“Yes.”
“Now, Cricket, tell me all about yourself.”
She looked at him intently for a moment. He lay stretched out on the sand, his elbow crooked to support his head. He looked frankly back at her.
“Go on, as friend to friend,” he urged.
And she did. She did not touch it up a bit. She made him see her life, her people, the Benjamins, her experience at Miss Vantine’s—all—through the eyes of her youth, her wistful youth. She told him about Martin Christiansen; she even confessed the fearful catastrophe with Cartel; and she did not mind when he rolled on his back and sent gusts of laughter up to the clouds.
“O ye delicious, crickety Cricket!” he groaned. “Go on.”
“There isn’t any ‘on’. That’s up to now. Tell me about you.”
And he did. He told her about his people, his young life near Dublin. How he went to an English University, how he enlisted in the war. He told her about his life in the trenches, about his wounds, about his decoration. He talked as he had talked to no one else about the whole experience of war.
She sat tense and still, concentrated on his every word. When he had finished, they sat in silence for several seconds.
“And that’s up to now, for me.”