And in my dream that was how the century came to a close.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY, with Max lying next to me on the sofa, I opened the ancient envelope.
September 16, 1918
Dearest Janet,
Thank you for the letter. I’m glad everything’s all right at home and Robert’s doing well. Please give my regards to your parents when you next see them. It was good of you to go and see Bobby.
We’re back near where we started three and a half years ago. There’s been a few changes. Most of the men I joined up with are dead now or have gone home with their wounds. There’s a lot of new lads come recently, conscripts mostly. They’re younger than me, and I don’t feel I have a lot to say to them. It’s difficult to explain to them the things we’ve seen.
They’ve offered me promotion again to sergeant, but I’ve told them not to bother. I don’t believe in what we’re doing any more. When I joined up we thought we’d come and get the job done quickly and the Germans would get a bloody nose and not make a nuisance of themselves any more. We knew by then it wouldn’t be a few weeks, but we did think it would be over in a year.
The trouble is I don’t think our commanders had thought about it. I probably shouldn’t say this in a letter, but there it is, it’s the truth. It’s what happens when you have machine guns all along the line. You can’t make any real advance because you get shot down. So you dig in. All along the front for more than 400 miles. And then you can’t just sit there, I suppose. So they order an attack, even though they know it can’t succeed.
Last year there were mutinies. Some of the French boys said they’d stay put in defense but they’d not attack because it was a waste of life. But when the Yanks came and then we got the tanks, we were promised it would end soon.
We’ve had a week in rest, then a week in reserve, and tonight we’re going up the line again.
I’m tired. I don’t think I’ve got it in me to give it one last go. I wouldn’t mind if I was shot now, clean through the head. But it’s the bombardment that comes first. It’s your own guns that are worse than theirs. “Softening up” they call it, and we’re meant to be grateful the longer it goes on because that means the enemy defenses have been smashed. But you can’t tell that to men who were at the Somme. Do you remember? I told you. We pounded them for seven days and when we got to their line the wire hadn’t been touched.
I shouldn’t go on, but I want you to know I think I’ve come to the end.
The world I was brought up in has all gone now. Not just my childhood, but when we were first married and the way we thought things would turn out. If we worked hard and were lucky with not falling sick it was going to be all right. There was work and church and money and family and being decent to other people. I wasn’t a fool, I knew there was evil in the world and there were wars. But not like this, not whole populations standing up to be slaughtered.
I understood it once, Janet. I knew the difference between right and wrong. Now I don’t know anything. The things I thought were sacred turn out to be dust. Men can do anything now. It’s not a world I know, it’s not a world I want to be part of.
Believe me, I’m sorry to be so downhearted, just when we may be getting near the end. But we’ve heard that before. The problem is I can’t sleep any more, my nerves are a mess, and the least thing seems to set me off. A new boy came into the billet last night and started singing, and they had to pull me off him. I don’t know why it just made me see red, this lad singing songs when he didn’t know what he was on about. I have this bad taste of metal in my mouth all the time, and the dreams I have, if ever I can get some sleep, they wake me up again.
Last night the officer gave me rum and said it might help. But there’s no MO anywhere near and I need some strong dope to get me through this. I stole some more rum from the store this morning, I’m half-cut most of the time. I traded some cigarettes for the rum ration with a couple of teetotalers from up north, but it’s not enough.
The thing is, the world doesn’t seem real to me any more. I don’t believe the trees are solid or that objects will keep still. The air and earth’s alive as much as the rats and the foxes and the men. Why not? We men have lost our place.
I want to tell you that you were a lovely wife, sweet and loving, more than I deserved, and if I don’t get back I hope you’ll make a life for yourself and the boy. Don’t think too much of me. If you meet another fellow, well and good. You’ll need a bit of help, so don’t mind me.
I’ve written a letter to the boy as well. I know he can’t read it yet, but you can give it to him when you think he’s old enough.
From your loving husband,
Thomas
Attached to this letter by a pin was a second one, neatly folded, never read. Some of the ink had been smudged by what may have been rain drops.
September 14, 1918
Dear Robert,
I don’t know how old you’ll be when you read this, if it gets to you at all. You won’t remember me. You’re only just two years old now, and I’m afraid that’s too young. But I want you to know that I remember you all right.
We were very happy when we found out your mother was expecting. It was a bit of a surprise because I’d only been home on leave for a week, but we took it as a blessing. You were born in June, and I had a photograph, which was sent from home. You looked like most other babies, to be honest, but I told myself you were better than the rest and put the picture in my pay book, where it stayed, even on the day when we attacked on the Somme. I won’t tell you about that, but I think you were my lucky charm. Of the 800 men in our battalion who went over in the morning, only 145 answered their name at roll call that night.
I was home for a few days in the spring last year and you were a fine little chap, with your mother’s eyes. All the women said, “He’ll be a heartbreaker that one,” but they say that about all the babies, just to be polite. I took you for a long walk with me down by the canal, carrying you. I pointed out to you all the trees and flowers and told you all their names, not that I’m any expert—cutting and stitching’s more my line but I thought I should try. I saw a fish and I pointed at it. But you wouldn’t follow where my finger was pointing; you just kept looking at the finger.
Your mother kept writing and telling me how you were making progress. She was proud of you. Next time I saw you must have been last Christmas, when you were eighteen months old and what a change. You could talk, not just the odd word but whole sentences. “The little professor” is what our neighbor, Mrs. Bridger, called you. You sat up in the wooden high chair I’d made the last time with some bits of timber I’d got from the outbuildings. You talked away and asked me about being a soldier. I told you it wasn’t like they said in the books, but I didn’t want to let on too much. When you were telling me things you pushed your hand up and down in the air as if you were weighing something up.
Babies can’t normally talk like that. It was for us like listening to an explorer who’d gone to a better place that no one else had been and come back with a report. We hung on every word.
When you’d been asleep and we knew you were waking up, we’d stand together peering down. You used to pull yourself up, a bit tousled and red in the face, and look around the room, as if you were trying to remember where you were. Then you’d say something and we’d be off again.
I’ll never see you again and I ought to try to give you some advice for the future. But the truth is I don’t understand anything any more. This is not the world I thought it was going to be. You’ll have to make your own way in the mess we leave. Be kind to other people. Be good to your mother.
All I can really offer is a prayer for you. I pray that you’ll find peace of mind and happiness. And I beg you to forgive me. I loved you, and I meant no harm. Just like I carried the picture of you into battle, please carry me in your heart till in a better world than this one we may somehow meet again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SEBASTIAN FAULKS is th
e author of twelve previous novels. They include the U.K. number-one bestseller A Week in December; Human Traces; On Green Dolphin Street; Charlotte Gray, which was made into a film starring Cate Blanchett; and the classic Birdsong, which has sold more than three million copies and has been adapted for the stage, as a television series starring Eddie Redmayne, and is in development as a feature film. In 2008, Faulks was invited to write a James Bond novel, Devil May Care, to mark the centennial of Ian Fleming. With the approval of the Wodehouse estate, he wrote a new Jeeves and Bertie novel, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells. In between books he wrote and presented the four-part television series Faulks on Fiction for the BBC. He lives in London with his wife and their three children. You can sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY SEBASTIAN FAULKS
FICTION
The Girl at the Lion d’Or
A Fool’s Alphabet
Birdsong
Charlotte Gray
On Green Dolphin Street
Human Traces
Engleby
Devil May Care (writing as Ian Fleming)
A Week in December
A Possible Life
Jeeves and the Wedding Bells
NONFICTION
The Fatal Englishman
Pistache
Faulks on Fiction
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
About the Author
Also by Sebastian Faulks
Copyright
WHERE MY HEART USED TO BEAT. Copyright © 2016 by Sebastian Faulks. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.henryholt.com
Cover photograph © Mark Bauer / Trevillion Images
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Faulks, Sebastian.
Where my heart used to beat: a novel / Sebastian Faulks. — First U.S. edition.
pages; cm
ISBN 978-0-8050-9732-0 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-8050-9733-7 (electronic book)
I. Title.
PR6056.A89W48 2016
823'.914—dc23
2015023832
e-ISBN 9780805097337
First U.S. Edition: January 2016
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Where My Heart Used to Beat Page 32
