Chapter Eight: Harry

Chapter Eight

Harry

Arras, August 1921

HARRY DREAMS ABOUT THE EYES AND NOSES THAT NIGHT, THE mouths and chins piecing together into faces, the faces with parts missing, and Francis incomplete. He wakes up sweating in the strange yellow room. Its shadows lurch about him for a second, with the eyes and the mouths, and then the rapping at the door comes again. He rubs the nightmare from his eyes.

“Just a minute.”

Rachel is in the corridor. She looks as if she is about to speak but can’t remember what she meant to say.

“Are you all right? Did I wake you?”

Has he screamed again? When the nightmares wake wives and babies he normally moves on. He has spent the past twelve months moving on. The nightmares keep him moving.

Still Rachel doesn’t speak.

“I had a bad dream. What a fool.” He sees the shadows under her eyes. “Are you quite well? You look like you’ve woken from a nightmare too.”

She seems to consider the question. “Can I come in?”

He lights the bedside lamp, wishing it had more power to push back the shadows. Her white nightdress is just a glow around the lines of her body. He sits on the bed and looks at his hands. “I dreamed about the faces,” he says, in need of something to say. “The faces that you told me about in the catalogues.”

“Don’t, Harry.” She stands in front of him. “Please don’t speak.”

She begins to unbutton the nightdress. He sees her collarbone and her angular shoulders and the locket at her throat, its glimmer accentuating the quickening rhythm of her breath. The dress falls to her feet. She stands naked in front of him and bends, then, to put her mouth to his. Rachel’s pale lips touch Harry’s. Her mouth is soft, hesitant, and then insistent. He sees her closed eyes and closes his own. And it is Edie’s mouth then. It is Edie’s voice that says his name in his ear. It is her skin, her scent, her touch, as he has imagined it all, and everything else falls away. Her fingers pull him to her, twist and tug in his hair—but suddenly the illusion breaks, and they are Rachel West’s fingers once more, her ringed fingers that have stirred lost property, that have touched the buckles and cigarette cases and postcards. He sees Rachel’s hands turn the combs and razors and Francis’s penknife.

“I can’t,” he says. He stands, pushes her away. “Rachel, don’t.” He turns his back to her. “You don’t mean this.”

“I do.”

“You don’t.” He turns back to her and sees she has covered her eyes with her ringed fingers. “You’re just upset and I just happen to be the person in the next room.”

“It’s not that.”

“It is. You’re married.”