The woman seemed reluctant, but admitted it.

"And your family name. Fourmentier?"

She nodded without speaking. There was a trace of her sister Isabelle in her manner.

Stephen said, "Do you know who I am?"

She looked up and into his eyes. Her expression was of resigned weariness.

"Yes. I think I do."

"Do you mind that I stopped you?"

She did not answer. At that moment the barman arrived with Stephen's cap. Stephen thanked him and gave him money.

When the two of them were alone again, he said, "Could we talk somewhere? There are some things I'd like to ask you."

"All right. Follow me."

Stephen followed. There was nothing he wanted to ask her, there was nothing he needed to know. In the moment that he had seen her face and guessed who she was he had had to make a choice, either to ignore her or to acknowledge her. Without time to consider, he had instinctively chosen the latter, with all that it might entail.

Jeanne went into the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville and sat down on a bench. Stephen stood uncertainly in front of her.

"We can't talk here. I mean, couldn't we go indoors somewhere?" Jeanne shook her head. "I don't want to be seen with you in a bar."

"What about your house? Couldn't we...?"

"No, we can't go there. What do you want to ask me?"

Stephen sighed deeply. His exhaled breath made fragile statues in the gaslight. He pulled his coat across his chest.

He said, "Perhaps I should tell you something of what happened." He saw that Jeanne distrusted him and thought it might allay her fears if he could show that he wished no harm to her or Isabelle. He gave a brief account of his life with Isabelle, though he knew Jeanne would have heard the story before. If he could confirm things she already knew then he could prove his reliability. Jeanne nodded at intervals with a slight, noncommittal movement of her head.

As he talked, it became clear to Stephen what it was that he wanted to know, and he was taken aback by the simplicity of it. He wanted to know if Isabelle still loved him. Looking into the eyes of her elder sister, he saw enough of Isabelle for a sense of her presence to be rekindled in him. With the sense of her came back his curiosity.

"Then I arrived back in France and there has been this war ever since. I have not moved very much, just a few miles up and down the line. The years have passed. Maybe one day it will end." He felt his account finishing lamely. He didn't want to give Jeanne too much detail of his life in the war; he presumed that such things would be familiar enough to her from her own family and friends. Nor did he want to appear as though he were trying to win her sympathy, when his own experiences were typical of those of millions.

"And what of you?" he said. "Do you live in Amiens now?" Jeanne nodded. She pushed back the scarf from her head a little, and he saw the shape of her large, brown eyes and the almost translucent whiteness of her skin. Her face was more strongly and simply constructed than Isabelle's, with none of the contradictory shades of character and colouring, yet in the texture of Jeanne's skin there was delicacy as well as strength. Her voice was low and soft.

"I have lived here for some time. I came here to... I came when I was asked to come, last November."

"Are you married?"

"No."

"Do you live alone?"

"No, I live with... friends."

It was impossible to say whether her reticence was general or whether there was something specific she wanted to conceal. Stephen's own monologue had clearly not set her entirely at ease. A shiver ran through him as the wind whipped into the square from the north. He saw Jeanne pull her cape around her. He would have to be more direct.

"I want to know about Isabelle. I want to know if she's well and if she's happy. I've no wish to make things difficult. I'm aware that you probably think badly of me for breaking up her marriage, and whatever life she has now--I have no wish to disturb it. After six years I just wanted to know if she's all right." Jeanne nodded. "All right, Monsieur? Yes, she's all right. You must understand that what you did caused great suffering, to her husband and particularly to his children. It was a scandal. Of course Isabelle is not absolved from responsibility. Far from it--her life is ruined because people do blame her for what happened. But as for you, there are people in this town who would gladly shoot you for what you did."

"I understand. I never undertook it lightly, it was always a serious matter for both of us. Do you understand the nature of Isabelle's marriage to Azaire? Did she talk to you about that?"

"Isabelle has talked to me about everything, Monsieur. I am her only friend and confidante and she has poured into me all the passion, all the details that a normal person would share among numerous others--sisters, friends, and family. I know everything."

"Good. It's not that her unhappiness with him exculpates me or her, but Jeanne said, "I don't blame anyone. I took my position rather as you took yours. Isabelle trusted me and I had no choice but to return her trust. I have been faithful to her in everything. I can't turn back or qualify that."

Stephen felt pleased by what Jeanne said. "It's true," he said, "that loyalty can't be partial, it must be complete. I want to assure you that my loyalty is to Isabelle's happiness, not to my own or anyone else's. You must trust me."

"I don't know you well enough to trust you. I know what my sister has told me of you and that, together with what I have seen for myself, disposes me to believe you. But there are things better left undone or unsaid. I think we should say goodbye now." Stephen laid his hand briefly on her wrist to restrain her from going. "Tell me, why do you live in Amiens?"

Jeanne looked closely at Stephen before she eventually said, "I came to look after Isabelle."

"Isabelle lives here? She's here now? And what do you mean, 'look after'? Is she sick?"

"I don't want to tell you too much. I don't want to lead you on."

"It's already far too late," said Stephen. He could hear his voice echoing in the still square. He swallowed, and tried to lower it. "Tell me, is she in Amiens? And is she unwell? What happened?"

"All right. I'll tell you, provided you agree to let me go when I've finished. I'll tell you all that you need to know and then I shall go home. You mustn't follow me or make any attempt to reach me. Is that understood?"

"Yes. I agree."

Jeanne spoke carefully, as though measuring out the optimum levels of truth that could be told. "Isabelle returned to Rouen, to my parents' house. It was my suggestion. They were reluctant to take her back, but I insisted. After some months my father made a deal with Azaire, that she would return to him. No, listen. Let me tell you. She had little choice in the matter. My father would otherwise have thrown her out. Azaire promised to make a new beginning, to take her back as though nothing had happened. Grégoire, his son, pleaded with her. I think it was he who persuaded her. She came back to him, to his old house. There were other reasons, which I can't tell you. In the first year of the war the town was occupied by the Germans, as you probably know. Many men were taken away, including Azaire. Then... well, time passed, things happened. Isabelle stayed. The house in the boulevard du Gange was hit by a shell and the back part of it was destroyed. No one was hurt, but Isabelle moved to an apartment in the rue de Caumartin. Lisette was married and Grégoire was old enough to leave school. He's going into the army next year. Then last November there was a heavy bombardment, and the house in the rue de Caumartin was hit. Isabelle was injured, but she was lucky. Two people in the street were killed. She wrote to me when she was in hospital and asked if I would look after her, so I came from Rouen. She's out of hospital now, and she's quite recovered, though she won't be quite... fit again. I'm staying with her for a few more weeks."

"I see." So strong was the sense of Isabelle evoked by Jeanne that it was almost, Stephen felt, as though she were sitting on the bench between them. Yet clearly something, or perhaps a great deal, was being withheld.

"I want to see her," he said. The words surprised him. At no moment when he had been encamped in slime and mud had he wished her to be more real to him than the indistinct memory that infrequently visited him; he had not wanted to see her actual skin, flesh, or hair. Something Jeanne had said had altered that indifference. Perhaps it was his anxiety for her well-being that made it important for him to rely on the evidence of what he could see rather than on what he remembered or what was told him by Jeanne.

Jeanne shook her head. "No, that's not possible. It wouldn't be wise. Not after all that's happened."

"Please."

Jeanne's voice became tender in response to Stephen's. "Think about it. Think of all the disruption and pain that was caused. To go back now, to reopen all those things, would be quite insane." She rose to go. "Monsieur, I have told you perhaps more than I should, but I felt when I saw you that I could trust you. I also felt that there was some small debt owing to you. When Isabelle left you she gave no explanation, but I think you were honourable in your way. You did not pursue her or make her life more difficult than it was. I think you deserved at least to be told what I have told you. But my loyalty is now with Isabelle and, as you were saying, such things must be complete, they cannot be compromised."

Stephen stood up next to her. "I understand," he said. "Thank you for trusting me as much as you have. But let me ask you one thing. Will you at least tell Isabelle that I'm here? Tell her that I would like to see her, merely to wish her well in one short visit. Then she can decide for herself."

Jeanne pursed her lips in great reluctance and began to shake her head. Stephen cut her off. "That wouldn't be disloyal. It's simply allowing her to make up her own mind. It's still her own life. Isn't it?"

"All right. It's against my better judgement, but I'll tell her we've met. Now you must let me go."

"And how will I know?"

"I'll meet you in the same bar at nine o'clock tomorrow evening. Now I must get back."

They shook hands and Stephen watched the tall figure disappear across

*

He walked across the town toward the boulevard du Gange. He left the cathedral behind him, its cold Gothic shape fortified by the stacked bags full of earth, as though its spiritual truths were not in themselves proof against exploding metal, and descended to the banks of the canal where, in the warm evenings of his first visit to the town, he had watched the shirtsleeved men casting their rods hopefully over the tamed, diverted waters of the Somme.

It had come alive again. What he had thought dead and reduced to no more than fossil memory was beginning to leap and flame inside him. He had never foreseen such a_ _thing, even at the deepest moments of solitude, under the worst bombardments, when he had had to look for his most childlike, fundamental means of reassurance. At no stage had he drawn on the memory of Isabelle or of what had passed between them as a source of hope or meaning, or even as an escape from the pressing reality in which he found himself. Meeting Jeanne, however, had done something extraordinary to him: it had reduced the events of the last three years to something if not comprehensible, then at least contained.

He crossed to the southern end of the boulevard and began walking. He could not believe that the house would be there; it had the same unreliable quality as his memory of dying, when his life had lured him back with uncertain promises, or of his recollection of passages of battle, when time had seemed to collapse. Then he saw the red ivy that crept up to the stone balcony on the first floor; the formidable front door with its ornate ironwork; the grey slate roof that plunged in various angles over the irregular shape of the rooms and passageways it covered. Its solid, calm façade had an unquestionable solidity.

The taste of those days returned to his mouth. He could smell the polish on the wooden floors applied by the maid whose name was... Marguerite; the wine Azaire habitually served at dinner, a dry tannic red, not cheap, but thick and dusty; then the sounds of footsteps, their deceptive ring seeming closer or farther than they really were; the smell of pipe tobacco in the sitting room; and the clothes that Isabelle had worn, the hint of rose, their stiff cleanness and the sense she gave of having not merely dressed, but dressed up, as though in a costume that suited not the house but some other world she inhabited in her mind. They came back to him with pressing clarity, as did his own feeling at the time that Isabelle's withheld, inner life would in some way accord with his own. As he stood in the dark street, looking over at the house, he remembered too the rapturous urgency with which he had found that he was right.

He crossed the street to look more closely. The gates were locked and there were no lights inside. He walked on a little so that he could see the side of the house. A long sheet of tarpaulin was held in place at the back, and there were signs of repair work, with piles of brick waiting to be cleared. From what Stephen could see, it appeared that a large section of the rear of the house had been destroyed. They would have been using heavy guns in any case, and this must have been a direct hit, or possibly two. Stephen calculated that most of the main sitting room was destroyed, and several lesser rooms downstairs. Above them had been the back bedrooms, including the maids' quarters and the red room.

He sat down at the edge of the road, beneath a tree. He was overcome by the power of his memory. It was all clear again in his mind, as though he was reliving it. The fire laid ready to be lit in the red room, the medieval knight, the clematis against the window... He tried to keep back the flood of complete recollection, yet at the same time he felt revived by it.

He stood up and began to walk away from the house, toward the town and then along the banks of the canal. He briefly wondered if Ellis would be all right on his own. There were plenty of billets in town, and friendly officers to show him where to go. He himself had no desire to sleep. He was close to the river gardens, the fertile enclosures through which he had punted one stifling afternoon with Azaire and his family and Monsieur and Madame Bérard.

Throughout the night he walked, occasionally stopping to rest on a bench in an attempt to clear his mind. When dawn came he was in the Saint Leu quarter, where he heard the first signs of the day's activity as bakers lit their ovens and metal milk churns were brought clanking down the street on hand-pulled wagons. At seven o'clock he ate fried eggs and bread in a cafe; with a bowl of coffee. He washed and shaved in a small room at the back indicated by the owner. He was so used to not sleeping that he felt no ill effects from the night. Perhaps he could find a place where they were showing a film; if not, he would buy a book and read it in the gardens by the cathedral.

He passed the day in fitful expectation. During the afternoon he slept more deeply than he had expected in a room he took in a small hotel. In the evening he changed his clothes and prepared to meet Jeanne. As he walked toward the bar he noticed that his clean shirt, like his old one, had lice in it.

Shortly after nine Jeanne came into the bar. Stephen put down his drink and stood up. He pulled out a chair for her. He was barely able to go through the formalities of offering her a drink and asking after her health as his eyes searched her face for some indication of her news.

"And did you speak to Isabelle?"

"Yes, I did." Jeanne, having declined the drink, sat with her hands folded on the table. "She was surprised to hear that you were in Amiens. Then she was even more surprised to hear that you wanted to see her. She wouldn't answer until this evening. It's very difficult for her, Monsieur, for a reason you'll see. Eventually she agreed. I am to take you to the house tonight."

Stephen nodded. "All right. There's no point in delaying." He felt quite cold, as though this were a routine matter, like a trench inspection.

"All right," Jeanne stood up. "It's not far to walk." They went down the dark streets together in silence. Stephen felt that Jeanne would not welcome questions from him; she seemed dourly set on her mission, about which she clearly had private doubts.

They came at last to a blue front door with a brass handle. Jeanne looked up at Stephen, her dark eyes glowing in the shade of the scarf wrapped around her head. She said, "You must make of this what you will, Monsieur. Be calm, be strong. Don't upset Isabelle. Or yourself."

Stephen was moved by her gentleness. He nodded his agreement. They went into the house.

There was a dim light in the modest hallway, which had a table with a bowl of daisies beneath a gilded mirror. Jeanne went upstairs and Stephen followed. They went along a small landing and came to a closed door at the end.

"Wait here, please," said Jeanne as she knocked at the door. Stephen heard a voice answering from inside. Jeanne went in. He heard the sound of chairs being moved and of low voices. He looked around him, at the pictures on either side of the door, at the pale distemper of the walls. Jeanne reappeared. "All right, Monsieur. You can go in."

She touched his arm in encouragement as she went past him and vanished down the corridor.

Stephen found his mouth had gone dry. He could not swallow. He put his hand to the door and pushed it open. The room was very dark. There was only one lamp, on a side table, beneath a heavy shade. On the far side of the room was a small round table, of the sort people might play cards on. On the other side he could see Isabelle.

He took a few steps into the room. This is fear, he thought; this is what makes men cower in shellholes or shoot themselves.

"Isabelle."

"Stephen. It's good to see you." Her low voice was the same he had first heard fill the room under Bérard's boorish prompting; it slid along each nerve of his body.

Stephen went closer so that he could see her properly. There was the strawberry-chestnut hair and wide eyes; there was the skin, if it had been bright enough to see it properly, in whose changing patterns and colors he had seen the rhythm of her inner feelings.

And there was something else. The left side of her face was disfigured by a long indentation that ran from the corner of her ear, along the jaw, whose natural line seemed broken, then down her neck and disappeared beneath the high collar of her dress. He could see that the flesh had been folded outward. It had healed and dried; the ear had been well repaired. The altered line of the jaw, however, gave an impression of the great impact that must have struck her, and although the wound was closed, the sense of this force made it still seem immediate. The left side of her body was awkwardly held against the chair, as though it lacked independent movement.

Isabelle followed his tracking eyes. "I was injured by a shell. I expect Jeanne told you. First the house in the boulevard was hit, then the place we'd moved to in the rue de Caumartin. It was unlucky."

Stephen could not speak. Something had closed his throat. He raised his right hand with the palm toward her. It was supposed to indicate that he was glad she was alive, that he had seen much worse, that he felt sympathetic, and many other things, but it conveyed little.

Isabelle seemed to have prepared herself much better. She continued calmly,

"I'm happy to see you looking so well. You've gone a little grey, haven't you?" She was smiling. "But it's good that you've survived this awful war." Stephen was grinding his teeth. He turned away from her, his fists clenched. He shook his head from side to side, but there was no voice. He had not expected this sensation of physical impotence.

Isabelle went on speaking, though her voice began to falter. "I'm glad you wanted to see me. I feel very pleased that you've come. You mustn't worry about this injury. I know it's ugly, but it gives me no pain."

The words went perilously on, addressing Stephen's back. Slowly he began to assert himself over the feelings that raged inside him. The sound of her voice helped him. He drew on all the strength of mind he had, and gradually assumed control of himself.

It was with relief and some pride that he heard a sound at last issue from his throat as he turned to face her. He was saying, like Isabelle, simple, empty things. "I was fortunate to run into your sister. She's been very kind."

He met her eyes and went over to the table, where he sat down opposite her.

"I was lost for words. I'm sorry. It must have seemed rude." Isabelle stretched out her right hand across the table. Stephen took it between both of his and held it for a moment. He withdrew his grip, not trusting himself to keep it there.

He said, "Isabelle, would you mind if I had a glass of water?" She smiled. "My dear Stephen. There is a jug on the table in the corner. Help yourself. Then you must have some English whisky. Jeanne went out specially for it this afternoon."

"Thank you."

Stephen crossed to the table. After he had drunk the water he poured some whisky into the glass. His hand barely trembled and he was able to compel a_ _smile as he turned back.

"You've kept safe," she said.

"Yes, I have." He took a cigarette from a metal case in his tunic. "The war will last another year at least, perhaps more. I can hardly remember a life before it. We don't think about it, those of us who have survived."

He told her how he had been wounded twice and how he had recovered on each occasion. Their conversation seemed quite passionless to him, but he was content that it should be.

Isabelle said, "I hope you're not shocked by the way I look. Really, I was lucky compared to some others."

Stephen said, "I'm not shocked. You should see what I have seen. I won't describe it to you."

He was thinking of a man whose face had been opened up by a bullet, a mere rifle shot. A neat triangle was made, with its apex in the middle of his forehead and the two lower corners on the midpoint of each jawline. Half of one eye remained, but there were no other features left except for some teeth buried at an angle; the rest of the face was flesh turned inside out. The man was conscious and awake; he could hear and follow instructions given to him by the medical officer. Compared to his wound, Isabelle's was discreet.

And yet he had lied. He was shocked by it. As he grew used to the light he could see where the skin at her left temple was stretched, so that it pulled the eye slightly out of shape. It was not the severity of it that appalled him, it was the sense of gross intimacy. Through her skin and blood he had found things no exploding metal should have followed.

Eventually, when some rapport was established, she ventured to tell him what had happened to her. She moved quickly over references to their life together, even to St.-Rémy or other places they had visited.

"So I returned to Rouen, to the family house. It was like being a child again, but there was no innocence, no sense of many possibilities ahead. In some ways it was kind of them to take me, but I felt imprisoned by my failure. Can you imagine? It was as though I had been sent back to begin again because I'd been no good.

"My father gently introduced the idea of my returning to Amiens. I didn't think at first he could be serious. I imagined that Azaire would never want to see me again--to say nothing of the scandal. But my father is a shrewd negotiator. He dealt with it just as he had dealt with the marriage in the first place. He brought Lisette and Grégoire over to see me. I wept with happiness when I saw them again. Lisette had grown up so much, she was a young woman. She didn't need me to come back, but she was kind when she might easily not have been. And Grégoire pleaded with me. I was overcome by them. I couldn't believe they were so forgiving after what I'd done to their father. They just said it was forgotten. I think having lost one mother they would do anything not to lose another. And they forgave me. They forgave me because they loved me, just for who I was.

"Then there was the meeting with Azaire, which I dreaded. The strange thing was that he seemed quite ashamed. Because I'd left him for another man, I think he felt diminished. He was quite meek with me. He even promised to be a better husband. I couldn't really believe all this was happening. I had no wish to return. What decided me was how unhappy I was at home--something my father cleverly exploited."

"You went back?" said Stephen. It did not make sense to him; it was inconceivable, unless there was some part of the story that Isabelle had withheld.

"Yes, Stephen, I went back, not willingly, but because I had no choice, and it made me very unhappy. I regretted it the moment I stepped inside the house. But this time I knew I could never change my mind. I would have to stay. Within a few months what they call 'society' had taken me back. I was asked to dinner by Monsieur and Madame Bérard. It was the old life, though even worse. But I was saved by the war. Perhaps that's why I'm philosophical about this." She touched her neck with the fingers of her right hand. Stephen wondered what it felt like.

"That August, British troops came through the town. I watched them, halfexpecting to see you. People sang 'God Save the King.' Then things began to look bad. At the end of the month the army decided not to defend the town. They left us to the mercy of the Germans. I wanted to leave but Azaire was a town councillor and he insisted on staying. We waited for two days. It was agonizing. Eventually they arrived--they marched in down the road from Albert, up the rue Saint Leu. For a moment or two there was a festival atmosphere. But then we learned of their demands. The mayor had two days to provide them with an enormous amount of food and horses and equipment. As a guarantee he wanted to be given twelve hostages. Twelve councillors volunteered. My husband was one of them.

"They'd come to the house on the boulevard du Gange and taken it over to accommodate a dozen German officers. My husband was kept in the council chamber that night. They were very slow producing all the food, and the Germans threatened to kill the twelve men. They trained a huge battery of guns on the town. The next day we heard that the hostages had all been freed, but then it turned out that the mayor had not paid enough money, so four of them, including my husband, were held. After three days of this uncertainty, the Germans agreed that their terms had been met, and all the councillors were free to return. But the city under this occupation was a different place."

Isabelle moved quickly over the next part of the story. It did not reflect well on anyone involved.

All men of service age were required to present themselves for deportation. Many took the chance to leave town, but four thousand willingly gave themselves up. The Germans were embarrassed by their docility. They lacked the capacity to deal with such numbers. They released all but five hundred willing prisoners whom they marched out of town. By the time they reached the suburb of Longueau, the less fearful saw that there were no effective restraints on them and went quietly home. At Péronne those who had not made their own arrangements were put into requisitioned French cars and driven to Germany. Azaire, who saw his duty as a councillor to lie with the men of Amiens, went with them. Although his age made him the object of several informal offers of release, he was steadfast in his determination to be with the wronged people of his town.

For Isabelle the city under occupation was certainly a different place; though to her in the house on the boulevard du Gange the occupation brought freedom. The German officers were punctilious and good-humoured. A young Prussian called Max paid special attention to Isabelle's two-year-old daughter. He took the child into the garden and played with her; he persuaded his fellow-officers that care of the girl should excuse Isabelle from looking after their needs, which could be done adequately by the army servants. Isabelle was allowed, at his insistence, to keep the best room for herself.

When she recounted the story to Stephen, Isabelle made no mention of the child. It was for the baby's sake that she had agreed to return first to Rouen and then to Amiens: the child needed a home and family. She could not bring herself to mention the girl to Stephen, even though she was his daughter. She had kept her pregnancy a secret from him and had made Jeanne swear not to tell him. She believed that if he knew about the child it would make matters more painful and complicated between them.

For the same reason that she withheld the fact of the child's existence, however, she did tell Stephen about Max. She thought it would make things simpler and more final for Stephen if he knew.

The occupation lasted only a few days, but in the compressed time of war it was long enough for Isabelle to fall in love with this soldier who played with her infant daughter and made her own comfort his special charge. He was a man not only of great courtesy, but of imagination, stability, and humour. For the first time in her life she felt she had met someone with whom she could be happy under any circumstances, in any country. He was dedicated to her well-being and she knew that if she returned that simple fidelity, no circumstances, no alterations, not even wars, could disrupt their simple, enclosed contentment. Compared to her passion for Stephen it was a muted affair, and yet it was not shallow; it made her profoundly content, and confident that at last she would be able to become the woman that she was meant to be, unhampered by restraint or deceit, and within a life that would be calm and helpful for her child.

Max appeared gratifyingly excited by what he described as his great good fortune. To Isabelle's modest surprise he seemed barely able to believe that she should return his feelings. His incredulity brought a lightness and brilliance to him in the short time they were together. The only darkness in Isabelle's mind concerned his nationality. At times when she lay awake at night she thought of herself as a traitor, not once or even twice now to her husband, but three times over, and most significantly, to her country and her people. She could not understand why she seemed to have attracted this strange fate when she remained in her own eyes such an uncomplicated creature, the same little girl who had wanted merely some love or attention, some natural human exchange as a child in her parents' house. Why was it that her simple desires had turned her into so extravagant an outcast? This was the problem that stayed knotted, intractable, whichever way she drew it or examined it inside her. It brought misery to her when she dwelt on it; yet she had also a developed instinct for the practicalities of survival. Max was a man of flesh and blood, a good man, a human soul, and in the end this was more important than the accident of nationality, even at such a terrible time. Isabelle's natural feeling for the enduring, hard choices of daily living made her able to drive onward to what she felt was right, regardless of what she thought of a larger, but ultimately theoretical consideration.

She corresponded with Max. She travelled secretly to Vienna to see him when he was on leave. Their long separation did nothing to diminish her feelings; they enforced her determination. This was her final chance to redeem herself and create a life for her daughter.

In June 1916 Max's regiment was moved to reinforce a previously quiet sector on the river Somme near Mametz. Isabelle received Stephen's letter from the line. For six months she could not bring herself to read a newspaper. The thought of Max and Stephen fighting was unendurable. She wrote to Max from hospital. The news of her injury redoubled his devotion. The more difficult it became, the more important they both knew that it was for them to honour the pledges they had made to each other.

"It isn't easy," said Isabelle. "These choices are all very, very difficult. But the longer the war goes on, the more determined we have become."

She finished speaking and looked over at Stephen. He had said nothing during her account. She wondered if he had really understood it all. Because she had made no mention of the child, it had seemed much harder to explain than she had expected. She was aware that he seemed puzzled.

He had changed almost beyond recognition, she thought: certainly much more than he appeared to know. His hair was shot with grey, as was his untrimmed moustache. He was badly shaved, and he scratched his body all the time, apparently without knowing it.

His eyes had always been dark, but now they seemed sunken. There was no light in them. His voice, which had once reverberated with meanings and nuances, with temper and emotions held in check, was now alternately toneless or barking. He seemed a man removed to some new existence where he was dug in and fortified by his lack of natural feeling or response.

Isabelle was greatly moved by the sight of these changes, but feared to reach out more than a hand to whatever world he now inhabited. She would shed tears for him when he had gone, but not until the practical business of his enlightenment had been completed.

Stephen took another cigarette from his case and tapped it slowly on the table. He smiled, surprisingly, a wide, sardonic movement of his lips. "You've certainly not taken any easy path, have you?"

Isabelle shook her head. "Though I didn't willingly ask to face any of these difficulties. They seemed to happen to me."

"How is Lisette?"

"She's married. Much to my husband's irritation she married Lucien Lebrun. You remember, the man who organized the strike."

"I remember. I used to be jealous of him. And is she happy?"

"Yes. Very happy, except that Lucien is in the army. Grégoire will join up next year if the war's still going on."

"I would like to see Lisette. She was a nice girl."

"She lives in Paris."

"I see." Stephen nodded. "What's that noise?"

"It must be the cats. Jeanne has two of them."

"It sounded like a child."

They heard footsteps in the corridor. A door opened and closed.

Isabelle was aware that beneath Stephen's expressionless manner there was some powerful urge or desire.

He said, "Isabelle, I'm glad of all these things you've told me. I don't wish to see you again now. This was all I needed to know. I wish you well with your German friend."

Isabelle felt unforeseen tears welling up in her eyes. Surely he would not leave on this muted note of downcast generosity. She had not wanted to see him so broken.

He leaned forward across the table. He said with a slight catch in his voice,

"May I touch you?"

She looked into his dark eyes. "You mean...?"

"Yes." He nodded slowly. He held out his right hand. She took it in hers, feeling the large, roughened fingers. Slowly, with a little tremor in her own grip, she guided it across her face and laid it on her jaw, just below the ear. She felt his fingertips gently run down the cleft in her skin. She wondered if they were soft enough for him to feel the quality of her flesh or whether they were too calloused to register the different texture of what they touched. She was overcome with desire as his fingers probed the abrasion. It was as though they were not on her cheek, but were opening the flesh between her legs; she felt again the soft intrusion of his tongue; she reexperienced the ecstasy of abasement and possession. Her skin flushed with blood; there was a melting in her belly and a hot gush of liquid. She was blushing with arousal, her skin beating and burning under her dress.

His head was quite steady, his eyes following the slow course of his hand through the turned furrow. When it reached the top of her dress, he left it for a moment, the fingers resting in the wound. Then he laid the back of his hand across the soft, unharmed skin of her cheek, as he had done so many times before. He stood up and left the room without speaking. Isabelle heard him talking to Jeanne at the head of the stairs, then his footsteps going down. She covered her face with her hands.

*

It was late afternoon and the light was already fading when Stephen arrived at the station concourse. He saw Ellis waiting at the head of the platform and walked over to him.

"What happened to you?" said Ellis nervously. He sounded annoyed.

"I met a friend."

They found two seats on the train and Stephen looked out of the window as the station slid back behind them.

Ellis lit a cigarette. "It's like that time of day on Sunday when you expect to hear the first bells of evensong," he said. "I'd give anything not to have to go back." Stephen closed his eyes. He no longer had strong opinions on what he wanted or did not want to do. The train would take them in its own time. The next day he went to see Colonel Gray at battalion headquarters. Gray put down his book as Stephen opened the door to his office, which was the converted parlour of a farm.

"Sit down, Wraysford. Did you have a good leave?"

"Yes, thank you, sir."

"I'm afraid your company's going back to the front line tomorrow."

"I don't mind," said Stephen. He crossed his legs and smiled at Gray. "We just go on and on. Until it's finished." He liked Gray because he was direct. Only his penchant for strange psychological theories worried him.

Gray lit his pipe. "I'm under pressure to put you in for a staff job," he said.

"This time you'll have to take it."

Stephen tensed himself. "I haven't gone this far to abandon the men now." Gray spoke quietly. "Which men?"

"The men I've been with for more than two years."

Gray shook his head in silence and raised his eyebrows. Stephen swallowed and looked down at the floor.

"They're gone, Wraysford," said Gray. "They're all gone. You can't name more than two from your original platoon."

Stephen licked his lips. There were tears in his eyes.

Gray said, "You're tired."

"No, I'm--"

"You're not shirking anything. I know you go on raids and patrols. I heard you were even down the tunnel with the miners. No, it's not that. You're tired in your mind, Wraysford. Aren't you?"

Stephen shook his head. He could not answer. It was so long since anyone had spoken to him with this degree of sympathy.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of. Good heavens, you've done as much as anyone in this battalion. The best you can do now is help brigade staff. They need your French. It's no use being fluent in a shellhole."

"How long for?"

"A few months, that's all. There's a little trouble brewing in the ranks of our French allies. We need to know exactly what's happening because you can be sure they won't tell us themselves."

Stephen nodded. He could see no line of profitable resistance.

"First there'll be home leave. And you're not going to get out of that this time, either."

Gray's batman, Watkins, brought in tea and some walnut cake sent by Gray's wife in England.

They ate in silence for a moment, then Gray said, "There was a bad incident with some enemy prisoners in B Company. Did you hear? It was after a long bombardment and the men were worn down. There was a raid and they took a dozen Boche. When they discovered they had to escort them uphill five miles in the rain, they took them to the edge of a copse and killed them. The officer turned a blind eye."

Stephen was aware that Gray was watching his response closely. It was possible, he thought, that Gray had even invented the story to test him. "They should be charged," he said.

"And I thought you were so hard toward our German friends," said Gray, with the slight increase in Scots accent that meant he was intrigued.

"I am," said Stephen, putting down his tea cup. Even in battalion headquarters the tea tasted of the petrol can it had been carried in. "I find that the hardest part of my job, trying to get the men to hate them as much as I do. It's all right when we're in rest or reserve, but the closer we get to the front the more they start talking about 'poor old Jerry.' The worst thing is when they can hear them talking or singing, then I know we're in trouble. I remind them of their dead friends."

"And what about you?"

"I have no difficulty in keeping the flame of hatred alive," said Stephen. "I'm not like them. I've learned to love the rule book, to be bloodthirsty in the way it prescribes. I only have to think of my men, of what they have done to them, of how they died."

Stephen was agitated. He tried to calm himself in case he should say something injudicious. He was thinking of Brennan, whose brother had gone missing on patrol some days before.

Gray was nodding with intellectual excitement, like a surgeon who had found a gallstone that will be the talk of the medical papers.

"I don't think officers are supposed to live at a pitch of personal hatred for the enemy," he said. "They are supposed to be bloodthirsty, by all means, but with a clear head, and with regard to the safety of their men."

"I have had that thought in my mind all the time," said Stephen. "If you've seen what you and I did last July then you never wish to see the life of one of your men needlessly lost again."

Gray tapped his teeth with his teaspoon. "Would it please you to kill large numbers of the enemy--personally, with your own hands?"

Stephen looked down at the table. His mind was heavy with the thought of Isabelle and her Prussian. He pictured what he would do if he were to meet the man. He would find no difficulty, no awkwardness at all, in pulling the trigger on his revolver; he would not hesitate to take the pin from a grenade. He was not sure what Gray expected him to say. His thoughts were clouded, but a single strand was clear: that having come this far, with so many men dead, it would be insane to compromise or turn away. He told the truth as it then occurred to him. He said, "Yes. A great number."

"And yet you feel punctilious about a mere dozen prisoners who were shot by men whose lives they had made miserable."

Stephen smiled. "I know what they're like--the way they surrender as soon as they can no longer kill you in safety, all that _'Kamerad' _and souvenirs. But somehow there is a propriety. It sounds strange, but we have degraded human life so far that we must leave some space for dignity to grow again. As it may, one day. Not for you or me, but for our children."

Gray swallowed, and nodded, without speaking. Eventually he said, "We'll make an officer of you one day. First you must forget your hatred. Do you remember when I came to see you in hospital? I told you to stop playing with all the voodoo nonsense. Did you?"

"I do it on special request for Captian Weir. No one else."

"You don't believe in it yourself?"

"I fix the cards. How could I believe in it?"

Gray laughed and brushed some crumbs from his mouth. "And what do you believe in?"

"War."

"What do you mean?"

"I want to see how it will end."

"Anything else?" Gray had resumed his inquisitive doctor's expression.

"Sometimes," said Stephen, who was too tired to be evasive, "I do believe in a greater pattern. In different levels of experience; a belief in the possibility of an explanation."

"I thought so," said Gray. "With most people it's the other way round. The more they see, the less they can believe."

Stephen stood up. He said forcefully, "I saw your face that July morning we attacked at Beaucourt. I took my orders from you at the head of the communication trench."

"And?"

"I looked in your eyes and there was perfect blankness."

Gray, for the first time since Stephen had known him, seemed wrong-footed. He coughed, and looked down. When he could meet Stephen's eye again, he said,

"Those are intimate moments."

Stephen nodded. "I know. I was there. I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine."

*

They buried Arthur Shaw and Bill Stanley, the man who had died with him. First they had to disinter them from their unscheduled burial place in the tunnel. It took working parties of four men three days to dig their way through, timbering as they went, until they got to the bodies. It was a dangerous exercise, which Weir himself advised against; but since he was still resting behind the lines, the men were able to impress their willingness to find the bodies on the temporary company commander, a malleable character called Cartwright.

Jack Firebrace stood between Jones and Evans, their caps clasped in their hands as the padre read the prayers for the funeral service. Handfuls of earth were thrown in on top of the men. Jack felt unsurprised at what had happened. There had seemed to him no reason to suppose that his friend would survive any more than his son. When he heard the explosion of the German tunnel, he waited for the news to come: two men had been down there, one had been Arthur Shaw. He merely nodded when Fielding told him. The random violence of the world ran supreme; there was no point in trying to find an explanation.

They sang a hymn, "There is a green hill far away," which Jack knew Shaw had liked. Far away indeed, thought Jack, looking down to the yellowish mud around his boots. A bugle sounded. The men moved off heavily, lifting their feet from the earth. For the final time Shaw went back under the ground.

Jack's section was in reserve, billeted in a farm hut. Tyson, Shaw, and he had clubbed together to buy a small primus stove, which was now his sole property. He invited Jones and Evans to a tin of Maconochie's stew, which Evans supplemented with some beans and a cake he had been sent from home.

"This is no good," said Jack. "We ought to be drinking his health." He went to the door of the hut and tipped the mess of stew and beans out on to the ground. When it was dark they found their way back through the support lines to a village where Fielding told them there was a friendly estaminet. They followed his instructions and came to a room in a cottage behind the main street. By the time they arrived Jack found his hands badly in need of heat. The cuff of his uniform rubbed against the frozen veins and sent what felt like small electric shocks through his fingers. His body ached for warm water. The estaminet was crammed with men, standing round the walls and trying to push their way closer to the stove at the end of the room, on which a deep pan of oil was spitting. Two women were throwing in hand-fuls of potatoes, which they served with fried eggs to the loud enjoyment of the men lucky enough to have found a place at the long table.

Jack pushed his way through to where a woman was handing out glasses of pale beer. Jack knew through watery experience that this was no way to get drunk. He asked for a bottle of white wine, and Jones commandeered some syrup from a man who was leaving. They drank the bottle quickly, while Evans shouted abusively at the old woman who was frying eggs. She swore back happily until eventually his turn came.

They bought more wine and drank it with the greasy potatoes, which tasted exquisite to them, fresh and hot and redolent of home. Jack wiped his mouth on his sleeve and lifted his glass. Evans and Jones were standing close to him in the crush.

"To Arthur Shaw," said Jack. "The best mate a man could have." They drank, and drank again, Jack with the rhythmic, slow determination he brought to his work at the tunnel face. There was this memory of Shaw, this painful memory, kept in place by his sober, conscious mind. He would hack away that sobriety, bit by bit, until it all was gone, taking the memory with it. The estaminet had to shut at 8:30, when the military police would come to make sure there were no men left there. With twenty minutes to go, the speed of drinking increased. Evans began to sing, and Jones, whose Welsh forebears had gone to London many generations earlier, found enough Celtic memory to support him. Then they put up Jack Firebrace to do his music hall turn.

Jack felt inspired as Evans called the room to silence. He launched into some familiar jokes and found that the men's initial resentment at having their conversations interrupted soon turned to loud appreciation. He looked forward to the punch line of each joke with professional calm, leaving little pauses to build the men's excitement. The drink made him unself-conscious and detached; he felt as though he had gone beyond the stage where he might slur his words or forget his place and had aimed instead at a new clarity. There was something disdainful, almost cruel in his confidence.

The men loved the jokes, though they had heard each one before. Jack's manner was persuasive; few of them had seen the old stories so well delivered. Jack himself laughed little, but he was able to see the effect his performance had on his audience. The noise of their laughter roared like the sea in his ears. He wanted it louder and louder; he wanted them to drown out the war with their laughter. If they could shout loud enough, they might bring the world back to its senses; they might laugh loud enough to raise the dead.

Jack drank more wine from a jug that an appreciative man passed up to him. He crossed the line from his state of particular calm, given by his complete loss of inhibition, into a raging incoherence, where he imagined that what he felt and what he wanted--this great release of laughter--could be brought on merely by urging, and not by his cold concentration on the means to that end. He began to repeat the crucial words of the jokes and to conduct the audience response with his arms. Some of the men looked puzzled, others started to lose interest in the entertainment and to resume the conversations they had broken off.

Jack always ended with a song. It was odd how the cheapest, simplest things were the best; these were the ones that enabled the men to think of home, each in his own mind. He began to sing, "If you were the only girl in the world." His voice rose, and he waved his arms in invitation to the men to join with him. Relieved that his stories were finished, many added their voices to his.

Seeing their faces, once more friendly and approving, Jack was moved and encouraged. The features of his dead friend came back. Shaw had been, in this strange alternate life, the only person in the world to him: his handsome head with its level eyes, his muscular back and huge, broken-nailed fingers. Jack could almost feel the supple shape of Shaw's body as it had curved to accommodate him in the narrow, stinking dugouts where they had slept. The words of the foolish song began to choke him. He felt the eyes of the growing audience, friendly once more, boring into him. He looked out over their red, roaring faces as he had once before looked out when singing this same song. At that time he had told himself that he had no wish to love any of these men more than any other, knowing what lay in store for them.

The hot, noisy room moved dizzily in front of his tear-filled gaze. I have made this mistake in my life, Jack thought: not once but twice I have loved someone more than my heart would bear.

With this hopeless thought in his mind, he fell forward off the chair into the arms of his friends Jones and Evans, who took him away into the night under the puzzled but indifferent eyes of his fellow men.

Two days later came the rare drama of divisional baths. Jack's company was marched three miles back from the front to an old brewery. Jack enjoyed the ritual and was amused at the optimism of a succession of young officers who were sure that this brief plunge would cure the hygiene problems of the men for good. Jack had at first viewed the lice on his body as simple parasites whose presumption had made him indignant. The way they dug their ugly fawn-coloured bodies into the private pores of his skin had revolted him. He took great pleasure in holding a lighted candle and working it slowly up the seams of his clothes where the insects lurked and bred. Usually their fiery deaths were silent, though occasionally he would hear a satisfying crackle. He would do Shaw's clothes for him too, because Shaw did not have the necessary delicacy of hand and was liable to set fire to his underwear. If there was no candle available, a fiercely applied thumbnail was effective up to a point. There was a sense of relief when some of the creatures were gone, though it was like the crushing of a blood-gorged mosquito: Jack always felt they had no right to be there in the first place. The evident advantage in cutting back the numbers was the temporary relief it gave from the sour, stale smell the creatures left, though even this relief was qualified, since the odour was usually compounded or overwhelmed by stronger and more persistent bodily smells. Jack, like most of the men, scratched almost all the time, unconsciously, and gradually grew less aware that he did so. Not all of them were resigned. Tyson had once been driven so frantic that the medical officer ordered him to have fifteen days' rest. The constant irritation had proved more wearing to him even than the sound of heavy guns or the fear of dying.

At the old brewery the men lined up and handed in their clothes. The underwear was thrown into a pile, a grey crawling heap that it fell to the most unfortunate refugees to pick up and take to the corps laundry. The men joked at the women who had to perform the task. They wore gloves and carried handkerchiefs over their faces. Jones offered his gas mask to one thin, wretched Belgian woman who did not understand. They gave their tunics and trousers to others who, under the direction of Jack's platoon sergeant, carried them to the corner of the barnlike room where a Foden Disinfector, a machine that was dragged optimistically up and down the front line, was supposed to fumigate them.

Jack climbed into a tub with several men from his platoon. The water was still warm, though soapy from the previous occupants. They rubbed themselves all over and laughed at the feel of the heat on their skin. No showers had been provided for the men who dug the Underground in London; Jack had had to go home grimed with sweat and clay. Here, in the old beer barrels, there was a moment of friendship and relaxation such as he had barely known. Evans and O'Lone began to splash the water at each other, driving it up with the flats of their hands. Jack found he had joined in. He felt guilty for a moment toward the memory of his dead comrades, as though he were not being respectful, but the feeling passed. He would take any pleasure that helped.

Afterward they stood shivering while the quartermaster checked the issue of clean shirts and underwear. With their outer clothes returned from the Disinfector, they stood smoking in the weak sunlight of spring. The weather had begun to change. Though still cold, with a deep chill at nights, the air during the day had thickened. Jack thought of the daffodils that would be coming out along the banks of the canal at home. He remembered how he had played with John, teaching him how to bait a line, or kicking a ball backward and forward for hours. He had hoped that this practice would make John better able to join in the games of the other boys in the street, though it seemed to make little difference. All Jack could see was the boy's cheeks flushed pink with excitement as he ran back toward him clutching the ball, which looked oversized against his narrow chest. He could hear his lisping, excited voice, cutting the foggy air with its unblunted innocence and glee. He turned his mind away and looked down at his boots. He stretched his feet inside the clean socks. The men formed up to march back to their billets. That evening they would be doing trench repair work in the front line. The difference between being in the front line and being in reserve, as Evans remarked, was that when you were in the front line at least you were allowed to be underground, beyond the range of shells.

By the time they had reached their billets Jack felt the first irritation on his skin. Within three hours the heat of his body as he marched had hatched the eggs of hundreds of lice that had lain dormant in the seams of his shirt. By the time he reached the Front his skin was alive with them.

*

The next morning there was a letter for Stephen from Amiens. He had never seen the handwriting before, but it had a family resemblance to one that had left notes to him in St.-Rémy or messages for the delivery boys in the boulevard du Gange. He took it to his dugout and opened it alone, when Ellis had gone out to talk to the sentries. It was the first letter he had received since the war had started. He turned the envelope round in the light, marvelling at his name on it. He opened it and felt the strange intimacy of the blue, crackling paper. Jeanne wrote to say that Isabelle had left Amiens to go to Munich, where her German had returned home after being badly wounded. Max had had to pay an enormous sum to get her out through Switzerland. Isabelle had said good-bye to her and would never return to France. She was an outcast in her parents' family and in the town.

"When you asked me if I would write to you," the letter concluded, "you said you would like to hear about normal life. I don't think either of us expected that I would begin with such important news. However, since you asked for details of domestic life in Amiens, let me tell you everything is fine here. The factories are busy supplying uniforms to the army. Of course now that the men no longer wear red trousers, the clothes are not so exciting to make. Life is surprisingly normal. I expect to stay a little longer before returning to Rouen. If you would care to visit on your next leave, I can assure you that it would be acceptable to me. You could dine at the address you visited last time. The food supplies are not as good as in peacetime, but we probably do better than you soldiers at the Front. With good wishes from Jeanne Fourmentier."

Stephen laid the letter down on the rough surface of the table, in the grooves of which the rat's blood had dried. Then he rested his head in his hands. He had received an answer to the simple question that had intrigued him. Isabelle no longer loved him; or if she did, she loved him in some distant way that did not affect her actions or her feelings for another man.

When he looked into his reserves of strength he found that he could bear this thought. He told himself that the feeling they had had for each other still existed, but that it existed at a different time.

Once when he had stood in the chilling cathedral in Amiens he had foreseen the numbers of the dead. It was not a premonition, more a recognition, he told himself, that the difference between death and life was not one of fact but merely of time. This belief had helped him bear the sound of the dying on the slopes of Thiepval. And so he was now able to believe that his love for Isabelle, and hers for him, was safe in its extreme ardour--not lost, but temporarily alive in a manner as significant as any present or future state of feeling could be in the long darkness of death.

He put Jeanne's letter in his pocket and went out into the trench, where Ellis came sliding along the duckboards to meet him.

"Quiet, isn't it?" said Stephen.

"Tolerable," said Ellis. "I've got a problem. I'm trying to get a working party to go out and bring back some bodies. It's pretty quiet, as you say, and we may not have a better chance."

"So what's the problem?"

"My men wouldn't do it unless I went too. So I said I would. Then they insisted on having at least one miner with them, but the miners' CO says it's nothing to do with them and in any case they're fed up with doing our fatigues." Ellis's white, freckled face was agitated. He pushed the cap back from his forehead to show a puckered hairline from which the gingerish hair had started to recede.

Stephen smiled vaguely and shook his head. "We should all go. It doesn't matter. It's only death."

"Well, will you tell Captain Weir to get one of his sappers out with us?"

"I can ask him. Perhaps he'd like to come too, now that his arm's better."

"Are you serious?" said Ellis crossly.

"I don't know, Ellis. There's something about you that makes me quite unsure. Get your working party ready for twelve o'clock. I'll see you in the next firebay." Weir laughed drily when Stephen made the suggestion.

"There'll be rum," said Stephen.

Weir's eyes opened in interest.

Then when the moment came it brought a sudden fear and unreality. They could never be prepared to look at death in the crude form that awaited them. Stephen felt, as he had done before at moments of extreme tension, a dislocation in his sense of time. It seemed to stutter, then freeze.

At noon on the firestep in gas masks. Taste of death, smell of it, thought Stephen. Coker slashed sandbags into gloves. "Wear these." Firebrace and Fielding of the miners, Ellis, white like milk, Barlow, Bates, Goddard, Allen of the infantry; Weir taking rum on top of whisky, unsteady on the step of the ladder.

"What are you doing, Brennan?"

"I'm coming too."

They tracked out toward a shellhole, the sun bright, a lark above them. Blue sky, unseen by eyes trained on turned mud. They moved low toward a mine crater where bodies had lain for weeks uncollected. "Try to lift him." No sound of machine guns or snipers, though their ears were braced for noise. "Take his arms." The incomprehensible order through the gas mouthpiece. The arms came away softly.

"Not like that, not take his arms _away." _On Weir's collar a large rat, trailing something red down his back. A crow disturbed, lifting its black body up suddenly, battering the air with its big wings. Coker, Barlow shaking their heads under the assault of risen flies coming up, transforming black skin of corpses into green by their absence. The roaring of Goddard's vomit made them laugh, snorting private mirth inside their masks. Goddard, releasing his mask, breathed in worse than he had expelled. Weir's hands in double sandbags stretched out tentatively to a sapper's uniform, undressing the chest in search of a disc which he removed, bringing skin with it into his tunic pocket. Jack's recoil, even through coarse material, to the sponge of flesh. Bright and sleek on liver, a rat emerged from the abdomen; it levered and flopped flatly over the ribs, glutted with pleasure. Bit by bit on to stretchers, what flesh fell left in mud. Not men, but flies and flesh, thought Stephen. Brennan anxiously stripping a torso with no head. He clasped it with both hands, dragged legless up from the crater, his fingers vanishing into buttered green flesh. It was his brother.

When they got back to the safety of the trench, Jack was angry that he and Fielding had been made to go, but Weir pointed out that there were three men from their company unburied. Goddard could not stop vomiting, though his stomach was long since empty. When he was not retching, he sat on the firestep, weeping uncontrollably. He was nineteen.

Michael Weir had a rigid smile. He told Fielding and Jack they were excused fatigues for a week, then went to Stephen's dugout in the hope of whisky.

"I wonder what my father would say," he said reflectively. "Of course they're all 'doing their bit,' as he put it." Weir swallowed and licked his lips. "It's just that his

'bit' and mine seem so different."

Stephen watched him and shook his head fondly. "You know what I really dreaded?" he said. "What frightened me was the thought that one of those men was going to be alive."

Weir laughed. "After all that time?"

Stephen said, "It's been known." He had a thought. "Where's Brennan? Did you see him when we got back?"

"No."

Stephen went along the trench looking for him. He found him sitting quietly on the firestep near the dugout where he and half a dozen others slept.

"I'm sorry, Brennan," he said. "That was a terrible thing for you. You needn't have come."

"I know. I wanted to come. I feel better now."

"You feel _better?"_

Brennan nodded. He had a narrow head, with thick, black greasy hair on which Stephen was looking down. When he turned his face up, its features were calm.

Stephen said, "At least wash your hands, Brennan. Get some chloride of lime on them. Take some time off if you want to. I'll tell your sergeant you're excused fatigues."

"It's all right. I feel lucky in a way. You know last July when I fell off the firestep when the mine went up and I broke my leg? Then watching you lot go over the top. I was lucky."

"Yes, but I'm sorry about your brother."

"It's all right. I found him, that's the thing. I didn't let him lie there. I got him back and now he'll have a proper burial. There'll be a grave that people can see. I can come and put flowers on it when the war's over."

Stephen was surprised by how confident Brennan was that he himself would survive. As he turned to go, Brennan began to sing softly to himself, an Irish song that he had sung on the morning when they waited to attack. His voice was a grating, persistent tenor and he knew many songs.

All night he sang for his brother, whom he had brought home in his hands.

*

There was an excited party of young officers in the dining room of the Hotel Folkestone in Boulogne. Many of them had been at the Front no more than six months and had stories to tell their friends and families. The war was not going too badly for them. They had witnessed mutilation and death; they had undergone the physical discomfort of cold, wet, and fatigue such as they had never thought themselves capable of enduring, yet they could still see this pattern of service at the Front alternated with regular home leave as something tenable, for a short time at least. They drank champagne and boasted to one another of what they would do when they got to London. They had not been there for the great slaughters of the previous year and could not foresee the mechanized abattoir that was expected in the impassable mud of Flanders in the months to come. The horror of the entr'acte was bearable; they shuddered with the joy of survival, and chafed each other with the exhilaration of their relief. Their young voices rose like the squawl of starlings beneath the chandeliers.

Stephen heard them in his room on the first floor, where he was writing a letter to Jeanne. His hip flask, filled with the last of his whisky at Arras, was almost empty, and the ashtray was full. Unlike the men under his command, who wrote home daily, he had had little practice as a correspondent. The men's letters, which he read wearily, consisted of reassurances to those at home, comments on the contents of the parcels received, and requests for more news.

Stephen did not think Jeanne needed reassurance about his well-being; neither would she enjoy details of trench life. While he compelled himself not to mention Isabelle, he thought it sensible to write about things common to both him and Jeanne. This meant talking about Amiens and how its people and buildings survived.

What he wanted to say to Jeanne was that she, apart from Michael Weir, was the best friend he had. Since he might be dead within the month, there seemed no reason not to say so. He wrote: "It means a great deal to me to receive your letters, to have some contact with a sane world. I appreciate your kindness to me. Your friendship enables me to survive."

He tore up the page and threw it in the wastepaper basket by his feet. Jeanne would not appreciate such things; it was precipitate and vulgar on his part. He needed to be more formal, at least for the time being. He rested his head on his hands and tried to picture Jeanne's long, wise face in his mind.

What was this woman like? What would she want him to say? He imagined her dark brown eyes beneath their arched brows. They were intelligent, sardonic eyes, and yet they had a quality of great gentleness and compassion. Her nose was similar to Isabelle's but her mouth was wider, with a darker shade in the skin of the lips. Her chin was sharper, though quite small. The strength of her features, the darkness of her colouring, and the forbidding quality of her eyes gave her a faintly masculine appearance; yet the beauty of her pale skin, not expressive like Isabelle's but quite even in its ivory smoothness over her face and neck, spoke of extraordinary delicacy. He did not know how to approach her.

He wrote some details of his train journey to Boulogne and promised that he would write from England, when at least he would have something interesting to tell her.

When the boat arrived in Folkestone the next day there was a small crowd assembled on the quay. Many of the boys and women waved flags and cheered as the mass of infantry came up the gangplank. Stephen saw the looks on the faces of the crowd change from gaiety to bewilderment: for those come to greet sons or brothers these were the first returning soldiers they had seen. The lean, expressionless creatures who stepped ashore were not the men with gleaming kit and plump smiles who had been played aboard by the regimental bands. Some wore animal skins they had bought from local farms; many had cut pieces from their coats with knives to increase their comfort or to bind their cold hands. They wore scarves about their heads instead of caps with shining buttons. Their bodies and their kit were encrusted with dirt and in their eyes was a blank intransigence. They moved with grim, automatic strength. They were frightening to the civilians because they had evolved not into killers but into passive beings whose only aim was to endure.

Stephen felt a hand on his arm. "Hello. Are you Captain Wraysford? My name's Gilbert. I'm in charge here. Couldn't make it out with you chaps--bad leg, I'm afraid. Now look, you take these forms and when you get to the station I want you to liaise with the embarkation officer. All the men's names are here. Got that?" Stephen looked at the man in bemusement. His body gave off an acrid, rotting smell when he came close to show him the forms.

On the station platform were further crowds of well-wishers. There were tables on which voluntary organizations were offering tea and buns. Stephen walked to the head of the platform and, when he was obscured from the throng by the bulk of the red-brick waiting room, dropped the thick bundle of forms over a low wall.

The train started, men lining the corridors, sitting on their kit, smoking and laughing, waving to the people on the platform. Stephen gave his seat to a woman in a blue bonnet.

Jammed up against the window of the compartment he could see little of England as it went past in flashing squares visible only occasionally beneath the angle of his armpit. The sight of his homeland had not brought any feeling of affection or deep welcome. He was too tired to appreciate it. All he could feel was the pain in his lower back from trying not to bang his head against the luggage rack above. In time, perhaps, he would appreciate the countryside and the sounds of peace.

"I'm getting out at the next stop," said the woman in the bonnet. "Would you like me to telephone your wife or your parents and tell them you're on your way?"

"No. No, I... don't think so. Thank you."

"Where is your home?"

"Lincolnshire."

"Oh dear, that's a long way."

"I'm not going there. I'm going to... " He had had no plans. He remembered something Weir had once said to him. "To Norfolk. It's very nice at this time of year." At Victoria Station, Stephen pushed and fought his way out into the street. He wanted to see no more soldiers but to lose himself in the great blankness of the city. He walked briskly up through the park to Piccadilly, then slowly along the north side. He went into a well-stocked gentlemen's outfitter near the foot of Albemarle Street. Many of his clothes had been lost in transit a year before and he needed at least a change of shirts and underwear. He stood on the planed floorboards looking into the glass-topped cases with their extensive displays of coloured ties and socks. A man in a morning suit appeared behind the counter.

"Good morning, sir. Can I help?"

Stephen saw the man's eyes run down him and register his uniform and rank. He also saw, beneath his formal politeness, an involuntary recoil. He wondered what it was about him that repelled the man. He did not know if he smelled of chloride of lime or blood or rats. He reflexively put his hand up to his chin but felt only a minimal scratch of beard that had grown back since he had shaved in the Hotel Folkestone.

"I want some shirts, please."

The man went up a ladder and pulled out two wooden shelves which he brought down and laid in front of Stephen. There were white, stiff-fronted shirts for evening wear and collarless cotton striped for day. As Stephen demurred, the assistant brought more shelves down with shirts of every colour and fabric they had in stock. Stephen gazed at the array of pastel colours, the great arc of choice that the man fanned out in front of him, their buttonholes finished by hand, the pleats of the cuffs nipped and pressed, their textures running from the rigid to the luxuriously soft.

"Excuse me, sir. I must just attend to this other customer while you make your choice."

The assistant backed away, leaving Stephen confused by the decision and by the man's attitude to him. With the other customer, a large man in his sixties in an expensive overcoat and homburg hat, he was much more effusive. After several items had been charged to his account, the man wandered out of the shop, heavily, without acknowledging Stephen. The assistant's smile froze, then faded, as he returned. He kept a certain distance.

Eventually he said, "I don't wish to hurry you, sir, but if you're not happy with our choice it would perhaps be better if you tried elsewhere." Stephen looked at him incredulously. He was about thirty-five, with sandy hair receding on either side and a neat moustache.

"I was finding it difficult," he said. His jaw felt heavy as he spoke. He realized how tired he was. "Excuse me."

"I think perhaps it would be better if--"

"You don't want me in here, do you?"

"It's not that, sir, it's--"

"Just give me these two." He picked out the shirts nearest him. Ten years ago, he thought, he would have struck the man; but he merely offered him the money and left.

Outside, he breathed deeply in the thick air of Piccadilly. Across the street he saw the arches of the Ritz hotel, its name lit up in bulbs. Women in trimmed fur coats and their escorts in sleek grey suits and black hats went through the doors. They had an air of private urgency, as though they were bent on matters of financial significance or international weight that would not even permit them to glance toward the ingratiating smile of the doorman in his top hat and gold frogging. They disappeared through the glass, their soft coats trailing behind them, oblivious to the street or to any life but theirs.

Stephen watched for a moment, then walked along with his service valise toward Piccadilly Circus, where he bought a newspaper. There had been a financial scandal and an accident at a factory in Manchester. There was no news of the war on the front page, though later, next to the readers' letters, was a report on Fifth Army manoeuvres and warm praise for the tactical expertise of its commander. The further he walked, the more isolated he felt. He marvelled at the smoothness of the undamaged paving stones. He was glad that an ordinary life persisted in the capital, but he did not feel part of it. He would have been embarrassed to be treated differently from ordinary civilians by people in a country he in any case had not lived in for some time, but it seemed strange to him that his presence was a matter not just of indifference but of resentment. He stayed the night in a small hotel near Leicester Square, and in the morning took a taxi to Liverpool Street.

There was a train to King's Lynn at midday. He had time to go to a barber and have a haircut and shave before he bought a ticket and wandered up the platform. He climbed into a half-empty train and found a seat at leisure. The upholstery of the Great Eastern Railway was plush and clean. He sank into a corner seat and took out a book. The train jerked and clanked its way slowly out of the station, then began to gather speed as it left the low, grimed terraces of northeast London behind. Stephen found he could not concentrate on the book. His head seemed too clogged and numb for him to be able to follow the simple narrative. Although there was some stiffness in his limbs he did not feel the ache of fatigue in any physical way; he had slept reasonably well in his small hotel room and breakfasted late. His mind, however, seemed hardly to function at all. He was capable of doing little more than sitting and staring at the landscape that went by. The fields were lit by a spring sun. The occasional narrow stream or river went quietly through them. On the rise of hills he could once or twice make out the grey spires of churches, or a cluster of farm buildings, but for the most part he saw only this flat, agricultural land, apparently uninhabited, whose deep, damp soil was going through the same minute rotations of growth and decay, invisible but relentless, that it had done for centuries beneath the cold, wet sky by day, by night, with no one to see.

Yet as the train clattered onward it seemed to sound a rhythm in a remote part of his memory. He dozed in the corner seat and awoke with a start, having dreamed he was in the Lincolnshire village of his childhood. Then he found he was still asleep: he had only dreamed that he had awoken. Again he found himself in a barn in a flat, pale field, with a train going by. A second time he awoke, in some fear, and tried to keep himself conscious; but again he found that he had only dreamed his awakening.

Each time his eyes opened he tried to stand up, to lever himself off the plush seat of the carriage, but his limbs were too heavy and he felt himself slide under again, just as he had once seen a man in his company slip on the duckboards of the trench into an uncovered sumphole, where he had drowned in the clinging yellow mud.

At last he managed to catch himself in a moment of waking and force his legs up. He stood at the window and gazed at the fields.

It took some minutes before he could convince himself that he was not dreaming. The sensation felt no different, to begin with, from the half-dozen times he had thought himself awake, only then to find that he was still asleep and had dreamed it.

Gradually some clarity returned to him. He held tight to the frame of the window and breathed deeply. The sense of disorientation diminished. I am tired, he thought, as he pulled a cigarette from its case. I am tired in my body and in my mind, as Gray pointed out. Perhaps Gray, or one of his Austrian doctors, could also explain the curious sequence of hallucinating dreams. He straightened out his uniform and pushed his hair into place where he had ruffled it in sleep. Pulling back the door of the compartment, he wove his way down the swaying carriage to the restaurant car. Only two tables were taken and he was able to seat himself by the window. The steward waddled down the aisle with a menu.

Stephen was surprised by the choice. It had been years since he had been confronted with such variety. He asked for consommé, then sole, and steak-andkidney pudding. The waiter offered him the wine list. His pocket was filled with English bank notes he had bought with his pay in Folkestone. He ordered the most expensive wine on the list, which was six shillings a bottle.

The steward hovered with a ladle full of boiling soup, most of which he deposited into the crested plate, though by the time he had finished, the starched white cloth bore a long trail of brown. Stephen found the soup too strong to be pleasant; the taste of fresh beef stock and seasoning confused him. He had not eaten lunch or dinner in Amiens and his palate had grown used to Tickler's plumand-apple pudding, bully beef, and biscuits, with only an occasional slice of cake sent out from England to Gray or Weir.

The little fillets of sole with the delicate film of veins and intricate white layering of flesh were too subtle for him to taste. With some ceremony the steward then poured an inch of wine into the crystal glass. Stephen swallowed quickly and told him to pour. While he waited for the steak-and-kidney pudding, he drank properly. He found the taste overpowering. It was as though his whole head had been filled with small explosions of scent and colour. He had not tasted wine for six months, and then only a rough, unlabelled white. He put the glass down quickly. Water at the front tasted simply of water if it had come up with the rations, or something worse if it had been sieved from shellholes; tea had an equally straightforward flavour--of petrol, from the cans in which it was carried. But when he drank this wine it felt as though he were drinking some complex essence of France itself, not the visceral inferno of Picardy, but a pastoral, older place where there was still hope.

He was evidently even more tired than he had thought. He ate as much of the steak-and-kidney pudding as he could. He passed over the dessert and smoked a cigarette with coffee. At King's Lynn he took a branch line along the Norfolk coast toward Sheringham, which he thought was the place Weir had recommended. However, he found as the small train puffed along that he was impatient with travelling. He wanted to be outside in the clear, peaceful air; he longed for an inn with a soft bed. At the next station, a village called Burnham Market, he hauled his valise down from the luggage rack and jumped out onto the platform. He was able to walk into the village itself, which was bisected by a road on either side of which was a plush, well-kept green. Most of the houses that overlooked it had been built in the eighteenth century; they were spacious but modest and were interspersed with half a dozen shops, including a pharmacy, a chandler, and a place that sold equipment for horses.

Behind a huge chestnut tree was a long, low-built inn called The Blackbird. Stephen went into it and rang a bell on a counter at the foot of the stairs. No one answered, so he went into the stone-flagged bar. It was empty, though there were still uncollected beer glasses from lunchtime on the tables. It had a dark, cool atmosphere, given by the floor and the heavy wooden beams.

He heard a female voice behind him and turned to see a plump woman in an apron who smiled a little uncertainly as he met her eye. She told him she was only the cleaner and the landlord was out for the afternoon, but she could let him have a room if he would sign the register. She showed him upstairs to a small bedroom with a mahogany chest of drawers and an old wooden bedstead with a fat white eiderdown on it. There was one ladder-back chair by the door and a washstand with a china jug and basin. Just by the door was a small bookshelf with half a dozen wellread volumes on it. Beyond the chest was a window that overlooked the green at the front of the hotel where the chestnut tree's white blossom blocked out the sky. Stephen thanked the woman and threw his valise on to the bed. It was the kind of room he had wanted.

When he had unpacked he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. He wanted to sleep, but his eyelids were flickering too much. Each time sleep seemed near his body jolted him back from it. Eventually he fell into a half-waking state, like the one he had found himself in on the train, in which brightly illuminated scenes from the last two or three years occurred at random in his mind. Incidents and men he had forgotten recurred with vivid immediacy, and then were gone. He tried to pull himself back from the lurid sequence of memories. He kept seeing Douglas falling off the stretcher on to the slippery floor of the trench as a shell landed; he could hear the lifeless thump of his passive body. A man he had forgotten, called Studd, came back to his mind, his helmet blown back and his scalp raked by machine-gun bullets as he bent to help another man who had fallen.

Stephen climbed off the bed. His hands were shaking like Michael Weir's during a bombardment. He breathed in deeply, hearing the air catch in his chest. It seemed to him extraordinary that he should be feeling the shock now, when he was safe in a tranquil English village.

The thought of his surroundings stirred him. It was a_ _long time since he had been in England. Perhaps it would be good for him to walk outside and look at it. His boots echoed on the uncarpeted wooden steps as he went down, hatless, into the hall and out into the air.

He heaved his shoulders up, then let them drop in a long, broken sigh. He began to walk along the green, then turned down a lane that led away from the village. He tried to relax himself. I have been under fire, he thought; but now, for the time being, it is over. Under fire. The words came back. How thin and inadequate the phrase was.

The hedgerows were deep and ragged where he walked, covered with the lace of cow parsley. The air had a feeling of purity, as though it had never been breathed; it was just starting to be cool with the first breeze of evening. From the tall elms he could see at the end of the field there was a sound of rooks, and a gentler calling of wood pigeons close at hand. He stopped, and leaned against a gate. The quietness of the world about him seemed to stand outside time; there was no human voice to place it.

Above him he saw the white moon, early and low above the elms. Over and behind it were long jagged wisps of cloud that ran in ribbed lines back into the pale blue of the sky, then trailed away in gestures of vapourous white.

Stephen felt himself overtaken by a climactic surge of feeling. It frightened him because he thought it would have some physical issue, in spasm or bleeding or death. Then he saw that what he felt was not an assault but a passionate affinity. It was for the rough field running down to the trees and for the path going back into the village, where he could see the tower of the church: these and the forgiving distance of the sky were not separate, but part of one creation, and he too, still by any sane judgment a young man, by the repeated tiny pulsing of his blood, was one with them. He looked up and saw the sky as it would be trailed with stars under darkness, the crawling nebulae and smudged lights of infinite distance: these were not different worlds, it seemed now clear to him, but bound through the mind of creation to the shredded white clouds, the unbreathed air of May, to the soil that lay beneath the damp grass at his feet. He held tightly on to the stile and laid his head on his arms, in some residual fear that the force of binding love he felt would sweep him from the earth. He wanted to stretch out his arms and enfold in them the fields, the sky, the elms with their sounding birds; he wanted to hold them with the unending forgiveness of a father to his prodigal, errant, but beloved son. Isabelle and the cruel dead of the war; his lost mother, his friend Weir: nothing was immoral or beyond redemption, all could be brought together, understood in the long perspective of forgiveness. As he clung to the wood, he wanted also to be forgiven for all he had done; he longed for the unity of the world's creation to melt his sins and anger, because his soul was joined to it. His body shook with the passion of the love that had found him, from which he had been exiled in the blood and the flesh of long killing.

He lifted his head, and found that he was smiling. He walked in peace along the road for perhaps an hour, though he had no track of time. The evening stayed light as far as he went, the fields in their different shades and the trees in lines or clumps or alone where a chance seed had dropped.

As the road fell and turned a corner he found himself coming into a small village. There were two boys playing on a big green space beyond a ditch that separated it from the road. Stephen went into a pub opposite and found himself in what looked like a private parlour. An irritable old man asked him what he wanted. He fetched beer from an unseen barrel in a back room; with the pint mug he brought a smaller glass containing some cinnamon drink. Stephen took both glasses outside and sat on a bench by the green, watching the boys at play until the sun at last went down and the white moon glowed.

*

Stephen went back a day early to France so that he could visit Jeanne in Amiens. His transfer to brigade staff had been delayed by a fortnight, and he was to rejoin his company at the Front in the meantime. He thought the return to the war might be made easier if he had spent a night in France before going on to whatever billet Gray had meanwhile allocated him.

Amiens station had the look of an old landmark to him, though he found to his surprise when he counted that this was only the third time he had actually arrived at it. The first time had led to extraordinary and unseen consequences and so, in a way, had the second. On this occasion there would certainly be no Isabelle; perhaps there would be no drama or reverse at all. He hoped so.

Jeanne had decided to trust him, and he felt grateful to her. There was no need for it, but it showed generosity and imagination on her part, he thought, unless it was only pity. He found it difficult to know what kind of feelings he awakened in people now, but even if Jeanne's impulse was merely one of charity to an uncouth soldier, he would not turn it away. She was a kind woman. He wondered why she had not been married: she must be thirty-eight or -nine, almost too old to have children.

He had sent a telegram from Boulogne, and had awaited her reply. She would be happy to see him that evening, she said, at any time.

He walked up through the town, still with his awkward service valise. He was wearing one of the new shirts he had bought in London, with new underwear. As far as he could tell, the lice that had plagued him had perished in the bonfire he had made with his old clothes in Norfolk. As he passed through Liverpool Street on his return, he asked the barber to remove his moustache. He had begun to feel almost like the young man who had arrived at the boulevard du Gange.

He crossed the square with the café in which he had met Jeanne and came to the small house in which she had been lodging with Isabelle. He rang the bell. As he waited he tried to remember what Jeanne looked like, but no picture came to his mind.

"Corne in, Monsieur." Jeanne held out her hand.

Stephen found himself once more in the modest hallway, though it seemed more brightly lit this time. Jeanne opened a door on the right into a sitting room. It had a shiny wooden floor and a circular table with freesias in a glass bowl. There were armchairs on either side of the marble mantelpiece.

"Are you tired after your journey?"

"No, not at all. I feel very well."

Stephen sat in the chair that Jeanne indicated for him, and looked up at her. He did remember the strong features of her face and her pale skin; when he looked at them they made him calm. In the set of her eyes and the turn of her head there were occasional flickers of Isabelle, something impetuous that was transformed and stilled in the gravity of Jeanne's demeanour.

Jeanne said, "She told me you stared a lot."

Stephen apologized. "These years in the mud--I've lost my manners." He was glad that the subject of Isabelle had come up so soon. At least they could then dispose of it.

"Have you heard from Isabelle?"

"Yes," said Jeanne. "She's very happy. Max is badly hurt, but he's going to survive. She asked me to thank you for coming to see her. I think it meant a good deal to her. She has been very unlucky--or very foolish, as my father would say. All her decisions have been difficult ones. To see you again and to know that you at least wished her well, I think that sustained her."

"I'm pleased," said Stephen, though he did not feel pleasure. It confused him to think the role he now played in Isabelle's life was to offer minor reassurance. "I'm pleased," he repeated, and in that moment of small insincerity he thought he felt the last presence of Isabelle leave him, not by going into false oblivion, as she had the first time, but into simple absence.

He turned to Jeanne. "How long will you stay in Amiens? Isn't your home in Rouen?"

Jeanne looked down at her hands. "My father's old and would like me to stay and look after him. Although my mother's still alive, she's not well and is less attentive than he would like."

"So you will go back?"

"I don't know," said Jeanne. "I've been a dutiful daughter. But I'm drawn to the idea of independence. I like it here in Amiens, in this little house."

"Of course." Stephen thought of her age again. "What about your other sisters? Couldn't they look after him?"

"No. They're all married. Now, Monsieur, we're going to have dinner in about an hour. I'll have to go and see how it's coming along. I'm not sure if you'd like to rest, or have some aperitif... I'm not used to this sort of thing." She waved her hand.

"It's somewhat unconventional."

"Nothing in the world is conventional at the moment." Stephen smiled. "I'm grateful that you understand that. In the meantime, yes. I'll have a drink." Jeanne smiled back at him. It was the first time he had seen her smile, and he believed it was the most extraordinary expression he had seen on a human face. It began with a slow widening of the lips, then the pale skin of her face became radiant, not with blood as Isabelle's might have done, but with an inner light that made it shine. At last it reached her eyes, which developed squares of brilliance as they narrowed into trusting humour. It was not just her expression, Stephen thought, but her whole face that had changed into something forgiving and serene. She said, "There is something Isabelle sent me out to buy when you came before. It smells horrible. It's called Old Orkney. It's an English drink." Stephen laughed. "Scottish, I think. I know it well."

Jeanne brought the bottle and jug of water. Stephen poured a little into a small crystal glass and looked around the room while Jeanne went to the kitchen. He could hear the sound of pans and cutlery; a smell of herbs and wine caused a sudden rush of hunger in his stomach. He lit a_ _cigarette and searched the elegant little room for an ashtray. There were a number of small ceramic and china dishes, but he dared not risk them and flicked the ash into the fireplace where he rubbed it in with his foot. For all his new lice-free clothes, he felt lumpish and awkward in this tidy, feminine room. He wondered if he would ever refind his ease and naturalness in normal surroundings, or whether he had now evolved into a creature whose natural habitat included corrugated iron ceilings, wooden walls, and food hanging in rat-proof parcels from the rafters.

Jeanne had made soup that she served from a bowl on a table at the end of the room. It was supposed to be a fish soup in the manner of Dieppe, near her home in Normandy, she explained, but she had not been able to find all the ingredients she needed in Amiens. Stephen remembered how irritated Isabelle had once been when he said that Amiens was not noted for its cuisine.

"I expect the war has affected supplies," he said.

"I'm not sure," said Jeanne. "It may be that the Amiénois are just not interested in food. Would you like to pour the wine? I don't know if it's good, but it's one I've seen my father drink."

Stephen was still not sure whether Jeanne viewed him as a refugee whom someone public-spirited should foster, or if she had simpler motives of friendship. He questioned her as they ate.

She was not generous with information. Her manner had a pleasant shyness about it, as though she felt that the evening was not really permitted by the rules of etiquette and at any moment someone might come in and forbid it to continue. Stephen gathered that she had been kept at home by a sense of duty to her father, who seemed able to impose his will on her as he had on Isabelle. She had resisted his choice of husband more successfully than her younger sister, but he had retaliated by forbidding hers. As he had scared away Isabelle's soldier, so he had frozen from contention a widowed man who would have taken Jeanne away from him.

Jeanne spoke in very measured sentences; there was something strict in her manner that was relieved by the humour that glimmered behind it in her eyes and in the sudden movements of her long, thin fingers.

Stephen continued to feel a sense of tranquillity in her presence. He found himself happy to listen to her talking, and when she questioned him he was able to reply with a sense of proportion, even when talking about the war.

Then, as it grew late, he began to feel the dread of his return. From the first time as a child when he had been taken from the fields and made to go back to the institution in which he was living, he had feared the moment of separation more than anything: it was abandonment. The return to the trenches was something he could not bring himself to contemplate. As the time grew nearer he lost the ability to talk any more.

Jeanne said, "You're thinking of your return, aren't you? You've stopped answering my questions."

Stephen nodded.

"It won't last for ever. We are waiting for tanks and for the Americans, that's what Marshal Pétain says. We must all be patient. Think of your next leave."

"Can I come here again?"

"Yes, if you like. Count the days and the weeks. Keep yourself safe. It sounds as though with your new job you won't be in action so much. Be careful." Stephen said, "You may be right." He sighed. "But it's been so long, so very long. I think of the men I was with and--"

"Then you must stop thinking about them, the ones who have died. You did your best for them and there's nothing more you can do. When it's over you can remember them. Now you must concentrate on getting yourself through it. Another casualty won't help those who have died."

"I can't do it, Jeanne, I can t do it. I'm so tired."

Jeanne looked at his pleading face. He was close to tears.

"I have given everything," he said. "Don't make me go on. Please let me stay here."

Jeanne's smile came again. "This is not the talk of a man who led his soldiers on the Ancre. A few weeks behind the lines, where there's no danger. You can manage that."

"It isn't the danger. It's the effort. I can no longer bring my mind to it."

"I know." Jeanne put her hand on his. "I understand. But you must be strong. I've made up a bed for you because I thought you might want to stay. I'll wake you in good time in the morning. Come on now."

Stephen followed her reluctantly to the door. He knew he would go back the next day.

*

The assault on the Messines Ridge was planned hard and in detail. Veterans of the previous July were mean with the human life at their disposal.

"I've good news for you," said Gray when Stephen reported back to him.

"There's time before your new appointment for you to organize a large raid on the enemy trenches. It's part of the new, cautious regime of knowing our enemy. Reconnaissance." He tried unsuccessfully to still the twitchings of a smile.

"I see," said Stephen. "And will it make much difference to our grand strategy if we discover we are facing the forty-first regiment rather than the forty-second?"

"I very much doubt it," said Gray. "But my orders are to contribute to the intelligence gathered along the line. I think your company is coming out of reserve this week. It's good timing for a frontline soldier like you."

"Thank you, sir."

Gray laughed. "All right, Wraysford. Relax. What I actually want you to do is lead an attack on the canal to the left. We need to get a foothold there. It's just a local attack. You go up at dawn with the rest of the battalion. We have support from our Black Country friends later in the day. Is that a bit more to your liking?"

"It seems a more useful way of dying than while examining the cap badges of the men opposite."

"Good man, Wraysford. Keep going. I knew you would."

"And how do _you _keep going, sir?" said Stephen.

Gray laughed. "It's my Scottish blood. We've barely started yet." The men went up the line once more, through the long communication trench and into the mired slit of land beneath the sandbags. Apart from raids and patrols, they had not attacked for nine months, and there was nervousness and argument among the men who were detailed to place the scaling ladders against the trench wall. All morning was the sound of hammering and sawing as the wood was cut and positioned at intervals against the parapet. Stephen had the impression that for all their forebodings of the big offensive in Belgium that was reportedly so dear to General Haig, they had somehow thought they would not themselves be involved in another trudge into the hurricane of guns.

Jack Firebrace watched the preparations when he came back from his shift underground, and they brought back memories he had until then successfully closed down. He remembered how he had prayed for the men who would go over on that summer morning and how he had trusted in their safekeeping. This time he had no prayers to offer.

He went into the large dugout at the head of the deep mine where his company was temporarily sleeping. He made tea and drank it with Evans, then took out his sketchbook. Since Shaw's death there were no more pictures of him. Jack had taken to drawing Stephen instead. From the moment he had pitched into his arms, back from the dead, Jack had been intrigued by him. Now he had made drawings of his large, dark head from many angles and in many poses--with his big eyes open in incredulity or narrowed in determination; of the smile with which he chafed his own officer, Captain Weir; of the blank, remote expression, as if his memory had failed, with which he had dismissed Jack when he had gone to report for sleeping on duty. He could not remember John's face well enough to draw it. The wait for the attack was short, but no less difficult for that. Stephen talked to the platoon commanders who would go first up the wide-spaced ladders into the uncertain world beyond.

"You mustn't waver," he said. "What is waiting for you can't be changed, but if you hesitate you will needlessly endanger the lives of others." He saw Ellis licking his lips. There was sweat on his pale forehead. The bombardment was starting up and it was beginning to shake the earth from the roof of the dugout.

Stephen spoke with the calm of experience, but it did not help him. The fact that he had done this before was no guarantee that he could do it again. When the moment came he would have to confront the depths of himself once more, and he feared that he had changed.

The bombardment was only for a day. It was trained, so the artillery had assured them, with scientific precision based on accurate aerial reconnaissance. There would be no uncut wire, no unharmed concrete redoubts spraying lazy waves of death over the turned fields.

Weir came to his dugout at midnight. His eyes were wild and his hair disarrayed. Stephen felt dismayed at the sight. He did not want to catch the other man's fear. He did not want him to breathe over him.

"This noise," said Weir. "I can't bear it any more."

"You've been saying that for two years," said Stephen sharply. "The truth is you're one of the most resilient men in the BEF."

Weir pulled out cigarettes and cast his eyes around hopefully. Stephen reluctantly pushed a bottle toward him.

"When are you going over?" said Weir.

"Usual time. It'll be all right."

"Stephen, I'm worried for you. I have this foreboding."

"I don't want to hear about your foreboding."

"You've been a marvellous friend to me, Stephen. I'll never forget when we lay in the shellhole and you talked to me and--"

"Of course you'll forget it. Now just be quiet."

Weir was trembling. "You don't understand. I want to thank you. I just have this premonition. You remember last time we did the cards and you--"

"I fix the cards. I cheat. They don't mean a thing." Stephen could not bear the conversation.

Weir looked startled and downcast. He drank deeply. "I know I shouldn't be saying this, I know it's selfish of me, but--"

"Just shut your mouth, Weir." Stephen was shouting, his voice caught with the beginning of sobs. He put his face close to Weir's. "Just try to help me. If you are grateful or something then try to help me. Christ Jesus, do you think I want to do this? Do you think my life was made for _this?'_

Weir recoiled under Stephen's indignant saliva.

He began to protest, but Stephen was now rolling with anger. "All those boys of eighteen and nineteen who walk out in the morning and I have to go with them and watch. Just please for once try to talk about something else." In his oblique and drunken way Weir was as passionate as Stephen. "This is something that has to be said, and I don't care if it's tactful. There are things more important than that. I want to thank you and to say goodbye, in case--" Stephen took him by the lapels and lifted him to the door of the dugout. "Fuck off, Weir, fuck off out of my way and leave me alone." He pushed him and sent him sliding face down into the mud. Weir clambered up slowly, glanced back reproachfully at Stephen as he picked the slime and filth from his front, then made his solitary way along the duckboards.

Alone, as he had wanted to be, Stephen began the journey down into himself that would end at dawn. He looked carefully at his body and remembered the things his hands had touched; he looked at the prints of his fingertips and laid the back of his hand against the soft membrane of his lips.

He lay down on the planks of the bed and felt the touch of the woollen blanket against his face. It was a feeling he remembered from childhood. He closed his eyes tight and thought of his earliest memories of his mother, of her hands, the sound and scent of her. He wrapped himself in the cloak of his remembered world, hoping he would be safe in it where no shells or bullets could reach him. He swallowed, and felt the familiar feeling of his tongue and throat. It was the same flesh he had had as an innocent boy. Surely they would not let anything happen to it now. His renewed love of the world made the prospect of leaving it unbearable. An hour before dawn Riley came to him with water he had boiled for shaving. Stephen was pleased to see the smart little man with his obsequious manner. He had also been able to brew a large pot of tea. Stephen shaved carefully and put on the belt that Riley had shined for him.

When he went out into the trench he found that the rations had come up on time and some of the men had cooked bacon for breakfast. He had to move carefully in the dark, watching his feet on the duckboards. He found CSM Price checking the kit. Price's methodical manner helped him; it was as though it was just an ordinary day. Then he spoke to Petrossian, the corporal in his old platoon. His familiar, swarthy face looked up at Stephen as though in hope of delivery. Stephen looked away. He came to a group of men who had not been over the top before, Barlow, Coker, Goddard, and some others huddled by a ladder. He stopped to talk to them and even in the darkness he could see the strange look on their faces. It was as though the skin had been drawn tight across them so that they glowed. They were incapable of responding to his words; each had gone down alone into himself, where time had stopped and there was no help.

The artillery began to lay down the barrage in no-man's-land. They could see the earth spitting and leaping over the height of the sandbagged parapet. Stephen checked his watch. Four minutes to go. He knelt on the firestep and prayed, a wordless yearning.

It had happened so fast. The long bombardment before the July attack had been almost intolerable, but it had at least given the men time to get ready. On this occasion it seemed that only a few hours earlier he had been having dinner with Jeanne and now he was preparing to die. It made little difference that this was, by comparison, a small attack: there were no degrees of death.

He rose from his knees and went back into the next firebay, where he could see Ellis looking down at his watch. He went up to him and put his arm around his shoulders. Ellis's stricken face encouraged him; from somewhere he found a smile of reassurance to go with the squeeze he gave his shoulders. At the head of the communication trench stood Price, with a clipboard. He held out his hand to Stephen, who shook it. Price would not be going over, though he would count the cost.

Stephen looked up to the sky, where the first light was cracking the clouds. He let out a long sigh that shook him to his boots. "Oh God, oh God," he breathed, shuddering down his spine. Where now was the loving unity of the world? With one minute to go the realization struck him as it struck all the men: that there was no way back. He threw a glance of longing down the clogged communication trench, then turned to face the Front. A whistle blew, and clumsily the men began to clamber up the ladders, weighed down by their heavy packs, into the metal air. Stephen watched their foolish, crablike movements and felt his heart seize up with pitying love for them. He pushed his way through to follow.

The men ran as fast as they could over the broken ground; there was no repetition of the slow march ordered for the previous year. Their own machine guns were putting a barrage over their heads where it met the defensive fire of the enemy. Stephen was aware of the density of sound as he lowered his head, trying to take what protection he could from his tin helmet. He had to swerve over fallen bodies and leap small craters in the mud. He could see that the advancing line in front had reached the enemy trench. His own company, which was in support, began to regroup in shellholes about fifty yards short.

Stephen slid down a ten-foot drop into the slime, where he saw Goddard and Allen, the latter holding a field dressing over his bicep. Coker was looking over the rim of the shellhole, supported on another man's back, trying to see through field glasses what signals were coming from the troops in front.

He jumped down into the mud. "Can't see a thing, sir," he screamed at Stephen through the noise. "No signals, nothing. They seem to be through the wire. There's Mills bombs going off in the trench."

Stephen felt a throb of hope. It was possible that for the first time in his experience the artillery had actually cut the wire and his men would not be playthings for the enemy machine guns.

Petrossian stumbled into the shellhole. He was black with the slime of mud and whatever decomposing filth he had encountered in previous shelters, but he was not bleeding.

"Signal from B Company, sir," he shouted. "They're in."

"All right. Let's go."

Stephen clambered up the edge of the shellhole and waved a flag. The ground began to move and disgorge men for a length of a hundred yards or more. The noise in front of them redoubled as German fire began from their support trench. Though the men in B Company tried to cover them, their rifle fire could not compete with the machine guns. The last fifty yards became a hopping, dodging exercise as men weaved through fire and leapt over fallen bodies.

Stephen followed two others through a hole in the German wire and jumped down into a crowded firebay. No one knew what was going on. There were groups of German prisoners along the duckboards wearing nervous smiles, looking relieved to be taken, but anxious that something might go wrong for them at this late stage. They plied the men of B Company with souvenirs and cigarettes. Their trench was a source of wonder to the British men, with its huge, deep dugouts and crafted parapets. They stared in rapt curiosity at the long-imagined privacy that they had finally violated.

Stephen managed to get the prisoners into an undamaged dugout, where he left Petrossian in charge with three other men to guard them. He knew Petrossian would be relieved not to have to advance further and would take pleasure in killing them if necessary. He went along the trench and found Ellis, damp with sweat and blank-eyed, as though the battle was taking place in some other world. There was still fighting in the trench to their left where it adjoined the canal, though after half an hour they saw more German prisoners being brought up, and the sounds of fire died down.

Ellis looked at Stephen expectantly. "What now?"

"We'll get support at midday from that wood on the right, from what Gray calls our Black Country friends. We have to secure the canal end, then press on to the second trench."

Ellis smiled uncertainly. Stephen grimaced. "We've started shelling their second line now," he shouted as he heard the whine above him. "Keep your helmet on and your fingers crossed."

There was frantic movement in the trench as men piled up sandbags so they could fire over the rear of the trench toward the German support line. Many were hit in the head and fell back as they tried to find space to fire. Lewis gunners were looking for a secure post from which they could concentrate their aim, but for the time being it was hard to know whether they could move on before the counterattack came back at them.

Gradually the artillery began to find its targets. There were shouted reports of shell blasts on the trench lip, with men and earth thrown upward together. From behind the lines the German artillery began a heavy reply. There was no communication with battalion headquarters, and in the noise and increasing carnage of the battle the only way Stephen could think of to impose order was to follow the original plan. He climbed up onto the improvised firestep. From what he could see the enemy was preparing for a further retreat to its reserve trench. If only there was some way of communicating with the artillery they could catch them as they went.

Through a series of yelled and half-heard orders, a second attack began. It was less coordinated than the first, without the distinct waves, but the men who had survived were dizzy with exhilaration as they wove onward to the second line. With no room for rifles, they went into the trench with bayonets and fists. Some were crushed by their own artillery, who were late to be informed of the second advance, and some leapt straight into death below. Stephen crashed through the wire and landed on the body of a German corporal whose legs had been removed by a shell. He was alive and trying to haul himself to safety. They tried to gather in knots and push both ways along the trench so that their rear was always guarded, but new arrivals meant they could not throw grenades over the traverses for fear that they would be killing their own men. There was no alternative but for men to go blind round each corner. The fate of the first two or three was a good indicator to those who followed. Stephen watched the men go on madly, stepping over the bodies of their friends, clearing one firebay at a time, jostling one another to be first to the traverse. They had dead brothers and friends on their minds; they were galvanized beyond fear. They were killing with pleasure. They were not normal. By late morning they had secured the support trench. Stephen sent a detachment down to the canal to dig in against counterattack. All they had to do now was hold the line until reinforcements arrived at noon to protect their other flank.

Stephen could not bear the sight of Germans and tried to get the prisoners back as quickly as possible. Despite the continuing shellfire there were enough volunteers to escort them. To have taken two lines in a morning was thought by most men to be the limit of their likely good fortune. After five hours of exertion they were desperate for rest. Stephen enviously watched their tired departing backs.

The intensity of fire diminished for a moment, then built up again, mostly on the right flank, which was coming under attack from unseen machine-gun emplacements and from rifle grenades. Stephen had not had time to taste the moment of significant advance before their position was besieged. The dogtoothed construction of the trench made it impossible to know what was happening more than a few yards away, but to him the sound of the counterattack was ominous. He became aware of a concertina movement coming down the trench from the right as the furthest firebays were either being evacuated or merely silenced. At noon he climbed a ladder on what had been the parapet and looked up to the wood for reinforcements. There was no one there. He jumped down into the trench and found a periscope. He looked back over no-man's-land and could see nothing except a distant line of prisoners being taken back. He closed his eyes and sighed quietly in the storm of fire. He might have known. He could have guessed.

A platoon commander called Sibley shouted in his ear. He wanted to know when the reinforcements would arrive.

"There are none. They're not coming," bellowed Stephen.

"Why?" mouthed Sibley.

Stephen said nothing.

An hour later the Germans were back in the trench at the far end and there was hand-to-hand fighting. Shortly afterward, B Company were ordered by their commander to retreat to the enemy frontline trench that they had taken in the morning. As they went up over the parapet they came under fire from German machine guns that had reestablished themselves in the support trench. The noise was making it impossible to think. Stephen was aware of Ellis screaming at him. "We're going down, we're going down!" his lips said silently. Stephen shook his head.

Ellis put his lips to Stephen's ear. "B Company's gone."

"I know. I know." Stephen did not explain. His company's job was to occupy; B Company had been detailed to assault and were entitled to take their own view of when to move. He could not have made Ellis hear, but he wanted to stick to the orders given him by Colonel Gray.

A sergeant with blood-spattered face pushed past them, and was followed by another surge of men who were being squeezed back down the trench from their unprotected right flank. The counterattack was now also coming head-on in an advance from the reserve trench. Two Lewis guns were not able to keep them back. It only needed an attack from the canal end and they would be completely encircled. Stephen rapidly calculated the possibility of a retreat. There were now so many Germans in the trench that they would be able to resume their positions on the parapet and shoot his men in the back as they ran.

Ellis was weeping. "What do we do?" he wailed. "I want to save my men. What do we do?"

In his mind, Stephen saw only one outcome: his company's bodies stacked like sandbags one on another. It was not what he had chosen, but it was all that was left to them.

"What do we do?" Ellis moaned against the noise.

"We hold the line, we hold the fucking line." Stephen's tongue and teeth were visible in the silently screaming cave of his mouth.

In the desperation of trying to save their own lives, the men fought over each yard of trench. Stephen joined them, firing rapidly at the advancing lines of grey. Just before three o'clock he was aware of a Yorkshire voice in his ear and an unfamiliar face. He looked with puzzlement into the man's eyes.

It was a lieutenant from the Duke of Wellington's regiment. He shouted to Stephen that his men had regained control of the far end of the trench. Within another hour they had cleared their way back to the canal. Further reinforcements came up with trench mortars and more machine guns. The German counterattack was temporarily over, and its stragglers withdrew to their reserve position.

Stephen climbed down on to the duckboards and went along to a dugout, where he found a major of the Duke of Wellington's.

"You look all in," the major said cheerfully. "Your orders are to withdraw. We were sent up to cover you. Something went wrong before. Another triumph of planning."

Stephen looked at the man's face. He looked so young, he thought, yet he had performed some kind of miracle.

"And what are you going to do?" he asked.

"Cover your retreat, then get the hell out of it."

Stephen took the man's hand, then went outside.

They got the dead and wounded out first and what was left of the company was back in its own trench by nightfall. Ellis had been killed by machine-gun fire. The small groups of survivors dragged themselves over the mud they had crossed in the morning. They did not ask about the fate of their friends; they were intent only on reaching somewhere they could lie down.

*

Stephen's new job seemed to consist of going over maps and trying to ascertain which battalion was where. He was billeted in a pleasant house in the village, though was occasionally required to spend the night in a dugout in the reserve line. Even this was a great improvement on what he had known.

There was some urgency about the work, since the attack on the Messines Ridge was imminent. Stephen took sardonic pleasure in confirming that Weir's tunnelling company was due for a rest shortly beforehand. Their work would be done and someone else could blow the mines.

The brigade major, a man called Stanforth, reminded him in manner of Colonel Barclay. He had a tendency to shout for no good reason, and he spoke in abbreviated sentences that were supposed to communicate urgency. If anything unforeseen happened he at once showed how much he was in command by issuing forceful and complicated orders, even though the hitch would usually sort itself out unaided.

The day he arrived Stephen had the unpleasant duty of writing to Ellis's mother, who had already been officially informed of her son's death. He chewed the pen in his office for an hour or more before he could begin. It was a summer day, with blackbirds and thrushes at play in the garden of the house.

He made many false starts, in which he tried to describe something of the attack or of the times he had spent with Ellis in the dugout or in Amiens. In the end he wrote only formal words of condolence.

Dear Mrs. Ellis,

I am writing to offer you my deepest sympathy on the loss of your son. As you will have been told, he was lost during an offensive action on the morning of June 2nd. He was killed by enemy machine-gun fire while organizing the defence of a German trench bravely captured by the men under his command. He is buried with Lieutenant Parker and Lieutenant Davies. The grave has been properly marked and the position notified to the Graves Registration Committee.

During the last conversation I had with him he told me he had no fear of death and felt fully equipped for any task he might be called upon to perform. In every circumstance his consideration for the welfare and comfort of his men came first.

His men loved him, and I am expressing not only my own sympathy but theirs too. In dying for what the Empire now seeks to uphold, he was among many who paid a great price. We commit the souls of our brothers who have fallen to the mercy and safekeeping of God.

When he read the letter back to himself, Stephen underlined the word

"every". "In _every _circumstance... " It was true. In a few months Ellis had won the respect of his men because he was not afraid, or, if he was, he did not show it. He had become a good soldier, for all that it had helped him.

Stephen was tired of writing such letters. He noticed how dry and passionless his own style had become. He imagined what effect the letter would have on the distraught widow who opened it. Her only son gone... He did not wish to contemplate it.

*

For the last week before the attack, Jack's company was switched to the deep mines below the Ridge, where they laid tons of ammonal in specially prepared chambers. Two days before the attack itself the work was completed, and Jack emerged exhausted into the sunlight. Evans, Fielding, and Jones came up after him. They stood in the section of the trench at the tunnel head and congratulated one another on their efforts. They were instructed to report to Captain Weir before being officially dismissed, and they made their way along the duckboards toward his dugout.

"There's a rumour of home leave for you, Jack," said Fielding.

"I don't believe it. They'll make us dig to Australia first."

"There's certainly no more digging we can do here," said Evans. "It's a warren under there. I'd be happy just to get back down the line into a nice soft bed with a glass or two of that wine inside me."

"Yes," said Fielding, "and maybe one of those French girls to follow." Jack was beginning to think that the worst of the war might be over for him. He allowed himself to picture the hallway of his house in London with Margaret waiting for him.

Weir came along the boards to meet them. He looked happier than usual. He was wearing boots and a tunic and a soft cap. As he came closer to them, Jack noticed that some of the sandbags on the parapet had not been properly replaced from the day when the infantry had gone over them. He tried to warn Weir that he was not properly covered. Weir climbed on to the firestep to let a ration party go past and a sniper's bullet entered his head above the eye, causing trails of his brain to loop out on to the sandbags of the parados behind him.

His body seemed for a moment unaware of what had happened, as though it would carry on walking. Then it fell like a puppet, its limbs shooting out, and the face smashing unprotected into mud.

Word reached Stephen the next night from an intelligence officer called Mountford. He was in his dugout in the reserve line, where he was acting as liaison between headquarters and the men who would be in the second wave in the morning. Mountford delivered the news briefly. "I believe he was a friend of yours," he said. He could see from Stephen's face that there was little to be gained from staying.

Stephen sat still for a minute. The last time he had seen Weir had been to push him head first on to the floor of the trench. That had been his final gesture. For some minutes he could think of nothing but Weir's hurt, reproachful expression as he picked the mud from his face.

Yet he had loved him. Weir alone had made the war bearable. Weir's terror under the guns had been a conductor for his own fear, and in his innocent character Stephen had been able to mock the qualities he himself had lost. Weir had been braver by far than he was: he had lived with horror, he had known it every day, and by his strange stubbornness he had defeated it. He had not conceded one day of his service; he had died in the line of battle.

Stephen rested his elbows on the rough wooden table. He felt more lonely than ever in his life before. Only Weir had been with him into the edges of reality where he had lived; only Weir had heard the noise of the sky at Thiepval. He lay on the bed, dry-eyed. Soon after three in the morning the mines went up and shook the bed where he lay. "The explosion will be felt in London," Weir had boasted.

The telephone rang, and Stephen went back to the chair at the desk. Throughout the small hours of the morning he relayed messages. By nine o'clock the Second Army was on the ridge. Elation edged the voices he spoke to: something, at last, had gone right. The mines had been colossal and the infantry, using methods copied from the Canadians, had stormed through. Celebration seeped into the wires.

Stephen was relieved at noon. He lay down on the bed and tried to sleep. He could hear the unrelenting bombardment continue on the German lines. He cursed his fortune that he could not go in behind it. Now, to answer Gray's hypothetical question, now he would have taken life without compunction. He envied the men who could fire down on to the hopeless enemy, men with a chance to sink bayonets into unguarded flesh, men with the opportunity to pour machine-gun bullets into those who had killed his friend. Now he would have gone killing with a light heart. He tried to think that victory on the Ridge would bring pleasure or vindication to Weir, but he could not imagine it. He was merely an absence now. Stephen thought of his puzzled, open face, its chalky skin patched red with blood vessels broken up by drink; he thought of his balding skull and shocked eyes that could not contain his innocence. He thought of the pity of the flesh gone back underground without knowledge of another human body.

All that night and the next day he lay unmoving on the bed. He did not speak when Mountford came back to try to rouse him. He turned away the food that was brought to him. He cursed himself for his last act of impatience toward Weir. He hated the selfishness of his feeling, because he felt more sorry for himself than for his dead friend. He could not help it. Like all the others, he had learned to dismiss death from his thoughts; but he could not shake off the loneliness. Now that Weir was gone there was no one who could understand. He tried to make himself cry, but no tears would come to express his desolation or his love for poor mad Weir. On the third day Colonel Gray came to see him.

"Success at last," he said. "Those tunnellers did a wonderful job. Mind if I sit down, Wraysford?"

Stephen was sitting on the edge of the bed. He had made an effort to stand up and salute when Gray came in, but Gray had waved him back. He gestured to the chair at the table.

Gray crossed his legs and lit a pipe. "The Boche didn't know what hit them. I was never a great believer in the sewer rats, giving the enemy little craters to fortify, but even I would be forced to concede that they did their job this time." He carried on talking about the attack for a few minutes, apparently taking no notice of the fact that Stephen did not reply.

"Our chaps were in reserve," he went on. "Not needed. Some of them were a bit disappointed, I do believe." He sucked on the pipe. "Not many, though." Stephen ran his hand back through his unkempt hair. He wondered whether Gray had been sent or whether he had decided of his own accord to visit him.

"Stanforth," said Gray. "He looks like a typical English staff officer, doesn't he? Fat, complacent, ill informed. Forgive me, I have nothing against the English, as you know, Wraysford. The appearance is misleading in his case. He's a very thorough planner. I believe he has saved many lives in this attack."

Stephen nodded. A sense of interest was beginning to penetrate the blankness of his grief; it was like the first, painful sensations of blood returning to a numbed limb.

Gray kept on talking and smoking. "There's a rather delicate matter coming up concerning our noble French allies. They are experiencing difficulties. A certain, how can one put this, reluctance is spreading. The removal of the dashing General Nivelle has helped. Pétain appears a little more thrifty with their lives, but it's alarming. We understand that two-thirds of the army has been concerned in some way, with perhaps one division in five seriously affected."

Stephen was curious to hear what Gray said. The French army had performed better than the British in comparable circumstances and shown formidable resilience. Mutiny seemed unthinkable.

"Stanforth will ask you and Mountford to go with him. This is a completely informal meeting. The French officers concerned are on leave. It's just something that's been arranged by friends."

"I see," said Stephen. "I'm surprised this is allowed. We hardly ever meet the French."

"Quite," said Gray, with a small smile of triumph. He had made Stephen speak. "It's not allowed. It's just lunch with friends. And while I'm here. You look a bloody mess. Get a shave and a bath. I'm sorry about your sapper friend. Now get up."

Stephen looked at him blankly. His body was without energy. His gaze fastened on to the pale irises of Gray's eyes. He tried to draw strength from the older man.

Gray's voice softened when he saw that Stephen was trying to respond. "I know what it means when you're left alone, as though no one else has shared what you have. But you're going to have to proceed, Wraysford. I'm going to recommend you for an MC for your part in the action at the canal. Would you like that?" Stephen stirred again. "No, I certainly would not. You can't give tin stars to people when there are men who gave their lives. For God's sake." Gray smiled again and Stephen had the feeling as often before that he had been played like an instrument. "Very well. No decoration." Stephen said, "Recommend one, but give it to Ellis or one of those men who died. It might help his mother."

"Yes," said Gray. "Or it might break her heart." Stephen stood up. "I'll go back to headquarters and change."

"Good," said Gray. "If you falter now you'll rob his life of any purpose. Only by seeing it through can you give him rest."

"Our lives lost meaning long ago. You know that. At Beaucourt." Gray swallowed. "Then do it for our children."

Stephen pulled his stiff limbs out from the dugout and into the summer air. When he looked about him to the trees and the buildings that were still standing, and to the sky above them, he could still feel something of the binding love he had experienced in England. He was able to compel himself to act, though he feared that the reality he now inhabited was very fragile.

He wrote to Jeanne almost every day for a time, but then found he had nothing to say. She replied with accounts of her life in Amiens and told him what the French newspapers said about the war.

He went in a car with Stanforth and Mountford to Arras, where they met two French officers called Lallement and Hartmann in a hotel. Lallement, the older of the two, was a plump, worldly man. In peacetime he had been a lawyer attached to the civil service. He ordered numerous wines with lunch and ate several partridge, which he tore apart with his hands. The juice ran down his chin and on to a napkin he had tucked into his collar. Stephen watched in disbelief. The younger officer, Hartmann, was a dark, serious-looking man of perhaps twenty years old. His expression was inscrutable, and he seemed unwilling to say anything that might embarrass his senior officer.

Lallement talked mostly about hunting and wildlife. Stephen translated for the benefit of Major Stanforth, who surveyed the Frenchman with some suspicion. Mountford, who could speak French, asked him about morale in the French army. Lallement assured him, as he wiped the gravy from his chin, that it had seldom been better.

After lunch Lallement questioned Stanforth, through Stephen, about his family in England. They had a friend in common, an elderly Frenchwoman who was related to Stanforth's wife. From there Lallement turned his questioning to the British army and how they viewed the state of the war. Stanforth was surprisingly frank in his replies and Stephen found himself tempted to censor them. He presumed Stanforth knew best, and in any case Mountford might have noticed any alterations.

Stephen, who was not used to intelligence-gathering operations, even such informal ones, wondered when they were going to find out about the collapse of French morale and the extent to which its armies were affected. By teatime he had given a detailed account of the movements of most of the divisions in their part of the BEF and a picture of the low state of the men's spirits, which successes at Vimy and Messines had lifted only for a time. Depression had begun to sink into the army's bones, particularly among those who knew of the prospects of the major offensive at Ypres.

Lallement wiped his mouth finally on his napkin and suggested they go to a bar that a friend had told him about near the main square. They stayed till ten o'clock, when Stephen was dispatched to find the driver of Stanforth's car. He found him asleep on the back seat. By the time they said good-bye to the French it had started to rain. Stephen looked back at Lallement and Hartmann standing together beneath the dripping colonnade.

He visited Jeanne again in August and September. They went for walks about the town, though he resisted her suggestion that they should spend an afternoon in the water gardens.

She told him she was worried by his listlessness. It was as though he had given up hope and was allowing himself to drift. He said it was hard not to, when the attitude of the people at home to what they had endured was one of indifference.