Low life | 14 February 2019

My sister’s boyfriend is a solitary man and easily overwhelmed by another’s presence. On his rare visits he flits in and flits out again. On this occasion he was making his usual dash for the door when he saw me, remembered something, and handed me two battered old pocket diaries in that offhand, embarrassed way of his. ‘You’re interested in the first world war. I thought you might want to have these,’ he said. ‘If you can make any sense of them, good luck.’ I opened one and saw his surname, Smith, inscribed between the words ‘Gunner’ and ‘248 Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery’. The diary was for 1917. The other one was for 1918. ‘Your grandfather?’ He nodded. I expressed surprise that he would want to give away his grandfather’s war diaries. A wave of the hand dismissed the idea of family sentiment as an absurdity and he was gone.