Part 16 (1/2)

... That rattle on the stones was the firing. It had come at last. She saw Gwinnie looking back round the corner of the hood to see what it was like. She called to her, ”Don't stick your head out, you silly cuckoo.

You'll be hit.” She said to herself, If I think about it I shall feel quite jumpy. It was one thing to go tearing along between two booming batteries, in excitement, with an end in view, and quite another thing to sit tight and still on a motionless car, to be fired on. A bit trying to the nerves, she thought, if it went on long. She was glad that her car stood next to the line of fire, sheltering Gwinnie's, and she wondered how John was getting on up there.

The hands of the ambulance clock pointed to half-past three. They had been waiting forty minutes, then. She got down to see if any of the stretcher bearers were in sight.

They were coming back. Straggling, lurching forms. White bandages. The wounded who could walk came first. Then the stretchers.

Alice Bartrum stopped as she pa.s.sed Charlotte. The red had gone from her sunburn, but her face was undisturbed.

”You've got to wait here,” she said, ”for Mr. Conway and Sutty. And Trixie and Mac. They mayn't be back for ages. They've gone miles up the field.”

She waited.

The front cars had been loaded, had driven off and returned three times.

It was six o'clock before John appeared with Mrs. Rankin.

She heard Mrs. Rankin calling sharply to her to get down and give a hand with the stretcher.

John and Mrs. Rankin were disputing.

_”Can't_ you shove it in at the bottom?” he was saying.

_”No._ The first cases _must_ go on top.”

Her mouth snapped like a clamp. Her eyes were blazing. She was struggling with the head of the stretcher while John heaved at the foot. He staggered as he moved, and his face was sallow-white and drawn and glistening. When Charlotte took the shafts from him they were slippery with his sweat.

”Is he hurt?” she whispered.

”Very badly hurt,” said Mrs. Rankin.

”John, I mean.”

Mrs. Rankin snorted. ”You'd better ask him.”

John was slouching round to the front of the car, anxious to get out of the sight and sound of her. He went with an uneven dropping movement of one hip. Charlotte followed him.

”Get into your seat, Sharlie. We've got to wait for Billy and McClane.”

He dragged himself awkwardly into the place beside her.

”John,” she said, ”are you hurt?”

”No. But I think I've strained something. That's why I couldn't lift that d.a.m.ned stretcher.”

The windows stood wide open to the sweet, sharp air. She heard Mrs.

Rankin and Sutton talking on the balcony. In that dreadful messroom you heard everything.