I pass over the question of the Commission in scorn and contempt. Am I to sue on my bended knees for what shou’d be given of right and would have been had he survived the Campaign which covered England with Glory. But my pen fails me to describe such unlook’d for Baseness as to rob me of what he so hardly earned—if indeed this is the Fact and not an obstacle merely rumoured to enhance the value of the Services rendered.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

Henrietta Wolfe

“Jesus,” Sophie throws down the letter so forcefully I am obliged to swoop down and rescue it from the messy tent floor. “You really are a hopeless case. This is the letter I’m supposed to use to apply for your pension? Another useless dream from the distant past? It’s not the right one! What about here and now? What about Madame Blanchard’s papers? Hers are the documents we need to include if we’re ever going to see a penny.” At the sound of Madame Blanchard’s name I see silvered boards, a clothesline whose garments dance in summer wind.

“Have you forgotten her?” prods Sophie.

Forgotten Madame Blanchard! Her empty house—the scabbed turnips, the useless hoe, the pinhole in the pail—

Is that house one of the hundreds I ordered torched in the summer of 1759?

“Where’ve you really been today? You were ages longer than usual. You’re in a worse state of hauntology than ever tonight, aren’t you?”

Sophie insists my problem with civilization, or war aftershock, or even melancholy, is really a problem with time. She says all these problems would fall away and thus end my torment if I could only come to terms with her version of time and abandon mine.

Hauntology! Those scorched fishermen’s homesteads merge into one in my memory. Do I over-fondly imagine such a house not burnt, not destroyed at my command but somehow restored into one single saltbox: parlour shaded by a lilac at the window, corner where a returned soldier can sit in a chair and read his book of poems, dog at his feet? I see this house plainly, a simple fisherman’s house on the Gaspé, yet not his—it’s all mine—where has the fisherman gone? I’ve burned his traps and filled the place with my books! I’ve stolen his chair for my reverie. My house, hidden in goldenrod and asters ringed by junipers fragrant with sticky cones pink as a newborn’s toes…

Was I ever newborn?

Sophie cuts in. “Did you go to Gerard’s pawn shop today to gawk at your lost flute? Is that what’s the matter with you?”