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Digory woke with a start as something scurried over his face.
"Rats," Jones said, a couple feet from him. It was still dark, and Digory could not make out his face, only the resigned set of his shoulders. In the eastern sky, dawn, discoloured by the poisonous air into a reddish brown, was beginning to break. "I'd go back to sleep, if I were you."
"Not sure if I can." But Digory settled back down, pulling his greatcoat tight over him, wiping his face before he could think better of it, in the process smearing out the fresh trail of mud left by the rat.
Somewhere in the distance, a shell exploded. There were cries and rattles of machine guns. Digory huddled against the wall of the trench and tried not to think. Beside him, Jones gave a convulsive shudder and muttered something inaudible.
"Homesick?" Digory said, trying for a bit of cheerfulness. After all, it wasn't them being mowed down at the moment. One had to take what one could get.
"Shut up," Jones said, rolling himself a cigarette. "Thought you were going back to sleep."
Digory shook his head. He sat up, and Jones rolled a cigarette for him as well. The glow of the butts burned in the dim trench like tired suns in a desolate world.
"Well, well," Jones said. "It's a mess, ain't it?" He sighed. "Better to be home now, all right. No shame in saying so. Bet you'd like to be home too, with your sweetheart." He sighed again. "I should write my wife half as many letters as you write her."
Digory considered clarifying that Polly was not, in fact, his sweetheart, but decided against it. "She wants to know what's happening here," he said. "And she understands."
"Not possible," Jones said with finality. "Nobody who hasn't been here can understand. Mind you, I'm not saying anything against your girl, Kirke. I bet she's a fine lass. But you can't expect that of her. It's just not fair, is all."
They smoked in silence for a while. Digory imagined Polly busy at her desk, taking notes, writing reports, her fingers going tap-tap-tap on the typewriter. He supposed it was true that one couldn't imagine the smell without having experienced it firsthand, or the sights, or the sick squelching sound when you stepped on someone's dead body while scrambling frantically for cover. Or, for that matter, the feeling of reprieve, when you sat behind the front trenches and listened to the shellings and the screams and waited for your turn.
It was terrible, the things one could get used to.
Jones took a last deep draw of his cigarette, then dropped it on the ground. "Damn it, Kirke, how old are you again?"
"Twenty-eight."
"I'm thirty-five. No age at all. Though when I was eighteen I thought it ancient. Serves me right." He let out a shaky laugh. "All the things I've yet to see."
"I'd thought I'd seen all the things in the world when I was twelve," Digory said thoughtfully. "And some things out of it."
"Eh?" Jones said. "You're being too deep for me. Well. It's Jerry or us, and I'd rather it be Jerry, for I'd like to go home and see my wife again. Do you know, Kirke, we tried to have children and couldn't? Maybe we just needed time, but then this war came up. I suppose we're doing something important. Although..." He lowered his voice, glancing about him furtively. "Don't you wonder, sometimes, if anyone actually knows what they're doing? We have to believe they do, right, or we'll go mad. But still. What do you think our bosses are doing?"
Digory said, "They are pouring out the blood of their armies like water."
"Fuck!" Jones said, almost despairingly. "Don't talk like that."
"Sorry." In fact, he himself was disturbed by the words, and by the memory they brought with them: cruelty, death, and an evil he himself had woken to life. Still, he could not help but feel that he understood that old, dying world a bit better now, sickening as it was. "I'm just saying what I think is true. They don't care about us. They care about who wins."
"All the same." Jones started rolling two new cigarettes. "Better keep your voice down about those things. Don't want to get in trouble."
"No, I suppose not." He gratefully accepted the cigarette. Before France, he had never taken to smoking. For a moment he tried imagining himself in the sunlit garden back home, with a cigarette in his fingers. The thought was strangely upsetting, as if he had dragged a bit of this world -- the trenches, the darkness, the filth -- into a world where only peace and beauty should be.
No more of that, he thought. Instead he looked at Jones, wondering if the two of them, and everyone else in the company, or in the English army, or in the war altogether, now shared something akin to what he shared with Polly: the life-changing experience nobody could understand who had not taken part in it. He supposed they did, in a way, though it was hardly the same. The memory of Narnia, and of what had happened before it, had remained a secret, a bond between Polly and him, and he could not imagine they would have stayed such close friends without it. But he could not imagine getting together with Jones for tea and reminisce about the trenches, their cigarettes and hushed almost-mutinous speculations, even provided they both survived.
"After Charn, there is Narnia," he muttered to himself, trying to believe it.
"Sorry?" Jones said, and Digory felt an acute sting of guilt. It was hardly Jones's fault that he'd never seen what Digory and Polly had seen, had never learned what they had learned.
"Do you believe in God, Jones?" he asked, because it suddenly occurred to him he did not know.
"Golly. You're really bent on being deep today, aren't you?" Jones gave another of his half-hearted shrugs. "I suppose so. Don't we all?"
"Do we?" said Digory softly, turning his eyes east.
He still had more reason to believe than most. He knew that. And yet, looking at the sickly attempt at daybreak, the sounds of slaughter in his ears, he could not help but wonder if this was now a desolate world -- if there would be anything good left in it by the time the armies had bled out.
You're a pig, Polly said in his head. Talk to your friend now. He needs you.
"I believe in goodness, at any rate," he finally said, turning back to Jones and smiling weakly. In the corner of his eye, he imagined one of the dark clouds in the east looked a bit like a lion. It might be wishful thinking, but he was not above wishing at this point. "Even if we're terrible at it. Would you mind giving me another cigarette?"