HARRY WALKS ALONG the line. Ralph has directed him to the third row of Plot 8, fourth grave from the far right, beside Captain Watts, who is wearing a wreath. Harry is aware that they are watching him, leaning on their shovels and smoking, but then forgets as he starts to look at the names. He sees service numbers close to his own. There are a lot of Manchester men under Edwards’s well-mown grass. He counts the crosses along the line and thinks about the line of men ahead of him moving down the trench with the banjo playing behind. On some of the crosses there are flowers and ribbons. Captain Watts’s wreath is made from paper roses and oak leaves. Harry feels short of breath as he looks at the cross beside it. His knees give way and he sinks down by Will’s grave.

Chapter Nineteen: Harry

Chapter Nineteen

Harry

La Briqueterie, Somme, July 1916

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME,” SAID FRANCIS. HE LOOKED UP WITH red-rimmed eyes. It was the first time he had spoken that morning.

“How do you come to that conclusion?”

“We crawled into shell holes when we should have carried on forwards. If we’d carried on, if we’d completed the thing, you wouldn’t have been sent up.”

“If you’d carried on, I’d possibly be burying two brothers today.” Harry flicked his cigarette away. He’d tried to sleep but couldn’t. The images convulsed. Somebody else’s blood was underneath his fingernails. He had worked it out with a matchstick, until determined working made his own blood run. He wrote it down, as well as he was able. Red fingerprints illustrated his account. The whistling noise was still there in his head. His head ached with it now and he wasn’t in the mood for a show of remorse.

“I was meant to look after him,” said Francis.

“We were all meant to look after each other.”

One minute Will had been at his side, and then he wasn’t. In the chaos and the eruption and the adrenaline of the instant, Harry hadn’t seen him go. It was only when he fell into a shell hole too that he looked back and Will wasn’t there.

At dusk they had all crawled back and the relieving battalion had started to bring the dead in. He had found Francis crouched in a cubbyhole in the communication trench. They had barely exchanged a sentence before Will was being carried back. His lips were white and his teeth were red. In their grief and shock Harry and Francis had kicked and clawed at one another.

“You and I have to watch out for each other now,” said Harry.

Francis looked away.