having spilled over most of the flower beds, and but for the loggia steps it must have come into the bungalow. There in the open she realised that the rushing noises which she had thought were just in her own head were in fact the noise of much water moving down from the mountains. She looked with fascinated foreboding at what the storm had done to the mere trickle which Pietro had dammed to make his waterfall and shrank from the thought of what it might do to the larger streams.
"Did you get the papers?" she asked. "Was there any news from outside?"
"No, no." Pietro dismissed the question. Even catastrophe in the next village would have left him unmoved at that moment, he was so full of what had happened in his little world of Lamontella. "G
iacomo's new vineyard—all gone !
" he made a sweeping gesture with his arms. "All washed away in the river. Papa Antonio's goats have broken their tethers—the water, do you see, made the stakes loose in the groun
d—and they are just gone—pouff
!
No sign of them at all."
He would have gone on all day about the little local tragedies, but Fay wanted news of the outside world.
"It will come later—later," he promised. "I will go down to the village again to see if the papers have arrived, but there may be a—what you call a landslide, yes?—on the road from Nice. The papers are printed there and they come in by road. The radio will be working soon, perhaps, when they have time to make the adjustments, but they say at the inn that they have heard the lightning had struck the mast."
But Fay decided she would go down to the village herself to find what news there was from the outside world. That at least was the reason she gave to herself. She was only just beginning to realise the depth of the loneliness which had started last night for her. Until then her decision had not been irrevocable, and she had not looked beyond it, had not tasted in anticipation the dry sterility of loneliness which would be her lot from now on. But this morning she felt it in full measure—felt it and could not bear it. One half of her panicking brain said, "Perhaps Geoff will not be gone—perhaps it's not too late—"; but the other half knew that what she had done was right. "There are some things no true
woman can do—" she remembered the words, and it calmed her a little. "I'm being tempted to be a coward," she thought, "but if I hang on the strength will come. I'll get used to it in time."
The thing to do was to be busy. That was the cure—so busy that she would have no time to think about herself, no time to repine for the things she could not have. "I'll go home," she thought, and was surprised to find that she meant England and not Australia as "home." But then she remembered Matron. Matron had ordained that she must have a holiday and would certainly not be pleased for her to get back to work before her leave expired and upset the rotas worked out for her absence.
"I can't stay here, though—there's not enough to do," she decided.
Going down to the village proved to be a more hazardous undertaking than Fay had bargained for, and soon she found that she had to concentrate all her thoughts and attention on negotiating the steep steps and cobbled paths which led down from one terrace to the next. They were all covered with a slippery slime of earth washed down by the torrential rain and overflowing water butts. As she got lower an obnoxious smell reached her nostrils. The nurse in her was alerted at once and painted a picture of what had happened. There was a main drain through Lamontella, but she guessed that few of the older houses and cottages would be connected to it. They probably still had old and inadequate cesspits which had now overflowed.
Last night's storm was not over. The worse and more dire results were yet to show themselves. She wondered what was the state of public health administration in Lamontella.
She felt impelled to hurry, and made what haste she could to the lower terraces. The post office, the council offices and the inn were all close together, and this morning it seemed as though the entire population of the village was collected outside one or other of them.
From the activity both inside and outside the council offices Fay gathered that the local elders were alive to the dangers of the situation. Large handwritten posters were being put up and distributed round the village. Fay's know-
ledge of the language had not progressed very far as yet, but she was pretty sure that they said "Boil all water!" Several of the small refuse carts which were used to surmount the difficulty presented by the steep terraces were out, and men with shovels were clearing. the streets. Suddenly with a great deal of noise the tiny fire engine emerged from its garage, and Fay guessed that its task would be to hose down after the shovellers.
Obviously Lamontella was coping with the disaster. Breathing a sigh of relief, Fay turned into the post office. It was some time before she could get to the counter to have a word with the postmistress, who spoke English.
"Is there any news through yet?" she asked.
"No papers yet, [Gees, but the telegraph is working now. It seems we here in Lamontella have escaped lightly, thanks be to St. Peter—" St. Peter was the patron saint of the village. "But there is much damage between here and Nice. Roads have been flooded and cars stranded and there are many trees fallen. There is talk of great trouble farther east, though."
That was all the woman could tell her, and Fay thanked her and pushed her way through the crowd again, making her way unhesitatingly towards the inn. She knew there was a barmaid there who spoke English, and she had to have news of Geoff. She had to be sure that he was safe—that he had indeed gone back to the inn before the worst of the storm broke and had not gone wandering into the night because of what she had done to him.
The young woman produced from the back quarters of the inn appeared white-faced and still bearing the signs of the night before. But she was only too ready to converse with someone in her own tongue, for she was another English girl who had married an Italian.
"Mr. Wentworth, miss? Lovely man. Yes, he got in last night before the storm really got going. He was a bit wet, but nothing to worry about—or that's what he said. Went straight up to his room."
"He was to have left this morning, wasn't he?" Fay's heart, going its own wayward road, beat a little faster, but she was glad to hear the other girl reply, "Yes, miss—going
back to Marseilles he was. But as that didn't seem likely by road he got Ricky—that's Ricardo, my husband—to drive him into Pandeterra. There's a local airfield there, and Ricky's brother is a pilot, and he took Mr. Wentworth with him as he'd got a delivery
for Marseilles. Bit of luck, rea
lly
, because otherwise poor Mr. Wentworth wouldn't have caught up with his people and I bet they'd be worried stiff about him, seeing all the bad news there is floating around."
"What other news have you heard?" Fay asked.
"Nothing definite—you know what these Eyeties are. All crossing themselves and calling on St. Peter. But I reckon as how there's been a pretty big disaster somewhere."
The full news did not come through until about midday, when the local relay station recommenced broadcasting. The story was one of widespread disaster, with the centre of the storm over Yugoslavia, where in the mountainous area a whole small town had been swallowed in an earthquake with the rescue work now hampered by floods. The International Red Cross had declared an emergency and volunteers were urgently needed to report to local centres as soon as possible.
Fay felt a strange sense of release as though this was what she had been waiting for. Even Pietro was shaken out of his parochialism by the magnitude of the disaster. He and Rose did all they could to speed Fay's departure. The nearest Red Cross Headquarters was in Nice, they told her, and immediately Pietro was on his way down to the village again to discover if he could the possibilities of getting through by road. While he was gone Fay condensed a few necessities into one small bag, while Rose cut masses of sandwiches which she packed into a satchel. "You never know when you'll get anything to eat again," she told Fay, becoming suddenly all Lancashire again, "and no one can work on an empty stomach, I always say."
Almost before the bag was packed Pietro was back, panting from his exertions. Yes, cars were getting through, he told them as soon as he could speak. "Ricardo—at the inn, you know him, mees?—he will take you into Nice as soon as you are ready. He will not charge—it is what little he can do to help."
In her present mood that touched Fay. She was so very
conscious of the need to help someone—and she knew she was fortunate in that, in this hour, she had much to give.
It did not occur to her at the time that her experiences of the evening before, the storm, and an almost entire lack of sleep, were not the best preparation for the arduous mission on which she was setting out. She only marvelled later that she could remember so little of the various stages of the journey which eventually landed her, in an incredibly lovely dawn, at an airfield near Dubrocja, the stricken town. Somewhere en route since she had left Lamontella her credentials had been checked and she had been fitted out with overalls and a first-aid bag. She did not remember where this had been done. There had been coffee, hot and strong, on the plane which had helped to dispel the sleep which threatened to overcome her at any minute, but it was the sight of the stricken town which had been Dubrocja which finally alerted her every sense, every fibre of her being.
She had never seen, nor in her wildest thoughts imagined, such a scene of utter destruction which met her when the rumbling, jolting truck brought them to the site of what had until two nights ago been a flourishing little town. There was not a single house left intact. There were piles of masonry and timber everywhere, and the lower part of the town where the railway station had been was completely flooded. From the air she had seen a large crack which had seemed to split the entire place into two and now that she was nearer she knew that that crack must have fractured the gas and water mains and the main sewer. An undefinable stench lay heavy over the whole place, and the air was filled with a cacophany of sounds, from the wailing of lost children to the piercing screams and low moans of the injured. A swarm of sweating men like a colony of ants crawled over the debris trying to extricate the numbers of people still trapped. Another band of men and women sorted out the dead and dying from those who had a chance of life.
Every local doctor and anyone with the slightest medical knowledge was there already, but they were lost and panic-stricken in the face of a disaster with which they were not equipped to deal.
It was a question of the most elementary first aid. Supplies
were desperately short and they had no anaesthetics beyond blessed unconsciousness and a limited quantity of morphine. Casualties had to be dealt with where they were until the fleet of lorries and trucks co-opted as ambulances could carry them off to hospitals, often many miles away. The shortage of water was acute, and such as there was had to be bailed before it could be used for any purpose.
By midday the Big Top of a circus which had been pitched a few miles away appeared in their midst, as if by magic, reeking of carbolic which was probably the only disinfectant to be had in large quantities. It was better than nothing and at least provided some shelter from sun, which since the dawn had risen higher and higher like a brass ball in a steel-blue sky.
The hours passed, and Fay hardly noticed them go. The passage of time was marked only by such things as the arrival of the American team, flown straight from Germany, and with them a blessed relief to the shortage of medical supplies. Then the word went round that the first section of the field hospital was in position, and that by nightfall there should be a workable operating theatre.
Fay found that she was allocating nationality more on the basis of how the teams worked than on their speech. The Germans were unflappable and effective, the Swiss meticulous, and under normal circumstances she guessed they would be perfectionists. The French and Italians were full of nervous energy which soon exhausted itself, and the Americans confident and utterly tireless. As yet there was no British team.
Fay found herself working alongside an Italian woman doctor who reminded her of Toni. She had the same lustrous dark eyes, the same poise and indefinable air of breeding, which made her stand out among the motley crowd of workers. She spoke fluent English, and soon she and Fay were working together as if it had been the habit of years.
Night came, and they were still digging out victims from the ruins of the town, and there were scores of less desperate cases who had as yet not been attended to. But the Commandant had taken control of things now and wisely conserved his forces. Fay and her doctor were ordered to take a few hours' rest and thankfully they slid on to a pile of straw
leaning against the wall of the tent. The smell of carbolic was thick about them, and Fay knew that after that night, whenever she smelt carbolic she would see this scene again—this nightmare now lit with hurricane lamps plus a few naked electric bulbs fed from a generator lorry. She would remember it with horror, and yet with a kind of pride as well —pride in the courage, fortitude and inherent goodness of people, both the injured and the helpers, which could rise above the petty differences which so often separated nations. It was a pity that it took such a calamity to bring out those better qualities, she thought tiredly.