by John Wilcox
“Vous êtes aviateur?” The voice was soft and undemanding.
“Er… oui. Je suis anglais. Non.” Damn it. “Pas anglais. Je suis gallois.”
The man threw back his head and laughed. To Gladwin, it was the most welcome sound on earth. “Gallois! Don’t tell me you’re, what’s-his-name, the bloody Duke of Windsor!” The English was perfect and quite unaccented.
“What?” Gladwin’s jaw dropped. This meeting was becoming surreal. And then he understood. “Oh, you mean the Prince of Wales. No. I’m just a humble rear gunner from Wales. You see, we don’t like to be called English when we are not.”
“Ah yes.” The voice was now almost languorous. “What is it the Yorkshire people say… er… there’s nothing quite so queer as people, or something like that.”
“Oh, there’s nowt so queer as folk, do you mean? Good lord, your English is good. You can’t be, can you…?”
“English? No. But I lived there for quite some time when I was younger. Welsh, you say. Where is your home?”
“Near Brecon.”
“Ah, just by Swansea. I know it.”
“No. Brecon’s nowhere near there. It’s border country, in fact.”
The Frenchman’s languorous manner suddenly changed. “Yes, I know that. I think we can stop the testing now. One can never be sure that the Germans are not planting pseudo escapers on us. Look. We have to get you away from here. Can you walk?”
Gladwin pushed himself awkwardly from the ground onto his sound leg and hung onto the bush. “Sorry. I either broke or sprained my ankle when I landed.” He grimaced. “I don’t think I can go far.”
“Don’t worry. My house is only five minutes away. You can lean on me. But we must go now. I saw you come down so others could have done so, too. Maybe the Germans, though they are based about seven kilometres away.”
“What about that armoured column?”
“What armoured column?
“I heard what sounded like a column of tanks or armoured cars roaring up the road the other side of these trees. It made me shit scared.”
The Frenchman grunted. “No. Impossible. I would have heard and, anyway, there is no road there. Come on. Put your arm around my shoulder. We must move.” He whistled softly to the dog, who was nuzzling through the undergrowth in the wood. “Bertie. Bertie. Ici, Bertie.”
Gladwin put his foot to the ground and a shaft of pain like a knife thrust shot up his leg. “Sorry,” he gasped. “I’ll have to lean heavily.”
“Pas de problem. Here.” The Frenchman leaned down a little – he was more than three inches taller than Gladwin – and pulled the Welshman’s arm across his shoulder, putting his other arm round the injured man’s waist. Gladwin caught a glimpse of a large, acquiline nose and a well-trimmed beard, felt rough tweed on his cheek and then the two set off, along the edge of the field, the dog roaming ahead, sniffing the ground. Before long they turned into the wood itself, just as the moon slipped from behind a cloud and sent shafts of milky light through the trees to illumine their path.
It was desperately slow going because Gladwin could hardly bear to put his injured foot to the ground and perspiration poured down his face so that he could barely see. The Frenchman sensed the other’s pain and discomfort. “Not far, now,” he said. “We must keep going. There is a curfew here, so we must not be caught in the open. You can rest when we reach the house. Just think of it as a stroll in the Brecon… what d’you call them… Beeches?”
“Beacons,” gasped Gladwin through gritted teeth.
“Ah yes. Beacons.” He chuckled. “I had really forgotten. I was not testing you.”
Gladwin had no concept of the kind of house they had reached, for his head was down and his whole being was concentrating on progressing while putting as little weight as possible on his right ankle. The right side of his body seemed to be on fire, although, strangely, that particular burning sensation in his loins seemed not to have reappeared. It was but a small mercy, however, for the pain from his ankle and, to a lesser extent, his ribs, virtually consumed him and he had no curiosity about his surroundings. He was on the point of collapse when the Frenchman gently leaned him against the wall of the house while he fumbled with his keys.
“Alors. We are here. Try and be quiet if you can because I do not wish to wake my wife.”
Awkwardly, the two shuffled through the door that the Frenchman carefully locked behind him. Then he gestured to a chair and Gladwin hopped to it, clutching a table to give him support. Once sitting, Gladwin mopped his brow with part of the silk parachute that, from the base still bundled inside his flying suit, was now trailing across his lap, and looked around. He was in the kitchen of what was clearly a farmhouse. A large black stove, squatting beneath a frieze of dangling copper pans, dominated one wall and a white sink, flanked by work surfaces, another. The table was bare of cloth but seemed well scrubbed and was set for two places for breakfast, sparsely with only bowls and spoons. A dull red glow was evident at the bottom of the stove and despite the season and the early hour, the room remained warm. The four windows were shuttered from the inside and to Gladwin the room seemed a womb-like haven after the exigencies of the night.
The Frenchman was busying himself at a hob on the stove and, for the first time, Gladwin was able to study him. He was tall, of course – perhaps six feet – and slim, with wide shoulders. There was no sign of the bluff stolidity which Gladwin associated with farmers back home. This man wore his workmanlike tweeds with an air of casual elegance and there was precision and a touch of grace about the way he was assembling jug, cup and kettle and raking the fire under the stove to give heat for the kettle. As he bent he spoke without turning his head.
“I am sorry, my friend, that we cannot give you chocolate to drink, only coffee made of roasted wheat grains.” He looked up and smiled. “The Germans take everything that is worth eating or drinking but somehow, you know, we manage.”
Gladwin noticed that the smile had no warmth and that the blue eyes that regarded him seemed cold and almost distant. The face was handsome enough: neatly clipped Van Dyck beard through which white teeth gleamed as he spoke; brown hair, showing only early streaks of grey at the sides and brushed straight back; the forehead and cheeks unlined. The man was probably in his middle thirties and he spoke with an air of confident authority. His English was that of an academic. Yet Gladwin observed that the hands that were now slicing a long baguette were seamed and broad and there were traces of dirt under the fingernails. A farmer, then, but clearly no peasant.
Shifting in his chair in an attempt to ease his aching body, Gladwin coughed. Grateful as he was to be in this warm sanctuary, he felt ill at ease with this knowing, patrician stranger. “You are very kind to help me,” he said. “Me being here must be putting you into danger.”
The Frenchman cut black bread and shrugged his shoulders. “I have to say that is true,” he said. “The Germans now are not the confident, er, perhaps I should say, insouciant people we knew at the beginning of the occupation.” He gave Gladwin his joyless smile. “They are expecting the invasion soon and they are jumpy and vicious. French people caught helping enemy airmen are now shot out of hand. Oh, yes. It happens quite a lot, now. In this part of France, on your route home, we have many, er, visitors.”
“Where are we, then?”
“In the Pas-de-Calais, about forty kilometres from the coast.”
Gladwin frowned.
“Yes my friend. You were nearly home. It is very bad luck.”
“It can’t be helped. What is this place called?”
“Tramecourt.”
The name meant nothing to Gladwin. As though reading his thoughts the Frenchman continued. “It is a very small place, more a what-do-you-call-it? hamlet, than a village. I farm here, as my family has for many generations. The soil is good.”
He poured water into the jug, added a precious few drops of milk and took the mug and a plate of bread and butter to Gladwin and then brought his own mug and pe
rched on the edge of the table. The Welshman put the mug to his lips. The coffee tasted of mud but it was hot and welcome. He nodded through the steam from the cup. “Thank you. What will you do now – hand me over to the Germans?”
For the first time the Frenchman’s imperturbability left him. His eyes widened in anger. “Mon Dieu, non. Of course not. We are not collaborationists here. My friend, we hate the Germans. No, we will try to help you, of course.” He regained his composure and held out his hand. “I am forgetting my manners. My name is Henri de Vitrac and I welcome you to my house.”
Gladwin leaned across and shook it. “Gladwin. Bill Gladwin. Flight Lieutenant.”
De Vitrac’s eyebrows rose. “Flight Lieutenant! You are, er, senior, I think to be an air gunner, yes?”
“How would you know that?” Gladwin spoke sharply.
“Ah, this house has received one or two visitors like you since you began flying over us to bomb inland.” His voice suddenly took on a keener note. “You are bombing more now, of course, and many French men and women have been killed.” He coughed, as though in apology, and continued softly as before. “I do not like this bombing but, over the months, I have become familiar with your ranks. I think a gunner is usually a sergeant, is that not so?”
“That’s true.” Gladwin marked the reference to French deaths but summoned up a smile. “I’m just a bit long in the tooth, that’s all.”
“Long in the tooth. I do not know that expression. But its meaning is clear. As in the horse, you are old for the job?”
Gladwin sighed. His right foot now seemed to be just a throbbing extremity hanging from a framework of pain and he yearned to lie down and close his eyes. This exchange of semantics with the Frenchman was beginning to lose its appeal. He nodded. “Yes, old for the job. Too bloody old by far.”
As if taking the hint, de Vitrac stood up and consulted his wrist watch. “It will soon be dawn and the Germans may well come calling. We must hide you. Tomorrow, I will fetch the doctor but now you must sleep.”
As if noticing it for the first time, he carefully removed the parachute that was falling across the Welshman’s lap. “We must get rid of this,” he said, gathering it in folds. “It is a pity that we must destroy it because Marie could certainly use it. But one of our families has already been betrayed because the wife could not resist using this material.” He smiled. “Whatever the Paris couturiers say, parachute silk does not make the best blouses. We must bury it.” He threw the bundle onto the floor. “Now, if you have finished your coffee, lean on me and I will take you to your bed. It will not be easy, because you must go down steps, but it is the only way.”
The two men shuffled through into a corridor and then into another, larger room. There, with a deftness that obviously came from practice, de Vitrac pushed aside a wall-side table, kicked away a rug, and inserted a small knife into what appeared to be a crack in the stone floor, lifting up a block of stone with surprising ease to reveal stone steps descending into the darkness.
“When our visiting service began,” he explained, “we replaced our hatchway here with smooth wood re-painted to look like stone. We have been searched four times but the Boche has never found this.” He lit a candle. “I am afraid it is stuffy but it is not damp. Please do not drink my wine down there. Here, lean on my back as we go down together.”
He descended a few steps and then hunched his back so that Gladwin could lean on his shoulders and together the two shuffled down the stone stairway. At the bottom de Vitrac threw a switch and the single yellow light revealed a wine cellar containing about twenty freestanding wine racks, of which only four contained bottles. The Frenchman led the way to the rear of the cellar where a wall of wooden casks – cider perhaps? – concealed a rough timber partition. Behind it stood a low bed, complete with mattress, pillow, blankets and sheets, with a small table containing candlestick, candle and matches set at its side.
De Vitrac turned and shrugged his shoulders. “It is not exactly the Ritz, Mr Gladwin,” he said, “but I think you are tired and you should sleep well enough. If you are a little claustrophobic here without light, then put a flame to the candle. But if you hear shouts from above then put it out and lie very still. The Gestapo have been here before and they may well come again. Their regional headquarters is in the town, only fifteen kilometres from here.”
Gladwin nodded. Claustrophobia was the least of his worries. “I am very grateful,” he said – and meant it. “Just one thing. In case I need to, er…”
“Ah, of course, yes. A pee-pee.” He pointed to the far wall. “We do not have a proper toilet here, Monsieur, but there is a little channel by that wall which empties into the drains.” He smiled apologetically. “I have used it in extremis. I sometimes work down here. I find it tranquil.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
The Frenchman turned on the bottom step. “In the morning, I shall not be here. But my wife, Marie, will visit you and bring you a little breakfast and see if we can put something on that ankle of yours until the doctor comes, perhaps in the afternoon. I am afraid that you should not leave this cellar until we tell you that all is clear. Now, sleep well.”
“Good night and thank you again.”
Gladwin perched on the bed and began laboriously taking off his flying suit, gritting his teeth as he pulled the trouser leg over his swollen ankle. Surprisingly, the cellar was not cold but, after the agony of removing his flying kit, he decided to retain most of his clothing anyway. Prising off his sheepskin-lined boots, he threw his uniform jacket onto the floor and then rolled into the bed still wearing his dark blue polo-necked sweater, RAF issue shirt, trousers and thick socks. He lay back onto the pillow with a sigh and the darkness seemed to fold around him like a warm cloak. It was close and heavy and he felt that, if he reached with his hand, he could grab and hold some of it, put it under the blanket and keep it as a souvenir. This was French darkness: different – cloying and deep, like a heavily-bosomed woman’s perfume. He blinked his eyes, opened them wide and looked around to catch perhaps a glimpse of light from the room above, to reassure him that he was still alive. As a little boy he would have been terrified but, now, this deep darkness would help him rest. Sighing again, he composed his tired, aching body to sleep.
His mind, however, had other ideas. As he lay, a sense of disquiet began to edge into his consciousness and he opened his eyes again and stared sightlessly into the blackness. De Vitrac… de Vitrac. A strange man to be a farmer. The hands of a labourer but the elegance of an aristocrat. There was certainly no reason to distrust him. On the contrary, he had been helpful and hospitable and if he was going to turn this fugitive over to the Gestapo then there would be no point in hiding him away and giving him a bed for the night. With a damaged ankle, Gladwin was not going to run anywhere. Anyway, the Frenchman’s excellent – no, idiomatic – English surely was evidence of some sort of affinity with the British. An Anglophobe would hardly want to tuck away in his mind the old Yorkshire saying “there’s nowt as queer as folk.” Yet Gladwin could not help recalling the Frenchman’s cold smile and the absence of expression in his eyes. There was an undercurrent of hostility lurking beneath his polite exterior, like Dracula’s butler welcoming a stranger to his master’s castle. And what about that reference to British bombs killing French people? Gladwin felt his stomach muscles contract. The house was a sanctuary and yet, somehow, it felt strange, almost surreal. The small bed, waiting in the cellar, all ready-made up with a band of white sheet neatly folded back over the blankets. It was as if they were expecting him. It was eerie. Surely they would not keep an escapers’ corner, all ready and waiting for the Gestapo to find it? That noise in the field, too, that dull, thudding rumble and the tremble in the ground under him: was the place haunted? Was de Vitrac some wraith from the past? Then he smiled to himself in the darkness. What the hell! He was alive, wasn’t he? He would rather share filthy pseudo coffee with a ghost than take a jackboot in the guts from an SS man.
H
e rolled over and snuggled into the soft pillow and directed his thoughts to the little black-eyed bundle that was Caitlin and then, guiltily, to Kathleen. Would he see either of them again? Why couldn’t he love his wife, particularly now that she had produced that sweet little girl? Why did her vulgarity still annoy him to the point of distraction? Why had he been so unaware of it before they were married? Why…? The questions continued to loom up out of the blackness until he drifted away into sleep.
*
When he awoke he was immediately aware that someone was standing by the bedside, looking down at him. The room remained in semi-darkness, the blackness lightened only a little by the open trap door above, but he sensed that he was being watched. He rolled over and looked up at the outline of a young person, silhouetted against the yellow square of the opening at the top of the steps.
“Ah, bonjour, monsieur.” The voice was that of a young woman, low and mellifluous. He could not see her face but one thing was certain: she was not the Gestapo.
“Good… er… bonjour, mademoiselle.” Awkwardly, he tried to sit up.
“Madame,” she corrected him. “Please, do not disturb yourself. There is no need to arise yet. Would you care for something to eat?”
Gladwin realised that he was extremely hungry. “Thank you. You are very kind. But I do not wish to… er… inconvenience you.”
“It is nothing, Will Gladwin. I shall return.”
With a quiet rustle of her clothing, she turned and then seemed almost to disappear, like the good fairy in a pantomime, so quickly and soundlessly did she climb the steps. Gladwin stayed looking at the yellow square of light, his jaw sagging. He had seen enough to realise that the woman was slight and, despite her married state, quite young. And – like everything else in this house – strange. Gladwin frowned. Why did she address him, in that unexpectedly informal and yet rather pedantic style, as “Will” Gladwin? He had muttered “Bill Gladwin” in introducing himself to de Vitrac. Gladwin puffed out his cheeks and shook his head. It was all too much for him. Better just see how the day progressed.
