Morton picked up his phone from the bedside table and checked his emails. ‘Yes!’ he yelled, leaping from his bed. He could easily have opened theattachments on his phone but he wanted to be able to appreciate them fully andclearly, so he dashed up to his study and switched on his laptop.
Moments later, the email from Andrew Sageman was open in front of him. DearMorton, I have located the relevant bits and pieces from the millions of boxfiles and folders scattered around my house and have scanned them in highresolution—hopefully it won’t unduly clog up your inbox! Please let meknow if there are any problems. It would be good to meet up sometime, ifyou would like. Perhaps it’s time our two families became a bitcloser? I look forward to hearing from you. Regards, Andrew.
Morton looked at the screen, considering the email. He would dearly loveto meet up with Andrew and bring the two sides of the family together again,especially given that they were more closely related than anyone had previouslyrealised. He had decided that he needed to break the news about Charles’shaving taken Leonard Sageman’s identity face to face. It was too much ofa bombshell, which required too much evidence for an email. He wouldcontact him again and arrange a get-together. For now, though, he had theemail attachments to delve into. The first, Charles Farrier’s will,Morton skimmed through quickly, being as it was an exact copy of the one he hadalready downloaded. The next attachment was a photograph of Charles’s warmedals. The three medals, appearing to be bronze, silver and golddangling from their attached ribbons, were the standard three affectionatelyknown to veterans as Pip, Squeak and Wilfred. That Charles was issued the1914 Star rather than the 1914-15 Star was a nod towards his having been inservice as a part of the pre-war British army.
After clicking on the next attachment, Morton was taken aback. It was asmall and simple rust-coloured book with black type. Army Book64. Soldier’s pay book for use on active service. Thephotograph of the book had been taken on a white background and the book tiltedto show the sides of the yellowing pages within. Despite the long passageof time which had since elapsed, the book was unequivocally stained with driedblood. To whom did the blood belong? Morton wondered. Wasit Charlie’s, Leonard’s or someone else’s? He hoped that the finaldocument, the letter from Charles’s friend, Edward Partington, might shed somelight.
With a slight trepidation, although he couldn’t quite fathom why, Morton readthe handwritten letter to Nellie, with what the British military had taken tobe the official account of Charles Ernest Farrier’s last moments. January1915. Dear Mrs Farrier, I hope you do not find it misplaced that I writeyou a line about your husband and my friend, Charlie. He was such a goodman, soldier and companion that I felt I should write to explain, as fully as Ican, the circumstances surrounding his untimely death. On the 26thDecember, Charlie, Len and another chap, Stoneham, were sent out to check thewire perimeter. I was with him when he went over the top, one of the lastto see him alive. They had been out only a few minutes when sniper shotswere heard—two or possibly more. It is the sergeant’s thinking thatCharlie and Stoneham were mortally wounded. I’m dreadfully sorry to saythat a mortar was fired from the enemy trenches, landing close by to where themen fell, before we had a chance to recover the bodies. Len Sageman isstill missing. We are hopeful that he is alive, somehow having survivedthe attack. I hope that the knowledge that Charlie was well-liked andrespected among the Battalion and that he died honouring his country will bringsome ease to your suffering. Your friend, Edward Partington.
Morton sat back, havingread the account of Charles’s—or Leonard’s, as it had turned out to be—finalmoments. He wondered at the timing of the letter—January 1915—and whethershe had already made the discovery that her husband was in fact still alive, orwhether this letter from Edward Partington had added to her grief, with itslikely ineffective attempts at easing her pain.
Morton looked up to the wall above his desk, where he had placed a picture ofhis great grandfather in his First World War uniform. From the researchthat he had conducted into Charles Farrier, Morton believed that his motivesfor taking on his best friend’s identity had been motivated by money—an attemptto lift his family finally out of the poverty that had blighted it forgenerations in London. In doing that much, he had succeeded. And,unlike so many millions of men, he had returned home at the end of the war tohis wife and son.
Below the picture of Charles Farrier, was a hand-drawn Farrier familytree. Although he had wanted the neatness of a computer-generated GEDCOMfile, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to input all thepeculiarities of his odd family. His eyes fell upon his greatgrandfather, Charles Ernest Farrier, and his great grandmother, NellieEllingham, and he momentarily considered all that he had learned about them inthe last few days before moving down the tree to his grandfather, AlfredFarrier, and his grandmother, Anna. During his recent visit to Cornwall,his Aunty Margaret had told him that her mother, Anna, had been the daughter ofa long-standing family friend, Gustav Schmidt, whom Charles—posing as Len—hadgot to know during the war. From Alfred and Anna, a vertical linedescended and split to his adoptive father and Aunty Margaret. Finally,his eyes rested on his own name at the bottom of the tree.
‘My weird and wonderful family,’ he said with a smile, pencilling in the words JulietteMeade beside his.
HistoricalInformation
The movements and locations of theSecond Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment have been recorded as faithfully andaccurately as possible. The unit diaries used are exactly as written,with the exception of the final lines from 26th December 1914; to myknowledge no soldiers were sent out to check the wire that night, and none werekilled.
All characters in the book areentirely fictional, although approximate numbers of soldiers (on both sides)killed, injured and
