I run to it with open arms.
The more of Albie’s letters I read, the more I feel I know him – and the more I like him. There’s something easy about him, familiar. Kind. How could Iris not fall for him? How could anyone not? Maybe it’s just that he’s in my head now. After all, he didn’t mean these letters for anyone other than Iris (and maybe not even for her, not always – some of them feel like they’re more to get the thoughts out of his head, like a diary…or a therapist) but they speak to me.
Whatever trick he had to get his letters out, it seems to have worked – most of this batch are uncensored. Reading them is like listening to him speak; I can almost hear his voice if I try. He talks about the soldiers, mostly, what so-and-so said or did, where they’re from and who they’ve left behind. In a few, he describes the horses the senior officers have – the ones they ride or the ones that pull the huge guns ranged around the network of trenches and fields that are the front line. It makes me think of War Horse; of seeing that story play out on a big screen in front of a hotel that has another story that can easily match it. And how, of all the people watching on the grass, we were the only ones who knew.
He talks about a little stray dog someone in his unit adopts and feeds scraps to, hoping to keep the rats away. He talks about how suddenly there are birds again – not the swifts he misses so much, but skylarks, barrelling through the sky above the Somme. And he talks about the rain and the strange colour of the sky, the smoke and the silences – and the loss. So much loss. His letters ache with it – friends injured or killed, or simply missing. It feels so fresh, so clear and new, that I want to reach into the past and take Albie’s hand and tell him that everything will be all right.
Even though it won’t be. Because I know what he doesn’t. That his time is running out too.
But through all the letters, the one thing he never talks about is the fear. He never talks about it, but it’s there, running through every letter like a seam of coal.
Hal’s story isn’t just a story any more. The people in it have lives. Friends. Parents. People who loved them. They lived; they even lived here. And they died. And I can’t square it – how they were just like me and Hal and Mira…and they went to war. They walked away from this place, from everything they’d ever known, and they went there and faced that. Guns and bombs and fear and death.
You can’t even face yourself. Can’t even face the people around you knowing who you really are.
The thought prickles uncomfortably through my brain.
“Look. It’s a photo. There’s a photo here.” Hal’s fingers touch my arm.
“A photo?”
“It’s him. It’s Albie. It has to be.”
It had never occurred to me that there might be a photo; that we might somehow be able to see what he really looked like.
The picture Hal’s found shows a group of men…are they even men? A couple of them still look like kids – younger than us in their uniforms and caps. There are six of them pictured in fuzzy black-and-white: three sitting on wooden chairs, three standing behind. The photo looks like it’s been taken in somebody’s garden – there’s grass under their feet and leaves from a plant at the side of the frame. A stone wall, half-covered in ivy, is behind them.
They look almost the same in their uniforms, so close that they’re practically identical, staring straight into the camera. Or at least they do at first – because the longer I stare at the picture, the more differences I see. The sitter on the right has his feet tucked together in front of him; the one on the far left has his apart. The man seated between them is taller than the others, and it almost looks like he’s slouching – trying to not be the tallest, just for once. But standing behind them, the guy in the middle is almost smiling, as though that’s what his face naturally wants to do. His tie isn’t quite as straight as it should be, and his hat is pushed back a little and it makes him look less intimidating than the others around him. The picture’s too blurry, too blotchy to see him as clearly as I’d like…but I’m sure that’s him. I point at him.
“That’s Albie,” I say quietly.
“How do you know?” Hal’s voice is equal parts serious and curious.
“He looks like he matches the words. Does that make sense?”
He makes a non-committal sound. “You can’t even see him properly.”
“I know, but try to picture any of them – all of them in that photo – writing the stuff we’ve read. He’s the only one who fits.”
After a long pause, he nods. “Maybe. Or we could just check the letter with it.”
“Which one?” I wave at the letters that have spread out around us like a sunburst.
“This one.” He picks it up and starts skimming through it. “He says there was a French photographer taking portraits to send home. Somewhere near where he was based, a farm, I think? It’s smudged. But he says who the others are, so I guess if we eliminate them, we’ll be left with him.” Hal frowns over the letter, glancing from it to the photo. “Sitting down, there’s Bill Fosse, George Harbutt…”
The name is enough to snap me back to myself. “GH? The gardener?”
Hal nods. “I guess so. Or another coincidence?”
The tall guy, the one trying not to stand out…he was their mystery helper. I stare at him, sitting in the middle of the row in a garden in France – a long way from home.
“And then there’s Fred Keane. Oh, and here he says ‘either side of me’, see? You were right. ‘Either side of me are Dougie Marton and Charlie Brewer.’”
I wince at the name as my brother’s face flashes before me. Even if it’s not him…it could have been.
Hal doesn’t notice – he’s too deep in the past. He sits back on his heels, staring at the photo.
“So that’s them,” he says, looking up from the letter. “Bill, George, Fred, Dougie, Charlie…and Albie.”
But my brain has latched onto something – or at least part of it has. The fast part, the manic part. The determined, yappy little terrier part of it that can’t bear to stop moving.
The puzzle-solving part.
Something about my brother. Something about those initials – GH. George Harbutt.
George Harbutt was a gardener.
GH.
My brother.
GH.
Got it.
I brush the dust off my knees. “Do you want to get out of here for a minute?”
He blinks up at me. Probably wondering why I don’t want to stare at the photo some more. After all this, he wants to put a face to the name. A voice to the words that have led us here.
But I want more than that. I don’t need to hear Albie’s voice – I already know it. I can feel it in every word he writes. I want something more – something that connects them and us, then and now. Somewhere they’ve left a mark.
And I know just where to find it.
Some people would call it a greenhouse – and technically, they’d be right – but that makes it sound small and neat, like something you’d find at the bottom of one of the gardens in the village. That’s not what this is. The Hopwood glasshouses are long, broad sheds, but with the walls and roofs made entirely of glass panes held in place by old oak frames. The floor is bare earth, beaten and trampled hard by generations of feet crossing it to reach the wooden workbenches, which stretch most of the length and are loaded with trays of baby plants, or the nursery beds dug straight into the ground. Inside, it smells of damp soil and tomato leaves. Faint traces of mist from the watering system hang in the air.