TOBY #1
It is astonishing now - how far those bits of happiness seem.
As Toby falls with his plane, he can only think of bailing out; but the moment he does, he closes his eyes, and behind his eyelids there is Simon’s face waiting for him. Simon’s face, close to his, smiling, his uneven teeth biting gently at Toby’s lower lip, and then a gush of laughter comes from both, and Toby pushes Simon against a wall with expensive striped wallpaper.
He opens his eyes, and he pulls the rip cord of his parachute - a moment too late, so he’s falling too fast. He vaguely recognizes the green fields under him, and he hopes to God he doesn’t die, because the bloody Nazi can’t win, because he needs to live, he needs to live for his sisters and for Veronica and for Montmaray and to see the end of the war. He needs to see Simon again, and maybe it won’t mean as much to him as it does to Toby but hell, he doesn’t care.
SIMON #1
Simon gets a twenty-four hour leave, but he doesn’t have the guts to go to Sophie, or Veronica, or anyone else he knows, so he just walks around places in London he’s never been before; when the sun starts to go down, he enters a pub, and it’s not long before a woman sits beside him.
“Where are you from? Your accent’s nothing I can recognize”, she asks him as she lights his cigarette in bed, a few hours later.
“You hardly could”, he answers bitterly, “I’m from Montmaray”.
She doesn’t know the place.
He considers himself lucky he’s smoking, so he doesn’t have to answer immediately.
TOBY #2
Marie is a lovely woman, Toby knows she is; and he feels horrible, horrible, because he can’t bring himself to actually feel what he lets her believe he feels. He knows he’s only deceiving her to save his skin, and he tells himself he’s done worse - he let that family die - but whenever she blushes when he does something ordinary like smiling at her, or helping her carry something heavy, or anything, anything at all, he feels like a complete clod. It’s not like he doesn’t care for her at all - it’s that he knows all too well what it means to be loved less.
SIMON #2
Simon hears Toby’s voice constantly, Toby’s voice cursing in his last moments, but as he closes his eyes, trying to calm down, he cannot recall his face. It slips away. He remembers the contours of it, details of it, but he can’t, however hard he tries, picture it in his mind. He remembers how his cheekbones felt under his lips, and the golden curls and even his muffled moans drawing hot breath on his own skin, but not his face. It makes him mad, it makes him mad because he can’t help thinking he should’ve loved Toby better.
