“If it had been me, would you write to Edie?” Francis had asked. And, of course, he had. Harry tries to remember what he had said, what kind and polite form of words he had framed that news in. She had sent him back letters that were full of questions, demanding details that he couldn’t supply. She had wanted him to go back over the ground. She had wanted to come out to Belgium herself. Did she not understand what it was like? There were lots of letters in those weeks, and then fewer. In the winter of 1918, their exchange of envelopes had just ended. Not a word had passed between them—not a word for over a year—until he had seen a girl that looked like her on another station and found himself boarding a train heading north. In all that silent time had she been going over those same questions? And, if so, why hadn’t she spoken out and asked him to help her before? What had prompted the need for a photograph of a grave? What had made her need for the truth suddenly urgent? Was it the anonymity of the envelope containing Francis’s photograph? Did she really picture Francis posting it to her?

A blackbird hops across the lawn. It tilts its head to one side, listening for worms. Very carefully, with slow controlled movements, he reaches for the camera. Wings flap away with the click of the shutter. His image will be a blur of feathers.

They had passed through the station here on the same day, he and Francis. He was coming back as Francis was going home. “Like a couple on a weather house,” he had said. It had been raining in Poperinghe that day. Was Sergeant Reeth here at the same time? Was his last letter full of dripping trees? He has spoken to Mrs. Reeth on the telephone, and heard the sadness in her voice as she told him how happy her son had sounded in his last letter. Harry wishes now that he had asked her more about the details in that letter, so that he may match his photographs up with Claude Reeth’s words, so that he may give his mother some proof of the sincerity of that happiness, and in turn perhaps take away some of her sadness.