Catherine Cookson by The Cinder Path

Author:The Cinder Path
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-08-27T22:40:47+00:00

PART FOUR

Mud

T

IHE second-lieutenant looked extremely smart. He was unusually tall but he was straight with it. When he was saluted in the street he answered the gesture almost as smartly as it was given. But he'd have to get out of that; Radlett had hinted as much.

He liked Radlett, at least he didn't dislike him; but he wasn't at all keen on Lieutenant Calthorpe; very old school, Calthorpe, without the good manners one would expect from that kind of upbringing. He spoke to some of the men as if they were serfs.

The captain was as different again, a very understandable fellow Captain Blackett; but the

major, oh, the major, he talked as if he were still in the Boer War. Radlett said openly he was a fumbling old duffer.

It was funny, Charlie thought, how some people were able to voice their opinions of others and get off with it.

For instance now if he had called the major a fumbling old duffer ten to one he would have been up on the

carpet before his breath had cooled. Radlett acted and talked like an old hand but he was almost as new to the game as he himself was.

As he left the Central Station to board a bus that would take him across the water to Nellie's, the glow that had been with him since early morning began to fade. Another man in his position would be making for home. He had two homes but he was going to neither: the home among the hills was too far away to get there and back comfortably in a forty-eight.

Moreover, you had to chance getting transport. And the home where his wife resided was barred to him now for good and all. So there remained only Nellie's; and even about this visit he was feeling a little trepidation, for he hadn't done as he promised and written to her.

It had been understandable in the first two or three weeks because everything had moved so fast. He had been kept at it all waking hours. They called it a crash course in pips, and it was certainly that all right, for as Radlett so grotesquely illustrated in his garrulous way, the only thing they didn't ram into you was how to die with your guts hanging out. Did you yell, "Carry on, men!" before you pushed them back, or let them drip as you waved your fellows on crying, "Good luck! chaps."

Anyway, he had forty-eight hours and he was going to enjoy it. Why not? He would take Nellie out. Knowing Nellie, she'd get quite a kick out of his change in fortune. But then it might not come as a surprise to her after all, because if she had visited home and run into Betty, Betty would surely have told her. Yet again it had been a good three weeks before he had informed Betty of his change in position. Still, he was looking forward to seeing Nellie.

A passenger walking down the aisle happened to

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