The Burning Shore Page 6

  Andrew lifted his glass and said softly, ‘I give you those poor blighters out there in the mud. May they endure.’ And this time even Centaine sipped from Michael’s glass and her eyes swam with dark tears as she drank the toast.

  ‘I hate to be a killjoy,’ the young doctor stood up unsteadily, ‘but that artillery barrage is the work-whistle for me, I’m afraid, the butchers’ vans will be on their way back already.’

  Michael tried to rise with him, but clutched quickly at the edge of the table for support. ‘I wish to thank you, Monsieur le Comte,’ he began formally, ‘for your gentility—’ The word tripped on his tongue and he repeated it, but his tongue blurred and lost track of his speech. ‘I salute your daughter, Mademoiselle de Thiry, l’ange du bonheur—’ His legs folded up under him, and he collapsed gently.

  ‘He is wounded!’ Centaine cried as she leaped forward and caught him before he hit the floor, supporting him with one slim shoulder under his armpit. ‘Help me,’ she pleaded. Andrew reeled forward to her assistance, and between them they half-carried, half-dragged Michael through the kitchen door.

  ‘Careful, his poor arm,’ Centaine gasped under the weight, as they lifted Michael into the side-car of the motor-cycle. ‘Do not hurt him!’ He lolled in the padded seat with a beatific grin on his pale features.

  ‘Mademoiselle, rest assured he is beyond all pain, the lucky devil.’ Andrew tottered around the machine to take the controls.

  ‘Wait for me!’ cried the doctor as he and the comte, giving each other mutual support, bounced off the door jamb and came crabbing down the steps in an unintended sideways charge.

  ‘Climb aboard,’ Andrew invited, and at the third attempt kick-started the Ariel in a roar of blue smoke. The doctor clambered on to the pillion behind him, and the comte thrust one of the two bottles of claret that he carried into Andrew’s side pocket.

  ‘Against the cold,’ he explained.

  ‘You are a prince among men.’ Andrew let out the clutch and the Ariel screeched into a tight turn.

  ‘Look after Michael!’ cried Centaine.

  ‘My cabbages!’ screamed Anna, as Andrew took a short cut through the vegetable garden.

  ‘A bas les boches!’ howled the comte and took a last surreptitious pull at the other claret bottle, before Centaine could confiscate it from him and relieve him of the cellar keys once more.

  At the end of the long drive that led down from the château Andrew braked the motor-cycle and then at a more sedate pace joined the pathetic little procession that was trickling back from the ridges along the muddy, rutted main road.

  The butchers’ vans, as the field ambulances were irreverently known, were heavily loaded with the fruits of the renewed German bombardment. They chugged through the muddy puddles, with the racks of canvas stretchers in the open backs swaying and lurching to each bump. The blood from the wounded men in the upper tiers soaked through the canvas and dripped on to those below.

  On the verges of the lane little groups of walking wounded straggled back, their rifles discarded, leaning on each other for support, lumpy field dressings strapped over their injuries, all their faces blank with suffering, their eyes dead of expression, their uniforms caked with mud and their movements mechanical, beyond caring.

  Beginning to sober rapidly, the doctor climbed down off the pillion and selected the more seriously hurt men from the stream. They loaded two of them on to the pillion, one astride the petrol tank in front of Andrew and three more into the side-car with Michael. The doctor ran behind the overloaded Ariel, pushing it through the mud holes, and he was completely sober when a mile up the road they reached the VAD hospital in a row of cottages at the entrance to the village of Mort Homme. He helped his newly acquired patients out of the side-car and then turned back to Andrew.

  ‘Thanks. I needed that break.’ He glanced down at Michael, still passed out in the side-car. ‘Look at him. We can’t go on like this for ever.’

  ‘Michael is just slightly pissed, that is all.’

  But the doctor shook his head. ‘Battle fatigue,’ he said. ‘Shell shock. We don’t understand it properly yet, but it seems there is just a limit to how much these poor bastards can stand. How long has he been flying without a break – three months?’

  ‘He will be all right,’ Andrew’s voice was fierce, ‘he’s going to get through.’ He placed a protective hand on Michael’s injured shoulder, remembering that it was six months since his last leave.

  ‘Look at him, all the signs. Thin as a starvation victim,’ the doctor went on, ‘twitching and trembling. Those eyes – I’ll bet he is showing unbalanced illogical behaviour, sullen dark moods alternating with mad wild moods? Am I correct?’

  Andrew nodded reluctantly. ‘One minute he calls the enemy loathsome vermin and machine-guns the survivors of crashed German aircraft, and the next they are gallant and worthy foes – he punched a newly arrived pilot last week for calling them Huns.’

  ‘Reckless bravery?’

  Andrew remembered the balloons that morning, but he did not answer the question.

  ‘What can we do?’ he asked helplessly.

  The doctor sighed and shrugged, and offered his hand. ‘Goodbye and good luck, major.’ And as he turned away, he was already stripping off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves.

  At the entrance to the orchard, just before they reached the squadron’s bivouac, Michael suddenly heaved himself upright in the side-car and with all the solemnity of a judge pronouncing the death sentence, said, ‘I am about to be sick.’

  Andrew braked the motor-cycle off the road and held his head for him.

  ‘All that excellent claret,’ he lamented. ‘To say nothing of the Napoleon cognac – if there was only some way to save it!’

  Having noisily unburdened himself, Michael slumped down again and said, just as solemnly, ‘I want you to know that I am in love,’ and his head flopped back as he passed out cold once more.

  Andrew sat on the Ariel and drew the cork from the claret bottle with his teeth. ‘That definitely calls for a toast. Let’s drink to your true love.’ He offered the bottle to the unconscious form beside him. ‘Not interested?’

  He drank from it himself, and when he lowered the bottle, he began unaccountably and uncontrollably to sob. He tried to choke back the tears, he had not wept since he was six years old, and then he remembered the young doctor’s words, ‘unbalanced and illogical behaviour’, and the tears overwhelmed him. They poured down his cheeks, and he did not even attempt to wipe them away. He sat on the driver’s seat of the motor-cycle, shaking with silent grief.

  ‘Michael, my boy,’ he whispered. ‘What is to become of us? We are doomed, there is no hope for us. Michael, no hope at all for any of us,’ and he covered his face with both hands and wept as though his heart was breaking.

  Michael awoke to the clatter of the tin tray as Biggs placed it beside his field cot.

  He groaned as he tried to sit up, but his injuries pulled him down again. ‘What time is it, Biggs?’

  ‘’Alf past seven, sir, and a lovely spring morning.’

  ‘Biggs – for God’s sake – why didn’t you wake me? I’ve missed the dawn patrol—’

  ‘No, we ’aven’t, sir,’ Biggs murmured comfortably, ‘we’ve been grounded.’

  ‘Grounded?’

  ‘Lord Killigerran’s orders, grounded until further orders, sir.’ Biggs ladled sugar into the cocoa mug and stirred it. ‘’Igh time too, if I may be allowed to say so. We’ve flown thirty-seven days straight.’

  ‘Biggs, why do I feel so bloody?’

  ‘According to Lord Killigerran – we were severely attacked by a bottle of cognac, sir.’

  ‘Before that, I smashed up the old flying tortoise—’ Michael began to remember.

  ‘Spread her all over France, sir, like butter on toast,’ Biggs nodded.

  ‘But we got them, Biggs!’

  ‘Both of the blighters, sir.’

  ‘The book paid out, I trust, Biggs?
You didn’t lose your money?’

  ‘We made a nice packet, thanking you, Mr Michael,’ and Biggs touched the other items on the cocoa tray. ‘’Ere’s your loot—’ There was a neat sheaf of twenty one-pound notes. ‘Three to one, sir, plus your original stake.’

  ‘You are entitled to ten per cent commission, Biggs.’

  ‘Bless you, sir.’ Two notes disappeared magically into Biggs’ pocket.

  ‘Now, Biggs. What else have we here?’

  ‘Four aspirins, compliments of Lord Killigerran.’

  ‘He is flying, Biggs, of course?’ Gratefully Michael swallowed the pills.

  ‘Of course, sir. They took off at dawn.’

  ‘Who is his wingman?’

  ‘Mr Banner, sir.’

  ‘A new chum,’ Michael brooded unhappily.

  ‘Lord Andrew will be all right, don’t you worry, sir.’

  ‘Yes, of course, he will – and what is this?’ Michael roused himself.

  ‘Keys to Lord Killigerran’s motor-cycle, sir. He says as you are to give the count his salaams – whatever those may be, sir – and his tender admiration to the young lady—’

  ‘Biggs—’ the aspirins had worked a miracle – Michael felt suddenly light and carefree and gay. His wounds no longer pulled and his head no longer ached. ‘Biggs,’ he repeated, ‘do you think you could lay out my number ones and give the brass buckles a lick and the boots a bit of a shine?’

  Biggs grinned at him fondly. ‘Going calling, are we, sir?’

  ‘That we are, Biggs, that we are.’

  Centaine woke in darkness and listened to the guns. They terrified her. She knew she would never become accustomed to that bestial, insensate storm that so impersonally dealt death and unspeakable injury, and she remembered the months of late summer the previous year when, for a brief period, the German batteries had been within range of the château. That was when they had abandoned the upper levels of the great house and moved below stairs. By then the servants had long since fled – all except Anna, of course – and the tiny cell that Centaine now occupied had belonged to one of the maids.

  Their whole way of life had changed dramatically since the stormwaves of war had swept over them. Though they had never kept the same grand style as some of the other leading families of the province, there had always been dinners and house-parties and twenty servants to sustain them, but now their existence was almost as simple as had been that of their servants before the war.

  Centaine threw off her forebodings with her bedclothes, and ran down the narrow stoneflagged corridor on bare feet. In the kitchen Anna was at the stove, already feeding it with split oak.

  ‘I was on my way to you with a jug of cold water,’ she said gruffly, and Centaine hugged her and kissed her until she smiled, and then went to warm herself in front of the stove.

  Anna poured boiling water into the copper basin on the floor and then added cold. ‘Come along, mademoiselle,’ she ordered.

  ‘Oh, Anna, do I have to?’

  ‘Move!’

  Reluctantly Centaine lifted the nightdress over her head, and shivered as the cold raised a fine rash of goosepimples on her forearms and over her small rounded buttocks.

  ‘Hurry.’ She stepped into the basin and Anna knelt beside her and dunked a flannel. Her movements were methodical and businesslike as she soaped down Centaine’s body, starting at the shoulders and working to the fingertips of each arm, but she could not conceal the love and pride that softened her ugly red face.

  The child was delightfully formed, though perhaps her breasts and bottom were a little too small – Anna hoped to plump them out with a good starchy diet, once that was freely obtainable again. Her skin was a smooth, buttery colour, where the sun had not touched it, though where it had been exposed, it tended to take on a dark bronze sheen that Anna found most unsightly.

  ‘You must wear your gloves and long sleeves this summer,’ she scolded. ‘Brown is so ugly.’

  ‘Do hurry up, Anna.’ Centaine hugged her soapy breasts and shivered, and Anna lifted her arms one at a time and scrubbed the dense bushes of dark curly hair under them. The suds ran in long lacy lines down her lean flanks where the rack of her ribs showed through.

  ‘Don’t be so rough,’ Centaine wailed. And Anna examined her limbs critically: they were straight and long, though much too strong for a lady – all that riding and running and walking. Anna shook her head.

  ‘Oh, what now?’ Centaine demanded.

  ‘You are as hard as a boy, your belly is too muscular for having babies.’ Anna ran the flannel down her body.

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Stay still – you don’t want to smell like a goat, do you?’

  ‘Anna, don’t you just love blue eyes?’ Anna grunted, knowing instinctively where the discussion was headed.

  ‘What colour eyes would a baby have, if its mother’s eyes were brown and its father’s a lovely shimmering blue?’

  Anna slapped her bottom with the flannel. ‘That is enough of that. Your father will not like that kind of talk.’

  Centaine did not take the threat seriously, she went on dreamily. ‘Airmen are so brave, don’t you think, Anna? They must be the bravest men in the world.’ She became brisk. ‘Hurry, Anna, I’ll be late to count my chickens.’

  She sprang from the basin, scattering water drops on the flagged floor, while Anna wrapped her in a towel that she had heated in front of the stove.

  ‘Anna, it’s almost light outside.’

  ‘You come back here immediately after,’ Anna ordered. ‘We have a lot of work to do today. Your father has reduced us to starvation level with his misplaced generosity.’

  ‘We had to offer a meal to those gallant young airmen.’

  Centaine pulled on her clothes and sat on the stool to hook up her riding boots.

  ‘Don’t go mooning off into the woods—’

  ‘Oh, hush, Anna.’ Centaine jumped up and went clattering down the stairs.

  ‘You come straight back!’ Anna yelled after her.

  Nuage heard her coming and whickered softly. Centaine flung both arms around his neck and kissed his velvety grey muzzle.

  ‘Bonjour my darling.’ She had stolen two cubes of sugar from under Anna’s nose and now Nuage salivated over her hand as she fed them to him. She wiped her palm on his neck and then when she turned to lift down the saddle from its rack, he bumped her in the small of the back, demanding more.

  Outside it was dark and cold, and she urged the stallion into a canter, revelling in the icy flow of air across her face, her nose and ears turning bright pink and her eyes beginning to stream tears. At the crest of the hillock, she reined Nuage to a standstill and looked into the soft gunmetal sheen of dawn, watching the sky above the long horizon turn to the colour of ripe oranges. Behind her the false dawn caused by the harsh, intermittent glow of the artillery barrage flickered against the heavens, but steadfastly she turned her back to it and waited for the planes to come.

  She heard the distant beat of their engines, even over the sound of the guns, and then they came snarling into the yellow dawn, as fierce and swift and beautiful as falcons, so that, as always, she felt her pulse race, and she rose high in the saddle to greet them.

  The lead machine was the green one with its tiger stripes of victory, the mad Scotsman. She lifted both hands high above her head.

  ‘Go with God – and come back safely!’ she shouted her blessing, and saw the flash of white teeth under the ridiculous tartan tam-o’-shanter, and the green machine waggled its wings and then it was past, climbing away into the sinister sombre clouds that hung above the German lines.

  She watched them go, the other aircraft closing up around the green leader into their fighting formation, and she was overwhelmed with a vast sadness, a terrible sense of inadequacy.

  ‘Why couldn’t I be a man!’ she cried aloud. ‘Oh, why couldn’t I be going with you!’ But already they were out of sight, and she turned Nuage down the hill.

  ‘The
y will all die,’ she thought. ‘All the young and strong and beautiful young men – and we will be left only with the old and maimed and ugly.’ And the sound of the distant guns counterpointed her fears. ‘I wish, oh, how I wish—’ she said aloud, and the stallion flicked his ears back to listen to her, but she did not go on, for she did not know what it was she wished for. She knew only that there was a void within her that ached to be filled, a vast wanting for she did not know what, and a terrible sorrow for all the world. She turned Nuage loose to graze in the small field behind the château and carried his saddle back on her shoulder.

  Her father was sitting at the kitchen table and she kissed him casually. His eyepatch gave him a rakish air despite that fact that his other eye was bloodshot; his face was as baggy and wrinkled as a bloodhound’s and he smelled of garlic and stale red wine.

  As usual, he and Anna were bickering in a companionable fashion, and as Centaine sat opposite him cupping the big round coffee bowl in her hands, she wondered suddenly if Anna and her father mated together, and immediately after she wondered why the notion had never occurred to her before.

  As a country girl, the processes of procreation were no mystery to her. Despite Anna’s original protests, she was always there to assist when mares from the surrounding district were brought to visit Nuage. She was the only one who could manage the big white stallion once he smelt the mare, and calm him sufficiently to enable him to perform his business without injuring himself or the object of his affections.

  By a process of logic, she had reached the conclusion that man and woman must work on similar principles. When she had questioned Anna, she had at first threatened to report Centaine to her papa and wash her mouth out with lye soap. Patiently Centaine had persisted until at last Anna had in a hoarse whisper confirmed her suspicions, and glanced across the kitchen at the comte with a look on her face that Centaine had never seen before, and at the time could not fathom, but which now made logical sense.