Owed By So Many to So Few (Part 1)
Title: Owed By So Many to So Few (the ‘Not Quite What You Expected’ WWII AU)
Fandom: Generation Kill (AU)
Characters: Brad/Nate, Ray, Walt, assorted OCs
Ratings: NC-17 (part 1 pg-13 for language)
Disclaimer: Totally fictitious...vaguely based on the characters portrayed in the miniseries and various things I've read about the time period.
Notes: written for the combat_jack porn meme prompt “WWII AU: Nate Fick is a young British farmer who rescues an injured soldier, Brad. Sex Hurt Comfort etc” I needed a little backstory for the porn...and 31 pages later, here we are! De-anon-ed so people don't have to read across the comment threads. This was originally posted at generation_kill , but that link is down and people have asked...Epigraph is General Patton, cut-tags and title are Winston Churchill, whole thing is kind of inspired by this article from the Telegraph.
The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo.
If Sergeant Brad Colbert lies flat and absolutely still in his infirmary bed and cranes his head to the right until the pull of his casted arm borders on agony, he can just make out a sliver of sky through the infirmary window. He discovered this trick the day he arrived on the ward after smashing his left arm in a training accident, and now he seeks out that little bit of blue whenever things become too much. He projects himself out there, into that cold clean blue, when the wireless spouts news of more German victories in Europe while he’s stuck here vegetating in an English hospital , no good to anyone (no Christmas in Berlin this year, either). He seeks it out when the doctors tell him his arm hasn’t set right, that breaking and recasting will keep him out of ‘planes for the next six weeks. He’s pretty much started turning his head toward the sky automatically as soon as the kid in the next bed opens his mouth.
“C’mon, buddy,” Ray whines. “It’s fucking Christmas!”
“I’m Jewish,” Brad retorts.
Ray snorts, his eyerolling unimpeded by the giant dressing that covers the burns on his face. “Seriously-how do you get to be such a moron? I mean, I know I’m starting a little late, Brad, but if I really worked at emulating you in every regard, do you think I, too, could ascend to your heights of moronitude? That would be my dream.”
Brad ignores him, squelches the desire to explain that ‘moronitude’ is not a word, and concentrates on his little piece of sky. If it weren’t for stupid Trombley mis-reading the goddamn landing checklist, he would be out there right now. Close to heaven, Brad thinks to himself: speed, solitude, and no one can touch me.
Ray, of course, keeps talking. Brad has known him for two weeks, and heard his entire life story in the first hour of their acquaintance. Ray grew up in the States, in the heart of the Appalachian coal belt, carrying a wrench from the time he could walk. Nearly two years ago, back when the US was still a neutral power and Americans couldn’t legally enlist in the British Royal Air Force, Ray had lied his way into a mechanic’s job by swearing he was Canadian, of all things. So instead of doing his bit on the homefront in Jerkville, Kentucky working some essential-to-the-war-effort job for time-and-a-half, he is putting out fires with his face as an RAF mechanic. Clearly, he lacks the slightest sense of self-preservation, an observation that is confirmed when he sees a familiar face out on the ward and calls for reinforcements.
“Doc? Hey, Doc! Come in here and tell Brad to stop being such a fucking killjoy,” he shouts to the passing Corpsman.
Doc sticks his head through the doors that separate the ‘Lightly Wounded’ from the rest of the infirmary. “Corporal Person,” he says politely, “please speak up. I would be delighted to watch the Matron act on her threat to wash your mouth out with soap.”
Brad snorts. Doc and the hospital’s head nurse have been battling it out for as long as he’s been here. There’s a pool going among the Lightly Wounded about who will prevail. Ray says it’s unpatriotic to bet against Doc, but Brad figures they’re all on the same side now. Besides, betting that Matron will ever cede any ground to a noncommissioned med student seconded from the US Navy is like burning money.
“Got the place to yourselves, hmmm?” Doc walks down the aisle between empty beds to Brad’s tiny window, which he opens a crack. He lights a cigarette and sighs the smoke into the cold December air. Everyone else smokes like chimneys-on the wards, in the surgery, they even package cigarettes with the fucking meals-but Doc has some crazy theory about tobacco smoke being bad for patients. (“Probably bad for all of us,” he told Brad once, “clogs up the lungs.” “I don’t see you quitting,” Brad had retorted sharply; he’d just gotten the news about re-setting his arm and he was not feeling kindly toward the medical profession. But Doc had just smirked-Brad’s never heard him laugh-and said, “Well, who wants to live forever, anyway?”)
“That’s what I was telling you,” Ray squawks, even though he wasn’t. “Everyone else has left for the holidays, except Mr. Doom-and-Gloom over here.”
“That’s Sergeant Doom, to you, Corporal,” Brad says mildly, accepting the cigarette Doc offers him.
“They…left for the holidays?” Doc holds out the cigarette case to Ray, who takes two and sticks one behind his ear.
“The VADs fucking farmed out everyone who could walk, sent them to spend the week with locals who want to help the war effort by ‘hosting an airman far from home,’” Brad can taste the sarcasm in his voice.
“But not you?” Doc is examining the square of cardstock left on the window-ledge, the little one that assigns Sgt. B. Colbert (USAAF) and Corp’l. J. Person (RAF) to Mathilda Farm from 23 December 1942 to 1 January 1943.
“I don’t like charity,” Brad says, shortly.
“How’s the arm?” Doc asks, suddenly, changing the subject. Brad wiggles the fingers at the edge of the cast. He’s fine, really. As he keeps telling people. But the fucking retarded chain of command won’t believe him without medical clearance and his case is ‘not a priority.’
“It’s fine.”
“And how’s your head?”
Brad glances over at the doctor. It gets dark early here in December and in the dying afternoon light from the window, Doc looks more tired than usual. Still, he’d have to be fucking catatonic to mix up a diagnosis like that. “Ray’s the one who was dropped on his head as a baby. My head is fine…”
“I ask,” Doc says casually, picking a flake of tobacco off his tongue, “because it sounds like you might need to have it surgically removed from your ass! Has it occurred to you that the hospital staff will have enough trouble taking care of the patients who can’t be moved? The last thing they need over their holiday is two more. I’m telling Matron you’ll be gone as soon as...” he glances again at the card, “as soon as Mr. Fick can scrounge up the gas ration coupons to get you out to his farm.” The doctor runs a hand across his face, fucking exhausted, the fight gone out of him as suddenly as it came. “Look, this farmer was probably too ancient for the last war, much less this one. Go out there, let the missus feed you tea and some inedible Christmas cake, listen when the old man tells you how there were real wars back in his day, be a goddamned human being for a few days.” He closes the window and pulls the black-out curtains across it with a snap. “For fuck’s sake-it’s Christmas,” he calls over his shoulder as he stalks out to find the Matron.
Brad sighs and drops back on his pillow. “I'm Jewish,” he tells the ceiling.
++++
It turns out that Farmer Fick gets to keep his ration coupons; Matron is apparently so eager to see them off that she finds space in an RAF truck-lorry, Brad reminds himself; people here call them lorries-headed out to the farm the next morning. It is a vaguely scenic trip. The hospital porter who is driving stops humming long enough to explain that the military basically bought up the entire town of Tangmere in 1939 so they could expand the Great-War-era airfield. Most of the families were relocated to make space for RAF personnel.
“Nearly everyone else who was leaving for the holidays had to go by train,” Stafford explains, “on account of there being so few families left here.”
“Guess we’re just lucky.”
“Oh, no,” the porter says, cheerfully oblivious to Brad's sarcasm, “Matron said she rather thought you’d be a hard case, so she assigned you somewhere you could get to last minute-like.”
Ray, squashed between Brad and the gearbox, fails to turn his laugh into a cough. Brad glowers; he hates many, many things right now, of which being predictable is not the least.
“Of course, don’t tell the girl that. She thinks you picked Mathilda at the ward Christmas raffle.”
“What girl?!” Ray perks up.
“The Fick girl. She lives out at the Farm with her brother. In fact, it was probably her idea to have you. Her brother’s a little…well, nice enough, I’m sure, but rather a recluse.”
Great, Brad thinks to himself. Fantastic. True British eccentrics. He can only hope Ray’s deplorable sister-fucking tendencies do not extend to other people’s sisters. “How come they were allowed to stay in the area when everyone else had to move?”
“Oh, I expect it’s because of Mr. Fick’s work with the-“ the vehicle suddenly jerks to the side, sending Ray into Brad and Brad into the door. “Sorry!” Stafford says, chipper, “spot of damage to the road-it’s impossible to get anything fixed properly these days.”
“You were saying?” Brad asks when they’ve run over three more potholes and pulled off onto a tributary road.
“Was I? Oh, that’s right-it’s the Farm, I imagine. You see, it’s rather a large farm and now turned over entirely to war-work. Keeps us all from getting scurvy down in the mess hall in Tangmere. Ever so much more convenient than having veg and things shipped all the way in from Scotland…Not many Land Girls, though,” Stafford adds mournfully.
“Ever so,” Brad agrees, vowing to drown himself in the goddamn Channel before settling for a Scottish Land Girl. If Stafford realizes he’s being made fun of, he doesn’t react. He hums all the way to Mathilda, where he drops both men and their kit bags off in the dooryard.
“Want me to bring in the bags, then, gents? You say the word,” Stafford offers, mindful of Brad’s cast.
“Uhm? No, no, that’s fine. We’re fine, thanks.” Brad is staring at the…well, he suppose it would have to be called a farmhouse. But only because it is, allegedly, on a farm. Otherwise, it bears no resemblance to the farmhouses he’s familiar with. He’d spent two years digging ditches all over the Pacific Northwest with the WPA, and a year before that bumming odd jobs across California. He’s seen his fair share of farms. What Fick and his sister have here is a mansion. Brad remembers his father’s lessons in architecture: the style is what is called Federalist in the States, neo-Classical in Europe-broad, symmetrical brick white columns and a cupola.
“Holy shit,” Ray mutters.
“Happy Christmas!” Stafford calls, backing the tru-lorry down the drive.
Apparently someone inside hears him; the door flies open and a girl bounces out. “Are you our soldiers?! Happy Christmas! Nate-” she turns back to call over her shoulder. “Nate, they’re here!”
She bounds over to Brad, grabs his hand, and pumps it fervently. “Hullo. I’m Louisa. Who are you? It’s lovely to meet you. Do you like gingerbread? You’re very tall. We thought you weren’t coming. I thought you weren’t, anyway, but Nate said you would. Nate-” she turns again to call for her brother, only to find that he’s come out of the house and is standing right behind her.
“Hullo. Nate Fick,” Nate shakes Ray’s hand and then Brad’s. “Happy Christmas!”
They stand awkwardly in the drive for a moment. Brad is about to explain his religious affiliation (third time lucky) when Ray bursts, “Oh! You’re YOU.”
“Uhm, yes. Yes, I suppose I am,” Nate says affably, and ever afterward, Brad will think of this when he hears someone mention ‘British phlegm.’ This is usually the part of the conversation where he apologizes for his whiskey tango countryman, but it’s just dawned on him-as it has on Ray-that this Nate Fick is the only Mr. Fick. There is no elderly farmer, just this kid, somewhere between eighteen and thirty-five. At precisely that moment, Nate reaches to smooth his windruffled hair off his forehead and Brad realizes that he’s holding a raveled woolen sock. Farmer Fick, of Mathilda Farm, Tangmere, West Sussex, England, Great Britain who should, by rights, be out defending the Empire against the marauding Hun is instead whiling away this December morning darning socks with his kid sister.
Jesus fuck. Eleven days with civilians.
“Right.” Brad gives up: “Happy Christmas.”
++++
Upon entering the house, however, Brad gains a new appreciation for wool. He also realizes why Nate is wearing not one but two sweaters. He has been in warmer meat-lockers.
“Sorry,” Nate apologizes immediately. “It’s impossible to keep the place heated on the allotment of coal we get. We’ve shut up most of the house, but one must make do.”
“Would you like a scarf?” Louisa produces one from somewhere in the poorly lit entry hall. “I made it myself!”
“Lou started knitting socks for the Red Cross and now there’s no stopping her,” Nate says as Brad finds himself engulfed in gray wool. “Uhm, Lou, why don’t you show Corporal Person his room so he can get settled in.”
“Super!” Louisa wrestles Ray’s kitbag out of his hands and sets off across what seems to be an acre of floor. On the way, she makes polite conversation: “D’you have a favorite princess? Mine’s Margaret Rose-she’s so stylish. But I do like Elizabeth's dogs. After I show you your room, I’ll bring you to see our dogs. Nate says it’s wrong to pick favorites because they’re just people but I think…”
Brad stares after them. “What a…precocious child.”
Nate’s expression suggests he knew that wasn’t Brad’s first adjective. “Kind of you to say,” he replies, dryly. “If you’d like, I can show you to your room. You might like a chance to write letters or something before lunch. I’m afraid we’ll be eating in the kitchen-the heating, you know.”
Brad makes sympathetic noises about the heating; if he has to comment on the difficulty of finding good servants these days, he’ll hitch right back to the RAF infirmary, Matron or no. Fortunately, Nate does not seem overly given to small talk. He walks Brad around the first floor. The entry hall is a two-story space, lit from above by windows in the cupola, with a gallery running around the second floor. “Library’s here, dining room’s next to it,” Nate gestures to doors opening off the checkerboard tiles. “Other side is the drawing room, the morning room, and the music room, but they’re shut up now. The Old Wing is closed up, too. Kitchen is back that way, along with the conservatory and the estate offices, used mostly by the Ministry of Ag folks, so you may see them about.”
Nate leads Brad up the staircase to the rooms that open off the gallery. He has somehow winkled the kitbag right out of Brad's own hand. He also knows to stay on Brad’s good side to avoid knocking the awkward plaster cast. “All the rooms on this side are shut up, nursery and such.” He gestures across the hall. “The girls’ rooms are on that side-Lou and my older sister, Em-she’ll be in for Christmas if she can get a train. Corporal Person will be in that corner room (“Please,” Brad interrupts, “call him Ray. Otherwise, you’ll just encourage him.”). And you’re right in here,” Nate concludes, leading Brad to the door next to Ray’s. “We’ve opened up a second bath-it’s that little door next to, uh, Ray’s. And I’m right at the corner if you need anything at night. We leave torches at the head of the stairs. It gets awfully dark.”
Flashlights, Brad translates, banishing the image of wandering around with a burning branch when he needs to take a leak at night. Looking up, he realizes that the intricate glasswork of the cupola has been painstakingly painted black, as have the mullioned windows at each corner of the gallery. The rest are hung with heavy blackout curtains. It puts the house in perpetual evening.
“Quite strict rules about blackouts, this close to the airfield,” Nate explains quietly, following Brad’s gaze. His voice sounds so hollow in the big empty hall that Brad finds himself-suddenly, unexpectedly-feeling sorry for this guy who's had to shut up and give away portions of what must have been a magical place to grow up.
“Who was Mathilda?” Brad asks, to fill the silence.
“Oh, an Empress. First woman to rule England, though the claim is disputed. No relation; I am assured of this,” Nate smiles as though he can read Brad’s thoughts about the English aristocracy. “My great-grandfather tried to dignify his origins by setting himself up as a landed gentleman; he made all his money inventing some sort of gauge for rail cars. He rather felt women had got a raw deal from history; the home farm is called Eleanor House, after Eleanor of Aquitaine.”
“Interesting choice.”
“My family,” Nate shrugs fondly, “are interesting people.”
“It’s just you and your sister?”
“Right. Em’s doing a training course in London, so it’s just me and Lou, rattling about here.”
Brad is trying to decide if he can politely ask about Nate’s profession, or his future plans-he looks perfectly healthy: surely he intends to enlist before long? Maybe when his sister returns from her course?-and Nate takes that moment to excuse himself. “I should make sure Louisa isn’t talking Ray’s ear off or trying to get him to adopt one of her kittens or something. We’ll eat at about noon, in the kitchen as I told you, and dinner at eight. Lou and I generally spend the evening in the library-it’s warmest-and you and, er, Ray are welcome to join us. Also, we…uhm, it’s rather a tradition that we dress for dinner on Christmas Eve, although please don’t feel that you have to…” Nate trails off.
“Thank you,” Brad realizes this is the first time he’s said this. “Thank you very much. For everything. Ray and I would be delighted to participate.” He makes a mental note to remind Ray about forty times before dinner the next night. The VADs had asked them to clear out their tiny infirmary storage lockers and so, tucked at the bottom of his bag, Brad has most of his uniform-certainly enough to pass muster at dinner in a half-empty country house with a 4F master and a ten-year-old mistress.
Brad’s room was evidently brought out of retirement just for him. It smells like lemon furniture polish, except for the giant bed, which smells like lavender. The bed and wardrobe are huge and vaguely art noveau-probably top of the line about twenty years ago. An armchair by the fireplace is stacked with towels and blankets whose thickness and warmth pre-date rationing. In one of the pigeonholes of the corner writing desk, he finds a stack of brittle pasteboard squares printed with ‘Mathilda Farm, Tangmere’ and is suddenly transported to his tenth-grade literature class at Lincoln High School. Visiting cards. He’d always thought Jane Austen had invented those as a plot device. The other pigeonholes yield two dried pen nibs and a photograph of three carefully posed children. Two of the children-a toddler and a little girl with a hairbow the size of her head-are young enough to be indistinguishable; behind them stands a boy in a sailor suit, maybe ten years old. He is looking forthrightly into the camera, one arm on his sister’s shoulder. In the black-and-white photograph, his eyes are gray and his expression is preternaturally serious. What would it take, Brad wonders, to make Nate Fick laugh?
++++
Hanging clothes with one good arm takes a while, even when you have few clothes and a wardrobe the size of Trafalgar Square. Finished with his only chore, Brad meanders down to the first floor. Nate has disappeared; Ray seems to be amusing himself in the kitchen by spinning lies about Canada to the little girl, Louisa. (“Have I ever killed a bear? Hah! Have I ever killed a bear, she asks?! Sweetheart, let me tell you about Canadian bears…”). Brad tries the handle on one of the heavy wooden doors and finds himself in the library. This room really is warmer, mostly because a row of French doors trap sunlight. A low table by the fireplace contains a half-finished wool something, the needles still stuck in it, and a pattern…looks like Louisa is trying to make balaclavas for the Merchant Marines. The titles on the shelves run heavily to the classics-lots of Greek, even more Latin-with a few titles in French and a set of Dickens. There is a surprising amount of poetry. Other than a collection of pamphlets put out by the War Information Board (MAKE DO AND MEND: The Board of Trade Guide to Making Your Clothes Last!) Brad cannot see anything more recent than a 1927 Rudyard Kipling reprint. There is a week-old copy of the London Times; someone has been filling out the crossword in ink. Brad scoffs audibly when he sees that fifteen down has been left blank (11 letters, meaning ‘lofty and king-like’) and decides to help Nate along by filling it in. He sits down on a divan to page through the paper as best he can with his functional hand. Three hours later, he wakes up. Somewhere a clock is chiming. Twelve o’clock is lunch, Brad reminds himself. In the kitchen. Because of the heating. He stands up as the details come back to him, surprised at himself; he hasn’t dropped off in the middle of the day since…well, he can’t remember the last time. He looks out the French windows. Beyond the terrace, beyond the lawn and the trees that edge it, he can see a small silver flash taking off from the Tangmere base; he watches until its brightness becomes part of the sun.
Lunch is soup in the vast kitchen, with Lou’s currant buns for dessert. (Louisa proudly informs the assembled diners that one can make a hundred currant buns with one ration of sugar. Brad is not surprised by this statistic.) Dinner is more soup and Woolton pie. Both meals are eaten with various Home Service volunteers who have been assigned to keep the farm running while the original workers are off serving King and Country. A man named Poke tries to start a discussion on Indian independence, though it doesn’t really catch. There’s a reporter from a London daily, formerly an Agony Aunt columnist, hoping to make his big break by writing about the homefront. Lou divides her attention between Ray and a young man named who everyone calls Walt, because his original name is totally unpronounceable.
“What’s his story?” Brad asks Nate, because he’s never seen Ray attend to another person’s conversation as closely as he does now. The Corporal seems to be fascinated by Walt’s mouth.
“Walt? He came over from Poland to study in London, and then, of course, Poland was invaded. So now he can’t go back-the Polish government is in exile. So the Land Labor people sent him here. Much to Louisa’s delight. I rather think she has a crush.”
“Hmm,” Brad notices that the tips of Walt’s ears flush whenever Ray talks to him. “Her currant buns are wasted on that one,” he remarks without really thinking, and then wishes he could bite his tongue. Even an American bumpkin knows shocking your host is not good manners.
Nate, though, is not shocked. He just glances over at Walt and Ray playing goo-goo eyes like a pair of fucking teenagers and says placidly, “Yes, I see what you mean.” Then he goes back to eating his soup.
Brad nearly chokes on a current. “And you don’t…mind?”
Nate looks surprised by Brad’s surprise. And then he laughs. He leans across the table, close enough that Brad can smell him (lavender, like the sheets; it must be something they put in the laundry soap). “I have been assured that there is no place more homoerotic than the military, but as a public school graduate, I venture to nominate a British boys’ boarding school for second place in that particular contest.”
++++
After lunch, Brad walks seven miles back along the road that Stafford had taken from Tangmere. Commerce in the town consists primarily of the pub, the tobacconist, and the British equivalent of a PX, but Ray knows a guy who knows a guy. For the first time in his life, Brad buys Christmas presents. When in Rome, he’d explained to Ray, you observe-you do not admire, and you sure as hell do not go skulking around so that ‘a guy’ can set you up with certain unmentionables. And yet, here he is. (“Hmm…somebody’s getting coal in his stocking this year,” Ray had mused innocently. “In his nice, hand-darned wool stocking, perhaps, if he plays his cards right.”) Purchasing completed, he sits in the pub and writes a letter home. Another first: he actually has more to say than ‘I am well and hope this letter finds you the same.’ By the time he arrives back at Mathilda, it is time for tea, which is mostly hot water, taken in the library. Nate sits at his desk and does some sort of paperwork, but Brad is called upon to judge Lou’s charades contest. Ray accuses him of cheating.
That night, Nate goes from room to room, pulling blackout curtains and lighting fires in the grates. Brad suspects the true inhabitants of Mathilda Farm have been scrounging coal for weeks to make the house as warm as it is…and even that is not terribly warm. They have probably been cold a long time. (“Keeping calm and carrying on is not working out so well,” Ray had observed, noticing the motto on one of the War Ministry pamphlets in the library. “Maybe they should try bombing shit and raising hell…”).
Brad settles under a small mountain of blankets, only to find that he cannot sleep. At first, he thinks it’s because he napped earlier in the day, but a fourteen-mile hike to town and back should have been enough to tire him out. At about 1:00 AM, he realizes what is missing: the sound of Ray breathing. Actually, the sound of anyone breathing. Hospital ward, barracks, troop transport, WPA lodging-he’s just used to having someone else out there in the darkness, even if they’re fast asleep. He tells himself not to be a baby, reminds himself to enjoy the luxury of having this whole room to himself. It doesn’t work. Finally, he remembers the flashlights out on the landing and all the books in the library below. He wouldn’t run the batteries down-surely just a few pages of Charles Dickens would be enough to send him off to dreamland.
The air in the hallway outside his bedroom is so cold, Brad curses before he can stop himself. He is stumbling toward where he thinks the flashlight might be when he hears a door open.
“Lou?” Nate calls quietly.
“Uh, no. It’s just me. Brad.”
“Oh.” Suddenly a flashlight beam flicks on and Brad can see Nate standing in his doorway. He wears a sweater over his pajamas and lumpy socks on his feet; his hair is pillow-flat on one side. “Sorry”-Brad will never become accustomed to the British habit for apologizing first thing-“I thought you were Lou. And, uhm…do you need anything?”
“Oh, no. I just. I can’t sleep, so I thought I might-”
“It’s the cold, isn’t it?” Nate shakes his head ruefully. “I am sorry about that. The rest of us are used to it, but I imagine it’s quite different from being in hospital. Would you like a jumper?”
Before Brad can demur, Nate turns back into his room, taking the light with him.
“It’s not the cold, really,” Brad insists, following him. “I’m just…”
“A cardigan might fit best over your cast,” Nate appears with one. “Lou has been collecting jumpers; she reuses the wool for her projects.”
“…used to sleeping with someone. That is,” Brad is astonished to find himself blushing, “you know, someone else in the room.”
Nate blinks in the light. “Oh.” And then he smiles. “I know quite what you mean; I had the same trouble myself when I left school and went up to university. But that, at least, is more easily mended than the heating. You’re quite welcome to the spare bed in here.”
The whole conversation is conducted at a whisper; the need for quiet and the small circle of artificial light makes this meeting seem strangely intimate. That-and the desire to make sure Nate doesn’t think he’s a wimp about the cold-is the only reason Brad can think of for accepting Nate’s offer. Before he’s entirely sure what is happening, Nate has banked the fire in the guest room and hauled blankets and pillows to the narrow twin bed that matches his own. In the morning, Brad will realize how ridiculous it all was-‘don’t like your huge and comfortable spare room? Not a problem! Let’s just move you in the middle of the night.’ But somehow, in the wee small hours, Nate made it seem totally reasonable, even normal. (Brad is not surprised to find out in the next few days that, in addition to running the Farm, Nate is also the local air raid warden. He is exactly the sort of person you would want in command during an emergency). In five minutes, Brad is ensconced in a new bed; in ten minutes, he can hear Nate breathing, even and quiet, from the other side of the room. And then, he is asleep.
++++
He wakes up at 5:00, when Nate goes out to see to the milking (Mathilda apparently keeps one cow-named Moo, Nate explains in a whisper when Brad asks where he’s going, “Lou named it when she was a baby”), drags himself back to his own room. Somehow, now that the light is peeking in at the edges of the blackout curtain, he manages to drift back off to sleep for a few hours. He scrounges breakfast in the cavernous kitchen, makes himself useful by toasting bread one-handed and scrambling eggs with condensed milk for various farm staff who wander in. One of the farm managers, Patterson, offers to walk him around the operation, so Brad gets to see a little of it. It is Christmas Eve, so any of the workers who could get away have done so. Patterson himself leaves after lunch; Nate drives him and a few other stragglers to the train station in Chichester when he goes to pick up his sister.
Em Fick is tall like Nate and dark like Louisa, a true middle child. She brings current newspapers and imitation coffee from London and is not at all surprised to find her siblings have invited two random soldiers and a Polish civilian to share Christmas Eve dinner. “One year it was a traveling salesman,” she reminisces, “Another time it was most of Nate’s fifth form class, for some reason. And the year of the railroad strike, I think we had nearly everyone who got stranded at Chichester station. Robbie threatened to sleep in the snow if he was put out of his bed. Lou, run out and get the big package from the car, but don’t let Nate see,” she teases, right in front of Nate. “And now, I am gasping for a cup of tea.”
The flurry of arrival disperses-Nate to attend to more paperwork in the library; Lou, squealing, to the car, Walt and Ray trailing behind her. Em and Brad are left in the entrance hall. “Who’s Robbie?” Brad asks, finding himself unsurprisingly charmed by the newest addition to the family Fick.
“Our brother,” Em says, and her voice aches.
“Oh.” Brad thinks of the infant in that picture he found, and of Nate sleeping in a small twin bed when there are half a dozen empty bedrooms available. He doesn’t have to ask for details: he knows what happens to young men in a world at war. “I’m very sorry.”
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Part 2