I smiled though I wasn’t sure if I should. His fatalistic view of his future, on top of the devastating news about Edgar, saddened me.
“There is something on your mind. You have come here to learn something of your brother, but I can tell there is more you’re searching for.”
I told him then about Mariette and the child and showed him the photo.
“Yes, I know her,” he said. “I know them all. Percy Davis, that fellow there, was blown up shortly after that photograph was taken. The other man, Jerome, owned an orchard where we were billeted, and the girl you’re talking about was his daughter.”
I straightened before leaning forward to hang on to his every word.
“Ed took over my billet after I was shipped out with Percy. And the next time I heard about him, he’d been transferred to a hospital for some respite.”
“Do you have the billet address?”
“The orchard was about four miles outside of Bailleul.”
I was excited by the news.
“I know the town took heavy bombings, and I’ve heard most are not yet in fit shape for visitors, but I can mark it on a map there if you wish. If you open the desk, you will find a map of France.”
I passed him the map and a pen, and he left his cigarette in his mouth as he opened out the page and drew a small X on the place he guessed was “close enough.”
“Did you know of a relationship?”
“He never said anything to me. He wasn’t that sort of person. But from what you just said, he must have been keen on her.”
He asked what Mariette’s character was like, and I described her.
He nodded, examining the image. “That is certainly me and, yes, the girl . . . Flirtatious from what I remember. The soldiers loved her, and I can tell you that she loved the soldiers.”
It must have shown on my face: a slight withdrawal from this information, from the sting of it.
“I’m sorry,” he said, handing me back the photograph. “That was probably uncalled for. It’s just that she was one of those French girls that you do in fact remember.”
He looked sorrowful then, and it was his advice following that I would carry for longer and even to this very day.
“I can’t say if what she says is true or otherwise, but there is a child now. And whether it’s Ed’s or not, he has come under your care. I think you should give him the benefit of the doubt and raise him as if he is your brother’s. Though it is just my opinion of course. I don’t know the whole truth of it.”
I nodded.
“Anyway, to hell with the Kaiser, eh?” he said, inhaling an extra-long breath from the tube.
“Indeed. To hell with the Kaiser.”
I was grateful for his frankness, and I wished him the very best. He shook my hand warmly, though his hand was cold, considering the autumn was still yet mild.
CHAPTER 14
On the train going back to Lakeland that night, I watched the darkened hills in the distance heading to meet me, amid a silent landscape that had seen no war in over a century. I thought how safe and wonderful it was here. The descriptions that both Andy and Roger had given me were frightening, and I tried to see the world through Edgar’s eyes. I tried to visualize the horrors but found I couldn’t. I wished I could. I wished I could endure some of it: if I had been older, if he had sent us a letter, a plea for help. Though there was nothing that I could have changed, I still carried regret that I had not been there to alter Edgar’s fate.
I battled for some time with myself during the train journey over whether to tell Mother any of the things I had found: the diary, the stories from Andy and Roger. Perhaps it was better that she remembered him differently. The idea that her shining star had faded and suffered miserably before his end would affect her deeply. And then I had to think of Edgar, too. He had not written for a reason. He may not have wanted anyone to know, and I felt blessed in some way that the few who did were men who would not spread such stories around, for they would surely have done so by now. Edgar’s secret had been kept hidden.
As I opened the briefcase to retrieve Edgar’s diary again, I noticed the envelope from Roland that held the list of the missing, thrust between bylines and rough sketches of shopfronts that I was meant to complete. I opened the envelope cautiously at first, scanning down the list of the dead and trying to grasp the enormity of such a war and the fact that this was one page from many volumes. The page of names smelled freshly of ink, but the content, the message within was from another time. I stared at Edgar’s name, a man with big plans and a world of opportunities, reduced to small black print. It seemed so wrong. His last moments that were trapped within the type—the date and the place he was killed—did not feel real to me, as if the information were about someone I didn’t know.
As well from Roland was a small handwritten piece about the battles during this German offensive and the number of dead, injured, and captured. There was something about the date beside Edgar’s that stood out, though I did not have to ponder, as Roland had already worked it out. Have a look at the date. It seems the date of his official missing in service has changed from that in earlier vague correspondence from his regiment. I can only imagine it was chaotic during those final months. The confusion about the exact date may have been the reason someone inadvertently left his name out of the original published records. I think, though, this will not give you closure but the need for more investigation.
Arriving back at the house, I examined all the evidence before me. Against the warm lamplight that spread across the pages, the words looked harsh, and the discrepancy was apparent. I stared at it dumbly. The date of his newly recorded death was less than a fortnight before his date of marriage.
I sat back and wondered several things. The first was whether there was an error in the recording of his death. Could the registry have got it wrong? But more importantly it triggered my mind to various places I wished it hadn’t gone. Did he not die on the battlefield but elsewhere, perhaps a less honorable death? Or was the man on the certificate an imposter, Edgar’s identity and handwriting stolen? My mind buzzed with possibilities, all leading to nowhere.
It would be another issue, I was certain, that would be contested if this information in the register were deemed accurate. If it came to it in a court of law to ascertain the authenticity of a marriage certificate, a document such as this would prevail: a record signed by a military officer. A dead man can’t get married. I remembered the hesitation by Mariette before she handed it over, which I had assumed was for another reason. The inconsistency of dates would affect any inheritance for Samuel, whose chance of a legitimate endowment was narrowing. This new evidence from Roland also meant that Mother would never find a sense of closure. With Samuel, there was some part of Edgar’s history that we could both hold on to. Without him Edgar was simply on a list of the dead and the mystery of his time away buried somewhere with him on foreign shores. I conceded I would need to talk to Mother about it and hoped that she did not involve Laurence until I had covered every avenue of inquiry. There was no doubt Mariette and Edgar were connected. The points in contention now were how and when.
And what to do about the child in the meantime? We had all grown so fond of Samuel. A part of me still clung unsurely to the belief he was my nephew, and part of me also believed he was brought here by Mariette for a reason, for a better fate than the one he’d had before. Of that I felt sure.
Mother was back to sleeping in late. It was after lunch the following day when I found her on the terrace of her room under the shade of a large sunhat. Peggy had encouraged her to seek fresh air, though from her restlessness I could tell she would not be there long. I asked if she would like to speak with Samuel, but she declined. It was the same mother after Edgar died. Mariette and Samuel had brought her out into the light again, and that light was quickly extinguished by a set of even more bizarre circumstances.
“Mother, there is something you need to read.”
“Not now, Rudy.�
��
She turned away from me, but I persisted.
“These are all items that Mariette left behind. Also, from Roland, a copy of Edgar’s name on a list of those dead or presumed dead.” Which until recent events had meant the same thing. I left the list on the tea table nearby along with the marriage certificate, the will, and the diary. One did not push Mother when she was in one of her dismissive moods, and owing to her current condition, I did not feel it was timely to mention the news of Edgar’s illness, which would only add to her worries. Besides, I could not confirm such a condition to be true. Though I trusted the men I had spoken to, without an official account Mother might reject it as vicious speculation, which might also deter her from pursuing any further investigation that could reveal Edgar in a poor light. With the documents now in front of her, she would no doubt have the mind to compare the date of Edgar’s death with the marriage certificate, which had only complicated the mystery and placed a more doubtful cloud above Samuel. “I’m not sure what you will make of it, but I think that these should now be in your care.”
Laurence did not come back to the manor in the meantime, but he responded to my request for more details about Mariette’s last night here with a rather hostile note to say that undoubtedly her purpose had been to manipulate Mother and me for money. Laurence himself had manipulated Mother for money in recent months, so his contribution to speculation meant little at this point.
But truth be known, I was also losing hope myself that there would ever be an answer. I feared the fate of the boy would ultimately lie in Laurence’s hands, and I had to prevent that at all costs.
Mariette had taken her bag and earrings but left the dresses we bought her. Was that a message to me perhaps that the earrings meant something to her, some reminder of our time together? I didn’t really believe it. In the back of my mind, I thought they were something she would likely sell. But what didn’t make sense was the fact that Samuel was still here. I saw the way she was with him, possessive and caring. He had called her Maman. It did not seem possible that a child would do that if indeed the child had been stolen and used as Laurence suggested. The boy was undoubtedly foreign. He spoke mostly French, but understood a surprising amount of English also, which led me to suspect he may have been in England longer than we thought.
With his mother gone now for over a week, Samuel had grown more accepting of her absence, but his curiosity-driven enthusiasm had dimmed, and he preferred to spend more quiet moments lying with Missy. I vowed to devote more time to him and gave him a tour of the library on the top floor, which in times gone by had also been used as a formal room for entertaining special guests and had been off limits to children entirely. He was intrigued by the number of books and awed by the gold-framed paintings on the wall. Samuel looked at the marble fireplace and the silverware and ornaments on the top and, above these, pressed flowers put in small gold frames. There was so much to see, and his eyes were having trouble landing on anything.
I went over to a section of the library to search for books on farm animals to show Samuel. When I turned, he had walked to the end of the room and was staring at the wall. The wall had a selection of photographs of the family at various ages and some portraits as well: Mother in her wedding gown; us boys standing in various poses around the property; Father, in his better times, sitting at his desk, the photograph used by a newspaper when he was at the height of his career and dabbling in philanthropy, in this particular case donating funds for a new school in a rural village.
Samuel had found a picture on the wall of Edgar in uniform. The picture was taken on the station platform before he left. Mother had it placed in a large frame on its own in the center of all the others so you could never miss it. Mariette had seen these also. I remember her inspecting them carefully and wondered then why she didn’t move to see them again.
I had presumed from the photograph kept by Mariette that Samuel had seen pictures of his father before.
“You know him, don’t you?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Is that your father?” I asked, simply to start a conversation, but I was unprepared for the response.
He shook his head.
“He is the same man in the photograph that your mother carried. You’ve seen that one, haven’t you?”
He looked a little confused before nodding.
I thought to be careful then. I had no idea what the boy had been told by Mariette.
He said something in his small voice in French then.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” I asked.
“That man is Uncle Fabien,” he repeated.
I looked at the image again and back at Samuel. I stepped closer to point directly at Edgar in the photo.
“This man here? Is he your uncle?”
The boy nodded. I took the picture from the wall so he could look at it closely.
“Are you sure?”
He nodded again, confused by my sudden interest and without any idea about the information he had just unleashed. My mind raced. What had I missed? What was said? I thought of the conversations with Mariette, the uncle that she alluded to, the one she said had died. Mariette had said there were no relatives left in France.
“Did you see Uncle Fabien before you came here?”
“Before the boat. He came to say goodbye.”
“The boat that brought you to England? To here?”
Samuel nodded. Mariette had said there were no relatives left alive, partly the reason for her departure from France and a likely explanation for her timing to bring Samuel here.
“Can you count, Samuel?”
“Yes! I can count to ten!”
“Very good! Can you count how many nights you spent in England before you arrived here at this house? How many nights from when you left the boat to when you first met me?”
He thought hard and shook his head.
“I can remember what we ate for supper before we came here!” he said proudly. “We had potatoes and, one time, beef.”
“How many times did you have supper after you left the boat? Can you remember that?”
He shook his head.
“Can you try really hard for me? Can you think about all the times you stopped and where you slept?”
He counted slowly on his fingers, frowning and recounting, before settling on a number. “Four!”
I could not completely rely on this, of course, but it was encouraging. It meant if Uncle Fabien had seen Samuel off at the boat in France and Mariette and Samuel had only been in England days before arriving at Lakeland, then there was a strong chance the “uncle” that Mariette had mentioned—presuming she was referring to the same one—had not died after all.
Though the recognition of Edgar as Fabien might simply mean there was a confusing similarity between the two men as seen by a young child, I couldn’t discount it. Why Edgar would change his name and what relationship he had with the boy only added to such a confusing tale.
But still my heart beat thunderously because what it told me was that if Uncle Fabien was my brother, then, according to the boy, Edgar had not only lived well beyond the war, he might also be alive today.
CHAPTER 15
Mother summoned me later that evening. She said that she still suspected the marriage certificate and will were fakes, though she sounded less than convincing. The will was scrawled and ragged, but I had seen an essence of Edgar there in the slant and weight of the strokes, and I believe Mother had seen this also. Laurence’s talk of forgery had filled her with only thoughts of deceit. She tapped Edgar’s diary that sat on her lap.
“How do you think she got this?”
“The same way she got the will. From Edgar.”
Mother’s expression gave very little away. She was keeping her thoughts well guarded.
“I would like to think she will collect her child eventually if indeed he is hers.”
“And if she doesn’t?” I asked.
“Then we will have to wait and see what
happens.”
I believe her attitude in that moment was simply armor against her true feelings about Samuel. She did not want to believe in something only to be disappointed to learn a different truth.
“Mother, what I am about to tell you might just help with your decision.”
I did not want to give her false hope, but it was my wish that news of the mysterious Uncle Fabien would convince her there was enough truth to connect Samuel with Edgar. I did not yet wish to tell her what Roger Whitney had relayed. I still felt that such knowledge would keep her awake at night, wondering where she went wrong and taking Edgar’s pain upon herself. I relayed what the boy had said about the uncle, and she sat there pensively at first while I awaited her response. Though I did not expect what came next, so accustomed to my mother’s reserve.
She hugged the diary to her chest, then broke into heavy tears that shook her frail body. The crying was so wretched, her heart so broken, I thought my own would give out in that moment. I passed her my handkerchief, knelt beside her, and held her hand until she had calmed. Mother then gingerly handed me the notebook, almost reluctant to let it go.
“Find him!” she whispered.
I inquired of ferry times from Dover to Calais. From there I would take the train to Armentières, which was the next town from Bailleul, its station temporarily closed for more reconstruction.
The following day, after giving Bert a final hand with maintenance issues, I called into Mother’s bedroom to say my farewell.
“Rudy,” she said. “You and Edgar were always so close. Edgar was a good man, but you may even be a better one. You are able to look into people’s hearts and see things that others can’t. I also know that you fell in love with Mariette. It is easy to see why you did, and though I warned you against any relationship, I also trust your judgment. You have to know that.”
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