The Absolutist Read Online Free PDF Page B

she scurried down the corridor, looking left and right at the end as if she didn’t know whichdirection she should go in, even though she had most likely lived there for nearly all her adult life.
    Back inside my room, with the door closed again, I ate the sandwich slowly, conscious that to rush it might upset the fragile equilibrium of my stomach, and sipped the tea, which was hot and sweet and strong, and afterwards I began to feel a little more like myself. I could hear occasional movements in the corridor outside—the walls of my room were paper-thin—and resolved to be asleep before any of my neighbours in rooms three or five returned for the night. I could not risk lying awake: it was important to feel refreshed for the day that lay ahead of me.
    Setting aside the tray, I stripped off my vest and washed my face and body in cold water at the sink. It quickly dripped down upon my trousers so I pulled the curtains, turned the light on and stripped naked, washing the rest of myself as well as I could. A fresh towel had been laid on the bed for me but it was made from the type of material that seemed to grow wet very quickly and I rubbed myself down with it aggressively, as we had been shown on our first day at Aldershot, before hanging it over the side of the basin to dry. Cleanliness, hygiene, attention to detail, the marks of a good soldier: such things came instinctively to me now.
    A tall mirror was positioned in the corner of the room and I stood in front of it, examining my body with a critical eye. My chest, which had been well toned and muscular in late adolescence, had lost most of its definition in recent times; it was pale now. Scars stood out, red and livid across my legs; there was a dark bruise that refused to disappear stretched across my abdomen. I felt desperately unattractive.
    Once, I knew, I had not been so ugly. When I was a boy, people thought me pleasant to look at. They had remarked as much to me and often.
    Thinking of this brought Peter Wallis to my mind. Peter and I had been best friends when we were boys together, and with thoughts of Peter it was but a short stroll to Sylvia Carter, whose first appearance on our street when we were both fifteen was the catalyst for my last. Peter and I had been inseparable as children, he with his curly rings of jet-black hair, and me with that unhelpful yellow mop that fell into my eyes no matter how often my father forced me into the chair at the dinner table and cut it back quickly with a heavy pair of butcher’s scissors, the same ones he used to cut the gristle from the chops in the shop below.
    Sylvia’s mother would watch Peter and me as we ran off down the street together with her daughter, the three of us locked in youthful collusion, and she would worry about what trouble Sylvia might be getting herself into, and it was not an unjustified concern, for Peter and I were at an age when we talked of nothing but sex: how much we wanted it, where we would look for it, and the terrible things we might do to the unfortunate creature who offered it.
    During that summer we all became most aware of each other’s changing bodies when we went swimming, and Peter and I, growing older and more confident in ourselves, attracted Sylvia’s teasing stares and flirtatious remarks. When I was alone with her once, she told me that I was the best-looking boy she had ever seen and that whenever she saw me climbing from the pool, my body sleek with water, my swimming trunks black and dripping like the skin of an otter, I gave her the shivers. The remark had both excited and repelled me, and when we kissed, my lips dry, my tongue uncertain, hers anything but, the thought passed through my mind that if a girl like Sylvia, who was a catch, could find me attractive, then perhaps I wasn’t too bad. The idea thrilled me, but as I lay in bed at night, bringing myself off with quick, dramatic fantasies that were just asquickly dispelled, I imagined scenarios of the most lurid