‘Tell ’im, Lanky.’ The other men were urging him on now, but he had no more to say. ‘Gie us a tab, Lanky.’ He passed his cigarettes round the carriage.

‘I don’t know,’ it was a corporal speaking now, ‘I reckon I’m sorry to leave the Howards. A good regiment in a good division. An’ all our mates there. What they do it for, anyway?’

A half a dozen men started to answer at once. ‘Ah, button it up,’ said the sergeant, ‘all the lot of you. They told us what we’d come back to Blighty for, didn’t they?’

‘The Second Front,’ said the corporal.

‘On the nail.’ The sergeant was speaking again; the others were all quiet and listening. ‘Well, men like us are useful. We’ve been shot up a bit. We’re not apprentices any more. We’re tradesmen. We know all about it. So they’re sending us to stiffen up some lousy battalion that’s never done it before.’

‘It’s what they call a cay-der,’ said the corporal.

‘Cah-der,’ called a private from the far corner of the carriage.

‘Cah-dree.’ The sergeant gave the final ruling. ‘C-a-d-r-e – cah-dre. That’s what we are, a cah-dre. An’ I can just imagine what it’ll be like there. The colonel’ll be about seventy, the sergeants’ll all be Chelsea Pensioners and all the other ranks’ll have fallen arches or double ruptures. I know these home service battalions.’ He turned back to the window. ‘Give us a bloody tune,’ he said disgustedly.

The mouthorganist took his instrument from his pocket, tapped it elaborately on the palm of his right hand and inflated his cheeks.

There was the noise of the train, and of many men laughing; the noise, mournful and wavering, of a mouthorgan; and the noise of the rain on the carriage windows.

In the next carriage they were talking about leave.

‘Reckon we’ll get leave again, Corporal Shuttleworth?’ asked someone.

Corporal Shuttleworth was taller than the others. He always seemed to be stooping, even when he was sitting down; and there was always something ineffectual, a little bemused, in his face.

‘You’ve had three weeks disembark,’ he answered. ‘What more d’you want?’

‘Well, they’ll be running a normal leave rota in this new lot we’re going to. Surely we’ll be put on that.’

‘I reckon we will,’ replied the corporal, without enthusiasm.

‘He’s a glutton for punishment, isn’t he, Corp?’ said another man.

Another voice. ‘So’s his missus.’ Laughter.

The corporal opened the window, spat and closed the window again. ‘He’s welcome,’ he said. ‘He can have mine, too.’

Another corporal, sitting opposite him, leaned forward and touched him on the knee. ‘What’s up, Charlie? Trouble?’

Shuttleworth pressed his hand against the windowpane, then laid the cold palm against his face.

‘The Hero’s Homecoming,’ he said, ‘or Back from the Desert.’