Bloody Good. Georgia Evans

      Sergeant Pendragon proved as welcoming as Mrs. Burrows claimed. After the woman deposited Peter at the Pendragon front door and skeedadled off as fast as she could, even to the point of refusing a cup of tea, Peter and Howell Pendragon faced each other over the scrubbed kitchen table.

      “Care for a bite of lunch?”

      “No, thanks. Just tea would be splendid.”

      The old man shook his head. “Tell the truth, young man. Yer hungry, right? Never say ‘no’ to a chance to eat. I learned that in the last war.”

      Mention of the last war had to be a preamble to talk of the current one. “I hate to put you to the trouble.”

      “Think of it as giving me company. It’s good to have a young man across the table and you might as well learn yer way around the kitchen. Bread’s in the bread bin.” He indicated a chipped enamel one by the back door. “And the board and knife over there.” He nodded toward the edge of the draining board. “You cut us some bread. Don’t have any butter left I’m afraid, but I’ve some cheese and pickled onions. I’ll fetch them while the kettle boils.”

      They sat down to pint mugs of tea and doorsteps of bread with slices of delicious crumbly, white cheese and homemade pickled onions.

      “Thank you,” Peter said as Howell Pendragon refilled his mug. “I think that’s the best meal I’ve had in weeks. Where did you get that cheese?” He hesitated—was that being rudely inquisitive?

      “My old aunt back in Anglesey sends me a cheese every so often. She helps my cousins out on their farm. I don’t ask how she has so much spare that the government don’t grab. I just say ‘thank you.’”

      Peter couldn’t hold back the smile and the thought of an old lady hiding cheese from the Ministry of Food inspectors. He raised his mug. “Good health and my thanks to your aunt in Anglesey!”

      Howell Pendragon nodded and raised his own mug. “I think you’d get on with old Aunt Blod. She’s always been one to face life her own way and damn what people say. And they’ve always said plenty about her. Some even say she’s a witch.”

      The last statement contained a loaded question. And demanded a response. “Doesn’t every village claim a witch or two? Where I grew up there was an old lady lived down by the old millpond. Old Mother Hastings was her name. She scared the willies out of us children, but women in the village went to her for herbal remedies and all sorts of things. I can remember even my mother going to her when she had a skin rash that nothing the doctor prescribed could cure.”

      Howell Pendragon smiled. “Don’t say things like that within earshot of the doctor—she’d brush it off as superstition.”

      “And you don’t?” Peter held little faith in all that superstition himself.

      “I’d say go for whatever works. No one knows everything.”

      Heavens was that true! “You’re right there.”

      “Mind if I smoke?”

      In his own kitchen? “Go ahead.”

      He spent a few minutes cleaning the dottle out of his pipe, refilling carefully, and puffing on it as he lit the tobacco. All set, he took the pipe out of his mouth and exhaled toward the window. “Nothing like a good pipe after a meal. I think we’ll deal well together, young man. Just one thing I have to know, seeing as how we’re going to be sitting across the table from each other for the next heaven knows how long: What made you stand up as a CO?”

      Talk about hitting a man between the metaphorical eyes! Peter stared, stunned for several seconds, then took a breath. He’d faced the question before and evaded the sticky issue of personal details, but Howell Pendragon offered friendship and courtesy and he had a point. If Peter was going to be living in the man’s house, he was entitled to ask. Another deep breath. “Can I have your word this stays between us?”

      He nodded, putting the stem on the pipe between his teeth. “You have it. I’m not one to gossip at any time. This is between the two of us and the kitchen table, if that’s what you want.”

      Fair enough. Better make it a precise as possible. “My father always promised me that when I turned ten, he’d teach me to shoot. I was a demanding and impatient little bugger and couldn’t wait. I was forbidden to touch his guns. I disobeyed. Went into his gun room one afternoon, took down his Rigby, and ignoring any rules I’d ever had pounded into my thick skull, loaded it, and practiced sighting.

      “Dad walked in on me and demanded to know what I was doing. I was so startled, as I turned around, my fingers closed on the trigger. I got him in the chest at about four feet.”

      The memory still seared his mind like acid. Peter paused and picked up his mug and drained it, leaves and all.

      His head was still buzzing when he set the mug down with a thud.

      “Crikey, lad!”

      “He died, there on the floor. Looking back I was lucky not to end up in Borstal or an Approved School, but it was ruled an accident. My mother made me promise, hand on the family Bible, to never touch a gun again and I haven’t. I told the tribunal that. They accepted it. I told them I’d do anything, as long as it didn’t violate that promise. Aside from that, just thinking about picking up a gun turns my stomach into knots. I’ll never forget how Dad’s warm blood felt on my hands and the smell of cordite in the gunroom.”

      That Howell had no trouble believing. The lad had gone so pale he looked green. “What were you doing before the war?”

      “I was training to be a vet.”

      Howell almost managed to stifle the wry laugh. “So they sent you off to patch up people.”

      “And now I’m here.”

      “You’ll do, lad. You’ll do. Those two women will like as work you to death, like they do themselves.” He stood. “Tell you what, you go fill up the coke”—he nodded at the battered enamel hod by the kitchen stove—“while I clear the table, and then I’ll take you round the village and introduce you to Nurse Prewitt. I’d take you along to the doctor’s, but she’s off talking to the coroner. We had someone die here last night and dunno when she’ll be back.”

      The lad seemed almost relieved as he hefted the empty coal hod and went out the door.

      Nice boy, Howell decided. A bit nervous, but wasn’t everyone these days? And what a hell of thing to have to live with. He, for one, would never forget the look in the face of the Jerry he’d gutted with his bayonet back at Verdun. It had given him nightmares and that had been a total stranger. But for a kid to kill his da? He shook his head. It wasn’t just wars that ripped lives apart.