Everyone Brave Is Forgiven(20)

“My buh . . . boots are killing me,” said Duggan with a grin. “I miss cuh . . . comfy shoes. Are you for Chelseas or pumps?”

“I’m a loafer who favors a brogue.”

“I like a guh . . . good heel on a shoe and I don’t care for those fuh . . . fussy leathers like pigskin or cuh . . .calfskin. Just give me something that can tuh . . . take a decent shine. I don’t mind as far as the cuh . . . color goes. Black is all right, I suppose, but tan is fine tuh . . . too and even a beige or—” He stepped on the unexploded artillery shell, and it tore him apart.





November, 1939





AT THE BARRACKS ALISTAIR kept returning to awareness to find himself engaged in some activity: showering, or shaving, or eating green soup and white rolls in the NAAFI. Men of all ranks came and talked at him soundlessly, and from their demeanor he tried to gauge which were offering consolation and which were giving orders. Officers seemed to be waiting for him to say something. He tried “sir,” but it didn’t make them leave him alone.

The explosion had deafened him. At dinner a single drop of blood splashed to the table beside his bowl and he stared until he understood that it had come from him. With his finger he traced its point of origin to his ear. Embarrassed, he left the table with his food untouched.

Alone in the dormitory, with his hearing beginning to return, he opened his locker. There was to be a kit inspection at dawn—there always was—and his equipment was a state. He balled up newspaper, stuffed it into his boots and stood them on the paraffin heater. It was against regulations, and Alistair knew that if the sergeant major saw it, then he would say: “THE REGULATIONS ARE THERE FOR A REASON. WHAT IF EVERYONE PUT THEIR BOOTS TO DRY ON TOP OF THIS PARAFFIN HEATER?” And Alistair, along with the other men present, would be required to suppress the answering voice that said: “Everyone would have dry boots.”

Alistair folded his two dress shirts into regulation rectangles and squared them away in the top left position in the locker, with the collar side at the back and the forward edge parallel to the edge of the metal shelf and one exact quarter-inch back from it. Some fellow sufferer in history had scored a line into the metal shelf of the locker, to facilitate the alignment. This was the only humanizing decoration that Alistair had found in the barracks. In the caves of Lascaux he had seen aurochs and megaloceros daubed in mineral paint. In the restoration rooms of the Tate he had held his breath over Turner’s brushwork.

He took off his trousers to fold them, and found an envelope in a pocket. The post had come during the day, clearly, and he must have lined up with the other men to receive it. There had been so many lines that day. Armory, brigadier’s office, laundry, infirmary. He had handed in his rifle, his report, his clothes, his body, until there was nothing left to surrender and he had been dismissed to light duties.

He opened the letter.

Dear Alistair,

I, Caesar, have been keeping an eye on Tom for you—or rather, I have been keeping a rather fetching mother-of-pearl coat button on him, since that was what you saw fit to equip me with. I have much to report, so pin back your ears. (After all, you did pin back mine.)

Since you left for pastures more exciting, your flatmate has seen his own existence considerably enlivened. You know that I disapprove of humans and their laughable choices of mate, but in this case even I must admit that your friend Tom has picked a corker. Mary North is the loveliest thing I have ever seen, despite her damnable lack of tail and whiskers, and her strange habit of walking on her hind legs.

Alistair put down the letter and went over to the paraffin stove. His boots steamed. He turned them to let the heel sides dry, and pulled out the tongues. He eyed the boots critically. It would be important to take them off the stove before they were absolutely crisp, or else the leather would ossify. Then he would get blisters on the next march—and the company didn’t slow for blisters. You marched until they burst, and then until the flesh rubbed raw. Blisters were the true reason the men hated the enemy. The invasion of Poland was terrible, of course, but at least it was an event that had taken place on the outside of everyone’s boots.

He returned to his cot and tried to make sense of the letter. He hadn’t slept since reaching the barracks at seven that morning and collapsing at the gate. The high whining sound was still in his ears. He read the first paragraph again. Dimly he understood that his friend, Tom, was writing to him from the point of view of their stuffed cat. Caesar he could call to mind easily, fluid and feline as he stalked the old garret. He found it harder to recall Tom’s face, and when he did so, it was confounded with elements of Duggan’s. The man had been so pale, prone on the red grass in the red bloom of the sunrise. His lips had seemed dark as cocoa, although of course they must have been blue. The red light had been blind to the color. The dark lips had moved for a while—Duggan had said something—but Alistair’s ears were blown. The lips, excused from their color, had formed words relieved of their sound.

He noticed his hands holding the thin blue paper of the letter. Despite the shower he had taken, there was a black residue under his fingernails and in the creases of his knuckles. He had tried to hold Duggan’s head up—he remembered it now. As if we hadn’t all to drown.

Last night Tom took Mary to see a show at the Hammersmith. I wasn’t invited, I must disgustedly observe, but from what ensued upon their return I must conclude that the evening went well. Ah, Alistair, I always said that you were astute, for a human! You noticed straight away, of course, that I wrote “upon their return,” and yes, it is quite true. Abandoning propriety, Tom invited Mary to inspect the old garret, and inspect it she did! You should have seen the scorn with which she surveyed the living arrangements—I am quite sure that she was one of your regimental sergeant majors in a past life. And then, before Tom walked her home, the two of them danced to the gramophone and—oh, I tell you what, I can’t be bothered to be the cat anymore. Mary’s a knockout, Alistair, that’s what I’m trying to tell you, and I’m grateful to you for making me go through with that first dinner.