Come home.

He would read them all and then read them through again. Over and over until he was fit and turfed out of the hospital bed, over and over until they put down their guns. Until the damn war stopped. A tide swelled through his body, in his fingers, chest, groin. Life battered its way along every nerve and artery. It slammed into his head and down his throat. He was parched, breathless. It was all too much to take in. Besides the weather, she wrote about Mabel, the farm, her thoughts, her fears, her knitting! She wrote him just the sort of letters that any woman might write to her lover.

She wrote letters like no one else ever could.

24th December 1916

Do you know, sometimes I would watch you sleeping. Your face naturally collapsed into something that wasn’t as determined or resilient. Most people find that a peaceful time. For me, sleeping Howard was almost difficult to look at because he didn’t seem alive enough then. I worried for him. Come home.

12th February 1918

You’ll think I’m quite mad but I enjoy being in the brown fields that you used to work. I remember watching you, then talking to you. Earning your smile, that was always a surprise, remembering your embrace, as shocking as an assault. I breathe deeply and try to get some of that oxygen you used to feed me, because it was so, wasn’t it, my love? The atmosphere was energetic, full, from the moment we met. Timmy Durham’s brother is home. His nerves are ruined. He’s as you described. I met his mother in the street. She is grateful to have him back. Even as he is. She said to me that he barely speaks; she joked that she never thought she’d consider Timmy her bright lad. She took her hand out of her pocket to clasp mine, and said, ‘It will pass, my dear, everything does. In the end we go jogging along side by side to one another. Pushing on.’ I wish I could agree. I fear some things are such a piercing shock that nothing can ever be the same. It’s probably best we all acknowledge that. I understand her acceptance, though. I wouldn’t mind, my darling. The same or changed beyond recognition. Just come home. I look for signs. I suppose humankind has that in common now. If the sun breaks through the cloud when I’m working, I think good times are ahead. It might be all right. But then if it starts to pour I tell myself that everything is being cleaned and refreshed. It might be all right. Because it has to be. I’ll only think that way. I can be stubborn too. Oh God knows, I miss you, though. Come home.

11th August 1917

It’s different now that you are both out there. My child’s father and the man I love. I now long for safe returns, for the end of the conflict, with an intensity that makes it hard to walk, to put one foot in front of the other. I know I won’t be given you unless Aubrey is spared too. I pray ferociously for a husband and a lover. Greedy, frenzied praying. If there is a God, He must be laughing. I am asking for twice as much and I deserve half. Come home.