Soldier's Game by James Killgore Page B

remained lifelong friends. And, of course, Jack was there too among the crowd. By then he’d already met Ross’s great-grandmother and they were engaged. A year later Sir George would help him get a position at the Royal Bank of Scotland where he worked until his retirement in 1958, having risen to the position of senior manager.
    Over the years Jack rarely spoke of the war and his fallen friends – though he did write each and every Christmas to Hugh Wilson’s sister Emily. What Pat knew of her father’s story had come from books and what her mother had told her the year after Jack died from cancer in 1960.
    ***
    For weeks the story of Jack Jordan and the 16th Royal Scots haunted Ross. To think of the immediate world around him – streets, houses, tenements – overlain with time like one of those kid’s books withclear plastic pages. Lives all but vanished: hopes, dreams, sorrow, pain.
    One night he lay awake in bed thinking about something Pat said. Ross had asked her why people build monuments.
    “Isn’t it better just to forget?” he said.
    “We can’t ever forget,” she’d replied.
    “Why not?”
    Pat had stood there by the clock clutching the yellowed pamphlet.
    “Well, the way I look at it is – the dead can only be dead. Nothing else is left to them. The least we can do is to try and make sense of what’s happened in the past, hold on to what it meant to those soldiers and their families – even if just by reading a name on a bronze plaque.”
    It was this that gave Ross the idea. The very next evening he phoned Pat and they talked it over. She wrote the letter and in the end it was an archivist from Heart of Midlothian FC who got back in touch.
    ***
    One day a few weeks later Pat met Ross after schooland they took a cab to Tynecastle. The archivist – a Mr Kemp – met them in reception at the club administration building and took them into a meeting room. He was a small portly man, a good six inches shorter than Pat, with balding hair and thick black glasses. Ross laid Jack’s box onto the table.
    “May I?” said Mr Kemp.
    Ross nodded and the archivist reached for the latch. His eyes widened when he opened the lid. He lifted the boots carefully out of the box.
    “These have been well looked after. Top quality for the time.”
    Mr Kemp grew more excited when he found the maroon jersey, and the shorts and socks – a full kit. But it was the medal and Jack’s photograph that he looked at the longest before removing his glasses.
    “And you say he never played football again.”
    “No. Just a loyal supporter after the war,” Pat replied.
    Mr Kemp shook his head.
    “Well, all I can say is the club would be honoured to have these objects in our collection – especially with the upcoming centennial of the Great War.”
    ***
    In the cab on the way home Ross began to wonder if he’d made a mistake giving up Jack’s things. Pat seemed almost to read his thoughts. She laid a hand on his knee.
    “Why not stop in for a quick cup of hot chocolate and then I’ll walk you home.”
    Sitting later at her kitchen table Ross sighed.
    “Do you think it’s possible to miss someone you never knew?”
    Pat smiled.
    “But you do know Jack – or all that’s left to know. And he knew you.”
    “How could he know me?” asked Ross.
    Pat replied, “Well, it’s obvious he cherished the items in that box. Why else would he have packed them away so carefully? And he must have trusted that someone would come along who’d recognise their worth.”
    Ross looked confused. She reached out and touched his hand.
    “That was you. And I know for certain that he would have been proud to see his old kit on display at Tynecastle. To remind people just what was sacrificed by all those young men. You made thathappen.”
    ***
    Ross felt better about his decision after that. And for the next few weeks he went to bed each night hoping to see Jack again in his dreams, to play once more with him at Tynecastle, to score