“Tristan.”
“Sorry,” I say, turning back but not stepping forward. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“You’re not,” he says, smiling. “Off duty, then?”
“Just this minute. I’d better get some sleep, I suppose.”
“Sleep is that way,” he says, indicating the direction from which I have come. “What are you doing over here?”
I open my mouth to respond but can’t think of an answer. I don’t want to tell him that I needed company. He smiles at me again and nods at the seat next to his. “Why don’t you sit down for a few minutes?” he asks me. “It’s ages since we’ve talked.”
I walk over, trying not to feel irritated by his implication that this has been a mutual decision. There’s no point in being angry with him, though; he’s offered me the gift of his company and there’s not much more that I want from life. Perhaps there will be an end to hostilities after all.
“Writing home?” I ask, nodding at the papers set out before him.
“Trying to,” he says, gathering them up and shuffling them on the table before stuffing them into his pocket. “My sister, Marian. I’m always uncertain about what to say, though, aren’t you? If I tell her the truth about how things are going out here, she’ll only worry. And if I lie, then there seems to be no point in writing at all. It’s a bit of a puzzle, isn’t it?”
“So what do you do?” I ask.
“I talk about other things. I ask questions about home. It’s small talk but it fills the pages and she always replies to me. I’d go bloody mad if I didn’t have her letters to look forward to.”
I nod and look away. The mess tent is completely empty, which surprises me. There are almost always people here, eating, drinking tea, their heads bowed over their settings.
“You don’t write home?” he asks me.
“How do you know I don’t?”
“No, I only meant I’ve never seen you write. Your parents, surely they’d like to hear from you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think they would,” I tell him. “I got thrown out, you see.”
“Yes, I know. But you’ve never told me why.”
“Haven’t I?” I ask, and leave it at that.
He says nothing more for a few minutes, takes a sip of his tea, then looks up again as if he’s just remembered something. “What about your sister?” he asks. “Laura, isn’t it?”
I shake my head again and look down, closing my eyes for a moment, wanting to tell him about Laura but unable to; it would require longer than we probably have.
“You’ve heard about Rigby, I suppose?” he asks after a while, and I nod.
“Yes,” I say. “I was sorry to hear it.”
“He was a sound chap,” says Will gravely. “But really, every time they send a feather man out into no-man’s-land, they’re just praying that he’ll be picked off. They don’t care about the poor bastard they’ve gone out to retrieve, either.”
“Who was that, anyway?” I ask, turning to him. “I never heard.”
“Not sure,” he replies. “Tell, I think? Shields? One of those.”
“Another one of ours,” I say, picturing the boys in their beds in Aldershot barrack.
“Yes. Only eleven of us left now. Nine gone.”
“Nine?” I ask, looking up and frowning. “I counted eight.”
“You heard about Henley?”
“Yes, but I included him,” I reply, my heart sinking at the idea that another one has gone; I keep a close track of the boys from the barracks, of who is still with us and who has been killed. “Yates and Potter. Tell, Shields and Parks.”
“Denchley,” says Will.
“Yes, Denchley, that makes six. Rich and Henley. That’s eight.”
“You’re forgetting Wolf,” says Will quietly.
“Oh yes,” I say, feeling my face flush a little. “Of course. Wolf.”
“Wolf makes nine.”
“He does, yes,” I agree. “Sorry.”
“Anyway, Rigby is still out there, I think. They might send a team out later tonight to collect him, although they probably won’t. What a waste of bloody time, eh? Sending a stretcher-bearer to collect a stretcher-bearer. Then he most likely gets killed and we have to send another out to retrieve him. It’s an endless bloody cycle, isn’t it?”
“Corporal Moody says there are eighty more men marching our way so we should have reinforcements in a day or two.”
“For all the good they’ll do,” he says grimly. “Bloody Clayton. And I mean that literally, Tris. Bloody Sergeant James Bloody Clayton.”
Tris. One single syllable of intimacy and the world is put to rights.
“It’s hardly his fault,” I say. “He’s only following orders.”
“Ha!” He snorts, shaking his head. “Don’t you see how he sends the ones he doesn’t like over the sandbags? Poor Rigby, I don’t know how he survived as long as he did, the number of times he went out there. Clayton had it in for him from the start.”
“The chaps don’t like a feather man,” I say half-heartedly.
“We’re all feather men at heart,” he replies. He extends his hand towards the candle that is burning before him. There’s not much life left in it and he hovers his index finger in the air, passing it through the flame quickly, then slower, then slower again.
“Stop it, Will,” I say.
“Why?” he asks, half smiling as he looks at me, his finger holding steady for longer and longer in the flame.
“You’ll burn yourself,” I say, but he shrugs it off.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Stop it!” I insist, grabbing his hand now, pulling it away from the candle, which flickers for a moment, casting shadows on our faces as I hold his hand in mine, feeling the rough, calloused skin that we’ve all developed. He looks down at my hand and then looks up, his eyes meeting mine. I notice that his face, which is filthy, is caked in mud beneath both eyes. He smiles slowly and the dimples appear—neither war nor trenches can do for them—and he pulls his hand back slowly, very slowly, leaving me unsettled, confused and, above all else, aroused.
“How are yours?” he asks, nodding at my hands. I place them flat in the air and every finger is motionless, as if they have been paralysed. It’s become something of a party piece for me now among the men; my record is eight minutes without a single movement. He laughs. “Still steady as a rock. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Nerves of steel,” I say, smiling at him.
“Do you believe in heaven, Tristan?” he asks in a quiet voice, and I shake my head.
“No.”
“Really?” he asks, surprised. “Why not?”
“Because it’s a human invention,” I tell him. “It astonishes me when people talk of heaven and hell and where they will end up when their lives are over. Nobody claims to understand why we are given life in the first place, that would be a heresy, and yet so many purport to be completely sure about what will happen after they die. It’s absurd.”
“Don’t let my father hear you say that,” he says, smiling.
“The vicar,” I say, remembering now.
“He’s a good man really,” says Will. “I believe in heaven, you know. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I just want to. I’m not particularly religious, but you can’t grow up with a father like mine and not have a little bit of it in your blood. Especially when your father is such a decent man.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” I say.
“Ah yes, the Butcher of Brentford.”
“Chiswick.”
“Brentford’s close enough. And it sounds better.”