Everyone Brave Is Forgiven(120)

“No, but he’d be the first from an honorable regiment. I hope you still appreciate the distinction.”

“I do, sir.”

“So you say Heath pulled strings, and you had nothing to do with it?”

“God damn it, yes.”

“And if I were to ask Heath the same question, no doubt he would say that it was you who pulled the strings, and that he had no hand in the affair?”

“If he has any sense at all, I hope that’s exactly what he’ll say.”

They watched each other while the old war turned through another minute of arc.

“I see,” said Hamilton at last.

“I’m very sorry.”

“Do you know what my days consist of now? HQ gives me orders that are almost supernatural. This caloric requirement to be transcended, these mortal wounds to be healed, those laws of nature to be revoked. As if we weren’t soldiers but saints.”

“I remember when we were human beings.”

“Yes. Well, I don’t suppose you’d have let Heath take the swing on his own, back then.”

Simonson closed his eyes. A girlfriend had written the week before: Catherine, trusting he was having fun. He remembered her at Oxford. Her hair, smelling of strawberries. Their punt, adrift among the meadows of the Cherwell. His cheerful incompetence with the pole. The summer sun fixing the memory, immortalizing her laughter even as it pealed.

Outside, another raid was starting up. The courtyard emptied as everyone hurried to the guns.

Simonson stood. “I should go to my men—”

“Stay where you are. What good to them is a man like you?”

Simonson sat back down. The bombs came, shaking the earth, deepening his headache until he felt his skull must crack. Officers, bloody and disheveled, began to bring their reports—communications with HQ were cut; number nine gun was a total loss; Grandfield and Barlow were killed.

Hamilton sat behind his desk and took the reports one by one.

“Do you see it yet?” he said in a lull. “Do you see it from my point of view? Because I have all night, you know. We can do this as long as you like.”

More reports came.

“Oh, look,” said Hamilton, sliding a damage chit across the desk. “That aimer on Nine Gun—you know, the Geordie—he’s had the front of his foot blown off. Shall we give him an evacuation number, do you think, or should we pull some strings?”

Simonson held his aching head while bombs blew it apart.

“Interesting,” said Hamilton, replacing the handset of the field telephone. “There’s a second casualty from that hit on Nine Gun. He—”

“All right,” said Simonson, “you’ve made your point.”

The war would grind them down until all that remained was this bitter and sullen fury pounding in the center of his skull. The war would find the true hearts of them all as it found his own heart now: incensed, incandescent, unconsoled.

The raid died away, the guns fell silent. In the hiatus before the all-clear there was the stuttering sound of the damaged tail-enders fleeing.

“I hope you also see it from my point of view,” said Simonson. “For someone he cares about, a man must do what he can.”

“Regardless of the social order?”

“Regardless of the evacuation order.”

“I see. So, you cut a few corners for Heath. I won’t say it’s unnatural, only unbecoming. Of an officer, you understand.”

“I admit nothing,” said Simonson.

“Then we must do it by the book. One of you pulled strings, and if it wasn’t you then logically it must have been him. So I will wire the C/O at Gibraltar, and have him put that to Heath. And as you say, if Heath has an ounce of sense he will deny any knowledge and you’ll both be off the hook. I expect that’s what he’ll say, don’t you?”

Simonson turned his cap over and over.

Hamilton said, “It’s just that you would need to be certain—wouldn’t you?—that Heath shared your cynical disposition. Otherwise there’s no guarantee he won’t simply do the honorable thing and own up, and serve out the whole of his twelve-months in the loneliest jail in the Empire. Might not even survive it, in his condition.”

“Please. I do understand.”

“Then I shall give you till dawn to think it over. Let me have your answer then. Dismiss.”

Simonson turned in the doorway. “Sir, why must you do this?”

“I wouldn’t, if we had any bread. All I’ve left to give the men is fairness.”

—

Back in his room Simonson sat on his cot. A damaged moon was easing itself up from the sea, and he wished it wouldn’t. One would be released from all cares, at last, if the moon and sun didn’t always pop up like hospital visitors. He wished the Germans would make an effort and sink them both for good.

The orderly had brought a new stack of paperwork and squared it away on his desk. Alistair had gifted Simonson his jar of blackberry jam, and he laid it on the stack now as a paperweight. He rubbed the fatigue from his eyes and sat to write the next day’s manning order. Number One Gun would have a full crew, Number Two would be half manned, Number Three would be . . . oh, but it hardly mattered. The magazines were empty.

His eyes strayed to the jam, where the moonlight crept through the jar. The deep ruby color connected directly with his hunger. He could hardly force himself to stop looking. Saliva flooded his mouth. He spat, and lit another bitter cigarette.