Smoke and Lights

CW: Death, PTSD

VE Day, 1945. Somewhere in London. 

The pub is drowning in the light. The stench of strongly-scented perfume and cigarette smoke seems to seep from its pores, filling up every corner in a manner that should be suffocating, yet is instead somehow liberating, just in its very existence. Jazz music plays at the side and champagne flutes clink, pulsing in sync like a collective heartbeat. 

Florence weaves in and out of the exuberant crowd, inhaling the elation, the freedom. She plucks empty glasses out of strange hands that rush to embrace her. She spins in the arms of boys, dressed their khaki uniforms for the last time. She pours drinks for men who can finally, finally, laugh out loud and believe that tomorrow they’ll still be here to laugh some more. 

It takes her back to different nights. On those nights, she would lift glasses to the lips of soldiers who hadn’t the hands to do it for themselves. In her arms she would carry teenagers in their blood-spattered uniforms. She measured morphine out for men who hoped, begged for the night to be their last.  

Tonight, Florence doesn’t let the memories slink their way into her brain for more than a fleeting second - she embraces and dances and laughs. 

She carries a tray of cheap liqueur over to a group of uniformed men; by the way they attack it, it could be the finest wine from here to Sicily. They leap onto her next, pulling her into their circle and throwing her into the air as the music washes over them all. She lets them. 

Eventually, she breaks away from the soldiers, grinning as she ignores their puppy-eyed protests to stay. She has more drinks to serve. She breathlessly makes her way back to the bar, eyes soaking up all the faces, all the stories, all the people, who have come out on this May evening to celebrate and forget. To hold reality at bay for one, perfect night. 

The cigarette smoke swirls ever thicker in the room, and briefly Florence thinks of smoke-filled fields and gasping lungs. But on this night, the whimsical clouds form patterns like art, spiralling around joyous faces and shrouding them in a magical glow. She smiles as she sees a grey-haired lady throw her arms around a tall American captain. She looks fondly at a young boy seated atop the shoulders of a soldier he’s probably never met, thrilled to have found himself at this jubilant party, possibly more thrilled at being allowed to stay awake so far past his bedtime. She notices a young man – a boy, really. He’s dressed in uniform, standing in the middle of the room, a look of calm serenity in his sea-blue eyes. 

The music grows livelier and the crowd shifts, masking the soldier before Florence can place where she’s seen him before. Then she’s thrust back into the hustle and bustle of supplying drinks far faster than glasses can be produced. 

When she sees him again, he’s still alone, staring back at her with just the slightest hint of a smile on his lips. She almost drops the bitter she’s serving as she wracks her brains for a hint of who he may be. His name is so close, but keeps sliding out of her brain like a slab of butter from her fingertips. 

“Who’s that soldier?” She asks Mabel, as the older lady hands her a full bottle of bourbon to replace a finished one. 

“Which soldier?” Mabel replies, but Florence has already lost sight of him. 

“You alright ma’am?” A round-faced man in a lieutenant's uniform asks her. Florence replies in the affirmative and offers the man an easy smile and a glass of whiskey. Where his right leg should be is just empty space. Florence thinks back to another night, another place. There, this man would have been one of the lucky ones. 

When one of the musicians at the side of the room crashes a drumstick against a symbol, she finds herself flinching, cowering against a blow that – on this night at least – never comes. She looks across the room and her eyes meet those same sea-blue ones as before. The boy is stiller than night itself. Around him, the revellers keep on revelling. They dance round and round in circles, as if the world has done no wrong. Finally, the boy blinks and Florence thinks he mouths, “it’s okay,” but nothing is okay and he seems invisible to everybody else and her hand is superglued to the bottle of bourbon she’s gripping and nothing is okay. 

Suddenly, the alcohol smells like necrotising skin, the bright lights burn her eyes like flames and the vibrating pulses of jazz shake the room like the impact of an explosion. Florence vaguely registers the bottle shattering into hundreds of shards of glass at her feet. Somewhere in her periphery she thinks she hears Mabel swear in surprise. Blindly, she stumbles to a door and falls outside into the black night air. 

At the same time, her mind finally falls back into a night just months ago, as it has been threatening to do all evening. She feels, rather than hears, the blast as it rips through her. It hurls her backwards and she crashes into the icy ground with a thwack! She might black out for a second, but somehow, some saint in the recesses of her brain drags her unwillingly from the blissful abyss of unconsciousness. She stands. 

Adrenaline pushes her through the thick smog. She has to clamber over a fallen tree, stumble around bodies she’s too late to save, bodies she daren’t look at with more than a sweeping acknowledgement. Two soldiers climb labouredly out of the ditch that saved both their lives. Another nurse kneels over a writhing body. Florence doesn’t stay to see whether the man is going to make it. She trudges further and further, feet crunching on fallen leaves, as though she’s five-years-old again. She reaches a body. Leans down, hoping to feel a pulse. Keeps walking.  

When it comes, the voice is so faint she almost misses it. “Please.” 

Florence runs over to the soldier and drops to her knees beside him. Plastered to his stomach, his uniform is an ugly dark red. Even under the low light of the stars, his face glows eerily blue. His eyes are shut tight, like as long as he doesn’t open them, this won’t be real. He doesn’t ask Florence to help him; Florence knows not to try. Instead, she says, “I’m here.” 

“I was going to be a doctor,” the boy says, almost disbelievingly. “Marry Eloise. Have kids. She wants... five kids.” His voice cracks unwillingly, and every breath is becoming more laboured. “Five grandchildren... for my mother. Write her...” He’s really struggling now. Florence grips his hand tightly and waits. She feels like an intruder in this moment, watching this boy’s life as it’s ripped away from him and away from all the people he loves. “Write her. Tell her I wasn’t scared. Please.” 

“I will.” Florence says, and she doesn’t know why her eyes are dry, why her heart isn’t bleeding, when the world is ending in front of her. Why isn’t she feeling anything? 

As she sits there, the boy struggles to draw enough oxygen into his lungs to sustain his next breath. Florence can do nothing. He’s fading away in front of her, and she can do nothing. And then he squeezes her hand weakly and finally opens his eyes. “It’s okay,” he whispers. And his grip goes slack and his sea-blue eyes stay open, wide and unseeing. 

“It’s okay,” Florence hears again, and she looks up to find Mabel crouched beside her outside the pub, stroking her hair. Florence sits and focuses on the feel of the other lady’s hand, waiting for the fog inside her mind to clear. Then she stands up, walks straight past the soldier with the sea-blue eyes, and opens the door. She doesn’t need to turn around to know he’s already disappeared. 

The bright lights, cigarette smoke and jazz music wash over her once more. Strange hands grab her arm, pulling her into a circle of ebullient soldiers. So, Florence embraces and dances and laughs.