Shamrock Green (49 page)

She began to cry with gentle regret for all that she was leaving behind.

‘Oh, God, Becky, I shall miss you,' Angela said, sobbing too, and, leaning over the stretcher, gave her a hug.

On Sister Congreve's signal, the orderlies lifted the stretcher and slid it into the ambulance. Becky looked out into the sunlight, at the green lawns and pale stone facings of the Ecole, at the little group of friends and colleagues who had come to see her off, then the doors closed and the ambulance drove off.

*   *   *

Gowry was fifty yards from the captured German trenches before he realised that Jerry hadn't been beaten back after all. Only the front lines had crumpled; stout pockets of resistance remained on both flanks, and snipers and machine-gun nests were still hidden in the rubble.

When he looked back he could see staff cars and armoured vehicles approaching along the road from Albert. He had no map. Officially this was no longer occupied territory – only nobody had told the Germans that. He had absolutely no idea who was doing the shooting or why the motor ambulance had become a target. There might be no rational explanation. Jerry was no more sensible than Tommy when it came to picking targets and the Ford, sticking up like a toy, just begged to be blasted to kingdom come.

The excitement he'd experienced during the rush to the sunken road took hold of him once more. He was curious to discover who was in the motor ambulance and why the Connaught sergeant had been sent to find someone who could drive the damned machine instead of waiting to haul it in after resistance had been mopped up and the village finally secured.

He looked down into the shell hole at a tangle of bodies. A year ago the sight would have turned his stomach but now it affected him hardly at all. He glanced behind him again and saw the sergeant's bloody periscope sticking up above the parapet. He waved and set off for the little tin target on what passed round here for a hill.

Three men lay dead near the ambulance. One had been shot through the chest. He had fallen backwards, hands raised. The other two were huddled a few yards from the rear door. They had been caught by a burst of machine-gun fire. Gowry turned them over just to make sure they were dead. As he did so a machine-gun opened up. He threw himself to the ground behind the corpses as bullets strafed the side of the Ford, pitting the metal.

The door at the rear of the vehicle swung open.

An arm groped out and tried to pull it shut.

‘Hoy,' Gowry shouted. ‘Hoy, you in there? How many?'

The arm continued to wave about until another burst from the machine-gun chased it away. A shell came over, high, and exploded about sixty yards away. The machine-gun fire ceased. The instant Gowry raised his head, however, three or four shots from a rifle flicked up dust close by. He tucked his chin into his fists and lay flat on the ground like a lizard.

At least he knew there was somebody in the ambulance and that he wasn't risking his neck just to retrieve an empty vehicle. He lay motionless, covertly studying the machine. The offside was badly scarred but there was no stink of spilled fuel and the tyres seemed to be intact. The driver's door hung open and Gowry thought he could see a leg sticking out of the cab.

He lifted his head and yelled: ‘Hoy, you? Are you deaf? How many of you are there?'

‘Two.'

‘Alive?'

‘Yes, but barely.' An Irish voice, high register, squeaky with fear. ‘Have you come to get us out of here?'

‘I have,' said Gowry. ‘So your worries are over.'

‘Praise be to God.'

The face that appeared in the open doorway was familiar: a small, pinched, middle-aged face, white with fear.

‘Padre?' Gowry said. ‘Father Coyle, is that you skulkin' in there?'

‘Who is that? Do you know me?'

‘Sure an' I do.' Gowry grinned. Sheer chance had stuck him with poor Father Coyle and it felt as if Becky were with him too. ‘Who's your passenger?'

‘Colonel Rayboult.'

‘Ah!' Gowry said. ‘I see.'

The sniper was still potting away but he was on the limit of his range and not particularly accurate. Gowry put his head down and rested for a moment.

Now he understood why he had been sent out to rescue the lizzie and why the sergeant had been so secretive. Rayboult was a battalion commander, a much-respected veteran who had insisted on coming out of retirement to fight with his old regiment. He was a bit of a figurehead, an icon. What puzzled Gowry was why the Connaughts hadn't sent out a heavily armed team to reel the old boy in. Surely someone in the Rangers' ranks knew how to drive a motor vehicle. He wondered if fate had manipulated him into this position, if that blunt, demanding sergeant was destined to be his nemesis.

Stealthily, keeping low, he began to crawl towards the ambulance.

*   *   *

The ambulance men were very attentive. She was treated with so much consideration that she did indeed feel like a lady. Morphine flowed in her veins. She could feel its soothing warmth in every particle of her being. It felt like warm milk. It felt as if her brain were bobbing in milk. It was all rather spectacular in a misty kind of way, the orderlies so kind, and the stretcher-cases on the platform waving as she went past. She was conscious of their interest and the voices of the orderlies shouting, ‘Gangway, gangway,' while they eased her up the ramp and entered the dim interior of the hospital train.

Where was she exactly? Heuvert? Albert? Perhaps she was in Amiens and Gowry would come hurrying along the platform with poppies in one hand and champagne in the other to see her off properly.

The posies that Mr Sanderson had given her had a sweet scent and the chocolate bars that Bobby Bracknell had parted with were heavy in her pockets. She remembered the lovely taste of chocolate, but had no desire to eat. Memory was sweeter than reality in any case, especially her memories of Gowry: Gowry in Amiens, Gowry kissing her in the lane behind the cathedral, Gowry holding her close after they'd made love. She was glad that they had made love, glad that she had given herself to her Irishman before random chance separated them.

The stretcher was strapped to a rack at the end of the corridor. She was probably the only woman patient on the train. She could hear the groans of the wounded and how they clamoured for attention, for relief. She had no urge to tend them. She had done all she could for them and there came a point at which duty became pointless and all you were left with was a fretful little echo of responsibility.

The MO leaned over and drew down the green-painted shade to keep the sunlight from blinding her. He was a young man, younger than Captain Bracknell, and had no smiles for anyone.

‘All right, Nurse Tarrant? All right for now?'

She managed to nod. She was very sleepy.

The racket from the platform, the cries in the corridor were like sounds from a seashore. She thought of the island where she'd been born, of her mother's cottage and the great blue-green Atlantic stretching out to infinity, of her aunt's house on the headland and her cousin Robbie coming down the slope of the hill towards her. Then it wasn't Robbie at all, but Gowry. She gave a little laugh and tried to wave to him, but her hands wouldn't move.

She felt the train move.

She was bleeding again, bleeding within.

It wasn't morphine but the slow turbid oozing of blood that soothed her. Her mouth was dry. She thought of calling out, but didn't want to make a fuss. She wondered where Gowry had got to. The strip of light at the edge of the green-painted blind darkened as the train shuddered and the iron wheels beneath her began to beat out a rhythm, a sleepy rhythm like the lapping of waves on a seashore.

‘Nurse Tarrant?' said a voice. ‘Rebecca?'

The train was rolling freely now, rumbling along. She had a headache, not much of one, quite endurable. It was all quite endurable, really.

‘Becky?'

She imagined that her eyes were open. She imagined that Gowry was with her, for the priest looked so much like him. One thing she had always dreaded was pain but there wasn't much pain. There was no pain at all now that Gowry was here and the sound of the seabirds crying and the waves on the shore by the cottage on the bay and the bay so wide and the sea blue-green with the light upon it.

She felt someone touch her, heard anxious, murmuring voices.

The train jerked and there was a weight on her chest and Gowry was leaning over her, his arms about her, trying to lift her up. She yielded to him, let herself go. The green-painted blind detached itself suddenly and clattered up and she was looking out into the sunlight that bathed the plain and the words the stranger murmured meant nothing and the plain looked unbelievably white, and the weight went from her chest.

‘Gowry,' she said, ‘are you with me?'

‘Sure and I am,' he said.

*   *   *

Father Coyle caught him by the hand and yanked him into the ambulance. The floor was puddled with blood. Colonel Rayboult was propped against the canvas that backed the cab. He had a tourniquet around his thigh and his tunic had been cut away and there was a dressing on his chest, a huge pad of flesh-coloured lint, heavily bandaged. There had been a dressing on the thigh too, Gowry reckoned, but someone or something had ripped it off.

The colonel was fully conscious.

When Gowry made to stand up he shouted, ‘Get down, man. Get down.'

Father Coyle groped for the door-handle while bullets whined off the panels. Gowry reached around the padre and pulled the door shut.

‘Who the hell are you?' The colonel's face was filthy, but dirt and blood did not diminish his authority.

‘I'm the driver, sir,' Gowry told him.

‘Jesus Christ! Are you the best they could find? You're not a Ranger?'

‘Sperryhead Rifles, sir.'

‘Well, whoever you are, you'd better get us out of here.'

‘I'll do my best, sir.' Gowry glanced at Father Coyle who looked scared and sheepish. ‘How're the boils, Padre?'

‘What? Oh, very well, thank you. All gone.'

‘Boils!' the colonel exclaimed. ‘Oh, for Christ's sake!'

‘Where were you headed?' Gowry said.

‘The clearing station at Trônes Wood,' the padre told him.

‘Why did you stop?'

‘I don't know. Something happened. They all went out to help and they didn't come back. Are they dead, do you think?'

‘Of course they're bloody dead,' the colonel roared. ‘We've been squatting here for the best part of forty minutes. Do you think they'd have left us high and dry if they hadn't been dead? Where's Watson? Where's that bloody oaf of a sergeant? I'll have his balls for breakfast when I get out of here.'

‘It's the femoral artery,' Father Coyle said. ‘You know what that means?'

‘It means I'd better get moving,' said Gowry.

‘Of course it bloody does,' said the colonel. ‘Here, take this.' He groped about in the puddle of blood, found a jack-knife and held it up. ‘Cut through the canvas and climb into the cab. See if you can get this blasted contraption moving again.'

‘Yes, sir,' Gowry said.

‘Take the padre with you. He's no use to me.'

Spleen had kept the colonel going. Spleen would keep him going for another half-hour, longer if it took longer. Temper made the old boy seem vigorous but he had lost much blood and his strength was waning. Surely the medicos hadn't sent him off in this state. Something must have happened on the way. It didn't matter what, for, like a lot of things in this war, the situation was so farcical and improbable that it might have been the plot of a pantomime.

The colonel tightened his grip on the tourniquet, screwing it so tightly that his arm shook. His cheeks were scratched and blood matted his moustache.

Gowry took the knife, wiped it on his shirt and thumbed open the blade. He stabbed at the canvas, pierced a hole, worked the knife blade up and down and then ripped a hole large enough to climb through. He put his foot and leg through the opening, then his arm and shoulder and finally his head.

The driver was sprawled across the seat. He had been shot through the mouth and there was nothing much left of his face. Gouts of blood clung to the windscreen and smeared the steering wheel.

Father Coyle stuck his head through the tear in the canvas.

‘Oh dear, poor chap.' He murmured something in a language Gowry didn't understand. ‘Can we take him back with us?'

‘Sorry, Padre,' Gowry said and, easing his arms under the dead man, lifted him into a sitting position and heaved him out of the cab door.

‘Oh, dear, dear God!'

Gowry seated himself behind the wheel. The seat and the wheel were slick with blood. Oddly enough, he had never been in the cab of a Model T before and was astonished at how basic everything seemed, a far cry from Flanagan's limousine. He tamped the gear pedal and manipulated the stick.

The padre leaned over his shoulder and watched him jiggle the switch to test the starter motor. Gowry was just beginning to wonder if the lizzie had a starter motor when the engine turned over. He jiggled the switch again, praying that he wouldn't have to go out into the open and use the crank. He dabbed at the pedal and coaxed the engine to turn over again. Then, abruptly, it roared and caught. He released the spring-loaded handbrake, threw the vehicle into gear and tapped his foot on the accelerator. The rear wheels dug into the dirt. The note of the engine rose to an ear-piercing shriek and the Ford crept forward.

Gowry wiped blood from the windscreen and peered out.

They were moving in a lumpy fashion towards the crest of the hill.

‘Where are you going?' the padre asked.

‘Trônes Wood?' said Gowry. ‘Isn't that where you want to go?'

‘Wouldn't it be easier to drive back to our lines?'

‘An' risk having the colonel bleed to death?' said Gowry.

He was beginning to feel confident now, almost cocky. The lizzie wasn't all that difficult to handle. He peered through the windscreen again.