Pied Piper

by Nevil Shute

  Howard stared at him. ‘My dear chap,’ he said, ‘I should be only too glad to do anything I can to help. But I must tell you, that at my age I don’t stand travel very well. I was quite ill for a couple of days in Paris, on my way out here. I’m nearly seventy, you know. It would be safer if you put your children in the care of somebody a little more robust.’

  Cavanagh said: ‘That may be so. But as a matter of fact, there is nobody. The alternative would be for Felicity to take the children back to England herself.’

  There was a pause. The old man said: ‘I see. She doesn’t want to do that?’

  The other shook his head. ‘We want to be together,’ he said, a little pitifully. ‘It may be for years.’

  Howard stared at him. ‘You can count on me to do anything within my power,’ he said. ‘Whether you would be wise to send the children home with me is something that you only can decide. If I were to die upon the journey it might cause a good deal of trouble, both for your sister in Oxford and for the children.’

  Cavanagh smiled. ‘I’m quite prepared to take the risk,’ he said. ‘It’s a small one compared with all the other risks one has to take these days.’

  The old man smiled slowly. ‘Well, I’ve been going seventy years and I’ve not died yet. I suppose I may last a few weeks longer.’

  ‘Then you’ll take them?’

  ‘Of course I will, if that’s what you want me to do.’

  Cavanagh went away to tell his wife, leaving the old man in a flutter. He had planned to stay in Dijon and in Paris for a night as he had done on the way out; it now seemed to him that it would be wiser if he were to travel straight through to Calais. Actually it meant no changes in his arrangement to do that, because he had booked no rooms and taken no tickets. The changes were in his plans; he had to get accustomed to the new idea.

  Could he manage the two children by himself, or would it be wiser to engage a village girl from Cidoton to travel with them as far as Calais to act as a bonne? He did not know if a girl could be found to come with them. Perhaps Madame Lucard would know somebody …

  It was only later that he realised that Calais was in German hands, and that his best route across the Channel would be by way of St. Malo to Southampton.

  He came down presently, and met Felicity Cavanagh in the salon. She caught his hand. ‘It’s so very, very kind of you to do this for us,’ she said. It seemed to him that she had been crying a little.

  ‘Not in the least,’ he said. ‘I shall enjoy having them as travelling companions.’

  She smiled. ‘I’ve just told them. They’re simply thrilled. They’re terribly excited to be going home with you.’ It was the first time that he had heard her speak of England as home.

  He broached the matter of a girl to her, and they went together to see Madame Lucard. But Cidoton proved to be incapable of producing anybody willing to go with them to St. Malo, or even as far as Paris. ‘It doesn’t matter in the least,’ said Howard. ‘After all, we shall be home in twenty-four hours. I’m sure we shall get on famously together.’

  She looked at him. ‘Would you like me to come with you as far as Paris? I could do that, and then go back to Geneva.’

  He said: ‘Not at all—not at all. You stay with your man. Just tell me about their clothes and what they say, er, when they want to retire. Then you won’t need to worry any more about them.’

  He went up with her that evening to see them in bed. He said to Ronald: ‘So you’re coming back to England with me, eh, to stay with your auntie?’

  The little boy looked up at him with shining eyes. ‘Yes, please! Are we going in a train?’

  Howard said: ‘Yes, we’ll be a long time in the train.’

  ‘Will it have a steam engine, or a ’lectric one?’

  ‘Oh—a steam engine, I think. Yes, certainly, a steam engine.’

  ‘How many wheels will it have?’ But this was past the old man’s capacity.

  Sheila piped up: ‘Will we have dinner in the train?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you’ll have your dinner in the train. I expect you’ll have your tea and your breakfast in it too.’

  ‘Oo … Oo,’ she said. And then, incredulously, ‘Breakfast in the train?’

  Ronald stared at him. ‘Where will we sleep?’

  His father said: ‘You’ll sleep in the train, Ronnie. In a little bed to yourself.’

  ‘Really sleep in the train?’ He swung round to the old man. ‘Mr. Howard, please—may I sleep next to the engine?’

  Sheila said: ‘Me too. I want to sleep next to the engine.’

  Presently their mother got them settled down to sleep. She followed the men downstairs. ‘I’m fixing up with Madame Lucard to pack a hamper with all your meals,’ she said. ‘It’ll be easier for you to give them their meals in the wagon lit than to bother with them in the restaurant car.’

  Howard said: ‘That’s really very kind. It’s much better that way.’

  She smiled. ‘I know what it is, travelling with children.’

  He dined with them that night, and went early to bed. He was pleasantly tired, and slept very well; he woke early, as he usually did, and lay in bed revolving in his mind all the various matters that he had to attend to. Finally he got up, feeling uncommonly well. It did not occur to him that this was because he had a job to do, for the first time in many months.

  The next day was spent in a flutter of business. The children were taking little with them in the way of luggage; one small portmanteau held the clothes for both of them. With their mother to assist him the old man learned the intricacies of their garments, and how they went to bed, and what they had to eat.

  Once Mrs. Cavanagh stopped and looked at him. ‘Really,’ she said, ‘you’d rather that I came with you to Paris, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ he said. ‘I assure you, they will be quite all right with me.’

  She stood silent for a minute. ‘I believe they will,’ she said slowly. ‘Yes, I believe they’ll be all right with you.’

  She said no more about Paris.

  Cavanagh had returned to Geneva, but he turned up again that night for dinner. He took Howard aside and gave him the money for their journey. ‘I can’t tell you how terribly grateful we are to you,’ he muttered. ‘It just makes all the difference to know that the kids will be in England.’

  The old man said: ‘Don’t worry about them any more. They’ll be quite safe with me. I’ve had children of my own to look after, you know.’

  He did not dine with them that night, judging it better to leave them alone together with the children. Everything was ready for his journey; his portmanteaux were packed, his rods in the long tubular travelling-case. There was nothing more to be done.

  He went up to his room. It was bright moonlight, and he stood for a while at his window looking out over the pastures and the woods towards the mountains. It was very quiet and still.

  He turned uneasily from the window. It had no right to be so peaceful, here in the Jura. Two or three hundred miles to the north the French were fighting desperately along the Somme; the peace in Cidoton was suddenly unpleasant to him, ominous. The bustle and the occupation that his charge of the children had brought to him had changed his point of view; he now wanted very much to be in England, in a scene of greater action. He was glad to be leaving. The peace of Cidoton had helped him over a bad time, but it was time that he moved on.

  Next morning all was bustle. He was down early, but the children and their parents were before him. They all had their petit déjeuner together in the dining-room; as a last lesson Howard learned to soften the crusts of the rolls for the children by soaking them in coffee. Then the old Chrysler was at the door to take them down to Saint-Claude.

  The leave-taking was short and awkward. Howard had said everything that there was to say to the Cavanaghs, and the children were eager to climb into the car. It meant nothing to them that they were leaving their mother, possibly for years; the delicious prospect of a lon
g drive to Saint-Claude and a day and a night in a real train with a steam engine filled their minds. Their father and mother kissed them, awkward and red-faced, but the meaning of the parting escaped the children altogether. Howard stood by, embarrassed.

  Mrs. Cavanagh muttered: ‘Good-bye, my darlings,’ and turned away.

  Ronald said: ‘May I sit by the driver?’

  Sheila said: ‘I want to sit by the driver, too.’

  Howard stepped forward. ‘You’re both going to sit behind with me.’ He bundled them into the back of the car. Then he turned back to their mother. ‘They’re very happy,’ he said gently. ‘That’s the main thing, after all.’

  He got into the car; it moved off down the road, and that miserable business was all over.

  He sat in the middle of the seat with one child on each side of him for equity in the facilities for looking out. From time to time one saw a goat or a donkey and announced the fact in mixed French and English; then the other one would scramble over the old man to see the wonder. Howard spent most of the drive putting them back into their own seats.

  Half an hour later they drew up at the station of Saint-Claude. The concierge helped them out of the car. ‘They are pretty children,’ he said in French to Howard. ‘Their father and mother will be very sad, I think.’

  The old man answered him in French: ‘That is true. But in war, children should stay quiet in their own country. I think their mother has decided wisely.’

  The man shrugged his shoulders; it was clear that he did not agree. ‘How could war come to Cidoton?’

  He carried their luggage to a first-class compartment and helped Howard to register the portmanteaux. Presently the little train puffed out up the valley, and Saint-Claude was left behind. That was the morning on which Italy declared war on the Allies, and the Germans crossed the Seine to the north of Paris.

  Chapter Three

  Half an hour after leaving Morez the children were already bored. Howard was watching for this, and had made his preparations. In the attaché case that he carried with him he had secreted a number of little amusements for them, given to him by their mother. He pulled out a scribbling-pad and a couple of coloured pencils, and set them to drawing ships.

  By the time they got to Andelot, three hours later, they had had their lunch; the carriage was littered with sandwich wrappings and with orange peel; an empty bottle that had contained milk stood underneath a seat. Sheila had had a little sleep, curled up by old Howard with her head resting on his lap; Ronnie had stood looking out of the window most of the way, singing a little song in French about numerals—

  Un, deux, trois,

  Allons dans les bois—

  Quatre, cinq, six,

  Cueillir des cerises …

  Howard felt that he knew his numerals quite well by the time they got to Andelot.

  He had to rouse Sheila from a heavy slumber as they drew into the little country station where they had to change. She woke up hot and fretful and began to cry a little for no reason at all. The old man wiped her eyes, got out of the carriage, lilted the children down on to the platform, and then got back into the carriage for the hand luggage. There were no porters on the platform, but it seemed that that was inevitable in France in war-time. He had not expected it to be different.

  He walked along the platform carrying the hand luggage, with the two children beside him; he modified his pace to suit their rate of walking, which was slow. At the Bureau, he found a stout, black-haired stationmaster.

  Howard enquired if the Rapide from Switzerland was likely to be late.

  The man said that the Rapide would not arrive. No trains from Switzerland would arrive.

  Dumbfounded, Howard expostulated. It was intolerable that one had not been told that at Saint-Claude. How, then, could one proceed to Dijon?

  The stationmaster said that Monsieur might rest tranquil. A train would run from the frontier at Vallorbes to Dijon. It was incessantly expected. It had been incessantly expected for two hours.

  Howard returned to the children and his luggage, annoyed and worried. The failure of the Rapide meant that he could not travel through to Paris in the train from Andelot, but must make a change at Dijon. By the time he got there it would be evening, and there was no knowing how long he would have to wait there for a train to Paris, or whether he could get a sleeping berth for the children. Travelling by himself it would have been annoying: with two children to look after it became a serious matter.

  He set himself to amuse them. Ronnie was interested in the railway trucks and the signals and the shunting engine; apart from his incessant questions about matters that Howard did not understand he was very little trouble. Sheila was different. She was quite unlike the child that he had known in Cidoton, peevish and fretful, and continually crying without energy. The old man tried a variety of ways to rouse her interest, without a great deal of success.

  An hour and forty minutes later, when he was thoroughly worn out, the train for Dijon pulled into the station. It was very full, but he managed to find one seat in a first-class carriage and took Sheila on his knee, where she fell asleep again before so very long. Ronnie stood by the door looking out of the window, chattering in French to a fat old woman in a corner.

  Presently this woman leaned forward to Howard. She said: ‘Your little one has fever, is it not so?’

  Startled, he said in French: ‘But no. She is a little tired.’

  She fixed him with beady black eyes. ‘She has a fever. It is not right to bring a child with fever in the train. It is not hygenic. I do not like to travel with a child that has a fever.’

  ‘I assure you, madame,’ he said, ‘you deceive yourself.’ But a horrible suspicion was creeping over him.

  She appealed to the rest of the carriage. ‘I,’ she ejaculated, ‘—it is I who deceive myself, then! Let me tell you, m’sieur, it is not I who deceive myself. But no, certainly. It is you, m’sieur, truly, you who are deceived. I tell you that your little one has fever, and you do very wrong to bring her in a train with others who are healthy. Look at her colour, and her skin! She has scarlet fever, or chicken-pox, or some horrible disease that clean people do not get.’ She turned vehemently to the others in the carriage. ‘Imagine, bringing a child in that condition in the train!’

  There was a grunt from the other occupants. One said: ‘It is not correct. It should not be allowed.’

  Howard turned to the woman. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘you have children of your own, I think?’

  She snorted at him. ‘Five,’ she said. ‘But never have I travelled with a child in that condition. It is not right, that.’

  He said: ‘Madame, I ask for your help. These children are not my own, but I am taking them to England for a friend, because in these times it is better that children should be in their own country. I did not know the little one was feverish. Tell me, what would you do, as her mother?’

  She shrugged her shoulders, still angry. ‘I? I have nothing to do with it at all, m’sieur, I assure you of that. I would say, let children of that age stay with their mother. That is the place for such children. It is getting hot and travelling in trains that gives children fever.’

  With a sinking heart Howard realised that there was some truth in what she said. From the other end of the carriage somebody said: ‘English children are very often ill. The mothers do not look after their children properly. They expose them to currents of air and then the children get fever.’

  There was general agreement in the carriage. Howard turned again to the woman. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘do you think this fever is infectious? If it is so, I will get out at the next station. But as for me, I think she is only tired.’

  The little beady eyes of the old peasant woman fixed him. ‘Has she got spots?’

  ‘I—I don’t think so. I don’t know.’

  She snorted. ‘Give her to me.’ She reached out and took Sheila from him, settled her on a capacious lap, and deftly removed her coat. With quick fingers she undi
d the child’s clothes and had a good look at her back and front. ‘She has no spots,’ she said, replacing the garments. ‘But fever—poor little one, she is hot as fire. It is not right to expose a child in this condition, m’sieur. She should be in bed.’

  Howard reached out for Sheila and took her back; the Frenchwoman was certainly right. He thanked her for her help. ‘It is clear to me that she must go to bed when we arrive at Dijon,’ he said. ‘Should she see a doctor?’

  The old woman shrugged her shoulders. ‘It is not necessary. A tisane from the chemist, and she will be well. But you must not give her wine while she has fever. Wine is very heating to the blood.’

  Howard said: ‘I understand, madame. She shall not have wine.’

  ‘Not even mixed with water, or with coffee.’

  ‘No. She should have milk?’

  ‘Milk will not hurt her. Many people say that children should drink as much milk as wine.’ This provoked a discussion upon infant welfare that lasted till they got to Dijon.

  The station at Dijon was a seething mass of soldiers. With the utmost difficulty Howard got the children and his bags out of the train. He had an attaché case and a suitcase and the tin tube that held his rods with him in the carriage; the rest of his luggage with the little portmanteau that held the children’s clothes was registered through to Paris. Carrying Sheila in his arms and leading Ronnie by the hand, he could not carry any of his luggage; he was forced to leave everything in a corner of the station platform and thrust his way with the two children through the crowd towards the exit.

  The square before the station was a mass of lorries and troops. He threaded his way through and across the road to the hotel that he had stayed at before, startled and bewildered by the evident confusion of the town. He forced his way through to the hotel with the children; at the desk the girl recognised him, but told him that all the rooms were taken by the military.