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fifteen years, Kingsley,’ Cartwright snarled.
    ‘Mr Cartwright, you and I both know,’ Kingsley replied, ‘that by rights you should have hung.’
    ‘You can’t look down on me, you yellow-bellied bastard,’ Cartwright sneered. ‘Not now. I’d rather be a killer than a coward.’
    ‘It is quite possible to be both, Mr Cartwright, and you are.’
    It was not that Kingsley was without fear; he was as horrified at his immediate prospects as any man might be. It was only that even in these desperate straits his logical instincts prevailed. He knew that there was no profit to be had in pleading for mercy and experience had taught him that any strength, even if it is only a refusal to be cowed, can be of advantage in a fight. Therefore he resolved to make a show of courage and contempt. He was utterly alone in his fight for life: once he gave up on himself there truly was no hope left for him.
    The other two men, a burglar and a pimp, stepped forward.
    ‘Evening, Inspector,’ they said. ‘Remember us?’
    Kingsley braced himself. Placing his back against the door he dropped to a fighting stance with his fists raised and his knees bent. He was tall and fit and an excellent boxer — he had won a Blue at Cambridge — but his three antagonists were strong also. For all Kingsley’s skill, might prevailed and he hit the floor in less than a minute. He curled up in the foetal position as the blows rained down upon him until, coughing on his own blood, he lost consciousness.

TEN
    Field Punishment No. 1
    On the morning after the welcome dinner in the officers’ mess, Captain Abercrombie faced the first duty of his new command. It was his unpleasant task to preside over a punishment detail involving a man from his section.
    A gun limber had been brought to what had once been the Wytschaete village square and now served as an improvised parade ground for the 5th Battalion. A small party stood before it: Captain Abercrombie, four officers of the Military Police and the prisoner Hopkins, who was cuffed at the wrists.
    A cold drizzle was falling and it seemed that what summer there had been in Flanders that year was already over.
    Abercrombie stepped up to address the prisoner.
    ‘I do not know you, Private Hopkins,’ he said, ‘and I had not taken up my post when the offence of which you have been found guilty was committed. I therefore take no pleasure in what is now required of me. However, the army code leaves me no choice.’
    Hopkins attempted to hold his head up and stare Abercrombie down but his whole body was shaking with fear.
    ‘We all have a choice,’ he mumbled. ‘Don’t assuage your conscience with me.’
    If Abercrombie had heard the man, he ignored his comment.
    ‘You have been found guilty of disobeying a direct order.’
    ‘I didn’t refuse to fight! I refused to put on a lice-ridden jacket! Would you have put it on, Viscount? ’
    ‘You disobeyed an order. Repeatedly. You could by rights have been shot. Do you have anything to say?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Speak then.’
    ‘Your poetry’s shit, Captain. ‘Forever England’? What a lot of lying shit. I’ve heard boys quote it, Captain. Sixteen-year-old boys parroting that shit as they marched off to their deaths. Forever England? Forever shit. Shit shit shit.’
    Abercrombie stood for a moment as if he had been struck. The colour drained from his face. It seemed to the policemen watching that the captain had to make some effort to collect himself.
    ‘Is that all, Private?’ he asked finally.
    ‘Yes, and more than enough.’
    ‘Field Punishment Number One!’
    Two of the military policemen removed Hopkins’s handcuffs and dragged him towards the gun limber. Then they lashed him across one of its wheels, spreading his limbs wide like the male figure in Da Vinci’s famous sketch, a copy of which Abercrombie had had pinned upon his wall at school.
    Hopkins hung upon the wheel all day.

ELEVEN
    An uncomfortable convalescence
    Anyone who imagined