France, 1917
He was thinking of her when his pistol went off; or, more precisely, he was thinking of her lips. Wondering, with the frantic preoccupation of a man who wished with all his heart and soul that he was anywhere but here – here, on this godforsaken brink of hell with its screaming noise and stench of blood and rotting flesh – wondering if lips really could taste like cherries. His brother had kissed her, he reasoned. If anyone knew, it would be Ronald. Hadn’t he taunted Edwin with the knowledge, laughed at the hunger he had surely seen in Edwin’s eager eyes? And Edwin hanging off his every word, unashamed, so desperately did he long to know for himself—
A shell went off somewhere to the left of him. He staggered sideways, and when the aftershock struck him in the chest he crashed to his knees. For a moment, all he could hear was the sluggish whomp of his heartbeat, dull and slow, as if drifting to him from underwater. He shook his head. His ears popped and noise exploded back around him. Shouting behind, then rapid rifle fire. A shrill scream as a strafe cut down the man beside him. Edwin struggled to his feet, his body numb, his mind ablaze with fear.
Dear God, he was on the brink. He clutched at sanity. Cherries, he thought. Remember the taste: sour–sweet, rich with sunlight, bursting in the mouth with such impossible goodness that your hunger for them increased tenfold. He had spent every summer in the orchard, gorging on mulberries and cherries, eating his fill of grapes and passionfruit, laughing at his mother’s scoldings for leaving so few strawberries for her afternoon tea. He should have remembered the taste of sun-warmed fruit, he should have been able to imagine – but he was cold and afraid and he itched from lice. And men, men he knew, were dying around him. All he could remember was the taste of mud, the acid tang of fear and blood. No matter how he tried to conjure it, the sweet wild flavour of cherries eluded him.
He tightened his grip on the pistol. His hand was trembling so hard he could barely feel the weapon’s weight in his palm, let alone the touch of the trigger. Yet when a figure loomed up suddenly ahead of him, he reacted without hesitation. His fingers constricted on the grip, and the handgun wavered. He choked on a sob and took unsteady aim.
‘Fire!’ someone shouted, close to his ear. The captain, he thought, though it was hard to be sure. His ears still rang from the blast, but there was been no mistaking the urgency in the captain’s voice, as though he too was on the very edge of panic. ‘—Fire, damn you!’
A blood-streaked face burst from the smoke haze ahead. Edwin barely registered the mud-encrusted uniform, the wild eyes, the helmet knocked askew—
An inner voice whispered, For the love of God, hold your fire . . . but it was the voice of a person Edwin had abandoned years ago. A person with a liking for piano music and books and cool dark places into which he could escape. A person he had shed the moment he stepped off the wharf and onto the gangway of the great grey battleship that would sail him to the other side of the world. A person who no longer existed. A weakling, Ronald had called him, a nancy-boy with no right to carry arms. Well, Edwin would show him. He’d prove his worth as a soldier and show Ronald up as a fool. Ignoring the voice, Edwin gritted his teeth and whispered her name.
Clarice . . . Clarice. The girl he loved. Beautiful, kind Clarice.
The girl who would, once the nightmare had spent itself and, God willing, they were shipped off home, marry his brother. His taunting, boastful, undeserving brother Ronald.
The pistol bucked in his hand, he tasted the squirt of cordite at the back of his throat. Before him, the man with the blood-streaked face twitched mid-stride and then crumpled to his knees. As the man hit the ground, a greyness descended on Edwin. The mayhem around him faded, his senses tunnelled. A waft of breeze delivered the scent of overripe fruit, gaggingly sweet, turned to rot by the sun—
He snapped alert as the dim blare of shouting erupted nearby.
‘My God, man. He’s one of ours. Move aside, you mongrel. Someone call a medic!’
Later, that moment would return to him in dreams. The cries, the blast of weaponry, the choking smoke, the whistle of shells; and beneath it all, the barely audible footfall of the blood-faced man as he scrambled incoherently towards Edwin, his arms thrust forth. He carried no weapon, Edwin now understood. Rather, his hands were outstretched, empty, his fingers splayed as though imploring Edwin to grasp them.
In these dreams, other details surfaced. Edwin clearly heard the captain’s call. Hold your fire! he had cried. Hold your fire, damn you! A thousand times Edwin had replayed that moment, and a thousand times he had despaired. How had he failed to hear the captain’s warning? How had he not seen behind the man’s blood mask? How had the mud and fear and noise obscured what hindsight now clearly showed him to be true? A face he had seen day after day throughout the long balmy summers and icy winters of his childhood, a face as familiar to him as his own.
The face of his most hated enemy.
His brother’s face.
She sensed her mother’s presence in the sitting room, but did not turn around. What was the point? There was nothing Mother nor anyone else could say to change what had happened. There was no one in the world blessed with the ability to bring him back.
‘Clarice, darling,’ her mother said carefully. Shoes shuffled on the Persian carpet, and the rustle of skirts seemed overloud in the dusty stillness. ‘A young man is here to see you.’
Hope spiked in Clarice’s chest, but quickly died. A young man did not mean her young man. She ignored her mother. If she sat very still, she felt in control of the pain; it became a solid burn, hollowing her slowly from the inside, unbearable but by no means lethal. The moment she moved – the twitch of a finger, the flare of her nostrils, the too-sudden intake of breath that lifted the position of her rib cage – the grief rose up and threatened to consume her.
‘Oh, darling, he’s travelled here especially to see you.’
‘Go away,’ Clarice murmured. ‘All of you. I shan’t see anyone.’
‘He’s brought something for you,’ her mother persisted, and then added pleadingly, ‘It’s Edwin.’
A memory knocked softly on the windowpane of Clarice’s closed mind. She flashed on the image of a tall, awkward boy with a pasty face and serious eyes. Eyes that made her think of a rabbit or a fox squirming in the steel jaws of perpetual humiliation. With the memory came laughter; not just any old chuckle or snort, but his laugh, dear Ronald’s laugh – a rich, slightly mocking honey-warm rumble that always made her want to join in. She swivelled her head.
Her mother nodded, her small, sharp-featured face suddenly flushed. ‘He says he has a parcel for you. It’s from . . . Oh, my dear, will you not see him, just for a moment?’
Minutes later, the boy was sitting stiffly on the edge of her mother’s good sofa. He was as thin as Clarice remembered, and just as awkward, only now he wore a soldier’s uniform. The jacket rumpled around the shoulders, frayed at the cuff, the trousers hung too short at the ankle. He was gazing at Clarice with those large damp eyes she remembered. More rabbit than fox, she thought absently. Yet there was something hungry in their brown depths, as though the poor creature needed a decent feed. In his sweaty hands, he clutched a small package.
‘Is that for me?’ she managed.
The boy swallowed noisily. ‘He wanted you to have them . . . his medals. He made me promise, if anything happened—’ Edwin’s brows furrowed suddenly, and now he was hawklike, wary. Reaching over, he placed the parcel on the edge of the lamp table, as though eager to rid himself of its burden.
Clarice frowned. How had this poor scrap of humanity survived, while Ronald – dear, brave Ronald with his fine strong body and sharply intelligent mind – how had he been lost? With a sinking heart, she found herself cataloguing their differences. Ronald was outgoing and cheerful, gifted and witty, while his younger brother seemed to hover on the edge of life like a frightened sparrow. He had never joined in their lively conversations, never coped with their teasing banter. Rather, he had retreated, preferring the anonymity of his own company. If Clarice had been the sort of woman to accept a wager, she’d have placed her last shilling on the odds that Edwin Briar would most certainly have been one of the war’s first casualties. Yet here he was, perched on her mother’s sofa, gazing back at her in apparent terror. Alive and well, while Ronald—
Clarice swallowed. She dragged in a breath, expecting the pain to shred her, but to her surprise, she no longer felt quite so brittle. Taking another breath, this time venturing to draw it all the way into her lungs, she heard herself say in a rush, ‘You were there, weren’t you, Edwin? What did you see? Did he—’ Her throat closed as the swirling force of her grief tried to break free, but she managed to rein it in. ‘Did he mention me?’
Edwin drew his fingers into fists on his knees, as though pulling them out of harm’s way. At this strangely vulnerable gesture, Clarice felt her pity for him blossom.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said hastily, ‘I’m being rude. You’ve travelled all this way and I haven’t even offered you tea.’ She began to stand, but Edwin reached out and caught her sleeve in his pale fingers. It was just a gentle tug, but enough to startle Clarice into sitting back down.
Edwin leaned nearer. ‘My brother loved you very much, Miss Hopeworth. I’d never known him to be as happy as he was in those times he spent with you. I can’t imagine your pain, and I’m truly sorry for it. If you like, I can return in a day or so. It might comfort you to speak of him. Not,’ he hastened to add, ‘what happened over there. Rather, the way he used to be with you . . . when he was happy.’
Clarice sat back. She had never heard the boy speak so many words in one breath, nor had she expected such kindness. If she were perfectly honest, she would have to admit that something about his presence calmed her.
She took the parcel from the lampstand and placed it carefully, almost reverently, on her lap. Medals. How she wanted to throw them in the fire, be rid of them. Yet she also longed to hold them to her heart, cling to them, bathe them with her tears. They were her last vestige of Ronald. She looked at the boy. Perhaps the medals were not her last vestige of Ronald, after all. From some forgotten place inside her, a tiny smile emerged and settled hesitantly on her lips.
‘I think I should like that,’ she murmured. ‘I’d like it very much indeed.’