Maclean by Allan Donaldson

before the Armistice. With the prospect of peace so close, he got careless maybe, or maybe some general back in his chateau decided to use his last chance to improve his record by capturing another few acres of mud.
    When she first came to Wakefield, Claudine lived for a while with her in-laws, but they didn’t get on, and she moved to a small apartment over a store off Main Street. She was still living there when, like Private Eldon Swann, Maclean met her at a dance.
    They were both a little tight. She had come with another couple, an ex-soldier and his girlfriend. Maclean knew the ex-soldier a little, and they fell into talk. After a while, he had a dance with Claudine, then another, and soon found himself part of a foursome.
    In spite of the gas, he was still a good-looking man in those days, he still had his job at the woodworking factory, and he was well aware of the popular view that a man such as himself should be in search of a wife. Except at a respectful distance, he had never had anything to do with a woman since he went to the war. The whores of England had not attracted him, the whores of France still less, and no other possible relationship had ever come his way. There were now plenty of unattached women around, thanks to the war, but he didn’t feel the impulse to pursue them. When asked, as he sometimes was, about his single state, he served up the stock reply that he had not yet met the right girl.
    After the dance, he walked Claudine to the building where her apartment was. It was after midnight, and the streets were deserted. Standing in the door way, she kissed him goodnight and pressed his hand.
    Claudine Swann was small with thick, reddish-brown hair, brown eyes, and a sharp foxlike face. She wasn’t particularly pretty, but she had a good deal of whatever it is that can make a woman attractive regardless of her looks. Working away at his desk, Maclean found himself thinking about her, and half way through the following week, he went around to the store where she worked and asked her to the next Saturday’s dance. After that, they began going out to dances, movies, the races, band concerts. One night she took him by the hand and led him upstairs.
    Although he always went back to his own room to sleep (How would he have explained an all-night absence to Bob and Clara? How long would it have been before the talk started? How long before his boss at the woodworking factory decided to have a “word” with him?), over the next couple of months, her apartment took on some of the qualities of home.
    She didn’t have much, and much of what she had was second-hand or third- or fourth-hand. Well-worn furniture, well-chipped dishes, well-dented pots and pans, an unmatching assortment of cheap “silverware.” The oilcloth on the floor had been worn down in places almost to the boards underneath. The wallpaper was overlain by a layer of dirt the colour of weak tea and in places had begun to peel. One of the windows was cracked. (Even after a quarter of a century, he could still remember the precise location and shape of every one of these disfigurations.)
    Within this context of neglect and decay, Claudine had made things as cheerful as she could with colourful curtains and calendars and pictures from rummage sales of far, imaginary places.
    She never spoke of Eldon Swann, and once he realized she didn’t want to, he never spoke of him either. Now and then she let drop remarks that suggested other dark memories, but she volunteered nothing more about them, and he didn’t pry. Since she knew that he had parents on the other side of the river whom he never visited, he told her about them one night in a monologue that lasted almost the whole evening. Then that too was consigned to silence. Sometimes she asked him about the war, and he told her whatever she wanted to know, wondering whether what she was asking about might not be Private Eldon Swann and what his dying might have