At tea, Mrs Parker lays her right hand where his left arm should have been. And for a moment, he is sure he can feel it: her fingers digging into the faded upholstery; five tiny electric shocks.

“And how are you James?” she says. “Really.”

“Very well, thank you, Mrs Parker. Much improved.”

Across the room, his mother is watching them – stealing little glances. Checking he’s really there. Even though it was she who insisted that he should join her Thursday afternoon teas, she watches the other women as if she doesn’t trust them. As if they might snatch him away and claim him as their own.

“You must be so disappointed.”

It takes him a moment to realise that Mrs Parker isn’t referring to the loss of his arm.

“Oh. Yes. Naturally.”

“I know my boys would be absolutely spitting if they had to leave the Pals behind.

Not to be able to do your bit for King and Country must be a terrible blow.” “It is.” James fixes his eyes on his slice of fruitcake. “Terrible.”

“My Robert was one of the first to sign up of course.”

Robert Parker had signed up the same day as James. They’d smoked a cigarette together outside the village hall afterwards, reminiscing about long-ago school cricket matches, end-of-term pranks; tugging at the edges of any memory that might make them feel like heroes.

“And I don’t suppose Peter would come home even if he was allowed.” Mrs Parker smiles round at the room. “Such a strong sense of duty.”

Beside James’s mother, Alice Nell makes a sound that might have been a snort, or might have been a cough. Mrs Parker glances over at her, but doesn’t say anything. A year ago, Mrs Parker had felt sure of herself when faced with the Alice Nells of the village. Mrs Parker had three sons at the front – more than anybody else. She was Chief Martyr to The Cause, assumed-Head of the War Effort. But Mrs Parker’s three sons are still alive and Alice Nell’s only son is not, and nobody is sure anymore whose sacrifice counts for the most. Or if anybody is still keeping score.

Mrs Parker turns back to James. “It’s so terribly fortunate that it’s your left arm, isn’t it? So very lucky not to lose your right. That really would’ve been most inconvenient.”

The room grows quiet. In his mother’s unnatural stillness, James can feel her outrage. He can feel the ballooning force of her defensive anger and her... something else. Her doubt perhaps? Because this is what they have all been thinking. This is what has been said as his name has been passed along the line at the butcher’s, whispered at the crowded bus stop. His left arm is it? Well, I’m not one to cast aspersions but...

“I’d really rather have lost neither arm, Mrs Parker.” James keeps his voice light. “But, as you say, King and Country and all that.”

It is Mrs Clarke who breaks the untidy silence. “My George is... uh... my George is coming home in a day or two.” Every eye turns towards this news. “He’s been wounded.

Shrapnel apparently.” She says it in the tone she might once have announced his Fifth Form Latin prize. “He needs to recuperate for a while.” The relief in her voice – the snatched triumph over the other mothers – is barely hidden. “You must come and see him.”

This last remark is directed at James. James doesn’t want to see George. He’s not ready to see anybody who knows all the things he knows. But he can’t imagine when he’ll ever be ready, and Mrs Clarke has already lost one son, so he says, “Of course. Delighted.”

“I don’t suppose he’ll be home long.” Mrs Clarke looks at Mrs Parker apologetically. “I’m sure he’ll be dying to get back to the front with the others, as you say.”

There is no mistaking the snort this time. Everyone looks at Alice Nell. “Something wrong, Mrs Nell?”

Alice Nell meets Mrs Parker’s gaze. “I don’t understand why we’re all still pretending that this is some sort of glorious game.” She looks around the room. “They must hate it. All the men – they must hate every second.”

“Not at all.” Mrs Parker is brisk. “It’s about honour. Doing the right thing. They want to serve – isn’t that right, James?”

James doesn’t look at Alice. “We all want to do our patriotic duty, of course.” “And how is morale among the troops?”

James takes a deep breath. He has practised this. Lying in the hospital, after being questioned by a grey-haired officer (Left hand is it? Damned odd place to get shot. Did it yourself I suppose? Thought it would get you out of things. Capital offence that, you know), he practised the lines: high morale, patriotic duty, King and Country. He lined them up on his tongue so to be ready for moments like these. He still cannot look at Alice Nell.

“Morale is high,” he says. “ Excellent.”

Mrs Parker gives Alice a look of triumph. Alice shrugs. “Jimmy hated it. He joined for all the right reasons.” She rises to her feet. “And he still hated it.”

As the door closes behind her, the women exchange glances. There is the glance that says, allowances must be made for poor Mrs Nell now that her son has gone too, and the glance that says, but not too many allowances. There is the raised eyebrow of Mrs Parker that tells once again how she never really believed that a woman of barely 35 with a son old enough to fight was ever really a Mrs. And there is the smile of James’s mother – the firm, tight smile of Christian charity – that prevents anyone from saying anything out loud.

* * *

George is sitting up in bed when Mr Clarke ushers James into the room.

“Here you are, old chap. Here’s James Defray to see you. That’s nice, isn’t it?”

James perches on the edge of the wicker chair beside the bed. He doesn’t look at the heavily bandaged leg. He feels George not looking at the space below his left elbow.

“Hello, old man.” James’s voice sounds too loud in his own ears. “How are things?” “I’ll leave you chaps to it.” George’s father backs out of the room.

James lowers his voice. “Caught a Blighty one then? Lot of fellows would give good cigarettes for one of those.”

George manages a smile. “It was my first thought. I looked down and saw the mess of my leg and thought, ‘Well that should bloody well get me a ticket home at least’.”

James laughs. “Me too.” The relief of saying it makes him feel lighter, almost giddy. “Second thought was that I’d bet Robert two bob I’d stay in one piece longer than him.”

“Yes, he’s been telling people about that. I think you’ll have to pay up, old man.” “Gladly. When they’re all back. Can’t last much longer, eh?”

They look at each other properly then – acknowledge the lie that hangs in the air.

And they talk. They talk about the letters that Baker’s girl sends him – the bits that he reads out, and the bits someone else reads out if they can snatch them from him. They talk about cigarettes and the new gas that the Germans are using; about who’d won the last tug-of- war competition, and the rumour that a 16-year-old lad had been shot at dawn further up the line; about who’d been up in the games of pontoon since James left the front, and whether they thought it likely the ringing in their ears would ever stop. They talked of Walker, who’d always been a wet blanket at school, but who had won a recommendation for bravery by the time he’d had enough, climbing over the top alone to open welcoming arms to the German snipers.

They didn’t talk of George’s older brother. They didn’t talk about the way James used to crib off him during maths lessons, or the time he caught the star batsman out first ball in the annual Old Boys game. They didn’t talk about Mons.

“You won’t be going back.”

George eyes James’s neatly-pinned sleeve.

“No. Office work for me for the duration I suppose.”

“Left arm.”

“Yes.”

“Dashed awkward for you that.” “Yes.”

James lets the silence drag on before meeting George’s eye. “You will be going back, I suppose? Later.”

“I suppose so.” George takes a deep breath. “Oh god. Yes, I suppose so.”

And then George is crying. Deep, shuddering gulps, shaking his thin shoulders, shaking the bed. And his father is in the doorway so fast he must have been listening outside. He is beside George and George is burrowing into his shoulder as if he were 20 years younger.

“Now, now.” Mr Clarke pats George’s back. “Steady on, old chap. Can’t have this, can we?” He looks at James. “He’s a little out of sorts. The fever you know? Nothing a few of his mum’s casseroles and a bit of quiet won’t sort.”

James stands. “I’ve overtired him, I expect.”

“Yes, I expect that’s it. He’s alright, aren’t you George?”

George grows quiet, but he doesn’t look up, doesn’t leave the safety of his father’s arms.

“Course you are.” Mr Clarke looks desperately at James. “Right as rain soon.”

“It’s quite alright. I understand.” James pauses at the door and waits for Mr Clarke to look at him before he says it again. “I understand.”

Outside, in the quiet street, James considers going to the pub. But he’s not sure he can face the old men yet. In The Bull he will become a hero, with free drinks and back slaps. Or he will become a coward, with pointed looks and shoulders turned against him. He will be whichever they need him to be and he isn’t sure which to expect. And he doesn’t know which would be worse.

The women he has not been able to hide from. In the morning, when he goes for the walk his doctor insists he needs, he feels their hungry eyes on him. Mothers of absent young men reach out to squeeze his good arm, feel the realness of him, the solidity. Mothers of restless young women say good morning, keeping him in their sights. He is not their first choice for their daughters any more – not with only one arm – but even here they are beginning to realise that choice may not come in to it.

At the corner of the road, two young wives stand chatting over their garden gates in the early evening sunshine. They pause as James draws near and raises his hat. Cecil Lambeth’s wife is pregnant – Cecil being needed on the Home Front to farm. Walter Fields’s wife is not.

“James, I heard you were back.” Mary Fields opens her gate and comes out to greet him. “Do you have any news of Walter? I’ve not had a letter for a month.”

“Post’s bad. Taking a long time for letters to get through. I’m sure you’ll hear soon.” “But when you last saw him..? Was he..?”

James thinks about the last time he saw Walter. Then he tries not to think about it. “He was well,” he says. “Morale’s high. Won’t be long now I shouldn’t wonder. Home before you know it.”

Mary’s face relaxes. She lays a tentative hand on his right elbow. “Thank you.”

Only after he has watched the two women disappear into their houses, does James feel watched himself. He turns to the open door of the house across the street. Alice Nell sits on her front step. James touches his hat and turns away.

“What’s it really like?” Alice Nell’s voice rings out through the empty street. “Tell me.”

James crosses to her gate, pushes through it, walks up the path, stops only a few feet
in front of her. He looks down at this woman, not ten years older than him, but already a widow – or so she claims – already lost a boy to war.

“Tell me,” she says again. “Not what you tell the others. Tell me really.”

James hesitates. He knows his duty: fighting doubt on the Home Front, raising spirits, giving the party line. His eyes meet hers.

“It’s hell,” he says.

Alice Nell’s kitchen is small and pristine. Two photographs of Jimmy stand guard either end of the dresser. Two Jimmys in uniform – school on the left, army on the right. He looks the same age in both. As James takes a seat at the table, Alice sees him looking and hands him the army photograph.

“I didn’t want this taken,” she says. “Jimmy insisted.”

“He was brave.” James looks at Jimmy’s careless smile. “Braver than most of us.” “He was stupid.” Alice places a cup in front of him. “He didn’t have to go. I told him not to go.” She gives James a look of furious defiance. “I suppose that makes me unpatriotic.”

James lays Jimmy down on the white tablecloth. “Not to me.”

Alice pours water into the teapot and sits opposite him. “What have you seen then?” “I’m sorry?”

“Tell me what you saw. Out there. On the front. Tell me what Jimmy saw before he
died.”

“He didn’t suffer you know.”

Alice throws him a glance of such desperate disbelief, James finds himself reaching
across the table, grabbing her hand.

“I promise,” he says. “He really didn’t. I was there. It was a sniper bullet. Straight to the head. He didn’t see it coming.”

James saw it though. If he closes his eyes he will see it again: Jimmy Nell’s childish, laughing face and then, with a crack that split the air between them, the empty space. He doesn’t close his eyes. He keeps them trained on Alice Nell, allowing her to scrutinise him, to discover for herself that he’s telling the truth. It takes a long moment, but finally, she nods.

“He was 17,” she says. “I know. He told me.”

“He had to lie about his age because he didn’t want to wait. Couldn’t wait even wait
another six months.” She picks up the photograph. “17. That’s how old I was when I had him. I thought I was so grown-up.” Her fingers whiten on the black frame. “I wasn’t. He wasn’t.”

She turns her son face down on the table, pushes him beyond the sugar bowl. “How dare he? How dare all of you? How dare you go to war?”

James doesn’t know whether she wants him to answer. And he doesn’t know what answer he could give. So, instead, without letting go of Alice Nell’s hand, he tells her everything.

Light is beginning to show pink on the eastern horizon, when James slips in through the kitchen door. The cook is not up yet, but as he passes the back stairs, he hears the maid humming to herself as she dresses. He could try to sleep – there are still two hours until breakfast. Instead, he sits at the window, watching a dawn that has already broken over Belgium, slide across the hills towards him.

Later that morning, James takes the train to London to start his new job in the War Office. Later that evening, James turns up again on Alice Nell’s front step, tells her again of hell. The next day he does the same. And the next. By day, James organises troop transport and the shipment of ammunition. In the evenings, he has dinner with his parents and then he goes to Alice Nell.

Alice wants to hear it all and, when James has told her everything, she wants to hear it all again. She wants to know how it feels to lie in a field hospital waiting for the surgeon to saw into your infected arm, knowing the chloroform ran out two weeks ago. She wants to know how a group of grown men sound as they lie in their bunks at night pretending not to cry. She wants to know about the smell of the blood and the bite of the lice and about how some of the men shit themselves with fear as the shelling starts up again. She makes James tell her over and over until he cries, and then over and over until he stops crying. She tortures them both, heals them both, sits expressionless at the table, pressing on a bruise that might be his or might be hers. On the nights they end up in bed, he whispers sweet, unpatriotic words: catastrophic injuries, cowardice, low morale.

* * *

On the day George leaves for the front, the whole village turns out for him. He walks to the station through streets of good wishes, his pockets becoming so full of cigarettes he runs out of places to put them.

The Pals have moved. Nobody is quite sure where – somewhere in France perhaps?

Not that it will matter for George. He isn’t rejoining the Pals. There are other regiments who need the man-power more.

They hold the London train for him at the station, to allow his parents one more farewell. When Mr Clarke grips his son’s hand, it is his wife who has to make him let go.

As the train pulls out of the station, George takes the seat opposite James. He pulls a cigarette from his new stash and James leans forward to offer him his matchbook, pretending not to notice when it takes George three attempts to strike one. They ride the whole way in silence.

On the platform at Victoria, James holds out his hand. “Good luck, old man.” “Thanks.”

“See you soon.”

George doesn’t reply.

The first telegram arrives just as James is walking home from the train that evening. He sees the boy stop at Mary Fields’s gate. Mary takes the telegram and then shoves it back so violently, the boy falls from his bike.

“It’s not mine!” James hears her shout from the other end of the street. “I don’t want it.”

By the time James reaches her, Mrs Parker has appeared, hurrying from the village hall with an armful of drooping flowers. She puts the other arm around Mary, while James picks up first the boy and then the telegram.

Deeply regret to inform you that Private Walter Fields...

“Come now, my dear.” Mrs Parker leads Mary to her door. “You must be brave.

Brandy, if you please, James.”

James cannot find brandy in Mary’s kitchen. He lets himself in to Alice’s instead. She is sitting white-faced at the table.

“Walter?”

James nods. He takes the blue glass bottle of cooking brandy from Alice’s dresser and leaves without a word.

Mary Fields is not crying. She is sitting, stone-faced as Mrs Parker keeps up a monologue about duty, about bravery, about noble sacrifice. Mrs Parker is still talking when her maid arrives to say a telegram has arrived at the Parker residence too.

At first it seems as if Mrs Parker has not heard. She continues turning out the tins of bread that Mary had left in the oven, tapping each one to check if it’s done.

“Ma’am?” The maid hovers uncertainly at the kitchen door. “The telegram, Ma’am.” “Yes, I heard,” Mrs Parker snaps. “You can see I’m busy. I’ll be home presently.”

It is Mary who dares to say it. “You should go.” She watches Mrs Parker folding and refolding her glass cloth. “Ava. Please.”

James has never heard anyone use Mrs Parker’s first name before.

By the time James reaches home two hours later, the whole village knows. His mother greets him at the door, red-eyed, grey-faced.

“The Parker boys?” she says, and she makes it a question even though it isn’t. “Yes.”

“All three?”

“Yes.”

All three of them. Robert and Peter and Graham. And Walter Fields. And Sid Baker.

And William Hayes who had taken over as school master only two years ago.

James’s mother pulls him towards her. Her hand grips the stump of his left arm and although it hurts him, he doesn’t stop her.

“Thank God.” She leans forward and kisses it. “Thank God.”

* * *

In the Parkers’ parlour, James sits straight-backed in an armchair, while Mr and Mrs Parker perch on the settee opposite. The clock on the mantelpiece ticks unfeelingly loud beside three face-down photo frames.

“I’m so terribly sorry,” he says for the second time. “To serve with your boys was an absolute honour. They were heroes, all three of them.” This is as far as he has planned.

Mrs Parker shakes herself. She looks through him. “We’re very proud of them,” she says. “Of course. They did their duty.” The phrases drop from her in staccato. “It’s been a devastating blow.” She doesn’t sound as if she feels devastated. She doesn’t sound as if she feels anything. “But we knew it could happen. It was a sacrifice we knew we might have to make.”

Mr Parker leans forward and taps out his pipe into the ashtray on the table. “Doesn’t seem to me,” he says slowly, “as if it was us who made the sacrifice.” He rises stiffly to his feet, nodding at James as he leaves the room.

Mrs Parker stays still for so long then, James wonders if he might slip out without her noticing, but when he stirs, she turns to look at him.

“You must have these.” She pulls her knitting bag out from beside the settee. “Socks. I was knitting them for Robert. I’d just finished when... They should fit you nicely.” “Oh, no. I couldn’t Mrs Parker.”

“Please James.” Her voice comes out harsh and high. “Please have them.”

She holds the balled socks out to him. James gets up and sits beside Mrs Parker. He places his hand over hers. “Thank you.”

“You’ll wear them?” she says. “You really will?” “I will. I promise.”

She puts her other hand over the top of his, trapping it between them. And as he has no other hand of his own, he just sits and allows her to stroke the one left to him.

“You’re a good boy, Robert.” When Mrs Parker speaks again it is in a low voice, a singsong tone that James has never heard from her before. “You’ve always been such a good boy.”

James tries to pull away. “Mrs Parker...”

“Your father and I are so proud of you.” She moves her top hand up to his cheek, cupping it, running a thumb over the cheekbone. “You do know that, don’t you, Robert?”

“Mrs Parker... I...” “You do, don’t you?”

James hesitates. Then he takes her hand from his cheek and moves it to his lips. “Yes, Mother,” he says. “Of course I know.”

He is already at the front door when he hears her calling after him. “You should’ve shot yourself in the hand.” James pauses in the dark hallway. “Like that school friend of yours did, darling. I do so wish you’d done that.”

The curtains are drawn at Alice Nell’s house, even though she has nobody left to mourn. James hasn’t been here for three days – not since the day of the telegrams – but he doesn’t knock. He walks straight into her kitchen, tossing Robert’s socks on to the table.

When he pulls Alice to her feet, she is unsteady, as if she has been waiting there for him all this time.

They are already undressed, when Alice stops him. She rolls away from him on the patchwork coverlet, turns her head to watch his face. “I really am a widow you know.”

“I know.” James shifts on to his back. “I really didn’t shoot myself in the hand.” “I know.”

And so she rolls back towards him. And afterwards, when she is staring at the ceiling and James asks her what she is thinking about, he isn’t offended when she says, Jimmy. He isn’t offended, because he is thinking of Robert.

And they lie side-by-side in the darkening room, thinking of Jimmy and Robert and Graham and Peter and Walter and Sid and William and Teddy Clarke and Mr and Mrs Clarke and the Parkers. James isn’t sure when he first starts to cry. Perhaps it is when he thinks of Mary Fields and the baby she won’t have, or all the things Sid Baker’s girl promised him and that he never came home to claim, or the string of coffin-less funerals ahead of them.

Or perhaps, it is when Alice Nell pulls him close to her and he is halfway to clasping her in his arms when he realises that he can’t; he will never hold anyone in his arms ever again. And he didn’t know that when he left for war – him and Robert Parker. He didn’t know that this is what he would miss out on. And he feels the aching loss of it – the hand that somebody else shot – more acutely than he ever has before. Perhaps it is then – when Alice rests her head on his chest and whispers him to sleep: Patriotic Duty. Morale is high. Can’t be long now.