The Return of the Soldier recap

During the First World War, officer Chris Baldry returns to his country estate with amnesia that has erased the previous fifteen years. He does not recognize his elegant wife Kitty or remember their dead child; emotionally he remains the young man who loved Margaret Allington on Monkey Island. Margaret, now the careworn Mrs. Grey, comes to him despite the class contempt of Kitty and Chris's cousin Jenny. Their reunion restores Chris's happiness and gradually forces Jenny to see the depth of their bond. A doctor argues that Chris's mind is hiding from a painful truth. Margaret identifies that truth when she learns of the death of Chris and Kitty's son Oliver. She brings reminders of the child, knowingly ending Chris's refuge. His full memory returns, along with grief, marriage, social responsibility, and fitness for war. Margaret leaves, Kitty regains the recognizable husband she wanted, and Jenny sees that being cured may be a harsher fate than remaining forgetful.

At Baldry Court during the First World War, Chris Baldry's wife Kitty and cousin Jenny wait for news from the front. A plainly dressed stranger, Margaret Grey, arrives with a startling message: Chris has been sent home suffering from memory loss and has contacted her. Margaret explains that she and Chris loved each other fifteen years earlier, before his marriage, when she was Margaret Allington. Kitty and Jenny initially treat her as an intruder and doubt her story, partly because of her lower social position. Details only Chris could have supplied establish that the message is genuine. When Chris returns, he does not recognize Kitty as his wife or accept the adult life surrounding him. He believes himself still young and asks for Margaret, whose past relationship is the last emotional reality he remembers.

Margaret comes to Baldry Court and Chris recognizes her immediately. Their meeting revives the emotional world of their youth on Monkey Island, while Kitty's beauty and the carefully arranged estate mean little to him. Jenny watches with discomfort but also begins to perceive that their attachment is neither a trick nor a crude betrayal. Chris's amnesia has removed the years in which Margaret married William Grey, Chris inherited his responsibilities, and he married Kitty. In the protected present created by his condition, Chris and Margaret can briefly recover the happiness their separation ended. Kitty suffers from being treated as a stranger, and the household's effort to restore normality increasingly conflicts with what seems to make Chris peaceful.

Dr. Anderson examines Chris and proposes that the missing years are not random: Chris's mind has retreated from some fact it cannot bear. A cure will require uncovering that emotional obstruction and confronting him with it. Jenny's sympathy shifts toward Margaret as she sees the patience and generosity with which Margaret cares for Chris. The women consider objects and memories that might connect him to his adult life, but ordinary reminders of the estate and his marriage do not reach the source of the loss. Margaret's presence continues to sustain him, even as everyone understands that her success in helping to cure him will erase the renewed relationship that matters most to them both.

Margaret asks about Chris and Kitty's child and learns that their son Oliver died. She recognizes the child's death as the grief from which Chris's mind has escaped. Bringing reminders associated with Oliver, Margaret goes out to Chris alone, choosing his recovery over the happiness his amnesia has returned to her. Jenny and Kitty watch from the house as his posture changes and the burden of his adult identity returns. Margaret says that he is cured. Chris now remembers Kitty, his dead son, the lost years, and his obligations as an officer; recovery makes him eligible to return to the war. Margaret departs, and Kitty regains her husband in the socially recognizable sense, but Jenny understands that the restored reality is filled with grief and danger. Chris's retreat into youth ends, and the people who demanded his cure must accept what consciousness costs him.

Dr. Anderson concludes that Chris's amnesia shelters him from an intolerable memory and that a sufficiently powerful reminder may restore him. Margaret recognizes the missing wound when she asks about Chris and Kitty's child and learns that Oliver died. She returns with objects associated with the boy and goes alone to Chris, accepting that curing him will end their recovered happiness and return him to Kitty, social duty, bereavement, and war. From the house, Jenny and Kitty watch Chris's bearing change as memory returns. Margaret confirms that he is cured and then leaves the life to which she briefly seemed central. Kitty welcomes the restoration of the husband she knows, while Jenny understands its cruelty: Chris has regained knowledge of his dead son and adult obligations and will once again be fit to return to military service. The cure restores social reality at the cost of the refuge his mind created.