The Absolutist

WE’RE DIFFERENT, I THINK Aldershot, April–June 1916

I DON’T SPEAK TO Will Bancroft until our second day at Aldershot Military Barracks but I notice him on our first.

We arrive in the late afternoon of the last day of April, some forty of us, a group of untidy boys, loud-mouthed and vulgar, stinking of sweat and bogus heroism. Those who already know each other sit together on the train, talking incessantly, afraid of silence, each voice competing to drown out the next. Those who are strangers hide in window seats, their heads pressed against the glass, feigning sleep or staring out as the scenery rushes past. Some make nervous conversation about the things they have left behind, their families, the sweethearts they will miss, but no one discusses the war. We might be on a day trip for all the nerves we dare show.

We stand around in groups as the train empties and I find myself next to a boy of about nineteen who glances around irritably, taking me in and dismissing me again with a single look. He wears a carefully coordinated expression of resignation mixed with resentment; his cheeks are fleshy and raw, as if he has shaved with cold water and a blunt razor, but he stands erect, staring around as if he cannot quite believe the high spirits of the other boys.

“Just look at them,” he says in a cold voice. “Bloody fools, every last one of them.”

I turn to look at him more closely. He’s taller than I am, with a neat haircut and a studious appearance. His eyes are a little narrow-set and he wears a simple pair of owl-rimmed spectacles, which he removes from time to time to massage the bridge of his nose, where a small red indentation is clear to the eye. He reminds me of one of my former schoolteachers, only he is younger, and probably less prone to outbursts of gratuitous violence.

“It’s a lot of nonsense, isn’t it?” he continues, sucking deeply on a cigarette as if he wants to draw all the nicotine into his body in one drag.

“What is?” I ask.

“This,” he says, nodding in the direction of the other recruits, who are talking and laughing as if this is all a terrific lark. “All of it. These idiots. This place. We shouldn’t be here, none of us should.”

“I’ve wanted to be here since it started.”

He glances at me, thinks he has the measure of me already, and snorts contemptuously as he shakes his head and looks away. Crushing the spent tab beneath his heel, he opens a silver cigarette case and sighs when it reveals itself to be empty.

“Tristan Sadler,” I say, extending a hand now, not wanting to get my military career off on a sour note. He stares at it for five seconds or more and I wonder whether I will have to draw it back in humiliation, but finally he shakes it and nods abruptly.

“Arthur Wolf,” he says.

“Are you from London?” I ask him.

“Essex,” he replies. “Well, Chelmsford. You?”

“Chiswick.”

“Nice there,” he says. “I have an aunt who lives in Chiswick. Elsie Tyler. You don’t know her, I suppose?”

“No,” I reply, shaking my head.

“She runs a florist on Turnham Green.”

“I’m from Sadler & Son, the butcher on the high street.”

“Presumably you’re the son.”

“I used to be,” I say.

“I bet you volunteered, didn’t you?” he asks, more contempt seeping into his voice now. “Just turned eighteen?”

“Yes,” I lie. In fact my eighteenth birthday is still five months away but I have no intention of admitting this here in case I find myself back with a hod in my hand before the week is out.

“I bet you couldn’t wait, am I right? I bet it was your present to yourself, marching down to the sergeant major, yes, sir, no, sir, anything you say, sir, and offering yourself up on a crucifix.”

“I would have joined earlier,” I tell him. “Only they wouldn’t let me in on account of my age.”

He laughs but doesn’t pursue it any further, simply shaking his head as if I’m not worth wasting his time on. He is a man apart, this Wolf.

A moment later and I sense a commotion in the ranks. I turn to watch as three men in heavy, starched uniforms emerge from a nearby barrack and stride towards us. Everything about them stinks of authority and I feel a rush of something unexpected. Apprehension, certainly. Desire, perhaps.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” says the man in the centre, the eldest of the three, the shortest, the fattest, the one in charge. His tone is friendly, which surprises me. “Follow me, won’t you? We’re not quite where we ought to be.”

We gather in a pack and shuffle along behind him and I take the opportunity to look around at the other men, most of whom are smoking cigarettes and continuing low conversations. I pull my own tin from my pocket and offer one to Wolf, who doesn’t hesitate.

“Thanks,” he says, before, to my annoyance, asking for a second for later on. I shrug, irritated, but say all right, and he slips another from under the holding cord and perches it above his ear. “Looks like he’s the one in charge,” he says, nodding in the direction of the sergeant. “I need a word with him. Not that he’s likely to listen to me, of course. But I’ll have my say, I promise you that.”

“Your say about what?” I ask.

“Take a look around you, Sadler,” he replies. “Only a handful of these people will still be alive six months from now. What do you think of that?”

I don’t think anything of it. What am I supposed to think? I know that men die—their numbers are reported in the newspapers every day. But they’re just names, strings of letters printed together as news type. I don’t know any of them. They don’t mean much to me yet.

“Take my advice,” he says. “Follow my lead and get the hell out of here if you can.”

We stop now in the centre of the parade ground and the sergeant and his two corporals turn to face us. We stand in no particular order but he stares and remains silent until, without a word to each other, we find ourselves separating into a rectangle, ten men long and four men deep, each distanced from the next man by no more than an arm’s width.

“Good,” says the sergeant, nodding. “That’s a good start, gentlemen. Let me begin by welcoming you to Aldershot. Some of you want to be here, I know, some of you don’t. Those of us who have been in the service for many years share your emotions and sympathize with them. But they don’t matter any more. What you think, what you feel, doesn’t matter. You are here to be trained as soldiers and that is what will happen.”

He speaks calmly, betraying the conventional image of the barracks sergeant, perhaps to put us at our ease. Perhaps to surprise us by how quickly he might turn on us later.

“My name is Sergeant James Clayton,” he announces. “And over the next couple of months, during your time here, it is my responsibility to train you into soldiers, a job that requires as much intellect on your part as it does strength and stamina.” He looks around and narrows his eyes, his tongue bulging out his cheek as he considers the men—boys—lined up before him.

“You, sir,” he says, lifting his cane and pointing it at a young lad in the centre of the front row, who made himself popular on the train with his quick wit and effervescent sense of humour. “Your name, please?”

“Mickey Rich,” says the boy confidently.

“Mickey Rich, sir!” shouts the soldier standing at the sergeant’s left shoulder, but the older man turns to him and shakes his head.

“It’s perfectly all right, Corporal Wells,” he says cheerfully. “Rich here doesn’t understand our ways yet. He is utterly ignorant, aren’t you, Rich?”

“Yes, sir,” Rich replies, his tone a little less certain now, the “sir” being uttered with deliberate force.

“And are you happy to be here, Rich?” asks Sergeant Clayton.

“Oh yes, sir,” says Rich. “Happy as a pig in shit.”

The entire troop bursts into laughter at this and I join in nervously.

The sergeant waits until the laughter has died down, wearing an expression that suggests a mixture of amusement and contempt, but he says nothing before looking back through the rows and nodding in the direction of a second man. “And you?” he asks. “Who are you?”

“William Tell,” comes the reply, and now there’s another snigger, difficult to contain.

“William Tell?” asks the sergeant, raising an eyebrow. “Now there’s a name. Brought your bow and arrow, have you? Where are you from, Tell?”

“Hounslow,” says Tell, and the sergeant nods, satisfied.

“And what about you?” he asks, looking at the next man along.

“Shields, sir. Eddie Shields.”

“All right, then, Shields. And you?”

“John Robinson.”

“Robinson,” acknowledges the sergeant with a brief nod.

“And you?”

“Philip Unsworth.”

“You?”

“George Parks.”

“You?”

“Will Bancroft.”

And so on and so on. A litany of names, some of them registering in my mind but none giving me any cause to look at anyone directly.

“And you?” asks the sergeant, nodding in my direction now.

“Tristan Sadler, sir,” I say.

“How old are you, Sadler?”

“Eighteen, sir,” I reply, repeating my lie.

“Glad to be here, are you?”

I say nothing. I can’t think of the correct answer. Fortunately he doesn’t press me on it because he has already moved on.

“Arthur Wolf, sir,” says my neighbour.

“Wolf?” asks the sergeant, looking at him more closely; it’s obvious that he knows something about this man already.

“That’s right, sir.”

“Well.” He looks him up and down. “I expected you to be shorter.”

“Six foot one, sir.”

“Indeed,” says Sergeant Clayton, his mouth creasing slowly into a thin smile. “So you’re the chap who doesn’t want to be here, yes?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Afraid to fight, are you?”

“No, sir.”

“No, sir, indeed not, sir, what an outrageous charge, sir! I wonder, can you imagine how many brave men over there don’t want to fight either?” He pauses as his smile starts to fade. “But there they are. Fighting day in, day out. Putting their lives on the line.”

I can sense a low murmuring in the ranks and some of the recruits turn their heads to look at Wolf.

“I’m not sending you home, if that’s what you’re expecting,” says the sergeant in a casual tone.

“No, sir,” says Wolf. “No, I didn’t expect you would. Not yet, anyway.”

“And you won’t be put in confinement either. Not till I get orders to that effect. We’ll train you, that’s what we’ll do.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sergeant Clayton stares at Wolf, his jaw becoming a little more clenched. “All right, Wolf,” he says quietly. “We’ll just see how this all turns out, shall we?”

“I expect to hear quite soon, sir,” announces Wolf, no tremor audible in his voice, although standing next to him I can sense a certain tension in his body, an anxiety that he’s trying hard to keep well hidden. “From the tribunal, I mean. I expect they’ll be in touch to let me know their decision, sir.”

“Actually, it is I who shall hear, Wolf,” snaps the sergeant, losing his cool a little at last. “They will direct any communication through me.”

“Perhaps you’d be good enough to let me know as soon as you do, sir,” replies Wolf, and Sergeant Clayton smiles again.

“Perhaps,” he says after a moment. “I’m sure you’re all proud to be here, men,” he continues then, looking around and raising his voice, addressing the pack now. “But you’re probably aware that there are some men of your generation who feel no obligation to defend their country. Objectors, they call themselves. Chaps who examine their conscience and find nothing there to satisfy the call of duty. They look like other men, of course. They have two eyes and two ears, two arms and two legs. No balls, though, that’s a given. But unless you whip their pants off and make the necessary enquiries it can be fairly difficult to distinguish them from real men. But they’re out there. They surround us. And they would bring us down if they could. They give sustenance to the enemy.”

He smiles then, a bitter, angry smile, and the men in the ranks grumble and mutter to themselves, turning to look at Wolf with scorn in their eyes, each one trying harder than the last to impress upon Sergeant Clayton that they subscribe to no such beliefs themselves. Wolf, to his credit, holds his ground and acknowledges none of the hisses and catcalls that are coming his way, taunts that neither the sergeant nor his two corporals do anything to quell.

“Disgrace,” says one voice from somewhere behind me.

“Bloody coward,” says another.

“Feather man.”

I watch to see how he will react to the abuse and it is then that I lay eyes on Will Bancroft for the first time. He’s standing four men down from me and staring at Wolf with an expression of interest upon his face. He doesn’t look as if he entirely approves of what the man is doing but he isn’t joining in the chorus of disapproval. It’s as if he wants to get the mark of a fellow who calls himself a conscientious objector, as if he has heard of such mythical creatures and has always wondered what one might look like in the flesh. I find myself staring directly at him—at Bancroft, I mean, not Wolf—unable to shift my gaze, and he must sense my interest for he turns and catches my eye, looking at me for a moment, then cocking his head a little to the side and smiling. It’s strange: I feel as if I already know him, as if we know each other. Confused, I bite my lip and look away, waiting for as long as I can force myself to before turning to look at him again, but he’s standing straight in line now, focused ahead, and it’s almost as if the moment of connection never happened.

“That’s enough, men,” says Sergeant Clayton, and the cacophony quickly dies down as forty heads turn back towards the front. “Come up here, Wolf,” he adds, and my companion hesitates only briefly before stepping forward. I can sense the anxiety beneath the bravado. “And you, Mr. Rich,” he adds, pointing at his first interviewee. “Our resident pig in shit. The two of you, come up here, if you please.”

The two men advance until they’re standing about six or seven feet away from the sergeant and about the same distance from the front line behind them. There is absolute silence from the rest of us.

“Gentlemen,” says Sergeant Clayton, looking towards the assembled men. “In this army, you will all be trained, as I have been trained, to honour your uniform. To fight, to handle a rifle, to be strong and to go out there and to kill as many of the fucking enemy as you can find.” His voice rises quickly and angrily on that last phrase and I think, There he is, that’s who this man is. “But sometimes,” he continues, “you will find that you have worked your way into a situation where you have no weapons left and neither has your opponent. You might be standing in the centre of no-man’s-land, perhaps, with Fritz standing in front of you, and your rifle might have vanished and your bayonet might have disappeared and you will have nothing left to defend yourself with but your fists. A terrifying prospect, gentlemen, isn’t it? And if such a thing were to happen, Shields,” he says, addressing one of the recruits, “what do you think you would do?”

“Not much choice, sir,” says Shields. “Fight it out.”

“Exactly,” says the sergeant. “Very good, Shields. Fight it out. Now, you two,” and here he nods in the direction of Wolf and Rich. “Imagine that you are in that very situation.”

“Sir?” asks Rich.

“Fight it out, boy,” says the sergeant cheerfully. “We’ll call you the Englishman, since you showed a bit of spark, if nothing else. Wolf, you’re the enemy. Fight it out. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Both Rich and Wolf turn to each other, the latter with an expression of disbelief on his face, but Rich can tell where the land lies and he doesn’t hesitate, clenching his right hand into a fist and punching Wolf directly in the nose, a sharp jab forward and back, like a boxer, so quickly surprising Wolf that he stumbles backwards, tripping over his feet, holding his face in his hands. When he rights himself again he looks in shock at the blood pouring from his nostrils over his fingers. But then Rich is a big lad with strong arms and a neat right-hook.

“You’ve broken my nose,” says Wolf, looking at all of us as if he can’t quite believe what has just happened. “You’ve only gone and broken my fucking nose!”

“So break his in return,” says Sergeant Clayton in a casual tone.

Wolf stares down at his hands; the blood has slowed a little but there is a lot of it already, gathered in thick swirls on his palms. His nose is not broken, not really; Rich has just burst a few blood vessels, that’s all.

“No, sir,” Wolf says.

“Hit him again, Rich,” says Clayton, and Rich jabs once more, this time to the right cheek, and Wolf stumbles back once again but manages to stay erect. He works his jaw, uttering a low cry of pain, and puts a hand to it, holding it there for a moment, massaging the bruise.

“Fight him, Wolf,” says Clayton, very quietly, very slowly, enunciating each syllable clearly, and there’s something in Wolf’s expression that suggests to me that he just might, but he waits for twenty, thirty seconds, breathing heavily, controlling his temper, before shaking his head.

“I won’t fight, sir,” he insists, and now he is punched again, in the stomach, then once more in the solar plexus, and he’s on the ground, cowering a little, no doubt hoping that this beating will soon come to an end. The men watch, uncertain how they should feel about the whole thing. Even Rich takes a step back, aware that it’s hardly a fair fight when the other fellow won’t stand his ground.

“For pity’s sake,” says Sergeant Clayton, shaking his head contemptuously, realizing that he’s not going to get the brawl that he’s been hoping for, the one that could leave Wolf seriously damaged. “All right, Rich, get back in line. And you,” he says, nodding towards the prostrate Wolf, “get up, for God’s sake. Be a man. He barely touched you.”

It takes a minute or two but Wolf eventually rises to his feet unassisted and shuffles his way back into line next to me. He catches my eye; perhaps he sees the expression of concern there, but he looks away. He wants no pity.

“It’s a beautiful day for a new beginning,” announces Sergeant Clayton, stretching his arms out in front of him and cracking his knuckles. “A beautiful day to learn about discipline and to understand that I will tolerate neither humour nor cowardice in this regiment. They are my twin bugbears, gentlemen. Understand that well. You are here to train. And you will be trained.”

And with that he turns around and strolls off in the direction of the barracks, leaving us in the hands of his two apostles, whose names are Wells and Moody, and who step forward now to tick our names off on a list that they hold in their hands, working their way down the line, letting each man leave once he has been accounted for, and leaving Wolf, of course, until the end.

My first real contact with Will Bancroft comes the following morning at five o’clock, when we’re woken by Wells and Moody.

We’re divided into barracks of twenty men, ten beds along one wall pointing into the centre, ten facing on the opposite side, an arrangement that Unsworth remarks is exactly his idea of what a field hospital might look like.

“Let’s hope you don’t find out any time soon,” says Yates.

Having no brothers, I’m unaccustomed to sharing a room with anyone, let alone nineteen other young men who breathe, snore and toss and turn throughout the night, and I’m convinced that it will be all but impossible to sleep. However, to my surprise, my head has barely hit the pillow before a series of confused dreams begins—I must be exhausted from both the train journey and the emotion of being here at last—and then it’s morning again and our two corporals are screaming at us to shift our fucking arses or they’ll shift them for us with the toes of their fucking boots.

I have the last-but-one bunk on the left-hand wall, the side where, should the sun shine in the morning through the small window close to the ceiling, the light will fall directly on my face. Will was among the first inside the barracks and he took the bunk next to mine, the best place to be for he has a wall to one side of him and only one neighbour, me. Across from him and three beds down to the right is Wolf, who has received a great deal of pushing and shoving from the men since the previous night. To my surprise, Rich chose the bed next to his, and I wonder whether this was an act of apology or a threat of some sort.

Will and I acknowledged each other only briefly before falling into our bunks but as we leap from them again, me to my left, him to his right, we collide and fall backwards, nursing bruised heads. We laugh and offer a quick apology before lining up at the end of our beds, where Moody tells us that we’re to make our way quick-smart to the medical tent for an inspection—another inspection, for I had one at Brentford when I enlisted—which will decide whether or not we’re suitable to fight for the King’s empire.

“Which is unlikely,” he adds, “as I’ve never seen such a bunch of fucking degenerate misfits in my entire life. If this war depends on you lot, well, then, we better all spruce up on our Guten Morgens and our Gute Nachts because we’ll need them soon enough.”

Drifting outside towards the back of the group, dressed in nothing but our shorts and vests, our feet bare against the scratchy gravel, Will and I fall into line with each other and he extends a hand to me.

“Will Bancroft,” he says.

“Tristan Sadler.”

“Looks like we’re to be neighbours for the next couple of months. You don’t snore, do you?”

“I don’t know,” I say, having never considered it. “No one’s ever said so. What about you?”

“I’m told that when I lie on my back I could raise the roof, but I seem to have trained myself to turn over on to my side.”

“I’ll push you over if you begin,” I say, smiling at him, and he laughs a little and already I feel a camaraderie between us.

“I shouldn’t mind it,” he says quietly, after a moment.

“How many brothers do you have, then?” I ask, assuming that there must be some if he has been told about his nocturnal habits.

“None,” he says. “Just an older sister. You’re an only child?”

I hesitate, feeling a lump in my throat, unsure whether to answer truthfully or not. “My sister, Laura,” I say, and leave it at that.

“I was always glad of my sister,” he says, smiling. “She’s a few years older than me but we look out for each other, if you know what I mean. She’s made me promise to write to her regularly while I’m over there. I shall keep that promise.”

I nod, examining him closer now. He’s a good-looking fellow with a mess of dark, untidy hair, a pair of bright blue eyes that look poised for adventure, and round cheeks that crease into dimples when he smiles. He’s not muscular but his arms are well toned and fit his vest well. I imagine that he has never had any difficulty finding bed-companions to roll him over on to his side if he grows too noisy.

“What’s the matter, Tristan?” he asks, staring at me. “You’ve grown quite flushed.”

“It’s the early start,” I explain, looking away. “I got out of bed too quickly, that’s all. The blood has rushed to my head.”

He nods and we stride on, bringing up the rear of our troop, who don’t seem quite as enthusiastic or spirited at this early hour as they did when we descended from the train yesterday afternoon. Most of the men are keeping themselves to themselves and marching along quietly, their eyes focused more on the ground beneath their feet than the medical hut up ahead. Wells keeps time for us, calling out a fierce “Hup-two-three-four!” at the top of his voice, and we do our best to keep some sort of order but it’s pretty hopeless really.

“Here,” says Will a few moments later, looking directly at me, his expression growing more perturbed. “What did you make of friend Wolf, then? Pretty brave of him, wouldn’t you say?”

“Pretty stupid,” I reply. “Annoying the sergeant on his first day here. Not a good way to make friends with the men, either, is it?”

“Probably not,” says Will. “Still, you have to admire his balls. Standing up to the old man like that, knowing that he’ll probably get a pasting on account of it. Have you ever known any of those fellows? Those… what do you call them… conscientious objectors?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Why, have you?”

“Only one,” he replies. “The older brother of a chap I went to school with. Larson was his name. Can’t remember his Christian name. Mark or Martin, something like that. Refused to take up arms. Said it was on religious grounds and old Derby and Kitchener needed to read their Bible a little more and their rules of engagement a little less, and it didn’t matter what they did to him, he wouldn’t point a rifle at another of God’s creatures even if they locked him up on account of it.”

I hiss and shake my head in disgust, assuming that he, like me, thinks the man a coward. I don’t object to those who are opposed to the war on principle or wish for its speedy conclusion—that’s natural enough—but I am of the belief that while it’s still going on, it remains the responsibility of all of us to join in and do our bit. I’m young, of course. I’m stupid.

“Well, what happened to him?” I ask. “This Larson fellow. Did they pack him off to Strangeways?”

“No,” he replies, shaking his head. “No, they sent him to the Front to act as a stretcher-bearer. They do that, you know. If you refuse to fight they say the least you can do is be of assistance to those who will. Some are sent to work on the farms—work of national importance, they call it—they’re the lucky ones. Some go to prison, they’re not so lucky. But most of them, well, they end up here anyway.”

“That seems fair,” I say.

“Only until you realize that a stretcher-bearer at the Front has a life expectancy of about ten minutes. They send them over the trenches and out into no-man’s-land to pick up the bodies of the dead and the wounded and that’s the end of them. Snipers pick them off quite easily. It’s a sort of public execution really. Doesn’t seem quite so fair now, does it?” I frown and consider it. I want to reply carefully, for I already know that it’s important to me that Will Bancroft thinks well of me and adopts me as his friend. “Of course I could have tried that myself, the whole religious thing,” he adds, thinking about it. “The pater’s a vicar, you see. Up in Norwich. He wanted me to go into the Church, too. I suppose that would have spared me the draft.”

“And you didn’t fancy it?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Not for me all that malarkey. I don’t mind soldiering. At least, I don’t think I’ll mind it. Ask me again in six months. My grandfather fought in the Transvaal, you know. Was something of a hero out there before he was killed. I like the idea of proving myself as brave as he was. My mother, she’s always kept a— Watch out now, here we are.”

We step inside the medical hut, where Moody splits us into groups. Half a dozen take their seats on a group of bunks behind a row of curtains while the others stand nearby and wait their turn.

Will and I are among the first to be examined; he has chosen the last bed again and I take the one next to his. I wonder why he seems to have such a disdain for being in the centre of the room. For my part, I rather like being in the middle: it makes me feel part of something and somehow less conspicuous. I have an idea in my head that factions will develop soon among our number and those on the outskirts will be among the first to be picked off.

The doctor, a thin, middle-aged man wearing a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles and a white coat that has seen better days, indicates that Will should strip out of his clothes and he does so without embarrassment, pulling his vest over his head and tossing it carelessly on to the bed beside him, then dropping his shorts on the ground as if they matter not a jot. I look away, embarrassed, but it doesn’t do much good, for everywhere I look, the other members of my troop, those sitting on the beds at least, have also stripped down to the altogether, revealing a set of malformed, misshapen and startlingly unattractive bodies. These are young men of no less than eighteen and no more than twenty, and it surprises me that they are for the most part so undernourished and pale. Sparrow chests, thin bellies, loose buttocks are on display wherever I look, except for one or two chaps who are at the other end of the extreme, overweight and corpulent, thick flabs of fat hanging around their chests like breasts. As I undress, too, I quietly thank the construction firm where I worked for the past eighteen months as a labourer for how it fed my muscle, before wondering whether my relative strength and fitness might see me called up for active duty sooner than is healthy.

I turn my attention back to Will, who is standing straight as a rod, both arms extended before him as the doctor peers inside his mouth, then runs a measuring tape across the expanse of his chest. Without thinking how it might look, I take him all in with a glance and am struck once again by how good-looking he is. Out of nowhere I have a sudden flashback to that afternoon at my former school, the day of my expulsion, a memory still buried deep inside me.

I close my eyes for a moment and when I open them I find that I am looking straight into Will’s eyes. He’s turned his head to look at me; it’s another curious moment. I wonder, Why isn’t he looking away? And then, Why aren’t I? And the look lasts for three, four, five seconds before the corners of his mouth turn up into a slight smile and he looks away at last, staring directly ahead once again, exhaling three times, long and deep, the response, I realize, to the doctor holding a stethoscope to his back and asking him to breathe in deeply and out again.

“Thank you,” says the doctor in a disinterested tone as he comes around to the front and tells Will that he can put his clothes back on. “Now,” he says, turning his attention towards me. “Next.”

I endure a similar examination, the same measuring of heart rate and blood pressure, height, weight and pulmonary ability. He grabs my balls and tells me to cough; I do so quickly, willing him to let go, then he orders me to extend both hands in front of my body and hold them there, as still as I can. I do as he asks and he seems pleased by what he observes. “Steady as a rock,” he says, nodding and ticking off a box on his paperwork.

Later, after a terrible breakfast of cold scrambled eggs and fatty bacon, I find myself back in our barracks once again and kill a few minutes by taking in the lie of the land. The screened-off area at the opposite end from Will and me is where Wells and Moody sleep, their bunks offering a small degree of privacy from their useless charges. The latrine is outside, a single hut that contains a few pisspots and something worse, far more foul-smelling, and which we are informed we will be taking it in turns to empty every evening, starting that night, of course, with Wolf.

“You don’t think they might have let us digest our breakfast first?” asks Will as we make our way to the drill ground, walking alongside each other again but this time more to the centre of the pack. “What do you think, Tristan? I feel as if I’m going to throw that whole mess up at any moment. Still, we are at war, I suppose. It’s not a holiday camp.”

Sergeant Clayton is waiting for us, standing erect in a freshly pressed uniform, and he doesn’t move or even appear to breathe as we fall into line before him and his two apostles take their positions on either side.

“Men,” he says finally, “the idea of seeing you engaging in exercise while wearing the colours of the regiment is abhorrent to me. For that reason, until I deem otherwise, you shall train and drill in your civvies.”

A low murmur of disappointment rings out across the ranks; it’s clear that many of the boys want nothing more than to put on the longed-for khaki fatigues here and now, as if the clothes themselves might turn us into soldiers immediately. Those of us who have waited a long time to be accepted into the army have no desire to wear the cheap, dirty clothes we arrived in for a moment longer than is necessary.

“Load of tosh,” whispers Will to me. “The bloody army can’t afford any more uniforms, that’s all it is. It’ll be weeks before we’re kitted out.”

I don’t reply, nervous of getting caught talking, but I believe him. For as long as the war has been going on I’ve been following it in the newspapers and there are constant complaints that the army doesn’t have enough uniforms or rifles for every soldier. The downside is that we will be stuck in our civvies for the foreseeable future; the upside is that we can’t be called to France until we have a suitable kit to fight in. There’s already uproar in Parliament about men sacrificing themselves without even having the proper uniform.

We begin with fairly rudimentary drilling techniques: ten minutes of stretching, followed by running on the spot while we build up a good perspiration. Then, quite suddenly, Sergeant Clayton decides that our file of five by four men is quite disordered and charges between us, pulling one man a step forward, pushing another a fraction back, dragging some poor unsuspecting lad to his right while kicking another further to the left. By the time he has finished—and I’ve received my own share of pushes and shoves during his manoeuvres—the lines don’t look any more ordered or disordered than they did ten minutes earlier, but he seems more satisfied with them and I’m willing to believe that what is not obvious to my untrained eye is a glaring offence to his more experienced one.

Through it all, Sergeant Clayton complains loudly about our inability to hold formation, and his voice becomes so strained and his face so angry that I genuinely believe he might do himself an injury if he does not take care. And yet, to my surprise, when we are finished and dismissed, sent back to the wash house to scrub ourselves clean, he seems as composed and unflappable as he did when we first encountered him.

There’s only one order left for him to give. Wolf, he decrees, has let the side down badly by not lifting his knees high enough as he marched.

“Another hour for Wolf, I think,” he says, turning his head to Moody, who responds with a firm “Yes, sir” before Wells leads us back to where we started, our colleague standing alone in the middle of the parade ground, marching in a perfect formation of one as the rest of us leave him to it, apparently unconcerned for his welfare.

“The old man rather has it in for Wolf, doesn’t he?” Will says as we lie on our bunks later that day, having been granted a thirty-minute reprieve before we are to report back for an evening march over some wild terrain, even the thought of which makes me want to groan out loud.

“It’s to be expected,” I say.

“Yes, of course. All the same, it’s not very sporting, is it?”

I turn to him and smile, surprised. There’s a bit of the toff in the way he speaks and I imagine that his upbringing as the son of a Norfolk vicar was perhaps a little more salubrious than mine. His language is refined and he seems to care about others. His kindness impresses me. It gathers me in.

“Was your father upset when you were drafted?” I ask him.

“Terribly,” he replies. “But he would have been worse if I’d refused to fight. King and country mean an awful lot to him. What about yours?”

I shrug. “He didn’t care very much.”

Will nods and breathes heavily through his nose, sitting up and folding his pillow in two behind his back as he lights a tab and smokes it thoughtfully.

“Here,” he says after a few moments, his voice growing quieter now so that no one else can hear him. “What did you think of that doctor chap earlier, then?”

“Think of him?” I reply, confused by the question. “I didn’t think anything of him. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” he says. “Only I thought you seemed very interested in what he was doing, that’s all. Not planning on running off to join the Medical Corps, are you?”

I feel my face begin to blush again—he had caught me staring at him after all—and turn over on the bed so he won’t notice it. “No, no, Bancroft,” I say. “I’m sticking with the regiment.”

“Glad to hear it, Tristan,” he says, leaning near enough towards me for me to smell a faint scent of perspiration coming my way. It feels as if his entire spirit is about to press down upon me. “Only we’re stuck with a right group of no-hopers here, I think. Corporal Moody might have a point about that. It’s good to have made a friend.” I smile but say nothing; I can feel a sort of sting running through my body at his words, like a knife placing itself in the centre of my chest and pressing forward, hinting at the pain that is sure to follow. I close my eyes and try not to think about it too deeply. “And for God’s sake, Tristan, stop calling me Bancroft, would you?” he adds, collapsing back on his own bunk now, the weight of his body throwing itself down so enthusiastically that it causes the springs to cry out as if they’re in pain. “My name’s Will. I know every bugger here calls each other by their surname but we’re different, I think. Let’s not let them break us, all right?”

Over the weeks that follow we endure such torturous training that I can’t believe this is something I had wanted to be a part of for so long. Our reveille comes most mornings at five o’clock when, with no more than three minutes’ warning by Wells or Moody, we’re expected to wake, jump from our beds, dress, pull our boots on and line up in formation outside the barracks. Most days we stand there in a sort of daze, and as we begin to march out of the camp for the four-hour hike ahead our bodies cry out in pain. On these mornings I imagine that nothing could be worse than basic training; soon I will learn that I was wrong about that, too.

The result of such activity, however, is that our young bodies begin to develop, the muscle forming in hard packs around our calves and chests, a tightness appearing at our abdominal muscles, and we begin to look like soldiers at last. Even those few members of our troop who arrived at Aldershot overweight—Turner, Hobbs, Milton, the practically obese Denchley—begin to shed their excess pounds and take on a more healthy aspect.

We’re not obliged to march in silence and usually keep up low, grumbling conversations. I form good relations with most of the men in our troop but it’s to Will that I cleave most mornings and he appears content to spend his time with me, too. I haven’t experienced much friendship in my life. The only one who ever mattered to me was Peter, but he abandoned me for Sylvia and then, after the incident at school, my subsequent disgrace ensured that I would never lay eyes on him again.

And then, one afternoon on a rare hour’s break in the barracks, Will comes inside to find me alone, my back turned to him, and he leaps upon me in a fit of enthusiasm, screeching and squawking like a child at play. I wrestle him off me and we roll around on the floor, grabbing and jostling, laughing at nothing. When he has me in a clinch, pinned to the floor, his knees on either side of my torso, he looks down at me and smiles, his dark hair falling in his eyes, and I am sure that he looks at my lips for moment, turns his head a little and stares at them, his body arcing forward just a touch, and I raise my knee slightly and risk a smile. We look each other—“Ah, Tristan,” he says mournfully, his voice soft—and then we hear someone at the door and he jumps up, turning away from me, and when he looks back as Robinson enters the barracks I notice that he cannot, just now, catch my eye.

Perhaps it’s not unusual, then, that I find myself seething with jealousy on an early-morning march when, having stopped to retie my bootlaces as I leave camp, I find that I have lost Will in the pack of men and, brushing my way through them quickly, careful not to appear too obvious in my intentions, I discover him walking ahead of the others with none other than Wolf, our conscientious objector, as his boon companion. I stare at them in surprise, for no one ever walks or talks with Wolf, on whose bed small white feathers appear every night from our pillows to such an extent that Moody, who has no liking for Wolf any more than the rest of us do, tells us to pack it in or our pillows will be stripped bare and we’ll develop neck ache from stretching flat out on our mattresses with nothing to cushion our heads. I glance around, wondering whether anyone else has noticed this unusual pairing, but most of my fellow recruits are too focused on putting one foot in front of the other as they march along, heads bowed, eyes half closed, thinking about nothing other than getting back to base as quickly as possible and the dubious pleasures of breakfast.

Determined not to be left out of whatever they’re discussing, I pick up the pace a little until I am alongside them both, falling into line next to Will, looking anxiously across at him as Wolf leans forward and smiles at me. I get the impression that he has been in the middle of a speech about something—it’s never a conversation with Wolf, it’s always a speech—but he grows silent now and Will turns to look at me, offering an expression which suggests that although he’s surprised to see me he’s pleased nonetheless.

Of course, one of the things that I like most about Will is the notion—completely real, at least in my head—that he genuinely enjoys my company. He laughs at my jokes, which come more freely and wittily whenever I am around him than they do in anyone else’s company. He makes me feel as if I am just as good as him, just as clever, just as relaxed with other people, and the truth is that I feel anything but. And there is the sense, the ongoing sense, that he feels something for me.

“Tristan,” he says cheerfully, “I wondered what had happened to you. I thought perhaps you’d gone back to bed. Arthur and I got talking. He was telling me about his plans for the future.”

“Oh yes?” I ask, looking across at Wolf. “And what are they? Planning on making a run for the papacy, are you?”

“Steady on, Tristan,” says Will, a note of criticism in his tone. “You know the pater’s a vicar. Nothing wrong with the Church, you know, if it’s the right thing for you. Couldn’t manage it myself, of course, but still.”

“No, of course not,” I say, having momentarily forgotten the sainted Reverend Bancroft, preaching his sermons back in Norwich. “I only meant that Wolf sees the good in everyone, that’s all.” It’s a pitiful response, designed to imply that I hold Wolf in high esteem, which I don’t, for no other reason than that I suspect that Will does.

“Not the priesthood, no,” says Wolf, apparently enjoying my discomfort. “I thought politics.”

“Politics,” I reply, laughing. “But there’s no chance of that, surely?”

“And why not?” he asks, turning to me and, as ever, giving nothing away in his expression.

“Look, Wolf,” I say. “I don’t know whether you’re right or wrong in your convictions. I won’t presume to judge you on that.”

“Really? Why not? You do most days. I thought you agreed with all those other fellows that I was a feather man.”

“It’s just that even if you are right,” I continue, ignoring this, “you’ll have a difficult job convincing anyone of it after the war. I mean to say, if a fellow were to stand for Parliament in my constituency and told the voters that he objected to the war and refused to fight in it, well, he’d have a tricky job making it off the platform intact, let alone garnering enough votes to win a seat.”

“But Arthur isn’t refusing to fight,” says Will. “He’s here, isn’t he?”

“I’m here training,” insists Wolf. “I’ve told you, Will, that once we’re shipped out, I’ll refuse to fight. I’ve told them that. They know it. But they don’t listen, that’s the problem. The military tribunal was supposed to make a decision on my case weeks ago, and still nothing. It’s extremely frustrating.”

“Look, what exactly are you objecting to?” I ask, not entirely sure that I understand his motivations. “You don’t like war, is that it?”

“Nobody should like war, Sadler,” says Wolf. “And I can’t imagine that anyone really does, except for Sergeant Clayton, perhaps. He seems to relish the experience. No, I simply don’t believe that it is right to take another man’s life in cold blood. I’m not a religious man, not much anyway, but I think it’s up to God to take us or leave us as he pleases. And anyway, what do I have against some German boy who’s been dragged away from Berlin or Frankfurt or Dusseldorf to fight for his country? What does he have against me? Yes, there are issues at stake, political issues, territorial issues, over which this war is being fought, and there are legitimate grounds for complaint, I dare say, but there is also such a thing as diplomacy, there is such a thing as the concept of right-thinking men gathering around a table and sorting their problems out. And I don’t believe those avenues have been exhausted yet. Instead we’re all simply killing each other day after day after day. And I object to that, Sadler, if you really want to know. And I refuse to be a part of it.”

“But, my dear fellow,” says Will, a note of exasperation in his tone, “then it’ll be the stretcher-bearer’s job for you. You can’t want that, surely?”

“Of course not. But if it’s the only alternative.”

“Small use to politics you’ll be if you’re picked off by a sniper in ten minutes flat,” I say, and Will turns on me then, frowning, and I feel ashamed of what I’ve said. We make a point, all of us, of never talking about the consequences of the war, the fact that few of us, if any, are likely to live to see the other side of it, and it’s against our code of conduct for me to make such a vulgar remark. I look away, unable to bear my friend’s disapprobation, my boots stamping loudly on the stone beneath my feet.

“Something the matter, Sadler?” asks Wolf a few minutes later when Will has advanced again, this time laughing with Henley about something.

“No,” I grunt, not even turning to look at him, my eyes focused firmly ahead at yet another prospective friendship that might push my nose even further out of joint. “Any reason why it should be?”

“You seem a little… irritated, that’s all,” says Wolf. “A little preoccupied.”

“You don’t know me,” I say.

“There’s really nothing to worry about,” he replies in such a casual tone that it infuriates me. “We were just talking, that’s all. I’m not going to steal him away from you. You can have him back now if you want.”

I turn and stare at him, unable to find any words to express my indignation, and he bursts out laughing, shaking his head as he marches away.

Later, as punishment for my insensitivity, Will pairs off with Wolf again when we begin to train with the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifles—the Smilers, as we call them—and I find myself stuck with Rich, who has an answer for everything and considers himself the great wit of our group, but is known as something of a dunderhead when it comes to learning anything. He holds a rather curious position among us, for although he drives Wells and Moody to distraction with his idiocy and incurs the wrath of Sergeant Clayton almost every day, there’s something pathetic about him, something likeable, and no one can ever be angry with him for long.

We each receive a rifle, and complaints that we are still wearing our civilian clothes, which are washed every third day to rid them of the caked mud and the stench of sweat that they bear, fall on deaf ears.

“They just want us to kill as many of the enemy as possible,” remarks Rich. “They don’t care what we look like. We could go over in our birthday suits for all Lord Kitchener would care.”

I agree with him but think the whole thing is a bit much and say so. Still, it’s something of a sobering moment for all of us when at last we are handed our Smilers, and an uneasy silence falls among us, terror that we might be called upon to use them, and soon.

“Gentlemen,” says Sergeant Clayton, standing before us and stroking his own rifle in a perfectly obscene fashion, “what you hold before you is the means by which we will win this war. The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifles have a ten-round magazine, a bolt mechanism which is the envy of armies around the world and, for a short-range attack, a seventeen-inch bayonet attached to the end for the moment when you leap forward and want to spear the enemy in the face to let them know who is who and what is what and why the price of cabbage is the price of cabbage. These are not toys, gentlemen, and the chap that I see acting as if they are is the chap who will be sent on a ten-mile march with a dozen of these fine instruments tied to his back. Do I make myself clear?”

We grunt that he does, and our basic training in the use of the rifle begins. It’s not easy to load and unload the mechanism and some are quicker to master it than others. I would say that I am about halfway down the pack on ability here and I glance across at Will, who is conversing with Wolf once again as they fill their magazines, empty them again, attach the bayonet, release it. Catching Wolf’s eye for a moment, I grow convinced that they are discussing me, that Wolf can read me like a book, can see through to my very soul, and is telling Will all my secrets. As if I am shouting this aloud, Will turns at that very moment and looks at me, breaking into an elated smile as he waves his rifle dramatically in the air, and I smile back, waving mine in return, and receive a box on the ears from Moody for my troubles. As I rub them in pain, I see Will laughing in delight, and that alone makes it all worth the trouble.

“I can see that we have a few men who are faster learners than others,” announces Sergeant Clayton when enough time has passed. “Let’s have a little test of skill, shall we? Williams, step up here, please.” Roger Williams, a fairly mild-mannered member of our troop, stands up and makes his way to the front. “And… Yates, I think,” he continues. “You, too. And Wolf.”

All three men gather at the front for what has become Wolf’s daily ritual of humiliation. I can sense the delight of the men as he stands there, and I glance across at Will, who is frowning heavily.

“Now, gentlemen,” says Sergeant Clayton, “the last man to take his rifle apart successfully and put it back together will…” He thinks about it and shrugs. “Well, I’m not sure yet. But I dare say it won’t be much fun.” He smiles a little and some of the sycophants among our company giggle in appreciation of the pathetic joke. “Corporal Wells, count them down if you would.”

Wells gives them a “Three-two-one-begin!” and to my astonishment, as Williams and Yates struggle with their rifles, Wolf takes his apart without any bother at all and reattaches the whole thing in about forty-five seconds flat. There’s a silence among the men, a potent disappointment, and his two opponents stop for a moment and stare at him in disbelief before rushing quickly to finish second.

Sergeant Clayton stares at Wolf in frustration. There’s no question that he has done what has been asked of him and has completed the task in good time; there’s simply no way that he can be punished for it now: it wouldn’t be sporting and every man would know it. Will can’t keep the smile off his face, I notice, and seems only a little shy of breaking into a burst of applause, but thankfully he manages to restrain himself.

“It astonishes me,” says Sergeant Clayton eventually, sounding as if he genuinely means this, “that a man who is afraid to fight should show such skill with a rifle.”

“I’m not afraid to fight,” insists Wolf with an exasperated sigh. “I just don’t care for it very much, that’s all.”

“You’re a coward, sir,” remarks Clayton. “Let us at least call things what they are.”

Wolf shrugs his shoulders, a deliberately provocative gesture, and the sergeant grabs the rifle out of Yates’s hands, checks that it isn’t loaded, and turns to Moody once again. “We’ll have one more go at it, I think,” he announces. “Wolf and I shall take each other on. What do you say, Wolf? Can you stand a challenge? Or does that offend your finely honed moral convictions, too?”

Wolf says nothing, simply nods his head, and a moment later Moody gives another “Three-two-one-begin!” and this time there’s no question about who the victor will be. Sergeant Clayton disassembles and reassembles his rifle with such astonishing speed that it’s really quite something to observe. Many of the men applaud him, although I add only a perfunctory clap to the embarrassing din. He turns and looks at us, delighted by his victory, and grins at Wolf with such a proud expression that it makes me realize what an infant this man really is, for all he has done is best a recruit at something that he has been doing successfully for years. There is no real victory in that. If anything, the challenge itself was shameful.

“Now, Wolf,” he says, “what do you think of that?”

“I think you handle a rifle better than I ever shall,” he replies, finishing the reassembly of his Smiler and taking his place back in line next to Will, who reaches his hand behind him and pats his back in a well-done gesture. Sergeant Clayton, however, cannot seem to decide whether Wolf’s comment was meant as a compliment or a slight, and remains alone on the ground after he dismisses us, scratching his head and no doubt wondering how soon it will be before he can punish Wolf again for some perceived infraction.

The day that our uniforms finally arrive is the same day that Will and I have been rostered for guard duty and we stand together by the gates of the barracks in the cold night air, excited by our brand-new standard issue. Every man in the troop has been given a new pair of boots, two thick grey shirts, collarless, and a pair of khaki trousers, which are pulled high on our waists and kept in place with a neat set of braces. The socks are thick and I believe that for once my feet will be kept warm throughout the night. We’ve each been given a heavy overcoat, too, and it is in this fine new set of clothing that Will and I stand side by side, patiently scouring the expanse in the unlikely event that a battalion of German soldiers might appear over a hill in the middle of Hampshire.

“My neck hurts,” says Will, pulling the shirt away from his skin. “It’s a bloody rough material, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But we’ll get used to it, I dare say.”

“After it’s left a permanent ring around our necks. We’ll have to imagine that we’re aristocrats in the French Revolution and are giving Madame la Guillotine a clue for where to slice our heads off.”

I laugh a little, seeing my breath appear before me. “Still, they’re warmer than what we had before,” I say after a moment. “I was dreading another night on guard duty in my civvies.”

“Me, too. What about poor Wolf, though? Did you ever see anything as disgusting as that in all your life?”

I think about it before replying. Earlier in the day, when Wells and Moody were distributing the uniforms, Wolf found himself with a shirt that was too large and a pair of trousers that were too tight. He looked rather like a clown and the entire troop, save Will, was reduced to tears of laughter when he put them on and displayed himself for our merriment. I only stopped myself from joining in the hysteria through my desire not to have Will think badly of me.

“He brings it on himself,” I say, frustrated by my friend’s constant need to stand up for Wolf. “I mean, really, Will, why do you always take his side?”

“I take his side because he’s in the regiment with us,” he explains, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I mean, what was it that Sergeant Clayton spoke to us about the other day? Espert… what was it? Espert something?”

“Esprit de corps,” I remind him.

“Yes, that. The notion that a regiment is a regiment, a singular object, a unit, not a collection of mismatched men all vying for different levels of attention. Wolf may be unpopular among the men but that’s no reason to treat him as if he were a monster of some sort. I mean he’s here, isn’t he? He hasn’t run off to some hideaway in, I don’t know, the Scottish Highlands or some godforsaken place. He might have run off up there and laid low till the war was over.”

“If he’s unpopular it’s because he makes himself so,” I explain. “You’re not trying to tell me that you agree with the things he says, are you? The things he stands for?”

“The man talks a lot of sense,” replies Will quietly. “Oh, I’m not saying that I think we should all hold our hands up and call ourselves conscientious objectors and head off home to bed. I’m not stupid enough to think that that would be a good idea. The whole country would be in a terrible mess. But damn it all, he has a right to his opinion, doesn’t he? He has a right to be heard. There are some chaps who would have just scarpered and he didn’t and I admire him for that. He has the guts to be here, to train with the rest of us while he waits to hear what the result of his case will be. If they ever get round to telling him. And the result of that is that he’s subject to the bullying and despicable behaviour of a bunch of clots who don’t have the sense to think that actually killing another human being is not something we should simply do on a whim, but is a most serious offence against the natural order of things.”

“I didn’t realize you were such a Utopian, Will,” I say, a tone of mockery in my voice.

“Don’t patronize me, Tristan,” he snaps back. “I just don’t like the way he’s treated, that’s all. And I’ll say it again if I have to. The man talks a lot of sense.”

I say nothing now, simply stare ahead and narrow my eyes, peering forward as if I’ve noticed something moving on the horizon when, of course, we both know full well that I haven’t. I don’t want to pursue this conversation any further, that’s all. I don’t want to argue. The truth is, I actually agree with what Will is saying; I only hate the fact that he sees in Wolf a chap whom he respects and even looks up to, when I am no more to him than a friend to pal around with, someone he can talk to while he’s going to sleep and double up with when it comes to joint activities, for we are each other’s match in terms of speed, strength and skill, the three factors, according to Sergeant Clayton, which separate British soldiers from their German equivalents.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I say after a long silence. “I quite like Wolf, if I’m honest. I just wish he wouldn’t make such a song and dance about things, that’s all.”

“Let’s not talk about it any more,” says Will, blowing into his hands noisily, but I’m pleased to note that he doesn’t say this in an aggressive tone. “I don’t want to argue with you.”

“Well, I don’t want to argue with you, either,” I say. “You know how much your friendship means to me.” He turns to look at me and I can hear him breathe heavily. He bites his lip, looks as if he’s about to say something, then changes his mind and turns away.

“Here, Tristan,” he says after a moment, conspicuously changing the subject, “you’ll never guess what today is.”

I think about it for a moment and know immediately. “Your birthday,” I say.

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess.”

“What did you get me, then?” he asks, his face bursting into that cheeky smile that has the power to dissolve all other thoughts from my mind. I lean forward and punch him on the upper arm.

“That,” I say as he cries out in mock pain and rubs the injured area, and I grin back at him for a moment before looking away.

“Well, happy fucking birthday,” I say, imitating our beloved Corporal Moody.

“Thanks very fucking much,” he replies, laughing.

“How old are you, then?”

“You know full well, Tristan,” he replies. “I’m only a few months older than you, after all. Nineteen today.”

“Nineteen years old and never been kissed,” I say, without really thinking about the words and ignoring the fact that he is not in fact a few months older than me but nearly a year and a half. It was a phrase my mother always used whenever anyone declared themselves to be a particular age. I don’t mean anything by it.

“Steady on, old man,” he says quickly, looking at me with a mixture of a smile and a hint of offence in his tone. “I’ve been kissed all right. Why, haven’t you?”

“Of course,” I say. Sylvia Carter had kissed me, after all. And there had been one other. Both utter disasters.

“Now if I was at home,” says Will then, stringing out the words for a long time, playing a game that we always indulge ourselves with when we’re on guard duty together, “I expect my parents would be throwing some sort of dinner party for me tonight and inviting all the neighbours in to throw presents at me.”

“Sounds very posh,” I say. “Would I be invited?”

“Certainly not. We only allow the upper echelons of society into our house. As you know, my father is a vicar, he has a certain position to uphold. We can’t just let any old so-and-so through the door.”

“Well, then, I should wait outside the house,” I announce. “And stand guard, like we’re doing here. It would remind us of this rotten place. I’d keep everyone out.”

He laughs but says nothing and I wonder whether my suggestion has seemed a little overwrought to him.

“There is one you’d have to let through,” he says after a moment.

“Oh yes? Who’s that?”

“Why, Eleanor, of course.”

“I thought you said your sister’s name was Marian.”

“It is,” he says. “But what’s that got to do with anything?”

“No, I only meant…” I begin, confused. “Well, who’s Eleanor, then, if she’s not your sister? The family Labrador or something?” I ask with a laugh.

“No, Tristan,” he says, sniggering. “Nothing of the sort. Eleanor’s my fiancée. I’ve told you about her, haven’t I?”

I turn and stare at him. I know full well that he has never once told me about her and can see from the expression on his face that he knows the same thing. He seems to be making a point of saying it.

“Your fiancée?” I ask. “You’re to be married?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking,” he says, and I think I can hear a note of embarrassment, even regret, in his voice, but I’m not sure whether it’s really there or whether I’m just imagining it. “I mean, we’ve been sweethearts for ever so long. And we’ve talked about marriage. Her family are well in with mine, you see, and I suppose it’s just always been on the cards. She’s a terrific girl. And not at all conventional, if you know what I mean. I can’t stand conventional girls, Tristan, can you?”

“No,” I say, digging the toe of my boot into the dirt and twisting it around, imagining for a moment that the soil is Eleanor’s head. “No, they make me want to throw up.”

I’m not entirely sure I know what he means when he says that she is not conventional, it seems an unusual turn of phrase, but then I remember him telling me he has been told that he snores something terrible and the phrase attacks me like a viper as I realize exactly what it is that he is saying.

“When this is all over, I’ll introduce you to her,” he says a few moments later. “I’m sure you’d like her.”

“I’m sure I would,” I say, blowing into my own hands now. “I’m sure she’s an absolute fucking delight.”

He hesitates for a moment before turning to me. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” he asks quickly.

“What?”

“What you just said: ‘I’m sure she’s an absolute fucking delight.’ ”

“Don’t mind me,” I say, shaking my head angrily. “I’m just bloody cold, that’s all. Aren’t you freezing, Bancroft? I don’t think these new uniforms are all they’re cracked up to be.”

“I’ve told you not to call me that, haven’t I?” he snaps. “I don’t like it.”

“Sorry. Will,” I say, correcting myself.

An unpleasant tension settles over us then and we don’t speak for five, perhaps ten more minutes. I rack my brain for words but can think of nothing to say. The idea that Will and this miserable Eleanor tramp are somehow involved, have been for who knows how long, tortures me and I want nothing more than to be back in my bunk with my head buried in my pillow, hoping for the quick arrival of sleep. I can’t imagine what Will is thinking but he is so silent now that I imagine he feels awkward, too, and I simultaneously try to analyse the reason why and try not to.

“Don’t you have a sweetheart at home, then?” he asks me finally, the words sounding as if they are meant in a kindly way but coming out anything but.

“You know I don’t,” I say coldly.

“Well, how would I know that? You’ve never said one way or the other.”

“Because I would have told you if I had.”

“I didn’t tell you about Eleanor,” he counters. “Or so you claim.”

“You didn’t.”

“It’s just that I don’t like to think about her up there in Norwich all on her own, pining away for me.” He means it as a joke, something to soften the nasty atmosphere of the moment, but it does no good. It just makes him appear smug and arrogant, which is the opposite of his intention. “You know one or two of the chaps are married,” he says now and I turn to look at him, interested at least in this.

“Really? I hadn’t heard. Which ones?”

“Shields for one. And Attling. Taylor, too.”

“Taylor?” I cry. “Who the hell would marry Taylor? He looks like Unevolved Man.”

“Someone did apparently. It all took place last summer, he told me.”

I shrug and act as if none of this is of any interest to me whatsoever.

“It must be awfully nice to be married,” he says then, his voice becoming dreamlike. “Can you imagine coming home every night to find your slippers toasting beside a warm fire and a hot dinner waiting for you?”

“It’s every man’s dream,” I say acidly.

“And the rest of it,” he adds. “Whenever you want it. You can’t deny that that doesn’t sound like it’s worth all the trouble.”

“The rest of it?” I ask, playing stupid.

“You know what I mean.”

I nod. “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I know what you mean. You mean sex.”

He laughs and nods. “Of course sex,” he replies. “But you say it like it’s a terrible thing. Like you want to spit the word out in horror.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t mean to,” I say haughtily. “It’s just that I think there are some matters that are not fit for conversation, that’s all.”

“In the middle of my father’s sermons, perhaps,” he says. “Or in front of my mother and her chums during their Tuesday-night whist drives. But here? Come on, Tristan. Don’t be such a prude.”

“Don’t call me that,” I say, turning on him. “I won’t be called names.”

“Well, I didn’t mean anything by it,” he says defensively. “What has you all twisted up in knots, anyway?”

“Do you really want to know?” I ask. “Because I’ll tell you if you do.”

“Of course I want to know,” he says. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”

“All right, then,” I say. “Only we’ve been here for almost six weeks, haven’t we?”

“Yes.”

“And I thought we were friends, you and I.”

“But we are friends, Tristan,” he says, laughing nervously, although there is no humour to be found here. “Why ever would you think we’re not?”

“Perhaps because in the course of those six weeks you’ve never once mentioned to me that you had a fiancée waiting for you at home.”

“Well, you’ve never mentioned whether… whether…” He struggles to finish his sentence. “I don’t know. Whether you prefer trains to boats. It’s just never come up, that’s all.”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” I say. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I thought you trusted me.”

“I do trust you. Why, you’re the finest fellow here.”

“Do you think so?”

“Of course I do. A chap needs a friend in a place like this. Not to mention in the place we’re going next. And you’re my friend, Tristan. The best I have. You’re not jealous, are you?” he adds, laughing at the absurdity of it. “You sound just like Eleanor, you know. She’s forever goading me about this other girl, Rebecca, who she swears is sweet on me.”

“Of course I’m not jealous,” I say, spitting a little on the ground in frustration. For Christ’s sake, now there’s a Rebecca to be thrown into the pot. “Why would I be jealous of her, Will? It makes no sense.” I want to say more. I’m desperate to say more. But I know that I can’t. I feel as if we are at a precipice here. And when he turns to look at me, and swallows as our eyes meet, I’m sure that he can feel it, too. I can walk out over the ledge and see whether he’ll reach out to catch me or I can take a step back. “Oh, just forget I said anything,” I say eventually, shaking my head quickly as if to dismiss every unworthy thought from it. “I was just hurt that you didn’t tell me about her, that’s all. I don’t like secrets.”

A slight pause.

“But it wasn’t a secret,” he says quietly.

“Well, whatever it was,” I say. “Let’s forget about it, yes? I’m just tired, that’s all. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

He shrugs and looks away. “We’re both tired,” he says. “I don’t even know why we’re arguing.”

“We’re not arguing,” I insist, staring at him, feeling tears springing up behind my eyes because I would be damned rather than argue with him. “We’re not arguing, Will.”

He steps closer and stares at me, then puts a hand out and touches me gently on the arm, his eyes following it as if it’s acting independently of him and he’s wondering where it might travel next.

“It’s just I’ve always known her,” he says. “I suppose I’ve just always thought we were meant for each other.”

“And are you?” I ask, my heart pounding so heavily in my chest as his hand remains on my arm that I am convinced he will be able to hear it. He looks up at me, his face caught in a mixture of confusion and sadness. He opens his mouth to say something, thinks better of it and, as he does so, our eyes remain locked on each other for three, four, five seconds and I’m sure that one of us will say something or do something, but I’m relying on him for I cannot risk it and now, for the briefest moment, I think he might but he changes his mind just as quickly and turns away, shaking his arm as if he wants to rattle it loose, cursing in exasperation.

“For fuck’s sake, Tristan,” he hisses and walks away from me, disappearing into the darkness, and I can hear his new boots tramping in the soil as he makes his way around the circumference of the barracks, on the lookout for anyone who has no business being there and upon whom he might take out whatever aggression he is feeling.

My nine weeks at Aldershot are almost at an end and I wake in the middle of the night for the first time since my arrival. In another thirty-six hours we are due to pass out, but it’s not anxiety about what lies ahead for our regiment once we are officially soldiers that breaks my sleep. It’s the sound of a muffled commotion coming from across the room. I raise my head off the pillow and the noises quieten for a moment or two before returning even stronger: an unsettling reverberation of dragging and kicking, then a shushing sound, a door opening, then closing, and silence again.

I open my eyes a little wider and look across at Will, asleep in the bed next to mine, one bare arm draped over the side, his lips slightly parted, a great bunch of dark hair falling over his forehead and into his eyes. Muttering something in his sleep, he flicks it away with the fingers of his left hand and rolls over.

And I fall asleep again.

At drill the following morning, Sergeant Clayton orders us into our ranks and we are an immediate eyesore to him, for sticking out in the second row, third spot along, is the empty place of a missing person, a soldier AWOL. It is the first time this has happened since we disembarked from the train in April.

“I feel I need barely ask this question,” Sergeant Clayton says, “because I trust that if any of you men had an answer to it you would have already come to me. But does anyone know where Wolf is?”

There is complete silence from the ranks. No one turns their head as we might have done nine weeks earlier. We simply stand there and stare directly ahead. We have been trained.

“I thought not,” he continues. “Well, I might as well tell you that our self-proclaimed conscientious objector has disappeared. Taken himself off in the night like the coward that he is. We’ll catch up with him sooner or later, I can promise you that. If anything, I take a certain pleasure in the fact that when you pass out on Friday, there will not be a coward among your ranks.”

I’m a little surprised by what he has said but don’t think too much of it; I don’t for a moment think that Wolf has absconded and am sure that he’ll turn up sooner or later with a perfectly ridiculous excuse for his absenteeism. Instead, my mind has turned to questions of what will happen on Saturday morning. Will we be dispatched on the train to Southampton immediately and then find ourselves on an overnight passage to France? Will we be in the middle of things over there by Monday morning? Will I live another week? These are far more pressing concerns to me than whether or not Wolf has made a bid for freedom.

I am in Will’s company, walking back later that afternoon from the mess hut towards the barracks, when I sense a great commotion ahead and notice the men gathered in groups, engaged in excited conversation.

“Don’t tell me,” says Will. “The war’s over and we all get to go home.”

“Who do you think won?” I ask.

“Nobody,” he replies. “We both lost. Look out, here comes Hobbs.”

Hobbs, having noticed us walking along, comes bounding over like a slightly overweight golden retriever. “Where have you chaps been?” he asks breathlessly.

“To Berlin, to see the kaiser and tell him to give it all up as a bad lot,” says Will. “Why, what’s the matter?”

“Haven’t you heard, then?” asks Hobbs. “They found Wolf.”

“Oh,” I reply, a little disappointed. “Is that all?”

“What do you mean, ‘Is that all?’ It’s enough, isn’t it?”

“Where did they find him?” asks Will. “Is he all right?”

“About four miles from here,” replies Hobbs. “In the forest where we went on marches in the early weeks.”

“Up there?” I ask in surprise, for it’s an unpleasant, squalid place, filled with marshes and freezing cold streams, and Sergeant Clayton had abandoned it long ago for drier terrain. “What on earth was he doing up there? That’s no place to hide out.”

“You really are quite dim, aren’t you, Sadler?” said Hobbs, breaking into a broad grin. “He wasn’t hiding out there. He was found there. Wolf’s dead.”

I stare at him in surprise, quite unable to take this in. I swallow, considering the awfulness of the word, and repeat it quietly, but as a question now, not a statement.

“Dead?” I ask. “But how? What happened to him?”

“I haven’t got the full story yet,” he says. “But I’m working on it. Seems he was discovered face down in one of the streams up there, his head split open. Must have been trying to run away, tripped over a rock in the dark and fell face forwards. Either the wound killed him or he drowned. Not that it matters either way; he’s gone now. And good riddance, I say, to our resident feather man.”

My instincts kick in and I grab Will’s arm just as he lashes out to punch Hobbs in the face.

“What’s the matter with you?” asks Hobbs, jumping back in surprise and turning on Will. “Don’t tell me you’ve signed up to his rot, too? Not going to turn yellow on us on the eve of our getting out of this place, I hope?”

Will struggles against my arm for a moment longer, but I’m his match in strength and only when I feel his muscles slacken and his arm begin to relax do I release him. I watch him, though, as he glares at Hobbs, pure anger on his face, before he turns around and marches away, back in the direction from which we have come, throwing his arms up in the air in disgust as he does so before disappearing out of sight.

I decide not to follow him and instead return to my bunk and lie on my back, ignoring the conversations of the men around me who are coming up with ever more fantastic theories on how exactly Wolf has gone to his maker, and think about it myself. Wolf, dead. It seems beyond possible. Why, the man was only a year or two older than I, a healthy specimen with his whole life before him. I spoke to him only yesterday; he said that he’d played a geography quiz with Will while they were on duty together and Will had let himself down badly.

“He’s not the brightest card in the pack, is he?” Wolf asked me at the time, infuriating me into silence. “I don’t know what you see in him, really I don’t.”

Of course I know that there’s a war on and that we will each face death sooner than we should in the natural order of things, but we haven’t even left England yet. We haven’t seen the back of Aldershot, for that matter. Our barrack of twenty is already down to nineteen, the slow inevitable crumbling of our numbers beginning before we pass out. And all these other boys laughing about it, calling him a coward and a feather man, would they find as much to celebrate if I had died? If Rich had? Will? It’s too much to bear.

And still I despise myself for what I’m thinking. For while I no longer have reason to be jealous of his friendship with Will, God forgive me but I feel a certain satisfaction that it cannot be revived.

When Will hasn’t returned by nightfall, I go in search of him, as we are by now less than ninety minutes from curfew. It’s our last night together as recruits, for the following day we will pass out and be told of the army’s plans for us, and in celebration of this we have been given the evening off and are allowed to wander at will, with the condition that we are back in our bunks with lights out by midnight or Wells and Moody will know the reason why.

Some of the men, I know, have gone into the nearby village, where a local pub has been our gathering place on those rare occasions when we have been granted liberty. Some are with the sweethearts in the local villages they have got together with over the weeks here. Others have gone for long, private walks, perhaps to be alone with their thoughts. One poor fool, Yates, has said that he is taking a last march up the hills for old times’ sake and has been ragged mercilessly by the men for his ardour. But Will has simply vanished.

I check the pub first but he isn’t there; the landlord tells me that he was in earlier and sat alone in a corner. One of the locals, an elderly gentleman, offered him a pint of ale in honour of his uniform and Will refused, casting an aspersion on his warrant badge, and a fight nearly ensued. I ask whether he’d been halfcut when he left but am told no, he’d had two pints, no more than that, then stood up and left without another word.

“What does he want to go starting fights in here for?” the landlord asks me. “Save all that for over there, I say.”

I don’t respond, simply turn around and leave. The notion runs through my head that Will may have run off in anger at what has happened to Wolf and means to desert. Bloody fool, I think, for he’ll be court-martialled if—when—he’s caught. But there are three separate paths leading from where I stand and he could have taken any of them; I have no choice but to make my way back to the barracks and hope that he’s been smart enough to return there while I’ve been gone.

As it happens, I don’t need to go that far, for halfway between pub and camp, I discover him by chance in one of the clearings in the woods, a small, secluded area that overlooks a stream. He’s sitting in the moonlight on a grassy bank, staring into the water and tossing a pebble casually from hand to hand.

“Will,” I say, running towards him, relieved that he hasn’t put himself in danger’s way. “There you are at last. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“Have you?” he asks, looking up, and in the moonlight I can see that he has been crying; his cheeks are streaked with dirt where he’s tried to dry the tears away and the skin below his eyes is fleshy and red. “Sorry about that,” he says, turning away from me. “I just needed to be alone for a while, that’s all. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“It’s all right,” I say, sitting down beside him. “I thought you might have done something stupid, that’s all.”

“Like what?”

“Well, you know,” I say with a shrug. “Run off.”

He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t do that, Tristan,” he says. “Not yet, anyway.”

“What do you mean, ‘not yet’?”

“I don’t know.” He lets a deep sigh escape his lips and rubs his eyes once again before turning back to me with a sad smile on his face. “So here we are,” he says. “The end of the road. Was it worth it, do you think?”

“We’ll find out soon enough, I imagine,” I reply, staring into the still water. “When we get to France, I mean.”

“France, yes,” he says thoughtfully. “It’s all in front of us now. I believe Sergeant Clayton would be disappointed if we weren’t all killed in the line of duty.”

“Don’t say that,” I reply with a shudder.

“Why not? It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

“Sergeant Clayton may be many things,” I say, “but he’s not that much of a monster. I’m sure he doesn’t want to see any of us dead.”

“Don’t be so naive,” he snaps. “He wanted Wolf dead, that’s for sure. And he got his way in the end.”

“Wolf killed himself,” I say. “Perhaps not on purpose but through his own foolishness. Only an idiot would go marching up through that forest in the middle of the night.”

“Oh, Tristan,” he says, shaking his head again and smiling at me, the low, quiet way he whispers my name reminding me of the time he had me pinned to the floor after our mock-wrestle in the barracks. His hand reaches out now and he pats me on the knee, once, twice, then lingers a third time before slowly moving it away. “You really are unbelievably innocent at times, aren’t you? It’s one of the reasons I like you so much.”

“Don’t patronize me,” I say, annoyed by his tone. “You don’t know as much as you think.”

“Well, what else am I supposed to think?” he asks. “After all, you believe that Wolf was the author of his own misfortune, don’t you? Only an innocent would think that. Or a bloody fool. Wolf didn’t fall, Tristan. He didn’t kill himself. He was murdered. Killed in cold blood.”

“What?” I ask, almost laughing at the absurdity of his remark. “How can you even think such a thing? For God’s sake, Will, he’d deserted the camp. He’d run—”

“He hadn’t run anywhere,” he says angrily. “He told me, only a few hours earlier, before going to sleep, that he’d been granted his status as a conscientious objector. The tribunal had finally come back with a resolution to his case. He wasn’t even being sent out there as a stretcher-bearer on account of it. Turns out he was quite adept at mathematics and had agreed to help in the War Department and live under house arrest for the rest of the war. He was going home, Tristan. The very next morning. And then, just like that, he disappears. That’s a pretty extraordinary coincidence, don’t you think?”

“Who else knew about this?” I ask.

“Clayton, of course. Wells and Moody, those dark horsemen. And one or two of the other men, I suppose. It was starting to get around late last night. I heard some rumblings about it.”

“I never heard a thing.”

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t the case.”

“So what are you suggesting?” I ask. “That they took him out and murdered him on account of it?”

“Of course, Tristan. Do you mean to tell me that you think they’re not capable of it? What have we been trained for, after all, if not for killing other soldiers? The colour of the uniform doesn’t matter much. They all look the same in the dark, anyway.”

I open my mouth to reply but am unable to find any words. It makes perfect sense. And then I remember waking in the middle of the night and the noises that I heard, the rustling of the bed sheets, the kicking of the blankets, the shushing and the dragging along the floor.

“Jesus,” I say.

“Now you have it,” he says in an exhausted tone, nodding his head. “But what can we do about it, anyway? Nothing. We’ve done what we came here to do. We’ve made ourselves fit and strong. We’ve trained our minds to believe that the man in front of us who doesn’t speak our language is a piece of meat that needs stripping from the bone. We’re perfect warriors now. Ready to kill. Sergeant Clayton’s work is done. We’re just getting a head start on the action, that’s all.”

He speaks with such anger, such a tangled mixture of dread and fear and hostility, that I want nothing more than to reach out and comfort him, and so I do. A moment later, his head is buried in his hands and I realize that he is weeping. I stare, unsure what to do, and he looks up, guarding one side of his face with the flat of his hand so I cannot see how upset he is.

“Don’t,” he says, between gulps. “Go back to the barracks, Tristan. Please.”

“Will,” I say, reaching forward. “It’s all right. I don’t mind.

We all feel it. We’re all lost.”

“But, damn it,” he says, turning his face to mine, swallowing as he takes me in. “Jesus Christ, Tristan, what’s going to happen to us out there? I’m scared shitless, honest I am.”

He reaches over, takes my face in his hands and pulls me to him. In my idle moments, imagining such a scene, I have always assumed that it would be the other way round, that I would reach for him and he would pull away, denouncing me as a degenerate and a false friend. But now I am neither shocked nor surprised by his initiative, nor do I feel any of the great urgency that I thought I would, should this moment ever come to pass. Instead, it feels perfectly natural, everything he does to me, everything that he allows to happen between us. And for the first time since that dreadful afternoon when my father beat me to within an inch of my life, I feel that I have come home.