“Did he say how he came to have Freddie’s things?”
“He hardly talked at all, at first. His eyes were— He had that look they get after combat—looked straight through you. But I did my best for him, made a point of doing his dressings myself. He came through his fever eventually. Was it Christmas? After? We’d had the news from Halifax by then, so after. January perhaps. Up until then, he’d only spoken in his fever, and that only in German. One of the nurses had a little German, she said he must be some odd form of Protestant, he spoke so much of the devil.”
“Never mind that. What did he know? Where is he now?” There was something strange in her friend’s face. “What, Kate?”
Kate said, “He ran.”
One arm. Young said their spy…Oh, surely not.“Did they catch him?”
“No, they haven’t.”
“What did the German know about Freddie?”
Her friend hesitated. “I asked him about Freddie. Again and again. For a long time he wouldn’t answer. But finally one night, he told me that he and your brother had been trapped in an overturned pillbox, that they’d clawed their way out together. But your brother died in a shell hole, he said, and he took Freddie’s things away with him. And after that, the German said, he had been taken prisoner.”
Well, that explained it all. The arrival of the box, the mixed messages. Laura had built it up in her mind into some unknowable mystery and all along it was…She burst out, “Why in God’s name did you send me cryptic letters, then? Why not just tell me? I’d not have come if…” She shouldn’t have come. She had told herself she didn’t hope that Freddie was alive, so why did it hurt so much?
Kate said, “No, of course— I’d never…Laura, the German said something else.”
“What did he say?”
“It was late. I’m not sure he knew it was me. He’d had morphine. I was changing his dressing, he was still in a good deal of pain. He was speaking German, and the good lord knows I’ve picked up enough of it, nursing prisoners. The German said,He’s not dead.
“And I said,Who?”
“Iven,he said.I promised him.
“Promised him what?I asked.
“That I’d save him,he said.I promised.He didn’t say anything else. In the morning, I convinced myself it was all delirium. But—then—a few weeks later, once the German had more strength, he ran.”
“That’s all?” Laura saw the answer on her friend’s face. “You believed him, didn’t you? You believed that German. You think he lied the first time, when he said Freddie died in a shell hole.”
“It’s so hard to know what to believe sometimes,” said Kate. “Even when you see something with your own eyes, or hear it with your own ears, you think, well, I was mortally tired, or I’d had a few at dinner. A man once told me, in great earnest, how he saw his brother, dead three years, in his dugout, leading him away just before the heavy came down.Ghosts have warm hands,he kept telling me, as though it were the greatest secret in the world. I remember nodding like a ninny. Still, now, whenever I touch a man’s cold fingers, I catch myself thinking,Well, he’s not a ghost yet.” Kate spread her hands. “So yes, Laura. Somehow, I believed him. The German lived. He healed. He ran. They’re still searching for him. They haven’t found him. And, rightly or wrongly, I think he left the hospital to go and look for Wilfred Iven, whom he believed was alive.” She paused. “He might have been a madman. But I’ve seen enough madmen, out here. And I—I don’t think he was. There was something in his face.”
“What did he look like?”
“The German? A fine-looking man,” said Kate. “Pale blue eyes. Crisp, you know. Intelligent. A little older—mid-thirties, I’d say. Polite.”
“And one arm,” said Laura. “Do you remember his name?”
Kate sighed. “Winter. He was called Winter.”
· · ·
Poperinghe had gone to seed: a town of prosperous burghers turned gimcrack, where the only industries had necessarily to do with war or the entertaining of soldiers. Cafés and bars abounded, and souvenir shops, and brothels.
But it had a life, did Poperinghe. The main square teemed with men, talking and milling, drinking and laughing. Pop was as good as Paris, the soldiers said. Shell-scarred, but alive. You could get a drink there. Take a room and sleep in a bed. Not like Ypres to the east, which was fit for no one but ghosts.
After she left Mendinghem, Laura took the motorcycle to Pop. She’d arranged to meet Freddie’s officer, a man called Whiting, over an early supper. She arrived covered in spring mud and nervous sweat, but she’d managed to preserve herself and everyone around her despite the motorcycle’s best efforts.
She didn’t know what to make of Kate’s story, and she didn’t yet have time to think about it.
Whiting was the lean, lantern-jawed sort, with the slightly blank stare, fixed in the middle distance, that many men acquired after combat, and a touch of neurasthenia: a tremor in his hands. He also had a vile cold, but there was hardly a man serving who didn’t. He ordered some of the one-franc wine for them both and drank his off fast.
“Your brother died quick, Miss Iven,” said Whiting straight off. “No pain.” He sneezed. He wore an expression of wary forbearance: a man doing his duty by a dead comrade. He probably was expecting tears and pleading.
Laura put down her glass. “I am not here to cry on your shoulder, sir. I simply wish to know, in as much detail as you can, what happened to my brother.” She left her hand flat on the tabletop.
