by John Wilcox
Gladwin sighed. “Peter, we are RAF officers attempting to do our duty by evading arrest. That doesn’t make us spies. Now, for God’s sake, cheer up. Don’t they have trains in New Zealand? We can make our way, all right. Anyway, these women are marvellous. They haven’t let us down yet. Dominique will turn up. You’ll see.”
But no red-scarfed, brown-coated woman made her appearance during the next hour, as the platform emptied onto the La Rochelle train and then began to fill up again. The platform behind them, obviously serving the up-line for Paris and the north, remained strangely empty throughout this time and the reason then became apparent, with terrible clarity.
With a hiss of steam, a goods train, pulling what appeared to be a string of cattle trucks, wheezed alongside that platform and halted. Proctor shrank closer to Gladwin as the platform suddenly became populated by German troopers carrying rifles, who stood in a line as though to stop anyone from the down-line platform crossing over. Then the doors of the cattle trucks were slid back and remained open, as if awaiting their next bovine shipment. Three sinister figures dressed in polished black boots and black uniforms trimmed in silver braid now appeared and sauntered down the platform, slapping their boots idly with swagger canes to the ends of which were attached small thonged loops.
“Oh shit!” whispered Proctor. “It’s the SS.”
But the officers displayed no awareness of two itinerant Polish workers. With almost languid disinterest, they poked their heads into the waiting trucks and carried out a perfunctory inspection. Then the senior of the trio, wearing rimless spectacles and a clipped moustache – reminding Gladwin of the newsreel pictures he had seen of the dreaded SS chief, Heinrich Himmler – nodded his head back up to the entrance of the platform.
Immediately, the barriers were pulled back and a pitiful collection of civilians appeared and began to dawdle aimlessly along the quai, as though unsure of what to do or where to go. Within an instant, however, the armed guards moved towards them, like dogs herding a flock of sheep. With kicks and rifle butts, they hurried the crowd along the platform until the head of it reached the furthest cattle truck. There, the leaders of the pathetic procession were herded inside, pushed and pulled so that, standing, they virtually filled the inside of the truck and few others could be squeezed in. Those that carried suitcases or bundles were dispossessed of them, so that a small pile of these personal possessions began to grow in the middle of the platform. Some of the cases were made only of cardboard and they split as they were tossed aside by the guards, spilling out pathetic items of domestic detritus – hairbrushes, underclothes, toothbrushes. One small mantelpiece clock bounced across the platform and ended up at Proctor’s feet. He lifted his foot as though the clock was a bomb about to explode. Many children, hands clutching those of their parents, also carried toys, dolls or teddy bears. These all received the same treatment and the crying of the children now rose like a great lament, hanging over the station in a sad, despairing rebuke. The adults in the throng made no sound, nor tried to prevent their possessions being taken from them. Mutely, they shuffled along and turned into the waiting trucks.
“What the hell is going on, Taff?” asked Proctor, his eyes wide.
Gladwin, his shoulders hunched, whispered, “Jews.”
“What do you mean?”
“I read a bit about it back home, but I couldn’t believe it. Then Chauvin mentioned it again. This bastard, Laval, has done a deal with the Nazis under which some captured Frenchmen can be repatriated in exchange for about five Jews for each returned man.”
“What happens to the Jews, then?”
“They’re taken to these camps in the north. They’re supposed to be work camps. But what the hell are those poor little kids doing with them? They can’t work. And why can’t they take their possessions?”
The procession continued: elderly men with trimmed, black beards; seemingly prosperous middle-aged people, the men in homburg hats and women in fur coats; others, less wealthy, in work-a-day clothes; and, everywhere, children of various ages, all with haunted, black eyes. They shuffled along, seemingly reconciled to their fate, whatever it was to be, all but the very young uncomplaining and docile. They were stacked into the cattle trucks and then, one by one, the doors were slid along and then padlocked shut.
“Oh God!” murmured Gladwin. “They’re packed in there like sardines. There won’t be room to sit or lie. What on earth is to happen to them…?”
He looked around him. The French people on the platform had watched the operation, of course. There was no way of avoiding it. Some of the women had tears in their eyes, most of the men were looking away, as though averting their gaze would erase the whole disgusting procedure from their memories. The French railway officials at the barrier were studying their boots. The SS officers were laughing at some private joke. The leader waved his swagger stick – or was it a whip? – towards the head of the train and then, with a hiss of steam and chatter of dolly wheels, the line of trucks began slowly to move away. The German soldiers shouldered their rifles and moved towards the exit, followed by the SS officers, seeming priestly in their black, if it had not been for the jaunty angle of their peaked caps and the strut of their walk.
Gladwin spoke slowly and softly, as though to himself. “These… people… are… barbarians,” he said. “And I worried about killing three of them! Oh God – give me a gun again!”
Proctor spoke urgently. “Come on, Taff. Don’t do anything stupid now. We have got to concentrate on getting out of here.”
“Yes, I suppose you are right.” Gladwin closed his eyes for a moment. Then, opening them, he looked along the platform. “Where the hell is Dominique?”
But the lady in the brown woollen coat and the red headscarf did not make an appearance. There was still no sign of her as the 8.10 down-train to Bayonne rumbled into the station twenty minutes late.
Gladwin quickly weighed the options. He had no idea how long it would be before the next train for their destination arrived – probably next morning. To wait on the platform or even within the station would be to attract attention and invite interrogation. And yet, they had no idea where they should go in Bayonne… Dumais had said something about an Abbe – but who and where? He made a quick decision.
“Come on, Peter,” he said. “We’re going to the sunshine.” He grabbed Proctor before the other could protest, wrenched open the door handle and pushed him inside, joining a long stream of passengers edging their way along the dimly-lit, narrow corridor. The train seemed full. Good. More difficult for the Germans to check warrants and identities, but hell if they couldn’t find seats. His ankle was beginning to hurt again.
The procession along the corridor shed its numbers as seats were filled and the two fugitives eventually found somewhere to sit, towards the front of the train, in a crowded compartment. Darkness had long since descended and air raid precautions meant that the compartment was unlit. The two tired and anxious men slotted between other sleeping forms and found comfort in darkness and anonymity.
So it continued through the night, with sleep only broken by shaking stops at Poitiers, Angoulême and, in a misty dawn, Bordeaux. Here their documents were inspected and accepted without question and the train, now carrying considerably fewer passengers, rumbled on down the west coast of France towards the bottom of the Bay of Biscay and the French border with Spain. Occasionally, Gladwin caught a glimpse of dark grey sea and whisps of spume floating like bridal veils from the wave tops and he thought of how close they had come to boarding the British boat from that Breton beach and crossing the narrow sea to England. He knew that they faced new dangers in Bayonne, for this was known to be the jumping-off ground for the crossing of the Pyrenees by escapers. It was the cross-roads, the gathering point for fugitives which led on to the border town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Well… they would just have to play it by ear. Luck had been with them so far. Would she hang along for the rest of the ride? Defiantly, he took out his silk green scarf and tied it rou
nd his neck, compromising its exoticism by tucking the ends carefully down under his by now very grubby shirt.
*
Sleepy-eyed and feeling dirty and dishevelled, the two men stepped down onto the platform at Bayonne and were met with a bright blue sky and a distinctively warmer temperature. As with Brittany, they could sense the salty smell of the sea and it lifted Gladwin’s heart. It sank again, however, when he saw that the exit from the station was manned, not only by the customary French guard and a member of the Wehrmacht, but also by two distinctly suspicious-looking men in trilby hats and long grey macintoshes. The queue to leave the station bunched around the exit and Gladwin could see that all documentation was being studied carefully. It was doubtful if pseudo-Polish would open barriers here.
“We’re fucked, Taff,” said Proctor predictably. “Time to give it in now, surely?”
“No. This way.” Gladwin pushed open the doors of the station café, with the aim of buying coffee and working out some sort of plan. In fact, no plan was needed. Facing them, on the other side of the room, were two swing doors leading out to the street. There were no guards to be seen here and Gladwin, towing a hesitant Proctor, rushed to open the doors for two elderly ladies and, accepting their grateful smiles, followed on behind them out of the café onto the busy thoroughfare.
“Just keep walking,” hissed Gladwin. And they did, Gladwin leading, swinging along as though he knew exactly where he was going. After ten minutes, they stopped outside a grubby workmen’s café. “Breakfast, I think,” said the Welshman, and he pushed open the doors and sat down in a corner of the room at a small, round table, stained and dressed with two rush placemats.
“Bloody hell, Taffy,” whispered Proctor, “is your French good enough for this?”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re Polish, remember? Anyway, I’m hungry.”
There were only two other men in the room, sitting at separate tables and sipping coffee. They seemed to be workmen. A large, pleasant-faced woman, with a maternal bosom, came from behind the bar and nodded amicably enough, although she looked them up and down keenly. “Messieurs?”
“Bonjour Madame,” said Gladwin, trying to sound more at ease than he felt, and dimly recalling his last holiday in France. “Deux cafés t, s’il vous plaît.”
“Cafés ?” Then she spoke quickly, too quickly for Gladwin to understand.
He shrugged his shoulders and gambled. “Bien,” he said. “Ça ne fait rien.”
It seemed to work, for she nodded and walked away. “What did she say?” asked Proctor.
“I haven’t the faintest idea. We’ll just have to have what’s given to us.”
It may well have been that the proprietress was apologising for the fact that the coffee was ersatz, for it tasted foul. But the black bread and and thin jam was good enough and they were given a little bowl of beet sugar. The two men wolfed it all down.
“How much money do you have?” asked Gladwin. “No. No. Don’t empty your bloody pockets. Just tell me.”
“I’ve still got the notes from the escape kit. I think it’s about two thousand francs.”
“Yes, so have I. Plus the few francs Chauvin gave us. That’s about twenty-five quid between us. That’s not going to get us far. I reckon we’ve got to travel about fifteen miles to the frontier, or something like that. We could try to walk it, but I don’t fancy doing that in broad daylight, and it would be risky at night because of the curfew.” The two men had been speaking quietly, with their heads close together and Gladwin looked up and noticed that the proprietress was looking at them. He smiled at her and she smiled back. So far, so good.
He turned back to Proctor. “Dumais said something about an Abbe operating a safe house here. We’ve got to try and find him.”
“Yes, but how?”
“Well, where there’s an Abbe, there should be an Abbey. Find that and we’ve found him, I should think.” He looked around him. The café was now empty but the proprietress was still at the counter, polishing glasses. He decided to take a risk. He stood and walked to her.
“Excusez-moi, Madame.”
“Oui.” She put down the glass and smiled.
“Er… je suis polonais et je cherche l’abbé.”
The smile disappeared and was replaced by a frown. She took a quick look through the window at the street outside. “L’abbé. Pourquoi?”
“Er… pour aide, Madame.”
The woman regarded him intensely. Then, “You are English, n’est-ce pas?”
Gladwin sighed. “Yes. How did you know?”
The smile came back. “Ah. We do not have many Poles with English accents in Bayonne. You are English, you say?”
“Yes, we are two RAF officers and we are trying to reach the border.” He turned and beckoned to Proctor who joined him at the counter. “Well, I say English – but I am Welsh and he is from New Zealand.”
The woman put her head on one side. The smile remained but her eyes were wary. “So. New Zealand, eh. Which city is your home, Monsieur?” she asked Proctor.
Proctor shifted uneasily. “Auckland.”
“Ah. The capital, I think?”
“No. That’s Wellington.”
“So it is. And you, Monsieur, are English, so you will know, of course, who won the English First Division football championship in 1939, the last year of peace, eh?”
“Good lord.” He turned in supplication to Proctor, who shook his head. Gladwin gulped. “Well, Madame, both the Welsh and the New Zealanders play rugby more than football, but I think it was Portsmouth.”
The smile broadened in relief. “So it was. My late husband was English and came from Southsea. He was so pleased when Portsmouth won. But enough! We have to be careful, for the Gestapo are everywhere in this town. Come with me. We must not stay here.”
She beckoned them to follow her through an open doorway that was partly screened by long coloured strips of paper that hung from the top of the door frame. They found themselves in a kitchen in which two young girls were working. Then they followed the proprietress through another doorway into a simply-furnished living room. She gestured to them to sit down, reached up onto a shelf and brought down three small glasses and a bottle.
“Cognac?” she invited, and Gladwin and Proctor both nodded eagerly.
The woman poured dark amber liquid into the glasses, held hers up to them as a toast and, her smile broadening, said, “cheers!”
“Thank you, Madame,” said Gladwin in response. “We are lucky to have found you.”
“You are very lucky.” The woman frowned. “We were expecting two packages but not unaccompanied. Why are you alone?”
“Our courier was not there to meet us in Tours. We took a chance and came on alone.”
“And the name of your courier?”
Proctor was about to speak, but Gladwin held up his hand. “Forgive me, Madame, but I don’t think we should reveal that.”
The woman made a dismissive gesture with her hands. “You are right to be careful but it does not matter. It would be her code name, anyway, and not her real name. I still want to be sure, you see.”
“Very well. It was Dominique.”
“Dominique! Ah.” She put her glass down on the table slowly. “That is bad news. Dominique is very, very reliable.” She frowned. “I hope that nothing has happened to her. I know her well. She would have waited for you, even if you were late.”
“I am sorry.”
“You were lucky that you came here. Very well. We have to get you back onto the line.”
“We were told of an Abbe…?”
She shot him a sharp look. “You should not have been told that. It is against the rules to tell you of the next link. Eh bien. You are right. The Abbe Carpentier is the man. Give me a minute to close the café and I will take you to him. He will get you to Saint-Jean-de-Luz at the border. Now excuse me for a moment.” She swallowed her cognac and left them.
Four minutes later they were striding through the streets of Bayonne, th
ree abreast, she in the middle, her arms linked through theirs – “to avoid suspicion”, she explained. And, indeed, this frontier town seemed unusually alien and hostile, with its streets full of French gendarmes and Germans in both army and naval uniforms.
They reached an ivy-covered house of some distinction, tucked in a side street under the lee of a prominent church, which could have been an abbey or a cathedral. The woman led them to a side door and they were ushered into an austere room, sparsely furnished and dominated by a dark painting of Christ on the cross. She exchanged a few brief words with an elderly lady in a starched white apron and turned back to them, her hand outstretched.
“Monsieur L’abbé will not be long,” she said. “But I must go back to the café to earn a little money. Madame Robert here will bring you coffee – better than mine. I wish you good luck and safe journey. Give my love to Portsmouth when you reach home.”
Both men took her hand in turn. “We cannot thank you enough, Madame,” said Gladwin. “I think you have saved our lives. And thank you for the cognac.”
*
After she had left, the two men sat in silence, sipping excellent, real coffee, served to them in white porcelain cups. Gladwin realised that Proctor had hardly spoken a word since they had left the railway station. Now, he sat staring ahead of him, a muscle twitching in his forehead and his face set in a frown of despondency. Was he near breaking point? Certainly, hunched over his coffee cup in his old overalls, he looked a picture of utter misery. Gladwin sighed. They were so near to freedom now. It would be a double tragedy if the man gave way at this late point. He would have to be watched even more carefully now. Oh, why did it have to be Proctor who had escaped from the burning Lancaster? Dear old Chuck or any one of the other New Zealanders would have been cheerful company, resourceful and brave in the face of danger. Why bloody Proctor?
The Abbe slipped into the room half an hour later. He was a small man, with his monk’s tonsure revealing a pink scalp and a neat white beard setting off the bluest of eyes. His manner was self-effacing, almost deferential, and he shook their hands in silence. When he spoke, his voice was gentle and his English precise and almost without accent.
