The wounded were being brought down from Lokeren in trams that ran on to
a siding behind a little fir plantation outside the village. At the wide
top of the street a table of boards and trestles stood by the foot track,
and the stretchers were laid on it as they came in, and the wounded had
their first bandaging and dressings there. McClane took up his place by
this table, and the stretcher bearers went backwards and forwards between
the village and the plantation.
Beyond the plantation the flagged road stretched flat and grey, then bent
in a deep curve, and on the wider sweep of the curve a row of tall,
slender trees stood up like a screen.
It would be round the turn of the road under the trees that the Germans
would come when they came. You couldn't lose this sense of them, coming
on behind there, not yet seen, but behind, coming on, pursuing the
retreat of the batteries. Every now and then they found themselves
looking up towards the turn. The grey, bending sweep and the screen of
tall trees had a fascination for them, a glamour; and above the movements
of their hands and feet their minds watched, intent, excited, but without
fear. There was no fear in the village. The women came out of their
houses carrying cups of water for the men's thirst; they seemed to be
concerned, not with the coming of the Germans, but with the bringing in
of the wounded and the presence of the English ambulance in their street.
And the four stretcher bearers came and went, from house to house and
between the village and the plantation, working, working steadily. Yet
they were aware, all the time, of the pursuing terror, behind the turn of
the road; they were held still in their intentness. Over all of them was
a quiet, fixed serenity. McClane's body had lost its eager, bustling
energy and was still; his face was grave, preoccupied and still; only
Trixie Rankin went rushing, and calling out to her quiet man in a fierce,
dominating excitement.
And in John's face and in his alert body there was happiness, happiness
that was almost ecstasy; it ran through and shone from him, firm and
still, like a flame that couldn't go out. It penetrated her and made her
happy and satisfied and sure of him. She had seen it leap up in him as he
swung himself into the seat beside her when they started. He was
restless, restless every day until they were sent out; he couldn't wait
in peace before they had set off on the adventure, as if he were afraid
that at the last minute something would happen to dash his chance from
him. She couldn't find this passionate uneasiness in herself; she waited
with a stolid trust in the event; but she had something of his feeling.
After all, it was there, the romance, the fascination, the glamour; you
couldn't deny it any more than you could deny the beating of the blood in
your veins. It was their life.
They had been in the village three quarters of an hour. John and
Charlotte waited while McClane at his table was putting the last bandage
on the last wound. In another minute they would be gone. It was then that
the Belgian Red Cross man came running to them. Had they taken a man with
a wound in his back? A bad wound? As big as that? No? Then he was still
here, and he had got to take him to the ambulance. No, he didn't know
where he was. He might be in one of those houses where they took in the
wounded, or he might be up there by the tramway in the plantation. Would
they take a stretcher and find him? _He_ had to go back to the tramway.
The last tram was coming in from Lokeren. He ran back, fussy and a little
frightened.
John shouted out, "Hold on, McClane, there's another tram coming," and
set off up the street. They had taken all the men out of the houses;
therefore the man with the bad wound must have been left somewhere by the
plantation. They went there, carrying their stretcher, going, going up to
the last minute, in delight, in the undying thrill of the danger.
The wounded man was not in the plantation. As they looked for him the
tram from Lokeren slid in, Red Cross men on the steps, clinging. The
doors were flung open and the wounded men came out, stumbling, falling,
pushing each other. Somebody cried, "No stretchers! Damned bad
management. With the Germans on our backs." A Red Cross man, with a
puffed white face, stood staring at John and Charlotte, stupefied.
"Are they coming?" John said.
"Coming? They'll be here in ten minutes--five minutes." He snarled, a
terrified animal.
He had caught sight of their stretcher and snatched at it, thrusting out
his face, the face of a terrified animal, open mouth, and round,
palpitating eyes. He lifted his hand as though he would have struck at
Charlotte, but John pushed him back. He was brutalized, made savage and
cruel by terror; he had a lust to hurt.
"You can't have our stretcher," Charlotte said.
She could see they didn't want it. This was the last tram. The serious
cases had been sent on first. All these men could walk or hobble along
somehow with help. But they were the last in the retreat of the wounded;
they were the men who had been nearest to the enemy, and they had known
the extremity of fear.
"You can't have it. It's wanted for a badly wounded man."
"Where is he?"
"We don't know. We're looking for him."
"Ah, pah! We can't wait till you find him. Do you think we're going to
stand here to be taken?--For one man!"
They went on through the plantation, stumbling and growling, dragging the
wounded out into the road.
"If," Charlotte said, "we only knew where he was."
John stood there silent; his head was turned towards the far end of the
wood, the Lokeren end. The terror of the wood held him. He seemed to be
listening; listening, but only half awake.
Here, where the line stopped, a narrow track led downwards out of the
wood. Charlotte started to go along it. "Come on," she said. She saw him
coming, quickly, but with drawn, sleep-walking feet. The track led into a
muddy alley at the back of the village.
There was a house there and a woman stood at the door, beckoning. She ran
up to them. "He's here," she whispered, "he's here."
He lay on his side on the flagged floor of the kitchen. His shirt was
ripped open, and in his white back, below the shoulder blade, there was a
deep red wound, like a pit, with a wide mouth, gaping. He was ugly, a
Flamand; he had a puffed face with pushed out lips and a scrub of red
beard; but Charlotte loved him.
They carried him out through the wood on to the road. He lay inert,
humped up, heavy. They had to go slowly, so slowly that they could
see the wounded and the Red Cross men going on far before them, down
the street.
The flagged road swayed and swung with the swinging bulge of the
stretcher as they staggered. The shafts kept on slipping and slipping;
her grasp closed, tighter and tighter; her arms ached in their sockets;
but her fingers and the palms of her hands were firm and dry; they could
keep their hold.
They had only gone a few yards along the road when suddenly John
stopped and sank his end of the stretcher, compelling Charlotte to
lower hers too.
"What did you do that for?"
"We can't, Charlotte. He's too damned heavy."
"If I can, you can."
He didn't move. He stood there, staring with his queer, hypnotised eyes,
at the man lying in the middle of the road, at the red pit in the white
back, at the wide, ragged lips of the wound, gaping.
"For goodness' sake pick him up. It isn't the moment for resting."
"Look here--it isn't good enough. We can't get him there in time."
"You're--you're _not_ going to leave him!"
"We've got to leave him. We can't let the whole lot be taken just
for one man."
"We'll be taken if you stand here talking."
He went on a step or two, slouching; then stood still, waiting for her,
ashamed. He was changed from himself, seized and driven by the fear that
had possessed the men in the plantation. She could see it in his
retreating eyes.
She cried out--her voice sounded sharp and strange--"John--! You _can't_
leave him."
The wounded man who had lain inert, thinking that they were only resting,
now turned his head at her cry. She saw his eyes shaking, palpitating
with terror.
"You've frightened him," she said. "I won't have him frightened."
She didn't really believe that John was going. He went slowly, still
ashamed, and stopped again and waited for her.
"Come back," she said, "this minute, and pick up that stretcher
and get on."
"I tell you it isn't good enough."
"Oh, go then, if you're such a damned coward, and send Mac to me.
Or Trixie."
"They'll have gone."
He was walking backwards, his face set towards the turn of the road.
"Come on, you little fool. You can't carry him."
"I can. And I shall, if Mac doesn't come."
"You'll be taken," he shouted.
"I don't care. If I'm taken, I'm taken. I shall carry him on my back."
While John still went backwards she thought: It's all right. If he sees
I'm not coming he won't go. He'll come back to the stretcher.
But John had turned and was running.
Even then she didn't realise that he was running away, that she was left
there with the wounded man. Things didn't happen like that. People ran
away all of a sudden, in panics, because they couldn't help it; they
didn't begin by going slowly and stopping to argue and turning round and
walking backwards; they were gone before they knew where they were. She
believed that he was going for the ambulance. One moment she believed it
and the next she knew better. As she waited in the road (conscious of the
turn, the turn with its curving screen of tall trees) her knowledge, her
dreadful knowledge, came to her, dark and evil, creeping up and up. John
wasn't coming back. He would no more come back than he had come back the
other day. Sutton had come. The other day had been like to-day. John was
like that.
Her mind stood still in amazement, seeing, seeing clearly, what John was
like. For a moment she forgot about the Germans.
She thought: I don't believe Mac's gone. He wouldn't go until he'd got
them all in. Mac would come.
Then she thought about the Germans again. All this was making it much
more dangerous for Mac and everybody, with the Germans coming round the
corner any minute; she had no business to stand there thinking; she must
pick that man up on her back and go on.
She stooped down and turned him over on his chest. Then, with great
difficulty, she got him up on to his feet; she took him by the wrists
and, stooping again, swung him on to her shoulder. These acts, requiring
attention and drawing on all her energy, dulled the pain of her
knowledge. When she stood up with him she saw John and McClane coming to
her. She lowered her man gently back on to the stretcher.
The Flamand, thinking that she had given it up and that he was now
abandoned to the Germans, groaned.
"It's all right," she said. "He's coming."
She saw McClane holding John by the arm, and in her pain there was a
sharper pang. She had the illusion of his being dragged back unwillingly.
McClane smiled as he came to her. He glanced at the Flamand lying heaped
on his stretcher.
"He's been too much for you, has he?"
"Too much--? Yes."
Instantly she saw that John had lied, and instantly she backed his lie.
She hated McClane thinking she had failed; but anything was better than
his knowing the truth.
John and McClane picked up the stretcher and went on quickly. Charlotte
walked beside the Flamand with her hand on his shoulder to comfort him.
Again her pity was like love.
From the top of the village she could see the opening of the lane. Down
there was the house with the tall green door where the dead man was. John
had _said_ he was dead.
Supposing he wasn't? Or supposing he was still warm and limp like the boy
at Melle? She must know; it was a thing she must know for certain, or she
would never have any peace. And when the Flamand was laid out on
McClane's table, while McClane dressed his wound, she slipped down the
lane and opened the green door.
The man lay on a row of packing cases with his feet parted. She put one
hand over his heart and the other on his forehead under the lock of
bloodstained hair. He was dead: stiff dead and cold. His tunic and shirt
had been unbuttoned to ease his last breathing. She had a queer baffled
feeling of surprise and incompleteness, as if some awful sense in her
would have been satisfied if she had seen that he had been living when
John had said that he was dead. To-day would then have been linked on
firmly to the other day.
John stood at the top of the lane. He scowled at her as she came.
"What do you think you're doing!" he said.
"I went to that house--to see if the man was dead."
"You'd no business to. I told you he was dead."
"I wanted to make sure."
* * * * *
That evening she had just gone to her room when somebody knocked at her
door. McClane stood outside, straddling, his way when he had got
something important on hand. He asked if he might come in and speak to
her for a minute.
She sat down on the edge of her bed and he sat on Gwinnie's, elbows
crooked out, hands planted on wide parted knees; he leaned forward,
looking at her, his face innocent and yet astute; his thick,
expressionless eyes clear now and penetrating. He seemed to be fairly
humming with activity left over from the excitement of the day. He was
always either dreamy and withdrawn, or bursting, bursting with energy,
and at odd moments he would drop off suddenly to sleep with his chin
doubled on his breast, recovering from his energy. Perhaps he had just
waked up now to this freshness.
"Look here," he said. "You didn't break down. That man wasn't too
heavy for you."
"He was. He was an awful weight. I couldn't have carried him a yard."
"That won't do, Charlotte. I _saw_ you take him on your back."
She could feel the blood rising up in her face before him. He was hurting
her with shame.