A blackbird hops across the lawn. It tilts its head to one side, listening for worms. Very carefully, with slow controlled movements, he reaches for the camera. Wings flap away with the click of the shutter. His image will be a blur of feathers.
They had passed through the station here on the same day, him and Francis. He was coming back as Francis was going home. ‘Like a couple on a weather house,’ he had said. It had been raining in Poperinghe that day. Was Sergeant Reeth here at the same time? Was his last letter full of dripping trees? He has spoken to Mrs Reeth on the telephone, and heard the sadness in her voice as she told him how happy her son had sounded in his last letter. Harry wishes now that he had asked her more about the details in that letter, so that he may match his photographs up with Claude Reeth’s words, so that he may give his mother some proof of the sincerity of that happiness, and in turn perhaps take away some of her sadness.
The sun makes shifting patterns through the branches onto an empty bench. White roses glow in the shadows behind and light glints on wet paving stones. He commits it to film, thinking as he does so of the alchemy of chemistry and light and its capacity to capture an instant, a chemical reaction making the scene in front of him forever more. The face of Daniel East is still in his pocket. What reaction will that caught instant set off? Will it trigger happiness or sadness? He means to develop the film when he gets a chance. Then, when he sees the wreath-maker’s face again, when he has had the chance to test it against his memory of David West, he will make a decision whether to write to Rachel. His shutter clicks on the shadows of the beech trees, on the bark of the silver birch and on the two men at the bottom of the garden passing playing cards across a table. He means to give Mr and Mrs Reeth a peaceful forever-more image that might perhaps echo something in their sons’ last letter, that might perhaps bring them some peace. Harry is struck by both the permanence and the fragility of the scene in front of him.
Standing next to Francis on the station platform he had been very conscious of the red ribbon around his neck. Did he really have cause to feel guilty? It was hardly a betrayal of his brother. He can still remember the texture of it, the feel of her placing it in his hand. He can still see Edie pulling it over her own head, smiling through her hair. ‘For luck,’ she said. Would it have changed Francis’ luck if he had passed it to his brother that day? Harry isn’t sure that he believes in luck either. He wonders where the ribbon is now. Has it too survived somewhere?
A man is raking the gravel paths. He touches his hat to Harry as he passes. A gramophone is playing inside the white house. The windows are open and a curtain billows out. The carillon bells are ringing. He wishes that he could send it all to Mr and Mrs Reeth.
37
Harry
Poperinghe station, September 1917
‘Frannie!’
Harry saw his brother from across the station. He had clambered up on top of a wagon and was angling his lens down at the men on the platform. There was a great crowd of them, all flourishing their leave papers at Francis’ camera. He put his thumb up and the crowd erupted into a cheer.
‘He wants to be careful with that. He’s going to find himself in bother.’ Pembridge was leaning against a railing. His grin spread as Harry turned towards him.
‘Jack! Bloody hell, it’s good to see you.’ He took Pembridge’s extended arm and grabbed him into a hug.
‘You look well, Harry. They stitched you tidily back together?’
‘A few souvenir scars but otherwise as good as new. You got leave too?’
Pembridge held up his white paper.
‘Lucky sod.’
‘He needs it.’ Pembridge nodded towards Francis. He was just clambering down from the wagon. Harry waved towards him.
‘When did you move up here?’
‘Only a couple of days ago. We were west of Arras for a fortnight, being prepared for “conditions prevailing in the Passchendaele sector”.’ He made quotation marks with his fingers and an officerly voice.
‘And in English?’
‘Mud. We’ve had a lot of lectures about looking after our feet.’
It was coming on to rain again. The crowd of men was quickly dispersing. Harry stepped under the shelter. A transport column was grinding its way up the road behind. Rain glistened off the roofs. ‘Where’s the camp?’
‘Up to the north-west. It’s pretty lively. Supply depots and munitions dumps all around. They’ve started shelling it. The roads are something to see. It’s like Piccadilly Circus.’
‘Have you ever been to Piccadilly Circus, Pembridge?’
Harry turned as he heard his brother’s voice. Rain was coursing off his cap.
‘Francis.’ They shook hands. ‘It’s good to see you.’
‘It was nose-to-nose on the road as we came in. Rather be heading in our direction than yours.’
Harry was struck by how much older Francis looked. There were new hollows in his cheeks and his eyes seemed to have shrunken. When he put a cigarette to his lips he noticed how ingrained the dirt had become in Francis’ fingers. For an instant he thought of those fingers on Edie’s white throat.
‘New camera?’
‘It was Rose’s.’
‘He doesn’t give me photographic equipment,’ complained Pembridge. ‘He gave me latrine duty last week.’
Harry laughed. ‘You’ve got ten days?’
‘Aye,’ Francis replied. ‘I might not get out of bed.’
He imagined Francis, a few hours on, sitting across the table from Edie. He imagined Francis’ hands in her hair. He imagined them in the same bed. ‘Give Edie my regards,’ he said.
‘I will.’ Francis’ eyes met his own for the first time. ‘Did you see her?’
Harry was suddenly very aware of Edie’s ribbon around his own throat. Had Francis seen it? ‘Edie?’
Francis nodded.
He felt the weight of his brother’s assessing eye. ‘She came to see me once at the hospital. She brought me in a bunch of flowers and a bag of liquorice rock, but she ate them herself – the sweets, not the flowers, that is.’
Pembridge laughed. Francis looked at the railway lines.
‘Get a feed in town before you go,’ said Pembridge. ‘You can buy anything here.’
‘Send us a postcard,’ said Francis.
‘Wish you were here?’
‘Hardly.’
‘We’d better go and get our train.’
‘You do that. I’m glad that I saw you,’ Harry said.
‘Keep your head down.’ Francis shook his hand. It struck Harry that there was something strangely final about the way that he said it. It was as if Francis didn’t expect to return.
‘Au revoir,’ said Harry.
‘Not if I can bloody help it.’
Francis looked back as they walked across the railway lines. Harry had nothing to feel guilty for. Why, then, did that look make him feel as though he had betrayed his brother?
38
Edie
Ypres, September 1921
She sees him from the window of the slowing train. His profile. His face turning. There, on the platform. She hears her own intake of breath, pushes herself back against her seat and angles her face away from the window. Because, for this moment, it is him. It is Francis. But then, when she looks again, the man has stepped forward and it’s Harry, shifting from foot to foot, looking up and down the length of the train, his face all concern and nervousness, and brightening now as he sees her.
‘Let me take your suitcase.’
‘Dear God, I’m glad to see you!’
Is it relief that makes her hug him so tightly? She clings on to Harry as the train pulls away and the crowds shift and thin around them. With her face against Harry’s chest, the clean smell of his shirt, and his arms closed around her, she is eighteen again, and safe and certain, and none of this has happened. She really doesn’t want to pull away and step back into this afterwards life.
‘I think I just heard one of my ribs cra
ck.’
She feels his laughter. She hears the smile in his voice. And she is so glad of him.
‘I’m sorry. I was worried that you might not be here. I’m so relieved to see you.’
She leans back. It is glorious to see the smile that he can’t quite seem to straighten out, and she has an urge to put her fingertips to Harry’s twitching lips, but she smooths her hair instead, pats his hand and nods her head.
‘Come on,’ he says.
She watches him as they walk along the platform. It has been four months since she last saw him. Four months through which she has needed him and doubted him and worried about him. She is not sure what it is that makes the ground seem to shift beneath her feet – whether it is finally walking down the platform in Ypres station, or looking at Harry’s face again.
‘You’re not eating enough. I could feel your ribs. Is it any wonder if I broke a couple?’
He looks tired too, looks as though he hasn’t been sleeping, but he glances towards her and grins. ‘It’s delightful to have you telling me off again. Utterly ruddy joyous. Don’t feel that you can’t wag a finger at me. Don’t feel you have to stop.’
But his grin fades as they step out onto the station steps, and then she must turn and look at it too.
‘My God. I knew it was bad, but not this bad. We had no idea at home,’ she says. ‘Absolutely no idea. How you must have hated us.’
She looks to him, wishing that he would say something, wishing that he had some explanation for the wreck of a town in front of them, but Harry merely shakes his head.
‘It’s not what I expected,’ she says, because there has to be something to say. ‘Though I’m not sure what I expected.’ She needs to put a hand to his shoulder as they walk down the steps. ‘Do you mind? I’m afraid my knees might go at any minute.’
‘Don’t worry. It’s only a short walk and I’ve managed to find a hotel with walls – and even some roof.’
‘Is it the first time that you’ve been back?’ she asks.
‘Yes, it’s almost three years. It actually looks more knocked about now than it did then. I think it’s the fact that people are living amongst it, that there are shops again and school children and curtains at windows. It highlights what a wilderness it is.’
Many of the buildings on the street from the station have lost their top floors. They are mere fragments of frontage. An arm-in-arm couple stroll ahead of them with a black dog, its tail tick-tocking. They have to keep stepping off the pavement to avoid the piles of bricks.
‘It’s like something fantastical,’ she says. ‘Somehow not of this earth and our time. I’m horrified and fascinated all at once. I want to babble and yet I’m utterly lost for words. Is that the wrong reaction?’
He shrugs. ‘I don’t know that there is a right reaction.’
‘I feel as if I’ve arrived in Africa.’
She watches his boots at her side. She feels steadier looking at Harry’s sensible, serviceable boots making a straight line, but the ground still feels as though it’s trembling beneath her feet.
‘I made it as far as Poperinghe,’ she says. She’s not sure where to start, so she just says it, although it feels like admitting a weakness. ‘I meant to come here. I planned to, I even bought my ticket for the train. I stood on the station platform in Poperinghe and watched the train for Ypres leave. It was something like panic. Can you understand that? I couldn’t find the courage to come here on my own and then I bolted for home. That’s terribly cowardly isn’t it?’
‘No. I don’t think that of you at all.’ He glances at her and glances away. ‘I am sorry that you’re here,’ he says. ‘I feel I’ve let you down. I’m sorry that I couldn’t have done this for you. That I can’t give you more answers.’
‘I’m no longer certain what the question is. Or exactly what answer I want.’
‘You said on the telephone that there’s somewhere you want to see?’
She isn’t ready for the question, but she sees that he needs to ask it. ‘Yes. I’d like you to take me to that place.’
‘That place?’
‘Where he last was. Where you last saw him.’
‘Because?’
She considers. ‘Just because.’
‘If that’s what you wish,’ he replies.
‘It is.’
There are areas of recent demolition on either side of the road, she sees. A strange sort of scrub seems to be growing over much of it now. There are nettles and thistles. Cats slink between the rubble.
‘That photograph of Francis . . .’ he begins, and as she looks at him she sees that he isn’t entirely sure where to go next. ‘Have you seen something in it? Is there something there that has made you come here?’
What can she say to him? ‘I think it might have been taken here.’
‘Here? Ypres?’
‘I thought it was Arras at first. I thought I recognized the buildings in the background. He’s standing in a ruined square, you see, but no: all arrows now seem to point to Ypres.’
‘And you’ve received nothing else since? No other photographs? No letters?’
‘No, and that’s the most frustrating part of the whole thing. Why the anonymity? Why be so cryptic? It could be from anyone, couldn’t it?’
‘It could.’
‘Is that the Cloth Hall?’
The tower is under scaffolding. She has seen photographs of the Cloth Hall in the newspapers, but that doesn’t prepare her for how emphatically broken down it all is now. How very little of it there is. A lot of what remains of Ypres is being shored up. So much of it is just facades and it reminds her of a stage set. A strong gust of wind might bring it all down.
‘It was.’
‘Like Roman ruins,’ she says. ‘Like some antique site. I almost expect to see grand tourists quoting poetry amongst the fallen stones.’
‘ “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair”?’
‘And how!’
There are piles of broken old stone, and dressed new stone, stacks of timbers, iron beams and roof tiles. It is all waiting by the roadsides. There is so very much of it to be put back.
‘Have you been here long?’ she asks.
‘I only got in this morning.’
‘I’m not distracting you from your work?’
‘Terribly. Entirely. And I’m glad of it.’
‘It’s heavy going, then?’ She sees it on his face.
‘I only wish that I could do more for the families. When I’ve met them, when I’ve spoken to them, the size of the gaps in their lives is so apparent. How can a few photographs fill that? I wish that I could give them more of my time. That I could give them whys and wherefores and more comfort. But I can’t.’
She looks at him and sees what a burden on him this responsibility is. She wishes that he didn’t have to carry that. Has she been fair to Harry in expecting him to answer her question too? ‘You underestimate what you’re doing. I’m sure that having those photographs does give them some comfort.’
‘To know that their sons and husbands and brothers are definitely dead?’
‘Don’t undervalue the significance of that. It will be a comfort to them to know that the facts they have are correct and that their loved ones are properly buried.’
‘Properly? As in respectfully buried or definitely buried?’
‘Both, I suppose.’
They walk on. Her footsteps pause for a moment by the window of a patisserie shop. There are towers of stacked sweetmeats behind the glass, tidily boxed chocolates and a gingerbread model of the Cloth Hall as it must have been before. The wall above the shop window has been blown entirely out, exposing a first-floor interior that looks so terribly violated, with its sprigged wallpaper there for all to see, and its curtains bleached and tattered by the weather and catching in the breeze now.
‘In May you told me that you couldn’t come here,’ he says, ‘that you couldn’t bring yourself to make this journey.’
‘Female prerog
ative.’
‘Am I allowed to ask what changed your mind?’
‘I started to wonder if you’d ever get round to it.’
‘Of course I would.’
‘I do know that. I’m only teasing.’ She smiles at him and is glad to see his profile eventually return the smile. ‘There was a letter waiting for me when I got home. It was from an acquaintance of yours, I assume. A woman called Rachel? She told me that I ought to find out about Francis, one way or another, and then move on with my life. I was rather affronted when I first read it. I mean, that from an absolute stranger! It is a bit presumptuous, isn’t it? I screwed it up and very nearly threw it in the fire. It was a rather bossy letter.’
She doesn’t know who this Rachel is, but it is obvious that she means something to Harry. Was it wrong that Edie had also felt something like jealousy as this stranger’s handwriting told her how she ought to have more respect for Harry’s finer feelings?
He laughs. ‘That sounds about right. Rachel is looking for her husband. She’s already been out here three times. She can’t accept that he’s dead, she’s not convinced that’s right, but every time she comes over here she feels as though she’s getting further away from finding him. It’s as if she’s on this endless, impossible quest.’
‘You make it sound like some trial from Greek mythology.’
‘I think she’s tired of it all. And lonely. She’d just like to have a grave that she could put flowers on and to be able to move forward herself.’
Something passes over Harry’s face as he talks about this woman called Rachel and her loneliness, and Edie can’t place what it is. Is he saying that Edie ought to see herself in this other woman’s quest for finality?
‘I wondered if it might be that photograph of Francis,’ Harry says.
‘The one that came in the post?’ His eyes move over her face. For some reason she has a sense that he’s testing her response. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I thought receiving that photograph might have prompted you to come here.’
The Photographer of the Lost Page 20