Peter Ho Davies was named as one of Granta’s Best British Young Novelists in 2003, but he built his early career on short stories. ‘Relief’ was included in his debut collection, The Ugliest House in the World.

Claire Keegan has said that “a short story begins after what happens happens”. I’ve never been entirely sure what that means, but Davies’ story is perhaps a good illustration, in that it features two famous historical people a while after the event for which they are renowned. Lieutenants Bromhead and Chard are enjoying dinner in the mess tent in Natal, South Africa in the spring of 1889. Three months have passed since their defence of the British mission station at Rorke’s Drift, in which around a hundred men held off an army of five thousand Zulu warriors. Davies isn’t interested in glorifying the British soldiers’ exploits, though: Bromhead and Chard’s retelling of the event is interrupted by a bout of flatulence suffered by another soldier at the mess table. There’s broad humour here, but the story becomes a compelling examination of embarrassment, compassion and different kinds of bravery.

First published in The Paris Review Issue 141, Winter 1996 – subscribers can read it online here; collected in The Ugliest House in the World, Granta, 1997