He turned into their billets, and found them deserted except for Martlow, who told him that Shem and Corporal Hamley had gone off together for half an hour, leaving him behind to mount guard over the provisions. Bourne sprawled beside him in the dry dusty litter; it was hay, not straw, the fine stems of it just strong enough to prickle where it touched the skin. Anyway, they would have some wine, some variation of food, and some quiet talk, before turning over to sleep. They were the masters of the moment at least, fate could not rob them of what they actually had now. Food and sleep they needed, in the interval remaining to them, as much of both as they could get. Once they went over the top, with the best of luck the world would be shattered for them, and what was left of it they would have to piece together again, into some crazy makeshift that might last their time. He could not believe that after the show was over, he would be sent back to Blighty, drilled as though he were a recruit again, and, after he had been smartened up, dressed in a Bedford cord suit and Sam Browne and sent back again, to take up an entirely different position in regard to the men. He would have to forget a lot; and, even while he was thinking how impossible it would be to forget, Martlow looked up at him with a grin on his puckish face.

‘D’you remember the night we pinched all them pertaters an’ swedes out o’ the fields at Reclinghem, an’ made a stew wi’ some bully in a biscuit-tin? ’twere real good, that stew.’

Bourne laughed, a little absently, as one who feels he is being beaten by circumstances and must make the best of them. Men are bound together more closely by the trivial experiences they have shared, than by the most sacred obligations; and already his memory was haunted by outstretched hands seeking rescue from oblivion, and faces half-submerged to which he could give no name. Martlow only grinned more broadly, thinking he laughed at something funny in the episode itself.

‘When I’ve got me bellyful, I don’t care a fuck if it snows ink,’ he continued. ‘The worst o’ goin’ over the top is that you get tired an’ cold, an’ empty. It’s that empty feelin’ in the pit o’ the stomach what gets a man down. You feel as though all your guts had dropped out.’

They both looked up as the corporal and Shem came in, and Martlow turned on them at once with his inevitable questioning, while Bourne took out the bottles and tinned food from under the blankets.

‘Oh, they’re quite lively down the road,’ said the corporal. ‘It puts you in quite a good skin to ’ear ’em all singin’. Shem an’ I just went in an’ ’ad a glass o’ beer.’

They each took a tin of sausages in tomato sauce, and after debating for a moment whether it would not be better to heat them over the brazier, decided, partly from idleness, and partly from appetite, to eat them cold. Bourne uncorked a bottle of champagne, and was holding it over a mess-tin into which bubbled the creaming foam, when they all turned towards the doorway again, and Weeper Smart came in alone. He looked at them in some embarrassment, and crossing to his own corner, to which the glow from the brazier and the light from the hurricane-lamp scarcely penetrated, sat down dejectedly.