XV

“I was as near death myself. But when I came to, I knew another part of me was finished. But then I had always known it would finish in death. All things do, as far as that goes.”

She sat and ruminated. The thunder crashed outside. It was like being in a little ark in the Flood.

“You seem to have such a lot behind you,” she said.

“Do I? It seems to me I’ve died once or twice already. Yet here I am, pegging on, and in for more trouble.”

She was thinking hard, yet listening to the storm.

“And weren’t you happy as an officer and a gentleman, when your Colonel was dead?”

“No! They were a mingy lot.” He laughed suddenly. “The Colonel used to say: Lad, the English middle classes have to chew every mouthful thirty times because their guts are so narrow, a bit as big as a pea would give them a stoppage. They’re the mingiest set of ladylike snipe ever invented: full of conceit of themselves, frightened even if their bootlaces aren’t correct, rotten as high game, and always in the right. That’s what finishes me up. Kowtow, kowtow, arse-licking till their tongues are tough: yet they’re always in the right. Prigs on top of everything. Prigs! A generation of ladylike prigs with half a ball each.”

Connie laughed. The rain was rushing down.

“He hated them!”

“No,” said he. “He didn’t bother. He just disliked them. There’s a difference. Because, as he said, the Tommies are getting just as priggish and half-balled and narrow-gutted. It’s the fate of mankind, to go that way.”