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What did she mean by asking about his friends? How had she perceived his loneliness so distinctly?
    “Well, blokes are more solitary than birds, I expect.”
    She knew he meant this to be a batting away of the ball she’d tossed him, but she could also intuit his suffering about something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
    “Quite a few come back changed by the war, I believe. Posttraumatic stress disorder. Lots of divorce. Lots of depression. Lots of drinking. The three D’s. I do some hours on an army helpline when I’m not up here or somewhere else with the Household. Gives me something to do. Lots of my family were in the army too. In fact, I think all of them come back changed in some way by the fighting, and not always for the better.”
    Luke felt the gravitational force of her compassion, the magnetic attraction of someone who understood army ways, and knew a little about Iraq without his having to tell her. “Well, when you’ve changed, if you’ve changed, you can’t always say how or why yourself. Others outside see it, but you just feel like you’re carrying on the same as ever. Still you.” He thought for a moment, and then admitted, “Maybe a lonelier you, or an angrier you, but you yourself, well, you’re not the best judge.”
    “I see that. Yes.”
    “As for post traumatic whatsit, I don’t think there were too many what you’d call traumas out there.”
    “Yes, well, I don’t believe you.”
    Luke wasn’t used to receiving such flat negatives from the Household. They usually went out of their way to make a charming apology before they said, in their silkiest manner, “No.”
    In the midst of his surprised silence, Anne said, “You see, it’s just that the helpline is busy all night long with men who can’t get over what happened to them. And sometimes the worst thing that happened to them was that they had to leave their lives for a year and spend it in the desert in an air-conditioned tent, with a group of other men whom they didn’t know and didn’t choose to be with. I believe that’s trauma enough for most people.”
    “It’s a volunteer armed force. They didn’t have to go. It’s what they signed up for.”
    “They didn’t know what they signed up for. How could they know till they got there? And no one signs up to die. Death was close enough out there for plenty of them to see what it looked like. And that’s traumatic too.”
    Luke felt as if he’d been driven into a corner, and not by some insurgent with a gun, but by an old woman from the army helpline. He wasn’t sure which was the way out to keep this talk on a polite plane. He would, after all, have to work with her again. He struggled and then admitted his failure to find a conversational exit. “Give.”
    “What?”
    “I give in. What do you want to know?”
    “You lost someone out there, didn’t you?”
    “I did.”
    “Tell me.”
    “An American. On loan to our unit. Meant to be helping us liaise with some of their units. Only with us for a few months. Didn’t understand all the regimental horseshit. I mean, excuse me. I mean . . .”
    “Go on.”
    “Only that most of the American units don’t have quite the same traditions, or history, or dress, or funny ways of doing things that we do in the Guards. They’re not used to it. As if having been recruited in the seventeenth century to fight for bloody Charles the Second is going to keep you alive in Iraq. And Andrew, well Andy he was, Andy didn’t understand any of it, but living with us he saw it, and the others ragged him for not getting it right. And I guess I was the first one to tell him to pay no attention and, well, we got along.” This was not the full story, but it was a true part of it.
    “You gave him a hand, did you? Taught him what he needed to know to get along with these Trobriand Islanders?”
    “That’s what it was. He didn’t understand the first thing about the lingo or which fork to use or how to have his gear