by H. E. Bates
And suddenly he wanted her there. The image was not enough, and in any case, he thought, we have to be rational. There are still five men who have to escape from here.
‘Is the girl coming up again?’ he said.
‘She said someone was to go down if you wanted her,’ Sandy said.
‘I wanted to talk to her.’
‘Taylor will go,’ Sandy said.
‘No,’ he said, ‘you go.’
After Sandy had gone downstairs he spoke to O’Connor. He deliberately did not want to speak to Taylor. The two boys stood looking out of the window. They looked very young and no longer tired in the sun.
‘Take Goddy and Taylor upstairs,’ he said. ‘Keep your eye on the roads. And put the map away.’
He shut his eyes so that he should not look at Taylor. His jealousy against him was like a small gritty seed of irritation. The very unreasonableness of it fascinated him. He kept himself close to it, knowing now that it was part of his affection.
When he looked up again the room was empty. Alone, in the emptiness, he realized now that he felt very ill. The separate pain of his arm and head and throat became one acceptable piece of thought, the expression of his entire self, unpleasant but final. He knew that he was slipping towards the point when he would no longer care what happened.
The girl came in with Sandy very quietly, a moment or two later. She was dressed in a short green skirt and a white blouse. The blouse was of some shining thin material that showed the shape of her breasts, and above the white collar of it her brown face looked darker still. He saw her wholly, then as it were fragment by fragment: the black eyes, the clear breasts under the blouse, the brown bare legs below the green skirt.
‘Françoise,’ he said.
He smiled at her and she came over to him, and for the first time he realized that he had never attempted to get up. ‘Jesus, I must be ill,’ he thought.
‘How is your arm? ’ she said.
‘All right. The bandage became tight in the night. It’s better now.’
He looked over her shoulder for Sandy. He was not in the room.
‘They said something about passes,’ he said.
‘Two.’
‘Is it safe?’
‘There were two aircraft came down,’ she said. ‘They know about one, but not the other. Not about yours. So it is safe.’
‘What kind of aircraft? ‘
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It was north-east of here. You must have come north-west.’
He watched her as she spoke, not caring much what she said. She was kneeling on the floor, her skirt pulled tight across her knees and her hands smoothing it. He wanted to kiss her again, and he felt the excitement of the moment grow bigger than the feeling of illness. He reached forward and pulled her down towards him, and she came without any of the hesitation of the previous night, as if it were all very natural and right and part of the whole ordained pattern of hiding and war and escape. When he had kissed her once she turned her face, and then he held it for a moment with his good hand.
‘This is no time,’ she said.
‘It’s the only possible time,’ he said.
‘There are serious things to talk about.’
‘This is serious,’ he said.
He said it without thinking, and in a second he saw the light of pain and wonder jump sharply into her face, and he thought, Oh God! I mean it and she isn’t sure. Oh hell! he thought, she wants me to mean it and I do mean it, and she isn’t sure. It is serious. Jesus, it is serious! ‘Please,’ he said, ‘please.’ He looked at her steadily and she looked back, calm and clear, the black eyes so seriously tender again that he knew there was no need to speak any more.
It was she who was rational again at last.
‘It will be possible for two to go to-night,’ she said. ‘Pierre will take them the first part of the way. My father has the papers. It is possible they will go to Paris.’
‘To Paris?’ he said. It did not seem credible. ‘That’s back from where we came.’
‘You mustn’t argue about it.’ She took hold of his good hand and held it flattened between her own, the flattened, smooth fingers cool as leaves. ‘It’s all right. Everything will be all right. It’s you we have to look after. Your hands are very hot.’
He smiled. ‘It’s a hot day.’
‘Be frank with me.’
It was no use. His pose seemed suddenly idiotic. I feel ill, he thought. Oh hell! why don’t I admit it? I feel bloody and terribly ill. She knows how I feel, and it’s stupid to try to fool her any more.
‘Be frank with me,’ she said. ‘The arm is bad, isn’t it?’
‘It seems very swollen.’
‘If it doesn’t get any better something will have to be done.’
‘I’ll try to sleep.’
‘If it gets worse sleep won’t be enough,’ she said.
He lay back. It seemed better once again not to talk about it. Talk seemed only to clip at the edges of reality, made up now of the pain of his body and the pleasure of looking at her. Outside these things it was all unreal, and the clipping frayed his nerves.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Don’t talk any more. There is no need to talk. I have the two sets of papers here. Don’t talk. Just listen. I’ll explain what has to be done.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘The papers are for Jean Joubert and Michel Lebrun. They are going to Marseilles. To hospital.’
‘Hospital!’ he said.
‘Don’t talk.’
‘But why hospital?’
‘They are deaf and dumb.’
The whole thing is mad, he thought. He looked at her, oddly, but did not speak.
‘It is very simple,’ she said. ‘The papers say they are deaf and dumb. In that way there are no questions. If they go to the right people there will be no difficulty. In the same way you can all go.’
He nodded.
‘I must go,’ she said. ‘Who are the two to go to-night?’
‘The two young ones. They have always been friends together.’
‘Then the ages and descriptions must be filled in.’
‘I’ve got a pen,’ he said.
He unscrewed his fountain pen and gave it to her and, with his head lying back, told her what to write. While he watched her writing the description of Taylor and Godwin on the papers he saw the black eyes at intervals raised up to him. They were very beautiful, and once again he was seized by the awful fear that she was too young, too lovely, and too fine to have any part of it all. But the calm supreme assurance of her eyes finally repelled his fear. He decided it was better to take each situation how and when it came.
‘They had better get to know the papers,’ he said. ‘Confidence is everything.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going now.’ She laid the papers on his blankets. ‘Shall you sleep?’
‘I’ll try to sleep.’
‘Tell the others to sleep, too. They will be travelling all night.’
She bent down and held her face over him. The moment before he touched her had the reality of a dream re-dreamed and joined, finally, to a moment of waking. As if I’ve been here before, he thought, or as if the vines and the mill and all of it were part of some other life that once happened to me. She kissed him and he discovered that he had hardly the strength to kiss her back. ‘Try to sleep,’ she said.
‘Come back again,’ he said.
She smiled and he saw her figure go past the window and then he shut his eyes. Alone, he felt more tired than ever. His eyes began to be beaten with slow recurrent waves of pain, and he had no thought of getting up.
He did not know how long it was before the sergeants came downstairs. They walked quietly and he knew they thought him asleep. He let them come in and then opened his eyes.
‘Here, all of you,’ he said.
They came and stood by him. It was an effort for him to look up.
‘Papers for two,’ he said, ‘For you and Goddy.’ He han
ded the papers up to Taylor.
Taylor took the papers, read them, and burst out laughing.
‘We always knew you and Goddy were dumb,’ Franklin said. It did not seem, after all, very funny. ‘Now it says so in the papers.’
‘Deaf and dumb, Goddy,’ Taylor said. ‘Deaf and dumb I/
‘You’re pulling my leg.’
‘No, Goddy, it says so! ’ Taylor said.
‘And it means so,’ Franklin said. ‘It means exactly that. Nothing else. So don’t go forgetting it’
‘When do they go?’ Sandy said.
‘To-night.’ Franklin felt terribly sick. His words seemed to be at the far end of a chasm. He groped for them heavily and the sound of them reverberated wildly in his head. ‘They’ll give you all the final instructions. Memorize the papers and don’t do anything they don’t tell you. Is that straight?’
‘Yes,’ Taylor said.
‘And remember your own instructions,’ he said. Why must I go on talking? he thought. They know this. They’ve heard it a hundred times. Then he stopped talking. He could not find the words he wanted to say. His mind was chasmic and empty, and a wave of sickness was coming up into his throat.
The four sergeants waited.
At last he found what he had to say. ‘If you’re caught be bloody careful. However innocent the questions sound make sure they’re not. Everything’s a trap to get your squadron number, your type of aircraft, your station. So don’t answer a damn thing. Just your name and rank and number.’
‘In fact, be deaf and dumb,’ Goddy said.
They all laughed at that. His eyes were open as the four sergeants laughed, and the sight of their laughing faces, bright against the hot blue square of window and the dark wooden walls, were the last fully coherent and tangible things he remembered. There was nothing else to the day except the increase of pain and sickness and the sweat of his body under the blankets, and whenever he opened his eyes the glaring square of sun, and whenever he shut them the image of the girl steady and bright in the dark confusion of fever.
CHAPTER 9
O’CONNOR roused him a little after eight in the evening. It was not yet dark. The two sergeants were ready to go.
‘The Frenchie is here, too,’ O’Connor said. ‘Pierre.’
‘M’sieu,’ Pierre said. He stood stiff in the middle of the room. He had his best Sunday black cap in his hands. Franklin saw his hands picking the material of the peak, and thought he looked nervous. ‘Everything is ready?’ Franklin said.
‘Everything is quite ready.’
‘Where do you go?’
‘Over the hill. There is a short walk and then we pick up the car. It will be dark by then.’
‘The taller of the two sergeants speaks French,’ Franklin said. ‘It will be easy to explain to him.’
‘It is all arranged,’ Pierre said.
‘Good.’ Again he did not want to talk. He was sick of himself and the hardness of the floor-boards and the smell of his sweat. His arm now had swollen still more and was tight as a blown-up tyre under the bandages.
‘Anything else you wanted to say?’
He looked up and it was Taylor. He was wearing a dark blue beret, and a blue sweater tucked into a pair of navy blue trousers. He looked very French and very young.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Franklin said. ‘It depends on you. We’ll come on as soon as we can.’
‘All right. Well, we’ll say good-bye.’
Franklin held up his hand. It was more of an effort than he expected. Taylor took the hand. It seemed an awkward moment, and they each said ‘Good-bye’. Then Goddy came up and Franklin said, ‘Good-bye, Goddy. Don’t get arsing around too much. Keep your head. If anything goes wrong you can always start walking.’
‘Good-bye, Frankie,’ Goddy said. ‘I hope your arm will be better.’
Franklin smiled. He’s a good kid, he thought. A hell of a nice kid. Too nice to be in a war and getting his life balled up. But he probably loves this. ‘I hope you get through all right,’ he said.
‘Lucky sods,’ O’Connor said.
Franklin heard the two young sergeants saying good-bye to Sandy and O’Connor, the voices jumbled in his head, and he himself not caring much about it, and then the final words and sounds as the two boys and Pierre went downstairs.
‘We can watch them go up the hill,’ he heard O’Connor say.
The two elder sergeants stood at the window. There was still some light in the sky. Franklin lay for a moment and then held the topmost blanket under his chin and got slowly up, kneeling first, then standing. He realized then, as he stood there, trusting the weight of his body to his legs and feeling this weight rise slowly up through his body to his head until his head seemed like a great iron ball on a matchstick, that he was very ill. The window was a long way off. He could never reach it. The floorboards of the little room became suddenly enlarged and stretched away, up a slope, like part of a scenic railway. He held the blanket tight round his chin, stood for a moment, and then painfully walked up the slope to the window.
‘What the hell are you out for?’ O’Connor said.
‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘Where are they?’
He clung to the window-sill with his finger-tips.
‘Hang on to me,’ Sandy said.
‘I’m all right,’ he said. His weakness flooded over him in waves, and the waves in turn folded over each other outside, as part of the increasing darkness.
‘They’re just going up the path.’ O’Connor said. ‘The way we came down.’
He looked and could see the dark area of fruit trees and grass, beyond it the lighter area of vines, and to the side of both the white path. Now he could just see the three figures, in single file, going up the path.
And then he thought that there were four figures. For a moment he was not sure. Then he stared again, and the figures dimmed and enlarged with his sickness. Then he had a moment of clarity, when the path and his head seemed to stand still, and he was sure there were four.
‘Who else is there?’ he said.
‘It looks like the girl,’ O’Connor said.
A second later he knew his hands were leaving the window-sill. He was already falling before they released their grasp: falling through the cold space of the mill, down through the dark hollows and the water and the air that had been for years without sun. He was going down for ever, baling out like a dead weight, to fall and fall until he struck his arm against the stone somewhere and broke it off like a piece of touchwood on a dead tree swollen by disease and rain.
The fall seemed to last through all the years of his life. He remembered hitting the floor, twisting himself with terror so that his arm should fall free. Then he remembered nothing else until they began to carry him downstairs, O’Connor and Sandy and the girl’s father, and across the narrow roadway into the house. He remembered, too, how they carried him upstairs in the house, and how the cold sweat of his faintness lay all the time on his head, which seemed like a wizened and juiceless piece of flesh on his shoulders.
When he came round fully he saw an oil-lamp of opaque white glass burning on a table by the bedside, and the old woman moving about in the low light. This is it, was his first thought, this is it. If they come to us now there’s nothing any of us can do. They’ll shoot everybody: the old lady and the girl, everybody. There’s no escape now. Oh Jesus! what have I gone and done?
His arm hurt like hell. ‘Take the bandage off,’ he said.
‘Don’t talk,’ the old woman said.
‘The bandage is too tight.’
‘The bandage has already been changed,’ she said.
Nothing made sense. They couldn’t have changed it without my knowing, he thought. I haven’t been here five minutes. It’s only a minute since they carried me up.
‘What time is it?’ he said.
‘It is past the time for talking,’ she said. She came and stood in the lamplight, so that she was shadowy and seemed doubly old, her French rugged and rathe
r fast in its half-patois that he could only just understand. ‘Past midnight,’ she said. ‘That’s what time it is.’ Her shadow was huge and easy on his face.
She stood there, it seemed to him, all night, so that the light should keep out of his eyes. Whenever he woke or opened his eyes the shadow was on his face, but afterwards he knew that it was the whole darkness and that the lamp had gone.
When he really came to himself it was day and the girl was in the room. He could tell by the blue of the sky above the plain, seen through one of the windows, that it was very hot and far into the day. He lay for a long time looking at a large black crucifix hanging on the wall opposite the bed and did not see the girl until she made a sound as she moved. She was sitting by a second window. When she saw him awake she came over to the bed.
She looked very tired. His gladness at seeing her was dry. It had no excitement. He was simply glad.
‘What time is it?’ he said.
‘Three o’clock.’ She smiled, but the black eyes were not bright.
‘Have I been asleep all that time?’
‘Part of it. Yesterday you didn’t sleep much.’
‘Yesterday?’ he said. ‘Yesterday?’
Nothing made sense. I remember yesterday, he thought. I remember Taylor and Goddy going, and being at the window, and the fall. I remember being brought here. Yesterday has nothing to do with it.
‘This is the third day,’ she said.
‘Oh God!’ he said.
There was no reasoning it out. He lay flat and without strength.
‘The doctor is coming to-night,’ she said.
‘Doctor?’
‘The same doctor. The one you saw.’
‘Isn’t it very dangerous? Why is he coming?’
‘There is nothing for it,’ she said. ‘The arm doesn’t get any better.’
He felt small and frightened and confused, lying in the centre of the large feather bed. Nothing was easy. The complication of things had happened without his knowing it, too fast. He couldn’t grasp it all.
‘There is no need for you to worry,’ she said. The doctor often comes. He will come for the fishing. No one suspects a fisherman.’
He did not speak. He remembered suddenly a story by de Maupassant, also of France, in a war, of two innocent fishermen who were shot. I’m not so sure, he thought. This is what war does. It is the very innocent who get caught up. They get destroyed.
