Chapter Text
“I’m glad about the letter.”
“You’re what about the what?”
Charles had just about kept count of the bars (four), but long since lost track of how many drinks they’d had. Enough, anyway, that they’d been lost in the back streets of Soho for a good half an hour looking for a place Monty swore was just around the corner, you’ll love it, Charlie, except he seemed to have forgotten which corner. Charles didn’t mind it. He was glad of the cool air, and the relative quiet after the crush of people, and the way Monty kept slinging an arm around him or leaning on his shoulder as they meandered.
“Bill’s letter,” he said. “The one Hester wrote.”
“What a dark horse, who would have thought?”
“Don’t be unkind. It was terribly good of her.” Charles, made bold by the alcohol, tugged gently at a strand of hair that had come loose over Monty’s collar. “And we needed it. Colonel Bevan was right. I don’t like to… to think of Bill on his own, not knowing that anyone loved him…”
“It’s a nice thought, Charlie, although there is the tiny detail that neither Bill or his beloved Pam are, in fact, real.”
“But the letter is,” he insisted. “You didn’t hear Hester, Monty, it was lovely and… and awful all at the same time. I can’t imagine loving somebody like that. Being loved like that.”
They were in the middle of the street. He couldn’t have said when they’d stopped.
“Can’t you?” Monty said. There was an odd catch in his voice, and it was a moment before Charles remembered that there was a Mrs Montagu, thousands of miles away. He must miss her dreadfully, to never even bring himself to speak about her.
“Well, I have a mother and sister, of course,” he said, feeling as if he’d been disloyal to them somehow. “But I’m not sure if that… what I mean is, if the only people who’ve ever really loved you were your closest relations, that doesn't seem like you can count it. As it’s an obligation.”
“Nobody’s obligating me,” Monty said, a sentence Charles turned over in his addled head several times and couldn’t get to make sense. He seemed on the verge of saying something else, and then he shook his head, and dug his cigarette case out of his trouser pocket. Charles didn’t bother protesting this time when the first one was pressed between his lips. “Charlie,” Monty said, not looking at him as he fiddled with the matchbook, “don’t ever think you’re not… well, don’t worry about Bill, all right? Not that bit, at least. He was adored, Charlie. Trust me.”