if he were a woman, and softly belched and said, ‘let’s us two go and do our
duty like these Scotchmen, eh? You and me, come on, what d’you say?’
Walter said nothing – he hardly dared breathe – and Eddie flared; his eyes
briefly blazed as he pushed Walter away.
‘Oh fuck you then. I’ll go and fight the fucking Krauts on my own.’
And though Walter called after him as he stumbled from the house into the
darkness of that midsummer’s evening – ‘It’ll be shut, Dad, we can go in the
morning!’ – Eddie wasn’t listening and wouldn’t come back, not that evening
at least, perhaps not at all.
Neither Walter nor his siblings nor their mother had any idea where Eddie
slept when he went missing, as he periodically would, and neither were they
ever much surprised by the sorry state of him when eventually he returned –
sometimes weeks later, bearded and hungry and in need of a wash – but
when the following morning Walter climbed the half dozen steps to the hall at
St Saviour’s, wearing his new bowler to make himself seem taller, and
determined again to enlist, he hardly expected to find his father already
installed at the head of the queue, still less to find him shaven and wearing a
collar and tie.
The clamour of the previous August and September was by then gone, but
still the hall was thick with the noise and rank smell of dozens of men, and
once his eyes had adjusted to the gloomy interior after the brightness outside
Walter confirmed that no one else in that hall was smarter, more crisply
turned out than Eddie Barley, and as he waited to present himself once again
at the recruiting sergeant’s desk – puffed up with an odd sort of pride in his
father, feeling two inches taller at least – he began in his imagination to
anticipate the adventure that was in store for them, some rifles and ammo
and a ship out to France, a few Hun to knock over and a month or so of fine
French sunshine and fillies and wine, and even sooner than that – his mind