That got him another roar, as he put his violin in a cracked leather case. His amused gaze flickered over the crowd and paused at the three women, standing soaked and mystified by the door. For the briefest instant, he wore no expression at all. Then a smile lit his face. With a tilt of his head, he indicated an empty table and then went off in the direction of the bar. The room filled with murmuring talk, laughter, calls for more wine. Laura, Pim, and Mary drifted to the table, looking around in exhausted bemusement.
Illicit drinking was as old as armies; secret bars dotted the forbidden zone, although Laura had never heard of one so—grand. Surelyshe ought to have heard of this place? She’d never imagined anything like it. She wanted to be wary, but the air was too warm and too mellow with talk, the scent of good wine was too delightful. She felt like a storm-tossed boat that had slipped, unexpectedly, into harbor. “Christ, this is more like it,” said Mary.
Laura agreed silently. The music still echoed, somewhere, in the bones of her feverish face.
No one had called to them when they entered, and no one turned to look when they sat down. That was strange. Women were rare as hens’ teeth, and women who spoke English in constant demand. But the room was gripped with that easy, delightful kind of drunkenness that makes people idle and drowsy and contented. Perhaps that was what kept the men where they were, murmuring with their heads close together.
The musician crossed the room, paused to speak to another table, made a joke that set them all to laughing. Laura studied him. It was not an ugly face, although its bones were sharp under the skin, and he’d the mobile mouth of an actor. But his eyes were not the same color. One was dark, like a well dug deep. The other was green as peridot, and shone.
He caught her eye and came across. “Seldom do I have guests so lovely,” he said. Laura could not quite place his accent. “I’m called Faland. What brings you here tonight?”
“Accident,” said Mary. “A bomb fell on our road. Our lorry was disabled, and the driver killed. We should like something to eat, Monsieur. And a place for the night.”
A line, faint as thread, showed between Faland’s brows. “A fortunate coincidence.” Was there an odd note in his voice? “That led you straight to my door.” His strange gaze didn’t seem to look directly at you, but caught you sidelong, piercing. “Supper. Of course. Straightaway.” The eyes ghosted over Laura, returned. “Are you well, Mademoiselle?”
“Nothing a bite and a drink won’t fix,” said Laura. The musician was carrying glasses and a bottle. He smiled, laid out the glasses,and poured the wine. Laura had to sit on her hands so she wouldn’t seize it and drink it off like a savage.
Unexpectedly Pim said, “Monsieur Faland, why are all those men looking in that mirror?” Pim was staring across the room, at a dark mirror behind the bar. Several of the men were clustered around the glass, peering. Laura hoped there wasn’t a naked girl behind it; poor Pim would be shocked.
Faland’s eyes lit with unholy laughter, as though he’d caught her thought. But he answered Pim courteously. “Just a superstition, Madame. One of the attractions of my establishment.”
As Faland spoke, one of the men turned away from the tarnished mirror, the tracks of tears clear in the grime on his face. Laura frowned. Pim looked as she had before the Parkeys’ séance. Eager. Curious. “What superstition, Monsieur?”
“Why,” he replied, lightly, “that the mirror will show you your heart’s desire.” He bowed. “Enjoy your wine.”
“And supper,” called Mary, picking up her glass, as Faland slipped away.
“I would avoid that mirror, Pim,” said Laura. “It’s probably obscene.”
Pim said nothing. Mary lifted her glass and toasted Laura and Pim. They all drank. The wine was glorious. Like getting hit in the face by an ocean wave; it was a shock, then a pleasure, then a numbness. Laura’s headache receded.
One glass became two, and then Laura realized that she’d lost count. Dinner never appeared, but it didn’t seem to matter. Faland’s smile was delightful, his supple voice raised from every corner. Laura, head full of wine, thought vaguely,He doesn’t carry it the way the rest of us do. This place. These years. Why is that, I wonder?
A madman, perhaps.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she found Faland sitting beside her. She was startled. She hadn’t seen him cross the room. But he was there, rolling an empty glass between long fingers. “It’s Laura, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Laura. When had she told him her name?
“Do you like the wine?”
“Yes,” she said. She was so warm, the knife-edges of the world all blunted.
He refilled her glass deftly. “And you were wounded?”
He’d noticed, of course. How could he not? “I was.”
“Brave heart,” said Faland. “But surely you would stay home after that, in the arms of your family. Or are you so wild for adventure?”
“No,” she said. A hairline crack ran now through Laura’s enjoyment. There was something in his face, almost too subtle to notice. Malice? His sidelong stare seemed to see everything. The ghosts that Agatha Parkey swore she trailed: her mother, her father, her brother. The hope and long-denied despair that had dragged her back across the ocean. He seemed to see it all, to catalogue it, even to be laughing at it, in some secret place.
Didn’t he have patrons to serve? Pim was nowhere to be seen. Mary had put her head down and gone to sleep. Trying to turn the force of his gaze, Laura said, “Have you ever considered leaving Flanders? A man with your talent—” She fell silent, staring past Faland’s shoulder.
Standing in the middle of the room was the figure she’d seen in the road, the figure that had prompted her, half-instinctively, to cry out. It was the watcher from the gangplank in Halifax. The face from her dreams. Her mother with glass in her eyes, glass jutting from her body.
The glow of the wine vanished. Laura stumbled to her feet, backing away. She was wet, hungry, tired, ill.
Faland shook his head, as though he’d understood something that vexed him. Then Laura blinked and the figure was gone. She stood panting, swaying on her feet. Lightly, Faland said, “You could stay here awhile. It would do you good, I think. You could stop being afraid.”
