by Thomas Wood
In no time at all, I was obeying the gentle giant, I was gradually falling asleep.
*Chapter Break *
I awoke to a series of hushed voices that seemed to burn into my mind with an aggressive fervour. Opening my eyes and sitting up, I noticed that the little girl still sat in her chair by my table, with the addition of a blanket wrapped around her, her head tilted back to a degree that almost looked unnatural, as she continued to snooze away in the kitchen with the mysterious visitor.
The voices were coming from outside the room, the fire now having subsided into nothing more than the occasional pop of dying embers.
Grunting and grimacing, trying desperately not to wake the little girl, I began hobbling my way to the door, using the sideboard that ran around the kitchen for some sort of support. Pulling myself through the door, clutching tightly to the wall, I could make out two figures animatedly talking to each other in the shadows on the other side of the wooden frame.
As I stood, I could make out a few French words, all of which were totally useless in isolation and without the context of the conversation, but from what I could hear, it sounded like they were arguing.
One of the figures must have caught sight of a shadow at the door and within an instant I was face to face with the giant once more, this time a far more troubled look on his face than when I had last seen him. He was joined at the door by a woman, so small in comparison to the man that it looked almost farcical. They both ushered me into the room quickly, obviously wanting to disturb the girl even less than I had wanted to. The door was pushed to the moment I had made it into the room.
“This is Cécile Brodeur.” The man announced as I looked her up and down. She made no attempts to introduce herself or make her welcome any less frosty than the cold hard stare that she treated me to. She was naturally very pretty, naturally because she had made no real attempt to scrub herself up, her clothes were dirty and there was a thick layer of dirt under her long fingernails. Her eyes were piercing though and outside of the situation I now found myself in, I was certain that I would be quite attracted to her.
“She is here to help you. You have been here too long already.”
“The Germans know that a British soldier is here, someone saw you being taken into the house and told them. If we don’t leave immediately, you, as well as Monsieur Paquet and his daughter, will all be shot. Understand?”
“You’re American?”
“Put these on now. I have a few friends who will try and help as best they can. It is my job to get you home, apparently.” She shot a vicious look towards Monsieur Paquet and I felt mightily glad that her spotlight wasn’t totally on me for a moment. She bundled a handful of clothes towards me, which I began pulling on with some urgency.
“Where is the rest of his uniform?” she enquired of Monsieur Paquet, in fluent French, to which he produced a small bag of my tunic and blouse, which was soon joined by my trousers in the dying embers of the fire.
“You know what to do.” She said to him, with a nod, still with not even a hint of a smile or any other emotion other than aggression. He returned the nod and began busying himself reigniting the fire before waking the small girl and packing his things together.
“You speak French?” It was a question, but it was asked in such a way that it sounded like she was commanding me to start reciting the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen.
“Yes. A little.”
“That should be good enough to fool the Germans.”
She waited a while, busying herself with hurrying me along into my new clothes before she spoke again.
“I am a nurse here. You are one of my patients, and I am trying to take you down to Marseilles in the south for some of the sea air there. If anyone asks you any questions directly, you do not speak to them unless you are confident they do not speak fluent French. Anything else will get us killed. Understand?”
She was an aggressive, fiery woman, I could see that much already, and in truth, she scared the living wits out of me. But I could not help but admire her, she had such a willingness and determination to get me out alive that she was putting her own life on the line, as well as mine. It was only then that the thought flashed across my mind that maybe she hadn’t been willing at all, and that Monsieur Paquet had more or less forced her into helping me.
Either way, I was still in a much better position than before I entered Monsieur Paquet’s house. I didn’t know if I could trust this woman, she seemed volatile, jumpy almost and I had an underlying fear straight away that, if she was to be challenged by a German guard, there would be no way of stopping her from clubbing the poor man to death without question. It was there and then that I decided, at the earliest opportunity, I would have to give her the slip.
“Come on, come on, our lift is here.” Her American tones seemed so unnatural in a situation like this and I couldn’t work out how a girl like her had ended up in the middle of some rural French village while a horrific, deadly war raged on just down the road.
As I was bundled into the back of a waiting farmer’s truck, down in the footwell while the nurse and the driver sat up front, I realised that I never got the chance to thank Monsieur Paquet and his daughter. They had given up everything for one man, one that they had found lying on the forest floor in desperate need of assistance.
They had surrendered food and water for me. They had given up their home for me. And shortly, it was likely their lives too, would be taken, because of me.
23
As we left Monsieur Paquet’s house for the last time, I wondered what would happen to the kindly fellow who picked me up from the forest floor, presumably carried me to his house and tended to my every need, potentially saving my life.
I hoped that he managed to get away, along with his daughter, and that they would survive this ghastly episode without so much of a scratch rather than a score of German firing squad bullets.
I still wasn’t aware of how long I had been in his care for, but the way in which everything seemed to be relatively organised in this whole late-night manoeuvre, I assumed I had been there for a good number of days, just resting. Apart from the pain that I felt in my side every time I moved, I finally felt good; I was well rested for the first time in weeks, I was fed reasonably well and I was clean, with barely a speck of dirt on me, apart from that which I picked up in the footwell of what turned out to be a baker’s truck.
The lights were off the whole time and no one said a word, on the nurse’s part that seemed like it was out of frustration at helping a stupid Brit who had managed to get himself lost from the rest of his men, but the baker, who drove the whole way, seemed to keep quiet out of a genuine fear that was etched across his face from the very moment he picked us up.
Eventually, the truck stopped, and the baker whispered something to the nurse, which she translated for me, in her now all too familiar aggressive tones, “He can’t risk going any further. You’re going to have to walk from here.”
“I can do that you know. I’m not an invalid.”
I was bundled out of the van and realised that the baker was getting out to walk with us, obviously not comfortable in driving around anymore than was strictly necessary at this time of the night. Up ahead, I could make out the outlines of a small town, which we began to stagger towards, slowly, the baker frequently making sure that there was no one behind us.
The door we stopped at was a faded red in colour and had started to peel at the edges after so many years of being abused. The nurse tapped on the door, five times, in a rhythmic beat as she looked back out over the street.
The baker gave the nurse a kiss on both cheeks, and tipped his cap in my direction, before hobbling off down the street at a brisk pace, as if he had just knocked on the wrong door and was now making off in embarrassment.
A face appeared in a crack in the doorway, which quite quickly was flung wide open and we were ushered frantically inside, the door slammed behind us firmly.
We were immediately in the kitchen area of the house, a small and basic room, with just a dining table and some chairs in the way of furnishings. All the lights were out, just a lone candle sat on the table, gently steadying its flame after the change in air pressure had sent it wobbling all over the place.
The man picked it up from the table and began fussing with an old gas lamp, which chucked out an infinitely brighter flame, before being hastily dimmed so it was just a low glow, a faint hissing sound reassuringly humming underneath.
It was only then that the man seemed to calm down enough to begin acting rationally, welcoming the girl with a couple of kisses on the cheeks before taking a good look at her face. They conversed in French for a few moments, before embracing and kissing once more. He then turned his attention onto me and just stood, staring at me for a moment or two. It was then that I realised that these two must have been related, there was no way that I had managed to meet two, unrelated, icy stares like that in a matter of hours. Eventually, he held out his hand, which I took, before he pulled me into an embrace like a long, lost brother.
“This is my uncle,” she said, after the man eventually broke the embrace that seemed to go on for far too long, “Andrè.”
“And who, exactly, are you?” I was growing frustrated with the woman, I had been with her for a number of hours now and she was still to explain who she was and what she intended to do with me, all the while maintaining a steely exterior that meant I was finding it increasingly difficult to work out if she was here to help, or whether she was going to hand me over to the Germans.
“I’m Cécile,” she said, repeating Monsieur Paquet’s words with an obvious frustration, “I am a Red Cross nurse here. These people are my family, my extended family. My father moved to America after the war where he met my mother. I am both French, and American.”
She began moving about the house as if it were her own, making a drink for all three of us, while her uncle sat at the table and observed her, finally glad, it seemed, to have a willing helper around the house.
“What happened to your Auntie?” I enquired, quite innocently, which was met by a murderous look of disgust on her face.
“We will have to stay here a while. There is a plan in place to move you, but it will take time to organise.”
“How long?”
“A week at least. Maybe more. In that time, you cannot go outside, you must not leave the house unless you are in real danger. If you do, my uncle here will be found out and shot…like Monsieur Paquet will be.”
I felt my heart almost snap in two at the mention that it was likely he would be dead within a few hours, but I slowly started to calm myself down as I realised that what she was saying was a threat, to make sure her family were kept alive, and that maybe there was a chance that that was all it was, just a threat, to make me realise the gravity of the situation. Besides, Monsieur Paquet and his daughter were already on their way out of the house when we were leaving, weren’t they? I couldn’t quite remember now.
“So, what are you actually going to do with me?”
She looked at me, her head slightly cocked over to one side, as if she was enquiring as to why I would be asking such an absurd question.
“I’m going to get you home, Mr Lewis.” I felt like kissing her head at the mere mention of the word ‘home,’ it being more of a dream than a reality for so long now, that it felt like it was some mythical place that I would never be able to return to.
I allowed myself a few minutes of thought before doing anything else. I let myself think of my home, I thought of my dad and wondered if he would have been proud of me so far, and that, if I were to make it home, whether or not he would believe such an incredible tale that sounded closer to make believe than anything that might happen in reality. I thought about my brother and wondered what he was doing right now. He was always keen to keep up to date with the latest goings on around the world, so he surely must have known about the total confusion that some of our army was in and, if it was true, that some of our army was being taken home not too far from here. I hoped that he was reading the news, every word of it, and thinking of me, maybe even offering a prayer or two up for my safe return, but I wasn’t quite sure if our brotherly rivalry prevented that sort of thing from happening still.
I slid my hand into my pocket, in search of my Bible; I would allow myself one quick, brief look at it and maybe share with Andrè who each character was and why I wanted to get back to see them. But my pocket was empty. As my hand cannoned around in my pocket, searching for the small book, I realised that I was causing quite the scene.
“What’s the matter?”
“My Bible! It had the only photo of my family I had!” It was then that it dawned on me that it had stayed in the pocket of my uniform, which was now smouldering away on Monsieur Paquet’s fire, hopefully nothing more than a pile of blackened ashes now. At least, for his sake, I hoped that’s what it was, if the Germans saw anything resembling a British uniform or an English Bible, he was for the chop.
“You’re better off without it,” she muttered, barely looking up from the sink on the far side of the room, “if they found you with it, we’d all be killed. I don’t particularly want to die for someone like you.”
I was quite taken aback with her tone and the way in which she apparently didn’t want to help me.
“Why are you helping me then, if you’re so convinced you’re going to die?!” I exploded.
She simply stared at me for a moment or two, waiting for the air of tension to die down so that the screaming match could continue in far more secretive tones.
“I am doing it because it is what should be done. Someone helped my father escape in 1917 and he always said I should return the favour if I could.”
I couldn’t help but daydream wild thoughts as she continued making herself busy around the house. The war had ended a year after she had said, and he had needed to ‘escape,’ leading me to conjure up immersive stories of how he was a secretive spy who had needed to be withdrawn to some distant country, or how he was a coward who had somehow managed to desert with the help of some other fainthearted deserter.
In her classic manner, she interrupted even my thoughts. “It is time you got some rest. Upstairs, second door on the left.”
I did as I was told and soon realised that I was far more exhausted than I had previously thought, especially so as it dawned on me that this was the first time in weeks that I had actually faced a night on something which resembled a bed. As soon as my head hit the softness of the pillow, I was gone.
*Break*
“So, is there a plan then, or what?” I asked, as I slid a thin slice of buttered bread down my neck, basking in the flavours that previously seemed so bland.
“Yes.”
André’s eyes seemed to start burning brightly at the mention of a plan, and he began inching forward in his seat, his head darting in between me and Cécile like he was umpiring at a tennis match.
“So, am I allowed to know?” I half-chuckled as I wondered why everything was so secretive around here, especially as I considered myself the main piece on this chess board of escape.
“No.”
Andrè immediately exploded into a tirade of French at a pace that meant it was impossible for me to keep up with the verbal abuse he was subjecting his niece to. She simply stood there, staring at him, letting him get on with it all, waiting for him to run out of energy or curse words, whichever happened to be first. Eventually he calmed down, his sentences slowly losing pace and trailing off into nothing. She blurted back at him, and I only caught the odd word which meant nothing to me, place and street names that meant I wasn’t able to follow in the slightest, I was only half sure of which country I was currently in.
Andrè erupted once more in a fervour, all the while keeping half an eye on the door, just in case a German happened to be standing on the other side of it, listening in.
Out of all the words that he launched into the air, there was on
e phrase that I picked out, and clutched a hold of until their exchange was over.
La gare. Tell him about la gare.
We were heading to the train station, we must be, that must be my escape route. After they had calmed down and returned to their daily routines of reading the newspaper and endless cleaning, I challenged Cécile.
“Won’t la gare be crawling with Germans?” I switched between the French and the English to let Andrè in on the conversation, which was met with his newspaper flapping down hard on the table.
She spun round and glared at me. Andrè too was glaring, but he had a smile etched on his face, his head almost bobbing up and down as he willed her to tell me the plan.
After a minute or two of pursing her lips, debating what to tell me, or whether she could get away with completely ignoring me altogether or not, she finally spoke.
“Yes, it will be. But we have a plan. We have people willing to help you. I just don’t want to risk all of our lives by telling you what is going to happen. You must respect that.”
“You could at least tell me where I am though.”
“Hardifort. About thirty kilometres from Dunkirk. The coast.”
That was as far as her intelligence sharing went for now, for she fell into silence once more, broken up by a few syllables uttered under her breath, so that her aging, deaf uncle couldn’t quite hear her.
“You’ll know what the plan is soon enough.”
*Break*
One morning, while I sat at the table with Andrè, marvelling at how pale my skin was becoming due to my temporary house arrest, I noticed something about Cécile when she sauntered down the stairs. Instead of wearing her usual clothes, normally some sort of skirt and blouse with an apron tied hastily over the top, she had an altogether different, more brightly coloured outfit on.
She had a long, pale blue dress on, that stopped just short of her ankles, over the top of which was a pristine, sparkling white apron, emblazoned with the sharpest red cross that I had ever laid my eyes on. Her nails were clean and trimmed right back, her hands no longer dirtied from cleaning the house or the dishes and around her forehead was wrapped a thin piece of fabric, whiter than her apron, that hid the vast majority of her blonde hair.
