Chapter Text
In loving memory
Of
2nd Lt. Stephen Clarence Croft
Of the Royal Flying Corps
Our dearly beloved and deeply mourned son and brother
Who was born in this parish
On the 11th of July 1898
And who was killed in action over the skies of France
On the 20th of October 1917
Aged 19 years, 3 months, and 9 days
“Not my will, but thine be done”
It had been a lovely wedding for one so hastily thrown together, and where so many guests wore mourning. Black dye ran as free in Lyndhurst as blood was flowing in France, and everywhere you looked, you could see a wreath hung on a door or a soldier’s face smiling behind the glass of a widow’s brooch. But at this point in the war, with so many dead, it wasn’t uncommon or even particularly frowned upon to dispense with old traditions. The new Mrs Gresham chose to wear white.
“It wouldn’t be right to be married in mourning,” she had said with a sad smile and a gentle hand on her fiancé's arm, “my brother would have wanted us to look happy.”
Still, black dye seems to get everywhere. It rubbed off Katherine’s uncle’s gloves and stained her white kid ones as he gave her away, and there were marks where her mother’s crape dress had brushed against her Brussels lace veil in the rain. Gresham tried not to notice it, or how red her eyes were behind that veil, and Katherine tried not to notice how many times he refilled his glass during the reception. They both tried not to look at the newly-placed stone in the Croft family’s corner of the graveyard and the grave-sized patch of earth pointlessly fenced off as though it’s supposed occupant was actually interred there.
But at least they had looked happy, Gresham thought bitterly the next morning. Katherine still slept peacefully, but her new husband was accustomed to waking early. He didn’t want to break that habit, not when he’d be back in France flying dawn patrols within the week. He hated that he was looking forward to returning. It was harder to pretend at home, it was harder to lie to his fiancée- no, his wife- than to his men, and he suspected she was having just as much difficulty. He was honestly surprised that she still wished to marry him, after all that had transpired, and after finally seeing him again, haggard and shaky with an almost perpetual scent of liquor on his breath.
Perhaps it had only been for respectability’s sake. They had been engaged far too long to break it off without harming both of their reputations, and she was too gentle- too bloody gentle!- to do anything that might break his heart. Even if she (quite rightfully, he thought), blamed him for her little brother’s death. But it was clear she was devastated. She had barely looked up at him from her knitting the entire week he had been home (he counted at least two khaki caps and half a navy blue one, and she had finished the last few rows of a balaclava helmet waiting for his train to arrive), and had spoken very little. When she had spoken, it had been of Comforts Funds, staffing issues at the ward she now managed, and once, Croft.
She wanted to know how it had happened.
“He didn’t suffer,” was all Gresham initially offered, but she pressed the question.
“I need to know, John. Please don’t think you need to protect me from the truth. I am a nurse, after all,” Katherine had said, taking John’s hand. Oh, it was that fact which made him so hesitant to tell her. She would have seen enough to fill in the blanks of his description with exactly what those final seconds may have felt and looked like. He looked out the window as he spoke, not wishing to see her face as she pictured her brother’s final moments. It was raining outside, quite heavily. Poor conditions, really.
“It was an air-to-air collision. His aeroplane collided with a German aeroplane, and both he and the enemy were killed instantly. He didn’t suffer.”
She hadn’t asked again, and he hadn’t mentioned the letter informing him that the Germans had taken as prisoner of war an unidentified pilot almost certainly belonging to 76 Squadron. It was torture enough for Gresham, to constantly imagine ways Croft might’ve lived, or Tommy, or Uncle, or so many, many other men, especially when such an impossible glimpse of hope presented itself. He didn’t want to put her through that too.
It wasn’t Croft. He couldn’t be Croft. But the thought he might be would only hurt his family worse than it was hurting Gresham, so he said nothing, and went back to his drink.