The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur - Страница 39
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What is happening now, Papa? it is the death-throes of the German army, the comte explained, the last thrashings of a dying giant. But do not worry, my little one, the British will soon invest their positions. We have nothing to fear. The thunder of the guns rose to a crescendo and was heightened by the din of the British counter-barrages as they sought to destroy the German counter -attack that was massing in the front-line trenches facing the ridges.
It sounds just like last summer. Centaine stared with foreboding at the stark outline of the chalk ridges upon the horizon. They were blurring slightly before her eyes, shrouding in the haze of shell-bursts. We must do what we can for them, she told Anna.
We have to think of ourselves, Anna protested. We still have to go on living and we cannot-'Come, Anna, we are wasting time. Under Centaine's insistence they cooked up four of the huge copper kettles of soup, turnip and dried peas and potato, flavoured with ham bones. They used up their reserves of flour at a prodigious rate to bake ovenful after ovenful. of bread loaves, and then they loaded the small hand-cart and trundled it down the lane to the main road.
Centaine remembered clearly the fighting of the previous summer, but what she witnessed now shocked her afresh.
The highway was choked, filled from hedgerow to hedgerow with the tides of war, flowing in both directions, piling up and intermingling and then separating again.
Down from the ridges came the human detritus of the battle, torn and bloody, mutilated and bleeding, crowded into the slowly moving ambulances, into horse-drawn carts and drays, or limping on improvised crutches, borne on the shoulders of their stronger fellows, or clinging to the sides of the over-crowded ambulances for support as they stumbled through the deep muddy ruts.
In the opposite direction marched the reserves and reinforcements moving up to help hold the ridges against the German assault. They were in long files, already worn down under the weight of equipment they carried, not even glancing at the torn remnants of the battle which they might soon be joining. They trudged forward, watching their feet, and stopped when the way ahead was blocked, standing with bovine patience, only moving forward again when the man ahead of them started.
After the initial shock, Centaine helped Anna push the hand-cart up on to the verge, and then while Anna ladled out the thick soup, she handed the mugs, each with a thick slice of newly baked bread, to the exhausted and injured soldiers as they stumbled past.
There was not nearly enough, she could feed only one man in a hundred. Those whom she picked out as being in greatest need gulped down the soup and wolfed the bread.
Bless yer, missus, they mumbled, and then staggered on Look at their eyes, Anna, Centaine whispered as she held up the mugs to be refilled. They have already seen beyond the grave. Enough of that fanciful nonsense, Anna scolded her, you will give yourself nightmares again. No nightmare can be worse than this, Centaine answered quietly. Look at that one! His eyes had been torn out of his head by shrapnel and the empty sockets bound up with bloody rags. He followed another soldier, both of whose shattered arms were strapped across his chest. The blind man held on to his belt, and almost dragged him down when he tripped on the rough and slippery roadway.
Centaine drew them out of the stream, and she held the mug to the lips of the armless soldier.
You are a good girl, he whispered. Do you have a cigarette? I'm sorry. She shook her head and turned to rearrange the bandages over the other man's eyes. She had a glimpse of what lay beneath them, and she gagged and her hands faltered.
You sound so young and pretty- The blinded man was about the same age as Michael, he also had thick dark hair, but it was clotted with dried blood.
Yes, Fred, she's a pretty girl. His companion helped him to his feet again. We'd best be getting on again, miss.
What is happening up there? Centaine asked them.
All hell is what is happening Will the line hold? Nobody knows that, miss, and the two of them were washed away on the slowly moving river of misery.
The soup and bread were soon finished, and they wheeled the cart back to the chAteau to prepare more.
Remembering the wounded soldiers pleas, Centaine raided the cupboard in the gunroom. where the comte kept his hoard of tobacco, and when she and Anna returned to their post at the end of the lane, she was able for a short time to give that extra little comfort to some of them.
There is so little we can do, she lamented.
We are doing all we can, Anna pointed out. No sense in grieving for the impossible. They laboured on after dark, by the feeble yellow light of the storm lantern, and the stream of suffering never dried up, rather it seemed to grow ever denser, so that the pale ravaged faces in the lantern light blurred before Centaine's exhausted eyes and became indistinguishable one from the other, and the feeble words of cheer which she gave each of them were repetitive and meaningless in her own ears.
At last, well after midnight, Anna led her back to the chateau, and they slept in each other's arms, still in their muddy, bloodstained clothes, and woke in the dawn to boil up fresh kettles of soup and bake more bread.
Standing over the stove, Centaine cocked her head as she heard the distant roar of engines.
The airplanes! she cried. I forgot them! They will fly without me today, that is bad luck! Today there will be many suffering from bad luck, Anna grunted as she wrapped a blanket around one of the soup kettles to prevent it cooling too quickly, and then lugged it to the kitchen door.
Halfway down the lane Centaine straightened up from the handle of the cart. Look, Anna, over there on the edge of North Field! The fields were swarming with men. They had discarded their heavy back-packs and helmets and weapons, and they were labouring in the early summer sun, stripped to the waist or in grubby vests. What are they doing, Arma? There were thousands of them, working under the direction of their officers. They were armed with pointed shovels, tearing at the yellow earth, piling it up in long lines, sinking into it so swiftly that as they watched, many of them were already knee-deep, then waist-deep behind the rising earth parapets.
Trenches. Centaine found the answer to her own question. Trenches, Anna, they are digging new trenches."Why, why are they doing that?
Because, Centaine hesitated. She did not want to say it aloud, Because they are not going to be able to hold the ridges, she said softly, and both of them looked up to the high ground where the shellfire sullied the bright morning with its sulphurous yellow mists.
When they reached the end of the lane, they found that the roadway was clogged with traffic, the opposing streams of vehicles and men hopelessly interlocked, defying the efforts of the military police to disentangle them and get them moving again. One of the ambulances had slid off the road into the muddy ditch, adding to the confusion, and a doctor and the ambulance driver were struggling to unload the stretchers from the back of the stranded vehicle. Anna, we must help them. Anna was as strong as a man, and Centaine was as determined. Between them they seized the handles of one of the stretchers and dragged it up out of the ditch.
The doctor scrambled out of the mud.
Well done, he panted. He was bare-headed but his tunic sported the serpent and staff insignia of the medical corps at the collar, and the white armbands with the scarlet crosses.
Ah, Mademoiselle de Thiry! He recognized Centaine, over the wounded man on the stretcher between them. I should have known it was you. Doctor, of course- It was the same officer who had arrived on the motor-cycle with Lord Andrew, and who had helped the comte with the consumption of Napoleon cognac on the day that Michael crashed in North Field.
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