'Here is the pumping station,' she said.
'I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said that.'
'It's of no importance.'
'It was an impertinence,' Bruce demurred.
'It doesn't matter.' Bruce stopped the car and opened his door.
He walked out on to the wooden jetty towards the pump house, and the
boards rang dully under his boots. There was a mist coming up out of the
reeds round the harbour and the frogs were piping in fifty different
keys. He spoke to the men in the single room of the pump station.
'You can get back to the hotel by dark if you hurry.'
'Oui, monsieur,' they agreed. Bruce watched them set off up the road
before they went to the car. He spun the starter motor and above the
noise of it the girl asked: 'What is your given name, Captain Curry?'
'Bruce.'
She repeated it, pronouncing it'Bruise', and then asked: 'Why are you a
soldier?'
'For many reasons.' His tone was flippant.
'You do not look like a soldier, for all your badges and your
guns, for all the grimness and the frequent giving of orders.'
'Perhaps
I am not a very good soldier.' He smiled at her.
'You are very efficient and very grim except when you laugh. But
I am glad you do not look like one,' she said.
'Where is the next post?'
'On the railway line. There are two men there. Turn to your right again
at the top, Bruce.'
'You are also very efficient, Shermaine.' They were silent having used
each other's names.
Bruce could feel it again, between them, a good feeling, warm like new
bread. But what of her husband, he thought, I wonder where he is, and
what he is like. Why isn't he here with her?
'He is dead,' she said quietly. 'He died four months ago of malaria.'
With the shock of it, Shermaine answering his unspoken question and also
the answer itself, Bruce could say nothing for the moment, then: 'I'm
sorry.'
'There is the post,' she said, 'in the cottage with the thatched roof.'
Bruce stopped the car and switched off the engine. In the silence she
spoke again.
'He was a good man, so very gentle. I only knew him for a few months but
he was a good man.' She looked very small sitting beside him in the
gathering dark with the sadness on her, and Bruce felt a great wave of
tenderness wash over him. He wanted to put his arm round her
and hold her, to shield her from the sadness. He searched for the words,
but before he found them, she roused herself and spoke in a
matter-of-fact tone.
'We must hurry, it's dark already.' At the hotel the lounge was filled
with Boussier's employees; Haig had mounted a Bren in one of the
upstairs windows to cover the main street and posted two men in the
kitchens to cover the back. The civilians were in little groups, talking
quietly, and their expressions of complete doglike trust as
