In Memoriam by Alice Winn EPUB & PDF

In Memoriam by Alice Winn EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online

• Status: Available for Free Download
• Authors: Alice Winn
• Language: English
• Genre: World War II Historical Fiction
• Format: PDF / EPUB
• Size: 2 MB
• Price: Free

ELLWOOD WAS A PREFECT, so his room that year was a splendid one, with a
window that opened onto a strange outcrop of roof. He was always
scrambling around places he shouldn’t. It was Gaunt, however, who truly
loved the roof perch. He liked watching boys dipping in and out of Fletcher
Hall to pilfer biscuits, prefects swanning across the grass in Court, the organ
master coming out of Chapel. It soothed him to see the school functioning
without him, and to know that he was above it.

Ellwood also liked to sit on the roof. He fashioned his hands into guns and
shot at the passers-by.
“Bloody Fritz! Got him in the eye! Take that home to the Kaiser!”
Gaunt, who had grown up summering in Munich, did not tend to join in
these soldier games.

Balancing The Preshutian on his knee as he turned the page, Gaunt
finished reading the last “In Memoriam.” He had known seven of the nine
boys killed. The longest “In Memoriam” was for Clarence Roseveare, the
older brother of one of Ellwood’s friends. As to Gaunt’s own friend—and
enemy—Cuthbert-Smith, a measly paragraph had sufficed to sum him up.
Both boys, The Preshutian assured him, had died gallant deaths. Just like
every other Preshute student who had been killed so far in the War.
“Pow!” muttered Ellwood beside him. “Auf Wiedersehen!”
Gaunt took a long drag of his cigarette and folded up the paper.

“They’ve got rather more to say about Roseveare than about CuthbertSmith, haven’t they?”
Ellwood’s guns turned back to hands. Nimble, long-fingered, ink-stained.
“Yes,” he said, patting his hair absentmindedly. It was dark and unruly. He
kept it slicked back with wax, but lived in fear of a stray curl coming unfixed
and drawing the wrong kind of attention to himself. “Yes, I thought that was
a shame.”

“Shot in the stomach!” Gaunt’s hand went automatically to his own. He
imagined it opened up by a streaking piece of metal. Messy.
“Roseveare’s cut up about his brother,” said Ellwood. “They were awfully
close, the three Roseveare boys.”

“He seemed all right in the dining hall.”
“He’s not one to make a fuss,” said Ellwood, frowning. He took Gaunt’s
cigarette, scrupulously avoiding touching Gaunt’s hand as he did so. Despite
Ellwood’s tactile relationship with his other friends, he rarely laid a finger on
Gaunt unless they were play-fighting. Gaunt would have died rather than let
Ellwood know how it bothered him.

Ellwood took a drag and handed the cigarette back to Gaunt.
“I wonder what my ‘In Memoriam’ would say,” he mused.
“ ‘Vain boy dies in freak umbrella mishap. Investigations pending.’ ”
“No,” said Ellwood. “No, I think something more like ‘English literature
today has lost its brightest star…!’ ” He grinned at Gaunt, but Gaunt did not
smile back. He still had his hand on his stomach, as if his guts would spill out
like Cuthbert-Smith’s if he moved it. He saw Ellwood take this in.
“I’d write yours, you know,” said Ellwood, quietly.

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