"I didn't send Gwinnie. I gave you your chance. I knew you wanted to cut Mrs. Rankin out."
"I? I never thought of such a rotten thing."
"Well, you talked about danger as if you liked it."
"So did you."
"Oh--go to hell."
"I've just come from there."
"Oh--so you were frightened, were you?"
"Yes, I was horribly frightened. I had thirteen wounded men with me. What do you suppose it feels like, driving a heavy ambulance car by yourself? You can't sit in front and steer and look after thirteen wounded men at the same time. I had to keep hopping in and out. That isn't nice when there's shells about. I shall never forgive you for not coming to give a hand with those men. There's funk you can forgive and--"
She thought: "It's John--John--I'm saying these disgusting things to. I'm as bad as Trixie, telling him what I bloody well think of him, going back on him."
"And there's funk--"
"You'd better take care, Charlotte. Do you know I could get you fired out of Belgium to-morrow?"
"Not after to-night, I think." (It was horrible.) He got up and opened the door. "Anyhow, you'll clear out of this room now, damn you."
"I wish you'd heard that Army doctor damning you."
"Why didn't he go back with you himself, then?"
"He couldn't leave his wounded."
He slammed the door hard behind her.
That was just like him. Wounded men everywhere, trying to sleep, and he slammed doors. He didn't care.
She would have to go on lying. She had made up her mind to that. So long as it would keep the others from knowing, so long as John's awfulness went beyond their knowledge, so long as it would do any good to John, she would lie.
Her time had come. She remembered saying that. She could hear herself talking to John at Barrow Hill Farm: "Everybody's got their breaking point.... I daresay when my time comes I shall funk and lie."
Well, didn't she? Funk--the everlasting funk of wondering what John would do next; and lying, lying at every turn to save him. He was her breaking point.
She had lied, the first time they went out, about the firing. She wondered whether she had done it because then, even then, she had been afraid of his fear. Hadn't she always somehow, in secret, been afraid? She could see the car coming round the corner by the Church in the narrow street at Stow, she could feel it grazing her thigh, and John letting her go, jumping safe to the curb. She had pretended that it hadn't happened.