At the foot of Charlie Venable’s bed a soldier was kneeling on a large sheet of plywood scrubbing a pair of anklets. He looked up and answered Charlie.

‘All right, cocker. Nearly done now.’

Baldy was Charlie Venable’s batman, his body-servant, his slave, his faithful squire. Baldy was a man with two selves. On parade, wearing beret or steel helmet, he was a soldier, tall and sturdy, his face firm and confident, enduring on the march, quick and ruthless with the bayonet. But with his head bared, and the great, brown-mottled bald patch at the back – the consequence of some childhood illness – revealed, he slackened and became Baldy, unwilling to go into a public house, afraid to go to a dance, refusing to talk to women for fear of their laughter. He was a lonely man, and without confidence. One day Charlie Venable, in a generous moment, had stopped by Baldy’s bed and said, ‘Comin’ down the village for a drink, Baldy boy?’ Since then they had ‘gone mates’ together. It was Charlie’s nature to pair off with someone like this, just as in the East End street that was Charlie’s home the prettiest girls always went out with the fattest and ugliest. Baldy, on his side, made no secret of his devotion to Charlie. He made Charlie’s bed for him, blancoed his equipment, ran errands for him to the canteen and fought at his side whenever there was a rough house.

Charlie, quick and insolent and proud to the point of arrogance, accepted this homage as his due. Whenever he clashed with an officer or insulted a sergeant Baldy was at his shoulder, gulping and apprehensive but loyally heaping insult on his master’s insult; so that each time Charlie was led away to the guard-room his baldheaded Sancho Panza went with him.

‘Will you do mine, while you’re about it?’ asked one of the card players.

‘Tanner,’ said Baldy. ‘Tanner a pair.’

He took the sixpence and the anklets and set to work again. For half a crown he would blanco the whole of a man’s equipment; for any single item he charged sixpence. He had a thriving business.

Most of the platoon were asleep. At the side of the bed nearest to the door Lance-Corporal Feather knelt briefly and prayed. The men who were still awake watched him curiously but without derision.

As he slid into his blankets Charlie Venable asked him: ‘Prayin’ for us, Corp?’

Lance-Corporal Feather smiled. ‘For all of us, Charlie.’

‘Reckon it does any good?’

‘Well, it makes you feel better, Charlie.’