The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur. Страница 40

They set the stretcher down under the hedgerow and the young doctor knelt beside it, working over the still figure under the grey blanket.

He might make it, if we can get help for him soon. He jumped up. But there are others still in there. We must get them out. Between them they unloaded the other stretchers from the back of the ambulance and laid them in a row.

This one is finished. With his thumb and forefinger the doctor closed the lids of the staring eyes, and then covered the dead man's face with the flap of the blanket.

The road is blocked, it's hopeless trying to get through, and we are going to lose these others, he indicated the row of stretchers, unless we can get them under cover, where we can work on them. He was looking directly at Centaine, and for a moment she did not understand his enquiring gaze.

The cottages at Mort Homme are overfilled, and the road is blocked he repeated.

Of course, Centaine cut in quickly. You must bring them up to the chateau.

. . .

The comte met them on the staircase of the chdteau and when Centaine hastily explained their needs, he joined enthusiastically in transforming the grand salon into a hospital ward.

They pushed the furniture against the walls to clear the centre of the floor and then stripped the mattresses from the upstairs bedrooms and bundled them down the stairs. Assisted by the ambulance driver and three medical orderlies the young doctor had recruited, they laid the mattresses out on the fine woollen Aubusson carpet.

In the meantime the military police, under instructions from the doctor, were signalling the ambulances out of the stalled traffic on the main road and directing them up the lane to the chAteau. The doctor rode on the running-board of the leading vehicle, and when he saw Centaine, he jumped down and seized her arm urgently.

Mademoiselle! Is there another way to reach the field hospital at Mort Homme? I need supplies, chloroform, disinfectant, bandages, and another doctor to help me. His French was passable, but Centaine answered him in English. I can ride across the fields. You're a champion. I'll give you a note. He pulled the pad from his top pocket and scribbled a short message. Ask for Major Sinclair, he tore out the sheet of paper and folded it, the advance hospital is in the cottages. Yes, I know it. Who are you? Who must I tell them sent me? With recent practice, the English words came more readily to Centaine's lips.

Forgive me, Mademoiselle, I haven't had a chance to introduce myself before. My name is Clarke, Captain Robert Clarke, but they call me Bobby. Nuage seemed to sense from her the urgency of their mission and he flew furiously at the jumps and threw clods of mud from his hooves as he raced across the fields and down the rows of vineyards. The streets of the village were jammed with men and vehicles, and the advance hospital in the row of cottages was chaotic.

The officer she had been sent to find was a big man with arms like a bear, and thick greying curls that flopped forward on his forehead as he leaned over the soldier on whom he was operating.

Where the hell is Bobby? he demanded, without looking up at Centaine, concentrating on the neat stitches he was pulling into the deep gash across the soldiers back.

As be pulled the thread tight and knotted it the flesh rose in a peak and Centaine's gorge rose with it but she explained quickly.

All right, tell Bobby I'll send what I can, but we are running short of dressing ourselves. They lifted his patient off the table, and in his place laid a boy with his entrails hanging out of him in an untidy bunch.

I can't spare anybody to help him either. Off you go, and tell him. The soldier writhed and shrieked as the doctor began to stuff his stomach back into him.

If you give me the supplies, I will carry them back with me. Centaine stood her ground, and he glanced up at her and gave her the ghost of a smile.

You don't give up easily, he grudged. All right, speak to him. He pointed across the crowded room of the cottage with the scalpel in his right hand. Tell him I sent you, and good luck, young lady."To you also, doctor. God knows, we all need it, he agreed, and stooped once more to his work.

Centaine pressed Nuage as hard as before on the ride back and let him in his stall. As she entered the courtyard, she saw that there were three more ambulances parked Igo in the yard; the drivers unloading their cargoes of wounded and dying men. She hurried past them into the house carrying a heavy kitbag over her shoulder, and paused at the door of the salon in amazement.

All the mattresses were full, and other wounded men were lying on the bare floor, or propped against the panelled walls.

Bobby Clarke had lit every branch of the silver candelabra in the centre of the massive ormolu dinner table and was operating by candlelight.

He looked up and saw Centaine. Did you bring the chloroform? he called across to her.

For a moment she could not reply and she hesitated at the tall double doors, for the salon already stank. The cloying odour of blood mingled with the reek of the bodies and clothing of men who had come from the mud of the trenches, mud in which the dead had been buried and had decomposed to the same soupy consistency, men with the acrid sweat of fear and pain still upon them.

Did you get it? he repeated impatiently, and she forced herself to go forward. They do not have anyone to help you. You'll have to do it. Here, stand on this side of me, he ordered. Now hold this.

For Centaine it all became a blur of horrors and blood and labour that exhausted her both physically and nervously.

There was no time to rest, barely time to snatch a hasty mug of coffee and one of the sandwiches which Anna turned out in the kitchen. just when she believed that she had seen and experienced so much that nothing else could shock her, then there would be something even more harrowing.

She stood beside Bobby Clarke as he cut down through Igi the muscles of a man's thigh, tying off each blood vessel as he came to it. When he exposed the white bone of the femur and took up the gleaming silver bone-saw, she thought she would faint with the sound it made, like a carpenter sawing a hard-wood plank.

Take it away! Bobby ordered, and she had to force herself to touch the disembodied limb. She exclaimed and jerked back when it twitched under her fingers.

Don't waste time, Bobby snapped, and she took it in her hands; it was still warm and surprisingly weighty.

Now there is nothing that I will not dare to do, she realized as she carried it away.

At last she reached the stage of exhaustion when even Bobby realized that she could not stay on her feet.

Go and lie down somewhere, he ordered, but instead she went to sit beside a young private on one of the mattresses. She held his hand, and he called her motherand spoke disjointedly of a day at the seaside long ago.

At the end she sat helplessly and listened to his breathing change, panting to stay alive, and his grip tightened as he felt the darkness coming on. The skin of his hand turned clammy with sweat and his eyes opened very wide and he called out, Oh Mother, save me! and then relaxed, and she wanted to cry for him, but she did not have the tears. So she closed those staring eyes as she had seen Bobby Clarke do and stood up and went to the next man.

He was a sergeant, a heavily built fellow almost her father's age, with a broad, pleasant face covered with grey stubble, and a hole in his chest through which each breath puffed in a froth of pink bubbles. She had to put her ear almost to his lips to hear his request, and then she looked round quickly and saw the silver Louis X! soup tureen on the sideboard. She brought it to him and unfastened his breeches and held the tureen for him, and he kept whispering, I'm sorry, please forgive me, a young lady like you. It isn't proper. So they worked on through the night, and when Centaine went down to find fresh candles to replace those that were guttering in the holders of the candelabra, she had just reached the kitchen floor when she was seized by sudden compelling nausea, and she stumbled to the servants toilet and knelt over the noisome bucket. She finished, pale and trembling, and went to wash her face at the kitchen tap. Anna was waiting for her.