by Nevil Shute
It was only when the train was well upon the way that Howard discovered that la petite Rose was nursing a very dirty black and white kitten.
Nicole was at first inclined to be sharp with her. “We do not want a little cat,” she said to Rose. “No, truly we do not want that cat or any other cat. You must put him out at the next station.”
The corners of the little girl’s mouth drooped, and she clutched the kitten tighter. Howard said, “I wouldn’t do that. He might get lost.”
Ronnie said, “She might get lost, Mr. Howard. Rose says it’s a lady cat. How do you know it’s a lady cat, Rose?”
Nicole expostulated, “But, Monsieur Howard, the little cat belongs to somebody else. It is not our cat, that one.”
He said placidly, “It’s our cat now.”
She opened her mouth to say something impetuous, thought better of it, and said nothing. Howard said, “It is a very little thing, mademoiselle. It won’t add to our difficulties, but it will give them a good deal of pleasure.”
Indeed, what he said was perfectly correct. The children were clustered round intent upon the kitten, which was washing its face upon Rose’s lap. Willem turned to Nicole, beaming, and said something unintelligible to her. Then he turned back, watching the kitten again, entranced.
Nicole said in a resigned tone, “As you wish. In England, does one pick up cats and take them away like that?”
He smiled, “No, mademoiselle,” he said. “In England only the kind of person who sleeps on straw mattresses in cinemas does that sort of thing. The very lowest type of all.”
She laughed. “Thieves and vagabonds,” she said. “Yes, that is true.”
She turned to Rose. “What is her name?” she asked.
The little girl said, “Jo-jo.”
The children clustered round, calling the kitten by its new name, trying to make it answer. The kitten sat unmoved, washing its face with a tiny paw. Nicole looked at it for a few moments.
Then she said, “It is like the lions in the Zoo de Vincennes. They also do like that.”
Howard had never been to the Paris zoo. He said, “Have they many lions and tigers there?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “They have some. I do not know how many — I have only been there once.” And then, to his surprise, she looked up at him with laughter in her eyes. “I went there with John,” she said. “Naturally, one would not remember how many lions and tigers there were in the zoo.”
He was startled; then he smiled a little to himself. “Naturally,” he said drily. “But did you never go there as a child?”
She shook her head. “One does not go to see these places except when one is showing the sights of Paris to a friend, you understand,” she said. “That was the reason that John came to Paris, because he had never seen Paris. And I said that I would show him Paris. That was how it was.”
He nodded. “Did he like the zoo?” he asked.
She said, “It was a very happy day, that. It was a French day.” She turned to him, a little shyly. “We had arranged a joke, you see — we should speak only in French one day and in English on the next day. On the English day we did not talk very much,” she said reminiscently. “It was too difficult. We used to say that the English day ended after tea. . . .”
Mildly surprised, he said, “Did he speak French well?” Because that was most unlike John.
She laughed outright. “No — not at all. He spoke French very, very badly. But that day, on the way out to Vincennes, the taxi driver spoke English to John, because there are many tourists in Paris and some of the drivers can speak a little English. And John spoke to him in English. Because I had a new summer hat, with carnations, you understand — not a smart hat, but a little country thing with a wide brim. And John asked the taxi driver to tell him what the French was for—” she hesitated for a moment, and then said “ — to tell me that I was looking very pretty. And the man laughed a lot and told him, so then John knew and he could say it to me himself. And he gave the driver twenty francs.”
The old man said, “It was probably worth that, mademoiselle.”
She said, “He wrote it down. And then, when he wanted me to laugh, he used to get out his little book and read it out to me.”
She turned and stared out of the window at the slowly moving landscape. The old man did not pursue the subject; indeed, he could think of nothing adequate to say. He got out his packet of Caporal cigarettes and offered one to Nicole, but she refused.
“It is not in the part, that, monsieur,” she said quietly. “Not in this dress.”
He nodded; lower middle class Frenchwomen do not smoke cigarettes in public. He lit one himself, and blew a long cloud of the bitter smoke. It was hot already in the carriage though they had the window open. The smaller children, Pierre and Sheila, were already tired and inclined to be fretful.
All day the train ground slowly on in the hot sun. It was not crowded, and they seldom had anybody in the carriage with them, which was a relief. As on the previous day, the German troops travelling were confined strictly to their own part of the train. On all the station platforms they were much in evidence. At towns such as St. Brieuc the exit from the station appeared to be picketed by a couple of German soldiers; at the wayside halts they did not seem to worry about passengers leaving the station.
Nicole drew Howard’s attention to this feature. “It is good, that,” she said. “At Landerneau it may be possible to go through without questioning. But if we are stopped, we have still a good story to tell.”
He said, “Where are we going to to-night, mademoiselle? I am entirely in your hands.”
She said, “There is a farm, about five miles from Landerneau, to the south. Madame Guinevec, wife of Jean Henri — that was her home before she married. I have been there with my father, at the time of the horse fair, the Fête, at Landerneau.”
“I see,” he said. “What is the name of the people at the farm?”
“Arvers,” she said. “Aristide Arvers is the father of Marie. They are in good circumstances, you understand. Aristide is a careful man, my father used to say. He breeds horses a little, too, for our army. Marie was Queen of Beauty at the Landerneau Fête one year. It was then that Jean Henri first met her.”
He said, “She must have been a very pretty girl.”
“She was lovely,” Nicole said. “That was when I was little — over ten years ago. She is still beautiful.”
The train ground on in the hot sunlight, stopping now and again at stations and frequently in between. They gave the children déjeuner of bread and sausage with a little lemonade. That kept them amused and occupied for a time, but they were restless and bored.
Ronnie said, “I do wish we could go and bathe.”
Sheila echoed, “May we bathe, Monsieur Howard?”
He said, “We can’t bathe while we’re in the train. Later on, perhaps. Run along out into the corridor; it’s cooler there.”
He turned to Nicole. “They’re thinking of a time three days ago — or four, was it? — just before we met the Air Force men. I let them have a bathe in a stream.”
“It was lovely,” said Ronnie. “Ever so cool and nice.” He turned, and ran with his sister out into the corridor, followed by Willem.
Nicole said, “The English are great swimmers, are they not, monsieur? Even the little ones think of nothing else.”
He had not thought about his country in that way. “Are we?” he said. “Is that how we appear?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I do not know so many English people,” she said frankly. “But John — he liked more than anything for us to go bathing.”
He smiled. “John was a very good swimmer,” he said reminiscently. “He was very fond of it.”
She said, “He was very, very naughty, Monsieur Howard. He would not do any of the things that one should do when one visits Paris for the first time. I had prepared so carefully for his visit — yes, I had arranged for each day the things that we would do. On the f
irst day of all I had planned to go to the Louvre, but imagine it — he was not interested. Not at all.”
The old man smiled again. “He never was one for museums, much,” he said.
She said, “That may be correct in England, monsieur, but in Paris one should see the things that Paris has to show. It was very embarrassing, I assure you. I had arranged that he should see the Louvre, and the Trocadéro, and for a contrast the Musée de l’Homme, and the Cluny museum, and I had a list of galleries of modern art that I would show him. And he never saw any of it at all!”
“I’m sorry about that,” said Howard. There seemed nothing else to say. “What did you do?”
She said, “We went bathing several times, at the Piscine Molitor in Auteuil. It was very hot weather, sunny all the time. I could not get him into one museum — not one! He was very, very naughty.”
“I expect that was very pleasant, though,” he said.
She smiled. “It was not what I had arranged,” she said. “I had not even got a costume. We had to go together, John and I, to buy a bathing costume. Never have I done a thing like that before. It was a good thing I had said that we would meet in Paris, not in Chartres. In France there are conventions, Monsieur Howard, you understand.”
“I know,” he said. “John never worried much about those. Did he get you a nice bathing dress?”
She smiled. “It was very beautiful,” she said. “An American one, very chic, in silver and green. It was so pretty that it was a pleasure to be seen in it.”
“Well,” he said. “You couldn’t have worn that in a museum.”
She stared at him, nonplussed. “But no . . .” And then she laughed. “It would be quite ridiculous, that.” She smiled again at the thought. “Monsieur, you say absurd things, just the same as John.”
It was four o’clock when the train pulled into the little station of Landerneau. They tumbled out of the carriage with relief, Nicole lifting each child down onto the platform except Ronnie, who insisted on getting down himself. They fetched the pram from the baggage car and put the remainder of their lunch in it, with the kitten.
There was no guard at the guichet, and they passed through into the town.
Landerneau is a little town of six or seven thousand people, a sleepy little place upon a tidal river running to the Rade de Brest. It is built of grey stone, set in a rolling country dotted round with little woods; it reminded Howard of the Yorkshire wolds. The air, which had been hot and stuffy in the railway carriage, now seemed fresh and sweet, with a faint savour suggesting that the sea was not so very far away.
The town was sparsely held by Germans. Their lorries were parked in the square beneath the plane trees by the river, but there were few of them to be seen. Those that were in evidence seemed ill at ease, anxious to placate the curiosity of a population which they knew to be pro-English. Their behaviour was most studiously correct. The few soldiers in the streets were grey-faced and tired-looking, wandering round in twos and threes and staring listlessly at the strange sights. One thing was very noticeable; they never seemed to laugh.
Unchallenged, Howard and Nicole walked through the town and out into the country beyond, upon the road that led towards the south. They went slowly for the sake of the children; the old man was accustomed now to the slow pace that they could manage. The road was very empty and they straggled all over it at will. It led up onto the open wold.
Rose and Willem were allowed to take their shoes off and go barefoot, rather to the disapproval of Nicole. “I do not think that that is in the part,” she said. “The class which we represent would not do that.”
The old man said, “There’s nobody to see.”
She agreed that it did not matter much, and they went sauntering on, Willem pushing the pram with Pierre. Ahead of them three aircraft crossed the sky in steady, purposeful flight towards the west, flying at about two thousand feet.
The sight woke memories in Rose. “M’sieur,” she cried, “Three aeroplanes — look! Quick, let us get into the ditch!”
He calmed her. “Never mind them,” he said equably. “They aren’t going to hurt us.”
She was only half reassured. “But they dropped bombs before, and fired their guns!”
He said, “These are different aeroplanes. These are good aeroplanes. They won’t hurt us.”
Pierre said suddenly and devastatingly, in his little piping voice, “Can you tell good aeroplanes from bad aeroplanes, M’sieur Howard?”
With a sick heart the old man thought again of the shambles on the Montargis Road. “Why, yes,” he said gently. “You remember the aeroplanes that Mademoiselle took you to see at Chartres? The ones where they let you touch the bombs? They didn’t hurt you, did they? Those were good aeroplanes. Those over there are the same sort. They won’t hurt us.”
Ronnie, anxious to display expert technical knowledge, endorsed these statements. “Good aeroplanes are our own aeroplanes, aren’t they, Mr. Howard?”
“That’s right,” the old man said.
Nicole drew him a little way aside. “I don’t know how you can think of such things to say,” she said in a low tone. “But those are German aeroplanes.”
“I know that. But one has to say something.”
She stared at the three pencil-like shapes in the far distance. “It was marvellous when aeroplanes were things of pleasure,” she said.
He nodded. “Have you ever flown?” he asked.
She said, “Twice, at a fête, just for a little way each time. And then the time I flew with John over Paris. It was wonderful, that. . . .”
He was interested. “You went with a pilot, I suppose. Or did he pilot the machine himself?”
She said, “But he flew it himself, of course, monsieur. It was just him and me.”
“How did he get hold of the aeroplane?” He knew that in a foreign country there were difficulties in aviation.
She said, “He took me to dance, at the flying club, in the Rue François Premier. He had a friend — un capitaine de l’Aéronautique — that he had met in England when he had been with our Embassy in London. And this friend arranged everything for John.”
She said, “Figurez-vous, monsieur! I could not get him to one art gallery, not one! All his life he is used to spend in flying, and then he comes to Paris for a holiday and he wants to go to the aerodrome and fly!”
He smiled gently. “He was like that. . . . Did you enjoy yourself?”
She said, “It was marvellous. It was a fine, sunny day with a fresh breeze, and we drove out to Orly, to the hangar of the flying club. And there, there was a beautiful aeroplane waiting for us, with the engine running.”
Her face clouded a little, and then she smiled. “I do not know very much about flying,” she said frankly. “It was very chic, with red leather seats and chromium steps to make it easy to get in. But John was so rude.”
The old man said, “Rude?”
“He said it looked like a bedbug, monsieur, but not so that the mechanics could hear what he said. I told him that I was very cross to hear him say such a thing, when they had been so kind to lend it to us. He only laughed. And then, when we were flying over Paris at grande vitesse, a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour or more, he turned to me and said, ‘And what’s more, it flies like one!’ Imagine that! Our aeroplanes are very good, monsieur. Everybody in France says so.”
Howard smiled again. “I hope you put him in his place,” he said.
She laughed outright; it was the first time that he had heard that happen. “That was not possible, Monsieur Howard,” she said. “Never could I put him in his place, as you say.”
He said, “I’m sorry about that.” He paused, and then he said, “I have never flown over Paris. Is it beautiful?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Beautiful? I do not think that anything is beautiful seen from the air, except the clouds. But that day was marvellous, because there were those big, fleecy clouds that John called Cum . . . something.”
“Cu
mulus?”
She nodded. “That was it. For more than an hour we played in them, flying around and over the top and in between the white cliffs in the deep gorges of the mist. And every now and then, far down below, one would see Paris, the Concorde or perhaps the Etoile. Never shall I forget that day. And when we landed I was so sleepy that I went to sleep in the car on the way back to Paris, leaning up against John, with my head on his shoulder.”
They walked on in silence for a time. Pierre and Willem tired of pushing the pram and gave place to Rose, with Sheila trotting at her side. The kitten lay curled up in the pram, sound asleep.
Presently Nicole pointed ahead of them. “That is the house — amongst those trees.”
The house that she pointed to lay about a mile ahead of them. It seemed to be a fairly large and prosperous farm, grouped round a modest country house standing among trees as shelter from the wind. About it rolled the open pasture of the wold, as far as could be seen.
In half an hour they were close up to it. A long row of stabling showed the interests of the owner; there were horses running in the paddocks near the farm. The farm buildings were better kept and laid out than the farms that Howard had had dealings with upon his journey; this was a cut above the usual run of things.
They went up to a house that stood beside the entrance, in the manner of a lodge; here Nicole enquired for M. Arvers. They were directed to the stables; leaving the children with the pram at the gate, they went forward together.
They met their man half way.
Aristide Arvers was a small man of fifty-five or so, thin, with sharp features and a shrewd look. Howard decided at the first glance that this man was no fool. And the second thought that came into his mind was realization that this man could well be the father of a beauty queen, of Miss Landerneau. The delicate features, sharpening by advancing age, might well be fascinating in a young girl.
He wore a shapeless black suit with a soiled scarf wrapped around his neck in lieu of collar; a black hat was on his head.
Nicole said, “Monsieur Arvers, do you remember me? You were so kind as to invite me here one day, with my father, Colonel Rougeron. You showed my father round your stables. After that you entertained us in your house. That was three years ago — do you remember?”
