Hand in glove

He was an Army officer. Public school accent. No doubt Sandhurst trained.

Surely, he knew the etiquette. Take off a glove before shaking hands. It was something my father taught me. Goes back to the time when knights removed their gauntlets as a gesture of trust.

Even in today’s more informal culture I still consider a gloved handshake to be bad manners.

How was I to know when we shook hands that this officer’s right hand had been severed in Afghanistan while trying to defuse a landmine?

And what better way to mask a prosthetic hand than with a glove?