He throws his cigarette away as the port comes into sight and takes Edie’s postcard from his pocket. The engines check and he feels the vibration of the boat change. Dunes and ramparts and piers emerge. There are the shapes of chimneys then, the dome of the basilica, and the holiday colors of the quayside cafés. Light cuts through the gathering rain clouds and the flags on the casino pull in the wind. As Boulogne slides into focus now, he wonders whether Edie is still on this side of the Channel and whether she has found Francis dead or alive.

Chapter Two: Harry

Chapter Two

Harry

Boulogne-sur-Mer, August 1921

FRANCIS HAD BEEN HERE TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS SIX YEARS AGO. Harry had watched from behind as his brother had focused in on the patterns of the rigging and nets and ropes, and all of it reflected back on the wet dock. The disembarking passengers tread through those same reflections today, and Harry hears and knows the sound of the rain in this place, the cries of the seagulls and the stevedores, and the screech of the wheels of the railway cars. He remembers the mass of masts and chains and cables scribbled against the rain-filmed sky, the shapes of cranes, the funnels of sailing barges, and the names of the grand hotels beyond. This dockside is all so familiar, and yet the memory of it feels so far away.

It had been such a momentous thing to see the French coast approaching for the first time, to finally be on this side of the Channel, but then they had stepped onto a workaday quayside, with canning sheds and tea huts and old-fashioned fishing boats with red sails. Now, on that same dock, Harry watches a man piling suitcases into a dinghy. Barrels are being rolled along the cobbles. A horse and cart clatter past, the cart loaded with baskets of herrings. There is a strong smell of diesel and fish. So much is the same, five years on, and so much is different.

Harry shoulders his luggage and walks on into the town, past warehouses, hotels, and shopwindows. He catches glimpses of his own reflection against the displays of butchers and bakers and ironmongers, and half expects to see Will and Francis there at his side. He remembers Will’s voice haltingly reading all the shopfront names aloud and laughing; their surprise that here too there must be grocers selling cabbages and corsets and colanders. Their eyes had been all over it that first time, he remembers, expecting foreignness but finding familiarity, as they walked through the streets of an extraordinarily ordinary town. When they had stopped pointing at things, the three of them had linked arms, that wordless action needing no acknowledgment, and seeming like the most natural thing.

“Where’s this war, then?” Francis had asked.

“Bothering some bugger else,” Will had replied.