The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy Read Free Book Online

glass is stuck in my hand. I pull it out. My blood flows freely. I don’t feel any pain.
    I crawl out from under the table, leaving the other people. Not thinking at all, just moving. I get to my feet and run out the door, and down the High Street, and through the arch to the covered steps that take you down to the pier. The steps are dark and smell of fish and the damp stone is slippery under my feet. I have only one thought—to look for Gwen, to see if Gwen is alive.
    At the bottom of the steps I come out into sunlight again, on the Esplanade that runs along the harbor past the pier. All the horror of it slams into me. Everything is on fire before me; I can feel the heat of it here, but the fire seems unreal, as though it couldn’t burn me. There are bodies everywhere, lying strangely, arms and legs reaching out, as though they were flung from a great height. The lorries are all burning. Tomato juice and blood run together over the stones, and there is gray smoke everywhere—smoke from the fires, and a smoke of dust—and smells of burning and blood, and a terrible rich charred smell that I know must be burning flesh. The body of a man has dropped out of the cab of his flaming lorry—it’s an ugly, broken, blackened thing. I hear a cry, and it chills me—it’s like an animal blind with anguish, not a human sound. I rub my eyes, which are stinging, as though the sight of the fire is hurting them. Everything is so bright, too bright—the red, the flames, the blood that streams on the stones.
    I look up and down the Esplanade, but I can’t see Gwen, I don’t think Gwen can have been here. I’m praying she got away in time. I walk out onto the pier. Heat sears my skin as I pass a smoldering lorry. My foot slips in a pool of blood. I have some vague thought that perhaps I could help—I can do a splint, a neat bandage, I know a little first aid. Yet even as I think this, I know how pointless, how useless, it is—I know that everything here is utterly beyond me.
    I come to a man who is lying on the pier beside his lorry. His face is turned away, but something draws my eye—the checked cloth cap on the ground beside him. There’s some significance to this, but my thoughts are so heavy and slow.
    â€œOh God,” I say then, out loud. “Frank. Oh God.”
    It’s Frank le Brocq.
    I kneel beside him. I can see his face now. At first I think he must be dead already. But then his eyelids flicker. I cradle his head in my hands.
    â€œFrank. It’s Vivienne. Frank, it’s all right, I’m here. . . .”
    But I know it is not all right. The one thing I know is that he cannot live with such wounds—the blood that seeps from the side of his head, the blood that slides out of his mouth. I feel a heavy passive helplessness, so any gesture, any word, takes all the strength I have.
    He’s trying to speak. I put my ear close to his mouth.
    â€œBastards,” he whispers. “Fucking bastards.”
    I kneel there, holding him.
    I try to say the Lord’s Prayer. It’s all I can think of. My mouth is stiff and I’m afraid that I won’t remember the words. But before I get to the power and the glory he is dead. I carry on anyway. For ever and ever. Amen .
    He’s staring at me with empty eyes. I reach out and close his eyelids. Then I just kneel there beside him. I don’t know what to do now.
    A shadow falls across me; someone is bending down to me. I look up—it’s a fireman. Behind him, I see the single fire engine that’s come.
    â€œExcuse me,” I say. “I know you’re terribly busy, but this man—he’s a friend of mine, Frank le Brocq.”
    The fireman’s face is white but composed. He peers down.
    â€œI know Frank,” he says.
    â€œThe thing is—he’s dead, you see,” I say.
    â€œPoor, poor bugger,” says the man. “You knew him, did you? You knew