Lost Among the Living(49)
“Not much, sir,” Martin replied quietly. “Though I believe he is officially missing in action, as Mrs. Manders has no official death notice.”
Colonel Mabry appeared to think this over, then nodded. He turned to me. “I suppose it’s quite frustrating for you, as his wife,” he said. “But disappearances like your husband’s were unfortunately common. We have some several thousand men still missing in England alone, Mrs. Manders. The recent burial of the Unknown Warrior illustrates this exact point.”
I nodded. The Unknown Warrior—the exhumed body of an unidentified soldier from a French battlefield—had been buried with great ceremony at Westminster Abbey the previous year, attended by royalty and thousands of mourners. I had sat in my flat alone that day, trying, like countless others, I was certain, not to imagine that it was my missing husband in that box, its solemn photograph in all the papers.
“You will not understand everything you see in the file,” Colonel Mabry said to me, as if I were a child or a recent student of English. “But wherever I can give clarification, I will do so.”
I took it from him and set it in my lap. Then I opened the slender file.
The first thing I saw was Alex’s face. The photograph was clipped to the inside cover of the file—a small, square shot of him. He was dressed in uniform, his collar just visible in the close-cropped shot, though he was hatless. There were the familiar planes and angles of his features, the eyes that I knew were extraordinary dark blue ringed with black, the familiar, well-bred set of his chin. His lips were closed and set in a serious line and his gaze was carefully blank as he stared into the camera.
“This is the photo from my husband’s passport,” I said.
“Yes,” Colonel Mabry agreed. “It is standard procedure.”
My eyes traveled the particulars of my husband on the page: height, six feet three inches; weight, fifteen stone; hair, dark blond; eyes, blue; age, twenty-three years. The file dated from 1915, when Alex enlisted, leaving him frozen in time, permanently twenty-three years old.
I tore my gaze from Alex’s face and turned the page. Here was what I had been looking for: his war history. He had enlisted in February of 1915 and had been sent almost immediately into pilot training at the Military Aeronautics School in Reading. After eight months he’d gone to France for advanced training in Reims that seemed to consist of both classroom work and flight practice, both of which he excelled at. A note was written in pencil beneath the Reims record: “Skills very promising. Naturally suited for this kind of work.” The signature beneath the note had been blacked over with ink.
After training, Alex was moved to the Western Front, where he spent most of the rest of the war. The record listed relocation to Soissons and Neuve Chapelle in 1916; and an extended period up and down the Somme in 1917, moving every four to five weeks. In every place he was assigned as a pilot, “for purposes of reconnaissance and battle, if engaged.” He seemed to have gone wherever the authorities in charge needed photographs or other kinds of intelligence information, his piloting skills reserved for close observation of the enemy rather than head-on battle.
I studied his leave record. He had been given ten days’ leave in 1916—I remembered it well; it had been spring, several of the days unseasonably warm, and Alex had seemed intensely happy to be home in a way that had almost confused me. The war was still new to both of us, and we’d bumped through the first days of his leave like strangers until we remembered how to be married. His second leave, in early 1917, was when the camera arrived, and he had seemed more distant by then, more quietly weighed down by the things he’d seen.
There was no leave listed for August of 1917, the month Franny had died. There was, however, a notation in the file.
“What does this mean?” I asked, breaking the silence in the room and looking up at Colonel Mabry. “In August of 1917. There is a note that says ‘authorized travel.’”
I turned the file toward the colonel for him to read, but even from several feet away he barely glanced at the writing on the page. “I’m uncertain of the details, Mrs. Manders, but the implication is that your husband’s superiors sent him somewhere for official reasons.”
“But it wasn’t leave,” I said.
“If the file doesn’t state that it was leave, then no,” the colonel replied. “Your husband was sent somewhere for a purpose, which in this case does not seem to have been recorded.”
“Would ‘authorized travel’ have sent him to England?”
“I would be very surprised if it did. Travel to England was strictly monitored during the height of the war, as you can imagine.”
Martin was looking at the file over my shoulder. “That’s the month my sister died,” he said. “Alex was here then. At Wych Elm House.”
“Was he?” Colonel Mabry said.
I studied the colonel’s face, the even features, the salt-and-pepper eyebrows above impassive eyes. “How could he have been at Wych Elm House when he was not on leave?” I asked.
“There’s one way, I suppose,” Martin answered before the colonel could speak. “That is, if Alex was sent somewhere on official business—and then came here on his way back. A sort of side trip.”
“But it wasn’t authorized,” I said. “That would mean Alex took unauthorized leave. He would be court-martialed for desertion.”