like something he’s left behind.
His eyes close when he bites into it, and for a moment June thinks he’s in pain. But then he swallows and opens his eyes, and she realizes he is swamped with emotion.
“They’re good, aren’t they?” She takes a bite and has a drink of tea.
Alec nods reverently, eating his sandwich in a series of bites so precise, nearly delicate, that June wonders if he’s trying to keep himself from swallowing it all at one go. It’s only when he turns his focus to the seedcake and the sweet, murky tea that June sees he needs both hands to hold his cup. She understands now how severe the damage to his hands must be—how tangled and scarred his fingers really were. When she notes the furrow between his eyes as he concentrates on his grip, and how steadfastly he seems to be refusing to look at her, she can’t help but wonder if he’s embarrassed or ashamed. Wanting to give him a moment as best she can, June nearly fumbles her own sandwich, and turns her gaze out the window.
Alec says almost nothing else for the rest of the trip, as if he’s exhausted his store of conversation for now, and June stays mostly quiet too, trying not to overwhelm him further. She doesn’t want to prattle at him, but every few minutes she tells him something about the village—a new baby for the grocer’s daughter, an enormous eel found in a basket in a tributary of the Lark, Frank Burleigh taking over the smithy and expanding it into a proper garage. Little details to give him anchorage.
When they arrive in Fenbourne, she leads him out of the station, trying to avoid the curious eyes of the village even as she knows the task is hopeless.
“Shall I call the taxi?”
Alec looks down at her, then shakes his head. “Would you mind if we walked?”
“Not at all,” she says. In fact it is a relief; perhaps the even lines of horizon and dike will work on him as they have worked on her, orienting her to the familiar landscape. He nods and shoulders the battered rucksack again, and they set off, falling into step just as they used to before the war.
She had meant to walk the longer way around, following the curve of the Lark to their bridge, and then up the sluice road to the cottage, but Alec sets their course. Before she’s ready, they reach St. Anne’s and the shell of the vicarage.
Alec stops abruptly in the shadow of St. Anne’s, staring at the ruin.
June takes his arm again, and he shifts a step closer to her.
“I knew,” he says, glancing at her, “but I didn’t really. Not until now.”
“Yes,” June says. “It’s rather . . . I am still getting used to it myself. Sometimes I come around the corner and I’m thinking of something else and then it’s just . . . It’s just there, waiting for me.”
He frowns down at her, his eyes sad. “I’m sorry, June. I . . .” He trails off. “Well, I know it wasn’t my fault I wasn’t here, but I feel I ought to have been.”
“You mustn’t feel that way,” she says urgently, looking up at him, and squeezes his arm again.
He pulls away gently, moving to lay his hand against the oval of stones that still rings the front garden of the shattered building. “Sometimes I thought I’d never see Fenbourne again,” he says. “Or you, June. Everything is . . . It feels very unreal.”
June catches herself wanting to say something about the POWs she helped process at Anderson, liberated from Japanese camps. She knows their stories better than she knows Alec’s, which seems wrong on any number of levels. But of course there is no way to tell him any of this. Instead she says, “I expect so,” which feels inadequate, at best.
Alec looks at her and smiles, but the smile doesn’t come off quite right. Perhaps he feels the insufficiency of her words as much as she does.
By the time they reach the cottage, Alec seems more disoriented than ever. He had startled at the raucous calls of crows, looking at the sky as if it were too broad for him, or too low. June hangs his coat on the stag-headed iron coat rack in the front hall. Without it, he looks both taller and thinner, and it jars her. He prowls the parlor and the kitchen, drifting out into the garden and back again, and June follows quietly, trying to understand what he reminds her of. It’s not until he goes up the stairs, awkward and a little off-balance, that she realizes he’s all points and angles. Alec, but somehow not. Just like what’s left of the vicarage.
She listens to him pacing upstairs, wonders if he needs anything. Or if space is what he wants. Then the clunking, throttled sound of the bathtub tap and the old water heater. June relaxes, or tries to, turning to a crossword for distraction, willing herself not to invade him with her listening.
He comes back after a while, settles finally into the overstuffed sofa, still awkward, his hair damp and uncombed. “I didn’t mean to just disappear. When I saw the tub . . . It’s been so long.” The good fingers of his left hand stroke the scars on his right. June can’t tell if he knows he’s doing that, or if it’s some kind of check that has become habit.
June sits beside him, trying to stay close without hovering. “Would you like tea? Or something more to eat?”
Alec stares past her, his eyes roving about the room. “I . . .” He turns back, focuses. “I’m sorry. I feel very off-kilter. Like I can’t quite tell if this is a dream.”
“I know,” she says. How to tell him that she too has come back from an entirely different world to find Fenbourne shifted and wrecked in ways she cannot ever quite grasp? Reality has become as slippery as the darting of a swallow under the eaves, and she is alone in the vastness of trying to manage her own confusion. June sighs. She can share her mourning with Alec without sharing her story. She will have to. For the rest of their lives, she will have to.
They talk into the evening, Alec halting and slow. He is clearly not ready to tell her what has happened to him in the camps, and of course she can’t tell him about her war, either. When he tries to ask her about the bombing, June freezes. He undoubtedly believes she was in England when it happened, that she would have been home for the funerals, and even considering the infinite extra layers left behind by her clandestine life is exhausting. She tells him the closest she can to the truth—she had not been back in Fenbourne yet when the vicarage was bombed.
“Ah,” he says. “Foreign Office kept you busy, then?”
“Rather,” she says, trying to see ahead in the conversation so she can steer as needed.
He nods. “Fellow in Germany had a girl at home, a Wren, off at the Isle of Wight.” He shrugs. “Glad you were safe in London.” His brow furrows. “More or less, in any event.”
She’s relieved when he doesn’t pursue it, relieved when she doesn’t have to obfuscate or make up stories. But it stings, just a bit. It rankles that he thinks she was here in England, a flower to be protected, her work not even worth asking about. As soon as she thinks it, though, she’s angry with herself—he is just back from nearly three years as a prisoner, and already she is expecting him to be his old self. When clearly he no longer is.
If only he didn’t look so haunted, it would be easier to let him chew his secrets at his own pace. But June can see it all gnawing at him. She pauses, trying to feel her way through the conversation.
“I’m grateful you were able to get word to me,” June says.
“I wish I could have managed more often.” He glances down at his hands. “And I wish I’d been able to write you myself.”
“But we all did as well as we could, didn’t we?” She pauses, trying not to drift too close to topics she mustn’t broach. “In any case,” she says brightly, “it was just always such a relief to hear from you.”
He almost smiles, but then his face closes off. “There was a priest, a chaplain. An American. Smasher, we called him. He was the fellow who helped me.” The ghost of the smile is gone, and when he looks up again, his gaze goes straight through her.
“Perhaps we can talk about him another time,” she says carefully. “If you like.”
“Perhaps,” Alec says. He focuses on her for just a moment before he gets to his feet and goes back to scrutinizing the room.
One step forward, two back, it seems. June stands, thinking to embrace him. She loops her fingers around his too-bony wrists. She can feel something between them, perhaps more memory than want, but something. A current. When their eyes meet, she feels their past as a jolt in her belly, and something in his face says he feels it, too. For a moment, the world seems to shift back into place. But then Alec looks down at his hands, sighs, and gently pulls away.
“I think I might need a bit of time to myself,” he says. “I don’t know how . . .” He makes a gesture that seems to include her, the cottage, perhaps all of England. “I’m sorry.”
“All right,” she says, working to keep her voice even. “There’s no rush, Alec.”
“Thank you,” he says. His shoulders sag a bit. “Good night, June.”
He goes up the stairs, stumbling a bit on the uneven carpet that he used to step over without a second thought, and June is left alone on the sofa. She can hear him moving upstairs, his boots treading heavily across the boards, and the creak of springs as he settles onto the bed. She doesn’t know if he’s going to sleep—it seems early, although she supposes he must be feeling as though it’s later, and the dark has come sooner than she’s used to. Perhaps he’s just sitting quietly by himself in his old room. She doesn’t know quite what she had expected for this first day together, but now she realizes it was far too much.
She stands, looks around. They can make a life here, for now, although there is not much holding either of them in Fenbourne as far as she knows. Not any longer. But first there is the matter of helping him be here, helping him recover, as much as that’s possible, from whatever his captors did to create that distance in his eyes and between the two of them.
She doesn’t know what to call it, even for herself. It’s not merely that he is more changed than she expected, more damaged. She feels as though there has been a shattering, a sundering of sorts, in what they had, and now they are in the dawn of rebuilding something new. What that new life is, she can’t quite say. His bedroom door is shut when she goes upstairs, and she tries not to feel it as a slap. Instead she lays her fingertips against the heavy wood and whispers a quick good-night to him.
By the time June falls asleep, her room lit by a waxing moon and the low fenland stars, her door slightly ajar in case he needs her in the night, she has convinced herself that she can fix this. Everything is different, but they are together now. She must believe that they are still them, although their configuration has shifted. But that is a puzzle she can solve. She believes that the boy she knew is still in there, cloaked in the layers of captivity and war, and that somewhere in those layers is a man who still loves her with his whole heart. The pressing thing now is that he needs her. She knows enough, and the rest will come.