Tin Soldiers

They should have seen what she was like, from the beginning. The tin soldiers. The girl discovered them in a box beneath her brother's bed; a box which she dragged out, placed between her legs which she stretched quite straight on either side of it, and which she then tipped upside down making the soldiers tumble into a pyramid on the carpet.

The soldiers, still inanimate at that time of course, were every one of them at attention with arms by sides and legs together. They were simply painted: black for the detailed buttons and moustaches; red for the uniforms which shone.

To the astonishment of the soldiers, the nose on one of them began to twitch and they all came to life, the small man lifting his arm to rub himself. Being brought to life like this, signalled by such an unmilitary act as a nose-rubbing, was no small shock to them; and they gazed up at her pretending not to see smudged around her mouth, some ice-cream which they noticed was cherry-flavoured.  

The clues were there right from those early days: the way she would shake them out of the box, which elicited several loud complaints about rough treatment and high-pitched screams of surprise from those who had been sleeping at the time; the way she would soon tire and grow petulant when they had persuaded her to treat them to their favourite pleasure - to be held and turned slowly over a gas-ring for a while, causing a sort of singing noise in the tin which they didn't mind at all (they could talk quite normally to her while singing from every joint in their bodies).

What prompted her to take one of them as her lover should have given her away. It could not be denied that it was the soldiers' lack of interest in her one day, that had caused her to make eyes at him. She teased him to such an extent that he soon insisted on kisses; then one day - probably excited and so going a little further than she had intended - she carried him to the mirror, where unbeknown to the others, she undid her clothing, freed her small breasts, and let him stand between them supported on the palm of her hand.

Straight afterwards she gazed at him gazing at her. Of course the little man started to weep; he took her mouth in his hands and kissed her longingly; he asked her, with a serious look, to marry him.

He was only a little disconcerted, not unduly put-out, when she didn't answer, when she, instead, quickly packed all the tin soldiers away again, saying nothing.

The next day he came rushing out to meet her. But her hand passed straight over him - she didn't even look in his direction - and reached for another soldier this time, a taller one, one wearing a moustache this time.