Lovely War(104)

“I’ll never be the same,” she said. “That’s plain to us both.”

He drew closer. “You can’t mean what I think you’re about to say,” he said. “You can’t.”

She turned her face so that her right side greeted James in full. Gashed by livid red lines. A mockery of what her face had been.

“Is this the face—”

“It is the face.” He cut her off. “The face I want to see.” His eyes searched hers. “Do you think scars would matter to me?”

How could he ask such a question? When she looked like this now? “They should matter,” she protested. “They’d matter to anyone. That doesn’t make you unfaithful or weak.”

“Hazel!”

Her hands gripped the back of a chair for strength. “I can’t let you yoke your life to this,” she said. “I can’t let you promise your forever to this out of pity, or noble duty.”

His face fell.

Now he would protest, now he would insist, now he would make some declaration that the years would wear away at like water upon sand. He’d be trapped.

Now she would have to argue with him and win, to persuade him to let her go. A horrible treason of the heart against itself.

He reached up and softly, gently, stroked her face with his fingertips. He hovered lightly over the scars to not cause any pain.

Hazel’s left eye ran with tears.

James pulled Hazel to him and encircled her in his arms. She couldn’t escape, nor had she the will to try. She hid her cheek against his chest.

“I’ll never be the same,” she said.

He pulled away to look into her eyes.

“You will always be the same,” he told her. “You’ll always be my lovely Hazel.”

Was that still love she saw there? As much as in Lowestoft? Chelmsford, Poplar?

James kissed her scarred cheek. “I will never be the same,” he reminded her. “You know that.”

“You are to me,” she protested.

He looked at her pointedly.

“You’re doing splendidly,” she said. “Your troubles are behind you now.”

He was silent for a time.

“I wish,” he said at length, “that that were true. That my troubles were behind me.”

She wanted to embrace and reassure him. No, foolish girl, she reminded herself. That’s what you can no longer do.

“You’re still you,” she said. “Still James. Still wonderful. Still clever and kind. Still handsome. Still brave. Still strong.”

James paced back and forth like someone desperate. He raked his hands through his hair until it stood on end. “Do you think I sought you out at the Poplar dance for your face?” he demanded.

“Watch it there, Charley,” she told him. “I suppose now you’re going to tell me my old face was horrid?”

He reached his hands toward her, then held them back. “Your face has never been horrid,” he said. “It’s always been perfect. It still is.”

She laughed in bitter disbelief. “You’re mad!”

He looked at her pointedly. “Yes,” he said. “I am. Now you see. So mad, so mental, I had to sit for weeks in a pink room. After spending weeks doped on morphine. Who knows when I’ll need to go back and do it all again?”

Hazel hadn’t realized. Not really. He’s still afraid.

“If you do need to go back,” she told him, “that’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’ll get through it. You’ll get better, just like last time. What happened to you isn’t your fault.”

He looked back at her.

Of course what happened to her wasn’t her fault either, but it wasn’t the same.

“Why didn’t you leave me?” he whispered. “Why didn’t you run away from the lad touched in the head?”

Hazel felt tears prick her eyelids once more. “How can you ask me that?” she said. “Why would I ever do such a thing?”

“You think I love you less than you love me,” he said softly.

“I never said that!”

“You think I can’t see past lines on your face,” James said. “Lines that in time will fade.”

Hazel wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “But never go away.”

“Yet you see past the shadow,” he said. “All that’s left of a kid who went off to war.”

She shook her head angrily. “You’re wrong to call yourself a shadow.” Her breath came rapidly. “You’re everything to me.”

He sank into a chair. “Then how can you leave me?” he cried. “How can you try to make me leave you?”

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, but the tears wouldn’t stop. “Because all your life, James,” she said, “you’ll look at me, and you’ll see the scars. You’ll see them, and I’ll watch you. All your life, if I let you stay, I’ll watch you work to reconcile yourself to the face you made a promise to. Even as you come to wish you hadn’t.” She hid her face, scars and all, behind her hands. “I won’t be able to bear it.”

“You’re wrong to call yourself a face,” he said. “Damaged or otherwise.” He pulled something from his pocket, pried her hand gently off her face, and placed the thing on her palm.