“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.