Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  Then she apologized to the ticket puncher. “He is my uncle,” she said. “He is a good old man, but he is more trouble to me than all these children.”

  The man said, “Rennes. On the right,” and passed them through. The German stared at them indifferently; one set of refugees was very like another. So they passed through onto the platform, and climbed into a very old compartment with hard wooden seats.

  Ronnie said, “Is this the train we’re going to sleep in, M’sieur Howard?” He spoke in French, however.

  Howard said, “Not to-night. We shan’t be in this train for very long.”

  But he was wrong.

  From Chartres to Rennes is about two hundred and sixty kilometres; it took them six hours. In the hot summer afternoon the train stopped at every station, and many times between. The body of the train was full of German soldiers travelling to the west; three coaches at the end were reserved for French civilians and they travelled in one of these. Sometimes the compartment was shared with other travellers for a few stations, but no one travelled with them continuously.

  It was an anxious journey, full of fears and subterfuges. When there were other people with them in the carriage the old man lapsed into senility, and Nicole would explain their story once again, how they were travelling to Landerneau from their house in Arras, which had been destroyed by the British. At first there was difficulty with the children, who were by no means inclined to lend support to what they rightly knew to be a pack of lies. Each time the story was retold Nicole and Howard felt a knife edge of suspense, their attention split between the listener and the necessity of preventing the children from breaking into the conversation. Presently the children lost interest, and became absorbed in running up and down the corridor, playing “My great aunt lives in Tours” with all its animal repetitions, and looking out of the window. In any event, the peasants and small shopkeepers who travelled with them were too anxious to start talking and to tell the story of their own troubles to have room for much suspicion in their minds.

  At the long last, when the fierce heat of the day was dying down, they pulled into Rennes. There the train stopped and every one got out; the German soldiers fell in in two ranks in orderly array upon the platform and were marched away, leaving a fatigue party to load their kits on to a lorry. There was a German officer by the ticket collector. Howard put on his most senile air, and Nicole went straight up to the collector to consult him about trains to Landerneau.

  Through half-closed eyes Howard watched her, the children clustered round him, dirty and fretful from their journey. He waited in an agony of apprehension; at any moment the officer might ask for papers. Then it would all be over. But finally he gave her a little pasteboard slip, shrugged his shoulders, and dismissed her.

  She came back to Howard. “Mother of God!” she said crossly and rather loudly. “Where is now the pram? Do I have to do everything?”

  The pram was still in the baggage car. The old man shambled towards it, but she pushed him aside and got into the car, and pulled it down on to the ground herself. Then, in a little confused huddle she shepherded them to the barrier.

  “It is not five children that I have,” she said bitterly to the ticket collector. “It is six.” The man laughed, and the German officer smiled faintly. So they passed out into the town of Rennes.

  She said quietly to him as they walked along, “You are not angry, Monsieur Howard? It is better that I should pretend that I am cross. It is more natural so.”

  He said, “My dear, you have done wonderfully well.”

  She said, “Well, we have got half way without suspicion. To-morrow, at eight in the morning, a train leaves for Brest. We can go on that as far as Landerneau.”

  She told him that the German officer had given them permission to go there. She produced the ticket he had given to her. “We must sleep to-night in the refugee hostel,” she said. “This ticket admits us. It will be better to go there, m’sieur, like all the others.”

  He agreed. “Where is it?” he enquired.

  “In the Cinema du Monde,” she said. “I have never slept in a cinema before.”

  He said, “Mademoiselle, I am deeply sorry that my difficulties should make you do so now.”

  She smiled. “Ne vous en faites pas,” she said. “Perhaps as it is under German management it will be clean. We French are not so good at things like that.”

  They gave up their cards at the entrance, pushed their pram inside, and looked around. The seats had all been removed, and around the walls were palliasses stacked, filled with old straw. There were not many people in the place; with the growing restrictions upon movements as the Germans took over control the tide of refugees was less than it had been. An old French woman issued them with a palliasse and a blanket each and showed them a corner where they could make a little camp apart from the others. “The little ones will sleep quiet there,” she said.

  There was an issue of free soup at a table at the end of the hall, dispensed by a German cook who showed a fixed, beaming smile of professional good humour.

  An hour later, the children were laid down to rest. Howard did not dare to leave them, and sat with his back against the wall, tired to death but not yet ready for sleep. Nicole went out and came back presently with a packet of Caporal cigarettes. “I bought these for you,” she said. “I did not dare to get your Players; it would not be safe, that.”

  He was not a great smoker, but touched by her kindness he took one gratefully. She poured him out a little brandy in a mug and fetched a little water from the drinking fountain for him; the drink refreshed him and the cigarette was a comfort. She came and sat beside him, leaning up against the wall.

  For a time they talked in low tones of their journey, about her plans for the next day. Then, fearing to be overheard, he changed the subject, and asked about her father.

  She had little more to tell him than he already knew. Her father had been commandant of a fort in the Maginot Line not very far from Metz; they had heard nothing of him since May.

  The old man said, “I am very, very sorry, mademoiselle.” He paused, and then he said, “I know what that sort of anxiety means . . . very well. It blackens everything, for a long time afterwards.”

  She said quietly, “Yes. Day after day you wait, and wait. And then the letter comes, or it may be the telegram, and you are afraid to open it to see what it says.” She was silent for a minute. “And then at last you do open it.”

  He nodded. He felt very close to her; they had shared the same experience. He had waited and waited just like that when John had been missing. For three days he had waited; then the telegram had come. It became clear to him that she had been through the same trouble; indeed, her mother had told him that she had. He was immensely sorry for her.

  Quite suddenly, he felt that he would like to talk to her about John. He had not been able to talk about his son to anybody, not since it happened. He had feared sympathy, and had shunned intrusion. But this girl Nicole had known John. They had been skiing companions — friends, she had said.

  He blew out a long cloud of smoke. “I lost my son, you know,” he said with difficulty, staring straight ahead of him. “He was killed flying — he was a Squadron Leader, in our Royal Air Force. He was shot down by three Messerschmitts on his way back from a bombing raid. Over Heligoland.”

  There was a pause.

  She turned towards him. “I know that,” she said gently. “They wrote to me from the Squadron.”

  8

  THE CINEMA WAS half full of people, moving about and laying down their palliasses for the night. The air was full of the fumes of the cooking stove at the far end, and the smoke of French cigarettes; in the dim light it seemed thick and heavy.

  Howard glanced towards the girl. “You knew my son as well as that, mademoiselle?” he said. “I did not know.”

  In turn, she felt the urge to talk. “We used to write,” she said. She went on quickly, “Ever since Cidoton we used to write, almost each w
eek. And we met once, in Paris — just before the war. In June, that was.” She paused, and then said quietly, “Almost a year ago to-day.”

  The old man said, “My dear, I never knew anything about this at all.”

  “No,” she said. “Nor did I tell my parents.”

  There was a silence while he tried to collect his thoughts and readjust his outlook. “You said they wrote to you,” he said at last. “But how did they know your address?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “He would have made arrangements,” she said. “He was very kind, monsieur, very, very kind. And we were great friends. . . .”

  He said quietly, “You must have thought me very different, mademoiselle. Very rude. But I assure you, I knew nothing about this. Nothing at all.”

  There was a little pause.

  “May I ask one question?” he said presently.

  “But yes, Monsieur Howard.”

  He stared ahead of him awkwardly. “Your mother told me that you had had trouble,” he said. “That there had been a young man — who was dead. No doubt, that was somebody else?”

  “There was nobody else,” she said quietly. “Nobody but John.”

  She shook herself and sat up. “See,” she said, “one must put down a palliasse, or there will be no room left by the wall.” She got to her feet, and stirred him, and began to pull down one of the sacks of straw from the pile. He joined her, reluctant and confused, and for a quarter of an hour they worked, making their beds.

  “There,” she said at last, standing back to survey their work. “It is the best that can be done.” She eyed him diffidently. “Will it be possible for you to sleep so, Monsieur Howard?”

  He said, “My dear, of course it will.”

  She laughed shortly. “Then, let us try.”

  Over the palliasses he stood looking at her, blanket in hand. “May I ask one more question?”

  She faced him, “Yes, monsieur.”

  “You have been very good to me,” he said quietly. “I think I understand now. That was because of John?”

  There was a long silence. She stood looking out across the room, motionless. “No,” she said at last. “That was because of the children.”

  He said nothing, not quite understanding what she meant.

  “One loses faith,” she said quietly. “One thinks that everything is false, and bad.”

  He glanced at her, puzzled.

  “I did not think there could be any one so kind and brave as John,” she said. “But I was wrong, monsieur. There was another one. There was his father.”

  She turned away. “So,” she said, “we must sleep.” She spoke practically, almost coldly; it seemed to the old man that she had set up a barrier between them. He did not resent that; he understood the reason for her curtness. She did not want to be questioned any more. She did not want to talk.

  He lay down on the palliasse, shifted the rough, straw-filled pillow, and pulled the blanket round him. The girl settled down upon her own bed on the other side of the children.

  Howard lay awake, his mind in a tumult. He felt that he had known that there had been something between this girl and John, yet that knowledge had not reached the surface of his mind. But looking back, there had been little hints all the time that he had been with them in the flat. Indeed, she had used John’s very words about a cocktail when she had said in English that, “A little bit of what you fancy does you good.” Thinking back, he remembered the little twinge of pain that he had suffered when she had said that, and yet he had not realized.

  How close had their friendship been, then? They had written freely to each other; on top of that it seemed that they had met in Paris just before the war. No breath of that had reached him previously. But thinking back, he could remember now that there had been a space of two week-ends in June when he had seen nothing of the boy; he had assumed that duties with the squadron had prevented him from coming over to see him, or even from ringing up. Was that the time? It must have been.

  His mind turned to Nicole. He had thought her a very odd young woman previously; he did not think of her in quite the same way now. Dimly he began to realize a little of her difficulties with regard to John, and to himself. It seemed that she had told her mother little about John; she had nursed her grief in silence, dumb and inarticulate. Then he had turned up, quite suddenly, at the door one day. To her secret grief he added an acute embarrassment.

  He turned over again. He must let her alone, let her talk if she wanted to, be silent if she chose. If he did that, perhaps she would open out as time went on. It had been of her own volition she had told him about John.

  He lay awake for several hours, turning these matters over in his mind. Presently, after a long time, he slept.

  He woke in the middle of the night, to the sound of wailing. He opened his eyes; the wailing came from one of the children. He sat up, but Nicole was before him; by the time he was fully awake she was out of her bed, crouching down by a red-faced, mournful little boy sitting up and crying bitterly.

  It was Willem, crying as if his heart was going to break. The girl put her arm round him and spoke to him in soft, baby French. The old man rolled out of his blanket, got up stiffly, and moved over to them.

  “What is it?” he enquired. “What is the matter?”

  The girl said, “I think he has had a nightmare — that is all. Presently he will sleep again.” She turned again to comfort him.

  Howard felt singularly helpless. His way with the children had been to talk to them, to treat them as equals. That simply did not work at all unless you knew the language, and he knew no word of any language that this little Dutch boy spoke. Left to himself he might have taken him upon his knee and talked to him as man to man; he could never have soothed him as this girl was soothing him.

  He knelt down clumsily beside them. “Do you think he is unwell?” he asked. “He has perhaps eaten something that upset him?”

  She shook her head; already the sobs were dying down. “I do not think so,” she said softly. “Last night he did this, twice. It is bad dreams, I think. Only bad dreams.”

  The old man’s mind drifted back to the unpleasant town of Pithiviers; it would be natural, he thought, for bad dreams to haunt the child.

  He wrinkled his forehead. “You say that he did this twice last night, mademoiselle?” he said. “I did not know.”

  She said, “You were tired, and sleeping very well. Besides your door was shut. I went to him, but each time he very soon went to sleep again.” She bent over him. “He is almost asleep again now,” she said softly.

  There was a long, long silence. The old man stared around; the long, sloping floor was lit by one dim blue light over the door. Dark forms lay huddled upon palliasses here and there; two or three snorers disturbed the room; the air was thick and hot. From sleeping in his clothes he felt sticky and dirty. The pleasant, easy life that he had known in England seemed infinitely far away. This was his real life. He was a refugee, sleeping upon straw in a disused cinema with a German sentry at the door, his companion a French girl, a pack of foreign children in his care. And he was tired, tired, dead tired.

  The girl raised her head. She said very softly, “He is practically asleep, this one. In a minute I will lay him down.” She paused, and then she said, “Go back to bed, Monsieur Howard. I shall not be long.”

  He shook his head, and stayed there watching her. Presently the little boy was sound asleep; she laid him gently down upon his pillow and pulled the blanket round him. Then she got up. “Now,” she said quietly, “one can sleep again, until next time.”

  He said, “Good night, Nicole.”

  She said, “Good night. Do not get up if he should wake again. He is no trouble.”

  He did not wake again in the two or three hours that was left of the night. By six o’clock the place was all astir; there was no chance of any further sleep. Howard got up and straightened out his clothes as well as he could; he felt dirty and unshaven.

  The girl go
t the children up and, with Howard, helped them to dress. She, too, was feeling dirty and unkempt; her curly hair was draggled, and she had a headache. She would have given a great deal for a bath. But there was no bath in the place, nor even anywhere to wash.

  Ronnie said, “I don’t like this place. May we sleep in a farm to-morrow?”

  Rose said, “He means to-night, m’sieur. He talks a great deal of nonsense, that one.”

  Howard said, “I’m not quite sure where we shall sleep to-night. We’ll see when the time comes.”

  Sheila, wriggling her shoulders in her Liberty bodice, said, “I do itch.”

  There was nothing to be done about that. To distract her mind Howard led her off with the other children to the end of the hall where the German cook was dispensing mugs of coffee. With each mug went a large, unattractive hunk of bread. Howard left the children at a trestle table, and went to draw their bread and coffee.

  Nicole joined them as he brought it to the table and they all had breakfast together. The bread was hard and tasteless and the coffee bitter, acid stuff with little milk. The children did not like it, and were querulous; it needed all the tact of the old man and the girl to prevent their grumbles calling the attention of the German cook. There was some chocolate left of the provision he had brought upon the road from Joigny; he shared this out among them, and this made a little relish to the meal.

  Presently they left the Cinema du Monde and, pushing the pram before them, made their way towards the railway station. The town was full of Germans parading down the streets, Germans driving lorries, Germans lounging at the doors of billets, Germans in the shops. They tried to get chocolate for the children at several shops but the soldiers had swept the town clean of sweets of every kind. They bought a couple of long rolls of bread and a brown sausage of doubtful origin as provision for their journey. Fruit was unobtainable, but they bought some lettuce.

  At the railway station they passed the barrier without difficulty, surrendering their billeting pass to the German officer. They put the pram into the baggage waggon on the train for Brest, and climbed up into a third-class carriage.