Ypres, September 1921
Harry moves fingertips, touches the floorboards, then his wrist. He turns his head to the cool wood. His limbs feel wasted, like after a route march, and his head feels as fragile as glass. He feels all hollowed out. The curtains billow, bright with sunlight, and there is the noise of crockery being set out somewhere downstairs. He rights himself cautiously. When he puts his eye to the wall, there is nothing in her room but tidy order and absence.
He splashes water onto his face and looks himself in the eye in the replaced mirror. What should he say to her today? Must he now speak the words that she has already read? Or, her having read them, should he forget that he had ever felt that way? He buttons a clean shirt, dampens his hair and tries to make it lie flat. Will she cry? Will she scream at him? Or will it be a day of terrible silence?
When he opens the door it is all there in the corridor – the papers stacked neatly and buttoned into his haversack. The ribbon, once again, is circling the diary. Edie, though, isn’t there.
*
The bus rattles along the road. He looks out of the window and tries to find features that he recognizes. Only there are very few features. There is nothing but agriculture interspersed here and there with new red roofs. The wind makes waves across a field of wheat. There are lines of sugar beet. Cows graze in fields where pillboxes crumble.
The woman on the reception desk had looked at him coolly as he had asked her the question. She told him that Edie had paid for her room and left early that morning with her suitcase. He had run through the streets to the station. The train had departed two hours earlier. It had then occurred to him that, instead of going straight for the train, she might have first come here. Might he yet find her at Tyne Cot?
He knows that it is the most likely place. That is what they have told him – and what, in turn, he has told Edie. Those casualties that were hurriedly buried behind the railway lines had all been transferred to this cemetery. He looks down at the directions to this place formed in her handwriting, and thinks about how she had suspected that Francis himself could have sent that photograph. Did she really have a doubt? Is that really why she made this journey? Surely she would need to silence that doubt before she went home?
There are vans parked by the side of the road and parties of men digging in the fields beyond. He thinks of Ralph and is aware that their spades have no agricultural purpose. He leaves the bus at Zonnebeke and guides himself with an atlas of the fighting line that he had bought for two shillings in Tidworth in 1916. The line on the front cover looks like ancient history; it might as well be a map of Carthage. He remembers Francis looking in this map book in 1916, all trepidation and excitement, as they had travelled east in cattle trucks. He thinks of Francis, just eighteen months after that, turning the pages of his diary.
Along the sides of the road there are the usual sentinel trees. They show its line ahead. He recalls reading about the taking of this village when he was waiting for his return train in London in 1917. It is now nothing but ruins – a stack of roof tiles by the side of the road, a pile of anonymous masonry parts, some curiosities of old carving and yellow grass in between. The name of the cemetery doesn’t exist on his map and so he is glad now of Edie’s directions. It is terribly desolate all around, as if an effort has been made to erase every feature from the map. The only landmarks are clues to things that no longer exist.
Harry walks through the cemetery gate. The crosses are straight and orderly and stretch a long way. He starts to count rows but gives up. There are thousands here. Maybe tens of thousands. The scale of it, even having already seen so many dead men and so many graves, shocks him. There is a gun emplacement amongst the graves, the concrete crumbling away. He has read that it is the only German pillbox that is going to be allowed to remain on Flemish soil, serving as an instruction and a reminder. He thinks that no more reminder is needed than the crosses that fill his vision all around.
Most of the burials here have no names, he sees. These men have all been swallowed up by the earth, their identities gone, along with their futures. They have lost their bones, their blood and the name that bound it all together and made them into that particular man. These men are now nothing but gaps and question marks. It matters then that someone is asking the question, that someone is searching for these nameless men, but what a big and terrible question it is. He thinks of Rachel’s search and how impossibly vast it has been. It seems, in this instant, like a definition of hope. Looking at the stretching crosses, at this place full of terrible questions (with only tidiness and order for an answer), he rather hopes that Edie hasn’t come here.
Other figures move between the graves. He stares at the women, bending with flowers and private words and tears, but none of them are her. The shadows of the crosses swing around as he walks along the path. He thinks of Francis’ spread arms, the awful shadow swinging around the cross to which he was tied, and is glad, regardless of what happens next, that she will never see that.
He remembers looking into Francis’ eyes at the end, that last moment, his eyes full of half-formed suspicions and Harry’s own stolen words. Could his brother be here? Could he be one of the nameless burials? To find him, amongst so many men, so many other names and absences, seems an impossible quest. All the paper trails that he has pursued have ended. It feels like the end of the line.
Has she walked through this cemetery earlier today? Has she stood where he is now standing and spoken her guilt and innocence to the nameless graves? Could she really feel Francis’ presence if he were here? All that Harry can feel is an awful sense of emptiness.
When he looks at it through his viewfinder, the rectangle is full of crosses, like a postcard that his brother sent once long ago. The crosses crowd into the frame and stretch away beyond it. Harry supposes that he is the lucky one, but at this instant he can’t muster much positive feeling. The shutter clicks. He cries.
51
Harry
Houthulst Forest, north of Ypres, October 1917
The first light was in the sky now and Harry could more clearly see the tape line stretching out across the mud. There was something almost laughable about the precision of this white line. It looked feeble and false; such a small, silly thing amidst the rule-breaking bigness of the landscape that it demarcated. It didn’t look like something that trust ought to be invested in. They had obediently followed the tapes forward, though, past the dead mules and the dead men, all churning together as the heavy shells fell and the columns of black water roared into the air.
Lines of other men had been moving the other way, following the tape lines. Harry couldn’t see their faces in the gloom – they were anonymous, invisible men, only there in the jostle and the noise of their boots and breath. They could well have been a ghost army retreating. The duckboard tracks, the heaving howitzers and the tapes were the only things that had kept the scene from being some vision from the Old Testament. Armstrong had said that it was like going through Dante’s seven circles. Summerfield said that this Dante clearly had a nasty imagination. The night air billowed hot and cold and smelled of sulphur. Harry had been reminded of a William Blake illustration for the Divine Comedy – a writhing whirlwind of doomed lovers – and had kept his eye on Francis’ back moving on in front of him, following the tape into the flood and fire and darkness.
This tape line had been laid out by the engineers in advance of the front line. They had been crouched on it since 2 a.m. It gave a strange illusion, Harry thought, as if this were the start of a race – as if there would be an engraved cup and a congratulatory cream tea for the first man across the finishing line. Summerfield tapped the face of the wristwatch that his mother had sent him. Tate tested his rifle, kissed it and spat. His rifle had kept jamming with the damp and so he now played with it like a nervous tic. Flares glimmered occasionally ahead. The finishing tape, such as it was, was the line of the forest, just beyond the road junction that rose some thousand or so yards ahead. At 5.35 a.m. they
were due to start advancing towards it. They were waiting for the rolling barrage to start. He could see Francis a few yards away to his left. He still hadn’t spoken.
Harry had been trying not to stare at his brother. When their eyes met he saw that his attention was not welcome, but it was difficult now not to watch Francis. He didn’t trust him to look after himself. When Harry went forward it was not just his own skin that he must steer out of trouble.
‘Bleeding rain again,’ said Armstrong.
The flooded shell craters ahead shimmered as the rain moved over them in waves. They waited for the waves of artillery to come.
‘How long now?’ asked Tate.
‘Any time.’
It seemed only a fraction of a second between them hearing it roaring up behind and then the shells actually hitting. The earth thundered up ahead, yards away. Great convulsions of mud and wood and water leapt and then heaved down. Harry realized that he had dived back. His hands clawed into the earth, which was cold and liquid. There didn’t seem to be anything solid to hold on to. He watched the line of artillery boom down again. Summerfield next to him was screaming. His mouth stretched into silent words. Harry couldn’t hear a thing. There was only the eruption of the barrage. The sky sounded as if it were rending.
Lieutenant O’Kane blew his whistle, only much of the artillery seemed to be falling short. They were told to advance and, within seconds, told to retreat.
‘Flaming hokey-cokey,’ shouted Armstrong in Harry’s ear. He laughed, though he didn’t know why. Above the bellow of the bombardment he could hear his own heart pounding in his ears. His whole head was throbbing. His throat was dry and his eyes smarted. He looked across at Francis, who looked back to Harry. Was that fear finally in Francis’ eyes?
‘Go on!’ screamed Sergeant Foy.
Harry stepped forward, the ground giving beneath his feet, pulling him down into panic. They edged on, crouching, stumbling, cursing the artillery which too often was falling short. It seemed to be all around them rather than ahead. Earth pitched and splinters zipped. It was all churning and sharp and black smoke billowing. Instinct told him to run away from it, but which way to run?
‘Two hundred and fifty yards,’ yelled O’Kane.
‘Are you pacing it?’
‘Thirty minutes gone.’ Summerfield tapped his wristwatch.
They had worked out the mathematics as they had waited on the tapes. Based on the advance rate of the barrage, Harry had calculated that it would take them eighty minutes to reach the enemy line. Looking forward, through the barrage, there was just leaping mud and a sharp line of trees beyond the rise in the distance. Could this really go on for another fifty minutes? At this moment, it seemed impossible.
‘Your watch must have stopped,’ he shouted.
Francis was on the other side of Pembridge. He was struggling forward with the rest of them, his feet moving, his eyes on the rise ahead. The aircraft seemed to come in from nowhere. It swooped low overhead, spraying bullets along the line. Harry toppled forward, his cheek in the cold mud. A shell hit somewhere ahead of him, hurling it all up and leaving behind a smoking crater. He felt the earth jolt and got to his feet. He saw that Summerfield hadn’t. His hand was outstretched and the glass of his wristwatch smashed. Francis was standing perfectly still, just watching the sky.
It all came in as they crested the rise. It slammed in. Machine-gun fire was coming from the front and behind the railway lines over to the right. Harry was on the ground again, Pembridge flattening himself at his side.
‘Jesus wept,’ said the older man. ‘Are we meant to go on into that? How are we meant to go into that?’
When Harry looked across at him his lips were trembling. Beyond Pembridge, he could see that Francis was still standing. He wanted to leap over Pembridge and grab Francis, but then Corporal Allan was dragging them both to their feet. ‘On, not back,’ he said unsteadily. To the left, Harry could see Captain Rose on all fours, teeth and blood spilling out of his mouth.
They ran forward at a crouch, but suddenly Pembridge was pitching back. Harry looked over his shoulder and saw his empty, broken face.
Lieutenant O’Kane was shouting. ‘Our right flank is completely up in the air,’ he protested, but then he was falling, holding red hands to his chest.
Harry stumbled into a shell hole and let his legs slide down. Rifle fire was coming from the left now as well. It seemed to be all around them – and suddenly so few of them seemed to be moving on. Water splashed behind and he turned to see Francis. He staggered forward and lay down at Harry’s side. Above the noise of the artillery and the machine-gun fire he could hear Francis panting. For a moment he remembered them having races by the reservoir and then Francis there next to him on the grass, chest heaving and grinning. Francis’ grin seemed a long time ago. He touched his brother’s shoulder and he turned his head towards Harry. There was mud on his face. He pulled back his lips and showed his teeth, but it was more of a grimace than a grin. His lips were cracked and trembling. His eyelids fluttered. His breath was hot and sour and whistled through his lips.
Something heavy hit the earth behind them and dirt skittered across the surface of the water in the shell hole. He heard a catch in Francis’ breath. It was only then, as Harry looked up, that he saw it. The blade in Francis’ hand glimmered as light rolled in the sky above. The rhythm of his breathing quickened. The white blade moved. Francis’ grimed fingers held the knife out towards Harry. For a moment he felt its cool steel touch on his throat, at the very spot where Edie’s red ribbon had burned. He heard himself gasp. Whatever menace there was in the gesture, though, it wasn’t there in Francis’ eyes.
‘I know. I’ve always known. Do you love her?’ he said.
Harry put his hand out to the knife. He curled his hand around his brother’s and pulled Francis’ fingers away. ‘Yes,’ he said. There was no firmness, no resolution, in Francis’ grip. The penknife fell from his fingers. Harry folded it shut. He almost wished that there had been more certainty, more strength, in Francis’ grip. He looked at the knife. It was the same penknife with which they had carved their initials on to the wall of a barn; three sets of joined letters, side by side and so long ago. ‘Yes,’ he said again, ‘I always have.’ Was it grief or relief or merely fatigue that showed in Francis’ eyes then? He nodded and his eyes closed. Rifle fire spat earth from the lip of the shell hole. Francis’ eyelids didn’t flinch. Would their plaster initials still be there after they had all gone? Would she outlive them all? Did it matter then if they both loved her?
Francis rolled onto his front and lay with his cheek against the earth. Harry wondered if they could just stay here, could just crawl backwards or forwards later when this thing had resolved itself in either direction. It stank worse than a latrine in this shell hole and the cold was creeping up his legs, but he didn’t want to leave. He watched his brother’s sleeping face. Harry wanted to sleep too, deep undreaming sleep. He wanted to curl into his brother’s back and to sleep it all away. But then Corporal Brady was bellowing and there was a bayonet between his shoulder blades.
‘Up, scum.’ Spittle hit Francis’ back as Corporal Brady screamed down at him.
Harry took his brother’s arm and they clambered up and over together. He felt the air move against his face as machine-gun fire zipped across. Francis was sagging but Harry kept hold of his arm. They flailed and staggered on as it erupted and tore all around them. Francis’ footing seemed to go again and suddenly he was ahead of Harry and facing him. Harry stared at his brother’s face inches from his own. He put his hands to Francis’ shoulder wanting to push him away, to pull him back and put himself between him and danger, but Francis had dropped his rifle and was now spreading out his arms. Harry watched his brother’s pupils dilate. He felt him sigh against his cheek. He also felt the bullets’ thrust. It surprised him, the volume of the violence in that jolt. Francis convulsed and slumped. Harry fell to the ground with the weight of his brother in his arms.
&nbs
p; PART II
52
Harry
Amiens, September 1921
‘You don’t look well,’ says Cassie. ‘Not at all.’
‘I’m all right.’ Harry pulls out the chair for her and puts his hand up for the waiter.
‘Are you sure? You didn’t sound it on the telephone.’
He had called, as arranged, on the fifteenth. He had meant to talk to Ralph about Francis, but had ended up telling Cassie about Edie. Facing her questions and her concern he had crumbled and spoken it all into the telephone receiver. The voice that had replied was calm and kind, but now she is sitting across the table from him. There are Japanese pagodas in the print of Cassie’s blouse and an ostrich feather in her hat and she is staring at him from under its brim.
‘So she’s gone?’
‘Disappeared. Might never have been here. I might as well have imagined her.’
‘Oh dear,’ says Cassie and looks disappointedly down at the hat, which is now in her lap. She absentmindedly strokes the feathers as if they are a cat. ‘I am sorry to hear that, Harry. Really sorry. And I have to pass on Ralph’s apologies too: he apologizes for not being here and for having drawn a blank.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing at all beyond what you already know. He made a lot of telephone calls, wrote several letters, pulled on all his strings of contacts, but he found nothing beyond what you’ve already been told. There’s no grave with your brother’s name on it, but neither does he seem to have surfaced anywhere alive.’
‘I can’t say that I’m too surprised. I’m coming to the conclusion that we’ll never get beyond this point, that this is it: this is as much information as we are ever going to have.’
‘I’m sorry that I haven’t brought you any answers. You must despair of what direction to go in next.’
‘You could say that.’ He pulls the ribbon out of his pocket and holds it out towards Cassie.
The Photographer of the Lost Page 26