Chapter 23

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A s they came through the copse of leafless trees and down the hill to where the cottage was, it began to mist. On the edge of the horizon, the sun was sinking low behind the clouds, arcing the light in streams of purple and blue dusk. The white crosses, row on row, shone brilliant against the dark, green grass. As they got closer, Stanley's gaze was drawn to them, again and again.

Isaac was beneath one of those crosses, or maybe he wasn't. The crosses didn't mark actual bodies, for the most part, but rather represented how many men had died. Some bodies were unidentifiable; other men's bodies had never been found. Over two hundred crosses had been driven into the earth to mark the occasion of the end of one battalion's futile struggle. Stanley's stomach turned at the thought of it.

"What's the matter, Stanley?" asked Devon.

He put his shopping bags down while he unlocked the door. When he saw where Stanley was looking, he quickly opened the door and ushered them both into the cottage and out of their caps and jackets. He bustled about, putting groceries away in the kitchen. Stanley lingered by the counter, wanting to help, but not knowing where everything went .

"You still look sad," said Devon. "Even with food in your belly and all this food in front of you."

The words started out half-joking, as though Devon had meant to jolly Stanley out of his mood. But then he seemed to realize that something deeper was amiss. He pulled Stanley to him and held him close. Stanley let himself breathe slowly in and out, his cheek on Devon's shoulder, his nose buried in the collar of Devon's shirt.

"Let me pour you some wine and then tell me."

Stanley didn't want wine, and he didn't want to report on how he felt, as though this was something Devon could fix. As if this was something anybody could fix. But this was different; Devon's intention seemed to be that he only wanted to help.

Devon poured wine into jelly jars for them both. Together they stood in the kitchen, hip to hip, while Devon fried onions and sausages and peppers in a pan, with the heat on low. Not because they were hungry, but because it seemed he liked having something to do with his hands and, besides, they had all the time in the world.

"I just wonder," said Stanley, enjoying the warmth of Devon's body next to his.

Devon looked up at him, his eyes dark and serious in a way that told Stanley that he was listening, really listening. That he probably wouldn't dismiss what Stanley was about to say.

"I just wonder if what I tried to do made any difference at all."

"What do you mean?" asked Devon after a swallow of wine.

"Well, I saved my friends, I saved them , but I didn't save the radio."

Stanley looked at his jelly jar glass, though he didn't really want to drink any. The wine at supper had numbed him a bit, but now his feelings were back, and they felt important enough not to drown out.

"In the end, I still had to go on my mission. Which then failed again . They died anyway."

Devon nodded as if he understood. Which he seemed to, and would, because he knew all about the war, knew how it had ended, and how peace had soon turned into another war.

"You never did explain what the mission was," said Devon. Stanley watched him put a bit of chopped garlic in the pan and, yes, more butter. "But I guess it was a secret mission and if you tell me, you'll have to kill me?"

Devon's eyebrows went up like this was the tail end of a very old joke, one that Stanley had never heard before. The look on Devon's face made him smile, and he realized that he'd never fully explained what he'd set out to do on that fateful morning.

"Well, the first time," said Stanley, and you could have knocked him over with a feather if somebody had told him he'd go through that moment not once, but twice, and then end up talking about it in a kitchen in the distant future. "Isaac had died, along with Rex and Bertie. The same shell that killed them also destroyed the radio. The lieutenant needed somebody to go, to deliver the request for retreat—"

Devon made a sound, and Stanley could see that he was tempted to get out his pencil and paper and start taking notes. But then he shook his head as if chiding himself.

"Go on," he said. "Tell me more, tell me the rest of it." Devon paused to cup Stanley's cheek, gentle and reassuring, giving Stanley the strength to tell his story.

"The request for retreat," said Stanley, explaining it as though to a new recruit, "is half of the code. You find the highest ranking officer and you give him the first half of the code. Then he gives you the rest of the code, which is the approval for retreat."

"Why does it have to be in person?" asked Devon, stirring the food in the pan. "Oh wait, because the radio was broken."

"Yes, and the second time, I forgot about the radio, which if I hadn't—" Stanley's voice broke and he stopped, the full weight of his decision coming down on him so heavily he had to take a breath and start again.

"Right," said Stanley. "Normally, you could do this over the radio so that if the Germans were listening in, they wouldn't be able to crack the code. They wouldn't know that you were out of bullets and food, and that you wanted to head for the hills."

He felt his memory stagger back into that moment when he'd stood in front of Lt. Billings. He'd been full of dread, his stomach sinking, but he'd known he was the best choice for the mission because his friends were dead, and nobody back home would miss him if he failed.

"You did what you could," said Devon. Instead of this sounding like a platitude, it felt genuine to Stanley because the expression on Devon's face, with his turned-down mouth, made Stanley feel as though Devon truly understood.

"But I failed twice, Devon," said Stanley, half of his mind whirring at how bizarre that sounded. "Twice I couldn't get it right. Twice ."

Devon looked at Stanley like he didn't quite know what to say to this, but at least he wasn't insisting that Stanley should just get over it. Instead, he turned off the heat beneath the frying pan and took out the crusty bread, warm from the oven, and pulled Stanley to the table and fed him. Food was a good distraction, even though he'd recently eaten. As they sat catty corner from each other, close enough so that their knees touched, Stanley made use of the moment to gather his thoughts while he ate the sausage and peppers, and warm bread with butter dripping off it. The wine, he left for Devon.

"If only you'd known the code when you went back the second time," said Devon. He tipped his head back to polish off his wine and plonked the jelly jar on the table. He looked at Stanley, his eyes serious, as though he had come to a decision. "You know, we could probably look that information up."

"We could?"

"Sure," said Devon. "It's not classified anymore. Right? It's in the records, at least it should be. There's got to be somebody out there obsessed with the small details. You know, like the trainspotters."

"Like the what?" asked Stanley.

"You know," said Devon. "The guys who know every bolt and every button on every train on every line that ever ran. Guys like that."

Stanley couldn't imagine anybody with that much time on their hands, or access to that kind of information. They all must have their own version of Devon's metal laptop, though, where everything that had ever been known was available with a few taps on the keyboard. It made his head spin to think about it too much, so he nodded and licked his finger and poked at the breadcrumbs on the table by his plate.

"I could wash the dishes and you could look," Stanley said. He didn't think he could bear to scroll through the records for that kind of information.

Devon nodded and stood up, scraping his chair back, and together they cleared the table. Afterwards, Devon began researching, clicking on his laptop as Stanley began washing the dishes.

Stanley soothed himself by swishing his hands in the hot water, which was supplied by a never-ending source of more hot water from the tap. The suds were mighty as well, and the bubbles never seemed to shrink. In no time, he was finished. He dried his hands on a towel and, leaving the dishes on the sideboard to dry, joined Devon at the table. He pulled his chair close to Devon's so their shoulders brushed.

"I'm not finding anything," said Devon. He moved his little roller mouse, which somehow knew how to communicate its position on the window, and scrolled the page down and down and down. "It's just not here."

Stanley shrugged. The code wouldn't make any difference now anyway, so there was no point in finding it. Devon was determined, however, and kept at it for another hour. Stanley stayed at his side, his shoulder pressed against Devon's, feeling a little lost.

Finally, Devon got up and turned to Stanley. He kissed him on the mouth, and cupped his face in his warm hands, and Stanley started to feel a little better.

"Maybe it's in one of the books," said Devon.

"Maybe," said Stanley, and he couldn't keep his lack of enthusiasm out of his voice.

"I'll just look for a little while and then I'll stop, okay?" asked Devon.

He looked so hopeful, as though he thought it would help Stanley somehow to know a code that he'd been unable to complete on account of a broken radio and his lack of ability to run through a cloud of mustard gas. So Stanley nodded, put on a smile, and then realized that this was who Devon was. He loved to do research, and as the war was what his paper was on, he had a great many books to look through. As they both sat down on the couch, his hands went unerringly to a particular pile on the floor.

" Life in the Trenches , it's called," said Devon.

Stanley flicked a glance at the glossy cover and then concentrated on Devon's fingers as he turned through the pages. Devon talked to himself while he searched, and just when Stanley began to imagine that this could go on for quite a while, Devon straightened up.

"So you were in the 44 th Battalion, right?" asked Devon.

"Yes," said Stanley. "That's the one."

His attention sharpened because it might be interesting to see his former world from an outsider's perspective; it felt objective and slightly clinical that way, and he could bear it if the information didn't reveal too much about the actual men who had died. Besides, the information was in a book, and printed words couldn't hurt him.

"Says here that there were a series of trenches built around the village. It was Lt. Billings, not your Commander Helmer who deserted, who had half the code for retreat, and all the upper ranks, the ones who needed to know, had the other half."

Stanley nodded. He knew that much.

"What was your half of the code?" asked Devon.

Devon looked over at Stanley. Stanley straightened up, thinking for half a second that Devon might be a German spy who was tricking Stanley into revealing what he knew, and he was tempted not to tell him. Except that a wrinkle appeared between Devon's eyebrows, as though he was on the verge of realizing this, and Stanley could have kicked himself over it.

"You're going to laugh," said Stanley. "My half of the code was, There are penguins on the ice ."

Devon's straight white teeth came into view as he smiled, nodded, and bent over the book in his lap. With one finger, he traced his way down what looked like a list. As Stanley leaned close, hooking his chin over Devon's shoulder, he could see what it was. A list of codes of various sorts, all broken into their respective parts. If you knew the first part, you could find the second.

"This one," said Devon, tapping the page. Then he read the code out completely. " There are penguins on the ice and they skate brilliant figure eights ."

A sense of sadness swamped through Stanley. If he'd known that phrase, he could have saved Isaac. The radio. He could have saved everybody . He could have saved himself, even. And then nobody would be buried beneath the green grasses topped row on row by white crosses. But he'd failed and didn't deserve his current happiness.

He barely heard Devon slap the book closed, but he did feel Devon's arms come around him.

"Don't be sad, Stanley, please," whispered Devon in his ear, his breath soft and warm. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize this would hurt you so bad. I shouldn't have kept looking."

"It's okay, Devon," said Stanley, his voice low. "Now I know at least what the code was, had I been able to make it through."