Love and the Loveless Read Free Page A

the Distinguished Conduct Medal.
    Hiding the bottle, Pinnegar said, “How the hell do they expect us to get four camp beds down in this small space? What do they think we are, bloody hens? No wonder the walls have caved in next door!”
    “’Tis better than nowt,” said the Northumbrian. He had dark small eyes in a face pitted with blue specks, which gave him a badly-shaven appearance. “Th’ lads would be glad of this on the Somme. D’you mind if we come in?” Phillip noticed that the back of his hands were dark-speckled, too.
    “Please yourself,” said Pinnegar.
    “I’ve bagged next to the wall,” said Phillip. “Under the window. I can’t sleep with a window closed.”
    “How I agree!” said the fourth man, with a glance at Phillip’s wound stripes. He, like the Northumbrian, looked newly commissioned.
    Phillip offered his cigarette case.
    “I don’t mind if I do,” said the Northumbrian.
    “Awful good of you,” said the other. “By the way, my name is Montfort.”
    Four cigarettes having been lighted, and some foxtrots listened to, Pinnegar suggested that they all go down to take a look at the town. “There might be a revue at the theatre!”
    The main street was filled with officers, all apparently new arrivals like themselves. They walked down one pavement, passing by shops with the least interest, and came to a large forbidding iron-works, sombre with its own smoke-stains; and returning on the opposite pavement for variety, went down to look at the outside of the theatre. The Man Who Stayed at Home. A play. “I’ve seen it. Thank God I was tight at the time. Utter tripe!” said Pinnegar. So they visited a dull façade of ironwork, wood, and corrugated posters advertising Theda Bara and Mary Pickford, which was the local Picture Palace.
    “I’ve seen them both,” said Pinnegar. “My God, what a hell of a place to spend Saturday afternoon.”
    They stood on the pavement, each of them severed from the life he had known, spiritually and physically—four acquaintances casually come together, to adhere in the moment through loneliness : four among thousands of immature men with lost or withered roots recently sent into the district, yet scarcely knowing what was lacked. Where should they go? Tea at the Angel? Or one of the tea-shops? Which would be the most likely place for girls? They looked into two tea-shops. No girls there, only soldiers; so they went into the Angel.
    “As I thought, a place for brass-hats,” remarked Pinnegar, at the door of a long room. “And they’ve taken all the fire.”
    “They’ll hear you,” whispered Phillip.
    “Who cares? Our money’s as good as theirs, isn’t it?”
    Armchairs with red-tabbed figures in long shining brown boots and spurs were spoked round an open hearth. “Cavalry!” Pinnegar eyed the backs of the recumbent figures with hostility, as he sat on a hard-backed chair.
    “Do you like poetry as well as music?” said Phillip, not at ease with Pinnegar’s remarks.
    “Some things, yes. Why?”
    Phillip took from his pocket book a poem originally copied from The Times, which he knew by heart. It was now much frayed, having been carried in his pocket diary for nearly a year.
    “Let’s have a look,” said Pinnegar. “I’ll tell you if it’s any good.”
    He read a few lines, and snorted. Almost angrily he read on, then throwing down the paper, exclaimed, “Absolute tripe,in my opinion! The person who wrote that had never been anywhere near the front!”
    “As a matter of fact,” said Phillip, hiding his disappointment, “the man who wrote this died of wounds soon after sending the poem home to his father.”
    “Tripe all the same,” repeated Pinnegar. “All that glory of war stuff gets my goat.”
    “Give us a look.” Phillip passed the clipping to the Northumbrian , saying, “It’s not glory of war.”
    Pinnegar was persistent. “I still say that no-one before a battle thinks like that. I’ve been in two, and I damned