“Oh,” said Pim, with flattering seriousness. “Is it very bad over there, sir?”
“Of course we’ll always protect you, Mrs. Shaw. But, well, you know, those rascally Bolsheviks—”
Laura applied herself to the soup course.
“—they weaseled Russia out of the war…”
Young had a good deal to say about the Bolsheviks. Now that Russia was out, Germany was going to reinforce their western front with all the men from the east. There were at least a million of them. But Mrs. Shaw was not to worry. Because a single Allied soldier was worth ten Germans.
Laura wasn’t so sanguine.
The soup was removed and roast chicken put down.
“Those Communists,” Young was saying, expansively. “Infected the populace with dreadful ideas. All people the same. That just means chaos. They won’t take orders, Communists. No discipline.”
Laura had a patient once, an Austrian prisoner, who’d fought on the Eastern Front.Lots of soldiers there,he’d said.Lots of Russians. But not enough of anything else. They send men out with one rifle among two, and tell the second man to pick it up after the first one’s killed…
Laura took more chicken.
“Why, even the French—” Young swallowed the rest. He’d spoken into one of those strange silences that occur even in the loudest of parties. Nearly the whole table had heard. Munster and Gage, and a handful of other officers, instantly fixed him with a hard eye.
Young flushed. “Our greatest allies,” he added feebly, and then asked Pim, “Do you like the chicken?”
Pim murmured something polite. Laura cut up her second helping. Recalled the rumors that had spread from billets to estaminets during the long, bloody days of the summer before:The French won’t go up. They won’t fight. They’re singing “The Internationale” in their dugouts. Say they won’t attack, say they’re tired of dying. Calling for the working class to rise.
Mutiny—that was the word, the rumor, that people had hardly dared to whisper. If Germany had known, that would have been it. They’d have broken the line.
Laura kept on doggedly chewing. A million Germans coming, the French wavering, and the Americans only beginning to trickle onto the battlefield. If they lost, all the stationary architecture of theback area would be crushed under advancing feet, and she’d never find out what happened to Freddie, would spend her whole life wondering…
A well-bred girl in evening clothes, who volunteered at London hospitals, was trying to revive the flagging conversation. She turned to Laura. “My patients tell me such funny things. Ghost stories and folktales, so interesting. Perhaps you’ve heard some good stories yourself, Miss Iven? One man said he’d seen his captain, who’d passed away years ago, tipping his hat to him through a window. Another said he met a man selling wine who’d grant you wishes. And another told me about the wild men. Have you heard of the wild men?”
“An invention of the newspapers, Annie,” Munster put in repressively. A certain family resemblance there. Niece? Granddaughter? Munster mopped his face. Laura noted that his color was worse, thought perhaps she ought to tell his wife to call a doctor after supper.
“Oh?” said the girl innocently. “Because a patient of mine told mehe’dcertainly seen them. He was on a salvage party near Fresnes, and he said all the men were afraid to leave their camp at night, for fear of the screams and the rifle shots coming from No Man’s Land. It was the wild men making the noise, he said. Frenchmen, Germans, Italians—all soldiers who had deserted—they lived together and they’d come out at night to scrounge food and fight for entertainment. Once, my patient said, he and his mates even put out a trap for the wild men—some food and whiskey in a basket. No one touched it, but the next morning they found a note inside that said, ‘Nothing doing!’ ”
Annie laughed innocently. A few of the Americans joined her. Pim had tilted her head toward the exchange. Laura sighed internally. A much-cherished fantasy, that there was a brotherhood of free men waiting for those who deserted. But she could see Gage starting to fume, so she said, “Once I had a patient come in who’d gone over the top ten days before. He was only just getting his wound seen to, he said, because he’d spent a week in a shell hole,drinking rainwater and calling for help.He said it as though it was quite ordinary, too. There’s your voices from No Man’s Land. Soldiers who can’t get back.” Her mind presented her with an image of her brother, trapped in a shell hole. She shook it away.
The girl looked chagrined.
Munster broke in, raising his glass. “Shall we have a toast, then? To the end of the war. To the kaiser’s ruin. To the army, gentlemen.”
There were murmurs of affirmation, and everyone drank. A babble of fresh conversation broke out. But Laura set her glass down abruptly. The color had receded from Munster’s face. Laura was on her feet and moving just as he slumped over sideways in his chair.
“He’s taken ill,” she said, to a volley of questions, the back of her hand on his forehead, the other finding the pulse in his thick neck. “Very ill.” The skin of his cheek and throat was hot enough to scorch. He ought to have been upstairs in bed.Not sitting at a table with you lot, drinking. And whatever he has, it’s probably catching.
Laura listened to the patient, didn’t like what she heard. At least she had experience with fluid in lungs. Phosgene casualties generally came to her half-drowning. “Get him to a sofa. Prop him up. Here, help me,” she said to the men hovering. “He cannot get his breath if he’s bent over.” Laura wrenched open the buttons on his collar. “Someone fetch a doctor.”
Munster was taken off to a quiet sofa and propped up. Brandy and water revived him a little. Laura didn’t like his high fever, though. It had come on so quickly.
“What is this?” said the doctor, when he came. “This man should be lying down.”
“He’s got fluid in his lungs,” said Laura.
“Don’t lecture me on my own profession, miss,” said the doctor, bending toward the patient. “I’ll see to him now.”
Laura opened her mouth, saw Mary in the doorway, closed it again, and crossed the room to her. She was tired. “Where’s Pim?” Laura wanted to go back to the hotel and get off her leg.
“Gage got hold of her in the confusion. Took her off to the library.” Mary was nursing a glass of port.
