The Warm Hands of Ghosts

As April approaches, Lieutenant Young arrives at Couthove to visit Pim and to warn everyone that a German spy with an amputated arm named Winter has escaped custody. Young asks Pim out to dinner. Pim accepts, planning to ask him to help her find Faland’s hotel afterward. Now used to the motorcycle, Laura plans to visit Kate the same day as Pim’s dinner with Young. She asks Jones to watch out for Pim while she is gone. Jones teases her for being overprotective but promises to do what he can. Surprisingly, Laura trusts him.

Freddie finds Faland staring into the mirror one day and surmises that Faland hates the war as much as he does. Faland says he hates and loves it at the same time and cannot leave because people choose him: “They say Better you than that. Over and over they choose me. […] They hand their souls to me. As you did. That’s why I’m here. Because I cannot bring myself to go” (194).

Faland asks for another story, and Freddie tells him about his time in the trenches and charging up Passchendaele Ridge. However, when Faland asks to hear about his German friend, Freddie refuses.