Winter Roses (25 page)

Stop, she told her heaving stomach. She could only cope if she took one tiny step at a time. She had to deal with what was in front of her at the moment. Yves had gone now and she must work alone. At her feet was a woman lying on her back, bleeding heavily and with a beam of wood across her. She felt calmer, for she knew what to do. She took a deep breath and began.

Two hours later she slammed the doors of the last ambulance shut on the last casualty, brought out of the wreckage of Stokes. The fire brigade had left some time ago after dealing with a fractured gas main, and telling them that bombs had
fallen all over Folkestone, Cheriton, Lympne and Hythe. There was little talk, for everyone was preoccupied with rescue work. Later would come the reckoning. Mr Stokes had been killed, and now his fourteen-year-old son was being brought out, not likely to live, the ambulance men had told her. The butcher, that nice man – no, she would not think about it. This was but one evening, she told herself. Felicia coped every day.

She looked round, but there seemed nothing more for her to do. Now it was over, great waves of nausea hit her, starting somewhere deep in her stomach, forcing their way up, repelled but at last conquered. She staggered over to what had been a shop doorway, leant over and brought up all her sickness, revulsion and fear, coughing and retching. When at last she stood shakily upright, Yves was at her side again. She said nothing for there was nothing to say, nothing to do except to walk away from the stench of fear. Yves was cut and bleeding, covered in dirt. He looked at her with tired, dark eyes. ‘Come,’ he said, and led her back along Harbour Street.

The streets were crowded as everyone came out with their own whispered stories of carnage and bereavements, but she could still say nothing. On the harbour front, he stopped at a fountain which miraculously still spouted water.

‘Drink,’ he said, and she bent over the spout feeling the cool liquid dribble into the inferno of her nightmare. Then he wiped her mouth with the only clean spot on his handkerchief.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘Home.’

‘No!’ Caroline stood still. Not Sandgate Road, even if the house still stood. Perhaps it too was gutted, and Mrs Clark one of the bodies lying in the mortuary. And if it were unscathed, she could not face the ghoulish chatter – or was it that she could not face the loneliness of herself?

‘My home,’ Yves corrected.

‘Belgium?’ Her brain seemed to be dulled to the point of stupidity.

‘Hythe. If I still have a house there. The fire chief said nineteen bombs fell there. Luke said you had gone to the town. When I heard the bomb, I—’ He broke off. ‘My car is up on the Leas. Can you walk that far?’

‘Yes.’ Provided it was out in the air and not in the town. It was almost dark now, and their progress was therefore even slower.

He lived in Hythe, he had said. It didn’t make sense to her, nothing made sense any more with her ears still partly blocked by the aftermath of the explosions; everything seemed distant and unreal.

Unquestioningly she climbed up into the staff car, unable to cope with what was happening to her, or why Yves was still with her. The whole town seemed to be milling about on the Leas, a peaceful beehive had turned into an angry wasps’ nest of civilians and soldiers. She thought she ought to make an effort to speak.

‘Shouldn’t you be with your Belgian friends? Aren’t there things you should do?’ Things? What did she mean? Her words fell into a deep pool of silence.

Then he replied: ‘There is work for me here to do that is more important.’

He drove the car at a snail’s pace to avoid congregating people as well as because of the dimmed headlights. What was the point of dimming them now? she wondered. The enemy had done its bit for tonight, surely. Not even the Germans would dare come back again; the whole of the Royal Flying Corps would be up to meet them. Rules were rules, of course. For some reason this struck her as very, very funny, and she began to laugh. Then she was unable to stop.

Yves halted the car on the Sandgate seafront, and the sound of the crashing waves seemed a Wagnerian background for her laughter. He pulled her out of the car and down onto the shingle beach, she could feel the stones through her boots, and that seemed funny too. He turned her into the night wind, which was cool and sharp, so that it blew hard against her face, bringing the spray with it. He held her until sobs followed the laughter, then held her closer until she could feel the thump of his heart.

Calm brought weariness and Caroline only dimly remembered jumping down from the car, and his leading her into a stone cottage somewhere at the back of the town near the church of St Nicholas. That too had been hit, judging by the group of people in the churchyard, although the church still seemed solid enough and she was glad. The safety of St Nicholas Hythe was a good portent for St Nicholas in Ashden.

The cottage was not large, and Yves brought her into the first of the two rooms downstairs. She took in nothing of her surroundings, save that they spoke of their former resident, not Yves. The photographs, the pictures, and
the commemoration china displayed looked English.

‘I have no Mrs Dibble,’ Yves apologised, ‘and my batman is in London, so for food you are at my mercy.’

He drew across the curtains before switching on the gaslight. His face looked grey in the flickering lights; there were streaks of dirt on his jaw and bloodstains on his uniform.

‘I couldn’t eat.’

‘Water first, for your stomach, and then soup before you sleep.’

She did not have the strength to protest further, and sat down at the small gate-leg dining table when he returned with a tray, two bowls of soup and bread.

‘This is waterzooi soup, left over from the vegetables and water the chicken was boiled in.’

She found this puzzling. ‘What a coincidence. Did you guess I was coming?’

‘No. I am too lazy to cook anything else now. It is always waterzooi soup.’

She managed a real smile at that. The soup with tiny bits of chicken as well as the soft vegetables slid into her stomach surprisingly easily.

‘Yves—’ she began, but he interrupted her.

‘No. You need sleep,
cara
.’ He took her by the hand when she had finished. ‘I will show you the privy as you call it, then I will show you the scullery with the washing basin which the owner of this house calls the bathroom. And then I will show you the bedroom.’

She saw nothing odd in this; it seemed quite natural that he should be leading her up the narrow cottage staircase to
the two bedrooms. He pushed open the door to the larger one. ‘That is where you will sleep,’ he said gently. ‘And I will sleep where my batman usually rests.’

She stood still. ‘I can’t.’

He misunderstood. ‘You need have no fear. I will not—’

‘No.’ She brushed this impatiently aside. Couldn’t he understand? ‘Not
alone
. Not tonight.’ When the eyes closed nightmares would begin, the smell, the sight of charred broken bodies would rush back and Tontine Street engulf her.

He was silent for a moment, his arm still round her. ‘Very well,’ he said at last, ‘I will stay with you, but you will sleep,
cara
, we will both sleep, and no nightmares will come. That is understood?’

He was waiting for her when she came upstairs again. She had had to force herself even to visit the privy, and then to wash at least her face and clean her teeth with the powder and brush he must have put there for her while he was in the kitchen. But that was all. She wanted to strip off all her clothes to help eradicate the memories of the evening, but she was too tired to do so, and he led her into the bedroom, sitting her on the edge of the bed.

‘Wait,’ he commanded. When he returned from his own ablutions, he took off her jacket, her boots and then her stockings as if undressing a doll. He loosened the waistband of her skirt and unfastened the two top buttons of her blouse.

‘No more,’ he said. ‘Nor I either.’

She watched as his boots joined hers on the floor, and his tunic was laid by her jacket. Then he turned to her and
took her in his arms. He still smelt of smoke, she could see dust in his hair, and knew that he smelt and saw the same on her. So they were together, and her eyes closed.

But the nightmares still came.

Her own cry awoke her in the early hours of the morning, and she sat bolt upright in the dark, her brain reacting slowly to what had happened and where she was. Then it came back.
Yves
was here.

‘
Cara,
they are bad dreams, that is all.’

His voice came out of the dark. She struggled to make sense, to divide the reality from that of her sleep. One thought seemed to crystallise all her terrors, and she wept it out to him.

‘I never bought the meat.’

‘
Quoi?’
He sat up and put his arm round her, and she realised the ridiculous thing she had said. Yet she had to explain, for it seemed very important to do so.

‘That’s why I went, to get my landlady’s meat and vegetables.’

‘You have probably saved them from a horrible fate if I remember your landlady’s cooking rightly. Now, sleep, if you please. For my sake.’

She couldn’t. If she did, she knew the other memories would flood back again, and lay half awake, half asleep. She was in the Rectory kitchen. Mrs Dibble had no food and it was her fault. ‘Vegetable stew,’ she muttered.

‘Sleep,
ma petite,
sleep.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Then I shall light first a candle and then the gas to wake
us up properly, and we will try again, in half an hour.’

She sat up gratefully and the nightmares began to inch away as the gas hissed gently over their heads. Yves looked flushed, his hair and clothes dishevelled and she was aware she must look even worse. She didn’t care, even that she was keeping him from sleep.

‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked politely. He swung his legs to the floor, came round to her and sat by her side, shifting after he had managed to find the exact spot where her left leg lay.

‘How strange life is, I suppose. I began this morning cheering myself up because it was a beautiful spring day, and this evening here I am sleeping in your arms.’

‘And that,’ he took her hands, ‘makes you happy or unhappy?’

‘It just seems right.’

He stood up abruptly and moved away, his back to her. What had she said that wasn’t obvious? She didn’t care, for what was the point of holding anything back now?

‘Why did you go, Yves?’ she burst out. ‘Why do you call me
cara
when you hurt me so much? And why call me
cara
anyway? It’s Italian, you’re Belgian. It isn’t fair. Why—?’ She stopped. There were so many whys, but only one that mattered. Why weren’t you here?

At first she thought he would not answer, but he did. ‘My elder sister is married to an Italian naval officer, and I know and love the language. Why did I go away? That too is simple. Because we men are not so good at these matters as women. We act instead of speaking, imagining that explains all, but it explains nothing. I went away because I loved you.
And because of that I thought of you as
cara
, not Caroline.’

She seized on the one word. ‘Loved? You no longer do?’

He was at her side again and she in his arms. ‘Love, of course I love you still. Why else did I go away? My English is not so good that I never make mistakes in mere verbs. Past and present is the same; I love you, Caroline. I had loved you even before the first time I met you formally at Ashdown Park. I loved you, then, I went on loving you, and I will go on loving you. Is that enough verbs,
cara mia
?’ He rocked her to and fro in his arms, grasping her so tight he was hurting her. ‘And then at Christmas I kissed you. I should not have done that.’

‘Why not?’ Oh, the wasted months of misunderstanding.

‘Because I wanted to make love to you so much I knew if I stayed it would happen.’

‘But that’s what I wanted –
want
,’ she cried. ‘Please.’ She lay back trying to draw his body onto hers, but he resisted. His head was buried in her breast, but he would come no further.

‘No.’ His voice was muffled.

‘But why?’ The pain was too great. So far, so much, so little.

‘Because I can’t marry you, much as I want to.’

Her arms dropped away, and he sat up. ‘Why not?’ she asked dully.  ‘Because you’re a Roman Catholic and I’m Protestant?’

‘No. Yes. Caroline, you wanted to know about my family.’ His hands were clenched hard. ‘I told you the truth, but not all the truth. I am married.’

She began to shiver again, though the night was warm, wanting to push this away and pretend it wasn’t happening. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because for the first time for many years I had found some happiness and didn’t want to lose it. Then I saw that was selfish and went away.’

‘You’re not happy with your wife?’

When she woke up tomorrow, perhaps this whole terrible evening would prove to have been a dream, and she would be in her own single bed at her lodgings. Or back at the Rectory. Oh, for the Rectory’s comforting arms.

‘Do you wish to know the whole story?’

‘Yes.’ However hard to bear.

‘Very well. Annette-Marie was the daughter of a neighbouring estate owner. Our families were both Roman Catholic, both with army connections, and similar in age. She is now twenty-seven, five years younger than me. It is a familiar tale. We played together as children, our parents were eager that we should marry. Too eager, for I was full of romantic and headstrong ideas and refused. I fell in love with a dancer. It was a dream, and it died like all dreams do. She would not marry me, for I was not rich enough. We lived together, she was unfaithful and laughed when I protested. Beauty such as hers should be shared, she told me. I went back home and found that Annette-Marie had waited for me. She comforted me, bolstered up my male esteem, and eventually in gratitude I married her.’

‘Without loving her?’

‘I believed I did. I thought that old ways, old customs, understanding hearts, added up to love.’