In the morning he would
lurch out of bed, put on a soiled shirt and trousers, dab his face
with a decrepit sponge, take a tiny piece of soap from an old tin box,
look at it, rub it on his fingers and put it hurriedly away again as
though he were ashamed of it. Sometimes, getting out of bed, he would
cry: "Have you heard the latest scandal? About the ammunition in the
Tenth Army! They say--" and then he would forget his washing
altogether. He did not shave his head, as most of us had done, but
allowed his hair to grow very long, and this, of course, was often a
subject of irritation to him. He had also a habit of sitting on his
bed in his nightclothes, yawning and scratching his body all over,
very slowly, with his long (and I'm afraid dirty) finger-nails, for
the space, perhaps, of a quarter of an hour. This I found difficult to
endure. His long white face was always a dirty shade of grey and his
jacket was stained with reminiscences of his meals. His habits at
table were terrible; he was always so deeply interested in what he was
saying that he had not time to close his mouth whilst he was eating,
to ask people to pass him food (he stretched his long dirty hand
across the table) or to pass food to others.
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