Under Her Uniform

      Isobel “Bob” Hailey was unaccustomed to the weight of an Enfield rifle, but Captain Meyer had been insistent. She had a long trek to carry new orders to Private Mason and Corporal Southey, currently toward the far end of their thin defensive line, the end currently being pounded too hard for its actual defensive worth. She didn’t think the rifle would be anything but a burden. Better to be prepared, Meyer had said. Men liked their guns, felt safer with them in their hands.

      Hailey was sure Meyer had not been so cautionary before he’d found out she was a woman in disguise, before they’d been lovers. But he was her commander. She took the rifle. It would not protect her from shellfire; but she didn’t want to waste time arguing. She liked Mason, and she especially liked Southey, who never cheated at cards, and had been kind to her at a difficult time. She didn’t want them to get blown up through any fault of hers.

      Her boots shuddered the slimy duckboards as she trotted through the section of the trench some wag had nicknamed Sweet Sally’s Skirt. The Christmas quiet was long over. Blythe, Isaacs and Jones clustered around the fire step, taking turns playing tag with German snipers across the way. Bullets puffed into the parados above and behind their heads. Hailey checked her helmet and squeezed past, glad she wasn’t very tall.

      Southey was stationed a good two miles down the way, past a maze of half-constructed communication trenches and false alleys. He was supposed to pretend there was a whole squad down there with him; Mason’s duty was similar. These trenches were therefore fairly empty, barring the occasional stick with a helmet on top, and stray bits of canvas hung to mimic occupation.

      The traverses kept her from moving too quickly; she had to keep changing directions, like walking a giant maze. It was easy to fall into a sort of trance of boot heels thumping and webbing equipment clanking and everywhere the smell of dirt; dirt beneath her and dirt to either side of her and dirt reaching over her head. Dirt on her boots, dirt on her uniform, inside her collar, dirt on her exposed hands and face. The late afternoon sky overhead seemed an unlikely blue, as if it ought to be dirt-colored, too.

      She was sweating with the walk, and beneath her uniform tunic and gray shirt, the bindings she wore tight around her breasts chafed as they grew damp. It felt queer to be away from the usual crowded conditions. She hadn’t had this much privacy in weeks. For a distraction, she stopped for a swig from her canteen, leaning against the trench wall and staring up at the sky, dreaming. She could spare a few moments for that, while she caught her breath.

      Usually, if she had a moment to herself, Captain Meyer would come to mind; she’d remember the last time she’d been on leave, together with Meyer and Lieutenant Daglish, maybe going through what they’d done together, a step at a time, trying to remember each sensation, or maybe imagining what she’d like to do with them the next time they were together. The physical crowding in the trenches, and the related necessary intimacies of personal hygiene, left her craving time to herself. At the same time, she would crave removing the distance that, of necessity, one had to keep from her fellows. Those times of true intimacy with the two men, when she could be her own self, were thus a great relief, unfolding something in her that normally was wadded up tight inside. Fantasy was the next best way to remember herself.

      Today, to her surprise, her mind went to Corporal Southey, not in a general way but specifically his fine rear end. She’d been working with him a great deal more lately, and he’d been more on her mind. She’d had to be careful not to let her interest show, because her interest would be sure to be misinterpreted. Or not misinterpreted; interpreted exactly as it was. A thrill of unease rushed down her throat and into her belly, but it wasn’t really unease, not quite.

      She shouldn’t be thinking of him, pretty face or not. She had to work with the man nearly every day and keep her wits about her so as not to betray herself. That was her rule, how she’d kept her secret for this long: she was always conscious of her pretense.

      Southey’s image came back, insistent. She shivered a little. She really shouldn’t, but that was why she was thinking of him, she knew.

      No one was nearby, not for a good long distance, but she looked left and right and, feeling foolish, scrambled up the revetment just enough to glance over the parapet. Seeing no one, she dropped back and leaned against the wall with a nervous puff of breath.

      Fine. She wasn’t going to be able to shake this need to let her mind wander, so she would take refuge in another fantasy, one of her favorites. She took another drink from her canteen, screwed the lid back on, and hung it from her webbing before she started walking again, this time letting her thoughts fly where they would.

      In her mind, she was in a small house, not one she’d ever lived in, but the one belonging to the rector of the suburb where she’d grown up; except in this fantasy, the house was hers. Not the bedroom—she shied away from that—but the drawing room she’d glimpsed once through an open doorway, with its overstuffed chintz-upholstered sofa and settee, and the stiff chairs all embroidered on the seats, and the china shepherd and his flock on the mantelpiece. The long curtains were open at the front window, letting the sun shine in, little dust motes flickering, instead of the way the rector’s wife had always kept it, with the curtains drawn and the drapes as well. A great deal of the pleasure of this fantasy was in redecorating it to suit her tastes.

      On the sofa, lounging at his ease with a cup of tea, was Andrew Southey.

      He was in uniform. That wasn’t right—she could imagine the dirt, all over the pretty chintz. That thought made him naked and she hurriedly crushed that. She tried to think about the old-fashioned fern trapped in a dome that used to live in the fireplace alcove, which she’d always wanted to set free with a well-aimed fire iron.

      Southey didn’t leave. In fact, he was casting an eye over the ornaments, as if trying to decide which one to pocket.

      She decided to put him in a charcoal-colored suit, tailored to a fare-thee-well, because when she’d been trying to make a living as a tailor, wouldn’t she have loved having a form like his to set off in the latest style from London? His upright shoulders, tapering down his torso, would perfectly fill out a jacket of fine wool, and a crisp waistcoat would beautifully set off his slender waist. Maybe a bright peacock-blue to go with his eyes. Her hand would shape his shoulders and trace that torso all the way down to his hips, smoothing out the jacket. He would have a good clean line at his hipbone, and she knew exactly how she would cut the pocket, and how the trousers ought to be pressed so they would hang down the front of his thigh.

      Then she ran into the difficulty she often had with her fantasies. She was too practical to just imagine herself into the scene. What was he doing at the rector’s house? No, it was her house.

      If she was going to have a fantasy, it might as well be a good one. Southey was visiting