The Tin Snail

by Cameron McAllister

  As the days began to merge into each other, our botany field trips to the river became increasingly frequent. For those brief hours spent playing in the water, all thought of the impending invasion slowly slipped from our minds. It was like the war was something that was happening everywhere else, and so long as we remained by the river, it would always stay like that.

  After our daily swim, once our clothes had dried, I would walk back into the village with Camille. At the fork in the road, the left track led down the hill and then steeply up to the manor house, beside the avenue of cypresses where the cows liked to graze in the shade. The right track led to the village and Camille’s house.

  One afternoon, I noticed that Camille seemed particularly distracted. As we came to the fork, she paused. I had already walked on several meters before I realized she had stopped.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I just assumed you’d be heading home,” she answered, trying to appear casual.

  “Why?”

  “No reason.” She shrugged and carried on walking. But as we continued toward the village, my mind started to turn over her remark. What would make her stop like that?

  My question would soon get an answer. As we approached the square, Camille became more and more withdrawn. I glanced at her and saw, possibly for the first time ever, that her face had colored.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What makes you think anything’s wrong?” she answered shortly. But it was clear from her tone that something was up. “I have to go,” she muttered, before heading quickly across the square.

  As I watched her, my heart suddenly lurched—for this time she didn’t carry on to the forge, but went into the café. Where Philippe was waiting for her.

  How could this be? Surely Camille couldn’t like him. As if to add insult to injury, Camille didn’t look back once as she hurried away. But Philippe did. He turned and stared at me—a lingering, malevolent look.

  I turned and headed home, feeling physically sick.

  That night I barely touched my food—what there was of it. My father was too distracted to notice as he listened, absorbed, to the news on the radio about the German advance toward Bordeaux. So I went off to bed early and lay awake on top of my covers, fully dressed.

  After what must have been several hours, I woke and sat bolt upright in bed. I was still fully dressed and sweating. The curtains were rustling in a breeze that made the window frame tap against the shutters. Something in the air had changed. The wind had altered direction, and now blew hot and dusty from the south, straight from Africa.

  I couldn’t face trying to go back to sleep. Instead, I slipped silently out of my room and down the stone stairs, eased the front door open and crept out into the courtyard.

  Ten minutes later I had wandered into the village square, now eerily silent. I sat on a bench and tried to clear my head, but it was no use. No matter how hard I tried to block it out, all I could think of was Camille and Philippe.

  Suddenly something hit the ground next to me—perhaps an acorn dislodged by a bird or a squirrel. I had just decided to ignore it when a stone landed right beside my foot. I spun round to find Camille standing on the other side of the scruffy patch where the locals played boules.

  “Couldn’t sleep?”

  I shrugged. “Too hot.”

  She sat next to me on the bench and I felt the warm down on her arm brush lightly against my skin.

  “I know you’re angry with me,” she said after a moment.

  “Why would I be angry?” I asked, trying to hide the sarcasm in my voice and failing.

  “Because of Philippe.” She sighed.

  “Can you blame me?”

  “Actually, I think it’s rather sweet.”

  “Sweet?” I asked, indignant.

  “Admit it,” she said. “You’re jealous.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, partly because it was so true. I had a mind to tell her right then and there what he’d said about her mother and father. But even now I couldn’t bring myself to repeat his vile words.

  “For goodness’ sake,” she groaned, rolling her eyes. “I’m only teasing you. He isn’t my boyfriend.”

  “Oh,” I said, completely wrong-footed.

  “Give me some credit. I just promised to help him with some of his exam stuff.”

  I felt like a prize idiot. For a moment we sat in silence. Then, before I knew what I was doing, I was suddenly up on my feet.

  “Come on.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked, confused.

  But by now I was already halfway across the square.

  By the time she caught up with me, I was racing toward the woods. Moments later we arrived at the riverbank. The old water mill and the wooden beam loomed above us in the darkness.

  “You want to go swimming now?” she asked in disbelief.

  “Not quite,” I corrected her.

  At that, her eyes followed mine up to the beam. Suddenly she understood. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea….” She faltered.

  “If I don’t do it now, I never will,” I told her, feeling my heart start to race even faster.

  Before I could talk myself out of it, I began climbing up the rotten woodwork of the water mill. Before long I was taking my first tentative step out onto the beam.

  If I thought it was high when I was down below, it was nothing compared to what it looked like now. My stomach knotted sickeningly as I peered down at the inky black water far below. I was beginning to think that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all when Camille shinned up the woodwork and appeared next to me.

  “So you’re really going to do it?” she asked, intrigued.

  “You’ve done it, haven’t you?” But for a moment I thought I saw a flicker of hesitation in her eye.

  “Of course I have,” she scoffed and, as if to prove her point, nudged past me, edging her way out toward the end of the beam.

  I felt my stomach clench again. “M-maybe you should come back,” I stammered.

  “Quickest way to go down is to jump,” she said, smiling mischievously.

  She took a step backward along the beam and I felt my heart leap into my mouth.

  “Don’t be stupid….”

  “So stop me,” she goaded, before taking another step toward the edge.

  I couldn’t believe she was putting me in this situation. That I’d put myself in this situation.

  Then, all at once, I was running. I don’t remember giving my legs permission to do it, yet here they were, apparently taking on a life of their own. What’s more, my throat had joined in and was now letting out a banshee wail of terror. Camille screamed as I suddenly leaped toward her, sending us both somersaulting backward over the edge.

  For what seemed like an eternity our bodies twisted through the darkness, until we finally crashed into the icy water below. When we eventually resurfaced, we swam back to the bank, and sprawled on our backs, trying to get our breath back.

  “What the…?” Camille spluttered, staring at me, wild-eyed.

  “What?” I protested. “You told me to do it.”

  “I wasn’t serious! Jesus, you could have killed me!”

  “Hold on. You haven’t dived in from there before, have you?” I asked, outraged.

  “Of course not!” she snapped. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

  I stared at her for a second, then burst out laughing, partly out of relief that I was still alive, partly because I had proved myself to her.

  Then, just as suddenly, I stopped. Far off, I heard a rumbling that seemed to make the very earth shudder.

  We turned and looked at each other. We both knew without saying exactly what it was.

  The Germans.

  By the time we made it back to the village, a large Panzer tank had taken up residence in the center of the square. In negotiating the corner, one of its enormous caterpillar tracks had mounted the curb and crushed the stonework into rubble. Beside the tank was a German scout
car and several motorbikes with sidecars. About twenty German soldiers were milling around, eyeing the windows for any sign of hostility.

  Victor suddenly emerged, hastily tugging on his monogrammed dressing gown and trying to muster as much authority as he could, while several other locals wandered out cautiously. Amid the deafening noise of the tank and motorbikes, Victor began to remonstrate with one of the German soldiers, demanding to know who was in charge.

  Suddenly a large military staff car thundered into the square. Its huge radiator grille and sweeping wheel arches were caked in dust, but I recognized it immediately: a Mercedes Benz 770—the most expensive and luxurious car the German manufacturer made. Adolf Hitler himself drove one.

  As it drew to a halt, one of the soldiers leaped forward to open the rear door and an imperious-looking German officer stepped out. Around his neck hung a silver insignia on a chain. It glinted in the moonlight, and I saw the sinister skull and crossbones of the Panzer division.

  The officer calmly removed his goggles and elbow-length gloves and glanced around. He was extremely compact and neat, his uniform immaculately starched. His nose was razor sharp and tilted upwards. I could see his nostrils sniff the air, almost as if he were trying to pick up a scent, while his small, narrow eyes darted cunningly around the square.

  He nodded respectfully to some of the locals before his hawk-like eyes picked out Victor. As he made his way over, Victor drew himself up to his full height and pulled in his stomach importantly.

  “Are you in charge?” Victor barked.

  The officer gave a broad smile. It was obviously supposed to convey warmth, and yet somehow it seemed too practiced, too mechanical.

  “I am Major Tobias Keller,” he said, extending a hand courteously to Victor.

  My blood ran cold at the sound of his name. This was the very man Bertrand had told us about. The officer who had interrogated all the workers at the factory.

  They must have found out about the test track—or known about it all along. And now they were here, looking for our car. Thank goodness we had destroyed everything, I reassured myself.

  But then a terrible thought dawned on me. Already there were rumors of the Nazi secret police taking people away to interrogate them in towns and cities all over the country. What if they arrested my father and tortured him…?

  I began scratching nervously at the back of my neck, then put my hand down by my side for fear of giving myself away.

  Victor, meanwhile, made no attempt to shake the major’s extended hand, so he calmly withdrew it.

  “May I assume that you are the mayor here?” Keller asked, in crisp, educated French.

  “I am,” Victor informed him coldly.

  “Then we are to become acquainted. As you are no doubt aware, under the agreements of the armistice, you are under the jurisdiction of the Wehrmacht. However, so long as you offer no resistance, I am more than happy for you to carry out your duties as usual. It is my sincere hope that we can work together to our”—the major paused to find the right word—“mutual benefit.”

  Victor was a little thrown. I think he expected to have to make a stand, but the German officer had taken the wind out of his sails by saying that nothing would change. How were you supposed to defy that?

  “I see…” He faltered. But feeling the eyes of the villagers on him, he clearly felt he had to put up some show of defiance.

  “Your tank has destroyed the curbstone,” he grumbled, indicating where the tracks had mounted the pavement.

  The major immediately unleashed a barrage of furious orders to the tank commander. Suddenly a huge plume of black fumes belched out of the vehicle’s funnel as it rumbled backward, exposing more destroyed stonework.

  Keller turned to Victor. “My apologies. My men will have it repaired first thing in the morning.”

  Again Victor was disarmed by his respectful tone.

  “Now, may I impose on you for a suggestion as to where I may billet my men?” the major asked courteously. “I will also require rooms for myself and my guest.”

  Guest? I glanced back at the staff car and saw that there was a second occupant—a small, mousy-looking civilian buried under a large coat and hat and clutching a case. I couldn’t place him, but something about him seemed strangely familiar. We had met somewhere before.

  At that moment my father raced up to join me.

  “Are you OK?” he asked breathlessly. I nodded—but his attention had already been drawn to the small figure hunched in the back of the Mercedes. I saw from his look that he had recognized him immediately.

  “What is it?” I demanded.

  “The man in the back,” Papa muttered darkly. “He was at the motor show. He’s Ferdinand Porsche’s right-hand man.”

  I looked again. Sure enough, it was the same weaselly fellow I had seen bustling around at the motor show all that time ago.

  It was odd. For so long we had talked of our German rivals coming to the village with their spies, yet now that one was right here in front of us, he looked entirely harmless. Almost disappointing.

  However, the news that the Germans intended to stay in the village sent a shiver down my spine. They must know.

  “May I ask why you feel it necessary to occupy a village as small as this?” Victor asked the German major curtly.

  My father tensed. If Victor appeared too concerned about the Germans staying, it might arouse suspicion.

  “We have some business in this area,” Major Keller replied crisply. “Unrelated to the war.”

  “May I ask what?”

  Now even I knew that Victor was in danger of pushing too far.

  “It’s a private matter. Nothing that need concern you,” the major assured him. His tone was slightly less cordial this time.

  Victor caught Papa’s eye—a worried glance that was met by a steely look from my father and the very subtlest of head shakes. He was obviously telling Victor not to push the matter. Victor turned away, but it was too late. Keller had picked up on the glance and was now looking over at us.

  My guts tensed as I waited to see what would happen. It was hard to say whether Keller had recognized my father. After a moment his piercing eyes turned back to Victor.

  “So, the rooms?”

  “We have one or two above the bar,” Victor grunted. “Otherwise the nearest hotel is twenty kilometers away in Boutonne. You may prefer to stay there.”

  “No problem.” Keller smiled. “I saw a large manor house as we turned off the road. It will more than suffice for me and my men.”

  My stomach clenched again. Were they really going to take over Bertrand’s house? What would become of us?

  My father stepped out of the shadows and cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”

  Major Keller turned slowly, and I suddenly saw how steely his eyes looked in the moonlight.

  “The house you mentioned is already occupied. By me and my son,” Papa stated coolly.

  The German officer calmly weighed him up before smiling. “Then we are to be your guests,” he said. “The house looked more than big enough from what I could see from the road.”

  Before my father could protest, Keller was rattling out orders to his men. Anything Papa tried to say was immediately drowned out by the roar of engines starting up.

  For all the officer’s politeness, I realized that resistance was not an option. As of now, the German army, and the spy from Porsche’s company, were not just in the village; they were in Bertrand’s house.

  As the vehicles started to maneuver their way out of the square in a huge roar of activity, my attention flitted back to the hunched little man in the Mercedes. He was watching my father with beady little eyes. There could be no doubt now: he knew who my father was. But for the moment he said nothing.

  The German soldiers were billeted in various barns and outbuildings of the manor house, their assortment of vehicles neatly parked around the courtyard. Of course, the tank was too large to fit through the gates, so it squatted in the adj
oining field with Benoît’s bull to keep it company.

  Keller himself took over one of the rooms on the ground floor, sleeping in a camp bed next door to the makeshift office we had set up in the breakfast room. It unnerved me to think that, until recently, those very walls had been covered in sketches and diagrams for the Tin Snail.

  Porsche’s spy, meanwhile, had disappeared into a small room toward the back of the house. As soon as he arrived, my father studiously avoided making eye contact with him, but I knew it would be impossible to avoid him for long.

  That night was the longest of my life. To think that for the last week or so I’d allowed myself to imagine that the Germans might not come after all; now here they were, sleeping under the very same roof as us.

  More to the point, how long would it be before my father, or even I, became Major Keller’s next interrogation victim?

  I woke early, and did what I always do when my nerves get the better of me: I tried to keep busy. It wasn’t long before my curiosity about the tank became overwhelming and, while the soldiers were shaving and washing in various corners of the courtyard, I wandered over for a closer look.

  It was a terrifying piece of engineering, ruthlessly efficient and bristling with power. I shrank at the thought of the villages it had crushed beneath its vast tracks as it rumbled its way south.

  “Step up and look inside,” a voice suddenly called from behind me. I spun round to find Major Keller smiling benignly. He was less formal now, without his double-breasted overcoat. Instead he wore only striped black jodhpurs and a shirt. But he was still, I noticed, immaculately presented, his sharp chin closely shaved, and his boots gleaming.

  I hesitated. I wanted to look inside so badly, but I felt it was wrong, like a betrayal.

  “I’d rather not,” I mumbled. “But thank you anyway.”

  Keller raised an eyebrow, surprised. “Perhaps another time. We should be here for quite a while.”

  I smiled awkwardly and made to head back inside.