Fair Stood the Wind for France

by H. E. Bates

  He got up at last and looked hard at O’Connor and went out into the corridor. He looked up and down the corridor, and the motion of the train swayed him about in the empty darkness. He caught the handrail with his right hand and hung on. O’Connor came out into the corridor a moment later and shut the door.

  ‘Anything up?’ O’Connor said.

  ‘No. I just wanted to talk, that’s all.’

  ‘What happens at the frontier?’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to talk about. I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘I wish to hell we were flying,’ O’Connor said.

  Franklin leaned against the window. In the faint light he could see the faces of himself and O’Connor impressed in reflection on the glass. O’Connor looked disturbingly English still.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘If we get separated.’

  ‘If what?’ O’Connor said. ‘Don’t talk cock. Nobody’s going to separate us. Not now.’

  ‘It’s more than possible.’

  ‘Nobody’s going to separate us,’ O’Connor said. He was very firm. ‘I’ll shoot the bastard who does.’

  ‘You’ll shoot nobody.’

  ‘If you only knew how I’ve been longing to shoot somebody,’ O’Connor said.

  ‘I do know.’

  ‘Then you understand my feelings. Nobody’s going to separate us now. I’ll see to that.’

  ‘All right,’ Franklin said. ‘Just in case.’

  A man came along the corridor, carrying a heavy brown suitcase. He pushed past O’Connor and Franklin, who stopped talking. The man said ‘Pardon!’ and O’Connor and Franklin pressed themselves against the outer glass so that he could get by.

  The man swayed along the corridor, bumping the suitcase against his legs. Franklin and O’Connor watched him go.

  ‘O.K.,’ O’Connor said.

  ‘If I should get separated from you,’ Franklin said, talking in a low voice, ‘take the girl to the French authorities in Madrid. If you get to England take her to my mother. Go and see my mother, anyway.’

  ‘Right. I got the address,’ O’Connor said.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’ll be doing target practice somewhere.’

  ‘Now look.’

  ‘Now look what?’ O’Connor said. ‘You overruled me last time, and what happened? You got in a hell of a mess and I got in a hell of a mess. The only time you let me arrange things I got you over the river.’

  ‘All right,’ Franklin said. ‘Ten to one we won’t get separated. I just wanted to tell you it doesn’t matter much if we do. Each can find his own way.’

  ‘We’ll cling together like the ivy,’ O’Connor said.

  Franklin grinned. ‘All right.’ There was really no arguing with O’Connor. There never really had been. Better to let him go. ‘But for God’s sake don’t show that revolver. And whatever happens, be nice to her.’

  ‘I’ll be nice to her.’ O’Connor, a little embarrassed by the effort of saying something tender, stared at his own face in the glass. ‘I’ll be nice to her. I know how you feel. I’m sorry you didn’t find the padre.’

  ‘Thanks. We’ll find one,’ Franklin said.

  O’Connor did not speak. They leaned together against the glass. Franklin, who could see nothing and could only feel the darkness solidly flowing past beyond their reflected faces, felt they were very close together: closer than on any of their trips, closer than in the river with O’Connor swimming him across, closer than at the meeting in Marseilles. This closeness gave him great confidence. O’Connor was one of the imperishable ones who somehow blundered through.

  There were no words for this, and he looked up and down the corridor. No one was coming and he said:

  ‘All right. Go back and tell Françoise I want her. Don’t talk and, if she’s asleep, don’t wake her.’

  O’Connor looked through the glass division of the compartment.

  ‘She is asleep.’

  Franklin looked through the glass. The girl was sitting quite upright. She had closed her eyes, the closed lids slightly paler than the sunburn of her face. It was as if she were not asleep, but really dreamily thinking through the closed lids. She might easily have been praying, too, he thought.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Go back, anyway. Tell her when she wakes up.’

  O’Connor opened the compartment door and went in, and Franklin watched him shut it again and sit down. The girl did not seem to wake, and he turned back to stare at the night flowing beyond his reflection in the sheet of glass.

  He stood there for a long time while the train rocked on in the darkness. It did not stop at all as he stood there, and he got the impression of inevitability from its constant speed in the night. Everything had seemed inevitable, really, since the meeting with Miss Campbell and Miss Baker. Everything, after the weeks of indecision and of looking vainly for the padre in Marseilles, had happened quickly. It was better like that. Almost everything that had happened before that now seemed increasingly confused. It was hard to recall even the most vicious moments of pain. His arm had healed very well; he supposed it was really wonderful. They would let him fly again. They had to let him fly again. It was quite impossible to consider a life without flying, and he would pull every string he knew until they did let him fly. He hung on to the handrail and the train swayed in the darkness, jerking violently, the darkness firing signal lights in a row, like tracer, as they passed a station. He remembered something Miss Campbell had said about being young and not realizing, in youth, that the going was good. He wondered how her youth had been spent; remote holidays in the Highlands, seasons in London, the spring perhaps at Hyères, the summer in Dorset. You could be very young for a long time in those days, and it would not matter if you never knew it, because of the apparent permanence of that gentle world. Now there was no gentleness left, and scarcely any youth at all. You were doing elementary physics one day and bombing somebody to hell the next. The train was smoother now in the darkness, and his face pale and immobile in the glass. He was twenty-two, but he did not feel very young any more.

  Miss Campbell wouldn’t understand. He thought how admirable and fortunate she was. He would remember Miss Campbell for ever and the smell of tea that was all England. The train lurched again, and then in a moment the compartment door opened and he turned to find Françoise coming out.

  She shut the door and smiled.

  ‘Been to sleep?’

  ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘Not really?’

  ‘Half asleep. Just thinking.’

  He moved along the corridor, towards the end, the girl with him. It was the middle of the night, and in the compartments most people were sleeping. He held her with his arm in the corner at the end of the corridor and they spoke in low tones.

  ‘Thinking of what?’

  ‘Of what we will do when we are out of here.’

  ‘What will we do?’

  ‘Eat a lot.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I will learn English.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘You will get a new arm. Was there something else?’

  ‘Yes. I will call the arm George.’

  ‘George? Because of what?’

  ‘Because George is the name of the automatic pilot.’

  ‘What pilot? Tell me about him. This George.’

  It suddenly struck him that she was talking too much; that her sleep had been really full of truth. It seemed better once again to face the possibility of their being separated.

  ‘Suppose we don’t get out of here?’ he said.

  ‘We will get out.’

  ‘We may get out and we may be separated.’

  ‘We shan’t get separated.’ He knew that the moment was coming when he would not be able to argue against it. ‘I have faith we won’t get separated. I had faith we would get here and we got here. I had faith you wouldn’t die after the arm and you didn’t die.’

  ‘I shall die after it,’ he mocked. ‘One day.’
/>
  ‘You shouldn’t mock death,’ she said.

  He held her again in the corner of the corridor, glad that he had said something to make her stop talking. It seemed suddenly as if they were the only people awake on the train: very awake in a darkness unknown to them. Then lights were fired out of the night again, red and yellow and black, and the points of another station crackled explosively under the train. He held her against him and again thought, for some reason, quite in-consequently, of Miss Campbell. The going was very good, after all. It was very good and very wonderful: the night flowing on and themselves the only people awake in it, Marseilles and the uncertainty behind them, and then beyond that, far back, all the difficulties, the nearness of death and the pain. Miss Campbell was quite right. He felt the smooth, warm arm of the girl and wanted suddenly to bury his face in her hair because of the truth of it. Only a little farther, he thought It can’t be much farther. We’ve come a long way and it can’t be much farther. The train swung on in the night, and because of his love and confidence in her he felt himself swing forward before it. For a moment or two he was borne forward on a smooth illusion, and was at last in Spain.

  In about half an hour the train stopped at a station. It was not the frontier, and Franklin and the girl went back to their seats. A few people got in and stood in the corridor. In the corner the woman with the book was still reading, and still, sometimes, furtively eating out of her bag.

  O’Connor was sleeping in the corner. The girl changed her seat and sat at the right side of Franklin, leaning her head on his shoulder. He put his arm against her and held her there. He looked at O’Connor, the sailors, the woman reading, the attaché case, and persuaded himself for one moment that it was a holiday. Then the train moved on, jerking at first, then smoother and smoother, until the feeling of its inevitability grew on him again. He shut his eyes and wondered how much farther they had to go. It was colder now.

  It seemed very cold when he woke and his heart turned over, sick and sour, and he saw the daylight beyond the window-blinds. He knew now there would be no darkness. The sick excitement of the moment, of knowing they were nearly there, made him almost dizzy. O’Connor was still asleep, and the girl was drowsy as Franklin moved her head away from his shoulder and got up. In the corner the woman who resembled Miss Campbell was still reading; she did not look up as he stumbled out into the corridor.

  He stood by the window for some time and watched the early day going past: a white farmhouse, with a few vineyards on terraces beyond, and then fields striped brown by ploughing, and then a station house of yellow plaster by a level crossing, and then fields and fields again. The sun was coming uncertainly through grey easterly cloud and he could see a wind blowing the bare trees along the line. The land was rising to the west. Then there was another level crossing, and he saw a peasant and a boy with a brown horse and cart, waiting for the train to come through. Sitting in the cart, the boy had his coat collar turned up, and Franklin could see the mane of the horse tossed suddenly upwards in a wild fringe by the wind.

  He felt in his pocket for his papers. It couldn’t be long now. Somewhere in the night the train had stopped again, and now the corridor was empty. He had looked at his papers over and over again, putting them to all the tests. It was impossible to think they were not right.

  He stood there for about ten minutes, hating the daylight. There were more houses by the track, in ones and twos, and then in small settlements of twenty or thirty, red and white. The vines were all empty beyond them. The fields were empty, and the wind continued to blow fitfully at the empty trees.

  He looked into the compartment and saw the girl awake. She was awake and was combing her hair. Seeing him, she smiled and then the black hair fell over her face and for a moment she was lost. O’Connor was awake, too. The blinds on the other side of the compartment were drawn up, and Franklin could see more houses on that side, and then fields, and then beyond them the crumpled faint line of mountains.

  O’Connor came into the corridor. He shut the door.

  ‘We’re coming to it,’ Franklin said.

  ‘Any moment now,’ O’Connor said.

  ‘If anything happens act as if you didn’t know either of us. We’ll do the same.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ O’Connor said. ‘If I don’t get out one way I’ll get out another.’

  Before Franklin could speak again the train began to slow down. He saw more houses go past, and then a new concrete water-tower, and then the first sidings of a station. He stood rigid.

  ‘Go and sit down and tell Françoise to come out a moment,’ he said. ‘And remember you’re a Frenchman now.’

  ‘Don’t insult me,’ O’Connor said. ‘I might shoot myself by mistake.’

  He grinned and went into the compartment, shutting the door. The girl had finished combing her hair and in a moment she came out. The train was going very slowly now.

  ‘We must be there,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I am all right.’ She smiled. Her hair was smooth and lovely when she had combed it.

  ‘There may be some confusion,’ he said, ‘and we may get separated for a moment. But don’t worry.’

  ‘I am not worried.’

  He looked up and down the corridor. It was empty.

  ‘Would you kiss me?’ he said. ‘Here?’

  ‘I will kiss you,’ she said.

  She kissed him briefly, her lips very warm and steadfast. He felt unsteady.

  ‘Let’s go back,’ he said. ‘I will get the case.’

  She did not smile. Her face had the same tense assurance as when he had first seen it, and nothing, he thought, could be more sure than that. He went into the compartment and got down the attaché case from the rack. The two sailors were smoking, and the woman in the corner was still reading. He stood with the case in his hand and looked at the girl and heard the brakes on the train.

  In a few more moments the train had stopped and, suddenly, what he had feared and expected and wanted to happen was happening, simply but quickly, in a way that he could not influence nor prevent. He was with the girl out on the platform. He could not see O’Connor. He gripped the case. Some hundreds of passengers seemed to have exploded from the train. For a few moments there was no order among them, and then they were drifting down the platform, and he was with them and the girl with him, and they had their papers in their hands. He was borne forward with them and felt the wind driving coldly down on to the station from the mountains. He saw it blow the dark hair of the girl wildly about her face. It blew into her eyes, so that for a moment she could not see. She brushed it out with her hand. Then he looked back, but still he couldn’t see O’Connor, and then the long line of people bore him away from the train, his throat continually tight and dry, until he was in a large office, where men were examining papers and stamping them, and where the worst moment of all his life suddenly slipped past him, unexpectedly simple and brief, before he knew it, and he was walking out again into the cold wind on the station, his papers in his hand. It all seemed so simple that he wondered suddenly if it was purposely simple. He looked wildly about the station for O’Connor. The steam from under the train was blown almost fiat along the platform, among the feet of the people. He could not see O’Connor. Walking back towards the coach where they had been he was suddenly torn between the need for finding O’Connor and the fear of losing sight of the girl. He looked back. In the large office behind him the girl was standing at a table. Someone was asking her questions, and he was near enough to see her mouth moving in answer. Her bare head was high up, her hair untidy when the wind had blown it. He thought in that moment how desperately he wanted to marry her. A French curé with long black habit and flat black hat went past him, carrying two bags, and into the crowd, and he wondered why he had never thought of being married in the French church. Then he knew that it could only have complicated things. Now they were almost free and it did not matter. The going is good, Miss Campbell, he thought. Are you thinking of us? We
are almost through. We can be married in Madrid.

  He thought all this very quickly; it was part of the moments of confusion. He still could not see O’Connor. He turned and looked swiftly into the train, but it was empty. At the far end three or four uniformed men, station officials or perhaps even gendarmes, were getting into the train. He could see their peaked caps above the crowd, and then as he moved back down the platform he saw that they were gendarmes, four of them. They were armed with short rifles.

  The crowd on the station had begun to scatter itself; the long queue had been sucked into the office. It was half-past seven. The engine which had brought the train in had been detached and was whistling up the line. He took all this in very swiftly as he looked back for the girl. In that moment he could not see her. Someone else was at the table where she had been. He started wildly towards the office. Then it was all right. He could see her. She was at another table, with another official, answering other questions.

  He still could not see O’Connor. He kept midway between the train and the office. The train was still without an engine and there was plenty of time. Then he saw the Frenchwoman who resembled Miss Campbell. She had her papers in one hand and in the other a cake; she was reading the papers and eating the cake at the same time. He wanted to ask her if she had seen O’Connor, but suddenly he could not remember any words of French, and she went on and got into the train.

  In the few moments before he went back the girl had disappeared. He could not see her at all now. The desks in the office were occupied by other people, and he knew that she must have come out. He walked wildly about the platform, not seeing her, and then back to the office window, and then about the platform. Down the line the new engine was coming on to the train. and people everywhere were getting back to their seats.

  He tried to be very calm. He went back into the train. The Frenchwoman so like Miss Campbell was sitting in the corner of the compartment. She did not look up. Neither the girl nor O’Connor was there.