The Fountain
Hindenberg Line, France, 1918
The trenches had been obliterated days ago.
There was nothing heroic about the landscape. Nothing to suggest a border, or a front, or even a side. Only churned mud and the dull thudding of artillery somewhere further down the line.
They had gone over the top in a confusion of whistles and blasphemy, not because there was hope - no one claimed that anymore - but because the alternative was waiting, and there had already been too much waiting.
One moment he had been running, the next he was staring at the sky.
His mouth tasted of iron. Something thick and animal began to pool in his chest. At first he noticed only the rain and the uncanny sharpness of detail.
His hand trembling on his chest. A crack in his watch face, the hands stopped at precisely 11:14. The wedding band on his left hand, where black blood seeped out between his fingers.
There was no agony, exactly. No writhing in the mud. It was only the sensation of a mistake, a miscalculation, as if he had been dropped into the wrong page of the wrong book.
The rain collected in the corner of his eyes, blinking the world in and out of focus.
The last thing he remembered before the dark was a summer afternoon, years before, in the shade of the big house at Shrevesbury.
He had been sixteen, stretched along the warm parapet of the fountain pond, hands behind his head, watching clouds drift above.
There had been the smell of wet grass and pond water, and the sour trace of cigarettes stolen from the butler’s pantry.
Diana Talbot stood knee deep in the pond, black-bobbed and sharp-chinned, her garnet dress bright among the water lilies. She flicked water at him with her fingertips and laughed.
It was the sort of laugh that made you want to kiss or drown.
He leapt into the pond after her, chasing her around the fountain while she darted away, glancing back to see if he would follow.
Her wet dress clung to her knees. Her eyes shone with something reckless and triumphant.
He wanted to tell her then that he loved her, with the full conviction of youth. Yet even at sixteen, he understood there were things that could not be said, only lived.
He tried to call to her now but the sound would not carry. He tried to stand but his legs would not answer.
He tried, very briefly, to remember the point of it all; the lesson, the meaning, the part he had been meant to play, but the words turned into rain and smoke.
His eyes closed. The guns kept on, shuddering the earth, but he heard nothing now.
In the darkness behind his eyelids, he chased her around and around the fountain, never catching, never tiring, always falling, always in love.
***
In a room scarcely larger than a cupboard, a man sat at a battered desk and translated the dead into paper. The typewriter made a wet, spattering sound with every stroke.
The formula was simple. ‘Regret to inform you’, ‘killed in action’, ‘deepest sympathy’ followed by a name. Some letters he mis-struck, but these he left. Who would notice, amid so many.
To his left, a basket of empty forms waited. To his right, a stack of completed forms rose steadily. When the pile of completed forms reached an inch, a boy from the next room carried them away, and the cycle began again.
***
Across the Channel, a postman rode up the yew-lined drive at Avebury Park and delivered a letter into the care of a footman, who delivered it to a butler, who delivered it to master of the house, seated over his correspondence in the study.
The man was tall with the face of a hereditary statesman: straight nose, thin mouth, watery blue eyes. His fingers bore the stain of tobacco and ink.
He unfolded the letter and read it once.
There was no reaction at first. No gasp, no tightening of the jaw. Only the briefest closing of the eyes before they opened again and moved to a photograph in a silver frame on the desk.
His son in uniform beside Diana Talbot, luminous beneath her veil. Married only two months earlier, in the chapel at Shrevesbury, three miles distant.
At length, the butler cleared his throat softly.
“Will you require the motor, sir?”
“Yes. Tell James to bring it round.”
The letter disappeared into his breast pocket. The grandfather clock in the hall continued its steady ticking.
***
The motorcar crossed the countryside, past hedgerows and fields, beneath a low, clouded sky. In the rear, the passenger gripped the window-strap, his gaze unmoving from the horizon.
It motored down avenues of lime and beech to Shrevesbury, past the great pond, its surface interrupted by the ancient fountain, then came to a halt on a sweep of raked gravel before the house.
The passenger mounted the portico steps slowly and was shown inside at once. Diana’s father waited in the study. They shook hands without warmth.
“I understand there's been no mistake,” Diana’s father said quietly.
“None. The line was shelled. We only heard of it when the post arrived this morning.”
He did not say it, but both understood the purpose of the meeting was not hope. They spoke in the measured code of their kind, as though restraint might lessen the fact.
***
Outside, Diana wandered beneath the avenue of trees, her hand trailing absently through the tall grass. A great dane moved beside her with solemn dignity.
War had altered time. Since the wedding, the days had ceased to form properly in her mind and blurred into one long suspended season of waiting.
Diana paused at the fountain pond and sat on the stone edge while the dog settled heavily at her feet. She stroked his head, absently, and watched as a kingfisher hovered and dove.
Then she heard the motorcar.
She looked up, squinting. The vehicle, with its familiar livery, had stopped on the gravel at the far end of the drive.
The dog rose first. Diana followed. She crossed the lawn quickly, an uneasy questioning already beginning before she reached the house.
The dog ran inside first, as if eager to announce her arrival, its paws padding a damp rhythm across the black and white marble floor.
Inside the entry hall, voices carried from the study. Diana moved silently toward the half-open door.
Firelight trembled across the room. Her father stood beside the mantel. Opposite him was her father-in-law, holding a letter in one hand.
She did not enter. She did not need to. The moment she saw the letter she understood. The world contracted to a single, finite point, and then, very quickly, shattered.
“Please, no,” she said. Barely louder than a breath.
Her father stepped toward her.
“Diana...”
“No.” Louder this time. Sharper.
Diana backed away, shaking her head violently.
"No! No!"
She turned and fled.
She crossed the gravel blindly, the dog barking as it bounded after her. The lawn blurred beneath her feet.
She reached the pond and plunged into the water without slowing. Cold surged around her legs, her waist. The hem of her skirt ballooned around her.
She stumbled and fell, the water closing over her head for a brief, exquisite second, before she came to her knees. Her hands fisted in the mud, her hair fell in wet strands across her face.
She tried to gather herself but all she could do was sob. It came out in jagged gasps, each sharper than the last, until she could no longer distinguish between pain or breath.
The only witness to her undoing was the ancient, indifferent fountain.
Time stretched.
The violence of grief exhausted itself.
Gradually, the gasps gave way to long measured breaths. Diana lay on her back in the pond, her dark hair fanning around her in the water lilies.
She lifted a hand, wiped her cheek and waited for a new wave of tears. There were none. Her capacity for weeping had been spent.
For a long time she remained there, watching as the clouds rearranged themselves into shapes, none of which resembled the future she had imagined.
The dog stood at the water’s edge, watching her with the anxious devotion peculiar to his breed. Once he barked a sharp rebuke but she paid no mind.
She tried to remember if she had ever been this cold, or this empty.
Once, as a child, she had fallen through the ice at the far end of the pond. Her nurse told her she’d been blue as a fish by the time they pulled her out.
She had no memory of it. Perhaps, in time, she would have no memory of this either.
At last she pushed herself upright. The wet wool of her skirt clung to her calves as she waded to shore. Water streamed from her as she crossed the lawn toward the house.
Inside, the entry hall stood empty. She left damp footprints across the marble floor.
Her father called after her once.
She didn't answer.
At the foot of the great staircase stood her younger brother, Simon, a boy of fourteen. He looked at her sodden dress, her dripping hair, the blue tinge of her lips, and said nothing.
Without pausing, Diana climbed the stairs.
Water fell steadily from her clothes onto the marble steps.
Drip, drip, drip.
Simon watched her until she vanished from sight.
