What the war had to do with them the people of the village did not know. It came on them as a strange plague, taking their sons away and then killing them, meaninglessly, randomly. They watched the road often for the telegrams.
The telegrams were brought to the houses by the local elder who, clad in black, would walk along the road and then stop at the house to which the telegram was directed. People began to think of the telegram as a strange missile pointed at them from abroad. They did not know what to associate it with, certainly not with God, but it was a weapon of some kind, it picked a door and entered it, and left desolation just like any other weapon.
The two women who watched the street were different, not only physically but socially. For the thin woman’s son was a sub-lieutenant in the Navy while the fat woman’s son was only an ordinary seaman. The fat woman’s son had to salute the thin woman’s son. One got more pay than the other, and wore better uniform. One had been at university and had therefore become an officer, the other had left school at the age of fourteen.
When they looked out the window they could see cows wandering lazily about, but little other movement. The fat woman’s cow used to eat the thin woman’s washing and she was looking out for it but she couldn’t see it. The thin woman was not popular in the village. She was an incomer from another village and had only been in this one for thirty years or so. The fat woman had lived in the village all her days; she was a native. Also the thin woman was ambitious: she had sent her son to university though she only had a widow’s pension of ten shillings a week.
As they watched they could see at the far end of the street the tall man in black clothes carrying in his hand a piece of yellow paper. This was a bare village with little colour and therefore the yellow was both strange and unnatural.
The fat woman said: ‘It’s Macleod again.’
‘I wonder where he’s going today.’
They were both frightened for he could be coming to their house. And so they watched him and as they watched him they spoke feverishly as if by speaking continually and watching his every move they would be able to keep from themselves whatever plague he was bringing. The thin woman said:
‘Don’t worry, Sarah, it won’t be for you. Donald only left home last week.’
‘You don’t know,’ said the fat woman, ‘you don’t know.’
And then she added without thinking, ‘It’s different for the officers.’
‘Why is it different for the officers?’ said the thin woman in an even voice without taking her eyes from the black figure.
‘Well, I just thought they’re better off,’ said the fat woman in a confused tone, ‘they get better food and they get better conditions.’
‘They’re still on the ship,’ said the thin woman who was thinking that the fat woman was very stupid. But then most of them were: they were large, fat and lazy. Most of them could have better afforded to send their sons and daughters to university but they didn’t want to be thought of as snobbish.
‘They are that,’ said the fat woman. ‘But your son is educated,’ she added irrelevantly. Of course her son didn’t salute the thin woman’s son if they were both home on leave at the same time. It had happened once they had been. But naturally there was the uneasiness.
‘I made sacrifices to have my son educated,’ said the thin woman. ‘I lived on a pension of ten shillings a week. I was in nobody’s debt. More tea?’
‘No thank you,’ said the fat woman. ‘He’s passed Bessie’s house. That means it can’t be Roddy. He’s safe.’
For a terrible moment she realised that she had hoped that the elder would have turned in at Bessie’s house. Not that she had anything against either Bessie or Roddy. But still one thought of one’s own family first.
The thin woman continued remorselessly as if she were pecking away at something she had pecked at for many years. ‘The teacher told me to send Iain to University. He came to see me. I had no thought of sending him before he came. “Send your son to university,” he said to me. “He’s got a good head on him.” And I’ll tell you, Sarah, I had to save every penny. Ten shillings isn’t much. When did you see me with good clothes in the church?’
‘That’s true,’ said the fat woman absently. ‘We have to make sacrifices.’ It was difficult to know what she was thinking of – the whale meat or the saccharines? Or the lack of clothes? Her mind was vague and diffused except when she was thinking about herself.
The thin woman continued: ‘Many’s the night I used to sit here in this room and knit clothes for him when he was young. I even knitted trousers for him. And for all I know he may marry an English girl and where will I be? He might go and work in England. He was staying in a house there at Christmas. He met a girl at a dance and he found out later that her father was a mayor. I’m sure she smokes and drinks. And he might not give me anything after all I’ve done for
