by John Wilcox
Indeed she was. Deftly, Marie bathed the swollen joint and then applied a cold compress which she bandaged over instep and ankle before securing with a safety pin. De Vitrac watched the proceedings and then, with a nod, mounted the steps. Maria collected her bits and pieces and was about to follow him when Gladwin caught her wrist.
“No,” he said. “Don’t go yet. Can you spare a moment just to stay and talk?”
Her nose seemed to tilt as she smiled, as if in happy recognition of the suggested intimacy. “I think not. I have work to do.”
“Leave it for a moment and talk to your patient, like a good nurse.” He looked around. “It is very… lonely down here. Nothing to read, nothing really to do.”
Her eyes widened. “Ah. Would you like books to read? Though I am not sure we have any in English.”
“No. Stay and talk. Just for a moment.”
She lowered her eyes briefly in that by-now familiar gesture of modesty. “Very well. For a moment.”
“Good.” Gladwin shifted on the narrow bed. “Here, come and sit down.”
She arranged herself demurely on the edge of the bed. “What would you like to talk about, Will Gladwin?” She spoke softly, and a touch coquettishly.
Gladwin decided to start tangentially. He gestured to the crutch. “This was your husband’s? Did he fight with the French – was he wounded?”
She nodded. “Yes, he was a captain in the artillery. He was wounded in the leg when the Germans broke through in May 1940. He still walks with a… what is the word… limp, yes, limp, although he tries to hide it. This is one reason why the Germans have left him alone here on the farm. Many fit men have been taken to work in factories in Germany or here in France.” She spoke with unaccustomed vehemence.
“Forgive me for asking, Marie, but does your husband…er…does he feel any dislike of the British? Maybe a little bitterness?”
She gave him a sharp glance. “There is, perhaps, a little… what will I say… history there. In the Great War, his father was killed at Verdun, while your generals were trying to make up their mind to attack on the Somme and take away the pressure on our army. Then his brother died helping the British retreat to Dunkirk in 1940. It is sad, you know? But Henri is an honourable man and we all hate the Boche. That is the important thing.”
“Of course.” Gladwin felt uncomfortable and wished that he had not been so direct in his questioning. What right did he have to question a man who was risking two lives on his behalf? He cleared his throat.
“But it is you I really want to know about,” he said. “Do you mind telling me how old you are? I know that that is not the sort of thing a man should ask a woman – at least, not in my country – but I want to know more about you… as well as your husband,” he added lamely.
She smiled. “Oh, I am twenty-two years old, although sometimes I feel older – much, much older. How old are you?”
“Me? I’m an old man of twenty-nine.”
“Twenty-nine.” She nodded her head solemnly and looked into the middle distance. “Yes, that is about right, I think.”
“What? What is right?”
She started and flushed. “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking that that was a nice age to be.”
“No it isn’t. It’s too damned old. Anyway, how long have you been married? When did you meet your husband?”
“We have been married for two years.” Something of a mask had now dropped over her features, which were so animated when they were joking and half-flirting. “I seem to have known him all my life – and perhaps longer. We grew up together, although, of course, he was much older than me. But he was always kind and helpful to me, like an older brother, almost. It seemed… natural, you know, that we should marry.”
Gladwin felt embarrassed again. “I am sorry,” he said. “It must seem that I am prying.”
“No, no.” The smile came back, causing him to catch his breath. “It is natural that you should ask me.”
“Oh, is it?”
“Yes. What else would you like to know?”
Gladwin could not resist smiling back at her. Her directness and quaint manner of speaking made him feel that he was talking to someone from another world, some childlike Mary Rose, from Barrie’s play, who had strayed in from another time and another place. But a fascinating, stirring woman for all that. “All right, then,” he said. “Do you have children? I cannot hear anyin the house.”
She shook her head. “No. We have not been blessed.” Her gaze dropped to the floor again. “It is a source of… unhappiness to my husband, I think.”
“Oh, I am sorry. But there is plenty of time.”
“Oh yes.” She nodded her head slowly and smiled at him rather sadly. “Time. Yes. There is always plenty of that. Now, what of you? Are you married, do you have children?”
Gladwin drew in his breath. He always felt uncomfortable talking of his marriage and, for some reason, he experienced particular unease in discussing his private life with this girl woman. “Yes, I am married,” he said shortly.
“And do you have children?”
“Yes. One little girl, Caitlin. She is only six months old.”
“Caitlin. It is a beautiful name. They will call her Kate when she is older.”
“Yes, it has happened already.”
They both fell silent and looked away from each other. Gladwin could feel a tautness between them, as though a string had been drawn around their waists and was pulling them together. Marie slowly raised her eyes and looked into his and Gladwin was amazed to see that they were full of tears. She began to put out her hand to touch his face and then, suddenly, stood and moved away.
“I must go,” she said, and hurried up the steps, lowering the hatch behind her.
Gladwin stared at the hatch as though he could will her to reappear and then slowly put out his hand to touch the warm indentation on the mattress where she had been sitting. He sat for a moment and then lay back on the pillow, both hands behind his head.
This girl – no, this married woman – intrigued him. He had certainly not fallen in love. That would be ridiculous. But she possessed a strange aura and sent out peculiar, haunting signals to him, whose meaning he could not quite define. Yet, although at times she seemed to be to be coquettish, she was no tart. There was nothing vulgar about her. She seemed to possess an innocence that removed any hint of carnal flirtation from her behaviour. Rather it was as though she was gently opening negotiations or even attempting to renew a once strong relationship.
This thought turned his mind to Kathleen, once the only girl that he thought he could ever love. Lying on his back in this French cellar, he faced the fact that, for some time, that love had lain like an embarrassing memory in his heart; shallow and, he realised, originally founded on lust and conditioned by his own innocence and inexperience. Well, somehow he would have to face up to the problem when he returned home. If he returned home, that is. The Lancaster… Chuck dead and five of the others also. But who was the sixth? Who floated down under the other parachute? Well, he would know soon enough. For the moment, he must prepare himself for the escape.
He reached for the crutch and, thrusting the padded crosspiece under his armpit, hauled himself erect. He found that, with care, he could hobble around the cellar without causing too much pain to the injured joint. He explored the room with interest. In fact, there was little to examine: the empty wine racks, less than twenty bottles left on the one nearest the door, a few rough planks of wood stacked in a corner, the barrels and the partition behind which lay his bed. Idly, he selected one dusty bottle and held it to the light. It was a Saint Emilion 1934. Was it a good year? How the hell would he know – he a beer-drinking Welshman from the border country?
Then, bottle in hand, he paused, his brain racing. This was an old house in good farming country. France was a wine-drinking country. Every house such as this would have a wine cellar, even in a non wine-growing area like the Pas-de-Calais. The Germans were not fools and they would
know this. Why had they not found the cellar on previous visits? Why had they not looked for it?
He replaced the bottle with care and leaned on his crutch, his brow furrowed. Sooner or later a German officer would conduct a proper search of this old house and they must find this cellar. If they did so and discovered him then it probably meant death for de Vitrac and Marie and probably himself also. He looked around the cellar for inspiration and then focussed on the corner partition in front of which some of the casks were stacked, with others strewn about the stone floor. If he piled up enough of the barrels would they conceal his little compartment behind? Maybe, but if they were full he would not be able to lift the damned things, let alone make a wall of them.
He hopped across to the first of the discarded casks and gave it a prod with his crutch. Empty, fine. Discarding the crutch carefully, he bent his good leg and found that he could lift the barrel well enough to place it on top of the pile, then another. He realised that the casks lying haphazardly on the stone flags were all, in fact, empty, left there probably when de Vitrac went to war, leaving no man behind to tidy up unimportant detritus like this. Gradually, he was able to lift them until he had built a complete wall to the ceiling, with a right-angled turn and a small space allowing him to enter the compartment. He put one barrel partly blocking this entrance then, awkwardly, climbed over it and placed three barrels on the inside, where he could position them from within to complete the wall in an emergency.
He took the last three down again, hobbled to the centre of the cellar and inspected his work. Did the wall look hollow? Possibly.
On an impulse, he lit a candle and then unscrewed the light bulb from the low ceiling. The flickering yellow light was much less revealing and, from the centre of the cellar at least, the barrels looked as though they were piled against the wall. Sleeping within the narrow confines of his hiding place was now going to be even more claustrophobic, but better that than discovery. His efforts had made his ankle throb again but he felt satisfied that he had been able to do something to help the de Vitracs in an emergency. He took his candle to his narrow bed and lay down with something approaching a sense of achievement.
CHAPTER 3
As if on cue, the Germans arrived exactly one hour later. Deep in his hideaway, Gladwin heard the faraway barking of Bertie. Then the trapdoor was held open for a moment and de Vitrac shouted: “Germans! Put out lights.” Then the hatch was slammed down.
Gladwin swung his good leg to the floor and hopped to where the three barrels were stacked inside his narrow opening. Cursing as he wrenched his ankle, he moved them to the entry and re-stacked them. Then he returned to the bed, blew out the candle and prepared to wait. No sooner had he sat, however, than he stood up again, fumbled in the dark for his uniform jacket and put it on. Better to be in uniform if he was to be caught; less chance of being put up against a wall and summarily shot. Then he waited, his heart in his mouth.
At first he heard nothing, for the stones above effectively muffled most noises. Then came – as he knew it would – a heavy thumping on the hatch way, a scratching and it was suddenly thrown open. He heard what was undoubtedly a triumphant shout in German and, faintly in the background, the level tones of de Vitrac. There was a scrape of jackboots on the stone steps and the click of the light switch. It brought no illumination, of course, and Gladwin, crouching on the bed attempting to look through a chink in the wall of barrels, blessed his foresight in removing the light bulb. Would they have an electric torch? That might reveal the gaps between the barrels and enable them to shine a light through. He stood more chance in candlelight.
Another shouted command in German and then he heard a match striking and, faintly through his peep hole, saw the yellow gleam of a candle. Thank God for that! The jackboots descending the steps were followed by others. He heard wine bottles lifted and replaced and the planks of wood picked up and thrown down. Then the footsteps approached his wall. A boot kicked one of the barrels on the bottom row and, for one horrible moment, Gladwin expected the whole wall to topple. But the bottom line of casks and the two rows above contained liquid and the wall did not move.
Two feet away from him, Gladwin heard a German voice growl: “Was ist das?”
“Cidre,” responded de Vitrac, in that cool, unemotional voice.
Gladwin heard a tap turned and the splash of liquid on the stone floor. Then the unmistakeable sound of a finger being sucked. “Gut,” said the German. The hidden man bit his lip. He did not dare to look through his peep hole but now stood with his back to the barrel wall, his arms outstretched, hoping to block out any view of the interior if a torch was brought and also to give some stability to his precarious barricade. If, however, the searchers chose to tap on the barrels above the third line in the wall, they would realise that they were empty and therefore easy to move, so prompting the dismantling of the wall. Again, he held his breath.
For what seemed an eternity Gladwin remained in that position, hardly daring to inhale. He could hear nothing from the other side of the wall. What the hell were they doing? Then he heard the German officer grunt and bark a command. The jackboots thumped their way up the stone steps and the hatch door was thrown down with a thump.
Gladwin did not move for a full three minutes, not wishing to challenge his luck and expecting at any moment to hear the trap door thrown open again. But nothing. Then, faintly, he heard Bertie barking again. The tomb-like silence of the cellar was unbroken for some considerable time, perhaps even half an hour, and Gladwin softly moved and sat on his bed in the darkness. Then, at last, the trap door was opened gently and he heard de Vitrac’s voice.
“Gladwin, I think we are safe now. The Germans are gone. We do not know how you did it, but you saved us all. I am coming down.”
A candle flickered and, stiffly, Gladwin began to dismantle the entrance to his hiding place, half expecting, as he stepped from behind the barrel wall, to see an SS man with a pistol standing behind de Vitrac on the stone steps. But the Frenchman was alone. He advanced with hand extended and the two men stood shaking hands, the candle sending ghostly shadows flickering across the cellar walls.
“You were behind the barrels, then?”
Gladwin forced a grin, although his stomach was still churning. “Yes,” he said, “I was drinking your cider. He was right. It was gut.”
De Vitrac smiled and this time there seemed to be real warmth in his eyes, although perhaps it was a trick of the candlelight. “Mon ami, forget about the cider. I think you have earned a little good wine tonight – in fact, we all have. We shall eat together this evening in our dining room and Marie will try and find something good for us to have. The Germans have other searches to make so they will not be back here. If they do…” he gave a Gallic shrug of the shoulders, “then you must just disappear into the air again. You obviously find it easy.”
A movement at the top of the steps made Gladwin look up. Marie was bending down to see through the hatchway and looking directly at him. Her face was indistinct in the candlelight but he could see that she was smiling. As she turned away, he caught the glisten of tears on her cheeks.
*
That evening, Gladwin was allowed to visit the de Vitracs’ bathroom to take a much needed bath. He also met for the first time the elderly couple who helped the de Vitracs on the farm and in the house: Andre, a veteran of the Battle of the Marne, and his wife, Josephine. Then he was ushered into the carefully-shuttered dining room of the farm house. He looked around him with interest. The room was panelled with a wood that, like the low ceiling, had absorbed decades – perhaps centuries – of tobacco smoke, cooking aromas and the ambience of good company and fellowship, so that it almost glowed in the light from the candles. These were set in fine wrought iron sticks placed on the whitest of linen tablecloths. The table itself was long and could have taken twenty or so diners, but, as it was, the three of them sat at the end, companionably close, with Marie and Gladwin either side of de Vitrac, who presided at the head. A wood f
ire burned in the grate.
Gladwin slowly shook his head. Only twenty-four hours ago he had been climbing into his flying suit, trying to stop his stomach from fluttering. Now, he could have been on holiday, full of anticipation of fine, bourgeois cooking and with the added frisson of sitting facing a beautiful young woman. The events of the last hours – the cannon shells crashing into the Lancaster, Chuck’s broken voice on the intercom, the flames, the pain, and the presence of a German officer just two feet away from him – they all seemed to have come from a disturbing dream. He dipped his spoon into the steaming vegetable soup before him. Delicious, of course.
He looked up and caught Marie’s eye. Quickly, she flashed a glance at de Vitrac, who was busy cutting bread, then looked back at Gladwin. Slowly, she tilted her head to one side and regarded him with wide eyes, as though in wonder, as if she could not believe he was there. Then came that radiant, nose-tilted smile. Her lips pursed for a moment – was it a silent half kiss, or was his imagination running away with him? – then she returned her gaze to her soup bowl, still smiling. The Welshman found himself smiling in turn at her bowed head, then he forced himself to look away.
He cleared his throat. “You are sure that the Germans will not come back, Monsieur de Vitrac? I would hate to have to run to that hatchway.”
The Frenchman slowly shook his head. “Please call me Henri,” he said, “and I shall call you Bill, if I may – unless you prefer Will, which seems to be the way Marie addresses you?”
Gladwin felt himself blushing. “No,” he said. “Bill is… er… fine.”
