The Year It All Ended Read Online Free PDF Page B

write.
      This last twenty-four hours I’ve been at a post – a chateau very close behind the lines. There’s a moat around the place and, despite the fact you can hear bombs falling all day, there’s a swan on the moat. It’s white and beautiful and it glides around the chateau as if nothing in the world is troubling it.
      Last night I slept, or rather lay down, in the chateau wine cellar. At 2.00 a.m. we were warned of gas and had to put on our masks. When that was over there was Coup de Main and a tremendous noise; torpedoes and shells and glass falling from already broken windows as the chateau shook and rocked. But in the brief moments of silence I snatched a few minutes sleep and dreamt of you and Nette and Minna and Thea. In my dream, you weren’t girls but beautiful swans.
      Did you know that when I was a boy, I used to think of my sisters as swan maidens? I was always afraid that one day someone would come and steal your feathery gowns and take you all away from Larksrest. You must be so grown-up now, little Titch. Do you still wear your hair long? You must never cut it. When I come home, I want to see those long blonde plaits flying as you pedal your bicycle through the park. Save me a little bit of the girl version of you. Don’t grow up without me.
      After the sleepless night in the wine cellar there is not much left of the ruined chateau – no doors or windows and not much roof. Rain is pouring in, half drowning the poor blokes on the first floor. Luckily, I am writing this in what must have been the chateau’s library, a fancy room with the ceiling mostly complete, though bits of plaster are falling from above the long windows. It is sad to see these nice houses and grounds destroyed – presumably they were nice once. Now it’s all desolation and ruin.
      But you would love France, Tiney. Not this France – the one of mud and suffering – but the one that will grow green again once peace is made. One day we will come here together, you and I and all the family. When there are no more bombs we’ll walk through green fields and picnic beneath a laurel tree. At least, that’s what I imagine us doing, when I’m lying watching the rain drip through the broken ceiling.
      I won’t be here in the chateau much longer – perhaps until Monday. And then I’ll be closer to the front again where there are no swans, nor even the ruins of buildings, but I will be thinking of you.
    With love from your brother,
Louis
    Tiney folded the letter carefully and laid it in her lap. She shut her eyes and pictured Louis sitting in the ruined chateau with the lonely swan, thinking of his sisters. The letter was dated two days before his death; it felt as if it had arrived from the other side, from a vale of shadows. She thought of Louis lying beneath the cold winter ground, on the other side of the Earth, far from everyone who loved him, and an instinct to find him, to find his grave, to be with him and see the place where he died swelled inside her so powerfully that she covered her mouth with her hands to stop a cry of longing escaping.
    She looked up to see Nette walking through the front gate in her Cheer-Up uniform. A corner of her crumpled wimple poked out of her handbag like a broken bird’s wing. Her face was so melancholy that Tiney couldn’t bear to add to her unhappiness. She shoved the letter into the pocket of her gardening apron and jumped up to hug Nette.
    Nette smiled and hugged her back.
    ‘What was that for?’ she asked.
    ‘It was just for you,’ said Tiney.
    Tiney sat on the end of Nette’s bed and watched her take off her uniform. She stripped down to her slip, her pale skin shiny with sweat.
    ‘I wish I’d had a shift today,’ said Tiney.
    ‘No, you don’t,’ said Nette. ‘It was unbearably hot in the kitchens. What did you do this afternoon?’
    Tiney fingered the letter in her pocket. She wanted to share it, but she didn’t want any of her sisters to be jealous that