“High Bluff?”
“Manitoba.”
“And why didn’t you stay there?”
How innocently her eyelashes fluttered … You would have sworn the question was completely disingenuous. Still, she had dismissed me; of that I had no doubt. There was no reason why I should not reply brusquely, in kind, but I decided to remain civil.
“I answered the call of the mother country.”
She all but burst out laughing. Then quickly thinking better of it, she looked at me with a knowing smile.
“Just like me, of course. Yet no one marches off to war without hidden motives.”
The harder I worked to avoid her piercing gaze, the more insistently it darted to and fro around me, as if to cut off all possible paths of retreat. I experienced a moment of weakness, a movement of self-betrayal. But rapidly I righted myself.
“Disasters have always attracted me. In High Bluff, I would run a mile in the middle of the night to watch a house on fire. As I see it, there is no greater tinderbox than Flanders.”
“True, and we will soon have all the fire we want.”
Did she mean to mock or approve of my brash manner? It mattered little to me. As far as I could determine, it would take nothing less than a raging fire to amuse this young lady. The fabric of her coif snapped in the wind as though it might be carried away at any moment. A rebellious lock of pale golden hair had slipped free and brushed against her cheek. I felt a sudden desire to seize it, wrap it around my finger, then take hold of her entire mane. With a single, rapid motion, I clambered up the stele and sat down beside her. The war was now far from my thoughts.
“We might as well begin. The first to roll a double ace wins.”
Where her knotted brows converged, three tiny folds formed a fleeting palm frond.
“It isn’t the most exciting of games, unless the stakes are high.”
From my pocket I produced the meagre funds remaining. There must have been the equivalent of three dollars. The nurse quickly acquiesced and handed me her dice cup. I must confess I was rather startled: it was the same goblet covered in petit point I had seen that very morning at the antiquarian’s.
The game lasted an hour, perhaps two. We would no doubt have continued playing had my adversary not exhausted her stake, and been forced to admit defeat. I won fifteen dollars—the equivalent of two weeks’ allowance! As I was about to pocket the money, the gloved hand seized my arm.
“Not so fast, soldier boy. You owe me my revenge.”
“Tell me where and when, and I’ll be only too delighted to oblige.”
“Here. Now.”
“It’s getting late. Soon they’ll be sounding the curfew.”
“Just one round.”
“Double or nothing, then.”
“If I lose, I shan’t be able to pay. Forget the money. Instead, I’ll show you something I’ve never shown anyone else.”
I looked long and hard at the wad of banknotes in my hand. I considered the bait she dangled before me. Then I put the money on the table.
“So be it.”
It quickly became clear that by upping the ante, she had changed the nature of the game. It had become a breathless struggle that gained in intensity what it lost in civility. Rolls of the dice followed one another impetuously; every failure of the dice to produce double sixes caused my adversary to writhe in impatience. I was blind to the stones around me; they might as well have been horses on a carousel. Vertigo swept over me, and twice I nearly dropped the dice cup. Just as I was beginning to wonder when this race would end, I rolled a double ace. I could feel my heart’s blood overflowing.
The nurse bent over the dice to make sure she’d seen clearly.
“Yours is the luck of the devil.”
There was rapture in her voice, as though she were relieved to have lost. Her astonished mouth remained half-open. I don’t know what stopped me from kissing her right then and there.
“And my pay-off?”
“There’s the money. All you have to do is take it.”
“Don’t try and back out of your promise.”
With a look of resignation she removed her glove, pulling slowly at each finger, and laid her left hand on my knee. At the very point where her thumb and index finger met, she had attached a small pigeon feather of iridescent grey. So that was what she had never shown anyone else? I was beginning to feel a bit cheated.
Before she could withdraw her hand, I took it in mine.
“Surely I can allow myself the privilege of a touch.”
Though her fingers did not tremble, they could not remain still. I tightened my grip.
How deceptive are appearances. The feather was not a real one. It was a fine silken embroidery, each stitch of which had been sewn into her skin. It took my breath away.
“You have the most curious foibles.”
“They are surgical sutures.”
“In that event, the surgeon was a skilful one.”
“Don’t make me laugh. In my trade, I see scars of all kinds. Let me assure you, the most hideous ones are the work of surgeons. Even at the best of times they stitch up wounds every which way, so just imagine the stigmata they can leave in wartime. If only they would allow nurses to mend human tissue … But they refuse to trust our delicate fingers. With the mass of wounded awaiting us in Flanders, they will have no choice; they will have to call on us. But in the meantime, I practice on myself.”
I was still holding her hand, reluctant to let go.
“When I’m wounded, will you save me?”
She got to her feet with a shrug.
“Oh! You … You’ve nothing to fear. The devil always takes care of his own.”
II
THE CANADIAN CONTINGENT has been stationed at Salisbury for well onto two months now, in the middle of a plain swept by howling winds. Since we arrived on October 20, it has been raining without respite. I counted fifty-five days of downpour to eight grey days—a typical English winter, despite the assurances of the locals, who claimed the region had not seen such bad weather in living memory. A thousand of the 35 thousand recruits have already been repatriated with meningitis.
Such were the conditions in which we prepared ourselves for the greatest game of all, as Kipling put it. Our daily routine consisted of marching back and forth to the music of a military band, shouldering broomsticks for lack of rifles, running through sandbags with our bayonets, firing off two or three shots at a target that only our eagle-eyed Mohawk snipers could hit.
As time passed, discipline began to slacken. The men lined up unkempt at muster, stood at ease as the flag was being raised, saluted their officers in cavalier fashion—when they saluted them at all. The Highlanders took great pleasure in driving around the encampment, kilts tucked up, on top of a double-decker bus plastered with advertisements for My Lady’s Dress at the Royalty Theatre. When fatigue duty sounded, the gamblers would seek refuge in my tent, drawn by the warmth of the rum and the games of 421. It would have been unseemly of me to complain of their company, particularly since I contrived to divest them of their meagre resources. I must confess, though, that I did not feel the same intensity I’d experienced at Stonehenge in the company of the nurse. Perhaps the sole exception had been the night before, when a powerful gust had wrenched the tent from its moorings and the sodden canvas collapsed about our heads, forcing us to chase after the wind-strewn bank notes like so many chickens.
The British majors who would inspect us from