Pied Piper

by Nevil Shute

  Howard was puzzled and distressed. ‘The little girl,’ he turned and indicated Sheila, ‘fell ill in Dijon. I told you so just now. She was too ill to travel.’

  The German leaned across the table to him, white with anger. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I warn you once again, and this for the last time. I am not to be trifled with. That sort of lie would not deceive a child. If you had wanted to return to England you would have gone.’

  ‘These children were in my care,’ the old man said. ‘I could not have done that.’

  The Gestapo officer said: ‘Lies … lies … lies.’ He was about to say something more, but checked himself. The young man by his side leaned forward and whispered deferentially to him again.

  Major Diessen leaned back in his chair. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you refuse our kindness and you will not talk. As you wish. Before the evening you will be talking freely, Mister Englishman, but by then you will be blind, and in horrible pain. It will be quite amusing for my men. Mademoiselle, too, shall be there to see, and the little children also.’

  There was a silence in the office.

  ‘Now you will be taken away,’ the German said. ‘I shall send for you when my men are ready to begin.’ He leaned forward. ‘I will tell you what we want to know, so that you may know what to say even though you be blind and deaf. We know you are a spy, wandering through the country in disguise and with this woman and these children as a cover. We know you have been operating with Charenton—you need not tell us about that. We know that either you or Charenton sent information to the English of the Führer’s visit to the ships in Brest, and that you caused the raid.’

  He paused. ‘But what we do not know, and what this afternoon you shall tell us, is how the message was passed through to England, to that Major Cochrane’—his lip sneered—‘that died in 1924, according to your story. That is what you are going to tell, Mister Englishman. And as soon as it is told the pain will stop. Remember that.’

  He motioned to the Feldwebel. ‘Take them away.’

  They were thrust out of the room. Howard moved in a daze; it was incredible that this thing should be happening to him. It was what he had read of and had found some difficulty in crediting. It was what they were supposed to do to Jews in concentration camps. It could not be true.

  Focquet was taken from them and hustled off on his own. Howard and Nicole were bundled into a downstairs prison room, with a heavily-barred window; the door was slammed on them and they were left alone.

  Pierre said, in French: ‘Are we going to have our dinner here, mademoiselle?’

  Nicole said dully: ‘I expect so, Pierre.’

  Ronnie said: ‘What are we going to have for dinner?’

  She put an arm around his shoulder. ‘I don’t know,’ she said mechanically. ‘We’ll see when we get it. Now, you run off and play with Rose. I want to talk to Monsieur Howard.’

  She turned to Howard. ‘This is very bad,’ she said. ‘We are involved in something terrible.’

  He nodded. ‘It seems to be that air raid that they had on Brest. The one that you were in.’

  She said: ‘In the shops that day they were saying that Adolf Hitler was in Brest, but one did not pay attention. There is so much rumour, so much idle talk.’

  There was a silence. Howard stood looking out of the window at the little weeded, overgrown garden outside. As he stood the situation became clear to him. In such a case the local officers of the Gestapo would have to make a show of energy. They would have to produce the spies who had been instrumental in the raid, or the mutilated bodies of people who were classed as spies.

  Presently he said: ‘I cannot tell them what I do not know, and so things may go badly with me. If I should be killed, you will do your best for the children, Nicole?’

  She said: ‘I will do that. But you are not going to be killed, or even hurt. Something must be possible.’ She made a little gesture of distress.

  Pursuing his thought, he said: ‘I shall have to try and get them to let me make a new will. Then, when the war is over and you could get money from England, you would be able to keep the children and to educate them, those of them that had no homes. But in the meantime you’ll just have to do the best you can.’

  The long hours dragged past. At noon an orderly brought them an open metal pan with a meal of meat and vegetables piled on it, and several bowls. They set the children down to that, who went at it with gusto. Nicole ate a little, but the old man practically nothing.

  The orderly removed the tray and they waited again. At three o’clock the door was flung open and the Feldwebel was there with a guard.

  ‘Le Vieux,’ he said. ‘Marchez?’ Howard stepped forward and Nicole followed him. The guard pushed her back.

  The old man stopped. ‘One moment,’ he said. He took her hand and kissed her on the forehead. ‘There, my dear,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  They hustled him away, out of that building and out into the square. Outside the sun was bright; a car or two passed by and in the shops the peasants went about their business. In Lannilis life went on as usual; from the great church the low drone of a chant broke the warm summer air. The women in the shops looked curiously at him as he passed by under guard.

  He was taken into another house and thrust into a room on the ground floor. The door was shut and locked behind him. He looked around.

  He was in a sitting-room, a middle-class room furnished in the French style with uncomfortable, gilded chairs and rococo ornaments. A few poor oil paintings hung upon the walls in heavy, gilded frames; there was a potted palm, and framed, ancient photographs upon the side tables, with a few ornaments. There was a table in the middle of the room, covered over with a cloth.

  At this table a young man was sitting, a dark-haired, pale-faced young man in civilian clothes, well under thirty. He glanced up as Howard came into the room.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked in French. He spoke almost idly, as if the matter was of no great moment.

  The old man stood by the door, inwardly beating down his fears. This was something strange and therefore dangerous.

  ‘I am an Englishman,’ he said at last. There was no point any longer in concealment. ‘I was arrested yesterday.’

  The young man smiled without mirth. This time he spoke in English, without any trace of accent. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’d better come on and sit down. There’s a pair of us. I’m English too.’

  Howard recoiled a step. ‘You’re English?’

  ‘Naturalised,’ the other said carelessly. ‘My mother came from Woking, and I spent most of my life in England. My father was a Frenchman, so I started off as French. But he was killed in the last war.’

  ‘But what are you doing here?’

  The young man motioned to the table. ‘Come on and sit down.’

  The old man drew a chair up to the table and repeated his question. ‘I did not know there was another Englishman in Lannilis,’ he said. ‘Whatever are you doing here?’

  The young man said: ‘I’m waiting to be shot.’

  There was a stunned, horrible pause. At last, Howard said: ‘Is your name Charenton?’

  The young man nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m Charenton. I see they told you about me.’

  There was a long silence in the little room. Howard sat dumb, not knowing what to say. In his embarrassment his eyes fell upon the table, upon the young man’s hands. Sitting with his hands before him on the table, Charenton had formed his fingers in a peculiar grip, the fingers interlaced, the left hand palm up and the right hand palm down. The thumbs were crossed. As soon as he observed the old man’s scrutiny he glanced at him sharply, then undid the grasp.

  He sighed a little.

  ‘How did you come to be here?’ he asked.

  Howard said: ‘I was trying to get back to England, with a few children.’ He rambled into his story. The young man listened to him quietly, appraising him with keen, curious eyes.

  In the end he said: ‘I don’t believe tha
t you’ve got much to worry about. They’ll probably let you live at liberty in some French town.’

  Howard said: ‘I’m afraid they won’t do that. You see, they think that I’m mixed up with you.’

  The young man nodded. ‘I thought that must be it. That is why they’ve put us together. They’re looking for a few more scapegoats, are they?’

  Howard said: ‘I am afraid they are.’

  The young man got up and walked over to the window. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said at last. ‘They’ve got no evidence against you—they can’t have. Sooner or later you’ll get back to England.’

  There was a tinge of sadness in his voice.

  Howard said: ‘What about you?’

  Charenton said: ‘Me? I’m for the high jump. They got the goods on me all right.’

  It seemed incredible to Howard. It was as if he had been listening to a play.

  ‘We both seem to be in difficulties,’ he said at last. ‘Yours may be more serious than mine; I don’t know. But you can do one thing for me.’ He looked around. ‘If I could get hold of a piece of paper and a pencil, I would redraft my will. Would you witness it for me?’

  The other shook his head. ‘You must write nothing here without permission from the Germans; they will only take it from you. And no document that had my signature upon it would get back to England. You must find some other witness, Mr. Howard.’

  The old man sighed. ‘I suppose that is so,’ he said. And presently he said: ‘If I should get out of this and you should not, is there anything I can do? Any message you would like me to take?’

  Charenton smiled ironically. ‘No messages,’ he said definitely.

  ‘There is nothing I can do?’

  The young man glanced at him. ‘Do you know Oxford?’

  ‘I know Oxford very well,’ the old man said. ‘Were you up there?’

  Charenton nodded. ‘I was up at Oriel. There’s a place up the river that we used to walk to—a pub by a weir pool, a very old grey stone house beside a little bridge. There is the sound of running water all the time, and fish swimming in the clear pool, and flowers, flowers everywhere.’

  ‘You mean the “Trout Inn,” at Godstow?’

  ‘Yes—the “Trout”. You know it?’

  ‘I know it very well indeed. At least, I used to, forty years ago.’

  ‘Go there and drink a pint for me,’ the young man said. ‘Sitting on the wall and looking at the fish in the pool, on a hot summer day.’

  Howard said: ‘If I get back to England, I will do that.’ He glanced around the shabby, garishly furnished room. ‘But is there no message I can take to anyone?’

  Charenton shook his head. ‘No messages,’ he said. ‘If there were, I would not give them to you. There is almost certainly a microphone in this room, and Diessen listening to every word we say. That is why they have put us here together.’ He glanced around. ‘It’s probably behind one of those oil paintings.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘As sure as I’m sitting here.’

  He raised his voice and said, speaking in German: ‘You are wasting your time, Major Diessen. This man knows nothing about my affairs.’ He paused and then continued: ‘But I will tell you this. One day the English and Americans will come, and you will be in their power. They will not be gentle as they were after the last war. If you kill this old man you will be hung in public on a gallows, and your body will stay there rotting as a warning to all other murderers.’

  He turned to Howard. ‘That ought to fetch him,’ he said placidly, speaking in English.

  The old man was troubled. ‘I am sorry that you spoke like that,’ he said. ‘It will not do you any good with him.’

  ‘Nor will anything else,’ the young man said. ‘I’m very nearly through.’

  There was a quiet finality about his tone that made Howard wince.

  ‘Are you sorry?’ he enquired.

  ‘No, by God I’m not,’ Charenton said, and he laughed boyishly. ‘We didn’t succeed in getting Adolf, but we gave him the hell of a fright.’

  Behind them the door opened. They swung round; there was a German Gefreiter there with a private. The private marched into the room and stood by Howard. The Gefreiter said roughly: ‘Kommen Sie?’

  Charenton smiled as Howard got up. ‘I told you so,’ he said. ‘Good-bye. All the best of luck.’

  ‘Good-bye,’ said the old man. He was hustled out of the room before he had time to say more. As he passed down the corridor to the street he saw through an open door the black uniformed Gestapo officer, his face dark with anger. With a sick heart Howard walked out into the sunlit square between his guards.

  They took him back to Nicole and the children. Ronnie rushed up to him. ‘Marjan has been showing us how to stand on our heads,’ he said excitedly. ‘I can do it and so can Pierre. Willem can’t, and none of the girls. Look, Mr. Howard. Just look!’

  In a welter of children standing on their heads Nicole looked anxiously at him. ‘They did nothing?’ she enquired.

  The old man shook his head. ‘They used me to try to make a young man called Charenton talk,’ he said. He told her briefly what had happened.

  ‘That is their way,’ she said. ‘I have heard of that in Chartres. To gain their end through pain they do not work upon the body. They work upon the mind.’

  The long afternoon dragged into evening. Cooped in the little prison room it was very hot and difficult to keep the children happy. There was nothing for them to do, nothing to look at, nothing to read to them. Nicole and Howard found themselves before long working hard to keep the peace and to stop quarrels, and this in one way was a benefit to them in that it made it difficult for them to brood upon their own position.

  At last the German orderly brought them another meal, a supper of bitter coffee and long lengths of bread. This caused a diversion and a rest from the children; presently, the old man and the girl knew very well, the children would grow sleepy. When the orderly came back for the supper things they asked for beds.

  He brought them straw-filled palliasses, with a rough pillow and one blanket each. They spent some time arranging these; by that time the children were tired and willing to lie down.

  The long hours of the evening passed in bored inactivity. Nicole and Howard sat on their palliasses, brooding; from time to time exchanging a few words and relapsing into silence. At about ten o’clock they went to bed; taking off their outer clothes only, they lay down and covered themselves with the blanket.

  Howard slept fairly well that night, the girl not so well. Very early in the morning, in the half-light before dawn, the door of their prison opened with a clatter. The Gefreiter was there, fully dressed and equipped with bayonet at his belt and steel helmet on his head.

  He shook Howard by the shoulder. ‘Auf!’ he said. He indicated to him that he was to get up and dress himself.

  Nicole raised herself on one arm, a little frightened. ‘Do they want me?’ she asked in French. The man shook his head.

  Howard, putting on his coat, turned to her in the dim light. ‘This will be another of their enquiries,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I shall be back before long.’

  She was deeply troubled. ‘I shall be waiting for you, with the children,’ she said simply. ‘They will be safe with me.’

  ‘I know they will,’ he said. ‘Au revoir.’

  In the cold dawn they took him out into the square and along to the big house with the swastika flag, opposite the church, where they had first been interrogated. He was not taken to the same room, but to an upstairs room at the back. It had been a bedroom at one time and some of the bedroom furniture was still in place, but the bed had been removed and now it was some kind of office.

  The black uniformed Gestapo officer, Major Diessen, was standing by the window. ‘So,’ he said, ‘we have the Englishman again.’

  Howard was silent. The German spoke a few words in his own language to the Gefreiter and the private who had brought Howard to the
room. The Gefreiter saluted and withdrew, closing the door behind him. The private remained standing at attention by the door. The cold, grey light was now strong in the room.

  ‘Come,’ said the German at the window. ‘Look out. Nice garden, is it not?’

  The old man approached the window. There was a garden there, entirely surrounded by high old red-brick walls covered with fruit trees. It was a well-kept, mature garden, such as he liked to see.

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘It is a nice garden.’ Instinctively he felt the presence of some trap.

  The German said: ‘Unless you help him, in a few minutes your friend Mr. Charenton will die in it. He is to be shot as a spy.’

  The old man stared at him. ‘I don’t know what is in your mind that you have brought me here,’ he said. ‘I met Charenton for the first time yesterday, when you put us together. He is a very brave young man and a good one. If you are going to shoot him, you are doing a bad thing. A man like that should be allowed to live, to work for the world when this war is all over.’

  ‘A very nice speech,’ the German said. ‘I agree with you; he should be allowed to live. He shall live, if you help him. He shall be a prisoner to the end of the war, which will not be long now. Six months at the most. Then he will be free.’

  He turned to the window. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘They are bringing him out.’

  The old man turned and looked. Down the garden path a little cordon of six German soldiers, armed with rifles, were escorting Charenton. They were under the command of a Feldwebel; an officer rather behind Charenton, who walked slowly, his hands in his trousers-pockets. He did not seem to be pinioned in any way, nor did he seem to be particularly distressed.

  Howard turned to the German. ‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘Why have you brought me to see this?’

  ‘I have had you brought here,’ said the German, ‘to see if you would not help your friend, at a time when he needs help.’

  He leaned towards the old man. ‘Listen,’ he said softly. ‘It is a very little thing, that will not injure either of you. Nor will it make any difference to the war, because in any case your country now is doomed. If you will tell me how he got the information out of France and back to England, to your Major Cochrane, I will stop this execution.’