The First of July(91)

Did your father know about us, whatever it was that we were? I think he did not. I came to love him very much. But I married him, as you guessed so angrily, all those years ago, because he had position and wealth and could take care of me.

Yes, I lured him into my bed. Yes, your rage was not misplaced, although I had no idea that you would then turn your back on us, on Teddy, on Abbotsgate, on England. I did not mean to hurt you. It never entered my head that you thought Teddy was your son. But you never let me speak to you, never came back to Abbotsgate again, or all this might have been made clear in an instant. No. No. He is your brother—so very much like you. Dearest Teddy, the greatest gift I ever had, the son and brother of brave men.

Thank you for providing for us both.

I pray for you, and Teddy and I both send you our love. He has a photograph of you by his bed at school.

Isabelle

“Jesus.” He heard himself say it aloud and his orderly, who had just returned with a top-up of tea, looked startled.

He was bone-weary yet overalert; the barrage would test the patience of the most pacific saint; he had nearly three hundred frightened men under his command, an attack tomorrow—and now this. A simple piece of information, which, when his tired brain could process it, would change how he viewed himself, how he had led his life, how he had treated other people.

His first, slow response was a mixture of relief, all-consuming regret, and then shame. He had run away because his lover had chosen a man over a boy; he had assumed because of his youthful virility that the child was his, yet he had refused to confront this, had hidden rather than find out the truth; he had abandoned his father, treated Isabelle with icy reserve, and ignored the little boy who was guilty of nothing and who was, in fact, all the time, his brother. All he could grasp at now was that clearly his father and Isabelle had been happy, and that Teddy was much loved. He was determined to survive these weeks and months and get to know this brother properly.

How could he have been so stupid about so much? The answer was his utter self-absorption. With his obsessive jealousy over Isabelle, there had never been any time for anything or anybody else until Marina. How incredibly lucky he was, and how undeserved his happiness with his wife.

He put Isabelle’s letter in his pocket. He would think what to say to her when tomorrow’s attack was over. He looked at his watch—today’s attack. He owed her an apology so great, he hardy knew how to begin it. He longed to return to Abbotsgate, all guilt behind him.

For now, he picked up his pen to write to Marina. He had saved up much to tell her, but in the end it took no time at all to set down everything he needed to say. When he’d finished, he handed the letter to his servant to post, sat back, and drank a single measure of brandy from his hip flask. It had once, in some other war, been his father’s.





CHAPTER THIRTY


Jean-Baptiste, France,

June 30, 1916


AT FIRST JEAN-BAPTISTE HAD STAYED north, making his way between soldiers and heavily loaded horse-drawn wagons going in one direction and refugees going the other. He kept his head down, tried not to look at the men who were walking alongside him, and dropped back often so that he was not with the same group for any length of time. It was not hard, but after two or three hours he was already tired, muscles he had not used for months aching, his scars tight. His bladder burned, and despite the warmth of the day he shivered in what were now damp clothes. He ate some bread, drank from his water bottle. Everything was hazy as he walked on into the low afternoon sun. The river—which, when he had known it, changed from one stretch to another; sometimes green, sometimes clear to the bottom—was now all one murky brown.

As the sun set, the air smelled of explosive, the noise was loud and continuous, but it was difficult to judge how many kilometers away the guns were. Sometimes he thought he recognized the landscape, but new roads had been dug, small farmsteads flattened. The smell was getting worse along the bank. A few meters on, he saw a dead horse that had been swept downstream and had lodged in tree roots where the bank had been undercut by water. Its belly had burst open and greenish intestines were drying on its upper flank. He put his arm up over his nose and mouth. Flies were crawling over its head and the leather bridle that was still attached. So many flies that he could hear them. The horse’s yellow teeth were bared in a snarl around the bit. He thought of Godet and the forge and the beautiful bay that had killed the old man and then been shot, after which one calamity after another had seemed to follow him. He would get back to Corbie and he would make it up to his mother. He wouldn’t even tell her that Vignon was a German, that she had been deceived in more ways than she could imagine. He would tell her Vignon had saved his life.