‘I’m so sorry,’ Robert whispered after a while with great difficulty. ‘Please forgive me.’
‘Nothing to forgive,’ said Edgar. ‘In times like these tears are surely the most honest thing. We need honesty in the world now more than anything.’
Robert nodded. ‘I couldn’t be anything but honest with you, Edgar. But I’m still sorry, please allow me to say that. This isn’t how I imagined seeing you; I wanted to make you feel better, not worse.’
‘But I do feel better – for seeing you, my dear young friend. And cry for the dead, not me. I’m still here, when so many who are younger and far, far worthier are not. I’m one of the lucky ones. I can still do the work I love, be with the people I care for. Such priceless gifts. What more could I ask for?’
Robert fought to regain his composure. ‘I brought you these,’ he remembered, laying down the peonies. The blooms, which he must have unknowingly crushed, immediately fell apart on the counterpane, their sad, broken petals floating to the floor.
‘Oh!’ said Edgar. ‘My… dear boy, really, you shouldn’t have.’ They looked at each other – and burst out laughing, the tension falling away.
‘Not to worry, I never liked peonies anyway,’ said Edgar. ‘They remind me of my Great-Aunt Agatha. She always had them in her house. She was a termagant.’
‘I’ve brought you some Robert Frost poems as well. And toffee. It’s rock hard, just as you like it. The lady behind the counter had to hammer it for ages. A piece almost speared my eyeball.’
‘Poetry and toffee!’
Robert held out the bag. Edgar took a piece and sucked contentedly.
‘Congratulations, Edgar,’ said Robert after a while. ‘The Distinguished Conduct Medal. That’s practically a Victoria Cross.’
‘Isn’t it utterly priceless? After being persona non grata for so long, now I’m the most conventional war hero you could possibly imagine.’
‘You could never be a conventional anything, Edgar,’ Robert smiled. The citation in the London Gazette had been brief but managed to sum up entirely the sort of man Edgar was:
For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty during a night patrol west of Aubers Ridge. When two of his officers became casualties, he set out in pitch darkness under heavy enfilade fire to lead a party of stretcher-bearers and render first aid, showing great courage and complete disregard for his own safety. Although he himself was badly injured, he proceeded with prompt and unselfish actions that saved the two officers’ lives.
‘Though I wish I hadn’t been quite so rash with the old daredevilry,’ Edgar said. ‘Vi and I have been invited to a reception at Lady Apsley’s house in honour of the Red Cross, and a garden party at the countess of Stafford’s now too. I fear I shall be wheeled out for every good cause going.’
‘God, that’s awful.’
‘Isn’t it just? And all the old bores we thought we’d managed to shake off are writing once more, asking us to come to their musical evenings and dinner parties. Ghastly.’ Edgar smiled. ‘I was so very glad to hear about your promotion, Robert. A captain now – and company commander! You thoroughly deserve it. I expect to hear you’re a major before too long.’
‘It’s extraordinary, all the senior officers in their twenties one meets about the place nowadays,’ Robert said. ‘There’s a twenty-nine-year-old colonel just up the line from us. He was at the Hotel Balzac in Amiens a few months back when some old dugout staff officer, a major, pulled him up for not saluting. Only for him to reveal that he was a colonel, and the major was the one who should salute him.’
Robert looked at his hands. There was so much he wanted to say but he barely knew where to begin. Everything was so unnatural and contrived.
‘I was so sorry I couldn’t be there when you received your medal,’ Edgar said.
A couple of months back, Robert had been awarded the Military Cross by the King at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace for his actions on the first day of the Somme, when he’d taken over the German machine gun and kept the enemy at bay, allowing his platoon to escape. His parents had insisted on hosting an extravagant party afterwards, but he’d got blotto and could scarcely remember a thing.
‘Don’t give it another thought,’ Robert said. ‘Are they feeding you all right?’ Edgar looked even thinner than usual, if that were possible.
‘Oh, quite passably, all things considered. The U-boat campaign is such an awful business, isn’t it? So many merchant seamen lost. I wonder if any of us deserves to eat at all.’
‘There will have to be rationing before long.’
‘Yes. Things must be shared out fairly. There was an article in the Times a couple of days ago about someone being taken to court for feeding bread to pigeons. Did you know it’s an offence now?’
‘Well, I’m glad to know that I’m laying down my life for such a righteous cause.’
They talked a little longer, then Edgar nodded towards the portfolio that Robert had brought with him. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘show me.’
Robert brought out his sketches and watercolours and handed them to Edgar, who looked at them all for a long time. The first few pictures were simple views out across no man’s land, the ravaged landscape covered in snow and frozen shell holes. It had been a bitterly cold winter, and nearly all of Robert’s men had lost fingers and toes to frostbite.
There was a watercolour of the men, unshaven, wearing goatskin jerkins and all kinds of outlandish fur hats. They looked like savages, not soldiers fighting a war for the preservation of civilisation.
‘Like cattle,’ said Edgar with a sigh, ‘huddling together for warmth.’
The pictures went back to the summer of 1916. There was the watercolour Robert had done from memory of the cornfield in front of High Wood, the yellow of the corn and the purple shadows of the trees picked out, and the harvest mouse.
‘You have your own mature style now,’ said Edgar. ‘You’ve had it for a while. It’s distinctive and quite your own. You have such a sense of tone, Robert, and such a firm and lyrical feel for line. These are stunning; honest and quite heart-breaking.’
‘You told me once that honesty is the most important thing in art. Do you remember? I don’t think I entirely understood at the time. But I do now.’
Edgar picked up another watercolour, this time of Coldbrook Hall, the soldiers in their hospital blues in the garden. Robert hadn’t looked at the few works from his time in hospital for months. There were the other pictures, too: one of shadowy, accusing faces, another of a boy standing in a dark river with a spectral figure on the bank, smoking, and one of a forest glade with a stream running through it. Then suddenly, there it was, in Edgar’s hand. His sketch of Louisa.