Flawed Banner

by John Harris

  In desperation, he headed back to the Embassy, where he found the staff on the point of leaving. He dragged Lord, the man who had been directed to help him, from a huddle of minor officials who were burning documents and told him he had to find him a car.

  Lord gave a shrill laugh. ‘There isn’t a car in Paris that hasn’t been commandeered or reserved!’

  Woodyatt flourished Pullinger’s papers. ‘I need a car and a tank full of petrol.’

  ‘Good God, man, what do you take me for?’

  Woodyatt ignored the bleat of protest. ‘I’ll be back for it tomorrow,’ he said.

  Heading for the shelter, he passed the wreckage of 81, Rue de Vanves. The flames had been put out and the firemen were clambering about the ruins. They had cleared the garage sufficiently for him to reclaim the battered suitcases and as he did so, the fireman he had spoken to the day before grinned at him.

  ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘This bomb didn’t come from up there.’ He jerked his thumb at the sky. ‘It was left in a suitcase in the hall. We found a battery. The salauds. Who were they after? You?’

  Four

  The knowledge that they were still being followed made up Woodyatt’s mind. He had hoped they would be able to lose themselves in Paris with its thousands of inhabitants and crowds of refugees. Even the hordes of defeated soldiery pouring into the capital ought to have been a screen and it came as a shock that somehow Zamerski had managed to find them. This and the nearness of the Germans meant it was time to move on. And quickly.

  ‘We leave tomorrow,’ Woodyatt announced. ‘Whether he likes it or not.’

  Dominique managed a twisted smile. ‘There’ll be no trouble,’ she said. ‘He’ll come.’

  ‘What changed his mind?’

  She shrugged, ‘He wouldn’t say.’

  They spent a restless night in the shelter. The old man’s explanation of his change of heart was brisk and uninformative. ‘I’ve seen war before,’ he said. ‘It includes lice, socks rotting on your feet, the stink of your own body.’

  Woodyatt smiled. ‘And where did you experience these discomforts?’ he asked. ‘You weren’t in the last war.’

  Montrouge didn’t answer and sat back in his chair, his head down, his hat over his eyes, clutching his walking stick. Woodyatt lay on the bare floor. Dominique slept beside him on a thin mattress that had been found for her. During the night Woodyatt woke to find her staring at him, and he put out his hand and touched her fingers.

  ‘We’ll be all right,’ he said.

  She showed no sign of having heard.

  When it was daylight, they rose, sharing the shelter’s meagre facilities to clean themselves up, then Woodyatt set off for the Embassy.

  On the way he saw diplomatic cars leaving with armed militia on their running boards. One or two cafés were operating and he saw a bar left unlocked, its till wide open and ransacked.

  The ambassador had already left for the South and Lord was about to follow. ‘No point in staying any longer,’ he said.

  He fished in his pocket and produced a bunch of keys and the rotor arm from a car’s distributor. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘It’s outside. You can’t mistake it. It’s red with a Dijon number. Belonged to one of the secretaries who’s gone to England.’

  ‘What about petrol?’

  ‘Full. Two full cans in the boot.’

  ‘Thank you. Is there any news?’

  ‘Nothing much. I’m off soon. I don’t fancy clerking for a set of bloody Nazis. I didn’t fancy clerking anyway. I think I’ll join the army.’

  Parking the car outside the shelter, Woodyatt went in search of Dominique. The old man still sat with his hat over his eyes, hiding his face, and she was bent over him, talking softly to him.

  ‘I’ve got a car,’ Woodyatt said.

  ‘I think we should get him into it,’ she whispered back.

  ‘And go at once. A man came, enquiring for him. He was tall and thin. He had a mean face.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I said nothing. I noticed also that my uncle – my–’ she hesitated ‘–that Monsieur Montrouge said nothing. Why should he do that? The man was asking for a Monsieur Montrouge and if he is Monsieur Montrouge, why didn’t he say so?’

  ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘He tells me nothing. He just accepts that someone’s out to destroy him. That’s all he’ll say.’

  ‘Tell him we’re going somewhere safe.’

  ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘We’ll go in easy stages. I have to get him back in one piece, not kill him with exhaustion. To St Nazaire – two days. We could stop one night. If that’s no good, we could try Bordeaux. That might take more. Three.’

  It was stiflingly hot as she slipped across the road to the church opposite. Woodyatt didn’t bother to protest. She didn’t take so long this time and they pushed the old man into the car and tucked him down in the front seat, his hat still jammed down on his head. The boot could take only the two suitcases and they had to put Woodyatt’s hold-all on the rear seat with Dominique. People were wandering about the streets as they left, as if they didn’t know what to do. They even passed a cinema with a small queue outside. What sort of people were these, Woodyatt wondered, who could go and watch a film when the world was falling apart about their ears?

  In the Boulevard Montparnasse near to the station they ran into a fresh mass of troops. They had just arrived. Ragged, tired and dirty, they were the demoralised remnants of a routed army, drifting into Paris and wandering about aimlessly.

  This time they weren’t in ones and twos and small groups. They were a great mass, as if half a dozen fully loaded trains had arrived and disgorged their shabby passengers on to the Paris streets. In their ill-fitting uniforms, packs slung anyhow on their shoulders, unarmed except for the long ugly bayonets at their hips, they spilled over into bars, noisy, argumentative and aggressive. They didn’t know where to go and there was no one to tell them. The pavement was littered with wine bottles, cigarette ends and discarded steel helmets. Some of them were staggering about drunkenly, shouting anti-war slogans.

  For a long time the three occupants of the car sat watching them stream past. It was as though the whole French army had suddenly been flung down around them. Then Dominique spoke, ‘Why doesn’t someone tell them what to do?’ she asked.

  Up ahead, the infuriated and defeated men found a car containing three officers. They started rocking it from side to side on its springs. As it went over there was a huge shout like the baying of hounds after a quarry and the officers could be seen running away, hatless and with blood on their faces. The car was set on fire and the whole area was filled with the stink of burning rubber amid clouds of black smoke and smuts.

  Eventually men of the Paris garrison arrived, fully armed and properly led, and the defeated men, still arguing, singing and shouting slogans, were formed up and marched off. One of them had made a banner out of a sheet and it was held up at the head of the column. ‘A bas la guerre!’ it announced, and there were cheers, jeers, and cries of disgust and hatred for the politicians, the generals and the wealthy Parisians they seemed to consider the cause of their wretchedness.

  Dusk was falling as the street was finally cleared and Woodyatt’s party was able to continue. They drove along the Boulevard Lefebvre. At every petrol pump there were queues of cars trying to fill up. At one they were obliged to stop because of the jam caused by drivers trying to get in. An argument was going on between one of them and the owner who wore his arm in a sling and was yelling a protest. ‘I can’t do any more,’ he was insisting. ‘I’ve been pumping for three days solid and my arm’s buggered.’

  The sky was blood-red with the sunset but a black fog draped the city. Someone said it was the smoke screen the Germans had put up for the crossing of the Seine. Someone else claimed it was from the oil dumps that had been set on fire. Smuts drifted everywhere, blackening clothes and faces.

  ‘Where are we going now?’ Mon
trouge demanded as they set off again.

  ‘Never mind,’ Dominique soothed. ‘We’re only finding shelter. The Germans will be here soon.’

  There had been an accident at the Porte de Versailles and traffic was being diverted via St Cloud. It was pitch-dark by the time they were back on the Versailles road and they could still hear the guns behind them. As they turned a corner, there was a panicky shout to extinguish the head lights.

  At Versailles, the traffic jam was unbelievable, the stream of vehicles heading west and south was held up by military police near the statue of Louis XIV outside the great chateau. They could only sit in the car and wait. All they could see were a few lights but they could hear shouts and the rumbling of engines. The word was passed down eventually that an endless column of army vehicles was crossing their path. They had already discovered that when two convoys met, the one that took precedence was the one commanded by the officer with the loudest voice and the biggest selection of expletives. Woodyatt began to see that his estimate of the time it would take to reach safety was wildly inaccurate.

  Even when the military vehicles had gone, they managed to move only in jolts and jerks a yard or two at a time. In front of them was a car loaded with a mattress that had two bicycles lashed on top. There had been some bombing near Auffargis and a crater in the road was being repaired, so that they all had to sit and wait, listening to the croaking of frogs in the marshy land to the right.

  Eventually they started off again and, finding a side road he knew, Woodyatt turned into it. It was empty and they made good time. But they were all tired. Indeed Montrouge had been dozing gently ever since they’d left, head down, as silent and still as if he were dead. They decided to pull off the tarmac and try to sleep for a while. The old man was sprawled against the door in the front seat, huddled deep in his overcoat. Woodyatt climbed out and he and Dominique sat at opposite ends of the rear seat, trying to make themselves comfortable in the corners.

  When Woodyatt woke he was surprised to find Dominique’s head on his shoulder and his arm round her. He couldn’t remember moving during the night and could only assume they had moved nearer to each other for warmth.

  What had been a deserted road when they arrived had filled up during the night. The area under the trees was full of cars. Nearby a policeman was moving along, waking the drivers.

  ‘Move on,’ he was saying. ‘We don’t want cars bunched together. The German planes will spot them.’

  At the car behind he stopped. ‘Montrouge?’ he was saying. ‘Is your name Montrouge?’

  Woodyatt’s eyes met Dominique’s and, as the policeman appeared alongside, they sat up. ‘There’s a type back there looking for his father,’ the policeman said. ‘He’s old and wandered off during the night. Name of Montrouge.’ He studied the still figure of the old man slumped in the front seat. ‘How about him?’

  ‘We’d hardly be likely to have someone else’s father sleeping in our car, would we?’ Dominique said spiritedly. ‘That’s my uncle. His name’s Vassin.’

  The policeman shrugged. ‘Sorry to trouble you, Madame, but some funny things are happening at the moment. All sorts of people are travelling in other people’s cars.’

  The threat was still there. Woodyatt had thought they’d thrown off their pursuers but clearly not. Moreover they were obviously ruthless and would stop at nothing. He needed to put as much distance between themselves and Paris as he could.

  As Woodyatt put the car in gear, Montrouge lifted his hat from his eyes. ‘I am nobody’s father,’ he muttered. ‘So it can’t be me he’s seeking.’

  Although the red Renault looked dashing, it was underpowered and old, and they made poor time. The road was seething with vehicles, tearing past them, at times two abreast.

  An empty train rattled by on the line to Paris, watched by people wheeling bicycles and trying to balance them with the heavy bundles of their possessions. Occasionally they came across a sad procession of villagers from the area around: children driving goats; a grandfather leading a horse dragging a wagon filled with chairs, tables, wardrobes, mattresses; women and babies, some grim-faced, some weeping.

  Reaching a small town where they heard the station restaurant was open, they decided to eat breakfast there. But the station was filled with people, most of them country dwellers in their best black suits and Sunday dresses. Little girls with ribbons in their hair as though they were going to a festival sat on piles of luggage which cluttered the entrance. Many of the would-be passengers were on the wrong platform, oblivious to the fact that any train they boarded would take them north towards the front. The station-master was at his wits’ end.

  ‘The Germans are nowhere near,’ he said. ‘The panic’s being caused by fifth columnists.’

  The restaurant had been closed because of the crowds and as they returned to the car they passed an engine hissing and puffing quietly in a siding. The station-master was tramping up and down the platform. ‘There are to be no more trains today,’ he was yelling. ‘It’s not my fault. I’ve got my orders. Military expediencies demand–’

  His voice was drowned as a train howled past. Through the windows they caught glimpses of uniforms and crested steel helmets. At the end were flat cars loaded with the massive bulk of tanks.

  They had to walk some distance and cross the track by scrambling down an embankment, Woodyatt and Dominique helping Montrouge. The crowd outside had grown enormously and were baying like animals. In the middle of them, by the wall of the Maine, was a man whose face was covered with blood. They could see fists and sticks rising and falling.

  ‘The bastard was posting a notice advising people to leave because the Germans are about to arrive,’ someone yelled. ‘It’s untrue! They’re nowhere about!’

  But the damage was done and the exodus had already started. Vehicles were on the move, adding to the confusion caused by the stream of traffic heading west and south. Among them, pedestrians who had walked miles to reach safety pushed past, indicating their bleeding feet and trying to beg lifts.

  Woodyatt and his passengers managed to edge their way from the town centre only to be halted at the next crossroads. An NCO of the armée de l’air, clean and alert-looking, was sitting astride a motor cycle waiting for a chance to join the traffic. As they watched, a fat and self-important policeman strode up to him.

  ‘Vos papiers,’ he demanded.

  The airman looked up. ‘I’m on duty.’

  ‘Vos papiers. How otherwise do I know you’re not a deserter?’

  ‘I’m on duty, I tell you!’

  The airman was indignant but his indignation only made the policeman more stubborn. ‘You could be a German parachutist in disguise. How do I know you’re not?’

  The shouting brought several other policemen to the scene and the airman was surrounded. The motor cycle went over with a crash, the rider under it. He was dragged out, spitting with fury, but the policemen were impervious to his yells of protest and he was hauled off, limping heavily. Woodyatt saw him struck in the face and, as he vanished, a soldier with an unshaven chin and dirty uniform, who might well have been a real deserter, hoisted the motor cycle to its wheels, sat astride it and started the engine. Giving a quick look around, he let in the clutch and disappeared at speed. The policemen dragging away their suspected parachutist didn’t even notice.

  The incident was symptomatic of the general panic, suspicion and confusion. France had gone mad, and, glancing at Dominique, Woodyatt saw she had tears in her eyes.

  Both sides of the street out of the town were crammed with parked cars and vans. Restive horses snorted and stamped in the shafts of carts and traps which the owners were trying to load. The through-traffic slowed to a crawl and Woodyatt decided they had better lay down emergency supplies of food.

  They were able to buy three gristly steaks, one or two tins and a bottle of wine but there was no bread. But then they heard word of a baker down a side street and decided to give him a try.

  ‘Non!’ the ba
ker yelled furiously, waving his arms at Woodyatt. ‘It’s all for the army!’ He indicated soldiers in a lorry waiting outside. Even as he spoke, a big Citroën carrying a Red Cross flag drew up and two men climbed out.

  They were British residents in France who, because they were above military age, had volunteered to work for the Red Cross. They wore regulation French uniforms and the Citroën they drove had been presented by Persil, Ltd, and was fitted to take stretchers.

  As Woodyatt argued his case the air-raid siren sounded and the lorry containing the soldiers vanished abruptly. The baker was immediately behind it.

  When the wail of the siren died there was a tremendous bang that shook the building and brought bottles down from a shelf behind the counter. The sound of tinkling glass and running from outside was followed by the appearance of a huge cloud of black smoke mushrooming into the sky beyond the nearby buildings.

  The two ambulance drivers looked at Woodyatt. ‘I think we should serve ourselves, don’t you?’ one of them said and began to pull loaves from the oven.

  As he was doing so, an old woman appeared in the doorway. She had obviously been on her way to collect bread and she was white with plaster dust, as if a ceiling had collapsed on her.

  ‘There you are, Madame,’ the ambulance driver said, handing her a loaf. ‘With the compliments of the management. Take care. It’s hot.’

  She stared at him, bewildered, then she shoved the loaf into her bag and vanished at speed.

  Flinging a loaf to Woodyatt, the ambulance men threw down a few francs as payment, and vanished, their arms full of bread. Woodyatt did the same and shot after them, tossing the hot loaf from hand to hand as he ran.

  The explosion could not have been a bomb because by the time he came in sight of the car the ‘All Clear’ had gone. The air was full of whirling dust, and a worried Dominique was waiting on a corner where she could see both the bakery and the car.