Page 86 of These Old Lies

Once he was satisfied that they were decent, he pulled Charlie away from the bookcases and down into the chair, cuddling his lover in his arms. Wordlessly and still boneless, Charlie nestled against his chest.

Together they watched the embers of the fire die down.

29 Thiepval Gate

Thiepval Gate, France, 31 July 1932 / Charlie

Much like the battlefield itself, the memorial to the Somme was located in a seemingly random part of Northern France.

The rain had continued from the night before and was now pelting down, providing an authenticity of mud to the event. It was the only element that felt genuine. The rest of the celebration, from the festooned grandstand to the men and women milling in their Sunday best, were at odds with how Charlie remembered the Somme.

Huddling under an edge of the grandstand, Charlie fought the urge to light a cigarette. He hadn’t slept after the fiasco at Ned’s hotel, and the guilt and confusion hadn’t faded either. What was it about this place that brought out the worst of his nature?

Ned’s arrival was impossible to miss, even in this swarm of people, he stood head and shoulders above the rest. If Ned was disturbed from the night before at the hotel, there was no sign of it on his face, impassive and polite as he gestured towards the memorial. Ned was in command, of himself, of this conversation, of this whole bloody event.

Distantly, Charlie heard a call for attendees to take their seats. With a muttered curse, he stepped out to take his seat.

???

The Somme. Hell on earth for three years. Where the hopes and futures of entire communities were erased in the span of an hour. Where tens ofthousands were lost without a grave, bodies so destroyed that they became indistinguishable from the mud that they had died in. Where Charlie had begun to lose his mind.

Charlie probably should have paid more attention to the ceremony. The Prince of Wales was there. So was the president of France. While most attendees would be able to comment afterward about how moving the speeches were, the details of the various pomp and circumstance, Charlie barely heard a word.

From the moment the ceremony started, the memorial itself had transfixed him. The unveiling was the whole purpose of the trip, but Charlie hadn’t put much thought into what he was expecting. If he had, he probably would have thought the memorial would be like Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square—a statue of the general on a pillar, surrounded by lions representing everyone else.

This was nothing like the column.

The memorial was a gigantic gate, towering over the flat fields of the Somme like a mediaeval cathedral. The scale was staggering, as if size alone could pay tribute to the grinding human sacrifice it commemorated.

The gate might have the scale of a natural wonder, but Thiepval was unflinchingly a work of man. Its statement was simple. ‘This is what we are capable of.’ The horror and the glory.

The nuances of its architecture probably meant more to someone properly educated like Ned, but to Charlie the plain red brick evoked the streets and homes of the working-class boys who had fought and died there.

It stood in testimony and in witness to what Charlie—and men like him—had lived through. He couldn’t deny that his war experience, from seeing a world outside of London to the knowledge he had killed men, cast the shape of him as much as it had broken him. Without the war, would he still have been as contrary? As curious about the world outside London? Would he have seen a man’s rough stubble and wondered what it would feel like to kiss him?

Ned’s words in front of the cathedral haunted him, that their war had not been the war to end all wars.

Charlie waited for his sense of adventure or patriotism or whatever hadmade him enlist in ’14 to surge up in him. To be ready to fight again, to pull the trigger on command. Instead, all he felt was a wave of nausea.

In the background, the ceremony droned on, but Charlie couldn’t make himself care. The man he was today and Corporal Charles Villiers, London Scottish Regiment, 1st London Territorial, had parted ways.

In the shadow of a memorial dedicated to the worst acts of Charlie’s life, he vowed he would never kill again.

???

After the formal speeches, Charlie ventured up to see the memorial in more detail. Only once inside the gate did the names of the fallen become properly visible. Endless lettering, stretching towards the sky and down again, covered every pillar. Each was distinct, and yet so many that they blurred together.

Charlie craved a cigarette. He probably could sneak in one with some of the others from the division before heading back to Arras, though. Resolved, Charlie turned on his heel and walked smack dab into a familiar broad chest.

The programme clutched in Ned’s hand trembled.

A small motion that shoved the disaster of last night out of Charlie’s mind. Accompanying Ned for this particular moment was why Charlie had booked this trip in the first place. To do right by Ned, without Ned needing to ask. No moments of weakness while dancing was going to change that truth.

Gently, Charlie reached for the programme. “Let’s find his name, then?”

Ned nodded.

The rest of the attendees had already gone back down to the reception, which was probably for the best. Charlie wanted to protect Ned from prying eyes, if not from the pain of this place.