Five Boys by Mick Jackson

enlisted was either a measure of their willingness to defend the land they worked on or their eagerness to leave it far behind. For Arthur Noyce and Lester Massie, at least, any respite from the tedium of animal husbandry and the trudge around the seasons was worth a look. Both men liked nothing better than to sit in the Malsters’ Arms and bemoan the loss of their wives’ figures to the ravages of motherhood. At best, they thought, they might encounter something young and slim and exotic on their travels; at worst, might learn to appreciate their wives a little more.
    Two days after they’d gone, Jem Hathersage followed, pedaling out along the Totnes road on a borrowed bicycle. He was in serious danger of missing his train after a hurried few minutes’ intimacy with Mrs. Hathersage and had his suitcase strapped to his back so tightly that on the uphills it almost throttled him and on the downhills threatened to throw him over the handlebars.
    Of all five fathers Alec Bream was the only man to pack his bag with any real sense of purpose. He had been predicting the war for years and thought it a war worth fighting, but his only objective was to get back in one piece, unlike his father, killed twenty years earlier, whose namewas one of those carved on the base of the village’s memorial.
    Last to leave had been Bernard Crouch, Aldred’s father, for whom the whole undertaking was an unutterable shock. He had no idea how much store he set by his home and family and felt grief-stricken, as if he had left his very soul behind. He began writing home on the first day of his training—letters written in such haste and with such desperation that his wife, Sylvia, found them almost illegible. They arrived in twos and threes, quickly grew into bundles and were tucked behind his pipe rack until they nudged it off the mantelpiece, then were stuffed in Sylvia’s sewing basket, from which they erupted whenever she went near the thing.
    Only Howard Kent, a bachelor, believed he served his country better out in the fields than in a uniform—an opinion, as it happened, shared by the army doctor who, after the most cursory of examinations, concluded that he was a danger not just to himself but his fellow soldiers, though whether there was something wrong with his feet or his eyes or, as his neighbors suspected, his head was never established and Howard always insisted it was his indispensable qualities as a farm laborer that prevented him joining up.
    In the years since, Howard had undergone a process of intense self-modification. He had always found women to be strange and intimidating but the lack of other young men in the village did wonders for his confidence, and he began to stride up and down as if he owned the place. The new Howard Kent was, he felt, a hearty soul, worldly-wise and always willing to stop and chat with the local women—a character, needless to say, the local women found just as revolting as the original one.
    Bobby first came across him when he accompanied Lillian to the post office. Howard stood among three or four women and rubbed his chin as if grand ideas were bubbling up inside him. But even as he spoke, Bobby couldn’t help noticing how Howard kept sneaking a peek at Mrs. Crouch’s bosom, as well as any other bosoms in his range, and when he finally departed, in a blaze of laughter, the women let out a collective sigh and adjusted their coats and cardigans as if Howard’s hands had been fumbling about inside.
    Bobby and Aldred had spent the morning going through Bobby’s cuttings. Despite Bobby’s best efforts, Aldred remained unshakable in his perception of London as a barren and peopleless place, finding nothing to contradict it in all the pictures of blasted buildings and brick-strewn streets. The sandbags stacked up against the walls of Whitehall looked to him like a pyramid’s foundations, and with all its toppled columns and derelict churches London seemed to grow more Ancient by the day.
    There