In Memoriam

by Alice Winn

“There’s always an empire, Kapitän. Why not a German one? With our art, our medicine, our philosophers? We have a great deal to offer.” “I think we’re all so busy offering that we forget how much we take.”

“I doubt the barbarians minded the Romans, once they had their roads and baths.” “On the contrary,” said Gaunt. “I think they minded extremely.” “Oh, it’s no use talking to you. You don’t understand history.”

It’s astonishing how well an English boarding school prepares one for prison. There’s a fellow in here who says he wishes his parents had sent him here instead of Preshute. Calls Preshute a ‘House of Tortures.’ ”

His powerlessness over the nightmares terrified him almost as much as the nightmares themselves.

Gaunt had forgotten Devi’s propensity to like everyone. As a defence mechanism, it was startlingly effective. At Grinstead, Devi smiled at his bullies and laughed at their unkind jokes, until they started to feel that he was really the audience they sought, and bullied someone else for his amusement.

He had begun to acquire that ineffable coat of studied ease that was slowly painted over all the boarding-school boys between the ages of eight and eighteen.

It was, in fact, not solitary at all, and the men in the dank cells passed their time in much the same way as the men who roamed free—rereading Adam Bede. (At one point, a shipment of books from the Red Cross arrived, and the men fell upon it in frenzied excitement when they saw that it contained a different George Eliot novel: Felix Holt. They were devastated to discover that there had been a clerical error. The two dozen books were, in fact, copies of Adam Bede with Felix Holt covers.)

He felt oddly clear-headed, despite the pain in his chest. It was much easier to be brave for your friends than for yourself.

It should have been impossible. Perhaps it would have been, if Gaunt had allowed himself to believe for a second that it was.

“Henry asked me to look out for you,” said Hayes. Ellwood settled himself under his covers. He tried to imagine the conversation, but couldn’t. Somehow, he could never imagine Gaunt talking about him. It had always felt as if Gaunt must forget about him when he wasn’t there.

“It seems unfair, doesn’t it? Our parents got to live their whole lives without anything like this.” “Busily building up the world that led to this.” “I suppose they thought they had their own problems,” said Ellwood. “No one ever thinks their life is easy.”

Ellwood remembered what Gaunt had said, about gunfire: how it made you feel as if you were at the centre of the universe. It was more than that, at the Somme. It was like watching the universe split in half.

It was hard to look at him and remember all the years they had spent together, not knowing what violence awaited them.

“It was character-building,” said Ellwood, who would never forget the things Burgoyne used to say about him at night, when he was thirteen.

“You beat me,” said Lantham. He looked from Ellwood to Roseveare. “Both of you. You tied me to a chair and beat me all night.” Hayes swore under his breath, but Roseveare laughed fondly. “I forgot about that. God, weren’t we rotten! I’m awfully sorry, Lantham. I didn’t know you’d take it so personally.” “We did it to everybody,” said Ellwood. “And it was done to us. It was character-building.” Lantham shook his head. “It didn’t build my character any more than this does. It tore me apart.”

Ellwood produced a football and showed it to his men. “Now, we’re to walk slowly forward. Whenever you spot the ball, kick it on. Whoever kicks it into the Boches wins. Got it?” A few of them smiled weakly. “What if they kick it into our trench?” asked Lonsdale. “Then they’ve won the War, I’m afraid. I don’t make the rules.” Ellwood grinned. Pretending made him feel braver.

Hayes grabbed Ellwood and enveloped him in a tight hug. Ellwood hugged him back, just as hard. It made him feel, for a minute, as if he had bones.

He was approaching the finish line of a race that had begun nine months ago, at Loos. Ellwood was at the other end, and Gaunt would not stop until he reached him.

Over and over he loaded the ammunition and cut down the advancing men who drove on, unwavering, relentless as the sea. They did not even run, but plodded to their deaths, like— There was no comparison. No animal on earth would have suffered it. No creature would walk so knowingly, so hopelessly, into the jaws of death. Weigand’s lips moved in prayer. Tears stained his face.

Ernst couldn’t even think of them as human. Humans did not die like that, in droves. They began to seem like ants to him, and he was a child crushing them with his fingers. It was the only way he could continue to load the ammunition, now that he could see their glazed, terrified faces.

“What will we do when the War ends? Never sleep again?” Gaunt laughed. “As if the War will end!” “Has anyone ever told you that your pessimism is a form of selfishness?” Gaunt blinked. “No.”

This is only one example of Percival’s almost aggressive modesty. He seemed incapable of understanding the extent of his worth. I hoped adulthood would teach him how much we loved him. He was shot in the head while gallantly leading his platoon in an attack, and lived only long enough to ask that others should be attended to before himself.

Ellwood had been awarded a Military Cross. The ribbon was sewn onto his pyjamas. It seemed ironic that the part of him that would once have been overjoyed at the sight of the medal was precisely what had been blighted in obtaining it.

He didn’t care about the poems, one way or another. He merely cut away the blackened, gangrenous bits of his soul and sold them.

“I…” he started, but he didn’t know how to begin. Maud waited. “I should never have told you, if you hadn’t asked,” he said, finally. “So. Thank you. For asking.”

Our bodies were used to stop bullets, thought Ellwood. He could think of nothing else.

She wanted him to pretend nothing had changed; wanted nothing more than for her comfortable Edwardian life to continue indefinitely, although it was the cracks in that life that had yawned open and swallowed him up.

He was bad-tempered and unresponsive, but then, so was Ellwood.

Gaunt paused in the doorway, a peculiar, fond smile on his lips. The same expression he used to get in school when Ellwood recited poetry to people who wished he wouldn’t; the same expression he had had on Divisional Rest in Loos, when Ellwood touched him more than was appropriate. It hadn’t ever changed. Gaunt had always looked at him like that, as if Ellwood’s flaws were qualities.

“You shouldn’t pick at it,” said Gaunt. He ran one finger delicately over the raw skin. Ellwood tried to laugh. “Why? Because it might scar?”

“I’ve decided it doesn’t matter whether you love me back,” said Gaunt. Some long-dead poet must have written the lines with which to answer, but Ellwood no longer knew them.

As he lay in bed, Ellwood rigid and pretending to sleep beside him, Gaunt reflected that it did not feel like loving Ellwood. It felt like loving a brittle impostor, one who had stolen Ellwood and would not return him. And yet, Gaunt was powerless: he loved every part of Ellwood, changed or not. If there was a lonelier feeling, Gaunt could not imagine it.

“War is…a violent teacher?” he said, eventually. Gaunt smiled at him. “That’s right.” The countryside streamed greenly past the windows. “It didn’t teach me anything,” said Ellwood. Gaunt looked thoughtful, but was silent.

At Reading, two women got on the train and sat opposite them. One stared for a long time, misty-eyed, then whispered in carrying tones to her companion: “They make such good friends at the front…!”

They had long ago learnt, in much more trying circumstances, how much easier it was to do one’s duty after tea than before.

They were a small-minded people, the English, and their greatest art form, writing, was small-minded also, it was provincial; it did not translate like music and painting, it was only for the English-speakers.

That Charlie and Bertie Pritchard, and Martin and Clarence Roseveare, and the Straker brothers, and West, and Finch, and Lantham, and Gosset, should all have to die so that England could continue in its smug small-mindedness seemed worse than a tragedy, for it was not beautiful. No, it was only stupid, and Ellwood hated the muddy fields and the dreary sheep and the clumsy, prehistoric rock formations that they had all been asked to die for.

“What’s interesting to note is that Pericles does not argue in favour of empire from a moral perspective, merely from a practical one. That is to say, that once an empire has been created—it’s sort of a Faustian deal—it quickly accrues so many embittered enemies that to dismantle it becomes a frightening prospect.”

Gaunt wished he could have spent a night with Ellwood’s bare face, so that he might have had a chance to grow used to it. He wanted to stare at it until it made sense, until his brain stopped trying to fill it in and fix it. He didn’t know how to look at Ellwood without hurting him.

Gaunt was tempted to think, Even with his injury, he is handsome, but that wasn’t quite right. Ellwood wasn’t handsome despite his disfigurement. The loss of his eye had been what guaranteed his life, and so, to Gaunt, it was beautiful. He was grateful to that wound. He would not change a single, scarred inch of it.

“I used to feel rapture when I stood on the roof at Thornycroft and looked at the countryside,” said Ellwood. “I went up this morning and tried to feel it.” Gaunt wished he could tell him he loved him, but they were in public, and it was illegal. “I didn’t feel a thing,” said Ellwood. His gaze was hard and furious. “Brazil. Promise me.” Gaunt wondered whether Ellwood would ever feel anything but anger again. “Yes,” he said. “I promise.”

“He’s too…he’s too…” Hayes moved his hands, as if looking for the right word. Finally he sighed. “Rich.” “I’m rich,” said Gaunt, wondering if this was code for something. Gaunt had come to realise that it often was, when people spoke of Ellwood. It wasn’t his money that troubled people, but his heritage, his dark good looks, his confidence. Hayes made a dismissive hand gesture. “He looks down on me,” he said. “I don’t think he does,” said Gaunt. Hayes scrunched up his face, and Gaunt decided to move on.

Gaunt crashed his train into her dollhouse drawing room. They were both occupied for a few minutes, making the dolls run away in terror amid a cacophony of crashing noises. Laughing, Gaunt set the train down. Maud rearranged the doll furniture that he had scattered across the floor.

“I think,” said Gaunt, watching her set the dollhouse to rights, “that if he gave me the smallest hope—I should wait forever.”

Dear Henry, I’m not playing, either. Yours, always, Sidney

More than two years apart had made Ellwood question whether Gaunt still meant what he had said that day in St. Pancras Station. Yet here they were, sleeping together in the same bed every night. They did not make eye contact during sex, or talk about important things.

Ellwood had been unkind to his mother when he last saw her. Cold and standoffish. He had counted on having decades in which to learn how to love her again.

“Call me Sidney,” said Ellwood. “Sidney,” said Gaunt, so quickly, as if he had been waiting years to say it. His hands went to Ellwood’s face, the fingers creeping under the edge of Ellwood’s mask. He pressed their foreheads together. “This means I’m keeping you,” he added, his voice fierce with warning. As if it wasn’t exactly what Ellwood wanted to hear.

“You can have me,” he told Gaunt, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. He could only think of the awful remoteness with which he had said goodbye to his mother. Gaunt was saying something; he held Ellwood’s head close and said the same word over and over, and it took Ellwood quite a while to realise it was just his name.

“Well, at least you had your chance to play at being Thucydides,” said Ellwood. “Tell me, was that the highlight of your existence? Or was it lounging around a prison camp, in bed with Gideon Devi?” “You’re drunk, Elly.” “Call me Sidney.” “Sidney.” Their fights never lasted long. Ellwood always apologised, and Gaunt always forgave him.