He arrived by car, no bigger than a twelve-year-old child, standing in the street distorted by the rain like a watermarked photograph. I stared at him through the bars in the window and waited for him to spot me. Later, when he joined me in the mess room, he made a performance of dragging out his chair from under the desk, slamming down a folder, which he never opened, already inclined to believe I would tell nothing but lies. I sat, a picture of unloveliness, coddled and wrapped in padding and a dirtied uniform, green in the face and thinning for the first time in years, from exposure, semi-starvation and fear.
I was exhausted from my interrogations by men, who all thought I was a German spy. This was my sixth cross-examination, my fingernails were bitten to the nub and days-old sweat covered me.
Breathing was an effort through the exhaustion my whole body felt. I could barely hold myself up and stare at the little man; answer his questions honestly or even keep my own eyes open. Is that correct? I shook my head and tried not to laugh. In a moment of madness I saw myself and this little man and it seemed so funny. Me, ragged and stiflingly pungent, with him smelling like Ivory soap, sitting snug in his jacket with perfectly combed eyebrows and a beauty spot on his cheek.
He must have led a life of luxury going from interrogation to interrogation to break men into spilling their secrets. But I was a woman, without a secret, just a story. Graves upon graves, men sitting in the holes of mud smoking and crying, beating each other for paper to write to their loved ones. Rats on pikes, blood swirling in rain puddles and the constant drumming of the ground being beaten by shells and gunfire and cordite. So, I sold everything I owned and booked passage to France. I went to Creil and learnt what I could, hoping to get to the front to report what I saw.
I shrugged and looked around the room absent-mindedly. I knew full-well why no reporters were getting to the front. I had lived in the trenches and seen with my own eyes what the papers back home were banned from broadcasting. I had no idea there was more than one. I was dumbstruck and too tired to think. I began to stutter, unable to think of a coherent answer, my memory dirtied with the horrors I had seen since.
