‘Out!’ Ben snapped, hauling the child closest to him to her feet and dumping her, shrieking, over the side on to the grass, ‘Get in the ditch!’
‘Ben, what on earth are you—?’
‘Out!’ he roared.
The buzzing was louder. Excitedly Willi stood up, pointing. ‘Look – an aeroplane!’
Ben caught him by the waist, swung him over the side of the truck. ‘Down!’
As if to add emphasis to his words there was the bone-shaking crump of another explosion. This time Sally saw it. Perhaps a mile along the crowded road the world erupted. Cobblestones, a cartwheel, something that looked for all the world like a broken doll, were hurled into the air. Dust drifted across the sun. Around them people were screaming, standing in petrified terror as the small plane swooped and banked and turned towards them.
‘God Almighty!’ Sally was out of the truck in a moment, the squalling Philippa under one arm. She dumped the child unceremoniously in the ditch next to Willi – ‘Hold on to her!’ – and then was back at the truck helping Ben with the others. ‘Quickly, quickly! Into the ditch. Put your heads down! Cover them with your arms.’ Several children were crying, terrified. The plane swooped. Sally, glancing up, could quite clearly see the figure of the pilot in the small cockpit. Even in the heat and horror of the moment she had time to register the wave of hatred that swept over her at the sight of him. ‘Bastard!’ she muttered viciously under her breath, ‘murdering bastard!’ and was abashed to catch the quick flash of Ben’s teeth as he almost threw the last of the children into her waiting arms.
The plane was almost upon them. Still holding the child she leapt for the ditch, flinging herself down upon her face, her body curled about that of the squirming, crying child. A moment later Ben was beside her, his arm across her shoulders, forcing her face into the ground, the protective weight of him pressing the breath from her lungs. There was a strange, still moment of suspense and then reverberations of the explosion as the pilot tossed the last of his hand grenades on to the crowded road was all around them, rupturing the air, erupting through the ground upon which they lay. Men, women and children were screaming. A horse bellowed its agony. Dirt and stones rained down on them as they lay. Somewhere near a woman shrieked and shrieked again.
Sally felt Ben’s weight lift from her. Dazed she sat up. ‘Philippa?’
‘Mama!’ A small whirlwind hit her, filthy, sobbing, thoroughly frightened, but whole.
‘Flippy! Oh – Flippy!’ Sally buried her face in the child’s dirty hair, her eyes clenched tight against tears, her arms crushing the child to her. The road was chaos. The grenade had fallen perhaps fifty yards from them, opening a small crater in the road beside which a disembowelled horse lay still screaming its agony. Men and women were wandering, dazed and bleeding, or sitting in shocked silence. Ben was on his feet and, having ascertained that his own party was unscathed, had grabbed his bag from the cabin of the truck and was in amongst the wounded, calling over his shoulder to Sally as he went.
‘Leave the children with Private Benson. Come on – I need you to translate.’
She followed him numbly, having handed the clinging Philippa into the strong arms of Private Benson. Almost as mindless with shock as were the victims of the explosion she helped Ben organize the wounded, translating for him as he cleaned and bound wounds as best as he could, splinted arms and legs with anything to hand. Within minutes both he and she were as covered in blood as any of the casualties. The horse had stopped screaming. A strange stillness had fallen, broken only by the quiet murmur of voices, the stifled sobbing of a woman, the occasional wail of a child.
‘Ben—’ Sally touched his arm. He finished tying a bandage, looked up. She nodded towards the side of the road, very close to where, miraculously, all of their own party of youngsters were sitting, cowed and quiet but unhurt, with Private Benson. A young woman nursing a baby sat, white-faced, her arm about a little boy of perhaps four or five, a sturdy, well-built little fellow clothed warmly and well, a tumble of fair curls falling on to his still babyish forehead as his head lolled in his mother’s lap.
Sally looked in anguish at Ben.
Ben stood up, his face a mask.
Together they walked towards the woman. With the composure of shock she watched them approach, a look of polite enquiry on her face.
‘The child is dead,’ Ben said quietly.
‘Yes,’ Sally’s whisper was barely audible. They reached the woman. Sally knelt by her. ‘May I take the baby?’ she asked gently in Flemish. ‘I’ll hold her for you.’
The girl smiled sweetly. She was very fair, her face pointed as an elf’s. ‘Thank you, but no. I don’t want to wake her.’
‘Madam—’ Ben began, then stopped helplessly. As the woman moved to look up at him the dead child’s head shifted in terrible travesty of life. There was no sign of wound, no blood. The woman’s small hand rested firmly upon his shoulder, as it would upon that of a sleeping child.
Very gently Ben reached for her hand. The baby cried a little. As Ben lifted the mother’s hand the body of the little boy slithered forwards, falling into the ditch.
The girl sat rigid for a moment, staring at the crumpled body of her merry, handsome son, her face suddenly blank with horror and grief. Then she screamed. Again and again she screamed, wordless, mindless, terrible.
Sally, heart and mind raked raw by the awful sound, the look in the girl’s eyes, put her arms about her, baby and all, and drew her close, the screams that convulsed the slim body muffled against her breast.
Ben picked up the dead child, laid him gently upon the ground. His body was whole, his face peaceful. He might indeed have been asleep.
Sally, tears running down her face, rocked the screaming girl in her arms, head thrown back. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said to the livid, dust-filled, sun-reddened sky. ‘Sweet Jesus Christ!’ and was not herself sure if she prayed or cursed.
II
The modern seaport of Zeebrugge was a teeming ant heap of frantic activity. Uniforms were everywhere; British, Belgian, some French. By the boat-load the British arrived, by the truck and train-load, on foot and on horseback they left, moving forward into the flat, fertile farmlands of Flanders, across which the German armies and armaments were advancing. The town was thronged too with refugees, every transport office besieged by them, every inch of shelter taken, every pawnbroker and market stall doing brisk business in barter.
Sally, two precious loaves of bread and a large hunk of cheese clutched to her breast in a paper bag, fought her way through the crowded streets back towards the warehouse where Ben had managed to billet her and the children for the two days and nights they had been in the town. He had been irritated that she had refused to take the first berths for England he had found for them; but how could she have left Marie-Clare to face the terrible ordeal of burying her tiny son alone? With the same calm obstinacy with which she had insisted over Ben’s – she suspected half-hearted – protests that the woman, her baby and her dead child should join them after the air attack she had adamantly refused to take the first empty troop-ship home and abandon them. Marie-Clare quite obviously had been in no fit state to cope. Sally it had been, with Ben’s help, who had arranged the pathetic and hasty little funeral, she and Marie-Clare the only mourners at the brief and somehow heartless little ceremony. Small, innocent Charles Vennigen had not been the first child to be buried so in Zeebrugge since the flood of refugees began to pour into the town. Sally supposed, grimly, that he would not be the last.
She pushed her way through the crowds at the dockside, thankful that she had Ben to rely on in the matter of transport back to England. Queues of people jostled and pushed, faces drawn and pale with worry, lack of sleep, lack of food. There seemed to Sally to be an even greater urgency in the air, a frightened thread of panic no less infectious for being subdued. She hurried her steps. In the small warehouse where truckle beds had been set up for her and the children it was comparatively quiet. Marie-Clare
, her baby as always tucked into the crook of one arm, had a group of the smaller children in one corner; packing cases their improvised tables and chairs, they were playing some kind of game, relaxed and amazingly cheerful. In the past twenty-four hours Marie-Clare’s open, loving nature had won them over entirely. Sally threw her a grateful smile. The girl smiled back, her heart in her eyes. If Sally van Damme had asked her to walk through fire Marie-Clare Vennigen would have done it with that same smile.
‘Sally—’
Sally turned. Ben was at the door, beckoning. His face was grim. She lay the bread and cheese upon the table, called to one of the bigger boys. ‘Albert – you and Willi share this out. Equal portions for everyone, mind. Marie-Clare will be watching you!’ She had long since discovered that the best way to harness the subversive instincts of these two was to give them responsibility. With a task to do they were two eager pairs of hands, two active and clever minds. Idle they were devils. She watched the job started before joining Ben. ‘What is it?’
‘Antwerp’s fallen.’
They stood in silence for a moment.
‘So. Poor Belgium is lost,’ Sally said very quietly.
‘Yes.’ His voice was soft. She glanced at him and quickly away, almost afraid of the compassion she saw in his face. She had not expected him to understand how much Philippe’s country – her country for such a little, happy while – meant to her, how hard a blow it was to think of what would happen to it now. She looked down at her hands, which were clasped tightly in front of her.
What of Alice? What of Anselm? What of dear, beautiful Bruges?
She blinked rapidly, raised her head.
‘I’ve berths for you at dawn tomorrow,’ he said, and then, with a small twitch of the lips that could hardly be called a smile, ‘I do suppose you’re ready to take them? There are no more lame ducks to be helped, no more matters more urgent than safety?’
She grinned a little and shook her head. ‘Thank you.’ Suddenly and overwhelmingly she longed to be gone, to be out of this peril, to be in a land unthreatened by invasion. To be home.
‘Marie-Clare and the baby will be going with you,’ he said, absurdly casually.
That came closer to reducing her to tears than anything else. ‘Oh – Ben! Thank you. Thank you!’ Without a moment’s thought she threw her arms about him, hugging him hard, lifted her face to his and kissed his taut, rough cheek. Then stood back, face flaming. ‘I’ll—’ the words stumbled on her tongue, ‘I’ll go and tell her—’
His answering grin was warm, quick, utterly unembarrassed, almost boyish. ‘Dinner tonight,’ he said briskly.
Half turned from him she stopped, staring blankly. ‘What?’
He laughed, and she flushed again, poppy bright, mortified at her own unseemly brusqueness.
‘Dinner,’ he repeated. ‘This evening. Well – hardly dinner, but a bite to eat and a glass of wine in a little café I know. The patron owes me a favour or two. I won’t keep you up late, I promise.’
‘But—’
‘Marie-Clare and those devious lieutenants of yours will give an eye to the children. I’ll pick you up at seven.’ Not waiting for her reply, he touched his stick to his cap and turned on his heels.
She watched him go, watched the tall, broad-shouldered figure through the crowds until he disappeared. Stood for a long moment her hand still upon the open door, her eyes distant and thoughtful before she turned back to the children.
* * *
‘What will happen, do you think? Will it be over by Christmas as everyone seems to think?’ Sally twirled her wine glass a little, watching the play of light in the rich, dark depths, then lifted her eyes to Ben’s face, openly studying the square, strong lines of it.
He shook his head, taking a breath that might have been a sigh. ‘No. Not this Christmas – possibly not next.’
She nodded, unsurprised. ‘It’s all so stupid, isn’t it?’ she asked at last softly, her eyes roaming about the crowded, smoky room. Young men in uniform stood at the bar, sat on and about the oilcloth-covered tables, drinking, laughing, smoking. One or two girls clung to khaki-clad arms or draped themselves about khaki-clad shoulders. In the corner a piano played, off key, fighting a losing battle in the hubbub of noise. ‘Look at them all.’ She nibbled her lip, turned a suddenly despairing face to him, ‘It’s – it’s as if they think it’s some kind of game?’
He nodded.
‘And somewhere’, she jerked her head at the window, ‘out there – just a few score miles away there are other women’s sons – other women’s husbands – doing the same thing.’
Following her line of thought exactly he nodded wryly. ‘Except that their mothers, sisters, wives are in Berlin, or Frankfurt—’
‘Yes. And for what? Ben – what’s it all about?’ She was truly puzzled.
He shrugged.
She picked up her glass and with a quick movement drained it. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to get maudlin.’
‘You aren’t.’ Ben picked up the empty bottle, lifted it and, catching the eye of the portly man who was serving at the tables, indicated his desire for another.
‘Ben!’ Sally could not suppress sudden laughter. ‘What are you doing? We’ve already drunk a whole bottle!’
‘And we are now about to drink another. Hand over that glass.’ He glanced at her as he poured the wine. Gaunt still, her mouth too ready to fall into the straight line of unhappiness, yet she looked better than the dispirited scarecrow the sight of whom had so shocked him in Bruges. Her eyes were alive again, less inward-looking. Her smile was natural.
Almost as if picking the thought from his mind Sally, with the glass he had pushed over to her, toasted him half smiling, her eyes sad. ‘To you, Ben. With – oh, so many! – thanks. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come. I wasn’t—’ she stopped for a moment, her gaze dropping to the richly glinting wine, ‘wasn’t myself,’ she finished, steadily enough.
The small silence was deep and warm with sympathy. ‘I’m sorry,’ Ben said at last without embarrassment, ‘very sorry. About Philippe.’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes clung a little longer to the glimmering, impersonal liquid, then she looked at him. ‘You were wrong.’ Her voice was quiet, her eyes deadly serious.
‘Yes. I know.’
‘But – you meant it for the best, I think.’
His lips twitched a little. ‘Another small good intention to pave the road to hell. Yes. I did.’
She nodded. Sipped her wine. Wondered a little uneasily at the odd, not unpleasant sensation that came as the liquid slipped warm and smooth down her throat. ‘Well—’ she had somehow, inexplicably, lost the thread of the conversation. She concentrated hard. ‘Thank you again. For rescuing me. Us, that is.’ She leaned her elbows on the table, put her chin on her hands, studying him. ‘As a matter of fact – I don’t think you should be here at all, should you?’
He grinned. His face, more relaxed than she had seen it in years, was unnervingly attentive, glinting with mischief. ‘That’s very perceptive of you. No. I shouldn’t be.’
‘Where should you be?’
‘Somewhere in France.’
‘Ah.’ She nodded sagely.
‘Where I shall turn up tomorrow with some reasonably plausible story, having seen you on your way. The way this war is being run, believe me, no one will have missed me. Meanwhile,’ he leaned forward, bottle in hand, ‘this really is excellent claret.’
They talked for an hour or so longer, talked of home and of the people who waited there – of Hannah who, having with the rest of the sisterhood abandoned for the moment her political battle in order to give her wholehearted support to her country in time of war, was nursing in a London hospital determined to be posted to France; of Ralph, whose conscientious objections to fighting in a war he considered to be morally, humanly and politically indefensible were, to his mortification, all but nullified by eyesight that was so bad that no army would take him if he had begged them; of Pete
r, already in the thick of it fighting alongside the French on the Aisne in defence of Paris.
Neither of them, perhaps oddly, mentioned Charlotte.
They spoke of the Bear that was now, Ben told her, as full of Belgian refugees as of London’s orphans, they spoke of Bron’s adamant and indignant refusal to join most of her contemporaries in Silvertown, earning a small fortune in the armament factories.
Sally smiled. ‘Good old Bron. She’s worth a guinea a box that girl.’
Ben nodded. The noise around them had abated a little. At the table next to theirs a young lieutenant snored, his head on his arms.
‘And Doctor Will?’ Sally asked.
Ben tinkered with his glass. ‘He’s – older. But bearing up. He spends a lot of time at the hospital, of course. A lot of wounded were shipped back after Mons. That can only get worse I should think. Pa will have as much to do as I have.’ He offered the bottle. She shook her head, smiling but positive. He emptied the wine into his own glass, filling it to the brim.
‘And you?’ she asked softly. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Doctoring. What else?’
‘But – in uniform?’
‘You’re surprised?’
She hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I just am somehow.’
He watched her for a long moment, the old cool, wry gleam in his eyes. Then he lifted the glass, savoured a mouthful, put it down, the long mouth twitching to a self-derisive smile. ‘You aren’t the only one, Sally Smith. I’m pretty surprised myself.’
She did not correct the name, though she was tempted. They sat for a long, companionably quiet moment. Outside, in the distance, the guns had started again, a sound she had become used to in the last couple of days. She looked at him, a quick gleam in her eyes. ‘This little lot’s made a bit of a mess of your plans, hasn’t it, Doctor Patten?’ she asked, only half humorously.
Tomorrow, Jerusalem Page 35
