Chapter Text
David has always been a jealous man. His brother likes to say that it is the curse of the middle child, a byproduct of his upbringing, but he knows it is something more inescapable than that. It's genetic, this kind of thing, it runs in the blood.
So it is to be expected, though he would never admit to it aloud or otherwise, that when he first sets eyes on Eoin McGonigal, his honest reaction is vile envy.
"You're alive," David manages.
"So are you," Eoin says, greeting him like an old friend, like they've ever done more than nod at one another over the rigid line of Paddy Mayne's shoulders. "And walking, by the looks of it. I suppose your parachute survived the drop this time, sir."
David is not often rendered speechless, but it does take him a moment of incredulous silence before he can answer, "Why yes it did. More than I thought I could say for yours."
"The parachute was just fine." Eoin's lips seem stuck in a perpetual smile; their own fucking Lazarus of Bethany, all teeth. "It was so fine, in fact, that it thought it might take me for a second go round. C'mon now, this way."
David never knew Eoin as anything more than a gentling force to Paddy's madness. He hardly noticed him much at all, except to note his presence at Paddy's side and then his sudden absence from it. He had a notion about them, of course. When he still fancied himself an artist, David spent more than one season playing at starving and living la bohème among London's many outcasts and queers. Paddy might not be the type to swan about in a Soho parlour, but David knew the truth of him well before his performance of grief displayed his heart for all to see.
"They call us to count every three hours down the corridors. But it's the Italians, mind, so they're not very punctual about it."
Eoin's tour seems practised, like he might be the designated greeter for those men unlucky enough to find themselves in this repurposed, renaissance prison. David can't bring himself to pay attention to any of it, however. He is too busy boiling himself alive with the notion that while Eve is presumed dead in the great sand sea, Paddy's long-lost love managed to wash ashore unharmed in fucking Italy.
Biblical luck, that's the kind of thing Paddy Mayne has in his favour. God, if he could get his hands around his throat just now, with this much banked envy, David thinks he might even stand a chance.
"They serve rations here twice a day," Eoin says. "No rum, but you'll meet the Scots later, and they always have something up their sleeves."
As Eoin leads him through the wide-open space that must serve as a mess hall, David gets his first glimpse of him in the late afternoon light. There are vivid red scars across his cheek that he is almost certain were not there before, pulling like crows feet at his left eye and stretching into his hairline. The skin on the backs of his hands is mangled and patchy, but they appear in working order, quick and deft with a match and a cigarette.
"We'll share, if you don't mind. We don't waste tobacco here."
He seems, all things considered, improbably well, so David truly cannot help himself when he takes the offered cigarette and says through his teeth, "So you couldn't be bothered to write?"
"What was that, sir?" Eoin's hair falls into his eyes, weighed down by grease instead of Brylcreem.
"A letter. To Paddy. It's been a year." It feels right to lean into righteous anger on a friend's behalf. It's easier, anyway, than leaning into grief.
"A letter?" He thinks he sees something then, some hint of a sharp edge in this cheery, limp-fish of a boy. "I've sent as many as they'd let me. For you it's been a year, but for me it's been half that."
Two men pass by in rumpled uniforms and they each clap Eoin on the back like they're old mates in a hometown pub. "A game of Hearts when you're done here, lad?"
"Ah, you only want to play with me because you know how well I lose," Eoin replies, all cheer once more. It's like watching a playactor or a prostitute; charm and no candour.
"He's got our ticket," one stage-whispers to the other. "The new man is welcome to join as well, of course."
"The new man has a name," David snaps. "And if you wouldn't mind, McGonigal and I were having a private conversation."
"McGonigal," one of them repeats. "Are you in trouble with the headmaster, Eoin?"
"You know me," he answers with a wink. "All trouble. Now off with ye. I'll join you after, if you're lucky." Once they're out of ear shot, Eoin takes a long drag and blows a cloud of smoke over their heads. "You'd be wise to get on with those men, sir. They manage the cigarette distribution. It's quite a wee racket they have."
"McGonigal - "
"I was half dead when they found me." Eoin's eyes don't wander or stray; he looks at him straight on, down the barrel. "Only God knows why they didn't put a bullet in my head. Maybe it was mercy, but I think they had orders to interrogate me. They didn't get much of a chance at it though, because I wasn't lucid enough to do more than scream until I woke up on a freight in the Mediterranean."
"When was that?" David asks, skeptical still.
"March, as close as I can figure. Give or take a few weeks. On the way over, I came down with fever. Could've been an infection or some exotic flu. Either way I thought I'd die on that ship."
"Infection has felled better and worse," David responds, a force of habit. It was a favourite of his father's, once, a maxim of the trenches.
"Sure has," he says, passing the cigarette back. Eoin had been a fine shot in those early days, blessed with the steady hands of an artist, but now that he's looking, David notices a tremor there that doesn't break. He must catch him at it, because Eoin holds up his scarred hands, showing them off with a practised flick of his wrists. "This isn't the worst of it. Saint Jude was with me though, I suppose, because I survived that as well."
"Saint Jude?"
Eoin smiles. "The patron saint of hopeless causes."
Despite himself, David scoffs out what might pass for a laugh. He never had a good memory for the saints. There were simply too many of them, and he wasn't particularly fond of the underdogs, besides. That was more his sister's territory.
He holds his next drag in his lungs until it burns. "Please," David manages on the exhale. "Continue."
Eoin shrugs. "There isn't much else to it. When I arrived in the first camp, I was still half-delirious with fever and expecting to die, but I insisted they take my AN and alert my unit. I didn't have an ID disk on me, so I assumed I was declared MIA or presumed dead."
"You assumed correctly."
He inclines his head with a slight grimace. "They told me notice of my internment would have to go through the proper channels, and my commanding officer would be responsible for forwarding the notice on to my family. But then I was transfered. Another boat, another train. When I ended up here, alive against all odds, it was back to the start." He gestures vaguely, a never-ending cycle. "Proper channels, commanding officers. Any day now, I was hoping I'd receive word that my letters finally made it through dispatch, but it appears that my CO might have been recently captured by Italian soldiers."
"Well," David says, handing the cigarette back. "That is rather inconvenient, isn't it?"
"Isn't it," Eoin echoes.
"And it was the Germans, for what it's worth."
Eoin exhales smoke and with his head tipped back against the stone he looks like the perfect life-drawing model. He's all angles, until you get to the hair of course.
"How is he?" He asks, shaking David free of his thoughts.
He doesn't bother with the theatre of asking for a name. "He has proven ferociously capable at destroying aeroplanes and tanks and anything else he comes into contact with. He's a terrible commanding officer, but I made him captain anyway in a fit of rage."
Eoin's eyes are closed, lashes long against his cheeks. "Good to know, I suppose, but that's not the question I asked, sir."
"He's heartbroken," he admits. "And it makes him reckless."
"He's always been reckless."
It's a question, in its own way, and so David tries his best to manage as diplomatic an answer as he can. "He seems resigned to making it through this war, anyway."
"Right." Eoin pinches out the cigarette and slips what's left of it behind his ear. "Our cell is this way. Two men to a room, though they were monk's quarters once, so don't expect much in the way of space."
"Our cell?"
"I pulled the short straw," he explains. "But had I known you were the one I'd be stuck in with, I might've rigged the draw."
"McGonigal, if I didn't know any better, I would think that you don't actually like me."
Eoin's lips tick up in a little fishhook smile. "What could've possibly given you that idea, sir?"
"Stop calling me sir, for Christ's sake. Call me David."
"I'm afraid my mother brought me up better than that. You've been promoted, or so the lads said. Maybe Major Stirling would be more appropriate."
"Stirling, then. Please. Unless you're absolutely set on reminding me of my rather recent failures."
Eoin hums, a musical little disagreement. "I wouldn't call your service record a failure, if it were me."
"You would if you were captured doing something very, very stupid," he mumbles.
"Ah, well." Eoin pauses in front of a narrow door with the number fourteen written on it in white chalk. He steps back and gestures David inside. "You see, but I was captured doing something very, very stupid. I didn't get a promotion for it though, did I?"
"We'll work on that." David flicks his wrist in the vague approximation of a signature, before collapsing back onto the empty cot that is clearly intended to be his. The mattress is stuffed tight and reeks of mildew, but it could be worse. "How's the rat situation, would you say?"
Eoin looks down at him, hands in his pockets. "Getting worse by the day."
He thinks he's likely taking the piss, but honestly he's too tired to investigate any further. "When was it you said they called count?"
"They're rather loud about the whole thing. Italians, you know. They'll make a song and dance of it, so you'll hear it coming."
"Good. I suppose I'll see you in line, McGonigal."
"Sleep well, Major Stirling."
He doesn't know if Eoin stood to salute before he left, but if he did, David assumes it was, at best, a gesture of insubordination. The sand of sleep falls heavy and quick in the hourglass of his mind, but before he gives in to it, he allows himself a brief moment of hope. Escaping from a prisoner of war camp will be easier, after all, with two madmen instead of one.
—
David doesn't waste his time with the men who run the cigarette racket, or the Scots who brew booze in the latrines, or the men who apparently have a radio rigged up in the north block. He spends exactly three nights staring into the darkness of their shared cell, before he sets about finding himself the keepers of the escape list.
"I'm getting out of here next week," David tells Eoin, once they're locked in for the evening. "Would you like to come with?"
He expects, if not enthusiasm, then at least some fucking gratitude. Instead, Eoin hardly looks up from his book except to say, "And how do you reckon you'll do that, Major?"
"An escape attempt is planned for - "
"There's a list, you know." He turns a page.
"I am well aware, and I have recently seen myself to the top of that list. You as well, if you could be bothered to put down your damn book."
Eoin marks his place with a finger and turns to look at him. "What's your plan, then?"
"There are tunnels all throughout this place, apparently. Several of them lead to an old attic space, up at the very top of the monastery. One of the smaller men, Shipley, I think - "
"Shirley," Eoin says.
"Yes, whatever. Shirley has been exploring the lengths of it, and next Tuesday before sundown he'll crawl his way through to the top and tie a set of ropes to the bars outside the eastern wall. Then it's as simple as a short belay to the bottom."
Eoin looks at him for one long, unblinking moment, before turning back to his book. "Thank you for the invitation, but no."
"No?" David repeats, incredulous.
"They increased the rounds after the last attempt. It's every fifteen minutes now, half that at dusk."
"That is more than enough time," he insists.
"It's one-hundred feet, straight down."
"I was a climber, once," David says, firmly waving off memories of his failed ascensions with a flick of his wrist. This is only a descent, after all. "Come now, McGonigal. Where's all that SAS grit, hm? Is it not worth the risk for a chance to return to our unit?"
He leaves Paddy's name unsaid, but Eoin doesn't appear to have half the interest in playing coy. "I won't be of any use to him crippled or worse."
"What a remarkable lack of imagination you have." He wonders at the terrible odds that have seen him locked up with the only sane recruit in all of the SAS. "Fine, stay cooped up here if you wish. Would you like me to take a letter for you, at least?"
"Cheers," Eoin says. "But you'll be buried in a shallow grave or back here beside me soon enough. Now, if you'll excuse me, Major, I'm racing this candle to the end of my book. They only give us one per week, you see."
"Right," David mumbles, shoving his meagre blanket into the shape of a pillow beneath his head. "So much for daring."
When he does, inevitably, wake from a rather undignified fall to the customary nausea of the very recently concussed, David retches over the side of his cot and pants out, "Don't say a word, McGonigal."
To his credit, Eoin doesn't. He does laugh, though, and God it echoes.
—
Eoin spends two days ferrying him cups of watery tea and his daily rations on tin plates before David is able to sit up again without losing the contents of his stomach. Even still, he can barely keep his eyes open for more than a handful of minutes at a time in anything but complete and total darkness.
"C'mon, sir," Eoin says, pressing a cup of water into his shaking hands. "Where's all that SAS grit, then?"
"Fuck you, McGonigal."
"Ah, but don't bite the hand that feeds you, Major Stirling, or you'll find yourself going hungry."
"I wish I'd died in that fall," he moans, eyes pinched closed.
Eoin laughs. "I'd be back to sleeping on my own, so that makes two of us."
David dreams of Eve laid out beside him, tracing patterns up and down his inner arm with just her fingertips. He wakes, inevitably, to the horrible riptide of grief. It's nearly impossible to keep his head above water laid out in bed like this, and so he takes to distracting himself by updating Eoin on the many SAS exploits he missed.
"And when they finally returned to Jalo, it was without Jock. Messerschmitts caught up with them and rained hellfire."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Eoin says, his dutiful little audience of one. "He was a good man."
"He was just a man, in the end." It's not as hard to say now that time has dampened the pain of disbelief. Maybe, if he'd seen his body, if he had watched his blood soak into the sand, David might've accepted it sooner. "Fraser told me that. I nearly punched him for it."
Most of the time, David can hear the steady turn of pages from Eoin's corner of the room, meaning he is likely more than half tuning him out with all the precision of radio operator. He doesn't mind, though. He is more than happy to speak into the darkness just to speak, especially when the alternative is drowning.
"And how is Fraser, if you don't mind my asking?" It's the first time Eoin has engaged much at all with his disjointed story telling. Even when David regaled him with tales of Paddy's victory at Tamet, he hadn't done anything but hum in vague acknowledgement.
"I didn't think you and Fraser knew each other that well," David says.
He hears his cot shift and settle. "What is it exactly that you think you know about me, sir?"
Without seeing his face, he can't tell if Eoin asked in jest or as a challenge, but still David pretends like he is truly considering the question before answering. "I know about you and Paddy," he says eventually, soft-spoken but unequivocal. It's best to get it out of the way now, before he blurts it out in the course of an argument or worse.
"Do you?" Eoin asks, airily. God, but he sounds like he's smiling, the bastard.
"It was rather difficult to miss. Our star-crossed lovers, in Cairo where we lay our scene."
"In Belfast," Eoin corrects him. "Cairo was just a scene change, to nick your metaphor."
David snorts, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes until he sees something like light. "I assumed you and Paddy met in the commandos."
"You assumed incorrectly, sir."
"McGonigal, please, for Christ's sake."
He's definitely smiling now though, he can fucking hear it clear as daylight. "We met when I was thirteen. My family moved to Belfast and Paddy played rugby with my older brother."
"Sounds like there's a story there."
"There is," he agrees. He doesn't elaborate though, as if to say, 'but not for you.'
"You should know that I am dangerously bored, McGonigal, so if you insist on keeping mum, I will continue speaking."
"Go ahead, Stirling," he says, followed by the crisp turn of another page. "I'm all ears."
In an act of petty retaliation, David fills the air with every remembered inch of Eve. He tells the stone and the flickering candle light and Eoin fucking McGonigal how Eve would enter a room like a monarch, the sort of spy who hid in plain sight because there was simply no where else she could hope to be. She was far too beautiful for the shadows, but she had a mind of gears and metal wire and Jock might have seen an equal in her ruthless efficiency had either of them lived long enough to meet.
"Red flowers and French spies," Eoin says, almost to himself. "She sounds like a remarkable woman."
"She is," he says, and his voice threatens to give to a sudden wave of grief. It's self-preservation, more than anything, that causes him to ask, "What is it about Paddy, then?"
"What do you mean?"
David groans. "Don't start playing coy now, McGonigal. Paddy, our mutual friend, while certainly the type of man some might call remarkable, well. He is volatile, he is hostile, he's as competitive as I am and has half the self control and dare I say a quarter of the charm - "
"He's honest," Eoin answers, quiet but firm.
"Well." In fairness to him, among Paddy's many faults, being a liar was never one. Still, David says, "That feels vaguely pointed."
"A lesson you'll one day come to learn is that not everything is about you, Major Stirling."
"We're back to major, are we?"
All he receives in response is the turn of a page. That feels pointed too.
—
Once he is reliably recovered from the splitting headaches and persistent nausea, David gets straight to work smuggling cheap tin spoons from the mess and shaving them down into thin files against the stone walls.
He used to pick the locks at Keir House all the time as a child, using his sister's hairpins and the wire hangers their staff kept in the laundry. It is either an act of God himself or the reliability of European manufacturing that their cell doors are fitted with the same old cylinder locks he grew up slipping.
They also, of course, have latches made of repurposed iron, but by his reckoning, they're rarely ever used. David has counted four nights in a row that the guards passed by without doing more than turning the key. It might as well be an open invitation, one he does not plan to decline.
David reasons that even if he doesn't make it as far as the parameter yard, he will at least gain a better understanding of the layout of this place. The tunnels might be well explored, but there is only so much information they can gather while cordoned off in their little pre-approved leisure spaces. David might, if he's lucky, even manage to get as far as the first gate.
All things considered, it is a half-decent plan, with only the slightest chance of sustaining another concussion. Though it has, perhaps, been a rather long time since he's practised on the locks in Keir House.
"Fuck," David whispers, after this third unsuccessful attempt.
"Stirling?" Eoin is sitting up in bed, a silhouette of wayward curls rubbing at empty eyes.
"Go back to sleep, McGonigal." His files creak and grind, so far off from the sound he remembers. It was always like a little music box, just before the cylinder slid free.
"Ah, see, I don't think I will, because it looks very much like you're trying to pick that lock there."
"I am." He says through gritted teeth.
"Enough of that, Stirling. Give it here." Eoin pushes himself out of bed and makes to snatch his tools from his hands, but David bats him away.
"Bugger off," he hisses. "If you don't want to escape this place that's fine, but I am getting out of here as soon as - "
"Not like this you won't." He makes another grab for him, but this time David stands, using his height to his advantage as he shoves him back towards his cot. Eoin's voice is low, barely above a whisper when he says, "If you get caught escaping our cell in the night, we'll both be transfered out. You're probably already set to sail, considering your last wee fuck up, and trust me there are far worse prisons than this."
"I'm not letting you hinder - " David starts, but before he can finish his sentence, Eoin comes at him quick and knocks him flat out against the floor. And God, he fights dirty. David holds his own for about thirty seconds, until Eoin gets one hand under his shoulder and wrenches it back in an illegal hold.
"Jesus fucking Christ." He yelps, falling involuntarily still beneath the weight of Eoin's body. "You'll pop my bloody shoulder out."
"I will." His voice is just beside his ear. "And I'll do worse if you try something that stupid again." He presses down against David's ribcage for long enough that the breath leaves his lungs entirely. "Don't misunderstand me. I do plan on getting out of here, but I will not let you sully my chances with your poorly planned escape attempts." Then, just as suddenly, Eoin lets go of him and climbs to his feet. He stands there, prim as anything with his threadbare socks and loose prison-issued jumper, and even has the gall to extend a hand.
David scoffs and rolls his shoulder, testing to make sure he hadn't done any permanent damage. "You are a madman after all, McGonigal."
"I know the ends I'm after, but the means are a flexible thing. Is that madness, do you think?" With his hair smoothed back out of his face, he looks perfectly at ease again. He even has his hands in his pockets, no doubt clutched around David's improvised lock-picks, smiling like it's a neutral expression, like Paddy's mouth tends to pull into a grimace at rest.
"No," David bites out. "It's mercenary."
"I think the word you're looking for is 'sensible,'" Eoin says, settling back onto his cot.
David, ever the middle child, cannot help himself. "And does Paddy know that his Saint Eoin is sensible as well as a coward?"
"Saint Eoin?" He repeats, cocking his head to one side. "Ah, but what would our Paddy want with a saint?"
"How the hell should I know?"
"It's not about daring or bravery or grit," Eoin continues. "It's about patience."
"Patience is a luxury."
Eoin laughs, pulling his blanket up over his shoulders like a shroud. "You wouldn't know luxury if it slapped you in the face, Major, because you've never lived a day without it."
Just outside their door, he can hear the passing footsteps of the night watch. They fade quickly into silence, and David considers, just for a moment, knocking a pearly white tooth loose from Eoin's ever-present smile. He would take a dislocated shoulder in exchange for the satisfaction. He'd take worse.
Before he can make up his mind either way, Eoin says, "Do you know which escape attempts actually work? The attempts of opportunity. Not the ones they argue over and put on a list."
"If you say another word, I may honestly try to stab you to death with tomorrow's cutlery."
"Fair play. I do have your wee shanks though, and you did most of the work for me."
"McGonigal - " he starts in a warning.
"Goodnight, sir. I'll see you in the morning"
—
Eoin is friendly with everyone. Even, apparently, the guards. David is smoking next to one of the barred windows, watching as two Italian soldiers sit on either side of him to play a hand of poker at their makeshift card table. Eoin's laughter echoes, is the thing; it's impossible to ignore. One of the guards leans in, claps him on the shoulder, and says something that gets lost in the shuffle of voices.
"They're bored too," Eoin tells him, when David begins his interrogation. "They've been out here for months, same as us, with nothing to do but drink and brawl. They're driving each other mad."
"So you've started inviting them to play cards instead?"
"There are only so many games of scopa a man can play, I expect, Italian or no." Eoin has his book propped up on his chest and it takes everything in David's very limited arsenal of patience not to pluck it from his hands and toss it across their narrow cell in an act of provocation.
"They're not worried there will be a revolt then?" David asks, instead. "You've all been that well behaved and predictable, have you?"
"They're not too concerned, no. So long as there are no weapons we might be able to nick, the Italians can come and go at their own risk. No ransoms will be paid, if you follow. Most of the lads and I are aligned on the matter, anyway."
"A true man of the people, you are," he grits out. "Learned any Italian, then? Or do you, like Paddy, only speak dog?"
"Paddy speaks French, actually."
"Sometimes I wonder if they did shoot me in Tunisia, and this is purgatory," David says to the stone ceiling.
"I've learned some though," Eoin continues. "And they've learned a few words of English. And sometimes, if a man is on duty, he'll tell you all about the war as he sees it. If we don't speak the same language, well, we manage."
"Wait - you have an informant?" David asks, sitting up.
"I know a few guards who like to talk. Make bets with each other. Complain. You know how it is." He really fucking doesn't, but Eoin is turning to look at him, a rare show of attention. "If the allies make it to the mainland, and it looks pretty damn certain that they will, the Italians will have orders to move all POWs to Germany."
"What are you saying?"
"That would be an awfully good opportunity, don't you think?"
"And if that doesn't work? You'll sit around and make friends with the Germans, will you?"
Eoin shrugs, turning back to his book. "I'll cross that bridge," he says. "And you'll be welcome to join me, if you ever get that attitude of yours in check. Ah, look here. 'Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs.' Listen to ol' Aurelius, Stirling. He seems to know a thing or two."
"I genuinely cannot stand you," David tells him.
"Suppose any man shall despise me. Let him look to that within himself."
David throws his left boot at him in retaliation. It hits the wall above Eoin's head and falls harmlessly between his outstretched legs.
"I didn't think you'd go in for stoicism," David says, grudgingly. Eoin seems the type to favour pulpy American thrillers over dead Roman emperors.
Eoin tucks the boot neatly beneath his own cot, where David suspects he'll need to fight to get it back. "Ah, I don't really. I've run out of books from the lending library. But he occasionally has something good to say, does our Marcus. Perhaps you'd like to borrow it, once I'm finished."
"I'd rather fall one-hundred feet straight down."
"Well, before the month is out, I'm sure you'll manage, sir."
—
David is bitter and resentful of each stone and brick that makes up the walls of their shared cell. He hates the cramped leisure hall and the sliver of grey sky outside their modest little window, but more than that, he comes to resent Eoin's comfort with silence.
"What are you even doing?" David asks, because he is certainly not sleeping. He's lying on his back with his hands folded over his belly, like a corpse at an Irish wake. It's unsettling, is what it is, and an insult to David's relentless boredom.
"Thinking of home," he says, though his eyes remain closed.
"Thinking of home?" David repeats slowly. "Good God, man."
"I have an excellent imagination," Eoin continues.
"Ah, thinking about Paddy then." David says in an attempt to score a reaction. He cannot allow himself to picture Eve, not without the numbing effect of booze, anyway. Even then, the pain of it might be too much; shock, not amputation, is the real killer on the field, or so the medics say.
Eoin cracks one eye open. "Sure, sometimes. Just now, though, I was thinking of my brother. He was due to be married last year."
"Right," he sighs, settling into the familiar disappointment of Eoin's even temper.
Were he given all the time in the world to do nothing but imagine the comings and goings of his own family, David highly doubts he would ever think about anything so mundane as a wedding. He barely remembers Bill's, pissed as he was by the time mass let out. He received an earful from his mother after the fact for vomiting into her rose bushes. The damn gardener was never fond of him, and David always suspected he was the grass, since his mother was almost certainly too busy with the festivities to catch him at it.
"I think he got her pregnant, between you and me," Eoin says.
He snorts. "I thought you were good Roman Catholics."
"Catholics, yes. Good - " he waves one hand this way and that.
"So you might have a niece or nephew by now?" David missed the births of both of his nephews, preoccupied as he was drinking his way through the Americas. He might've sent a postcard though, from a valley in the Andes. He vaguely remembers buying it and scribbling out a message of congratulations, but he cannot for the life of him recall if he ever actually posted it.
"I just might, yes," he says. "If it's a boy, and Ambrose thinks I'm dead, he'll have named him Eoin."
"Christ, that's a bit grim."
"He's sentimental."
David finally cracks a smile and says, "How embarrassing it'll be for you if he didn't. Maybe he's named him something terribly expected like Patrick."
"Or maybe it's a girl, and they've named her Agnes."
"Let me guess," David starts. "The patron saint of parachutists and mad Irishmen."
He smiles, half turning to look at him. "Close. The patron saint of hasty weddings."
He snorts out a laugh, and for the briefest moment of time, David feels like he's back in the wide open air of Jalo. The heat of it passes as quickly as it came, however; Eoin returns to his daydreaming and David is left with nothing to do but endure another afternoon in silence.
—
The guards hand out two sheets of paper and two envelopes to each man, along with a handful of ink pens and lead pencil stubs to share between them. "Fai presto," they say, a warning that they'll be back to collect their letters pronto.
Eoin sits with his knees against his chest and uses the back of his battered copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations as a stand-in for a writing desk.
"Surprised you're not out in the mess," David says, watching the ritual of it with academic curiosity. "They have tables out there. It's probably a sight more comfortable than what you're doing now."
"If I sit out there, the lads will ask for help. Spelling, grammar, a turn of phrase. I'm happy to do it, but I need to finish mine first."
Eoin, of course, folds and seals both of his letters before David has even considered who he should write to. His brother surely already knows about his internment from his position aiding and abetting His Royal Majesty's spies, and as such their mother will be equally well-informed. His sister is still driving ambulances and fighting fires in the AFS, and she has little time for his war stories among her own.
David taps his pencil against his own thigh in an idle rhythm, before asking, "You wrote to Paddy?"
"And my mother," he says. "God willing, one of these days they'll actually receive them."
"Well, let's double our chances then, shall we?" David addresses a letter to Paddy in a decisive flourish: Found something of yours in Gavi. He leaves the rest of the page blank. "Here you are," he says, handing the sheet over. "My letters are almost certain to be delivered once the censors are through with them."
Eoin hesitates for just a moment, before he reaches out to snatch the page from his hand. "You're sure?" He asks, pen already set to paper. "You don't have anyone else you want to write to?"
"I'll send a note to my mother, I suppose. I meant to write to Paddy anyway, to share the good news of your resurrection. But if he sees it in your own hand, perhaps he'll actually believe it."
Eoin doesn't take up much time or space, in the end. 'Not yet in that far border town, beyond the desert's edge. Turns out, it's just Italy.' He signs it with love and adds a quick post-script: 'Please ask after my POW status with GHQ. I'm in postal purgatory. Nearly as bad as the real thing.'
"Thank you," Eoin says, softly, as David folds his envelope closed.
He waves him off. "If he knows you're alive, there's less of a chance that Paddy will drive my unit straight into the ground."
"Ah, that's - well - it's not very likely, is it?"
Paddy was, of course, a madman well before Eoin was lost to the desert.
"You may be right," he admits, after a long moment.
"If anything, it might make him worse."
David was always terrible with his classics; Greek and Latin were a miserable and consistent stain on his reports home. But still David tries for the opening stanza of the Iliad, the line all boys his age learned and rehearsed like good little acolytes of empire, lined up in a row: sing, o goddess, the wrath of Achilles.
Eoin, of course, only laughs. "What the was that?"
"Greek."
"Christ, but you are posh, Stirling. And you haven't even the good sense to hide it."
"I'm ripping up that letter," David threatens, though he's more interested in a bit of a kip, all told.
Eoin seems to know it, because he lays down on his own cot and pillows his arms behind his head. "I'm sure you'll get right on that."
"Oh I will," David continues, allowing his eyes to drift closed. "Just you wait."
—
David sketches Eve on the wall of their cell with a piece of scrap metal. Then, in a fit of jealousy, he draws Paddy too. It's not a terrible likeness, all told; he manages the bat tipped ears and the broken set of his nose. He is just finishing off the cupid's bow of his top lip when Eoin appears in the doorway. If their places were reversed, he thinks Paddy would've bloodied him by now, taken a tooth or three and rolled them like dice across the stone floor. That, at least, would have been satisfying in its own way.
Instead, Eoin says, "Maybe, if you got to know the lads better, you wouldn't be going mad in here all on your own."
"They're not our unit, they're not our men," he mutters, tracing his fingers down the chalky edge of Eve's cheek.
"No, but they are men. Some of them are even good men. And if nothing else, talking to them is a sight better than talking to shadows on the wall."
"I talk to you," David says.
"You talk at me," Eoin corrects him, toeing off his boots and stretching out on his cot.
"And I'm certain that will join your list of complaints once we're free of this place." It's underhanded and immature, but he can't help himself when he pitches his voice into an approximation of an Irish accent. "Oh Paddy, David was a terrible bore. He treated me no better than drawings on - "
"I don't call him Paddy." Eoin has one arm behind his head, reading with aggravating nonchalance. "If you're going for realism, there."
"Now I know that's not true. I've heard you - "
"You've heard me," he says. "That's the point. I don't call him Paddy when we're alone."
David flings his little piece of metal at him and Eoin easily bats it away. "Are you still reading that dreadful book? Marcus Aurelius and his dry fucking meditations?"
"Receive without conceit, release without struggle," Eoin quotes.
"McGonigal. I mean this genuinely. Once we're out of here, I never want to see your face again."
He's smiling. "Ah sure, but I'm your number one fan, Major. However shall I cope?"
In a manoeuvre reminiscent of his summers spent in Keir House with only his siblings for company, David manages to get twenty-eight hours into a total embargo on communication before he finally gives in. His silence seems to be more of a reprieve for Eoin than a punishment, and if he spends any more time on his own, he really will go mad.
"Ah, it's himself," Eoin says when David sits down across from him, clutching his breakfast of watery stew.
"If I weren't so hungry, I would splash this down your front."
"It'd be a waste," Eoin agrees. "Though, I can't say whatever mystery meat they've served up today agrees with me. I'm not convinced it isn't rats they're stewing in there."
Spurred by the gamey scent memory of roast gazelle and very much not wanting to think about what actually did go into their breakfast, David decides to sing to Eoin the ballad of the Free French. He hardly manages to set up the premise — Paddy as a training officer for a squadron of paratroopers with three English speaking officers between them — before Eoin begins to laugh. He is alive with it and it lights up the room, causing heads to turn in their direction.
"What's so funny then, mate?" One of the men asks, clapping his shoulder.
Eoin tilts his head up to grin at him, his eyes glassy with mirth. "Stirling's just telling me stories from our unit, is all."
"Well go on then, share with the class."
And so David tells a room full of strangers all about Paddy's stand-off with a French philosopher and the scaffolds built thirty feet high. He reenacts his shooting match with a would-be German traitor, who turned out to be just a German man, flawed but fighting for something better. When he makes it as far as the gazelle, an offering to the alter of the French resistance, Eoin's laughter dissolves in a short intake of breath. He looks away, suddenly lost in a world of his own making, tucked somewhere securely behind his eyes.
The others don't seem to notice, but David looks right at him and says, "He didn't, of course, shoot it for the sake of the Frenchmen. He never told me why he did. Needed to feel blood on his hands, I suppose. But true to his word, he shared the meat all the same."
"A regiment of madmen and you, ey Eoin?" A lieutenant asks.
"Don't let him fool you," David cuts in. "He's as mad as the rest of us. How do you think he ended up here?"
"Not mad," Eoin says with a hollow little smile. "Just foolish enough to follow the orders of madmen, it turns out."
"Well, that's all of us then," says one of the enlisted soldiers, eliciting shouts of agreement from the rest.
David catches Eoin's eye across the table, and for a second, he's sure there's something terrible there, a resentment buried deep. But it passes as quickly as it comes, and Eoin pitches his voice into a cajoling song as he says, "Go on then, Major, tell the lads about the first time you jumped out of an aeroplane and into the great sand sea."
—
The radio, held together by wire and Geordie ingenuity, gets confiscated from the northern block. Eoin suspects the cause of it was a rather incendiary round of poker between the Italian officers and a group of Assam soldiers. Game after game, the Italians lost in rather spectacular fashion, and once the final hand was played, the capitano accused them of cheating and initiated something of a brawl. Though Eoin still seems to think they can all be bosom friends, the Italians certainly didn't hesitate to show their true colours when the chips were down.
Normally, David could not care less about the fate of their would-be radio engineers, except that the last spot of news they managed to intercept mattered to him very much indeed.
"Supposedly, it's your boys leading the charge," one man told them, slapping Eoin's back in congratulations and offering David a slanted salute. "The SAS are on their way."
It's still envy, it's always envy, that has David thrashing his knuckles against the walls of their cell. He has no tables to splay across the ground, no wood to shatter, nothing but his own body to throw against stone. He should bloody be there; by rights his boots should be hitting fascist soil before Paddy Mayne even makes it onto an allied ship. Eoin is used to madness, it seems, and he lets David rage without comment.
Eventually, once he's tired himself out, Eoin says, "How's about we go join the lads for a game of cards?"
"Is that what you did with Paddy?" He spits. "When he showed himself to be more beast than man? Did you take him to play cards with the lads?"
Eoin doesn't rise to it, he just leans in the doorway and watches like he knows there's more coming. And God, there is.
"He looked for you, you know. He spent days in the desert after Squatter, looking for you. And when it was clear that you wouldn't be coming back alive, he started looking for a body. I let him, too. He'd ask permission and I'd grant it, even though I knew eventually he wouldn't come back. He'd take a loaded Colt in one hand and a bottle of whisky in the other, and I knew one day he would walk into the dunes and rain bullets down from the sky until he had only one left for himself."
"Right," Eoin says. "Is that a no to cards, then?"
"Yes it's a bloody no! Fuck!" David shouts.
"Sure." Eoin manages a half-hearted salute. "I'll leave you to it then."
He dreams of Eve, sitting at his bedside, looking distinctly unimpressed. She says something, a whisper of sound, and David leans in closer in an attempt to hear her. Before he manages to parse whatever judgement she might pass from beyond the veil, he jerks awake to the creak of door hinges and whispered laughter from the hall.
Eoin slips back into their cell like a school boy out past curfew. "Card game ran long," he says, by way of explanation. "Go back to sleep."
David hears one of the guards chuckle from just outside, followed by the familiar tune of the lock and key. He turns on his side and watches the silhouette of Eoin in the dark as he strips off his jacket and tucks his boots up against the wall like he's still a cadet in training. He passes in front of the window, lit for a moment by a single ray of moonlight, before climbing into his cot.
The silence is abrupt and far too heavy to go on uninterrupted, so David clears his throat and says, "That might've been uncalled for. What I said."
Eoin scoffs out a laugh. "Which part?"
"Most of it. All of it, rather." He pinches his eyes shut to pinpricks of stars. "I'm just so fucking sick of this place."
"You're still the newest man here you know. By a number of weeks and all."
"McGonigal, I was trying to make this a nice apology, but if you're going to insist on provoking me - " Eoin really does laugh, then. It's a sweet sound, high in his throat. "Wait - " David starts, pushing himself up onto his elbows. "Are you drunk?"
"Hardly," he says. "A little airy, is all. I won some wine off the Italians."
"Thought you were shit at cards," David says, a tad outraged and very envious indeed. This is the longest period of sobriety he has endured since he first learned how to sneak into the dry larder as a child, and it does not fucking agree with him.
"I'm pretty decent, actually, but I've been ringing since I got here," Eoin admits.
"You little card-sharp," he says, half an accusation and half gleeful realisation. "You've been losing to them on purpose."
"I figured I'd need to trade for something eventually," he says, like it's any kind of explanation. "And I didn't want to leave it up to chance."
"So you traded for wine."
"And three cigarettes," he adds, holding up three solemn fingers. "Cigarettes that I chose to share with the guard who lost them to me, out at the front entrance."
"He let you through the gate?" David hisses, incredulous.
"No, we smoked through the bars. Fresh air and that. It's farther than you'd have managed to get by picking that lock, to be sure, but not far enough to make a runner. Besides, it wasn't the view I was after." Eoin turns onto his side, and David imagines he can see the shine of his teeth in the dark. "They're worried. The Italians. They've got a brass-man arriving the day after tomorrow, and they think it'll be the start of relocation orders."
"Relocation orders," he repeats, the words thick on his tongue. "So what is it you're planning, then?"
"Ah, nothing. Just keeping both eyes open, for when the opportunity presents itself."
In David's experience, very few opportunities present themselves. Rather, one needs to sculpt opportunity from wet earth and your own fucking ribs, an Old Testament recipe. Still, there is little to be done about it now, so he closes his eyes again and hopes that he might dream of Eve for a while.
"Good night, Stirling."
"Fuck you, McGonigal."
—
In the end, an opportunity does present itself, and damn Eoin McGonigal to hell for the ease of it. The brass-men come and go, and the prison walls echo with gossip as guards and prisoners alike await news. Eoin, of course, says nothing more about it until the door to their cell clicks open in the hours before dawn.
They both leap from their cots, chests heaving, because cell doors opening in the dead of night are rarely ever a good thing. Adrenaline has them both primed for a fight, until the shadow in the doorway finally speaks.
"Eoin." The way the guard says his name, all vowels, has him relaxing just slightly at David's side.
"Savino," Eoin whispers back. "What is it? Che c'è?"
"Alla matina." The guard takes one step into their cell, but seems to hesitate, glancing over at David and then quickly away. "Alla matina, Eoin. Good luck." He slips the door shut with barely a creak of the ancient hinges, and in the silence that follows, there is no turn of a key, no slip of a deadbolt, no lock at all.
They stand in the dark for a long, drawn out moment, before finally Eoin says, "How's that for an opportunity then?"
"If we're killed tonight, know that I'll still spend the last moments of my life fantasising about strangling you to death," David tells him, but already he can feel the satisfying flush of adrenaline in his veins. Fear and a fool's errand is as good as any amphetamine.
"That's fine. So long as you're ready to run."
"Oh, I am." He is already pulling on his boots and lacing them tight, while Eoin appears to be layering every article of clothing he has, topping it all off with a cap pulled over his curly hair. David watches him, before he tests out a sound of vague disinterest followed by, "The guard seemed sweet on you."
Eoin snorts. "Sweet on me?" He repeats. "No. But we're friends. Friendly, I suppose."
"You can't be friends with your own jailor, McGonigal."
"Ah, sure ya can." He says, ducking down to press his ear to the keyhole. He sets a finger to his lips before David can argue his point. "It sounds clear out there. Most of them are likely loading up vehicles at the front." He stands, brushing off his hands, and pulls his cap down further over his ears. "We'll go through the kitchen. Once we're out the door, go straight to the incline and climb."
"The kitchen?" David asks, before shaking his head and continuing, "Climb down, you mean?"
"No. The road up the mountain is dug in, so the kitchen's service entrance is just under the eastern slope, which, as you learned the hard way, eventually leads to a sheer drop. Climb up, follow the walls counter-clockwise, and there will be a clear path down from there."
David considers this for a moment, before deciding it sounds like a bloody terrible idea. "Why not just - "
"Do as I say or go your own way. But don't be surprised if you find yourself taking machine gun fire to the chest if you do." When he hesitates, Eoin says, "I will not go back for you. I will not wait for you. Follow me or don't."
He thinks of Jock Lewis, holding out a silk parachute and asking him to jump. "So what?" David mumbles to himself. "So fucking what? Well, go on then, McGonigal, and lead the way."