by H. E. Bates
‘Have you looked at the country that way?’ he said.
‘Only from here,’ Sandy said. ‘Nobody has been out.’
‘Let’s have a look,’ he said.
They walked slowly together to within five yards of the edge of the pines. They stood each behind the trunk of a pine and looked at the open country. The slope of rough grass up which they had come in the night had been scorched by the summer to the colour of dirty straw. Beyond the depth of the slope the land was stepped up in a series of folds. On the lowest of these folds white strips of cornland were already partly bare of crops. Along the middle folds were terraces of vines, blue-green in the vertical sun.
‘Can you see the telegraph poles?’ Sandy said.
‘No.’ Franklin felt his eyes jumping up and down at the strong light of the distances. ‘No. I can’t see them.’
‘On the top of the hill. A good way over the top of the vines. In a straight line.’
Franklin was still dazed. ‘No. I can’t see them.’
‘They’re there all right. It must be a road.’
‘I don’t see any houses,’ Franklin said.
‘If you go down to the corner of the wood,’ Sandy said, ‘you can see a house half-way up the slope.’
‘Somebody ought to watch it,’ Franklin said.
They went back into the woodland and Franklin sat down on the pine-needles, his back against a tree. He felt weak with movement and the light of the sun.
‘How is your arm?’ Sandy said.
‘It’s all right.’
‘I warn you it isn’t altogether good. Sooner or later you’ll have to do something about it. It’ll have to be stitched or there’ll be trouble.’
‘We can think about that later. The main thing is to get moving.’
‘We can’t move until dark. That’s certain.’
‘No. That’s the hell of it,’ he said.
He lay back against the pine-tree, listening to the noon silence brittle and dead all about him, the trees and the sunless air under the trees unmoved by wind. His mouth was dry, and he was worried because the three sergeants were not back.
‘They shouldn’t have gone,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in it. We must keep together.’
‘Your arm makes you jumpy,’ Sandy said. ‘They’ll be careful.’
‘They’d better be,’ he said. ‘If they’re seen the whole bloody lot of us are done.’
He lay back against the tree, listening and fretting. The situation was unreal. He had not yet adjusted himself to it. The cool and apparently impregnable silence under the pines seemed dangerous. He shut his eyes.
The blood beating up into his head became the sound, after a few moments, of the three sergeants returning. He opened his eyes and felt his relief take the form of annoyance. It rose hotly inside him and he checked it. He heard the sergeants rustling the pine-needles as they walked, not talking, from the depth of the wood, and then he saw them coming, without their flying-jackets, their blue sleeves bright in the shadows. He held his annoyance down and decided to hear what they had to say.
‘Hullo, how do you feel?’ O’Connor said.
‘Not bad. What did you find?’ he said.
‘Not much. I think we’re lucky. We got to the edge of the trees farther down and you can see the forest stretching for miles. It would take days to search it all.’
‘All right. Did you see any houses?’
‘None at all.’
‘Right,’ he said. His annoyance had gone; he felt himself reassured by the competence of O’Connor’s voice and face. O’Connor was thirty-four. His Air Force service had begun in boyhood, in apprenticeship. He had fought in France, flying Battles, and had been twice wounded. His face was tough and pale and sure. It was right that Franklin should trust him.
‘Where do you think we are?’ he said.
‘I’ve got a feeling we’re in Occupied.’
‘I hope so.’
The four sergeants were sitting down now, resting on their flying-jackets, among the pine-needles. They were full of confidence.
‘I think we might eat,’ Franklin said. His fear had gone.
Lounging on the dry pine-needles, they had a meal of chocolate and biscuits, with a small tot of rum. Franklin felt the sickness of shock and loss of blood still lying hot and sour all across his chest, above his heart. He was not very hungry.
‘We might as well discuss what we’re going to do,’ he said. ‘My idea is to lie up here for the rest of the day and then start walking again at twilight. We’ve got to find a house before it’s dark.’
‘That’s a risk,’ Taylor said.
‘It’s a risk you have to take,’ he said. ‘Anyway, a farm is fairly safe. It’s a thousand to one there are no troops in isolated houses. Anyway, we have to do it. We can’t go on without food.’
‘Can you speak French?’ O’Connor said.
‘It’s good enough,’ he said. The chocolate he could not eat was already soft and warm in his fingers. He felt sick and now at the same time impatient. He was fretted by inertia and even though he knew it was impossible, wanted to be moving on.
‘We’d all better rest this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Get some sleep if you can.’
‘Better take it in relays,’ O’Connor said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’d better make it three resting and two off. That means one watching the inside of the wood and one the valley.’
‘And if we see anyone?’
‘We’ll talk about that when it happens,’ he said.
They rested and watched in relays all the rest of the afternoon and on into the evening. The heat began to go down a little with the sun, about six o’clock, but all afternoon the bare cornland was white with heat below the shimmering blue-green vines on the far slope of the valley. As he tried unsuccessfully to sleep under the trees he watched the sky splintered above him into sharp blue lace by the needles of the pines, and as he lay on the edge of the wood, taking his turn at watching, he occasionally saw the distant telegraph poles quivering on the blue-white horizon in the taut heat of full afternoon. Once he went along to the far edge of the wood and lay watching the farmhouse a mile or two away, a block of bare whitewash among its low cubes of newly harvested corn and a clump of high grey poplars, but no one came out of it, and the folds of the valley, beyond the vineyards, remained empty in the sun.
There began to be some sign of twilight soon after eight o’clock. The horizon beyond the vines turned purple after the heat of day, the vines glowing sharp green against the background. As Franklin went down the slope from the wood, walking a little behind the three sergeants as before, with O’Connor, he watched the line of telegraph poles, just visible like clusters of white pin-heads against the darkening sky. He knew that somehow they had to get over the road. It looked like a big road and it ran roughly south-west, the direction they wanted to go. He knew that it might be dangerous to reach it through the open cornland and the vineyards, and he knew that their only chance lay through the farm.
He was not quite sure if the farm, which lay a little west of the vines, belonged to the vineyards. To the east the vineyards curved round the slope of the hillside, out of sight. They were quite evidently very big.
The farm was quite small. Down at the foot of the slope he found himself looking up at it. The bare track coming up from the grassland, dusty after the heat of summer, went up the second slope, by a wire fence, with the vineyards on the other side, and then merged into the yard of the farm. The farmhouse was one-storeyed, washed white, with big red curling tiles on the roof. He saw two small stacks of corn and a black-brown heap of muck by the door, but there was no one in sight.
He stopped the sergeants on the slope. They looked very conspicuous and odd in their flying-jackets and he did not like it. They were about three hundred yards from the house when he stopped. He made them squat down by the vines, and as he squatted down too, he could see long shadowy alleys between the vines, and grapes plump and green amon
g the leaves.
‘I’m going up to the house,’ he said. ‘If I don’t get food we’ve got grapes.’
‘We’ve got grapes, anyway,‘ Taylor said.
‘And if you don’t come back?’ O’Connor said.
‘I’ll leave it to you. Hide all day and keep walking at night. But don’t go north. Whatever you do, don’t go north.’
‘You’ll be back all right,’ O’Connor said.
‘Keep in the vines, anyway,’ he said.
He began to walk away up the slope steadily, watching carefully the land beyond the fence. He was very conscious of the white sling on his arm and he tucked it deeper into the opening of his jacket. He felt the wound throbbing as he walked and the blood making corresponding beats in his head. As he came to the farmyard the twilight was rapidly coming down and he could see under a big apple-tree a cluster of white chickens already roosting in the dry hollows they had scratched in the dust about the roots. They fluttered a little as he went by. Then he went on and into the farmyard and halted for a moment about ten yards from the door of the farm.
He thought afterwards that the woman must have seen him from the windows. She came running out of the house and then stopped very suddenly, about five yards from him, her body flattened upright by the act of stopping, her hands slightly uplifted. All the time they were speaking she did not come any nearer.
‘I’m English,’ he said.
He felt foolish. His French, normally very fair, would not come. He stood looking at her stupidly. She was a little woman, about sixty, her hair drawn tightly back in a grey knot, her yellow brown face scared and almost hostile.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No. Not here. Not here.’
‘Something to eat,’ he said.
‘No.’ She stood arrested, more scared than himself, her very dark eyes staring.
‘Is the road safe?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
‘Where does it go?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s all right. If you’re alone it’s all right. Don’t be frightened.’
‘There is no food here,’ she said.
‘It’s all right,’ he said.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing. They take so much. It’s not easy.’
‘Can you tell me what’s over the road?’ he said.
‘You go now,’ she said.
‘Over the road,’ he said, ‘up there – what is there?’
‘You go now,’ she said; and then: ‘The river.’
‘The river?’
‘You go now. You’re all right if you go now.’
‘What river?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
He knew suddenly that it was no use. Her eyes were large and tearful with fear. She was too scared to offer either coherence or bread. He had eaten nothing but the chocolate for twenty-four hours, but now he felt suddenly that the road and what lay beyond the road were more important than hunger.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ He began to move away.
Transfixed, upright in her first stiff attitude of astonishment, she watched him go, not saying another word.
Five minutes later, when he came up the slope again and through the farmyard with the four sergeants, she was still standing there, flattened and upright, as if she had been shot where she stood. The twilight was deepening rapidly, but as the five went past her Franklin could see the deep scared black eyes alive in the frightened face, but she did not move except to give a little harsh sound of new astonishment as they went by. When he looked back once more, and for the last time, she was still standing there, vague but unmoved in the twilight, not watching the five men, but only the empty air of the spot where Franklin had first appeared.
At the top of the hillside they lay down in the ditch between the field and the road.
‘What happened?’ O’Connor said.
‘She was frightened.’
‘No food?’
‘She was too scared for anything.’
‘We brought some grapes,’ O’Connor said. ‘Will you have some? They’re sour, but they quench your thirst. I like them.’
‘Break a few off for me.’
He lay on his good elbow, pressing the grapes one by one into his mouth. They were good and clean and sharp on his tongue. It was almost dark now. There was no sound except the slight noise of air moving overhead in the telegraph wires, and he felt that in a few moments the road would be safe.
‘Would she do anything?’ O’Connor said.
‘I don’t think so. She was scared. I think she thought I was someone else,’ he said.
‘What now?’
‘Somewhere farther on there’s a river,’ he said. ‘I found that out. But I can’t make up my mind whether we ought to stick to the road or go on to the river. What do you think?’
‘If there was just one of us,’ O’Connor said, ‘if it was myself, I’d say the road. But there’s five of us. We look like bloody explorers.’
‘That’s what I feel,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
The road was empty as they went over it. He just had time to see the black shine of the tyre-worn tarmac and the line of telegraph poles vanishing on either side into a falling darkness, and then to smell the warm, friendly odour of tarmac scorched by the heat of the day. Then the five of them were in the field beyond, and were walking fast across it, slightly downhill again. As they walked he remembered, for the first time since the time of the crash, that soon the moon would be up, and he could not make up his mind whether or not it would be a good thing for them. The field they were crossing was cornstubble, and their flying-boots, hitting against the sharp upright straw, made a swishing and hollow sound in the wide quietness. He judged by the position of the vines that this was the north, perhaps the north-west slope, of the hill. They were going diagonally across it, almost dead into the thin strip of orange light lying far over in the west, the last of the day.
He spat out some grape-stones. ‘We ought to make twenty miles,’ he said. ‘Perhaps twenty-five. The moon will be up.’
‘What about the river?’ O’Connor said.
‘There’s bound to be a bridge. If there’s no bridge we can swim.’
‘With one arm?’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Like hell you will,’ O’Connor said. ‘And I’ll tell you something else. You’ll have trouble with that arm if it isn’t stitched soon. You’ve got a slit in it as long as a jack-knife. It isn’t congealing much either.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘I’m telling you,’ O’Connor said.
He knew that what O’Connor was saying was probably true. He tried not to think of it. He finished the grapes O’Connor had given him and held out his hand for more. The three sergeants were about forty or fifty yards ahead. O’Connor gave him six or seven grapes broken from the bunch, and he ate them one by one as he walked.
Down the slope, at the end of the stubble, the sergeants were waiting.
‘It looks like sugar-beet in the field beyond,’ Godwin said. ‘Is it all right to go through?’
‘Go round it,’ he said. ‘Going through will make a hell of a noise.’
The three sergeants moved off. Stubble came down to the edge of the sugar-beet. There was no hedge or path between and they walked on in the stubble, keeping the roots on their right hand.
They walked on for another ten minutes without speaking The night was warm, and Franklin could smell the straw of the field and then, as they went farther down the slope, the slightly cooler air, touched with dew, coming up from the valley. From the field of roots they went down into grass, long and rough and sun-scorched again, but damp now with falling dew.
‘Nearly all rivers in France are navigable,’ he said. He felt they were not far from the river now.
‘Which might mean something,’ O’Connor said.
‘It might mean barges. It’ll almost certainly mean
guards on the bridges and locks.’
‘And a bloody good width,’ O’Connor said.
‘It looks like a swim,’ he said.
‘Not with that arm.’
‘You want me to walk it?’
‘You’re about as obstinate as a woman,’ O’Connor said.
They came to the last flat stretch of grass running on to the river almost before Franklin was ready. He was about to be angry with the sergeants for going too far ahead, when he and O’Connor stumbled on them in the grass. ‘We thought we’d better wait,’ Taylor said. ‘The river bank is about thirty yards ahead.’
‘Does it look all right?’
‘It seems clear.’
‘Go and look,’ he said.
Taylor was very young, about nineteen or twenty. He was a very good gunner: so good that Franklin sometimes wondered if he knew, in a war not of his own making, anything of what it was all about. He had seen Taylor sometimes a little drunk after a big spell of ops., with gaiety swimming on his face, and with his eyes bright through the smeared glassiness of long strain, and had wondered how old you needed to be before fear stopped being half-conscious, and emerged from the embryo of mere excitement and became, at last, a harder and clearer pain.
He did not know why he was thinking of this, except perhaps to remind himself that what had happened so far, easy and lucky and in a way adventurous, was only the beginning. All the time he was trying to measure the possible distance they had to go with the capacity of all of them to go on. He did not doubt this. It only seemed to him wise to keep his alertness cool and clear, and as he lay in the grass, waiting for Taylor to come back, he realized that his fear and his alertness were one.
When Taylor came back he caught the sound of new responsibility in his voice, and was glad now that he had sent him.
‘It’s about sixty yards wide and it looks deep,’ he said.
‘Any bridge?’
‘I can’t see anything. There’s a big bend farther up-stream,’ he said.
‘We might follow the bank,’ Godwin said, ‘and cross lower down.’
‘I don’t see the point of it,’ Franklin said. ‘Bridges are always dangerous, and the moon will be up, anyway.’
