(no subject)
Title: The Common Form
Characters: Union Jacks (I+II), Destroyer, Spitfire
Rating: PG perhaps.
Summary: Lord Falsworth muses on how things have changed.
Written in joint honor of Father's day (in UK) and ani bester's request for rare characters.
To an outsider, it would seem nothing has changed.
My son and I have been at loggerheads since he could talk. For a long time, I believed it drove him to his death, but never did I regret our conversations.
Better a son is wild than blindly obedient.
I thought if Brian and I fought, as we did, then he would be saved from my scars. I forgot that lies can take many forms.
What was it Kipling said? “If any asked why we died, say because our fathers lied.”
For the first time in a long time, last night, I thought of my father.
Of his pride, his anger, of our inability to communicate after I returned.
He wanted to pretend nothing had changed, when everything had. I had seen friends blown to pieces, seen a line of men cut down by machine fire, stepped over the rotting corpse of a friend, knowing full well I would create more of them before the day was done.
I had swam though gas, and been deafened by shells. Things could never be as they had been.
He could not accept this.
From the day I returned, to the day he died, we only spoke once. On the day of his death.
The doctors told me he had little time left, so I came into his room. It was the middle of May.
He looked up at me from his sick bed, a giant of a man worn thin by the disease that killed him and said, “It looks like it will rain this afternoon.”
“Yes.” I agreed.
He died an hour later. And it did rain.
I used to thank God that no matter what happened Brian and I would never get to that stage, that even if all we did was fight, we at least spoke.
Perhaps my father had it easier, he could not comprehend what I had seen, what I had done, but he could ignore it.
They banned the printing of the casualty lists, so the journalist printed blank columns where they should be. The images of the trenches...they were mostly only known about through the writings of poets, and while I knew and was friendly with many of them, he always hated poetry.
“Namby pamby wishy washy nonsense.” He used to call it.
Sometimes I wonder what he would have made of Brian. Whether if the cancer hadn’t killed him, the shock of his grandson would.
At least he could pretend.
I saw some of it when Brian was restored to me and more on the cinema’s screens. I can’t hide, but I can not understand. I don’t know if that’s better or worse.
Jac’s a bit like my father. She does an ostrich act, burying her head in the sand, going on like nothings changed. She talks about the season in London, about the nice young man she’s met, about the difficulties of getting good help. Goes on about it, as if nothing has changed. As though she wasn’t Spitfire.
Alright, I hung up my costume as soon as the Great War was over, but things were different then. The war ended with a treaty sighed at 11 o’clock on the 11th November. The Kaiser was in exile, and the Dutch refused to give him up.
But this war, it was a war of civilians. Of people. The war is over, but there is still much to do. Jac does her part, I can’t argue with that. She works like a real trooper. Only sleeps when she has to. But she...my little girl is like animated corpse. She doesn’t seem alive any more.
Sometimes I wonder if I argue with Brian to convince myself that he is alive. Jac and I...we never had that relationship. Jac was my daughter, so she took care of things. I never thought she would want anything else.
In that sense, I know I did her a great wrong, but I have no idea how to correct it.
So I listen to her talk of her new man, Crichton and try not imagine my father’s reaction. Heaven only knows he was dubious enough about my own marriage, to a woman whose family had made their money in fish. Crichton is a good man, and he loves Jac dearly, in spite of, or maybe even because of her scars.
Roger is still a fixture in Brian’s life. The war hasn’t changed that, indeed it seems to have strengthened the bond between them. I wish I could say I approve.
At the same time, the passion that shines through Brian, when he and Roger talk of the future, of their secret project is unmistaken.
Roger seems to be the only one who sees how much things have changed. I’ve caught him looking at me more than once, as though trying to understand my reaction.
He’s changed, certainly, he’s more...vitriolic seems the best term. Not that Roger Audrey was ever obedient. They didn’t call him Dynamite for nothing.
They fight more than previously did, but not about things that matter. About the direction of their efforts.
Brian wants to find those responsible for what happened. To bring them to justice. In spite of everything’s that’s happened, everything he’s seen, everything the yanks have told him, he still believes this is possible.
On a level, I think he has to. It’s the only way to reassure himself that it is truly over. How can he not wonder that, when he was lived through two world wars?
Roger, while I have no doubt that he wants to see justice done, is looking to the future. “This can not happen again!” I’ve heard him argue more than once. He wants to be proactive in tackling the threats before they reach the levels they were at 6 years ago.
On a level I understand it. He was brainwashed by the Nazi and then worked behind their lines. Jac and I can not comprehend what happened to him. Brian can perhaps grasp half or maybe only a quarter of it.
I can even support him. If we had acted sooner...but it’s pointless dwelling on the past. We are here in the year of our Lord 1949 and nothing will change it.
Jac steers clear of these arguments, refusing to comment, even when they ask. I think on a level, she supports them both, but is uneasy about the tactics they use.
No war, no matter how noble it’s motives, is ever clean and this one hides some pretty big secrets.
Where do I stand?
I don’t.
I could not undo the deaths and injuries of those killed in the trenches. I could not stop the war starting, I could not stop it swallowing up my son and my daughter for that matter, I could not stop my brother taking my legs. I can not stop what is happening between me and my son.
That doesn’t mean I do not wish I could.