1

RUBY

July 1919

It was like the strangest of dreams, standing here on the deck of the steamship, with the blue sky above, the sun glittering off the sea like a million diamonds. To her right, the grey slate roofs of the little town huddled almost apologetically beneath those magnificent cliffs, so much higher and more brilliantly white than she’d ever imagined.

She could scarcely believe that she was about to leave the shores of England for the first time in her life. It was not an adventure she had sought, much less desired. Why would she want to cross that treacherous stretch of water, the English Channel, to visit a country so recently torn apart by four years of terrifying, tragic events? She was still only twenty-one and she considered that her short life had been tragic enough, thank you very much, without inviting further danger and heartache.

What she most wanted, now that peace was here, was to live a quiet, ordered life, honouring his memory by working hard and trying to be kind to others who grieved like her. There were plenty of them, for heaven’s sake. No family had been left untouched by the tragedy. She would keep herself to herself, would never allow anyone else to break her heart. It’s the best I can do, she wrote in her diary, the only thing I can do, when he’s given his future to make ours safe from the Hun. How else can we make sense of it all?

So when, after serving tea that early June afternoon, his parents solemnly sat her down in one of their overstuffed armchairs and presented her with the Thomas Cook brochure, she’d thought at first it was some kind of a joke.

‘Tours to the battlefields of Belgium and France,’ she read out loud. ‘Why on earth would anyone want to go and gawp at the place . . .?’

She saw Ivy wince, and the words faded in her mouth. Her mother-in-law was as fragile as cut glass, unable to accept that her only child was dead. Never an outgoing person, her health had been frail for as long as Ruby had known the family, which seemed like forever.

When they’d first started courting, she thought it odd that he rarely invited her back to his house. ‘Mam’s a bit poorly,’ he’d say, or, ‘She complains that I make a mess.’ Now, Ivy was a feeble whisper of a woman, barely of this world, with a ghost-like pallor from lack of fresh air. She spent much of her time in bed, or at least in her bedroom.

Ruby and Bertie met at school and stayed friends until one day, when they were walking home together, his hand crept out and took hers. They did not pause, and neither said a word; they walked on in silence. But the warmth of his touch surged like electricity up her arm and she knew, then, that she would be with this boy forever. I love Bertie Barton!! she wrote in her diary that night, framing the words with a wonky circle of red-crayon hearts. She wrote it again and again, on her pencil case, her school notebook, the shopping list, the inside of her wrist. No one ever doubted that Ruby loved Bertie, and vice versa.

And then, shortly after this, tragedy. Her father, foreman at a boat-building company in their small Suffolk town, was crushed by a marine engine falling from a crane. He died instantly. She couldn’t remember much of the following days – only that her mother seemed to be barely there, so hollowed out, so wrapped up in her grief that she had nothing left with which to comfort Ruby.

All she can recall, now, is that Bertie was always by her side, holding her as she wept, making endless cups of tea with plenty of sugar and taking her for walks to distract her with his stories of nature: which bird sang which song, what flowers liked to grow in certain places and how their flowering was so carefully orchestrated with the arrival of certain insects; which set of holes in the ground were badger, fox or rabbit. In her memory he grew, almost overnight, from a schoolboy into a man.

Hugs and hand-holding soon turned into shy kisses, furtive explorations behind the garden shed and, before long, his declaration of love. One evening when they were alone in the house he went down onto his knee and presented her with a diamond engagement ring for which, he admitted rather shamefacedly, his father had loaned him the money.

Bertie became her entire world. She never looked at another boy and knew she never would. He claimed she was the only girl for him, forever. Bertie and Ruby, forever! she wrote in enormous letters on a fresh page in her diary, encircling the words with yet more hearts.

They were the perfect fit in every respect: physically quite alike with curly dark blond hair and freckly complexions – neither overly good-looking nor too plain but just ‘normal’, as he loved to say. A matching pair of normal. He said her brown eyes were like ginger wine; she said his reminded her of hazelnuts. They both loved dancing, walking and sharing silly stories or games of cards in the pub of an evening with their close-knit group of friends. And of course, they were going to live happily ever after. She could not imagine that things could possibly turn out otherwise.

When the recruitment notices were posted on the town hall noticeboard she pleaded with him not to join up. But then the pressure became too much, all the lads were enlisting, so she made him promise to return safe and sound. True to his word, he did return twice on leave from training. He was changed: he seemed to have grown several inches and was certainly stronger, physically, with muscles she had never noticed before. Bertie the joker had disappeared; he was more serious and thoughtful, and struggled to make conversation in larger groups. Indoors, he was fidgety and uncomfortable.

Only when walking in the woods and fields with Ruby did he appear to relax. And yet, however gently she posed her questions, he still refused to talk much about what they had been going through. Only at the very last moment did he let slip that this would be his final leave for a while: they were being posted. He would not say where.

They married on the Monday before he left, a hastily convened affair at a registry office. Her mother had been saving for years for this moment and when she saw Ruby in her wedding dress she burst into tears. ‘War or no war, you’ll have a day to remember for the rest of your lives,’ she said.

And what a day it had been: bright sunshine, puffy white clouds in the sky, the smiles of many good friends and such joy that she felt she might burst. Those two nights at the Mill Hotel afterwards – their honeymoon – were the happiest of her life. Although at first shy with each other, she discovered in herself a new world of passion, of intense bliss, that seemed to have been waiting in the wings for all her girlhood years. She felt complete.

They spent the daytime walking the water meadows, stopping to watch the mysterious brown fish languidly swimming against the flow of the river, listening to the larks calling overhead and, once, spying the brilliant blue flash of a kingfisher.

‘I never want this to end,’ she’d sighed, giddy with gladness. ‘Please don’t go, Bertie. I can’t bear to be without you.’

‘I’ll be back soon, I promise,’ he said, and she believed him.

Even when he left Ruby refused to worry, determined to remain strong and cheerful. That’s what he had asked of her, after all. He was doing his duty for King and Country and he’d promised, hand on heart, that he would stay out of danger. Of course she would miss him, of course she cried herself to sleep. But he would come home before long, she knew that for certain. Bertie never broke his promises.

So when, five months later, she received a telegram, followed by army form B104-83, dated September 1917 – We regret to inform you that your husband, Albert Barton, is notified as being missing in action at Passchendaele – she refused to consider that he was anything other than just temporarily out of contact. She built a hasty wall around her heart, not allowing herself to contemplate any other outcome. He’s promised to come home safe and he always keeps his promises, she wrote. He’ll turn up, soon enough. She could even hear him: ‘Just popped out for a fag, officer. Didn’t miss me, did you?’ At school he’d always been in trouble for his cheek.

She would keep calm and carry on, just as the posters exhorted, forcing herself to get dressed each day, to eat the meals which her mother so solicitously cooked for her but which, to her jaded senses, tasted like cardboard. On her way to work she nodded to the regulars on the bus and exchanged the usual pleasantries about the weather. Once there, she applied herself as efficiently as ever, pasting a smile on her face for her colleagues and customers, hoping none of them would ask her about him.

Word got out, of course it did. He was the boss’s son, after all, at Hopegoods, the men’s and women’s outfitters in the High Street where she worked in haberdashery. After the first round of sympathetic comments her colleagues learned not to mention his name. This sort of news had become almost commonplace.

But as the months went by and they heard nothing further, Ruby’s protective wall began to disintegrate. She sank into a chasm of grief and guilt that she experienced as real, physical agony, from which she could see no escape. She seemed to be in the bottom of a well, hemmed in on all sides by darkness, with only a glimmer of light too impossibly high to reach and too exhausting to climb towards. There were days when she felt she simply could not carry on and sometimes, walking by the river, she imagined wading through the deep mud and giving herself up to the cold, heartless current. But she never found the courage. Her mother, still struggling with her own bereavement just a few scant years before, did what she could to comfort her daughter, but nothing eased the pain.

In the face of Ruby’s persistent refusals to go out with them, their once close group of friends drifted away one by one, and gave up inviting her, or even calling round. She stopped writing in her diary because she could think of nothing to say. She felt like an empty shell, the kind you find on the beach, bleached and whitened in the salt and the sun, hard to imagine that it had once held a living creature inside. She could not remember the last time she had laughed.

But how could she go on living otherwise? Without Bertie she felt like half a person, not really alive at all. She could gain no enjoyment from any of the things they’d had fun doing together: going to the pub, to the cinema, to dances, for walks in the woods. She wore only black, or occasionally charcoal grey. He had made the ultimate sacrifice, she reasoned, so how else could she honour him? It felt insulting to his memory, somehow, to wear anything cheerful. This is how my life will be from now until I die. It’s only right.

Her dutifully regular visits to his parents only served to underline their mutual loss. It twisted the knife in her heart to see his mother so devastated, his father so grimly stoic. Afterwards she would emerge exhausted, as though carrying the boulder of their grief, as well as her own. Leaving the overheated fug of their house, she would look up at the sky and inhale deeply, trying to draw strength from the fresh air. One step at a time, she’d say to herself, one day at a time. This misery will soon ease.

Of course it didn’t, not really. The grief was still so intense it sometimes took her breath away, and at work she would have to hide in the ladies’ toilet until she could compose herself. She discovered, by trial and error, how to present a brave face to the world. At first it was an unreliable mask, so brittle that it threatened to shatter at the slightest unguarded word or prompted memory but, as the days passed, and then weeks and months, the disguise became more durable until now, two years later, it had almost become a natural extension of her real self. In fact, she was no longer sure who her real self was.

What she did know, however, was that she would never betray his memory. Not again. It had been a moment of madness with a man she’d never met before and had never seen since, but the guilt of it burned her heart with a pain she felt would never ease.

She viewed these twice-weekly visits to her in-laws as her duty to Bertie, a duty she would bear for the rest of her life. She was still his wife, after all, always would be. Mr and Mrs Barton frequently referred to her as ‘our daughter’. Who else did they have, now that he was gone?

But conversation was always sticky. Ivy seemed as insubstantial as thistledown, liable to blow away at the slightest wrong word. Albert senior was unchanging, gruff and uncommunicative, but at least he was usually solid and predictable. But she could never have foreseen this moment, this little Thomas Cook brochure, their faces so solemn and expectant.

‘We’ve some good friends who went on one of those tours,’ he said, and she began to relax. Perhaps he was just offering her the brochure by way of conversation. ‘They’ve recommended it to us. They found their son’s grave, you see. It was difficult, they said, but it gave them a great sense of solace.’

‘Are you considering it for yourselves?’ she asked.

‘We’ve thought about it, but . . .’ He inclined his head fractionally towards his wife, who was silently dabbing her eyes with a lacy handkerchief. ‘We wondered whether’ – he paused a moment – ‘whether you might go on our behalf?’

They’ve gone barmy, Ruby thought to herself. Me, travel to the battlefields, by myself? Wander around the trenches looking for signs of him, along with a load of gawping tourists? It was not just crazy, it was slightly distasteful.

Albert was still talking: ‘To pay our respects, as a family. As we don’t have a grave, you know.’

Oh, she knew all right, only too well. Bertie’s body had never been found. That was one of the hardest things: not knowing how he died, not being able to imagine where he lay. She still had nightmares, fuelled by photographs in the Illustrated London News that she could only look at through half-closed eyes, about his body entangled with those of others, entombed and rotting in a muddy crater somewhere near Ypres. She turned back to the brochure, but the sentences swam in her vision. She loved Bertie, of course she did, and always would. But surely this was a step too far? How would she ever survive seeing, for herself, those places of horror?

‘My dear?’ Albert prompted. ‘Would you be willing?’

‘I really don’t think I . . .’ she began, and then ran out of words. Surely they could not be asking her to go, alone, to this terrible place?

‘You hear these reports, you know . . .’ Ivy whispered into the silence.

It was a familiar refrain. For a few months after the armistice, with almost every visit to the Barton house, a newspaper cutting would be produced: photographs of men who had miraculously returned, skeletal but alive, having escaped from prisoner-of-war camps and walked hundreds of miles back from Germany, or who had hidden out in the woods of Flanders for months and even years, afraid to show themselves as deserters. She would be invited to speculate on what might have happened to Bertie – that he might have been taken prisoner, or just been injured and helped by a Belgian family who were keeping him safe – and on the possibility that he might just turn up one day.

Even though she knew it was infinitesimally unlikely, after these conversations she sometimes dreamed of it: a man walking out of the smoke of battle towards her, his face blackened with dirt, his uniform torn and his cap missing. And then that face would break into his beloved smile and she would gasp, unbelieving, running towards him.

She would wake, crying, watching the dawn rise through the curtains, hearing the birds tuning up for the morning chorus: a few tentative tweets at first, followed by a single territorial blackbird and then the rest, joining the full-throated refrain. The cruel world was still out there, she was still here, alone, and he was dead. The only way to survive was to harden her heart.

As 1919 drew on, reports of miraculous returns became fewer and fewer until, almost to Ruby’s relief, they seemed to dry up entirely. At least now, she’d hoped, perhaps Ivy would begin to accept that he wasn’t coming home.

But no. Bertie’s aunt Flo had been to a séance a few months ago and asked about him. The medium had spoken some platitudes – Ruby’s interpretation, not Flo’s – about how he would always be with them, and this had been understood – distorted, in Ruby’s view – as an indication that he was somehow still on this earth. He’d been injured, apparently, but was now recovering in hospital. Ruby didn’t believe a word of it. If he was in hospital, they’d have heard by now.

‘We thought perhaps you might be able to find him,’ Ivy now murmured, leaning forward and taking Ruby’s hand. ‘It would mean so much to me, my dearest. I don’t think I have the strength to go on living without knowing whether he is still alive, somewhere. Or at least to know where he rests.’

It was a ridiculous idea and there was no way that Ruby was going to agree to go to Flanders on her own. She had to find some way of refusing, gently, so as not to cause them further distress. But for now, just to seem willing, she flicked through the brochure.

‘It’s on page fourteen, the itinerary we thought would be about right,’ Albert said, leaning over to help her turn the pages. ‘Not too expensive, but time to get a feel for the place, and visit the places you need to see.’

‘A Week at Ostend,’ she read. ‘With excursions to Ypres, and the Belgian Battlefields. Leaving London every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Fare provides for travel tickets (Third Class rail, Second Class steamer), seven days full board accommodation at a private Hotel, consisting of café complet, lunch, dinner and bed; electric trams to Zeebrugge and Nieuwpoort. All excursions accompanied by a competent Guide-Lecturer.’ A detailed daily itinerary followed. The price for ‘Second Class Travel and Second Class Hotel’ was thirteen guineas.

‘But that’s a fortune,’ she said. ‘And the extras . . .’ She did a quick sum in her head – it would add up to nearly three months’ wages.

‘Don’t worry, my dear, we’ve already agreed.’ Albert seemed to read her thoughts. ‘We shall pay for you, of course, and the pocket money besides.’

‘I couldn’t possibly—’

‘I called round and spoke to your mother this morning,’ he went on. ‘It seemed only right to let her know that we were going to ask you and I wanted to reassure her on every detail.’

For a moment, Ruby felt betrayed. Why hadn’t Mum mentioned it? Then she remembered that she’d come here straight from work and she had not been home since. ‘But I’ve never been abroad before, let alone on my own,’ she said. ‘I don’t speak French, or whatever it is they speak in Flanders.’

Albert senior straightened his back in the chair, assuming his most assiduous expression. ‘We understand that it’s a brave thing we’re asking you to do for us, my dear,’ he said. ‘But you are a mature, responsible young woman and will be in excellent hands. Thomas Cook is a most respectable outfit; you will travel in a small group with a guide looking after you at all times.’

She looked up from the brochure again, meeting his gaze, so earnest, almost desperate. Only then did she fully understand that he was deadly serious. She felt suddenly light-headed, hardly able to believe this was happening.

‘I’ve been in touch with them personally, to make sure,’ he went on. ‘I shall accompany you to London to ensure that you are met by their representative at Victoria station. You will have all meals provided and will be looked after in every way. My dearest,’ he said, leaning so close that she could smell his pipe-tobacco breath, ‘we would never have considered allowing you to go had it been otherwise. You are too precious to us.’

‘May I have a few days to think about it?’ she asked, forcing her lips into a smile. She would talk to her mother, get her on side, ask her to dissuade them from pursuing this crazy notion.

‘Of course, my dear.’ Albert rose from his chair to shake her hand. It was the closest to physical contact she’d had with him since that terrible day of the telegram, when he had actually put his arm around her.

He turned to Ivy. ‘Shall we revive the pot, dearest?’

After his wife had left the room he whispered, ‘I would go with you, Ruby, but you know she is too frail to be left alone for a whole week. And she is desperate for some kind of news, good or bad. Without that I truly believe that she will fade away.’

‘Perhaps I could stay with Ivy, and you could go instead?’ she said, more in hope than expectation.

‘Of course I’ve suggested that too, but she insists she cannot manage without me. I’m the only one who understands, apparently.’ He brushed a hand through his thinning hair, a gesture which, for the briefest of moments, betrayed his exasperation, his exhaustion, the heavy burden he carried.

Then he leaned forward, confidentially. ‘Besides, we thought that going for yourself might offer you some personal solace, my dear. Our friends insist that it is a highly reputable company and it would be perfectly safe for a young woman on her own. In fact, there were several single ladies on the tour with them. They will give us a personal introduction to the tour guide, a former army major and a most excellent man, they said.’

This was emotional blackmail, Ruby knew, but she was powerless to resist. ‘You seem so strong, and this will mean such a lot to her,’ he went on. ‘You do understand, don’t you?’

She didn’t feel strong. She could get by, day by day, doing the familiar things. But travelling alone to Belgium? Visiting the battlefields?

His brown eyes reminded her so much of Bertie’s, gentle and pleading. She was never able to refuse that look when he was alive and it felt as though refusing his father’s request might be an insult to his memory, perhaps even a denial of his very existence. In their different ways his parents were pinning their hopes on her, and the last thing she wanted was to cause them even further suffering.

‘We will none of us recover, of course. But perhaps if you are able to bring back something . . .’ Albert shook his head, lost for words. ‘A memento of some kind, I don’t know what, but perhaps a postcard, a flower, anything – it might allow her heart to rest. We should be eternally grateful.’

‘When would this be?’ Ruby asked. ‘I’ve promised Mum we’ll have some days out in the summer. She wants to go to the seaside and Auntie May has offered to lend us her beach hut.’

‘It would be only a week, and I thought early July might be best, when the crossing will be calm. I’ll have a word with Mrs T.’

She felt an urgency to speak up now, before she left, or it would be assumed that she had agreed. But just then Ivy returned from the kitchen with the pot of tea, poured her a new cup and handed it across the table with such an entreating smile that Ruby could not bring herself to say anything at all.

That evening she talked to her mother. A few years after being so suddenly widowed, Mary had managed to create a new life for herself: taking in sewing to supplement Ruby’s modest income, joining the Women’s Institute and making wonderful cakes, digging over her husband’s vegetable patch and learning how to grow potatoes, beetroot, beans and salad vegetables to save on food bills.

Over the months and years she had become Ruby’s closest confidante, her best friend, the one person, she felt, who could truly understand what she was going through: the daily pain of bereavement.

‘I don’t want to go, Mum,’ she said. ‘It feels a bit distasteful to me.’

‘They’re very set on it, you know.’ Mary handed her a mug of cocoa. ‘Mr B. called round this morning. I was in a hurry getting out for the bus, but he would have his say. Ivy’s convinced Bertie’s alive somewhere.’

‘It’s that wretched sister of hers, the one who went to the spiritualist.’ Ruby sighed, pushing aside the milk skin with the back of a teaspoon.

‘It’s your decision, love. I told him it was up to you.’

‘If I have to go, would you come with me?’

‘How could we ever afford that?’

‘We could ask him to pay for you, too.’

‘Shush, girl, I won’t have us being in their debt. And anyway, I can’t take more time off work if we’re going to take up Auntie May’s offer of the beach hut.’

‘I’m afraid, Mum. Of the mud, and those battlefields, and all. Of finding his grave, even.’

Mary put down her mug and leaned over to stroke her arm. ‘You never know, it might help, my darling.’

Ruby wasn’t convinced, although she was starting to accept that she had no option but to do her duty by Bertie’s parents. She would have to wrap that protective carapace of unfeeling tightly around herself, to harden her heart and concentrate on surviving.

As the date approached she tried not to think too much about it, but found it impossible to dispel the nausea of fearful anticipation in her stomach.

It was after the wedding that Ruby had taken the job as a sales assistant at Hopegoods. Albert had inherited the business from Ivy’s father and Bertie had worked there too, ‘learning the trade’. It was always assumed that he would take over when his father retired.

‘I can’t just stay at home kicking my heels, with you going off to France,’ she’d said to him one day. ‘You won’t mind, will you, if I get a job? I have to feel I’m doing something for the war effort.’

He’d smiled at her then, the heart-melting smile that lit up his face and crinkled the corner of his eyes, and pulled her to him, kissing her on the forehead, which was where his lips naturally reached.

‘Dearest Rube, you must do what you wish. When I get home, and we start having little ones, then you can be a lady of leisure.’

She applied to become a clippie on the buses in Ipswich, but the places were all taken. She was offered a job in the munitions factory but her mother vetoed it. ‘It’s so dangerous. And I couldn’t bear to lose you too, my darling. Why don’t you ask Mr Barton if he has any vacancies at the shop?’

So for the past three years she’d been working in haberdashery under its redoubtable manager Ada Turner, a widow known to all as Mrs T., who was wedded to her job and appeared to have no outside interests. She never spoke about any family, where she lived or what she did on her days off, but she knew by heart the reference number for every one of the two hundred colours of threads, and the right yarn for each purpose: general stitching, heavy duty work, overlocking and serging, embroidery, quilting and patchworking, and the beautiful luminescent pure silk threads for very fine work.

She could guide customers to the appropriate fabric for their garment, advise them what stiffener to use, or which was the correct zipper from the dozens that they stocked, and help them to choose from more than a hundred styles, varieties and sizes exactly the right type of button. They loved her. If she was away from the counter for any reason, customers would linger over the pattern books until she returned. When she arrived back and took over a transaction that Ruby had already started it made her feel very much like second best.

At first Mrs T. and the other staff were wary and even mistrustful of Ruby, the boss’s daughter-in-law. But she’d kept her head down and worked diligently to gain their trust and respect. Initially she felt bamboozled by all the information she was expected to absorb but as her knowledge grew she discovered that she enjoyed the work and getting to know her ‘regulars’. The books of dress patterns were so enticing she couldn’t wait to start trying them out herself.

She dusted off her mother’s old Singer and started with modest items at first, petticoats and aprons, but soon became more adventurous, making skirts and even, most recently, a jacket of green wool serge, nipped in at the waist with darts at back and front. It was the first time she’d worn anything other than black since those terrible days of 1916, but it was sombre enough, she thought.

She was wearing it now, here on the deck of the ship, along with the black skirt she’d made to match, and a cloche hat, purchased at the shop with her staff discount. Over her arm was the summer raincoat that Alfred senior had pressed into her hands a few days before. ‘You might need this,’ he said. ‘It rains in Flanders.’

It was, she could tell from the label, from a top-quality manufacturer, the very latest style in charcoal cotton twill, more luxurious and certainly more costly than she’d ever hoped to own. How proud Bertie would have been, she’d thought to herself, glancing at her reflection in the shop windows on her way home from work, enjoying the unaccustomed swish of the fabric around her calves.

Paradoxically, it was moments like these, brief moments of unexpected happiness, that seemed to bring home her loss more profoundly, rocking her stability, threatening to crack the mask. What always followed, she discovered, was an even deeper sense of despair and hopelessness, when the ache of missing him twisted like a knife lodged in her heart.

It was more than two years since she’d last seen him and, although his dear face still smiled at her from the photograph by her bedside that she kissed every night, she was starting to lose the most important memories: the sweet-clean smell of his shaving soap, the deep timbre of his voice that seemed to vibrate through his chest, the bubbling joy of his laughter. It was as though her mind was protecting her by blurring her knowledge of him, making him somehow less real. It seared her with guilt that the man she had loved for most of her life was slowly fading from her memory; that she was alive, and he was not.

But not as much as it did for betraying him while he was alive.

Bertie’s father was as good as his word. On the appointed day he collected her by taxi, purchased rail tickets for both of them to Victoria station and bought her a cup of tea and a sandwich. During the journey he was more animated than she’d seen him for several years, pointing out landmarks as they passed, discussing his plans for the development of Hopegoods now that the shadow of war was lifted, and dispensing advice about how she should comport herself while on tour, in particular how she must be wary of approaches from strangers. He seemed to relish this interruption to the daily routine, away from the responsibilities of the shop and his tearful, fearful wife.

At Victoria station he quickly spotted the Thomas Cook representative.

‘I’m Major Wilson. Call me John. Good to have you aboard,’ the man boomed, shaking her hand vigorously with a bone-crushing grip. Then, turning to Albert, ‘Don’t you worry, sir. I will take the greatest care of your daughter-in-law.’

The major was a bluff middle-aged man with a kindly smile, not tall but with a bearing that left you in little doubt that he’d brook no impertinence. It transpired that he had spent twenty years in the army including several years in the trenches before being invalided out with a gammy leg.

‘Hardest thing I ever did,’ he told Ruby as they waited for the others to arrive. ‘Leaving the lads there to face the Hun without me. Broke my heart. The army don’t want a cripple like me, no ruddy use at all, excuse my French.’ He grimaced, tapping his knee. ‘So when Cooks advertised for guides I saw my chance. Escorting people like your good self to the battlefields to pay their respects to their loved ones is the best way I can think of to honour my old mates. You have to make sense of it all somehow.

‘It’s your husband, isn’t it? Died at Passchendaele? A young man, I assume?’ he added, after a discreet pause.

‘Twenty,’ she said, trying to steady her voice. The major was waiting, watching, expecting more. ‘He was only out there nine months,’ she added. ‘We’d just got married. They never found him.’

‘God bless you,’ he said simply. ‘It’s a brave thing to do, to visit the battlefields. I admire your courage. But I can reassure you that most people find it brings them some peace.’

Despite her initial wariness, Ruby warmed to his down-to-earth approach. She had been so busy just trying to put one foot after another, to get through each day, one at a time, that she’d forgotten to look up. The war was over but there was no relief from the misery: men returning were injured, often unable to find work or housing. Newspapers talked of strikes and unrest, food was still rationed. What had it all been for, in the end? But if, as Major Wilson said, this trip would help her make sense of it all, then it would certainly be worth it.

The group was soon gathered – around ten people, mostly older than herself – and shepherded onto the Dover train in a carriage that reeked of cigarette smoke and orange peel. A great weight of almost visible sorrow seemed to hang in the air. She glanced around at her fellow travellers. Most were couples, so far as she could see, speaking in low voices to each other, or just sitting in silence, drawn and sallow-faced. A man with an eye patch sat with his pale waif of a wife. She caught a brief glimpse of another single woman, tall and rather glamorous with a glossy brown bob, like a movie star, in a flame-red jacket and matching hat with a flamboyant brim. Red? To the cemeteries? How inappropriate. Happily she did not seem to be in the same carriage.

Being in the group made her feel even more alone and she wished for the umpteenth time that she’d found the courage to refuse Alfred’s request. She found herself sitting opposite a couple eager to talk about their two sons, killed a year apart, in the fields of Flanders.

‘They gave their lives for King and Country,’ the man said. ‘That is our consolation.’

‘We want to find their graves,’ his wife added, her voice serrated with grief. ‘So we can tell them how much we . . .’ She tailed off, sniffing into her handkerchief.

‘Don’t trouble yourself so,’ the husband chided, squeezing her arm. ‘I told you we must be strong.’ It was like being with Albert and Ivy all over again.

By the end of the journey, Ruby had learned everything about their boys. She didn’t mind, only relieved that the couple seemed so utterly absorbed in their own loss and pride that they never asked her a single question. Or perhaps they were just being polite. She was afraid she might not be able to retain her composure if someone showed sympathy. This is just between me and Bertie, she said to herself.

Now, as she stood on the deck of the ship in the sunshine, her heart began to lift. The weeks of waiting and the almost paralysing anxiety had almost disappeared. The sky was an unblemished blue, the water only gently ruffled by the slightest of breezes. The bracing tang of seaweed and salt that she’d first inhaled on stepping from the train was now overlaid with reassuring smells of fresh paint and varnish.

The last time she’d been on the water was at the artificial lake in Christchurch Park, when she’d found the instability of the little rowing boat unnerving. But this ship felt so steady beneath her feet it was hard to believe they were not still on dry land. A huge grey and white seagull landed on the railing just ahead of her, cocking its head to one side, interrogating her with a piercing yellow eye.

‘Hello, bird,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got anything to give you, I’m afraid.’

Men far below on the quayside began to wheel the wooden gangways away from the side of the ship. Great coils of rope, thick as a man’s arm, were slung from either end and hauled in by waiting groups of navvies. Their shouts were drowned by a sudden ear-splitting blast of the ship’s horn that seemed to reverberate through her body. The gull flew off, leaving a white splat on the high polish of the hand rail.

A single downy feather fluttered to the deck and she picked it up, turning it in her fingers, marvelling at its delicacy. But then she recalled, at the start of the war, reading reports of women handing out feathers like this, shaming men into joining up. She shivered and dropped it quickly. She’d rather Bertie had been called a coward and come home with one of these than with his call-up papers. At least he’d have been alive.

Almost imperceptibly at first, and then more quickly, the ship moved away from the dockside. Beside her, fellow travellers waved to their friends gathered below, calling farewells. They gathered speed swiftly, passing through the mouth of the docks and into the open sea. As the breeze picked up most of the passengers retired below, but Ruby was determined to watch the land as it receded. This would have been Bertie’s last view of England, and she owed it to him to look until it disappeared. What would have been in his mind, that day? Was he worried or frightened? Did he wonder when he would get to see those white cliffs again?

Or perhaps his mood was buoyed by the excitement of the journey, of the new sights and sounds. He’d have been with his mates, after all; they would have been jollying each other along and cracking jokes, of course. At school they’d called him the class clown. It cheered her to imagine how the other men would have come to love his impertinence, his generosity – always sharing his fags – and how he’d have made them laugh.

It was late afternoon and the intense whiteness of the chalky cliffs, illuminated by the sun, formed a wide luminous band, almost unearthly, along the edge of the land separating grey sea and blue sky. She stood, transfixed, as the ship pulled steadily away.

‘Quite a sight, ain’ it?’

The voice, with its unmistakeable American twang, made Ruby jump. She’d thought herself alone on the deck. She looked up into the eyes of the tall movie-star woman she’d observed getting onto the train. Bright scarlet lips smiled widely to reveal the largest, whitest teeth Ruby had ever seen.

‘Alice Palmer. Pleased to meet you.’