My bones ache with cold and anxiety. Papa and I scour the papers for the names of the Missing, Wounded, and Dead every day. How easily we pass over the unfamiliar names. List after list. Page after page. And yet every one, every single name, is a person, a much-loved son, brother, husband, lover. I was so angry yesterday I took the newspaper to the top of Richmond Hill and shouted out each name to the wind. I don’t know how many there were in total, but I was there for a long time. The wind carried their names away over the meadows. I hope they soar on the breeze for all eternity. Gone, but never forgotten.
Wishing you a very happy Christmas, and wishing us all a brighter, happier, and victorious New Year.
Write soon—and remember that the brake pedal is in the middle.
Much love,
Evie
X
From Alice to Evie
24th December, 1915
Somewhere in France
My dearest Evie,
Thank you for sending news of Mr. Harding. Such a shame for Tom to miss his father’s funeral. And I’m sorry you feel Tom’s absence so keenly. He will survive! Say it every day in your heart and aloud on that hilltop. We have to believe passionately, with all our might, to will things to happen sometimes. You have never lacked will and optimism. Don’t bow to the shadows now, my girl. We need our Evie to be strong, and inspire others with her new column.
You should see me drive this ambulance. I’m a natural now. I barrel over the roads at top speed, dodging gunfire and all else. We load the wounded carefully from the field hospitals and I race to the hospital train with one thing on my mind—cheat death! Sometimes I’m successful, sometimes I’m not, but I try like mad. As thrilling as it is, I find myself dreadfully homesick. I would give anything to be home for Christmas this year.
Chin up, love. We’ll get through this. Happy Christmas.
With love,
Alice
From Evie to Thomas
24th December, 1915
Richmond, England
Dear Thomas,
No word from you for a while. I suspect it is far too cold to hold a pen.
Even though I know this won’t reach you in time, I wanted—once again—to wish you a happy Christmas, and to let you know that I am thinking of you, and will think of you especially on the 25th. When I hear the carol singers in the town square I will join in, and sing for dear Will and for you, and for all the brave men fighting, and I will pray for happier times and victory ahead.
With fondest wishes, and three cheers for the Allies.
Evie
X
Paris
20th December, 1968
An early morning fog lingers on the Seine, painted rose-gold by the frail winter sun. These were her favourite times: just after sunrise and just before sunset. The bookends of the day, she called them. She had so many elegant ways to look at things. She taught me to see the world so differently.
But my thoughts this morning are with Will. My childhood friend, my counsel, and my conspirator. The man who stood shoulder to shoulder with me when we went over the top the first time. His presence was a blaze of light in a bleak world. Of us all, why did he have to be the one to go? I have never understood the choices Fate made on the battlefields.
Margaret fusses with the blanket wrapped around my legs. She mutters about my not catching a chill before she resumes her position at the helm and pushes me on. The indignity of a wheelchair is unbearable for a man with such pride, but if it is the only way I can get to the places I want to go, then so be it.
We make easy progress, it being early yet. Pigeons strut and coo as we go. The snap of their wings as they take flight brings me back to the trenches and the carrier pigeons we took to the Front in wicker baskets, to dispatch with messages back to base. I had always thought them nothing but vermin, but I suppose everyone finds their true calling in times of war. Even the brave pigeons were decorated and hailed as heroes.
Apart from the birds, all is silent along these Parisian boulevards. Cars don’t yet clog the streets. Only a single bell rings in a nearby church tower. The quiet hours are a gift, I think.
I feel for the cuff links in my pocket. She wanted me to leave them at his grave, but it is too difficult a journey for me to travel out of the city to the military cemeteries, especially with the heavy snow. I hope my solution would please her.
Margaret buys Christmas roses from the flower market and it is among the velvet petals that I place the cuff links. I leave them at the Arc de Triomphe, at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It is the best I can do. With misty eyes I look to the tomb and read the inscription.
Ici repose un soldat mort pour la patrie. 1914–1918
Margaret lays the roses at the foot of the stone slab, beside the eternal flame, and for the last time I wish dear Will a Happy Christmas, and the fondest of farewells.
“He was one of the bravest men I ever knew, Margaret.”
She dabs at her cheeks. Tears glisten in the sunlight. “I know, Mr. Harding. I know.”
But she doesn’t. Nobody can, unless they were there. Only those of us who lived those days will ever truly know. It is a sorrow that has never left me, and I am glad of this place, this tomb, this eternal flame. A reminder of what was lost. A reminder, so we will never forget.
It is why I am grateful now for the letters. They, perhaps, are the starkest reminder of all.
Back at the apartment, with the fire crackling in the grate, I sit up in bed, my head propped against too many pillows, and I read on . . .
PART THREE
1916
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.”
—John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields”
From Thomas to Evie
1st January, 1916
Somewhere in France
Dear Evie,
I hope you enjoyed Christmas, or rather, that you made the best of it, given how things are. I know your family will have struggled this first Christmas without Will. I thought of you often.
Thank you, as ever, for your encouraging and kind words last month. A heavy cloud has hovered over me these last weeks, and I’ve been unable to shake it with Father’s passing. Another Christmas at war exacerbated things, but I’m breathing easier now that the festivities, and the incessant reminder of all I have lost, are behind me. A new year lies ahead. Though I am losing hope every day that I will ever return to England in one piece—or at all—at least time marches forward, paying no heed to the follies of men. There’s something oddly comforting in that truth. The world goes on. Once more around the sun we will travel.
On a lighter note, you won’t believe this but I ran into Alice Cuthbert! She was at the field hospital, ordering everyone about like a mother hen. I believe she may have found her calling in life. She was her usual charming self, though her immediate optimism has dimmed a bit. No one can escape the gruelling realities of war. Nonetheless, we shared a few stories and fond memories of happier times and raised a Christmas glass to absent friends.
Would you mind sending on a new pair of gloves? We’ve been told we’ll be on a long march in the coming weeks and mine are shredded and too thin. Trying to ward off the infernal frostbite.
You’re a star, Evie. About the only light I see in these endless nights.
Yours,
Tom
From Evie to Thomas
10th January, 1916
Richmond, England
Dearest Thomas,