Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  Ten minutes later it was his, for a hundred and fifty francs. She threw in with that a frayed piece of old rope with which he made shift to lash the broken spring. Hens had been roosting on it, covering it with their droppings; he set Ronnie and Rose to pull up handfuls of grass to wipe it down with. When they had finished he surveyed it with some satisfaction. It was a filthy object still, and grossly expensive, but it solved a great many of his problems.

  He bought a little bread from the old woman and put it with the cases in the pram. Rather to his surprise nobody wanted to ride but they all wanted to push it; he found it necessary to arrange turns. “The youngest first,” he said. “Sheila can push it first.”

  Rose said, “May I take off my shoes? They hurt my feet.”

  He was uncertain, revolving this idea in his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “The road will not be nice to walk on.”

  She said, “But, monsieur, one does not wear shoes at all, except in Dijon.”

  It seemed that she was genuinely used to going without shoes. After some hesitation he agreed to let her try it, and found that she moved freely and easily over the roughest parts of the road. He put her shoes and stockings in the pram, and spent the next quarter of an hour refusing urgent applications from the English children to copy her example.

  Presently Sheila tired of pushing. Rose said, “Now it is the turn of Pierre.” In motherly fashion she turned to the little boy in grey. “Now, Pierre. Like this.” She brought him to the pram, still white-faced and listless, put his hands on the cracked china handles and began to push it with him.

  Howard said to her, “How do you know his name is Pierre?”

  She stared at him. “He said so — at the farm.”

  The old man had not heard a word from the little boy; indeed, he had been secretly afraid that he had lost the power of speech. Not for the first time he was reminded of the gulf that separated him from the children, the great gulf that stretches between youth and age. It was better to leave the little boy to the care of the other children, rather than to terrify him with awkward, foreign sympathy and questions.

  He watched the two children carefully as they pushed the pram. Rose seemed to have made some contact with the little fellow already, sufficient to encourage her. She chatted to him as they pushed the pram together, having fun with him in childish, baby French. When she trotted with the pram he trotted with her; when she walked he walked, but otherwise he seemed completely unresponsive. The blank look never left his face.

  Ronnie said, “Why doesn’t he say anything, Mr. Howard? He is funny.”

  Sheila echoed, “Why doesn’t he say anything?”

  Howard said, “He’s been very unhappy. You must be as nice and as kind to him as ever you can.”

  They digested this in silence for a minute. Then Sheila said, “Have you got to be nice to him, too, Monsieur Howard?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Everybody’s got to be as nice as ever they can be to him.”

  She said directly, in French, “Then why don’t you make him a whistle, like you did for us?”

  Rose looked up. “Un sifflet?”

  Ronnie said in French, “He can make whistles ever so well, out of a bit of wood. He made some for us at Cidoton.”

  She jumped up and down with pleasure. “Ecoute, Pierre,” she said. “Monsieur va te fabriquer un sifflet!”

  They all beamed up at him in expectation. It was clear that in their minds a whistle was the panacea for all ills, the cure for all diseases of the spirit. They seemed to be completely in agreement on that point.

  “I don’t mind making him a whistle,” he said placidly. He doubted if it would be any good to Pierre, but it would please the other children. “We’ll have to find the right sort of bush. A hazel bush.”

  “Un coudrier,” said Ronnie. “Cherchons un coudrier.”

  They strolled along the road in the warm evening, pushing the pram and looking for a hazel bush. Presently Howard saw one. They had been walking for three quarters of an hour since they had left the farm and it was time the children had a rest; he crossed to the bush and cut a straight twig with his pocketknife. Then he took them into the field a little way back from the traffic of the road and made them sit down upon the grass, and gave them an orange to eat among them. The three children sat watching him entranced as he began his work upon the twig, hardly attending to the orange. Rose sat with her arm round the little boy in grey; he did not seem to be capable of concentrating upon anything. Even the sections of the orange had to be put into his mouth.

  The old man finished cutting, bound the bark back into place and lifted the whistle to his lips. It blew a little low note, pure and clear.

  “There you are,” he said. “That’s for Pierre.”

  Rose took it. “Regarde, Pierre,” she said, “ce que monsieur t’a fait.” She blew a note on it for him.

  Then, gently, she put it to his lips. “Siffle, Pierre,” she said.

  There was a little woody note above the rumble of the lorries on the road.

  5

  PRESENTLY THEY GOT back to the road, and went on towards Montargis.

  Evening was coming upon them; out of a cloudless sky the sun was dropping down to the horizon. It was the time of evening when in England birds begin to sing after a long, hot day. In middle France there are few birds because the peasant Frenchman sees to that on Sundays, but instinctively the old man listened for their song. He heard a different sort of song. He heard the distant hum of aeroplanes; in the far distance he heard the sharp crack of gunfire and some heavier explosions that perhaps were bombs. Upon the road the lorries of French troops, all making for the west, were thicker than ever.

  Clearly, it was impossible for them to reach Montargis. The road went on and on; by his reckoning they had come about five miles from where they had left the bus. There were still ten miles or so ahead of them, and night was coming on. The children were weary. Ronnie and Sheila were inclined to quarrel with each other; the old man felt that Sheila would burst into tears of temper and fatigue before so very long. Rose was not so buoyant as she had been and her flow of chatter to the little boy had ceased; she slipped along on her bare feet in silence, leading him by the hand. The little boy, Pierre, went on with her, white-faced and silent, stumbling a little now and then, the whistle held tight in his other hand.

  It was time for them to find a lodging for the night.

  The choice was limited. There was a farm on the right of the road, and half a mile further on he could see a farm on the left of the road; further than that the children could not walk. He turned in to the first one. A placard nailed upon a post, CHIEN MECHANT, warned him, but did not warn the children. The dog, an enormous brindled creature, leapt out at them to the limit of his chain, raising a terrific clamour. The children scattered back, Sheila let out a roar of fright and tears, and Rose began to whimper. It was in the din of dog and children competing with each other that Howard presented himself at the door of the farm and asked for a bed for the children.

  The gnarled old woman said, “There are no beds here. Do you take this for a hotel?”

  A buxom, younger woman behind her said, “They could sleep in the barn, ma mère.”

  The old dame said, “Eh? the barn?” She looked Howard up and down. “The soldiers sleep in the barn when we billet them. Have you any money?”

  He said, “I have enough to pay for a good bed for these children, madame.”

  “Ten francs.”

  “I have ten francs. May I see the barn?”

  She led him through the cow house to the barn behind. It was a large, bare apartment with a threshing floor at one end, empty and comfortless. The younger woman followed behind them.

  He shook his head. “I am desolated, madame, but the children must have a bed. I must look somewhere else.”

  He heard the younger woman whisper something about the hay loft. He heard the older woman protest angrily. He heard the young one say, “Il
s sont fatigués, les petits. . . .” Then they turned aside, and conferred together.

  The hay loft proved to be quite possible. It was a shelter anyway, and somewhere where the children could sleep. He made a bargain for them to sleep there for fifteen francs. He found that the women had milk to spare, but little food. He left the children in the loft and went and brought the pram in past the dog; he broke his bread in two and gave half of it to the younger woman who would make bread and milk for the children.

  Half an hour later he was doing what he could to make the children comfortable upon the hay. The younger woman came in and stood watching for a moment. “You have no blankets, then?” she said.

  He shook his head, bitterly regretful that he had left his blanket in the bus. “It was necessary to leave everything, madame,” he said quietly.

  She did not speak, but presently she went away. Ten minutes later she returned, with two coarse blankets of the sort used for horses. “Do not tell ma mère,” she said gruffly.

  He thanked her, and busied himself making a bed for the children. She stood there watching him, silent and bovine. Presently the children were comfortable and settled for the night. He left them, and walked to the door of the barn and stood looking out.

  The woman by him said, “You are tired yourself, monsieur.”

  He was deadly tired. Now that his responsibilities were over for a while he had suddenly become slack and faint. “A little tired,” he said. “I shall have supper and then I shall sleep with the children. Bonne nuit, madame.”

  She went back to the farm house, and he turned to the pram, to find the other portion of the loaf of bread. Behind him the old woman called sharply from the door across the yard,

  “You can come and have a bowl of soup with us, if you like.”

  He went into the kitchen gratefully. They had a stock-pot simmering upon a charcoal stove; the old woman helped him to a large bowl of steaming broth and gave him a spoon. He sat down gratefully at the bare, scrubbed table to consume it, with his bread.

  The woman said suddenly, “Are you from Alsace? You speak like a German.”

  He shook his head. “I’m an Englishman.”

  “Ah — an Englishman!” They looked at him with renewed interest. “But the children, they are not English.”

  The younger woman said, “The bigger boy and the smaller girl are English. They were not talking French.”

  With some difficulty he explained the position to them. They listened to him in silence, only half believing what he said. In all her life the old woman had never had a holiday; only very occasionally had she been beyond the market town. It was difficult for them to comprehend a world where people travelled to another country, far away from home, merely to catch fish. And as for an old man who took care of other people’s children for them, it simply did not make sense at all.

  Presently they stopped bothering him with their questions, and he finished the soup in silence.

  He felt better after that, much better. He thanked them with grave courtesy, and went out into the yard. Already it was dusk. On the road the lorries still rumbled past at intervals, but firing seemed to have ceased altogether.

  The old woman followed him to the door. “They do not stop to-night,” she said, indicating the road. “The night before last the barn was full. Twenty-two francs for sleeping soldiers — all in one night.” She turned, and went indoors again.

  He went up to the loft. The children were all asleep, curled up together in odd attitudes; the little boy Pierre twitched and whimpered in his sleep. He still had the whistle clutched in one hand. Howard withdrew it gently and put it on the chopping machine, then spread the blanket more evenly over the sleeping forms. Finally he trod down a little of the hay into a bed, and lay down himself, pulling his jacket round him.

  Before sleep came to him he suffered a bad quarter of an hour. Here was a pretty kettle of fish, indeed. It had been a mistake ever to have left Joigny, but it had not seemed so at the time. He should have gone straight back to Dijon when he found he could not get to Paris, back to Switzerland, even. His effort to get through by bus to Chartres had failed most dismally, and here he was! Sleeping in a hay loft, with four children utterly dependent on him, straight in the path of the invading German army!

  He turned uneasily in the hay. Things might not be so bad. The Germans, after all, could hardly get past Paris; that lay to the north of him, a sure shield the further west he got. To-morrow he would reach Montargis even if it meant walking the whole way; the children could do ten miles in a day if they went at a slow pace and if the younger two had rides occasionally in the pram. At Montargis he would hand the little boy in grey over to the sisters, and report the death of his parents to the police. At Montargis, at a town like that, there would be a bus to Pithiviers, perhaps even all the way to Chartres.

  All night these matters rolled round in his mind, in the intervals of cold, uneasy slumber. He did not sleep well. Dawn came at about four, a thin grey light that stole into the loft, pointing the cobwebs strung between the rafters. He dozed and slept again; at about six he got up and went down the ladder, and sluiced his face under the pump. The growth of thin stubble on his chin offended him, but he shrank from trying to shave beneath the pump. In Montargis there would be a hotel; he would wait till then.

  The women were already busy about the work of the farm. He spoke to the older one, and asked if she would make some coffee for the children. Three francs, for the four of them, she said. He reassured her on that point, and went to get the children up.

  He found them already running about; they had seen him go downstairs. He sent them down to wash their faces at the pump. The little boy in grey hung back. From the ladder Rose called to him, but he would not go.

  Howard, folding up the blankets, glanced at him. “Go on and wash your face,” he said in French. “Rose is calling you.”

  The little boy put his right hand on his stomach and bowed to him. “Monsieur,” he whispered.

  The old man stood looking at him nonplussed. It was the first time he had heard him speak. The child stood looking up at him imploringly, his hand still on his stomach.

  “What’s the matter, old boy?” Howard said in French. Silence. He dropped stiffly down upon one knee, till their heads were level. “What is it?”

  He whispered, “J’ai perdu le sifflet.”

  The old man got up and gave it to him. “Here it is,” he said. “Quite safe. Now go on down and let Rose wash your face.” He watched him thoughtfully as he clambered backwards down the steps. “Rose, wash his face for him.”

  He gave the children their coffee in the kitchen of the farm with the remainder of the bread, attended to their more personal requirements, paid the old lady twenty francs for food and lodging. At about quarter past seven he led them one by one past the chien méchant and out on to the road again, pushing the pram before him.

  High overhead a few aeroplanes passed on a pale blue, cloudless sky; he could not tell if they were French or German. It was another glorious summer morning. On the road the military lorries were thicker than ever, and once or twice in the first hour a team of guns passed by them, drawn by tired, sweating horses flogged westwards by dirty, unshaven men in horizon blue. That day, there did not seem to be so many refugees upon the road. The cyclists and the walkers and the families in decrepit, overloaded pony carts were just as numerous, but there were few private cars in evidence upon the road. For the first hour Howard walked continually looking backwards for a bus, but no bus came.

  The children were very merry. They ran about and chattered to each other and to Howard, playing little games that now and then threatened their lives under the wheels of dusty lorries driven by tired men, and which had then to be checked. As the day grew warmer he let them take off their coats and jerseys and put them in the pram. Rose went barefoot as a matter of course; as a concession to the English children presently Howard let them take off stockings though he made them keep their shoes on. He took
off Pierre’s stockings, too.

  The little boy seemed a trifle more natural, though he was still white and dumb. He had the whistle clutched tight in his hand and it still worked; now and again Sheila tried to get it away from him, but Howard had his eye upon her and put a stop to that.

  “If you don’t stop bothering him for it,” he said, “you’ll have to put your stockings on again.” He frowned at her; she eyed him covertly, and decided that he meant it.

  From time to time Rose bent towards the little boy in grey. “Siffle, Pierre,” she would say. “Siffle pour Rose.” At that he would put the whistle to his lips and blow a little thin note. “Ah, c’est chic, ça.” She jollied him along all morning, smiling shyly up at Howard every now and then.

  They went very slowly, making not more than a mile and a half in each hour. It was no good hurrying the children, Howard thought. They would reach Montargis by evening, but only if the children took their own pace.

  At about ten in the morning firing broke out to the north of them. It was very heavy firing, as of guns and howitzers; it puzzled the old man. It was distant, possibly ten miles away or more, but definitely to the north, between them and Paris. He was worried and perplexed. Surely, it could not be that the Germans were surrounding Paris to the south? Was that the reason that the train had stopped at Joigny?

  They reached a tiny hamlet at about ten o’clock, a place that seemed to be called La Croix. There was one small estaminet which sold a few poor groceries in a side room that was a little shop. The children had been walking for three hours and were beginning to tire; it was high time they had a rest. He led them in and bought them two long orange drinks between the four of them.

  There were other refugees there, sitting glum and silent. One old man said presently, to no one in particular, “On dit que les Boches ont pris Paris.”

  The wizened old woman of the house said that it was true. It had said so on the radio. A soldier had told her.