The men settled down on their palliasses, some to sleep, some to talk softly. The corporal leaned forward, relaxed, towards the heat of the stove. Around him there was a splash, flickering and undefined, of dim light, from the hurricane lamp and the glowing stove. The rest of the hut was in darkness.

There still hung faintly in the air the acrid smell of high explosive.

‘Who’s the last one?’ asked Colonel Pothecary.

‘Scannock, sir,’ said the R.S.M. stiffly, ‘he’s up again – drunk, fighting, fouling the billet, insubordination. And Major Maddison’s waiting to see you after that.’

‘Scannock,’ said the colonel wrathfully. ‘I’m sick of seeing that man. Last time he was in here I talked to him like a Dutch uncle. It doesn’t seem to have done him any good.’

‘It’s only the drink he lives for, sir,’ said the R.S.M. ‘He’s Irish from Liverpool – as low as they come – live like a pig, work like a horse, drink like a fish.’

‘Bring him in,’ said the colonel.

Low as they come, thought the colonel, as the prisoner and his escort marched in, their boots crashing in quick time on the concrete floor. He looked up at the man in front of him. Scannock the Scouse, the terror of the battalion; Scannock who, drunk, would knock a man down and trample his face with steel-shod boots; Scannock, a queer, sagging shape of a man, a paradox of muscle and fat; Scannock, who could stand to attention with his back rigid but his shoulders hunched hopelessly forward; Scannock, an uncomprehending face of seamed brown leather, a wide low forehead overhung with untamed black hair, a flat nose with broad nostrils that would twitch in anger, a glimpse and a stench of yellow teeth between slack and drunken lips.

The sergeant-major was intoning the charges, the row of men in front of the colonel’s table stood rigidly, each swaying ever so slightly on boots that might have been cemented into the floor.

The colonel scratched with the third finger of his right hand at the green baize tablecloth, counted the holes and the inkstains, plucked at a loose end of green cotton. Like another race of beings, he thought, remembering the grey Liverpool streets, the shrieking tenements, the smell of cabbage-water and dust and babies. He thought of his own home, the rooms sweet and full of sunlight, and the homes of his workpeople. He knew them well, for he lived on good terms with his people; their world was the same as his and the little front parlours in the little Lancashire streets were all neat and clean, with shining brass and gleaming blackleaded grates, the curtains fresh, the windows fanatically cleaned, the mirrors, the crockery, the souvenirs from Blackpool all spotless. He knew these people and liked them, but…