Chapter 19: The Wall

She had asked him in the car, and he had said only, "It is a matter for the commissar."

That was all she got.

At five the next morning Wanning woke alone.

On his pillow lay a note in square handwriting: Gone to drill. Back by eight.

She did not believe it.

She put on her coat and walked out to the training ground in the mist.

The obstacle wall rose ahead of her, three metres of grey boards with a rope hanging from the top.

It was the wall she had fallen off in her second week.

She put her palm on the rough wood and stood there.

"It hasn't moved," said a voice behind her. "I checked."

The colonel's wife stood on the path in her camel coat with a thermos in each hand.

She wore soft shoes and a scarf over her silver hair.

"I walk here at five," she said. "The colonel snores."

She held out a thermos.

Wanning took it.

It was sweet red-date tea, very hot.

"I know it isn't real," the colonel's wife said.

Wanning's hands went still around the cup.

"The marriage," the older woman said gently. "I am old, Wanning. I am not stupid."

"A girl who has known a man a fortnight does not walk into a registry in a cardigan."

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