Free Wake: A Novel by Anna Hope Page B

phrase; still, it just about sums it up. This one, she is sure, is no gentleman, temporary or otherwise; from his dress and bearing, he is a private through and through.
    She dips her head and takes out the first of her forms.
    When her fourth man approaches the desk, she knows that he’s trouble without looking twice. “You ready for me now, then?” he says, sitting down before her.
    There’s something about him, a confidence, a posture.
Officer?
His accent is indeterminate. She lines up the form against the side of her desk.
Rank?
Difficult to say; she can’t call this one.
    “Name?”
    “Reginald Yates.”
    “Rank?”
    “Second lieutenant, as was.”
    She writes “Reginald Yates” on the top of a pink form.
    “And is this your first visit to the Ministry?”
    “No,” he snorts. “I’ll say it’s not.”
    He has a sharp face, brown hair greased tightly back from his forehead, and a neat mustache. It’s difficult to tell his age. He could be twenty-five, but he could be ten years older. There’s something restless, something bristling, about him. Evelyn is used, now, to assessing the potential danger that might come her way; a woman was attacked once, a year ago, by a man with a knife. Her last female colleague. The woman spent the night in hospital and never came back.
    “I’m getting less,” he says, extracting a packet of shag from his pocket and rolling himself a quick, expert cigarette.
    She slides the ashtray in front of him. “Less money, you mean?”
    “Yes.” He lights up and blows smoke into the air between them.
    “This happens I’m afraid, Mr.… Yates.”
    His eyes find hers through the smoke.
    “May I ask what your injury was?”
    “No, you may not.”
    At this, she sees that the sheen has come off his cockiness somewhat. “All right,” she says. “That’s up to you.”
    Buttocks then, or groin; those are the ones that never want to say.
    He leans forward, jabbing the air with his finger as he speaks. “The only thing you need to know is I was on seventeen bob a week, and now I’m getting less.” His accent, she notes, is slipping a little now.
    “Well,” says Evelyn, “you should know, Mr.… Yates, that for what the department calls second-grade injuries—and these are any injuries that do not include the loss of a limb—the payment drops after three years. Can I ask when the injury was sustained?”
    “Nineteen seventeen.”
    She opens her hands. “There we are, then. I’m sorry, Mr. Yates. You’re welcome to file an appeal.”
    The man spits a stray piece of tobacco out onto the floor. “Is that it?”
    “That’s it, I’m afraid.”
    “You’re not going to tell me if I’m going to get more?”
    Evelyn sighs. It astonishes her still that she is here, the mouthpiece for a committee that regards every claim as suspect, every man a malingerer, guilty until proven innocent, forced to plead for scraps from a government that has long since ceased to care.
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Yates, but we’re only a first port of call. If you wish to file an official complaint, then we are able to register that complaint and forward it on. You should have a date for reassessment, which will include a medical examination, within the month.”
    “Within the
maaanth
?” He leans forward, mimicking her accent. At this he is, she notes, not bad at all. “What about the benefits, then? How come if I’d stayed a private I’d be drawing more?
Land fit for heroes, is it
?”
    He’s right. In a way, the ex-privates are the lucky ones; they have been given a small unemployment benefit. No such benefit has been given to the commissioned classes; they are supposed to have friends, or means. Temporary gentlemen have come down to earth with a bump. He leans back in his chair, pointing his cigarette at her as though deciding whether to fire. “Fucking woman.”
    “Yes, well,” she says. “I’m afraid unemployed women haven’t been given any benefit, either.”
    He looks as though he