It would all stop.

Howard was almost tempted. Why drag it out? The outcome was unavoidable; Aubrey’s jealousy could only hasten the inevitable. He stepped towards the officer and said in a low voice that he hoped the sergeant could not hear, ‘I’ll keep writing, and you can decide if you post them or not. Every man must answer to his own conscience, sir, but I won’t abandon her. I can’t.’

Aubrey looked thwarted, agitated. Then, as though he had stared at Medusa, he turned to stone. ‘I shall return and be master of the farm again, you understand that, don’t you, Private?’

‘You might not make it back, sir.’ It was almost a whisper, but the message was loud and clear.

Aubrey’s nostrils flared a fraction, his pupils blackened. ‘You certainly won’t, Private.’

‘Yes, sir, I agree.’ Howard was standing to attention, but somehow his bones slackened. He didn’t want to die. Not at the root of him. He wished it was all different. Their generation had been cheated and used.

‘Why are you here, Private? What made you come?’ Major Owens seemed openly gripped. Howard knew he must be a puzzle to such a man, the sort of man who lived an unhesitant, unquestioning life. The thought of such obedience sickened him. It was that blindness that had landed them all here. His voice couldn’t quite mask his contempt; he wasn’t sure he wanted it to.

‘To do my duty, sir.’

‘At last.’

‘I suppose I just had to find the thing worth fighting for.’

‘Get out.’

Howard knew that any letters he wrote to Vivian would never be posted. The sergeant would take great pleasure in reading them, rolling in their tender intimacy, their fiery neediness. He’d take greater pleasure still in flattening, annihilating both things by withholding them from the post. If he was as vindictive as they said, he’d also show them to Aubrey. The letters would become vicious weapons. Owens would be humiliated, hurt; Vivian would be at risk. Howard tried to come up with a plan as to how else he could get his letters to her. He considered asking another soldier to conceal them in a note to their wife or sweetheart, but everyone’s post was censored and the secreted letters would be discovered. He didn’t want to get anyone else into trouble. He thought about writing in some sort of code and sending them to his mother, asking her to pass them on, but a code would arouse suspicion. Anything that could be written in a way that would pass censorship would have no meaning; anything worth saying could not be said through his mother. No one was allowed leave at the moment, as able fighting men were so thin on the ground, so he couldn’t ask one of the lads to post a letter in Blighty. It wasn’t clear what he could do.

He wrote anyway. Since he and Vivian had become lovers his inherent, essential craving to write had been firmly re-established. His thoughts were once again effluent and vivid. Now she, along with his writing, helped him make sense of the world, allowed him to escape it. Every night, like the other men, he wrote letters, but instead of handing them over to be edited, approved, then posted, he tied them in a bundle and kept them in a Fortnum and Mason tea tin. He’d bought the empty tin off another man; he’d paid six times what it was worth full, but it was rat proof and therefore priceless to him.