‘And have him ride with four stiffs? Not on your life,’ said the policeman. ‘You take him.’ The red wine was still gurgling into the roadway and there was a sound of tearing metal as the hydraulic jacks tore the cab open to release the driver’s body.
‘Look,’ said Maria desperately. ‘It’s my early shift. I can get away if I don’t have to book a casualty in. The other ambulance won’t mind.’
‘You’re a nice little darling,’ said the policeman. ‘You don’t believe in work at all.’
‘Please.’ Maria fluttered her eyelids at him.
‘No I wouldn’t darling and that’s a fact,’ said the policeman. ‘You are taking the injured one with you. The stiffs I won’t insist upon and if you say there’s another ambulance coming then I’ll wait here. But not with the injured one I won’t.’ He handed her a little bundle. ‘His personal effects. His passport’s in there, don’t lose it now.’
‘No, I don’t parle,’ said a loud English voice. ‘And let me down, I can toddle myself, thanks.’
The policeman who had tried to carry the boy released him and watched as he climbed carefully through the ambulance rear doors. The other policeman had entered the ambulance before him and cleared the tins off the bed. ‘Full of junk,’ said the policeman. He picked up a film tin and looked at it.
‘It’s hospital records,’ said Maria. ‘Patients transferred. Documents on film. I’m taking them to the other hospitals in the morning.’
The English tourist – a tall boy in a black woollen shirt and pink linen trousers – stretched full length on the bed. ‘That’s just the job,’ he said appreciatively. The policeman locked the rear doors carefully. Maria heard him say, ‘We’ll leave the stiffs where they are. The other ambulance will find them. We’ll get up to the road blocks. Everything is happening tonight. Accident, road blocks, contraband search and the next thing you know we’ll be asked to do a couple of hours’ extra duty.’
‘Let the ambulance get away,’ said the second policeman. ‘We don’t want her to report us leaving the scene before the second ambulance arrived.’
‘That lazy bitch,’ said the first policeman. He slammed his fist against the roof of the ambulance and called loudly, ‘Right, off you go.’
Maria turned around in her seat and looked for the switch for the interior light. She found it and switched off the orange lamp. The policeman leered in through the window. ‘Don’t work too hard,’ he said.
‘Policeman,’ said Maria. She said it as if it was a dirty word and the policeman flinched. He was surprised at the depth of her hatred.
He spoke softly and angrily. ‘The trouble with you people from hospitals,’ he said, ‘you think you’re the only normal people left alive.’
Maria could think of no answer. She drove forward. From behind her the voice of the Englishman said, ‘I’m sorry to be causing you all this trouble.’ He said it in English hoping that the tone of his voice would convey his meaning.
‘It’s all right,’ said Maria.
‘You speak English!’ said the man. ‘That’s wonderful.’
‘Is your leg hurting you?’ She tried to make it as professional and clinical as she knew how.
‘It’s nothing. I did it running down the road to find a telephone. It’s hilarious really: those four dead and me unscratched except for a strained knee running down the road.’
‘Your car?’
‘That’s done for. Cheap car, Ford Anglia. Crankcase sticking through the rear axle the last I saw of it. Done for. It wasn’t the lorry driver’s fault. Poor sod. It wasn’t my fault either, except that I was going too fast. I always drive too fast, everyone tells me that. But I couldn’t have avoided this lot. He was right in the centre of the road. You do that in a heavy truck on these high camber roads. I don’t blame him. I hope he doesn’t blame me too much either.’
Maria didn’t answer; she hoped he’d go to sleep so she could think about this new situation.
‘Can you close the window?’ he asked. She rolled it up a little, but kept it a trifle open. The tension of her claustrophobia returned and she knocked the window handle with her elbow, hoping to open it a little more without the boy’s noticing.
‘You were a bit sharp with the policeman,’ said the boy. Maria grunted an affirmative.
‘Why?’ asked the boy. ‘Don’t you like policemen?’
‘I married one.’
‘Go on,’ said the boy. He thought about it. ‘I never got married. I lived with a girl for a couple of years …’ He stopped.
‘What happened?’ said Maria. She didn’t care. Her worries were all upon the road ahead. How many road blocks were out tonight? How thoroughly would they examine papers and cargoes?
‘She chucked me,’ said the boy.
‘Chucked?’
‘Rejected me. What about you?’
‘I suppose mine chucked me,’ said Maria.
‘And you became an ambulance driver,’ said the boy with the terrible simplicity of youth.
‘Yes,’ said Maria and laughed aloud.
‘You all right?’ asked the boy anxiously.
‘I’m all right,’ said Maria. ‘But the nearest hospital that’s any good is across the border in Belgium. You lie back and groan and behave like an emergency when we get to the frontier. Understand?’
Maria deliberately drove eastward, cutting around the Forêt de St Michel through Watigny and Signy-le-Petit. She’d cross the border at Riezes.
‘Suppose they are all closed down at the frontier?’ asked the boy.
‘Leave it with me,’ said Maria. She cut back through a narrow lane, offering thanks that it hadn’t begun to rain. In this part of the world the mud could be impassable after half an hour’s rain.
‘You certainly know your way around,’ said the boy. ‘Do you live near here?’
‘My mother still does.’
‘Not your father?’
‘Yes, he does too,’ said Maria. She laughed.
‘Are you all right?’ the boy asked again.
‘You’re the casualty,’ said Maria. ‘Lie down and sleep.’
‘I’m sorry to be a bother,’ said the boy.
Pardon me for breathing, thought Maria; the English were always apologizing.
38
Already the brief butterfly summer of the big hotels is almost gone. Some of the shutters are locked and the waiters are scanning the ads for winter resort jobs. The road snakes past the golf club and military hospital. Huge white dunes, shining in the moonlight like alabaster temples, lean against the grey Wehrmacht gun emplacements. Between the points of sand and the cubes of concrete nightjars swoop open-mouthed upon the moths and insects. The red glow of Ostend is nearer now and yellow trams rattle alongside the motor road and over the bridge by the Royal Yacht Club where white yachts – sails neatly rolled and tied – sleep bobbing on the grey water like seagulls.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought they would be earlier than this.’
‘A policeman gets used to standing around,’ Loiseau answered. He moved back across the cobbles and scrubby grass, stepping carefully over the rusty railway lines and around the shapeless debris and abandoned cables.