53
I’m sitting at a table in a pub and Jack is beside me. No, wait, Jack but not Jack. My hand is wrapped around a mug of beer, Guinness, that’s what it is, pulling the name from somewhere. People are singing a sad Irish ballad and the melody tugs at my soul with a melancholy familiarity.
“Donal, me friend,” Jack, not Jack, tells me. “We came back too soon; from the a*s end of one war into another.”
Tom, that’s his name. It comes to me out of the fog. The fog? Isn’t there a fog we are waiting for?
“Too soon?” I ask stupidly. It’s like I’ve jumped into the middle of a book, or one of those new-fangled picture shows and I don’t know the storyline, much less where we are in that story.
“I have to get back,” I say. There is something urgent I need to do but I can’t recall what.
“’Tis jus
