Free We That Are Left by Clare Clark Page A

about arguing with him but the snake was too heavy. It made it difficult to breathe. ‘Do you ever think about it?’ she asked instead. ‘About what it would be like to fight?’
    Oscar looked at her.
Guten Abend, guten Nacht
. The tune went round and round, round and round. ‘Sometimes.’
    â€˜It’s the only way to make people believe you’re not German, you know. To kill some Germans yourself.’
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜Then what are you waiting for?’
    â€˜To be eighteen.’
    â€˜You could lie. Lots of boys do, it was in the newspaper. Or are you a coward?’
    â€˜I don’t know. Probably. Are you?’ He glared at Jessica. The snake in her chest coiled around her heart, squeezing it tight. Tears burned behind her eyes.
    â€˜Why does war have to be so absolutely bloody?’ she whispered.Closing her eyes, she slid along the bench and laid her head against his chest. He did not put his arm around her. Beyond the woods the garden with its trees and statues looked grey and grainy, like a picture in the newspaper.
    â€˜It’s not really Phyllis you like best, is it, Oscar?’ she asked softly.
    Oscar did not answer. At the end of the path, where the gate led into the park, a man was smoking a cigarette. Though the light was poor and he was some distance off, there was no mistaking him. He leaned against a beech tree, one hand cupping his elbow. He was wearing his uniform, the khaki jacket and breeches that Oscar had seen laid out on the bed, only this time they were clean and pressed. When he exhaled the smoke made a stripe in the air.
    On the path Jim Pugh’s dog stopped rolling. Scrambling to its feet, its hackles raised, it barked frenziedly at the soldier. Theo Melville did not turn around. Dropping the butt of his cigarette, he ground it out with the heel of his boot. Then slowly, he walked away out of sight. Oscar let his breath go.
    Jessica turned her face, looking up at him. ‘What is it?’
    â€˜I . . . I’m not sure.’
    In the twilight her eyes were the colour of new pennies. He blinked at her, dazed. He felt like he had somehow stepped out of his body and did not know how to get back inside. Reaching up, she put her arms around his neck. ‘Kiss me,’ she said.
    Kiss me. Two words, a single fixed point in a swirling sea of flashing dust. Giddily Oscar looked down at her, at the bow of her parted mouth, the smudges of her closed eyes with their thick eyelashes curling up at the ends. She looked just like a film star.
    â€˜Well?’ she said impatiently, opening one eye.
    Squeezing his eyes shut, he pressed his lips to hers.

5
    In the dormitories at Oscar’s school, boys were allowed a single photograph on their chests of drawers. In Oscar’s first few terms most of the boys had photographs of dogs, except for Brigstocke who had a lady in a silver frame who he insisted to Matron was his aunt but who was actually a dancer called Hilda Lewis. By the second year of the War the photographs were almost all of men in uniform.
    Oscar told the other boys that Theo was his cousin. In the picture he was standing on the sloping lawn at the front of Ellinghurst, with the castellated turret and arched windows of the east wing of the castle visible behind him. Oscar had taken it himself with Theo’s old Brownie, which he had unearthed in a box of discarded clothes and cricket bats. Theo had a newer grander camera by then but Oscar had still been half-afraid to take it back to Ellinghurst in case he decided he wanted it back. There was a pale circle just visible on one of the windows that might have been a face looking out but which Oscar knew was just the reflection of the sun on the glass. Beneath the stiff peak of his cap Theo was squinting.
    He kept the photograph there, even after Theo was killed. The other boys did the same. On clear nights, when the moon silvered the linoleum, the faces of all the dead