The Little Ship

by Margaret Mayhew

  He heard and saw the German fighter approaching before any of the civilians were aware of it. A 109 came streaking across the fields just over treetop height and banked to turn in line with the road. Its machine-guns chattered and blazed and bullets ripped into the macadam. The refugees scattered, screaming and running for the ditches at the sides of the road. Guy fell out of the Bedford and rolled underneath it. He watched an old woman in black peasant dress, too slow to reach the ditch, mown down; a small child of about five standing rooted to the spot with terror, mangled to a bloody mess; a horse sag to its knees; a cart explode into flames. In a pointless, futile gesture, he grabbed his revolver from his pocket and fired at the fighter. The Messerschmitt flew off and a terrible sound of wailing and sobbing began. He was shaking with horror and rage. Murdering bastard! Christ, if only he’d been up in his Hurricane, he’d’ve gone after him and blown him apart.

  He crawled out from under the Bedford. The refugees were emerging from the ditches, collecting scattered belongings, righting carts. He bent over the old woman and saw that she was dead – the child, too; miraculously, they were the only victims. For the moment, there was a clear way through on the road ahead and he seized the chance to drive on fast, leaving the army of refugees behind. He drove into Armentières and stopped at a garage selling petrol. The elderly man in charge shook his head. ‘There is none, monsieur. Not a drop. The army has taken all.’

  ‘The British?’

  ‘British and French. They have both been through here – this way and that. Nobody knows what is happening or where the Germans are.’ It was a long shot, but he asked the question. The man nodded. ‘She is beautiful? With long dark hair?’

  ‘You’ve seen her?’

  ‘Mais oui. The bike had a puncture and she asked me to repair it. She was not French, though she spoke it very well indeed. She had a bit of a German accent, just a very little, and I thought perhaps that she might be a spy. But then I said to myself a German spy would not be riding around on an old bike, getting punctures … Besides she was very beautiful.’

  ‘Did she say where she was going?’

  ‘She is probably still here, monsieur. She was very thirsty and I directed her to a café just along the road from here. That was only half an hour ago.’

  She was sitting at a table on the pavement in the shade of a Martini umbrella and calmly sipping at a glass. Relief switched to anger. He parked the truck and went across and stood over the table, arms folded. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Anna?’ She looked up, startled, and then smiled. ‘I might ask you the same thing, Guy. I thought you would be back in England.’

  ‘Why did you think that?’

  ‘There were some British soldiers here a while ago, driving through in lorries and they told me the RAF were getting out. They were quite rude about it.’

  ‘Where were the soldiers going?’

  ‘Towards St Omer, I think. May I have a cigarette, please?’

  ‘Don’t you ever have any of your own?’

  ‘Only French and I hate those. I prefer English ones. Why don’t you sit down and have a drink? It’s very nice here.’

  ‘Anna, you do realize that the Germans can’t be more than sixty miles away? There isn’t time for a drink. Or a cigarette either. Finish your drink. We’re leaving.’

  ‘I have not paid yet.’

  He tossed some coins onto the table and jerked her to her feet. ‘You have now. Come on.’

  ‘My bag …’ She grabbed at it. ‘And my bike.’ He slung the bike in the back of the Bedford. ‘Get in.’ They roared off out of the town, taking the road on to Bailleul.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To the coast. Or as near as we can get before the petrol runs out. I reckon we’ve got about another ten miles before that happens.’

  ‘After that we can both ride my bike.’

  ‘This isn’t a joke, Anna. We’ve got to get you out of France and back to England. For Christ’s sake you should have gone long ago, like I told you to do. I’m praying we can get you on a boat at Calais.’

  ‘There is blood on your shirt.’

  ‘I had a tooth out at the dentist’s. The squadron took off when I was out for the count. Unconscious. That’s how I got left behind.’

  ‘Does it hurt still?’

  ‘I haven’t had much time to think about it.’ He felt his jaw cautiously. ‘It’s OK.’ They had to slow down for another small army of refugees. ‘Poor people,’ Anna said. ‘Where can they all go? What will happen to them?’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said grimly. ‘The Germans will machine-gun them from the air. They did that when I was on the road from Lille. Thank God it didn’t happen to you.’

  ‘Those pigs shoot people like these? In cold blood?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. The more panic they create the better for them. The refugees must be rather a useful weapon. They block the roads for the Allies very effectively. The Huns couldn’t do it better themselves.’

  She muttered something to herself in German. ‘I should like the chance to kill at least one of them.’

  They reached Bethune and drove through the town. There was a street market and women were buying fruit and vegetables, fish and meat, men standing at bistro bars, as though there was nothing whatever to worry about. Outside the town they came across a British army lorry by the side of the road, bonnet open, men at work on the engine. Guy stopped and got out of the truck and walked back. ‘We’ve broken down, sir,’ the sergeant in charge told him. ‘Just our bloomin’ luck.’

  ‘Seen any RAF? I’ve lost touch with my squadron.’

  ‘No, sir. You’re not the only one; we got separated from our unit. It’s a shambles, if you ask me.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Well, sir, all I know is that we’ve been ordered to pull back towards St Omer. Jerry’s working his way along the coast. It’s the tanks, sir. The Panzers. They’ve gone right through like a dose of Eno’s. The French don’t seem to know what to do next and they’re supposed to be giving the orders, aren’t they? We’ve taken a real beating and lost a lot of men. We’re doing our best but it’s bloody chaos.’

  ‘Well, good luck, Sergeant. I hope you get the lorry going.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ The sergeant saluted. ‘Good luck to you too, sir.’

  They wove their way through another straggle of refugees plodding south and passed another British army lorry, leaning at a drunken angle in a ditch, its cowling left open, the engine wrecked. Further on, there was a burned-out tank and several more lorries. Then another tank and more lorries. All burned or wrecked. The situation must be even worse than he had feared.

  ‘What is happening, Guy? Why are they leaving all these?’

  ‘Either they ran out of fuel or they broke down. Either way, they’ve made certain the Germans can’t use them.’

  Several miles further on they came to another small village and a tin-shed garage with one petrol pump and an old man sitting on a chair beside it in the sun, black beret on his head, Gauloise cigarette stuck to his lower lip, engrossed in a newspaper. Once again, Guy was told that there was no petrol. ‘The reservoir is empty, monsieur.’

  Guy took his revolver out of his pocket. ‘I don’t believe you. Give us petrol.’ He was given a look of contempt. ‘There is none. You can shoot a defenceless old man, if you like, but it will not help you.’ As he walked back to the truck he heard the old man spit on the ground behind him. ‘I think he’s lying.’

  ‘Perhaps. They do not like you running away.’

  ‘I’m not running away, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I know, but that is how they see it. The English are retreating and deserting them. You are a sale Anglais. If he had petrol, he would not give it to you.’

  He tapped the fuel gauge. ‘Well, I’d say we have enough left to get us another five miles, if we’re very lucky.’ He had been optimistic. They had travelled less than two more miles when the engine suddenly choked and d
ied. ‘Well, that’s that.’

  ‘We still have the bike.’

  ‘One bike …’

  ‘We can share it. There is a strong shelf at the back, to put parcels and things. I can sit on that.’

  He hauled the bike out of the truck. His suitcase and its contents would have to be left behind but he salvaged the packets of Players and his torch and dumped the rest in the ditch. He gave Anna the cigarettes to put in her canvas bag which went in the basket. She helped him push the truck off the road and he yanked out ignition wires, removed the rotor arm and slashed the tyres with the penknife he always carried. He handed her his steel helmet. ‘You’d better wear this.’ He folded his greatcoat into a cushion to go on the metal ledge at the back of the bike and they set off with Anna sitting behind him, clinging on to his waist.

  A huge dust cloud, miles long, marked the rumbling progress of the Panzer tanks across France. Otto wiped his field-glasses on his sleeve and took another look ahead and on each side of the long straight road. Fields, orchards in blossom, the occasional farm, but no sign of the enemy except for the equipment they had left behind – wrecked British lorries and tanks now added to the discarded French arms and armaments. The British, he noted, had been very careful to disable everything. They were retreating but they were still fighting hard, standing fast at artillery posts, attacking from unexpected quarters, picking off the unwary. One stubborn group of Tommies – no more than a dozen or so – had managed to hold them up for almost half a day, pelting them with grenades and shell-fire until they had run out of ammunition. At another point, three more Tommies with one Bren-gun between them had opened fire from the roadside in a suicidal attempt before they were quickly taken out. Further on, the entire column had halted in front of what were thought to be mines laid on the road ahead only for it to be discovered that the British had put down, not mines, but upturned dinner plates. Stephan had been highly amused.

  The tanks rolled on through town and village. The French civilians watched them go by from windows and doorways, and pathetic refugees scattered from their path in terror. Their progress was unstoppable. In his own mind, Otto questioned the wisdom of advancing so fast and so far beyond the infantry and their supply lines. But it was not for him to challenge such things, only to obey orders.

  The Panzer column halted briefly and Stephan strode over. ‘Your British fight a good fight, I grant you, but they can’t hold us back. Soon, we shall have Boulogne and Calais.’ He grinned up at him through the dust caking his face. ‘I have heard a rumour that the King of the Belgians is going to surrender. If that happens he will leave the way wide open for us on the enemy’s flank. They will have nowhere left to go but for a swim. Imagine that, Otto! First we dine in Paris, then we shall be in London. The food and the women will not be so good, but I have always heard that the English countryside is rather pleasant, especially at this time of year. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes, it’s true.’

  ‘Then I shall look forward to it.’ Stephan extended his arm in a salute. ‘Heil Hitler!’

  ‘Heil Hitler!’

  The column rolled forward once more. Ten miles further on and close to nightfall, Otto’s tank broke down.

  It was almost dark and very difficult to see their way. The bike had no front lamp though, in any case, Guy would not have dared to use one. The Germans could be anywhere. His instinct was to press on, no matter what, but he knew that Anna was tired and it made some sense to rest while the going was so hard. Earlier, they had bought some food from a village shop. Anna had made him stay outside. ‘If they see your British uniform, they may refuse us.’ He had waited impatiently further down the road, smoking a cigarette, and presently she had reappeared carrying a long stick of bread and a hunk of Camembert cheese which they had stowed in the basket on the handlebars. So all that was needed now was to find a safe place for a few hours.

  He turned off the main road onto a narrow lane and presently they came to a rough track leading to a farm. He could see the shape of the farmhouse and some outbuildings, including a barn which might serve the purpose. He had no intention of asking permission since no-one could be trusted. A dog barked as he wheeled the bike quietly along the track, with Anna following. They waited until the barking stopped and then skirted the house. There was a clucking and fluttering as he pushed open a small door in the side of the barn and shone his torch inside. A mothers’ meeting of brown hens eyed him indignantly from a far corner. He played the torch around some more and saw a wooden ladder leading upwards. ‘This is OK. We can go up in the loft.’ The hens clucked again as he wheeled the bike inside and concealed it behind farm machinery. The loft was partly filled with new, sweet-smelling hay and Anna sat down and took off the steel helmet. She produced the bread and cheese and they tore the food apart with their hands and ate by torchlight.

  ‘Now, if we only had some wine, Guy, it would be a very fine supper.’

  ‘We’d also need a corkscrew. And glasses.’

  ‘Not glasses – we could drink, in turn, from the bottle.’

  She was pretty amazing, he thought. Cool as a cucumber. Most women in her situation would be scared to death and having hysterics. He wondered if she had a clue how serious things could be. The litter of abandoned and disabled equipment on the roadsides had told its own story. The BEF was in full retreat, fighting a rearguard action against the oncoming Germans, and, so far as he could tell, in grave danger of being totally surrounded. The army could retreat only so far – until it reached the Channel. After that it would be a question of fighting it out, backs to the sea. The only real chance still seemed to him to be to head for Calais as fast as possible. To try to go south and attempt to find a way through the enemy lines would be madness. He reviewed other facts grimly: Calais was still forty miles away, or more; they had one old bicycle for transport, a revolver with a few rounds, and the Germans could overrun them at any moment. He debated whether it would be better to stay on the main road, the most direct route, or safer to take to the country lanes and try to cut across country. The one thing they did have, after all, was a map. He realized then, with a sudden and horrible jolt, that he had left it in the truck.

  ‘What are you thinking, Guy?’

  ‘What the hell to do next.’

  ‘Well, I am going to sleep.’

  ‘You’d better have my coat to keep you warm.’ He laid it over her and tucked her in carefully. Just like nanny, he thought.

  ‘You are very kind, Guy. I never knew this. Will you sleep?’

  ‘I ought to keep guard. Just in case.’

  He switched off the torch and sat with his back to the wall smoking a cigarette. He smiled to himself. Ironic to be spending the night with her in a hayloft … on bloody sentry duty. Not exactly what he’d have had in mind in normal circumstances. Well, at least she thought he was kind. That was a change. A big improvement. He knew he was in love with her, which was his misfortune, because she certainly wasn’t with him. For how long had he been, exactly? He wasn’t sure. Perhaps since the Commem. ball. Perhaps since the very beginning, when he’d first set eyes on her. It didn’t matter. Nothing to be done about it. At least, not at the moment.

  The dog barked over at the farmhouse and the hens clucked softly and murmured together in the barn below. Probably disturbed by a fox. He listened hard but heard nothing more until some lunatic bird started singing somewhere nearby. It was a while before he realized that it was a nightingale. He stayed awake for a long time, leaning against the wall, and then, finally, his head drooped.

  A cockerel woke him, crowing raucously outside. Daylight was filtering down through a grimy skylight overhead and he swore aloud, furious with himself. They should have been on the road an hour ago at least. He shook Anna awake. The hens were not in the barn and he saw that the small door was open, which meant that somebody from the farm was already up and about. Outside the yard was empty except for the hens and the cockerel standing on a wall, neck stretched, crowing loudly. Anna tugged at
his arm and he followed her gaze. A bike was propped against the same wall – rusty and old, but serviceable, so far as he could tell. As they wheeled it away down the track he expected, at any moment, to hear angry French shouts behind them. An early-morning mist was rising off the fields and the sun was coming up behind an orchard of apple trees. Nothing could have seemed more peaceful, but as they set off down the empty road they could hear the distant boom of gunfire, coming from the west.

  ‘Did you hear the news, Mr Ransome? The Germans have gone and captured that French port. Something beginning with B.’

  ‘Boulogne?’

  ‘Yes, that was it. Booloin. They won’t get any further, though, will they? Our boys will soon deal with them.’

  ‘I’m sure they will.’ He saw that his landlady had no idea how desperate the situation was. The Germans were systematically taking the French ports. After Boulogne it would be Calais. They must be sweeping round to encircle the Allies and if they weren’t stopped in Belgium, then pretty soon there’d be nowhere left to retreat to. Where was Guy? Not in England or they would have heard from him and there had been no letter, no word for nearly three weeks. And what about Anna? Nobody had heard anything from her either. ‘I shouldn’t think there’s anything to worry about, Mrs Honeywell.’

  ‘I’ve got some smoked haddock for your supper today. A special treat. Just a small piece.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Matt turned to go on up the stairs.