She nodded, smiled briefly and looked away.
He watched her as she looked around the room, seeing the now familiar walls anew through Edie’s eyes. The rows of plain beds were rather at odds with the grandeur of the plasterwork ceiling. Ferguson, in the next bed, picked at his blanket and stared at Edie from behind. His hands looked clawlike, Harry thought, as if the tendons had shrunk. Sometimes Ferguson’s clawlike hands beckoned at him when he wanted to talk. His voice was a thin thing and sounded as if it came from very far within him. His lips seemed to want to stick together, seemed, with a glistening whiteness, to want to glue in his words. Harry had to lean in close to hear, but Ferguson’s too-close words smelled sour. He was starting to dread the beckon of Ferguson’s fingers. He watched him watch Edie now and then suddenly Ferguson’s eyes flicked and connected with his own. Did he wink? Had he really seen Ferguson wink? Harry felt a rush of affronted protectiveness. He wanted to get out of the bed and hit Ferguson, whether his lungs were rotten or not.
‘I’m not sure that the flowery bedspreads are entirely soldierly,’ Edie said.
He refocused on her face. ‘The firmness of this mattress is appropriately military.’
‘It is very nice to see you, even pale and bedraggled and bandaged.’ Edie looked at her hands in her lap.
‘We should do this more often.’
She looked up. ‘Please, not in these circumstances.’
The sunlight made bright rectangles on the parquet. Johnson in the bed opposite was snoring. The smell of the larkspur was making Harry slightly nauseous. He felt Edie’s blue-green gaze on his face. It prickled on his skin.
‘It’s terribly quiet in here,’ she said. ‘They’re all listening, aren’t they? It makes me feel noisy and clumsy and indiscreet – like everything that I’m saying is a pronouncement on a stage.’
‘Isn’t it? I can’t stand the quiet. I am glad of your noisy indiscretions.’
In truth, when it was quiet he could still hear the roar of the incoming shell. Its echo seemed to have got stuck in his head, as if it were ricocheting in his skull. In his dreams the wire writhed around him.
‘You’re jittery,’ she observed.
‘What makes you say that?’
She nodded to the matchbox that he was turning between his bandaged fingers. ‘Fidget.’
‘Sorry. My springs are all wound up tight and it takes a while to remember how to relax, but I’ll get there.’ He rattled the matchbox and put it down. Ferguson was still staring.
‘Forgiven.’
‘Do you think that we might go for a walk? I’ve been glowering at the same ceiling for a fortnight. They’ll trust me not to topple over if you’re here to mind me.’
‘Lord, do you topple? Are you well enough to walk?’
‘I’m actually A1,’ he said in a stage whisper. ‘But I have a secret craving for hospital food and nurses’ uniforms.’
*
Harry passed commentary on the walls as they walked along the picture-lined corridor. They walked through earnest Victoriana, grand tours and seascapes. His identifying finger pointed out Dutch landscapes, mild-faced Madonnas and the Battle of Balaclava. The door of the red room was open at the far end. He was conscious of not wanting to lean on her too heavily. The effort of it left him slightly breathless.
‘You’re doing very well,’ she said.
He stared down at his arm through hers. It struck him that this was the most physically intimate moment that they had ever shared, or were possibly ever likely to. He wished the corridor longer.
‘Had I known that you were invalided in an art gallery, I wouldn’t have felt sorry for you.’
‘What luck, eh? It’s all downhill from now, isn’t it? This might well be the best day of my life.’
She squeezed his arm and looked away.
Three years earlier he had talked about the future with Edie. He had told her that he had applied to the college, about the bright and bold marks that he meant to make on canvas. He told her things that he had never dared to say to anyone else before and she had encouraged his ambitions. She had let him talk and it had all seemed possible.
‘I might lean against the door for a minute. Would you mind?’
He watched her walk ahead of him into the red room. They were all new paintings in here, a collection of canvases that the family had bought in the south of France before the war, all hot southern intensity. There were yellow mountains and blue trees, houses that thrust crystalline, precipitating from the sea, and Bacchic dancers curling arabesques. He watched Edie’s fingertips extend, testing texture, looking at him to check that she wasn’t doing the wrong thing. He took in all the details so that he might draw her later. There was a vase of white roses on the fireplace. The smell of the white roses filled the red room.
‘Is this what France is like?’
‘Not the parts that I’ve seen.’
‘Very bright, isn’t it? Violently bright. It makes my eyes hurt. I think that I might have a permanent headache if I had to live with these pictures, or in this place.’
‘They make my eyes hungry,’ he said.
‘You must think that you’ve bounced out of the down below place and ricocheted up into Paradise.’ She looked at him over her shoulder.
He put his arm out towards her. ‘If I cling on to you, will you help me not to bounce back down?’
*
There was a crowd sat out on the steps in hospital blues and dressing gowns, with newspapers and novels and the ears of the family’s dog requiring attention. They smiled into the sun and passed cigarettes. It was only the lean of crutches and the white of bandages that compromised the idyll. The men moved apart as Edie linked him down the steps.
‘When you’ve perambulated Blythe, will you do me, miss?’
‘How did he manage that?’
‘Would you care to polish my medals, miss? I’ve a Victoria Cross in my trouser pocket.’
Edie laughed as they walked towards the lake. ‘Good God. Is that the plucky Tommy’s saucy badinage?’
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
They sat on a bench and looked out over the water. Edie plucked a daisy and pulled its petals away. The reflection of the house shivered in the lake. He skimmed a stone towards it.
‘Loves me or loves me not?’
‘I didn’t count.’ Her chin tilted as she smiled. ‘You do look a bit peaky in the daylight. Am I not meant to put a blanket over you, or some such?’
‘Never ever think of training as a nurse.’
She wrinkled her nose as she passed him a bag of sweets. ‘Liquorice rock. See, I’m good for something. They told me that you’re doing well – that you’re making excellent progress.’
‘I am. It’s not nearly as bad as it looked.’
‘Trust you to make an almighty fuss over a bit of a cut. Do you think you’ll be here for long?’
‘No. Not at all. The major told me this morning that they’ll have me back in France before September is out. I honestly think that he expected me to give a cheer.’
She pointed at the fleeting glimmer of a dragonfly. Sitting here, with the noise of the ducks and the pleasant chatter behind, it was difficult to believe that France existed.
‘Maybe you should stop making such excellent progress?’ she suggested.
He looked at her. Backlit by the sun, she had a bright silhouette.
‘What?’
‘You’re all fiery around the edges. You look like a star shell.’
‘You do talk nonsense, Harry.’
Coleman had brought the gramophone out onto the steps again and Italian arias were crackling across the garden. Caruso was singing something about dying despairingly. Pickering was miming along with the music, making exaggerated arm gestures. ‘Oh dear me,’ said Edie.
‘Have you heard from Francis?’ he asked. Not speaking his brother’s name extended the spell, but eventually he had to say it. ‘I sent him a postcard, but I’ve had no reply.’
‘Ye
s. They’ve made him a lance corporal. Would you believe it? Apparently, he covered himself in glory in this little show of yours.’
‘A lance corporal? Frannie? Good God.’
‘I’m sure that he’ll love giving you orders when you get back. He’s got leave, as well. This is what you get for being a good boy, you see. You should try it. He thinks that he might get home for a few days in September.’
‘You don’t look particularly pleased.’
‘Of course I’m pleased.’
Pickering was now conducting the choir as the men on the steps sang the chorus. Edie looked at them and laughed, but when she turned towards Harry all the light had gone out in her face.
‘How is he?’
‘Francis?’
She nodded.
‘Muddling along – as much as anyone else is. You know what he’s like: it’s never easy to know what Francis is thinking. Or, at least, when I try to read him I always seem to get it wrong. You’d think that we’d speak the same language, wouldn’t you? He writes to you, doesn’t he?’
‘I get pages full of words but they don’t really say anything. It’s almost the same letter every time, as if it’s a formula that he feels he has to send me. The same phrases. The same sentiments. The same not-quite-convincing cheeriness. Oh, I know that I shouldn’t complain. He’s kind, he’s caring, he never criticizes, but it’s like the model letter that a soldier ought to send his wife, and I can’t hear Francis’ voice in it. As if he’s disappearing. Slipping away. The voice in his letters isn’t that of the man who I lived with. It could be from anyone and I worry about that. You write to me more often than he does and I open your letters with more relish. That’s awful, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. You’re a terrible woman. I shall endeavour to send you duller letters. In fact, as you’re such a perfidious floozy, I might stop writing to you altogether.’
‘Please don’t,’ she said. ‘But he is all right?’
‘He is. Don’t worry. He’s ready for a break, that’s all. He needs a rest. Coming home on leave will do him good.’
‘I do hope you’re right.’
Phrases of music seemed to hang over the water, as the mist clung to the lake in the mornings. The sun was warm on the back of his neck. A breath of air shifted a strand of hair across Edie’s cheek.
‘Ever wish that you could just hold your breath and make it all stop – make it all stand still?’
‘Yes. Right at this instant,’ she replied.
The reflection of the house, bright in the early evening light, had the heightened colour of an illustration from a child’s book. It looked like something that might disappear at any moment.
‘Is it always like this?’ she turned towards him. ‘I expected to be visiting some grimly sober institution. I was braced for grey wards and the smell of antiseptic. I expected to feel sorry for you, but I can’t remotely.’
‘Not even slightly? Not even for having to suffer sentimental tenors? Do you know how much light operatic we must endure?’
‘Poor Harry!’
‘It’s agony. Can’t you possibly summon up enough pity to dance with me?’
She smiled slowly as she stood and offered him her hand. ‘I’m only doing this for the war effort.’
They danced right there on the lawn. Turning slowly. Feet faltering to the uncertain notes. The men on the steps whistled and shouted as they spun, but Harry didn’t hear them at all. He held on to her and the rest of it spun away. Edie shut her eyes and leaned her head back as she laughed. The flat of her hand was between his shoulder blades. Her laughing mouth was inches from his own.
‘What?’ she said, as she opened her eyes and looked at him.
He leaned the side of his head against hers and could feel her breathing. He breathed in her smell of soap and liquorice, and the swoop of the orchestra strings, and wanted to tell her that he had never felt more exquisitely happy or more sad.
*
Harry walked her back along the drive. He ought to talk to her, he felt, ought to keep it light and bright and her entertained, but he struggled even to find airy words now that she was leaving. The roses, along the path, had passed their best. The petals of the poppies had blown. He named lilies and foxgloves and delphiniums because of the need to keep on speaking, to keep on sharing, to have her eyes lift and meet his. He pointed out seed heads and leaf shapes and gave her the Latin names, all of these details already like a memory. He told her about the palm house and the fern garden and the espaliered apricot trees. Harry filled the space between them with all of these things, so that he didn’t have to tell her about the other places. So that her eyes were only full of the images that he had selected to show her. So that he didn’t have to speak Francis’ name again.
‘I keep thinking about Will,’ she said suddenly. ‘I remember you having handstand races down Rochdale Road and then having to pick glass out of your palms. I remember the three of you getting slung out of the Black Horse for horseplay and Will always saying that Francis had started it. I remember Francis coming home and saying that he’d signed up and then knowing with absolute certainty that you and Will would too. Because it always was Francis who started it. I can’t imagine the two of you out there without Will. Everything must be out of balance. I fear for the two of you now.’
He remembered Francis by Will’s grave. He had held up his hands, a gesture of capitulation, and Harry had noticed that the creases of his palms were picked out in brick dust. He had looked at Harry and then looked away. Something had changed in that instant.
‘We’ll watch each other’s backs now.’
‘Will you?’
‘As much as we can.’
‘Why doesn’t that fill me with confidence?’
What was it that he had seen in Edie’s eyes at that moment? As she stopped and turned towards him, she looked as if she were about to say more, but then had changed her mind.
‘What?’
She shook her head. ‘Just be careful, eh?’
They carried on up the drive. He watched their side-by-side feet on the gravel and felt a great weight of unsayable words.
‘Here,’ she said, her footsteps stopping abruptly. ‘I want you to have this.’ She pulled a ribbon over her head and handed it to him.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a Saint Christopher. It was my grandmother’s. She believed it was lucky.’
‘I wondered what the ribbon was. I haven’t seen you wearing it before.’
‘I didn’t. I haven’t. It’s been quite a year, though, hasn’t it? I’m not sure that I believe in luck, but I reckoned that it was worth a chance.’
‘You can’t give me this.’
‘Yes, I can. It’s mine to do with as I choose, and I choose to give it to you. I can’t vouch for its luck-delivering properties, but it can’t do any harm, can it?’
‘No.’ He looked at the grey metallic medal in his palm. The ribbon was still warm. He closed his fingers around it. ‘I want to say something to you. If I don’t say it now, I might never say it.’
She looked down as she shook her head. ‘Harry—’
‘I am permitted to make a fool of myself because I might die tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? In Altrincham?’
‘I’m not being literal.’
‘You are being dramatic.’ Edie pushed her hair behind her ears and put the beret back on. She smiled at him and widened her eyes. ‘You might not die tomorrow and then what a fool would you feel?’
‘Edie, please, let me be serious.’
‘No, because you will say something that you regret. And then I will say things that I regret.’
‘Will you?’
‘I have to get my bus,’ she said. ‘Saint Christopher protects travellers. Now you’ll always be able to find your way back to me, won’t you?’
‘I will. You know I always will.’
‘Don’t really stop writing to me, will you?’
‘How could I? I promise: I won’
t ever stop.’
36
Harry
Talbot House, Poperinghe, September 1921
Location image order: Mr & Mrs Reeth would like photographs of the garden of Talbot House, Poperinghe. Sgt. Claude Reeth (23765), was decl. missing 28/11/17. He had last written to his parents from this location.
What did Sergeant Reeth see here? What did he put in a letter to his parents? Did he send them the shrub roses and potted geraniums and the monkey-puzzle tree? Did he send them the sound of the wood pigeons, the bumblebees and the church bells? Harry rewinds and corrects himself; he remembers that there weren’t church bells, then; there was eastward grumble of the guns. He considers what Mr and Mrs Reeth would wish to see. He considers whether Sergeant Reeth’s last letter – like Harry’s lens – composed well-meaning lies. Did he tell them about the smell of the larkspur?
The garden is full of birdsong on this afternoon four years on. Calla lilies are flowering in pots and there are salad greens coming on under cold frames. Chickens scratch on the gravel footpath and a woman is singing as she scrubs the tiles in the summer house. The scent of the lilac is heady. He sits down on a bench and watches the trees’ dappled light shift on the lawn. The monkey-puzzle makes sharp-toothed shadows.
‘If it had been me, would you write to Edie?’ Francis had asked. And, of course, he had. Harry tries to remember what he had said, what kind and polite form of words he had framed that news in. She had sent him letters that were full of questions, demanding details that he couldn’t supply. She had wanted him to go back over the ground. She had wanted to come out to Belgium herself. Did she not understand what it was like? There were lots of letters in those weeks, and then fewer. In the winter of 1918, their exchange of envelopes had ended. Not a word had passed between them – not a word for over a year – until he had seen a girl that looked like her on another station and found himself boarding a train heading north. In all that silent time had she been going over those same questions? And, if so, why hadn’t she spoken out and asked him to help her before? What had prompted the need for a photograph of a grave? What had made her need for the truth suddenly urgent? Was it the anonymity of the envelope containing Francis’ photograph? Did she really picture Francis posting it to her?
The Photographer of the Lost Page 19