3 July 1916

Near the River Somme, France

It was amazing what a body could grow used to.

Ivy had easily adjusted to the lack of sleep and the tinned army food. She’d grown used to the buttons and straps of her uniform, and the feeling of heavy boots laced on her feet. She’d even grown used to the shelling now; listening for it along the horizon the way grounded sailors listened to the distant rush of the sea.

She’d grown used to a great many things, but she thought that no matter how long she stayed in France, she’d never grow used to the sounds of men and horses shrieking in pain. She heard it in her dreams, now: the inhuman scream that tore from the vocal cords in a sound older than language. The hair-raising cry of pain and shock was her call to action, trained and instinctual both.

As night fell and the last of the light drained away from the sky, she could see the flash and pulse of artillery fire ahead, dead center over the hood of her rattling Ford. Behind her the empty stretchers of her ambulance rattled, waiting to be filled, and ahead of her raged the war that was meant to end them all.

Another ambulance, with the red and white medical cross emblazoned on its mud-spattered sides, swerved around her on the deep-rutted road. Off to the west the supply trained raced, rattling on the rails. It had done its duty, and delivered its food and ammunition and orders. Now, in the darkest of blood alchemy, those supplies had been turned into wounded, and the narrow-railed train was carrying them away again.

As Ivy forced the ambulance on, she could smell the battle now, and feel the shudder of artillery impacts through the ground over which she drove. Cordite smoke hung in the air like mist, bitter and grey, and as the relief camp came into view, she could hear the groans of the wounded.

Even as she shoved her heavy Ford into neutral, Ivy was up and moving, her world narrowed to the bloodied men laying in stretchers along the side of the road. “I’ve got room for six,” she said, swinging herself up into the back of the truck and passing the empty stretchers down to those waiting below. “And as many walking wounded as we can fit.”

The lance-corporal nodded, his face greyish white beneath the spatter of ground-in mud. Ivy had lost track of how many trips she’d made to this relief camp over the last three days, but as long as she’d been able to drive, there had been wounded there to meet her.

She helped to load the stretchers, finally thankful for the lanky height that had been the plague of her school-yard years. She could reach the upper racks and was strong enough to hoist the wounded men up where they needed to be for her drive back to the army hospital.

Once all six stretchers were in place, Ivy clambered though the open front of the ambulance, over the wide bench seat, and rammed herself behind the wheel again. A few more men were boosted into the truck to sit along the floorboards: those who’d been gassed or shot or hurt in a way that allowed them to walk under their own steam.

“Is that it?” she called to the lance-corporal, who was standing alone on the side of the road with only a lonely, flickering lantern at his feet.

“That’s it,” he said. “For now.”

It was a truth they both understood. Sooner or later, there would always be more wounded.

“I’ll tell St Johns,” said Ivy as she stomped the clutch, threw the car in reverse, and turned the car back the way she’d come.

Occasionally one of the men behind her would moan, and the cloudy night sky still lit up with the flash of shell impacts. Artillery rumbled in the distance, and Ivy’s pulse thrummed in time, her heart hammering against her ribcage like a trapped and threatened thing.

This was the part of her mission that made Ivy’s palms sweat, and her skin prickle in fear.

Driving to the front? It wasn’t fun. But driving away, with a truck full of wounded men who were trusting her to keep them safe? That was worse. This was the part that mattered.

“How much longer, miss?” one of the soldiers called, his voice echoing the sounds of northern England. “I don’t think this one’ll last much longer.”

“Almost there,” Ivy called, pressing a little more firmly on the accelerator. The lights of the intelligence encampment were glimmering just over the next rise, and Ivy kept her eyes peeled for wagons and soldiers as she careened into camp, sending a cloud of dust up into the hot, murky night.

As it cooled, the engine pinged and creaked, but Ivy wasn’t there to listen. She was around the back, helping the VAD and nursing staff of St John’s mobile hospital carry the wounded out to be triaged by lantern light.

Nurses moved in graceful efficiency between their patients, their dove-grey uniforms rumpled and stained from constant work. The surgeons looked worse; their hands scrubbed raw and their faces lined with more death than any one human was supposed to see. Overhead messages flew along telegraph lines, and in the distances, shells still fell like so much blood, come to teach a lesson to pharaoh.

One of the Fourth Army aides was talking with the hospital matron, and as the bureaucracy of war moved around Ivy, she felt the adrenaline of the mission slowly draining away. She slumped down against the back bumper of the ambulance, waiting for someone to give her orders.

One of the aides from headquarters was glaring at her, but what he was snapping took several long moments to register. “Corporal. Corporal Barr!”

Ivy blinked and wrenched her gaze away from a soldier who’s eyes were being rinsed and cleaned after he’d been burned with gas. It didn’t look like a particularly bad case—Ivy had certainly seen worse.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, forcing herself to her feet and standing before the lieutenant.

“Any reports from the front?”

“The lance-corporal at the aid station said that was the last batch for now, sir.”

“Fine. Take the ambulance around back behind the hospital, and then get some sleep.”

“Aye, sir,” she said, and kept one hand braced on the canvas side of her ambulance as she rounded the truck and clambered back behind the wheel. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept, and her eyes felt red-hot and gritty.

She brought the ambulance to a stop in the dark shadows along the edge of camp, and for a moment she considered just curling up and sleeping on the seat of the truck. But she was filthy, coated in two days’ worth of sweat and dust and other people’s blood.

(She never could get it all out from beneath her fingernails.)

Ivy slid down out of the seat, closed the door, and cut through the little dark alley between the temporary hospital building and the telegrapher’s office. She should eat; the canteen always had something going on nights like this, but god’s truth, at this point she was too tired to chew. All she wanted was to be clean and fall into her cot.

In her exhaustion, she didn’t notice the soldier leaning against the thin wall of the hospital structure before nearly walking into him.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, only now taking in the man’s bare feet and bandaged eyes. He was tall and lean; the shapeless cotton trousers and shirts issued by the hospital to their wounded left his ankles and wrists exposed. It was impossible to tell his hair color in the near darkness of the little alley, but she could see the cigarette he was holding between his lips, and the box of matches he was fumbling between his fingers.

“Need some help?” Ivy asked, wondering how effectively he’d be able to light the cigarette without singing off his fingers.

“Appreciate it,” said the soldier, holding out the box of matches. “Didn’t think this part through.”

His voice was familiar; Brummie and low.

Ivy took the box of matches, struck a light, and carefully held it to the cigarette he held loosely between his lips. It was then, as she looked up into his face, made bright by the flare of the match, that she recognized him.

“Will,” she said, shock rippling through her. She almost forgot to shake out the flame before she singed her fingers. “William Dyer.”

His head snapped up, his face turning towards her despite the bandages covering his eyes—eyes that she knew would be blue.

“Do I know you?” he asked, his voice rough and almost hungry.

Ivy swallowed hard, and leaned against the wall of the telegraph office opposite him. “Yeah. Well, not really. I went to school with Lillian. My name is Ivy Barr.”

He took a slow drag on the cigarette, and the end burned brightly in the dark. “Tall girl,” he said finally. “Dark, curly hair.”

She was surprised he remembered her. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “That’s me.”

“It’s a small world,” said Will, tipping his head back to rest against the wall behind him.

“It’s a small war,” said Ivy.

Will huffed, a laugh that was all spite and cynicism and humor so dark it had never seen the light. “No,” he said in a final tone. “It isn’t.”

Ivy didn’t know what to say to that. They stood in silence in the darkness of the alley as Will’s cigarette slowly burned down and the smoke drifted up to join the haze of clouds and dust that covered the night sky.

“Why are you here?” Will finally asked, breaking the quiet.

Ivy shrugged, her shoulders sore and tight from constant tension. “Same as you,” she said. “I volunteered.”

“More fools, us,” he muttered.

“What about you?” Ivy asked, rolling her shoulders in an attempt to keep herself awake and alert. “Why are you out here?”

Will shrugged. “It’s too quiet in there,” he said. “Can’t sleep.” He dropped the butt of his cigarette, stepped forward like he was going to grind it out with his heel, and then remembered just in time that he wasn’t wearing shoes. “Damn,” he muttered.

Ivy tamped out the cigarette, having to stand close enough to Will that she could feel the heat of his skin.

“You get used to it,” he said abruptly. “The noise of the war. The shelling, and the sound of the men around you. Horses stamping, the wood struts of the trenches and tunnels creaking. The pounding of your own heart. You get used to all the fucking noise, and now I’m back in between clean sheets and I can’t sleep.”

Ivy nodded, and yearned for a smoke of her own. “I was like that, my first few weeks in training. The quiet would wake me up, like I was listening for sounds that weren’t there. The Singer Motorworks bell ringing third shift, and the early train whistle coming up from London.”

“The bell at St. Gregory’s,” said Will, his voice rough.

“The coal wagons, and the paper boys.” All the little sounds that had made up her world; that came together in the constant humming rumble that was her city. Sounds that she’d taken for granted before the shelling had pushed them from her head.

“Some nights I think I might have dreamed it,” he said. “That I’ve spent all my life in that trench, and home was just a dream.”

“We’ll go back,” said Ivy. “That’s the point of all this, isn’t it? Making sure we all have homes to go back to.”

“Do you really think that?”

Ivy opened her mouth—and closed it again. She didn’t know. Neither of them was guaranteed to see the sun come up, let alone make it back to England’s shores. But if they didn’t tell themselves that home was waiting, and if they didn’t think there would be something to go back to…

A nurse rounded the corner of the hospital, a lone candle on her hand. “There you are, lad,” the nurse said, her grey hair frizzing out from beneath a cap that had lost its starch. “The matron’ll have both our heads if I don’t get you back inside.”

Will ignored her, and kept his bandaged face turned towards Ivy. “I’m glad you found me,” he said quietly.

“Take care of yourself,” said Ivy as the Scottish nurse looped her arm through Will’s and began to tug him away.

He snorted, and shook his head, and allowed himself to be led down the alley and around the building, out of sight.

Ivy made her way through the little buildings that housed the running of the war, wove through the rows of tents that stretched out across trampled French fields, and finally made her way into what, for now, was home.

She washed and dressed for bed, and then dreamed of a tall, lanky boy with bright eyes and a wry grin. He’d shared his umbrella with her, Lillian pressed to one side of him and Ivy on the other, and for the space of one walk home (for the space of one ephemeral dream) Ivy felt warm and cared for and safe.

July 1917

Near Passchendaele, Flanders

They were transferring more men to the front. The trucks and trains had come rolling in, and by now, after two years in service, Ivy knew what that meant: they were preparing for another bloody offensive, and sooner than later those men would come right back down the tracks: bleeding, dead, and broken.

She was attached to a different hospital now, working with Belgian and British medicals. As the war dragged on, and the endless pages of the dead and wounded stretched ever longer, the Royal Army decided they cared less and less about what was proper for a woman to do, and instead focused on the work that needed to be done. Ivy was there, and she was capable, so the work was what she did.

For now, the base camp was quiet, and Ivy sat on the edge of a rocky hill and watched the first of the stars come out, twinkling in a hazy summer sky. Her hands were greasy and scraped from the engine work she’d done that day, and her back ached from hours of leaning into her engine and helping to lift dead soldiers into place on the trucks.

She lit the last of her cigarettes, telling herself that tomorrow was payday, and she’d get her script and a new pack, courtesy of the quartermaster. (And if the pay was late, she could always try to trade with one of the Belgian drivers. Their smokes were better, anyway.)

She lay back on the little patch of grass, braced her feet on a granite outcrop, and smoked slowly, savoring the burn of tobacco in her lungs and the taste of ashes in her mouth. It was better—would always be better—than the memory of mud and blood and gunsmoke in the air, coating her nose and mouth and throat.

Night fell, and the war went on. The cars were parked behind her, up the slope, on the edge of the abandoned town where they were temporarily stationed. The brick and stonework caught the noise of one or two of the night shift drivers making an appearance, padding around the ambulances and opening and closing the doors.

“I’ve already got petrol in them,” she called, tamping out her cigarette and wandering up the hill. “The captain had me look them over; Flossie’s clutch is sticky, but she’ll last another week before—”

A heavy hand clamped over her mouth and she was tugged backwards against someone’s chest.

“Walk away,” said the man holding her, his breath hot in her ear.

He was English, she knew that much, and before she could collect herself enough to headbutt him or aim for his privates, he’d pushed her up against the side of an ambulance and leaned against her.

“This doesn’t concern you. Just walk away.”

She knew that voice.

“Will?” she gasped as he loosened his grip on her jaw.

He stilled, and she could feel him thinking. “Ivy?” he asked, releasing her and stepping away.

She took a slow breath, trying to calm her racing heart, before turning to look at him.

His eyes were bright against the dusty skin of his face, and he looked tired, like he ached to his bones. Gone was the young man who’d come laughing home on university holidays; gone was the boy who’d teased her under a shared umbrella. This man had been sharpened to a cutting edge; had been stripped of nearly everything but his soul.

As he looked her up and down, Ivy wondered if he wasn’t thinking the same thing about her.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

It didn’t take long to find the answer. There was a soft thump from inside the back of an ambulance, and Ivy darted around to look before Will could catch her.

There was a young man—he couldn’t be older than eighteen, Christ, how many of these boys had lied when they’d enlisted—crouched in the narrow aisle between the stretcher racks. He’d pulled one of the bodies off of its stretcher and was in the process of unbuttoning the dead man’s shirt.

“What are you doing?” Ivy asked, turning to look from the boy to Will and back again.

Will caught her chin and turned Ivy’s face back to his. “Ignore him,” he said.

“Because it looks like he’s stealing that man’s effects,” she said, her voice rising higher with worry.

“Hush,” said Will, taking a step closer. “I’ll explain. I swear I will, but right now I need you to ignore him. We’re running out of time.”

Ivy jerked free, and watched Will warily, all the while he watched her. Eventually the soft rustling noises stopped, and the doors to the ambulance clicked shut. The skinny kid padded up to Will, dressed in the dead man’s clothes, and looked from Will to Ivy and then back again.

To Ivy’s surprise, he tapped Will’s elbow quickly, tap tap, with the first two fingers of his right hand.

“Go back to line,” said Will. “I’ll be back later.” He didn’t bother to look away from Ivy. The dare (the threat) was clear.

The boy looked at her and then sped off into the darkness, his boots making almost no noise over the exposed stone of the patchy road.

“Now what?” Ivy asked, crossing her arms.

“I’m breaking into the command office,” he said, eyes wary.

Ivy blinked, and felt herself teetering on the precipice of …something. Something important. “Alright,” she whispered, firmly falling off the fence and choosing her side. “I’ll stand lookout, then?”

“It’d be easier if I had some bloody light,” said Will, padding down the row of ambulances and circling around to the back door of the Colonel’s temporary command office. Ivy was tempted to bum another cigarette off him (why else would she be standing around outside in the middle of the night?) but contented herself with idleness, leaning against the brick wall of what had once been someone’s home, and now was an Allied command office.

Soon enough she heard the door snick open behind her, and then she could smell the phosphorus flare of a match.

“You know where things are in here?” he asked.

Ivy backed up, making sure to keep her eyes trained on the road. “Sometimes.”

“Where’s the mail kept? Before it’s sent out?”

“Outgoing is in a bag hanging on the back of the door,” she whispered.

He disappeared inside soundlessly, leaving Ivy alone in the warm evening breeze. As she scuffed her boot over the dust of the road, she wondered why she was doing this; why she was risking everything for Will Dyer.

Back home everyone knew the Dyers. Mr. Dyer was one of the shift foremen at the Singer Motor Works; Mrs. Dyer worked as a secretary for one of the physicians uptown. Ivy’s own mother had worked for Mr. Dyer in the machine shops, and she said that he was a good and fair boss, who’d stand up for his men when the boss came ‘round.

Will had been one of the few neighborhood kids to finish all the way through at the board school before going up to university. An account, he’d become, in a posh office across from the Grand Hotel.

They did right by their friends and neighbors, the Dyers did. Ivy just had to hope she was doing the right thing now. Whatever it was this Will was doing, Ivy had to assume he had a reason.

“Done,” said Will quietly, gently pushing the door closed behind him.

“What—”

He cut her off before she could finish the question. “I’ll answer your questions. Ivy, I swear I will, but I have to get back to the lines before they notice I’ve gone. Where’ll you be tomorrow? It’s my week back from the trenches, I can find an excuse to come up. I’ll find you then.”

His eyes, those pale, pale blue eyes, were so intently focused on hers. “I’ve got runs down to the support camp in the morning,” she said slowly. “And fleet work in the afternoon. I’ll try to be around back where you found me, tinkering with one of the engines.”

“Right,” said Will, nodding. “Right, I’ll see you then.”

And before Ivy could turn to walk away, he stepped forward, backed her into the shadows of the building, and hugged her.

Ivy stiffened at first, surprised by the gesture. How long had it been since someone had done more than shake her hand? She didn’t know. Probably years, since she’d left for the volunteer training camp. (Since her mother had died, and left her alone with nothing but debt and memories.)

As the worry and surprise drained away, Ivy was left with the warmth of him, the strength of his body against hers. She tightened her arms around his waist, sighed into the wool of his uniform coat, and slowly let her weight rest against his. Just for a moment, for a handful of seconds, she let herself have this illusion: of someone caring, of a partner, of a warm body who would miss her at night.

And then he straightened, and she was back on her own feet, and the moment was over.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll find you.”

And then…

Did he kiss her? Did she imagine the brush of his lips against the top of his head?

Either way he was gone, walking into the darkness without making a noise, while on the horizon, the war raged on.

~*~

 

The VAD nurses had a battered old gramophone in the hospital ward, and some afternoons they let Ivy and the other ambulance drivers borrow it and the handful of records they protected like jewels.

The sun was warm overhead as Ivy tinkered with one of the ambulance’s cooling systems. The truck had a tendency to run hot, and Maggie thought maybe there was a hairline leak, letting water run out slowly enough that the drivers wouldn’t notice. When Irish Eyes Are Smiling played gently in the background as Ivy carefully resealed the pot of plumber’s glue, hoping it would hold until the ambulance fleet shifted back towards a city where they could have a proper welder look at it.

“Hard at work,” said Will’s voice from behind her, sounding amused.

Ivy spun around, the pot of glue still in her hand, and drank in the sight of him. He’d washed since last night; the layer of ground-in mud had been scrubbed from his face and knocked from his uniform and boots. He was clean shaven, and his short, cropped hair caught the late afternoon sun. He was smiling at her; that crooked grin she’d had a crush on a lifetime ago, and Ivy was suddenly self-conscious of her rumpled uniform skirt and the grease smears that went up her arms to the rolled cuffs of her shirt.

“Sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for. “I wasn’t sure when you’d come round.”

“You don’t need to apologize for working,” he said.

Ivy shrugged and picked up her toolbox, carrying it to the back of the quartermaster’s building where their tools were being stored.

“You learn about engines over here?” he asked, following after her.

“Mostly,” said Ivy, locking the storage room and heading back out to the water pump, where a bar of rough soap waited for her. “I worked at Singer Motors before volunteering. That helped.”

“Hmm.”

He leaned against the hood of an ambulance as Ivy scrubbed at her hands and arms with the gritty, stinging soap. Ivy had gotten used to men watching her after her first few weeks in France. Many of them had been fighting since the war broke out, and the nursing staff and First Aid Yeomanry were the first women they’d seen.

Will didn’t watch her that way. She could feel his eyes on her, studying her like he was cataloging her every move.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d come back,” she said, rolling down the damp cuffs of her terribly wrinkled shirtsleeves.

“I swore I would,” said Will, his voice low. He stepped forward, fished a handkerchief out of his pocket, and dampened it. Before Ivy could step back, he cupped the back of her head with one broad hand and ran the handkerchief over her cheek with the other. “You missed a spot,” he said, his eyes twinkling. Before he pulled away, he replaced the soft linen with the pad of his thumb, warm and calloused, and Ivy found herself tempted to turn her head and kiss the skin of his soap-scented palm.

She did her damndest not to blush. “Not a lot of mirrors about.”

Will pocketed the handkerchief. “Coffee?” he asked.

“Sure.”

They wandered to the canteen, which was quiet this time of day. A few corpsmen were in the back, working on whatever tinned meal they’d be serving for dinner, but the vat of perpetually hot coffee was available, next to a stack of tin mugs. Will and Ivy served themselves before he led the way back outside, where they perched on a granite outcrop looking out over the shallow valley where the support camp sprawled.

“It’s a pretty day,” said Ivy, tapping her fingers on the sides of her cup.

Will grunted his agreement. “You’ll be wanting to know what it was we did.”

Ivy wanted to correct him. What you did. But she’d made her decision, and she was just as complicit as he was, now.

“The boy—from last night—he’s sixteen.”

Ivy raised an eyebrow.

“Joined up last year. Tall for his age, had some schooling. I think they’re running out of fucking men to send over here,” he said bitterly. “Jacobs—that’s his name—‘s already been shot twice, and took a bayonet to the leg.”

Ivy sipped her coffee. She wished the story was a more uncommon one. Boys joined up to go off and fight the Hun. Somehow it never registered that they could get killed along the way.

(What did it say about her, that she now knew there were fates worse than a quick death from an unseen bullet?)

“He’s stopped talking. Has since the last time they sent him back up to the line. Hadn’t said a damn thing. He just sits and stares.”

“How long has it been?” Ivy asked.

“Almost three months.”

Ivy sipped her weak coffee and ignored the acidic churning of her stomach.

“The dead man,” said Will slowly, still fiddling with his own mug, “Was set to go home in a few days. Orders came through. He’d been wounded enough times, or knew the right people.”

“You’re having them change places.”

Will nodded, still watching the horizon. “Send the kid home. Roger won’t miss it.”

“What happens after he gets back to England?” Ivy asked.

Will shrugged. “I don’t know. But it’ll be better than here.”

Anywhere would be better than here.

“I wanted to explain,” he said abruptly. “I wanted you to know there was a good reason.”

“I wouldn’t have told,” said Ivy.

He shrugged. “I didn’t think you would.”

“You had to get the death notice back?” Ivy guessed. “From the office, before it went off to his family.”

Will nodded.

“Thank you,” he said gruffly. “For what you did.”

They sat in silence, finishing their bad coffee and watching the light go golden and long over the gentle Flanders hills.

“Why did you help me?” Will asked, his voice rough in their private bubble of quiet.

Ivy thought about it, trying to find the words. “It felt like the right thing,” she said slowly. “The whole neighborhood knew your family back home. Your dad and mum, they always helped where they could. I guess I figured, if you were doing something against orders, you must have had a good reason.”

Will sighed and swung an arm over Ivy’s shoulders, pulling her into his side. “Goddammit, Ivy” he muttered, tilting his head to rest his cheek against her crown. “Goddammit.”

Ivy leaned into him, and decided to take it as a compliment.

~*~

 

They stayed like that, basking in each other and the sun, until the sky had gone to purples and pinks and the canteen hummed with life.

“Did you hear?” asked Maggie, scooting over on her bench to make room for Ivy and Will with their plates. “A couple Yanks are here, performers from the States. There’s to be singing and dancing down in the square.”

“Tonight?” asked Ivy, resisting the impulse to glance over at Will. She wasn’t officially in the military; the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry were an independent group, but she could still, somehow, be drummed out on charges. Fraternization was not recommended.

“Yes,” said Maggie, spooning peas into her mouth as quickly as she could. “C’mon, hurry and eat. My sister sent me some new stockings and a lipstick; I want to put them on before the show starts.”

“Why do I have to go with you?” Ivy asked, chewing her grainy roast as quickly as she could.

“Because you need to change into something that’s not all-over grease!” said Maggie, practically bouncing in her seat. “I’ll let you try my lipstick.”

“Alright,” said Ivy, laughing at her friend’s enthusiasm. Beneath the table, Will’s hand gently squeezed her knee.

“I’ll see you ladies there, then,” he said as Ivy wriggled free of the bench to buss her plate.

“Yes,” she said, a little breathless. “I guess I’ll see you there.”

And then… oh, for a few glorious moments, she was a girl again. She hurriedly dressed in Maggie’s tent a few down from her own, laughing as Maggie stroked the fresh silk of her stockings and declared her new lipstick the most perfect shade ever created. They combed water through their hair, pinched their cheeks, and pretended that they were regular women heading out for a date, concerned with their hair and dresses and whether the men they met would be kind.

Soon enough they were back out into the night, walking arm and arm into the old stone town that had been abandoned by its sons and daughters months ago. But for now, just for tonight, the empty windows reflected lights from the square, and the brick and stone buildings echoed with the sound of joyous cacophony: laughter, conversation, and the slow tuning of instruments.

An upright piano had been rolled out into the street, a low stage had been constructed by placing a board between the beds of two supply lorries, and a trio of red, white, and blue-bedecked women were standing on the stage, caps on their heads and smiles on their faces. They were clean and crisp and colorful against the exhaustion and olive drab of the war, and for a moment Ivy wondered if she had ever looked that beautiful, or confident, or worry-free.

“Come on,” insisted Maggie, tugging Ivy into the crowd of uniformed men.

The Americans had started to sing, harmonizing about a soldier who’d met the most dangerous girl in the world. The piano was gamely playing along, and someone had pulled out a violin. The music flowed over the crowd like a benediction, a mass baptism in the river of good cheer.

The crowd jostled forward, pushing towards the stage, and Ivy tried to work her way to the edge of the throng. It didn’t work: there were too many people, too many men, and most of them wanted to grab her for a dance.

“You look lovely!” said the supply sergeant, pressing a mustachioed kiss to Ivy’s cheek before spinning her into a dance. She laughed and danced with him, their identical army boots thumping over the ancient stones of the little town road. The song changed, and one of the telegraphers was dancing with her, sending her into a frenzy of swirls. Dizzy and laughing, Ivy was passed to an artillery captain she hadn’t met, but who made ridiculous eyes at her and asked for a kiss. Then it was a Scot, with big hands and surprisingly light feet, and then a corporal, and then—

“Oh,” she said, flushed and panting, and Will’s hands caught her hips and pulled her in close.

“Hi,” he said, pitching his voice above the noise of the crowd. The music shifted again, dropping into a heavy, syncopated swing rhythm, and Will grinned even as his fingers tightened against her. “You dance?”

“Of course,” she said, and then her fingers were in his, and his hand was splayed low over her back, and they were moving together like they’d been dancing together for years. The music spun out around them like a spell from an old-timey fairy tale, dark and compelling, and the crowd spun and danced like those willingly ensorcelled. Will’s eyes flashed blue in the half-dark of the square, and no matter how they spun or dipped, his eyes stayed focused on her, a lifeline in the honey-warm night.

He spun her again, reeling her out like a child’s toy top, and Ivy closed her eyes and let the dizziness take her. Another pair of hands caught her, and she was smiling into the faces of strangers as they grinned back. Music had written their reprieve, and as long as the notes pealed out they could pretend that nothing was wrong; that they’d met in a dance hall back home, that tomorrow none of these men would die and or end up bleeding in the back of her ambulance as she rushed them back to a hospital sided with canvas and cardboard.

It felt like she was passed from hand to hand all the way around the square, each man eager to dance with the few women who had crossed the Channel for the same reasons they had. She dipped and spun and danced, danced until her feet were sore in her dark boots, and then she was back in Will’s long arms, and he turned them away from the rest of the crowd to dance with her a little too closely, letting their hips and thighs brush against each other; a pantomime of the type of dancing men and women could do alone in the dark.

And then, like autumn leaves drifting to earth, the music slowed, and the notes stretched out, and the golden glow that had fallen over the square began to fade. Dancers pulled their partners closer, and the music floated on, lingering like perfume in an empty room: everyone wanted to cling to the magic until the last possible moment, before reality and darkness and the war returned.

As the final notes faded, swallowed into a star-studded sky, Will backed into the shadows between two buildings and kissed her.

It wasn’t what she’d expected.

He kissed her gently; delicately, soft brushes of his lips against hers over and over, like he was painting a picture with his mouth: an impressionist’s interpretation of this moment. His breath was warm against her face, his hands were rough and calloused against the skin of her cheeks, and his body was hot and heavy on hers, pressing her against the cool brick wall at her back.

Ivy could have withstood the kind of kiss she assumed soldiers gave their girls; all teeth and tongues and desperate need. She was prepared for that; for the lightning strike of affection to sizzle down her spine and be gone as quickly as it came.

But this? This affection, and gentleness, and reassuring warmth? This was going to change her forever; this was going to be the standard that all other kisses had to meet. His kiss was a lure; it tempted her to forget that they were at war, and she was alone in the world, and that there were no guarantees that they would ever see each other again.

And then he kissed her again, and her thoughts drifted to a halt: she was a woman, tall and lithe and soft, and here was a man she’d wanted for nearly as long as she could remember, and he was kissing her, and his body was a reassuring weight against her own.

“I have to go back,” he said eventually, resting his forehead against hers. His voice was low and rough, and Ivy’s fingers tightened in the material of his uniform jacket. He smelled like cheap army soap and the permanent gunsmoke scent of his coat, and Ivy wanted to press her face to him and breathe it in until she forgot what blood smelled like.

“I know,” she said, trying to catalog each and every feeling: the way his hips met hers, the callouses across his palms, the gentle fuzz of short-shorn hair against her fingers. “I wish—”

There wasn’t any point in giving voice to her wishes.

“Be safe ‘til I find you again, yeah?”

“Alright,” she said, nodding against him. “Stay out of trouble.”

He grinned at her, stroked the back of his knuckles over her cheek, and gave his head a jaunty little nod. “Who, me?”

“Yeah, you,” said Ivy, smiling through the urge to sit down on the ground and cry.

“I’ll do my best,” he said, tipping his cap her way. “I always do.”

And then he was gone, lost in the crowd of soldiers working their way back down to the support camp, and their guns, and the endless, interminable war.

 

August 1918

Outside Amiens, France

The Fourth Army was back, and that meant there was going to be a slaughter.

The Fourth Army was back, and that meant Will was somewhere nearby.

The battle, when it came, wasn’t like any of the others to which Ivy had borne witness. Germans surrendered by the thousand, silently and solemnly, laying down their guns and walking into camp with the blank faces of men who had been too long at war.

Thousands surrendered, but even more soldiers fought on. The ambulances ran until the engines overheated in the brutal summer heat, and then they ran on some more. The floorboards went slick with blood, and still Ivy drove—

—and she checked every batch of soldiers she carried back to safety; looked with dread and anticipation into each pain-pinched face. She watched as the battle stretched into days and then to weeks, and still, she never saw the man she was looking for.

Summer turned into autumn, humid and soft, and that’s when Will found her again.

He was thinner, and his eyes were over-bright against his mud-stained face, but when he pulled her in for a crushing hug, that… that was the same.

 

11 November 1918

Outside Amiens, France

The war had too much momentum to stop.

It had been declared seemingly overnight; a call to action that had been answered with impossible speed. With the weight of four years and countless deaths behind it, the war spun on like a child’s top: hopping and rattling but still spinning, spinning, spinning; wobbling this way and that, but with too much force to come to a halt.

It was Armistice Day, but part of Ivy wondered if the war would ever end. Maybe this was their life now; perhaps what had come before (home, warm baths, the feeling of Christmas in the air) had been the dream. If there was a purgatory, Ivy thought that they had already arrived.

Most of the fighting had moved on, shifting and centralizing as German forces lost faith. Ivy still made ambulance runs, but they were few and far between: most of the souls in hospital were there with influenza, or with frostbite, or creeping cases of rotting gangrene. In the mornings she helped the logistics staff, or attempted to tinker with the engines of their ambulances, or went round to the nursing stations and offered them her assistance.

This morning wasn’t like the others. It wasn’t like any morning she’d experienced before. There was something almost holy about it: a mixture of hope tempered with the weight of every crushed dream and expectation that had come before.

“Two minutes,” muttered Maggie, her eyes fixed on her watch.

Ivy watched the road, watching a familiar figure jog along the deep, muddy ruts towards the motorcar fleet.

“I was worried you’d miss it,” said Ivy, going on tiptoe to press a kiss to Will’s cheek.

“‘Course I won’t miss this,” he said, tucking her against his side. He smelled like mud and cigarettes and cordite smoke, and Ivy wondered when that had become the smell of home.

On the other side of the road the cooks were standing in the open flap of the dining tent, their aprons clean and faces solemn. The nurses, too, were out in the road with their faces tilted up towards a watery, late-autumn sun.

“One minute,” Maggie said quietly.

Ivy leaned into Will’s side and turned her face to the west: that way lay home. That way lay the future, whatever it was. Right now, in this place, she couldn’t imagine it. The war had absorbed the world, and she couldn’t envision anything that came after.

“Ten seconds,” said Maggie, and Ivy reached for Will’s hand, squeezing it just this side of too tightly.

“Nine.”

More men shuffled out of the telegraph building and commanders’ offices, all with their faces tilted up to the sky.

“Eight.”

Remaining indoors wouldn’t change anything, but somehow, they were all driven by an instinctual need to face this future out under the open sky, where so many men had lived and died for a war that was meant to end all thoughts of another even happening.

“Seven.”

Will was squeezing her hand back, his blunt fingers locked around the tired bones of her own.

“Six.”

A lone bird flew overhead, coasting on the wind that came in off the ocean, even this far from the sea.

“Five.”

Did the world look different to birds? Or could the damage of war be seen even from a thousand feet?

“Four.”

Sudden panic gripped Ivy: everything was changing, or maybe it might not; what if they’d come so close only to fail now?

“Three.”

Ivy leaned into Will, and he tilted his head to rest on her own.

“Two.”

She could barely remember her life before the war. She couldn’t imagine what would come after.

“One.”

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, in a sea of silence, with faces raised to the weak autumn sun, the war ended. Not with a scream or a shout or a bang, but with peace. A tiny, unremarkable moment of perfect, incandescent tranquility that stood in the face of everything that had come before.

The world changed—but mainly, it didn’t. A car rattled up the road, the door the telegraph office clicked closed behind the workers, and all those who remained in France still needed food and orders and tending. Functionally, only two things were different: the absence of artillery fire, and the presence of hope.

“You know—I love you.” It felt right for her to say it here, under the endless curve of the sunlight heavens. Silence had washed over them like baptismal water, and when (not if) they left this place, it would be as new, entirely changed people.

Will turned and wrapped his arms around her, burying his nose in her hair. “Yeah,” he said gruffly. “I love you too.”

 

Early January 1919

Near Calais, France

Ivy tilted her head to rest against the frame of her ambulance as the bitter wind whistled around her. The air smelled of the sea, salty and dark, and overhead gulls cried, plaintive and mournful.

She was finally going home. The ships were leaving for England; for Albion’s familiar shores, and after months and years of terrible numbness, now she knew fear.

Her ambulance was parked in a row of dozens of other motorcars; an unmoving parade of vehicles stretching along the low scrublands beside the sea. Would it be left here, she wondered? Left for the salt of sea spray, for the vines and grasses and birds? Maybe someday, when war was nothing but a scary tale used to spook children at night, someone would find this graveyard of iron. Unlike the pharaohs of old, there would be no curse put on this tomb. No, the damned wouldn’t be those who found these battered cars—it was the damned who’d parked them here.

With a long sigh, Ivy closed her eyes and tugged the collar of her army coat more tightly around her throat. She should be in the queue to board the ship, or already up on the deck with the other women who were in this batch of army personnel returning to England. She should, but Ivy didn’t think she could survive one more goodbye.

Will had already gone home.

The army, in its dubious wisdom, had broken all of its personnel into forty classes. Wounded first, followed by those who had jobs ‘critical to the economy’. Will was an accountant, Oxford-educated and—and good. He was smart and patient and had a job waiting for him back in the city. He had a family who would pick him up at the train station; had a bed waiting for him surrounded by people he loved.

Of course he’d already gone home. Ivy hadn’t bothered to ask him to write.

That was the real reason that Ivy couldn’t bring herself to board the ship: her future gaped open like a sinkhole, fathomless and dark. She had no family to return to; had no job waiting for her. Volunteering for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry had only postponed the immediacy of those issues, it hadn’t made them go away. The war had given her purpose, and now it was gone.

She smoothed her palm over the bloodstained floorboards of the ambulance. Her purpose, if that was what she was mourning, was a terrible one. It was a purpose she needed to lay to rest.

Ivy took one last look along the length of her ambulance. It had served its purpose, and now it was time to let it go.

It was time for Ivy to go, too.

She slid onto the sandy soil and strolled along the ridge to the coast, where the last few soldiers were milling, waiting to catch the tide back home to England.

“Name!” the sergeant barked at her, looking up from his rickety table that had been set along the wharf.

“Ivy Barr,” she replied, clear and crisp.

Within minutes she was on the top deck of the ship. She could have sworn she smelled England in the air already.

 

Two Weeks Later

The train station was pure chaos, loud and joyful.

Families laughed as they embraced for the first time in four years, children yelled and dogs barked and women cried, hanging off the shoulders of the men they thought were lost. Ivy saw several kisses of varying intensity, and managed to smile through the jealousy burning through her.

Hiking her army duffel a little higher on her shoulder, Ivy slowly wove through the crowd as she worked her way to the edge of the platform, relieved to see that this, at least, hadn’t changed. The station was the same; grimy brick with the smell of coal smoke carried on the frosty wind. As she clattered down the stairs to the cobbled street below she could hear the bell at St. Gregory’s strike seven, and Ivy knew she was home.

It didn’t matter that she had to walk until she found the boarding house that Mrs. Griggs used to run on Somerville Road; it didn’t matter that it had started to snow, tiny little flakes floating down in the buttery warm glow of the old streetlights. It didn’t matter that she’d been greeted by no one when she stepped onto the train platform, because she was home.

She’d figure it out. She’d survived a war, after all. Birmingham wouldn’t be a problem.

And then nothing mattered, not even her own small joy at the smell of home on the air, because there was a familiar figure leaning indolently against the light post with his hands in his pockets and his legs crossed at the ankle.

“Will,” Ivy whispered, almost afraid to look away from him.

He grinned, and the moment broke—her bag was left on the ground, her boots flew across the slushy pavement, and then she was in his arms, being swung through the cold night air with the mist of her breath streaming out behind her like the tail of a comet.

“Walk you home?”