He was standing by the window with his hands in his pockets. I put down my bag and took off my light jacket. The only sound was the rustling of my clothes and then the bubbling of the coffee in the kitchen. I went and set the tray and brought the coffee into the sitting room. He sniffed, smelling the aroma, and turned his head away. By this time I was convinced that this had been a mistake. He didn’t want to be here, in this apartment. Everything about the place, even the coffee, was reminding him of how he used to be, how he had been when we met here the last time, before his capture and the camp and the march.

He picked up his coffee cup, his hand trembled, he set the cup down. “Look at me.” He tried to laugh. “The man you agreed to marry. I won’t always be like this, I promise. I’ll soon get back to my old self again.”

“There is no hurry,” I said. “You won’t be your old self, anyway. You’ll be different.”

“I expect so. I can’t imagine it.” He looked up at me. “I should have stayed longer in England. Some of us went to these rest homes. You know, to recuperate. Maybe I should have done that.”

That was what his mouth said. But his eyes were asking me a question.

They were asking if I still wanted him.

“I cannot think of a better place for you to be,” I said, “than with the woman who will be your wife.”

I found myself stammering over all those w’s. English suddenly felt very foreign to me.

—

Sometime later I said, “Darling, we don’t have to.” Which was, of course, the worst thing to say.

I undressed shyly. When I turned around he was sitting with his back to me on the bed. His ribs showed. His shoulder blades moved under his skin like a stripling lad.

My whole idea of what is beautiful changed in that instant.

—

Even though it was a hot evening we acted as if we were in a chilly English autumn, almost shivering as we arranged ourselves, rumpling the sheets and pulling them away from our bodies. His foot struck my calf. “Oh! I’m sorry,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter.” I knew I would have a bruise.

It was a tender, terrible disaster. We were, each of us in different ways, too hasty, too tardy, too frantic, too cold. Clumsily we put out each other’s fires and blew on the coals with no flint to strike it seemed. It had to be my fault. I was such a novice: clearly I’d done something wrong.

Presently James sat up.

“It’ll be better next time, darling, I promise.” He sounded stronger now. Not so lost or afraid. More straightforwardly embarrassed. “If I hadn’t—”

“No, no, it was me, I—”