THE RED COAT IS THE hardest part of the uniform to get right. My leggings and shoes and garter and hat are all easy to find, but the coat needs to have the right weight and weave or else I can’t abide wearing it. I never did wear the more ostentatious versions of this coat and am not about to start doing so. I want my sleeves rolled and do not want extra buckles or buttons or straps. I’ve seen soldiers sporting these baubles slaughtered when they became caught in rough terrain. What good are fancy bits of uniform plastered to rock and scrub?

You have to be careful that the red coat isn’t made of some modern fabric that melts when ironed. I never iron mine to inspection-worthiness as there’s nothing sillier than enacting a battle as if one pranced yesterday from the tailor. But between Septembers I do clean and press my uniform so it won’t rot or split in the creases or otherwise suffer disrespect.

I met a rugby coach on the train during my failed attempt to reach Quebec City last autumn, and he said, “I have a riddle for you: What’s worse than losing the championship game?”

“Winning the game,” I said, “is far more injurious to the soul.”

He looked at me anew, taking in my facsimile coat and hat. “Aye,” he said, “I guess a soldier would know.” He proceeded to recount to me the mountains of dolour and grief from which he had to dig his rugby players each season they were victorious. “They get depressed,” he said. “They get to asking what it’s all for. Some of the best hang their cleats up for good and I can’t stop ’em. It’s all I can do not to pack it all in myself and go on the beer.”

“My favourite poem is about that very thing,” I said.

“Favourite what?” He looked the way some people’s faces turn at the mention of coriander, or asafoetida, or even excrement.

I hauled from my pocket the page of my beloved poem, torn from a library copy of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. He found it incomprehensible. He was a lout, really. He completely failed to understand. I found the man so dispiriting I bailed out at the Trois-Rivières station and caught a Greyhound back to Montreal where Sophie sent me to the Mission, having rented my spot to a Cirque du Soleil trapeze artist who’d injured a meniscus.

I no longer possess any copy of Gray’s poem—the Palgrave page soon disintegrated. But I know where to find my red coat.