Harry wonders how many seers have run their fingers over David West’s image and what they have felt. He has read about psychics and spiritualist meetings, about widows and mothers communing with the souls of their lost men, connecting again and saying the things that they never had a chance to speak to their faces. But he can feel no sense of Francis as he holds his hand over his photographs. There is nothing there. No presence itching at his palm, no signs, no sense of a soul; only an absence, only a space, a gap, and memories that need to be kept covered up. Francis isn’t there to converse through a medium. If he is, Harry can’t think what Francis would say. And he’s not sure that he would want to hear it.
5
Edie
Arras, August 1921
There is a young couple in the corner of the café, not much more than teenagers, their fingers linked under the table, their heads touching, mouthing words only meant for each other. Edie catches the girl’s eye and quickly looks away, a brief, awkward moment of uninvited connection, but then his voice is there.
‘ “Fasten your hair with a golden pin,” ’ Francis’ voice whispers. She can almost feel his breath in her ear again and hear the grin shaping his recited words. ‘ “And bind up every wandering tress.” ’
It is eight years ago and she is a girl in the lending library, looking for a story to briefly take her away from her mother’s illness – and suddenly he is there, on the other side of the bookshelf, the blond boy with his flamboyant manners, and his rhymes, and that smile. She can see the gloss of his hair again. His smell of soap and cigarettes. His words that tasted of pear drops. Edie thinks of that boy’s confidence, and the irresistible vitality that shone so brightly out of him that day, and she can’t help but smile at the memory.
‘ “You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,” ’ he says, his soft voice lingering through the words, as though the sound of them is delicious to him. ‘ “And bind up your long hair and sigh, and all men’s hearts must burn and beat.” ’
It had been a displaced voice at first, whistling through the poetry section, until she had seen his movement on the other side of the shelves. She had looked through the gap between Dickinson and Donne and then his mouth had been there, making the whispered words.
‘ “And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky, live but to light your passing feet.” ’
She had wanted to tell him to shush, that this sort of thing isn’t allowed in the public library, to wave her hands and make the embarrassing words go away, but she could see the smile curling at the edges of his seashell-pink lips.
He was just a white-toothed grin, disembodied like the Cheshire Cat, and words with a scent of boiled sweets. But then he was eyes that watched her through the Romantics and the Classics; a flicker of long lashes and clear bright blue-green eyes that creased at the corners, so that she knew he was smiling on the other side. He existed only in fragments and glimpses and elements, and a voice that linked them all. But then he was a flash of profile, and finally a face that had looked directly down into her own as she had stepped out at the end of the row, as if he had always been there waiting for her.
‘ “I bade my heart build these poor rhymes,” ’ he recites. ‘ “It worked at them, day out, day in, building a sorrowful loveliness.” ’
The whisper of his voice was so soft that she had to step closer to hear him. He had put his eyes to the ceiling to recall the last line and then his gaze had connected with hers. He smiled with something that resembled satisfaction.
‘Yeats,’ he had said. ‘It’s a poem.’
‘I gathered that much.’
‘Only, when I saw you through the bookcase, I suddenly knew what it meant. I learned it by heart last week.’
‘And since then you’ve been like a coiled spring in the poetry section, waiting to pounce it on unsuspecting females?’
‘Not a bit of it.’ He had laughed and shaken his head. ‘It’s not like that at all. I would take your hand and introduce myself properly, only . . .’
His arms were full of books. He braced them with his chin to keep them from slipping. She looked at his chest and read the spines of atlases, a history of Roman Britain, walking guides and a book of birdsong.
‘You’ll get in trouble for whispering in the library,’ she had said. ‘It’s bad manners. There’s a notice up. They don’t approve.’
‘I’ll only be in bother if you report me. Would you tell on me, miss? Will you get me into trouble?’
There was something mischievous about his mouth. The directness of his eyes made her feel she ought to look away. She knew that she was blushing under the gaze of his eyes, which must follow hers, and the invitation of his grin.
‘I wouldn’t tell on you,’ she heard herself say.
He had been sitting on the steps when she left the library. That profile again and his broad shoulders. He had thrown his cigarette away and turned to her with a book in his hands.
‘Here, for you. I took it out for you. That’s not a liberty, is it? I thought that, since you were haunting the poetry section, you might enjoy it.’
She had turned the book in her hands. The cover design was a woven net of reeds and the gilding glinted in the sunshine.
‘It’s like a cage made of leaves, isn’t it? Is it meant to be a trap to catch something?’
‘I hope so. Only, I’m afraid that you’ll have to meet me here again next week, because it’s out on my library card.’
She had nodded. There was something about his smile, something about his eyes, so intently focused on her, that made it difficult to look up.
‘Do I get to know your name, miss?’
‘Edie.’
‘And will you be here again next Saturday, Edie? Around the same time? Can I count on you for that?’
‘I wouldn’t want you to incur a library fine.’
He laughed and looked away then. His eyes, which up to now had been so bold, suddenly seemed shy.
‘Since I hold the future of your library privileges in my hands, am I permitted to know your name?’ she had asked.
‘Francis Blythe.’
He pushed his fringe off his forehead. His fingernails were all bitten down, she saw, but his hair was golden in the sunlight. He was ivory, coral and gilt, and glimmering grin, and might well have stepped out of a painting or a poem.
‘I am pleased to meet you, Francis Blythe.’
He had turned to go, but then somehow his mouth was there by her ear again and his voice was in her head. As it will always be there in her head. As it still is there at this moment. ‘ “I have spread my dreams under your feet,” ’ he whispers. So quietly. So very faintly today. ‘ “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” ’ Edie looks around the café now, eight years on and a country’s distance away, and he is so near and yet so terribly far away.
*
‘Please, do you recognize the buildings at all?’
Edie watches the waitress’ face, waiting for a flicker of recognition. She watches the steady side-to-side of her eyes, the silent line of her lips, her fingers at the edges of Francis’ photograph, but then the girl is shaking her head.
‘I’m sorry, madame. I don’t know it.’
It is always the same. It has been the same for the past fortnight. They all shake their heads.
‘You don’t think it’s Arras? I thought it might be the Grand Place?’
‘Non. No. Je suis désolée. Ce n’est pas ici.’
‘Thank you, anyway.’
‘Peut-être en Belgique?’ says the girl as she hands over the photograph.
‘In Belgium? Yes, perhaps.’
Edie pushes her soup plate away and tilts the photograph to the light. She turns the image between her fingers. The reverse tells her nothing. She tries to read Francis’ face in the photograph, but it gives nothing away. For four years she has been certain that he is dead. When they had used those words, ‘Missing, believed killed’, she had believed it. She had felt it. But then, three
months ago, this photograph arrived. At first she had asked herself who could have sent it. Now she asks herself why he has sent it.
She can tell from his stance that he is taking the photograph of himself. His arms stretch out towards the sides of the print and his eyes are focused slightly above the top of the paper, so that he is caught perpetually both embracing and evading the gaze of the viewer. She can imagine him looking into the lens of his own camera, seeing the reflection of his own face curving in the glass. She has seen him do it before, when he was young, but always with a smart sideways grin, a raised eyebrow, an expression knowingly composed for film. There is no grin in this image, no larking or posing. There is no hint of humour in his eyes. There is something terribly blank about Francis’ face. This black-and-white misplaced man is so far away from that jewel-coloured boy in the lending library.
Under her magnifying glass he is pinpricks of silver ink and she cannot piece them together. She can’t join the dots and understand the image. She leans back in her chair and rubs her eyes, but it doesn’t help. In the picture he is wearing a collarless shirt that doesn’t look exactly clean, and a jacket that is fraying at the collar. Edie doesn’t know these clothes. These are not clothes that she has laundered or mended or folded. They are poor clothes, she thinks, not the smart cuts and colours that used to be Francis’ choices, and yet they matter to her. It is important that these are civilian clothes. It matters that he is not in uniform. Surely that confirms that this photograph was taken after 1917? Could she be sitting in the same town as Francis now?
The coffee machine hisses, the woman at the next table laughs and Edie looks up. The café doubles in the mirror behind the counter and the men on the bar stools watch themselves as they drink. The bottles on the shelves contain liquids of strange, exotic colours and they glimmer like rubies and emeralds as the evening sun slants in. A string of Allied flags droops above and might as well be a forgotten Christmas decoration. The room smells of garlic and beeswax polish. She wonders if she would still know the scent of her husband’s clothes.
The buildings in the background of the photograph do not have the look of peacetime, but then she has spent fourteen days walking through a town that is all rubble and ruin. Behind Francis’ shoulders there is what appears to be the shape of a wide square, only the buildings around its edges have all been brought down. The square looks as frayed as the collar of Francis’ coat. She has stood and stared and turned and compared in every square in Arras this week.
Edie watches the waitress moving around the room, singing along to the gramophone as she weaves between the tables with plates stacked up in her arms. All of the china in this café seems to have different patterns, Edie notices. She imagines that this tumbledown town must be full of smashed-up and mixed-up crockery.
‘C’était bonne?’ The waitress smiles as she takes Edie’s soup dish away.
‘Yes. Très bon. It was very good. Thank you.’
Is it wrong that she should notice the taste of the soup? Is it wrong that she should want someone to share that with? She imagines Francis’ face across the table. It doesn’t seem right.
Why would Francis be in Arras? How could he be? She remembers that this town was mentioned in his letters at the end of 1916. As she walks through its streets, she thinks that there are lintels and arcades and shop signs that she recognizes from his 1916 photographs. She knows that he has been here, that he has walked these same streets, but that last photograph can’t be from 1916. Could he really be here now?
She looks around the café noticing how the wood panelling on the walls needs repainting, and the tablecloths have been laundered too many times. But the gramophone is quietly playing songs from before the war and the bread is good. There are jugs of white larkspur on each table and the smell takes her back to sitting at Harry’s hospital bedside.
She had written to Harry after the photograph of Francis had arrived, because, well, who else was there to ask? He had come up from London the next weekend and she had watched him turn the photograph over in his hand. As Harry had brought the image close to his eyes, she had wanted to ask him so many questions, and to know what questions he was asking himself. He had been the last person to see Francis alive, and couldn’t Harry see now, as she did, that this photograph must have been taken after October 1917? But how could that be possible? It didn’t make sense. When Harry had shaken his head, she had found herself telling him that she needed to know if there was a grave. If Harry was meant to be in France taking photographs of soldiers’ gravestones, why couldn’t he show her a picture of Francis’ grave?
‘But there isn’t a grave,’ he had said. ‘You know that. Or, if there is one, his name’s not on it and there are no records. You’ve already made all those enquiries and had that reply. You told me yourself, it’s always the same response.’
‘But he can’t be nowhere,’ she had said to him. ‘He hasn’t just disappeared, has he? He needs to be somewhere, either dead or alive.’
‘You know he’s not alive,’ he had replied softly.
‘Do I?’
Harry had returned to London and promised her that he would do something. He would make calls and write letters again, revisit all the leads to see if something new had surfaced since she had last tried. But three months have passed without a word from Harry and it’s not enough. Through those weeks all her questions have multiplied, and what does Harry’s silence mean? In the end, she had bought a train ticket, and then a boat ticket, and had sent him a postcard from Arras. Only she is not quite sure what she is meant to do now, and she wishes that Harry were here so that she could ask him.
‘Madame?’
She looks up to meet the waitress’ eyes.
‘You can leave a photograph here. Si vous le souhaitez. If you wish. People do.’ She points to the wall at the rear of the café.
Edie swivels in her chair. How had she not seen it when she walked in? ‘May I?’
‘Bien sûr.’
She walks towards the rear wall and the pattern adjusts itself into a mass of faces, of appeals, of searches. She touches her hand to a chair to steady herself and then apologizes to the family at the table who all tilt their eyes upward to look at her. The wall is full of photographs of men and around them the details of the people who are searching for them. So many faces. So many searches. How could so many men be misplaced? Could so many men really have disappeared?
‘Si vous voulez?’
She turns and the waitress is standing at her side. There is a drawing pin in the palm of her outstretched hand.
‘My brother is also disparu,’ she says, and gestures towards a tinted image of a boy in a blue uniform.
‘Disparu?’
The girl hesitates for the word. ‘Missed? Missing?’ There is a purple bow at the collar of her white blouse and she winds the ends of it around her fingers as she stares at the wall. Her hands look like they work hard, her fingers are red and her nails are short. She has a crease between her eyebrows as if she frowns a lot, but she brightens when she turns back to the tables. ‘There’s a chance, isn’t there?’ she says.
Edie looks again at the photograph of Francis that came through her letterbox three months ago. It is not enough just to pin it to a wall and to hope that someone might chance upon it. She needs to do more than that: she needs to stand in that square, to know that he has been there, and to sense if he is there yet. Simply pinning his face here will not answer these loud questions and, besides, she doesn’t want to leave the photograph behind.
In her handbag she carries a miniature portrait of Francis painted by Harry in 1914. As she unfolds it, she is struck again by how different this face looks from the figure in the photograph. Here he is still the golden youth who whispered poetry to her in the library. This ink-and-watercolour boy could be the son of the man in the photograph. For a second she checks herself again: is it really Francis? Is that the man to whom she pledged her future? Is that the man who shared her bed?
Sh
e writes his name, together with her own, across the painting and fixes it to the wall. As she does so she is struck with the realization that she will miss this image. She had once meant it to be framed and hung on a wall and she can’t now remember why that never happened. It hurts to part with it. She will miss the kindness of Harry’s composition perhaps as much as she will miss this handsome once-upon-a-time man to whom she was married.
‘Un beau gosse,’ nods the waitress. ‘Un bel homme. I hope you find him, madame.’
‘Yes,’ Edie replies.
6
Harry
North of Béthune, February 1916
Harry watched the flat of Francis’ hand moving over the plaster wall. ‘Have you seen?’ he asked as he turned.
Harry stood at his brother’s shoulder. The wall of the barn was carved with the dates that other regiments had passed through this place. There were initials and insignia and cartoons scratched into the wall. There were ciphers and monograms and shields. The walls of the barn were like the massed voice of the men who had been before them.
‘It’s like a visitors’ book, isn’t it?’
‘Frannie, could we leave something?’
‘We should leave our mark,’ said Will.
Harry watched as Francis cut away the plaster with his penknife, making the shape of his initials. He stood back and blew the plaster dust away. ‘Now you.’
‘Yes.’ The knife felt strangely heavy in Harry’s hand. The plaster yielded easily to its blade, making a sharp, clean angle. He was struck by the seriousness of his brother’s face. There was no glimmer of humour in Francis’ eyes. It seemed that this was no joke, or light act of mischief. He ran inspecting fingertips over his work before handing the knife on to Will. ‘Mind your fingers.’
They watched as Francis scratched the date in below. There was something oddly ceremonial about the moment, Harry thought. A strange, solemn sense of ritual. He recalled fragments of half-forgotten stories in which brothers mingled their blood. The action seemed to have more than its immediate significance, particularly when Will took both their hands.
The Photographer of the Lost Page 4