himself and that only meant that the Allies, as a fighting unit, were less than the sum of their parts. It couldn’t go on and a summit was planned. The sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska had just been killed in a charge at Neuville-St.-Vaast.
The mud on the road was thickening, as was the smell of pig. The shine on my shoes was definitely under threat, so I turned round. I was now walking into the rain, which sliced against my face like grains of shrapnel. As I came within sight of the bridge again, my heart did a somersault in my rib cage. A woman was walking along the towpath, away from the lockkeeper’s cottage. Was Sam going out again so soon? Had I missed her on my way to and from the pigs? Then I realized that the woman on the towpath was not Sam, and was probably no more than fifteen. In fact, I recognized her as one of the girls who sang in the Middle Hill church choir.
She had her head down because of the rain and didn’t see me. I let her get well out of sight; then I climbed down the steps off the bridge and continued on to the towpath. In the distance a narrow boat was gliding slowly toward the lock gates but it was minutes away. The raindrops pelted the surface waters of the canal in tiny explosions.
I reached the cottage and pushed at the low gate. The hinge complained in a soft whine.
I stood for a moment at the door before knocking. Did I really want to do what I was about to do? I heard a kettle whistling and I thought I heard a baby crying somewhere. Suddenly the smell from the pig farm wafted across the meadows and shook me into action.
I knocked on the door.
After a delay, Sam appeared. “Oh!” she gasped, obviously as surprised as I hoped she would be. “Oh.”
“I hope I’m not intruding,” I said softly, taking off my hat, despite the rain. Cold water sluiced down the back of my neck.
“No, oh no.” She had on a striped apron. “Put your hat back on, please, you’ll get soaked. How did you know where I lived?”
“They know everything at the Lamb,” I lied, putting back my hat.
I noticed that she didn’t ask me in. Was someone else there? I’d come too far to pull back now.
“I wondered… there’s a dance in Stratford on Saturday, I thought you might like to go.”
She looked at me without blinking.
“Well,” I said, “I know dancing is not exactly my strong suit, not with this leg, but… there’ll be lots of people, a bar, music … it’s a change from village life. What do you think?”
She bit her lip. “I can’t go out, not at night anyway.” Then she added in a half whisper, “No, not nights.”
What did she mean by that? That she didn’t want to go out at all? That she didn’t want to go anywhere with me?
The pig smell intensified.
I tried again. “We could always go to Stratford for lunch, walk by the river. Visit Shakespeare’s grave—though I’m sure you’ve done that.” It sounded lame.
But she was nodding. “Yes, yes, I’d like that. The river there … it’s where—” She trailed off, but I knew what she’d almost said. It was where she and Wilhelm had courted, back in the spring of 1914.
That told me… not a lot, exactly, but enough for now. Don’t rush your fences, I reminded myself.
“How are you on motorbikes?” I said.
“What?”
I raised my voice above the rain. “I have a motorbike.”
“Oh no, far too dangerous. I mean, I’ve never been on one, but I’ve seen them. They go so fast—thirty miles an hour even. Oh no. Especially now that—” She checked herself, and I didn’t press it.
“Let’s take the train,” she said. “I’ll meet you at the station at eleven-thirty.”
“You don’t want me to come for you here?”
“No. Meet me at the station at half past. Don’t worry, I won’t be late.” She half-closed the door. It was clear that this was a dismissal. She smiled, closed the door fully, and immediately opened it again. “Thank you,” she said in a whisper. And then the door was closed a second time.
I have said next to nothing about my German course at Stratford. Housed in an old agricultural college on Wood Street, the language school had been operated as a private outfit in the days of Wilhelm Wetzlar, when its chief job was to teach