Fair Stood the Wind for France

by H. E. Bates

  He went out of the street with the tramlines into a small street beyond. He had had nothing but a few cups of bad coffee all day and he was hungry. A boy came running across the tramlines and up the street carrying newspapers, shouting something, but Franklin did not catch what it was. He was not really listening. He was thinking of how he wanted to marry Françoise; he wanted desperately to marry her before it was too late. He could think of nothing else as he walked out of one small street into another. How was the war? He had not seen a newspaper for several days. In Marseilles the war seemed to matter less than anywhere else he had ever been. The war was a decayed legend, and it seemed to him that people spoke of it as little as possible. Marseilles smelled of its own decay. He could not tell what rottenness was going on there, and had gradually found that he did not bother. He had become interested only in O’Connor’s papers and the idea, by now absurd and slightly stupid, of finding an English clergyman somewhere in the city.

  The leaves were not blowing in the small street that went due westward, but short tracks of sunlight were trying to shine down it from the far end. Franklin walked more slowly. Some people were coming towards him, on the same side. The high fronts of the pensions, with their big panelled doors, were gloomy in the flat sun. As Franklin looked up and down the street, ready to cross over, and then back to the people coming towards him, he saw that they were two women. He decided not to cross over and went on towards them instead.

  About a hundred yards away he could hear their voices. Suddenly they stopped. And he noticed that there was no more talking until they had gone some distance past him. One of the women was sitting in a light metal invalid chair, with a brown plaid rug over her knees. She was a very big woman, with grey hair and large grey jowls that flopped down on her high lace collar. The woman pushing the invalid chair was very small and her hair was quite white. It seemed to have been laboriously stuck on her pink head in separate strands of fine white cotton. She had small devoted icy-blue eyes that looked straight ahead. She was so short that she could only just see over the large black fruit hat resting on the back of the chair.

  The two women went slowly past him, both silent now. The woman in the bath chair gazed at the pavement. Franklin looked at them and felt for a moment as if he had made a hysterical discovery. The icy-blue eyes of the small woman were frozen in space. He went on for about thirty yards and then stopped. He suddenly knew that no women in the world, except the English, looked quite like that.

  He turned and went back. The invalid chair was going at the same pace, very slowly, but the women were not yet talking. The setting sun was clear of cloud now and shone flat on the white cottony head of the little woman pushing the chair.

  Franklin let them go on for a short distance and then hurried on a little and finally drew level. They were still not talking, but in the instant before he spoke they jerked their heads towards him, startled, as if they had been tied together with a single piece of string.

  ‘Are you English?’ Franklin said. He looked quickly up and down the street. It was quite empty. ‘I am English.’

  The invalid chair stopped. The icy-blue eyes of the little woman were dancing.

  ‘I am really Scots,’ the woman in the chair said. ‘My name is Campbell. Miss Baker is English.’ Her voice was steady and rather masculine. It clipped the ends off some of her words in an aristocratic fashion half as old as herself. She looked to be about eighty. ‘How do you do?’ she said. She held out her hand and her voice was formally calm.

  Franklin said, ‘How do you do?’ and held the large cool hand for a moment in his.

  ‘This is my companion, Miss Baker.’

  ‘I lived many years in Leamington,’ Miss Baker said. She, too, held out her hand. It was very tiny, and rather to Franklin’s surprise, quite warm.

  They both noticed his arm. He did not know what to say.

  ‘I am afraid we did not notice you as you passed,’ Miss Campbell said. ‘We have got out of the habit of speaking to people.’

  ‘I knew you were English,’ Franklin said.

  ‘Scots,’ Miss Campbell said.

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Even in Marseilles there is a difference.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She smiled; it was quite firm and friendly. Her grey hair, curled into full flat rings down on her forehead, was like a doll’s. She looked again at his arm.

  ‘How do you come to be in Marseilles?’

  ‘I am looking for an English padre,’ Franklin said.

  ‘There isn’t one.’

  Franklin looked up and down the street. It was empty in the flat sun. He saw Miss Baker turn her tiny hand over and look at her watch.

  ‘What time is it?’ Miss Campbell said.

  ‘Nearly four.’

  ‘We have tea at four,’ Miss Campbell said. ‘How do you come to want an English padre?’

  ‘I want to get married.’

  ‘Not to a French girl?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Miss Baker leaned her small body against the handle of the invalid chair.

  ‘Even in this crisis?’

  ‘I’m rather afraid I’m continually in a crisis,’ Franklin said. ‘Another wouldn’t matter.’

  ‘I see,’ Miss Campbell said. ‘However, as there is no English clergyman it doesn’t matter anyway.’ She looked again at his empty sleeve. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To England.’

  Miss Campbell looked swiftly up the street and then, putting the large fruit hat round the edge of the invalid chair, down it. The sun gleamed for a moment on the red and black cherries of the hat and on her grey hair and on the grey jowls of her face.

  ‘I think you had better come home and have tea with us,’ she said.

  Franklin sat in the sitting-room of Miss Campbell’s apartment and held a cup of tea in his hand. There was no central heating. The room was cool and not quite dark. ‘We have to save light,’ Miss Campbell said. She had been wheeled into the room in the invalid chair. ‘The heating is cut off, of course. But I will not bore you with that.’

  Miss Baker offered a plate of bread and butter. The bread was laid on the plate in rows, very thin, on a round lace doyley. ‘Take two pieces,’ Miss Baker said. ‘I always ask men to take two pieces.’

  Franklin balanced his cup on his closed knees and took two pieces of bread and butter and flattened them deftly together.

  ‘Let me take your cup.’

  Miss Baker reached out.

  ‘Oh no! ’ he said. He was very sensitive about it. What world is this, anyway? he thought. He could smell England in the tea. ‘I can manage.’ The war seemed to him suddenly very far away. ‘I can manage.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Miss Baker said. ‘Anyway, it’s a privilege to help a wounded soldier.’

  ‘Don’t be tactless,’ Miss Campbell said.

  ‘How did you know I was a soldier?’ Franklin said.

  ‘It was a metaphorical remark,’ Miss Campbell said. ‘I apologize for Miss Baker. But we already decided in the kitchen that you were an airman. Escaping. I hope we were right.’

  ‘Yes,’ Franklin said.

  ‘Will you think it a misguided remark if I say I am sorry about the arm?’

  ‘No,’ Franklin said. ‘It is very kind.’ He felt a fool. ‘It’s not much.’

  Miss Campbell drank gulps of milkless tea; it quivered the heavy aristocratic jowls of her cheeks as she swallowed.

  ‘You had better get out of Marseilles,’ she said. ‘And out of France. Quickly.’

  It did not seem to him that either Miss Campbell or Miss Baker, calmly drinking tea and eating their bread and butter, were anything but permanent. He had already told them, in a vague way, about O’Connor. He reminded them now that O’Connor had lost his papers. ‘And there seem to be no more in Marseilles,’ he said.

  ‘There may be something we can do about that,’ Miss Campbell said. ‘But you have to get out. Quickly.’

  ‘You said something a
bout a crisis,’ Franklin said. ‘Was that metaphorical?’

  ‘The British and Americans have landed in Algeria,’ Miss Campbell said. ‘I wouldn’t call that metaphorical.’

  ‘God!’ he said.

  ‘This morning,’ Miss Baker said.

  He sat there feeling very excited. God! It seemed to him that a colossal charge of explosive had gone off under the dormant surface of the war. Miss Campbell helped herself to a fresh piece of bread and butter, folding it calmly.

  ‘Not that it really affects us,’ she said. ‘We are very old. When you are eighty, revolutions don’t scare you.’

  ‘Revolutions?’ He grasped wildly at the idea of a revolution in France.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Miss Campbell said. ‘It will mean a revolution in France. The French can’t make it for themselves. So the Germans will. They’ll march in. In any case, the French will begin to behave with that peculiar sheep-like habit of theirs and run round in pointless circles. There’s always a crisis point in France when everybody starts running.’ The formal and slightly ironical language seemed to belong to another age. ‘If you take advantage of that you may get out.’

  Hell, Franklin thought.

  ‘May? I’ve got to get out,’ he said.

  ‘Then go to-night. The Germans think very quickly.’

  ‘There’s the question of the pass for my friend,’ he said.

  Miss Campbell again drank gulps of milkless tea, wiping her mouth with her handkerchief afterwards.

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Thirty-five.’

  Miss Campbell looked at Miss Baker, who had now filled Franklin’s cup a third time, and for the first time called her Effie. ‘What did we do with the papers we had for Georges?’ she said.

  ‘I can find them,’ Miss Baker said.

  Franklin sat on the edge of his chair. The time had come. Miss Baker went out of the room, and Miss Campbell explained: ‘Georges was our man-servant. His name was Georges Leblanc. We were, when France capitulated, going to leave France, and we had all the papers ready. Both for ourselves and Georges. Two days before we were hoping to go Georges had a stroke and died. After that it didn’t seem to matter.’ She took a deep breath. The change of subject was very abrupt. ‘How is England?’

  ‘England was all right when I saw it,’ Franklin said.

  ‘I used to live in Dorset,’ she said. He expected her to ask about the bombing but she didn’t. ‘But we spent most of the late summer in Scotland.’ She began a careful reminiscence about a house on a loch; it was fifty years ago and the trout were bright pink, she said. ‘I suppose you would call us exiles now.’

  By now it was growing darker and he wondered if Miss Baker was coming back. He felt worried for a moment or two, and then she came bouncing as she walked. She was carrying some papers in her hand.

  Miss Campbell took them from her. ‘I’m afraid I can’t see,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps we could have the light for a moment or two,’ Miss Baker said.

  She went to the door and switched on the light, a single lamp of about ten-watt power, and Miss Campbell looked over the papers. She read without glasses, and said: ‘Georges was fifty-five. If you altered the first five to a three it would do quite well.’

  ‘We could do that,’ Franklin said.

  Miss Campbell gazed at the papers.

  ‘I always thought Georges had something of the appearance of a startled bloodhound,’ she said. ‘It would simplify things if you could swap the photographs.’

  ‘We could do that, too,’ Franklin said.

  ‘All right, then.’

  She held out the papers. There was no time to lose. Franklin got up and took them. Large, very old, hugely flabby, so that she did not look unlike an aristocratic bloodhound herself, she smiled at Franklin, showing charming cream teeth.

  ‘If I were you I should go while the going’s good,’ she said.

  ‘Is the going good?’ he said.

  ‘When you are young the going is always good.’

  ‘Very wise,’ he said.

  ‘Not at all. It is not until you are old that you realize how good it has been. And then, of course, it is too late to do anything about it.’

  He put the papers in his pocket.

  ‘Get down to the station and take the first train for the frontier,’ she said. ‘Get out the obvious way.’

  ‘What about you?’ He seemed suddenly to be doing an extraordinarily selfish thing.

  ‘We shall be here.’

  ‘But you’re English! ’ he said.

  ‘Scots.’

  Miss Campbell smiled correctly.

  ‘But anyhow you will be in enemy hands,’ he said. It seemed impossible to leave them here.

  ‘On the contrary,’ Miss Campbell said, ‘I shall be in Miss Baker’s hands. And Miss Baker, as long as I have hands, will be in mine.’

  He could not answer this god-like simplicity. Miss Campbell smiled again, and once again he could smell all England in the smell of the tea as Miss Baker lifted off the lid of the pot for the last time.

  ‘Another cup before you go?’ she said. ‘There is one.’

  ‘Thank you, no,’ he said.

  He shook Miss Campbell’s hand: it was large and dog-like, like a cold and friendly paw; and then Miss Baker’s: very small and fleshless, with fingers surprisingly warm.

  ‘I can’t thank either of you enough,’ he said. ‘I can never thank you enough.’

  ‘Remember us,’ Miss Campbell said. ‘That will be enough.’

  ‘I will remember you,’ he said.

  He moved towards the door and Miss Baker, as he said goodbye to Miss Campbell for the last time, said she would come to the street door to show him out.

  ‘It is very dark,’ she said in the passage. ‘Don’t fall.’ He felt her cling with her small hands to his empty sleeve. No one had ever touched it before. He felt her pull him along in the dark passage, travelling with tiny steps, until she found the catch of the outer door. ‘We first came here in ‘97,’ she said. She stopped. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘There.’

  She opened the heavy street door.

  In the street outside it was not quite dark. The white after-light of sunset, reflected upwards, lay over the centre of Marseilles and westwards, a pale yellow, towards the sea.

  ‘Thank you again,’ he said.

  Miss Baker, who had held his empty sleeve until this moment. now let it go.

  ‘Good luck,’ she said.

  He went down the two steps into the street.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Good-bye.’

  ‘You’d better go,’ Miss Baker said. ‘There’s not much time.’

  Moving away and looking back for the last time he saw the light in the sky reflected in her bright icy eyes. No, he thought, there was not much time. She looked unbelievably frail and small. She was smiling a little, but whether to save herself from crying or whether because she was already crying, he never knew.

  CHAPTER 23

  As they went out of Marseilles that night, himself, the girl and O’Connor, travelling by train, he sat by the side of the girl, she in the corner of the compartment by the window, with O’Connor opposite. Above O’Connor’s head, on the rack, was the girl’s attaché case, containing all their things. The train, which was supposed to be very fast, stopped many times at intervals through the night, and sometimes at these stops Franklin would lift the window-blind and look out on the darkness of a strange station, with the ghosts of hurrying people passing to and fro under shaded lights, the ghostly voluble voices excitedly babbling, or on some remote part of the track where nothing moved and nothing could be seen except red stars of signal lights in the blackness, and there was no sound but hollow echoing noises of shunting trucks and sometimes the wind tuning the telegraph wires. Occasionally at these stops there came into the carriage once again the heavy friendly smell of locomotive smoke, steamy and pungent out of the strange darkness, so that Franklin would remember the night of rowing ove
r the river; but otherwise there was nothing but the smell of the train, of the many cheap cigarettes smoked by other passengers, and sometimes the intimate small fragrance of the girl’s hair as she leaned her head on his shoulder.

  He did not know at all how long the journey would take. He hoped simply for darkness at the frontier. It seemed natural that things must be easier in darkness. He remembered other frontiers, and other trains, in peace-time, and how, as far as he could recall, there was less vigilance at night. Sometimes, thinking of the girl and O’Connor and not knowing how adequate the papers of any of them were, he was worried. Then he would remember Miss Campbell and Miss Baker. At the station in Marseilles there had been an atmosphere of wild disintegration; the air was exploding into a million fragmentary rumours; and it was quite right what Miss Campbell said. Everyone was running, and it was just possible that there would be a short period when everyone would be too concerned for himself to wonder where other people were running to. If the worst came you could always run in the darkness. It might even be necessary, in fact better, to be separated. He had better face that, he thought.

  He sat for some time thinking about this. They had decided, since O’Connor could speak only English, and since his own accent wasn’t at all perfect, never to speak to each other in the carriage except when they were alone. They had not yet been alone, and now in the carriage with them there were two sailors and an elderly woman. The sailors, who had smoked heavily all the way from Marseilles, were now asleep. The woman reminded him faintly of Miss Campbell, except that she was very French where Miss Campbell had been very Anglo-Saxon, and she was much younger. But her grey face, as she continually read the book open on her knees, had the same large bland imperturbability. Under the book was a small handbag of food. Now and then she slid her hand under the book and surreptitiously took out something and ate it. The lights in the train were quite dim. She munched the food very furtively, her hand over her mouth, and whatever it was she was eating Franklin never knew.