The Absolutist

Set during and after World War I, the novel follows Tristan Sadler, a former soldier haunted by guilt, as he travels to Norwich in September 1919 to deliver a packet of letters to Marian Bancroft, the sister of Will Bancroft, the man Tristan loved and helped to kill. The narrative alternates between Tristan's present-day visit and extended flashbacks to military training at Aldershot and the trenches of northern France, gradually revealing the full scope of Tristan's secret.

Tristan, 21 and working as an editorial assistant at a London publishing house, arrives in Norwich the evening before his appointment with Marian. At a local pub, a man who lost both sons in the war studies Tristan and tells him plainly that what he sees is guilt and self-hatred. Alone that night, Tristan reflects on his adolescence in Chiswick, recalling his childhood friendship with Peter Wallis. Though a girl named Sylvia Carter kissed him, Tristan's desires were always for Peter. At 15, he impulsively kissed Peter in a schoolroom. Peter reported him, and Tristan's father beat him severely and threw him out. Overwhelmed by memories of a second, later love, Tristan collapses, questioning why he has come to Norwich.

The next morning, Tristan visits Norwich Cathedral, where he encounters Reverend Bancroft, Will's father, near the grave of Edith Cavell, a British nurse executed during the war for helping Allied soldiers escape. The reverend's resemblance to Will sends Tristan into a panic. At the train station, he stands before the London train, tempted to abandon his mission, but a destitute veteran with a disability begging for change reminds him of the war's unfinished toll, and he resolves to stay.

At one o'clock, Tristan meets Marian at a café. She is nervous and talkative, veering between warmth and hostility. She reveals that Will wrote about Tristan constantly during training at Aldershot, describing him with near-besotted enthusiasm. But from the moment Will shipped out to France, he never mentioned Tristan again. When Marian asked, Will wrote back that Tristan had been killed by a sniper. Marian mourned him; her father said a mass in his memory. She believed Tristan dead until his letter arrived three years later. The revelation devastates Tristan: Will effectively erased him after their last night together in England.

The narrative shifts to an extended flashback at Aldershot Military Barracks in the spring of 1916. Among the recruits is Arthur Wolf, a conscientious objector who refuses military service on moral grounds. Sergeant James Clayton publicly humiliates Wolf and orders another recruit to beat him while Wolf refuses to fight back. Tristan and Will, assigned adjacent bunks, form an immediate bond, but Tristan grows jealous of Will's friendship with Wolf, whose principled arguments against killing fascinate Will. One night on guard duty, Will mentions a fiancée named Eleanor. Tristan is blindsided, and a tense exchange follows in which his deeper feelings surface, though neither man names them.

Shortly before the recruits finish training, Wolf disappears. His body is found in a forest stream with his head split open, ruled an accident. Will is certain Wolf was murdered: Wolf had just been granted official objector status and was to leave the next morning. Tristan recalls hearing sounds of dragging and scuffling that night and realizes Will is right. Devastated and terrified, Will pulls Tristan to him, and they are intimate for the first time. For Tristan, the moment feels like coming home.

On the boat to France, Will tells Tristan their night meant nothing, that it does not count unless it is with a girl, and asks him to pretend it never happened. They barely speak for weeks in the trenches of Picardy amid flooding, rats, lice, and constant shelling. Weeks later, Will initiates contact again and they are intimate a second time, only for Will to resume his cold rejection afterward.

The turning point comes when their regiment captures a German trench. Will discovers a surviving German boy, barely 17, hiding in the rear and insists on taking him prisoner. A soldier named Milton executes the terrified boy with a shot to the head. Will demands that Tristan corroborate his account so Milton can face charges. Tristan refuses, partly from emotional resentment at Will's repeated rejections and partly from a desire to avoid involvement. Will empties his rifle, lays it on the ground, and declares he will take no further part in the fighting.

Back in the 1919 narrative, Marian reveals what Tristan already knows: Will was executed by firing squad for cowardice, the only soldier from the county to receive this sentence. The Bancroft family lives with shame and ostracism. At Marian's urging, Tristan visits their home, where the reverend has just failed to have Will's name added to the town's war memorial. Mrs. Bancroft, whose own father was killed in a previous war, cannot understand why Tristan's parents refuse to see their living son when she would give anything to see her dead one. Before enlisting, Tristan returned to Chiswick to learn that his younger sister Laura had died, a death his father never disclosed. Tristan delivers the letters, and the reverend asks what he needs to be forgiven for. Tristan cannot answer.

The novel's climactic flashback reveals Will's final hours. After declaring himself an absolutist, a conscientious objector who refuses to participate in the war in any capacity, Will is court-martialed and sentenced to death. Tristan is thrown into confinement with Will after fighting another soldier. In their last conversation, Will asks Tristan once more to report the truth about Milton and Wolf. Tristan refuses. Will accuses him: "I am to be shot as a coward while you get to live as one." Tristan confesses his love. Will rejects him with escalating cruelty, slapping him repeatedly and claiming he feels nothing but contempt.

Consumed by rage and heartbreak, Tristan volunteers as the sixth man on the firing squad. When Will is brought out at dawn, he rips off his blindfold to face his killers and sees Tristan in the line. His last word is "Tristan." The command comes, and Tristan pulls the trigger.

A final section jumps to October 1979. Tristan, now 81 and a celebrated novelist who has spent his adult life alone, receives a lifetime literary award in London. That evening, an elderly Marian appears at his hotel. She married Leonard Legg, her former fiancé who broke their engagement after Will's execution, though the marriage ended within a decade. She became a schoolteacher and had three children, including a son who has struggled throughout his life and whose name Tristan silently understands to be Will. Tristan reveals he has written a manuscript telling the complete truth but has never published it out of shame. He plans to leave it for posthumous publication. Marian calls him a coward, "right to the end," and leaves.

Alone in his hotel room, Tristan finishes writing the manuscript. He notes that his index finger, which has trembled spasmodically since the war, is finally still. He reaches into his briefcase for something he has kept close at hand, and the novel closes with his clear intention to take his own life, describing himself as "the greatest feather man of them all," using the wartime slang for a coward.