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in the polished gleam of their instruments, flaring from the brass mouths of the trumpets and the hoops of the drums.
    ‘ When Yankee Doodle came to Paris town
Upon his face he wore a little frown
To those he’d meet upon the street, he couldn’t speak a word
To find a Miss that he could kiss, it seemed to be absurd. ’
    The room felt close, stuffy, belying the snowdrifts that lay outside. So many people, the entire town it seemed, had turned out for this homecoming of one of their own. Suntanned, shiny-medalled, Raydon born and bred Yankee doughboy, on furlough from Paris and the war to end all wars: Major James Arthur Stonebridge.
    A chorus of partygoers belted out the lyrics to the song, whatever they knew of it at least, mostly seizing enthusiastically on the word ‘Yankee’. The noise hurt his ears. He started at each crash of the cymbals, his hand jerking reflexively to his shoulder for a rifle that wasn’t there.
    ‘ But if this YANKEE should stay there awhile
Upon his face you’re bound to see a smile
Soon YANKEE DOODLE he left Paris town
Upon his face there was a coat of brown
For every man of Uncle Sam was fighting in a trench
Between each shell, they learned quite well to speak a little French. ’
    He especially hated it when they came up on him from behind. An unending stream of guests, shaking his hand, taking his arm, slapping him on the shoulder as they offered their congratulations.
    ‘Good on you, James!’
    ‘Gave the Boche a taste of Yankee spirit, I bet.’
    ‘I tell you Stonebridge, if I were younger, I would’ve been right there in the trenches with you boys. Pow, pow pow, giving those Germans a right good shellacking.’
    It was so hot indoors. Sweat trickled down his neck, pooling slowly under his collar. He glanced longingly at the windows, picturing the clear, frosty night that lay just outside. The maples outlined in blue, thrusting bare-armed shadows over the ice.
    He nodded at yet another guest come to felicitate him, barely making out the man’s words. His back itched as the sweat crept down his spine and for a disorienting moment, it was as if he were back at the Front. Unwashed and under-slept, so filthy that his entire body itched and he couldn’t tell if it was from the mud drying on his skin or the cooties in his uniform.
    Reaching for his pocket square, he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
    A woman leaned in, eyes bright with interest. ‘How many of the Germans did you get, James? I mean, personally? I hear some men kept count, like notches in a belt?’
    The excited twitch of her lips as she awaited his reply, those vulgar, suffragette, blood-red lips that had suddenly become de rigueur and perfectly acceptable in polite society while he’d been gone.
    Overcome with loathing, he set down his glass and turned abruptly to his wife. ‘Let’s dance.’
    He limped about the periphery of the dance floor, pain shooting up his damaged leg. It had been bothering him all evening, but he was too proud to use his cane and give these jackasses something more to chatter about. Why had he ever agreed to this mayhem? It had been his wife’s idea, alarmed as she was by the stooped, silent husband who had returned to convalesce from his wounds, with dark circles under eyes that seemed so lifeless.
    ‘I could hire a band from that new hotel in Montpelier,’ she had suggested tentatively. ‘A winter ball, it’s been a while since we’ve hosted one of those . . .’ It had been easier then just to nod in agreement than acknowledge the anxiety that she tried so hard to hide each time she looked at him.
    He kept to the edge of the dance floor now, so that there was nobody at his back. His face expressionless, but his eyes darting ceaselessly from one end of the room to the other. It was foolish, he knew. Yet he could no more help this constant vigilance than deny his time at the Front. Round the room they went, his wife gladdened by his offer to dance, mistaking it for a glimpse of the