The Photographer of the Lost

by Caroline Scott

  ‘That we all need a drink.’

  The crowd is finally doubling back and daring to look, to take in the new perspective of the square. They don’t get too close to the memorial, though; it is approved, but somehow at this moment it repulses; it is measured from afar, assessed and debated. Only Marie Leval is able to breach and bear that proximity. She leans against the railings and stretches a hand through the bars. It is too distant by design, but her fingers wriggle and reach, and must touch her son’s name on the plinth. The village watches aghast.

  Gabriel’s hand is on Madeleine’s back as they walk into the bar. ‘En avant,’ he says. Something has changed between them today, Harry sees. He wonders if she recognizes herself in the stone girl on the memorial and what Gabriel meant by it. He wonders if Edie has yet seen his envelope and understood its meaning. Marie-Thérèse nodded when he asked if he could take the photograph of Francis’ grave, but he had hesitated as he folded his letter around it. Did Edie really need to see it? But then perhaps for her, as for him, it will draw a line, silence the questions, and let her sleep. And he owed her this truth. Didn’t he?

  *

  They dance in the bar that night. They sing songs from long before the war, and songs about the future, and the volume and the tears rise. Harry doesn’t feel part of it, he doesn’t know the words to any of these songs, but Gabriel tells him that he shouldn’t be alone tonight, and he knows that Gabriel wants him to be here.

  It is hot in the bar, as they spin gavottes and waltzes and ragtime, singing of fidelity and anarchy, of old loves and barricades and cherry blossom. Harry’s head pounds with the beat of the music, and the sounds of their laments and laughter, but he sits by the window and watches as the moonlight pulls the frost on the glass into patterns. Whorls of ice stretch finely, brightly, scrolling into rhythms of divine geometry. As the patterns on the glass multiply, he thinks about the cemetery with the gun emplacement at its centre, the crosses of the nameless dead radiating out from it. He thinks about what that vast cemetery must look like in moonlight and what pattern the graves must make from above. Do the graves look like shock waves radiating out? He pictures Francis’ cross and Francis on the cross with his arms splayed out. He feels the waves of shock that radiate from that image.

  ‘Harry, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, but I might go home.’

  ‘Stay. Drink. We shouldn’t dream tonight.’ Gabriel’s face glistens in the strange yellow light of the bar. He reaches for the bottle and fills Harry’s glass right to the top, but he has no thirst for it tonight.

  ‘I am tired.’

  Harry shuts his eyes to the polkas and the politics and the drink, and Gabriel and Madeleine’s across-the-table embraces, and in his mind he watches Edie dancing in the red room. He tries, as they spin, to see the face of the man who she is dancing with. He expects it to be, wants it to be, Francis, but in turns he sees the icy paleness of the eyes of the man called East, the disparu, whose image a camera cannot catch. With that, Harry must keep his eyes open. Perhaps Gabriel is right, that this is a night made only for nightmares? He drinks the glass of brandy down, and the words of the songs and the speeches seem to revolve in his head.

  He puts his cheek to the cool of the window and watches the ferns of frost curl. His head throbs with the hot and the cold, and the interminably circling beat of the music, and he is Francis in the Blue Angel for a moment, but then, somewhere behind the ice crystals, there is a flash of red.

  ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’ Gabriel’s face blurs in the candlelight and fug of drink. His hand stretches across the table. ‘Are you unwell, Harry?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  But then Harry knows the colour for what it is, and suddenly all the music and the tears and the laughter are silenced, and she is there. Harry stares at her and wonders if he has made her. Has he conjured her up? Is she imagination? He doesn’t trust his mind any longer. Like the eyes of the wreath-maker, is she madness or a phantom? Is this delirium or drink? He stares at Edie’s face. Edie’s eyes connecting with his. Edie’s mouth making the shape of his name. There is no fantasy in the fierce grip of her hand.

  Epilogue

  Harry and Edie

  Houthulst Forest, north of Ypres, March 1922

  Last night Harry dreamed about the reservoir. It is an awfully long time since he last had that dream, since his sleeping imagination last returned to that long-ago place. But yesterday, in their hotel room in Ypres, he had thought about the mirror that he broke here six months ago, the sound of the fracturing glass, and perhaps that was the link that took him back to the noise of the ice.

  In his dream he is a boy again, stepping out across the frozen reservoir, in the blue-white, bright, crisp cold. Will and Francis are calling from the far side and goading him to step out further. ‘Dare you!’ their adolescent voices shout. ‘Coward!’ they cry. The breath is icy in Harry’s mouth, and coming faster now, but because they shout, he keeps on going.

  He hears the cracks before he sees them, and then it is not even a second before they are racing out under his feet. He sees them shoot, suddenly multiplying and accelerating from his boots, and leaps momentarily before he plunges. He makes a grab for the ice, but it breaks away and there is nothing to hold on to. He flails, his legs wheel and he screams, but the black water takes away his words and thrusts into his lungs. He is full of it then, numb with it and falling down. He looks up, and sees the light flickering and retreating on the far above surface of the water, as the cold pulls him down.

  No hands break the receding light above. No fingers reach down to save him this time. Harry’s legs stop kicking and he lets it take him down. The silence of the water wins – until that moment, at the very edge of it being too late, when Francis’ fingers push through the light above and he is hauling Harry out. In that instant, Harry is thirteen years old again and he looks into his brother’s face and gasps.

  Strangely, it is something similar that he feels now as he stands and looks at Francis’ grave. He cannot quite believe that he is standing here. That this really is Francis, and that it has all ended here. The sight of Francis’ grave marker takes all of the air out of Harry’s chest, and though it is a warm spring day, he shivers like the boy who has just been pulled out of the reservoir by his brother.

  ‘You’re trembling,’ she says. She takes his arm.

  ‘It’s real, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is.’

  How unreal it is to stand in this place again. To stand here with her. When he looks at the concrete, and the rusting railway tracks, and the bales of barbed wire, it’s October 1917 again, he is following a tape line and Francis is at his side. He remembers it all as it was; the vibration of the hands of Summerfield’s wristwatch in the second before it started, and then all the leaping black water and the white of his brother’s eyes. Standing here, he can almost feel the convulsion of the bombardment again and, in the heavy silence, hear their screaming. How long will it be before this place forgets all of that, until the signs and the vibrations are all gone, and the silence is really still?

  This is not Francis’ final resting place and, looking at all the yellow grass and crumbled concrete around, Harry is glad that is the case. Ralph has told him that the grave will be moved now; having been identified, Francis will be disinterred and relocated to Tyne Cot. But it could take months, Ralph says. With all the scattered crosses that they have seen from the car, Harry thinks that it may take years. But they have had to fill in paperwork in preparation for the grave being moved. They have had to give all Francis’ details, define their relationship to the deceased, and are invited to choose a personal inscription of up to sixty-six characters to be incised at the base of his new gravestone. It is such a difficult thing to condense it into sixty-six stone-cut letters, to pare all life and loss down to that, but they have talked it over between them, and through those conversations, they have both voiced and shared and agreed what Francis means to them.

&nb
sp; They have bought dog violets in Ypres today, the first of the wild spring violets from the market, because she had said that she wanted to plant them here for him. The scent of the disturbed petals takes Harry to a looted room, but he shuts that down; he doesn’t mean to let his memory go there any longer; that is not the version of his brother that he chooses to remember. The scent of violets is also her smell and, because of that, this gesture seems right. He recalls Francis’ face turning and smiling, his eyes closed, as he curled into Edie’s neck. Harry holds her now as she cries, and wants to take her away from here and to make it right, but he knows that she has to have this moment, that he has to let her have this time, to plant violets around his grave, and to say all the words that she needs to say to Francis.

  How odd it is to be digging around his brother’s grave. He wants to dig the soil out before she does, because he dreads what the trowel may turn over.

  ‘Do you really want to do it? Are you sure?’

  He sees Edie’s hand shake as he gives her the trowel.

  *

  She takes the trowel from him and she can feel his hand tremble in that contact. She looks at Harry. What must it be like for him to be back in this place? What must it be like to stand at his brother’s grave? She is so sorry to have brought him here, and yet she is also so grateful to have him at her side.

  Edie pushes the soil around the violets. As she kneels by Francis’ cross, it is so hard to believe that this is him, that it has all come down to this, but she knows that he is here. Finally she believes it. Finally she feels it. She puts her hand to the wood of his cross so that she may know its texture. It is not that she means this to be her remembrance of him, only that she means not to forget. She sits on her heels and looks at him, all ringed around with violets.

  When they had first told her that Francis would be disinterred, she had not liked the idea that he must be dug up and disturbed all over again. But having been to this place, having seen this poisoned, leafless forest, so terribly marked by the passage of war, and so far off being made right, she realizes that it is better that than this. She wonders if this place will ever be made right.

  How very difficult it has been to have to choose an epitaph for Francis, to be asked to summarize all that he was and all that his absence means. In the end, they have decided it together. Somehow, as she and Harry have talked over the past four months, as they have fitted together all of the pieces, she feels that she has made her peace with Francis. She has talked to his memory through the long winter nights, has rewound from that man in the photograph, and has decided to remember him as the boy who sat waiting for her on the library steps. It feels as if they have shaken hands at that, she and Francis, because that, not this, is who Francis Blythe really was. She doesn’t want a photograph of this grave. This is not what she intends to remember.

  ‘Your hands.’

  She looks down at her hands, all creased in the earth of his grave. The grit of it is down her fingernails and behind her wedding ring. It is terrible to think what this earth contains, but she also feels strangely close to Francis now and there is some comfort in that.

  ‘It’s all right. Don’t worry.’

  When she looks up at Harry she sees the concern in his eyes. She still sees Francis in Harry’s face, and she is glad of that, but there is also something else there now; when she looks at Harry’s face, she sees a future. Her legs feel unsteady as she stands up. He puts his arm around her and she leans into his chest.

  *

  Harry takes the trowel from her earth-engrained hand. When she had sat there, on his grave, he had remembered Francis at Will’s graveside, the creases of his palms picked out in brick dust, and how he had ached with pity for them both at that moment. When Edie had looked up at him, her face was wet with tears, but there was also a smile there as she took his hand.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She nods.

  ‘Shall we go home?’

  ‘Yes. I’m ready now.’

  PRIVATE FRANCIS BLYTHE

  MANCHESTER REGIMENT

  22 OCTOBER 1917

  AGE 25

  LOST AWHILE AND FOUND AND LOVED

  Acknowledgements

  I should firstly, and loudly, thank my fantastic agent, Teresa Chris, for believing in this story and championing it so fiercely. Teresa, your determination is a wonder to behold and I’m so very lucky to have you on my side.

  I’ve been fortunate to have had the chance to work with editors at both Simon & Schuster and William Morrow. This crack team untangled my knots, pointed out my plot holes, breathed life into my characters, and knocked my wonky northern grammar into shape – and always with the greatest patience, thoughtfulness and care. I’m indebted to Liz Stein, Jo Dickinson, Alice Rodgers, Emma Capron and Sara-Jade Virtue.

  Lastly, and mostly, thank you to Mum and Dad – for putting up with my away-with-the-fairies face and for never once telling me that it was time to get a proper job. x

  Discussion Questions

  1. When Harry is taking photographs for the families back in Britain, he composes his images with care, and considers what he feels the families ought to see. Is this well-meaning editing the right thing to do, or should Harry be capturing more ‘authentic’ images?

  2. As she considers whether Francis could be alive, Edie is troubled by a sense of guilt. Where does this emotion come from – and does she have any good reason to feel this way?

  3. Harry copes with his wartime experiences by recording significant events and images in a sketchbook. Does this coping mechanism help him in the long term, or does it cause more damage?

  4. Why is Harry so determined to help Rachel, despite barely knowing her? Why is she so important to him? Do you think their encounter in the hotel is real, or is this Harry’s mind playing tricks?

  5. The novel chronicles a progressive downward slide in Francis’ mental health. In retrospect, Harry recognizes and appreciates how much his brother was suffering and struggling, but should he have seen it sooner? Could he have done more to help Francis?

  6. Why is Edie convinced that the man in the photograph is ‘so much older’ than Francis was the last time she saw him? What motivations are behind that judgement?

  7. Two of the characters in this novel – Daniel East and the photographer in Saint-Christophe du Quercy – may, or may not, be real. In your opinion, are they figments of Harry’s imagination? Or something else?

  8. Did you expect Francis to be alive or dead? How did you feel about the ultimate revelation of what happened to him?

  9. Francis steps in front of Harry immediately before he is shot. Is Francis acting out of a desire to protect Harry, or is he effectively trying to commit suicide? Is this an act of brotherly love, anger, despair, or a combination of all three?

  10. In the epilogue we see the characters coming to terms with what they have experienced and learned. Do you believe that Harry can really put the war behind him? Will Edie be able to move on? Do Edie and Harry have a future together?

  11. The events in this novel take place around a century ago, in a society very different from our own in many ways. Did the characters feel familiar to you, or distant? Were you able to empathize with their dilemmas?

  12. Memory (and the tricks that it plays) and remembrance are themes of the novel. Now that the centenary of the end of the First World War has passed, should we still make an effort to remember the conflict, or have we lingered here too long? Can it teach us lessons for our own time, or is this history now too distant to be relevant? Has the novel challenged your perceptions of the First World War in any ways?

  Caroline Scott completed a PhD in History at the University of Durham. She has a particular interest in the experience of women during the First World War, in the challenges faced by the returning soldier, and in the development of tourism and pilgrimage in the former conflict zones. Caroline is originally from Lancashire, but now lives in south-west France.

  First published in Great Britain by
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2019

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Caroline Scott, 2019. All rights reserved.

  The right of Caroline Scott to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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  Design by S&S Art Dept.

  Cover images © Arcangel

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4711-8639-4

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-8689-9

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-8312-6

  Audio ISBN: 978-1-4711-8640-0

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Excerpt from ‘Sea Fever’ by John Masefield.

  Reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of John Masefield

  ‘Battlefield Photography’ advert, originally printed in the Grantham Journal.

  Reprinted by permission of the British Newspaper Archives and Findmypast Newspaper Archive Limited

  Typeset in Bembo by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY