Two Topics of Conversation

Having only ….. two topics of conversation, ….. Second World War and ….. greengrocery trade, Sydney Faraday had talked exhaustively about ….. battles and beetroot, ….. former slightly dominating. He had been ….. sergeant with ….. tank regiment, ….. part of Montgomery's Second Army that swept across ….. northern Germany in ….. spring of 1945. One of his favourite stories was how he and ….. corporal and ….. private had gone into ….. farmhouse kitchen near the Weser, found ….. occupants gone, nothing to eat but ….. sucking pig roasting, in fact ready to eat at that moment, in ….. oven. Another was ….. one about ….. gun. Outside Bremen Sydney had found ….. dead German officer lying in ….. ditch. He was still holding ….. gun in his hand which led Sydney to believe (on no other evidence) that he had shot himself out of despair at ….. way the war was going. On …. altruistic grounds of not wanting ….. man branded ….. suicide, Sydney took ….. gun and kept it. It was ….. Luger.

'….. German military small-bore automatic pistol,’ Sydney would explain to the company, rather in ….. manner of ….. encyclopedia.

….. first time Victor heard this story had been after ….. Christmas dinner. He was only seventeen and still going about with his parents. He heard it again ten years later when his mother said she never saw him these days and then nagged him into going with them to Muriel's on Christmas Day. Things were just the same: ….. same under-cooked defrosted turkey, this time with canned potatoes, for there had been ….. technological progress during ….. intervening decade, and ….. greens that were perhaps sub-standard for ….. shop. While they ate ….. shop-bought, home-boiled pudding and drank ….. only pleasing constituent of ….. meal, Sydney's port, Sydney told ….. story of ….. German officer and ….. gun once more. Victor's mother murmured, though to no avail, that she had heard it before. Muriel, who had no doubt heard it many many times, interjected mechanically with 'My goodness!' and I say!', uttered expressionlessly as if she was learning these exclamations as ….. part of ….. minor role in ….. play. She had grown fat, and ….. more fat she became ….. more withdrawn. It was as if whatever spirit she had ever had was being steadily suppressed, muffled and smothered under ….. layers of ….. flesh.

Live Flesh by Ruth Rendell (BrE)