And Sophia, transfixed, looked into the eyes of the woman, eyes that were shadowed by a peaked cap.
Sophia could only transmit a silent plea.
The lamp moved as it was carried from the room. The light went with it, and the front of the farmhouse presented a blankness once more. Elissa turned and walked away. Sergeant Lugar kicked at something, and inside the house a dog began to bark.
Major Kirsten made himself heard.
‘Sergeant Lugar?’
‘Nothing to report, Major.’
‘Lieutenant?’
‘I’m here,’ said Elissa, by the entrance.
‘We’ve drawn a blank?’
‘Yes, Major,’ she said.
‘Well, now that we’ve disturbed their dog, let’s get on. That car must be tucked up in one of these places.’
‘What’s happening to Corporal Fischer and my men, that’s what I’d like to know,’ said Sergeant Lugar, not without a slightly grumbling note.
‘Back in Douai by now and resting their feet,’ said Major Kirsten.
They left. The dog continued barking.
‘She saw me,’ breathed Sophia.
‘Impossible,’ whispered Captain Marsh, wishing the dog would shut up.
‘She saw me.’
‘Did she say so? Something was said.’
‘She agreed with Major Kirsten that they’d drawn a blank – but she knew we were here – she saw me. We must go, we must.’ Sophia’s whispers were urgent.
‘No, not yet. They’ll hear us and jump on our tail again. We must lose them.’
‘But don’t you see, they’ll come back – she’ll tell Major Kirsten – she has to – they’ll catch you if you stay –’ Sophia jumped as a door at the back of the house was noisily opened to let out the barking dog. Captain Marsh took her arm and they ran back to the barn to get to the car. The dog came fast from around the house. Bristling and hostile, it was at them, and Sophia, remembering the other dog, was paralysed. A dark, blurred shape, it leapt at her arm to pull her down. Captain Marsh knocked it sideways in mid-air with a blow from his right fist. It yelped, it snarled, and turned again on Sophia, its teeth savaging the skirt of her coat. Sophia kicked it. It leapt, jaws agape, and took her by her left arm.
Captain Marsh pulled out his revolver and shot it.
Back at the van, Major Kirsten, Elissa and Sergeant Lugar all heard the shot; a sharp, explosive crack.
‘My God!’ Major Kirsten, appalled, jerked the van door open for Elissa. Elissa, a guilty silence on her conscience, was even more appalled than he was. She slid in fast. Major Kirsten ran round and got in beside her. Sergeant Lugar tumbled into the back. Elissa began a quick and frantic turn. ‘They were there,’ breathed the major, ‘my God, they were there, and we missed them – get back fast, Elissa.’
Elissa, completing the turn, put her foot down and the van vibrated as it raced back to the farmyard.
‘Major – he couldn’t have –’
‘I assumed, I accepted, he wouldn’t really use that pistol, that he and Sophia had found something in common – God in heaven, has he proved himself the complete madman, after all?’
It was in Elissa’s mind too, the terrible suspicion that the man’s nerves had snapped and that Sophia had been shot.
‘Major –’
‘He’s away, Elissa – look!’
She saw the car. It came roaring out in reverse from the farm entrance, swung round and burst forward, going away from them. The roar of the engine died away as the gears were slammed through to top, and the sound became a hum of power.
‘Shall I stop?’ gasped Elissa, suffering a mental picture of an inert body and blue eyes closed in death.
‘No,’ said Major Kirsten in a suppressed voice, ‘they’re both in the car.’
Elissa, speeding past the entrance, caught a brief glimpse of a man with a lamp standing over the carcase of a dog.
‘A dog – he shot a dog,’ she cried in a rush of beautiful relief.
‘He’s done no service to the farmer, but he has to unexpected callers,’ said Major Kirsten. ‘That kind of dog thinks the uninvited arrive to be eaten. And most French farm dogs are partial to Germans. That one may have been trying to eat Sophia. But where the devil were they hiding out in that farmyard, with the car? The three of us searched every corner.’
‘It was very dark,’ said Elissa, fighting the road in her attempt to match the speed of the car, which was already gaining.
‘Even so – Elissa, foot down – never mind the road – foot down – stay with them, and when Ludendorff brings us into Paris I’ll do myself the great pleasure of dining with you at Maxim’s.’
Elissa, conscience pricking her again, did all she could to reach maximum speed over an indifferent surface. The van hummed and vibrated, its canvas cover, stretched over a rattling frame, noisy and resistant. She saw the rear lights of the car before it disappeared around the thousandth bend of the night. A little sigh escaped her. She was in the middle now. She had put herself between Major Kirsten and his quarry. She did not like the way it made her feel. But those wide, startled eyes – and the appeal in them.
It was impossible to accept what one felt, that the daughter of a German general had found she had so much in common with a British airman that she was running with him to help him escape. Her lover, the young German airman, must have become irrelevant.
To Elissa, the car seemed to be travelling at an incredible speed on such a road on such a night. It was pulling away from the van at an alarming rate. She was losing the rear lights, and only the beam of the headlamps marked its course.
‘She’s driving too well for me, Major.’
‘The car is easier to handle than this old iron,’ said Major Kirsten. ‘Has it occurred to you that we’ve never seen him driving? There’s just a faint hope that she is under coercion, coercion of some kind. That’s something I must impress on Sergeant Lugar. He must not suspect there is no coercion.’
‘It was wise to put him where he is,’ said Elissa.
‘It was also selfish. You have more appeal for me than he has.’
Elissa, bringing the van around a bend with its tyres protesting, said, ‘That is an official comment?’
‘A heartfelt one, Lieutenant – damnation, I’ve lost their lights.’
Their own lights picked out crossroads ahead. The lights of the car had disappeared. The black landscape was dead. Elissa brought the van to a halt.
‘Which way?’ she asked, and he was not to know she would not be unhappy if the car had given them the final slip.
‘Straight on,’ said the major. ‘I think we’d have noticed the change in the direction of their lights if they’d turned left or right. Yes, straight on.’
But they slowed and stopped after ten minutes. There was only blackness on all sides of them.
‘We’ve lost them,’ said Elissa. ‘Shall we take Sergeant Lugar back to Douai and then return to Headquarters? We have to be on duty tomorrow morning.’
‘No, by God,’ said Major Kirsten, ‘we aren’t returning yet. We’ll get out, and we’ll look and listen.’
‘Very well Major.’
‘Shall we give up?’ said Captain Marsh. They were at a halt after turning left at the crossroads with their lights switched off and the car creeping along for five minutes.
‘You don’t mean that,’ said Sophia. She was shivering. She had driven like a crazy woman since reversing fast out of the farmyard. That dog had been a nightmare.
‘You’re cold,’ said Captain Marsh.
‘You’re worried about that?’
‘I’m worried about everything.’
‘So you want to give up? It is all going to be for nothing?’
He turned in his seat to look at her. Her lips compressed and her teeth grated.
‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘you take the gun.’ He offered it to her, its metal a dull gleam. ‘Switch on the lights. That will bring them to us. You will have the gun. The t
urning of the tables, Sophia.’
‘You will let me do that, let me hand you over? You won’t mind?’
‘It’s the best thing – for both of us.’
‘But will you mind?’ Sophia was insistent, and shivering uncontrollably.
‘No, of course not.’
But he would mind, she knew he would. He was not a man who would like being locked up.
She said, ‘It’s a terrible war.’
‘Yes.’
‘You and I, we are not really very important. Generals are important and big guns even more important. Armies are important. But you are only one of many thousands of airmen, and I am only one of many millions of women. If you fly against Richtofen again, will that mean the winning or the losing of the war? If I disappoint my parents, will that mean the collapse of Germany? You see, you and I are very insignificant. The gods of war don’t even notice us. Captain Marsh –’ Sophia hesitated.
‘Yes?’
‘Why should we give up? You are at war with me, yes, but I – I think you a man of great courage, and I don’t wish you to give up. You risked your freedom when you fired that gun and shot the dog.’
‘I shot it because it was trying to eat your arm.’
‘My leather sleeve saved me – how can people keep dogs as savage at that?’
‘To prevent hungry people like me raiding their farms.’
‘Don’t make jokes, please.’
‘No. The situation has never been one to encourage jokes. You’re cold. I’ll put the hood up. You’re sure you don’t want this gun?’
‘No!’ Wildly, she pushed it away. ‘There are too many guns, too much killing.’
‘Yes, I know,’ he said, and got out.
Sophia sat quietly while he worked the hood into position and enclosed the shining cloud of her hair. The night was so silent, the war in the trenches dormant, the guns at rest. Suddenly, the silence was so absolute, the hood fixed, and Captain Marsh making not a whisper of sound. She jerked upright in her seat. He had gone. He had slipped away. She would never find him in this darkness. She flung the car door open and, in anguished panic, slid out and came frantically to her feet. She rushed around the car.
‘Sophia?’ It was a cautious whisper. She turned. He was leaning against the back of the car smoking a cigarette.
‘Oh, my God,’ she said, and turned away, trembling. When she had thought him gone, it was as if life itself had left her.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ she whispered, ‘nothing.’
‘I thought this all a great challenge,’ he said, ‘but it’s become a great strain, hasn’t it?’
‘But it has been a challenge, yes,’ she said, facing him. ‘Do you think events are too much for people? Do you think some events present such awful problems that people think they can only solve them by going to war?’
‘Some people think that,’ said Captain Marsh, eyes searching the darkness. ‘What I think is that you were right; you and I are unimportant in relation to everything else. As for being insignificant, I am, but you aren’t. No woman can be called insignificant. Women are far more necessary to life and the future than men are. If you’ll forgive me for throwing his name about again, I don’t think Fritz considers you insignificant in the least.’
‘He – I – I am not actually engaged to him.’
‘I thought—’ Captain Marsh stopped and listened. Out of the night came the small but distinct sound of a clang. It became repetitive.
High above the sleeping earth, clouds broke apart and the black sky was pierced by the brilliant silver crescent of a new moon.
Sophia said, ‘That sound is familiar.’
‘It’s coming from over there,’ said Captain Marsh, pointing. ‘We’ve come almost full circle. It’s that plane-repair works, and they’re still busy. I think that road near the copse isn’t far ahead of us. We’ll drive there and then walk. We can take the route past that wood again and cross the main road.’ He threw away his cigarette and gave Sophia a warm smile. ‘Shall we do that?’
‘We have lost Major Kirsten and the others?’ she said.
‘It seems so – I hope so.’
‘Then why should we give up?’ she said, and got back into the car. He joined her. She switched on the lights and fired the engine.
Sergeant Lugar was some way off in his looking and listening. Major Kirsten was standing on the square bonnet of the van, which Elissa thought practical in respect of elevated observation, but not quite what any disabled man should do for a living. He had been up there ten minutes, like a balanced monument of patience and hope. It was another minute before his act brought its reward. He picked up the sudden beam of light in the distance. The light began to move.
‘Your hand, please, Lieutenant.’
Elissa reached up. He took a firm hold of her hand and jumped down. He buckled a little, then straightened up. Elissa regarded him with a certain wry wistfulness, wanting him to know that in her feelings for him as the man he was, she did not require him to behave like an acrobat.
‘Major, you’ll break a leg if you –’
‘Bless you, young lady, you sound as my wife would have certainly sounded, but never mind. I’ve seen them. We’ll go back to the crossroads and turn right. Sergeant Lugar!’
Sergeant Lugar, who had been wishing himself tucked up with the French widow, came hurrying up to take his place in the van. Elissa started up, turned the van round and headed for the crossroads. Reaching them, she took the right-hand road. She peered. She could see no lights.
‘There’s no sign of them,’ she said.
‘There will be,’ said Major Kirsten, ‘and we shall catch them in the end.’
Bravely, Elissa said, ‘Must we?’
He did not seem to analyse the reason for her question, but simply said, ‘Yes, Elissa, we must.’
For the sake of the major, and for the sake of her conscience, Elissa put her foot down.
Far ahead, a faint beam of light appeared.
It was very familiar, the rough road the van eventually found itself on. The clouds had parted again, and the new moon brought tolerable visibility to the night.
‘Major, I think we’re near that little copse,’ said Elissa.
‘The romantic Arcadia? Yes. It’s down there, on our left.’
‘Should we have turned right to join the road to Douai?’ she asked, slowing down.
‘They won’t take the car on to that road.’
‘But between them they’re remarkably audacious,’ said Elissa.
‘I wonder? Elissa, make a turn somewhere and head for the Douai road. Even if they don’t use it, they may leave the car and mark their direction for us.’
Elissa began a turn a little way on. Her headlamps threw light over field grass. Major Kirsten put a hand on her arm. She saw what he had spotted. The staff car, its hood up. It had been driven off the road and carefully parked out of sight of any pursuing vehicle. In making a turn at this point, Elissa had caught it in her lights. She sighed.
‘We’ll never catch them now,’ she said.
‘We’ll see. They’ve returned to the same starting point for their final lap. It’s easy to walk across country from here to Douai. They’re probably making a night stroll of it at this precise moment. But how far will they get? That road runs west to the front.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Elissa, ‘and will be busy tonight.’
‘I’ll take Sergeant Lugar with me. You return to Headquarters now. I think you’re tired. There’s the car.’
‘I’m not at all tired,’ said Elissa, ‘and would like to see it through with you.’
Chapter Eighteen
HAVING ABANDONED THE staff car to complete their journey on foot, Captain Marsh and Sophia were now back at the point where, hours ago, they had turned about and retreated into the wooded belt adjacent to the repair sheds. This time, however, they continued straight on.
‘The road shouldn’t be far,’ said Captain Marsh
. ‘We can either cross it and keep going, or risk walking some way along it before turning off. We need to make our final approach over common land on the outskirts of the town.’
‘You know the area so well?’ said Sophia. Physically she was not too fatigued. Mentally she was beginning to feel drained.
‘I’ve flown over it a few times. It’s easier to draw a picture of any part of France than it is any part of a desert.’
‘Yes. Of course.’ Sophia would have liked to blank out the images that danced so exhaustingly in her mind. Curiously, guilt had become vaguer than so much else. Among so much else was the thought that it would not be long now before they said goodbye to each other. What would that entail – a few awkward words and nothing about the fact they would never meet again? ‘It isn’t so dark now,’ she said with helpless irrelevance.
‘No. It’s a new moon.’ He was walking easily, unhurriedly, matching his pace with hers.
‘I know there’s still the war,’ she said, her booted feet bringing whispers from the stiff, frosty grass, ‘but we shall wish each other luck?’
‘Yes, Sophia. I shall wish you a mountain of luck. And it won’t mean winning or losing the war if you give my regards to Fritz.’
Fritz. Fritz stood outside the paralysing light of impossibility, for Fritz had become only the image of a likeable young man. She had been in love with escape, not with Fritz. Fritz, brittle and irreverent, was in love with escape too, escape from decimating war.
‘Can you see the road?’ she asked.
‘Not yet. But I’m sure it’s there. Just over the rise.’
The crescent moon bestowed its little light. Sophia felt she had been in flight with this man for weeks. He was still sure of his way, still one step ahead of Major Kirsten. She supposed that all fighter pilots had to be resourceful men. Imagine, this one was going to apply his resourcefulness to the extraordinary business of making horseshoes and repairing cars. He was not going to make himself a landowner or become a banker, he was going to help a blacksmith called Simon Tukes beat hot iron and crawl under oily cars. What was it like, the forge he had spoken about, with its fire and its hammers? What was the little country town like? It did not sound as if it bustled with people, as if it would provide him with enough business to make him rich. What kind of a woman would marry a man who, having been a fighter pilot, came down from the skies to repair broken-down cars?
Love for a Soldier Page 21