The only item that was not familiar was the Fortnum and Mason tea caddy. She pulled off the lid, which required some force, and found it was full of letters. Letters addressed to her. She recognised the handwriting in an instant.

50

THE ALLIES HAD taken all their objectives and advanced to a distance of about three miles, on a four-mile front. They had also been able to take 11,750 prisoners and a hundred guns. The generals were heralding this victory as the beginning of the end for Germany; the soldiers hoped to God they were right this time.

A Sergeant Farrell came to visit him in hospital. This young sergeant had a no-nonsense way about him that Howard appreciated. He’d no doubt come up through the ranks, liked the men, understood them. Didn’t expect too much or too little from them. He sat down heavily on a chair by the side of Howard’s bed, lit a cigarette. He pulled the smoke to the back of his throat and then let it spill.

‘I saw in your report that you had contact with Sergeant Bowler in a crater.’

‘Yes, sir. Did he make it?’

‘No.’

‘I was trying to go back.’

The sergeant shrugged, not dismissively, not even regretfully. It was as it was. ‘You can’t save everyone,’ he commented. Not even weary, not philosophical. Practical. The best of them had been reduced to that.

Howard had already been made to account for his whereabouts throughout the duration of the battle. It appeared he’d run when the order had been to advance slowly, a creeping barrage. He liked running. Fact. He remembered a time when he’d run in London parks. It was one of the ways he used to demonstrate to himself – and others, if they cared to take notice – that he would not agree to the accepted boundaries, that he would travel and overcome at his pace. Space was all. Limitless. Except this was not true in the army. In the army he was supposed to agree and accept. He could only conquer on command, which was a different sort of conquering altogether.

He had done his best to answer the questions in the report, but he’d been injured and disorientated; it was hard to measure whether one crater or trench was a different torment to another. Luckily, he’d run forward, towards the enemy; no one could accuse him of cowardice, although strictly speaking he had disobeyed orders, broken rank. It was unsteadying, could have led to chaos, but then what else was there out there on the battlefield? The muddle and madness couldn’t be intensified by a sprint, could it? If they’d wanted to be picky, he could have been court-martialled. Sergeant Farrell had come to tell him that this time, it seemed no one really wanted to put him on trial or shoot him at dawn. For once, common sense prevailed. Concern about whether he was where he ought to have been during the show had been mitigated by his efforts to attend to the wounded in the field. They talked about him being heroic. Howard was relieved. He didn’t need them to think he was a hero, but he was weary of people wanting to shoot him. He wasn’t sure why he had run or if his actions in tending to the wounded had made any difference; it was simply his story. He said as much.