The Day Before Tomorrow Read Online Free PDF Page A

always used these strange, magical-related expressions to describe her. 
    For example, her beauty had always been described, not as “radiant” or “luminous” or anything other than always “enchanting”.   Almost every time, that was the word used.  She was an “enchantress”. Admirers spoke of her “casting spells” on them, or “weaving enchantments on their hearts’. 
    When she thought about it now, she realised that modern men were not usually given to overblown expressions of this type.
    Jealous girls had referred to her, not as a “bitch”, but more commonly, a “witch”.   
    And there were other examples of this strange circumstance.  The most peculiar being her French teacher’s habit of calling her a “genie”.  She was trying to express the idea that she considered Tamar a genius of course, but her grasp of English had not been as impressive as Tamar’s grasp of French.  And Ophelia’s mother had always said that she had “a head full of magic”.  Never ever did she say: “oh she’s off on another planet.’ Or even, simply: ‘She’s a daydreamer’.  It was weird now she came to think about it; it was weirder still that she had never noticed it before.
    It was almost as if the universe was trying to tell her something.
     
    She left the letter behind when she left the room and Tristan picked it up curiously.  He read:
     
    Dear Tam
     
    I wonder how many of the enemy feel just like I do about –––  we  –– and I think about how they probably don’t want to any more than I do.  After all, they’re just men like us really, probably just like us.  I bet they’d much rather be at home, just like I would.  I don’t want to kill anyone.  I bet they don’t either.  But I will, and they will too, because we have to.  Nobody asked us if we wanted to.  It’s ridiculous, if we all just said no, what could they do about it?  But we won’t because we know the other side won’t say that and so it’s them or us, I suppose.  How did it get like this?
     
    It’s almost dawn. I have to go, I hope this letter reaches you. 
     
    Promise to go on, Tam, don’t give up whatever happens.  I put my hope in you now.  After all, if it’s not for you, then what am I doing this for?  You are the reason, the beginning and the end.  If you survive this, then that is all I ask for.  As for me, just keep me in your heart.  I know you will. 
    I love you always
     
    Denny X 
     
    Tristan sighed to himself as he put the letter down. ‘Oh to love like that!’
    * * *
    When Morris was blown to bits beside him, something changed in Denny forever.  He learned, in that moment, how to hate and how to kill without remorse.  The enemy had come upon them just before dawn and taken them by surprise. 
    Now Denny lay in the trench, spitting and swearing bloody murder, wreathed in smoke from the machine gun and totally unafraid, as bullets hammered into the sandbags around him, watching the lines of grey figures approach out of the early morning mist.  Hundreds and hundreds of them.  Not men any longer, they were just “The Enemy”. 
    Through the mist in his head, Denny could vaguely hear his comrades shouting: ‘Load!’  ‘Cock – Range?’  ‘Reload.’  ‘Fire!  Fire!’ All was desperate panic and confusion. The Captain had been right; these boys just weren’t ready for this.  Denny shivered.  With a cold fury, he shot, and not five yards from him, a man fell and another and another.  Beside him, Private Jones fell with a cry, Denny continued to shoot.
    Then somebody lobbed a shell into the trench; everybody dived out of the way as the ground around them sprayed upward like water.  Everybody seemed to be screaming.  There was fire everywhere. Denny was flung backwards by the force of the explosion.  He was lucky – he was still alive.  He just had time to let this thought register, before everything went black. 
    * * *
    Tamar had been sat in the same