Flawed Banner

by John Harris

  It was the woman in the fur coat who had been trying to find a driver. The man lying dead in the driver’s seat was the one she had found – the young officer – and his clothes were already on fire.

  Six

  As they set off again, still shocked and weary of the mounting horror, the powerful limousines began to vanish. All that were left were the small cars, and at the side of the road, the broken-down and those out of petrol.

  By this time people were growing used to the nomadic existence and were even greeting others they had seen on the road the day before. Woodyatt noticed the two evil-looking men in city suits and spats again, a family whose children pulled faces at him through the rear window of their car and an elderly lady, with a chauffeur, who offered a genteel wave. The same cyclists passed them again and again, nodding a greeting as they went by.

  As they drove through the lovely Touraine countryside they were offered wine by farmers and shopkeepers at almost every village shop they entered.

  ‘Help yourselves,’ they were told. ‘If you don’t, the Germans will.’

  Just ahead of them was another red Renault like their own whose driver gestured as if they belonged to a club established for wanderers. Now that they were away from the crowded roads round Paris, the shops were full of food. There were mountains of it: strawberries; cherries; peaches; tinned delicacies; sausages; chickens.

  The news was as grey as the hazy clouds that covered the sun. A local newspaper informed them that the Cabinet had fallen and Daladier was back in office. As they stopped to stretch their limbs during the afternoon, Montrouge began to question where they were going.

  ‘Are you attempting to take me to England, young man?’ he said. ‘I’m tired and if that’s what you’re up to, I can’t resist you. I’m too old. But you are wasting your time. I have no secrets.’

  Despite his protests, he remained remarkably alert. This, Woodyatt decided, was no frail old pensioner but a tough and resilient man with his wits about him.

  ‘Is it your intention to go to Bordeaux?’ Montrouge asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Woodyatt’s reply was short and harsh.

  ‘Then you’re going the wrong way. This road leads towards Niort.’

  ‘We’re going to Niort. I have a friend near there and I want to make sure he’s safe.’

  Montrouge eyed Woodyatt warily, and Woodyatt caught a hint of concern in his face.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘What a clever fellow you are and how well you manage to conceal the fact! I suspect you have a surprise up your sleeve.’

  Again there was that amused glint in his eye, as if he believed he had Woodyatt’s measure and was more than a match for him. The wish to catch him out was growing in Woodyatt into an obsession as powerful as Pullinger’s.

  The old man was studying him in that diverted way of his, as though they were all taking part in an entertaining game. ‘You are wasting so much time, young man. Always you talk of pursuers. Where are these pursuers? I see no pursuers. I think we’ve lost them.’

  During the afternoon, they were forced on to another diversion. The Germans were bombing the road ahead and the roundabout route took them over a long, narrow wooden bridge across a river. There was trepidation in every face as the column of traffic crawled along. The bridge had been bombed and looked none too safe and everybody was visualising a disaster.

  Just in front of them was the lorry filled with British petrol and driven by deserters. The police were struggling to halt the flow of traffic and allowing no more than one car on to the bridge at a time. As a lorry passed across, the bridge could be heard creaking in the growing wind that came down the river. The drivers were obeying the police instructions minutely, keeping carefully to the left-hand side of the bridge away from the damage. Then as the air filled with the sound of aeroplanes in the distance the panic started again. More cars moved forward, their drivers ignoring the police.

  From where they waited, Woodyatt saw a whole line of vehicles pushing on to the bridge. Then they heard a groan and a wail that was like a sob of despair as they saw the bridge lean slowly over to one side. Screaming women began to leap from their cars and run but the bridge leaned further and further until it finally collapsed into the river, carrying all its cargo into the water.

  Dominique was first out of the Renault. Woodyatt was just behind her. Some of the lost vehicles were already submerged but a few people had managed to scramble clear and struggle to the bank. Rescuers were climbing down the steep slope to the river’s edge and pulling the swimmers, and anything that floated, ashore.

  Some of the dead were laid out on the steep muddy bank of the river in a row. There were two children among them and an old man shook a fist at the sky.

  There wasn’t much they could do but comfort the injured and the shocked. Someone had managed to find a telephone and ambulances began to arrive. As they screamed to a stop, Dominique dragged herself up the bank, her feet slipping on the mud the water from the rescuers’ feet had created.

  ‘It wasn’t the Germans,’ she said in a flat voice. ‘It was simple panic.’

  Returning to the car they found two men loading their luggage into it and about to drive away. As Woodyatt dragged them out, they turned on him, fists swinging. As it developed into a rough-house, Woodyatt was afraid that his uniform might cause him to be singled out and that other French people might join in against him. The nightmarish journey was producing a single-minded aggression all round: the need to survive. He was depressed by the continuing situation and angry at the French acceptance of things, and laid in with a will. He was eager to work off some of his animosity and floored one of the men with ease. As he looked round for the other, he saw him staggering away under a blow from one of his own dropped suitcases, snatched up by the handle and swung with all her strength by Dominique.

  As the men stumbled to their feet and disappeared, Woodyatt put his arm round her shoulders and gave her a brief hug.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Montrouge beamed benignly at them from the back of the car. He seemed quite unmoved by the disturbance. ‘How touching,’ he said. ‘France to the rescue of Britain as usual.’

  Woodyatt turned on him angrily. ‘They’d have taken you with them,’ he snapped.

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘They’d have dumped you round the first corner.’

  Montrouge’s smile didn’t slip. ‘They wouldn’t have got that far,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose you’d have stopped them.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘At your age? How?’

  ‘I’m a surprising man. One up to Britain, though. We must be grateful for her small contribution in the common confusion.’

  ‘We owe Britain nothing,’ Dominique said sharply.

  ‘And, of course–’ the old man’s voice became sonorous with sarcasm as he repeated a comment Woodyatt had heard a dozen times before ‘–Britain forced us into the war.’

  ‘If you believe that,’ Woodyatt snarled, ‘you’ll believe anything.’

  It was obvious the thefts of and from cars were increasing and several people were yelling with fury at finding items of luggage gone. Not far away a man and a woman were screaming that their vehicle had vanished while they had been helping the injured.

  There was no point in hanging around. Tragedies such as they had just witnessed were happening over the whole of Northern France and the ambulance-men and the police were now in charge.

  ‘Get in the car,’ Woodyatt snapped at Dominique.

  For a moment she looked as though she were about to respond to his brusque command with spirit but she changed her mind and climbed in without a word.

  There was another bridge further downstream and, as order began to re-emerge, Woodyatt backed the car away and swung it about to head along the bank of the river. Just ahead of them was the lorry containing the British petrol. Woodyatt held well back, aware that the petrol cans it carried were notoriously fragile and liable to leak e
asily, and aware also that the French soldiers in the lorry all seemed to be smoking.

  As they reached safety among the trees at the other side of the river, they again heard aircraft and three Messerschmitts howled overhead low enough for them to see the pilots looking down and the numbers on the fuselages. As they vanished, they heard their guns going. The sound of anti-aircraft fire followed and they saw the machines lifting away into the sky and a column of black smoke rising ahead of them.

  The traffic came to a stop once more and they took the opportunity to get Montrouge out to stretch his legs. He seemed to be completely unmoved by all that was happening around him, quite calm, never ruffled, and always with that infuriating amused look on his face. He was slow getting back into the car as the traffic finally began to move again, and everybody behind started shouting. It was typical of him that he paused and regarded them with a look that ought to have shrivelled them.

  Ahead several cars were burning. The Messerschmitts had caught the refugees at the junction of two roads and people were trying to clear a passage. Bodies were stretched out on the grass and several men were struggling to attach a rope to a smashed cart and drag it away with a lorry. A woman was kneeling in the grass by a halted car and wailing over a screaming small boy with blood on his face. Watched by a despairing man, she was begging for help and Dominique went towards her. For a long time she bent over the child, while the woman wept with gratitude.

  ‘How I hate the Germans!’ Dominique said. She was tearing up a shirt the woman had given her. Signing to Woodyatt to hold the squirming child, she applied the bandages she had made. The boy was hysterical with pain but somehow she managed to calm him and between them they were able to staunch the blood. In her gratitude the woman kissed Dominique and the man insisted on pumping Woodyatt’s hand. As they rose, the road was being cleared and traffic began to move. When the cars opened out, they saw that several vehicles had been hit. Among them was the red Renault whose owner had given them a friendly wave. His car was full of holes, and the tyres were punctured, and he was staring at it with a baffled look.

  As the car containing the wounded child began to pull away, Woodyatt returned to their own car with a grim face. The sight of the red Renault had set his mind working. Did it have some meaning? It was the second red car that had been strafed by Messerschmitts. Were they still being followed? He had thought after the murder in the hotel outside Chartres that their pursuers would have been satisfied they had caught their quarry.

  When he passed on his suspicions to Dominique, she gave him a sick nervous look. ‘Is it possible?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘But I think we should get rid of this car as soon as possible.’

  Seven

  As Woodyatt and his passengers reached the end of the diversion, they came to a large village called Marville. It had a single main street with lanes leading off round the backs of the houses which were a mixture of brick and wood. Garages and stables were interspersed between them.

  The place was full of cars and tramping refugees. Among them were groups of grubby-looking soldiers heading south, grinning and shouting lewd comments at the women and girls who stood at their doors. The villagers had all turned out to watch the traffic, although it must already have been going on for days.

  Among the cars was the big Ford containing the two dark-jowled Parisians who looked like gangsters, and their blonde girlfriend. They were outside a garage arguing with the attendant in an attempt to get petrol. Also there was the Bedford lorry with its load of stolen British petrol. One of the soldiers had his head in the bonnet with the garage proprietor. The others stood around, grinning and watching the sky, cigarettes hanging from their lips.

  ‘Your lorries are no good, English,’ the driver yelled as he saw Woodyatt. ‘They won’t go.’

  The lorry had clearly been over-driven and it seemed a good idea to give it a wide berth. Quite apart from the problem of the drunken and quixotic French soldiers who were revelling in their power, Woodyatt didn’t trust their cigarettes because the floor of the lorry was probably swimming with leaked petrol by now.

  The traffic continued to move slowly past, cars honking and jostling, their occupants shouting insults at each other in their anxiety to keep well ahead of the Germans. The argument about petrol between the Parisian gangsters and the garage attendant ended abruptly.

  ‘No!’ the garage attendant roared. ‘We haven’t any petrol left!’

  ‘Well–’ one of the Parisians pointed to the lorry ‘–how about some of that?’

  One of the soldiers moved round the lorry and stuck the muzzle of his rifle in the Parisian’s stomach. ‘Move!’ he said. ‘You heard what he said.’

  Muttering to himself, the Parisian climbed into his car and they moved away, the blonde staring back balefully through the rear window.

  It was necessary to check the Renault’s oil and water. It was an old vehicle and used a lot. The engine seemed to be running hot and steam was coming from under the bonnet. As Woodyatt stopped the car and surveyed it, an old man popped up beside him. He was short, thickset and wore an enormous grey beard. ‘There’s water down here,’ he said, gesturing. ‘And I have a workshop with petrol and oil.’

  He climbed on to the running board and directed them off the main street into one of the lanes that looped round the houses and back to the main road. It dipped down to a stream and was lined by the wooden huts, garages and barns that stood at the back of the houses in the main street.

  ‘You can fill your radiator from that,’ the old man said, indicating the stream.

  They parked in the shade among a clump of trees and the old Frenchman directed them to a large wooden garage whose doors stood wide open. ‘I have spare petrol,’ he announced. ‘I will sell you some. My name is George Hugo. That is a splendid name, though Victor Hugo is no relation. You’ll have heard of Victor Hugo, of course. A great man, don’t you agree?’

  Woodyatt wouldn’t have dreamed of disagreeing with their helper.

  ‘And I am an old soldier of the 179th Regiment,’ Hugo continued. ‘I fought at Verdun. I can’t think what today’s soldiers are doing to allow this chaos. Où est l’esprit de Quatorze? Where is the spirit of 1914?’ With that, he opened the Renault’s bonnet and released the radiator cap. A cloud of steam leapt into the air.

  ‘I think it has a leak,’ Woodyatt said.

  ‘You need a can of water with you,’ Hugo agreed. ‘I can let you have one.’

  They refilled the car with petrol and checked the oil and water, and Hugo let them have a can of petrol as a spare. Woodyatt paid him more than he asked.

  ‘It’s a pleasure,’ Hugo said. ‘I am an old soldier, aren’t I? We shall still win. It might take time as in 1918 but we shall win, Monsieur. I’ll go and find a can for the water.’ As he disappeared into the depths of his garage, he beamed at them. ‘Times are strange,’ he said. ‘I keep a shotgun in the garage. People try to steal what I’ve got.’

  ‘How well you manage, young man,’ Montrouge smiled as they waited by the car. ‘Quite the diplomat. Personally, I’ve always thought anyone called Hugo a crashing bore.’

  Woodyatt ignored him. ‘Get in the car,’ he advised Dominique. ‘We’ll need to make a quick getaway.’

  As they waited for Hugo to return, a car turned into the lane from the other end. Two men began to climb out and Woodyatt wondered for a fraction of a second if they, too, were having trouble. Then, with a shock, he realised that one of the men was tall and thin and that the other had thick blond hair showing beneath his hat. They were looking about them, puzzled. His heart thumped as he recognised them. There was no doubt but that they had long since identified Woodyatt’s red car and had probably been following it for some time. He looked about him. The lane was deserted because the whole village was watching the enormous spectacle of the traffic in the main street. Even Hugo had vanished. They could hear him clattering about in the depths of his garage. The roar of the traffic was au
dible but the deserted lane itself seemed curiously silent.

  Woodyatt drew a deep breath. There was no sign or possibility of help. For days – years almost, it seemed he had been aware of the threat behind them, a dark shadow over his shoulder. Now, here, with the first physical contact a contact from which it was clear he was not going to be able to escape – the threat was about to explode into a harsh and bloody reality.

  He looked at Dominique. ‘Can you drive?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well our blond friend and his sidekick have arrived. They’ve discovered they made a mistake and they’ve picked us up again.’

  As her head jerked round, the old man in the back of the car looked up with interest.

  ‘What are you up to, young man?’ he asked.

  ‘Our friends from the hotel have arrived,’ Woodyatt said. ‘Keep your head down. They haven’t spotted you yet.’

  The Renault was facing the wrong way. The other car had entered the lane from the opposite end and they would have to pass it to escape.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Dominique asked.

  ‘God knows.’ Woodyatt carefully closed the bonnet of the car and secured it. ‘I’ll have to face them. Be ready to go. Fast. Wait round the corner near the main road. They won’t dare anything there. I’ll join you if I can. If I don’t make it, take the old man to Bray-en-Basse. Its near Niort in the Charente. Ask for Colonel Darby. He’s British and well-known. He’s expecting us. He’ll take care of everything. If he’s vanished, head south. Save yourself. You’ll have to do without the can of water.’