The planes were coming closer still—they were strafing the road, or else going after the train station at Beveren. She knew in excruciating detail what shrapnel did to bodies. “Merde,” said Fouquet. Laura braced herself, the muscles in her stomach cramping, as they barreled into the dark. The road before them wavered like water in the light of the headlamps.
But there was someone in the current. A shadow, a blur. For an instant, Laura could have sworn she saw a housecoat, and eyes black with blood. “Someone on the road!” she shouted, before she could think, and Fouquet swore and slammed on the brakes. The lorry slewed sideways and halted just as the bomb came down with an annihilating roar, in the road where they would have been. Dirt rained on the lorry, and the windscreen cracked. Everyone’s ears were ringing.
Laura recovered first. “Enough of this. Get out, get underneath! Take cover.”
Fouquet was already moving. They pitched out of the lorry. Laura’s leg didn’t hold her. Pim half-fell on top of her, and then they were crawling underneath just as another explosion obliterated the world in a wave of sound and spattering earth.
· · ·
Was she hurt? Laura didn’t know. You didn’t feel it at first, if it was bad. There was rain in her eyes. Her head was ringing. The aeroplanes had moved off.
She remembered the figure in the road, just before the shell came down, looked in that direction. There was nothing but a crater now. She blinked her eyes free of grit, crawling clear of the lorry. “Pim?” she called. Fear and incipient pneumonia gripped her lungs.
After a small, horrible pause, Pim’s voice answered. “I’m here.” Her skirt was soaked and filthy, her face absolutely colorless.
“Are you all right?” Laura asked. “Mary? Fouquet?” She couldn’t hear or see anyone but themselves, and wasn’t that strange? She knew the night teemed with people, with men, witharmies. But it felt as if she and Pim were standing alone at the edge of the world. Perhaps it was shock.
“I’m all right.” Pim squinted, trying to make out Laura’s face in the darkness. “Except my ears are ringing. You?”
Laura felt a knifing pain when she breathed. She wasn’t all right, but she’d do for the moment. “Mary?”
“Still alive,” said Mary, her voice jagged with adrenaline as she emerged out of the wet darkness. “But the lorry’s never moving again.”
Laura could just make out the engine smoking against a patch of lighter sky. “Where’s Fouquet?” But then her eye fell on him, huddled in the shadow of the smashed lorry, only half underneath. Dead indeed, with a blown-off piece of the engine halfway through his body.
Pim made a little sound, her knuckles against her mouth. Laura, limping, went across, checked his pulse for form’s sake, and covered his face with his hat. Mary was looking from the road to the wreck to the eastern sky. Pim was standing shocked, her face a mess of mud and tears.
“We must walk,” Mary said. “It’s too cold to stand. Not too farto Couthove now. We’ll send men back for Fouquet’s body. Let’s get on, Iven. Shaw, pull yourself together.”
Laura coughed, shallow with pain.
“Mary, Laura won’t make it; she’s sick.”
“Where do you suggest, then—” began Mary, when Laura brokein.
“What’s that?”
Pim and Mary turned. Far across the field, a gleam, quickly gone. Something like a light in a window. Laura squinted. Thought she saw, if she concentrated, a deeper darkness against the sky. The vague shape of a building. A farmhouse, maybe? It had begun to rain again, the soft remorseless spring rain of Flanders. Laura could already feel it soaking through the seams of her clothes. “We could ask for shelter until morning,” said Laura, eyes on that distant light.
The road was still empty, and silent.Where is everyone? This is a war zone. Pim should have six men at least vying to carry her, literally, to safety.But there was no one. Just the three of them and the dead man lying alone.
Mary looked torn. She gazed eastward again, toward Couthove. Then she glanced at Laura, seemed to give herself a mental shake. “No point in us all getting pneumonia.” They set out stumbling across the wet fields, toward that elusive light. It was cold, the mud was sticky. Laura’s limp worsened.
“There,” said Mary. Laura forced herself to look beyond Mary’s straight back, blinking ice from her eyelashes. Her heart sank. She could make out the jagged line of a roof, nothing more. Had they come upon a ruin? Flanders was covered with ruins. A gleam from the changeable sky showed gold lettering on the front of the building—Hôtel du Roi,it said.A ruined hotel,Laura thought. Just like a hundred others. Abandoned in the early days of the war.
“Well,” Mary said grimly, “hopefully we can find a corner that’s out of the wet, at least. Or if not, we’ll leave you, Iven, and go for help.”
Laura made no reply. They struck a chipped cobbled drive, silvered by the rain and glancing moonlight, murder on Laura’s leg.And then, they came to a door. “Won’t it be locked?” said Pim between chattering teeth.
Without a word, Mary turned her shoulder and pushed.
Laura was expecting damp chill and the smell of mold. Instead she felt a rush of warmth. Thought it was a by-product of her fever. Realized it wasn’t. “Oh, lord,” said Pim. They’d walked out of the rain into warmth. Into not a ruin, but a foyer.
The room—no, a bar, smelling of wine—was lit entirely with firelight. At first glance, all Laura saw was gilt: on cornices and chandeliers, glimmering in the low light. Then she saw the men. Soldiers in drab and khaki and blue. They were sitting around tables, their heads close together, faces softened with the firelight, drinking. Not a single head had turned at their entrance. Everyone was watching a man standing at the far end of the room.
This man wore a shabby civilian suit. He’d a sharp jaw, arching bones. Bow-curves of dissipation gouged lines round his mouth. He was playing a violin, flawlessly. Silky, grave, strangely familiar, the music poured like water from between his fingers and seemed to banish everything outside itself. Even the rustle of Laura’s strained breathing was lost as the room filled like a cup with melody.
Laura, Pim, and Mary stood transfixed. When the last notes died away, there was nothing in the room for three heartbeats but stunned silence. Then a roar of acclamation. The player bowed. Sweat stood out on his face. “Please. I hope you enjoy yourselves tonight. Drinks, anyone?”
