Among The Hopeless Saints

My dearest Mary. You understand, you always do. Like only a sister could.

It was muddy, and he couldn’t feel his feet. He’d been sitting on a box, staring at the dirt wall three feet from his face, and hallucinating the warmth of the parlor at home. His mother would have the Christmas tree up by now, and fresh garland hung on the mantle.

The fire would be crackling. Roaring.

The room would be warm.

“It’s bitter out tonight,” an officer said, plunking down next to him.

Miles shifted the writing pad on his lap, dropping the pencil and flexing his fingers against the cold. He smiled briefly as the officer jostled his arm.

“Quiet here. Talbot said it was silent all the way down the line.”

Miles resisted the urge to lose his composure, his fingers still searching for the pencil in the mud. He sat up slowly, pulling the mud covered pencil up with him. He rubbed it off on the side of his uniform. It could do with a little more mud.

It was sweet of you to ask after him in your last letter, but it might be best to avoid the subject from now on.

Miles stood up, boots cracking thin ice on a frozen puddle. He shoved the letter in his jacket pocket. “Well, that’s me off then.”

The officer nodded, running a hand down his face.

I thought we’d always be us. There was nothing that could have pulled us apart.

Miles could see his breath as he moved through the trenches, past ghosts in uniforms. He came to a place where the walls lowered, and he found himself on the ground instead of inside it.

It was always a complicated thing when he laid eyes on Thomas Talbot, his oldest friend and worst enemy. Their mothers had never understood it, said they fought more than anything, but somehow you never saw one without the other.

“They've turned us into the Pony Express, that's what they've done.”

Miles didn’t see anyone else, and could only assume that Thomas was talking to his horse again. He smiled.

“Only use left for the cavalry in a modern army,” Miles said.

Thomas moved to the other side of the horse without an acknowledgement.

I think I was wrong. This war breaks even the strongest of men.

Thomas carried on, unbuckling the saddle in silence. Miles took a step back and then a step forward. He put his hands in his pockets and then took them back out again.

“You're back,” he said, hesitant.

“Observant as always, Harrington,” said Thomas.

It's not just the trenches. This place kills everything it touches.

Miles reached for the bridle and got an icy glare for his trouble.

“So how was it?” Miles asked, withdrawing his hand and shoving it back into his pocket.

“What? Being a bloody messenger?” Thomas asked, bitter as tea without milk.

A couple of fellow cavalry officers trudge past, heading for the dreary mess of the trenches. They nodded at Thomas, and Thomas nodded back.

The men here know him better than I ever did.

Miles moved around to the front of the horse, petting its nose. The creature blew softly, allowing the gentle affection. The stars were out tonight, making it bitterly cold in the trenches. Miles felt the chill had sunk into his bones and would never leave. He’d be this cold for the rest of his life, carry it with him even into Mediterranean sunshine.

He took a step towards Thomas.

Thomas, done with the saddle, went the long way around to get the bridle and gave it a tug, the horse falling into step. He glanced over his shoulder, back at Miles.

“Not now.”

Miles stood with his hands clenched in his pockets, watching Thomas lead the horse away. He willed him to turn round. He’d look back over his shoulder with that well-worn smile Miles had seen so many times he’d lost count.

Thomas kept walking.

I am so very tired.

Perched on his wooden crate, Miles scribbled out the last lines of his letter home. Mary would be quite glad to get it. He knew she was a worrier, even if she never wanted to admit it. The alleviation of her worry hung over his head in some manner like guilt. A motivation to finish it, even if trying to pick out the least depressing bits of life in the trenches was difficult.

It was a quiet night, Miles thought. He could almost hear the scratching of the enemy soldiers. Though this far back in the support trenches, he supposed that more likely the rats scurrying about.

Thomas appeared out of the night, scrapping through the mud, and dropped himself down on an equally rickety wooden crate.

“What do you want?” Miles asked, without looking up.

“Happy Christmas, I suppose.”

Miles continued to stare at the letter, wondering if all he was going to do was worry his sister more. All he was doing to himself was furthering the depression that had been hanging over his head for a month. There was a sound that could have been a faint explosion somewhere down the line, or could have been a tree branch shattering in the cold. Miles couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

“I've something to show you,” Thomas said, quiet.

It wasn’t the sort of night for loud conversations.

Miles stared for a moment longer at the letter, then refolded and settled it into his jacket pocket. Thomas produced a crumbled telegram from his own pocket and handed it over silently. He rubbed at his eyes, defeated.

Miles read the telegram in silence, then sucked in a breath.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, looking up.

“Influenza. She was gone in less than a week,” Thomas said bitterly.

“How’s your father?”

Thomas shrugged. “English.”

They sat in silence, Miles still holding the telegram in one hand. The muted noises of the camp carried on around them. It wasn’t the pleasant sort of silence between friends, but that heavy, musty thing that festers in the dark.

“Take a walk,” Thomas said, a sudden break in the silence.

“Why?”

“Just…. come with me.”

Miles was wary, but he got up when Thomas did, following him through the maze of dirt until it gave way to trampled field, further from the front lines.

Thomas carried on. He kept walking until he hit the very edge of the camp, not looking back once, just assuming Miles was following.

He always assumed Miles was following. Even when they were in primary school, Thomas would take off and never look back. He’d never looked back once in his life. Not when he’d joined up, declaring it the right thing to do. And not when they were fifteen, and he’d kissed Miles for the first time, down by the river on a winter night just as cold as this one.

They passed several huddle groups of soldiers, the conversations dying down. Miles could hear something drifting in from the front. It took him long enough to put a finger on what it was.

Singing.

They stopped at the edge of camp, hidden in the darkness. Thomas’s face was just visible in the starlight. Neither of them said anything, standing in the cold and listening as the strains of “Silent Night” drifting over the frozen mud towards them.

“I suppose that means no offensive tonight,” Thomas said.

Miles stared at the stars.

“Looking for hope again, Miles? Thought the war would have beaten that out of you already,” Thomas said. Miles could see the smile on his face out of the corner of his eye. The smile almost made it up to Thomas’s eyes, but not quite.

The joke fell flat, knocked into the cold earth under their boots.

“Just a flash,” Miles said, so quiet he almost couldn’t hear himself.

“Yeah,” Thomas said, just as quietly.

They stood there, as Christmas Eve rolled into Christmas day, shoulder to shoulder and hands nearly brushing, listening to the faint strains of signing on the night air.

Silent night, holy night

All is calm, all is bright