“Do we need to mount a rescue?”
“No,” said Mary. “I know Pim looks terribly unworldly—and is, in a lot of ways—but she’s had men at her since she was a girl—it’s that hair.” Mary’s tone was affectionate. “Anyway, she can handle Gage.”
“Five minutes,” said Laura, eyes on the door to the library, “and then we’re mounting that rescue and leaving. And try not to breathe my air for a day or two. Munster was sick.”
“Iven, did you really need to—” Laura didn’t hear the rest of the question. Pim had reentered on Gage’s arm, and for an instant, standing in the lamplight from the hall, Pim’s face looked blank. Shocked.
Laura hurried across the room. Young was already there, quite drunk, paying Pim compliments, bowing over her hand. Gage did likewise, smiling with immense Irish charm, a particular tenderness. Pim smiled at them both, unruffled. Laura must have imagined the distress. Perhaps it was a trick of the uncertain light.
· · ·
Laura couldn’t sleep that night. She lay awake and imagined herself staying in London after all, perhaps as a nurse to a private family. A new life, one less troubled by memory. She recalled when Lucy Jeffries had been pulled out of one of the casualty clearing stations to tend to the king of England, after he’d sprained his back reviewing the troops. Lucy had spent six months in an English country house, eating her head off at royal expense, and got a medal at the end of it. Laura could do something like that. A country manor. Perhaps an older gentleman, an incurable hypochondriac. Yet the black current still had her, as much as it had in Halifax. Her face was turned eastward.
Pim was awake too; Laura could hear the whisper of her plaited hair as she turned her head on the pillow. “What do you think of the general?” Laura asked. “He hauled you off to the library so suddenly.” Pim hadn’t said a word about her interlude with Gage.
Pim’s answer was mild. “Oh, he was very charming. He’s been inHalifax once, you know. Had an excellent dinner there, he said. Fried cod.”
“He called you to the library to talk of Halifax? Pim—was he importunate?”
“Gage?” Pim sounded embarrassed. “Oh, no, of course not, Laura. A perfect gentleman. Where did you meet Lieutenant Young?”
Laura let Pim change the subject. “At a party, I suppose. We had a surprising number. In aerodromes and divisional headquarters and cafés. Quite desperate affairs, some of them. But he’s famous for the asparagus.”
“Asparagus?”
Laura laughed a little. “His unit was ordered up the line while he was on leave. In ’15, it was. He was shopping at a greenmarket in Oise and missed their departure. Came back to billets and found his unit gone. The whole crew. Didn’t faze him, though. He took his servant and his basket of cress and asparagus, ordered a taxi, and set off for the Front.”
Pim said, “Goodness. And then?”
“Are you all right?” Laura asked.
“I— Yes, of course. Too much cream in the soup. Do go on.”
Laura craned her neck to look across the room. But she couldn’t make out Pim’s face in the darkness. She wished she hadn’t started the story. “Well, all this happened—bad luck—on the day Fritz first tried gas. At Ypres. Young was just driving up, tucked in his cab, properly civilized, when the gassed men started running back. Bit of a shock for him.”
The story had been funny when someone had first told it in the mess. The absurd contrast: men staggering toward the rear, faces turning blue, clawing at their own throats, while the taxi driver stared, and the white-gloved officer in back clutched his fresh vegetables. They could laugh at anything, in their hospital mess. Told in London, to Penelope Shaw, it seemed less funny.
BETWEEN PASSCHENDAELE RIDGE AND YPRES, FLANDERS, BELGIUM
November 1917
The night dragged on. Thebody floated below them, half-submerged. Freddie wanted to go down, pull him out, lay him on the ground at least. But the ground was steep and slick, and when he tried anyway, Winter dragged him back. “It won’t make a difference to him now.” Freddie almost hated Winter for that, even as he subsided against the slope of their shell hole. They couldn’t go anywhere. They couldn’t leave until the rain lifted or the sun rose and gave them the direction. And then they must wait for nightfall once more, to cover their movements.
A day with the dead man. Freddie swallowed around his aching throat.
The rain still fell in sweeping curtains, but with full day came a slackening of the shellfire. In the relative silence, Freddie heard voices from other shell holes. Babbling, pleading, cursing.It’s the dead,he thought first. Then he thought, No, it’s the wounded. Trapped by daylight.Freddie found himself grinding his palms into his ears.
“Iven?” said Winter.
Freddie looked up, realized that he’d been whispering to himself. Lines of strain bracketed Winter’s mouth, purple marks like bruising, framing worried eyes of that startling blue. Freddie could feel the heat of Winter’s gathering fever where their shoulders pressed together. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m all right. Are you?” Freddie found himself straining over the ambient noise to hear Winter breathe. Perhaps it was something that had been carved into his brain during that time in the pillbox, that Winter breathing meant that he, Freddie, was also alive.
“I’ll do,” said Winter, easing back.
Freddie tried to think what to do about Winter’s wound. Laura had lectured him about this, too, making him learn what to do for a wound going septic. Christ, he missed her. Hedidn’tknow what to do. There were no more clean bandages. There was nothing to do at all but survive until they got back to the land of the living.
“Tell me a poem,” Winter said. “Tell me one of yours.”
“I can’t remember,” said Freddie. “I can’t remember anything.”
