Once by the Garden Gate

The envelope had been pushed under his door. 

It waited for him on the cold wooden planks, the revolver soon to follow. He hadn’t expected it feel so final, so heavy with despair. But this is what he had wanted. 

It was what he needed. 

Falling in love with one’s superior officers was all a rather wretched cliche, a tragedy in the making, but there was nothing to be done. Hobbes had tried to bury the feelings, pushed away thought and intentions, but found they had only talked root. He found himself taking his Captain his tea in the afternoons, sharing it with him to the late evening. It had to stop. 

The rising tide of his initial attraction to his captain had been swiftly followed by the sharp fish hook pull of desire, then overwhelmed by the urgent, all-consuming, besotted, grasping want of it. 

It had taken Hobbes weeks of careful questions and quiet observations to unearth the soft, sweat, beautifully kind man behind the heavy layers of routine and protocol. The man who holds all the motions of proper order and rule so tightly - delights in going through them - but never so tightly that his kindness doesn’t shine through. The man with endless enthusiasm for his work, who never fails to find stories of bravery and brilliance amongst the black clatter of war. The man whose attention always makes Hobbes feel as though he’s the only other person in the room, a smile that sends a glowing spark through his chest. 

It was all too much, yet not even close to being enough. 

Hobbes had to resort to making a feast of gathered scapes of intimacy; his captains joyful shouts of encouragement on the cricket field, the rare sight of him bleary-eyed and charmingly dishevelled in the mornings, the summer evenings they spent together by the lake. The closest he’s allowed himself to get is borrowing an occasional drag from his captain cigarette, wrapping himself up in this surreptitious meeting of their mouths. 

The giddy thrill never lasts long though. 

He is left with the feeling and the length of his minds wandering imaginings. 
  
He dreams of his Captain by the garden gates. The wind in his hair, the joy in his eyes, the soft touch of his lips. The birds would sing as they joined and parted. It would have been perfect, as all dreams are. 

But he had been reigned to an empty fate. The letter would leave him to a path uncharted. 

“So soon?” 

His captain is visibly wrong-footed by the news, but he rallies it well enough. Scaffolded with a respectable stiff upper lip-  as he had come to expect of his superior officer. The news of his transfer is no surprise, after all. They both knew it was the only way. 

It wasn’t soon though, he had left it to the latest moment he could reasonably leave it to inform his captain without raising suspicions. Hobbes doesn’t look to why he didn’t tell him immediately, or to what he has been purposely avoiding. 

“I shall miss you, Hobbes’

It’s only with his experience that the sense of loss is so plain in his captains eyes. Even with all the fondness, his words are heavy with regret, weighted enough to drag them both down. 

And with them, Hobbes can feel both his heart and resolve shatter. A wave of dread and utmost panic ripples across his skin, the new service revolver too heavy at his hip. 

The transfer was already in place, long set in motion, and what little time they have is almost gone. There is nothing either of them can do to stop it. Nor should they. He chose this empty fate for a reason, he has to remind himself as his pulse hammers beneath his skin. But that rationale does nothing to lessen the brightened pain of his approaching departure and how his head and his heart are tearing him in two…

Too often, Hobbes wondered what Gods he had offended - how he became cursed with a life where the most sincere act of love he can offer is to leave. 

The ghost of what might have been hangs in the air. Dead before it was even alive. maybe it would be possible in another life. Maybe in a time when the war was over, if they could be so lucky. The forsaken war that brought them together would also be the thing to pull them apart.

A tragedy of the ages. 

He turned to leave. 

“I say Hobbes,” his captain said to him “I understand, this whole transfer business. Naturally I’d be off like a shot myself if only they’d have me - but I… I wouldn’t want you to think you weren’t useful here.”

This is what he was afraid of.  The reason he hadn’t said anything when he’d requested the transfer, or when the letter had first arrived in his room.  The fish hook was pulling at him again, reeling him back in. Beneath the urgent need for his departure, he does want to go. Partly to fulfil an inescapable and ever-pressing sense of duty, (maybe he too had been lost to the routine and protocol), but partly to prove something - if not to himself then to everyone else. 

But on another level - he doesn’t want to leave at all. 

Ask me to stay -  Hobbes wills silently. Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t want me to go. Tell me why. Promise me staying will be worth it. 

He has to remind himself everyday that what he wants and what is right are very different things. Just once it would be nice to drop his guard and give in. To have what everyone else gets without question. To indulge in a love that isn’t always coloured with the dark colours of fear. 

Who would they be hurting? Only themselves. Each other. 

———————-

There had been a conversation, not long after he had first arrived. The two of them working through a stack of reporters in his captains office, fine threads of spring air creeping in at the windows, the steady hum of rain outside. Hobbes can’t now recall the meandering lines of their discussion and how exactly the topic came up but such detail are of little consequence. 

Some variation always comes around eventually. 

“I can’t make any guarantees it’ll be granted, but I’d put in for a spot of leave while you can if i were you,’ His captain says as he busied himself with replacing his typewriter ribbon. “No doubt your wife would be missing you.”

Hobbes’ heart danced in readiness. This dance again …

“No wife I’m afraid sir.” He keeps his tone flat but ages sure to add some levity to it. if he treats it like its nothing, there the chance everyone else will too. He had expected the admission might get easier with practise, but, in reality, his unmarried status only became more conspicuous as time marched on. 

It’s a small mercy his Captain doesn’t look in his direction, and instead turns to ruffling through a drawer for a new reel. 

“No? Well your sweat heart, then,” the consonants now slightly sharper around the edges. 

Hobbes could lie. It would be easy enough to invent a woman, drop an easily forgettable name and hope that was the end of it. Not that it would be. Someone would always undoubtably notice he received no letters, never spoke of her outside of questioning, had no photo of her. 

 “unfortunatly not, sir”

His captains head snaps up at this. Their eyes meet and Hobbes has the distinct sensation that his captain is studying him, waiting for the cracks of insecurity to shine through, to find the secret hidden beneath years of barriers built around his heart. 

“No one at all?” He asks in a bemused tone, like Hobbes had just told him the Germans had, on second thoughts, decided this whole war business just wasn’t for them. As if, surely, Hobbes had been making a joke. But there is none of the sharp indignation Hobbes usually sees in response to this irregularity. There is one softness to his captains confusion, carrying with it the suggestion of a question formed but cast aside unasked. 

“I’m afraid not. I suppose Im just unlucky”

That was one word for it. 

“But I understand your concern. I’m sure your own wife is uppermost in your thoughts these days,”

The wince his captain gives is small and refrained but doesn’t pass Hobbes’ notice. 

“Ah, well, no. I’m in a similar position, actually. Married to the cause, as it were.” He clears his throat to firmly punctuate the remark and returns his attention to the typewriter. 

“Perhaps one day, though. Still time. You never know.”

It took him too long to realise they were playing the same game. 

—————-

Looking at his captain now, with the rhythm of their words rattling in his mind, he realised his captain had navigated around the dreaded topic the same way he had; not with the simple embarrassment that most other unmarried men would show, but with calm resignation and a careful sleight of hand so well-rehearsed it was almost second nature. 

Neither of them had told a single lie, yet didn’t touch on the whole truth either. 

Two men with the same secret. Circling one another with the same dance, always three feet apart. 

——————-

The hours had disappeared too quickly. 

He stood at his bedside, bag packed, coat buttoned, hat in hand. He consider just leaving. He had told his captain the time of departure, the war wouldn’t thank him for unnecessary sentimentality. One final farewell is the decent thing to do. The kind thing. The thing he finds he cant stop himself from doing. 

He knocks at his captains’ offices door. 

Upon hearing his command to enter, he pushes open the door and smiles. His captain drops his pen and rises from his desk. 

“That’s you off then,” His tone is clipped, his jaw all tension. But the emotion is there, a trembling, shadowy shape lurking beneath the surface. 

“Yes, sir.”

He had considered just leaving, slipping away into the darkness of the night without another word. There was no need to drag it out. 

“If I may say so, it’s … it’s been an honour having you here, Hobbes. I have no doubt that you’ll distinguish yourself out at the front; you’ve more than done so here. Jerry wont stand a chance, not with chaps like you leading the charge.” 

“That’s very kind sir. I’ll do my best.”

Don’t kiss him. 

How useful would he be, really, only one man, one more body, swept up in the fierce tides of the war? Like as not, his contribution would mean little of any measurable value. But if it kept his Captain safe, alive, then perhaps his sacrifice would all be worth it.
 
Don’t kiss him while you still can.

“Forgive me,” Hobbes whispers, stepping closer, hands trembling at his side. 

Ask me to stay. 

He remembered the garden gate. 

His captain doesn’t recoil, only a faint gasp of understanding escaping his mouth before Hobbes stops it. 

It’s like he dreamt it would be. Soft. Perfect.

But it’s too brief. 

His captain looks deep into his eyes, takes a long shuddering breath, but doesn’t ask him to stay. 

“Just make sure you come back,” his captain whispers, his fingers gripping into Hobbes’ coat. 

He watches his own heart break in his face. 

“Yes, sir.”

Somehow, he lets go and steps away, shoulder his pack, opens the door, pushes down every impulse calling for him to look back one last time before it clicks shut behind him. 

He walks through the garden gate, into the pits of hell.