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By Root 1006 0

for uniformity), who was engaged to Lady Mumblemumble, who was going to return to Kent and refurbish the family Hall to its previous condition, and take his estates in hand, show the local yeomen what a twentieth-century gentleman farmer looked like, and on and on, to one’s taste, or one’s parents’ taste, to be accurate. I am sure you have heard it all, dear boy. Hugo provided an extensive biography for those fellows who weren’t terribly creative, even arranged for a few of the boys to have their photograph done in sporting garb with a local man who fit the bill. We would even go to Hugo for suggestions: “Mother wants to meet him next month. What shall I do?” Hugo handled everything, calmed our nerves, scripted whatever tales we needed, and our parents breathed easy. Our troublesome flaw acquired at school had quite vanished at University.

I still cannot precisely make out what happened that November day in the desert. I know what Hugo meant to do, dear Ralph. I do hope you have forgiven him that, old man. Can you really blame him? No, no more than I can blame you for the result. (Or blame myself: Hugo quite misconstrued my counsel.) But might you write me and reminisce over the events? I think you owe me that filament of peace.

Did you love him, a little? I have to think you did. How could it have been otherwise? How could he not inspire love? Especially in one whose heart is open a bit, you who dare not speak your name. You knew him last. You could write me about Hugo at War, describe his days.

Now then, with a packet of letters, you are all at once educated. But do not stop being yourself! That would be, without question, the wrong moral of this tale! No, I don’t mean to discourage you, Ralph, any more than I mean to hunt you, or ask the police to muck about in our lives. I am simply giving you the knowledge you need to carry on, because, after all, you are our love’s labour, dear boy, and you mustn’t be lost—your continued success does us honour. You are the walking expression of Hugo, his Adam outliving him, but still performing just as he built you. Oh, by all means, carry on, old Ralph, your Creator was proud of you, even if in a moment of weakness he did try to destroy you. Gods can be like that. And when I hear of your triumphs (such as this very droll little book of smut, which Hugo would have heartily admired), I shall sing to myself that in you Hugo walks the earth still, as alive as when last I embraced him.

He crafted you out of bits of cloth and horsehair stuffing, just to make me laugh, you know. Whatever you were to him, whatever he neglected to tell me, it is as nothing compared to what we were and what a gift he made to me of you, his Gui-gnol, whose stage is everywhere and whose strings stretch all the way up to some tastefully louche paradise. I can certainly imagine you today, nameless boy, talking as much like Hugo as you can. Do you trim and stretch “good morning” into “g’d mmmmorrrrning”? Do you call people Sven when you can’t recall their names? Do you bait the gynophiles and call them ducks? Of course you do, ducks.

Only, as a favour to this acolyte, give a thought, from time to time, to what you let die in a faraway desert. I do hope you were not cruel about it.

Your admirer,

B. Quint

16 January, 1918

Dearest Bevvy,

If you long for something cheering to enliven your dreary days in grey old England, then I have a tale to amuse you without fail: I am being—oh, oh! Mightn’t there be a censor or two peering over your shoulder? Well, never mind. I am an officer, and I shall slip this through to you clean somehow. I know a wounded fellow heading home who can carry an envelope. Trust your Go-go.

So out with it then: I am being blackmailed and it is delicious, I must tell you. It has brightened my dull, dusty existence here no end. I thought I should go mad if I had to interrogate one more of these old native women suspected of some or another contact with the ferocious Enemy, as if the Egyptians aren’t one and all simply delighted to be our Allies and top chums, from every little