Everyone Brave Is Forgiven(15)
“Amen.”
Alistair tapped out his pipe on the side of his boot. “Miss London?”
Duggan shook his head. “I duh . . . didn’t get through the bathing-suit round.”
Alistair smiled. “I miss being allowed to mind my own business.”
“I muh . . . miss it too.”
“Are you married?”
Duggan held up his cigarette and let the wind whip the ash away. “You ruh . . . really are young, aren’t you?”
In the southwest the horizon was gone now, lost in a flat zinc mist. Above them the base of the cloud was dropping, black cords of rain dragging it down. As the weather closed, the men occupied a shrinking remainder of the plain between the grass and the falling sky. The company exchanged the blackly comic looks of men about to be engulfed by worse of the same.
The sergeant major blew his tin whistle. “MIST COMING IN! TAKE NOTE, YOU HOPELESS BASTARDS! TAKE NOTE!”
Duggan frowned. “Take note of whu . . . what exactly? Will that awful man never tire of being unhelpful?”
Alistair blew on his hands to warm them. “What do you suppose he thinks we should be doing?”
“About the mist? Well we can hardly shh . . . shoot it, can we? And yet they have issued us th . . . these.” Duggan flicked the barrel of his rifle with a fingernail, making the dead note of a stopped bicycle bell.
“Do you suppose he means we should put on more clothes?”
“I’m wuh . . . wearing everything they gave us. Aren’t you?”
“Should we eat something, then? To keep our energy up?”
“Did the suh . . . sergeant major order us to eat anything? I don’t think I could bear being bawled at again.”
“We could use our initiative.”
“Did he spuh . . . specifically order us to use our initiative?”
“I have some jam in my pack.’
Duggan threw him a look. “You’ve been lugging jam around? Isn’t the stuh . . . standard-issue suffering heavy enough for you?”
“I’ve been saving it for when I needed bucking up.”
Alistair opened his pack and fished out the Kilner jar of Tom’s blackberry jam. “There. I don’t suppose you’ve anything we could put it on?”
Duggan looked around. “You won’t luh . . . laugh?”
Alistair shook his head. Somewhere close, the sergeant major was yelling again, the words snatched and broken in the wind.
Duggan said, “I have some biscuits my duh . . . dear mother baked.”
He took them carefully from his pack, wrapped in a blue linen tea towel and tied with parcel string.
Now with a silent rush the mist washed over the company and the plain vanished entirely. Nothing was visible outside the tight globe each man crouched in. They sprawled on their packs, smoking and talking in low tired voices, answering the encircling grayness with the blank orbs of their eyes.
Alistair’s thoughts stalled. After a fortnight of this sour cold and this enervating wind and this incessant sergeant major, his fatigue ran so deep that only the sight of the wide plain had convinced him of his own residual magnitude. Now he felt snuffed and extinguished. He blew on his hands and waited for the whistle to sound and an order to be given that would invest him once more with purpose.
Duggan was working at the knot that tied the biscuits in their blue cloth. His fingers stopped as the light gained a darker inflection. Two boots sank into the mud between Alistair and Duggan. The two men looked up.
“OH, WELL ISN’T THIS DELIGHTFUL! THESE TWO LONDON GENTLEMEN HAVE COME TO THE COUNTRYSIDE FOR A PICNIC!”
Gray forms converged in the mist. They turned into men Alistair recognized, their faces variously animated by apologetic solidarity or leering glee. He stood. Duggan drew himself up more slowly, first placing his parcel carefully on top of his pack.
“SATISFIED, DUGGAN?”
Duggan nodded. “Yes, Suh . . . Sergeant Major.”
“THAT PARCEL POSITIONED ENTIRELY TO YOUR LIKING, IS IT?”
“Qu. . . Quite, thank you, Sergeant Major.”
Without breaking eye contact with Duggan, the sergeant major nudged the package off its perch and smashed it into the ground with his boot. He ground it under his heel until it was half submerged in the mud.
“AND NOW?”
Duggan looked down at the muddy tea towel and the shattered biscuits dissolving in the rain. He raised his eyes to the sergeant major’s.
“Now your wuh . . . wife will have to bake me some muh . . . more buh . . . biscuits, Sergeant Major. I can pick them up next time I’m wuh . . . with her.”
The company sucked in its breath. The sergeant major rocked back on his heels and smiled, slowly, in a leer that exposed the teeth to their roots. The wind whipped at the men’s rain jackets.
“Very good, Duggan,” said the sergeant major finally. It was the first time any of the company had heard him use a normal speaking voice. He retreated and crouched beside his own pack, downwind, to communicate with parties unknown over the field radio.
Now the company clustered around Duggan. Once they were sure the episode was over and the sergeant major’s attention otherwise engaged, a few of them shook his hand. A cigarette was offered, and lit for him when it was clear that his own hands were shaking too badly to do it.
Alistair watched how the men acted with Duggan: chummily, though ready to disperse if the sergeant major should return in wrath. They did not yet know the ways of the Army—whether a besting once acknowledged was forgotten, or whether grudges were held over things like this. There were nervous laughs. No one attempted a reenactment of the incident. They waited nervously in the fog: a chance agglomeration of greengrocers and machinists and accounting clerks, rifles slung.