They did not find David’s grave, only the place marked in the guide to the battlefields where an attack had been made on 6 November 1917, the day he had fallen. Grass was growing over the crazy maze of trenches that stretched for miles to each side of the little ridge. They did not care to look too closely into the rough ground between the trenches. It was a freezing day, and they hid themselves in their long cloaks.
‘I suppose you will want to write to his parents,’ said Laura.
‘I met his mother, did I tell you? Coming here, I realise that for David the fighting might have had its appeal, however terrible it was. Even when he was with me, something was urging him to return to battle, like a true knight. He’d have been proud to die for his country. . .’ She cast her eyes over the vast, massacred landscape.
They found Toby’s grave the next day. He had been badly wounded, and had died a few hours later: his batman had written to Laura describing the courage he had shown while being carried out of the trenches, and his death. There among two hundred or so rough little crosses was inscribed: ‘Captain Toby Slater, Durham Light Infantry, died 24 July 1916’.
They looked at the grave for a long time, in silence.
‘We would have been happy together,’ said Laura, ‘I know we would.’
‘I’m sorry I never met him,’ said Sophia.
‘You would have liked him. He was such a funny one. Quite radical, he was: he’d say to me, “Women have the same rights as men, you know. I want you to be more than just a wife, I want you to be a person in your own right.” I suppose that’s why I do what I do – even though selling clothes to rich ladies is a funny way of being a person in one’s own right.’
The following day they went in search of Freddy’s grave. ‘I had a letter from Puppi, Freddy’s sister, after the war,’ said Sophia. ‘She said how much they’d all appreciated my writing about Freddy, that a friendly voice from the other side had meant a great deal to them. I’ll write to her if we find the grave.’
They found the château where she had worked. The building was boarded up, desolate, the land around it hardly recognisable as a garden, the sheds that had sprouted over the park were collapsing. ‘That was where I mostly worked,’ and Sophia pointed to a long, crumbling wing. ‘Nobody wanted to look after the prisoners.’
At one end of the village lay the local cemetery with the graves of patients from the hospital. They wandered along the serried resting places of men forced to be as uniform in death as they’d been in life.
‘Hauptmann Friedrich Curtius. . . Here he is! Oh, Laura, here he is.’ And she gulped. ‘I can’t think of him as Hauptmann Curtius, to me he was our Freddy.’
‘Were you. . . do you think?’
‘I don’t think so. He was like a brother.’
‘I suppose none of the German relations can visit these graves yet, I see no flowers.’
‘Thank goodness I brought some for Freddy.’
A burst of rain struck them, and they clung together, grateful to feel a warm body among so many cold ones.
‘Shall we go back to the beastly hotel and get warm?’ said Laura. ‘I think we need. . .’ She did not finish her sentence.
‘You mean we need a drink,’ and Sophia laughed. ‘I’ve stopped, for ever, but I want you to have several. You can mention drink in my hearing quite safely now, without me starting to pant with longing.’
As they were driven back to the hotel in their rickety taxi, Sophia said, ‘It has been very strange, coming here, and seeing this awful landscape again, awful but silent. . . I feel purged.’
That night, in her mean bed with the scratchy sheets, she dreamt again. She saw faces crowding in on her, faces she recognised but could not name, faces of young men in uniform, some wounded, some merely pale, impassive but staring, raising their hands towards her as though saying goodbye. When she woke, in the narrow room where the thin curtains hardly excluded the gaslight, she did not know where she was, she only knew she felt relieved, as though the faces had drifted soundlessly away.
At breakfast, Laura announced she was going on to Paris. Sophia should come with her, and they would visit all the fashion houses. But no, said Sophia, she must go home soon. Laura, ever efficient, sent a telegram booking Sophia’s passage, and one other telegram, over which she spent a fair amount of time.
Three days later on the boat, Sophia bumped into the American man she had met at Laura’s shop. She was delighted to see him. He too had been in France and had found his brother’s grave. Ignoring the spray and the rolling of the ship, they had a long talk on deck. He gestured once or twice towards the saloon, but she shook her head and they stayed outside amid the wind and rain, but sheltered. When they disembarked, her cheeks were very pink and her eyes were very bright and her hair was all in a tangle, the result of the wind and the rain.