Kitty had smiled then and Leonard had wondered why he’d never noticed that dimple in her left cheek before.
He danced a lot that night. There was something of a man shortage in the village, and thus he was bemused (and pleased) to find himself in high demand. Girls who’d never noticed him were now lining up to dance.
It was getting late when he glanced over and spotted Kitty at the cloth-covered table on the edge of the dance floor. She’d been busy all night serving cucumber sandwiches and slices of Victoria sponge, and her hair was coming loose from its fastenings. The song was ending when she caught his eye and waved, and Leonard excused himself from his partner.
‘Well, Miss Barker,’ he said as he reached her, ‘a resounding success, I should say.’
‘You should say correctly. We raised far more than I dared hope, and all of it for the war effort. My only regret is that I haven’t danced all evening.’
‘That is regrettable indeed. Surely it wouldn’t be right for you to call it a night without at least one foxtrot?’
That dimple again when she smiled.
His hand rested in the small of her back as they danced, and he was aware of the smoothness of her dress, the fine gold chain around her neck, the way her hair shone.
He offered to walk her home and they spoke easily and naturally. She was relieved that the dance had gone well; she’d been worried.
The night had come in a little cooler, and Leonard offered her his coat.
She asked about the front and he found that it was easier to talk about it in the dark. He spoke and she listened, and when he’d said as much as he was able, he told her that it seemed like a bad dream when he was back here, walking with her, and she said that in that case she wouldn’t ask any more. They started reminiscing instead about the Easter Fair of 1913, the day they met, and Kitty reminded him that they’d walked up to the top of the hill behind the village, the three of them – Kitty, Leonard and Tom – and sat against the massive oak tree with its view over the whole of southern England.
‘I said that we could see all the way to France, remember?’ said Kitty. ‘And you corrected me. You said, “that’s not France, it’s Guernsey”.’
‘What a prig I was.’
‘You were not.’
‘I absolutely was.’
‘Well, maybe a little priggish.’
‘Hey!’
She laughed and took his hand and said, ‘Let’s climb the hill now.’
‘In the dark?’
‘Why not?’
They ran together up the hill, and Leonard had a fleeting realisation that it was the first time in over a year that he’d run without an attendant fear for his life; the thought, the feeling, the freedom was exhilarating.
In the darkness beneath the tree at the top of the hill above their village, Kitty’s face had been lit by the silver moon, and Leonard had lifted a finger to trace a line from the top of her nose, ever so lightly, all the way down until he reached her lips. He hadn’t been able to help himself. She was perfect, a marvel.
Neither of them spoke. Kitty, still wearing his coat around her shoulders, knelt across him and began to unbutton his shirt. She slipped her hand beneath the cotton and held it flat against his heart. He brought his hand to cup her face, his thumb grazing her cheek, and she leaned into his touch. He pulled her towards him and they kissed and in that moment the die was cast.
Afterwards, they dressed in silence and sat together beneath the tree. He offered her one of his cigarettes and she smoked it before saying, matter-of-factly, ‘Tom can never know.’
Leonard had nodded agreement, for of course Tom must never know.
‘It was a mistake.’
‘Yes.’
‘This blasted war.’
‘It was my fault.’
‘No. It wasn’t. But I love him, Leonard. I always have.’
‘I know.’
He’d taken her hand then and squeezed it, for he did know. He knew, too, that he also loved Tom.
They saw one another twice again before he returned to the front, but only in passing and always in the presence of other people. And it was strange because in those moments he knew that it was true, that Tom need never know and that they would be able to go on as if nothing had happened.
It wasn’t until he returned to the front a week later, and the weight of the place descended, that he began to turn things over in his mind, always arriving at the same question – a boy’s question, small and needy, which filled him with self-loathing as it grazed his consciousness: why did his brother seem so often to come out on top?
Tom was one of the first men Leonard saw when he reached the trenches, his dirt-smeared face erupting in a grin as he cocked his tin hat. ‘Welcome back, Lenny. Did you miss me?’
It was about half an hour later, as they shared a mug of trench tea, that Tom asked after Kitty.
‘I only saw her once or twice.’
‘She mentioned in her letter. Good stuff. I don’t suppose you and she had any special conversations?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Nothing private?’
‘Don’t be stupid. We hardly spoke.’
‘I see leave has done nothing to improve your mood. I just meant –’ his brother couldn’t keep the smile from his face – ‘Kitty and I are engaged to be married. I was sure she wouldn’t be able to resist telling you. We promised that we wouldn’t tell anyone until after the war – her father, you know.’
Tom looked so pleased with himself, so boyishly happy, that Leonard couldn’t help but give him a great big slapping hug. ‘Congratulations, Tom, I’m really pleased for you both.’
Three days later his brother was dead. Killed by a piece of flying shrapnel. Killed by loss of blood in the long dark hours after the shrapnel hit, lying out in no man’s land as Leonard listened from the trenches. (Help me, Lenny, help me.) All they managed to salvage from him, from Tom of the garden wall, Tom the breath-holding champion, Tom the boy most likely, was a cologne-scented letter from Kitty and a dirty old silver tuppence.
No, Lucy Radcliffe’s talk of guilt and self-forgiveness had been kindly meant, but whatever similarities she thought she had perceived between them, she’d been mistaken. Life was complicated; people made mistakes, certainly. But they were different. Their guilt with respect to their dead siblings was not the same.
Kitty had started writing to him in France after Tom’s death, and Leonard back to her, and when the war was over and he returned to England, she had come to see him one night in his bedsit in London. She brought a bottle of gin and Leonard helped her to drink it and they talked about Tom and they both cried. Leonard had presumed when she left that that would be the end of it. Somehow, though, Tom’s death had tied them together. They were two moons bound in orbit around his memory.
In the beginning, Leonard told himself he was looking after Kitty for his brother, and perhaps if that night in 1916 hadn’t happened he might have believed it. The truth, though, was more complicated and less honourable and he couldn’t hide from it for long. Both he and Kitty knew it was their disloyalty that night that had brought on Tom’s death. He was aware that it wasn’t entirely rational, but that didn’t make it any less true. Lucy Radcliffe was right, though: a person couldn’t go on indefinitely under the weight of so much guilt. They needed to justify their action’s devastating effect, and so they agreed, without discussion, to believe that what had happened between them that night on the hill was love.
They stayed together. Bound by grief and guilt. Hating the reason for their bond, yet unable each to let the other go.
They didn’t speak about Tom any more, not directly. But he was always with them. He was in the fine gold band with its pretty little diamond that Kitty wore on her right hand; he was in the way she looked at Leonard sometimes with faint surprise, as if she’d expected to see someone else; he was in every dark corner of every room, every atom of sunlit air outside.