“I heard—rumors,” said Laura. “In Poperinghe. But they were so strange, I discounted them. Go inside, for God’s sake.” She closed the door behind them.
“What rumors, Laura?” said Pim.
“Pim, you’re exhausted, you’re—”
“You’re worse off than I am,” retorted Pim, with a ferocity that Laura had never heard from her. “You’ve got cramps again, don’t you? In your leg. And you’re bossing me anyway.And you lied tome.”
Laura, not replying, stripped off her dress, sat down on her bed, undid her garter. The muscle in her right calf was like wood, andher ruined, exhausted fingers were spasming too hard to apply pressure.
“Let me,” said Pim abruptly, kneeling at her feet.
“Pim, I can—”
“Let me help you.” Bitterness in her voice. “Or don’t you trust me, Laura?”
Laura let go and leaned back. Pim had taken off her scarf; her hair stood out in spikes as she began to massage. “And then?” said Pim, not looking up. “Laura, is your brother dead?”
“I don’t know.”
Pim nodded, working away the cramps. “And the patient, the blond man—he’s the one Young told us about. The German.”
Laura felt a flicker of fear. “Pim, please—”
“I won’t tell Young,” said Pim. “I won’t tell anyone. I wouldn’t, Laura.”
Voice thready with weariness, Laura said, “My friend told me about Winter. Told me that Young’s spy was the man who brought my brother’s things down off the Ridge.” Laura faltered then, gritting her teeth through another cramp.
Pim pressed harder. The only thing Laura could see of her was her hands and the top of her golden head. Tears pricked her eyes from the pressure, but the worst of the tension eased. Laura said, “And during the riot, Winter saved me; he pulled me out from under it. Not—he didn’t know who I was. He did it for kindness.” She didn’t mention coincidence, if that’s what it was: the bloody, pointing finger that led her straight to Winter. “I recognized him from my friend’s description—blue eyes, one arm. I asked him if he knew my brother. He didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to think. But then he appeared, wounded, in the hospital, and said Freddie’s name, and that he is alive, and saidFaland’sname andChrist,Pim.” Laura heard her own voice go harsh. “Do you think I know anything at all? Any more than you? Winter could be mad, he could be a liar. And if he’s not—then Istilldon’t understand.”
Pim’s hands faltered, fell away. Then she looked up. “But it will be all right now, Laura, I’m sure of it. You’ll find him.”
“How?” said Laura.
“You will,” said Pim, and somehow her voice made Laura shiver.
“Did you find Faland, Pim?” said Laura. “In Poperinghe? Iknowyou went looking.”
Pim hesitated fractionally. Frowning, she shook her head. “No,” she said. “But I will. You’ll see. It will be all right now. I know you’re tired, but you must not give up.”
“I’m not giving up, Pim.”
Pim turned away and got undressed, and they each sponged off the worst of the muck and crawled under their blankets, lay in silence. Laura was mortally tired, but wound up like a clock-spring. Apparently Pim was too. “Why are we here?” Pim asked abruptly. Her voice was small.
Laura forced her eyes open. “At Couthove?”
“No,” said Pim. “It’s not— Oh…How did we gethere? How did it all come to this?”
Laura didn’t really have an answer, but she found herself saying, haltingly, “I was at a party once, with a great military scholar. He got very drunk. One of the things I remember he said was that the reason the Germans couldn’t call it off, invading Belgium, back in ’14, was that they’d already got their train tables down precisely, and any deviation from the schedule would ruin it.”
“So you think train tables got us into the war?” said Pim, skeptical.
“No,” said Laura. “Or maybe a little. But it’s not just train tables. The whole world’s made up of systems now. Systems that are too big for any one person to understand or control, or stop. Like the timetables. Alliances. Philosophies. And so now we’re here, even though no one wanted to be.”
“Why did God let it happen?” whispered Pim. “I tried to understand—all those days in Halifax, after Nate passed, and I heard Jimmy was missing. I’d go to church and tell myself that God has a plan for each of us. But how can we know?”
“I don’t know,” said Laura. She wouldn’t blurt out the heretical thing she was actually thinking:What is God if not another system?
“I want to hate someone,” said Pim.“But I can’t hate the Germans. Isn’t that strange?”
