by Wilbur Smith
She climbed up on the running-board of the ambulance for a better view, and a flight of aircraft took off from the field and flew low over the road.
Her disappointment was intense as she realized that they were ungraceful two-seater De Havilland scouts, not the lovely SE5a’s of Michael’s squadron. She waved to them, and one of the pilots looked down at her and waved back.
It cheered her somehow and as she returned to her self-imposed duties, she felt strong and lighthearted, and she joked with the wounded men in her accented English, and they reacted with delight. One of them called her ‘Sunshine’ and the name passed quickly down the line of ambulances.
Bobby Clarke stopped her as she passed. ‘Great stuff – but remember, don’t overdo it.’
‘I will be all right. Don’t worry about me.’
‘I can’t help it.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Have you thought about my offer? When will you give me an answer?’
‘Not now, Bobby.’ She pronounced his name with equal emphasis on each syllable, ‘Bob-bee’, and every time she said it he lost his breath. ‘We will talk later – but you are very gentil, very kind.’
Now the roadway was almost impassable once more, for the reserves were being hastened up to help hold the new line at Mort Homme. Endless columns of marching men slogged past them, and interspersed between the ranks of bobbing steel helmets were batteries of guns and lines of supply trucks loaded with all the accoutrements of war.
Their forward progress faltered, and for hours at a time the ambulances were signalled off the roadway into a field or a side lane while fresh hordes streamed past.
‘I’ll have to send the ambulances back soon,’ Bobby told Centaine during one of their halts. ‘They are needed back there. As soon as we can find a field hospital, I’ll hand over these patients.’
Centaine nodded and made as if to go to the next vehicle where one of the men was calling weakly. ‘Over here, Sunshine, can you give me a hand.’
Bobby caught her wrist. ‘Centaine, when we reach the hospital there is bound to be a chaplain there. It would only take a few minutes—’
She gave him her new smile, and reached up to touch his unshaven cheek with her fingertips. ‘You are a kind man, Bobby – but Michel is the father of my son. I have thought about it, and I do not need another father.’
‘Centaine, you don’t understand! What will people think? A child without a father, a young mother without a husband – what will they say?’
‘As long as I have my baby, Bobby, I don’t give a – how do you say in English – I don’t give them a fig! They can say what they like. I am the widow of Michel Courtney.’
In the late afternoon they found the field hospital they were searching for. It was in a field outside Arras.
There were two cottage tents, emblazoned with the red crosses. These were serving as operating theatres. Rough shelters had also been hastily thrown up around them to accommodate the hundreds of wounded waiting their turns on the tables. They were built of tarpaulins over timber frames, or of corrugated iron scavenged from the surrounding farms.
Anna and Centaine helped unload their own wounded and carry them into one of the crowded shelters, then they retrieved their baggage from the roof of the leading ambulance. One of their patients noticed their preparations to leave.
‘You aren’t going, Sunshine, are you?’ And hearing him, others pulled themselves up on an elbow to protest.
‘What are we going to do without you, luv?’
She went to them for the last time, passing from one to the next with a smile and a joke, stooping to kiss their filthy, pain-contorted faces, and then at last, unable to bear it any more, hurrying back to where Anna waited for her.
They picked up the carpet bag and Anna’s sack, and started along the convoy of ambulances which were being refuelled, ready to return to the battlefield.
Bobby Clarke had waited for them, and now he ran after Centaine.
‘We are going back, orders from Major Sinclair.’
‘Au revoir, Bobby.’
‘I’ll always remember you, Centaine.’
She went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
‘I hope it will be a boy,’ he whispered.
‘It will be,’ she told him seriously. ‘A boy, I am certain of it.’
The convoy of ambulances trundled away, back into the north, and Bobby Clarke waved and shouted something that she did not catch, as they were carried away on the river of marching men and lumbering equipment.
‘What do we do now?’ Anna asked.
‘We go on,’ Centaine told her. Somehow, subtly, she had taken charge, and Anna, increasingly indecisive with each mile between her and Mort Homme, plodded after her. They left the sprawling hospital area and turned southwards once again into the crowded roadway.
Ahead of them over the trees Centaine could make out the roofs and spires of the town of Arras against the fading evening sky.
‘Look, Anna!’ she pointed. ‘There is the evening star – we are allowed a wish. What is yours?’
Anna looked at her curiously. What had come over the child? She had seen her father burned to death and her favourite animal mutilated barely two days before, and yet there was a ferocious gaiety about her. It was unnatural.
‘I wish for a bath and a hot meal.’
‘Oh, Anna, you always ask for the impossible.’ Centaine smiled at her over her shoulder, transferring the heavy carpet bag from one hand to the other.
‘What is your wish, then?’ Anna challenged.
‘I wish that the star leads us to the general, like it led the three wise men—’
‘Don’t blaspheme, girl.’ But Anna was too tired and uncertain for the rebuke to have real force behind it.
Centaine knew the town well, for it contained the convent where she had spent her schooldays. It was dark by the time they made their way through the town centre. The fighting of the early years of the war had left terrible scars on the lovely seventeenth-century Flemish architecture. The picturesque old town hall was pocked with shrapnel splinters and part of the roof destroyed. Many of the gabled brick houses surrounding the Grande Place were also roofless and deserted, although the windows of others were candlelit. The more stubborn of the population had moved back again immediately the tides of war had rolled by.
Centaine had not made a special note of the way to the monastery that General Courtney was using as his headquarters when she had last visited it with Michael, so she could not hope to find it in the dark. She and Anna camped in a deserted cottage, eating the last scraps of stale bread and dried-out cheese from Anna’s sack, using the carpet bag for a pillow and each other for warmth as they lay on the bare floor.
The next morning Centaine dreaded finding the monastery deserted when she finally rediscovered the lane leading to it, but there was a guard on the main gate.
‘Sorry, miss, Army property. Nobody goes in.’
She was still pleading with him when the black Rolls came racing down the lane behind her and braked as it reached the gates. It was coated with dried mud and dust, and there was a long ugly scratch down both the doors on the nearest side.
The guard recognized the pennant on the bonnet and waved the Zulu driver on, and the Rolls accelerated through the tall gates, but Centaine ran forward and shouted desperately after the car. In the back seat was the young officer she had met on her last visit.
‘Lieutenant Pearce!’ She remembered his name, and he glanced back, then looked startled as he recognized her. Quickly he leaned across to speak to the driver, and the Rolls pulled up sharply and then reversed.
‘Mademoiselle de Thiry!’ John Pearce jumped out and hurried to her. ‘The last person I expected – what on earth are you doing here?’
‘I must see Michel’s uncle, General Courtney. It’s important.’
‘He is not here at the moment,’ the young officer told her, ‘but you can come with me. He should be back fairly soon, and in the meantime we’ll find you a place to
rest, and something to eat. It seems to me that you could use both.’
He took Centaine’s carpet bag from her. ‘Come along – is this woman with you?’
‘Anna, my servant.’
‘She can sit in front with Sangane.’ He helped Centaine into the Rolls. ‘The Germans have made it a pretty busy few days,’ he settled beside her on the soft leather, ‘and it looks as though you have been through it as well.’
Centaine looked down at herself: her clothes were dusty and bedraggled, her hands were dirty and her fingernails had black half-moons under them. She could guess what her hair looked like.
‘I have just come back from the front. General Courtney went up to take a look for himself.’ John Pearce politely looked away as she tried to put her hair into place again. ‘He likes to be right up there – still thinks he’s fighting the Boer War, the old devil. We got as far as Mort Homme—’
‘That is my village.’
‘Not any more,’ he told her grimly. ‘It’s German now, or almost so. The new front line runs just north of it, and the village is under fire. Most of it shot away already – you wouldn’t recognize it, I’m sure.’
Centaine nodded again. ‘My home was shelled and burned down.’
‘I’m sorry.’ John Pearce went on quickly. ‘Anyway, it looks as though we have stopped them. General Courtney is sure we can hold them at Mort Homme—’
‘Where is the general?’
‘Staff meeting at Divisional HQ. He should be back later this evening. Ah, here we are.’
John Pearce found a monk’s cell for them, and had a servant bring them a meal and two buckets of hot water.
Once they had eaten, Anna stripped off Centaine’s clothes, and then stood her over one of the buckets and sponged her down with hot water.
‘Oh, that feels marvellous.’
‘For once there are no squeals,’ Anna muttered. She used her petticoat to dry Centaine, then slipped a clean shift from the carpet bag over her head and brushed out her hair. The thick dark curls were tangled.
‘Oh là, Anna, that hurts!’
‘It was too good to last,’ Anna sighed.
When she had finished, she insisted that Centaine lie on the cot to rest, while she bathed herself and washed out their soiled clothes. However, Centaine could not lie still and she sat up and hugged her knees.
‘Oh darling Anna, I have the most wonderful surprise for you—’
Anna twisted the thick grey horse-tail of her damp hair up on to her head and looked at Centaine quizzically.
‘Darling Anna, is it? It must be good news indeed.’
‘Oh it is, it is! I’m going to have Michel’s baby.’
Anna froze. The blood drained from her ruddy features, leaving them grey with shock, and she stared at Centaine, unable to speak.
‘It’s going to be a boy, I’m sure of it. I can just feel it. He will be just like Michel!’
‘How can you be sure?’ Anna blurted.
‘Oh, I am sure.’ Centaine knelt quickly and pulled up the shift. ‘Look at my tummy – can’t you just see, Anna?’
Her pale smooth stomach was flat as ever, with the neat dimple of the navel its only blemish. Centaine pushed it out strenuously.
‘Can’t you see, Anna? It might even be twins, Michel’s father and the general were twins. It may run in the family – think of it, Anna, two like Michel!’
‘No,’ Anna shook her head, aghast. ‘This is one of your fairy stories. I won’t believe that you and that soldier—’
‘Michel isn’t a soldier, he’s a—’ Centaine began, but Anna went on, ‘I won’t believe that a daughter of the house of de Thiry allowed a common soldier to use her like a kitchenmaid.’
‘Allowed, Anna!’ Centaine pulled down her shift angrily. ‘I didn’t allow it, I helped him do it. He didn’t seem to know what to do, at first, so I helped him, and we worked it out beautifully.’
Anna clapped both hands over her ears. ‘I don’t believe it, I’m not going to listen. Not after I taught you to be a lady – I just won’t listen.’
‘Then what do you think we were doing at night when I went out to meet him – you know I went out, you and Papa caught me at it, didn’t you?’
‘My baby!’ wailed Anna. ‘He took advantage—’
‘Nonsense, Anna, I loved it. I loved every little thing he did to me.’
‘Oh no! I won’t believe it. Besides, you couldn’t possibly know, not so soon. You are teasing old Anna. You are being wicked and cruel.’
‘You know how I’ve been sick in the morning.’
‘That doesn’t prove—’
‘The doctor, Bobby Clarke, the army doctor. He examined me. He told me.’
Anna was struck dumb at last, there was no more protests. It was inescapable: the child had been out at night, she had been sick in the morning, and Anna believed implicitly in the infallibility of doctors. Then there was Centaine’s strange and unnatural elation in the face of all her adversity, it was inescapable.
‘It’s true, then,’ she capitulated. ‘Oh, what are we going to do? Oh, the good Lord save us from scandal and disgrace – what are we going to do?’
‘Do, Anna?’ Centaine laughed at her theatrical lamentations. ‘We are going to have the most beautiful baby boy, or if we are lucky, two of them, and I’m going to need you to help me care for them. You will help me, won’t you, Anna? I know nothing about babies, and you know everything.’
Anna’s first shock passed swiftly, and she began to consider not the disgrace and scandal, but the existence of a real live infant; it was over seventeen years since she had experienced that joy. Now, miraculously, she was being promised another infant. Centaine saw the change in her, the first stirrings of maternal passion.
‘You are going to help me with our baby. You won’t leave us, we need you, the baby and I! Anna, promise me, please promise me,’ and Anna flew to the cot and swept Centaine into her arms and held her with all her strength, and Centaine laughed with joy in her crushing embrace.
It was after dark when John Pearce knocked again at the door of the monk’s cell.
‘The general has returned, Mademoiselle de Thiry. I have told him you are here, and he wishes to speak to you as soon as possible.’
Centaine followed the aide-de-camp down the cloisters and into the large refectory which had been converted into the regimental operations room. Half a dozen officers were poring over the large-scale map that had been spread over one of the refectory tables. The map was porcupined with coloured pins, and the atmosphere in the room was tense and charged.
As Centaine entered, the officers glanced up at her, but even a young and pretty girl could not hold their attention for more than a few seconds and they returned to their tasks.
On the far side of the room, General Sean Courtney was standing with his back to her. His jacket, resplendent with red tabs and insignia and ribbons, hung over the chair on which he was resting one booted foot. He leaned his elbow on his knee and scowled furiously at the earpiece of a field telephone from which a faint distorted voice quacked at him.
Sean wore a woollen singlet with sweat-stained armpits and marvellously flamboyant embroidered braces, decorated with stags and running hounds, over his shoulders. He was chewing on an unlit Havana cigar, and suddenly he bellowed into the field telephone without removing the cigar from his mouth.
‘That is utter horse-shit! I was there myself two hours ago. I know! I need at least four more batteries of 25-pounders in that gap, and I need them before dawn – don’t give me excuses, just do it, and tell me when it’s done!’ He slammed down the hand-set, and saw Centaine.
‘My dear,’ his voice altered and he came to her quickly and took her hand. ‘I was worried. The château has been completely destroyed. The new front line runs not a mile beyond it—’ He paused, and studied her for a moment. What he saw reassured him and he asked, ‘Your father?
She shook her head. ‘He was killed in the shelling.’
&n
bsp; ‘I’m sorry,’ Sean said simply, and turned to John Pearce. ‘Take Miss de Thiry through to my quarters.’ Then to her, ‘I will follow you in five minutes.’
The general’s room opened directly into the main refectory, so that with the door open Sean Courtney could lie on his cot and watch everything that went on in his operations room. It was sparsely furnished, just the cot and a desk with two chairs, and his locker at the foot of the cot.
‘Won’t you sit here, Mademoiselle?’ John Pearce offered her one of the chairs, and while she waited, Centaine glanced round the small room.
The only item of interest was the desk. On it stood a hinged photograph frame, one leaf of which contained the picture of a magnificent mature woman, with dark Jewish beauty. It was inscribed across the bottom corner, ‘Come home safely to your loving wife, Ruth.’
The second leaf of the frame held the picture of a girl of about Centaine’s age. The resemblance to the older woman was apparent – they could only be mother and daughter – but the girl’s beauty was marred by a petulant, spoiled expression; the pretty mouth had a hard, acquisitive quirk to it, and Centaine decided that she did not like her very much at all.
‘My wife and daughter,’ Sean Courtney said from the doorway. He had put on his jacket and was buttoning it as he came in.
‘You have eaten?’ he asked as he sank into the chair opposite Centaine.
‘Yes, thank you.’ Centaine stood up and picked up the silver box of Vestas from the desk, struck one and held it for him to light the Havana. He looked surprised, then leaned forward and sucked the flame into the tip of the cigar. When it was well lit, he leaned back in the chair and said, ‘My daughter, Storm, does that for me.’
Centaine blew out the match, sat down again and waited quietly for him to enjoy the first few puffs of fragrant smoke. He had aged since their last meeting – or perhaps it was only that he was very tired, she thought.
‘When did you last sleep?’ she asked, and he grinned. Suddenly, he looked thirty years younger.
