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The enemy spotted him immediately, and their guns opened up. He zigzagged across the field like a hare chased by dogs. German mortars exploded around him but miraculously missed.
Kerry's "bit of a rise" was three hundred yards away.
He almost made it.
The enemy machine gunner got Kerry perfectly in his sights and let fly with a long burst. Kerry was struck by a dozen rounds within a heartbeat. He flung up his arms, dropped his mortars, and fell, momentum carrying him through the air until he landed a few paces from his rise. He lay quite still, and Gus thought he must have been dead before he hit the ground.
The enemy guns stopped. After a few moments, the Americans stopped firing, too. Gus thought he could hear the sound of distant cheering. All the men near him fell silent, listening. The Germans were cheering, too.
German soldiers began to appear, emerging from their shelters in the distant village.
Gus heard the sound of an engine. An Indian-brand American motorcycle came through the woods driven by a sergeant with a major on the pillion. "Cease fire!" the major yelled. The motorcyclist was driving him along the line from one position to the next. "Cease fire!" he shouted again. "Cease fire!"
Gus's platoon began to whoop. The men took off their helmets and threw them in the air. Some danced jigs, others shook one another's hands. Gus heard singing.
Gus could not take his eyes off Corporal Kerry.
He walked slowly across the meadow and knelt beside the body. He had seen many corpses and he had no doubt Kerry was dead. He wondered what the boy's first name was. He rolled the body over. There were small bullet holes all over Kerry's chest. Gus closed the boy's eyes and stood up.
"God forgive me," he said.
{IV}
As it happened, both Ethel and Bernie were home from work that day. Bernie was ill in bed with influenza, and so was Lloyd's child minder, so Ethel was looking after her husband and her son.
She felt very low. They had had a tremendous row about which of them was to be the parliamentary candidate. It was not merely the worst quarrel of their married life, it was the only one. And they had barely spoken to one another since.
Ethel knew she was justified, but she felt guilty all the same. She might well make a better M. P. than Bernie, and anyway the choice should be made by their comrades, not by themselves. Bernie had been planning this for years, but that did not mean the job was his by right. Although Ethel had not thought of it before, she was now eager to run. Women had won the vote, but there was more to be done. First, the age limit must be lowered so that it was the same as for men. Then women's pay and working conditions needed improvement. In most industries, women were paid less than men even when doing exactly the same work. Why should they not get the same?
But she was fond of Bernie, and when she saw the hurt on his face she wanted to give in immediately. "I expected to be undermined by my enemies," he had said to her one evening. "The Conservatives, the halfway-house Liberals, the capitalist imperialists, the bourgeoisie. I even expected opposition from one or two jealous individuals in the party. But there was one person I felt sure I could rely on. And she is the one who has sabotaged me. " Ethel felt a pain in her chest when she thought about it.
She took him a cup of tea at eleven o'clock. Their bedroom was comfortable, if shabby, with cheap cotton curtains, a writing table, and a photograph of Keir Hardie on the wall. Bernie put down his novel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, which all the socialists were reading. He said coldly: "What are you going to do tonight?" The Labour Party meeting was that evening. "Have you made a decision?"
She had. She could have told him two days ago, but she had not been able to bring herself to utter the words. Now that he had asked the question, she would answer it.
"It should be the best candidate," she said defiantly.
He looked wounded. "I don't know how you can do this to me and still say you love me. "
She felt it was unfair of him to use such an argument. Why did it not apply in reverse? But that was not the point. "We shouldn't think of ourselves, we should think of the party. "
"What about our marriage?"
"I'm not giving way to you just because I'm your wife. "
"You've betrayed me. "
"But I am giving way to you," she said.
"What?"
"I said, I am giving way to you. "
Relief spread across his face.
She went on: "But it's not because I'm your wife. And it's not because you're the better candidate. "
He looked mystified. "What, then?"
