Free Amy by Peggy Savage

uniform. It was not one of the regular service uniforms. It seemed to be well known in Paris now, but here it might arouse some suspicion.
    She waited. The silence stretched and the heat seemed to grow more intense. The light was clear and brilliant and cast deep sharp shadows beneath the eaves and in the doorways. In the field behind the houses a horse stood as still as a statue. She began to feel as if it were all unreal, as if they had driven into a static moment of time that would never change. Then one of the shutters moved a little and somewhere she heard the cry of a child that was suddenly silenced. She had no doubt that several hidden pairs of eyes were inspecting her. She broke out in a sweat and could feel it running down between her shoulder blades. She closed her eyes against the sun, and against whatever horror might erupt from these silent houses.
    What am I doing here, she thought? Is this all there is for me? Perhaps I’ll be shot. Perhaps I’ll die here beside this ambulance before I have achieved anything, before my life is worth anything. The silence was more and more intimidating. Maybe this village had been occupied . Maybe these were German eyes watching her.
    ‘You’re a woman,’ her father had said, trying, for the last time, to dissuade her. ‘There are worse things for a woman than dying.’ For a few moments she couldn’t think what he meant and then she blushedand turned away. She must not ever think of horrors that might happen. The evil she could see was enough.
    ‘There’s someone coming,’ Bill said. Amy opened her eyes and saw his hand appear at the window, holding his revolver.
    ‘It’s all right,’ she said hurriedly. ‘It’s a priest.’
    ‘I hope he speaks English.’ Bill withdrew the revolver.
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘We’ll find the men.’
    The priest stopped beside her and held out his hand. ‘ Bonjour ,’ he said.
    Amy shook his hand. ‘Do you speak English? Parlez-vous anglais ?’
    ‘Yes, mam’selle ,’ he said. ‘We are very glad that you have come. The men are very sick.’
    He looks dreadful, she thought. He was gaunt, tense with strain, grubby and unshaven. His cassock was stained and dirty. Some of the stains were dark and stiff. Blood, she thought, always blood.
    Slowly, some of the doors of the houses opened and the people came out hesitantly, looking at each other and at the priest for reassurance. Amy noticed, as she always did, that the few men were old, wearing the rough trousers and shirts of farm labourers. The women were almost all in black, some with a white scarf at the neck, and the children clung to their mothers’ skirts, silent and unsmiling, their little faces wiped blank with sights that no child should ever see. The priest gestured to them to come out, that it was safe, and spoke to them in French that was too rapid for Amy to understand. They came out, smiling a shy, troubled welcome. Some of them brought gifts, a half bottle of wine, a small piece of cheese resting in a spotless linen handkerchief. An old woman, grey and bent and leaning on a stick, took Amy’s hand and kissed it. ‘Thank you,’ she said in careful English. ‘Thank you.’ Amy’s eyes filled with tears.
    ‘The Germans have been through here twice,’ the priest said. ‘They took everything.’
    Amy glanced up at the surrounding hills. God knew what was concealed, waiting, up there.
    ‘We’d better get going then,’ she said. ‘Where are the men?’
    The priest turned to lead the way. They walked down a little lane with high hedges on each side where blackberries were growing, gleaming like dark jewels, nearly ready for the villagers to pick. It looked so much like England that Amy was swept again with homesickness ,longing to be in a quiet English country lane, her basket on her arm.
    She needn’t have asked where the men were. As they walked towards the church the foul smell of infected wounds rolled out and enveloped them. She gagged