InsaneJournal

Quiet contemplation has been the order of the day. And I suppose I never wrote to you why. When we received our messages in the week past, I had been reminded of my very own Evans. So here, because I do find ergotherapy to be stimulating - and writing a grounding principle - let me describe him to you.

And if you find yourself inclined to read, my hat's quite off to you.

He had a fine brow, not too thick, and was given to flattening it to make the boys scatter with that small gesture. Of course they never had the opportunity to scatter quite too far. This was also the look he gave me one winter morning when I decided the only fix for the frozen machine gun was to piss on it. There I was with my nose crusted with frost, a sweater wrapped round my head and my delicate bits on display so that we could initiate our morning hate. But it worked, so he never knew quite what to say after that.

His thin lips were given to pursing -not in anger or superciliousness, certainly not. But I suppose it was concern that drew lines round his mouth and made him older quite before his time. He had a long sloping shoulder and an aquiline nose. I remember teasing him about ginger whiskers coming out of both his nose and his ears. But his valet was typically present for his grooming rituals, so I haven't any further idea than that.

We were often together. I, his soldier and his confidant. The message - or rather, the scene replayed - was that of one night when we were behind the line. There in the floor of a farmhouse, he and I laughed and wrestled together with far fewer cares than we actually had. I loved every lined inch of him. And I am only just discovering how life sped up for us in those days. He died for me. He stepped in front of me on a raid, pushing me back into the trench as he caught a grenade and drawing rifle fire, died in the mud.

We were not special. We couldn't fly or cast spells. We simply lived as best we could given the time. I could have spent my life loving Evans. I could have married him, if that had ever been permitted to us. But all I have left of him are my memories. And I suppose they are good ones. I could have been a poor man indeed. But I am rich in his subtle smiles and his rough, callused palms. I am rich in the cramped messages he wrote, tolerating my attempts to put them in verse. I am rich in listening quietly to him stumble through Italian phrases.

But he was Evans. And for a time, I suppose, I was his.