Laura, Pim, and Mary landedin Calais, and spent the night in a hotel. They were tired with that unwholesome travel weariness that comes of sitting still for long periods while some conveyance heaves you into the unknown. Laura had a headache, steady and vicious, right between the eyes. Her face felt hot. Munsterhadbeen contagious. She drank whiskey and water, tried not to smoke, and prayed it would pass.
The streets of Calais were packed with soldiers on leave: faded blue uniforms for the French, khaki and drab for the rest. The French army was older than it had been. Most of the young men were dead; their fathers had been conscripted to take their places. Pim and Laura shared a hotel room, with Mary across the hall, in solitary state. Laura drank broth, refused supper, went to bed, and was lying still when Pim came up and felt her forehead.
“You look awful.” Pim’s fingers were cool and pleasant.
“It’s my clever scheme.” She did not take the cloth off her eyes.“I am going to terrify the Germans into retreat. Give me another day of this headache, and I’ll sweep them away with a glare.”
“I brought you a headache powder.”
“Thank God,” said Laura in a more human voice, lifting the cloth from her eyes. “Mary doesn’t have time for poor mortals’ headaches.”
“You must be all right if you can talk like that,” Pim observed, helping Laura sit up. She was mixing the powder into a glass of water.
Laura recalled herself and said, “Go away. Other side of the room with you, madam. I was in earnest that it may be catching.”
Pim tucked the blanket up round Laura’s shoulders, put the glass by her bed, and retreated. “You’ve a wretched color. That’s a nasty flu.”
“A very nasty flu. Just ask poor old Munster. But he had pneumonia in the bargain, and I don’t. I just feel vile; I’ll be all right tomorrow.” She gulped the headache powder and said, “Bless you.”
Pim said, after a small silence and in a different voice, “How are you—how are you going to look for Freddie? How do you even start? Whom do you ask?”
Laura said, “I’m not looking for him. I just want to know whathappenedto him. There’s a difference. Whatever—whatever mistake they made, in how they reported his death, heisdead.” When Pim was silent, Laura said, “You must accept the same for Jimmy, Pim. If you don’t, you’ll see him in every face. He wouldn’t want that for you.”
“I already do,” said Pim. Her face was in profile, her eyes on the darkling window.
Laura pulled the scratchy woolen covers up to her shoulders. “You mustn’t blame yourself.”
“I was proud of him.” Laura couldn’t see Pim’s face anymore. “Nate was dead. Jimmy was all I had. He looked such a man, in his uniform, and I was so proud of him.”
Laura said nothing. In Laura’s mind, Penelope and Jimmy Shaw belonged to that old world, the fairy-tale Calais, with its color, and glossy mustaches and heroism bright as banners. Now Pim was lost, alone in the wrong world.
Laura said, after a pause, “You are still proud of him, I hope.”
“Yes,” said Pim. “Always. But does it matter?”
Laura didn’t think it did. Pim’s love and her pride were like the Angels of Mons. Like the wild men. Even if they existed, they hadn’t changed anything. They belonged to the old world too.
· · ·
A troop train would take them east to Dunkirk, and a lorry would pick them up there, for the last kilometers to Couthove. Their train car the next day was crammed with soldiers, sitting on the floor or straw or empty ammunition crates, playing cards. Laura kept to herself. Her headache was worse, and all her bones ached. Mary eyed her. “I ought to have left you behind.”
“You couldn’t,” said Laura. “You wouldn’t leave anything that might do your precious hospital some good. I’ll be all right.”
The soldiers stared avidly at Pim, and Laura found herself glaring them off, red-eyed, as though she were a chaperone at the most absurd of balls.
Finally someone unearthed a pocket tome of Tennyson, of all things. It found its way to Pim, who, after a small hesitation, began reading. The soldiers in the car around them fell adoringly silent to listen.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
Laura listened in a haze of fever. She could almost convince herself that the poem was real and everything else illusion. Why should a tower, a tapestry, a fairy woman, and a magic mirror be made up when the thing crouching in the east, jaws wide, was real? A rumble was growing in the distance. At first, it could have been mistaken for thunder. But it went on and on.
Pim stopped reading and turned to Laura. “Is that—?”
