Pied Piper

by Nevil Shute

  Presently he returned to the subject that was on his mind. ‘Are many children going to America, monsieur? I cannot comprehend how you can be so positive that they will be welcomed. America is very far away. They do not bother about our difficulties here.’

  Howard shrugged his shoulders. ‘They are a generous people. These children will be quite all right if I can get them there, because my daughter will look after them. But even without her, there would be many people in America willing to provide for them. Americans are like that.’

  The other stared at him incredulously. ‘It would cost a great deal of money to provide for a child, perhaps for years. One does not do that lightly for a foreign child of which one knows nothing.’

  ‘It’s just the sort of thing they do do,’ said the old man. ‘They would pour out their money in a cause like that.’

  The horse-dealer stared at him keenly and thoughtfully. ‘Would they provide for Marjan Estreicher?’ he enquired at last. ‘No doubt they would not do that for a Jew.’

  ‘I don’t think it would make the slightest difference in the case of a child. It certainly would make no difference to my daughter.’

  Nicole moved impulsively beside him. ‘Monsieur …’ she said, but he stopped her with a gesture. She subsided into silence again, watchful.

  Howard said steadily: ‘I would take him with me, if that is what you want. I would send him to the United States with the other children. But before that, I should want help to get them all away.’

  ‘Jean Henri?’

  ‘Assuredly, Monsieur.’

  The other got up, displacing the unheeded game of dominoes with his sleeve. He went and fetched the Pernod, the glasses, and the water, and poured out a drink for Howard. He offered one to the girl, but she refused.

  ‘The risk is enormous,’ he said stubbornly. ‘Think what it would mean to my daughter if you should be caught.’

  ‘Think what it would mean to that boy, if he should be caught,’ the old man said. ‘They would take him for a slave, put him in the mines and work him till he died. That’s what the Germans do with Polish children.’

  Arvers said: ‘I know that. That is what troubles me.’

  Nicole said suddenly: ‘Does Marjan want to go? You cannot make him if he does not want to. He is old, that one.’

  ‘He is only ten,’ said Arvers.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ she said, ‘he is quite grown up. We cannot take him if he does not want to go.’

  Arvers went out of the room; in a few minutes he returned, followed by the boy. He said to him: ‘This is the matter, Marjan. This monsieur here is going to England if he can escape the Germans, and from England the children with him are going to America. In America they will be safe. There are no Germans there. Would you like to go with them?’

  The boy stood silent. They explained it to him again. At last he said in almost unintelligible French: ‘In America, what should I work at?’

  Howard said: ‘For a time you would have to go to school, to learn English and the American way of living. At school they would teach you to earn your living in some trade. What do you want to do when you grow up?’

  Without any hesitation the boy said: ‘I want to kill Germans.’

  There was a momentary silence. Arvers said: ‘That is enough about the Germans. Tell Monsieur here what trade you wish to learn in America, if he should be so kind as to take you there.’

  There was a silence.

  Nicole came forward. ‘Tell us,’ she said gently. ‘Would you like to grow up with horses? Or would you rather buy things and sell them for a profit?’ After all, she thought, it would be difficult for him to go against the characteristics of his race. ‘Would you rather do that?’

  The boy looked up at her. ‘I want to learn to shoot with a rifle from a very long way away,’ he said, ‘because you can do that from the hills when they are on the road. And I want to learn to throw a knife hard and straight. That is best in the darkness, in the narrow streets, because it does not make a noise.’

  Arvers smiled a little ruefully. ‘I am sorry, monsieur,’ he said. ‘I am afraid he is not making a very good impression.’

  The old man said nothing.

  Marjan said: ‘When do we start?’

  Howard hesitated, irresolute. This lad might be a great embarrassment to them; at the best he could only be described as a prickly customer. On the other hand, a deep pity for the child lurked in the background of his mind.

  ‘Do you want to come with us?’ he asked.

  The boy nodded his black head.

  ‘If you come with us, you will have to forget all this about the Germans,’ said the old man. ‘You will have to go to school and learn your lessons, and play baseball, and go fishing, like other boys.’

  The lad said gravely: ‘I could not kill a German for another two or three years because I am not strong enough. Not unless I could catch one asleep and drive a pitchfork into his belly as he slept, and even then he might reach out before he died and overcome me. But in America I could learn everything, and come back when I am fifteen years old, and big and strong.’

  Howard said gently: ‘There are other things to learn in America besides that.’

  The boy said: ‘I know there is a great deal to learn, monsieur. One thing, you should always go for the young women—not the men. If you get the young women, then they cannot spawn, and before long there will be no more Germans.’

  ‘That is enough,’ said Arvers sharply. ‘Go back to kitchen and stay there till I call you.’

  The boy left the room. The horse-dealer turned to Nicole. ‘I am desolated that he should have said such things,’ he said.

  The girl said: ‘He has suffered a great deal. And he is very young.’

  Arvers nodded. ‘I do not know what will become of him,’ he said morosely.

  Howard sat down in the silence which followed and took a sip of Pernod. ‘One of two things will happen to him,’ he said. ‘One is, that the Germans will catch him very soon. He may try to kill one of them, in which case they might shoot him out of hand. They will take him to their mines. He will be rebellious the whole time, and before long he will be beaten to death. That is the one thing.’

  The horse-dealer dropped into the chair on the opposite side of the table, the bottle of Pernod between them. There was something in the old man’s tone that was very familiar to him. ‘What is the other thing?’ he asked.

  ‘He will escape with us to England,’ said Howard. ‘He will end up in America, kindly treated and well cared for, and in a year or two these horrors will have faded from his mind.’

  Arvers eyed him keenly. ‘Which of those is going to happen?’

  ‘That is in your hands, monsieur. He will never escape the Germans unless you help him.’

  There was a long, long silence in the falling dusk.

  Arvers said at last: ‘I will see what I can do. To-morrow I will drive Mademoiselle to Le Conquet and we will talk it over with Jean Henri. You must stay here with the children and keep out of sight.’

  Chapter Nine

  Howard spent most of the next day sitting in the paddock in the sun, while the children played around him. His growing, stubbly beard distressed him with a sense of personal uncleanliness, but it was policy to let it grow. Apart from that, he was feeling well; the rest was welcome and refreshing.

  Madame dragged an old cane reclining chair from a dusty cellar and wiped it over with a cloth for him; he thanked her and installed himself in it. The children had the kitten, Jo-Jo, in the garden and were stuffing it with copious draughts of milk and anything that they could get it to eat. Presently it escaped and climbed up into the old man’s lap and went to sleep.

  After a while he found himself making whistles on a semi-production basis, while the children stood around and watched.

  From time to time the Polish boy, Marjan, appeared by the paddock gate and stood looking at them, curious, inscrutable. Howard spoke to him and asked him to come in and join them,
but he muttered something to the effect that he had work to do, and sheered away shyly. Presently he would be back again, watching the children as they played. The old man let him alone, content not to hurry the friendship.

  In the middle of the afternoon, suddenly, there was a series of heavy explosions over in the west. These mingled with the sharp crack of gunfire; the children stopped their games and stared in wonder. Then a flight of three single-engined fighter aeroplanes got up like partridges from some field not very far away and flew over them at about two thousand feet, heading towards the west and climbing at full throttle as they went.

  Ronnie said wisely: ‘That’s bombs, I know. They go whee … before they fall, and then they go boom. Only it’s so far off you can’t hear the whee part.’

  ‘Whee … Boom!’ said Sheila. Pierre copied her, and presently all the children were running round wheeing and booming.

  The real detonations grew fewer, and presently died in the summer afternoon.

  ‘That was the Germans bombing someone, wasn’t it, Mr. Howard?’ asked Ronnie.

  ‘I expect so,’ he replied. ‘Come and hold this bark while I bind it.’ In the production of whistles the raid faded from their minds.

  In the later afternoon Nicole returned with Arvers. Both were very dirty, and the girl had a deep cut on the palm of one hand, roughly bandaged. Howard was shocked at her appearance.

  ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘whatever happened? Has there been an accident?’

  She laughed a little shrilly. ‘It was the British,’ she said. ‘It was an air raid. We were caught in Brest—this afternoon. But it was the British, monsieur, that did this to me.’

  Madame Arvers came bustling up with a glass of brandy. Then she hustled the girl off into the kitchen. Howard was left in the paddock, staring out towards the west.

  The children had only understood half of what had happened. Sheila said: ‘It was the bad aeroplanes that did that to Nicole, monsieur, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Good aeroplanes don’t do that sort of thing.’

  The child was satisfied with that. ‘It must have been a very, very bad aeroplane to do that to Nicole.’

  There was general agreement on that point. Ronnie said: ‘Bad aeroplanes are German aeroplanes. Good aeroplanes are English ones.’

  He made no attempt to unravel that one for them.

  Presently Nicole came out into the garden, white-faced and with her hand neatly bandaged. Madame hustled the children into the kitchen for their supper.

  Howard asked after her hand. ‘It is nothing,’ she said. ‘When a bomb falls, the glass in all the windows flies about. That is what did it.’

  ‘I am so sorry.’

  She turned to him. ‘I would not have believed that there would be so much glass in the streets,’ she said. ‘In heaps it was piled. And the fires—houses on fire everywhere. And dust, thick dust that smothered everything.’

  ‘But how did you come to be mixed up in it?’

  She said: ‘It just happened. We had been to Le Conquet, and after déjeuner we set out in the motor-car to return here. And passing through Brest, Aristide wanted to go to the Bank, and I wanted tooth-powder and some other things—little things, you understand. And it was while Aristide was in the Bank and I was in the shops in the Rue de Siam that it happened.’

  ‘What did happen?’ he asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It was an aeroplane that came racing low over the roofs—so low that one could see the number painted on the body; the targets on the wings showed us that it was English. It swung round over the Harbour and dropped its bombs near the Port Militaire, and then another of them came, and another—many of them. It was the German ships in the harbour, I think, that they were bombing. But several of them dropped their bombs in a long line, and these lines spread right into the town. There were two bombs that hit houses in the Rue de Siam, and three or more in the Rue Louis Pasteur. And where a bomb fell, the house fell right down, not five feet high, Monsieur—truly, that was all that could be seen. And there were fires, and clouds of smoke and dust, and glass—glass everywhere …’

  There was a little silence. ‘Were many people hurt?’ he asked at last.

  She said: ‘I think very many.’

  He was very much upset. He felt that something should have happened to prevent this. He was terribly concerned for her, and a little confused.

  She said presently: ‘You must not distress yourself on my account, Monsieur Howard. I assure you, I am quite all right, and so is Aristide.’ She laughed shortly. ‘At least, I can say that I have seen the Royal Air Force at work. For many months I longed to see that.’

  He shook his head, unable to say anything.

  She laid her hand upon his arm. ‘Many of the bombs fell in the Port Militaire,’ she said gently. ‘One or two went wide, but that was not intended. I think they may have hit the ships.’ She paused, and then she said: ‘I think John would have been very pleased.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said heavily, ‘I suppose he would have been.’

  She took his arm. ‘Come in the salon and we will drink a Pernod together, and I will tell you about Jean Henri.’

  They went together into the house. Aristide was not about; in the salon Howard sat down with the girl. He was still distressed and upset; Nicole poured out a Pernod for him and added a little water. Then she poured a smaller one for herself.

  ‘About Jean Henri,’ she said. ‘He is not to appear in this himself. Aristide will not have that, for the sake of Marie. But in Le Conquet there is a young man called Simon Focquet, and he will take a boat across with you.’

  The old man’s heart leaped, but all he said was: ‘How old is this young man?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Twenty—twenty-two, perhaps. He is de Gaullist.’

  ‘What is that, mademoiselle?’

  She said: ‘There is a General de Gaulle in England with your armies, one of our younger Generals. In France nobody knew much about him, but now he will carry on the battle from England. He is not approved by our Government of Vichy, but many of our young men are slipping away to join him, some by way of Spain and others in boats across the Manche. That is how Simon Focquet wishes to go, because he is a fishing-boy, and knows boats very well.’

  ‘But the Germans will stop that, surely.’

  She nodded. ‘Already all traffic has been stopped. But the boats are still allowed to fish around the coast and by Ushant. It will be necessary to devise something.’

  He said: ‘Where will he get the boat?’

  ‘Aristide has arranged that for us. Jean Henri will hire one of his boats for fishing to this young man, and Simon then will steal it when he leaves for England. Jean Henri will be the first to complain to the gendarmerie, and to the Germans, that his boat has been stolen. But Aristide will pay him for it secretly. You should pay Aristide, if you have so much money.’

  He nodded. ‘How much will it be?’

  She said: ‘Five thousand five hundred francs.’

  He thought for a moment. Then he pulled out his wallet from his hip pocket, opened with the deliberation of age, and studied a document. ‘I seem to have forty pounds left on my letter of credit,’ he said. ‘Will that be enough?’

  She said: ‘I think so. Aristide will want all the payment that you can make because he is peasant, Monsieur, you understand. But he wishes to help us, and he will not stop the venture for that reason.’

  Howard said: ‘I would see that he got the difference when the war is over.’

  They talked of this for a little time. Then Nicole got up from the table. ‘I must go and see the children in their beds,’ she said. ‘Madame Arvers has been very kind, but one should not leave everything to her.’

  ‘I will come too,’ he said. ‘They have been very good children all day, and no trouble.’

  The children were all sleeping in one room, the two girls in the bed and the three little boys upon a mattress on the floor, covered with roug
h blankets. The peasant woman was tucking them up; she smiled broadly as Nicole and the old man came in, and disappeared back into the kitchen. Ronnie said: ‘My blanket smells of horses.’

  Nothing was more probable, the old man thought. He said: ‘I expect you’ll dream that you’re going for a ride all night.’

  Sheila said: ‘May I go for a ride, too?’

  ‘If you’re very good.’

  Rose said: ‘May we stay here now?’

  Nicole sat down on her bed. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Don’t you want to see your father in London?’

  La petite Rose said: ‘I thought London was a town.’

  ‘So it is. A very big town.’

  ‘I like being in the country like this,’ Rose said. ‘This is like it was where we used to live.’

  Ronnie said: ‘But we’re all going to London.’

  ‘Not all of you,’ the old man said. ‘You and Sheila are going to live with your Aunt Margaret at Oxford.’

  ‘Are we? Is Rose going to live with Aunt Margaret, too?’

  ‘No. Rose is going to live with her daddy in London.’

  Sheila said: ‘Is Pierre going to live with Aunt Margaret?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Pierre and Willem are going to America to live with my daughter. Did you know I had a grown-up daughter, older than Nicole? She’s got a little boy of her own.’

  They stared at him incredulously. ‘What’s his name?’ Ronnie asked at last.

  ‘Martin,’ the old man said. ‘He’s the same age as Pierre.’

  Pierre stared at them. ‘Won’t you be coming with us?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Howard said. ‘I think I shall have work to do in England.’

  His lip trembled. ‘Won’t Rose be coming?’

  Nicole slipped down by his bed. ‘It’s going to be lovely in America,’ she said gently. ‘There will be bright lights at night-time, not like the black-out we have here. There is no bombing, nor firing guns at people from the air. There will be plenty to eat, and nice, sweet things like we all used to have. You will live at a place called “Coates Harbor” on Long Island, where Madame Costello has a great big house in the country. And there is a pony for you to ride, and dogs to make friends with, like we all used to have before the war when we had food for dogs. And you will learn to sail a boat, and to swim and dive like the English and Americans do, and to catch fish for pleasure. And you will feel quite safe then, because there is no war in America.’