Harry props Edie’s postcard against his glass and starts to place the photographs in the album that he has purchased for her, fitting them into their paper brackets one by one. On the first pages they are doing Swedish drills on the promenade, bayonet exercises on the golf links, and digging trenches at Torrisholme. There are interbattalion sports days and dances and concerts. They grin, standing on either side of their landlady, Mrs. Faulkner. She twists a white handkerchief in her hands. Crowds (and handkerchiefs) wave as their train pulls away. Harry annotates, as Edie entreated, adding dates and details with the pen that he has bought for the purpose.

There are group photographs at Parkhouse Camp then, Will smiling with the woman who sold oranges from a basket, and views of columns marching over Salisbury Plain. Biplanes curve low over Stonehenge. He sees himself, six years younger, leaning against the stones. His younger self squints into the sun. It is like looking at a different person. He thinks of the photograph of Francis that Edie had shown him three months ago. Where has it been, this image of his brother, for the past four years? Why has it surfaced now? Could it simply have been lost in the system somewhere? But for four years—could that be possible?

He looks out at the street and half expects to see Will and Francis there, linking arms again, walking away. Fat raindrops slide down the glass. He imagines Francis’s name on a grave and considers how that could connect with Edie sending him a postcard from Arras. What could have taken her there? Have there been more anonymous envelopes? Could there really be a connection between Edie’s postcard and Francis’s photograph face?

Francis had sent Edie a postcard on that day they first docked in Boulogne, Harry recalls. A chap with an extravagant mustache was peeping out from behind a bunch of giant pansies and pointing at a sign displaying the motto GROS BISOUS DE BOULOGNE. Francis had covered the reverse with crosses for kisses. No words. No name. Its meaning would be understood, Harry knew that, but there was something mischievous in the lack of signature, he had thought. He had recalled that crosshatching of ink kisses again, and its teasing anonymity, when Edie had shown him the envelope in which the photograph of Francis had arrived.

Harry reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the postcard that he has just bought for Edie. Baskets of herring are being landed from sailing boats in a pastel-tinted once-upon-a-time version of the harbor in which he has just landed. The sky above the quayside is tinted an improbable blue.

I am here. I am looking. I am trying, he writes on the reverse—and a P.S.: But are you here too?

Chapter Three: Harry

Chapter Three

Harry

Boulogne-sur-Mer, February 1916