“I didn’t know that you were here,” he says to Bartley’s cross. He does recognize the date on the grave, though; the day that Bartley died is the same day that Harry had been wounded. His memories of that day are of the panic on the wire, the wire being everywhere, and it all shrieking and bursting over his head. Many of the graves in the cemetery are decorated with woven wire wreaths. The tangling trap of the barbed wire, and the journey back in an ambulance train, had taken Harry to a garden in Cheshire. Just for an instant the recalled sound of a blackbird and the smell of new-cut grass push into the here and now. She is saying his name, the gramophone is playing, and Edie is shutting her eyes as it all spins around her. But this isn’t a place that he’s permitted to go back to and he blinks the memory away.

Bartley liked to pass around a photograph of a girl called Jane whom he one day meant to marry. Harry recalls the girl’s photograph face. Has she ever visited him here? Does she have a photograph of his grave? Will she ever marry anyone else? He puts his hand to Bartley’s cross. He will write to his family later and let them know that he has been here. He will ask them for the address of the girl called Jane, so that he may tell her about the day in the felled apple orchard and how, even through the worst of it, he would catch Bartley smiling at her photograph.

There is a man selling wire wreaths by the cemetery gates—the same wreaths, Harry recognizes, that are on so many of the graves here. He thinks about buying one for Bartley, but on reflection decides that he would be happy enough with his ring of apple pips. He watches the wreath maker’s hands work, admiring his dexterity. There is speed and sureness in this man’s fingers as he weaves the metal wire. The meshed wire makes Harry think about the trap of barbed wire, but there is skill and art in the geometric forms that this man is conjuring with a pair of pliers. He is in control of the wire.

“Je peux prendre votre photographie?”

“I’m not much of a one for posing for photographs,” the man replies in unexpected English. He has a soft, courteous voice and strikingly pale eyes when he looks up. “But if you must.”

“I promise not to steal your soul.” He offers the man his hand. “Harry Blythe.”

“East. Daniel East.”