Adventures in Two Worlds

by A. J. Cronin

  And I thought that if only all of us would work like that, steadfastly and selflessly, forgetting personal expediency, in the cause of the brotherhood of men, then the troubles of this stricken world would end.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  When autumn came I was still in Normandy. Now the fields were golden with ripe grain, the orchards heavy with red-cheeked cider apples. Here, in the open country, only a few scars of battle met the eye – some scraps of rusted metal in the ditches, the shattered segment of a tank, half hidden by a hedgerow. It was good to view this healing of the ravaged earth, yet one could not escape a vague sense of regret that so slight a testimony should here endure to the invasion – that great, exalted effort which had freed this fruitful French countryside.

  But when we reached the Lion Rouge in the little village near Avranches which was our destination for the night, I came upon a shred of evidence which drew me up … and made me smile. Written on the ground-glass panel of my bedroom door, I noticed these cryptic words: ‘Johnnie Brown, G.I., stays here.’

  The scrawl was in pencil and could easily have been erased. The fact that it remained interested me, and after supper I ventured into the kitchen and mentioned the matter to Madame Delnotte, who owned this simple inn.

  As though debating whether or not I were worthy of her confidence, Madame studied me, her sallow features illumined by a gleam from the copper pans which lined the wall. She glanced towards her daughter, Claire, who sat mending some linen at the table. Then, slowly, with an air of quiet reminiscence, she answered me.

  Yes, Johnnie had been one of that great American army engaged in the fighting which raged around this focal point between Mortain and Avranches. Impossible to realise the severity of that conflict – Madame’s face grew faintly rigid as she leaned forward in her chair – it was not an ordinary battle but had gone on for weeks, in endless uncertainty and suspense. Mortain, for example, had changed hands no less than seven times. Under such circumstances it was necessary that the exhausted troops should from time to time be billeted out of the line for a few days, to rest and recover. Thus Johnnie had come to the Lion Rouge.

  He was a silent, yet smiling boy with dark hair and eyes, tall for his age – he had just left high school when war broke out, and his home was in Georgia. Despite his reserve and the slow reticence of his soft Southern speech, Johnnie was a general favourite who took good-naturedly any amount of chaff, and Madame knew from his comrades that he was brave in action. Yet there was one special quality which distinguished him above all others: he was a born naturalist.

  On his rest periods at the inn he would set out for the woods and meadows, following the leafy trails and winding brooks with an alert and eager gaze, pausing to watch the darting of a kingfisher, lying flat to study the movements of an otter or a water vole, parting the long grasses to view the timid scurryings of a nest of field mice. Only a few short kilometres away the livid hell of battle raged, the roar of heavy artillery filled the air until the very sky seemed blasted, yet Johnnie pursued his beloved hobby unperturbed. And as he returned in the evening bearing some trophy, a rare fern, a strange butterfly, or a tiny lizard from the Salpaire sand pits, his face would beam with achievement.

  Then Johnnie had a stroke of luck – he was detailed for supply-route duty at Avranches, with headquarters fixed at the lion Rouge. Now he was able to make more frequent expeditions. At first he went alone, but presently, as though drawn by the young soldier’s absorbed, heroic fervour, Claire went with him. She was his companion when, one day, in a clump of rushes, they found a thrush with one leg broken and a wing half shattered by shrapnel.

  Johnnie brought the thrush home, and how gently, how skilfully he attended to its wounds! While Claire and her mother stood by, he splinted the fractured leg, bound back the dragging pinion, and coaxingly pursing his lips to a soothing whistle, induced the quivering bird to peck at a warm mash of bread and milk. When he had laid it in a box of soft hay by the kitchen stove he looked up with his quiet smile.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ he declared. ‘It’ll soon be okay.’

  Feeling their eyes upon him, he coloured and tried to excuse himself.

  ‘There’s nothing nicer in spring than the song of the thrush.’

  This selfless interest in the little creatures of field and furrow touched the women to the heart. All around men were killing each other, the air was charged with death and destruction, yet the only thought of this simple fearless boy was that of succouring a wounded bird.

  ‘Johnnie,’ Madame said suddenly, ‘you have a great talent … One day it will make you famous.’

  Johnnie’s flush deepened. Carried away by this unexpected praise, he spoke up. He had always wanted to be a naturalist, even before, as a kid, he had immersed himself in Audubon’s wonderful books. Now he wanted to write nature books himself, to collect fine specimens, to send back to the museums trophies which he had discovered abroad. Why, the conditions were so good in these remote Norman woods, he would like to come back when fighting was over and begin his work.

  When the boy finished speaking there was a silence. Then in a low voice, looking shyly into his eyes, Claire said:

  ‘Yes, Johnnie, you ought to come back.’

  ‘You bet,’ said Johnnie, returning her gaze with his steady smile. ‘I will.’

  Well, resumed Madame Delnotte after a brief pause, these were happy days. The enemy at last was being pushed back, people dared to think with confidence of the future. Johnnie’s thrush recovered and there came a great day when, with his wing completely healed, he hopped and fluttered, then finally took to the air, darting and swooping about the back-yard of the inn in a wild delirium of joy. He flew to the woods, of course – Johnnie said it was to find his mate – but he came back from time to time, usually in the evening, to perch on Johnnie’s wrist and peck at a piece of apple. After he had eaten, as though to show that he had not forgotten, his little throat would swell and he would break into a series of liquid trills.

  ‘He’s paying for his supper,’ Johnnie grinned.

  When autumn came, and the first frost sent the leaves tumbling down, the bird made a farewell visit, then flew away to the south. A little later Johnnie and the rest of his squad were ordered back to the line.

  ‘We were sorry, of course,’ remarked Madame Delnotte, ‘yet not overwhelmed. Now it seemed only a matter of crossing the Rhine: the end of the war was in sight.’

  Again Madame broke off and although I waited expectantly, she did not resume. Then, as the moments passed, and grew oppressive, I seemed to sense the reason for her silence. Covertly, I glanced at Claire, then quickly looked away. Of course! Victory had taken Johnnie back to America, where those promises, made so easily under stress of war emotion, could be as easily forgotten.

  ‘So Johnnie’ – I spoke at last – ‘Johnnie didn’t come back.’

  They both looked at me, as if surprised.

  ‘Oh, but yes!’ said Madame, and she smiled oddly at my discomfiture. ‘ In fact, he is quite near here. We go to visit him often. For that matter, we go tomorrow.’

  ‘May I come with you?’ I asked. I felt now that I would give a great deal to meet Johnnie Brown.

  Next morning, after coffee and fresh-baked bread, we all get into the car. It was a sweet morning, the dew fresh upon the grass, the wood smote spiralling from the cottage chimneys, a morning when it was good to be alive. Under Madame’s direction, I drove, towards the village of Saint James. Somehow I wondered if I had not heard the name before. We entered the quiet little town, turned left, ascended a pretty hill, and there, at the summit, yes, there, full understanding broke upon me.

  In silence, I followed Madame and Clair through the iron gates of the beautiful enclosure, passing between the long rows of plain white crosses, until at last we stood before the grave of Johnnie Brown.

  ‘He was killed by a land mine … near Mulhausen … only two weeks before the end of the war.’

  Madame Delnotte’s expre
ssion, usually so contained, had broken – her lips were trembling. She gazed round the great American Military Cemetery stretching across the hill crest, ordered and peaceful under the morning sun. Her voice fell almost to a whisper.

  ‘You see … Johnnie stays with us … forever.’ Her eyes were wet with tears, ‘We will never forget them … never … Johnnie and those other dear, brave boys … for what they did for us … for France … and for the world.’

  A bell sounded softly from the nearby village and at last we turned away. Slowly we drove back along the Highway of Liberation where, marking every kilometre, there stands a stone blazoned with the flaming torch of freedom. A bar of silence lay upon us, binding us in sympathy. Then – was it my fancy? – suddenly and clearly, in a distant hedgerow, or perhaps it was only in my heart … I heard the singing of a thrush.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  How often in these afflicted countries had I seen the eyes of men turn in longing towards America! To those who had suffered much and lost much, how now, despite their striving, found themselves caught in a mesh of economic difficulties, smothered by levies and penal taxation, hampered by edicts and restrictions, embargoes and controls, it stood out as the last great bastion of individual liberty, a country solid and secure, where one might still find opportunity and incentive, a decent way of life, and above all the chance to advance by effort and ability, without the crushing intervention of that curse, that creeping paralysis of the modern age – regimentation by the state. Especially to those parents who wished for their children a fair and favourable future did it seem attractive beyond all other lands.

  Was it strange, then, that our own gaze should swing towards this far yet hospitable horizon? Previously we had made several visits to America and been stirred not only by the warmth of our welcome, but by the breadth, vigour, and immense potentialities of this vast new country. I felt, indeed, a curious affinity towards these United States, since, but for an unhappy circumstance, I might well have been born within their borders. At the end of the century my father’s brothers and sisters had emigrated to California, and my parents were on the point of joining them when my father was stricken with a serious lung condition, an illness which debarred him from making the voyage and which soon afterward ended his life.

  It may be imagined, then, with what interest and sentiment – a nostalgia derived, perhaps, from prenatal influences – I explored this vast segment of the New World. In company with my wife I had fished in Maine, sat at a drugstore counter in the Middle West, eaten a steak in Kansas City, viewed the Grand Canyon, Crawford Notch, and Grant’s Tomb, wandered through missions of the Santa Barbara, the old gardens of Charleston and Savannah, the Vieux Carré of New Orleans. Often, on comparing notes, I found I knew more of America than many good Americans. With cousins on the West Coast, nephews and nieces in Chicago, I was very much at home. My transpontine public was a responsive one. In Hollywood my books had been transferred, not unprofitably, to the screen. Most of my business affairs were centred in New York. I had even become a Yankee baseball fan and would stun these kindly cicerones who took me to the Stadium and began, patiently, to explain that the basic idea was to strike the ball with the club, by calmly rattling off, to the last decimal point, Joe de Maggio’s batting average for the past five years. But beyond all this, in a troubled and tortured world, I saw America as the bulwark of democracy, the great, perhaps the only, hope for the future of the world.

  It was June when we invaded the New World via the port of Boston. This was no mere foray; we were an entire family and had come to stay. For several months we occupied a house in York Harbor, and experienced for the first time the glory of a New England summer. Never had we known such blue skies, such continuous and brilliant sunshine. Then, in the gold and scarlet autumn, we purchased a property in Connecticut and settled down for good.

  As I have described it, this seems a smooth and simple undertaking, but in reality it took time to effect the transposition of roots long planted in European soil and to adjust both idiom and ideas to transatlantic standards. Arnold Bennett was once impelled to state that Americans would always be alien to the British – but since this remark followed an unsuccessful lecture tour in the United States, it may be accepted with due reserve. Nevertheless, differences between the two people do exist, more than are implied in the pronounciation of such words as ‘schedule’ and ‘tomato.’

  Yet our early perplexities soon were dispelled, submerged by the fundamental decencies of this new land, by the basic sincerity and honesty of its people. The individual American is a sure and massive person, with a loyalty to his neighbour and his country unsurpassed elsewhere. There is, moreover, in most Americans a certain breadth of outlook, a genial tolerance of others – emphasised by the lack of fences around their houses – a liberal attitude of ‘ live and let live’, and above all, a most characteristic large-heartedness, a supreme generosity of heart and spirit, which far outweighs their minor defects.

  Many examples of this magnanimity have come within my personal experience, but none, I think, more poignantly typifies it than an incident that occurred in a town quite near my new home in Connecticut. This book has been burdened by many stories, the only tenable excuse for which is the fact that they are true. Yet perhaps one more indulgence may be permitted me, this final episode is so pertinent to what is in my mind.

  It concerns a man, Henry Adams, an accountant for a New York publishing house, whom I had known – being involved in the same trade – for some six years. Henry, about forty-five, turning slightly bald, with rimless glasses magnifying his rather shortsighted eyes, lived with his wife, two daughters of fifteen and thirteen, and his little son, aged six, in a commuting town which I shall call Elmville.

  His home, purchased by instalments, was of no great size, but he took pride in it – especially the half-acre back-yard garden where he worked in old clothes on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. Aided by his small son, Sam – pressed into service with rake and wheelbarrow at the strictly non-union rate of a quarter an hour – Henry came near to winning a prize at the Elmville Garden Show. On those autumn afternoons, soon after our arrival in the district, when I used to drive over to visit Henry, I would observe these incorrigible confederates, the spare little man and the sturdy little boy, bent together over the herbaceous border, or standing work-proud in the twilight, burning a heap of dry leaves. Sammy, you see, was devoted to his father, and Henry … well, without running to superlatives, Henry was rather fond of Sammy.

  Apart from horticulture, Henry had no outstanding tastes. He liked a good movie and an occasional ball game. On wet evenings when the children were in bed he settled down to a cigar and a detective story by the open fire and it was hard to move him – though when his wife wanted to get him to a church social she usually succeeded.

  Mrs Adams was an energetic, still pretty woman with a warm smile and soft hair with a wave in it. Her fondness for uplift societies was readily forgiven when you ate her blueberry pie or noticed the smartness of the school dresses which her quick fingers had machined for her two growing daughters, Betty and Louise.

  I have spoken of uplift movements, to which Elmville is reasonably addicted. When the war spread its devastating horror across Europe, the town joined in the movement to do something for the children of the stricken lands. Naturally Mrs Adams was in the forefront of it; she suggested to Henry that they take a refugee child into their home for the duration. Henry, who valued his privacy, did not much care about the idea at first, but he came to see the humanity of it and agreed readily enough in the end.

  After the formalities had been completed, word came that a Silesian boy had been allocated to the Adamses. I went with Henry to New York to pick up the youngster. Paul was the boy’s name; his family name was so full of entanglements like ‘piotro’ and ‘stanal’ it was difficult to get it right at the initial attempt.

  I shall never forget the first sight of that nine-year-old product of terror and starvation. Sitt
ing on a high stool, he seemed little larger than a shrimp, pale as a sheet, with pipe-stem legs and arms, a bony, close-cropped skull, and big dark eyes, frightened yet unfathomable. He could not speak English, and when you spoke to him he had a way of averting his head and letting those slanting eyes slip over the top of your hat. This, then, was my introduction to strange little Paul Piotrostanalsi.

  Henry drove him out to Elmville, where a royal welcome awaited him. Louise, Betty, and Sammy met us at the door, and Mrs Adams came hurrying from the kitchen. A cheerful fire blazed in the living-room, the table was lit with candles, the house full of warmth and the smell of roast turkey. As we sat down to supper everyone was eager to make the strange child feel at home.

  Paul thawed somewhat as the meal went on. Eating with great speed, he kept watching Sammy across the table with strange intensity. He took no notice of the two girls, who were ‘mothering’ him with all their might; he simply fixed his attention on Sammy. Finally he broke into a shrill, incredible little cackle, reached over and took Sammy’s hand in his. It was a funny, touching gesture, which made us all laugh and seemed to be the highlight of the evening.

  By all the contentions, my story should end upon this pleasing note of promise. But truth does not work to any formula. As the weeks slipped past, a painful disillusionment began slowly to supplant the first tender impression of the Adams’s young guest. Nothing you could put your finger on, perhaps. Yet there it was … whether due to privation or the war horrors he had witnessed, Paul was not quite – well, not quite normal. He was a queer, detached little creature, with confused ideas of obedience, perfectly untroubled by the slightest moral sense. Small change left about the house disappeared into his pockets. As he acquired the language, which he did with surprising quickness, he proved himself an astounding manipulator of the truth. At school he would entertain audiences with fantastic accounts of his exploits, relating, pale and tense, how he had subjugated lions and killed bad men with his own hands. Other, less amusing, falsehoods came back to the family in unpleasant ways.