“McClane?”
“He’s a psychotherapist. He knows
more about people’s souls than I know about
their bodies. He probably knows all about Conway’s
soul.”
Silence drifted between them, dim and silvery like
the garden mist.
“Charlotte—are we never to get away
from him? Is he always to stick between us?
That dead man.”
“It isn’t that.”
“What is it, then?”
“All this.... I’d give anything
to care for you, Billy dear, but I don’t care.
I can’t. I can’t care for anything
but the war.”
“The war won’t last for ever. And
afterwards?”
“I can’t see any afterwards.”
Sutton smiled.
“And yet,” he said, “there will
be one.”
The boat went steadily, cutting the waves with its
sound like the flowing of stiff silk.
Charlotte and Sutton and McClane, stranded at Dunkirk
on their way to England, had been taken on board the
naval transport Victoria. They were the
only passengers besides some young soldiers, and these
had left them a clear space on the deck. Charlotte
was sitting by herself under the lee of a cabin when
McClane came to her there.
He was straddling and rubbing his hands. Something
had pleased him.
“I knew,” he said, “that some day
I should get you three. And that I should get
those ambulances.”
She couldn’t tell whether he meant that he always
got what he wanted or that he had foreseen John Conway’s
fate which would ultimately give it him.
“The ambulances—Yes. You always
wanted them.”
“Not more than I wanted you and Sutton.”
He seemed aware of her secret antagonism, yet without
resentment, waiting till it had died down before he
spoke again. He was sitting beside her now.
“What are you going to do about Conway?”
“Nothing. Except lie about him to his father.”
“That’s all right as long as you don’t
lie about him to yourself.”
“I’ve lied about him to other people.
Never to myself. I was in love with him, if that’s
what you mean. But he finished that. What’s
finished is finished. I haven’t a scrap
of feeling for him left.”
“Are you quite sure?”
“Quite. I’m not even sorry he’s
dead.”
“You’ve forgiven him?”
“I’m not always sure about that.
But I’m trying to forget him.”
McClane looked away.
“Do you ever dream about him, Charlotte?”
“Never. Not now. I used to. I
dreamed about him once three nights running.”
He looked at her sharply. “Could you tell
me what you dreamed?”
She told him her three dreams.
“You don’t suppose they meant anything?”
she said.
“I do. They meant that part of you was
kicking. It knew all the time what he was like
and was trying to warn you.”
