It was a lovely day, and looking up at the sky over what used to be a school dedicated to the gentle Jesus, which is just by the place where one of the seventeen-inchers has blown a forty-foot hole, I saw a little round cloud suddenly appear in the blue, and then another, and then lots in a bunch, the sort of soft little cloudlets on which Renaissance cherubs rest their chubby hands, and with fat faces on one side consider mortals from cemetery monuments. Then came down dull concussions from the blue, and right over head I made out two Boche ‘planes. A shell case banged the pavé near me and went on to make a white scar on a wall. Some invisible things were whizzing about. One’s own shrapnel is often tactless. There was a cellar and I got into it, and while the intruders were overhead I smoked and gazed at the contents of the cellar—the wreckage of a bicycle, a child’s chemise, one old boot, a jam pot, and a dead cat. Owing to an unsatisfactory smell of many things I got out soon and sat on the pedestal again.
A figure in khaki came straight at me across the square, his boots sounding like the deliberate approach of Fate in solitude. It stopped, saluted, and said, “I shoodden stay ‘ere, sir. They’ve been gitten sights, and they gen’ally begin about now. Sure to drop some ‘ere.”
At that moment a mournful cry went over us, followed by a crash in Sinister Street. My way home! Some masonry fell in sympathy from the Cloth Hall.
“Better come with me till it blows over, sir. I’ve got a dug-out near.”
We turned off sharp, and not really before it was time to move, into a part of the city unknown to me. There were some unsettling noises, worse no doubt because of the echoes, behind us; but it is not dignified to hurry when you look like an officer. You ought to fill your pipe. I did so, and stopped to light it. Once I paused in drawing it, checked by the splitting open of the earth in the first turning to the right and the second to the left, or thereabouts.
“That’s a big ‘un, sir,” said my soldier, who then took half a cigarette from his ear, and a light from my match: we then resumed our little promenade. By an old motor bus, whose windows were boards, whose colour was War-Office neuter, but who, for memory’s sake, still bore on its forehead the legend “Liverpool Street,” my soldier hurried slightly, and was then swallowed up. I was alone. While looking about for possible openings, I heard his voice under the road, and then saw a dark mouth, low in a broken wall, and crawled in. Finding my way by touching the dark with my forehead and my shins, I found a lower smell of graves hollowed by a candle and a bottle. And there was my soldier, who provided me with an empty case, and himself another, and we had the candle between us. On the table was a tin of condensed milk suffering from shock, and some documents under a shell-nose. Pictures of partly clad ladies began to dimmer from the walls through the gloom. Now and then the cellar trembled.
“Where’s that old ‘bus come from?” I asked.
“Ah! the pore old bitch, sir,” said the soldier sadly.
“Yes, of course, but what’s the matter with her?”
“She’s done in, sir. But she’s done her bit, she has,” said my soldier, changing the crossing of his legs. “Ah! little did she think when I used to take ‘er acrorse Ludgit Circus what a ‘ell of a time I’d ‘ave to give ‘er some day. She’s a good ole thing. She’s done ‘er bit. She won’t see Liverpole Street no more. If Milertery Medals wasn’t so cheap, she ought to ‘ave one, she ought.”