The Burning Shore

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.