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never, never see Bobby again.’
    On the hotel bed, he buttoned his flies and wiped his face impatiently with his fingers. No backbone . And no self-respect, his father might have added. He had got on his knees to his wife, as though that would have made any difference, and he had begged for his son. She had only been even more disgusted. Could that have been possible – could her disgust have been greater still? Her disgust had been palpable; she had quaked with it, she’d pressed the back of her hand to her lips as though her mouth had filled with spittle. He thought how if she had been anyone but Margot she would have spat in his face.
    The room was becoming cold. When he’d first come in he had switched on the light, a single bulb hanging from a fraying cord in the centre of a ceiling yellow from all the thousands of cigarettes that must have been smoked on this bed. After a few minutes of this unforgiving glare he had switched it off again – the thin curtains let in enough of the streetlight. The only furniture apart from the creaking, too narrow bed was a wardrobe and a bedside table where he’d placed his glasses in their case, his cigarettes and lighter and a pile of pennies and half pennies that had seemed so shockingly foreign and heavy when he’d first arrived back in England. Only his suitcase by the door looked smart and new, a present from Patrick. ‘Leather,’ Pat told him, ‘no cardboard rubbish. And there – see – I had them emboss your initials on the side. F.L. ’
    F.L. He was Francis Law now, not Paul Harris any more, although sometimes he used his real name. He felt more like Paul in England. Francis belonged to Patrick, to their house in Tangiers. If he ever left Patrick, left Morocco, he would revert to being Paul and wouldn’t care if the past came back to kick him in the teeth.
    Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, and he sat up, listening, but the footsteps carried on past his door. If the boy didn’t come he would go out; there was a likely-looking place near by, an underground public lavatory, its wide flight of steps divided by an ornate iron balustrade and lit only dimly by a streetlight a few yards away. Risky business, though. You never knew if a policeman might be watching, or even waiting inside, a smooth-faced boy used as bait, but easy enough to spot, if you weren’t too stupefied by nerves and desperation. He would go to a pub first, a shot of Dutch courage, and he might even be lucky – have no need to scuttle down those slippery-looking steps into the piss-stinking darkness because there might be the right kind of man standing at the bar. This man might catch his eye, nod, comment on the weather perhaps. Such an encounter would be unlikely but not hopelessly so.
    More unlikely would be the chance of this stranger being as handsome as the boy he’d met tonight; not a boy – this Edmund wasn’t that much younger than he was; young enough, though; young enough not to have seen service, he was certain of that, relieved there was no possibility that he had ever been a fellow officer.
    Very occasionally during his encounters, a man would take a guess at his likely past and ask him which regiment he’d served in. Not that there was ever that much conversation, although a few liked to talk, if the conditions allowed. One had even asked, ‘Where did you lose your eye?’
    â€˜It popped out one morning over breakfast. Gave the wife a start, I can tell you.’
    Silly bastard for asking. He supposed that if he had told him how he’d lost his eye the man would’ve had an excuse to talk about his own war wound, the ragged scar he’d glimpsed as he was tugging at his underwear. And of course a response would be expected: ‘ Ypres, you say? That’s a coincidence – I got shrapnel in the thigh at Ypres. Gassed too? I know, I know. Ghastly, wasn’t it? I thought my lungs were