Anna ran to help Bobby and between them they dragged Centaine to the waiting ambulance.
You can't leave him like that! she pleaded, trying with all her might to resist them. Please, please, don't leave him to suffer. Another salvo of shells straddled the yard, driving in their eardrums and filling the air around them with hissing chips of stone and steel fragments. No time, Bobby grunted, we must go. They forced Centaine into the rear of the vehicle, between the tiers of stretchers, and crowded in after her.
immediately the driver clashed the gears and pulled away, the ambulance swung in a tight circle, bouncing over the cobbles, and then accelerated through the gateway and out into the driveway.
Centaine dragged herself to the tailboard of the speeding vehicle and looked back at the chateau. The flames were rushing up through the shell holes in the pink tiles, and dark black smoke towered above it, rising straight up into the sunlit sky.
Everything, Centaine whispered. You've taken everything that I love.
Why? Oh Lord, why have you done this to me?
Ahead of them the other vehicles had pulled off the road at the edge of the forest, and parked under the trees to avoid the shellfire. Bobby Clarke jumped down and ran to each in turn, giving orders to the drivers and regrouping them into a convoy. Then, with his own vehicle in the lead, they sped down to the crossroads and turned into the main road.
Again shell-fire fell close about them, for the German observers already had the crossroads well covered. Like a conga line the convoy wove from one side of the road to the other to avoid the shell holes and the litter of destroyed carts, dead draught-animals and abandoned equipment.
As soon as they were clear, they closed up and followed the curve of the road down towards the village. As they passed the churchyard, Centaine saw that there was already a shell hole through the green copper-clad spire.
Although she glimpsed the upper branches of the yew tree that marked the family plot, Michael's grave was out of sight from the road.
I wonder if we will ever come back, Anna? Centaine whispered. I promised Michael - her voice trailed off.
Of course we will. Where else would we ever go? Anna's voice was rough with her own grief and the jolting of the ambulance.
Both of them stared back at the shot-holed church spire and the ugly black column of smoke that poured up into the sky above the forest marking the pyre of their home.
. . .
The ambulance convoy caught up with the tail of the main British retreat on the outskirts of the village. Here the military police had set up a temporary roadblock.
They were sending all able-bodied troops off the road to regroup and to set up a secondary line of defence, and they were searching all vehicles for deserters from the battlefield.
Is the new line holding, sergeant? Bobby Clarke asked the policeman who checked his papers. Can we halt in the village? Some of my patients- He was interrupted by a shellburst that hit one of the cottages beside the road. They were still within extreme range of the German guns.
There is no telling, sir, the sergeant handed Bobby back his papers. I were you I would pull back as far as the main base hospital at Arras. It's going to be a bit hairy around here. So the long, slow retreat began. They were a part of the solid stream of traffic that blocked the road for as far ahead as they could see, and reduced to the same excruciating pace.
The ambulances would start with a jolt, roll forward a few yards with noses to tails, and then pull up again for another interminable wait. As the day wore on so the heat built up, and the roads so recently running with winter mud turned to talcum dust. The flies came from the surrounding farmyards to the bloody bandages and crawled on the faces of the wounded men in the tiers of stretchers, and they moaned and cried out for water.
Anna and Centaine went to ask for water at one of the farm houses alongside the road, and found it already deserted. They helped themselves to milk pails and filled them from the pump.
They moved down the convoy, giving out mugs of water, bathing the faces of those in fever from their wounds, helping the ambulance orderlies clean those who had not been able to contain their bodily functions, and all the time trying to appear cheerful and confident, giving what comfort they could, despite their own grief and bereavement.
By nightfall the convoy had covered less than five miles, and they could still hear the din of the battle raging behind them. once more the convoy was stalled, waiting to move on.
It looks like we have managed to hold them at Mort Homme, Bobby Clarke paused beside Centaine. It should be safe to stop for the night. He looked more closely at the face of the soldier who Centaine was tending. God knows, these poor devils cannot take much more of this.
They need food and rest. There is a farmyard with a large barn around the next bend. It hasn't been taken over by anyone else yet, we" bag it."
I IL Anna produced a bunch of onions from her sack and used them to flavour the stew of canned bully beef that they boiled up over an open fire. They served the stew with dry army biscuit and mugs of black tea, all of it begged from the commissary trucks parked in the stalled column of traffic.
Centaine fed the men who were too weak to help themselves, and then worked with the orderlies changing the dressings. The heat and dust had done their worst, and many of the wounds were inflamed and swollen and beginning to ooze yellow pus.
After midnight Centaine slipped out of the barn and went to the water pump in the yard. She felt soiled and sweaty and longed to bathe her entire body and change into clean, freshly ironed clothes. There was no privacy for that, and the few clothes she had packed in the carpet bag she knew she must hoard. Instead she slipped off her petticoat and knickers from under her skirt and washed them out under the tap, then wrung them and hung them over the gate while she bathed her face and arms with cold water.
She let the night breeze dry her skin and slipped her underclothes on again, still damp. Then she combed out her hair and she felt a little better, although her eyes still felt raw and swollen from the smoke and there was the heavy weight of her grief like a stone in her chest, and an enormous physical fatigue dragged at her legs and arms. The images of her father in the smoke and the white stallion lying on the grass assailed her once again, but she shut her mind to them.
Enough, she said aloud as she leaned against the gate to the yard. Enough for today, I'll cry again tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. A voice replied in broken French from the darkness, and she was startled. Bobby? She saw the glow of his cigarette then, and he came out of the shadows and leaned over the gate beside her.
You are an amazing girl, he went on in English, I have six sisters, but I've never known a girl like you. Matter of fact, I've known damned few chaps that could match you, either. She was silent, but when he drew on his cigarette, she studied his face in the glow. He was about Michael's age, and handsome. His mouth was full and sensitive-looking, and there was a gentleness about him that she had never had an opportunity to notice before.
I say- he was suddenly embarrassed by her silence_you don't mind me talking to you, do you? I'll leave you alone if you prefer. She shook her head. I don't mind. And for a while they were silent, Bobby puffing on his cigarette and both of them listening to the distant sound of the battle and to the occasional soft groan from one of the wounded in the barn.
Then Centaine stirred and asked, Do you remember the young airman, the first day you came up to the chAteau? Yes. The one with the burned arm. What was his name again, Andrew? No, that was his friend. The wild Scot, yes, of course. His name was Michel. I remember both of them. What became of them? Michel and I were to be married, but he is dead- and her pent-up emotions came pouring out.
He was a stranger and gentle, and she found it so easy to talk to him in the darkness. She told him in her quaint English about Michel and how they had planned to live in Africa, then she told him about her father and how he had changed since her mother had died, and how she had tried to look after him and stop him drinking so much.