THE LAST DAY
The house is on top of a hill and from his
bedroom you can see for miles, as far as the coast on a good day. This morning
is clear, agonisingly clear, and he convinces himself that far away on the
blurred horizon he can see the newborn light sparkling on the sea.
He was up with the sunrise – a new habit,
that, an Army habit. The carriage clock on the mantelpiece says six o’clock,
and he is shaved and dressed already, saying his prayers and thinking about
Folkestone, and the jam-packed troopship, and the train from Boulogne to the
front. They are always there now, somewhere in his mind, those great brute
facts, the inescapable conclusion of the last eight months. Every interlude
when he has not been thinking of them has been merely a temporary escape.
Dad’s familiar tread on the landing. A gentle
knock. “You awake, David?” he asks. “I made you some tea.” The old comforting
ritual. An early start, whatever the occasion, means an early cup of tea, a
bacon sandwich and a boiled egg. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever
shall be, world without end.
“Thanks dad,” he calls, picking a stray hair
from the shoulder of his jacket. “I’ll be down in a moment.”
They were up before him, of course. In the
kitchen, Dad is bustling around, finding things to do and trying not to meet
his eye. Mum, by contrast, can’t take her eyes off him. She looks drawn and
pale. She hasn’t slept, he suspects.
“Sounds like you’ll have a good
crossing, anyway,” says Dad. “I saw Bob Hartley last night, after you’d gone to
bed. He’d been out sea-fishing. Set fair in the Channel for a few days, he
reckons.”
There does not seem to be anything
to say to that, so he smiles.
“It’s a shame you’re not wearing
your uniform. You do look smart in it,” Mum manages to say. It is true but not
the whole truth. She finds the uniform hateful, because they are taking her son
away. “It’s hard to remember when you were a tiny baby wriggling on my knee.”
It’s not hard to remember at all, she has thought of little else for days. They
have filled her mind, those memories, the miracle boy born when they were both
getting too old, long after they had given up hope. She has tried to make each
recollection permanent, to engrave it on her heart.
*
