The Return of Captain John Emmett

He felt embarrassed at marching in and then leaving so abruptly, and he would have liked a chance to see more of Nicholas, but he didn't want to arrive at Gwen Lovel's house too late or miss Brabourne at his office. He wished he'd taken Brabourne's home address.

When he left, Eleanor brought Nicholas down to see Charles's car. Charles shook her hand in greeting and then swung the little boy into the passenger seat.

Although Nicholas's lower lip wobbled for a moment, he was smiling within seconds as Charles flicked switches on and off. Eleanor looked chily; she wrapped her arms around herself and took her eyes off her son only briefly.

'Laurie,' she said, in a low voice, leaning towards him. 'It was one thing to tel you a secret of my own after I'd judged you could keep it but there's something else I ought to tel you if you want to understand John. Because it's someone else's secret, I hope you can give me your word, even though it involves someone you know, that it wil go no further?'

Laurence could only nod agreement to her solemn entreaty. Her glance flickered to her son and Charles, tactfuly engrossed in the dashboard.

'John loved his father very much—you may have gathered. But when he was stil a boy—thirteen or fourteen—he discovered a letter from his grandfather to his mother in his father's gunroom, of al places. It was hidden; he was young and curious. I don't know the exact contents but it made it clear that Mrs Emmett had had an affair in which she conceived her daughter. The father of Mrs Emmett's child was John's grandfather, Mr Emmett Senior.'

Laurence was stunned for a minute. 'But I gathered the older Emmetts were against the marriage?' he said.

'Wel, unsurprisingly, if Emmett Senior was in love with his prospective daughter-in-law he didn't want his son marrying her. But there was no living grandmother. John's mother had been a housekeeper to his widowed grandfather and probably rather more.'

'Good God.'

'She married, impulsively, her family thought, then had a child who died in infancy. Born prematurely, John said, but it makes you wonder who its father was.

Then she had John, unequivocaly his father's son, the letter confirmed...'

Laurence was glad of that, remembering the bond between the two.

'And then at some point soon after that the marriage evidently cooled and the relationship with John's grandfather resumed. She bore him a daughter—Mary.

John's father was not Mary's father.'

'How dreadful for John finding out, though. Did he tel his father he knew?'

'No. Impossible. But it was a terrible burden for a young boy to bear. It ruined his relationship with his mother.'

And his sister, Laurence thought. The living evidence of what had gone wrong with their family. He was certain Mary did not know. Did the maternal grandparents know or suspect? Was that why al their money had been left to John?

'Look, I have to go in,' Eleanor said. 'I'l keep in touch but it's too cold for Nicholas to be out.' She leaned forward and kissed Laurence on the cheek. 'I'd like to meet your Miss Emmett,' she said. 'Perhaps it's time she was introduced to Nicholas. If you want to tel her I knew John, wel, you can, of course. If it would help.'

Then she bent over the car and exchanged a couple of words with Charles as she retrieved her son to wails of protest.

Charles was obviously delighted to have met Eleanor whilst simultaneously disappointed that she had not exploded into anarchy on her own doorstep. He had kept shaking her hand until she had had to withdraw it. As they drove away Laurence knew what Charles was going say next, but it was not until they had turned the corner that he finaly spoke.

'You know what they say about redheads?' he muttered, his teeth clenched on his pipe.

When they drew up at the Lovels' smal house, Charles let him out on the opposite side of the road, a little way down the street. Charles suggested waiting in the car but it was far too cold and Laurence had no idea how long he might be. If Mrs Lovel was in, he hoped the photograph might serve as an excuse to ask her some more questions. What regiment her son had been in, for a start.

Laurence braced himself. He crossed the road and walked up to the front door. The house was almost in darkness although a very dim light shone from a smal window that he thought must light the stairs. He knocked, waited. Knocked again. Listened.

The paint was peeling on the front door. The passage to the side was shut. He had a sudden vision of her standing on the doorstep with pistols stuck in her sash and a dagger between her teeth like a pirate queen. At the same time he knew that if he realy believed she was a murderer, he would hardly be here alone on a late winter's afternoon. He took two steps back to look up at the upper windows. He looked back over the road. Charles had gone. As he was about to knock again, he heard footsteps inside. Somebody was coming slowly down the stairs. The chain was removed and finaly the door opened.

Chapter Thirty-five

Gwen Lovel stood framed in the doorway, her face in shadow. For a split second he took her for her daughter, but it was an impression caused by Mrs Lovel's hair faling loose over her shoulders. As soon as he saw her, reality hit him. She was just one of tens of thousands of mourning women.

'I'm sorry. It seems as if I've come at a bad time.'

'No,' she said vaguely, but made no attempt to ask him in. She rubbed her face. He wondered whether she had been asleep. When he had first met her, her melancholy had had a sort of vigour. That was al gone now. His visit began to seem thoughtlessly impulsive.

'I'm realy sorry to bother you, but I have a photograph and it's possible it might be someone your son knew—you said you'd met a few of his friends—and I wanted to check with you. I could come back at some other time.'

'No. Come in, Mr Bartram.'

Her voice was quiet. She motioned to him to folow her into the front room and lit the lamps, leaving the curtains open. He put his coat down over a chair.

Finaly, a smile flickered briefly, although it was as if she was having to make an effort.

'Are you wel?' She said it with a tone of genuine concern.

'Quite wel, yes, thank you. And you?'

She shrugged. 'Wel, you know ... it is not easy. Not at al. Do you have any news of your friend?'

'I think I know some of what happened to him,' he said. It was too complicated and too private to start to explain it to her. She seemed to understand this and inclined her head slightly, but her eyes were alert.

'But you have something to show me?'

He puled out the photograph. She sat down and picked up some half-moon spectacles from a smal table. He watched her face as he had Eleanor's but was absolutely unprepared for what folowed. She put her hand up to her mouth. Her eyes opened wide. Her silence was unnerving.

Finaly she spoke. 'Oh my God. What is this? Where did you get it?'

'I was given it.' He knew the answer was inadequate—she was so pale he was afraid she was about to faint.

'Harry,' she said.

Laurence's head spun. Was the condemned man not Edmund Hart but Harry Lovel after al? Had Brabourne lied and, if so, why? Why hadn't he checked first with Leonard Byers that this was indeed Edmund Hart?

'Harry?'

Gwen Lovel gazed at the picture.

'Where have you got this?'

'Is it realy your son?' It was a ridiculous question. She was so obviously shocked. 'Can I get you a drink of water? I'm terribly sorry, I hadn't realised for a minute...' He felt cold with horror and angry with himself. Did she even know the man in the picture had been executed? But then, had he?

'Harry,' she said, then was silent. He became aware she had started to cry only when some of her tears fel on the picture. He heard a faint noise upstairs.

Catherine was obviously at home; he hoped she wouldn't come down.

'You can keep it,' he said hurriedly, regretting it immediately when she threw him a look of disbelief.

She puled out a handkerchief and blew her nose. 'Who did you think it was?'

'Actualy I thought it was a man caled Edmund Hart.'

She looked at him, pityingly, he thought. Her shoulders lifted as she took a breath.

'It is. This is my son—Hans Edmund Hart. He was never Lovel. Only Catherine is Mr Lovel's child.' She brought out the words slowly. 'My name was Hart before my marriage. I named him after my father. My father was German. I am German, although my mother was Welsh. We came to cal him Harry. A diminutive. But also because—Hans—wel, living in England, you can imagine; it would not have been easy.'

'And when he took a commission, he used his second name for every formality?'

She nodded. 'He had been brought up in England. He felt English. He was prepared to fight as an Englishman. But not as Hans.'

'You have no other photographs of him.' It was a statement but she took it as a question.

'I have pictures of Harry. I see him before I go to sleep and when I first wake up. When you have a child, they are your calendar, your measure of time passing.

I see him in his christening robes, I see him as a little boy with his hoop. I see him building castles on the sand. I see him play the piano. I see him at school. And now,'

she glanced at the photograph again, 'I see him at the end ... No, don't explain. I know what I am seeing. I am seeing what I already know.'

Laurence stood just inches away but with a continent of distance between them. He noticed that her accent was stronger in her distress. He wondered how he could have thought it insignificant before. He could think of nothing to say.

Yet as he stood there and watched her stroke the image of her son's face with her finger, it dawned upon him that if she had known al along how Edmund Hart had died, then she also had a much stronger motive for kiling John than he had thought. Had he made a sentimental misjudgment?

After a long time he spoke. 'Did you know how he'd died?'

She shrugged. 'Not at first. Not for a long time. Not when your friend Mr Emmett wrote to me or when he left me the money. Not when I first met you. But now, yes. I know it al.'

'And Edmund's—Harry's—real father is dead?'

She looked up, alarmed, not by his question, but by something she had seen beyond him.

'Captain Emmett.'

The words came from behind Laurence's back. A man stood in the doorway to the room. Laurence hadn't heard him. He stepped forward and stood beside Gwen Lovel. In the better light, Laurence guessed he was in his late fifties. He was of medium height, strongly built and had an authoritative presence. He was familiar yet Laurence couldn't identify him. Where had he seen him before and why, given that he had obviously been in the house al the time, did Gwen look worried to see him?

'May I have it?'

Gwen Lovel handed her guest the picture. He looked at it, his expression impossible to read. Finaly he looked up. Al the while, Laurence watched Gwen Lovel who was shaking her head almost imperceptibly. The man handed the picture back to her. Although Laurence knew he was on the point of placing the stranger, he was sure he had come across him in a completely different context.

'Harry,' the man said.

Suddenly Laurence realised with astonishment that he had seen the man before him at Charles's club. He was the man pictured in the articles Brabourne had given him. It was General Gerald Somers.

Laurence was briefly puzzled but then understood. Somers was already investigating executions during the Great War. If Gwen Lovel's son had been shot, then there was a logical reason why Somers was here. Laurence's anxiety receded. Mrs Lovel was no kiler.

'If I'd known Mrs Lovel's son...' Laurence started. Somers began to speak almost as if he hadn't heard him.

'Sit down, Mr Bartram. You see, I know who you are and why you are here and now you know why I am here. Or, if you do not, I shal tel you.' He indicated a chair at right angles to Gwen Lovel and then sat down himself.

Somers started to speak a few times and then stopped, not as if he was nervous but as if he didn't know where to embark on his story. When he did so, it was neither with the official inquiry nor with Edmund Hart, but with his own eldest son.

'When Hugh died—in the family tradition he was a career officer—it was quite early on, February 1915,' said Somers. 'Extraordinary to think of it, but we didn't then know a great many families who had lost sons.

'I never saw my wife weep. She acted on instinct. It helped her, perhaps. She wrote her black-bordered letters. Ordered her mourning from Peter Robinson.

She remained, head to toe, in deepest black, just as her mother or grandmother might have done. She was a figure in a landscape that had become history and she was left stranded, nowhere. Then, I think, she realised everything had changed. It seemed almost greedy to claim so much visible grief just for oneself. So with exquisite mistiming she found herself setting aside her Victorian veils and her crape just as every colier's wife was clutching at a worn black shawl. After 1916, mourning became a way of life.'

Somers paused and looked towards the window. 'She never spoke of Hugh again. Al pictures of him disappeared. She refused to engage in any discussion about him. It was hopeless. Impossible. I never knew what became of his possessions. When Miles, my younger son, came home on leave, he was furious about this and would try to force Marjorie—my wife—to acknowledge Hugh's life and death, but she would simply leave the room. Miles and I would talk of him late at night—in low voices as if he'd done something unspeakable.

'And yet she had been—we al had been—so proud of Hugh: a handsome young man, our brave boy. How naive we were. Now he was buried in another country and even more deeply in our memory. Neither place was to be revisited. The care with which we negotiated our daily conversation in order to expunge Hugh eventualy caused any real communication between us to cease altogether.

'Then when Miles was lost, there wasn't even a body. Suddenly the circumstances of Hugh's death seemed almost luxurious. Somebody had seen him and handled him, laid him down and read prayers over him. He had a grave.'

Somers got up, walked to the window and gazed out.

'"Missing, presumed kiled in action". My wife didn't hold out hope, as some mothers did, that our son would be found. I think she felt a degree of contempt for me as I tried to extract from the War Office information they didn't have, trying to raise the dead. For her it was over. She had no sons left. No children. More picture frames vanished. With Miles gone, I lost my last link with Hugh. Yet, unlike her and unbeknown to her, I had one son left, whom I had betrayed many years earlier and whom I could hardly claim now. Harry Hart was my son, Mr Bartram. Harry Hart should have been Harry Somers.'

Somers had returned to stand behind Gwen Lovel, his fingertips on her shoulders.

'You didn't realise?' Somers was saying to Laurence. 'About Harry? I've known Gwen for twenty-five years. Gwen should have been my wife—if I had not been a coward and a scoundrel. I met her when she was nineteen. Innocent, sweet, with al her life before her. I was already a cavalry major. Family tradition. I was keen on tradition then. Went to Berlin with some chaps in the regiment and one took me to hear Gwen sing. She captured my heart.'

His face softened.

'I went to her dressing room with my friend. We had some champagne and lingered a bit that evening. She was amusing, gentle, kind—and her voice was lovely.' He looked happy, remembering it. 'I wanted to see her again. On my own.'

Gwen tipped her head back to look at him.

'I didn't want to seem like some stage-door Johnny so I just took her for tea and for walks in Babelsberg Park. The next year I went back. One hot May day I bought her a yelow parasol and we took a boat on the Havel. I could see she was fond of me. Although the relationship was stil just a friendship, I had to tel her that I was engaged to be married. The terrible thing was that she had never entertained any thought of us having a future together; not because of a betrothal she hadn't even known about but because she assumed a man like me would never have serious intentions about a girl like her. I was ashamed when she told me.'

Gwen shook her head again.

'But we carried on, by letter, through visits, for weeks, months, a year. Mine was a lonely sort of marriage even before we lost our boys. Gwen had a Welsh mother; I had had an Austrian nursemaid. We corresponded in both languages. Time passed. Eventualy things changed. Her father died. She came to London. We became much closer.'

He looked down at his lover but she was gazing at her hands. Laurence stayed silent, not wanting to interrupt the flow of speech.

'I set her up in a tiny flat. It was a compromise. I hoped she knew I loved her as she did me. But just when I thought we were most happy, Gwen decided to end our relationship. She wouldn't explain why. I was upset and angry—though I had no right to be. She went abroad. Within the next year or so trouble flared up in Africa. I finaly left England with my regiment in 1899. I was worried about how she would manage. I'd been helping her financialy. I wrote to her, care of her father.

She never answered. When I returned in 1902, I heard that Gwen had managed fine: she'd returned to the concert hal and was engaged to be married to a widower.'

He drew breath and looked down at Gwen for a few seconds.

'I went back to the formalities of my marriage and the compensation of my sons. I thought of Gwen every day: what she'd think or say. Things that would amuse her. It wasn't until a year or so later that I was walking up Piccadily and bumped into a friend of hers, a felow musician. Of course, I asked how Gwen was. Her friend said she was back in London and the marriage was a success, but the husband was not in the best of health. Although he had not adopted her child, he took good care of both him and Gwen. I was reeling. The friend was talking as if I knew al about the situation. I don't know what I said then but I managed to extricate Gwen's address with a plausible story and wrote to her the folowing day.'

He smiled again.

'And so I discovered that the dear girl had ended the relationship because she was expecting Harry and didn't want me to feel obliged to her in any way. That was how much she loved me. When Mr Lovel offered to marry her, she accepted. Harry's name remained her maiden name—Hart. She told her husband that the man who had fathered her boy was from Germany and was dead.

'Which I might as wel have been. I made contact with Gwen and from then on she kept me in touch with his progress as a child, and then as a schoolboy. I stayed away as she asked—she had a daughter by then—though over the years I saw the boy from time to time from a distance. He was musical, like Gwen, and I would attend his concerts, but I never made myself known. Gwen was not prepared to tel him his real father had risen from the dead and was a married man.

Understandably.'

Laurence glanced at Mrs Lovel, whose intense gaze was now fixed, unmoving, on the general.

'And then came the war,' said Somers. 'Harry failed to get a commission in his first attempt. Gwen was sensitive to questions about his background, so I wrote on his behalf, saying I was the boy's godfather. I succeeded: he was commissioned three months after his eighteenth birthday, despite his German roots. Despite his lack of a father on his birth certificate. Not in the best of regiments, not like Hugh and Miles, but, as it turned out, fighting on the same blasted river plain. The same gas, the same wire, the same guns. The same rudimentary justice. The same muddy graves.'

'He joined the moment he could,' Mrs Lovel said, softly but firmly. 'He hated the idea of war but he wanted to do his bit.'

The light was starting to go, yet it was impossible to leave. Somers took his hands off Gwen's shoulders; he had evidently not finished unburdening himself.

'Might I speak to Captain Bartram alone, do you think?'

'Of course,' she said, although her eyes stayed on his face while she rose from the chair. Laurence heard her footsteps as she went slowly down the hal, folowed by the muffled bang of a door shutting. Then silence. Somers hardly seemed to have noticed her going.

'Suddenly, Gwen asked to meet me. She had never asked me to leave my wife's side, even for an hour. She had borne Harry alone and she was alone in bearing the knowledge of his death. She had been so patient, so undemanding, for years. She was as she had always been: a good woman.'

Laurence had a sudden vision of Louise, curled up in bed with her back to him, more like a child than a wife despite being five months pregnant. She was soft and relaxed, trying to get him to discuss choices of names for their unborn child before he left for France. Her hair had been in a loose plait and stray strands had tickled his nose. He thought what single word he would use to sum her up. She was not what Somers might cal a good woman. Nor was she undemanding. She was, he realised with an unexpected lurch of loss, sweet. Just a sweet girl.

'Yet when I went to see her,' Somers said, 'and she told me that Harry, my only remaining son, was dead, it felt like a kind of justice. For a moment it seemed reasonable that I should suffer. What incredible selfishness, eh, Bartram? Three boys gone, the two women who had borne me sons both dismantled by loss, and I could think only that some celestial justice had been meted out to me.'

Somers got up again and walked about; he had the very slightest limp. The room seemed hardly large enough to contain the two of them and al the ghosts of the dead.

'Over the next few months there were things Gwen could not understand. The telegram notifying her of Harry's death had no details beyond the location where he'd died and it had initialy gone to the address where they lived when Harry enlisted. His effects were eventualy returned to her and a slightly strange letter folowed from him, written shortly before his death, saying he was in a "spot of trouble" but she was not to worry. There was no subsequent letter from his CO or the adjutant.

She wrote to the War Office after a while, yet received the reply only that they would forward her further details of his death once they had them.

'More months passed and no pension was forthcoming. It struck her as odd but she was always rather diffident with authority, perhaps because she was part German, and Mr Lovel had left her a little and I was happy to support her. But she asked me to see if I could use my contacts to find out anything about our boy's death. She didn't even know where he was buried.

'It took me a little longer than I had expected to find out the truth, though I already had a bad feeling about the whole business. Harry should never have been a soldier. Hugh, Miles—were different sort of men—sportsmen, confident, forceful.' Somers continued, his voice low, 'But Harry was too sensitive, too imaginative.

Always had been. More like his mother than me. He could sing. Was a chorister at St Paul's. I went to hear him a couple of times, although I never told Gwen.'

His eyes flickered downwards.

'She was so generous about describing his life without ever expecting me to share it. He was like her in so many ways. He could write; he produced a libretto while he was stil at school. Poetry, too. It was fine stuff.'

Laurence, observing him closely, saw a muscle in his cheek twitch.

'Not just a father's pride...' Somers faltered.

At last Laurence spoke. 'I know,' he said. 'I read some of his work once.'

It seemed years rather than months since he had stood next to Mary in the Emmetts' attic room and first read the young poet's work.

Somers blinked. He looked surprised, then resumed speaking almost immediately.

'The war took my boys and then the influenza took Marjorie. Which was a mercy, I think. She had no wish to live, as far as I could tel, and the ilness was shockingly quick. But the effect of seeing my whole family vanish in four years slowed me down and I took too much time in pressing for the truth about what had happened to Harry. Perhaps I was putting off the day when I would acquire unendurable knowledge.

'The truth was told to me in a room in Whitehal on a fine summer's day. I doubt the civil servant who eventualy communicated Harry's ignoble end believed a word of the story I had concocted.

'After I left Whitehal, I walked down Horse Guards to St James's Park. I sat on a bench and watched a mother with her little boy, throwing bread for the pigeons, and he was laughing and running up and down, and suddenly I was aware of the most tremendous rage. Not sorrow—I was past al that, except in anticipating Gwen's reaction to my news—but fury. Rage at my country, which I had served with pride and to the best of my ability; which had demanded my sons' service and seen al three of them act, I truly believe, to the best of their ability. Two had been taken from me in circumstances beyond anybody's control but Harry had been taken, from Gwen and from me and from his own future, by his country. My country. Quite deliberately. He was shot by men who had served under him. They'd buried him perfunctorily—the battalion was moving on—and, in the resulting mêlée, even the exact location of his grave was lost.

'On leaving, I had said to this young mandarin, comfortable in his pleasant office with its views of the park, that in the conditions that prevailed at the time, and given both Harry's length of service and his youth, I felt it was quite possible stil to say to his mother that he had served his country. He answered, sombrely, but evidently thinking I was deluded, "You may say whatever you feel wil comfort the lady, but I fear the truth is that this officer died failing to do his duty and, indeed, putting the lives of his men at great risk."'

Laurence was silent; there was nothing he could say.

'But it took a chance meeting to make me see the way ahead. You might describe it as an act of God.'

Chapter Thirty-six

'I hadn't been idle since the war. I'd needed to do something. I'd met Philip Morrel many years before. My wife was a distant relation of Lady Ottoline, Morrel's wife.

He had odd views, frankly, but was wel meaning and wel connected. He talked to me round about the time of the Darling Committee. Asked if I'd be involved. They needed reliable fact-gatherers. People who could talk to people.'

He looked up as if checking whether Laurence knew what he was talking about.

'I was an experienced military man, I'd lost sons in the war, but I was broadly in sympathy with his views. Horatio Bottomley, the newspaperman, was with us.

Obnoxious, but a force to be reckoned with. His interest was not simply altruism, of course; for him every cause had material value. Cruelty and injustice sold papers.

He was raising questions before the war even ended. Damn lucky he wasn't prosecuted. But he correctly gauged a slight shift in mood and he's a useful man—he ensured we stayed in the public eye. Colonel Lambert Ward kept us respectable and we had Ernest Thirtle, the MP, as a parliamentary link to the ordinary man.'

Somers could have been speaking to an anonymous interviewer, now that he had gained momentum.

'Morrel was asking questions in the House about the military handling of capital sentences before the war ended. Just a year later the Darling Committee accepted that there were grave problems in the system. Rather too late, of course, for those affected by it.'

'Yes, of course.' Laurence tried to feel soothed by this account of public service.

'And when the Southborough Inquiry reports next year, it wil certainly confirm the validity of shel-shock. Not before time. The government are currently refusing to pay pensions to men who have broken down mentaly without also having been physicaly injured.'

Somers was animated by indignation.

'They invited me to be a member of the board. And that's how I first encountered the journalist.'

Laurence was startled. For a moment he thought he'd lost the thread.

'Journalist?' he asked, with a shiver of apprehension.

'He'd contacted Lambert Ward while researching an article for his newspaper but when he let slip that he'd witnessed a firing squad, Lambert Ward persuaded him to talk at the Darling Committee sessions about the experience of being a Prisoner's Friend. He gave Lambert Ward a photograph of an incident he'd been involved in. For him, I gather, images speak louder than words. Eighteen months or so ago, we thought he might have further information for us, so Lambert Ward asked to see him again. Lambert Ward fel il. I didn't trust Bottomley. Morrel was abroad. Thirtle was in his constituency so I said I'd see him. The colonel gave me the photograph and his file.'

Laurence was becoming increasingly puzzled. Where was the story going now?

'God sent his messenger in the form of Mr Tresham Brabourne. A man who bore witness, who watched my son go to his death. A man who'd been to school with Miles and Hugh. You've met him, I know.'

Somers looked straight at Laurence, who felt a degree of foreboding.

'Keen young chap,' said Somers. 'Reminded me a bit of Miles, to be honest. But now, slowly, agonisingly, I realy learned about Harry's death. I began to get some idea of the paucity of what passed for evidence, of the flimsiness of the case against Harry. Of the carelessness with which they took his life. Speaking to Mr Brabourne took me to the firing line, as it were. But Brabourne was—and remains—quite oblivious of my connection with the man he knows as Edmund Hart. I very much doubt he would have supplied so much detailed information if he'd realised he was speaking to Edmund's father.' He gave a wry smile.

'Young Brabourne had excelent recal of the trial but he couldn't give me al the names, only those he'd served with. However, he did identify Emmett in the photograph.

'Until I spoke to Brabourne, I had no idea who the officer who commanded the firing squad was, or even if he'd survived the war. But just as I was moving towards Captain Emmett, he was moving towards me.

'The final reckoning began in November last year,' Somers said, pre-empting with his slightly raised hand Laurence's attempt to interrupt. 'The homecoming of the Unknown Warrior. A warrior stil fighting, it seems. Rising from his grave, journeying home, welcomed by the greatest in the land, sleeping among kings? Moving stuff, fine spectacle: caught the mood of the nation.'

Laurence nodded. It had al happened at a time when he was scarcely reading the papers, yet the event had slowly seeped into that selfish, armoured part of his life. Although he hadn't been inside Westminster Abbey since then, he did sometimes think, as he walked past, of the anonymous, broken corpse in the vault.

'I went and stood by the track at some smal Kentish station,' Somers said, 'and I watched the train pass from Dover to London. Five seconds of light in the darkness. He was in his box of oak, known only to God and certainly never to be known to anyone on earth. Maybe he was one of the criminal, idle sort: stealing food, cheating at cards, clipped with his head down, trying to keep out of it. Maybe he was a hero who laid down his life for his friend. Al the same, I thought my wife might have liked me to be there. Three-quarters of a milion or more British dead, ten of thousands of bodies never found, and just one man on the train. They weren't good odds but there he was, for a fragment of time, hurtling past in the dark. The possibility of Miles. The shadow of Hugh and Harry. It was foolish, of course, but I was in good company. I stood there and a made a vow to myself: Harry's death would not go unanswered.

'I wasn't the only one who had fancies after that dead man's journey,' Somers said, stil matter-of-fact. 'There was Gwen getting more concerned that she knew so little about Harry's death. But then there was Emmett himself. Things were unraveling. The turning point came when she received this letter—'

'From John Emmett,' Laurence broke in.

'Captain Emmett, on his own inexorable crusade for truth and justice,' Somers said bitterly. 'Emmett had pored over the hulabaloo in the papers. He too had been thinking about the unknown dead. In fact, it turned out he seldom thought of anything else, although at the point of contact with Gwen he was vague and said only that he had information about Harry's death.

'Gwen wrote to me. She assumed, rightly, that it was a fairly standard communication from a surviving comrade in arms, but she was puzzled by the intensity of the tone. I realised the letter's significance immediately and told her I would contact him. I didn't know what to do. I hadn't even told her the truth yet, but it was obvious Emmett fuly intended to do so. I knew then that I couldn't bear the thought of her finding out about her dear boy's sordid end yet.'

In the few minutes' silence that folowed, Laurence strained to hear movement. Wherever Gwen had gone, she was silent. He was cold and his back was stiff; his leg was going dead. He had a feeling that a dark shadow was faling on them al.

'I had waited two decades to do the right thing by Gwen and Harry. It was too late now, of course, so al I could do was intercept Emmett. So I wrote to him, expressing an official interest in his actions. I threw the names in—Darling, Southborough. Mentioned Lambert Ward,' Somers explained. 'Said that I had his name on record as commanding a firing squad. I hoped I might draw his focus away from Gwen for a while. I claimed his testimony would be invaluable.

Laurence could only imagine the effect this interrogation would have had on John, whose memories had never left him. His heart sank.

'I wrote to his Cambridge address—it was on the letter to Gwen—and he replied. I asked him to meet me in London. When he arrived and revealed that he was currently incarcerated, I was surprised. His letters were untidy but rational, and the man himself anxious but entirely sane.

'I had arranged the meeting at the Coburg—somewhere I had taken Gwen, long ago. Nicely anonymous place. I did promise him discretion. A promise I suppose you could say I broke?'

Just for a second his eyes met Laurence's.

'He told me everything. I promised him a meeting with Mrs Lovel—I said I'd met her in the course of building up a file for the committee—meeting her was the thing he most wanted. What I wanted was information. He provided it. After he was dead, I was left to deal with the guilty men. But I stil couldn't tel Gwen the truth about Harry's death. I dreaded an official letter coming. I hoped my interview at the War Office had pre-empted the possibility. But then came Emmett's letter and then, afterwards, you came too.'

He stopped, then said, abruptly, 'Do you know about how Harry died, Bartram?'

'Yes, I think so. Tresham Brabourne told me.'

'My boy was il. In mind and body. He'd been treated for shel-shock and for dysentery. He'd not long been back from sick leave. Do you know what condition he was in when they arrested him, Captain Bartram?'

Laurence thought he detected a slight tremor in Somers' voice.

'He was very distressed, I think.'

'The official report says he had discarded part of his uniform,' said Somers. 'He had taken off his Sam Browne and his tunic. They argued that he was trying to hide the fact he was an officer. His CO said Harry had been jittery beforehand. They'd been close to a shel burst. The men dispersed into foxholes. Harry had blood and bone fragments on his uniform, on his face. Another man's blood and bone. A witness had seen him rubbing at his jacket, spitting on a handkerchief, like a mother wiping her child's mouth. Another junior officer, a bumptious young subaltern, Liley'—he spat out the name—'told him to pul the rump of his group together and continue the march forward. Harry told him that he didn't have to take orders from him. It was a schoolboy spat—not the stuff of heroes, but neither was it desertion.

'Harry turned on to open land and walked away towards HQ. There was no protection and constant German sheling. It was hardly the act of a man running for safety. If anything, it was suicide. The other subaltern reported his disappearance the next morning but by that time Harry had come in, half dressed. There'd been sleet al night. He'd got lost, disoriented. He'd spent the night half naked in the mud. He had to be treated for exposure.'

Somers came to a halt. He looked tired, Laurence thought, although he stil held himself erect. They sat, almost companionably, their knees only inches apart.

'My whole career was about making correct military decisions.' Somers shook his head disbelievingly. 'I was a soldier myself, damn it. Some of the men were animals: looting, pilaging, making brutal assaults on each other—worse, on the local population. Rape. Murder. They'd have hanged in England and we despatched them just as soundly overseas. Hard men. A hard life. Swift justice, often as not. But we gave even them a hearing.'

His legs were set wide apart, his fingertips splayed deep into the arms of the chair.

Laurence was about to speak, but Somers stopped him again. It was as if he was anxious that he might lose track if he was interrupted.

'I imagine Brabourne told you about the sergeant—Tucker?'

Somers didn't wait for a reply.

'He was a buly and, Emmett believed, a rapist, probably a murderer, who found entertainment in an execution. If anyone should have been before a firing squad, it was Tucker. The minute it was done, Tucker should have got the men out of sight and marched them away. This is the army. Executing soldiers is nothing new.

There's a procedure for al these things. But Tucker wanted to relish it. Harry's suffering, the soldiers' suffering and Emmett's destruction.'

'Tucker was kiled.'

Somers nodded. 'Vermin,' he said. 'Emmett had already tracked him down. Gave me the details of his whereabouts. But the Tuckers of this world enjoy violence and degradation. Why should Tucker repent? I didn't have to shoot him. He was so drunk that he put up no kind of fight. I did little more than destroy his face as he destroyed my son's, then I roled him into the canal. He deserved worse.'

Somers' confirmation that he had kiled a man was delivered so matter-of-factly that it took some seconds for it to sink in. It had long been obvious what Somers was leading up to but it was so hard for Laurence to absorb that a deadly curiosity now overwhelmed the enormity of what he had been told.

'The police officer in London?'

'Mulins? Yes, of course.'

'And Byers?' he asked, slowly. 'In Devon?'

'Yes.'

'It was your revenge for your son?' said Laurence. 'That was why?'

Outside the window, on the other side of the tidy hedge, lay a smal London street where darkness had falen. Across it, under the streetlight, two women walked by and their animated chat was quite audible through the window. Laurence thought the room seemed too ordinary to contain the man in front of him.

'Yes,' said Somers, finaly. Then he repeated himself, 'Yes. Wasn't that enough?'

Wasn't that enough? Leonard Byers had said that the last time Laurence had seen him. It was an epitaph for the whole grim mess. He waited for the other man to colect himself.

'Tucker died too easily,' Somers went on. 'Corporal Byers, too: a man more used to making beds and heating an officer's canteen than putting his life on the line. Your friend Captain Emmett said Byers was fussing about his wet feet while they were waiting to shoot my son and then he walked up to my boy, a condemned man within seconds of death, and tore off his badges. It was simply an act to humiliate him. Gratuitous.'

He was white-faced.

'As for Inspector—late Assistant Provost Marshal—Mulins, he was a cold, hard man who believed the worst of everybody. From my committee work I know that more men, whether guilty or simply unfortunate, were ensured of capture, arrest or execution under Mulins' aegis than any other. Although I took enormous risks in shooting him in broad daylight, so close to Scotland Yard, it was worth it. I was never worried for myself but simply that I would be prevented from finishing off my work.'

Laurence could hear his own breath. It sounded uneven and he hoped it wasn't audible to Somers. The last time he remembered feeling like this was in France.

He shifted slightly to ease the pressure on his spine. Somers' revelations were exactly what he had feared, yet could never possibly have expected from a man of his standing.

'You wanted to remove everyone involved in your son's death?'

'Of course not.' Somers looked surprised. 'I accept military necessity. I only ever wanted the guilty to be punished. There were six officers of the court martial.

Despite sentencing my son to death, they recommended mercy on account of his age. For this, I spared the four who had survived the war: Ryecraft, Vane-Percy, Goose and O'Shea.'

Somers recited their names effortlessly, ticking them off on his fingers. How many times had he gone through the case papers, Laurence wondered? He doubted whether even Brabourne would have known the name of every member of the board.

'Harry's CO—a chap caled Gooden, whose evidence damned Harry—died in an accident on the grouse moor on the opening day of the season in 1919.'

Somers smiled, without showing his teeth.

'Shot by a keeper. Presumably in error. My only targets were Emmett, Tucker, Byers, Mulins, Liley and General Hubert Gough. Al, bar Gough, are now dead. The Honourable Ralph Liley—the subaltern who had been so eager to condemn Harry, simply from spite and dislike—lived conveniently close to my home. We knew the family slightly, though of course he had no idea of my link to Harry. I folowed him for a while, observing his habits. Watched my quarry settle back into the comfortable life he'd led before the war. Liley took a regular train from our local station. It was the most natural thing in the world to join him, talk to him on the platform and then push him under the incoming train. These things are never quite straightforward: he fel too far out and the train merely cut off his legs rather than kiling him outright. But I jumped down on to the tracks and was able to tel him why he was dying, before help came and he bled to death. I was the unknown hero of the hour.'

Laurence found it hard to process what he was hearing. How long had he been here, listening to a man who should have been the sanest of individuals, and whose demeanour and tone were indeed utterly reasonable, talking of madness?

'I can see your skils deserted you there,' said Somers. 'Perhaps you didn't get as far as Liley. You didn't use your imagination.'

'Do you know, I've had enough of people teling me what I should have done,' said Laurence, fatigue and discomfort crushing the instinct to placate the man in front of him. 'I now know why John Emmett died, even if I don't know exactly how. I set out to unravel that and that alone. John's path crossed, disastrously, with your son's and with you, but al I ever wanted was an answer for his sister. I have that answer. And for her it may now be much simpler to come to terms with her brother's death. Knowing his life was taken by you, not thrown away by him,' he said, recaling both Byers' and Eleanor's comments about the relative pain of the suicide or the murder of a loved one.

Somers' face contorted slightly. He looked puzzled. 'You think someone kiling someone you love is easier to bear than knowing they took their own life?' For the first time, he fel silent.

'Yes. However you might have chosen to punish the men you condemned, for John Emmett's sister, at least, I think the truth wil be terrible but less hard than it was.' And then, stil angry, he added, 'I did know about Liley and you got the wrong man in Byers. He wasn't the man on the execution detail.'

'There you are wrong. Emmett identified Byers on the photograph. Described him. Told me precisely how he'd fussed about his wet feet—had degraded my son in his last minutes. I tracked him down to the very farm he'd enlisted from.'

Although Somers spoke firmly, a faint doubt showed in his face.

'That was his cousin,' said Laurence. 'There's a family resemblance, I'm told, but he was a cousin. You kiled Jim Byers. Jim Byers just did his bit in France for three years. Leonard Byers is alive and wel.'

He was angry because Somers was wrong. In this war every man's life had been on the line. Batmen and bandsmen had fixed their bayonets alongside their comrades. There was no escape.

Somers looked disconcerted only for a second and then, unexpectedly, he laughed, a laugh that filed the room with something like normality.

'Of course he's wel,' he said, with just a trace of bitterness. 'Mr Leonard Byers, successful civilian. Of course he is. I told you he was a man with an eye for the main chance. Warm feet now, no doubt. Stil, I'm sorry about the cousin if it's true. Dismal, run-down place the farm was, too. Not much sign of Mr Lloyd George's land fit for heroes down there. Scarcely fit for cows. But I am sorry. Not that any of it matters now.'

'And you were seen,' Laurence said, realising that for al his reasonable manner, part of Somers was irreparably and unpredictably damaged. 'Byers' old uncle, semi-bedridden, was at a window when you arrived with your gun. He was a weak witness, shocked and bemused, but he was stil a witness.' His words came out more strongly than he'd intended.

'I was seen, as you put it, before I pushed Liley under the train. I was seen by plenty of people when I shot Mulins. There's seeing and not seeing. Age, expectation and authority: they're al surprisingly effective disguises, Mr Bartram, especialy to certain witnesses.'

Laurence looked at the window. It was now completely dark outside. Where was Gwen Lovel?

'I wasn't merciless, you know. I checked them al. The other men connected with my son's death are more or less blameless or dead. One—Private Watkins—

endures a living death in the North Wales County Lunatic Asylum.

'Since the death of Mulins, things have become harder but my hand was forced before I was ready when I realised Mulins might be piecing things together. It was Gough I wanted, above al. Gough served with me in Africa. I knew him. He deserved to die. An ambitious man. An incompetent commander. Calous, arrogant; I doubt he even bothered to read through Harry's defence.

'In those crucial days when the top brass were weighing Harry's fate in their hands, even General Shute, who had no respect for Harry's division and whom the men hated, pointed out that Harry was very young. So I let Shute live. The request for confirmation of sentence rose upwards until it reached Gough. Gough rejected a unanimous cal for clemency by the officers of the court martial. Gough said with zeal that he "recommended" that sentence be carried out. Only rank distinguished him and Tucker: brutal men who reveled in war's cruelty and humiliations. He's been in Switzerland. But now he's back. And I have waited for him.'

There was absolute silence. Laurence had heard a single car pass by and a door slam across the road; the sounds provided a comfortable, though brief, assurance that there were people out there. Was Gwen Lovel listening to al this? Had she known al along what Somers was planning or what he'd done? While he was certain she hadn't known when he had first come to her house, he sensed that she did now. She had aged twenty years since then.

'Mulins came to see me after Emmett vanished. Very polite, of course. A favourite nephew had been a patient at Holmwood, as bad luck would have it. The late Inspector Mulins was obviously a very wel-connected man. The boy had no father so Mulins was up and down to see him. He made a miraculous recovery. So Dr Chilvers, not putting vast store by the local constabulary, had asked Mulins to cast an eye over Emmett's disappearance as a personal favour. Bad for the place's carefuly built reputation to lose a patient. It was Chilvers who told Mulins that Emmett had been in touch with members of the Darling Committee and was obsessed with the Hart execution. Al the same, it should have been a formality for a busy senior police officer from another force. Eventualy I had to concede to Mulins I'd visited Emmett at Holmwood. Chilvers was bound to tel him. I said Emmett had been a friend of Hugh.'

The army friend that the staff at Holmwood had described, Laurence thought. He had simply assumed it was a wartime contemporary of John's. How careless he'd been.

'Mulins was sharp. He seemed to be satisfied but he obviously kept turning it over. He remembered Hart's execution, of course. Then Emmett was found dead and Mulins thought a little harder.'

'And Mulins was briefly involved in investigating Jim Byers' death,' Laurence said.

'I didn't know that,' Somers said, obviously digesting this new information. 'Perhaps he was already looking out for connections? A clever man. But Dr Chilvers knew of Emmett's assault on Tucker—it was why he had been admitted: to escape prosecution for assaulting a policeman in that fracas—and that, too, Chilvers passed on to Mulins. Tucker was also dead, as Mulins discovered from the Birmingham force. Too many coincidences. At some point he commandeered Harry's file and tracked down the letter I'd written, pushing for him to be given a commission. He came to talk to me. I don't know if he ever knew about Liley. His death was carried in The Times, so it was likely. Liley lived and died just two miles from my house. Sooner or later Mulins would have approached Gwen because of Emmett's wretched bequest. Then, a week before his death, he asked me to come and see him again when I was next in London. Nothing urgent, so he said.

'I couldn't risk it any more but, anyway, he'd always been on my list. The perfect public servant. Duty and inflexibility. I went up to London, and the rest you know. The police were always going to go flat out once nemesis had caught up with Mulins. He'l have kept a record. Today it's you on the doorstep, tomorrow it wil be them.'

Somers got up and came towards him. Laurence tensed himself, but Somers simply walked unevenly past him to the window. Charles had said he had been wounded in South Africa. Somers stood looking out at the darkness, with his back to Laurence. Laurence wondered whether he should make a run for it. With his back so stiff, he doubted he'd get far. Who would win if it came to a tussle, and what part might Gwen Lovel play?

'Brabourne was so clear about what happened at the trial but I smeled a rat when he became vague about the execution itself,' said Somers, stil gazing out. 'I didn't want to alert him with too many questions, and I had to keep my emotions tightly under control. Eventualy he revealed that Harry hadn't died immediately. It had a taken a coup de grâce. Which meant Emmett should have put the last bulet in his brain. Except that Brabourne's essential decency covered up Emmett's disgrace. It took Emmett himself to tel me what had realy happened.'

Laurence was finding it increasingly hard to concentrate. He knew how the story Somers was now teling would end. He wished he hadn't sent Charles away.

'Emmett and I talked for an hour or so at the Coburg in the first instance,' Somers continued, 'just establishing the outline of it al. I couldn't push him too hard as I didn't want him to be uneasy, and he needed to get back to Holmwood before the police were caled to find him. I put him on a train. Made arrangements to meet again. I wanted to get him to my own house, away from onlookers, with time to go through it al. I wanted to make sure I got every fact, every name. To know exactly what happened and who was involved.'

He glanced at Laurence more directly.

'But Emmett knew it would be very difficult to escape from Holmwood a second time.'

He paused.

'And I knew that once I'd persuaded him to come to see me, he would have to disappear, you see. He was a link to me and I had my mission to complete. I didn't care about surviving myself but I did care about justice.'

Somers was almost persuasive, his tone of voice reasonable.

'I told Gwen to write to him. To ask to meet him. To suggest myself, as he had already met me, as an intermediary. To say that I lived not far from Holmwood, that I could arrange it. She wrote in good faith, believing it would happen—and Emmett had absolutely no idea that I knew Gwen other than professionaly. But, as I said, he was desperate to see her. She was the lure. However, I had absolutely no idea that he had left Gwen a bequest, which meant that his death would lead straight back to her.

'I set up the final meeting at my house in Oxfordshire. When he arrived, Gwen was not there, needless to say, but Emmett didn't realy seem surprised. He just wanted to talk. He told me every damn thing about Harry. His poetry. His trial. His death. Harry's persecutors and those few who tried to help him. Above al, Emmett gave me the names and each individual's portion of guilt became clear. I promised to tel Harry's mother everything.'

He stopped again, and then he said in a slower voice, 'I have thought about it since, of course. Did I feel pity for Emmett? Obviously he had suffered. Nerves, mostly. His right arm was useless, you know? When I had seen him for the first time, I assumed he'd been wounded but it wasn't that. Nothing realy wrong with the arm at al, but plenty wrong in the mind.

'But, do you know, during the long hours he was with me, I thought there had been some sort of lightening of his spirit, as if by teling me everything he had rid himself of his guilt. In the end I told him the truth. He had been so honest. He had emptied himself out. So I told him Harry was my son. I wanted to tel somebody at last.'

'What did he say?'

'He asked me to forgive him.'

Laurence felt numb. It was so simple.

'I told him there was nothing to forgive,' said Somers. 'It was war.'

'But you didn't forgive the others?'

'The others didn't ask.' He paused.

'Emmett told me that at the last minute he realised that he knew my son. He'd actualy met him once. They shared a deep love of poetry. Harry's last words were supposed to have been, "For God's sake shoot quickly and get it over with," but when he fel to the ground he was only injured. Refused a blindfold.'

Pain was unmistakable on Somers' face. His speech slowed.

'He had blue eyes, like his mother.'

He wiped his forehead, hesitated.

'Emmett just stood there. Frozen, he said. Harry tried to speak. Emmett had his gun in his hand; everybody waiting for him to do his duty. He said Harry was uninteligible. Then Sergeant Tucker, who hadn't marched the men away but left them gawping, quit the line, came forward, cool as you like, took the gun from Emmett, who put up no kind of resistance, and he shot Harry straight in the face.

Chapter Thirty-seven

The two men looked at each other. Both started to speak at once, then stopped. It was as if al the chaos of murder, adultery, suicide and ilegitimacy had been reduced to mere social awkwardness.

Finaly Laurence said, And now? What do you intend to do?'

'I imagine if you leave here you'l go straight to fetch the police?' Somers looked up. At last Laurence could hear Gwen Lovel move at the back of the house.

'I just didn't realy think...' Laurence began. Did Somers intend to let him go and if not, what would he do?

'Oh, you think,' said Somers. 'You're a brave man. Brave and dogged. An excelent officer. Acting major. Twice mentioned in despatches and holder of the Military Cross. How does the citation go? "For conspicuous courage under fire. Leading an attack against considerable odds, in which the battalion sustained heavy losses, he returned to retrieve the injured at considerable risk to himself." You think, Captain Bartram. You think very carefuly and you act decisively. If you didn't count on my finding you, you certainly knew it was a possibility you would find me.'

He was trying to heave the dead weight of Pollock, pitiable, fat Pollock, back across the churned-up terrain. Bent half double, he strained to drag him by the legs. Pollock's weight made a trough in the mud and as Laurence leaned forward he could smell the urine soaking through the soldier's trousers. He hoped the man was unconscious—the body kept lurching to the side and every time he managed to move him more than a few inches, Pollock made a wet, wheezing sound and red froth came out of his mouth. The front of his tunic was black and tarry. Laurence hadn't dared open it in case it was all that was keeping Pollock's guts inside his body. Suddenly the ground fell away and they were both tumbling into a crater of mud and water. The tremendous weight of the injured man landed on top of him. For a minute he lay winded and nauseated, then panicked and struggled furiously to get a purchase on Pollock's jacket. At last he tore himself free but his legs had lost all feeling. He sat in the slime holding the man's head in his lap. There was faint sunlight now, piercing the smoke, as the water around the soldier turned reddish brown and strings of pink saliva congealed between his bloody teeth. He sat and stroked Pollock's cold face until someone came and found them.

Somers was stil talking.

'Did you realy believe you were the only one capable of a bit of detective work? It's not hard to find a man's records, you know. To talk to a few people.'

He was getting up as he spoke. He returned to the bureau and opened a different drawer. Laurence wondered what he was about to show him. Somers rifled through some papers and turned round. He was holding a gun.

'Believe it or not, I regret the need for this,' Somers said. 'But, you see, Brabourne contacted me a day or so ago asking what had happened to the photograph he'd given me. Emmett stole it from my house, of course, after I showed it to him. I never even noticed its absence. I gather it came home with his effects? I had to improvise, say there'd been a burglary. But it wouldn't do. I knew you'd come back to Gwen sooner or later and now the journalist was suspicious too. He asked me if I had known Mulins. If I knew that Emmett was dead.'

He sat down, stil holding the gun. It was hardly different from the Webley that Laurence had used in the war.

'Did John take anything else?' Laurence thought Somers hesitated but realised the man was simply tiring. Somers shook his head and carried on talking.

'Gough. He was the ultimate arbiter. He had my son's life in his hands. I simply want him now. After that, I don't care. What difference does it make to me? I'l hang, Gwen wil be disgraced either way. If I shoot you now, I might get Gough and we might just get away. I have tickets for Gwen, Catherine and myself to sail to Canada in January. I chose the anniversary of Harry's death. By then it al needs to be finished.'

He looked at Laurence almost questioningly as if asking for his approval.

'I can't let you stop me before I've dealt with Gough.'

'I think there would be a difference to you in kiling me,' Laurence said steadily.

The Webley looked wel maintained. Was it loaded? Somers was not yet pointing it at him, but held it by his side. Laurence was surprised to find just how much he wanted to live. He wondered what Mary would feel if he died.

'As you say, it al depends on motive,' he continued, amazed that his voice was steady. 'In war there's little choice. We both know that. Kiling is abhorrent to start with, but it becomes routine. Possibly you felt you had no choice with the men involved in Harry's death, which makes it a noble cause in your eyes. But shooting me would be for nothing more than your own convenience. You might justify it on the grounds of protecting Mrs Lovel, but I don't think that's what she'd want, certainly not here in her own house and probably not anywhere, for that matter. I don't think you want to shoot me. I suspect you're weary of the whole thing.'

He hoped it was true.

'You could be right,' Somers said slowly. 'I lied even to her. Denied I'd ever seen Emmett. It can't be done here.'

He stopped speaking and seemed to be finding it hard to concentrate, though the gun was now pointing directly at Laurence, who was now sure it was loaded.

'It's a bad business about Byers. But it doesn't take away the justice of my mission. If you'd had a son, you'd understand.'

Actualy, I did have a son,' said Laurence. 'He died too.'

In the end it was such a simple thing to say.

Somers seemed distracted by his response. The gun dropped again.

'I'm sorry. This is a bad business.'

He rubbed his eyes. Any energy in him was suddenly gone. He deflated almost visibly.

'Do you know, I feel terribly old al of a sudden? I thought I'd fought my wars long ago. I'l be glad when al this is finished...'

Then he seemed to recolect himself and looked straight at Laurence.

'Because you were so close, I finaly had to tel her,' he said bitterly. 'Teling Gwen the truth, was the worst thing I've ever had to do. Not Brabourne's truth, and certainly not Emmett's truth in al its searing detail, but a truth of betrayal. A truth she would have found out anyway. The scene that folowed was every bit as distressing as you could imagine. But she was no Marjorie, stoic and withdrawn. Gwen just wept in my arms. She got out al the photographs from when Harry was a little boy.

There were not a great many but she had kept them carefuly, and there were his letters home.'

He gestured to the bureau in the corner.

'Catherine was away. We sat until it became dark. Eventualy she lit the lamps, set the fire. I talked about Hugh and Miles for the first time realy since their death. Her tears were for them as wel as for their unacknowledged half-brother, Harry. Our sons. Some time after midnight we went up to bed.'

Instinctively Laurence looked down at the weapon, which Somers was holding without wavering, then made himself return to the other man's deeply furrowed but stil handsome face. The clock on the mantelpiece whirred but did not chime.

'Perhaps it would be for the best...?' Somers began slowly.

Laurence jumped as the door, which had been ajar, opened. For a moment he thought the gun had gone off. Gwen stood there, her face blotched, her hair unkempt.

Somers looked up and attempted a smile. 'Come in, my dear. We're nearly done.'

She walked slowly into the room. Directly behind her was Charles. Gwen stared at both men in front of her with horror and then glanced behind her at Charles, who, Laurence now noticed, was holding his own gun—the Luger—his usual affable expression replaced by one of alert hardness. Laurence's eyes went from Charles to Somers, then to Gwen, who had moved swiftly towards the general. The situation was both farcical and potentialy deadly. For a moment her body blocked Somers'

weapon, but he drew her to his side.

'Put down your gun,' Charles said firmly.

Somers stared at him, his gun as steady as ever, the barrel stil pointing at Laurence.

'I'm afraid it's not possible,' Somers said.

'Please, Gerald,' Gwen said. She reached out and placed her hand on top of Somers'. 'It's over. Enough people have died.'

Somers resisted for only a second. Then his right hand swung up and, holding her to him with his other arm, he pressed the barrel to Gwen's head.

'I'm sorry, my darling,' he said. 'How I wish you had never met me.'

Laurence sensed Charles's finger tighten on the trigger, bracing himself for a shot. Gwen's face drained of colour, her eyes wide.

Al of a sudden, Somers' gun arm fel to his side. Slowly Gwen Lovel reached over and took the weapon from him. She gazed down at it in her hand, weeping, and then, gingerly, laid it on the table. Laurence picked it up. It was loaded. He emptied out the bulets and put the gun in his pocket.

When he looked back, Gwen had her arms around her lover and his head was bowed on her shoulder. She was trembling but stroking his head as if he were a child. Her eyes met those of Laurence. He could not read her face. Finaly, Somers lifted his head. Charles glanced at Laurence, stil firmly holding his own gun.

'Would you accept my word that I wil turn myself in? It has a little more dignity about it.' Somers appealed directly to Laurence, sensing that the decision ultimately lay with him. 'Let me have twenty-four hours here, so that I can see Gwen straight. Her family in Germany can't forget she took the other side in the war—her nephews were kiled. She has no one else but Catherine. Tomorrow, on my honour, on that of my three sons, I'l let justice take its course.'

Laurence thought quickly. If Somers didn't turn himself in within twenty-four hours, they could tel the police, who could protect General Gough until Somers was found. However, he couldn't think how they would explain the delay and what if Somers went through with the murder of Gough before then?

Charles raised an eyebrow; he too wanted it to be Laurence's choice.

Eventualy Laurence spoke. 'Al right.' He was so weary. He doubted that Somers had the energy to continue his campaign; he doubted that Gwen would let him out of her sight. Despite having other reservations, he didn't want to be the one to turn a decent, honourable man over to the hangman. Gwen Lovel had already lost so much. It al sickened him.

Somers seemed to sag and Gwen helped him into a chair.

'But just as you wanted your truth, I want to be able to tel John Emmett's sister what happened to him,' Laurence said firmly.

Somers stiffened slightly and looked uneasy. His glance flickered to Gwen, then back to Laurence.

'How did you get him to your house?'

'By car. I visited Holmwood a week or so before Christmas. Drove around the lanes not far from the vilage. Parked the car half a mile away behind some abandoned farm buildings, with a blanket over the engine. Couldn't risk it not starting when it was needed, though in the event the weather was mild. Walked to Holmwood. Went through the motions of having a meeting with Chilvers. Met my poor old friend Emmett: al sanctioned by Chilvers, with tea and cucumber sandwiches. The good doctor was keen to accommodate the valiant but shel-shocked son of a titled friend that I'd mentioned to him. Emmett thought I was there to represent Mrs Lovel. He was longing to see her; never was a man so obliging in the arrangements for his own removal.'

Gwen shuddered. Laurence thought she might faint, but she clung to Somers' arm.

'I wanted more information. I wanted him. Told them al at Holmwood that I'd arrived by train. Gave Emmett the directions to the car. Young Chilvers, an egregious braggart, even took me to catch a train home.

'Nobody to notice at home whether I had or hadn't got the car: one of the few advantages of having lost your entire family. Told my gardener it was being repaired. Agreement was that Emmett would get away when he could, pick up the motor car and drive over to my place at Fawler. He was stil confined to his room, more or less, or under constant supervision, but this suited me, as he was hardly likely to tel anyone of our plan. He thought Christmas Day would be his only chance to get away as he knew they'd al be taken to church. As far as I was concerned, Christmas was ideal as anybody who had a family would be with them. He thought I'd drive him back eventualy, of course. I left a map in the car but he said he'd been at school not so far away and knew the area.'

'Yes,' said Laurence. 'We were at Marlborough together.' Then he suddenly remembered. 'May I get something?' Gwen nodded. Laurence went over to his coat, felt in the deep pocket and puled out a grubby striped scarf. 'This was yours, wasn't it?'

Somers looked down and touched it. 'Miles's scarf, from Welington. His team colours.' He turned back the corner, looked at the school number, then took the scarf in both hands. 'Thank you,' he said. 'I'm glad to have it.' Laurence could see him making connections. 'Was it with John Emmett when he died?'

Laurence nodded. 'I came here on my way to see Tresham Brabourne—taking it to see whether he could confirm the school and identify the initials.'

Somers didn't respond for a while. Finaly he said, 'I gave it to Emmett as we left the house because he looked so cold. Miles didn't need it. I wasn't going to need it again.'

Gwen made no move to touch Somers. Laurence felt indecent, watching her world colapse.

'I don't believe John had to die. I don't understand why,' Laurence said.

'It isn't hard,' Somers replied. 'He died because he kiled my son.'

Laurence was struggling to see this rational, decent man as an unstable, flawed avenger. He thought to himself that, if anything, John had died because he had not kiled Hart.

'There was no connection in al this with a Frenchman caled Meurice?' he asked on the spur of the moment. Somers' expression was uncomprehending and his head shook almost imperceptibly.

As they reached the front door, Laurence turned to Gwen Lovel. She hadn't put on the light in the hal and in the open doorway her face was dark.

'Your son was a wonderful poet,' he said. 'He had a magical gift and he spoke for al of us. He should have lived.'

She was silent.

He folowed Charles down her chequerboard path and didn't look back. Even as he shut the gate behind him, he stil wasn't sure he had made the right decision.

Would Somers have shot him but for Gwen Lovel and Charles's adventitious arrival? How close had Somers been to shooting Mrs Lovel?

He stood for a second, feeling the weight of Somers' gun in his pocket, and looked in through the open curtains. Somers and Mrs Lovel were sitting opposite each other in the front room. They could have been any middle-aged couple about to make cocoa and go to bed.

As he and Charles trudged up the street towards the car he spoke. 'So, what made you come and find me?'

'Saved by an old soldier. You were hardly through Mrs Lovel's door,' Charles said, 'when I noticed Nicholas Bolitho had left his wooden guardsman in the footwel of the car. I thought I could just whizz back and give it to Mrs Bolitho and stil get to Savile Row. But Mrs Bolitho—Eleanor—wanted to give me a message for you. It was something she'd remembered. She thought she might have come across the man in the photograph. She was thrown when you showed it to her because he was so much thinner in the picture than when she'd nursed him, and she'd known him as Harry not Edmund. But it was the name that niggled at her, because Hart was a German name as wel as a British one, and that made her think, because she'd once had a British patient with a German name. And she thought it was him. She remembered that, because they'd had prisoners of war as temporary orderlies and she had heard Hart joking with them. Harry spoke perfect German, she said. When she warned him to be careful who overheard him—feelings were running high after some bad losses—he told her his mother was half German and had been a classical singer in Berlin and that he'd been born in Germany. Wel, after we'd left—what a mind that woman has—Eleanor starting putting two and two together. Almost as good as Mrs Christie. Apparently you'd told her Mrs Lovel had once been a singer in Germany?'

'I've no idea. I may have done.'

'So I said, "But our Hart was born in England. We checked. In Winson in the Cotswolds. Can't get much more British than that." She gave me a very long, teacher-like look and said, "Winsen is a city in Lower Saxony." But the next bit's interesting. She said that ilness and long, sleepless nights often had the effect of causing men to unburden themselves of secrets. At one point, the lad had also told her that his father was a famous British military man, but that he had never met him and that his mother didn't even know that he'd found out. Eleanor thought it was a fantasy—a product of fever and unhappiness.'

'He knew Somers was his father al along?'

'Wel, possibly not al along. But he knew. It can't have been that hard for a enquiring boy.'

Laurence thought of that other enquiring boy, John Emmett, who had discovered that his sister was not his father's child. He also remembered puzzling over Brabourne's account of Hart's dying words. So the boy died believing that his father, the courageous officer, would be ashamed of him. Laurence was glad Somers need never know.

'Once she'd remembered the name,' Charles said, 'she recaled that, like Emmett, he was something of a poet. She didn't know whether they'd met but thought John might have seen some of Hart's work.'

'Dear God. But what made you break in?'

'Wel, Eleanor was suddenly uneasy. Mostly because she was sure you were going to blunder in, oblivious, waving your waiting-for-dawn photograph at the mother of a dead man, which of course was precisely what you did.' Charles looked smug. 'But partly she, and I, just had a bad feeling about it. About Mrs Lovel, to be honest. Had a hard time stopping Eleanor coming along. Thought I might as wel come to the house, gun in pocket; knew you wouldn't approve if you saw it. If al was wel, or you'd just got yourself in an emotional pickle with Mrs L, I could have done my "can't sit freezing my bolocks off in the car any longer" speech. If al was not wel, then I could weigh in. QED. Looked in through the window, saw Somers. A famous military man, no less, in Mrs L's parlour. And then I saw the gun in his hand. Pointing at you.'

'Thank you. You may just have saved my life.'

'I don't think so for a minute,' said Charles. 'I don't think he ever intended to hurt you and I'm certain he wouldn't have done anything more to hurt Mrs Lovel. I think you just caught them unexpectedly. He improvised while he decided what to do. The gun simply gave him time, although I thought better of announcing myself by the front door once I'd seen it. Went round the back. Found Mrs Lovel sitting at the pantry table, al these papers and photographs spread out around her, and her head on her arms, weeping. I just tapped, smiled. She jumps up, very embarrassed to be caught red-eyed and wild-haired, and lets me in, easy as you please. Neither of them exactly has a criminal bent. My guess is she wanted it stopped.'

'Your rescue mission could have gone hideously wrong.'

'Hard to see Somers as a kiler.'

'I think he saw himself as a warrior. Soldiers at war aren't murderers. They're heroes. Somers was fighting a battle.'

'I don't expect Mrs Lovel knew?'

'Not at first. Later she may have suspected something was amiss but it's not as if Somers was living with her or as if the news of each death was a headline murder until Mulins. She didn't even know the names of the men involved in her son's execution. She didn't even know he'd been shot at dawn. I think Somers only told her when Brabourne contacted him about where the photograph was.'

'But she knows now,' Charles said grimly. 'She heard much of your conversation.'

'I think she already knew. She may have found out only recently. But she knew.'

He remembered the sad but calm, candid woman he had met a matter of weeks ago. Since he first saw her, her spirit had been crushed.

'But what I want to know,' Charles went on, more slowly, 'is how did the general persuade Emmett to break bounds and meet him, then go off to some godforsaken wood in the middle of winter?'

'The meeting was easy. He simply asked him to come. Said Gwen Lovel would be there. John could tel her everything, as he longed to do. Why John then went with him to such a remote spot, I don't think we'l ever know. He knew the Foly from school, of course.'

'When did Somers shoot him?'

Laurence shook his head, stil unable to understand why it had ended there. Somers obviously wanted to kil him away from the house and presumably John just trusted him.

'Probably a couple of days after they met. He didn't want to interrogate John at Holmwood, apart from anything else. He certainly didn't want him reaching Gwen and giving her every miserable detail. He'd promised she'd be at his house. How long could he stal, even when he'd told John the truth about his son? Yet John was torn apart with remorse, did what he could to make some kind of restitution. Was honest with Somers himself. I should think Mrs Lovel was horrified to know Somers kiled him. I don't think she knew that until tonight. After al, Emmett had only wanted to help her.'

Nevertheless, he reflected that Somers, who had gone out of his way to mutilate the men he'd kiled, had been careful to leave John's face untouched.

'What are you going to tel Mary?'

'The truth, I suppose. Before anyone else does.'

'And the police?'

'I'l give him his twenty-four hours.'

Charles shrugged. They sat in the car and stil he made no move to go. Three girls passed them, arm in arm, singing a Christmas carol.

'You don't realy believe that there'l ever be a trial?' Charles said.

'No.'

'Wil he do the decent thing?'

'Possibly.'

'So you think that him putting an end to himself would be a better outcome than the galows?'

'Yes, I do, actualy. A trial would only injure more people.'

'And you don't think there's a risk to Mrs Lovel and the girl?'

'No,' said Laurence, trying to suppress a flicker of uncertainty. 'He had his chance and he couldn't face it.'

Nevertheless, whatever happened to Somers, he thought, the future looked bleak for the Lovels, both mother and daughter.

Charles started the car and they drove on slowly out on to the main road, folowing a tram into the heart of the city, and in al that time they never exchanged another word.

Chapter Thirty-eight

Laurence lay awake for hours, going over and over the previous evening, trying to understand what had happened. He had a profound sense of having made a serious mistake. Was it a failure to imagine the impact of his questioning on those he spoke to? He had been too ready to treat them as one-way conduits of information, never considering that the flow of information might run both ways. Why hadn't he caled the police? Although he had felt reasonably certain that Somers was of no further danger, it was a huge and possibly dangerous assumption. He had been numb and exhausted at the time but now anxiety crept in.

Laurence would never be sure whether he had acted correctly. And what would Somers do now? For al his chivalric instincts to unravel John's death for Mary, it was she who had asked the one question he should have looked into early on: where were Edmund Hart's family? There was in itself nothing sinister about anglicising German names in war. It was common sense. The Coburg Hotel, the Bechstein Hal; even the royal family had dispensed with Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in favour of Windsor. Anyone with British loyalties or interests shed a name that tied them to an enemy.

However, even if he'd laid his hands on every bit of information; even if he had persuaded the police in the beginning that there was a link between the deaths—

and perhaps he should have done this—they would only ever have succeeded in tracking down Somers slightly earlier than they had. Almost al the kiling had already been done. Charles and Laurence had, perhaps, saved the life of General Hubert Gough, a man for whom Laurence had little respect. He wondered whether, had Somers' intended ultimate victim been anybody other than Gough, he would have been so wiling to walk away the evening before.

His thinking was cut short by a hammering on the street door.

'Telegram,' the lad said, handing over the familiar envelope. 'Your bel needs to be fixed.'

Laurence's heart raced for a moment. Telegrams were always bad news. He walked back into the bedroom and sat on the edge of his bed, just holding it. He dreaded finding that it was from India.

Finaly he tore it open and forced himself to look. It was from Mary. PLEASE MEET TOMORROW EASTBOURNE STATION MIDDAY REPLY ONLY IF NOT AVAILABLE

M.

Sitting there, al alone, he beamed.

Traveling to the south coast was easy. The day was clear, the train was on time, the carriages half empty. As he stepped from the train, seaguls were wheeling and screeching overhead. Even on this December day he could smel salt in the fresh air.

Mary was waiting outside in a smal car.

'See, I drive and punt,' she said, as he slipped into the passenger seat and finaly succeeded in shutting the door after banging it three times. 'I was taught during the war.' The car smeled of leather and mould and her. It creaked every time he moved. 'And I've borrowed my doctor friend's car so that we can get about. We've got it for only two hours, though, while he's on duty at the cottage hospital.'

She leaned over and gave him a kiss. He nuzzled into her hair and tried to clasp her neck beneath the folds of scarf. She twisted round awkwardly, burying her face in his coat with her arms around his neck. The embrace was bulky and marvelous and safe. Then she pushed him away from her slightly.

'You've got things to tel me,' she said. 'Important things. I can see it in your face. I'd asked you here because I had something to show you but now you must tel me what's happened.'

And so, not at al as he had planned, he sat in the Austin on the station forecourt and told her everything that had unfolded and much, though not al, of what he knew. She didn't stop him; indeed, her expression scarcely changed. Mostly she gazed ful at him, a little anxiously but concentrating. After a while she looked down at her gloved hands on the wheel and moved them to her lap.

'I'm not sure whether my intervention helped, realy,' said Laurence. 'I'm afraid the truth is as dismal in its way as how things originaly looked.'

'Not for me,' she said.

Laurence didn't respond.

'Which doesn't mean it isn't just as horrible and sad. In fact, because it involves more people and more destroyed lives, it's sadder realy. But, in a selfish way, for me, it's a kind of easing of the heart. An enemy kiled John as surely as they might have done at any time in the war. The motive was desperately unfair.' Her voice was slightly hoarse. 'But this way I can think about John without struggling with the fact that after al he'd been through he chose to leave us.'

He was immensely relieved that she felt the same as Eleanor, although something had bothered Somers about John's death and that something was bothering Laurence now.

'How do you think the general thought it would end?' Mary asked.

'I'm not sure. Somers certainly intended to kil General Gough. Who knows whether that would finaly have been enough?'

'Why did he leave Gough until last?'

'My guess is that it was tactics. If he went for the high-profile people first—Gough and, to a degree, Mulins—there would have been many more questions asked and the risk of him not finishing his self-imposed task would have been increased. After al, if you hadn't wanted to understand John's death, not even dreaming that he'd been murdered, Somers would presumably have got away with it al.'

'And then what?'

'He said he dreamed of taking Gwen and Catherine Lovel abroad to start a new life. But I don't think he believed it realy.'

'And al for revenge,' she said.

Laurence was silent. As wel as vengeance, John's death and the pattern of his own life were simply about fathers and sons, and the struggle to make things right.

He looked at Mary. Quite late on, he'd grasped that her real question al along, even if she had never known it herself, had been why her brother had rejected her. He had an unequivocal answer to that now: her father was not who she believed him to be and, to the young and imaginative John, she was the living proof of his mother's infidelity. It was an answer he could never give her.

Instead he said, 'I hope you'l meet Eleanor Bolitho. I think you'd like her and she could tel you much more than I can about John. She looked after him during the war and even when he was realy unhappy, quite cut off from the world, she cared for him.'

He was sure Mary would realise the truth about Nicholas Bolitho as soon as she set eyes on the child, but thought Eleanor would eventualy tel her everything.

The likeness between the little boy and John was remarkable.

Laurence thought of his own father. He couldn't remember his voice or his face, just his singing in the bath and his strong, square hands. Strangely, he could recal Mr Emmett more clearly. The affable smile, the absent-minded pats as he passed by; the sudden appearances and disappearances always with a dog or two beside him; the nightly toast to the survivors of Omdurman, at which they had al giggled.

He must have smiled at the memory because Mary asked, 'What are you thinking about?'

'Nothing. Vague memories. Your father, funnily enough.'

Something was bothering her, he could tel. Finaly she said, 'John's wilingness—his need—to give General Somers every last detail of the execution: the names of those involved, the circumstances, grim as they were. It probably sealed the fate of al of them, I suppose?' There was something in the tone of Mary's voice that made him think she hoped for contradiction.

'I think John's way out of despair was scrupulous honesty,' he said. 'He needed to make his peace. He could hardly guess that Somers was using his list to conduct his own war. He wasn't just speaking to a very eminent and much more senior military man, but one who had an official role, assisting a parliamentary committee. He also thought he was bringing some sort of help to Hart's mother.'

Suddenly he thought back to Somers' last conversation with him. 'You know, I think John held back on teling him of Hart's last words. Somers had told John he was Hart's father but that the boy never knew him. To discover his son knew who he was al the time and believed he'd be ashamed of him, would have been too terrible to bear. John told Somers that Hart was incoherent after the first voley. It must have been one of the few times John evaded the truth.'

Mary's face cleared a little. 'I'm glad,' she said.

Within minutes they had turned off into a vilage. Thatched cottages bordered the main street, with a smal brook on one side. After they passed a couple of larger red-brick houses, the vilage petered out by a flint-and-stone church and a field gate. Laurence guessed the smal church to be very old, possibly twelfth century.

His eye was taken by the vast, white-chalk figure that rose up in front of them, dominating the grassy hilside above the church.

'The Long Man,' Mary said with almost proprietorial pride.

The outline, clutching a stave in each hand, was obviously pagan in design and spirit. Laurence's spirits lifted. God knows how old the figure was, or what it meant to its creators, but undoubtedly it had stood on its hilside for milennia and would stand there long after they and their strange world were reduced to dust. He found the prospect of his own irrelevance comforting.

They left the car and walked across the churchyard in which grew a yew, also of great age, its wide branches propped on wooden supports. He could see why Mary liked this place. Ahead of them lay a medieval building with a long barn at an angle. As a dark figure carrying a box across the courtyard drew closer, he saw to his astonishment that it appeared to be a nun.

'Wilmington Priory. It's a nursing order,' Mary said. They crunched across the gravel and he prepared himself for the explanation that he sensed would folow.

'The thing is,' she said very slowly, 'that when I told you Richard was lost, I meant lost. It wasn't a euphemism. He isn't dead, you see. Not realy.'

Instantly Laurence felt his hair prick on the back of his neck. Mary puled on a metal boss next to a studded wooden door, silver-grey with age, and waited.

The door was opened by another nun. She left them in a dark hal, whose only ornamentation was a black oak table, two upright chairs and four religious paintings.

'Everything I told you—how he was injured—was al true.'

As she spoke, Mary wouldn't look at him.

'In a sense he died the minute the shrapnel hit him, but although his injuries were terrible, he survived.'

Finaly her eyes moved, almost pleading, to Laurence's.

'He was brought back to England. It became obvious that he would live, but also obvious that he would never be able to do anything for himself. The damage to his brain was never going to heal. He was a child. An infant. He knew no one and nothing, he could not move. He—' She paused. 'He even has to wear baby napkins.

So he was lost, you see—the man he was, the man I'd loved. He came here and here he wil stay for the rest of his life. He wil never walk, wil never see his lovely Downs or winter seas again. A few friends come from time to time, but less and less often. His doctor is an immensely kind, wise man. It's his car, actualy. I bumped into him at the concert we went to. I thought you'd seen us talking together; I wanted to explain but to start to tel you the whole story was too much then. I didn't know you wel enough and I wanted you to like me, and the alternative was to lie, which I didn't want.'

He stroked her arm. 'It's al right.'

'As for his wife, despite her scruples before, she eventualy divorced him and married her lover. I would have married Richard then, even as he is, especially as he is, but legaly he can't make the vows. She can divorce him, but I can't marry him unilateraly. Besides, he has no idea who I am.'

She looked at Laurence and shrugged.

'So that's that.'

He removed his hand as an older nun, wearing a white apron, came into view and beckoned them to folow her. They went up a shalow flight of black oak stairs and turned into a long dormitory. The first thing Laurence noticed were the large Gothic windows, which filed the long room with light. The views over the hil and past the Long Man in al his vigour were superb. The second thing he noticed was the row of beds and the peace. Younger nuns in slightly different habits attended the patients. One man groaned as two nuns turned him from his back on to his side. The occupant of the bed nearest the door lay on his back, one eye half open, his hands moving jerkily under the sheets. A shining line of saliva ran down his chin. Laurence looked away, feeling embarrassed.

He had thought their guide might have taken a vow of silence, but now she was talking quietly to Mary as they moved down the beds. Finaly she left them at the last one, under a window in the corner. Mary leaned over and kissed the supine form, his head supported on either side by pilows. She looked back at Laurence, who was hovering uncertainly, and motioned him over.

'Richard, this is Laurie Bartram,' she said in a low but even voice.

Sitting down on a plain wooden chair by the bed, she brought the man's hand out from under the covers and held it.

'He's been wonderful in finding out what happened to John.' She leaned forward to do up a pyjama button that had come adrift. Then she sat in silence for a while, stroking his fingers.

Laurence studied Mary's lover's face. He was freshly shaven and his hair was slightly damp. Mary was right: he was a handsome man. He looked wel, were it not for the puckered crater of healed tissue visible on the nearside of his head and the absolute lack of any facial response. His eyes were open, his irises very blue, yet Laurence could detect not a single indication that he had any awareness of their presence. When Mary let go of his hand, it fel loosely to the cover. She tucked it away, under the blanket.

'I can't stay today. But I went to see the house this morning and it's looking at its best. They've repaired the window frames and since the boys came home from the war, the gardens are getting back into shape. Mr Strangeways tels me they've had a wonderful year for roses—most of them stil blooming until the last few weeks.'

She stood up, bent over and stroked Richard's brow, then looked down at his face intently, as if she couldn't believe what she saw. 'Bye bye,' she said, finaly.

'I'l be back to see you soon, darling.'

She nodded to a nun by the door. 'Thank you,' she said simply.

They walked down the stairs and out into the open towards the church.

'The house is gone, of course,' she said. 'I haven't seen it since before the war. Strangeways, the head gardener, has gone to work at Compton Place. The court-appointed guardians decided that, as Richard had no heir, they needed to raise funds for his care throughout his remaining life and the house was too dilapidated to leave empty.'

She walked down the path between gravestones made smooth by time and through the Saxon doorway into the church. He folowed.

'Then there was a fire. Some mischief by local lads.' She wrapped her arms about herself. 'Not that he wil ever know.'

They sat in the empty church. It was cold. The tiny vestry held one of the most beautiful stained-glass windows Laurence had ever seen, simple and ful of colour. St Francis stood among butterflies and birds, al depicted as identifiable specimens. Beneath its rich light, the parish registers lay on a table.

'So you don't consider yourself free to make a life with anyone else?' asked Laurence.

'No, I don't. I'm not. Who knows, one day...'

'It's fine. You don't have to say anything. I should have liked ... Wel, you must know ... But I'm sad. Not mostly for me,' he hoped this was true, 'but for you and for him.'

'It was one of the reasons I wanted to know more about John,' she said. 'I was so angry when he kiled himself. Perhaps not with him but with God or fate.

There was Richard, a body without a working brain, and there was John, only slightly injured, with a proper life if only he'd grasp it, and it seemed that he'd just thrown it away. I know that's unfair. I knew his mind was probably as damaged in its way as Richard's, but I needed to know that for certain. I needed to grieve, not rage.

That's why I got in touch with you, I suppose.'

'Yet I turned out to know John a lot less wel than you thought,' said Laurence. 'Less than you, certainly. And Eleanor Bolitho knew him best.'

She looked at him questioningly. 'But you were the only friend John ever brought home. It had to count for something. I'd very occasionaly seen him with others, heard him mention names, but you'd been to our house. Anyway,' she smiled rather sadly, 'you and I—we saw something in each other ages ago, didn't we?

Back then? Something that might have been but wasn't?'

'I wish I'd been braver.'

She headed him off. And of course, you took finding John so much further than I'd ever intended and I became much more involved with you than I'd ever dreamed. And because you found out the real story, I have General Somers and the odious Tucker to feel angry about, instead of my own brother, and that's easier.'

'I'm not sure you'd feel angry at General Somers if you met him,' he said. 'Angrier at circumstances. Sad, even.'

Then he added, 'I've been thinking about our first meeting, that summer—when I was at school. I suspect John's invitation came from the same instinct that he showed in his bequest to Wiliam Bolitho, and to Edmund's mother, and probably to the unknown Monsieur Meurice. He may have been a solitary man, but he was a kind one, you know: a man who wasn't very good at intimate friendship but was very aware of others' unhappiness. Not an easy combination. And I was a very lonely boy after my parents died.'

'Have you exorcised your ghosts?' sad Mary, so quietly he almost didn't take it in.

'Ghosts?'

'You said earlier that John and, to a degree, Tresham Brabourne, were exorcising ghosts by speaking up. Somers was too, I suppose, in a ghastly way. Even Byers, in talking to you, from what you say. Are you the only man who walked through these horrors unscathed?'

'I was lucky,' he said, though he knew it sounded implausible. 'I was il with pleurisy once and in hospital, and I hurt my back helping an injured soldier, but apart from that I was lucky.'

'But you lost Louise?'

He was quiet for a very long time. Finaly he said, 'I was never sure whether I loved her, you see, so I couldn't realy grieve for her.'

'And your son?'

The silence seemed to go on and on. She didn't come to his rescue. He looked up at the glass butterflies. He tried to remember Louise as he had last seen her.

She was standing on the station in a summer dress and a straw hat. She wore white stockings and button shoes, and her pregnancy showed. It must have done because he suddenly remembered that she'd placed his hand on her hard bely.

'It's moving,' she'd said, her face bright with excitement. He had puled his hand away too soon.

'There was an attack in France, you see.' He stopped, then started again. 'Wel, there were lots of attacks, of course. It was only if you weren't there that you could think in terms of battles. The Battle of the Somme, the Third Battle of Ypres and so on. It wasn't realy like that; there were al-out attacks and unexpected skirmishes, and they al led one into another. Just one attack stands out. It wasn't the worst, though it was bad. But it's the one that stands for al the rest. Rosières. It was the end.'

He felt a sharp and terrible ache. Love and failure and betrayal. Fathers and sons. His chest felt tight and his eyes were sore. The memory that he had tried so hard to suppress weled up. The darkness of the hours before morning. The discomfort, the cold and the insomnia.

***

If only he could sleep he knew he would cope better.

Twenty minutes to go.

As the creeping barrage had died away, he found himself with hypersensitive hearing. All around him the shuffling and muttering of weary and scared men. Someone having a piss. A cough, the rasp of metal against a flint, the flat noise of rain falling on waterproof capes, and the occasional innocent snore from the rare soldier who could sleep despite everything. He had indigestion and was trying to find the bismuth that the MO had given him. The MO

thought he had a peptic ulcer but could offer no better treatment until Laurence returned to England. A few weeks ago one of the regimental majors had collapsed and died of a heart attack. He'd been complaining of pains in the chest for months. Laurence slipped his fingers between his tunic buttons and rubbed the centre of his chest tentatively through his shirt and vest.

He felt awful: sick and sweaty. His neck ached and he rotated his head a couple of times to ease it. He was conscious of every breath forced in and out. If he couldn't control his breathing, how could he hope to control his behaviour and that of a whole platoon of men? He could hear Sergeant Collins moving up the trench, murmuring; he couldn't distinguish the words but the tone was of reassurance and encouragement. They had two new lads; both said they were eighteen but Laurence doubted they were.

Fifteen minutes.

The barrage had found its new range. He hoped it was accurate. His fingers were tingling and the tips had no feeling at all. He had been turning over the signal whistle in his hands when his fingers lost the ability to hold it and it fell to the length of its lanyard. What would happen if he couldn't keep hold of his rifle when the time came and had to cross no-man's land unarmed?

Ten minutes.

The barrage stopped. He looked along to his right to check that his nearest NCO was ready. He could hardly see him but eventually he did and nodded. He took a furtive swig from the tiny bismuth bottle. He polished his watch face with his handkerchief. His eyes scanned the men closest to him. Who would make it? Jones, the temperance ranter? Gaseley, the loner? The unfit, overweight Pollock who had successfully lumbered his way in and out of two years of action? Sergeant Collins, once a stationmaster from Bromley? The East End scrap dealer, Levy, only twenty-two and yet already the father of four children? Who else was out there? What else was out there? He had studied the maps, read the reconnaissance reports, but things changed; whole landscapes altered in battle. They had seen aeroplanes, of both sides, crossing the sky during the late afternoon on the day before while it was still light. He could hear that high, distant noise of them even now, their apparently unhurried movements seeming to have nothing to do with what was going on below.

Even when one of them was shot down—though they'd seen and heard no firing—and fell to earth in silent flames, he had no sense that a man like himself was being roasted alive.

Five minutes.

He cleared his throat. Licked his lips. He had no saliva. The bismuth clogged his mouth. What if he couldn't blow the whistle? He felt for it again. The pain in his chest was excruciating. He looked up, exchanged grim smiles with Collins who had taken a position down to his left. Watched him pat one very young soldier—was the boy's name Russell?—on the shoulder. Looked at his watch. For a moment the numerals blurred.

Two minutes. He could hear Pollock's adenoidal breathing.

His arm rested on the ladder; momentarily he laid his forehead against it. He could sense every pore, every nerve ending and every alert hair on his body. How could all this suddenly cease in oblivion? It was unimaginable. Please God, he wasn't about to be sick. To his right one man crossed himself and he could see his lips moving in prayer. Now his heart was thudding so hard he could hear nothing else. The field guns stopped. Would they have cut the wire?

Would they?

One minute.

Pollock belched. Someone sniggered. He kept his eyes on his watch, steadied afoot on the lowest rung of the ladder, raised the whistle to his mouth and started a prayer of his own. Please God, he said, keep me safe. Please don't let me die.

Ten seconds.

Take someone else this time. Not me. Take someone else. Anybody. I just want to live. Please. Don't let it be me. He looked at the slight, fair-haired boy to his left. At Pollock, gasping, mouth open. Made his glance pass by Levy. Felt Russell watching him. Gaseley's eyes were shut, his face white and inscrutable. Not me. Not now. Please. The whistle was in his mouth; he could feel its vibrations but heard nothing. They started to climb.

Anybody.

'I remember a sergeant shouting at the men not to bunch up—it was human nature to cling together, a lethal instinct—and then I remember seeing Jones, a Welshman who'd been praying just before we went over, moving ahead of me even while the men to each side of him fel. I passed a soldier caled Levy lying on his back, the top of his head blown away. And then as we came towards the enemy lines, suddenly this German was right in front of me and he saw me and was so close I could see the muzzle of his rifle as it found me. I dropped down and got him as he fired, and a man caled Polock, who was right behind me, was hit. He went down clutching his bely and he just said "ouf" like a monstrous cushion deflating. I felt guilty and yet simultaneously elated. I thought God had answered my prayer; he'd taken Polock, not me. That was bad enough. But it was worse than that.'

Laurence leaned his head back against a pilar.

'We broke through. We overran their position. It was bayonets for hand-to-hand fighting. But the casualties were terrible. There were two lads, friends who had joined together ... I knew they were underage but we were short of men; it was easier not to ask. One of them was shot only feet from our position. His war had lasted less than five minutes. We never saw the other again. Eventualy we crawled back. Tried to pul in our wounded. A few days later—a lifetime later—we were back in bilets. We'd lost over half of our officers, nearly a third of our men. My men. I was drinking myself to sleep each night.

'A few days later, the colonel sent for me. I was hung-over and I thought he was going to promote me simply through lack of alternatives. But no, he had a telegram. Rather than look at me, he read it through without raising his eyes until he ran out of words, though it was so short he must already have known it by heart. It said that Louise had died giving birth and the baby had died with her. And they had died on the morning I was going into battle. Louise died—I made it my business to find out later—almost at the very hour I went over. When I was begging God to take another life instead of mine. The colonel's giving me a tot of his special scotch and apologising that he can't send me home quite yet and I'm realising that I sacrificed my wife and my son and the whole long life he might have had, just so that I could go on living my pointless existence.'

'Laurence,' Mary said gently but protestingly.

'I know. I know. It's a terrible, cruel, Old Testament God who would accept such an exchange. I know that. But I offered them up.'

'Laurence,' said Mary, putting her hand under his chin and forcing him to look at her. Her eyes were shining brightly. She blinked several times. 'Thousands—

millions —of prayers must have been said by desperate men in desperate situations. You think you were the only one who, faced with horrors I can't even imagine, asked to be spared at any cost? And what about al the mothers and wives and sisters back home? Do you think that perfectly nice mothers didn't hope and, yes, pray it would be someone else's boy? Their friend's son? Their sister's fiance? I prayed and prayed for Richard. I went to church, and I went through the motions of joining in prayers for victory and prayers for peace, but, selfishly, the only thing I wanted was Richard. I didn't care whether we won or lost. When he was horribly injured I prayed for him to survive, when, seeing him now, I should have wished for him to have been spared the living death he has. But I wanted him back. I didn't want to live in a world without him.'

When Laurence didn't answer she said, 'You weren't thinking of Louise then. You weren't suggesting a sacrifice, one for another; you wanted to live. It's a powerful instinct. Then you got the news of Louise's death when you were away from home, under enormous stress, and it's hardly surprising you made a link.'

'It was cowardice. Plain and simple. Not the sort that gets you publicly condemned and shot like Edmund Hart. Mine was the tidy, private sort. His broke out, mine ate into me. My punishment was living. I found it wasn't that important. When Louise died she took a bit of my past—she was, is, part of my memories and of other people's. But when the baby died ... He wasn't part of history, he couldn't be a memory; what he took with him was our dreams. His future ... my future...'

He could barely make it to the end of the sentence; his voice was hoarse and he could feel his eyes filing with tears. He wanted to tel her that the earthquake of grief that was suddenly threatening to sweep him away was not about his son. Or that it was not only about him but about everything that was gone, even about Somers and the holowed-out man who now lay in the corner bed only fifty yards away from them.

'I was so frightened,' he said.

She put her arms round him, knocking some hymnbooks on to the floor as she did so.

'Laurie, whatever you believe or part of you believes, the best thing you could do in your son's memory now is to live. Work. Explore. Marry again one day.

Have more children. Forgive yourself. Laugh from time to time.'

She kissed him on the forehead and held his head to her. He could smel her, wonderfuly warm and familiar.

'But not to you or with you?'

'No. Not with me. Not now. But you're stil quite young. Don't punish yourself for being frightened in intolerable circumstances. I don't mean to sound like a prig but when so many are dead like John or, like Richard, as good as dead, you have a chance to be part of this new world, unnerving though it is. I wish you would. And I hope you'l always be my friend. I need a special friend.'

'I'd like that,' he said. She handed him a ridiculously smal, embroidered handkerchief that had been carefuly ironed. He pressed it first to one eye then the other without unfolding it. He no longer cared whether he looked stupid.

'The rest—it's not quite as easy as you think. I can't see it another way; I can only learn to live with it. And I'l try. I'm thinking of going back into teaching.

Apparently they're terribly short of schoolmasters and they're using men in their sixties and seventies to make up numbers. They need some new blood. I might even be quite good at it. I've been asked if I'd be interested in a History post at Westminster. They want to see me next week. They need someone to start next Lent term.'

'That's marvelous,' she said with real enthusiasm. 'I think you'd be briliant at it. And we could meet and talk, and go to see Charlie Chaplin, even—and eat respectable crumpets and walk in Green Park. One day soon I'l move to London. It's hopeless living with Mother and she has Aunt Virginia who is the mainstay of her life. From London I could see Richard more often. I could work for a living. I want to do that. Anyway, if I stay in Cambridge, I'm going to wake up one day and find I've turned into a stuffed owl or a weasel inside a glass dome.'

'A weasel?' He ran his fingers through her hair. 'I don't think you're very weasely, Miss Emmett. More of a mongoose: inteligent, mischievous and loyal.'

'Destructive and noisy, but good for keeping down vermin?'

'Al useful skils in their place.' He laughed. 'I love you, weasel or not,' he said.

'Thank you,' she said and kissed him one more time, gently but with certainty. 'If it wasn't for Richard,' she began.

He put his finger up to her lips. 'Don't,' he said. Then puling her to him, he buried his face in her hair. 'I love you,' he said again.

There was no longer any game to play so honesty could not damage him. She whispered something back into his shoulder but he didn't catch it and it didn't seem to matter.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Having gone to his interview straight after lunch, at which the Board of Governors at Westminster School made clear his appointment would be a foregone conclusion, Laurence came out as the bels of the abbey were chiming three. As he passed through the Sanctuary, pupils stood aside to let him by. One or two smiled tentatively.

This would be his life from next year onwards, he thought with pleasure. It was the second week of December, the last day of term and excited boys of al sizes teemed around him in black jackets and stiff white colars.

He went home to change out of his smartest suit, then left his flat in a panic, afraid that his sister would be standing bemused and alone on Victoria Station, not knowing how to reach her hotel. The second post had arrived. He went through it quickly, discarding an obvious bil. A letter from Charles lay on the hal table with a parcel. He tore it open, though it was clearly meant as a Christmas present. G.K. Chesterton's The Wisdom of Father Brown. He laughed, left the book on the side table and took the handwritten envelope, only opening it when he was sitting on the bus.

Two buses arrived together, both of which were crowded, so he was lucky to get a seat. Outside it was already dark. Seen through the condensation running down the windows, London was merely a blur of red and yelow lights. He rubbed the glass with his coat cuff. Through the smeared, wet circle he saw they were at the back of Buckingham Palace, where the traffic had almost ground to a halt. He couldn't see whether the royal standard was flying. Perhaps the King and Queen were already at Sandringham; he thought that was what they always did at Christmas. He looked at his other letter. It turned out to be a dinner invitation from a Mrs Tresham Brabourne. He was caught by surprise; so the boyish Brabourne was married. At the bottom of the card, Brabourne had added his own postscript: 'If you would like to bring Miss Emmett, please do so.' Laurence smiled to himself.

As he walked into Victoria Station in a mist of drizzle, he was met by the sight of a scrawled headline on a paper stal, SUBMARINE LOST IN THE NORTH SEA. He was curious; he had never even seen a submarine. He bought a paper without stopping to read it and moved on towards the platforms. It was ten to five by the clock.

Her train was due in at five. He tucked the ends of his scarf into his coat, buttoned his gloves. His eyes flickered down to the headlines. Beneath the submarine tragedy was a short report on an inquest. The coroner had opened the inquiry into what the paper caled 'the tragic accidental death of the hero of Mafeking, General Somers'.

He looked up at the board, feeling dizzy as he tipped his head back.

After he'd heard the news originaly he had gone up to the Lovel house, taking with him the copy of Brabourne's magazine, Post-Guard. He had wanted Mrs Lovel to know that her son's poetry had been published, but the house had been al closed up. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and the giddiness passed. Opening them, he saw with a start that the train had come in early. Putting the paper in a bin, he elbowed his way urgently in the direction of the platform.

Although his greater height gave him an advantage over the people ahead of him, he felt nervous as he tried to pick out his sister from the mass of travelers crossing the concourse. Around a bushy Christmas tree the station band was playing 'O Come Al Ye Faithful'. They had drawn quite an audience, some of whom were singing along. Two policemen passed behind them, their eyes scanning the crowd. People were moving sluggishly because so many passengers were loaded with parcels or stopping for emotional reunions with arriving passengers. Above them al, the vault of the station was clouded with breath and steam.

He tried to imagine what his sister looked like now. It was eighteen years since she had disappeared to India. War had blocked her intentions to return once her children were less dependent. He could hardly remember her features; it was easier to recal her bossy presence: a big sister both loving and admonitory. He took off his gloves. Two or three women passed him with sons of approximately the right age in tow. He was looking across the platform when he felt a tug on his sleeve.

'Laurie?' asked the woman beside him, smiling tentatively.

He realised in an instant that he would have changed much more than her and felt a surge of warmth at her courage.

'Oh Milie,' he said, holding the sister he recognised instantly—smaler, rounder, but just as he now remembered her—first at arm's length and then pressed to him, so swiftly that her hat was knocked sideways and she had to extricate a hand to hold it on to her head. Her thick hair—pinned up in rather an old-fashioned way and much as his mother had styled hers—escaped in curls. She stil had such a pretty smile.

He was suddenly aware of the boy standing next to her. Taler than his mother, indeed nearly as tal as Laurence, dark-eyed in a way that instantly reminded Laurence of his father. He smiled nervously and shot out his hand. Laurence took it and held it with his other one.

'Helo—Uncle Laurie,' said the boy. He had nearly said sir.

'Helo, Wil.' He was suddenly and simply a man with a family, getting ready for Christmas.

'It realy is so very good to see you, Milie.'

Their eyes finaly met. Impulsively, he flung his arms round her again, then puled back slightly and looked down at her. Her eyes were brimming with tears; she fumbled in her bag. He felt in his pocket and gave her his handkerchief, grateful that he had ironed it.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'About everything,' she added, in a muffled voice, as she wiped her nose.

Laurence imagined the scene through her eyes. At twenty-six she had left England, her home, friends, parents and brother, for the furthest shores of the empire.

He suspected that by then she had begun to think she would become an old maid and was glad to be married even to a man nearly twenty years her senior. However, she could never have guessed how completely her world would crumble behind her. During her long sojourn in India, she had lost not just both parents but a way of life they had al shared. The family home was long gone; friends had gone; the brother she had left as a schoolboy was a widower, not far off middle age.

'And how old are you now?' said Laurence and before his nephew could tel him fourteen, which he knew perfectly wel, he laughed. 'I'm afraid I'm being a complete ass at this—you must be thinking I'm the most pompous uncle you could imagine.'

'No,' said the boy, a smile hovering, 'definitely not.'

'You must remember Henry's brother Norton? Wil's other uncle?' Milie said. 'It's hardly a fair competition.'

Now she had linked her arm through his, yet stil grasping his hand. Hers, gloveless now, was warm and dry. A porter hovered with a trunk and two cases, leading the way as they began to push a path through the crowds.

They were level with the station band when Laurence saw a face he recognised. Standing, listening to the carols, was Leonard Byers. Byers hadn't seen Laurence, who paused, just for a second, taking in the hatless young woman with bobbed hair, clinging to Byers' arm. As the porter parted the crowds, Laurence saw her in profile. She was very pregnant. She said something in Byers' ear, he grinned down at her and she laid her head against his arm.

One minute Laurence, Milie and Wilfred were having to muscle their way through the mass of people and the next, having come through the great arches, they were free, standing on the edge of the shining black street, where streams of cabs and dark cars moved swiftly in both directions. His sister looked from her brother to her bags and back to him again, as if she couldn't bear to raise her eyes and encompass the vastness of the new life around her. The boy looked in every direction: at the entrance to the underground station, the advertisement hoardings, the chestnut-seler, the clerks and shop girls getting off the bus, the passers-by slightly bowed under black umbrelas. His face was alert and excited.

In a way Laurence was glad that proper conversation was stil impossible; the carols had died away behind them but now there was a constant hiss from the wheels of the traffic and a paper boy stil shouting out the late headlines. They found their cab, loaded the bags, he tipped the porter and they were away, sucked into the city and the winter's night, with the bright shop windows and the slanting rain moving faster and faster behind them.

Epilogue

WEDNESDAY, 28 DECEMBER 1920

They were about twelve miles from Fairford now, approaching Faringdon. He could tell by the sinking sun that the road was heading almost due west. On the left, stunted willows marked what must be the distant course of the Thames or one of its small tributaries. This was countryside he had once known well.

To the south there was a gentle sweep of open land and a wide view through leafless trees rising to hills on the horizon. The temperature had dropped fifteen degrees in the last twenty-four hours and there was a dusting of snow on ploughed fields tinged faintly pink by the sun. To his right, John could see a small mound, almost artificially neat, with a cluster of dark trees on its summit. Somers looked straight ahead as the road curved in front of them. From the trees rose an extraordinary tower. It seemed to stand alone, its castellated battlements clear against the sky.

' What's that?' John asked. 'Is it a castle?'

He remembered from his Oxford days that there had been skirmishes fought around here in the Civil War, although this looked more like a building from a fairy tale.

The general turned his head briefly. 'It's a folly. Faringdon Folly. Just a tower. Decorative but useless. Four empty rooms stacked one upon another, Gothic windows and a marvellous view from the top. When I was young you could see into three counties from up there, though it scared us all to pass by it at night. The boys too in their turn. It's all locked up now, I believe.'

John recalled there having been a folly here long ago when he was a schoolboy. Was this it? It was summer then and everything had looked different.

'Could we go closer?'

'I'll drive as near to it as I can.'

He was grateful that the general asked for no explanation but simply added, 'I think the last stretch is just a bridle path'

They bumped their way up a rutted lane. It was only a few minutes before the car stopped.

'I'd like to get out here,' John said. 'I'll walk the rest of the way.'

The general looked mildly surprised. 'I'll come with you.'

'No. All the way back to Holmwood, I mean. I'd like a chance to think.'

'Good God, man, it's ten miles or more to Fairford. It'll be dark in two hours and bitterly cold by the look of it.'

'Don't worry' John said, evenly. He opened the car door. 'I've walked all my life in all kinds of weathers. Like this'—he indicated his greatcoat and borrowed boots—'I'll be fine. It's a good road. If I reach Lechlade and it's too cold, I'll put up at the New Inn. Might even get Chilvers on the telephone and make his son fetch me.' He almost smiled. 'I'd like to walk, to be honest. After this, I'll have precious little freedom.' He ran a hand through his hair. No solitary excursions for me for a while, I imagine. I'll see the Folly while it's light and then follow the road back. I feel better than I have for an age. Free.'

The general looked at him. John was very pale, but calm: a man who had finally relieved them both of an intolerable burden.

'Take this' he said, handing him a hip flask, from under his seat. I keep it in case of the car stranding me somewhere inhospitable. Oh, and this'—he unwrapped the striped woollen scarf from around his neck. 'It was Miles's scarf. House colours. Still serviceable, you'll find. You'll need it.'

'Thank you.'

John thrust the flask in the less bulky of his pockets. He opened the door, then paused.

'You will tell her everything?' he said.

'You have my word.'

It was certainly cold and he was glad of the scarf. He had once owned one like it, a long, long time ago. He wrapped it round his neck and ears, stuffed his hands in his pockets and started to walk uphill, unsteady on the frozen, roughly ploughed ground. General Somers waited for some minutes, the engine idling unevenly. Then, when John had climbed over a stile and looked back to wave with his right hand, clutching the cross-bar with his left, he turned the car and drove slowly away, bumping down the frozen track.

As he drew closer to the copse, John could see that although it contained a few bare sycamores and elms, it was mostly fir trees, which made it dense even in winter. For so long he had avoided thick undergrowth, afraid of what violent surprise might be concealed there. But there was nothing to hurt him here. The war was over. It was all over.

A slight wind stirred the upper branches. It had been achingly cold in the open and the grass crunched underfoot; once he was in the trees, he had some protection. The ground was softer here and covered in pine needles. By the time he reached the tower, he was slightly breathless; the bitter air, coming on top of the months of virtual confinement, had left him slightly out of breath. All the same it was good to be out of doors.

The tower loomed above him: dark brickwork with greenish streaks running upwards from the base. Had he been here before? He walked right round it and found a single door, heavily padlocked and offering neither protection nor imprisonment. He looked up; the empty, mullioned windows reflected the red sun, giving the impression of afire burning at the heart of the building, while orange-streaked clouds moved slowly overhead. With his head tipped back he had a momentary illusion of the tower falling. He looked down and steadied himself with his fingertips on the damp brickwork. He inhaled deeply and the effort made him cough.

He sat down with his back against the tower. The hefty material of his coat would protect him for a while from the iron cold behind and beneath him.

So much cold in his life. He turned his collar up. He wondered where he had left his gloves. The sky, which had been so blue, was turning a soft violet; the fields were losing their colour. Rooks were wheeling about the tallest elms. After some time—he had no idea how long he had been there—he saw a single star come out. Venus. The next time he looked there were hundreds; thousands, in a clear night sky. He could still identify the constellations his father had shown him as a child on night walks in Suffolk. It was August—the dog days, his father had said, stroking the panting Sirius on the head. High above him was Pegasus, the winged horse, with Orion the hunter and Canes Venatici, the hounds of the hunt. He felt the close hug the old man had given him as a consolation for his sudden terror of infinity; safety smelled of tobacco and elderly terrier.

How proud his father had been to see him an officer. He thought again. That was wrong; his father had never known of his choice but he had made it, hoping to please him. To make up for leaving him, just like everybody else, and going so far away. War was something his father would, at first, have understood, had he lived to see it. But what followed would have been incomprehensible.

A half-moon shone over the monochrome landscape. Miles away, a few lights marked an unknown hamlet. Had he fallen asleep? His breathing was shallow and his chest hurt slightly. He couldn't really feel his feet. He felt in his pocket for paper and a pencil. Hadn't he had a pencil when he set out? It was gone.

Instead he found the hip flask and, opening it with stiff fingers, he took a drink; it was brandy, which made him shudder but warmed him. He set the flask beside him, felt in his other, heavier, pocket and drew out a package wrapped in cloth, which he set on his lap. The rooks had quietened now. A pale barn owl skimmed across the fields, suddenly swooping to reach its prey. From time to time small creatures scrabbled in the darkness around him. Not rats, he hoped. Then a larger animal passed behind the tower: a badger or a fox, maybe, busy in this other world. He was glad to be here. He knew it was where he should be.

He thought of Eleanor. Her hair, her smell, her comfort. He remembered walking with her in France. He had been sitting on a bench outside the hospital. She came out, put up a hand to the side of his face.

'Oh you're so cold,' she said. She rubbed her hands briskly up and down his arms.

'May we walk?' she said. 'Are you comfortable enough?'

'Of course.'

Her head was swathed in a hood and she had a thick man's coat over her uniform, coming down to her boots. She pulled gloves out of a pocket.

Looking at her made him feel warm.

'Come on, race you to—wherever it is we're going.'

She ran ahead clumsily, laughing, and then she was gone. He called her name.

He opened and closed his fingers a few times to get his circulation going. Both hands. Both perfect hands. He poured some brandy on them and rubbed his palms together. She wasn't here. He looked at his fingers, spread widely and white as bone and opened his coat; he was not so cold. Then he unwrapped Miles Somers' scarf, folded it and set it down carefully a little way from his legs. He felt bad enough about stealing the photograph and package from the Somers house, but he didn't want to keep the scarf from its rightful owner too.

Then he took the small comb out of his pocket. He could hardly see the initials but he traced the unicorn with his finger. AM: Agathe Meurice. He set it down softly on the scarf.

He pressed his head back against the stonework and closed his eyes. He thought of other unreal worlds, other decisions, other possibilities: the shadows of faraway lives that had, briefly, crossed with his; of Eleanor, of a mortally wounded soldier trying to speak, and of a small boy startled by the cry of a red kite; but finally of his own hand in the dry comfort of his father's as they gazed up at the summer sky one Suffolk night.

When the shot came, the rooks rose outward from their roost with coarse cries of alarm, but in a few minutes they returned, settling back into the bare branches until the first light of dawn.

Afterword

'Craven fear is the most extravagant prodigal of nervous energy known. Under its stimulus a man squanders nervous energy recklessly in order to suppress his hideous and pent up emotions and mask and camouflage that which if revealed will call down ignominy upon him and disgrace him in the eyes of his fellows. He must preserve his self-respect and self-esteem at all costs.'

Bily Tyrel, a military doctor and victim of shelshock, in evidence to the Southborough Committee. Report of the War Office Commission of Enquiry into 'Shel-Shock'

(London, 1922), quoted by Ben Shephard in A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century.

Only three British officers were executed in the First World War. On the other hand, over 300 British and Commonwealth private soldiers met this fate, although of the 3,080 death sentences handed down, most were commuted.

My novel is loosely inspired by the executions of Temporary Sub-Lieutenant Edwin Dyett, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and of Lieutenant Poole of the West Yorkshire Regiment, both shot for desertion. The novelist A.P. Herbert, who had encountered Dyett while himself a junior officer in the same division, wrote a novel based on the case: The Secret Battle (1919). Leonard Selers has produced an account of the Dyett case in Death for Desertion, first published in 1995 as For God's Sake Shoot Straight. Further reading in this area includes Blindfold and Alone: British Military Executions in the Great War by John Hughes-Wilson and Cathryn Corns, and Shot at Dawn: Executions in World War One by Authority of the British Army Act by Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes. Ernest Thirtle MP

published a pamphlet in 1929, Shootings at Dawn: The Army Death Penalty at Work. The terrible effect on families of losing husbands and sons in this way is revealed by surviving letters.

There are, of course, a great number of excelent books on the Great War. I am particularly indebted to the folowing: John Keegan, The First World War; Richard Holmes, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front; Max Arthur, Last Post: The Final Word from our First World War Soldiers; and Neil Hansen, The Unknown Soldier: The Story of the Missing of the Great War. Gordon Corrigan has assembled a critical look at some of the myths of the war in Mud, Blood and Poppycock. Dominic Hibberd's biography of Wilfred Owen, Jean Moorcroft Wiliams' work on Isaac Rosenberg and Nicholas Moseley's book on Julian Grenfel are among many that I have read, as wel as Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth, a vivid account of her experience as a volunteer nurse on the Western Front.

A Deep Cry: First World War Soldier-Poets Killed in France and Flanders, edited by Anne Powel, is superb on the lives and deaths of less famous poets. Diaries, novels, plays and poetry of the period, as wel as some comprehensive websites, have helped my understanding of the varied experiences of those who lived in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Above al, for a wonderful survey of the Great War in the popular imagination, there is Paul Fussel's classic: The Great War and Modern Memory.

For the care and understanding of men with shel-shock, I have used several sources of which the most valuable were the papers of W.H.R. Rivers who treated many of these psychiatric casualties, and the publication in 1917 of Shell-Shock and its Lessons by two doctors, Grafton Eliot Smith and Tom Hatherley Pear. Daniel Hipp's The Poetry of Shell Shock: Wartime Trauma and Healing in Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney and Siegfried Sassoon was invaluable in providing the connection between poetry and mental fragility. There was a hospital for shel-shocked officers in Fairford, Gloucestershire (now Coln House School), but Dr Chilvers and his son are entirely fictional. Ben Shephard's War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century and Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam were moving accounts of war and mental ilness.

Sir Hubert Gough lived until 1963.

I have taken a liberty in placing the Faringdon Foly within the late nineteenth-century landscape. It was, in fact, built by Lord Berners in 1935, although the atmospheric hil upon which it stands is the site of settlements dating back to antiquity. Other locations al exist, although, as far as I know, Wilmington Priory was never used by a nursing order, and the beautiful 'butterfly' window at the church of St Mary and St Peter was lost in a fire a few years ago.

The Darling Committee (1919) and the Southborough Committee (1920—1922) both existed and examined questions of military courts martial and shelshock, though I have added to their members and to their proceedings. Philip Morrel MP raised questions on these topics in the House of Commons as early as 1918

before standing down for the December election. In 1919 an army officer, Colonel Lambert Ward MP (who had, like Sub-Lieutenant Dyett, served in the RNR), requested that there be no differentiation between the graves of those executed and those kiled on active service. Many individuals volunteered to give evidence to the Southborough Committee.

Acknowledgments

I am extremely grateful for the perseverance of my agent George Capel and her assistants Abi Felows and Rosie Apponyi in getting the first draft of this book to a state where it could be considered a novel. My thanks too to Lennie Goodings at Virago; her confidence and continued investment in it were hugely encouraging. I also owe a debt of gratitude to her assistant, Victoria Pepe, who read the manuscript first and whose belief in it pushed it forward, and to the sheer stamina of my assiduous copyeditor Celia Levett. George Miler and Katharine Reeve provided technical advice throughout the writing of the book.

The assistance of Richard Holmes was invaluable; he headed off my worst military blunders with patience and good humour. Alwin Hutchinson also advanced my military education. Any remaining mistakes were entirely dreamed up by me.

Lucy Cavendish Colege, Cambridge, has, as always, been an inestimable resource for information and ideas, as wel as providing the enduring friendships that have sustained my writing career.

Finaly, my thanks go to the trustees of the Hosking Houses Trust who provided the 2008 Residency that alowed me to get the bulk of this book written in the peace of the Trust's Church Cottage on the banks of the River Avon near Stratford.