“You upper-bracket French must have lived like a bunch of alley cats!” I growled. “No wonder you were a pushover when Jerry moved in!”
She laughed so loudly that I had to shush her.
“Oh Jan!” she exclaimed, “your most endearing characteristic is your seventeenth-century Puritanism! It runs in your veins like holy water and whenever you come face to face with the flesh you scowl like a Cromwellian troopchaplain carrying bible and sword into the tents of the ungodly! Don’t ever change, will you? Don’t ever get tolerant and broadminded, I couldn’t bear it, I should pine away for my Pilgrim Father!”
Gaiety seemed to bubble out of her, lending excitement and sparkle to everything within range of her laughter, and in spite of our desperate situation I wanted to take her in my arms and use her as roughly as she loved to be used; I wanted to demonstrate to her just how lusty a Puritan Father could be when he was tempted by an unrepentant pagan. I checked myself, however, and asked her how she intended to get us to Tours, reminding her that every cart-track would be crawling with Nazi transport.
“We don’t use the roads, silly,” she said, “we travel by boat!”
“Boat? On what?”
“On the river, the Cher. It’s over there through the trees and there’s a punt waiting for us!”
She showed me our approximate position and I saw that Tours was about forty miles downstream, where the tributary flowed into the Loire.
I weighed the risks and decided in favour of the punt Night travel on a river was not without its dangers but it was far safer than stumbling over open country in the dark, and trying to cross rivers and main roads in search of the railway lines.
“This fellow Lancier, the vet,” I asked, “how do you know he’s still there? And even if he is how can you be sure he won’t turn us away? There must be thousands of Nazis in a town the size of Tours!”
“At least I know him,” she argued, “and what’s the alternative? To knock on doors and trust to strangers? We might be lucky and then again, we might not. The current will carry us to within a few miles of Tours and we can lie up on one of the islets en route. Jerry will be guarding bridges and landing points but he won’t have a garrison on every island in the river.”
It made good sense. With any sort of luck we ought to be able to drift downstream in two or three nights, depending upon the strength of the current and I remembered that all the rivers in this part of France were studded with islets offering good cover during the hours of daylight.
“Okay,” I said, “let’s have a look at the punt!”
We wriggled out of the rhododendrons and stood silently in the glade, sniffing the air like a couple of hunted animals. It was almost dark now and the wood was alive with small, scuffling movements but they were not noises that worried a countryman. Diana took my hand and we moved off, pushing through the trees to the river bank. It was lighter here and we could just see the far bank, and, slightly downstream, a shadow on the water edge.
We went along the bank and down the shingle. Judging by the sound of the wash the current was strong and the area was clearly deserted. The punt was fastened to a staple driven into the corner pile of a ramshackle building and on feeling it I concluded that the wood was rotten all through. I gave the chain a sharp tug and the staple came out, the current catching the end of the punt and swinging it against the piles. There was an inch or so of water in the boat and the seats were wet with slime but it was seaworthy for it had been moored in two feet of water and still floated level I groped under the thwarts and found the pole as Diana settled herself in the stern. In the darkness I heard her giggle.
“ ‘She loosed the chain and down she lay’,” she quoted and then, with a ripple of laughter, “Cast off for many-towered Camelot, Sir Lancelot!”
Navigation was fiendishly difficult. The swirl of the current kept edging us towards the left bank where there were shingle bars and a seemingly endless tangle of willows trailing the water. When we fended off into midstream the current spun the boat in slow, ponderous circles, so that I was obliged to dodge from bow to stern and risk upsetting us in an effort to maintain headway. For all its difficulties, however, the cruise was relaxing, for Diana was in high spirits and kept up a flow of adolescent backchat as we bumped and butted our way downstream. Later, when the moon rose, our progress was a little easier and we passed under a long footbridge that was, as far as I could see, unguarded. No lights appeared on the banks and when the first glint of day showed in the sky above the woods I began to feel guardedly optimistic about our chances. The river at this point was not navigable for craft larger than row-boats and it now seemed to me that if we exercised reasonable care we stood a good chance of drifting down within reach of Tours and establishing contact with her friend Lancier.
About four-thirty A.M. we moved out to a broader stretch of water and right ahead I spotted a railway bridge resting on tall, stone piers. Feeling certain that a bridge of this size must be guarded I eased the punt into the left bank and peered around for a place where we could lie up during daylight hours. The woods here were thin, offering insufficient cover and there were one or two houses on the further bank. As it grew lighter I spotted an islet about a hundred yards downstream. It was very small but it was wooded and the chances of spending the day there undisturbed were better than if we remained close to the tow-path. We made a quick dash for it, crossing over, driving the punt into the undergrowth and making fast to the roots of a willow. The branches of the same tree provided an excellent screen and I was sure that we could not be spotted from either bank. We scrambled out and circled the tiny haven, choosing a place where we could keep the right bank under observation. Here, beneath close-set birches, we made a camp and stretched ourselves out, Diana keeping watch while I slept for I was worn out by my efforts with the pole.
Diana woke me when it was broad day and put her hand on my mouth, jerking her head towards midstream. I sat up and peered through the leaves. A skiff containing two men, one of them wearing the field grey of a Wehrmacht Reservist Corps, was drifting within twenty yards of our hideout but the occupants did not appear to be searching for anybody. The soldier had a fishing rod and his companion, a squat peasant about fifty years of age, was sculling in a leisurely fashion, a short pipe gripped between his teeth. Once or twice the reservist looked curiously towards the island and then the current carried them down towards what looked like a large railway maintenance shed on the left bank. I watched the point where it had disappeared for a long time, my Sten gun at the ready but no one else appeared and the river remained empty. We made a meal of stale bread and the remains of the goatsmilk cheese. Diana also produced some malted milk tablets and with these, doled out at intervals, we kept our hunger in check.
“We’re going to starve before we locate that vet!” I told her.
“Oh, we can do what Huck Finn did, put in somewhere and borrow a chicken!” she said, gaily. “I think it’s all turning out rather well, Jan. It makes me feel young again to be living on an island again with you! If only we had my old Decca gramophone and those Gilbert and Sullivan selections!”
For all my anxieties, however, it was impossible to withstand her gaiety and the sense of schoolboy adventure that she managed to infuse into our desperately serious situation. In some ways I think that day was among the most serene that we ever spent together. There we were, hidden by a thin screen of bushes from men who would have beaten us to death, with practically nothing to eat and the prospect of a twenty mile cruise to dubious safety ahead of us, yet we lazed and talked as though we were back in Sennacharib with nothing worse to fear than a downpour of rain. We discussed all manner of things, our youth, our child Yvonne, what we should do with Heronslea after the war and how I should earn a living on my twelve acres of Teasel Wood, plus the little I had been able to save since my enlistment Then, I recall, we moved on into wider fields and discussed the future of Europe and what the Allies would do to guard against a third bid by Germany for world dominati
on. I told her what her kinsman Raoul had said about the certainty of an attempt on the part of statesmen to bring about a status quo, and leave the scars of the First World War unhealed, but she pooh-poohed this possibility and said that the 1918 War had been an affair of soldiers, whereas this one had involved whole populations. It was therefore more than likely that people would demand a bigger say in the reshuffle. Then, shrugging our shoulders on the twentieth century, we went on to discuss religion and philosophy.
“We’re all so damned smug about our combustion engines and modern surgery and washing-machines!” she said. “We equate these kind of things with progress, whereas they seem to me to have absolutely nothing to do with teaching people how to enjoy their little day. I used to be terribly impressed by fast cars and power stations and what-not but they’re only toys really!”
Enthusiasm crackled from her. “Have you ever read anything about Ionian Bacchic cults Jan, those wonderful orgies the Greek women indulged in while their husbands had their heads down in elementary mathematics!”
I admitted wryly that my knowledge of Greek mythology was limited to Kingsley’s “Heroes”.
“Oh dear,” she said, laughing, “I’ll have to give you a short course when we get home! There were only two main cults practised and one, the worship of Dionysius, was a kind of feminine-inspired safety valve, you know—a reaction to Orphic gloom and pre-occupation with the future of the soul. The women got fed up with all the prohibitions just as I did at Heronslea and used to go up into the mountains and make whoopee! The more you read about the history of philosophy the more you realise that this tug-of-war between taking life as you find it, or preparing for after-life by soul-searching and self-denial, has been going on since the year dot Now me, I’ll take Pan to Jehovah every time! There’s a personal element too—your Puritanism was always a kind of challenge to me and I used to get a terrific kick out of persuading you to peel off your dun-coloured doublet and hose and chase me across Arcady! It always gave me a sense of achievement to watch the satyr kick the Obadiah-bind-the-wicked-with-links-of-iron in the pants, and do battle with his conscience the minute the fun was over!”
It made me smile to relate this admission with well-remembered bursts of sensuality on her part but there was some truth in what she said. Perhaps after all, it was her pagan enthusiasm for life that had fascinated me all these years; old Dionysius crying out to be done with Puritanism and playing safe.
We dozed off when the noonday sun beat over the clearing and kingfishers flashed across our peephole. Then, but without a trace of her customary impatience, she roused me, leaning over me and letting her hair brush across my face. She had thrown off her windcheater and underslip and her breasts were bare. I kissed them without urgency for there was a timelessness about this place that banished the sense of danger. For an hour or more we lay in each others arms, like foolish lovers with the world before them and presently a friendly mist stole over the river giving us confidence to move about the islet and make preparations for our second night’s voyage.
The sun went down and birds rustled in the thickets. The current warbled among the reeds and shingle bars and soon one or two lights showed on the furthermost bank near the bridge. Twice, while we were waiting for complete darkness, long goods trains went clattering over the river and thinking to avoid the risk of drifting into the glow cast by a third train I told Diana to hurry and scrambled into the punt to unhitch the mooring chain. I was standing with the chain looped round the stump and looking over my shoulder at Diana who had one foot on the stern thwart when the searchlight beam fell on us. Two seconds later the first burst of fire whipped into the branches above my head and showered leaves and twigs into the boat. There was no challenge, no warning sound of any kind, just the hard, white glare and then the harsh tattoo of bullets in the trees. Diana, poised midway between the shingle and the stern, was holding my Sten gun. Her Luger and my colt were in the boat with our bundle. There was no chance to do anything but duck and make a grab for the guns but I missed the bundle by a foot and landed face foremost in the inch of water at the bottom of the punt. I heard Diana shout and although I could see nothing and was half-stunned by the violence of the plunge, I knew that it was not a cry of pain she uttered but a warning. Then the peace of the tiny creek was shattered by a hideous outcry, shouts, splashes, the roar of an outboard motor, and behind all these noises a steady rattle of machine-gun fire and the whack of bullets cutting into waterlogged timbers of the punt.
Somehow I managed to struggle to my knees and saw Diana in the identical position she had occupied when the light went on, one foot on land and one on the edge of the punt, but as I cried out to her to jump she brought up the Sten gun and fired two short bursts, one to the left and one to the right, both clean over my head. At the same moment she braced herself against the stump to which the punt had been moored and pushed hard with her foot so that the shattered boat shot away from the beach and swung into the current, spinning in a wide circle well clear of the beam which played directly into the mouth of the creek, picking out every leaf and stem that grew there. I suppose I must have been about ten yards from the islet when I heard her shout again and her voice carried over the uproar as the current took a firmer hold on the wallowing punt, slanting it across the river towards the eastern bank above the bridge.
“Dive, Jan, dive!” she shouted. I lurched forward as the punt went under and the midstream current rolled me over like a barrel and the roar in my ears shut out the confused medley of sounds concentrating round the beam of light.
I did not know that I had been bit twice, once in the thigh and once in the calf and was losing blood rapidly. I felt no pain or no shock beyond that of immersion in cold water. All this had happened in less than fifteen seconds and for the next half-minute I forgot everything in an instinctive struggle to survive, and swim slantwise across the stream, dragging a numbed and useless leg. It was not until my chest bumped on the reedy fringe of the bank that I realised even approximately what had happened, that Diana was on the islet fighting it out alone and that I had no means whatever of getting to her or taking part in the battle. She had the only weapon and one magazine of bullets. Everything else was at the bottom of the Cher. I could still see the searchlight in the distance, and hear a far off jumble of sounds, but whatever was happening out there was as remote from me as a battle a hundred miles away. I tried to run along the bank but at the first stride I fell back into the river, sobbing with rage and helplessness as I dragged myself ashore and tried to crawl up the bank. The effort of that three-yard crawl was my last conscious act. The blood drained away from me and my senses left me as I gained the towpath. I remembered someone close at hand shouting something in my ear but the sound of the voices reached me as a pub babel penetrates the brain of a man stupefied with drink. The newcomer put an arm under my shoulder but I could make nothing of what he said or was trying to do. Then he slipped away altogether and the next thing I recall was the strong smell of resinous wood in my nostrils and a kind of pressure on all sides, as though I was lying in a cage made of strong smelling pine logs, with bars so close set that they shut out all but a chink or two of light.
For a long time I lay still, trying to relate factors that baffled me and intruded between me and the resinous smell, the curious sensation of stiffness as though I was pinned by the legs, and the dim awareness of the cagelike structure of my surroundings. Then, with a sickening rush, I remembered Diana and my final glimpse of her braced against the stump firing the Sten into the searchlight beam. With a cry I started up and a sharp spasm of pain ran from toe to groin, licking along the leg like a tongue of flame. My surroundings suddenly became significant I could see that I was not in a cage but a kind of nest made of faggots, and that the strong, resinous smell came from bulkier pine billets half filling the shed or out-house where I was hidden. Where the logs were carelessly stacked I could see a triangle of light and beyond it the wall of a building. I put down my hand and discovered that my ri
ght leg was bandaged and splinted and that I was unable to move, however desperate my need. A shadow crossed the triangle of light and wooden sabots scraped on stones and I called “Diana!” and again, as loudly as I was able, “Diana!’ not because I had the slightest hope that the shadow was hers but in defiance of the terrible conviction that she was dead. A man jumped into the shed and tugged at the faggots, enlarging the chink and thrusting his head and shoulders into the aperture. He was a middle-aged peasant with a pale, narrow face and a tuft of wiry grey hair pushing under a beret too small for his head.
“Mother of God, be silent!” he hissed, “they are searching the wood now!”
Before I could reply he had disappeared and I heard him moving about in the yard between his cottage and the shed in which I lay. Presently he went away and it was quiet again. I could hear birds in the trees and now and again the far-off rumble of trains crossing the bridge.
I must have slept a fitful sleep of despair or perhaps my temperature rose and I was delirious for when I became fully conscious once more the sun patterns on the wall of the cottage told me that it was evening and the throb of my injured leg was less urgent than my raging thirst. I thought about water deliberately, torturing myself rather than let my thoughts range back to the skirmish on the islet and what had become of Diana. That way I could pretend to hope that she was secreted somewhere not far off and that the moment the hue and cry died away we would be reunited and hidden until my leg healed and we could continue our flight to Tours.
When it was almost dusk the peasant returned bringing some coarse bread and a bowl of vegetable soup which I swallowed without a word. I then asked for water and he called over his shoulder to someone in the yard. A moment later a shapeless woman with a pitifully anxious manner approached the gap in the faggots and passed him an earthenware pitcher and a tin cup. He watched me drink a pint and in a guttural accent that might have been Basque or Spanish, he said:
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