Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  A cold fear entered Howard’s heart. His eyesight for long distances was not too good; he screwed his eyes up and peered in the direction Rose was pointing. True enough, there he was. Howard could see his little head just sticking out of a steel hatch at the top of the gun turret as he chattered eagerly to the German soldier with him. The man seemed to be holding Ronnie in his arms, lifting him up to show him how the captain conned his tank. It was a pretty little picture of fraternization.

  The old man thought very quickly. He knew that Ronnie would most probably be talking French; there would be nothing to impel him to break into English. But he knew also that he himself must not go near the little boy, nor must his sister; in his excited state he would at once break out in English to tell them all about the tank. Yet, he must be got away immediately, while he was still thinking of nothing but the tank. Once he began to think of other things, of their journey, or of Howard himself, he would inevitably betray them all in boyish chatter. Within five minutes of his losing interest in the tank the Germans would be told that he was English, that an old Englishman was strolling round the town.

  Sheila plucked his sleeve. “I want my supper,” she said. “May I have my supper now? Please, Mr. Howard, may I have my supper now?”

  “In a minute,” he said absently. “We’ll all go and have our supper in a minute.” But that was an idea. If Sheila was hungry, Ronnie would be hungry, too — unless the Germans had given him sweets. He must risk that. There was that soup kitchen that the German at the entrance to the town had spoken of; Howard could see the field cookers a hundred yards down the Place.

  He showed them to Rose. “I am taking the little children down there, where the smoke is, for our supper,” he said casually. “Go and fetch Ronnie, and bring him to us there. Are you hungry?”

  “Oui, m’sieur.” She said that she was very hungry, indeed.

  “We shall have a fine hot supper, with hot soup and bread,” the old man said, drawing on his imagination. “Go and tell Ronnie, and bring him along with you. I will walk on with the little ones.”

  He sent her off, and watched her running through the crowd, her bare legs twinkling. He steered the other children rather away from the tank; it would not do for Ronnie to be able to hail him. He saw the little girl come to the tank and speak urgently to the Germans; then she was lost to sight.

  The old man sent up an urgent, personal prayer for the success of her unwitting errand, as he helped Pierre push the pram towards the field cookers. There was nothing now that he could do. Their future lay in the small hands of two children, and in the hands of God.

  There was a trestle table, with benches. He parked the pram and sat Pierre and Sheila and the nameless little Dutch boy at the table. Soup was dispensed in thick bowls, with a hunk of bread; he went and drew four bowls for the lot of them and brought them to the table.

  He turned, and Rose was at his elbow with Ronnie. The little boy was still flushed and ecstatic. “They took me right inside!” he said in English.

  The old man said gently in French, “If you tell us in French, then Pierre can understand, too.” He did not think that any one had noticed. But the town was terribly dangerous for them; at any moment the children might break into English and betray them.

  Ronnie said in French, “There was a great big gun, and two little guns, m’sieur, and you steer with two handles and it goes seventy kilos an hour!”

  Howard said, “Come on and eat your supper.” He gave him a bowl of soup and a piece of bread.

  Sheila said enviously, “Did you go for a ride, Ronnie?” The adventurer hesitated. “Not exactly,” he said. “But they said I might go with them for a ride to-morrow or one day. They did speak funnily. I could hardly understand what they wanted to say. May I go for a ride with them to-morrow, m’sieur? They say I might.”

  The old man said, “We’ll have to see about that. We may not be here to-morrow.”

  Sheila said, “Why did they talk funny, Ronnie?”

  Rose said suddenly, “They are dirty Germans, who come here to murder people.”

  The old man coughed loudly. “Go on and eat your supper,” he said, “all of you. That’s enough talking for the present.” More than enough, he thought; if the German dishing out the soup had overheard they would all have been in trouble.

  Angerville was no place for them; at all costs he must get the children out. It was only a matter of an hour or two before exposure came. He meditated for a moment; there was still some hours of daylight. The children were tired, he knew, yet it would be better to move on, out of the town.

  Chartres was the next town on his list, Chartres where he was to have taken train for St. Malo. He could not get to Chartres that night; it was the best part of thirty miles further to the west. There was little hope now that he would escape the territory occupied by Germans, yet for want of an alternative he would carry on to Chartres. Indeed, it never really occurred to him to do otherwise.

  The children were very slow eaters. It was nearly an hour before Pierre and Sheila, the two smallest, had finished their meal. The old man waited, with the patience of old age. It would do no good to hurry them. When they had finished he wiped their mouths, thanked the German cook politely, collected the pram, and led them out onto the road to Chartres.

  The children walked very slowly, languidly. It was after eight o’clock, long past their ordinary bed time; moreover, they had eaten a full meal. The sun was still warm, though it was dropping towards the horizon; manifestly they could not go very far. Yet he kept them at it, anxious to get as far as possible from the town.

  The problem of the little Dutch boy engaged his attention. He had not left him with the Sisters, as he had been minded to; it had not seemed practical when he was in the town to search out a convent. Nor had he yet got rid of Pierre, as he had promised himself that he would do. Pierre was no trouble, but this new little boy was quite a serious responsibility. He could not speak one word of any language that they spoke. Howard did not even know his name. Perhaps it would be marked upon his clothes.

  Then with a shock of dismay, the old man realized that the clothes were gone forever. They had been taken by the Germans when the little chap had been de-loused; by this time they were probably burnt. It might well be that his identity was lost now till the war was over, and enquiries could be made. It might be lost forever.

  The thought distressed old Howard very much. It was one thing to hand over to the Sisters a child who could be traced; it seemed to him to be a different matter altogether when the little boy was practically untraceable. As he walked along, the old man revolved this new trouble in his mind. The only link now with his past lay in the fact that he had been found abandoned in Pithiviers upon a certain day in June — lay in the evidence which Howard alone could give. With that evidence, it might one day be possible to find his parents or his relatives. If now he were abandoned to a convent, that evidence might well be lost.

  They walked on down the dusty road.

  Sheila said fretfully, “My feet do hurt.”

  She was obviously tired out. He picked her up and put her in the pram, and put Pierre in with her. To Pierre he gave the chocolate that had been promised to him earlier in the day, and then all the other children had to have a piece of chocolate, too. That refreshed them and made them cheerful for a while, and the old man pushed the pram wearily ahead. It was essential that they should stop soon for the night.

  He stopped at the next farm, left the pram with the children in the road, and went into the courtyard to see if it was possible for them to find a bed. There was a strange stillness in the place. No dog sprang out to bark at him. He called out, and stood expectant in the evening light, but no one answered him. He tried the door to the farm house, and it was locked. He went into the cow house, but no animals were there. Two hens scratched upon the midden; otherwise there was no sign of life.

  The place was deserted.

  As on the previous night, they slept in the hay loft. There w
ere no blankets to be had this time, but Howard, searching round for some sort of a coverlet, discovered a large, sail-like cover used possibly to thatch a rick. He dragged this into the loft and arranged it double on the hay, laying the children down between its folds. He had expected trouble with them, excitement and fretfulness, but they were too tired for that. All five of them were glad to lie down and rest; in a short time they were all asleep.

  Howard lay resting on the hay near them, tired to death. In the last hour he had taken several nips of brandy for the weariness and weakness that he was enduring; now as he lay upon the hay in the deserted farm fatigue came soaking out of him in great waves. He felt that they were in a desperate position. There could be no hope now of getting through to England, as he once had hoped. The German front was far ahead of them; by now it might have reached to Brittany itself. All France was over-run.

  Exposure might come at any time, must come before so very long. It was inevitable. His own French, though good enough, was spoken with an English accent, as he knew well. The only hope of escaping detection would be to hide for a while until some plan presented itself, to lie up with the children in the house of some French citizen. But he knew no one in this part of France that he could go to.

  And anyway, no family would take them in. If he did know anybody, it would hardly be fair to plant himself on them.

  He lay musing bitterly on the future, only half awake.

  It was not quite correct to say that he knew nobody. He did know, very slightly, one family at Chartres. They were people called Rouget — no, Rougand — Rougeron; that was it, Rougeron. They came from Chartres. He had met them at Cidoton eighteen months before, when he had been there with John for the skiing. The father was a colonel in the army; Howard wondered vaguely what had become of him. The mother had been typically fat and French, pleasant enough in a very quiet way. The daughter had skied well; closing his eyes in the dose of oncoming sleep the old man could see her flying down the slopes behind John, in a flurry of snow. She had had fair hair which she wore short and rather elaborately dressed, in the French style.

  He had seen a good deal of the father. They had played draughts together in the evening over a Pernod, and had pondered together whether war would come. The old man began to consider Rougeron seriously. If by some freak of chance he should be in Chartres, there might yet be hope for them. He thought that Rougeron might help.

  At any rate, they would get good advice from him. Howard became aware at this point of how much, how very much he wanted to talk to some adult, to discuss their difficulties and make plans. The more he thought of Rougeron, the more he yearned to talk to some one of that sort, frankly and without reserve.

  Chartres was not far away, not much more than twenty-five miles. With luck they might get there to-morrow. Probably Rougeron would be away from home, but — it was worth trying.

  Presently he slept.

  He woke several times in the night, gasping and breathless with a very tired heart. Each time he sat upright for half an hour and drank a little brandy, presently slipping down again to an uneasy doze. The children also slept uneasily, but did not wake. At five o’clock the old man woke for good, and sitting up against a heap of hay resigned himself to wait till it was time to wake the children.

  He would go to Chartres, and look up Rougeron. The bad night that he had suffered was a warning; it might well be that his strength was giving out. If that should happen, he must get the children safe with some one else. With Rougeron, if he were there, the children would be safe; Howard could leave money for their keep, English money it was true, but probably negotiable. Rougeron might give him a bed, and let him rest a little till this deathly feeling of fatigue went away.

  Pierre woke at about half past six, and lay awake with him. “You must stay quiet,” the old man said. “It’s not time to get up yet. Go to sleep again.”

  At seven o’clock Sheila woke up, wriggled about, and climbed out of her bed. Her movements woke the other children. Howard got up stiffly, and got them all up. He herded them before him down the ladder to the farmyard, and one by one made them sluice their faces beneath the pump.

  There was a step behind him, and he turned to meet a formidable woman, who was the farmer’s wife. She demanded crossly what he was doing there.

  He said mildly, “I have slept in your hay, madame, with these children. A thousand pardons, but there was no other place where we could go.”

  She rated him soundly for a few minutes. Then she said, “Who are you? You are not a Frenchman. No doubt, you are English, and these children also?”

  He said, “These children are of all nationalities, madame. Two are French and two are Swiss, from Geneva. One is Dutch.” He smiled, “I assure you, we are a little mixed.”

  She eyed him keenly. “But you,” she said, “you are English.”

  He said, “If I were English, madame, what of that?”

  “They are saying in Angerville that the English have betrayed us, that they have run away, from Dunkirk.”

  He felt himself to be in peril. This woman was quite capable of giving them all up to the Germans.

  He faced her boldly, and looked her in the eyes. “Do you believe that England has abandoned France?” he asked. “Or do you think that is a German lie?”

  She hesitated. “These filthy politics,” she said at last. “I only know that this farm now is ruined. I do not know how we shall live.”

  He said simply, “By the Grace of God, madame.”

  She was silent for a minute. Then she said, “You are English, aren’t you?”

  He nodded without speaking.

  She said, “You had better go away, before anybody sees you.”

  He turned, and called the children to him, and walked over to the pram. Then, pushing it in front of him, he went towards the gate.

  She called after him, “Where are you going to?”

  He stopped and said, “To Chartres.” And then he could have bitten out his tongue for the indiscretion.

  She said, “By the tram?”

  He repeated uncertainly, “The tram?”

  “It passes at ten minutes past eight. There is still half an hour.”

  He had forgotten the light railway, running by the road. Hope of a lift to Chartres surged up in him. “Is it still running, madame?”

  “Why not? These Germans say that they have brought us Peace. Well, then, the tram will run.”

  He thanked her, and went out onto the road. A quarter of a mile further on he came to a place where the track crossed the road; here he waited, and fed the children on the biscuits he had bought the day before, with a little of the chocolate. Presently a small puff of steam announced the little narrow gauge train, the so-called tram.

  Three hours later they walked out into the streets of Chartres, still pushing the pram. It was as easy as that; a completely uneventful journey.

  Chartres, like Angerville, was full of Germans. They swarmed everywhere, particularly in the luxury shops, buying with paper money silk stockings, underclothes, and all sorts of imported food. The whole town seemed to be on holiday. The troops were clean and well disciplined; all day Howard saw nothing in their behaviour to complain of, apart from their very presence. They were constrained in their behaviour, scrupulously correct, uncertain, doubtful of their welcome. But in the shops there was no doubt about it; they were spending genuine French paper money, and spending it like water. If there were any doubts in Chartres, they stayed behind the locked doors of the banks.

  In a telephone booth the old man found the name of Rougeron in the directory; they lived in an apartment in the Rue Vaugiraud. He did not ring up, feeling the matter to be a little difficult for the telephone. Instead, he asked the way, and walked round to the place, still pushing the pram, the children trailing after him.

  Rue Vaugiraud was a narrow street of tall, grey shuttered houses. He rang the bell of the house, and the door opened silently before him, disclosing the common staircase. Rougeron liv
ed on the second floor. He went upstairs slowly, for he was rather short of breath, the children following him. He rang the bell of the apartment.

  There was the sound of women’s voices from behind the door. There was a step, and the door opened before him. It was the daughter, the one that he remembered eighteen months before at Cidoton.

  She said, “What is it?”

  In the passage it was a little dark. “Mademoiselle,” he said, “I have come to see your father, Monsieur le Colonel. I do not know if you will remember me; we have met before. At Cidoton.”

  She did not answer for a moment. The old man blinked his eyes; in his fatigue it seemed to him that she was holding tight onto the door. He recognized her very well. She wore her hair in the same close-curled, French manner; she wore a grey cloth skirt and a dark blue jumper, with a black scarf at the neck.

  She said at last, “My father is away from home. I — I remember you very well, monsieur.”

  He said easily in French, “It is very charming of you to say so, mademoiselle. My name is Howard.”

  “I know that.”

  “Will Monsieur le Colonel be back to-day?”

  She said, “He has been gone for three months, monsieur Howard. He was near Metz. That is the last that we have heard.”

  He had expected as much, but the disappointment was no less keen. He hesitated, and then drew back.

  “I am so sorry,” he said. “I had hoped to see Monsieur le Colonel, as I was in Chartres. You have my sympathy, mademoiselle. I will not intrude any further upon your anxiety.”

  She said, “Is it — is it anything that I could discuss with you, Monsieur Howard?” He got a queer impression from her manner that she was pleading, trying to detain him at the door.

  He could not burden a girl and her mother with his troubles; they had troubles of their own to face. “It is nothing, mademoiselle,” he said. “Merely a little personal matter that I wanted to talk over with your father.”

  She drew herself up and faced him, looking him in the eyes. “I understand that you wish to see my father, Monsieur Howard,” she said quietly. “But he is away — we do not know where. And I . . . I am not a child. I know very well what you have come to talk about. We can talk of this together, you and I.”