TWENTY-NINE
Stop tormenting and gloating on us like this.
Edgar could hear the birds singing excitedly as they flew into Moreden Woods to settle down for the night, and he whistled jauntily along with them as he walked back along the road towards Bishops Shilton. He squared his shoulders and tried to march, swinging his arms as he did, imagining himself already in his uniform, marching off to battle the Hun, to return in a blaze of glory, his chest full of medals and all the girls of the village eager to take his arm and walk with him.
The summer evening was fine and the sun, a blazing orange ball, was still several degrees from sinking away below the valley rim, and Edgar thought of when he had been a small boy, asking where the sun went at night and his fad telling him that the sun wa
