by H. E. Bates
‘You are quite sure about my brother’s wife?’ Pierre said. The voice was low for the last time from the jetty.
‘Quite sure.’
‘Number 67. Once you get there you don’t need to worry.’
‘I shall remember,’ the girl said.
The boat pulled round against the wind, and then at right angles to it, and Franklin felt the girl begin to pull with both oars, making very little sound, the boat moving in steady even sweeps, rocking very slightly on the wind-broken water. And then as it moved forward he heard a new sound. It came from the river-bank, and was like the sound of someone crying. It increased to a high-whimpering, and finally became the wild howling of the dog.
For a minute the girl stopped rowing and he felt the wind rock the boat in midstream. He heard the dog struggling in the reeds, threshing the water, and then the voice of Pierre in a desperate whisper telling it again and again to be quiet. He heard the dog crying again, struggling wildly on the water’s edge, and finally the sound of Pierre beating it into silence, hitting its flanks with a mournful hollow sound of his flat hand.
The girl began to row again, and there was no sound from the dog except a constant, small, thin crying. As it began to die away the sound of the mill-stream smothered it. Finally that sound, too, died away until there was no sound except the quiet noise of oars and the ruffle of rainless wind blowing across open water.
Franklin lay still and did not speak. He did not know what to expect, but as the boat went smoothly on he remembered how evening after evening the girl had rowed it upstream, whenever she could, so that whoever guarded the bridges would get used to the sight of a girl going to fish in the twilight. He did not know what to expect at the bridges that night: some shooting, perhaps, at least a challenge, perhaps even death, but he lay there under the tarpaulin and nothing happened. Once he lifted the corner of the tarpaulin and looked out. He could see the grey evening sky, not quite dark, swimming past above the wet leaves of the willows. He did not see the bridge. But in time he knew that they must have travelled far enough to be beyond it. He waited a little longer, keeping the edge of the tarpaulin raised, and then saw the shadow of the second bridge go past. The bridge was low and there was a second or two of darkness that held them down. Then it broke, and it was as if they had come out of a tunnel into the light beyond.
Five minutes later the girl stopped rowing. ‘All right now,’ she said. Franklin moved the tarpaulin aside and sat up. It was still not dark, and he could see the girl’s face as she rested on the oars. She was panting a little and looked rather tense. ‘Are you all right?’ he said.
‘It was the dog,’ she said. ‘The dog frightened me. I tied him up and he broke loose because he knew I was going.’
He did not say anything. He knew that it meant very much to her. He covered the tarpaulin over the bag of food and the attaché case.
‘Are you ready to go on?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can row, too, now.’
‘I am all right.’
‘I am going to row, too,’ he said.
He stepped over the tarpaulin and moved up towards the bows of the boat, sitting behind her. She changed the oar for him and he took it in his right hand. It felt good to be holding the smooth end of the oar. It gave him a feeling of responsibility.
‘Ready when you are,’ he said. He felt that he could row strongly, for a long time.
‘There is no hurry,’ she said. ‘Rest a moment. We can row all night.’
She rested a moment or two longer. He looked at the stream. It seemed about seventy or eighty feet wide and was running strongly down, with thick colour, after the day of rain. The current was quite strong, and it did not seem to him like the same stream. He asked her about it, and she said:
‘No. This is the real river. The mill is on the backwater.’
‘Does it go far like this?’ he said. ‘So wide?’
‘It goes down to the Unoccupied line,’ she said. ‘And then on to the south. For a time it is the Occupied line.’
‘Can we get past there?’ he said.
‘We can get past,’ she said. ‘Are you ready to row now?’
He did not speak at once. He saw her neck very brown in the twilight below her black hair, and he leaned forward for one moment and put his face against it. All that he wanted to say to her in thanks and love and admiration came together in a moment of tenderness that he could not express. He let go the oar and put his hand on her bare neck and pressed his face against her.
‘This won’t get us to England, she said.
‘It will,’ he said, ‘in time.’
‘Not loving.’
‘In good time it will.’
‘Do you want me to come to England?’
‘I want you to do whatever you feel is best. Do you want to come so much?’
‘I want to come,’ she said. ‘Will they like me?’
‘Will who like you?’
‘Your family,’ she said. ‘Your mother.’
‘There will be a private war if they don’t,’ he said.
‘Do the English hate the French?’ she said.
‘We will talk about that later. Are you ready now?’
‘I’m ready.’
‘Bless you,’ he said.
They began to row together a moment later. At first, each time he pulled, he felt the need for his other hand. He felt himself grope for it in the darkness. His hands had always been rather large, and he did not feel now any awkwardness in holding the oar with one hand. He felt only an odd sense of loss. His amputated arm was a ghost that seemed to be trying to become part of the rhythm of rowing. After a time this feeling grew stronger. He gradually felt that the arm was there, and that it went forward with the other arm, in unison, sharing the strength of each stroke.
They rowed for the first time for about an hour without stopping. After the first quarter of an hour he was very tired, but he did not say anything. He sucked in his lower lip and bit it hard under his teeth, and sometimes shut his eyes. The illusion about his arm grew stronger in the darkness. He was frightened that if he stopped rowing the illusion would stop, leaving him empty again, without the comforting sense of strength it gave. All the time the current in midstream was very strong; more water was coming down after the rain, and sometimes, on the wide bends of the stream, the wind was strong and quite cold, coming in long explosive gusts that broke on the willows like high waves. As he rowed his tiredness and his determination not to be tired became one. He did not think of anything, but he felt the soreness of his one hand increase until he could feel nothing with his mind except the painful slit made by the oar on the palm of his hand.
All the time he watched the girl, seeing her white blouse in the darkness. He was determined not to give up until she gave up. But after a time he became very tired and did not know quite what he was doing, and was surprised to see the branches of trees spreading rapidly in towards the boat from the shore. He was still rowing automatically, clinging to the illusion about his other arm, some moments after the girl had given up.
‘We’ll rest a bit,’ she said. ‘Are you very tired?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not very tired.’
‘I’ll get the food,’ she said.
‘I’m not hungry,’ he said. ‘I’m thirsty. That’s all.’
They were close into the left bank now, under a stretch of willows, out of the current and the wind. He leaned out of the boat and put his hand in the water. It was very cold and the soreness sprang out of the flesh like the pain of hot wire. But after a moment he felt the soothing of the water, and he let the hand remain in it until the girl had found the food and the wine.
‘Will you eat something?’ she said.
She sat facing him now.
‘I would like some wine, that’s all,’ he said.
She handed him the bottle. ‘You drink,’ she said. ‘I’m hungry.’
He took the bottle and pulled the cork with his teeth, and then drank so
me of the wine. It was dry and cold, and after a moment he felt better. He held the bottle between his knees and let the wind blow coolly on his wet, sore hand.
‘Are you very tired?’ she said again.
‘No.’
‘If you are very tired we won’t go on.’
‘I will go on as long as you go on,’ he said.
‘We should go a little farther to-night,’ she said. ‘We can rest all day to-morrow and then row again.’
’All right. Let’s go on,’ he said.
They rested about half an hour. The girl ate some of the apples with bread while Franklin drank more of the wine. Finally, while the girl was packing up the remainder of the food he dipped his handkerchief in the water and wrapped it round his hand. He held it against the oar and kept it there by pressure when he began to row again.
They rowed on for a long time after that, keeping closer into the bank, out of the wind, because it was darker now. Once the river turned in a great bend, eastward, and for a time the wind came full downstream, stronger than the current, and helped to blow them along. At intervals the illusion about his severed arm came back to Franklin, but never for long, and he felt himself instead using the old trick of sitting relaxed, as he had done when flying, foreshortening his mind and never thinking of the moment ahead. He did this until the movement of rowing was not conscious, and even the fiery slit across his palm could not be felt any more.
They came into the bank again after nearly three hours of rowing. Branches of trees spreading out low over the water brushed his face as the boat went in underneath them, and swung in close to the bank. He was too tired to move for a moment or two, and sat with his head on his knees, the blood hammering in his ears while the girl pulled the boat tight against the reeds. As he sat there, all the time meaning to move and help her and all the time not moving, she finished tying up the boat to the tree.
‘Shall we sleep in the boat or on the bank?’ she said. ‘I think on the bank is better.’
He was quite startled by her voice.
‘Oh! On the bank,’ he said.
He managed to get stiffly to his feet and help her with the tarpaulin.
There was an odd and disjointed unreality about the moment of throwing the tarpaulin on the bank and jumping to follow it and slipping in the reeds and feeling the sharp weeds cut the naked sores of his hand when the handkerchief had fallen away. But after a moment or two he felt better, and together they spread the tarpaulin on the grass. They folded the tarpaulin in half, and then lay down together on one half of it, pulling the other over them, with the girl’s coat on top. Franklin put his arm under her head and she lay against his shoulder, using it for a pillow. His eyes were hard and tense with tiredness, without flexibility, and he could not shut them for a long time after he lay down.
‘Have we come far enough?’ he said.
‘Far enough, I think,’ she said.
Her voice had all the calm quietness he had always known it to have: the calmness that seemed not quite real, as if nothing surprised her, as if everything had been planned for her beforehand and shaped, in its happening, by her faith.
She did not speak again, and he lay there for a long time awake and terribly tired, listening to the wind across the water. All the time she lay there calmly against his arm, not moving, as if she were already asleep. Finally he fell asleep, too, and then woke again much later, his body stiff and his arm bloodless where the girl had lain against him. It was still very dark, and now the girl had turned over and was lying with her face the other way.
He lay for a long time listening to her crying in the darkness. She was crying deeply and heavily, with terrible relief, as if all her wonderful calmness had broken at last. He did not say anything to her and did not try to stop her, but only held her in the darkness, tenderly.
CHAPTER 18
For a long time in the morning Franklin lay on the river-bank and watched herons circling above the water downstream. They flapped hugely in monotonous circles above the willows, yellow now in the grey light. The wind seemed grey, too, as it whipped fast across the deserted river, brushing across it sudden paths of dark waves that were clean and calm again a moment later. In these sudden squalls the wind seemed to rain from the western bank in yellow squalls of dying willow leaves that gathered in shoals and floated northward in the dirty water. Everywhere he could see, for a mile or two up and down stream, the river was empty, and the war seemed very far away.
He was very hungry all that morning, in the cool fresh west wind, and he was not tired. The stump of his arm did not ache and the palm of the other hand was not very sore from rowing. After he and the girl had eaten breakfast, finishing up the apples and the first loaf of bread, he wanted to be going. But the girl shook her head.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘There’s nothing very suspicious about a boat. We could row all morning and sleep this afternoon. And then row to-night. There’s nobody about.’
‘There is a town round the bend of the stream,’ she said.
‘What town?’
‘Wherever there is a town there are Germans,’ she said.
‘What about food?’ he said. ‘Don’t you have to get more food?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will get that.’
‘Where?’ he said. ‘In the town?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will walk in and buy more bread and fruit this morning.’
‘Not without me.’
‘It is very easy,’ she said.
‘No,’ he said, ‘not without me.’
He was conscious of a slight impatience. He remembered the first march, in the moonlight, with O’Connor and the rest of the crew, and how this same feeling of impatience had fretted him all that night. He looked back on all the weeks in the bedroom, at the mill, as part of a sharp and curious nightmare. Now, on the river, in the grey light after the rain, the situation seemed very real. It also seemed to him very simple. All his life had become clear again. All that they had to do now was to travel; to travel fast, and to travel out of the Occupied zone. Above all, they had to travel together.
‘You go nowhere without me,’ he said. He felt very determined about this.
‘We must have more food,’ she said.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘We will go and buy it together.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘But what are you talking about?’ he said. ‘If one can go then both of us can go. We went to the town together before. You were not afraid then. You said so. You needn’t be afraid now.’
‘I’m not afraid.’
‘Then what is it?’ he said. He went on talking rather rapidly, half knowing all the time it was not she who was afraid, but himself. He was afraid of the uncertainty, of the loneliness, afraid above all of losing her. He went on talking quickly, driven by this fear, until suddenly he saw that she was crying again.
‘Oh, God,’ he said.
She was sitting on her heels on the river bank, her hands flat against her sides. She was crying with her head down, and it seemed to him as if someone were beating her slowly down to the ground.
‘Please don’t,’ he said. ‘Please.’
She did not say anything. He felt very dry and miserable, and took hold of her hands.
‘You don’t have to cry because of me,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to cry again.’
‘Again?’ She lifted her face now.
‘I heard you crying in the night,’ he said. ‘That was easy. Why are you crying now?’
‘You’re very impatient,’ she said.
‘I did not mean to be impatient.’
‘Getting out of the Occupied zone into the Unoccupied isn’t always easy,’ she said. ‘It may take a long time.’
‘How long?’
‘I don’t know. A day or two. Perhaps a week or two. After that it will be easier. It is like crossing a frontier.’
God! I’m a fool, he thought. He did not say anything, but remained holding one of her hands, thinking of hims
elf only as a blind, impatient, and utterly selfish fool, the victim once again of his own mistrust. He knew that his impatience rose from anxiety, but he felt rising in him, too, his awakening consciousness about the war. He wanted to get back, to fly again, to bring to the war and his part in it the clearer anger of a new experience. He did not want to find himself left out. All the things that had happened to him in France, and the things that he had seen happen to other people, had now to be expressed, and he felt that they could only be expressed in terms of flying: not in the old way, for flying’s sake, but in a new way, positively, harshly, with the bright anger of new purposes. He had never flown with personal hatred, but he had known men who had, and he remembered among them Jameson, a very young boy good at football who lost his parents in a blitz: who for a whole year tried to shape his sorrow and fury so that he could fly better, more often and with more deadly intention. In the agony of this eagerness Jameson pranged kite after kite, getting nothing from it but dusty bitterness. As this went on, and Jameson drank with determination to counteract it, Franklin felt less and less pity for him, not understanding the huge agony of anger felt by Jameson, an emotion that seemed to be overplayed against the ordinary hearty life about him. It would have seemed better sometimes if Jameson had taken his sorrow less violently, alone. But Franklin now understood what Jameson felt. Something very like it in himself, an agony and a sorrow ripped raw by the deaths of the doctor and the girl’s father, his friends, had similarly to be avenged. And now the word itself, which in more ordinary days would have seemed violent and grandiose, seemed just and right. It was something which belonged, as Jameson’s emotion had belonged, to larger things than personal hatred. It belonged to all little people, to all little, honest, decent, kindly people everywhere. It was a fine purpose, and it seemed too bad that Jameson, as so often happened, had been blown to bloody and dirty pieces before he could accomplish it.
