Free Lying Together by Gaynor Arnold Page B

Awf’ly brave. )
    He frowned. ‘Do you? People don’t normally say that.’ He looked down at his mangled fingers. ‘Still, it’ll be good to get active again. I feel as though my body’s atrophied these last eighteen months.’
    Atrophied . I loved the long word, and the fact that he didn’t mind using it with me, although I could only guess what it meant. ‘Which Service are you in?’ I asked. ‘Or can’t you say?’
    He stopped, and gave me a long look over the rim of the cup. Then he set it down. Paused. Gave me a rueful smile. ‘I’m afraid, young lady, that you may be under a misapprehension.’
    Another complicated word. ‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘What misapprehension ?’
    He paused again, but for such a long time that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, ‘I’m not in the forces, I’m afraid: quite the opposite.’
    â€˜And what would the opposite be?’ I asked, jokingly. ‘Something terribly secret?’
    He looked me full in the face. ‘Not secret at all. Open for all to see and despise. I thought you must have guessed – my lack of uniform, I mean. I’m a Conscientious Objector.’
    The horrible words seemed to float in the air between us. I thought for a moment that he was joking, but one look at his face told me he wasn’t. I felt almost sick. A Conshie, a coward, the lowest of the low. Even my useless dad had tried to join up, although his chest was too bad and they’d sent him to an aeroplane factory in Bristol instead.
    â€˜There,’ he said, lightly. ‘I’ve disappointed you. You thought I was one of Our Brave Boys. Now you think I’m a coward and will want your cocoa back.’
    â€˜No,’ I said quickly, embarrassed at the way he’d guessed my thoughts – except for the bit about the cocoa, which I wouldn’t have begrudged anyone. ‘I expect you have your reasons.’ Although I couldn’t imagine what they could be. I didn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to fight. I’d wanted to fight myself when I heard Mr Churchill’s speech, saying we would never surrender.
    â€˜Well, I do have my reasons, of course,’ he said. ‘Although not everyone appreciates them. Not even my mother, sometimes. In fact my mother and my sisters don’t share my embarrassing principles at all.’
    â€˜So why are you a Conshie – entious objector?’ I asked, thinking as I said the words that it was not my place to question him, a guest at the hotel. Mr Reeves would have sacked me on the spot. ‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ I added, quickly.
    He sighed, as if tired of explaining it. ‘I happen to believe that war is fundamentally wrong,’ he said. ‘That we human beings can settle our differences another way. Haven’t we learnt from our mistakes? Take the War to End All Wars? Well, it didn’t, did it? We have to forge a different understanding if we are to survive; if we are to change the way we live. I won’t have other people’s blood on my hands.’
    â€˜But don’t you love your country?’ I asked. I’d imagined myself making a last stand on the promenade, alongside Mr Reeves and Mavis, kitchen knife in hand.
    â€˜My country?’ he said. ‘Well, I’m not sure about that. I mean, I love the individuals in it and I’m not scared of dying for them – at least not more than any other man. But I would never say “My country right or wrong.” Because my country is often wrong. Most ordinary people on both sides don’t want war and we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be bullied into it.’ He spoke quickly, quietly, seemed so sure of himself that I could tell he’d said the words before, probably many times. ‘Look,’ he said, as if passing on a really important thing, ‘the fact that a