by Nevil Shute
Howard undid his parcels, and gave Sheila the picture-book about Babar the Elephant. Babar was an old friend of la petite Rose, and well known; she took the book and drew Ronnie to the bed, and began to read the story to them. The little boy soon tired of it; aeroplanes were more in his line, and he went and leaned out of the window hoping to see another one go by.
Howard left them there, and went down to the hall of the hotel to telephone. With great difficulty, and great patience, he got through at last to the hotel at Cidoton; obviously he must do his best to let Cavanagh know the difficulties of the journey. He spoke to Madame Lucard, but the Cavanaghs had left the day before, to go back to Geneva. No doubt they imagined that he was practically in England by that time.
He tried to put a call through to Cavanagh at the League of Nations in Geneva, and was told curtly that the service into Switzerland had been suspended. He enquired about the telegraph service, and was told that all telegrams to Switzerland must be taken personally to the Bureau de Ville for censoring before they could be accepted for despatch. There was said to be a very long queue at the censor’s table.
It was time for déjeuner; he gave up the struggle to communicate with Cavanagh for the time being. Indeed, he had been apathetic about it from the start. With the clear vision of age he knew that it was not much good; if he should get in touch with the parents it would still be impossible for him to cross the border back to them, or for them to come to him. He would have to carry on and get the children home to England as he had undertaken to do; no help could come from Switzerland.
The hotel was curiously still, and empty; it seemed today that all the soldiers were elsewhere. He went into the restaurant and ordered lunch to be sent up to the bedroom on a tray, both for himself and for the children.
It came presently, brought by the femme de chambre. There was much excited French about the pictures of Babar, and about the handkerchief rabbit. The woman beamed all over; it was the sort of party that she understood.
Howard said: ‘It has been very, very kind of you to let la petite Rose be with la petite Sheila. Already they are friends.’
The woman spoke volubly. ‘It is nothing, monsieur—nothing at all. Rose likes more than anything to play with little children, or with kittens, or young dogs. Truly, she is a little mother, that one.’ She rubbed the child’s head affectionately. ‘She will come back after déjeuner, if monsieur desires?’
Sheila said: ‘I want Rose to come back after déjeuner, Monsieur Howard.’
He said slowly: ‘You’d better go to sleep after déjeuner.’ He turned to the woman. ‘If she could come back at four o’clock?’ To Rose: ‘Would you like to come and have tea with us this afternoon—English tea?’
She said shyly: ‘Oui, monsieur.’
She went away and Howard gave the children their dinner. Sheila was still hot with a slight temperature. He put the tray outside the door when they had finished, and made Ronnie lie down on the bed with his sister. Then he stretched out in the arm-chair, and began to read to them from a book given to him by their mother, called Amelianne at the Circus. Before very long the children were asleep: Howard laid down the book and slept for an hour himself.
Later in the afternoon he walked up through the town again to the Bureau de Ville, leading Ronnie by the hand, with a long telegram to Cavanagh in his pocket. He searched for some time for the right office, and finally found it, picketed by an anxious and discontented crowd of French people. The door was shut. The censor had closed the office and gone off for the evening, nobody knew where. The office would be open again at nine in the morning.
‘It is not right, that,’ said the people. But it appeared that there was nothing to be done about it.
Howard walked back with Ronnie to the hotel. There were troops in the town again, and a long convoy of lorries blocked the northward road near the station. In the station yard three very large tanks were parked, bristling with guns, formidable in design but dirty and unkempt. Their tired crews were refuelling them from a tank lorry, working slowly and sullenly, without enthusiasm. A little chill shot through the old man as he watched them bungling their work. What was it Dickinson had said? ‘Running like rabbits.’
It could not possibly be true. The French had always fought magnificently.
At Ronnie’s urgent plea they crossed to the square, and spent some time examining the tanks. The little boy told him: ‘They can go right over walls and houses even. Right over!’
The old man stared at the monsters. It might be true, but he was not impressed with what he saw. ‘They don’t look very comfortable,’ he said mildly.
Ronnie scoffed at him. ‘They go ever so fast, and all the guns go bang, bang, bang.’ He turned to Howard. ‘Are they going to stay here all night?’
‘I don’t know. I expect they will. Come on, now; Sheila will want her tea. I expect you want yours, too.’
Food was a magnet, but Ronnie looked back longingly over his shoulder. ‘May we come and see them to-morrow?’
‘If they’re still here.’
Things were still happy in the bedroom. La petite Rose, it seemed, knew a game which involved the imitation of animals in endless repetition—
My great-aunt lives in Tours,
In a house with a cherry-tree
With a little mouse (squeak, squeak)
And a big lion (roar, roar)
And a wood pigeon (coo, coo) …
and so on quite indefinitely. It was a game that made no great demand on the intelligence, and Sheila wanted nothing better. Presently, they were all playing it; it was so that the femme de chambre found them.
She came in with the tea, laughing all over her face. ‘In Touraine I learned that, as a little girl, myself,’ she said. ‘It is pretty, is it not? All children like “my great-aunt lives in Tours”—always, always. In England, monsieur, do the children play like that?’
‘Much the same,’ he said. ‘Children in every country play the same games.’
He gave them their milk and bread and butter and jam. Near the Bureau de Ville he had seen a shop selling gingerbread cakes, the tops of which were covered in crystallised fruits and sweets. He had bought one of these; as he was quite unused to housekeeping it was three times as large as was necessary. He cut it with his penknife on the dressing-table and they all had a slice. It was a very merry tea-party, so merry that the grinding of caterpillar tracks and the roaring of exhausts outside the window passed them by unnoticed.
They played a little more after tea; then he washed the children as the femme de chambre re-made the bed. She helped him to undress them and put them into their new pyjamas; then she held Sheila on her capacious lap while the old man took her temperature carefully under the arm. It was still a degree or so above normal, though the child was obviously better; whatever had been wrong with her was passing off. It would not be right, he decided, to travel on the next day; he had no wish to be held up with another illness in less comfortable surroundings. But on the day after that, he thought it should be possible to get away. If they started very early in the morning they would get through to St. Malo in the day. He would see about the car that night.
Presently, both the children were in bed, and kissed good night. He stood in the passage outside the room with the femme de chambre and her little girl. ‘To-night, monsieur,’ she said, ‘presently, when they are asleep, I will bring a mattress and make up a bed for monsieur on the floor. It will be better than the arm-chair, that.’
‘You are very kind,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you should be so very, very good to us. I am most grateful.’
She said: ‘But monsieur, it is you who are kind …’
He went down to the lobby, wondering a little at the effusive nature of the French.
Again the hotel was full of officers. He pushed his way to the desk and said to the girl: ‘I want to hire a car, not now, but the day after to-morrow—for a long journey. Can you tell me which garage would be the best?’
; She said: ‘For a long journey, monsieur? How far?’
‘To St. Malo, in Normandy. The little girl is still not very well. I think it will be easier to take her home by car.’
She said doubtfully: ‘The Garage Citroën would be the best. But it will not be easy, monsieur. You understand—the cars have all been taken for the army. It would be easier to go by train.’
He shook his head. ‘I’d rather go by car.’
She eyed him for a moment. ‘Monsieur is going away, then, the day after to-morrow?’
‘Yes, if the little girl is well enough to travel.’
She said, awkwardly: ‘I am desolated, but it will be necessary for monsieur to go then, at the latest. If the little one is still ill, we will try to find a room for monsieur in the town. But we have heard this afternoon, the hotel is to be taken over to-morrow by the Bureau Principal of the railway, from Paris.’
He stared at her. ‘Are they moving the offices from Paris, then?’
She shook her head. ‘I only know what I have told you, monsieur. All our guests must leave.’
He was silent for a minute. Then he said: ‘What did you say was the name of the garage?’
‘The Garage Citroën, monsieur. I will telephone and ask them, if you wish?’
He said: ‘Please do.’
She turned away and went into the box; he waited at the desk, worried and anxious. He felt that the net of circumstances was closing in on him, driving him where he did not want to go. The car to St. Malo was the knife that would cut through his difficulties and free him. Through the glass of the booth he saw her speaking volubly into the telephone; he waited on tenterhooks.
She came back presently. ‘It is impossible,’ she said. ‘There is no car available for such a journey. I regret—Monsieur Duval, the proprietor of the garage, regrets also—but monsieur will have to go by train.’
He said very quietly: ‘Surely it would be possible to arrange something? There must be a car of some sort or another?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Monsieur could go to see Monsieur Duval perhaps, at the garage. If anybody in Dijon could produce a car for such a journey it would be he.’
She gave him directions for finding the garage; ten minutes later he was in the Frenchman’s office. The garage owner was quite positive. ‘A car, yes,’ he declared. ‘That is the least thing, monsieur, I could find the car. But petrol—not a litre that has not been taken by the army. Only by fraud can I get petrol for the car—you understand? And then, the roads. It is not possible to make one’s way along the road to Paris, not possible at all, monsieur.’
‘Finally,’ he said, ‘I could not find a driver for a journey such as that. The Germans are across the Seine, monsieur; they are across the Marne. Who knows where they will be the day after to-morrow?’
The old man was silent.
The Frenchman said: ‘If monsieur wishes to get back to England he should go by train, and he should go very soon.’
Howard thanked him for the advice, and went out into the street. Dusk was falling; he moved along the pavement, deep in thought. He stopped by a café and went in, and ordered a Pernod with water. He took the drink and went and sat down at a table by the wall, and stayed there for some time, staring at the garish advertisements of cordials upon the walls.
Things had grown serious. If he left now, at once, it might be possible to win through to St. Malo and to England; if he delayed another thirty-six hours it might very well be that St. Malo would be overwhelmed and smothered in the tide of the German rush, as Calais had been smothered, and Boulogne. It seemed incredible that they could still be coming on so fast. Surely, surely, they would be checked before they got to Paris? It could not possibly be true that Paris would fall?
He did not like this evacuation of the railway offices from Paris. That had an ugly sound.
He could go back now to the hotel. He could get both the children up and dress them, pay the bill at the hotel, and take them to the station. Ronnie would be all right. Sheila—well, after all, she had a coat. Perhaps he could get hold of a shawl to wrap her up in. True it was nighttime and the trains would be irregular; they might have to sit about for hours on the platform in the night waiting for a train that never came. But he would be getting the children back to England, as he had promised Cavanagh.
But then, if Sheila should get worse? Suppose she took a chill and got pneumonia?
If that should happen, he would never forgive himself. The children were in his care; it was not caring for them if he went stampeding to the station in the middle of the night to start on a long, uncertain journey regardless of their weakness and their illness. That wasn’t prudence. That was … fright.
He smiled a little at himself. That’s what it was, just fright—something to be conquered. Looking after children, after all, meant caring for them in sickness. That’s what it meant. It was quite clear. He’d taken the responsibility for them, and he must see it through, even though it now seemed likely to land him into difficulties that he had not quite anticipated when he first took on the job.
He got up and went back to the hotel. In the lobby the girl said to him.
‘Monsieur has found a car?’
He shook his head. ‘I shall stay here till the day after to-morrow. Then, if the little girl is well, we will go on by train.’
He paused. ‘One thing, mademoiselle. I will only be able to take one little bag for the three of us, that I can carry myself. If I leave my fishing-rods, would you look after them for me for a time?’
‘But certainly, monsieur. They will be quite safe.’
He went into the restaurant and found a seat for dinner. It was a great relief to him that he had found a means to place his rods in safety. Now that that little problem had been solved, he was amazed to find how greatly it had been distressing him; with that disposed of he could face the future with a calmer mind.
He went up to the bedroom shortly after dinner. The femme de chambre met him in the corridor, the yellow, dingy, corridor of bedrooms, lit only by a low-power lamp without a shade. ‘I have made monsieur a bed upon the floor,’ she said in a low tone. ‘You will see.’ She turned away.
‘That was very kind of you,’ he said. He paused, and looked curiously at her. In the dim light he could not see very clearly, but he had the impression that she was sobbing.
‘Is anything the matter?’ he asked gently.
She lifted the corner of her apron to her eyes. ‘It is nothing,’ she muttered. ‘Nothing at all.’
He hesitated, irresolute. He could not leave her, could not just walk into his bedroom and shut the door, if she was in trouble. She had been too helpful with the children. ‘Is it Madame?’ he said. ‘Has she complained about your work? If so, I will speak to her. I will tell her how much you have helped me.’
She shook her head and wiped her eyes. ‘It is not that, monsieur,’ she said. ‘But———’ I am dismissed. I am to go to-morrow.’
He was amazed. ‘But why?’
‘Five years,’ she said. ‘Five years I have been with madame—in all seasons of the year, monsieur—five years continuously! And now, to be dismissed at the day! It is intolerable, that.’ She began to weep a little louder.
The old man said: ‘But why has Madame done this?’
She said: ‘Have you not heard? The hotel is closing to-morrow. It is to be an office for the railway.’ She raised her tear-stained face. ‘All of us are dismissed, monsieur, everyone. I do not know what will happen to me, and la petite Rose.’
He was dumbfounded, not knowing what to say to help the woman. Obviously, if the hotel was to be an office for the railway staff, there would be no need for any chambermaids; the whole hotel staff would have to go. He hesitated, irresolute.
‘You will be all right,’ he said at last. ‘It will be easy for so good a femme de chambre as you to get another job.’
She shook her head. ‘It is not so. All the hotels are closing, and what family can now afford a servant
? You are kind, monsieur, but it is not so. I do not know how we shall live.’
‘You have some relations, or family, that you can go to, no doubt?’
‘There is nobody, monsieur. Only my brother, father of little Rose, and he is in England.’
Howard remembered the wine waiter at the Dickens Hotel in Russell Square. He said a word or two of meagre comfort and optimism to the woman; presently he escaped into the bedroom. It was impossible for him to give her any help in her great trouble.
She had made him quite a comfortable bed upon a mattress laid upon the floor. He went over to the children’s bed and took a look at them; they were sleeping very deeply, though Sheila still seemed hot. He sat for a little reading in the arm-chair, but he soon grew tired; he had not slept properly the night before and he had had an anxious and a worrying day. Presently he undressed, and went to bed upon the floor.
When he awoke the dawn was bright; from the window there came a great groaning clatter as a tank got under way and lumbered up the road. The children were awake and playing in the bed; he lay for a little, simulating sleep, and then got up. Sheila was cool, and apparently quite well.
He dressed himself and took her temperature. It was very slightly above normal still; evidently, whatever it was that had upset her was passing off. He washed them both and set Ronnie to dress himself, then went downstairs to order breakfast.
The hotel routine was already disarranged. Furniture was being taken from the restaurant; it was clear that no more meals would be served there. He found his way into the kitchen, where he discovered the femme de chambre in depressed consultation with the other servants, and arranged for a tray to be sent up to his room.
That was a worrying, trying sort of day. The news from the north was uniformly bad; in the town people stood about in little groups talking in low tones. He went to the station after breakfast with Ronnie, to enquire about the trains to Paris, leaving Sheila in bed in the devoted care of la petite Rose. They told him at the station that the trains to Paris were much disorganised ‘à cause de la situation militaire,’ but trains were leaving every three or four hours. So far as they knew, the services from Paris to St. Malo were normal, though that was on the Chemin de L’Ouest.