WAKING

1854–1997

The photographer had taken care till now. He wished faithfully to record the people and places of this strange war, but not in such a way as to cause undue distress at home. So where a place had been the scene of a famous victory or a heroic defeat he was careful to wait until the dead and wounded had been removed. The text could describe what had happened, the numbers and scale of casualties: for them to be seen would be altogether too brutal a shock.

Yet the events of today were so extraordinary that they defied belief even in those, like him, who had witnessed them. He could not be sure whether what had taken place was heroism, or sheer folly, or both, nor how the news of it would be received in England. The glory, the élan, the stupidity, the carnage – they were still warring in his head.

That was why he wanted to take this photograph – to still those terrible mental pictures. The bareheaded young officer was lying alongside his horse for all the world as if the two of them were asleep in an English meadow: an image of war’s waste, and of the peace of those it snatched from the midst of life. A symbol of trust, devotion – tranquillity even – after the shocking madness of the day.

He did not even go round the still figures to the other side, to study another angle. He did not wish to see the hideous wounds from which they’d died. From here they appeared unmarked. Quietly and deliberately, with a sort of reverence, he climbed down from the waggon and set up his camera.

When he had finished he left them as he found them, just as if they really were asleep. In the distance, the bells of Sevastopol were pealing, sounding a great victory.

First the mare struggled to her feet, then the foal.

They watched as it tottered and stumbled, its pipe-cleaner legs threatening to buckle, its small wild head scything and questing for its mother’s nourishment. As it locked on, the mare tenderly licked the gummy fluid off its hide. Strands of the stuff hung from the foal’s stumpy tuft of tad. A crow settled about ten metres off, its cold black eye on the smoking afterbirth.

Robert took Stella’s stained hands in both of his.

‘Look at us.’

‘Bloody but unbowed.’

‘I’ll say.’

She felt washed through by a pristine, exhausted bliss. The sun was warm on their backs. Her hands were enfolded in his, lost to her. Slowly she allowed her head to droop on to his shoulder. As she did so, the crow took off and flew away. They could hear the soft, urgent suckling of the foal.

One at a time the bells of seven parishes began to peal, and the White Horse leapt in jubilation towards the sun.