it was Tom who’d won the soldiering race. The fact shouldn’t have rankled, but it did, if only a little. Alan smiled carefully, anxious not to let any of this show.
But the two men were twins and they didn’t only rely on words.
Tom asked gently, ‘Does it bother you, brother?’
Alan shook his head. ‘You’re a good officer and a courageous one. It’s right these things are recognised.’
Tom pursed his lips. ‘Really? I don’t know if I am a courageous man, let alone a good one. I fell into a bloody fury that night. I pitched bombs at Fritz because Fritz was close enough to get hurt. If it had been our own High Command beyond the wire, Haig and French and all those other bastards, then I’d have killed the lot of them instead.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘You wouldn’t, you mean. If they wanted to reward decent courageous men with these baubles, they ought to be picking chaps like you.’
Alan smiled to acknowledge the compliment, but his eyes remained serious. ‘You’re a better man than you give yourself credit for. But it wouldn’t hurt you to fool around less. No one would like you the less for it.’
It was Tom’s turn to smile. He looked at his watch. ‘Talking of fooling,’ he said, ‘I’ve a little fool who’s waiting for me right now. But I’ll be back for supper, if you’d care to share it.’
‘A fool? You mean a – a girl? Good God, you don’t have a girl here, do you?’ Alan was shocked, then embarrassed, then annoyed with himself for being either.
‘A girl? Maybe.’ Tom laughed. His open smile and shiny unmilitary hair seemed like reminders of an already lost age, those untroubled years before the war.
‘Good God, you do!’
‘Yes, and do you know, you ought to find someone too. I can tell you, if there’s one consolation for a horrible spell in the trenches, then it’s an afternoon in bed with a little French fool.’
Alan blushed slightly. He was embarrassed by this kind of conversation, and he disliked it when he heard officers talking about prostitutes as though they were horses. ‘I’m not sure I could. Not with a …’ Alan let himself tail off rather than speak the word ‘prostitute’. ‘I don’t mean to be preachy.’
‘It’s true, though, all the same. There’s nothing to beat the comfort of a pretty French fool. I’m being perfectly serious. If you ever wanted me to help, I’d be happy to.’
‘I’m amazed you’re able to –’ Alan blushed. ‘Sometimes I come back from our time in the front and I find myself hardly able to eat, let alone … let alone, do that.’
‘I don’t always. But you can lie in a girl’s bed without making love and there’s still a damned lot of comfort in it … In bed, you don’t have to act the British officer. The girls here do understand, you know. It’s not as though they’re ignorant of what war does to a man.’
Still blushing deeply, Alan asked, ‘Look, do you … ? God, I don’t mean this badly, it’s just I really don’t know. When you … do you … ?’
‘I don’t pay, no. My pretty little fool doesn’t charge me, but I imagine she sees other men and if she does, she probably charges them. It’s only sex, you know. She doesn’t love me and I don’t love her. When the war ends, I expect she’ll marry a French farmer and be faithful to him all her days … I think she wants to help the war effort. This is her way and it’s a damned good one, if you ask me.’
Alan’s blush had settled down and made itself at home. Rose pink had made way for tomato, which had given up and handed over to beetroot. ‘I see. Thanks. I didn’t mean to … I wasn’t trying to …’
‘You weren’t trying to admonish me, I know.’ Tom got up, smiling. He squeezed the other man’s shoulder with understanding. ‘I’ll see you later. For supper.’
Alan nodded stupidly. ‘Of course. Later. For supper.’
Tom pulled a clean shirt over his damaged arm, ran his hands briefly through his curly hair, twinkled a smile – and left.
The trouble with fate is that it leaves no tracks. Fate never looks like fate. It doesn’t come crashing into a person’s life with heavy bootprints and a smell of burning.
Instead, fate lives in the little things. A child’s fondness for blackberry pudding. A father’s slight unfairness between two boys. The chance results of battle. A tiny scrap of purple and white medal ribbon.
And that’s a pity. Because danger noticed is danger avoided. Because what is invisible can nevertheless be lethal. Because even the smallest things can grow up and destroy a life.
On 25 September 1915, the British mounted an assault at Loos. Six divisions attacked and were halted by devastating machine-gun fire. The following morning, in an effort to maintain momentum, two further divisions – fifteen thousand men, all of them volunteers – were sent forward in broad daylight, in parade-ground formation ten columns strong. The German gunners were simply astounded. Never had an easier target presented itself. They blazed away until their gun barrels were burning hot and swimming in oil. The men fell in their hundreds, but they continued to advance in good order, exactly as though all this were part of a plan, unknown to the enemy, but certain of success. And then the survivors reached the German wire. It was uncut, unscathed, impenetrable. Then and only then did they retreat.
Tom got his medal: the Military Cross, a little strip of white and purple stitched to his uniform tunic. He was proud of it, of course, but it sank quickly into the background. It no longer seemed important. But it was.
Alan and Tom heard about the massacre at Loos from Guy, on one of his rare visits to the reserve lines. It was a chilly day at the start of October. Alan and Tom had been lying on the roof of a dugout, smoking and watching an artillery team sweat as they dug in one of their thumping 60-pounders.
‘Good morning, ladies,’ said Guy, sitting down beside them without invitation. ‘Good to see our front-line troops straining every sinew.’
‘Go to hell, Guy,’ said Tom, neither looking up nor changing posture.
They chatted briefly about trivia, but it wasn’t long before Guy began venting his frustrations with the assault at Loos and the conduct of the war more generally. ‘Sir John French was a bloody fool – a decent chap but totally useless. Haig’s not like that. On tactics, gunnery, supply lines, all that kind of muck, he’s absolutely first rate, the very pattern of a modern general. But – my God! – he’s obsessed with attack. He literally doesn’t care about casualties. I’ve seen him in the bloody map room, hearing about the losses at Loos, the slaughter of the 21st and 24th, and his only reaction was to make changes to the ammunition supply arrangements. Not a hint of anything else. Nothing.’
‘Poor
