Matches and Bootlaces.

"Market hall, please."

"That'll be tuppence." The conductor braced himself against the bucking
motion and punched out the ticket.

With an unearthly shriek of metal grinding on metal, the corporation
tram lumbered round the Town Hall corner, narrowly missing a delivery
boy struggling to maintain his balance as he cycled across the tracks,
and thundered majestically away up the High Street towards the old
market. William Carter; Captain Carter to his office colleagues and
social inferiors, peered ahead from the quivering top deck to locate
his stop.

He seldom took this particular tram, the number six (Lawson Avenue via
Cemetery Gates} route. He was only reluctantly seated among the
hoi-polloi this Saturday afternoon so that he might collect his best
overcoat from Cavanagh's, the tailor's opposite the old market hall. It
was a dingy, unremarkable shop with a rich, distinct smell all its own,
easy to overlook, but Cavanagh's still retained a reputation for solid
workmanship and reasonable charges, and Carter had favoured them with
his custom many times in the past. Normally, Mrs Merrick, his
housekeeper, would have undertaken such a mundane errand but she'd been
unexpectedly called away to her sister's in Warrington and Carter was
having to shift for himself over the weekend.

The ancient juggernaut screeched to a halt outside the market, and
Carter tripped down the circular staircase. Being afternoon, the time
when even common workmen expected a half-day holiday from their
labours, the streets were packed and Carter was forced to pick his way
through the crush to reach his destination.

The coat was ready, as promised, and Carter examined it carefully. The
work was good, the repair to the disfiguring snag near-invisible.
Carter nodded and counted out the change carefully before leaving with
a quick word to the proprietor and walking, unsmiling, back out into
the teeming street. Carter seldom smiled, not these days: he'd not
found much to smile about for around ten years, not since the armistice
that had finally brought the most ruinous, most cataclysmic war in
human history to its sorry conclusion. He'd survived, physically intact
if not mentally, but he'd known many who hadn't been so lucky - all his
sad and wasted generation had.

The black depressions didn't come so often these days: not like they
had in the immediate post-war years. He'd mentioned them to his doctor,
in a roundabout sort of way, over a round of golf - for no-one wished
to be thought unstable or unduly rattled by their experiences, no
matter what a bunch of nancy-boy writers might have scribbled in their
moaning memoirs - and been told that his complaint was common enough:
nothing that a good scotch or three wouldn't cure. It had seemed sound
advice, and he'd frequently acted upon it. Possibly too often, lately,
but he reckoned that doctor knew best.

He picked his way across the well-polished tramlines, waited for a
swaying dray to pass, and walked across to the market hall. It was a
bright day, unseasonably warm for November, and the low sunlight caused
him to squint as he surveyed the tightly-packed advertising signs:
Virol, Barber's Tea, Sunlight Soap.. eventually, his gaze alighted upon
the gaudily-coloured poster that he'd spied from across the road. "The
Alhambra, Church Street," it read. "Grand Family Pantomime! Edward
Sims, Polly Williams and The Amazing Barrat Brothers and Doreen in our
magical production of Al-add-in!"

Carter nodded. It had become a ritual, and one that he secretly much
enjoyed - taking his nieces to the Alhambra on Boxing Day. In the
absence of a family of his own, his sister Gertrude's girls had become
almost like surrogate children and he frequently indulged them in
treats such as the pantomime and holiday trips.

Acting on impulse, Carter strolled into the dim, lofty recesses of the
old market. This was indeed unfamiliar territory, populated by a
seething throng of pasty-faced women in wide-brimmed hats and dark
coats seeking the best value for their meagre housekeeping. Carter felt
utterly out of place, and turned in a state of near-panic to push his
way out into the sunshine. The overpowering scent of decaying
vegetables, the strong bloody smell from the butchers' stalls, the
glassy-eyed ranks of rabbits hanging above his head - these things,
innocent enough in themselves, combined to conjure up nameless terrors:
by the time he'd gained the pavement again, his heart was thumping
uncontrollably. Leaning against the grimy wall, he fought to catch his
breath.

His reverie was interrupted by a light touch on his lower arm. Stunned
by this unwarranted assault upon his person, Carter stepped back and
spun around to face the man.

"Captain Carter? It is you, sir?" For a moment there was silence as the
two men faced each other.

"Why.. Thomas!" Carter spluttered. "I haven't seen you since.."

"Messines, sir."

"Of course.. and don't call me 'sir', Thomas. That's all over now,
isn't it?"

"S'pose so.."

"Indeed." Neither man knew quite what to say next. Carter didn't fully
understand why he'd been so quick to discard his treasured former rank,
not when he insisted upon its use from even distant family members:
maybe it was because he'd known the man so well. They'd shared sights
and sounds that mere civilians could never imagine, hellish visions
that had forged an indissoluble bond between them. The passing years
couldn't change that.

"I'm sorry to find you like this, Thomas." The words didn't seem
adequate. Corporal Thomas, once a strapping man of nearly six foot who
should have received more than a paltry Mention in Despatches for
carrying his badly-injured officer back from no-man's-land, now sat
lodged upright in an old, rusting perambulator with his well-worn
trousers tucked up beneath him. Around his neck, he carried a scuffed
wooden tray.

"I manage, sir," Thomas said brightly, forgetting Carter's
instruction.

"It's not 'sir' any more!" Carter insisted, leaning forward to touch
Thomas's shoulder. The sight would have astonished anyone who knew
Carter, for personal familiarity of that sort was utterly alien to his
stern, unbending nature.

"Yes.." Thomas mumbled, unsure now of how he should address
Carter.

"Er.. call me William, please." Carter asked politely.

"Yes.. William." Thomas blushed. "I've had a good day, you see."

"Oh. And you sell.."

"Matches and bootlaces, sir.. sorry, William. There's always a demand.
My girl Enid here.." He gestured behind his pram, where a tall, gangly
girl of around fifteen was standing. She smiled under her worn
second-hand cloche, and Carter tipped his hat.

"She brings me down, sees to me. Has to, since I lost the legs. It's no
life for a young girl, but.."

"What about your wife?" Carter enquired gently.

"No," Thomas shook his head sadly. "Gone before I ever came out of
hospital, her and our youngest. The great epidemic."

"The Spanish Influenza?" Carter asked, somewhat unnecessarily. By some
supreme irony, the disease had swept war-ravaged Europe in 1919,
carrying off more than the war itself. Often, these victims had been
the very loved ones whose devotion had sustained their menfolk through
four savage years.

"Look, I must do something," Carter said, averting his gaze.

"I'm always here!" Thomas said cheerily. "Rain or shine. If you ever
need laces.."

"Of course!" Carter exclaimed. "I do need laces, brown and
black."

"Oh, good." Thomas smiled as Carter emptied his pocket, but his smile
slowly changed to a look of flustered embarrassment as Carter threw
first a sixpence, then three pennies and finally a shiny new florin
onto his tray.

"Steady on, sir!" Thomas said, forgetting himself.

"I need this for the tram," Carter said, pocketing a few coins. "But,
here.." Withdrawing his wallet, he found a near-new ten-shilling note
and pressing it into Thomas's crabbed, scarred hand.

"I've got no change! Not enough.."

"Don't bother." Carter had signalled to Enid, and, when the girl
approached shyly, he grasped her hand and stuffed his other
ten-shilling note into it. The child, struck dumb, stood there mouthing
silently.

"Goodbye." Carter was suddenly away, into the crowd which had flocked
round to witness the astonishing scene.

"Sir! Your laces! William.." The voice faded as Carter fled across the
road, leaping aboard a passing tram. The crowd melted away, leaving
Thomas and Enid staring at each other in utter bewilderment.

"See you again, sir," Thomas mumbled. In that assumption, he was
wrong.

*****

Thomas kept his cheery, uncomplaining vigil outside the market for
almost another six years before his weakened lungs finally succumbed to
pneumonia: the doctor (who, ironically, Thomas couldn't afford when
alive) was only surprised that he'd lasted so long in such a damp
back-to-back, given his injuries. Enid, released from her duties, had
little option but to take a low-paid job in Woolworth's new store until
the Second World War - the "unfinished business" that her father had so
often talked about - took her into the factories and a marriage that
was happy enough. In any case, it was a long way away from the market
and that awful pram.

And Carter? He couldn't explain - would never have even attempted to
explain - just how badly the chance meeting had affected him. He was
used to the sight of unemployed ex-servicemen and cripples selling
whatever they could or playing their mouthorgans on street corners for
pennies, but somehow this had been different.

Out there in France, mired in that churned grey nightmare landscape, it
had been possible to believe that everyone would go home to lush,
verdant pastures - the limbless would throw away their crutches, the
blinded and gassed would see once more: everything would be just as it
used to be. Thomas was a part of that other world, the supposedly
vanished world that still erupted violently into his consciousness
during the night, leaving him sweating and fearful. There was no place
left in the living world for Thomas, or for himself.

Carter returned to his empty, lonely home, unwrapped his brown-paper
parcel carefully, and opened yet another bottle of scotch. As the level
dropped, he attempted - and failed - to make some sense of the world
he'd sacrificed everything for: marriage, health, prospects. But then,
he was still so much better off than Thomas: crippled Thomas, braver
than he'd ever be, who sat in his pram hawking matches for pennies and
who was wheeled back to a wretched hovel every night. Thomas who
remained cheerful, and shouldn't have - for without the anger and
burning resentment of him and millions like him, there would be no
change.. no justice.

The black mood returned that evening, worse than ever. Carter, maddened
by the events of the day, laid out his immaculate uniform - medals and
all - on his bed. Then, ever mindful of his duties as an employer, he
wrote polite instructions to Mrs Merrick, advising her to fetch a
policeman to accompany her before venturing upstairs. This, he placed
carefully in the hall.

Returning to his room, Captain Carter stood stiffly to attention, one
final time, before calmly and deliberately breaking his service
revolver, loading one bullet, and using it to blow his tortured brain
across the new rose-patterned bedroom wallpaper in a bright scarlet
arc.

Neither Carter's nor Thomas's name was to be added to the lengthy list
on their regiment's war memorial. They'd not fallen in action, the
authorities judged, so they weren't actually eligible. They, and
millions like them, were simply best forgotten.