by Nevil Shute
Ronnie said sleepily, “Are we going in the motor car?”
“No,” said the old man, “not to-day. I couldn’t get a car to go in.”
“Are we going in a char de combat?”
“No. We’re going in a train.”
“Is that the train we’re going to sleep in?”
Howard shook his head patiently. “I couldn’t manage that, either. We may have to sleep in it, but I hope that we’ll be on the sea to-night.”
“On a ship?”
“Yes. Go on and clean your teeth; I’ve put the tooth paste on the brush for you.”
There was a thunderous roar above the hotel, and an aeroplane swept low over the station. It flew away directly in a line with their window, a twin-engined, low-wing monoplane, dark green in colour. In the distance there was a little desultory rattle, like musketry fire upon a distant range.
The old man sat upon the bed, staring at it as it receded in the distance. It couldn’t possibly . . .
Ronnie said, “Wasn’t that one low, Mr. Howard?”
They’d never have the nerve to fly so low as that. It must have been a French one. “Very low,” he said, a little unsteadily. “Go on and clean your teeth.”
Presently there was a tap upon the door, and the femme de chambre was there bearing a tray of coffee and rolls. Behind her came la petite Rose, dressed in her Sunday best with a large black straw hat, a tight black overcoat and white socks. She looked very uncomfortable.
Howard said kindly in French, “Good morning, Rose. Are you coming with us to England?”
She said, “Oui, monsieur.”
The femme de chambre said, “All night she has been talking about going in the train, and going to England, and going to live with her father. She has hardly slept at all, that one.” There was a twist in her smile as she spoke; it seemed to Howard that she was not far from tears again.
“That’s fine,” he said. He turned to the femme de chambre, “Sit down and have a cup of coffee with us. Rose will, won’t you, Rose?”
The woman said, “Merci, monsieur. But I have the sandwiches to prepare, and I have had my coffee.” She rubbed the little girl’s shoulder. “Would you like another cup of coffee, ma petite?”
She left Rose with them, and went out. In the bedroom Howard sat the children down, each with a buttered roll to eat and a cup full of weak coffee to drink. The children ate very slowly; he had finished his own meal by the time they were only half way through. He pottered about and packed up their small luggage; Rose had her own things in a little attaché case upon the floor beside her.
The children ate on industriously. The femme de chambre came back with several large, badly wrapped parcels of food for the journey, and a very large wine bottle full of milk. “There,” she said unsteadily. “Nobody will starve to-day!”
The children laughed merrily at the poor joke. Rose had finished, and Ronnie was engulfing the last mouthful, but Sheila was still eating steadily. There was nothing now to wait for, and the old man was anxious to get to the station for fear that they might miss a train. “You don’t want that,” he said to Sheila, indicating her half-eaten roll. “You’d better leave it. We’ve got to go now.”
“I want it,” she said mutinously.
“But we’ve got to go now.”
“I want it.”
He was not going to waste energy over that. “All right,” he said, “you can bring it along with you.” He picked up their bags and shepherded them all out into the corridor and down the stairs.
At the door of the hotel he turned to the femme de chambre. “If there is any difficulty I shall come back here,” he said. “Otherwise, as I said, I will send a telegram when we reach England, and Rose is with her father.”
She said quickly, “But Monsieur must not pay for that. Henri will send the telegram.”
He was touched. “Anyway, it will be sent directly we arrive in London. Au revoir, mademoiselle.”
“Au revoir, monsieur. Bonne chance.” She stood and watched them as he guided the three children across the road in the thin morning sunlight, the tears running all unheeded down the furrows of her face.
In the station there was great confusion. It was quite impossible to find out the times or likelihood of trains, or whether amongst all the thronging soldiers there would be seats for children. The most that he could learn was that trains for Paris came in at Quai 4 and that there had been two since midnight. He went to the booking office to get a ticket for Rose, but it was closed.
“One does not take tickets any more,” a bystander said. “It is not necessary.”
The old man stared at him. “One pays, then, on the train, perhaps?”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps.”
There was nobody to check tickets as they passed onto the platform. He led the children through the crowd, Sheila still chewing her half-eaten roll of bread, clutched firmly in a hand already hot. Quai 4 was practically deserted, rather to his surprise. There did not seem to be great competition to get to Paris; all the traffic seemed to be the other way.
He saw an engine driver, and approached him. “It is here that the train for Paris will arrive?”
“But certainly.”
The statement was not reassuring. The empty spaces of the platform oppressed the old man; they were unnatural, ominous. He walked along to a seat and put down all the parcels and attaché cases on it, then settled down to wait until a train should come.
The children began running up and down the platform, playing games of their own making. Presently, mindful of the chill that had delayed him, he called Ronnie and Sheila to him and took off their coats, thinking to put them on when they were in the train. As an afterthought he turned to Rose.
“You also,” he said. “You will be better playing without your coat, and the hat.”
He took them off her, and put them on the seat beside him. Then he lit his pipe, and settled down to wait in patience for the train.
It came at about half past eight, when they had been there for an hour and a half. There were a few people on the platform by that time, not very many. It steamed into the station, towering above them; there were two soldiers on the footplate of the engine with the train crew.
To his delight, it was not a crowded train. He made as quickly as he could for a first class compartment, and found one occupied only by two morose officers of the Armée de l’Air. The children swarmed on to the seats and climbed all over the carriage, examining everything, chattering to each other in mixed French and English. The two officers looked blacker; before five minutes had elapsed they had got up, swearing below their breath, and had removed to another carriage.
Howard looked at them helplessly as they went. He would have liked to apologize, but he didn’t know how to put it.
Presently he got the children to sit down. Mindful of chills he said, “You’d better put your coats on now. Rose, you put yours on, too.”
He proceeded to put Sheila into hers. Rose looked around the carriage blankly. “Monsieur — where is my coat? And my hat, also?”
He looked up. “Eh? You had them when we got into the train?”
But she had not had them. She had rushed with the other children to the carriage, heedless, while Howard hurried along behind her, burdened with luggage. Her coat and hat had been left upon the station bench.
Her face wrinkled up, and she began to cry. The old man stared at her irritably for a moment; he had thought that she would be a help to him. Then the patience borne of seventy years of disappointments came to his aid; he sat down and drew her to him, wiping her eyes. “Don’t bother about it,” he said gently. “We’ll get another hat and another coat in Paris. You shall choose them yourself.”
She sobbed, “But they were so expensive.”
He wiped her eyes again. “Never mind,” he said. “It couldn’t be helped. I’ll tell your aunt when I send the telegram that it wasn’t your fault.”
Presently she stopped crying. Howard
undid one of his many parcels of food and they all had a bit of an orange to eat, and all troubles were forgotten.
The train went slowly, stopping at every station and occasionally in between. From Dijon to Tonnerre is seventy miles; they pulled out of that station at about half past eleven, three hours after leaving Dijon. The children had stood the journey pretty well so far; for the last hour they had been running up and down the corridor shouting, while the old man dozed uneasily in a corner of the compartment.
He roused after Tonnerre, and fetched them all back into the carriage for déjeuner of sandwiches and milk and oranges. They ate slowly, with frequent distractions to look out of the window. Sandwiches had a tendency to become mislaid during these pauses, and to vanish down between the cushions of the seats. Presently they were full. He gave them each a cup of milk, and laid Sheila down to rest upon the seat, covered over with the blanket he had bought in Dijon. He made Rose and Ronnie sit down quietly and look at Babar; then he was able to rest quietly himself.
From Tonnerre to Joigny is thirty miles. The train was going slower than ever, stopping for long periods for no apparent reason. Once, during one of these pauses, a large flight of aeroplanes passed by the window, flying very high; the old man was shocked to hear the noise of gunfire, and to see a few white puffs of smoke burst in the cloudless sky far, far below them. It seemed incredible but they must be German. He strained his eyes for fighters so far as he could do without calling the attention of the children from their book, but there were no fighters to be seen. The machines wheeled slowly round and headed back towards the east, unhindered by the ineffective fire.
The old man sank back into his seat, full of doubts and fears.
He was dozing a little when the train pulled in to Joigny soon after one o’clock. It stood there in the station in the hot sunlight, interminably. Presently a man came down the corridor.
“Descendez, monsieur,” he said. “This train goes no further.”
Howard stared up at him dumbfounded. “But — this is the Paris train?”
“It is necessary to change here. One must descend.”
“When will the next train leave for Paris?”
“I do not know, monsieur. That is a military affair.”
He got the children into their coats, gathered his things together, and presently was on the platform, burdened with his luggage, with the three children trailing after him. He went straight to the station-master’s office. There was an officer there, a capitaine des transports. The old man asked a few straight questions, and got straight answers.
“There will be no more trains for Paris, monsieur. None at all. I cannot tell you why, but no more trains will run north from Joigny.”
There was a finality in his tone that brooked no argument. The old man said, “I am travelling to St. Malo, for England, with these children. How would you advise me to get there?”
The young officer stared at him. “St. Malo? That is not the easiest journey, now, monsieur.” He thought for a moment. “There would be trains from Chartres. . . . And in one hour, at half past two, there is an autobus for Montargis. . . . You must go by Montargis, monsieur. By the autobus to Montargis, then to Pithiviers; from Pithiviers to Angerville, and from Angerville to Chartres. From Chartres you will be able to go by train to St. Malo.”
He turned to an angry Frenchwoman behind Howard, and the old man was elbowed out of the way. He retired on to the platform, striving to remember the names of the places that he had just heard. Then he thought of his little “Baedeker” and got it out, and traced the recommended course across country to Chartres. It skirted round Paris, sixty miles further west. So long as there were buses one could get to Chartres that way, but Heaven alone knew how long it would take.
He knew the ropes where French country autobuses were concerned. He went and found the bus out in the station yard, and sat in it with the children. If he had been ten minutes later he would not have found a seat.
Worried, and distracted by the chatter of the children, he tried to plan his course. To go on to Montargis seemed the only thing to do, but was he wise to do it? Would it not be better to try and travel back to Dijon? The route that he had been given through Montargis to Chartres was quite a sensible one according to his “Baedeker”; it lay along a good main road for the whole of the hundred miles or so to Chartres. This bus would give him a good lift of thirty-five or forty miles upon the way, so that by the time he left it he would be within sixty miles of Chartres and the railway to St. Malo; provided he could get a bus to carry him that sixty miles he would be quite all right. If all went well he would reach Chartres that night, and St. Malo the next morning; then the cross-Channel boat and he would be home in England.
It seemed all right, but was it really wise? He could get back to Dijon, possibly, though even that did not seem very certain. But if he got back there, what then? With the Germans driving forward into France from the north, and the Italians coming up from the south, Dijon seemed to be between two fires. He could not stay indefinitely in Dijon. It was better, surely, to take courage and go forward in the bus, north and by west in the direction of the Channel and home.
The bus became filled with a hot, sweating crowd of French country people. All were agitated and upset, all bore enormous packages with them, all were heading to the west. Howard took Sheila on his knee to make more room and squeezed Ronnie standing up between his legs. Rose pressed up against him, and an enormous woman with a very small infant in arms shared the seat with them. From the conversation of the people in the bus Howard learned that the Germans were still pouring on, but that Paris would be defended to the last. Nobody knew how far the Germans had advanced, how near to Joigny they might be. It was wise to move, to go and stay with relations further to the west.
One man said, “The Chamber has left Paris. It is now at Tours.” Somebody else said that that rumour was not true, and a desultory argument began. Nobody seemed to take much interest in the Chamber; Paris and the life of cities meant very little to these peasants and near-peasants.
It was suffocatingly hot in the bus. The two English children stood it better than Howard could have expected; la petite Rose seemed to be more affected than they were. Howard, looking down, saw that she had gone very white. He bent towards her.
“Are you tired?” he said kindly. She shook her head mutely. He turned and struggled with the window at his side; presently he succeeded in opening it a little and letting in a current of warm, fresh air.
Presently the driver climbed into his seat, and the grossly overloaded vehicle lumbered from the square.
The movement brought a little more air into the bus.
They left the town after a couple of stops carrying an additional load of people on the roof. They started out along the long straight roads of France, dusty and in poor repair. The dust swirled round the heavy vehicle; it drove in at the open window powdering them all. Ronnie, standing between the old man’s legs, clung to the window avid for all that he could see; Howard turned Sheila on his lap with difficulty so that she could see out too.
Beside him, presently, Rose made a little wailing cry. Howard looked down, and saw her face white with a light greenish hue; before he could do anything to help her she had vomited upon the floor.
For a moment he was startled and disgusted. Then patience came back to him; children couldn’t help that sort of thing. She was coughing and weeping; he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped her face and comforted her.
“Pauvre petit chou,” he said awkwardly. “You will be better now. It is the heat.”
With some struggling he moved Sheila over and lifted Rose up on his knee, so that she could see out and have more air. She was still crying bitterly; he wiped her eyes and talked to her as gently as he could. The broad woman by him smiled serenely, quite unmoved by the disaster.
“It is the rocking,” she said in soft Midland French, “like the sea. Always I have been sick when, as a little girl, I have travelled. Always, alwa
ys. In the train and in the bus, always, quite the same.” She bent down, “Sois tranquille, ma petite,” she said. “It is nothing, that.”
Rose glanced up at her, and stopped crying. Howard chose the cleanest corner of his handkerchief and wiped her eyes. Thereafter she sat very quiet and subdued upon his knee, watching the slowly moving scene outside the window.
“I’m never sick in motor cars,” said Ronnie proudly in English. The woman looked at them with new curiosity; hitherto they had spoken in French.
The road was full of traffic, all heading to the west. Old battered motor cars, lorries, mule carts, donkey carts, all were loaded to disintegration point with people making for Montargis. These wound in and out among the crowds of people pushing hand carts, perambulators, wheelbarrows, even, all loaded with their goods. It was incredible to Howard; it seemed as though the whole countryside were in flight before the armies. The women working in the fields looked up from time to time in pauses of their work to stare at the strange cavalcade upon the highway. Then they bent again to the harvest of their roots; the work in hand was more important than the strange tides that flowed upon the road.
Half way to Montargis the bus heeled slowly to the near side. The driver wrestled with the steering; a clattering bump, rhythmic, came from the near back wheel. The vehicle drew slowly to a stop beside the road.
The driver got down from his seat to have a look. Then he walked slowly back to the entrance to the bus. “Un pneu,” he said succinctly. “Il faut descendre — tout le monde. We must change the wheel.”
Howard got down with relief. They had been sitting in the bus for nearly two hours, of which an hour had been upon the road. The children were hot and tired and fretful; a change would obviously be a good thing. He took them one by one behind a little bush in decent manner; a proceeding which did not escape the little crowd of passengers collected by the bus. They nudged each other. “C’est un anglais . . .”
The driver, helped by a couple of the passengers, wrestled to jack up the bus and get the flat wheel off. Howard watched them working for a little time; then it occurred to him that this was a good opportunity to give the children tea. He fetched his parcel of food from the rack, and took the children a few yards up the road from the crowd. He sat them down upon the grass verge in the shade of a tree, and gave them sandwiches and milk.
