He thinks about this for a moment, considers and dismisses it. “I’m sorry to hear he’s dead,” he tells me. “But it doesn’t change anything. It’s the principle that matters.”
“It’s not, actually,” I insist. “It’s life and death that matters.”
“Then perhaps I can take it up with Milton in a couple of hours’ time.”
“Don’t, Will, please,” I say, horrified by his words.
“I hope there aren’t any wars in heaven.”
“Will—”
“Can you imagine it, Tristan? Getting away from all this only to find that the war between God and Lucifer continues up above? I’d have a difficult time refusing Him, wouldn’t I?”
“Look, stop being so bloody flippant. If you offer to get straight back into the thick of it then the old man will let you off. He needs every soldier he can get his hands on. Yes, you might be prosecuted when the war is over but at least you won’t be dead.”
“I can’t do it, Tris,” he says. “I’d like to, I really would. I don’t want to die. I’m nineteen years old, I have my whole life in front of me.”
“Then don’t die,” I say, approaching him. “Don’t die, Will.”
He frowns a little and looks up at me. “Don’t you have any principles, Tristan?” he asks me. “Principles for which you would lay down your life, I mean.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “People, perhaps. But not principles. What good are they?”
“This is why things have always been complicated between us, you see,” he tells me. “We’re very different people, that’s the truth of it. You really don’t believe in anything at all, do you?
While I—”
“Don’t, Will,” I say, looking away.
“I don’t say it to hurt you, Tristan, really I don’t. I just mean that you run away from things, that’s all. From your family, for example. From friendships. From right and wrong. But I don’t, you see. I can’t. I’d like to be more like you, of course. If I was, there’d have been more chance that I would have got out of this bloody mess with my life.”
I can feel the anger bubbling inside me. Even now, even at this moment, he chooses to patronize me. It makes me wonder why I ever felt a thing for him.
“Please,” I say, trying not to let my growing resentment overwhelm me, “just tell me what you want me to do to put this madness to an end. I’ll do whatever you say.”
“I want you to go to Sergeant Clayton and tell him that Milton killed that boy in cold blood. Do that if you really mean what you say. And while you’re at it, tell him what you know about Wolf’s murder.”
“But Milton is dead,” I insist. “And so is Wolf. What’s to be gained by such a thing?”
“I knew you wouldn’t.”
“But it wouldn’t mean anything,” I tell him. “Nothing would be gained.”
“Do you see the irony at all, Tristan?”
I stare at him and shake my head. He seems determined not to speak again until I do. “What irony?” I ask eventually, the words tumbling out in a hurried heap.
“That I am to be shot as a coward while you get to live as one.”
I stand up and walk away from him, remove myself to the furthest corner of the room. “You’re just being cruel now,” I say quietly.
“Am I? I thought I was being honest.”
“Why must you always be so cruel?” I ask.
“It’s something I’ve learned here,” he tells me. “You’ve learned it, too. You just don’t realize it.”
“But they’re trying to kill us, too,” I protest, standing up again now. “You’ve been in the trenches. You’ve felt the bullets flying past your head. You’ve been out in no-man’s-land, crawling around among the dead bodies.”
“Yes, and we do the same to them, so doesn’t that make us just as bad as them? I mean it, Tristan. I’m interested to know. Give me an answer. Help me to understand.”
“You’re impossible to talk to,” I say.
“Why?” he asks, sounding genuinely bewildered.
“Because you will believe whatever it is you choose to believe and you won’t hear any argument about it one way or the other. You have all these opinions which help define you as a better man than anyone else, but where are your high-minded principles when it comes to the rest of your life?”
“I don’t think I’m better than you, Tristan,” he says, shaking his head. He looks at his watch and swallows nervously. “It’s getting closer.”
“We can put a stop to it.”
“What did you mean by ‘the rest of my life’?” he asks, looking across, his brow furrowed with irritation.
“You don’t need me to spell it out for you,” I say.
“I do, actually,” he says. “Tell me. If you have something to say, just say it. You may not get many more chances, so spit it out, for pity’s sake.”
“Right from the start,” I say, not hesitating for a moment. “Right from the start, you’ve behaved badly towards me.”
“Is that so?”
“Let’s not pretend otherwise,” I say. “We became friends back there in Aldershot, you and I. I thought we were friends, anyway.”
“But we are friends, Tristan,” he insists. “Why would you think otherwise?”
“I thought perhaps we were more than that.”
“And whatever gave you that impression?”
“Do you really need me to tell you?” I ask him.
“Tristan,” he says with a sigh, running his hand across his eyes. “Please don’t bring up that business again. Not now.”
“You speak of it as if it meant nothing.”
“But it did mean nothing, Tristan,” he insists. “My God. What’s the matter with you, anyway? Are you so emotionally crippled that you can’t understand what comfort is when it stands in front of you? That’s all it was.”
“‘Comfort’?” I ask, astonished.
“You must keep coming back to this, mustn’t you?” he says, growing angry now. “You’re worse than a woman, do you know that?”
“Fuck off,” I say, although my heart isn’t fully in it.
“It’s true. And if you continue to talk about this, I’m going to call Corporal Moody and ask him to lock you up somewhere else.”
“Corporal Moody is dead, Will,” I tell him. “And if you had been part of what was going on around here and not hiding away in this useful little cubbyhole of yours, you’d know that.”
This makes him hesitate. He looks away and bites his top lip.
“When did this happen?”
“A few nights ago,” I say, brushing it away as if it means nothing; this is how immune I have become to the fact of death. “Look, it doesn’t matter. He’s dead. Williams and Attling are dead. Milton’s dead. Everyone’s dead.”
“Everyone’s not dead, Tristan. Don’t exaggerate. You’re alive, I’m alive.”
“But you’re going to be shot,” I say, almost laughing at the absurdity of it. “That’s what happens to feather men.”
“I’m not a feather man,” he insists, standing up now and looking angry. “Feather men are cowards. I’m not a coward, I’m principled, that’s all. There’s a difference.”
“Yes, so you seem to believe. Do you know, if it had been a one-off, perhaps then I could have understood it. Perhaps I could have thought, Well, it was the end of our training. We were worried, we were terrified of what lay ahead. You sought comfort where you could find it. But it was you, Will. It was you who led me the second time. And then you looked at me as if I was something that repulsed you.”
“Sometimes you do repulse me,” he says casually. “When I think of what you are. And I realize that that’s what you think I am, too, and I know differently. You’re right. At such moments you do repulse me. Perhaps that’s your life. Perhaps that’s the way your destiny is to be shaped, but not mine. It’s not what I wanted. It never was.”