by Graham Swift
I set to work with the rusty nail I had extracted from the wall. It is perfectly true, not a mere adage, that hope gives you strength. By testing with the nail I ascertained that there was indeed an irregular section of brickwork, perhaps two feet across, slightly different in texture from the rest of the wall, and for which a different, weaker mortar had been used. Tapped with a knuckle, this section gave a more resonant sound.
I began immediately to scratch away at the mortar with the nail, close to where the air, through some unseen crack, was periodically infiltrating. Even as I did so I was hastily working out possibilities and precautions. When next my cell door was opened I must look quickly at this part of the wall to make a visual note of what I could only, so far, feebly gauge by touch. But if I did this I would draw the attention of the guards. I must therefore hide my work. But how? The latrine-can. This was about eighteen inches tall. Placed against the wall, it would hide some of the patch in question; as for the rest, I must make do. To conceal my chipping and scraping I must rub and scuff the area worked on with dirt from the cell floor. This would still show, but I could only hope the guards would not notice. To darken the mortar-dust made by my chipping I must use the only means available to me: my own urine. They would not think twice about a leaking latrine-can. I must hide the nail in between two bricks where it can be readily placed in a hurry but remain invisible to someone standing in the doorway. I must work in short, concentrated stints so as to be able to conceal my activities before visits by the guards. I must chip away not individual bricks but a complete section of brickwork so that even when I am able to remove it, it will stand in position. Will I possibly have the time? And the luck?
But all these methodical, if hasty conjectures I do not remember applying – not consciously at least. Perhaps, when your life is at stake, practical measures are implemented instinctively and automatically – since the cost of omitting them is so great. I only remember that I worked away feverishly with my nail. My universe – my existence – depended on that piece of rusty metal and that small patch of brick. My precautions for concealing my work must have been effective, for when the guards came, a first time, a second, they detected nothing. This went on – I cannot say how long. Scratching, chipping with the nail; interrupted by sessions with grey-hair and fat-cheeks. It was a race against time, and against my own dwindling physical resources. At any moment I might be the target for one of those fusillades that came from the courtyard. Or before I could finish my work I might lose the strength to continue. I might crack, before then, under interrogation. And yet, in fact, the merest chance of escape, the slenderest factor in my favour, renewed, double-fold, my power to resist and endure. I was carried along, despite all, on a wave of almost exalted emotion. I was not powerless. I had found a means of escape.
[30]
Tuesday. In the Tube today, a strange incident. The train stopped for a long time at Stockwell. Word got round that someone had been taken ill in one of the carriages; and, looking down the platform, we saw him: a short, chubby man with thin wisps of hair, being led away by a couple of porters. His jacket and tie were crumpled over one arm. His shirt was partly unbuttoned. His exposed chest glistened with sweat. And as they led him to the exit his face was reddened and contorted. He was crying like a child.
And the strange thing was the expression of everyone watching. Perhaps they felt shock, pity, curiosity. Perhaps they even felt a little bit afraid. But the dominant look on their faces was one of satisfaction, of relief, even of renewed strength.
[31]
… There was a strong temptation to hack away blindly at the gradually loosening brickwork, breaking it off in lumps. But this would have meant almost certain discovery. I somehow kept to my plan of removing a single, replaceable section. Since I was working in the dark I was constantly afraid that I might cut a hole too small for me to squeeze through, but my reckoning proved sound. Either that, or I had not realized how thin even a few days in Gestapo hands would make me.
At length, there came a moment unreal in its simplicity. I chipped away a final length of mortar. I felt the whole section loosen and wobble. I pushed gently at the bottom of the section and it fell forward on to my hands. My first feeling was, oddly, disappointment. No light flooded into my cell. I had already begun bitterly to conclude, from the lack of light visible through the cracks made as I worked, that, if my chute theory were correct, and ruling out, on the grounds of the incoming draught, that the outer wall was also blocked, then there must be, as in the case of my grandfather’s house, some metal plate on the outer wall stopping the passage of daylight. But, after removing the section of brick, I expected to see at least some glimmer of brightness. I had not prepared myself for two simple things. Firstly, that when I ‘broke through’ it would be night. Secondly (so desperately did I cling to the comparison with my grandfather’s cellar), that there could be something else blocking the entry of light other than a plate or hatch. Had I used the evidence of my senses I might have put two and two together.
Scarcely pausing, I thrust my head, and then my upper body into the opening. If light was not entering from outside, then fresh air certainly was, in abundance, together with the lavender fragrance I had already detected. I found myself – just as I had hoped – in a steeply inclining passage of rough brick. Crawling up it – I was, remember, quite naked – was painful. But these were the least of my pains at the Château Martine. At the point where, in order to get any further, my feet would have to leave the floor of the cell, my head bumped into something fibrous and yielding. It was the dense, woody undergrowth of a lavender bush.
A more careful soul might have hesitated at this point; might have crawled back into the cell, replaced the brickwork, sat down and formulated a detailed plan of escape. I did not. I had heard many escape stories while I was in France. The successful ones were either scrupulously worked out in advance or they were the result of sudden, hazardously seized opportunities. It was the ones in between which failed. I had neither the time nor the detailed knowledge of the Château and how it was guarded – nor the resources of self-discipline left – to make elaborate plans. It was night. I had made a hole in the wall. If I was spotted and shot in the Château grounds – well, doubtless I would have ended up shot anyway. My only precaution was to squirm back into the cell and daub my already quite filthy, scarred and bruise-covered body with dust. A nude escape had numerous drawbacks, the most immediate of which was easy detection.
I clambered back up the chute, listened carefully for several moments, then parted the thick stems of the lavender bush. My heart was throbbing with a strange thrill, a genuine, wild elation.
I knew I would emerge beneath the wall of the south wing of the Château. The front of the Château was to my right, the ‘Watteau’ garden to my left. I did not know precisely what lay immediately south of the Château but I resolved on making for the nearest cover in a direction half-left.
The lavender bush provided an excellent screened vantage-point. My eyes, free of the pitch-darkness of the cell, quickly penetrated the lesser darkness of the open air. There was a narrow border of shrubs, of which the lavender bush was an occupant, running along the base of the Château wall. Then a wide gravel path. Then an area about thirty yards square, which alarmed me first of all by seeming to be enclosed on three sides by a high wall. It contained a jumbled array of flowerbeds, low walls, paths and glass frames. I guessed this was the old kitchen garden of the Château. On the right was an open space occupied by two trucks and heaps of miscellaneous supplies, oil drums and so forth, under tarpaulins. No sign of my hosts. There was clearly an exit at either end of the gravel path, close to the Château wall, but these were dangerous routes. I looked along the walls of the kitchen garden. I spotted a doorway – whether it actually contained a door I could not see – on the left-hand wall, perfectly placed for the half-left, south-easterly line of escape I planned. If I could get to that doorway and pass through it, I ought to find myself in the gardens pro
per, with plenty of cover, and well clear of the rear of the Château.
I twisted my head round and looked up at the towering southern wall of the Château – like some piece of extraordinary stage scenery. No visible lights, searchlights or otherwise; stars veiled by patches of cloud. No noise. I was surprised by this. Perhaps it was later in the night than I imagined, or else, the centre of activity of the Château being the courtyard, the outer walls remained undisturbed. Looking before me again, I could see no sentry posts or machine-gun positions. The Château was not decked out like a prisoner-of-war camp with barbed-wire fencing. My captors must have relied on the internal security of the building – or on the fact that most of their charges were soon in too debilitated a condition to escape. It seemed inconceivable, nonetheless, that the place was not patrolled by sentries who made complete circuits of the walls. I had glimpsed already, en route to interrogations, the sentries on the terrace at the rear of the Château and perhaps they made regular tours of the side-wings. At any rate, I could see no Germans at present and I could hear no tell-tale crunch of approaching boots on the gravel. A last thought made me delay no more. It was the thought of my cell door being opened and of my bare feet being visible through the hole in the wall; and, strangely, it was the thought not so much of how cruel discovery would be at this point, but of how ridiculous it would look.
I began to crawl half over and half through the lavender bush. These plants are tougher than you think, and this was not so straightforward. Another absurd position in which to be caught. But, having got my knees clear of the wall, I raised myself, dashed across the gravel path, fell on to all fours amongst the frames and herb-beds and, in a strange quadruped shuffle, reached the doorway in the wall. No alarms were raised. The darkened vegetable patches and fruit bushes in the kitchen garden and the fresh night air seemed to welcome me like conspiring friends. In those few yards I cut my bare feet on sharp stones. Moreover, that friendly night air (this was September, in hilly country) was chill on my unclothed flesh. I scarcely noticed these things at first – though they were to matter later.
The doorway in the wall contained no door. I waited, listened, peered cautiously through the entrance; heard, saw nothing. The scene the other side of the wall was black and indistinguishable because of the backdrop of trees. But these same trees would cover my escape. I stepped forward through the opening – and came all but face to face with a sentry.
One has miraculous good fortune, and then one has miserable bad luck. The section of wall – about ten yards of it – between my doorway and the Château proper must have been used by sentries patrolling the buildings as a convenient urinal. Even as I peered out a sentry must have been doing what even the most dutiful of sentries are now and then constrained to do. At the point when I emerged he finished and turned to his left. He saw my unclad body, I saw his pale face, about five yards away from me.
Curious encounters take place in war-time. A naked Englishman meets an armed German with his hands on his fly-buttons. They should either fight or flee, but they do neither. For a frozen second they stare at each other in surprise and curiosity. I believe it was my nakedness that saved me. The expression on my German’s face was an appalled, even an offended one. Had I been clothed, I am convinced he would have reached for his rifle at once. Perhaps there is something disarming about an enemy with no clothes on; or perhaps a man feels absurd levelling a gun with his flies undone.
At any rate, I had time to turn and run, and before the German could gather his wits and take aim I was already hidden by darkness. I had been spotted, nonetheless. The alarm would be given; and I had the narrowest of head-starts. Darkness was my chief ally. But it was also a hindrance to speedy flight. You must try yourself running naked through wooded or even semi-wooded country in the dark to realize how quickly one’s feet become punctured and lacerated, one’s whole body and face whipped and torn by boughs and brambles, and how at every pace one runs the risk of a violent fall over some unseen obstacle or down some hidden ditch. In a short space I was cut and bleeding and had no idea which way I was heading. I would have given anything for a pair of shoes. I had reached the boundary of the Château grounds and plunged into thick woods, but I had no means of preventing myself travelling unwittingly in a circle back towards my pursuers.
I experienced all the agonies of a hunted animal. And yet I remember that, in the first stages at least, I scarcely felt any physical pain. I even felt a strange rush of gratitude for these branches and thick tangles of foliage which, even as I pushed on, scratched and snared me. Since then I have come to believe – a blatant case of the pathetic fallacy, no doubt – that the woods and the trees are always on the side of the fugitive and the victim, never on the side of the oppressor.
I halted now and then to recover my breath and to listen out. I heard no noise of a chase; but I had no idea how much distance I had put between me and the Château. I could simply stop and hide the night in the woods.
It was unlikely that a search would discover me in this sort of country – it was even possible that the Germans, in their present general state of retreat, would fail to mount a search at all. But at any moment the yapping of blood-hounds might demolish this optimism. It was also plain to me that a naked man, in daylight, would not be hard to pick out. I had to find some clothes before dawn.
I formed a rough plan. Assuming that I was travelling in a generally south-easterly direction, I ought gradually to veer towards the south-west and hope to strike one of the small tributaries of the Doubs. This would be a means of shaking off pursuit by dogs. Then my aim must be, avoiding the roads, to find clothing somehow at one of the hamlets in the region of Combe-les-Dames. I could, of course, seek refuge in one of these villages, but I dismissed the idea. It was too close to the Château for comfort, I did not know any reliable hide-outs and, now the retreat was in full swing, this whole region was probably swarming with Germans. It was by hiding in an unfamiliar village that I had been caught before. I had more faith, once I was clad and shod, in keeping to the woods and the cover of the country and heading on towards the villages near Besançon where I knew I could find friends. Not the least of my considerations here – though it really counted for little in a distance of a few miles – was that in travelling south-west I would be travelling against the direction of the German retreat and, emotionally at least, towards deliverance. What I did not know at that time was that the Germans were already pulling out of Besançon and that the Americans were pushing across from the Ognon to secure the retreat-route along the Doubs.
And what I also did not know was the actual direction I had been moving in and how many hours of darkness remained to me. I had assumed dawn was not far off. It was in fact only midnight. I had also trusted that I was travelling south-east, whereas in fact I had already, unwittingly, veered – too far – south-west and was doing the very thing I feared – circling the Château at no great distance from it. I missed the Doubs tributary. I eventually came upon a village. But certain features of it, even dimly visible from the distance, told me it was Frécourt, a village scarcely two kilometres from the Château and the very first place the Germans would search.
But, believing daylight was imminent, I had little choice. I battered at the door of an outlying farmhouse. You may imagine the scene, which in retrospect has strong touches of the grotesque and the comic, though at the time such notions counted for very little. I was a naked man, filthy and blood-smeared, hammering at the door of complete strangers. I did not think of the reaction of the occupants. I was only concerned that they would not hand me over to the Germans. Some trace of civilized delicacy still clung to me in my primitive state and I tore a leafy branch from a bush for purposes of decency. I stood like Adam after the Fall.
The door was opened, warily, by a woman, in her forties, with an oil lamp, clutching the folds of her dressing-gown. Her eyes went wide as saucers.
There was no time for elaborate explanations:
‘Madame, je suis un age
nt Anglais. J’ai échappé aux Boches. Je vous en prie, donnez-moi des vêtements.’
This was the first time, in addressing a stranger, that I had dispensed with my French ‘cover’. I called myself an ‘agent Anglais’. I thought this would add to the effect.
My potential saviour stared at me for several seconds. She was interested less in my nakedness than in the filth and blood-stains that covered me. For a moment her face indicated nothing. Then she said, in the most collected of voices: ‘Entrez monsieur. Attendez ici.’ And I knew I would be provided for.
She left me and returned in no time with a large blanket, towels and clothes; then went out again and reappeared with a bowl of warm water and a cloth. She beckoned me into a room and spread the blanket over a sturdy armchair.
‘Asseyez-vous. Lavez-vous et mettez ces vêtements.’
I was touched by the way that in the midst of harbouring a fugitive ally she was concerned for her armchair.
She went to a sideboard, took out a bottle of wine and a tumbler.
‘Buvez. Je vais vous apporter quelque chose à manger.’
It was only now as I began to bathe myself that I realized how I had suffered in the course of my flight. My feet and ankles were raw, bloody, deeply gashed in several places and – for the first time – stabbingly painful. All this was on top of what had been wrought at the Château. A sense of having no time to spare, together with the pain involved, made me none too thorough about the washing. I slipped on the underwear and trousers I had been given. They were a shade too small.
The woman returned with soup, bread and cheese. Now that I was decently clad she allowed herself to inspect me more closely and to examine my wounds. She knelt and looked at my feet, uttered a brief exclamation of sympathy and began rinsing them gently. This hurt a great deal. ‘Allez – mangez, buvez,’ she said. She spread towels under my feet so that the splashes of blood and filth would not touch the floor. It struck me that this was to avoid future evidence of my presence; but it must have already left incriminating footprints in the hallway. I realized the extreme risk she was running. She was a capable, dignified – and handsome woman, with reserves of warmth behind her alert grey eyes and disciplined, unpanicking features. Circumstances lend attraction to women – but this reflection is unfair to her.
