Pied Piper (14 page)

The old man blinked at him. ‘Where are you making for?’

The corporal said: ‘Place called Brest. Not the kind of name I’d like to call a town, myself, but that’s the way these Froggies are. Officer said to go there if we got cut off, and we’d get the lorry shipped back home from there.’

Howard said: ‘Take us with you.’

The other looked uncertainly at the children. ‘I dunno what to say. I dunno if there’d be room. Them kids ain’t English.’

‘Two of them are. They’re speaking French now, but that’s because they’ve been brought up in France.’

The driver passed them with his dripping can, going toward the road.

‘What are the other two?’

‘They’re French.’

‘I ain’t taking no Froggie kids along,’ the corporal said. ‘I ain’t got no room, for one thing, and they’re just as well left in their own place, to my way of thinking. I don’t mind obliging you and the two English ones.’

Howard said: ‘You don’t understand. The two French ones are in my care.’ He explained the situation to the man.

‘It’s no good, mate,’ he said. ‘I ain’t got room for all of you.’

Howard said slowly: ‘I see …’ He stared for a moment absently at the traffic on the road. ‘If it’s a matter of room,’ he said, ‘will you take the four children through to Brest with you? They won’t take up much room. I’ll give you a letter for the R.T.O. at Brest, and a letter
to my solicitor in England. And I can give you money for anything they’ll want.’

The other wrinkled his brows. ‘Leaving you here?’

‘I’ll be all right. In fact, I’ll get along quicker without them.’

‘You mean take them two Froggie kids along ’stead of you? Is that what you’re getting at?’

‘I’ll be all right. I know France very well.’

‘Don’t talk so bloody soft. What ’ld I do with four muckin’ kids and only Bert along o’ me?’ He swung round on his heel. ‘Come on, then. Get them kids dressed toot and sweet—I ain’t going to wait all night. And if I finds them messing with the Herbert I’ll tan their little bottoms for them, straight I will.’

He swung off back towards his lorry. Howard hurried down to the sand pit and called the children to him. ‘Come on and get your clothes on, quickly,’ he said. ‘We’re going in a motor-lorry.’

Ronnie faced him, stark naked. ‘Really? What sort is it? May I sit by the driver, Mr. Howard?’

Sheila, similarly nude, echoed: ‘May I sit by the driver too?’

‘Come on and get your clothes on,’ he repeated. He turned to Rose and said in French: ‘Put your stockings on, Rose, and help Pierre. We’ve got to be very quick.’

He hurried the children all he could, but they were wet and the clothes stuck to them; he had no towel. Before he was finished the two Air Force men were back with him, worrying with their urgency to start. At last he had the children ready. ‘Will you be able to take my perambulator?’ he asked, a little timidly.

The corporal said: ‘We can’t take that muckin’ thing, mate. It’s not worth a dollar.’

The old man said: ‘I know it’s not. But if we have to walk again, it’s all I’ve got to put the little ones in.’

The driver chipped in: ‘Let ’im take it on the roof. It’ll ride there all right, corp. We’ll all be walking if we don’t get hold of juice.’

‘My muckin’ Christ,’ the corporal said. ‘Call this a workshop lorry! Perishing Christmas tree, I call it. All right, stick it on the roof.’

He hustled them towards the road. The lorry stood gigantic by the roadside, the traffic eddying round it. Inside it was stuffed full of machinery. An enormous Herbert lathe stood in the middle. A grinding-wheel and valve-facing machine stood at one end, a little filing and sawing machine at the other. Beneath the lathe a motor-generator set was housed; above it was a long electric switchboard. The men’s kitbags occupied what little room there was.

Howard hastily removed their lunch from the pram, and watched it heaved up on the roof of the van. Then he helped the children up among the machinery. The corporal refused point-blank to let them ride beside the driver. ‘I got the Bren there, see?’ he said. ‘I don’t want no perishing kids around if we runs into Jerries.’

Howard said: ‘I see that.’ He consoled Ronnie and climbed in himself into the lorry. The corporal saw them settled, then went round and got up by the driver; with a low purr and a lurch the lorry moved out into the traffic stream.

It was half an hour later that the old man realised that
they had left Sheila’s pants beside the stream in their hurry.

They settled down to the journey. The interior of the van was awkward and uncomfortable for Howard, with no place to sit down and rest; he had to stoop, half kneeling, on a kitbag. The children being smaller, were more comfortable. The old man got out their
déjeuner
and gave them food in moderation, with a little of the orange drink; on his advice Rose ate very little, and remained well. He had rescued Pierre’s chocolate from the perambulator and gave it to him, as a matter of course, when they had finished eating. The little boy received it solemnly and put it into his mouth; the old man watched him with grave amusement.

Rose said: ‘It is good, that, Pierre.’ She bent down and smiled at him.

He nodded gravely. ‘Very good,’ he whispered.

Very soon they came to Montargis. Through a little trap-door in the partition between the workshop and the driver’s seat the corporal said to Howard: ‘Ever been here before, mate?’

The old man said: ‘I’ve only passed it in the train, a great many years ago.’

‘You don’t know where the muckin’ petrol dump would be? We got to get some juice from somewhere.’

Howard shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t. I’ll ask someone for you, if you like.’

‘Christ. Do you speak French that good?’

The driver said: ‘They all speak it, corp. Even the bloody kids.’

The corporal turned back to Howard. ‘Just keep them kids down close along the floor, mate, case we find the Jerries like in that place Susan.’

The old man was startled. ‘I don’t think there are any Germans so far west as this,’ he said. But he made the children lie down on the floor, which they took as a fine joke. So, with the little squeals of laughter from the body of the lorry, they rolled into Montargis and pulled up at the cross-roads in the middle of the town.

At the corporal’s request the old man got down and asked the way to the military petrol dump. A baker directed him to the north of the town; he got up into the driver’s compartment and directed them through the town. They found the French transport park without great difficulty, and Howard went with the corporal to speak to the officer in charge, a lieutenant. They got a brusque refusal. The town was being evacuated, they were told. If they had no petrol they must leave their lorry and go south.

The corporal swore luridly, so luridly that Howard was quite glad that the English children, who might possibly have understood, were in the lorry.

‘I got to get this muckin’ lot to Brest,’ he said. ‘I don’t leave it here and hop it, like he said.’ He turned to Howard, suddenly earnest. ‘Look, mate,’ he said. ‘Maybe you better beat it with the kids. You don’t want to get mixed up with the bloody Jerries.’

The old man said: ‘If there’s no petrol, you may as well come with us.’

The Air Force man said: ‘You don’t savvy, mate. I
got
to get this lot to Brest. That big Herbert. You don’t know lathes, maybe, but that’s a treat. Straight it is. Machine tools is wanted back home. I
got
to get that Herbert home—I
got
to. Let the Jerries have it for the taking, I suppose! Not bloody likely.’

He ran his eye around the park. It was filled with decrepit, dirty French lorries; rapidly the few remaining soldiers were leaving. The lieutenant that had refused them drove out in a little Citroën car. ‘I bet there’s juice somewhere about,’ the corporal muttered.

He swung round and hailed the driver. ‘Hey, Bert,’ he said: ‘Come on along.’

The men went ferreting about among the cars. They found no dump or store of petrol, but presently Howard saw them working at the deserted lorries, emptying the tanks into a
bidon
. Gleaning a gallon here and a gallon there, they collected in all about eight gallons and transferred it to the enormous tank of the Leyland. That was all that they could find. ‘It ain’t much,’ said the corporal. ‘Forty miles, maybe. Still, that’s better ’n a sock in the jaw. Let’s see the bloody map, Bert.’

The bloody map showed them Pithiviers, twenty-five miles farther on. ‘Let’s get goin’.’ They moved out on the westward road again.

It was terribly hot. The van body of the lorry had sides made of wood, which folded outwards to enlarge the floor space when the lathe was in use. Little light entered round these wooden sides; it was dim and stuffy and very smelly in amongst the machinery. The children did not seem to suffer much, but it was a trying journey for the old man. In a short time he had a splitting headache, and was aching in every limb from the cramped positions he was constrained to take up.

The road was ominously clear to Pithiviers, and they made good speed. From time to time an aeroplane flew low above the road, and once there was a sharp burst of machine-gun fire very near at hand. Howard leaned over
to the little window at the driver’s elbow. ‘Jerry bomber,’ said the corporal. ‘One o’ them Stukas, as they call them.’

‘Was he firing at us?’

‘Aye. Miles off, he was.’ The corporal did not seem especially perturbed.

In an hour they were near Pithiviers, five and twenty miles from Montargis. They drew up by the roadside half a mile from the town and held a consultation. The road stretched before them to the houses with no soul in sight. There was no movement in the town. It seemed to be deserted in the blazing sunlight of the afternoon.

They stared at it, irresolute. ‘I dunno as I fancy it,’ the corporal said. ‘It don’t look right to me.’

The driver said: ‘Bloody funny nobody’s about. You don’t think it’s full of Jerries, corp? Hiding, like?’

‘I dunno …’

Howard, leaning forward with his face to the trap in the partition, said over their shoulders: ‘I don’t mind walking in ahead to have a look, if you wait here.’

‘Walk in ahead of us?’

‘I don’t see that there’d be much risk in that. With all these refugees about I can’t see that there’d be much risk in it. I’d rather do that than drive in with you if there’s any chance of being fired on.’

‘Something in what he says,’ the driver said. ‘If the Jerries
are
there, we mightn’t find another roundabout this time.’

They discussed it for a minute or two. There was no road alternative to going through the town that did not mean a ten-mile journey back towards Montargis. ‘An’ that’s not so bloody funny, either,’ said the corporal. ‘Meet the Jerries coming up behind us, like as not.’

He hesitated, irresolute. ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘Nip in and have a look, mate. Give us the wire if it’s all okey-doke. Wave something if it’s all right to come on.’

The old man said: ‘I’ll have to take the children with me.’

‘My muckin’ Christ! I don’t want to sit here all the bloody day, mate.’

The old man said: ‘I’m not going to be separated from the children.’ He paused. ‘You see, they’re in my charge. Just like your lathe.’

The driver burst out laughing. ‘That’s a good one, corp! Just like your muckin’ lathe,’ he said.

The corporal said: ‘Well, put a jerk in it, anyway.’

The old man got down from the lorry and lifted the children one by one down into the hot sunlight on the dusty, deserted road. He started off with them down the road towards the town, leading the two little ones by the hand, thinking uneasily that if he were to become separated from the lorry he would inevitably lose his perambulator. He made all speed possible, but it was twenty minutes before he led them into the town.

There were no Germans to be seen. The town was virtually deserted; only one or two very old women peered at him from behind curtains or around the half-closed doors of shops. In the gutter of the road that lead towards the north a tattered, dirty child that might have been of either sex in its short smock, was chewing something horrible. A few yards up the road a dead horse had been dragged half up on to the pavement and left there, distended and stinking. A dog was tearing at it.

It was a beastly, sordid little town, the old man felt.
He caught one of the old women at a door. ‘Are the Germans here?’ he said.

‘They are coming from the north,’ she quavered. ‘They will ravish everyone, and shoot us.’

The old man felt instinctively that this was nonsense. ‘Have you seen any Germans in the town yet?’

‘There is one there.’

He looked round, startled. ‘Where?’

‘There.’ She pointed a trembling, withered hand at the child in the gutter.

‘There?’ The woman must be mad, distraught with terror of the invaders.

‘It speaks only German. It is the child of spies.’ She caught his arm with senile urgency. ‘Throw a stone and chase it away. It will bring the Germans to this house if it stays there.’

Howard shook her off. ‘Are any German soldiers here yet?’

She did not answer, but shouted a shrill scream of dirty imprecations at the child in the gutter. The child, a little boy, Howard thought, lifted his head and looked at her with infantile disdain. Then he resumed his disgusting meal.

There was nothing more to be learned from the old hag; it was now clear to him there were no Germans in the town. He turned away; as he did so there was a sharp crack, and a fair-sized stone rolled down the pavement near the German spy. The child slunk off fifty yards down the street and squatted down again upon the kerb.

The old man was very angry, but he had other things to do. He said to Rose: ‘Look after the children for a
minute, Rose, Don’t let them go away or speak to anyone.’

He hurried back along the road that they had entered the town by. He had to go a couple of hundred yards before he came in sight of the lorry, parked by the roadside half a mile away. He waved his hat at it, and saw it move towards him; then he turned and walked back to where he had left the children.