The Romantic Part 21

She could see they didn't want it. This was the last tram. The serious cases had been sent on first. All these men could walk or hobble along somehow with help. But they were the last in the retreat of the wounded; they were the men who had been nearest to the enemy, and they had known the extremity of fear.

"You can't have it. It's wanted for a badly wounded man."

"Where is he?"

"We don't know. We're looking for him."

"Ah, pah! We can't wait till you find him. Do you think we're going to stand here to be taken?--For one man!"

They went on through the plantation, stumbling and growling, dragging the wounded out into the road.

"If," Charlotte said, "we only knew where he was."

John stood there silent; his head was turned towards the far end of the wood, the Lokeren end. The terror of the wood held him. He seemed to be listening; listening, but only half awake.

Here, where the line stopped, a narrow track led downwards out of the wood. Charlotte started to go along it. "Come on," she said. She saw him coming, quickly, but with drawn, sleep-walking feet. The track led into a muddy alley at the back of the village.

There was a house there and a woman stood at the door, beckoning. She ran up to them. "He's here," she whispered, "he's here."

He lay on his side on the flagged floor of the kitchen. His shirt was ripped open, and in his white back, below the shoulder blade, there was a deep red wound, like a pit, with a wide mouth, gaping. He was ugly, a Flamand; he had a puffed face with pushed out lips and a scrub of red beard; but Charlotte loved him.

They carried him out through the wood on to the road. He lay inert, humped up, heavy. They had to go slowly, so slowly that they could see the wounded and the Red Cross men going on far before them, down the street.

The flagged road swayed and swung with the swinging bulge of the stretcher as they staggered. The shafts kept on slipping and slipping; her grasp closed, tighter and tighter; her arms ached in their sockets; but her fingers and the palms of her hands were firm and dry; they could keep their hold.

They had only gone a few yards along the road when suddenly John stopped and sank his end of the stretcher, compelling Charlotte to lower hers too.

"What did you do that for?"

"We can't, Charlotte. He's too d.a.m.ned heavy."

"If I can, you can."

He didn't move. He stood there, staring with his queer, hypnotised eyes, at the man lying in the middle of the road, at the red pit in the white back, at the wide, ragged lips of the wound, gaping.

"For goodness' sake pick him up. It isn't the moment for resting."

"Look here--it isn't good enough. We can't get him there in time."

"You're--you're _not_ going to leave him!"

"We've got to leave him. We can't let the whole lot be taken just for one man."

"We'll be taken if you stand here talking."

He went on a step or two, slouching; then stood still, waiting for her, ashamed. He was changed from himself, seized and driven by the fear that had possessed the men in the plantation. She could see it in his retreating eyes.

She cried out--her voice sounded sharp and strange--"John--! You _can't_ leave him."

The wounded man who had lain inert, thinking that they were only resting, now turned his head at her cry. She saw his eyes shaking, palpitating with terror.

"You've frightened him," she said. "I won't have him frightened."

She didn't really believe that John was going. He went slowly, still ashamed, and stopped again and waited for her.

"Come back," she said, "this minute, and pick up that stretcher and get on."

"I tell you it isn't good enough."

"Oh, go then, if you're such a d.a.m.ned coward, and send Mac to me.

Or Trixie."

"They'll have gone."

He was walking backwards, his face set towards the turn of the road.

"Come on, you little fool. You can't carry him."

"I can. And I shall, if Mac doesn't come."

"You'll be taken," he shouted.

"I don't care. If I'm taken, I'm taken. I shall carry him on my back."

While John still went backwards she thought: It's all right. If he sees I'm not coming he won't go. He'll come back to the stretcher.

But John had turned and was running.

Even then she didn't realise that he was running away, that she was left there with the wounded man. Things didn't happen like that. People ran away all of a sudden, in panics, because they couldn't help it; they didn't begin by going slowly and stopping to argue and turning round and walking backwards; they were gone before they knew where they were. She believed that he was going for the ambulance. One moment she believed it and the next she knew better. As she waited in the road (conscious of the turn, the turn with its curving screen of tall trees) her knowledge, her dreadful knowledge, came to her, dark and evil, creeping up and up. John wasn't coming back. He would no more come back than he had come back the other day. Sutton had come. The other day had been like to-day. John was like that.

Her mind stood still in amazement, seeing, seeing clearly, what John was like. For a moment she forgot about the Germans.

She thought: I don't believe Mac's gone. He wouldn't go until he'd got them all in. Mac would come.

Then she thought about the Germans again. All this was making it much more dangerous for Mac and everybody, with the Germans coming round the corner any minute; she had no business to stand there thinking; she must pick that man up on her back and go on.

She stooped down and turned him over on his chest. Then, with great difficulty, she got him up on to his feet; she took him by the wrists and, stooping again, swung him on to her shoulder. These acts, requiring attention and drawing on all her energy, dulled the pain of her knowledge. When she stood up with him she saw John and McClane coming to her. She lowered her man gently back on to the stretcher.

The Flamand, thinking that she had given it up and that he was now abandoned to the Germans, groaned.

"It's all right," she said. "He's coming."

She saw McClane holding John by the arm, and in her pain there was a sharper pang. She had the illusion of his being dragged back unwillingly.

McClane smiled as he came to her. He glanced at the Flamand lying heaped on his stretcher.

"He's been too much for you, has he?"

"Too much--? Yes."