Chapter One

During the first months of the Great War, Reginald loved to run to the edge of the white cliffs of Dover and lie panting on the grass, staring out over the English Channel. He loved listening to the rumble of guns and the flashes of light from France, where there were always ashen clouds, even on sunny days. His father Quentin lived in those clouds, and Reginald truly believed he was a species of thunder-god, who strode miles at a step and bit down on white lightning with tobacco teeth.

Reginald did not really remember his father being home, home in the way his mother was, sitting and knitting and sighing and, from time to time, wandering with the other mothers, from house to house, with tears in their eyes and handkerchiefs to their faces.

Home was a large, rambling house, a very English house, which was cold in the endless rain and spacious and creaky and covered with doilies crocheted by dead grandmothers and walled by pictures of chilly men who never smiled, not from any angle. The cabinets were glassy, glossy, containing plates and cups that were never used. It was a very quiet house. There were servants, but they were all very old, or women. It was a world without men.

Reginald hated spending time alone, and so spent a lot of time with his friends. Mostly they fought elaborate wars with sticks and old tennis balls. They aimed and boomed from the corners of their mouths, fell in heaps, dragged each other to safety, healed with a touch and argued over wounds and accuracy. They strove mightily to send their small braveries over the Channel to shore up the resolves of their fathers.

When his father left, Reginald was the ‘man of the house,’ and he did press-ups and tried to run without panting, half-expecting to receive a tiny gun and a little helmet and to be sent to France to run with the feet of the giant soldiers...