“Edie, please, let me be serious.”

“No, because you will say something that you regret. And then I will say things that I regret.”

“Will you?”

“I have to get my bus,” she said. “Saint Christopher protects travelers. Now you’ll always be able to find your way back to me, won’t you?”

“I will. You know I always will.”

“Don’t really stop writing to me, will you?”

“How could I? I promise: I won’t ever stop.”

Chapter Thirty-Six: Harry

Chapter Thirty-Six

Harry

Talbot House, Poperinghe, September 1921

Location image order: Mr. & Mrs. Reeth would like photographs of the garden of Talbot House, Poperinghe. Sgt. Claude Reeth (23765) was decl. missing 28/11/17. He had last written to his parents from this location.

WHAT DID SERGEANT REETH SEE HERE? WHAT DID HE PUT IN A LETTER to his parents? Did he send them the shrub roses and potted geraniums and the monkey-puzzle tree? Did he send them the sound of the wood pigeons, the bumblebees, and the church bells? Harry rewinds and corrects himself; he remembers that there weren’t church bells, then; there was eastward grumble of the guns. He considers what Mr. and Mrs. Reeth would like to see. He considers whether Sergeant Reeth’s last letter—like Harry’s lens—composed well-meaning lies. Did he tell them about the smell of the larkspur?

The garden is full of birdsong on this afternoon four years on. Calla lilies are flowering in pots and there are salad greens coming on under cold frames. Chickens scratch on the gravel footpath and a woman is singing as she scrubs the tiles in the summerhouse. The scent of the lilac is heady. He sits down on a bench and watches the trees’ dappled light shift on the lawn. The monkey-puzzle makes sharp-toothed shadows.