The Burning Shore (5 page)

Above the knees she wore a pair of carni-knickers of a sheer material through which he could distinctly make out the sheen of her skin. The legs of the knickers were fastened above the knee with pink ribbons, and they clung to her thighs and lower body as though she were naked - no, the semi-veiled lines were even more riveting than naked flesh would have been.

Michael felt his throat swell, so that he could not breathe, as she stooped to pick up his charred coat, and he was allowed a brief vision of her small, firm buttocks, round as a pair of ostrich eggs, gleaming palely in the early-morning light. He stared so hard, he felt his eyes begin to water and as she turned back to him, he saw in the fork framed by her hard young thighs a dark triangular shadow through the thin silk. She stood with that mesmeric shadow six inches from his nose while she spread the coat gently over his burned shoulder, murmuring to him in the tone a mother uses to a hurt child.

Michael caught only the words froid and brfiW. She was so close that he could smell her; the natural musk of a healthy young woman sweating with the exertion of hard riding was mingling with a perfume that smelled like dried rose petals. Michael tried to speak, to thank her, but he was shaking with shock and pain. His lips wobbled and he made a little slurring sound.

Mon pauvre, she cooed to him, and stepped back. Her voice was husky with concern and exertion, and she had the face of a pixie with huge dark Celtic eyes. He wondered if her ears were pointed, but they were hidden by the dark bush of her hair. It was windblown and kinked into dense springy curls. Her skin was tinted by her Celtic blood to the colour of old ivory and her eyebrows were thick and dark as her hair.

She began to speak again, but he could not help himself, and he glanced down again to that intriguing little shadow under the silk. She saw the movement of his eyes and her cheeks glowed with a dusky rose colour as she snatched up her muddy skirts and whipped them around her waist, and Michael ached more with embarrassment at his gaffe than he did from his burns.

The overhead roar of Andrew’s Sopwith gave them both respite and they looked up gratefully as Andrew circled the field. Painfully and unsteadily Michael clambered to his feet, as the girl settled her skirts, and he waved up at Andrew. He saw Andrew lift his hand and give him a relieved salute, then the green Sopwith circled out and came in on a straight run not higher than fifty feet above their heads, and the green scarf, with something knotted in one end, fluttered down and plunked into the mud a few yards away.

The girl ran to it and brought it back to Michael. He unknotted the tail of the scarf and grinned lopsidedly as he brought out the silver flask. He unscrewed the stopper and lifted the flask to the sky. He saw the flash of Andrew’s white teeth in the open cockpit and the raised gauntleted hand, and then Andrew turned away towards the airfield.

Michael lifted the flask to his lips, and swallowed twice. His eyes clouded with tears and he gasped as the heavenly liquid flowed scalding down his throat. When he lowered the flask, she was watching him, and he offered it to her.

She shook her head, and asked seriously, Anglais?”Oui, non, Sud Africain. His voice shook.

Ah, vous parlez franqais! She smiled for the first time, and it was a phenomenon almost as stunning as her pearly little bottom.

A peine, hardly. He denied it swiftly, staving off the flood of voluble French that he knew from experience an affirmative would have brought down on his head.

You have blood. Her English was appalling, only when she pointed to his head did he understand what she had said. He lifted his free hand and touched the trickle of blood which had escaped from under his helmet. He inspected his smeared fingertips. Yes, he admitted. Buckets of it, I’m afraid. The helmet had saved him from serious injury when his head had struck the side of the cockpit. Pardon? She looked confused.

J’en ai beaucoup, he tianslated.

Ah, you do talk French. She clapped her hands J-n_ nn endearing, childlike gesture of delight and took his arm in a proprietorial. gesture.

Come, she ordered, and snapped her fingers for the stallion. He was cropping the grass, and pretended not to hear her.

Wiens ici tout de suite, Nuage! She stamped her foot. Come here, this instant, Cloud! The stallion took another mouthful of grass to demonstrate his independence and then sidled across in leisurely fashion.

Please, she. asked, and Michael made a stirrup of his cupped hands and boosted her up into the saddle. She was very light and agile.

Come up. She helped him, and he settled behind her on the stallion’s broad rump. She took one of Michael’s hands and placed it on her waist. Her flesh under his fingers was firm and he could feel the heat of it through the cloth.

Tenez, hold on! she instructed, and the stallion cantered towards the gate at the end of the field nearest the chateau.

Michael looked back at the smoking wreckage of his Sopwith. Only the engine block remained, the wood and canvas had burned away. He felt a shadow of deep regret at her destruction, they had come a long way together.

How do you call yourself? the girl asked over her shoulder, and he turned back to her.

Michael, Michael Courtney. Michel Courtney, she repeated experimentally, and then, I am Mademoiselle Centaine de Thiry Enchante, mademoiselle. Michael paused to compose his next conversational gem in his laboured schoolboy French. Centaine is a strange name, he said, and she stiffened under his hand. He had used the word drole, or comical. Quickly he corrected himself, An exceptional name. Suddenly he regretted that he had not applied himself more vigorously to his French studies; shaken and shocked as he still was, he had to concentrate hard to follow her rapid explanation.

I was born one minute after midnight on the first day of the year 1900. So she was seventeen years and three months old, teetering on the very brink of womanhood.

Then he remembered that his own mother had been barely seventeen when he was born. The thought cheered him so much that he took another quick nip from Andrew’s flask.

You are my saviour! He meant it lightheartedly, but it sounded so crass that he expected her to burst into mocking laughter. Instead, she nodded seriously. The sentiment was in accord with Centaine’s own swiftly developing emotions.

Her favourite animal, apart from Nuage the stallion, had once been a skinny mongrel puppy which she had found in the ditch, blood-smeared and shivering. She had nursed it and cherished it, and loved it until a month previously when it had died under the wheels of one of the army trucks trundling up to the front. Its death had left an aching gap in her existence. Michael was thin, almost starved-looking under all those charred and muddy clothes; apart, then, from his physical injuries, she sensed the abuse to which he had been subjected. His eyes were a marvelous clear blue, but she read in them a terrible suffering, and he shivered and trembled just as her little mongrel had.

Yes, she said firmly. I will look after you. The chateau was larger than it had seemed from the air, and much less beautiful. Most of the windows had been broken and boarded up. The walls were pocked with shell splinters, but the shell craters on the lawns had grassed over, the fighting last autumn had come within extreme artillery range of the estate, before the final push by the Allies had driven the Germans back behind the ridges again.

The great house had a sad and neglected air, and Centaine apologized.

Our workmen have been taken by the army, and most of the women and all the children have fled to Paris or Arniens. We are three only. She raised herself in the saddle and called out sharply in a different language, Anna! Come and see what I have found. The woman who emerged from the vegetable gardens behind the kitchens was squat and broad with a backside like a percher on mare and huge shapeless breasts beneath the mud-stained blouse. Her thick dark hair, streaked with grey, was pulled back into a bun on top of her head, I and her face was red and round as a radish, her arms, bare to the elbows, were thick and muscular as a man’s and caked with mud. She held a bunch of turnips in one large, calloused hand.

What is it, kleintjie, little one? I have saved a gallant English airman, but he is terribly wounded-, He looks very well to me Anna, don’t be such an old grouse! Come and help me.

We must get him into the kitchen The two of them were gabbling at each other, and to Michael’s astonishment, he could understand every word of it.

I will not allow a soldier in the house, you know that, kleinjie! I won’t have a tomcat in the same basket with my little kitten- He’s not a soldier, Anna, he’s an airman.”And probably as randy as any tomcat, She used the word fris, and Centaine flashed at her, You are a disgusting old woman, now come and help me. Anna looked Michael over very carefully, and then conceded reluctantly, He has nice eyes, but I still don’t trust him, oh, all right, but if he so much as, Mevrou, Michael spoke for the first time, your virtue is safe with me, I give you my solemn word. Ravishing as you are, I will control myself. Centaine swivelled in the saddle to stare at him, and Anna reeled back with shock and then guffawed with delight. He speaks Flemish! You speak Flemish! Centained echoed the accusation.

It’s not Flemish, Michael denied. It’s Afrikaans, South African Dutch. It’s Flemish, Anna told him as she came forward. And anybody who speaks Flemish is welcome in this house. She reached up to Michael.

Be careful, Centaine told her anxiously. His shoulder - She slipped to the ground and between the two of them they helped Michael down and led him to the door of the kitchen.

A dozen chefs could have prepared a banquet for five hundred guests in this kitchen, but there was only a tiny wood fire burning in one of the ranges and they seated Michael on a stool in front of it.

Get some of your famous ointment, Centaine ordered, and Anna hurried away.

You are Flemish? Michael asked. He was delighted that the language barrier had evaporated.

No, no. Centaine was busy with an enormous pair of shears, snipping away the charred remnants of the shirt from his burns. Anna is from the north, she was my nurse when my mother died, and now she thinks she is my mother and not just a servant. She taught me the language in the cradle. But you, where did you learn it? Where I come from, everybody speaks it. I’m glad, she said, and he was not sure what she meant, for her eyes were lowered to her task.

I look for you every morning, he said softly. We all do, when we fly. She said nothing, but he saw her cheeks turn that lovely dusky pink colour again.

We call you our good luck angel, I’ange du bonheur, and she laughed.

I call you le petit jaune, the little yellow one, she answered. Theyellow Sopwith, Michael felt a surge of elation. She knew him as an individual, and she went on, All of you, I wait for you to come back, counting my chickens, but so often they do not come back, the new ones especially. Then I cry for them and pray. But you and the green one always come home, then I rejoice for you I You are kind, he started, but Anna bustled back from the pantry carrying a stone jar that smelled of turpentine and the mood was spoiled.

Where is Papa? Centaine demande&.

In the basement, seeing to the animals.

We have to keep the livestock in the cellars, Centaine explained as she went to the head of the stone stairs, otherwise the soldiers steal the chickens and geese and even the milk cows. I had to fight to keep Nuage, even She yelled down the stairs, Papa! Where are you? There was a muffled response from below and Centaine called again, We need a bottle of cognac. And then her tone became admonitive. Unopened, Papa. It is not a social need, but a medicinal one. Not for you but for a patient, here. Centaine tossed a bunch of keys down the stairs and minutes later there was a heavy tread and a large shaggy man with a full belly shambled into the kitchen with a cognac bottle held like an infant to his chest.

He had the same dense bush of kinky hair as Centaine, but it was woven with grey strands and hung forward on to his forehead. His moustaches were wide and beeswaxed into impressive spikes, and he peered at Michael through a single dark glittering eye. The other eye was covered by a piratical black cloth patch. Who is this? he demanded. An English airman. The scowl abated. A fellow warrior, he said. A comrade-in-arms, another destroyer of the cursed boche! You have not destroyed a boche for over forty years, Anna reminded him without looking up from Michael’s burns, but he ignored her and advanced on Michael, opening his arms like a bear to envelop him. Papa, be careful. He is wounded. Wounded!

cried Papa. Cognac! as though the two words were linked, and he found two heavy glass tumblers and placed them on the kitchen table, breathed on them with a decidedly garlicky breath, wiped them on his coat-tails, and cracked the red wax from the neck of the bottle.

Papa, you are not wounded, Centaine told him severely as he filled both tumblers up to the brim.

I would not insult a man of such obvious valour by asking him to drink alone. He brought one tumbler to Michael.

Comte Louis de Thiry, at your service, monsieur. Captain Michael Courtney. Royal Flying Corps. A votre sont6, Capitaine! A la v6tre, Monsieur le Comte! The comte drank with undisguised relish, then sighed and wiped his magnificent dark moustaches on the back of his hand and spoke to Anna.

Proceed with the treatment, woman. This will sting Anna warned, and for a moment Michael thought she meant the cognac, but she took a handful of the ointment from the stone jar and slapped it on to the open burns.

Michael let out an anguished whinny and tried to rise, but Anna held him down with one huge, red, work-chafed hand.

Bind it up, she ordered Centaine, and as the girl wound on the bandages, the agony faded and became a comforting warmth.

It feels better, Michael admitted.

Of course it does, Anna told him comfortably. My ointment is famous for everything from smallpox to piles. So is my cognac, murmured the comte, and recharged both tumblers.