‘What’s the use of talking about it? If Jerry hadn’t taken all his stuff down to the Somme, we’d be shelled to shit in half-an-hour. Come inside and get on with it.’

The colour-sergeant glanced at them enigmatically as they came into the room, and Bourne, without speaking, began to clear away the litter of broken glass from the table and floor, stacking the larger pieces in a heap. The lance-corporal came to his help, and when they had taken up all they could manage with their hands, Bourne swept up the splinters. Then he sat down to his typing. Every now and again the instrument in front of the signaller would tick out a message in Morse, and the signaller would take it down on a slip, which he passed to Johnson, who handed it to the colour-sergeant. Bourne, typing orders, heard broken fragments of conversation behind him, and sometimes the signaller speaking softly with a hand up to his mouth into the transmitter. It was meaningless to him, for he was not thinking of it.

‘… surprise … quiet place, not a sound … artillery on the Somme … all so quiet and still… swank, that’s what it is … I’m too old for this … not a bomb … anti-aircraft battery … it was a bomb all right … says two shells didn’t explode … major … what… yes … thought he’d get under the table … does put wind up … quite a cushy part … aeroplanes …’

It was all so much senseless babble to him. When he had finished typing orders, he put in a clean sheet, and typed whatever came into his head, to practise speed; odd bits of verse, Latin tags, Aequam memento rebus in arduis Servare mentem. He had a text of Horace with Conington’s translation in his pocket. ‘And richer spilth the pavement stain,’ that was pavimentum mero; why did that come into his head now? ‘Richer spilth’ was ill-sounding anyway, and ‘stain’ on top of it made an ugly line. Well, it didn’t matter, it was all experience, and gave him some mechanical occupation to fill in time. He kept on striking the keys: ‘Than e’er at pontiff’s supper ran.’ What he needed was to go on a big drunk somewhere, and break this bloody monotony. When he had filled up the sheet he took it out to turn, so that he could use the other side; but first he looked at it, to see how many mistakes he had made, and then through the window he saw two men swilling and sweeping the street. Yes; Fritz is mighty careless where he drops a dixie. He rested his chin on clasped hands and watched them in a kind of reverie. Men were cheap in these days, that is to say men who were not coalminers or ship’s riveters, to whom war only meant higher wages. Officers were scarce, but they might be scarcer by one or two, without much harm being done. They had a good lot of officers on the whole. Major Shadwell and Captain Malet, who took the last ounce out of you, but anyway pulled their own weight as well, and poor Mr Clinton, who was plucky but played out, and Mr Sothern, who was a bit of an ass, but a very decent chap. There was that old brigadier, who had spoken to him in Trones Wood: he must have been sixty, but he wasn’t too old to come and do his bit, and stuck it too. But there were some who could be quite easily spared. It would soon be time for dinner.