Upstairs, she slowly undressed. The trousers were thick and stiff with mud. Vivian thought she must tell her maid to brush them rather than wash them, because she might need them again in the morning and they would never be dry in time if they were washed. She didn’t light a candle but looked out of the bedroom window over the village and fields. Rare specks of light from cottage windows interrupted the calm darkness of dusk like fireflies. Such a contrast with London, a city of bright and glaring lights; streets, carriages, houses, theatres, restaurants, cars all lit up, bright, brilliant and blatant. She did miss it, but she missed it a little less today. Which way was London? she wondered. Which way was France?

She drew the dark green curtains against the night. The material was dusty and heavy, even faded in streaks, but they made the room seem comfortable. Perhaps it was the gold tassels, which brought to mind theatres, restaurants and other places of fun. Here in her bedroom it was hard to believe that London and all its activity, gossip, creativity, discussion and fashion even existed, and it was incredible to imagine war at all. The whispers of battles waned and faltered. She couldn’t hear the men’s boots marching to the ports or the explosions and ambulance engines across the Channel. The papers were full of it, but all that din and disarray dwindled into unreality beyond the edge of the herbaceous bush.

Kindly, the housemaid filled the bath right up to the top. Vivian lay in among the scent of lavender, scrubbing at the mud under her fingernails and thinking about what else she should do with the garden, what might she do with the land. She could try to learn something or other about those fields. She should know what they were growing. Who was farming them now that the men were away? Old men? Boys? Women? She should find out.

20

There were over 2,500 German bodies in the Yser Canal this morning after the fighting in the night. Many of them had drowned, others bayoneted. The very water itself was bloody. Dixmude’s streets were strewn thick with dead.

Daily Mail, 27th October 1914

‘THAT WILL SEND up a cheer at home,’ commented Clarke, without hiding his satisfaction.

The German dead were being gathered into heaps like autumn leaves and drenched in petrol; oily smoke was rising from them. Howard turned away. ‘Do you think anyone will wonder how many of our men are lying in heaps?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Clarke sighed, then admitted, ‘I don’t know if I want them to.’ Howard raised an eyebrow in question. ‘Not knowing seems some sort of merciful anaesthetic right now. I’m a man who has always admired curiosity in my readers and I seek to bring the news to people, to tell them how it is. But now . . .’ The sentence was left hanging in the air; it was unthinkable, unrepeatable.