He never wrote the book he had told Daniel about. He tried. Opened notebooks, wrote a few pages, tore them up. Something always betrayed it. Either the language became too clean for the filth, or the filth too unruly for the language. He became a schoolmaster in the end. He believed perhaps this was one way to do something decent with the fact that he had survived. He taught history and literature to boys who sat crooked, grew bored at poems, and laughed when he spoke about old battles. Edward never spoke to them about glory. He spoke to them about mud, hunger, fear, administrative lies, about language that dresses slaughter in a serious, clean tone.