A Mother's Love (48 page)

Automatically she began to help the orderlies lift the half-dozen stretchers allocated to her van on board while the walking wounded waited their turn in the rain to clamber up. The same procedure was taking place with a second van already there and two official khaki-painted ambulances.

Helping as best she could, Sara took the opportunity to ask where the village of her quest was.

‘A mile or two that way,’ said a medical orderly, pointing south across the flat, colourless land, bereft of trees or distinguishing landmarks of any kind. ‘You might almost see it from here if it weren’t for the weather. But you can’t go there.’

‘Could an ambulance go?’ she asked, breathlessly manhandling a stretcher up to the floor level of this inadequate private vehicle.

‘Not this ambulance. Only military ones.’

‘Can I get a lift in one?’

‘You most certainly cannot. No, you ladies wait here and we bring the blokes to you. It’s better that way. There’s not much you can do out there.’

‘But I’m looking for someone. I was told he was … he was hurt.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say killed.

The man looked sad and wise, seeing behind her expression. The look went through her, filling her with certainty about Jonathan’s fate. Sara felt her heart shrink with despair at that certainty.

‘If it was yesterday, miss,’ the man was saying through the blur of hopelessness, ‘any wounded we found is gone. Others … They’re laid out for burial a bit further back, if we find ’em, that is. If it was before yesterday, they’ll be buried by now, I should think.’

‘Would you have names?’ There was a sickening thumping in her throat. She saw the orderly spread his hands sympathetically.

Beatrice called to her. ‘Give us a lift with this one, Sara?’

Automatically she complied, got the stretcher aboard, hardly aware of doing it, her mind spinning, her heart pounding painfully, her breathing unnaturally fast. It was as though she were swooning, yet she remained on her feet.

‘Tell me,’ she cried, clutching the orderly’s arm as he passed her again. ‘Tell me how I can find out.’

The man pointed to a small tent nearby. ‘They’ll have lists. You can ask them. But it’s incomplete. Always is, because …’

Without waiting, Sara hurried towards the tent, ignoring the pleas of the woman she had ridden there with to help get the walking wounded up into the van.

Inside the tent, wiping the rain from her face with the back of her hand, she fought to calm herself.

As the officer looked up, the two men on either side of him, one a corporal, the other a sergeant, eyeing her, surprised by her sudden appearance, she burst out: ‘Do you have a Captain Ward on your list? A Captain Jonathan Ward?’

The officer recovered, his enquiry dispassionate. ‘Dead or alive?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I just have to find him.’

‘There are two lists. One for dead. One for wounded.’ The officer looked tired, his tone that of a man who seemed to have given up on normality.

‘Can you look in both of them?’ Sara asked, trembling at the idea of that ultimate list.

‘It’s a tall order, ma’am. D’you know how many we’ve …’

‘I don’t care! Just look! Please! Try yesterday’s list.’ It was the only thing she could think of, and that a forlorn hope.

Whatever the expression on her face, the officer stared for only a second longer, then bent down and brought a battered attaché case out from under the folding table at which he sat. This he undid and drew out several thick, rolled wads of paper. Dividing them into three, he gave one batch to the sergeant, another to the corporal, taking some himself.

‘Name?’ He spat out the command.

Sara smothered a stupified feeling as she answered. The bundles of paper – each sheet of each roll, a couple of feet in length, had to hold several hundred names – brought home more vividly than any sight she had yet seen, just how many in this one area of conflict on the one day had been killed and wounded.

‘We’ll go through the dead first. Mind, they’re not all here. Some might have been …’ He stopped short of saying blown to pieces, said instead, ‘… not found yet. Or captured. Those we’ll hear of in time.’

Please
, she prayed.
If he’s not wounded, let him be captured. But not dead, please God, not dead.

Yet these were not the only lists, she knew. All along the line would be tents such as this, each holding an attaché case full of names. How could so many men be laid low, in a single day, and all the days of this war so far – how could it be?

The fingers of the men in front of her ran swiftly down the names; when they came to the end of each sheet, they were licked for turning to the next. Sara waited. How long had she stood there? Time had no meaning. It could be all for nothing. The fast-moving fingers could easily miss the name. The sheet with Jonathan’s could be the very last one. Or the list bearing his name might not be here at all, but in some other tent. If so, how many tents must she visit, and could she go or be allowed to go through them all? It was an impossibility. She had come here on a fool’s errand, from the very start. She knew that now.

‘Jonathan Ward, Captain.’ The triumphant shout so startled her that she hardly heard the rest, his regiment, his number. All that rang in her head was the name. All she could hear was the last words: ‘Might still be at the field hospital.’

He was alive! Thank God! ‘How badly injured is he?’ she heard herself say, as though she were asking the time of day.

‘Couldn’t say. The field hospital for this area is back there, to the rear, straight as you go.’

Whether she thanked them for their efforts, she couldn’t remember afterwards. How she got back to the VAD ambulance she couldn’t remember either. She saw Beatrice climbing up into the driving seat, the wounded all aboard. Beatrice paused, seeing her running towards her. Her young face was no longer pleasant, but peevish.

‘Come back now all the work’s done?’

It was then she saw Sara’s face and her tone changed. ‘What is it? Is it the man you were looking for?’

‘They said he might still be at the field hospital.’

Beatrice brightened with relief. ‘That’s where we’re taking this lot. I’ve to come back here for another load. I can leave you there.’

That was where she found him. Or was at least informed by one of the nursing sisters that he was somewhere, she wasn’t sure where. Her face was grave as she looked up from scanning her register after Sara had explained her purpose there.

‘I’m sorry. It says he had broken ribs. A rib pierced the lung, and …’

The world had begun to spin. Sara felt herself sway, and clung on to the sister’s arm for support as she was guided to a chair and lowered gently on to it.

All this, only to find him dead. All this, never to see him again. All this … all her life … She knew now how much she had loved him, now that she had lost him.

A wet towel was being pressed to her forehead, its cold shock bringing her to herself. Smelling salts under her nose made her gasp, jerking her head up. Her blue eyes met the searching grey ones of the sister.

‘What do I do?’ she implored, her voice small, a child seeking love, any love, knowing there was none. ‘Where can I go?’

‘You can go and sit by him. It’s a matter of waiting to see if he survives the operation. But I must warn you …’

It was enough. Sara’s eyes opened wide. ‘He’s alive?’

The woman’s smile was sad, she saw that too. And the words –
if he survives
– brought first a moment of panic, then a sense of urgency, but more a feeling of fate, that she must be there to whisper her love before the end came. It was imperative that he knew.

‘Yes, I understand,’ she whispered.

She was taken to where his truckle bed lay in a corner by the tent flap.
Where they can bear his body away quickly
, came the thought as she stared down at the grey face, the face that had once been mobile with cynical humour; the face that had annoyed her on so many occasions, now so still with death upon it. To see him again, but like this, tore through her entire being.

Given a low rickety stool, she sat down. How long she sat there she couldn’t tell. It seemed an eternity. Someone brought her a mug of hot strong tea with hardly any milk and very little sugar. She took a sip because it was required of her. It was bitter and she put it aside. And all the time, the grey face did not change, nor did the eyes open.

‘Look at me, Jonathan, just once. Just once more,’ she whispered. She wanted to kiss those eyes, to wake them, but was afraid the kiss would in some manner fix them forever closed. It seemed hours that she sat watching him, watching for some flicker of his eyelids, some twitch of his lips. People moved about the huge tent, men in faded dressing gowns, nurses inspecting patients, helpers taking away slops in buckets, replacing them. The light began to fade. A lady volunteer worker came round lighting oil lamps that cast a sickly glow over the rows of beds. Now and again a harassed cry issued from one of the beds, short, sharp, terrified; or a moan as a patient turned over in a fever of restlessness. The lamps’ wicks plopped and spluttered.

Did she see Jonathan’s eyelids flutter or was it just a trick of flickering light? It must be the latter, for there was no more movement after that one moment of hope. Yet she had been so sure …

Outside it had grown dark. A nurse came with the surgeon. They moved her away to make a brief examination. The surgeon straightened up and looked directly at Sara.

‘Are you a relative?’

‘No.’ There was a strange expression on the man’s face. She was sure, then, that it was over. ‘I’m … his fiancée.’

The surgeon nodded. The strange look was kind, almost a smile, but was it a smile of sympathy?

‘Looks more encouraging than we’d dared hope,’ he said slowly. The smile had begun to broaden. ‘He might even wake up in a little while and say hullo to you.’

Sara sat a long time after they had left, the surgeon’s words of hope in her ears still.

It was very quiet. In a way the small restless movements of other patients accentuated that quietness. Somewhere, a long way off it seemed, someone was playing a mouth organ. Single notes, lonely, plaintive, echoing notes, hanging on the air, the tune recognisable: ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’. A sad, haunting melody, written to lift up the soul, but more likely to sadden it with longing when played on a mouth organ by someone lost in this wilderness.

Perhaps it was the song, perhaps the peace on the still face beside her, but inside her breast came a movement, a slow surging upwards. This man she loved. This man she would tell her love to and there would be no going back.

The surge inside her had become more intense. She had felt this before, many times, but always it would die, evaporate, leaving her as dry as a desert. It reached her throat, as often it had before, but now came on, steadily, steadily. This man was her life, would always be her life.

Her eyes were prickling and, with a deep, slow spasm of indrawn breath, the tears of life welled over Sara’s lower lids and fell gently down her cheeks.

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First published as
The Angry Heart
in 1995 by Judy Piatkus (Publishers) Ltd

This edition published in 2014 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
A Random House Group Company

Copyright © 1995 Maggie Ford

Maggie Ford has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

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