Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  She came presently, and exclaimed when she saw the chair and coverlet. “Monsieur has slept so?” she said. “But there was room in bed for all of you!”

  He felt a little foolish. “The little one is ill,” he said. “When a child is ill, she should have room. I was quite comfortable.”

  Her eyes softened, and she clucked her tongue again. “To-night I will find another mattress,” she said. “Be assured, monsieur, I will arrange something.”

  He ordered coffee and rolls and jam; she went away and came back presently with a loaded tray. As she set it down upon the dressing table, he ventured, “I must go out this morning to look for my luggage, and to buy a few things. I will take the little boy with me; I shall not be very long. Would you listen for the little girl, in case she cries?”

  The woman beamed at him. “Assuredly. But it will not be necessary for Monsieur to hurry. I will bring la petite Rose, and she can play with the little sick one.”

  Howard said, “Rose?”

  He stood for ten minutes, listening to a torrent of family history. Little Rose was ten years old, the daughter of the woman’s brother, who was in England. No doubt Monsieur had met her brother? Tenois was the name, Henri Tenois. He was in London, the wine waiter at the Hotel Dickens, in Russell Square. He was a widower, so the femme de chambre made a home for la petite Rose. And so on, minute after minute.

  Howard had to exercise a good deal of tact to get rid of her before his coffee cooled.

  An hour later, spruce and shaved and leading Ronnie by the hand, he went out into the street. The little boy, dressed in beret, overcoat, and socks, looked typically French; by contrast Howard in his old tweed suit looked very English. For ten minutes he fulfilled his promise in the market square, letting the child drink in his fill of camions, guns, and tanks. They stopped by one caterpillar vehicle, smaller than the rest.

  “Celui-ci,” said Ronnie clearly, “c’est un char de combat.”

  The driver smiled broadly. “That’s right,” he said in French.

  Howard said in French, “I should have called it a tank, myself.”

  “No, no, no,” the little boy said earnestly. “A tank is much bigger, monsieur. Truly.”

  The driver laughed. “I’ve got one myself just like that, back in Nancy. He’ll be driving one of these before he’s much older, le petit chou.”

  They passed on, and in to the station. For half an hour they searched the platforms, still thronged with the tired troops, but found no sign of the lost suitcase. Nor could the overworked and worried officials give any help. At the end of that time Howard gave it up; it would be better to buy a few little things for the children that he could carry in the attaché case when they moved on. The loss of a suitcase was not an unmixed disaster for a man with a weak heart in time of war.

  They left the station and walked up towards the centre of the town to buy pyjamas for the children. They bought some purple sweets called cassis to take back with them for Sheila, and they bought a large green picture book called Babar the Elephant. Then they turned back to the hotel.

  Ronnie said presently, “There’s a motor car from England, monsieur. What sort is it?”

  The old man said, “I don’t suppose I can tell you that.” But he looked across the road to the filling station. It was a big open touring car, roughly sprayed dull green all over, much splashed and stained with mud. It was evidently weeks since it had had a wash. Around it, two or three men were bustling to get it filled with petrol, oil, and water. One of them was manipulating the air hose at the wheels.

  One of the men seemed vaguely familiar to the old man. He stopped and stared across the road, trying to place where they had met. Then he remembered; it was in his club six months before. The man was Roger Dickinson; something to do with a newspaper. The Morning Record — that was it. He was quite a well-known man in his own line.

  Howard crossed the road to him, leading Ronnie by the hand. “Morning,” he said. “Mr. Roger Dickinson, isn’t it?”

  The man turned quickly, cloth in hand; he had been cleaning off the windscreen. Recognition dawned in his eyes. “I remember,” he said. “In the Wanderers Club. . . .”

  “Howard is the name.”

  “I remember.” The man stared at him. “What are you doing now?”

  The old man said, “I’m on my way to Paris, but I’m hung up here for a few days, I’m afraid.” He told Dickinson about Sheila.

  The newspaperman said, “You’d better get out, quick.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  The newspaperman stared at him, turning the soiled cloth over in his hands. “Well, the Germans are across the Marne.” The old man stared at him. “And now the Italians are coming up from the south.”

  He did not quite take in the latter sentence. “Across the Marne?” he said. “Oh, that’s very bad. Very bad indeed. But what are the French doing?”

  “Running like rabbits,” said Dickinson.

  There was a momentary silence. “What did you say that the Italians were doing?”

  “They’ve declared war on France. Didn’t you know?”

  The old man shook his head. “Nobody told me that.”

  “It only happened yesterday. The French may not have announced it yet, but it’s true enough.”

  By their side a little petrol flooded out from the full tank on to the road; one of the men removed the hose and slammed the snap catch of the filler cap with a metallic clang. “That’s the lot,” he said to Dickinson. “I’ll slip across and get a few brioches, and then we’d better get going.”

  Dickinson turned to Howard. “You must get out of this,” he said. “At once. You’ll be all right if you can get to Paris by to-night — at least, I think you will. There are boats still running from St. Malo.”

  The old man stared at him. “That’s out of the question, Dickinson. The other child has got a temperature.”

  The man shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I tell you honestly, the French won’t hold. They’re broken now — already. I’m not being sensationalist. It’s true.”

  Howard stood staring up the street. “Where are you making for?”

  “I’m going down into Savoy to see what the Italians are doing in that part. And then, we’re getting out. Maybe Marseilles, perhaps across the frontier into Spain.”

  The old man smiled. “Good luck,” he said. “Don’t get too near the fighting.”

  The other said, “What are you going to do, yourself?”

  “I don’t quite know. I’ll have to think about it.”

  He turned away towards the hotel, leading Ronnie by the hand. A hundred yards down the road the mud-stained, green car came softly up behind, and edged into the kerb beside him.

  Dickinson leaned out of the driver’s seat. “Look, Howard,” he said. “There’s room for you with us, with the two kids as well. We can take the children on our knees all right. It’s going to be hard going for the next few days; we’ll be driving all night, in spells. But if you can be ready in ten minutes with the other kid, I’ll wait.”

  The old man stared thoughtfully into the car. It was a generous offer, made by a generous man. There were four of them already in the car, and a great mass of luggage; it was difficult to see how another adult could be possibly squeezed in, let alone two children. It was an open body, with an exiguous canvas hood and no side screens. Driving all night in that through the mountains would be a bitter trial for a little girl of five with a temperature.

  He said, “It’s very, very kind of you. But really, I think we’d better take our own pace.”

  The other said, “All right. You’ve plenty of money, I suppose?”

  The old man reassured him on that point, and the big car slid away and vanished down the road. Ronnie watched it, half crying. Presently he sniffed, and Howard noticed him.

  “What’s the matter?” he said kindly. “What is it?”

  There was no answer. Tears were very near.

  Howard searched his mind for c
hildish trouble. “Was it the motor car?” he said. “Did you think we were going to have a ride in it?”

  The little boy nodded dumbly.

  The old man stooped and wiped his eyes. “Never mind,” he said. “We’ll wait till Sheila gets rid of her cold, and then we’ll all go for a ride together.” It was in his mind to hire a car, if possible, to take them all the way from Dijon to St. Malo and the boat. It would cost a good bit of money, but the emergency seemed to justify the expense.

  “Soon?”

  “Perhaps the day after to-morrow, if she’s well enough to enjoy it with us.”

  “May we go and see the camions and the chars de combat after déjeuner?”

  “If they’re still there we’ll go and see them, just for a little.” He must do something to make up for the disappointment. But when they reached the station yard, the lorries and the armoured cars were gone. There were only a few decrepit-looking horses picketed beneath the tawdry advertisements for Byrrh and Pernod.

  Up in the bedroom things were very happy. La petite Rose was there, a shy little girl with long black hair and an advanced maternal instinct. Already Sheila was devoted to her. La petite Rose had made a rabbit from two of Howard’s dirty handkerchiefs and three little bits of string, and this rabbit had a burrow in the bedclothes on Ronnie’s side of the bed; when you said “Boo” he dived back into his burrow, manipulated ingeniously by la petite Rose. Sheila, bright eyed, struggled to tell old Howard all about it in mixed French and English. In the middle of their chatter three aeroplanes passed very low over the station and the hotel.

  Howard undid his parcels, and gave Sheila the picture book about Babar the Elephant. Babar was an old friend of la petite Rose, and well known; she took the book and drew Ronnie to the bed, and began to read the story to them. The little boy soon tired of it; aeroplanes were more in his line, and he went and leaned out of the window hoping to see another one go by.

  Howard left them there, and went down to the hall of the hotel to telephone. With great difficulty and great patience he got through at last to the hotel at Cidoton; obviously he must do his best to let Cavanagh know the difficulties of the journey. He spoke to Madame Lucard, but the Cavanaghs had left the day before, to go back to Geneva. No doubt they imagined that he was practically in England by that time.

  He tried to put a call through to Cavanagh at the League of Nations in Geneva, and was told curtly that the service into Switzerland had been suspended. He enquired about the telegraph service, and was told that all telegrams to Switzerland must be taken personally to the Bureau de Ville for censoring before they could be accepted for despatch. There was said to be a very long queue at the censor’s table.

  It was time for déjeuner; he gave up the struggle to communicate with Cavanagh for the time being. Indeed, he had been apathetic about it from the start. With the clear vision of age he knew that it was not much good; if he should get in touch with the parents it would still be impossible for him to cross the border back to them, or for them to come to him. He would have to carry on and get the children home to England as he had undertaken to do; no help could come from Switzerland.

  The hotel was curiously still, and empty; it seemed to-day that all the soldiers were elsewhere. He went into the restaurant and ordered lunch to be sent up to the bedroom on a tray, both for himself and for the children.

  It came presently, brought by the femme de chambre. There was much excited French about the pictures of Babar, and about the handkerchief rabbit. The woman beamed all over; it was the sort of party that she understood.

  Howard said, “It has been very, very kind of you to let la petite Rose be with la petite Sheila. Already they are friends.”

  The woman spoke volubly. “It is nothing, monsieur — nothing at all. Rose likes more than anything to play with little children, or with kittens, or young dogs. Truly, she is a little mother, that one.” She rubbed the child’s head affectionately. “She will come back after déjeuner, if monsieur desires?”

  Sheila said, “I want Rose to come back after déjeuner, Monsieur Howard.”

  He said slowly, “You’d better go to sleep after déjeuner.” He turned to the woman. “If she could come back at four o’clock?” To Rose, “Would you like to come and have tea with us this afternoon — English tea?”

  She said shyly, “Oui, monsieur.”

  She went away, and Howard gave the children their dinner. Sheila was still hot with a slight temperature. He put the tray outside the door when they had finished, and made Ronnie lie down on the bed with his sister. Then he stretched out in the armchair, and began to read to them from a book given to him by their mother, called Amelianne at the Circus. Before very long the children were asleep; Howard laid down the book and slept for an hour himself.

  Later in the afternoon he walked up through the town again to the Bureau de Ville, leading Ronnie by the hand, with a long telegram to Cavanagh in his pocket. He searched for some time for the right office, and finally found it, picketed by an anxious and discontented crowd of French people. The door was shut. The censor had closed the office and gone off for the evening, nobody knew where. The office would be open again at nine in the morning.

  “It is not right, that,” said the people. But it appeared that there was nothing to be done about it.

  Howard walked back with Ronnie to the hotel. There were troops in the town again, and a long convoy of lorries blocked the northward road near the station. In the station yard three very large tanks were parked, bristling with guns, formidable in design but dirty and unkempt. Their tired crews were refuelling them from a tank lorry, working slowly and sullenly, without enthusiasm. A little chill shot through the old man as he watched them bungling their work. What was it Dickinson has said? “Running like rabbits.”

  It could not possibly be true. The French had always fought magnificently.

  At Ronnie’s urgent plea they crossed to the square, and spent some time examining the tanks. The little boy told him, “They can go right over walls and houses even. Right over!”

  The old man stared at the monsters. It might be true, but he was not impressed with what he saw. “They don’t look very comfortable,” he said mildly.

  Ronnie scoffed at him. “They go ever so fast, and all the guns go bang, bang, bang.” He turned to Howard. “Are they going to stay here all night?”

  “I don’t know. I expect they will. Come on, now; Sheila will want her tea. I expect you want yours, too.”

  Food was a magnet, but Ronnie looked back longingly over his shoulder. “May we come and see them to-morrow?”

  “If they’re still here.”

  Things were still happy in the bedroom. La petite Rose, it seemed, knew a game which involved the imitation of animals in endless repetition —

  My great-aunt lives in Tours,

  In a house with a cherry tree

  With a little mouse (squeak, squeak)

  And a big lion (roar, roar)

  And a wood pigeon (coo, coo) . . .

  and so on quite indefinitely. It was a game that made no great demand on the intelligence, and Sheila wanted nothing better. Presently they were all playing it; it was so that the femme de chambre found them.

  She came in with the tea, laughing all over her face. “In Touraine I learned that, as a little girl, myself,” she said. “It is pretty, is it not? All children like ‘My great-aunt lives in Tours’ — always, always. In England, monsieur, do the children play like that?”

  “Much the same,” he said. “Children in every country play the same games.”

  He gave them their milk and bread and butter and jam. Near the Bureau de Ville he had seen a shop selling gingerbread cakes the tops of which were covered in crystallized fruits and sweets. He had bought one of these; as he was quite unused to housekeeping it was three times as large as was necessary. He cut it with his penknife on the dressing table and they all had a slice. It was a very merry tea party, so merry that the grinding of caterpillar tracks and
the roaring of exhausts outside the window passed them by unnoticed.

  They played a little more after tea; then he washed the children as the femme de chambre re-made the bed. She helped him to undress them and put them into their new pyjamas; then she held Sheila on her capacious lap while the old man took her temperature carefully under the arm. It was still a degree or so above normal though the child was obviously better; whatever had been wrong with her was passing off. It would not be right, he decided, to travel on the next day; he had no wish to be held up with another illness in less comfortable surroundings. But on the day after that, he thought it should be possible to get away. If they started very early in the morning they would get through to St. Malo in the day. He would see about the car that night.

  Presently both the children were in bed, and kissed good-night. He stood in the passage outside the room with the femme de chambre and her little girl. “To-night, monsieur,” she said, “presently, when they are asleep, I will bring a mattress and make up a bed for monsieur on the floor. It will be better than the armchair, that.”

  “You are very kind,” he said. “I don’t know why you should be so very, very good to us. I am most grateful.”

  She said, “But, monsieur, it is you who are kind. . . .”

  He went down to the lobby, wondering a little at the effusive nature of the French.

  Again the hotel was full of officers. He pushed his way to the desk, and said to the girl, “I want to hire a car, not now, but the day after to-morrow — for a long journey. Can you tell me which garage would be the best?”

  She said, “For a long journey, monsieur? How far?”

  “To St. Malo, in Normandy. The little girl is still not very well. I think it will be easier to take her home by car.”

  She said doubtfully, “The Garage Citroën would be the best. But it will not be easy, monsieur. You understand — the cars have all been taken for the army. It would be easier to go by train.”

  He shook his head. “I’d rather go by car.”