Pied Piper (17 page)

‘Indeed,’ the old man said faintly, ‘we realise that, Herr Doktor.’

‘So,’ said the man, ‘what Germany has done for this boy, she will do for France, for all Europe. A new Order has begun.’

There was rather an awkward silence. Howard was about to say something suitable, but the yellow jersey caught his eye, and the image of the woman in the shop came into his mind and drove the words from his head. He stood hesitant for a minute.

The doctor gave the child a little push towards him. ‘What Germany has done for this one little Dutchman she will do for all the children of the world,’ he said. ‘Take him away. You are his father?’

Fear lent speed to the old man’s thoughts. A half-truth was best. ‘He is not mine,’ he said. ‘He was lost and quite alone in Pithiviers. I shall take him to the convent.’

The man nodded, satisfied with that. ‘I thought you might be Dutch yourself,’ he said. ‘You do not speak like these French.’

It would not do to say he was Norwegian again; it was too near to Germany. ‘I am from the south,’ he said. ‘From Toulouse. But I am staying with my son in Montmirail. Then we got separated in Montargis; I do not know what has become of him. The children I was with are my grandchildren. They are now in the
Place
. They have been very good children, m’sieur, but it will be good when we can go home.’

He rambled on, getting into the stride of his tale, easily
falling into the garrulity of an old man. The doctor turned away rudely. ‘Well, take your brat,’ he said. ‘You can go home now. There will be no more fighting.’

He went back into the tent.

The old man took the little boy by the hand and led him round the church, passing on the other side of the shop that had sold children’s clothes. He found Rose standing more or less where he had left her, with Sheila and Pierre. There was no sign of Ronnie.

He said anxiously to her: ‘Rose, what has become of Ronnie? Where is he?’

She said: ‘M’sieur, he has been so naughty. He wanted to see the tanks, but I told him it was wrong that he should go. I told him, m’sieur, that he was a very, very naughty little boy and that you would be very cross with him, m’sieur. But he ran off, all alone.’

Sheila piped up, loud and clear, in English: ‘May I go and see the tanks, too, Mr. Howard?’

Mechanically, he said in French: ‘Not this evening. I told you that you were all to stay here.’

He looked around, irresolute. He did not know whether to leave the children where they were and go and look for Ronnie, or to take them with him. Either course might bring the other children into danger. If he left them they might get into further trouble. He took hold of the pram and pushed it ahead of him. ‘Come this way,’ he said.

Pierre edged up to him and whispered: ‘May I push?’

It was the first time that the old man had heard the little boy volunteer a remark. He surrendered the handle of the pram. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Rose, help him push.’

He walked beside them towards the parked tanks and lorries, anxiously scanning the crowd. There were
German soldiers all about the transport, grey, weary men, consciously endeavouring to fraternise with a suspicious population. Some of them were cleaning up their clothes, some tending their machines. Others had little phrase books in their hands, and these were trying to make conversation with the crowd. The French peasants seemed sullen and uncommunicative.

Sheila said suddenly: ‘There’s Ronnie, over there!’

The old man turned, but could not see him. ‘Where is he?’

Rose said: ‘I see him—oh, m’sieur, what a naughty little boy. There, m’sieur, right inside the tank, there—with the German soldiers!’

A cold fear entered Howard’s heart. His eyesight for long distances was not too good. He screwed his eyes up and peered in the direction Rose was pointing. True enough, there he was. Howard could see his little head just sticking out of a steel hatch at the top of the gun-turret as he chattered eagerly to the German soldier with him. The man seemed to be holding Ronnie in his arms, lifting him up to show him how the captain conned his tank. It was a pretty little picture of fraternisation.

The old man thought very quickly. He knew that Ronnie would most probably be talking French; there would be nothing to impel him to break into English. But he knew also that he himself must not go near the little boy nor must his sister; in his excited state he would at once break out in English to tell them all about the tank. Yet, he must be got away immediately, while he was still thinking of nothing but the tank. Once he began to think of other things, of their journey, or of Howard himself, he would inevitably betray them all in boyish
chatter. Within five minutes of him losing interest in the tank the Germans would be told that he was English, that an old Englishman was strolling round the town.

Sheila plucked his sleeve. ‘I want my supper,’ she said. ‘May I have my supper now? Please, Mr. Howard, may I have my supper now?’

‘In a minute,’ he said absently. ‘We’ll all go and have our supper in a minute.’ But that was an idea. If Sheila was hungry, Ronnie would be hungry too—unless the Germans had given him sweets. He must risk that. There was that soup kitchen that the German at the entrance to the town had spoken of; Howard could see the field-cookers a hundred yards down the
Place
.

He showed them to Rose. ‘I am taking the little children down there, where the smoke is, for our supper,’ he said casually. ‘Go and fetch Ronnie, and bring him to us there. Are you hungry?’

‘Oui, m’sieur.’
She said that she was very hungry indeed.

‘We shall have a fine hot supper, with hot soup and bread,’ the old man said, drawing on his imagination. ‘Go and tell Ronnie and bring him along with you. I will walk on with the little ones.’

He sent her off, and watched her running through the crowd, her bare legs twinkling. He steered the other children rather away from the tank; it would not do for Ronnie to be able to hail him. He saw the little girl come to the tank and speak urgently to the Germans; then she was lost to sight.

The old man sent up an urgent, personal prayer for the success of her unwitting errand, as he helped Pierre push the pram towards the field-cookers. There was nothing
now that he could do. Their future lay in the small hands of two children, and in the hands of God.

There was a trestle table, with benches. He parked the pram and sat Pierre and Sheila and the nameless little Dutch boy at the table. Soup was dispensed in thick bowls, with a hunk of bread; he went and drew four bowls for the lot of them and brought them to the table.

He turned and Rose was at his elbow with Ronnie. The little boy was still flushed and ecstatic. ‘They took me right inside!’ he said in English.

The old man said gently in French: ‘If you tell us in French, then Pierre can understand too.’ He did not think that anyone had noticed. But the town was terribly dangerous for them; at any moment the children might break into English and betray them.

Ronnie said in French: ‘There was a great big gun, and two little guns, m’sieur, and you steer with two handles and it goes seventy kilos an hour!’

Howard said: ‘Come on and eat your supper.’ He gave him a bowl of soup and a piece of bread.

Sheila said enviously. ‘Did you go for a ride, Ronnie?’

The adventurer hesitated. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘But they said I might go with them for a ride to-morrow or one day. They did speak funnily. I could hardly understand what they wanted to say. May I go for a ride with them to-morrow, m’sieur? They say I might.’

The old man said: ‘We’ll have to see about that. We may not be here to-morrow.’

Sheila said: ‘Why did they talk funny, Ronnie?’

Rose said suddenly: ‘They are dirty Germans, who come here to murder people.’

The old man coughed loudly. ‘Go on and eat your
supper,’ he said, ‘all of you. That’s enough talking for the present.’ More than enough, he thought; if the German dishing out the soup had overhead they would all have been in trouble.

Angerville was no place for them; at all costs he must get the children out. It was only a matter of an hour or two before exposure came. He meditated for a moment; there were still some hours of daylight. The children were tired, he knew, yet it would be better to move on, out of the town.

Chartres was the next town on his list; Chartres, where he was to have taken train for St. Malo. He could not get to Chartres that night; it was the best part of thirty miles farther to the west. There was little hope now that he would escape the territory occupied by Germans, yet for want of an alternative he would carry on to Chartres. Indeed, it never really occurred to him to do otherwise.

The children were very slow eaters. It was nearly an hour before Pierre and Sheila, the two smallest, had finished their meal. The old man waited, with the patience of old age. It would do no good to hurry them. When they had finished he wiped their mouths, thanked the German cook politely, collected the pram, and led them out on to the road to Chartres.

The children walked very slowly, languidly. It was after eight o’clock, long past their ordinary bed-time; moreover, they had eaten a full meal. The sun was still warm, though it was dropping towards the horizon; manifestly, they could not go very far. Yet he kept them at it, anxious to get as far as possible from the town.

The problem of the little Dutch boy engaged his attention.
He had not left him with the Sisters, as he had been minded to; it had not seemed practical when he was in the town to search out a convent. Nor had he yet got rid of Pierre, as he had promised himself that he would do. Pierre was no trouble, but this new little boy was quite a serious responsibility. He could not speak one word of any language that they spoke. Howard did not even know his name. Perhaps it would be marked upon his clothes.

Then, with a shock of dismay, the old man realised that the clothes were gone for ever. They had been taken by the Germans when the little chap had been de-loused; by this time they were probably burnt. It might well be that his identity was lost now till the war was over, and enquiries could be made. It might be lost for ever.

The thought distressed old Howard very much. It was one thing to hand over to the Sisters a child who could be traced; it seemed to him to be a different matter altogether when the little boy was practically untraceable. As he walked along the old man revolved this new trouble in his mind. The only link now with his past lay in the fact that he had been found abandoned in Pithiviers upon a certain day in June—lay in the evidence which Howard alone could give. With that evidence, it might one day be possible to find his parents or his relatives. If now he were abandoned to a convent, that evidence might well be lost.

They walked on down the dusty road.

Sheila said fretfully: ‘My feet hurt.’

She was obviously tired out. He picked her up and put her in the pram, and put Pierre in with her. To Pierre he gave the chocolate that had been promised to him
earlier in the day, and then all the other children had to have a piece of chocolate too. That refreshed them and made them cheerful for a while, and the old man pushed the pram wearily ahead. It was essential that they should stop soon for the night.

He stopped at the next farm, left the pram with the children in the road, and went into the court-yard to see if it was possible for them to find a bed. There was a strange stillness in the place. No dog sprang out to bark at him. He called out, and stood expectant in the evening light, but no one answered him. He tried the door to the farmhouse, and it was locked. He went into the cowhouse, but no animals were there. Two hens scratched upon the midden; otherwise there was no sign of life.

The place was deserted.

As on the previous night, they slept in the hay loft. There were no blankets to be had this time, but Howard, searching round for some sort of a coverlet, discovered a large, sail-like cover, used possibly to thatch a rick. He dragged this into the loft and arranged it double on the hay, laying the children down between its folds. He had expected trouble with them, excitement and fretfulness, but they were too tired for that. All five of them were glad to lie down and rest; in a short time they were all asleep.

Howard lay resting on the hay near them, tired to death. In the last hour he had taken several nips of brandy for the weariness and weakness that he was enduring; now as he lay upon the hay in the deserted farm fatigue came soaking out of him in great waves. He felt that they were in a desperate position. There could be no hope now of getting through to England, as he once had
hoped. The German front was far ahead of them; by now it might have reached to Brittany itself. All France was overrun.

Exposure might come at any time, must come before so very long. It was inevitable. His own French, though good enough, was spoken with an English accent, as he knew well. The only hope of escaping detection would be to hide for a while until some plan presented itself, to lie up with the children in the house of some French citizen. But he knew no one in this part of France that he could go to.

And any way, no family would take them in. If he did know anybody, it would hardly be fair to plant himself on them.

He lay musing bitterly on the future, only half-awake.

It was not quite correct to say that he knew nobody. He did know, very slightly, one family at Chartres. They were people called Rouget—no, Rougand—Rougeron; that was it, Rougeron. They came from Chartres. He had met them at Cidoton eighteen months before, when he had been there with John for the ski-ing. The father was a colonel in the army; Howard wondered vaguely what had become of him. The mother had been typically fat and French, pleasant enough in a very quiet way. The daughter had ski’d well; closing his eyes in the doze of oncoming sleep the old man could see her flying down the slopes behind John, in a flurry of snow. She had had fair hair which she wore short and rather elaborately dressed, in the French style.

He had seen a good deal of the father. They had played draughts together in the evening over a Pernod, and had pondered together whether war would come. The old man
began to consider Rougeron seriously. If by some freak of chance he should be in Chartres, there might yet be hope for them. He thought that Rougeron might help.