For eternity . . the torch beams pierced the darkness, light tunnels along which the moths whirred as they struggled to reorientate themselves. Then they were smouldering in the stubble and the officer was shouting, What the bloody hell is going on here?! Who the bloody hell are you people? — Later, Kins concluded it was puzzlement rather than the rifles that had made the CLTA party so compliant. How had the Army detachment managed to creep up on them so stealthily. . seems as if I’ve lived out here in this wilderness forever. When they were jolting along in the back of the lorry, it did occur to him that the conchies, having learnt to ignore the airplanes roaring aloft at all hours from RAF Goltho, had probably, quite unconsciously, placed the Army lorries in the same ignorable category. — At Despond, Brockleby took his time coming forward, and when he did he was nonchalantly screwing a Craven “A” into the end of his amber holder. The singing farmer softly serenaded the officer — who looked old enough to be a regular and probably hadn’t much to do in this rural backwater but cultivate his own zeal. That’s all very well, Mister Brockleby, he said. For my own part I don’t doubt you are who you say, but the Station Commander is another matter, he’ll want to know what manner of fools he has on the doorstep of his airfield. . The officer’s voice began to creep up the scale, the anticipation of his superior’s grievance stimulating his own. . a malicious meddling fool, or merely one who thinks it a bit of a lark to show the enemy precisely where we are on the brink of a bloody invasion! — After that Brockleby’s Lincoln-green treacling couldn’t smooth things over: the officer all but frogmarched him to the road, his men chivvying the others along in their wake. The women and children were allowed to return to the farm on foot. When they arrived, they discovered the Tommies had already up-ended the stripped beds and emptied out all the cupboards. Out in the barns — Kins found this comical because it was something they’d seen done in the flicks — they were pitch-forking the loose fodder with their bayonets. A pair of binoculars, two Box Brownies and two shotguns were confiscated. The officer was still in high dudgeon, and when Jack Clarke couldn’t produce any papers he acted. . precisely as any jumped-up little fascist would and held them collectively responsible. As they were being loaded back on to the lorry, Jack kept on at him: For heaven’s sake, Captain Smyth, I’d have to’ve been here since W. G. batted for the MCC in order to acquire my accent — and I’d’ve had to mug up like a bastard to’ve gained my mastery of Wisden. Go on, man, try me out, I can give you any Test match result for the last twenty years, every innings, if that’s what you want. . But Smyth was not to be drawn, so off they went, the lorry with its slitted headlamps purring throatily along the dark lanes. . a big cat, its belly stuffed after happy hunting. In the back, pacifists and warmongers sat jolting. . un-der-neath the ar-ches! but, rather than being allowed to dream his life away, Kins was. . viciously ragged. Seated opposite him was one of the older Tommies, whose chubby cheeks and lumpy nose forced Syd Walker . . from Kins’s deck of cigarette cards. . a hundred stars of British cinema. The Tommy confirmed his own knowledge of this resemblance by removing his bayonet from its scabbard, catching its point in the floppy skirts of Kins’s cricketing pullover and pulling the hem so as to oblige its wearer to lean in to his leering face. I killed the cunt! he spat — and his mates guffawed. It was the first time Kins had ever heard the epithet spoken aloud, and such was his feverish shame he wondered whether it might abracadabra that part of Annette. . a grin without its pussy . . into the thickening atmosphere. Blushing heavily, Kins spluttered, Wh-What the d-devil d’you mean by that? And Syd Walker smashed Kins’s cut-glass with his mockery: W-Wot ve devil do I mean by vat? Well-well, wot ’ave we ’ere, lads — you must fink you’re some sorta dis-cunt vi-cunt swannin’ abaht safe in your cunt-tree funk-hole while us lot bash the square ’til it’s time to get our fucking bollocks shot off! — The pronounced indifference of the other Tommies — who were more taken up with whether they’d get a weekend pass and, if so, which local pubs would be most congenial for a prolonged soaking — stopped Syd Walker from getting any uglier. . than he was already. Jack Clarke, who was sitting next to Kins — and who, as a deserter, had much more to fear — gave Kins’s shoulder a brief squeeze and whispered, Buck up, man. For the remainder of the journey Kins faced down his tormentor’s sallies with stony indiff erence. But at Louth, when the lorry pulled up in the courtyard of the police station and once more the conchies were chivvied out at rifle point, Kins. . began to lose my stuffing. They were booked in by a bull-necked desk sergeant who bellowed his orders, then locked up two or three to a cell. The last thing Kins saw before the door clanged shut was Captain Smyth, who, he now realised, wasn’t much older than him, and who bore — with the addition of a futile blond moustache — a disturbing resemblance to. . Michael’s fag at Lancing. — In the coolly carbolic interior of the unlit cell Kins said to his companions, I’ll stand — then he tripped over a bucket and the stench of urine and vomit soon made the confined space. . unendurable. The others didn’t have to endure it for that long: Syd Walker, along with a cadaverous and diffident constable, came to fetch Finlay — a bookish, reserved Scot with whom Kins had played the occasional game of chess. An hour or so passed in silence. . we’d never developed any rapport. . before they returned for Briggs, a warehouseman from the West Country Kins had been accustomed to gently patronising — he’d taken the Molotov — Ribbentrop Pact. . perrsonal, like. Kins was left to his own miserable devices, the spillage from the bucket manured his imagination. . the singing farmer would approve, so visions of what was being done to the other conchies — things that in due course. . will be done to me!. . sprouted up before his eyes, and, for once, singling came easily as he nipped off the weedier possibilities — a tongue-lashing, a beating, a debagging — to leave the one healthy certainty: dawn was being dragged unresistingly into being with each muffled bing-bong! of the town hall clock, and the quarter-hour would arrive that brought with it the leaning stake, the stained gravel, the handcuff s and the blindfold soaked with the impotent tears of those who had gone before him. Rationally . . Kins knew this to be. . poppycock of the first order, yet no sooner had he wrestled his imaginings into submission than Syd Walker returned, slid open the Judas and added his filth to the general ordure: Yellow-belly, he spat. Lily-livered conchie and Fucking pansy. . If he could’ve mustered the necessary sang-froid, Kins would’ve remarked on the floweriness of this language — as it was, he only quailed while he was told, You, you’re less than fucking British, which is why we’re gonna do for you soon as cock crows. — The dated expression set Kins wondering: Was there an inky-pinky spider somewhere in the cell, whose doughty example would. . put some backbone in the Bruce? For now he truly was in a funk-hole, nearly giving way and screaming back at Syd Walker, Don’t you realise who I am?! My pater’ll have your guts for garters — I insist you put a trunk call through to his Ministry right away! — It was the thought of Sirbert’s embarrassment that restrained him — but when he was alone again he got to pondering: I’ve never seen him embarrassed in my life. Indeed, while his father’s thoughts had always been an open book. .