Voyage of the Sparrowhawk

by Natasha Farrant

  They had not realised, until they stepped ashore, how safe the little narrowboat made them feel.

  ‘The dogs should stay,’ said Clara. ‘We don’t know if they’re welcome.’

  ‘The captain said they were good women,’ protested Lotti.

  ‘That doesn’t mean they like dogs.’

  No boat, no dogs … Ben and Lotti suddenly felt very exposed, but they walked side by side with quick determined steps along a path which led from the jetty to a faded door in a high wall. It opened with a creak when Ben pushed it, and the travellers stepped inside.

  They found themselves walking in long grass in an overgrown orchard. On their left, a row of apple trees showed advanced signs of blight, and when the house came into view they saw that several of its shutters were broken, and that unchecked ivy grew thickly on the walls. And yet despite this, there was a solidity to both house and orchard, as if the breeze rustling through the trees and the ivy were whispering, times have been hard, but we are still here …

  ‘It will be all right,’ Lotti whispered to Ben. ‘I have a good feeling.’

  A bench had been placed by the back door, which was open, and from inside the house came the sound of a woman singing. Clara stepped forward, calling out a greeting in French. Immediately the singing stopped. An elderly nun came to the door wiping her hands on the apron she wore over her grey habit, and introduced herself as Sister Monique.

  ‘And you are the English travellers!’ she said, with a smile.

  ‘We are,’ said Clara, with a surprised laugh. ‘But how did you know?’

  ‘There was a telegram,’ said Sister Monique. ‘From a capitaine.’

  Clara blushed. ‘Captain de Beauchesne?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps. I did not see it myself. But the Reverend Mother said that when you arrived, we were to bring you straight to her.’

  A little bewildered, the travellers followed Sister Monique out of the kitchen and down a passage to another door which led them into a pleasant parlour with views over the orchard, where a tall, stately woman wearing the same grey habit as Sister Monique rose to greet them and introduced herself in careful English as Mother Julienne, and asked how she might be of assistance.

  The Reverend Mother listened attentively as Ben and Lotti told her of their plans. When they had finished, she joined her hands together as if in prayer, and looked at them thoughtfully. She was a kind woman but known for her plain-speaking, and for always telling the truth.

  ‘It will not be easy,’ she said. ‘To find a person missing for so long, after such a war as this … it is almost impossible. But you must know this already. Here is what I can do for you. There is a mission house in Buisseau, closely affiliated to ours. Sister Monique stays there sometimes when she goes to Saturday market. I will give you a message to take to them. You may stay there while you conduct your search, and they will help you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ben. He spoke calmly but his heart was hammering. ‘We’ll leave immediately. How do we … how does one get to Buisseau from here?’

  ‘The railway station at St Matthieu is four kilometres away. Sister Monique can take you in the pony cart. You may leave your boat at the jetty; it will be quite safe. You will all be going?’

  ‘The puppies,’ said Clara. ‘Someone ought to stay with them. Lotti …’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Lotti. ‘I’m going with Ben.’

  ‘It would be better if you went with an adult,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘Buisseau, that whole area – it has suffered much.’

  ‘I want Lotti,’ said Ben. ‘It doesn’t work if we’re not together.’

  He and Lotti stepped closer to each other, until they stood shoulder to shoulder facing the two women. Looking at them, Clara and the Reverend Mother had the same feeling that Henri de Beauchesne had experienced on the Sparrhowhawk, of seeing a small, efficient combat unit.

  An hour later, after a quick lunch, Lotti, Ben and Federico left for the railway station. Clara stayed behind to look after the Sparrowhawk and the puppies.

  *

  How strange, thought Ben as the train pulled out of the station, that after all they had been through, this last stage of the journey should be so straightforward. He spent the train ride with a local map borrowed from Sister Monique spread over his knees, tracing and retracing the route between Buisseau and the river. His breathing was short and painful. Three miles, about an hour’s walk from the station at Buisseau, and he would see the last place where Nathan had been alive, and he would speak to the farmer he had stayed with, and he would ask where exactly the survivors of the bombing had been taken and maybe, maybe, tomorrow they would find Sam.

  He tried not to think about what it would be like, out there close to where the bombs had fallen.

  Lotti, sitting beside him with Federico on her lap, heard Ben’s shallow breathing and watched him trace the map, and thought, Please, please, please let it work.

  It was mid-afternoon when they got off the train. As the Reverend Mother had warned them, Buisseau had suffered in the war. The station was dirty, its platform still being rebuilt after suffering shelling. On the main square, there were gaps where once there had been houses, and several shops were boarded up, with FOR SALE signs stuck to the boards. But in the south-west corner, Lotti glimpsed a café terrace … Was this where she had once stopped with her parents on their way to Armande and drunk pineapple juice?

  She thought of the sycamore-shaded square in Calais where she had sat with Ben, remembering the time Papa had bought her a secret cake.

  How would pineapple juice taste now?

  Lotti longed to find out, but she was also afraid … And anyway, Ben did not want to linger, and right now she was here for him. They did not even stop at the mission house to leave their rucksacks, but set out immediately towards the river, following the map.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Nathan had described his lodgings in one of his many letters home, which Ben had kept preciously and knew almost by heart.

  It’s hard to be here, so near the front, with the noise of the guns and the night sky all lit up from the artillery fire. To be honest it sounds like hell, and I pity the poor people caught up in it, all the more so since I’ve seen your brother. But the farm where I’m staying is like a paradise. I don’t mean the sort of paradise you read about in books with angels and harps and all that, more a quiet paradise on earth, with turtle doves cooing in the woods and tubs of red geraniums and a weathervane on the roof in the shape of a fox. It’s called Chez Thibault. That means Thibault’s house, and it’s been Thibault’s house for nearly two hundred years, having been built by the current owner’s great-grandfather …

  Lotti and Ben left Buisseau on a raised road flanked on both sides by fields. After walking almost two miles through gentle farmland, they noticed the fields around them had become dotted with ponds and pools, which reflected the sky, filling the landscape with light.

  ‘Pretty,’ said Lotti. ‘But why so much water?’

  ‘Shell holes.’ Ben swallowed. ‘And there are no trees.’

  ‘Oh,’ murmured Lotti. ‘I see.’

  They walked on, their footsteps steady and their eyes straight ahead, feeling increasingly uneasy. About forty-five minutes after leaving Buisseau, they came to a track, where a small sign indicated they should turn off for Chez Thibault.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ said Lotti. ‘The place where Nathan stayed.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ben, almost inaudibly.

  The place where Nathan stayed, the farmer Nathan stayed with …

  He knew before they even reached the farmhouse that it would be terrible. Turtle doves cooing in the woods, Nathan had written – but the woods were blown to bits, and all the birds were gone, and the farmhouse was destroyed.

  Lotti reached for Ben’s hand and held it tight. Together they advanced towards the ruins. A piece of metal stuck out of the ground at an awkward angle by an old well. When they drew near, they saw it was the weatherva
ne in the shape of a fox.

  ‘They must have come back,’ whispered Ben. ‘The bombers. After they hit the hospital, after the farmer wrote to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Lotti. ‘Oh, Ben, I’m so sorry …’

  What could she do, to take away his grief? What had helped her, all those years ago after her parents died? Queen Victoria the cat, and Moune, before she disappeared … Being held, being loved … She glanced at Ben. His face was ashen. Should she hug him? She wanted to, but then he squared his shoulders in a way that suggested he didn’t want to be touched.

  ‘I think,’ he said very carefully, ‘that I would like to go to where Nathan died.’

  They walked on to the site of the field hospital, but there was little left to show of the lives of the doctors and nurses and ambulance drivers and orderlies and patients and men who had passed through. In the burnt remains of a hut, Ben found a blue and white teacup. In a grassed-over shell crater, Lotti found a tobacco tin. In the hole left by an uprooted tree, Federico unearthed a boot.

  They went on to the river, and saw why it had become unnavigable, as Captain de Beauchesne had told them. A few hundred yards upstream, its banks had collapsed in the bombing, and trees had been blasted across the water, creating an unpassable barrier that, for now at least, had been left to rot.

  This was what they were aiming for, thought Ben. Not the hospital – the river. And then, This is where Nathan died. Why aren’t I upset?

  He searched himself quite carefully, looking for appropriate emotions, but felt nothing but a terrible numbness. After a while, realising there was nothing for him here, he said they should leave. They walked back along the raised road. The evening sky reflected in the ponds and pools and ditches was the colour of blood.

  In a lonely corner of the Protestant cemetery, they found Nathan’s grave, his name and date of death roughly carved on a plain wooden cross. Ben stood before it for a long time, still numb, but forcing himself to remember. Nathan, the first time Ben and Sam had met him, with Bessie and his soft hat, bandaging Ben’s foot … Nathan, who had painted him a robin, Nathan teaching him to read, to write, to pilot the Sparrowhawk, Nathan, who had loved him and Sam like sons … Little by little, the memories forced their way through the numbness, and Ben sat down right there on the grave and sighed, but still he did not weep.

  Lotti, watching from a discreet distance with Federico, felt that her heart might break.

  I shouldn’t have suggested this, she thought. Just because I wanted to get away – I wanted to come to France – but I should have thought. I shouldn’t have put him through this.

  At last, Ben turned away from the grave.

  ‘Let’s go back to the Sparrowhawk,’ whispered Lotti. ‘Let’s go back to Clara and Elsie and the puppies.’

  But Ben’s jaw was clamped in a way she had not seen before, and his features had hardened into fierce, stubborn resolution.

  ‘We’re not going back,’ he said. ‘Just because the farmer is gone doesn’t change anything. Other people can tell us which hospital the survivors were taken to. It’s still the same plan. We’ll sleep at the mission house and then tomorrow we’ll go to the hospital and see if Sam is there, and if he’s not we’ll ask to see their records to find out if he ever was there, and we’ll also ask everyone, everyone if they’ve seen Sam. We’ll show them his photograph, just like you said, and we won’t leave until someone recognises him.’

  ‘Ben …’

  ‘Don’t tell me it’s impossible. I know we can do it, I can feel it. We’ll find Sam. We’ll find him, because we have to. I can’t lose him as well as Nathan, I can’t.’

  *

  Back on the Sparrowhawk, Elsie was restless, prowling between the puppies and the deck, sniffing and whining. Clara tried to calm her.

  ‘Ben’ll be back soon,’ she promised, stroking her. ‘And he’ll never leave you again, don’t worry. I’ll make sure of that.’

  Long after night had fallen, Elsie settled. The black puppies rushed to feed, pushing little Delphine out of the way. Clara picked her up and placed her closer to her mother, then prepared herself for bed. When she was ready, she climbed into her berth and pressed her forehead to the window above it to look at the shadowy woods and river.

  It looks like a fairy tale, thought Clara.

  Suddenly, for a moment, she froze. Then with a shaky laugh she let out her breath.

  She could have sworn she saw a face, watching the Sparrowhawk from the trees, but it was only the reflection of the moon on the water.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The sisters at the mission house were kind. It was plain that they didn’t believe in Ben’s quest any more than the Reverend Mother, but they were helpful. Sister Marianne, who was in charge of the mission house, told them that survivors from the bombing had been taken to a civilian hospital in the nearby town of Rainvilliers, about ten miles away. Sister Angèle, the cook and a friend of Sister Monique’s, made them sandwiches and found them bicycles. Ben and Lotti set off as soon as they had finished breakfast, leaving a resentful Federico with Sister Angèle.

  *

  The hospital was a square, white modern building on the outskirts of Rainvilliers. Ben and Lotti locked their bicycles to a railing and went inside, and Lotti explained what they had come for to a tired-looking receptionist. The receptionist didn’t look surprised by their request, or even sad, but directed them to a room, which had been set aside especially for people like them.

  Their hearts sank as they came into the room. They had arrived early but already it was full. A stern-faced woman at a desk by the door gave them a numbered ticket and told them to wait until it was called to see the official record-keeper.

  ‘Why are there so many people?’ asked Lotti.

  The stern-faced woman looked at her pityingly. ‘Even now, all this time after the war, half of France is looking for a missing loved one,’ she said, ‘and you are searching for an Englishman!’ she added, as if Englishmen were famously the most difficult to find.

  All the chairs in the room were occupied. Ben and Lotti shrugged off their rucksacks and found a space on the floor to sit and wait. Lotti stole a look at Ben and was alarmed to see that he was shaking.

  ‘Maybe it won’t be so long,’ she said, slipping an arm through his.

  ‘It’s not the wait,’ he whispered. ‘It’s … we’re here …’

  ‘And soon we’ll know,’ said Lotti. ‘Yes. It’s scary.’

  Ben sighed and briefly rested his head on her shoulder, then gave himself a shake and reached into his rucksack for the envelope in which he had put Sam’s photograph.

  ‘Take it,’ he said, giving it to Lotti. ‘There’s no sense both of us waiting in here, and your French is better than mine. Go and ask people if they’ve seen him?’

  Lotti took the photograph and examined it carefully.

  It was a formal shot, taken in a studio before Sam left for the war. He wore an army uniform and his hair was cut very short, but his mouth was twisted in a half-smile, his eyes were crinkled and there was a dimple in his left cheek. The guardians of the orphanage would have had no trouble recognising the boy they used to define as trouble. ‘What a laugh!’ the face in the picture seemed to say, as if he wanted Ben and Nathan to remember him as he had always been, rather than what he was about to become.

  ‘I like him,’ said Lotti.

  Ben’s mouth trembled. ‘So do I.’

  ‘I promise,’ said Lotti, ‘if anyone here remembers Sam, I will find them!’

  She hugged him and hurried out of the room.

  Ben waited.

  There were double doors at the back of the room. As numbers were called, people got up and went through them. All sorts of different people were here. An old farmer in his Sunday best, a woman in a dark silk dress, a young man with a stick. They all went in looking nervous. They never returned smiling.

  *

  Lotti started outside the service doors of the hospital, watching the port
ers unload crates from a truck, feeling strangely nervous and un-Lotti-like, because she remembered the cold hard look on Ben’s face at the river yesterday, and at Nathan’s grave, and she wanted very much to make that look go away.

  ‘S’il vous plait,’ she asked one of the porters when he stopped for a cigarette. ‘Regardez! Avez-vous vu cet homme?’

  Please, look! Have you seen this man?

  It was not the first time the porter had been asked this question, in this manner. He had never yet recognised a face, but nonetheless he took the photograph and examined it. Called over his colleagues, who also looked. Handed it back, as he always did, with a sorrowful shake of the head.

  ‘Non, désolé.’

  I’m sorry, no.

  Nurses, kitchen staff, doctors, orderlies. Cleaners, ambulance drivers, even patients. Lotti moved to the main entrance and showed the photograph to every person who passed.

  Mainly, she drew blank looks. Sometimes, a sorrowful shake of the head. Once, a hug.

  But nobody recognised the photograph.

  The morning passed. Lotti came in to take Ben’s place so he could go outside to stretch and use the bathroom. He came back and ate his sandwiches. He closed his eyes and found that by focusing really hard on his breathing, he could slow down his heart and pretend he wasn’t there. In out in out. He opened his eyes and saw that the afternoon sun cast long shadows across the floor, and thought with a fierce longing of the Sparrowhawk.

  Lotti came in from outside, looking exhausted. Most of the chairs were free now, but Ben still sat on the floor. Lotti flopped down beside him.

  ‘Nothing?’ he asked wearily.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Four o’clock came, and the records office closed at five. They began to lose hope of ever being called, but then …

  ‘Numéro soixante-trois!’

  Number sixty-three!

  They jumped up, with their hearts in their mouth.