In the Wolf's Mouth Read Online Free PDF

of his training, at the end of a lot of things, and posted now, although Mother was yet to ask, off to the war finally. His mother spoke as though overhearing his thoughts.
    ‘You know I had hoped the war would have finished before you got dragged into it.’
    Will sat up. He was horrified. ‘But you wouldn’t want me to miss my chance.’
    ‘I think I could cope.’
    Ed said solemnly, ‘A man wants to fight’, and Will laughed.
    ‘And how would you know?’
    ‘Boys.’
    ‘Look, it’s my duty, isn’t it? It needs to be done. It’s what Father would have wanted.’
    ‘I’m not so sure you know that about him,’ Will’s mother said quietly.
    ‘Why wouldn’t he?’
    ‘You’re his son.’
    ‘I know that. All somewhat academic, anyway. I’ve been posted.’
    His mother looked up at him, her dim eyes watery, a rose flush blotching her neck. ‘Have you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And?’
    It wasn’t what he’d wanted. It was not what he deserved, with his Arabic and ambition. He had been warned by one NCO during training, a sly and adroit Cockney who seemed to be having the war he wanted, who had friends in the kitchens and spat at the end of definitive statements. ‘You need blue eyes,’ he’d said, smoking a conical hand-rolled cigarette, ‘to get a commission. Take my word for it. You’ll end up in the dustbin with the rest of them.’ There was a look for the officer class and Will didn’t have it. Five feet nine inches tall, he had dark hair and dark eyes, a handsomely groomed round head and a low centre of gravity. This was unfair. In his soul he was tall, a traveller, a keen, wind-honed figure.
    The man who sat at the last in a sequence of desks Will had visited, the man who decided Will’s future, considered the paperwork through small spectacles and made quiet grunting noises like a rootling pig. Finally he looked up. ‘All very commendable. Languages. I’m putting you in for the Field Security Services.’ The dustbin.
    Will pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘If I may, sir, I was hoping for the Special Operations Executive, you see, I …’
    ‘The duty to which we are assigned,’ the man interrupted, as though finishing Will’s sentence, ‘is where we must do our duty.’
    And so Will had humiliated himself precisely in the way he’d told himself he never would.
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Sir, I’m not sure I should mention this but my father, you see, in the last war …’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Distinguished himself. He was awarded the VC. I …’
    ‘Oh, excellent. Jolly good. You should try to be like him.’
    The personnel of the unit to which Will was assigned was like a saloon bar joke. An Englishman, a Welshman and a Jew … And lo and behold his commanding officer was tall, blue-eyed, a wistful blond, younger than Will by a couple of years, an Oxford rower, perfectly friendly, unobjectionable and unprepared. To Will he said, ‘And suddenly we’re all soldiers. All a bit unreal, isn’t it?’ But they weren’t soldiers. Not really.The only danger Will could perceive with the FSS was spending the remainder of the war guarding an English airbase doing nothing at all.
    Will considered how much of this to tell his mother as she asked again, ‘And?’
    ‘You needn’t look so worried. I’m not going far just yet. Port protection sort of thing. Security.’
    ‘Isn’t that police work?’
    Ed, leaning low over his plate, looked across to see Will’s reaction.
    Will felt an urge to throw his drink in his mother’s face. He pictured vividly the water lashing out from his cup and striking. It was a thought he had now and then, in different company, just picking up his cup and hurling its contents into the face of whoever it was who had provoked him. He wouldn’t ever do it but in those moments the vision of it was so clear and fulfilling that he had to resist. ‘It is what I have been assigned to do until I am posted abroad.’
    After supper they listened to the wireless, angling