The orderly sighed. ‘I think it’s supposed to be bubble-and-squeak, Sister.’

‘More squeak than bubble, eh?’

‘More flop than either, I’d say. But the pud’s not bad, sort of dumplings in golden syrup.’

‘Any pud’s better than none, Private. It’s remarkable how much the rations have improved in the last six months.’

‘My word, Sister!’ the orderly agreed fervently.

As she turned toward the Primus stove on which it was her habit to reheat the meal before serving it, a small movement in her office caught Sister Langtry’s eye; she put the plates down and stepped soundlessly across the corridor outside the dayroom.

Luce was standing by her desk, head bent, the unsealed envelope containing Michael’s papers in his hand.

‘Put that down!’

He obeyed quite casually, as if he had simply picked the envelope up in passing; if he had read them, the deed was already done, for she could see that the papers resided safely inside the envelope. But looking at Luce she could not be sure. That was the trouble with Luce: he existed on so many levels he had difficulty himself knowing which end was up; of course, that meant he was always able to assure himself he had done nothing wrong. And to look at, he was the epitome of a man who could have no need to spy or have recourse to underhand dealings. But such was not his history.

‘What do you want in here, Luce?’

‘A late pass,’ he said promptly.

‘Sorry, Sergeant, you’ve had more than your share of late passes this month,’ she said coldly. ‘Did you read those papers?’

‘Sister Langtry! As if I’d do such a thing!’

‘One of these days you’ll slip, and I’ll be there to catch you,’ she said. ‘For the moment you can help me get the dinner on, since you’re down this end of the ward.’

But before she left the office she took Michael’s papers and locked them away in the top drawer, cursing herself for a degree of carelessness she could not remember ever committing before, not in her entire career. She ought to have made sure the papers were under lock and key before taking Michael into the ward. Perhaps he was right; the war had gone on too long, which was why she was starting to make mistakes.

3

‘For the food we are about to receive, may the good Lord make us truly thankful,’ said Benedict into a partial silence, and then lifted his head.

Only Luce had ignored the call to grace, eating all the way through it as if he were deaf.

The others waited until Benedict finished before picking up knives and forks to dissect the dubious messes on their plates, neither embarrassed by Benedict’s prayer nor thrown off balance by Luce’s irreverence. The whole ritual had long lost any novelty it might once have had, Michael concluded, finding his palate titillated by an unfamiliar cook, even if the cooking was army yet. Besides, there were luxuries here. Pudding.

To form conclusions about any new group of men had come to be a routine with him, a part of survival—and a game, too. He would bet himself imaginary sums of money on the correctness of his conclusions, preferring to do this than to acknowledge that for the last six years what he was usually actually betting was his life.

The men of ward X were a rum lot, all right, but no rummer than some other men he had known. Just men trying to get on with other men, and succeeding about as well as most. If they were like himself, they were tired past endurance with the war, and with men, men, men.

‘Why on earth are you here in X, Mike?’ asked Benedict suddenly, eyes bright.

Michael laid his spoon down, for he had finished the pudding anyway, and pulled out his tin of tobacco. ‘I nearly killed a bloke,’ he said, working a sheet of rice paper out of its folder. ‘I would have killed him, too, if there hadn’t been enough other blokes around to stop me.’

‘Not one of the enemy, then, I presume?’ asked Neil.

‘No. The RSM in my own company.’

‘And that’s all?’ asked Nugget, making the most peculiar faces as he swallowed a mouthful of food.

Michael looked at him, concerned. ‘Here, are you all right?’

‘It’s just me hiatus hernia,’ said Nugget in a tone of fatal acceptance. ‘Hits me every time I swallow.’

This was announced with great solemnity and the same kind of reverence Benedict had given to his little prayer; Michael noticed that the others, even Luce, simply grinned. They were fond of the little ferret-faced lad, then.

His cigarette rolled and lit, Michael leaned back, his arms behind his head because the bench offered no spinal support, and groped after what sort of men they were. It was very pleasant to be in a strange place, surrounded by strange faces; after six years in the same battalion, you knew from the smell which one of your fellow soldiers had farted.

The blind one was probably well into his thirties, didn’t say much, didn’t demand much. The opposite of Nugget, who was their mascot, he decided. Every company had its good luck talisman; why should ward X be different?

He wasn’t going to like Luce, but then probably no one ever did like Luce. As with Nugget, there was nothing about him which suggested he had ever seen battle action. On no one would Michael have wished battle action, but the men who had seen it were different, and not in terms of courage, resolution, strength. Action couldn’t manufacture these qualities if they weren’t there, couldn’t destroy them if they were. Its horror went far deeper than that, was far more complex. Looking death in the eye, weighing up the importance of living. Showing a man the randomness of his own death. Making a man realize how selfish he was, to thank his lucky stars the bullet had every name on it save his own. The dependence on superstition. The anguish and self-torment after each action was over because at the time a man became an animal to himself, a statistic to those in control of his military destiny…

Neil was talking; Michael forced himself to listen, for Neil was a person to respect. He’d had a very long war. His garb was desert, and he bore himself like a real soldier.

‘…so as far as I can gather, we’ve got about eight more weeks,’ Neil was saying; Michael had been half listening, and understood that Neil was referring to the duration of ward X.

Fascinated, he directed his eyes from one face to another, his mind assimilating the discovery that the news of an imminent return home dismayed them. Blind Matt actually shivered in dread! They’re a rum lot, all right, he thought, remembering Sister Langtry’s saying they were frightened to go home.

Sister Langtry… It was a very long time since he had had anything to do with women, so he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about her. The war had turned things topsy-turvy; he found it hard to conceive of women in authority, women with a kind of confidence he never remembered their owning before the war. For all her kindness and her interest, she was used to being the boss, and she felt no discomfort in exercising her authority over men. Nor, to give her credit, did she appear to relish that authority. No dragon, Langtry, even a young one. But he found it awkward to deal with a woman who calmly assumed they spoke the same language, thought the same thoughts; he couldn’t even reassure himself he had seen more of the war than she, for it was likely that she had spent a considerable part of it under fire herself. She wore the silver pips of a captain in the nursing corps, which was a fairly high rank.

The men of ward X adored her; when she had first led him out onto the verandah he was immediately aware of the resentment in them, the wary bristling assessment of committed owners for a potential shareholder. That reaction of theirs, he decided, was the reason for their display of crotchety lunacy. Well, they needn’t worry. If Neil was right, it seemed none of them would be here long enough to be obliged to readjust the pecking order on his behalf. All he wanted was to be rid of the war, the army, every last memory of the six years coming to a close.