All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

01: Autumn

Taking care to stare past her faint reflection in the glass, Posey focused her eyes on the lone tree in the back garden as she made her first, determined snip. She knew she'd never be able to go through with it if she could see what a mess she was making in a mirror. With eyes darting between the tree and her reflection, she grabbed another handful of hair and cut it off as close to her head as she could manage.

She watched bronzed leaves float down from the branches and imagined it was them that brushed her back upon their descent and not her own pale locks. Her mother had always told her that her hair was her best feature. She wondered what her mother would say if she saw it in a growing pool at her feet.

Posey dared not look down. One glance down at the amount of hair she was standing in and she couldn't promise that she wouldn't start to cry. These were desperate times and desperate times called for desperate measures. After all, there were plenty of people in the world making far heftier sacrifices than their hair - her brother, to name only one, who had lost so many friends in the Battle of Britain he could no longer bear to look anyone in the face. He saw them everywhere, her mother had written in her letter. In turn, Posey saw him everywhere, too.

Even in the early evening the sky was beginning to taint black. The year was growing old and the sun weary, retiring earlier and earlier everyday. Posey could understand the sentiment; if she were looking down on the world right now she thought she couldn't much bear to look at it either. She wondered how everything had become so terribly undone. Europe's lights had all gone out, the place she called home forced into darkness.

If this was what it took to get back, she reminded herself, she could stand to lose some of her hair.

A knock at the door startled Posey, blood beginning to bead on her ear where she'd nicked it with the scissors. She swore under her breath.

"Josephine, dear?" called the woman on the other side.

Posey watched her reflection scowl. She hated her Christian name. She wasn't a Josephine, she was a Posey. She had always been a Posey. Mrs. Daniels, however, hadn't much cared what she was called back in England, under her roof she was Josephine and that was that.

Then, in spite of herself, Posey grinned. She wondered how Mrs. Daniels would take it knowing that she was now a Joseph instead.

"Yes?" she called back, her smile playing on the edges of her voice. She could only imagine the scene the elderly woman would cause as soon as she pushed into the room.

When the door opened it slammed closed again almost immediately. "Good heavens!" came the cry from the other side.

Posey grinned.

"Mrs. Daniels?" she asked, continuing to snip away at her hair. "Are you quite alright?"

She watched the door reopen tentatively in the reflection and took care to wipe the smirk off of her face. After all, other than insisting on using her Christian name, Mrs. Daniels had been a most agreeable host.

There was no movement behind her, and no noise either. Posey cut off the final long strands of hair in silence and nodded to herself in triumph before turning to face the door.

"What do you think?" she asked, striking a pose and trying desperately not to laugh.

Mrs. Daniels was aghast. "What on earth have you done to yourself, Josephine? Dear me, just what are you doing?"

Posey met the woman's gaze with a pleasant smile. "There's a war on, Mrs. Daniels."

The elderly woman nodded. "Yes, I think I may have read something about that somewhere."

Posey laughed. "Right. I'm glad you're familiar." Then she shook her head. She had to clench her hands into fists to stop herself from touching her hair - hair that no longer brushed her shoulders when she moved. "I'm going to fight."

Much to her surprise, Mrs. Daniels laughed. "And you couldn't have joined one of the many women's branches? You couldn't have been a nurse?"

Posey sighed and sat on her bed, stroking at the sheets to give herself something to focus on. "Can I tell you a secret?"

"Of course, my dear."

"I'm not really going to fight. I just want to go home."

"And you thought joining the army was the way to do it?"

It sounded so silly when she said it like that but the damage had already been done - all of her blonde hair lay strewn across the floor by the window as proof of that. And she had already made up her mind, and whilst Posey did a lot of things with reckless abandon, going back on her decisions was not one of them.

She tugged at the white sheets, watching as the embroidered pink roses puckered up as though reaching for the dying light from the window. She sighed once more. "The army will get me back to England as soon as I finish training," she said, voice only just above a whisper. "There won't be any needing to wait until the war is over, it'll be as soon as possible because they want to get their troops overseas." She shook her head, reminding herself of all of the reasons why she had decided to do this. "There's no promise that a nurse will be sent abroad because there are so many rehabilitation hospitals, and I can't wait for the end of the war because my family might not have that long. The lifespan of an RAF pilot these days is terribly short and my mother is in London, of all places, and God knows the Germans do so seem to love bombing London." The sheets were clenched tightly in her fists, peeking out to observe the conversation through the gaps between her fingers. "I need to get home now."

When she risked a glance up at Mrs. Daniels, the woman was nodding. "Okay, my dear."

Posey's eyebrows hopped up. "'Okay'?" she repeated. "That's all you're going to say?"

Mrs. Daniels laughed. "Well, that and the fact that you've missed a spot at the back." She walked over to the bed and sat down beside her. She gently pried the scissors from her hand and began to comb her fingers through the short strands of hair before cleaning up the haphazard job Posey had done with her lack of a mirror.

"You'll never get through the medical examination, Josephine," Mrs. Daniels said, but there was nothing malicious or taunting in her voice. She seemed to be smiling, perhaps anticipating that Posey had already devised a way around that.

Posey shrugged one shoulder, trying not to disturb the scissors currently at work in her hair. "I've got a plan for that."