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Updated: June 25, 2025
She saw herself and John carrying a stretcher, John at the head and her at the foot and Gwinnie and Dr. Sutton with another stretcher. Nothing for her and John and Gwinnie but field work; the farm had spoiled them incurably for life indoors. But it had hardened their muscles and their nerves, it had fitted them for the things they would have to do. The things they would have to see.
His features, slightly flattened, were laid quietly back on his composed, candid face; the dab of docked moustache rising up in it like a strange note of wonder, of surprise. There, he was looking at her again. But whether he looked or listened, or stood brooding, his face kept still all the time, still and sad. His mouth hardly moved as he spoke to Gwinnie.
She could see they were beautiful. And herself, her mysterious, her secret self, Charlotte Redhead. It had been secret and mysterious to itself once, before she knew. She didn't want to be secret and mysterious. Of all things she hated secrecy and mystery. She would tell Gwinnie about Gibson Herbert when she came. She would have to tell her.
That evening, in the bedroom that John shared with Sutton, they sat on two beds, discussing their prospects. Gwinnie was voluble. "They've driven us out of our messroom with their beastliness. We shall have to sit in our bedrooms all the time." "We'd better let the office know we're here," said Sutton, "in case we're sent for." "Anyhow," said Charlotte, "I'm not going to bed." John smiled.
Sutton that the British Red Cross wouldn't look at them and their field ambulance, but the Belgians, poor things, you know, weren't in a position to refuse. They would have taken almost anything. Her mind turned to them: to Gwinnie, dressed in their uniform, khaki tunic and breeches and puttees, her fawn-coloured overcoat belted close round her to hide her knees.
A struggling, dejected smile. "My dear child, I've told you they're not going to send us out first." "I don't know " said Gwinnie. "I do know. We shall be lucky if we get a look in when McClane's cars break down." "That's it. Have you seen their cars? I overhauled them this morning, in the yard. They're nothing but old lorries, converted. And one of 'em's got solid tyres." "Well?"
He could work things. So could Mrs. Rankin. She had dined with the Colonel. Charlotte didn't care. She liked that beastliness, that hostility of theirs. It was something you could put your back against; it braced her to defiance. It brought her closer to John, to John and Gwinnie, and shut them in together more securely. Sutton she was not quite so sure about.
Some damnable cruelty." "What makes you think so?" "Every kind and beautiful thing on earth, Jeanne, has been made so by some cruelty." "That's all rot. Utter rot. You don't know what you're talking about.... It's milking time. There's Gwinnie semaphoring. Do you know old Burton's going to keep us on? He'll pay us wages from this quarter. He says we were worth our keep from the third day."
Gwinnie could come at the week-end; she implored her to hang on for five days longer, not to leave Stow-on-the-Wold till they could see it together. A letter from Gibson, repeating himself. The family from Birmingham were going through the door; fat faces straining furtively. If they knew if they only knew. She stood, reading. She heard the door shut.
"Nothing," Charlotte said, "is going to be worse than this." It seemed to her that they had waited hours in the huge grey hall of the Hotel-Hospital, she and Sutton and Gwinnie, while John talked to the President of the Red Cross in his bureau.
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