“Don’t you have a sweetheart at home, then?” he asks me finally, the words sounding as if they are meant in a kindly way but coming out anything but.
“You know I don’t,” I say coldly.
“Well, how would I know that? You’ve never said one way or the other.”
“Because I would have told you if I had.”
“I didn’t tell you about Eleanor,” he counters. “Or so you claim.”
“You didn’t.”
“It’s just that I don’t like to think about her up there in Norwich all on her own, pining away for me.” He means it as a joke, something to soften the nasty atmosphere of the moment, but it does no good. It just makes him appear smug and arrogant, which is the opposite of his intention. “You know one or two of the chaps are married,” he says now and I turn to look at him, interested at least in this.
“Really? I hadn’t heard. Which ones?”
“Shields for one. And Attling. Taylor, too.”
“Taylor?” I cry. “Who the hell would marry Taylor? He looks like Unevolved Man.”
“Someone did apparently. It all took place last summer, he told me.”
I shrug and act as if none of this is of any interest to me whatsoever.
“It must be awfully nice to be married,” he says then, his voice becoming dreamlike. “Can you imagine coming home every night to find your slippers toasting beside a warm fire and a hot dinner waiting for you?”
“It’s every man’s dream,” I say acidly.
“And the rest of it,” he adds. “Whenever you want it. You can’t deny that that doesn’t sound like it’s worth all the trouble.”
“The rest of it?” I ask, playing stupid.
“You know what I mean.”
I nod. “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I know what you mean. You mean sex.”
He laughs and nods. “Of course sex,” he replies. “But you say it like it’s a terrible thing. Like you want to spit the word out in horror.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I don’t mean to,” I say haughtily. “It’s just that I think there are some matters that are not fit for conversation, that’s all.”
“In the middle of my father’s sermons, perhaps,” he says. “Or in front of my mother and her chums during their Tuesday-night whist drives. But here? Come on, Tristan. Don’t be such a prude.”
“Don’t call me that,” I say, turning on him. “I won’t be called names.”
“Well, I didn’t mean anything by it,” he says defensively. “What has you all twisted up in knots, anyway?”
“Do you really want to know?” I ask. “Because I’ll tell you if you do.”
“Of course I want to know,” he says. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”
“All right, then,” I say. “Only we’ve been here for almost six weeks, haven’t we?”
“Yes.”
“And I thought we were friends, you and I.”
“But we are friends, Tristan,” he says, laughing nervously, although there is no humour to be found here. “Why ever would you think we’re not?”
“Perhaps because in the course of those six weeks you’ve never once mentioned to me that you had a fiancée waiting for you at home.”
“Well, you’ve never mentioned whether… whether…” He struggles to finish his sentence. “I don’t know. Whether you prefer trains to boats. It’s just never come up, that’s all.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” I say. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I thought you trusted me.”
“I do trust you. Why, you’re the finest fellow here.”
“Do you think so?”
“Of course I do. A chap needs a friend in a place like this. Not to mention in the place we’re going next. And you’re my friend, Tristan. The best I have. You’re not jealous, are you?” he adds, laughing at the absurdity of it. “You sound just like Eleanor, you know. She’s forever goading me about this other girl, Rebecca, who she swears is sweet on me.”
“Of course I’m not jealous,” I say, spitting a little on the ground in frustration. For Christ’s sake, now there’s a Rebecca to be thrown into the pot. “Why would I be jealous of her, Will? It makes no sense.” I want to say more. I’m desperate to say more. But I know that I can’t. I feel as if we are at a precipice here. And when he turns to look at me, and swallows as our eyes meet, I’m sure that he can feel it, too. I can walk out over the ledge and see whether he’ll reach out to catch me or I can take a step back. “Oh, just forget I said anything,” I say eventually, shaking my head quickly as if to dismiss every unworthy thought from it. “I was just hurt that you didn’t tell me about her, that’s all. I don’t like secrets.”
A slight pause.
“But it wasn’t a secret,” he says quietly.
“Well, whatever it was,” I say. “Let’s forget about it, yes? I’m just tired, that’s all. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
He shrugs and looks away. “We’re both tired,” he says. “I don’t even know why we’re arguing.”
“We’re not arguing,” I insist, staring at him, feeling tears springing up behind my eyes because I would be damned rather than argue with him. “We’re not arguing, Will.”
He steps closer and stares at me, then puts a hand out and touches me gently on the arm, his eyes following it as if it’s acting independently of him and he’s wondering where it might travel next.
“It’s just I’ve always known her,” he says. “I suppose I’ve just always thought we were meant for each other.”
“And are you?” I ask, my heart pounding so heavily in my chest as his hand remains on my arm that I am convinced he will be able to hear it. He looks up at me, his face caught in a mixture of confusion and sadness. He opens his mouth to say something, thinks better of it and, as he does so, our eyes remain locked on each other for three, four, five seconds and I’m sure that one of us will say something or do something, but I’m relying on him for I cannot risk it and now, for the briefest moment, I think he might but he changes his mind just as quickly and turns away, shaking his arm as if he wants to rattle it loose, cursing in exasperation.
“For fuck’s sake, Tristan,” he hisses and walks away from me, disappearing into the darkness, and I can hear his new boots tramping in the soil as he makes his way around the circumference of the barracks, on the lookout for anyone who has no business being there and upon whom he might take out whatever aggression he is feeling.
My nine weeks at Aldershot are almost at an end and I wake in the middle of the night for the first time since my arrival. In another thirty-six hours we are due to pass out, but it’s not anxiety about what lies ahead for our regiment once we are officially soldiers that breaks my sleep. It’s the sound of a muffled commotion coming from across the room. I raise my head off the pillow and the noises quieten for a moment or two before returning even stronger: an unsettling reverberation of dragging and kicking, then a shushing sound, a door opening, then closing, and silence again.
I open my eyes a little wider and look across at Will, asleep in the bed next to mine, one bare arm draped over the side, his lips slightly parted, a great bunch of dark hair falling over his forehead and into his eyes. Muttering something in his sleep, he flicks it away with the fingers of his left hand and rolls over.
And I fall asleep again.
At drill the following morning, Sergeant Clayton orders us into our ranks and we are an immediate eyesore to him, for sticking out in the second row, third spot along, is the empty place of a missing person, a soldier AWOL. It is the first time this has happened since we disembarked from the train in April.
“I feel I need barely ask this question,” Sergeant Clayton says, “because I trust that if any of you men had an answer to it you would have already come to me. But does anyone know where Wolf is?”