Not a fly would he harm.

  That heroic young conshie named Paul.

  That one word heroic made him stand tall, and from then on I saw him walk with more of a swagger.

  One night I lay awake on my palette, or rather half-awake, in that zone between waking and sleep – unable to drift off, unwilling to get up. I listened to the noises around me – the clang of an iron door far off, the footsteps of a guard on the metal walkway, now and then a shout, another prisoner perhaps, calling out in troubled sleep, or emerging from a nightmare.

  Then cutting through it I heard a single voice raised in song.

  I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,

  I brought him up to be my pride and joy.

  Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,

  To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?

  I recognised the voice then as Robertson’s, with its unmistakeable Glasgow gutturals. Then another voice joined in, Bishop by the sound of it.

  Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,

  It’s time to lay the sword and gun away.

  A third voice came in then, a younger voice that must be Dickson.

  There’d be no war today,

  If mothers all would say,

  And although I was tired, my throat dry, my voice rough, I added my tuppenceworth.

  I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.

  There was a racket as some of the other prisoners shouted us down, called us conshie bastards and bolshie scum, and one said, so help him, he’d swing for us. Then the guards came round and banged on the cell doors to shut us up.

  Perhaps Dickson was feeling particularly heroic, buoyed up by the singing, full of bravado. But he kept singing after the rest of us had stopped and one of the guards yelled at him he’d get what for in the morning.

  We had all been given the regulation prison haircut, shorn close at the back and sides, up almost to the crown, leaving a little clump on top that we’d try to flatten with water. Young Dickson always seemed to have a wiry tuft that stuck up and refused to lie flat, and it made him look like a scruffy schoolboy, or a character from a cartoon, and somehow peculiarly vulnerable.

  That tuft of hair.

  The day after we’d been bawling out those songs, I was queuing in the canteen for my bowl of watery slop, my hunk of stale bread, when I saw him up ahead of me, that tuft of hair unmistakable. Then there was a sudden commotion, a clatter as a tray crashed to the ground, and immediately two of the guards appeared and, incredibly, dragged young Dickson away.

  I heard about it later from Robertson. One of the other prisoners, a brute by the name of Hoskins, had taken the boy to task about the singing

  He’s the youngest of us, said Robertson, and the smallest, and the weakest. And they call us cowards!

  I never saw Paul Dickson after that fracas in the canteen. We heard he was in solitary, then that he had been released.

  He must have friends in high places, said Bishop.

  Just the opposite, said Robertson. He’s done his three month minimum. Good conduct, apart from that wee rammy. They say they’re letting him go.

  But…?

  Once he’s outside, they’ll say he should be with his regiment, the one he’d been assigned to. If he won’t go…and he won’t…he’ll be rearrested as a deserter. Then he’ll be court-marshalled and he’ll end up back in here, starting the whole thing all over again.

  But why would they do that? Bishop was genuinely perplexed.

  Because they can, boy. Because they can.

  God damn the warmongers, I said, so puffed up, so full of themselves. If only we could laugh them to scorn, laugh them down into hell.

  If only, said Robertson. If only.

  Through all the time I was in the Scrubs, Pa seldom came to visit. He found it too unsettling but said he was praying for me. Ma came when she could, though she couldn’t always manage the visiting hours.

  But even in the midst of darkness there is light. There was Dora, my dear cousin.

  Dora.

  Her face appears before me, just as she was, her dark hair centre-parted, her bright eyes that looked into my soul, intense but divinely playful. I once told her she reminded me of Dorothy Wordsworth and she laughed and said she took that as a great compliment, for she could see I was halfway in love with the poet.

  And the other half? I asked.

  Well then, sir, she said, I shall appropriate that for myself, and she laughed again, linked her arm in mine, quoted Dorothy.

  I would not circumscribe your love:

  It may soar with the Eagle and brood with the dove…

  Dora came to visit me every week I was in prison. I felt sorry that she had to see me in such a place, but I was grateful for her presence, her grace. My friends saw her in the visiting area and Robertson declared she was a right wee smasher. Bishop winked and young Dickson looked away, flustered. And she smiled at them all, light in the darkness.

  Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me…

  Dora.

  So much unspoken.

  There was a passage in Wilde’s De Profundis which I had copied out on another salvaged scrap of paper with another blunt stub of pencil.

  One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are, and will be what they will be.

  What would be, would be.

  Time passed, as time does, and my years at the Scrubs came to an end, as did the war-to-end-all-wars. (Did we ever think that was true?) I had done time, served time, marked time, wasted time. Time had hung heavy, it had rarely flown.

  I had written poems, of a sort, since my boyhood. Now I submitted two or three to the London Mercury, more in hope than expectation. To my astonishment, two of my verses were published.

  I still have a copy of the magazine, which also contains an early poem by one William Butler Yeats.

  O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

  How can we know the dancer from the dance?

  Alongside was my own poem, Mortality, the one I just thought I might use as my jisei, my death verse. (Or then again, I may not).

  We that change,

  Hate change.

  And we that pass

  Love what abides.

  Summer and winter,

  Day and night.

  All times and seasons,

  Winds and waves,

  Vex our spirits

  With an image

  Of its waning,

  And bequeath

  In dying beauty,

  Ashes,

  Darkness,

  Dust.

  I managed to secure a teaching post at my old school, Cleveland Road, through the good offices of my teacher there, Mr Watson. He was himself a pacifist, a Quaker, and far from being hostile towards me, as so many were, he held me in high regard for what he saw as my principled stand.

  It took courage, he said, of a different order from facing bayonets and mustard gas, but courage nonetheless, and great resolve.

  But there were those who disagreed, for whom Conshie was still a dirty word, like Commie, or Coward, hawked out like a cough, a curse, and often enough they’d add yet another word beginning with C. It still took me by surprise. I’d go into the little corner shop at the end of our street, aware that the jangling of the bell above the door had interrupted a conversation, and fully expecting it to continue. But the talk would stop. Abrupt. A tense awkward silence would fill the cramped space, the air thick with the fug of cheap cigarettes, Woodbine, acrid. I would pay for my newspaper, or a bar of chocolate, with not one word spoken, and I would hear the talk starting up again as the door closed behind me.

  Then there were the girls.

  It was unexpected and it caught me off guard, on the blind side. I had gone out in the evening to take the air, clear my head after a day’s teaching at the school. It was a Friday night, and on my way home I stopped off at The Bell, an old pub on the High Street, where I made the most of a half pint of cider, all I could afford on my meagre wage. In truth it was the only thing I felt like drinking. I didn’t much care for the taste of beer-in-itself, be it mild or bitter. And as for spirits, they were firewater and rotgut, held absolutely no appeal. For all Pa’s born-again fundamentalism, his temperance and sobriety, he would on rare occasions fall off the wagon, come rolling home fou and unco happy – tipsy, half seas over. The effect was always to render him maudlin, sentimental. He would sing, not hymns but music-hall songs, not Bringing in the Sheaves, but She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage. A beautiful sight to see? It was not.

  The next morning he’d be hungover and penitent, signing the pledge. And Ma never once upbraided or nagged him, except by an over-loud clattering of pots and pans in the kitchen, a harangue more powerful for being unvoiced.

  But there I was, nursing my half-pint. The place was busy and I was content to lose myself in the warmth, the anonymity. At the far end of the bar an old fellow led a raucous singalong.

  Come, come, come and make eyes at me…

  I lingered over my half-pint, stepped out with some reluctance into the night.

  The walk back led past a stretch of parkland called The Flats, dark and unlit. I heard footsteps behind me, two women by the sound of it, the unmistakeable clack of heels on the pavement. There was giggling, then a sweet voice calling out my name.

  Reggie! Reggie Blyth!

  I turned and saw them, arm-in-arm. It took me a moment to recognise them as girls who had been in my class at school, Molly and Beth, one dark one fair. Molly was the dark one and I remembered her well. She had sat two rows in front of me in class and I had often been distracted by the turn of her head, the way she would coil a strand of that dark hair round her finger as she gazed up at the teacher, occasionally darting a glance at me over her shoulder then looking away again with a faint half-smile.

  Now here she was, a young woman, calling my name, a siren-cry.

  I was all awkwardness and tense excitement as I nodded to them, ran a hand through my hair. They stopped and whispered to each other, laughed again, surprised me by hurrying across the road, light on their feet, and disappearing into the park. I was confused. Did they expect me to follow? Then fair-haired Beth was crossing the road again, coming towards me.

  She handed me an envelope and flashed me a look I couldn’t read. Amusement, perhaps, but tinged with malice? She ran back to join her friend.

  She was the go-between, delivering the billet-doux.

  The envelope was scented, faintly floral. Violet.

  I tore it open, and inside was a single white feather.

  I heard the girls laughing together, a shriek, as they ran off and left me there, burning.

  Expense of spirit in a waste of shame.

  What shocked me most was the thought that they must have planned it. Did they carry the white feather with them on the off chance they would encounter a known Conshie? Or had they seen me go into the pub, hurried home to pick up the feather, then waited for me in the street outside?

  Once as a young boy, before my pacifist principles had taken root, I fell into an argument with another boy who challenged me to step outside for a fight. He said he would sort it by knocking my block off. Full of bravado I agreed and followed him. I had barely raised my fists when he hit me with one hard sickening punch to the solar plexus, drove the breath right out of me so I gasped for air and doubled over and that was an end of it. The boy laughed and turned away.

  And that was how this felt now, the shock of it, the sudden punch to the gut, the not-being-able-to-breathe.

  Scent of violet. A single white feather falling to the ground. The taste of cider sour in my mouth.

  I never mentioned any of this to my parents or to Mr Watson or anyone else at the school. I told some of it, in edited form, to dear Dora as we strolled of an evening in the park. She intuited that I was a little morose, which was not generally in my nature. I told her what had happened, trying to make light of it, playing up my own sense of foolishness.

  She stopped and took my hands, looked into my eyes.

  You are strong, she said simply, and this will pass. Then she linked her arm in mine and we walked on across the park.

  Dora.

  If we had not been cousins, tied by bonds of consanguinity.

  If.

  I have written somewhere that I came to Zen through disappointment in love.

  It would have been a marriage of true minds (and bodies) to which I would not have admitted impediment. But she, for all her liberal ideas, was troubled at what might be the outcome, especially if we were to have children.

  If.

  I knew I would move on. There was a wide world out there and I sensed it was my destiny to travel through it (and to travel hopefully). I was grateful to Mr Watson for the teaching job at the school, but the thought of working there all my days, growing old and chalky-white, filled me with a kind of melancholy dread. I could feel it physically, in the pit of my stomach.

  Encouraged once more by Mr Watson – he gave me a reference that was almost excessively positive – I applied to study English Literature at University College. My application was successful. I was awarded a scholarship. I had taken the first step.

  University would bring changes I could never have foreseen, open up possibilities I couldn’t even imagine, and it was where I met Annie.

  Annie.

  I see her face, suddenly, intensely there.

  Initially (initially!) we were a happy alphabetical accident – Berkovitch A and Blyth RH, assigned to the same tutorial group, seated together.

  Blyth and Berkovitch. Berkovitch and Blyth. I said later it sounded like a two-piece comedy act, she said more likely a dodgy firm of East-end solicitors.

  She arrived late for the first seminar – a flurry of agitation, a rush of air as she pushed open the door, let it crash behind her. It was a cold October afternoon, grey and dank, and she brought the outside in with her.

  She was small, wore a big old heavy overcoat, buttoned up, and a long scarf wound round her neck and over her head. She took off the coat and unwrapped the scarf, shook out a dark tangle of curls.

  Sorry, she said, to the lecturer, to the room in general.

  I moved along the bench to make room for her, and she flashed that smile at me, bright-eyed.

  Thank you, she said, something mitteleuoropaisch in the accent.

  Don’t mention it.

  I just did, she said.

  She settled, took out some papers from a canvas shopping bag.

  To continue… said the lecturer.

  I could feel the warmth emanating from her, smell her perfume, something light and fresh overlaying her own smell, unique and particular, musky.

  To continue…

  When the session was over, she held out her hand. Annie, she said, Annie Berkovitch.

  Reg, I said, Reg Blyth.

  We shook hands with what felt like an excessive formality and she laughed. Reg, she said. Good.

  Her hand was small in mine, but the grip firm, warm.

  Good.

  We began by meeting in the student canteen, comparing notes over bitter coffee or stewed tea from an urn that was constantly topped up – one tin mug could endlessly be refilled at no extra charge. (Perhaps that was what began to put me off tea and coffee). Or we’d swipe extra slices of bread and margarine from the stack beside the soup pot. Miraculously, Annie was vegetarian, like me, and she too had been against the war. She found me funny, I found her enchanting, and fascinating, and exotic.

  It’s good we met, she said.

  Yes, I said.

  It must be meant, she said. Fated.

  Perhaps.

  Whatever the underlying cosmology, I found that my happiness was more and more predicated on seeing her. I felt a lightness in my being when she appeared at classes. We looked out for each other, sat together at lectures or for those long coffee breaks. We talked, and laughed, sometimes just sat silent, drinking each other in. She was like nobody I had ever known, not even Dora.

  We shared a love of Bach. We talked about books we had read – I introduced her to the peculiarly English wisdom of Matthew Arnold, she offered me the dark mysticism of Meister Eckhart.

  Gott ist namenlos, she said, and I asked her to say it again, not because I didn’t understand, but for the sound of the words, her mouth shaping them.

  We spent more time together, went to free concerts, recitals, glad in each other’s company. The attraction grew into intimacy, the frisson was undeniable, her hand on my arm as she spoke, bright-eyed, about something, about anything, animated and passionate, holding my gaze. Our knees would touch as we sat talking, talking, or side-by-side at a seminar. Our bodies would be thrown together as we travelled to the city by bus whenever it lurched round a corner. We grew close.

  I was inexperienced and felt clumsy the first time, in her rented room, on a Sunday morning when her landlady was out at church. The room was shabby, smelled damp. The wallpaper was yellowed, the floral pattern faded except for a rectangle where a picture had once hung. Beside it, above the bed, was a little framed painting, a Russian ikon depicting the Virgin Mary, adding to the sense of the sacrilegious. (Her own background was Jewish, but there was something in this image of the Madonna she found comforting).The house backed onto a railway line, the main route into King’s Cross, and the trains juddered past with grinding regularity.

  It was less than idyllic. In truth, the act itself felt slightly ludicrous, verging on the absurd. But we were swept along by it, the sheer urgency, and in the moment heedless of consequences. We gave no thought for the morrow. The fear came later, an anxious wait till the all clear.