Harry thinks about the lace curtains and the vegetable gardens and wonders what it must be like to live in a place that is surrounded by so much bone-filled land. He wonders if the tunnels are still there beneath his feet.

“It will be a village again,” Alfred goes on. “They mean to remake it.”

There is a party of farmworkers at the next table, slapping down playing cards and talking loudly. Their cigarette smoke is thick and sweet, and they gesticulate widely, as if still in the fields. Alfred smiles at their frequent outbreaks of laughter. Harry downs his whiskey and thinks about the plowed earth.

“What did you want by the Briqueterie, then? Did you find what you were looking for?”

“I was looking for a grave,” Harry says. “There used to be a row of graves there. One of them was my brother.”

“You should have said so,” Alfred replies. “They were moved last summer and brought up to the cemetery here. I helped with the exhumation. You were nearly there when I picked you up on the main road.”

Harry realizes that he is gripping on to his chair. He stares at Alfred’s hand on the glass and imagines it on a shovel. He pictures Alfred’s shovel digging down. He wants to shake Alfred’s hand.

“Will you draw me a map?”

“I’ll do better than that.”

Chapter Eighteen: Harry

Chapter Eighteen

Harry

Guillemont, Somme, August 1921

CAPTAIN FIELDING.” ALFRED MAKES THE INTRODUCTIONS.

“Heavens, it’s Ralph. Can you forgive my hands?” Captain Ralph Fielding holds up his earth-ingrained palms like a gesture of surrender, and then offers Harry a handshake.

“Harry Blythe, private.”

Ralph shakes his head and says, “None of that here.”

Looking at the field of graves that surrounds him, Harry can see why rank doesn’t matter to Captain Ralph Fielding. The field is level and rather full.

“Captain Fielding was our commanding officer,” says Alfred. “We were cleaning up here in 1919 and there seemed too much to do to go home.”

Ralph Fielding takes out a white handkerchief and polishes his glasses. He is a large man, big hands, broad shoulders, and a somehow open face, with deep creases at the corners of his eyes as if he smiles a lot. Looking around the field, Harry wonders what he finds to smile about.

“There are ten of us,” Alfred goes on. “The old guard. Ten Robinson Crusoes on our odd little island, squatting in a sea of mud.”

“Are we stubborn, do you think?” Ralph Fielding asks. “Are we obstinate old relics?”

“Something like that,” Alfred replies.