“I saw a proposal written in a newspaper that the trenches should be left, should be kept an open wound for all to see. I thought that it was right; but now I see that it’s wrong. This is someone’s home. I feel as if I ought to apologize,” he says to Gabriel. When he looks back the woman is staring after them.

“But still people do want to see. There is talk of building an Office National du Tourisme, with barracks to house the sightseers and fleets of motor buses to take them over the battlefields. They say that it will be a new invasion.” A girl with blond hair passes them, cradling a loaf of bread to her chest. Gabriel says, “Bonjour,” but the girl doesn’t take her eyes from the road ahead. “I don’t know that it will be welcomed,” he says.

Curtains twitch at the windows of wooden huts. The houses here look like gardener’s sheds, Harry thinks. Another town is being remade in pine and corrugated iron. An old man carries pails of water from a pump. Children stand and stare on the junction.

“These places make me think about photographs that I’ve seen of prospector towns. Is this what it was like in the Klondike and California?”

“I don’t know that the prize was quite so high.”

Their feet stop by a Nissen hut. There is the noise of a piano playing and voices joining within, shaping into the tune of a hymn that Harry recognizes. Pieces of colored paper have been glued onto the windows to give the impression of stained glass. There is a large wooden cross nailed to the apex of the corrugated iron roof. It looks like it has been salvaged from an older place. It looks somehow declamatory. Harry wonders how these people can cling on to faith and hope.

“Communion,” says Gabriel.

“Perhaps that is what matters: the coming together?”

Chickens scatter ahead of them. A dog stretches lazily and watches them pass. There is a burnt-out house at the end of the road, the pink brick scorched and blackened roof beams slumped. Harry imagines how it must have roared when the roof gave way. They sit on the remains of a garden wall and pass a packet of cigarettes between them. A child hits at the dirt with a twig.