that the less you think about what you &re doing the
less there is to remember.
^Butley, with its unavoidable absence of liveliness,
did make me to some extent ccrebrally aware of \\hat
was happening to me. Through no fault of its own, it
suffered from the disadvantage of being "just thesamc
as ever"—except that all the life seemed to have gone
out of it. And I was merely my old self, on final leave,
with Aunt Evelyn doing her level best to make things
bright and comfortable for me. The pathos of her
efforts needs no emphasizing, though thinking of it
gives me a heartache, even now. A strong smell of
frying onions greeted my arrival. This, anyhow, gave
me a chance to say how fond I was of that odour—as
indeed I still am. "Steaks are quite difficult to get
now, dear, so I do hope it's a tender one," she re-
marked. And afterwards, while we were eating it,
"Much as it disagrees with me I never can resist the
merry onion."
Her tired face was just about as merry as an onion.
And the steak, of course, was tough. We hadn't much
to tell one another either. Conversation about Slate-
ford was restricted to my saying what a good place it
was for golf, and there was an awkwardness even in
telling her what a wonderful man Dr. Rivers was,
since his name at once raised the spectre of my "pro-
test", which neither of us desired to discuss.
No doubt she had hoped and prayed that I might
get a home-service job; but now she just accepted the
fact that I'd got to go out again.
Naturally, I didn't include Aunt Evelyn among the
people on whom I wanted to get my own back by be-
ing killed. But I knew that she disapproved of people
being pacifists when there was a war to be won. So
she suffered in silence; and if I said anything at all it
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