by H. E. Bates
What he needed most of all was a map. He had not seen any of his belongings since before the operation. If O’Connor and Sandy had not taken all the maps it was just possible that he could, by questioning the old woman, discover where he was. In that way he could spend the week planning the route to the Pyrenees. All this was theoretical. But he had shown himself, by walking around the room, to be fairly tough, and it did not seem that anything could stop him now.
He shut his eyes for a few moments, pleased with himself. All the silence of the afternoon was compressed into the sound of the mill-race, like the echo of a roar beyond the partly opened window. After a time this sound seemed to increase and come nearer. It broke at last into separate sounds: the sounds of feet on the stairs.
Someone knocked on the door. Neither the old woman nor Françoise ever knocked, and he said cautiously, ‘Come in.’
The door opened and Franklin was rather surprised to see the girl’s father. He had not spoken to him more than half a dozen times since the morning when he and the crew had first come to the house. He had seemed to him then like a man of reticence and responsibility. The fact that he had not seen him very often since now struck Franklin as having great significance. He knew that he owed more to him than the girl.
‘You are not asleep?’ The man held the door with one hand and then closed it gently.
‘No,’ Franklin said. ‘No. I have not been to sleep. Please come in.’
‘I do not want to disturb you.’
‘It is a pleasure,’ Franklin said.
The man was in his shirt-sleeves. The shirt was grey, like an army shirt, and was tucked into black trousers. He looked as if he had suddenly come in from the fields. His eyes were slightly out of focus, even troubled, as if the change from sun-glare to shade had been too abrupt for them. They struck Franklin, for the first time, as being of the same black brightness as the girl’s.
‘I am sorry to come at this hour,’ he said again. ‘How is the arm?’
‘Please,’ Franklin said, ‘it is very well’ He suddenly felt worried. It was all very apologetic. ‘I am very glad of it. I would like to thank you. You have been kind beyond words.’
‘I’m afraid you won’t thank me for what I have come to say now,’ he said.
‘Something is wrong?’
The man stood by the bed. The thin fissured cheeks looked narrower than ever. Curious, thought Franklin, that I don’t even know his name. The sharp Adam’s apple in the man’s thin brown throat jerked up and down.
‘You remember,’ he said, ‘how I spoke to you of labour troubles?’
That was the first morning. ‘Yes,’ Franklin said, ‘I remember.’
‘It gets worse,’ he said. ‘Yesterday they broke out again in the town. Unfortunately two Germans were shot.’
‘Unfortunately?’
‘Unfortunately in the sense that the innocent are bound to suffer.’ He did not smile.
It means hostages, Franklin thought. He waited.
‘I’m afraid the situation is bad,’ the father said. ‘They have put a curfew on the whole district. They have already taken hostages. Now they are taking a census of houses.’
‘You think they are coming here?’ Franklin said.
‘Unfortunately we know they are coming here.’
Any moment now, Franklin thought. He looked at the father. whose nervousness, now that he had spoken, was more subdued. The situation was now, to Franklin, very clear. He knew there was nothing to be done except to get him away. ‘I am ready to do whatever you want me to do,’ he said.
‘We shall have to move you,’ the man said. ‘I’m sorry. Pierre and I will carry you.’
‘There is no need,’ he said. ‘I can walk.’
‘No,’ the father said. ‘No. It will be better if we carry you. I will get Pierre.’ He moved towards the door.
‘No,’ Franklin said, ‘I can walk. Get Pierre and I will walk.’ He began to get out of bed.
The last thing he remembered seeing was the door swinging into the room. It seemed to swing very violently, as if it had sprung off its hinges when wrenched open by the man’s hand. He was perfectly certain that it swung across the room and struck him, like a black wall, in the face. Nothing else, he thought in that moment of sharp confusion, could have so surprisingly and completely knocked him down.
When he came round again he was looking up at the sky. He looked forward to see the tall shape of the girl’s father before him, and upward to see the blank and thick-lipped face of Pierre above his own. Together they were carrying him down, across the little jetty, to the river.
He knew afterwards, for all the sharpness of his impressions of the moment, that they could have thrown him in the river and he would not have cared. They were carrying him on two planks of wood lashed together by rope to form a stretcher. He could feel the rope against his neck as he moved. He could feel that someone had partly dressed him, putting on his trousers. They had covered him over also with a grey blanket on which his good arm lay bloodless in the hot sun. All his strength lay behind him, in the bedroom.
They set him down on the jetty for a moment and then slid him, very gently and at a slight angle, down to the boat below. The stones of the jetty, as his good hand touched them in passing, were burning in the sun. He heard the sound of a dog, panting and whimpering quietly, and then the voice of the girl, quieting it in reply. As he felt himself going down lower than the level of the jetty he looked up to see the face of Pierre. It seemed to project like the end of a lump of cracked brown wood from the side of the stones. The man was lying on his stomach, grasping the sides of the boat with two brown hands, so that it did not rock. He lay there for some minutes while Françoise and her father slid the planks along the seats of the boat, fixing them centrally, towards the stern end. Then Franklin felt the boat rock very slightly and saw the girl’s father standing on the jetty. He saw also the dog sitting in the well of the boat, and then, above him, the girl bending down. He felt momentarily grateful for the shadow she made, a cool break in the glaring space of sun. ‘I am going to cover you over,’ she said. ‘It won’t be for long.’
The tarpaulin came over him, hiding her face, the sun and the figures on the jetty. He breathed the smell of tar, warm and secure. The tarpaulin, soaked through by sun, was warm on the underside. He moved it slightly with his good hand. Through the break of light he saw the jetty moving away. When the hot grey-white stone at last slid away and was replaced by reeds he watched the small waves made by the motion of boat and oars gently strike the reeds and shiver them side to side. Soon the reeds grew thicker but farther away, and the motion of the water, in a series of sunlit waves, steadier and deeper. Then he heard in the silence of the afternoon nothing but the gentle sound of water, the regular and gentle beat of oars, and now and then, from somewhere near his feet, the gentler breathing of the dog.
The girl rowed steadily, and after a time he let the tarpaulin down. It was then quite dark; he became insulated from the sun. A slight sense of oppression was counteracted by amazement. To be strapped to the plank and rowed away in the boat, under a tarpaulin, in the peaceful heat of afternoon, seemed whenever he was not too stupefied to think of it a fantastic thing.
The boat moved on, at the same pace, for what seemed to him about fifteen minutes. During all this time the girl did not say a word. Once more he lifted up the edge of the tarpaulin. Across the water, now, on the river-bank, were lines of willow trees and between them and the boat thick stretches of water-lily leaves, flowerless and curled up in the heat of the sun. About five minutes afterwards he felt the boat slow down.
‘You are all right?’ Her voice, though in a whisper, quite startled him. It came from very close to his head. All the time he had had an idea that she was much farther away.
‘I am all right,’ he said. He lifted the tarpaulin higher, until he could see her brown hand on an oar. ‘Where are we?’
‘We have been going upstream. Not quite far enough yet. I thought
you’d like a little air.’
‘How long will it be?’
‘I don’t know. We heard that they were at the next farm along the river. It shouldn’t be long. They will signal from the house when they are ready.’
He wanted the tarpaulin off his face, so that he could look at her, but it seemed to be tied down. He could only lift his right hand free and touch hers as it rested on the oar. He felt her skin warm in the sun, and then, running his hand up the arm, the short soft hairs above the wrist. Then he let his hand run down to hers again and this time she took hold of it and held it for about a minute, firm and tender.
In a moment or two she rowed on. He kept the tarpaulin down. The delayed effect of being moved now came over him. He felt very tired and shut his eyes, feeling in the complete darkness the old throb of his arm renewing itself and beating up through the blood of his head.
He was disturbed out of this by the slowing down of the boat. It seemed as if the girl had given up rowing very suddenly. He felt her pulling round on one oar, the boat turning in a half-circle across the stream. Then she gave up rowing entirely and he felt the boat drifting without a sound.
‘Don’t move,’ she said.
He lay very tense and still. ‘What is it?’
‘They have put the guard back on the bridge,’ she said.
Jesus, he thought. ‘Can he see us?’
‘He is about a hundred yards away,’ she said. ‘He is looking at us now.’
He did not speak. The movement of the boat, ominously quiet, had almost spent itself. He could hear nothing but the panting of the dog. The girl talked in a whisper.
‘There used to be a guard here,’ she said. ‘He never did much.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But what do we do?’
‘I brought the fishing things.’
Too amazed to speak, he lay motionless, feeling against his back the very slight shock of the boat striking the bank at last. He did not dare move, but even through the tarpaulin he could feel the difference between the hot sunlight of the open river and the shade. The crazy tension of the moment filled him with alarm. It was like being shut up in a cupboard for fun, and then finding suddenly that it was locked from outside.
‘Tell me what goes on,’ he said. ‘What are you doing now?’
‘The guard is looking at us,’ she said. ‘I am putting the fishing-rod together. Do you fish in England?’
‘Myself?’ he said. ‘No. I never found the time.’
‘I am fixing the line to the rod now,’ she said. He waited and she did not speak for a moment or two. At last she said, ‘It is all fixed up now except for the bait.’
‘What bait do you have?’ he said.
‘I have no bait.’
This is mad, he thought. ‘Do you know the English word crazy?’ he said. He tried to be lighthearted, but his arm was hurting like hell.
‘No,’ she said. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It means it is mad to fish without anything on the hook.’
‘But I am going to get bait,’ she said. ‘I am going now.’
He lay rigid under the tarpaulin. One moment of suspicion from the sentry, he thought, and everybody will be shot. Oh Christ! he thought in panic. ‘Where are you going?’
‘There is an elderberry tree up the bank,’ she said.
‘I didn’t know that fish ate elderberries,’ he said.
‘You are not a fisherman.’
I’m trapped, he thought. I’m trapped in a cupboard! For God’s sake! ‘What will happen if he decides to investigate?’ he said.
He heard her move in the boat, and then felt the boat itself move, as if she was tightening it up by rope to the bank. ‘You have the dog,’ she said. ‘The dog would never let him get into the boat, even if he decided to get his feet wet.’ He heard her moving again. Not to know what she was doing was very like being blind.
‘What are you doing now?’ he said.
‘Taking off my shoes.’
A second later he heard her feet in the water. There was no sound from the dog. The sound of the girl walking in the water, taking less than half a dozen paces, suddenly stopped. She was climbing the bank. ‘Will you be long?’ he said. ‘Don’t be long,’ as if he were a child going to be left alone in a strange place, but she did not answer again.
He resisted a terrible impulse to lift the tarpaulin. Beneath, it was quite dark, and the sensation of being trapped became sharper. It filled him with almost senseless stupidity. The only senses left to him seemed to be hearing, though he could not even hear the dog, and a more than normally sharp sense of pain. All his tension seemed to concentrate itself on the raw edges of his severed arm. He felt he did not breathe at all.
He lay then for what he knew must have been fifteen minutes before he heard her voice. He was staggered to hear it coming from some way off, up the bank. He could hear it because it was talking to someone at a distance. He resisted again the awful impulse to lift the tarpaulin simply because, this time, he knew that it could only help him to confirm a more awful thought. There was only one person to whom she could be talking at a distance, and he knew it was the German on the bridge.
About the same time he became aware, too, of an extraordinary tension in the dog. Since there was nothing to hear, he was not sure how he became aware of it. He only knew, with absolute certainty, that the dog was sitting there somewhere in the boat in a state of intense alarm. He lifted the tarpaulin slightly and put out his right hand. The absurd question of whether to speak to the dog in French or English was never solved. A second later the dog broke free of all tension and began barking violently.
Franklin felt the sweat start out of him in a cold stream. The dog, in his excitement, began to jump up and down. The movement, though slight, rocked the boat in a way that made it seem, to Franklin, as if he were being swung into the air in a builders’ cradle. The dog seemed to dance on the edge of the boat. The old absurd question of whether to command it in French or English was, for the second time, never settled. The dog gave a great leap off the side of the boat, rocking it still more, and jumped into the water. He heard it swimming with great excitement upstream.
He lay there and did not move. He decided that someone had come along the bank, become suspicious, and had frightened the dog into hostility. His hand lay outside the tarpaulin and he dared not draw it back. As the boat rocked to stillness he listened for some movement on the bank, but he could hear nothing but the girl’s voice, higher pitched now, and the sudden joyous yapping of the dog. He heard, too, a new sound: the clattering of wings, the sound of a bird, in terror, half flying, half swimming, flapping and screeching as it skimmed the water. Finally the scream of the bird died away, leaving the taut silence over the water to be shivered only by the sound of the dog shaking his wet body somewhere on the bank upstream.
It seemed about half an hour before the girl came back. He became aware of her pulling gently at the rope by which the boat was tied. He felt the boat slide in towards the bank, himself helpless and wondering what the devil was the matter again until he heard her voice. ‘It’s all right, now,’ she said. ‘All right, All right.’
She climbed into the boat. He was stiff with lying in the same position, his nerves on edge, and now partly tired, partly enraged by his own helplessness.
‘Why have you been so long?’ he said. ‘What happened?’
‘I went up to the bridge.’
‘To the bridge?’ He could not believe her. ‘To the sentry? For God’s sake! ’ he said. ‘Why? ‘
‘I wanted to see if he could see the boat very clearly.’
She was quite calm; he felt empty and humiliated.
‘And can he?’
‘No,’ she said.
She lifted the tarpaulin for the first time off his face. The shadow of the willow was unbroken on his face, but the sunlight, deflected from the water, still dazzled his eyes. He looked up at her. She was tying back her hair.
‘Better?’
‘Mu
ch better,’ he said. But in spite of a vast thankfulness, he felt there was something wrong. Then he screwed his head round and said, ‘I don’t like your face upside down,’ and she smiled, moving so that he could see her full face, above him.
‘Better?’
‘Much better,’ he said.
She put her hand on his forehead, warm and wet with sweat. He said something about the dog, and she told him how she had left him near the bridge. ‘He will bark if the sentry moves,’ she said. ‘Just as he did with the duck. Were you frightened?’
‘I was frightened,’ he said. Like hell, he thought.
Suddenly it all seemed impossibly fantastic: he lying stiff as a corpse in the boat, the girl talking to the sentry, the dog chasing the duck. For a moment he could not believe in it. He felt that the aircraft could never have crashed, he could never have met the girl, he could never have lost his arm.
She squeezed out her wet handkerchief and put it on his face. It lay folded across his forehead, wet on his temples, a cold and slightly shocking stab of reality.
‘Is your arm comfortable?’ she said.
Which part of it? he was going to say, and then changed his mind. It seemed like the expression of something awfully petty. He was glad he did not say it. He said instead: ‘I am tired of lying down. That’s all.’ The arm, in fact, ached as if it were all there. Its tired pain had spread out and had assumed the shape, for the first time, of the lost limb. It gnawed in turn at his mind.
‘There is something to eat,’ she said. She unfolded the handkerchief and moulded it, like a cold plaster, on his face. ‘I brought apples and some bread.’
