by Nevil Shute
The woman by him said: ‘You are tired yourself, monsieur.’
He was deadly tired. Now that his responsibilities were over for a while, he had suddenly become slack and faint. ‘A little tired,’ he said. ‘I shall have supper and then I shall sleep with the children. Bonne nuit, madame.’
She went back to the farmhouse, and he turned to the pram, to find the other portion of the loaf of bread. Behind him the old woman called sharply from the door across the yard.
‘You can come and have a bowl of soup with us, if you like.’
He went into the kitchen gratefully. They had a stockpot simmering upon a charcoal stove; the old woman helped him to a large bowl of steaming broth and gave him a spoon. He sat down gratefully at the bare, scrubbed table to consume it with his bread.
The woman said suddenly: ‘Are you from Alsace? You speak like a German.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m an Englishman.’
‘Ah—an Englishman!’ They looked at him with renewed interest. ‘But the children, they are not English.’
The younger woman said: ‘The bigger boy and the smaller girl are English. They were not talking French.’
With some difficulty he explained the position to them. They listened to him in silence, only half believing what he said. In all her life the old woman had never had a holiday; only very occasionally had she been beyond the market town. It was difficult for them to comprehend a world where people travelled to another country, far away from home, merely to catch fish. And as for an old man who took care of other people’s children for them, it simply did not make sense at all.
Presently they stopped bothering him with their questions, and he finished the soup in silence.
He felt better after that, much better. He thanked them with grave courtesy and went out into the yard. Already it was dusk. On the road the lorries still rumbled past at intervals, but firing seemed to have ceased altogether.
The old woman followed him to the door. ‘They do not stop to-night,’ she said, indicating the road. ‘The night before last the barn was full. Twenty-two francs for sleeping soldiers—all in one night.’ She turned and went indoors again.
He went up to the loft. The children were all asleep, curled up together in odd attitudes; the little boy Pierre twitched and whimpered in his sleep. He still had the whistle clutched in one hand. Howard withdrew it gently and put it on the chopping machine, then spread the blanket more evenly over the sleeping forms. Finally he trod down a little of the hay into a bed and lay down himself, pulling his jacket round him.
Before sleep came to him he suffered a bad quarter of an hour. Here was a pretty kettle of fish, indeed. It had been a mistake ever to have left Joigny, but it had not seemed so at the time. He should have gone straight back to Dijon when he found he could not get to Paris, back to Switzerland, even. His effort to get through by bus to Chartres had failed most dismally, and here he was! Sleeping in a hay-loft, with four children utterly dependent on him, straight in the path of the invading German Army!
He turned uneasily in the hay. Things might not be so bad. The Germans, after all, could hardly get past Paris; that lay to the north of him, a sure shield the farther west he got. To-morrow he would reach Montargis, even if it meant walking the whole way; the children could do ten miles in a day if they went at a slow pace and if the younger two had rides occasionally in the pram. At Montargis he would hand the little boy in grey over to the sisters, and report the death of his parents to the police. At Montargis, at a town like that, there would be a bus to Pithiviers, perhaps even all the way to Chartres.
All night these matters rolled round in his mind, in the intervals of cold, uneasy slumber. He did not sleep well. Dawn came at about four, a thin grey light that stole into the loft, pointing the cobwebs strung between the rafters. He dozed and slept again; at about six he got up and went down the ladder and sluiced his face under the pump. The growth of thin stubble on his chin offended him, but he shrank from trying to shave beneath the pump. In Montargis there would be a hotel; he would wait till then.
The women were already busy about the work of the farm. He spoke to the older one, and asked if she would make some coffee for the children. Three francs, for the four of them, she said. He reassured her on that point, and went to get the children up.
He found them already running about; they had seen him go downstairs. He sent them down to wash their faces at the pump. The little boy in grey hung back. From the ladder Rose called to him, but he would not go.
Howard, folding up the blankets, glanced at him. ‘Go on and wash your face,’ he said in French. ‘Rose is calling you.’
The little boy put his right hand on his stomach and bowed to him. ‘Monsieur,’ he whispered.
The old man stood looking at him nonplussed. It was the first time he had heard him speak. The child stood looking up at him imploringly, his hand still on his stomach.
‘What’s the matter, old boy?’ Howard said in French. Silence. He dropped stiffly down upon one knee, till their heads were level. ‘What is it?’
He whispered: ‘J’ai perdu le sifflet.’
The old man got up and gave it to him. ‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘Quite safe. Now go on down and let Rose wash your face.’ He watched him thoughtfully as he clambered backwards down the steps. ‘Rose, wash his face for him.’
He gave the children their coffee in the kitchen of the farm with the remainder of the bread, attended to their more personal requirements, paid the old lady twenty francs for food and lodging. At about quarter past seven he led them one by one past the chien méchant and out on to the road again, pushing the pram before him.
High overhead a few aeroplanes passed on a pale blue, cloudless sky; he could not tell if they were French or German. It was another glorious summer morning. On the road the military lorries were thicker than ever, and once or twice in the first hour a team of guns passed by them, drawn by tired, sweating horses flogged westwards by dirty, unshaven men in horizon blue. That day there did not seem to be so many refugees upon the road. The cyclists and the walkers and the families in decrepit, overloaded pony-carts were just as numerous, but there were few private cars in evidence upon the road. For the first hour Howard walked continually looking backwards for a bus, but no bus came.
The children were very merry. They ran about and chattered to each other and to Howard, playing little games that now and then threatened their lives under the wheels of dusty lorries driven by tired men, and which had then to be checked. As the day grew warmer he let them take off their coats and jerseys and put them in the pram. Rose went barefoot as a matter of course; as a concession to the English children presently Howard let them take off stockings, though he made them keep their shoes on. He took off Pierre’s stockings too.
The little boy seemed a trifle more natural, though he was still white and dumb. He had the whistle clutched tight in his hand and it still worked; now and again Sheila tried to get it away from him, but Howard had his eye upon her and put a stop to that.
‘If you don’t stop bothering him for it,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to put your stockings on again.’ He frowned at her; she eyed him covertly, and decided that he meant it.
From time to time Rose bent towards the little boy in grey. ‘Siffle, Pierre,’ she would say. ‘Siffle pour Rose.’ At that he would put the whistle to his lips and blow a little thin note. ‘Ah, c’est chic, ca.’ She jollied him along all morning, smiling shyly up at Howard every now and then.
They went very slowly, making not more than a mile and a half in each hour. It was no good hurrying the children, Howard thought. They would reach Montargis by evening, but only if the children took their own pace.
At about ten in the morning firing broke out to the north of them. It was very heavy firing, as of guns and howitzers; it puzzled the old man. It was distant, possibly ten miles away or more, but definitely to the north, between them and Paris. He was worried and perplexed. Surely it could not be that the Germans w
ere surrounding Paris to the south? Was that the reason that the train had stopped at Joigny?
They reached a tiny hamlet at about ten o’clock, a place that seemed to be called La Croix. There was one small estaminet which sold a few poor groceries in a side room that was a little shop. The children had been walking for three hours and were beginning to tire; it was high time they had a rest. He led them in and bought them two long orange drinks between the four of them.
There were other refugees there, sitting glum and silent. One old man said presently, to no one in particular: ‘On dit que les Boches ont pris Paris.’
The wizened old woman of the house said that it was true. It had said so on the radio. A soldier had told her.
Howard listened, shaken to the core. It was incredible that such a thing could happen. Silence fell upon the room again; it seemed that no one had any more to say. Only the children wriggled on their chairs and discussed their drink. A dog sat in the middle of the floor scratching industriously, snapping now and then at flies.
The old man left them and went through into the shop. He had hoped to find some oranges, but no oranges were left, and no fresh bread. He explained his need to the woman, and examined the little stock of food she had; he bought from her half a dozen thick, hard biscuits each nine or ten inches in diameter and grey in colour, rather like dog-biscuits. He also bought some butter and a long, brown, doubtful-looking sausage. For his own weariness of the flesh, he bought a bottle of cheap brandy. That, with four bottles of the orange drink, completed his purchases. As he was turning away, however, he saw a single box of chocolate bars, and bought a dozen for the children.
Their rest finished, he led them out upon the road again. To encourage them upon the way he broke one of the chocolate bars accurately into four pieces and gave it to them. Three of the children took their portion avidly. The fourth shook his head dumbly and refused.
‘Merci, monsieur,’ he whispered.
The old man said gently in French: ‘Don’t you like chocolate, Pierre? It’s so good.’
The child shook his head.
‘Try a little bit.’ The other children looked on curiously.
The little boy whispered: ‘Merci, monsieur. Maman dit que non. Seulement après déjeuner.’
For a moment the old man’s mind went back to the torn bodies left behind them by the roadside covered roughly with a rug; he forced his mind away from that. ‘All right,’ he said in French, ‘we’ll keep it, and you shall have it after déjeuner.’ He put the morsel carefully in a corner of the pram seat, the little boy in grey watched with grave interest. ‘It will be quite safe there.’
Pierre trotted on beside him, quite content.
The two younger children tired again before long; in four hours they had walked six miles, and it was now very hot. He put them both into the pram and pushed them down the road, the other two walking by his side. Mysteriously now the lorry traffic was all gone; there was nothing on the road but refugees.
The road was full of refugees. Farm carts, drawn by great Flemish horses, lumbered down the middle of the road at walking pace, loaded with furniture and bedding and sacks of food and people. Between them and around them seethed the motor traffic; big cars and little cars, occasional ambulances and motor-bicycles, all going to the west. There were innumerable cyclists and long trails of people pushing hand-carts and perambulators in the torrid July heat. All were choked with dust, all sweating and distressed, all pressing on to Montargis. From time to time an aeroplane flew near the road; then there was panic and an accident or two. But no bombs were dropped that day, nor was the road to Montargis machine-gunned.
The heat was intense. At about a quarter to twelve they came to a place where a little stream ran beside the road, and here there was another block of many traffic blocks caused by the drivers of the farm wagons who stopped to water their horses. Howard decided to make a halt; he pushed the perambulator a little way over the field away from the road to where a little sandy spit ran out into the stream beneath the trees.
‘We’ll stop here for déjeuner,’ he said to the children. ‘Go and wash your hands and faces in the water.’ He took the food and sat down in the shade; he was very tired, but there was still five miles or more to Montargis. Surely there would be a motor-bus there?
Ronnie said: ‘May I paddle, Mr. Howard?’
He roused himself. ‘Bathe if you want to,’ he said. ‘It’s hot enough.’
‘May I really bathe?’
Sheila echoed: ‘May I really bathe, too?’
He got up from the grass. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said slowly. ‘Take your things off and have a bathe before déjeuner, if you want to.’
The English children needed no further encouragement. Ronnie was out of his few clothes and splashing in the water in a few seconds; Sheila got into a tangle with her Liberty bodice and had to be helped. Howard watched them for a minute, amused. Then he turned to Rose. ‘Would you like to go in, too?’ he said in French.
She shook her head in scandalised amazement. ‘It is not nice, that, monsieur. Not at all.’
He glanced at the little naked bodies gleaming in the sun. ‘No,’ he said reflectively, ‘I suppose it’s not. Still, they may as well go on now they’ve started.’ He turned to Pierre. ‘Would you like to bathe, Pierre?’
The little boy in grey stared round-eyed at the English children. ‘Non, merci, monsieur,’ he said.
Howard said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to take your shoes off and have a paddle, then? In the water?’ The child looked doubtfully at him, and then at Rose. ‘It’s nice in the water.’ He turned to Rose. ‘Take him and let him put his feet in the water, Rose.’
She took the little boy’s shoes and socks off and they went down and paddled at the very edge of the water. Howard went back to the shade of the trees and sat down again where he could see the children. Presently Sheila splashed a little water at the paddlers; he heard la petite Rose scolding. He saw the little boy in grey, standing in an inch of water, stoop and put his hand in and splash a little back. And then, among the children’s chatter, he heard a shrill little sound that was quite new to him.
It was Pierre laughing.
Behind his back he heard a man say:
‘God love a duck! Look at them bleeding kids—just like Brighton.’
Another said: ‘Never mind about the muckin’ kids. Look at the mud they’ve stirred up. We can’t put that stuff in the radiator. Better go on up-stream a bit. And get a move on or we’ll be here all the muckin’ night.’
Howard swung round and there, before him in the field, were two men, dirty and unshaven, in British Royal Air Force uniform. One was a corporal and one a driver.
He started up. ‘I’m English,’ he burst out. ‘Have you got a car?’
The corporal stared at him, amazed. ‘And who the muckin’ hell might you be?’
‘I’m English. These children are English, two of them. We’re trying to get through to Chartres.’
‘Chartres?’ The corporal was puzzled.
‘Chartres, ’e means,’ the driver said. ‘I see that on the map.’
Howard said: ‘You’ve got a car?’
‘Workshop lorry,’ said the corporal. He swung round on the driver. ‘Get the muckin’ water and start filling up, Bert.’ The driver went off up-stream swinging his can.
The old man said: ‘Can you give us a lift?’
‘What, you and all them kids? I dunno about that, mate. How far do you want to go?’
‘I’m trying to get back to England.’
‘You ain’t the only one.’
‘I only want a lift to Chartres. They say that trains are running from there to St. Malo.’
‘You don’t want to believe all these Froggies say. Tried to tell us it was all right goin’ through a place called Susan yesterday, and when we got there it was full of muckin’ Jerries! All loosing off their hipes at Bert and me like we was Aunt Sally! Ever drive a ten-ton Leyland, mate?’
; The old man shook his head.
‘Well, she don’t handle like an Austin Seven. Bert stuck ’is foot down and I got the old Bren going over the windshield and we went round the roundabout like it was the banking at Brooklands, and out the way we come, and all we got was two bullets in the motor generator what makes the juice for lighting and that, and a little chip out of the aft leg of the Herbert, what won’t make any odds if the officer don’t notice it. But fancy saying we could go through there! Susan the name was, or something of that.’
The old man blinked at him. ‘Where are you making for?’
The corporal said: ‘Place called Brest. Not the kind of name I’d like to call a town, myself, but that’s the way these Froggies are. Officer said to go there if we got cut off, and we’d get the lorry shipped back home from there.’
Howard said: ‘Take us with you.’
The other looked uncertainly at the children. ‘I dunno what to say. I dunno if there’d be room. Them kids ain’t English.’
‘Two of them are. They’re speaking French now, but that’s because they’ve been brought up in France.’
The driver passed them with his dripping can, going toward the road.
‘What are the other two?’
‘They’re French.’
‘I ain’t taking no Froggie kids along,’ the corporal said. ‘I ain’t got no room, for one thing, and they’re just as well left in their own place, to my way of thinking. I don’t mind obliging you and the two English ones.’
Howard said: ‘You don’t understand. The two French ones are in my care.’ He explained the situation to the man.
‘It’s no good, mate,’ he said. ‘I ain’t got room for all of you.’
Howard said slowly: ‘I see …’ He stared for a moment absently at the traffic on the road. ‘If it’s a matter of room,’ he said, ‘will you take the four children through to Brest with you? They won’t take up much room. I’ll give you a letter for the R.T.O. at Brest, and a letter to my solicitor in England. And I can give you money for anything they’ll want.’
The other wrinkled his brows. ‘Leaving you here?’