When he stood to put the tin back on the shelf, he saw stars. There was less of him now. There was less of them all. Officers and men dragged themselves around in uniforms three sizes too big, new holes punched into every belt, every collar hanging loose. They were a garrison of skinny boys performing a play about soldiers. It would not have been surprising to discover that their stubble and scars were drawn on with grease paint.
Fingernails bled. Everyone coughed. For weeks the men had lined the ramparts, looking down on the terraces that covered the escarpment. There, under strict supervision, the crops were harvested for the island’s collective ration. It was maddening for starving men to watch the almonds and apricots ripening sixty feet below. The garrison had pet names for each farmer, each terrace, each tree. Using artillery spotters’ binoculars aligned with clinometers on sandbagged and stabilized tripods, the battery’s trained observers monitored the ripening of each individual fig, gave it a number in the military system, and ran a book on the day it would be picked.
Lately the men had begun to give ranks to the fruit: this fat-arsed pear a major, this smug plum a brigadier. When food was collected they stood at attention and saluted the trucks leaving for the warehouse. When a farmer ate a tomato behind a wall, the men knew it. They lined the ramparts and beat out their indignation on pan lids. And still Tom’s jar of blackberry jam stood unopened in the alcove of the rifle port in Alistair’s room. If he opened it, the dust would get into everything he minded about.
“I should think you will lose the hand, don’t you?”
Simonson had appeared at the door. He eyed Alistair’s wound. Alistair took a clean dressing and began to wrap it.
“If I do lose it, you can come and gawk at the stump.”
“I think you should call me Major,”
Alistair lifted one weary eyebrow. “Really? They made you major?”
“In their wisdom. As soon as two little brass crowns can be fought through on a convoy, you will see them on these shoulders.”
“What about Anderton?”
“I never thought he was major material, did you? Plus, he was killed last night. Car went in the sea near Valletta—wind took it clean off the road.”
“I used to enjoy your sense of humor.”
“I couldn’t make it up. After all this—killed by the wind. Imagine writing that to the poor man’s wife.”
“I expect they’ll say ‘killed in action’, don’t you?”
“And that he was a credit, etcetera.”
“Well,” said Alistair, saluting with his bandaged hand. “Major.”
Simonson returned the salute. “Heath.”
“So, the command of the battery?”
“Mine all mine, old soldier. Logan will take over my troop. You can keep yours, if you like. Or hurry up and lose that hand, and I can have you shipped home on the next available empty. With luck you’ll be torpedoed.”
Alistair worked to remove any expression from his face.
“If only that Hun had brushed his teeth,” said Simonson.
Alistair wished he would leave. Simonson poked around the room, picking up books to peer at their titles. He nudged at a rack in which Alistair kept his bottles of turpentine and thinners. “What are these?”
“I use them to clean my wound.”
Simonson took the bung from a bottle of acetone, sniffed, and recoiled.
“God damn it! If you put this on your wound it would bloody well catch fire. What do you really use it for?”
“I fuel a squadron of tiny enemy bombers upon which my men practise firing with tiny anti-aircraft pieces. Afterward we make tea for our dolls.”
“Oh come on, though. Really.”
“I’m restoring a painting, sir. As I did before the war, sir.”
“That was another life. Is the Tate still there, do you suppose?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Who can? London might be ashes by now and none of us would be the wiser. There’d be a Ministry of Letters, forging notes from all our girlfriends.”
Alistair tried not to think about it. He hadn’t heard from Mary in a month. For a while she’d written every day and then, abruptly, nothing. Everyone else had got letters. Every now and then a mail plane was shot down, but it didn’t seem likely that nothing at all from Mary had got through.
Simonson peered at the thinners. “So what are you restoring?”
“Nothing important,” said Alistair. “Local artist.”
“Go on, I’d like to see it.”
“Sorry, but it’s private.”
Simonson closed his eyes for a moment. “Alistair, it’s been weeks. So we had a ding-dong. So bloody what.”
“I put you in an unbearable position.”
“No, you did the decent thing. I’m sorry I didn’t come to help sooner.”
The two men shook hands—Alistair had to use his left—while the red sand hissed in through the rifle port. Simonson held Alistair’s hand for half a minute before he let go. “I used to be less of an ass, you know.”
“It gets to us all. I used to be Ginger Rogers.”
“Explains why the men are so sweet on you.”
“The painting is under the bed. If you actually care.”
“Get it.”