He knew he could not get letters to her but he thought she’d work out why. She must understand by now that he was under Aubrey’s command; she had to be aware of censorship, didn’t she? He expected that she’d write to him anyway. That she’d see the vital importance of keeping connected, that she’d offer him some succour and delight in this brutal nightmare, was an absolute belief of his. He understood her, she understood him. They were in love. She would write. The military couldn’t stop her letters coming to him. They wouldn’t be stifled.

Days and nights went by; the shelling and shooting and sheer hell of it continued incessantly. All around him was noise and chaos, except when the post was delivered. Then it was as though a ceasefire had been called. Silence fell, the men smiled, breathing in home and humanity for a few snatched minutes. Howard received letters from his mother, from Basil Clarke and even from Miss Hawkins, his old school teacher. His mother told him that the weather had broken at home; autumn was upon them. She mentioned what she was planting, painting, knitting; her letters seemed remote, constrained. He hoped there were enough glorious, shimmering autumn days in Blackwell – the sort where every leaf and blade of grass seemed to gleam with beauty – to make it impossible for her to believe that here, only miles off the coast of England, men were being slain ruthlessly, their poor disfigured bodies heaped together and crowded in ghastly indiscriminate common graves. She was not the sort to find any comfort in the fact that thousands of German men were lying in the same way. It just added to the senselessness. Her letters did not scold or harangue; they both knew such a thing would be worse than pointless now. It seemed as though she’d accepted his certain death as much as he had.

Miss Hawkins wrote to tell him she was glad he’d found the right path at last; that he’d seen sense and picked up a gun. She wrote that the village was proud of him. He doubted they were. Perhaps they hated him a little less now, but he couldn’t imagine them hanging out the bunting because he’d changed his mind about whether he should kill men or not. Still, he appreciated her effort in writing to him, and he knew his mother’s position in the village would be more tenable now.

Basil Clarke’s letter was interesting, informative. Clarke was out in the thick of it again, but with the proper paperwork now, no longer an outlaw; something of a celebrity actually. Not able to tell it as it is, of course, he commented wryly. Howard couldn’t imagine that their paths would ever cross again.

He heard nothing from Vivian. Not a line. Not a word. Still, he continued to write to her and stored the letters in his tea tin.

It became increasingly difficult to write into the abyss of taciturnity. It was impossible not to fear that it was simply another senseless act in an ocean of futility.