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The gathered men—who’d all had their names written on a list, who’d all been invited back to Button House to celebrate VE Day—gradually disperse following the Captain’s—who’d not been on the list, who’d not been invited—untimely demise, which, he supposes, must have put quite the dampener on the festivities. He watches them go, listens to their murmurs of what a piss-poor captain he was until his hands go to his ears in a feeble attempt to block out the shame. It doesn’t go away, and after the years of carrying it sent him to his grave, the Captain is certain it never will.
Once silence dominates the space around him, the Captain lowers his hands and blinks open his eyes, immediately taking stock of his surroundings. It’s the same old ballroom, deflated balloons that no one had cared enough to take down still strewn sadly about, only evening is seeping in through the windows, now. The Captain can almost see the desks set up about the room, the soldiers of the Button House XI working well into the night—
A sniffle snaps the Captain back to reality. His eyes dart about in aims of locating the noise, until he looks down.
Lieutenant—no, Major —Havers, is kneeling on the ground and staring at the spot where the Captain died, and in his presumed solitude, has allowed himself to cry. He’s still here.
His Anthony, who the Captain had risked everything for, on the chance that he might see him again. His Anthony, who the Captain had worried over every day these past five years, who he had prayed survived the North African front. His Anthony, who had rushed to his side when the Captain had collapsed, who had held his hand even under the watchful gaze of at least a dozen pairs of eyes and said I know when the Captain didn’t have the strength to say the words themselves. His brave, courageous, kind Anthony, who had always seen right through him, enough so to press his swagger stick into the Captain’s hands.
The Captain knew, somehow, that he would remain clutching it for however long this afterlife he found himself in lasted.
That they were alone now , when Anthony could no longer see nor hear him, had to be some cruel joke, or perhaps a punishment from God for the sin the Captain had committed.
“I love you, James,” Anthony says to the empty room, voice broken and thick with tears,
It’s everything the Captain always wanted to hear and exactly what he didn’t get to say.
A cruel twist of fate, indeed.