EDIE HAD WATCHED HARRY LEAVE THE CEMETERY. SHE HAD SEEN HIM turning among the crosses, where she had been standing herself just minutes earlier, and knew that he too was trying to feel whether Francis was there. She saw Harry’s eyes searching, his mouth moving. Were those words for Francis? Did he speak with anger or regret? Did he ask for pardon, or offer his apology? Edie had wished that she could hear what words Harry was saying, could more clearly see what expression his face wore.

Rain spatters against the glass suddenly and she looks out, beyond her own reflected face, and sees apple orchards and fields of cattle, sugar beets, potatoes, and barley. It is all pastoral again here now: fertile, productive Picardy. The fields are green and full of wet life and Edie is struck by the contrast between this place and that. There, north of Ypres, it had all been churned earth and new earthworks, like a whole county had been bulldozed, brought down, and was being started again. There was no sense of rejuvenation, though; it wasn’t as optimistic as that; it was more reclaiming and sanitizing. Had it once been as bright and bountiful as the landscape that is now accelerating past?

As she had boarded the bus back to Ypres the man ahead of her had shown her a piece of twisted metal. “Lead,” he had said. “From the church roof.”

Edie watched the man’s hands turning the object, his fingers examining where the melting lead had run. It conveyed so much heat and violence, and Edie was reminded of all the scrap metal, all that salvaged ugliness and sadness, in Dillon’s shop. “Are you taking it home?”

“Yes, it’s quite all right: I did ask permission. It’s a souvenir,” the man had said.

Sitting beside her on the bus, he had told her that this was his holiday, his fortnight away from the accountancy office. He had been at Passchendaele in 1917 and had now come back to see the sights. Edie wondered how anyone might want to come back. How might one choose this as a holiday? A fortnight among accountancy ledgers seemed infinitely preferable. As she looked out at the sour and scabbed land, the bus rattling along the newly laid road, she had felt like she was watching a film reel: what flickered past the glass was unreal, surreal, black-and-white cinematography that might snap at any moment. Once again, she realizes it had perhaps been unfair of her to expect Harry to come back.

“S’il vous plaît?”

She shows her ticket to the guard as the train slows through suburbs. Sidings and terraces and a canal blur past. Workshops and warehouses and allotments pull away. She sees church spires, factory chimneys, and intact streets that look medieval. How lucky this town is, with its solid bridges and sound architecture. What fortune to be back behind that line.