The Fog of War

by A. L. Lester

  The Morning Room door banged behind Sylvia, and Lucy sat staring after her, open-mouthed. That…she hadn’t expected that. Over the last few months, she’d admitted to herself that Sylvia had become awfully close to being the centre of her world. The conversation they’d had a few weeks ago had left her with the knowledge that her feelings were returned. But…they’d agreed finding Anna was more important than anything they felt for each other. And so she’d accepted that Sylvia was never going to be over Anna. Although she had feelings for Lucy, she was never going to act on them. That was that conversation a few weeks ago had been about. And Lucy rather thought that the last few days had demonstrated to both of them it was a sensible stance to take.

  This slowly growing glimmer of hope in her chest was not a good feeling to have. She pulled a face. She was going to get badly hurt in all this. Very badly hurt.

  Did she care about that? Not when balanced against the possibility of being with Sylvia if Sylvia had changed her mind.

  She pushed her chair back from the table and got to her feet. The breakfast things needed taking through to the kitchen, regardless.

  * * * *

  She was drying the plates they’d used when Walter came back in from his call. Mary had gone off upstairs to change the beds and the kitchen was their own again.

  “Hullo,” he said, lifting the lid of the teapot and peering inside hopefully.

  “Hullo,” she replied. “I should make another pot if I were you. That one’s been around a while.”

  He made a grunting noise and went to put the kettle on. “I saw Sylvia walking up to the walled garden,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  Lucy looked at him, tea-towel still in hand.

  “Erm. I think so,” she said. “I. Just. We…” She sighed and said, “I don’t know.”

  Walter wasn’t watching her. He was concentrating on cutting himself a second slice of bread to toast.

  Lucy put the tea-towel down…she’d finished her drying…and sat down again, her legs sort of folding underneath her.

  “I wish yesterday hadn’t happened,” she said, softly. “I thought it would make things better for her, knowing, but it hasn’t. I don’t think.”

  Walter clattered the toaster open and put his bread inside.

  “And what about you?” he asked. “Has it made it any better for you?”

  Lucy pulled a face. “It was never about me, was it?” she asked, rhetorically. “It was never about me. It was about Sylvia and Anna. I thought there might be some space for me, to start with. I thought it was happening. But we agreed…weeks ago…we agreed weeks ago that finding Anna was more important. And I don’t want to get hurt. Over the last few weeks, I’ve felt…there’s been…”

  She stopped and then started again.

  “But just now…she said again…she says…she’s falling in love with me. But I think Anna’s always going to be there, and yesterday made that worse. So, I don’t think it’s made it any better for me, no. She needs me to leave, really. To stop confusing things.”

  She stopped again, out of words, blinking furiously.

  She couldn’t afford the tiny scion of hope that had sprouted at Sylvia’s shouted words. She couldn’t. So, she squished it down as far as she could inside her and concentrated on doing what was best for Sylvia.

  Sylvia might have said that she wished they hadn’t found out about Anna. That if she hadn’t found out about the magic then she’d be happier. But that didn’t change the fact that they did know about the magic and that yesterday had happened. Anna might not still be alive, but she hadn’t died under fire as the official reports said. Something magical had happened and they had witnessed it.

  Or caused it.

  And Lucy was in the way here because she was making Sylvia feel guilty about looking for Anna.

  Walter retrieved his toast and began to butter it, methodically.

  “Lucy,” Sylvia spoke from the doorway to the back hall.

  Both Walter and Lucy jumped.

  She was wearing a disreputable coat several sizes too large along with gum boots and her eyes were red from crying in a too-pale face. Her hands were shoved in the pockets of the coat.

  “Sylvia!”

  “Lucy, I…”

  “I think I’ll just go and check the completely fictitious and important thing I need to check,” Walter muttered, sliding out the opposite door into the inner hall, grasping his toast firmly.

  The door clicked closed behind him and Lucy got to her feet. There was silence for a moment and then Lucy said, “It’s all right, Sylvia, I do understand.”

  It took a great deal of effort to keep her voice steady. “We can keep looking. I can do a bit of work with the energy. I managed to send quite a bit to Mr Curland yesterday. So, I can help. We’ll find her. Please don’t worry. I won’t be a distraction. I promise. I don’t want you to feel guilty about carrying on searching.”

  Sylvia stepped another couple of steps inside.

  “No,” she said.

  “Or I can go?” Lucy cast round frantically, heart hitting the floor. This was what she feared Sylvia wanted. Offering to help hadn’t staved it off. “I can go home. I don’t want to be in the way. I’m sure Mr Curland and Mr Webber will help you.”

  “Lucy…” Sylvia stepped forward.

  Lucy stared at her, confused.

  “Lucy, please?”

  Sylvia was beside her now. The coat and gum boots really were in reprehensible condition. Lucy made a mental note to deal with the mudroom next—there were literal generations of outdoor gear in there, layer upon layer like an archaeological excavation—and then scrubbed the note out, because she was leaving.

  “Sylvia?” Her voice had a wobble. She hated when it did that.

  “Lucy, please?” Sylvia sounded desperate. She wasn’t looking Lucy in the eye. She was looking at Lucy’s hands, flat on the table, braced to push Lucy backwards and away from Courtfield, and Sylvia.

  “What do you want?” Lucy finally forced out. “What can I do, Sylvia, to make it better?”

  Sylvia dragged her hand out of the pocket of the coat and laid it over Lucy’s where it rested on the table.

  Oh. Oh.

  “Sylvia,” she said, turning her hand over, palm up, and wrapping her fingers around Sylvia’s. “Sylvia. I…” She stopped. “I don’t know what you want,” she said, finally. “Tell me what you need, Sylvia love, and I’ll make it happen. You just have to say.”

  Sylvia gave a sort of huffing sob and closed the gap between them. Lucy’s arms came up automatically, pulling her close. Sylvia’s arms came around her, returning the pressure.

  Oh. Oh.

  “I’m an idiot,” Sylvia said, sounding somewhat muffled from her face being buried in Lucy’s cardigan-clad shoulder. “I’m an enormous idiot and you have a ridiculous amount of patience with me, for whatever reason I cannot deduce. I’m so sorry.” She made another huffing noise when Lucy opened her mouth and drew breath to speak, tugging her arms even tighter. “I’m so very sorry, Lucy. Please don’t go. Please. Don’t go. I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay.”

  “Sylvia…” Lucy said helplessly. “Sylvia, I won’t go if you don’t want me to. I’ll stay and help. I can help, if you’ll let me!”

  “I don’t want you to help!” Sylvia said, drawing back out of her arms so her words were clear and ringing. “I don’t want you to stay and help find her, I want you to stay and be here with me. I want to stop looking. I’m going to stop looking, Lucy.” She bit her lip. She was crying again.

  Lucy was crying a bit as well. “Sylvia,” she said. “Sylvia, are you sure? She may still be out there somewhere.” She reached out and put her hand on Sylvia’s forearm, gripping tight.

  “But we don’t know that. We don’t know anything. We’ve got no way of finding anything more. And I could spend my whole life looking, couldn’t I? Dragging you with me. And you would, wouldn’t you, Lucille? You’d put your whole own life on hold to help me.”<
br />
  “I…” Lucy slashed her hands frantically across her face to clear the tears from her eyes. She didn’t want to look at Sylvia. “I…” She couldn’t deny it. “Yes,” she said, finally. “Yes, Sylvia dear. I would.”

  Sylvia took hold of Lucy’s hands as she dropped them away from her face. “And I would do the same for you,” she said, quietly. “I love you, Lucy. I loved Anna. But Anna is gone. She’s been gone for three years and these last few months of worrying and thinking and trying to work it all out have been grief, madness, something. I don’t know what. Idiocy, anyway. She’s gone. She’s not coming back.” She took a deep breath. “I could spend the rest of my days searching for her…go mad like Arthur Webber did, get sick like Matthew. I don’t want that.” She drew another breath and repeated with finality. “She’s gone. She’s not coming back.”

  Lucy finally had the courage to meet her eyes. Sylvia was looking at her, her own eyes swimming as Lucy’s were.

  “I fell in love with you at Royaumont,” Lucy said, possibly unwisely; and then corrected herself.

  The truth, now, here at the start of something.

  “At least. I admired you. You were so kind to me…to everyone. And so brilliant at what you did. I just…wanted to be near you. These last few months, though, Sylvia. It’s not a pash anymore. I’m in love with you, too. I want to be here, with you. If you need to keep searching, then we can do that. If you want to stop, we can do that too. So long as it’s together.”

  Sylvia’s breath hitched as she tugged Lucy closer and let go of one of her hands. It was warm where she cupped Lucy’s jaw. Her mouth on Lucy’s was as soft as Lucy had always imagined.

  Lucy sighed into the kiss and slid her spare hand around Sylvia’s waist.

  The waterproof was soaking wet and smelled of long-ago horses. Lucy flinched back for a moment and then returned to murmur reassuringly against Sylvia’s neck. “It’s not you,” she said. “It’s the coat. It smells. It needs burning.”

  Sylvia giggled—giggled!—and kissed her neck, a small line of kisses on her bare skin from the collar of her cardigan up behind her ear to her hairline. Lucy shivered.

  “Yes, it’s vile,” she murmured, mouth tickling against Lucy’s mouth again as she spoke. “But I won’t allow you to burn it. It’s my Lucy-coat now. The coat I wore when I first kissed Lucy. I’ll keep it forever.”

  “Stop talking about your coat,” Lucy said. “Stop talking and keep kissing me.”

  Sylvia obliged.

  Epilogue

  Apple blossom blew in swathes over the church path as they made their way toward the gate. They were silent, walking in a crowd of other women, all blinking in the bright April sunlight after the cool dimness of the church.

  There wasn’t much chatter. It had been a short but heartfelt service of remembrance. The Royaumont women who had managed to attend were going back to Anna’s parents’ house with the rest of the congregation. They’d be able to catch up with each other there.

  For now, they all seemed content to let the soaring music and soft words of the memorial fall over them like a blanket, muffling their conversations.

  “All right?” Lucy asked Sylvia, as they came to the gate.

  Sylvia nodded. “Yes, perfectly. You?”

  Lucy nodded back, patting her arm. She opened her mouth to say something and closed it again as her attention was distracted by someone coming up to speak to her in muted tones on her other side.

  Sylvia smiled at her as she turned away.

  The invitation to the memorial service had come a week after what Sylvia privately thought of as The Coat Kiss. It had been an unassuming cream envelope with a heavy, embossed card inside, inviting the recipient to A service of celebration of the life of Anna Masters, 1879-1917. Sylvia had opened it all unknowing, and found herself at the breakfast table blinking away a sudden rush of tears.

  Lucy had looked up at her from her own post. “I’ve got one, too,” she said.

  “One what?” Walter had looked up from his toast-buttering and Lucy had passed her card across without comment. He’d looked it over with a huff of breath. “Will you go?” his question had been to them both.

  Lucy looked at Sylvia too, question in her eyes.

  “I think so, yes,” Sylvia had said, hesitantly. “If that’s all right with you?” She had looked at Lucy, checking to see how she felt about it.

  Lucy had nodded. “Definitely,” she said. “But only if you want to, Sylvia, dear. We can make some excuse if you don’t feel up to it.”

  “No, I want to go.” Sylvia thought carefully, trying to put what she felt into words. “It’s a chance to say goodbye, isn’t it?” She bit her lip. “Say goodbye, once and for all.”

  And here they were.

  “We don’t have to go back to the house,” Lucy said. “Unless you want to?”

  Sylvia thought about it. “I think…” she said, “…I think I’d like to go home, if that’s all right with you? Unless you’d really like to go and catch up with people?”

  Lucy shook her head. “No,” she said. “It’s perfectly fine. They’re talking about getting more people to take the newsletter and organising some sort of meeting later in the year. I can get all the news then.”

  Going back to the Masters’ house that she’d never seen whilst Anna was alive, talking to her parents, who didn’t know how close they’d been…that seemed like a needlessly painful thing to put herself through.

  She’d said her goodbyes. This was enough.

  She slid her arm through Lucy’s as they took their leave and made their way toward the Austin.

  This was more than enough.

  THE END

  ABOUT A.L. LESTER

  A.L. Lester likes to read. Her favorite books are post-apocalyptic dystopian romances full of suspense, but a cornflake packet will do there's nothing else available. The gender of the characters she likes to read (and write) is pretty irrelevant so long as they are strong, interesting people on a journey of some kind.

  She has a chaotic family life and small children, and she has become the person in the village who looks after the random animals people find in the road. She is interested in permaculture gardening and anything to do with books, reading, technology, and history. She lives in a small village in rural Somerset and is seriously allergic to both rabbits and Minecraft.

  For more information, visit allester.co.uk.

  ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC

  JMS Books LLC is a small queer press with competitive royalty rates publishing LGBT romance, erotic romance, and young adult fiction. Visit jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!