The Pieces of Ourselves

by Maggie Harcourt

  “We should probably call it a day.” Hal squints up at the window, then sighs and shuffles the two piles in front of him together, tucking them up against the box.

  I don’t want to go.

  Judging by the speed (or lack of it) that he’s moving with, I’m not sure he does either.

  His hand reaching for mine.

  “Flora…”

  “Not yet.”

  As he tidies the pages of Albie and Iris’s story together, I reluctantly pull the window shut and grab my bag…and when I sling it over my shoulder, something flutters down to the floor. Hal scoops it up, holding it out to me. “You dropped this.”

  “Thanks.” I take it, and his fingers brush against mine. He’s standing so close – enough to feel the heat of him, breathe in the scent of him, to see the movement of his lips as they part just a little. So close, and still not close enough. Everything in the room blurs, then snaps back into focus, sharper than ever before. “Umm.” I force myself to look away and start to scrunch the paper into a ball, but Hal’s eyes widen and suddenly he grins.

  “Are you going to that?” He points at the page in my hand. I stop crumpling. It’s a flier for one of the outdoor film screenings the hotel puts on through the summer.

  “I hadn’t actually thought about it. Are you?”

  “Maybe we should. For, you know, research?”

  I look more carefully.

  “Oh!”

  The flier for tonight’s Hopwood Summer Screening is a picture of a horse and a soldier, standing together in front of a blazing summer sunset sky.

  War Horse.

  “For research,” I say, smiling back.

  If Mira, eating a hot dog and perched on the wall between the drive and the west lawn, is surprised to spot Hal walking with me towards the part of the gardens where the outdoor screen is set up, she hides it well. At least, she does until he walks past her, his eyes on the garden ahead. Then she gives me a huge grin and a double thumbs-up. One of her thumbs has mustard on it.

  I flap a hand at her, signing for her to cut it out before he sees.

  “You really think he’s even going to notice me with you around?” she laughs.

  A little way ahead, Hal stops – maybe realizing he’s lost me, maybe feeling like someone is talking about him (because we are) – and turns, coming back to where we’re standing. He sniffs hungrily at the smell of onions from the vintage hot-dog stand Barney’s installed at the edge of the lawn for tonight.

  “Hello!” Mira beams at him. Of course, he has literally no idea who she is. I step between them.

  “Hal, this is my friend Mira. She’s on the housekeeping staff too.”

  “Hi,” he says, but it’s me his eyes are watching. Maybe Mira was right. “Are you going to the screening too?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” She nods, licking the mustard off her fingers. “I was just waiting to see if Fl…” Mira gets halfway through my name, stops and grins even more widely. “…Philippe was coming. Hey, Peep!” she shouts over my shoulder at Philippe, who has just stepped out onto the drive, and jerks her head at the lawn. “You going tonight?”

  “Can’t,” he calls back. “Got an appointment.” He shrugs, still walking towards the gates.

  I turn back to Mira. “You can sit with us if you want? We thought we’d go for research.” Only a tiny, tiny part of me hopes she’ll say no.

  “Research?” Her eyebrows shoot up.

  “The First World War.”

  “Oh. That. Sure.” Mira’s grin is now so wide that the lower half of her face is entirely smile. “We?” she adds, so quietly that Hal doesn’t hear. Then, louder, “I think maybe I won’t go after all. I’m more tired than I thought…” She stretches her arms ridiculously wide, and pantomimes an enormous yawn.

  I snort. “Long day, was it?”

  “Yes. Some of us have cleaning to do.” She winks.

  “Have you got something in your eye, Mee?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Your eye. It must be sore for you to keep blinking like that.”

  There’s a tiny silence and then she laughs. “No. It’s good. I’m good. This is all…” She makes a gesture that is nowhere near as subtle as she thinks, pointing at me and Hal. “Good. See you tomorrow!” And still grinning, she pulls out her sunglasses and heads for the shortcut through the woods.

  I turn back to Hal, still standing there and probably very confused by Mira’s unsubtle comments. “Sorry about her. She’s just…Mira.”

  “Don’t apologize. She seemed nice.”

  “She is. She’s really nice.”

  And leaving soon.

  I push the thought away.

  The west lawn is already scattered with picnic blankets as people settle in for the evening. The closest cinema is a half-hour away by car (even longer by bus) so even if the film isn’t that great, Barney’s summer screenings are always busy, with guests, staff and people from the village covering the grass. Another hot-dog stand across the grass is manned by Libby from the kitchens, who gives me a wave. There’s a little pop-up bar too, where the barman seems to be making cocktails for a crowd three people deep. Threading their way through the blankets and rugs are a couple of the other restaurant and bar staff, handing out red-and-white striped paper bags full of popcorn.

  “Do you want a hot dog?” Hal looks longingly back at the stand behind us. Lunch was a long time ago, thinking about it. In fact, I should let Charlie know I won’t be back for dinner – I should have already, but my brother hasn’t exactly been taking up much space in my head. I tap out a quick message on my phone and hit send – and immediately get a bland Okay back, which probably means he’ll want to Talk About This later.

  As long as he doesn’t want to talk about it now, that’s okay with me. I turn my phone off and stuff it back in my pocket.

  Hal is still gazing at the hot dogs.

  “I’ll get them.” I grab two hot dogs, smiling hello at the waiter who’s got lumbered with this shift, and hand one to Hal. He takes it – tucking the bag of popcorn he’s managed to get hold of under one arm. “So, we just sit, or…?”

  I gulp down a bite of sausage. “Mmmph. No, not here – I know the best spot. Come with me.”

  Still eating, we follow the line of the drive then veer left into the woods, stepping through dappled patches of shade and buttery late sunlight all the way to the black lattice fence that cuts between the trees.

  Hal scrunches up the napkin from his hot dog, stuffing it into the pocket of his jeans. “Are you sure this is the right way?”

  “There’s a gate up ahead – it’s fine. It’s just to keep guests from wandering too far into the woods this way and ending up in the sheds.”

  “The sheds? What do you keep there?”

  “My brother, mostly.” I wave away a passing cloud of midges. The narrow gate is padlocked, half-hidden by sprawls of collapsed cow parsley and beech branches, but it’s there. And thanks to Charlie, I have a key. “If we go through here, round the back of the lawn, there’s a great view of the screen from the edge of the woods.” The gate creaks as I push it open. Hal steps through, waiting for me to close it behind us.

  “I’m guessing not all the guests get this kind of treatment?”

  I step into the shadow of the trees, feeling the air cool around me. “Only the good ones.”

  The place I had in mind is – thankfully – empty. As we came through the woods, I had a horrible image of walking out from the trees and finding Charlie and Felix already sitting there on one of the hotel’s big tartan blankets…But when we get there, we have it entirely to ourselves. Right at the edge of the woods, it’s partly screened from the lawns by a low hedge of box trees – short enough not to block the view of the screen but tall enough to mostly block the view of us.

  It occurs to me, as I grab one of the blankets an enterprising member of the garden team has “borrowed”, rolled up and stashed in a bucket by the hedge, that it looks like I’ve deliberately brought us to a sec
ret, secluded place. Did I mean to?

  “This is awesome!” Hal beams as he flaps the blanket about, scattering bits of dried grass from the back of it. “How come nobody’s already sitting here?”

  “Guests never notice it – it’s the hedge.” I point at the hedge. In case he doesn’t know what “hedge” means. “So it’s pretty much only the staff who come and sit here – and then they’ve either got to climb over the hedge or have a key. And not everybody does.”

  “I’m glad you do,” he says, then folds himself down onto the blanket, looking up at me. “Popcorn?” He holds the bag out.

  “Thanks.” I take a handful, and drop down to sit on the blanket beside him. “I’m glad I do too.”

  Sitting down, I can hear the quiet chatter of everyone on the lawn, but I can’t see them. All I can see is the green of the hedge and the trees above us, the pale sky fading from blue into pink, the gold of the hotel, and the bright white of the screen, waiting to flare into life.

  And Hal, fiddling with the ends of his fringe.

  I can feel him sitting next to me. Even though there’s a space between us, every part of me can feel the draw, the pull towards him as he stretches his legs out along the length of the blanket, his face tipped towards the screen. When the projector starts up, I feel him shift, leaning forward as he falls into the film.

  And without a single thought, I leave my world – Hopwood and all my history here and everything before it – and fall into it with him.

  “Did you see the village?”

  The light from the screen fades, and from the other side of the hedge, there’s a general packing-up-and-moving noise as everyone gets their stuff together.

  “The village?” In the half-light, I can just barely see Hal’s frown.

  “The village. In the film. It’s just down the road!”

  “Wasn’t it in Devon? I thought…”

  “Maybe it was meant to look like Devon, but I’m telling you – that was Castle Combe. There, Lacock and Wells – they’re used for filming all the time.” I tug the blanket, dislodging Hal, and roll it up to stuff back in the bucket. Mostly, I think if I keep moving, I won’t actually sound as tearful as I feel. Maybe coming to watch this wasn’t the best idea…

  “You seem to know a lot about it,” he says, and his voice is smiling. I pick my way carefully back towards the gate. There isn’t really a path here, and in the twilight it’s much harder to tell if the things on the ground in front of me are branches or shadows.

  I swing the gate open, holding it for him. “Not really. It’s just…okay, where did you grow up?”

  “London.”

  “Exactly. Then there’s no way you’re going to get it.”

  “Try me.”

  I lock the gate behind us, pocketing the key. “You see London in films and shows all the time, but when you live somewhere like this…” I wave a hand at the woods, at Hopwood, at the darkness settling in around us. “It’s just nice to feel like it’s important enough – even if it’s actually tiny and insignificant – for somebody to notice.”

  The thing is, the film made me think – not just about Castle Combe – or about how I could make it look like I was not crying at the end – but about Hal and the whole reason he’s here. He’s looking for someone’s story – for them, all this time after they lived.

  Would anyone bother doing that for me?

  Unlikely. I mean, I left school in a mess, and nobody from there came looking for me – not days after, not weeks after…not now. So why would anyone care a hundred years later?

  I’ll just be gone.

  No one would miss you anyway.

  Shut up, Flora. Nobody asked you.

  What would Albie think, knowing someone cared enough to turn their own life upside down searching for him?

  To turn mine upside down – because that’s what Hal’s done.

  And the thing is…I think that maybe that’s been a good thing.

  On the driveway, the glow from the windows at the front of the hotel is golden on the gravel and the light from a rising moon tints the gardens silvery grey. We have walked into a painting. We are the painting, two figures stopped on the edge of it all, standing almost toe-to-toe.

  And neither of us moves.

  “I should get back.”

  Even though I say it, I still don’t move.

  He doesn’t either.

  “How are you getting home?”

  “The usual – across the deer park.”

  “In this?” He points at the sky.

  “How else am I supposed to get there?”

  “But it’s dark…?”

  “It’s fine. I know where I’m going. And some of us are used to no street lamps.”

  In the light spilling from the windows, the gleam of the moon and the fading dusk, I can see him biting his lip.

  “Let me walk you? I mean…can I?”

  My heart pinballs off the inside of my chest.

  “You don’t need to. I don’t need you to.”

  “No, I know.” Another pause. “I want to.”

  “You want to walk me home?”

  “Yes. If that’s okay?”

  Walking me home, holding open doors…sometimes I wonder whether Hal has escaped from 1913 himself. Nobody I’ve ever met before acts like he does.

  “Pa always told me manners cost nothing,” he says, as though he can hear everything I’m thinking.

  Can he?

  Maybe he can.

  What if you said it out loud? What’s he going to think of you then? What would he say if you told him everything that goes on in your head?

  “Are you sure?”

  Please say you’re sure. Please.

  “It’s no problem. And anyway…I’m not ready to go back inside yet.”

  “You’ll have to walk back in the dark, though, and you won’t know where you’re going.”

  “I’ll manage.” His voice is as soft as the sky.

  “Okay then.”

  And the night seems to stretch out and on, just for us. The moon lights a path across the gardens and over the lake, all the way to the park – and when our hands meet, I don’t know if it’s because I reached for him or he reached for me, and I don’t care, because it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to overthink it – it just is.

  He just is.

  The gardens are quiet; the guests who went to the screening have all headed back indoors and everyone else has gone home. We have the night all to ourselves – the white flicks of rabbits’ tails as they scatter, the reflection of the moon caught cleanly in the lake, the stars slipping out from behind the sky…it’s ours.

  What is the point of sights like these if there is no one with whom to share them?

  I step onto the little wooden bridge across the lake. This is what Albie meant, isn’t it? Not the seeing, exactly, but the knowing there is someone else seeing the same thing.

  The not being alone.

  Our footsteps on the bridge vibrate down through the water, rippling out and shaking the moon on the surface – creasing it and folding it until it’s nothing more than jumping white lines…before slowly, slowly it finds its way back to its real shape.

  I know that feeling. It’s the way my mind feels sometimes, the way it felt back then. Only I didn’t realize it at the time, so I had no idea what was coming when those first ripples hit.

  I must have been staring at the lake for a little too long, because suddenly Hal says, “Are you okay?”

  “Me? Oh, yeah. I was just…” Just what? Contemplating the complications of my own brain and how it’s constantly, constantly out to get me? Thinking about how, even though it feels like there are three of me in here sometimes, all wanting different things and there’s not enough room for all the feelings and thoughts in my head, it’s lonely. Because how can I ever be anything but the crazy girl if people don’t know who I am – and how can I be who I am without them seeing all of me? “I was just thinking about Albie. And his letter.”<
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  “Me too.”

  “You were?”

  “Yeah.” His grip on my hand tightens. “I was thinking about him and about what it must have been like. The war,” he adds. “Whether it was like the film. And trying to figure out how someone goes from here…” He stares out at the lake. “To there. How they can be in both places and still be them.”

  “Maybe they can’t. Maybe places change people?”

  “What, like this one?” He laughs, but not at me. His eyes are full of stars and moonlight, and all on me, and when he speaks I can feel every word.

  “Why not?” Before I know it, he’s spinning me up to him, into him – and suddenly we’re face to face in the middle of the bridge, our bodies pressed together. Slowly, I reach up and brush his hair away from his face. It’s soft under my fingers and the air suddenly smells of him. “You’re telling me you don’t feel different here?”

  “Maybe that isn’t because of the place.” He whispers it into my ear, his voice so quiet and his face so close that he must be able to hear my pulse dancing just like I can feel his. He must know that every breath I take is that little bit faster now…He must.

  His thumb grazes the skin of my cheek gently, carefully, as if he’s touching something rare and delicate and doesn’t want to damage it, and suddenly everything is sparks and fire as I tilt my face up to meet his…My lips brush his and my veins are full of lightning that crackles under my skin as I lean into him because this, this is what I want and I’m sure of it now. His hand moves around me, behind my waist, pulling me nearer still; my hand reaches for the back of his neck, fingers tangling in his hair as his lips press against mine – and everything is quiet and everything is loud and everything is thick velvet darkness and blinding bright light and there is nothing in between – and this time, I am not afraid of either. I welcome them both.

  Whether it’s him or me who breaks the kiss first, I don’t know. I can’t tell any more. All I know is that, dizzy and breathless, the feel of his lips on mine stays there even when there’s space between us, even as I can see his eyes looking deep into mine, paler than ever in the near-dark.

  “Umm.”