Chapter Text
The last seconds to midnight were counted down on a pocket watch.
Drinks in hand, the entire population of Oxton, Scottish Borders crowded around Finlay Collins, breaths clouding in the winter air. Orange, black, and brown hair turned white as the snow fell, but no one paid attention to the weather. They were waiting for 1946. Between the clinks of glasses and bits of gossip, people slurred and shouted in their anticipation. Collins could hear his heart beat out the end of the year. It arrived with an explosion of cheers and toasts, champagne pops and exhilarated screams. Beer sloshed out of glasses, lips pressed together in fervid kisses, eyes turned heavenward. Though the war had ended three months ago, the dawning of the new year ushered in another wave of hope and promise. Collins was hugged fiercely by his grandmother, who he had to bend down to hold.
“Bliadhna mhath ùr,” she whispered to him. Happy new year. He repeated it back to her before kissing her cheek. The local children came for him next, jumping on his legs, arms, and back as they squealed. They chased the snow as if was their first snowfall; pink tongues peeked out to catch every flake, and they squealed delightedly when those crystals melted in their mouths. Collins ruffled their hair and swung them through the frigid air before setting them down. The younger ones stumbled, dizzy. Laughing, he pushed them back toward their parents, who apologized profusely even as he assured them not to worry. He could hear the children's complaints--“But maw, he’s givin’ me flyin’ lessons”--as he took his granny’s arm to lead her back to their cottage.
A few people were scattered on the streets, either smashed, stumbling, and singing, or holding their loved ones in tight embraces on the way home. Collins could hear “Auld Lang Syne” around every street corner. He wrapped his arm around his granny to warm her, knowing that if the chill could find him even in his wool coat, it would be seeping into her bones. She smiled fondly and patted her grandson’s hand. The mittens she wore she had made herself, dark and thick and matching the pairs she made for all the children in winter.
Collins couldn’t wear them anymore. He couldn’t stand the clumsiness of his fingers, how he couldn’t grip something right. It was laughable, he knew, to bring a fear of mittens back from the war, but he had done so all the same. So she knitted him scarves instead, and he wore them bundled up snugly beneath his chin.
The walk was short; Collins saw their cottage, nestled cozily in its own little corner of Oxton, in two minutes’ time. Its stone walls were surrounded by his gran’s garden in the summer, but currently all the shrubs had hidden themselves away from the cold. Collins couldn’t blame them.
He hurried up to the stoop, his gran shuffling next to him until they came to a stop for him to root for his key.
“I wish he could have come out with us tonight,” she admitted suddenly, gripping Collins’ arm like a vice. “Your granda used to love the New Year.”
“Maybe next year,” he offered, knowing that his grandfather would not leave the house next year, or any of the years after that. She smiled sadly, knowingly.
“Yes, maybe next year.”
As he reached for the doorknob, warm thoughts of the fire and a dozen hand-made quilts drawing him inside as quickly as possible, Collins heard the unmistakable click of a shotgun behind the door. Slowly, he pushed his grandmother behind him and placed his hand on the window beside the door so that his grandfather could see his RAF ring.
“Granda, it’s just me and Gran,” he said slowly, still in Gaelic. “Just us. I’m going to open the door now.”
“Carstaine? Fionnlagh?”
“That’s right. We’re going to come in the house now, alright?”
The gun’s muzzle scraped the door when Collins’ grandfather lowered it. Carefully, Collins turned the knob, asking his gran to stay outside for another moment. She nodded, one hand pressed to her mouth and the other holding her hip. But there were no tears. The women of the Collins family were made of sterner stuff than most folk.
Softly, Collins called, “Granda?” and repeated it louder when there was no answer. The house was pitch black and freezing. As he walked farther in, he checked every corner he passed. Eventually he found the man wearing nothing but his nightshirt and snow boots, shotgun set across his lap as he stared at the ashes in the fireplace. “It’s cold, sir,” Collins tried first.
“Mm, ‘tis cold, Air Commodore,” he growled in thickly accented English. “But we cannae let them find us, ye hear? Always watchin’ for smoke.”
Collins exhaled. “Marshal, your wife is gonnae freeze if we don’ light this again.”
There was a spark of recognition in the old man’s eyes. Suddenly, the hard lines in his face crumbled into something fragile and confused. “Fionnlagh,” he gasped. “Where’s my Carstaine?” Collins gently lifted the shotgun and placed it out of reach as he called his grandmother back into her home.
She entered with her head held high and a smile on her face. While the Marshal apologized, Carstaine simply shushed him and kissed his forehead, smoothing back his thinning grey hair. Collins worked on the fire first, pulling fresh logs from their indoor pile and setting them alight just as his grandfather had taught him. Almost instantly the house was warmer; he breathed a sigh of relief and shrugged off his wet coat. Carstaine gathered it from his arms and went to hang it to dry. When he jokingly refused to surrender the scarf, she pressed her lips to his cheek--standing on her tiptoes she could barely reach--and slid it off his neck.
“I’ll put a kettle on,” he told her, switching back to Gaelic as he crossed the living-room. Though his grandfather spoke English, learned by necessity from his time as an airman, his grandmother had never left the small villages of Scotland. She had no desire to speak anything but her native tongue, even though Collins’ parents had asked her to learn since they raised him to speak both languages. Of course, that didn’t matter anymore.
Through another door was the kitchen, with an ancient black kettle already resting on the back left burner of the stove. Right away he filled it and set it to boil. Carstaine appeared a few minutes later, a shawl over her shoulder and her husband by her side. There was an alertness to him that pleased Collins. He beamed at the pair of them.
“We’re off to bed, love,” she said, “though I’ll take my tea with me.”
Collins left the tea to her expert skills so he could go stoke the coals in the furnace. His grandfather had neglected it in their absence, and even with the fire, the cold pervaded the old stone cottage. It would take a while to heat back up and reach the upstairs bedroom. He wasn’t worried, though; his gran had enough blankets to cover the entirety of the British Expeditionary Force.
She left a cup waiting for him on the counter, made just the way he liked it; no milk, just two spoons of sugar. He added a little whiskey for good measure. After a moment of deliberation Collins also grabbed a few butter shortbreads from the cabinet that a neighbor had brought by earlier in the day. He took both to his favorite armchair--it had been his father’s--and settled in. The table next to him was stacked with six books, two of them Gunn novels that had been published during his service that he hadn’t been able to find in the small English bookshops he’d encountered during weekend leave.
Although Collins’ constant vigilance had not vanished once he had arrived home, he knew it was slipping when the combination of a hot fire, steaming tea, and a good book had his eyelids drifting closed. He rubbed his hands over his face, groaning. With a stretch he stood, putting his book back down before taking his teacup back to the kitchen. He washed and dried it quietly, careful since sound traveled so well in the house, and then went to the washroom to brush his teeth and prepare for bed.
His grandparents’ snoring, usually so loud even a floor above his room, was always drowned out during the New Year celebration. There would be fireworks soon, and all the teenagers would run through the streets shouting their hopes and dreams to the new sky. Collins’ last New Year’s wish here had been to be a war hero.
He’d never imagined the price.
Of course, there were rewards that filled his grandfather with joy and him with the sense of purpose and belonging that that young Scottish boy raised in a small village never thought he’d achieve. Collins stroked his thumb over the Distinguished Flying Medal sitting on his bookshelf. He hadn’t known where to put it, too awe-struck with it even in his hands, so it sat with his adventure books and miniature model airplanes. Often those little metal figures felt realer.
Collins tore himself away from the medal and the memories that came with it. The few seconds between taking off his day clothes and changing to pajamas were frigid and unwelcome; he lunged for the bed and its thick comforters as soon as all of his shirt buttons were fastened properly. Snuggling beneath his covers like a child, he fell asleep dreaming of snow, listening to the sounds of revelry drifting in from the streets.
When Collins opened his eyes, he didn’t need to check a clock to know it was exactly five in the morning. It was the time he and his squadron had awoken every year during the war. The habit was a hard one to lose, and he doubted he’d ever lose it, if his grandfather’s four AM awakenings were any indication. Marshal Iain Collins had done his time as a fighter pilot and then some. He’d taught both his son and grandson how to fly, but couldn’t even go near his own plane anymore, tucked away in an old barnhouse used by the family for decades. The plane was a rickety old thing, probably kept alive through sheer force of will alone. Collins had been repairing it before he enlisted, and had meant to continue after the war ended. Once there was less snow, he promised himself, he would walk out there and finish it.
He donned his robe and tied it tight. Fortunately, the house was still warm, which meant his grandfather had been alert enough to work the furnace that morning. As he opened his door to the hallway, he knew he’d find the Marshal in front of the fire in the living room, shotgun across his lap and a contented look upon his aged face.
“Granda, do you want a cuppa?” he asked at the doorway. It stood in the center of the room where Collins could watch Iain nod and cradle his gun. That used to scare him as a kid, thinking Iain might shoot him on his way down for breakfast, but his father had taken him aside one day and said, It makes yer granda safer ta have it than it makes ye nervous ta see it. Collins always thought that was fair.
Collins put the kettle on as he blinked the rest of his drowsiness away. Finally looking out the window, he noticed that the snow had piled itself in high drifts against the house. What used to be a field and pathways and various other cottages was now a blank white expanse. Snow still fell on that blinding bright surface, smooth like a fresh-pressed shirt and sparkling as the sunlight hit it. Collins knew the village kids would trample through it soon. He remembered the snowball fights and forts, the chattering teeth and soaking wet boots. His grandmother used to invite the whole street inside for hot drinks and homemade raspberry buns. They’d always been a bit too dry--Carstaine was a better knitter than baker--yet they’d been inhaled in minutes nonetheless.
There were no raspberry buns this morning. There was, however, now a full kettle of tea; the Collins household would be incomplete without it. Collins sat and enjoyed his cup in comfortable silence with his grandfather, waiting for Carstaine for breakfast. She was up by six, and prepared a veritable feast of black sausage, eggs, and toast with marmalade that Collins helped devour no later than seven. After that, knowing the rest of the village would be stirring soon, he took another moment to appreciate the snow’s serenity before he ran back to his room. Opening his closet, Collins found his warmest wool sweater and flying jacket, laced up his boots, and joined the men in digging out the village.
Collins was greeted with bleary ‘G’morning’s by hungover men all headed toward their barns. They trudged through the snow, digging themselves paths with the shovels in their hands, the older men sharing the same stories they did every year about each winter before, the younger men sharing stories of the night’s exploits.
“I remember the winter of ‘14; what a year,” someone said, brushing snowflakes off his arm, “We got fucked with tha’ rain.”
“Just like yer granddaughter las’ night,” one of the village boys whispered behind Collins. His friends cackled raucously and slapped him on the shoulder.
Shaking his head, Collins pressed on, already sweating under his many layers. He wasn’t looking forward to dragging the tractors out. But more men joined as they walked, bringing along their young sons for the first time. Collins had missed so many weddings and births it had taken him until the end of September to catch up on everything that had happened in Oxton without him. Of everything, that had been the hardest adjustment--life had simply moved on.
He’d known it would, of course. Pilots were so keenly aware of the time because keeping track of it--and the fuel--often became a matter of life and death. Collins’ father and grandfather had drilled that concept into his head, and later he’d experienced it firsthand in his squadron.
But that was a memory for another time. Collins made his way ahead of the group and shoveled ferociously, hoping the strain on his muscles would distract from the heartache creeping in. Each shovel-full brought his head back down closer to the ground; he would sigh with relief if he had enough breath in his lungs to accomplish it.
“Noo jist haud on,” the village’s bookshop owner, Mr. Wilson, insisted. “We’ll get these tractors out ye break yer back or not.” When Collins didn’t stop, he pressed further. “Slow down, lad.”
“Snow’s still fallin’,” Collins countered. He wiped the sweat from his brow.
“Finlay. There’s no clock to beat here.”
Collins considered him for a moment, wondering if Mr. Wilson had watched this happen to his father and grandfather when they returned from active duty. Then he nodded, slowly, and smiled. Mr. Wilson smiled right back and patted him on the shoulder. “There’s a good lad,” he finished. Then, louder, “Let’s get back to work so the lasses bring us some whiskey!”
The proposal was met with whoops and cheers. Boys who had previously fallen, panting, into the snowpiles now sprang up with renewed vigor. Mr. Wilson added that this whiskey would be far better than the piss they were drinking last night, and Collins could practically see the boys drooling. He laughed. Then they went back to work.
When his wife Agnes arrived, Mr. Wilson tossed his shovel down, swept her into his arms, and declared whiskey for all when he was done showering her with kisses. She giggled, swatting him aside. With a curious look at Collins she said, “Ta other girls ‘er on their way.”
Collins bade her good morning. The other boys sat on snow mounds, rubbing their hands together and griping about the cold, while he shoveled around the Wilson property. Although Mr. Wilson had dug them out for the most part, there was still enough snow that he could keep busy. He dug until his fingers seemed frozen, curled and rigid over the shovel handle. Prying them away and flexing them, he grimaced before bending down again, but was interrupted by the lilting voices of girls carrying hot thermoses of soup and flasks of whiskey--and the accompanying whistles of the boys.
He only vaguely registered the girl at his shoulder when he almost hit her with his shovel. After a flurry of sincere yet flustered apologies on his part and amusement on her part, they settled into a moment of awkward silence. She was gorgeous, with long raven-black hair framing a pale, heart-shaped face. Her green eyes were familiar enough that Collins cocked his head and stared.
“Oh, we haven’t met,” she told him. “I’m Ann Wilson.” Instead of offering her cheeks to be kissed, she stuck out a thermos.
He took it gratefully, dropping his shovel to the ground to avoid any further incidents. “The bookkeeper’s daughter?”
“Aye, that’s the one. My maw sent me over to you because you don’t have a bird fer yerself.”
Collins coughed. “Ah, well. Am jus’ home from the war, you see.”
“Three months isn’t jus’, though, is it?”
“S’pose not, no.” Collins squinted against the sunlight and gave her a half-smile, a little lost for words and feeling cornered. “It was nice to meet you, Ann.”
She took the dismissal gracefully, nodding once, her black tresses tumbling like waves about her head. “You can jus’ give that ta my da when yer done,” she offered at the same moment he said, “I’ll get this back to you later.” There was another strange pause, another small giggle from the girl.
Ann flattened her skirt, tucked her hair behind her ears. “Whatever you prefer, Mr. Collins,” she replied shyly. Then she marched back to her front door, and Collins spared not another glance her way.
He did, however, peer suspiciously over at the Wilson parents. They were deep in conference, sneaking looks at their daughter and at Collins. Collins stifled a groan. The villagers had always understood or excused his lack of courtship before the war--first it was his youth, then his meticulous nature, then his commitment to the cause--but now it seemed his time was up. There would be fathers practically throwing their daughters at him. Collins looked up at the cloudy sky. He didn’t know how to tell them that he’d left his heart with a dead pilot on the sands of Dunkirk.
"Won’t ya eat your soup? My youngest made it.” Collins started; he hadn’t noticed the man’s approach, as lost as he was in his memories. Mr. Wilson’s smile was half mischief, half hope. When Collins didn’t answer, the old man prompted, “Ann. I believe you’re acquainted.”
Unable to help it, Collins chuckled. “Aye, Mr. Wilson, we are.” After a pause he added, “She’s lovely,” because he’d been raised to always be polite. He could feel Mr. Wilson’s eyes on him, scrutinizing through thin-framed glasses, scheming. So he unscrewed his thermos cap and crouched, draining it in a few gulps like any soldier. It burned his throat and he barely tasted it, but it warmed him.
Mr. Wilson was awaiting a verdict. Collins made some generic noise of approval, knowing civilians wouldn’t really understand how any food was good food now. And Mr. Wilson seemed satisfied, clapping Collins on the back before taking the thermos back to his wife.
Collins breathed in the crisp air and rolled his shoulders. He could no longer feel his toes. It had been three hours already; it would be dark before 17:00. Snow fell relentlessly, white flakes sticking in every spot he had already cleared. They’d be pulling the tractors out soon enough, at least once the men unburied the sheds and paths to the roads. As if on cue, he saw a group heading to the nearest barn, slung his shovel over his shoulder, and joined them.
The village was completely dug out in four hours’ time. By then, the children had run home, tired and sore, and the oldest among the men had retired for cards and more whiskey. The snow was slowing, enough that everyone felt comfortable putting the tractors back for the day. At the very least, the cars could make it out; one family had already left to join their relatives for a short holiday. Collins was content to stay in Oxton. He declined an invitation to join the men for drinks at the pub and walked home, wanting nothing more than a long soak and a hot toddy in his own home.
Yet when he finally trudged up the stairs, stripped, and collapsed into his bed, sleep found him instantly.
There’s nothing as soothing as the purr of a spitfire engine. There’s nothing as jarring as the first time he hears rounds firing from his plane’s four machine guns. He remembers those clearer than even the rush of the wind. And he’s surrounded by it now, bullet after bullet after bullet, but his spitfire is chasing him. Collins is running, gasping, tripping. When he falls, he hits water.
He swims, and then he drowns, and then he’s sitting at the bottom of the ocean for what seems like hours. When his breath leaves his lungs, he washes up on the shores of France.
Dunkirk meets him with German soldiers on its shores. They push him, break his fingers with their boots. They are all wearing masks, and for some reason, he’s begging for them to remove those coverings. Their unmasking becomes more important than any end to his pain.
So they do, and there’s Farrier. Except it’s not really him; it’s a ghost, and then it’s a corpse. Farrier’s body hits the ground next to Collins, and the Germans tie that dead weight to the living pilot and drag them both into a hole. And they bury him alive next to the man he loved.
Collins woke feeling nauseous and numb. He ran to the bathroom as soon as his feet hit the floor, ignoring the cold wood on his bare feet, and retched into the sink. His empty stomach produced nothing but bile; for a long time, the minutes dragging on as the room swam around him, he just breathed harshly and coughed when he could. When the world finally settled and his head stopped pounding, Collins turned the faucet on and stuck his head under it. He let the freezing water soak his hair and his face until he couldn’t feel his skin.
Turning the water off, Collins opened his eyes. He stood slowly and grabbed a towel to dry his hair. Once he was able to change into clothes and not drip water all over them, Collins decided he needed one very specific thing: a cigarette.
He didn’t have any left in his room. However, he knew his grandfather kept some in the pantry, and if that didn’t work, he could always find his grandmother’s Lucky Strikes tucked away in a cabinet in the living room.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to go looking for those. His grandfather’s cartons were stacked neatly in the pantry, right next to the dried meat, and Collins grabbed one to take to his room. It wasn’t yet 2 AM; if he could calm down, he could try to fall back asleep for a few hours at least.
Collins’ RAF jacket hung on the back of his door, not on a hanger but just a simple hook, and he patted it down when he reached it, feeling for his lighter. Fishing it out of the right pocket, Collins flicked it open and closed as he turned and walked back over to his bed. When he sat, he took an unused cigarette from the carton and stuck it between his lips, bending his neck forward to touch the tip to the lighter’s flame. It lit immediately, and Collins breathed in gratefully. He set the lighter down on his nightable and leaned his shoulders back against the headboard.
A smile tugged at the corner of his lip as he remembered the last time he’d smoked in his bed. Most of the time anyone had to smoke during the war was outside, between flights, between training. And smoking in the pilot's quarters was a social thing, done in a circle while men shared dirty pictures and their plans for after the war. But one night, sometime in May--Collins remembered it being just days before Operation Dynamo, just days before he’d lost him--it had been a quiet night. There were no bets or pinup girls or aspirations to be had. Desires, though, there had been plenty of those. He had been sitting up in his bunk, for what reason he couldn’t recall, when Farrier had walked over and sat at the foot of his bed. Collins did recall distinctly the feel of Farrier’s fingers brushing against his when he’d shared his cigarette. My last one, Farrier had said, like it was the most practical thing in the world to share his last cigarette. Collins had taken a drag without ever taking his eyes off of Farrier. And then he’d handed it back, and Farrier had finished it, and that had been that.
Collins put out his cigarette in the ashtray and closed his eyes, content enough now that he had stopped shaking. Old heartache, he reasoned, was best dealt with with nicotine and some more sleep.
The next time he woke up, Collins was much slower out of his bed. Someone was calling his name, and it took him longer than he liked to register that it was his grandmother. He followed the sound of her voice out to the living room, where she held the phone in one hand and a ball of yarn in the other. Yawning, he spared a glance to the loveseat, where her knitting materials sat already turning themselves into winter wear.
“The phone for you,” she told Collins, urging it into his hands. He took it, eyebrows arched in confusion, but thanked her all the same.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Finlay Collins?” a woman’s voice asked.
Collins fought the urge to add his rank, instead simply replying, “Aye. Who am I speaking to?”
She did not give her name. “Sir, I am a nurse at Leeds Infirmary. We have a patient here who has asked for you by name, sir, he says he knows you from the war, and we’ve gone to some trouble to locate you, so I do hope you’re acquainted.” She laughed slightly, as if Collins was not right back in the sky, his stomach flipping faster than his spitfire, its engine dictating the speed of his heart. He had lost so many friends--some very close to him--and the thought of having even one of them returned to him... As the rush of blood in his ears grew almost deafening, Collins realized the nurse was still speaking to him. He gulped and brought the phone back to his ear. “Are you there, sir? Do you know this man?”
He cleared his throat. “Excuse me; could you repeat his name, ma’am? I couldn’t hear.”
“Of course. His name is Thomas Farrier.”
-
Art by @flurgburgler on tumblr