Free The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison Page A

in his way. I feel his presence with me here, cheering me on, bringing me luck.
    Stay away as long as you can—
    Your loving brother,
    Edward
    The letter felt oddly rhetorical to Thomas. The writing was neat, the paper unsmirched. Was it really so bad? Thomas forgot the fights he had known through his childhood with Edward, and felt sucked into the abysmal world of the trenches. He could sense the stinking mud which was so often described, the infernal soup of earth through which the soldiers waded, while he, Thomas, ate buttered muffins over a stoked fire at Eton.
    Edward survived as the men in his company fell. Through the long nights, he often recalled the sunlit lawns of his Yorkshire childhood. For too long now, he had left behind all that comfort and delight – first for the chilly dormitories of boarding school, and now, barracked with his men in trenches, with the stink of gangrene rising amongst them. The natural flickers of fellow feeling, of seeing how the limbs of working men were as good as his own, had made him doubt his inheritance. He would go back to his home a changed man – a better man, he told himself.
    But in 1917 he slipped into the infamous Flanders quagmire of Passchendaele. Running along slippery duckboards on a wet night, he was blown into a flooded dugout by ashell which shattered his right side.
    “at last a blighty,” he thought, “I’ll be home at Ashton for Christmas.” But he had not reckoned on his weakness, nor the depth of the mud, nor the distance to the duckboard. He hung onto a wooden rafter in the darkness and called for help, but the sky was loud with the clamour of shells.He tried to move forwards, but there was no firm ground beneath his feet. He thought of Bunyan’s Christian, in his Slough of Despond, and prayed for help. But there was no true faith in his prayers, only panic. The mire was too thick to swim through. With his good arm he clung to the wooden beam, but the mud was heavy, pulling on his boots, drawing him down.
    The sky was fitfully lit with the blazing flares of war. His shattered shoulder was throbbing with pain, and his too rapid breathing only sunk him further. The meteoric splendours of the battle sky echoed the involuntary flashes of light inside his own dimming mind.
    Images flickered through him, of his pale-faced sister, of the yellow wallpaper in his room at Ashton, of bare white legs on the rugby pitch at Eton. The aroma of his mother’s scent seeped through his breathing, and he felt the touch of her white embroidered handkerchief. He wished he had spent more time with women. If he could just keep afloat till dawn, somebody would surely find him and fish him out. Christmas at Ashton Park, breakfast with new-laid eggs and toast.
    After an hour, as freezing weariness and pain loosened his grip, he slipped downwards to darkness. He tasted the mud for a moment, thick, suffocating, before it flooded his lungs and he drowned.
    Nobody in his company knew where he was, but they were sure he had not deserted. He was missing, presumed dead. Too many had vanished into muddy oblivion, and would surface only later, as picked bones, when the summer skies dried up the unnatural quagmire.
    Ashton Park now lacked a second body to bury at home, and Miriam’s heart was broken. She clutched at consolations in the air around her, and began to speak to her dead sons through mediums.
    My dear Thomas,

How close we are to the spirit world, if we only learn how to listen and open our eyes! Last evening, with the help of Mrs Ostleton, I had a sighting of Edward. He was smiling. He looked as he did before going off to the war. He told us that William and he are together now, and happy, too. We need not despair. We are all together, now and for ever. Take courage, dear Thomas. I will tell you all about the vision properly when I see you soon. We must help your poor father, and Claudia, through this terrible time.
    Your loving Mama
    Thomas was at first shocked by his