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room, which I had made my bedroom and general quarters, was piping hot. A large wood fire was blazing in thefireplace, and Rose had told me that the weather outside was mild. The room is Octavia’s bedroom as well, where she sleeps on a French sleigh bed that my mother had ordered down from one of the rooms upstairs.
    Rose called Octavia to her and used a thermometer to take her temperature.
    ‘Normal,’ she said. ‘But if you still feel cold, Octavia, I’ll take you up to Pooley Bridge to see Dr Raverat.’
    She said goodbye after that and said she’d pop in again tomorrow. Octavia saw her to the door.
    Wednesday, 11 December
    This is, God knows, as lonely a place as I have known. I have Octavia for company, of course, but she is ten years old, and I often want to speak with an adult, a man or even a woman. Of course, with a woman I can never expect any more than intelligent conversation. All I can hope for is to have some women for my friends. The loss of my leg has diminished me so completely, I scarcely think of myself as a man now, a proper man, well formed, active, not the partial thing I have become.
    The sense of isolation here is made worse in the long evenings and nights. The blackout hems us in, but I had forgotten that the house was never fitted with either gas or electricity, and that we must depend on candles and oil lamps of various kinds. When dark comes down, the house changes. It is all shadows, shadows that shift and change. I feel disturbed by it. Lying alone in my bed, I am trapped, and my mind fixes on the shadows and the way the flickering of a candle will send them scurrying in all directions. Sometimes they will cluster in a corner, andmy imagination fancies that they move of their own accord, or that someone is watching me from within them. I keep a lamp burning through the night. Octavia sleeps on the sleigh bed at the foot of mine and says she does not mind the shaded light. At times she whimpers in her sleep, but I do not think she can hear the small sounds the house makes as its wooden beams expand and contract.
    Rose came again today. She arrived by car instead of bicycle. It’s Dr Raverat’s car, a little TB Midget, bright red and striking, even with its folding roof securely in place. I realized that the doctor must trust her a lot, to let her drive on these country roads in such a smart little sports car.
    She had a reason for borrowing it.
    ‘I prefer my bicycle,’ she said, ‘but I’ve brought something that wouldn’t fit safely on a bike.’
    She went out to the car, and when she came back in she was carrying a pair of wooden crutches.
    I recoiled when I saw them. ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘I’m not ready for those.’ I was terrified at the thought of them, of going outside, of falling on my back, of crashing on to my face, catching them in weeds, displaying my awkwardness, like a child learning to walk for the first time. Frankly, I didn’t want them at all.
    She smiled and approached the bed.
    ‘The sooner you can get out of that bed and start to walk, the better you’ll feel. You’re stifling in here and getting bedsores.’
    ‘I don’t have any clothes.’
    She laughed.
    ‘Octavia has shown me where your things are kept.’
    As if on cue, Octavia arrived, carrying a pair of trousers, a sock, a shirt and a thick pullover that I had worn against the cold of the fjords. She grinned and laid the bundle on top of her bed,then made her way back to the kitchen, where she lived while she was not with me.
    ‘Shouldn’t I do this in hospital?’
    Rose shook her head.
    ‘Lieutenant, what can I do to make you understand? I am a trained nurse. I have won awards for my nursing. I have worked in two hospitals, and I have seen my fill of amputated legs. Or, in your case, a partially amputated leg. You are already luckier than many men I have looked after: you have a complete leg and half a leg. There are men whose legs begin and end at the top of their thighs. I have dressed