Pied Piper (33 page)

She raised her head. ‘You need not draw your gun,’ she said. ‘I shall not try to go.’

The German did not answer her, but pulled the big automatic from the holster at his waist. In the dim light he went striding softly down the quay; Howard and Nicole hesitated for a moment and then followed him with the children; the black-uniformed driver brought up the rear. At the end, by the water’s edge, Diessen turned.

He called to them in a low tone. ‘Hurry.’

There was a boat there, where the slip ran down into the water. They could see the tracery of its mast and
rigging outlined against the starry sky; the night was very quiet. They drew closer and saw it was a half-decked fishing-boat. There were two men there, besides Diessen. One was standing on the quay in the black uniform they knew so well. The other was in the boat, holding her to the quay by a rope rove through a ring.

‘In with you, quickly,’ said Diessen. ‘I want to see you get away.’

He turned to Focquet, speaking in French. ‘You are not to start your engine till you are past Le Trepied,’ he said. ‘I do not want the countryside to be alarmed.’

The young man nodded. ‘There is no need,’ he said in the soft Breton dialect. ‘There is sufficient wind to steer by, and the ebb will take us out.’

They passed the seven children one by one down into the boat. ‘You now,’ the German said to Howard. ‘Remember to behave yourself in England. I shall send for you in London in a very few weeks’ time. In September.’

The old man turned to Nicole. ‘This is good-bye, my dear,’ he said. He hesitated. ‘I do not think this war will be over in September. I may be old when it is over, and not able to travel very well. You will come and visit me, Nicole? There is so much that I shall want to say to you. So much that I wanted to talk over with you, if we had not been so hurried and so troubled in the last few days.’

She said: ‘I will come and stay with you as soon as we can travel. And you shall talk to me about John.’

The German said: ‘You must go now, Mr. Englishman.’

He kissed the girl; for a minute she clung to him. Then he got down into the boat among the children.

Pierre said: ‘Is this the boat that’s going to take us to America?’

The old man shook his head. ‘Not this boat,’ he said, with mechanical patience. ‘That will be a bigger boat than this.’

‘How big will that one be?’ asked Ronnie. ‘Twice as big?’

Focquet had slipped the warp out of the ring and was thrusting vigorously with an oar against the quay-side. The stretch of dark water that separated them from France grew to a yard, to five yards wide. The old man stood motionless, stricken with grief, with longing to be back upon the quay, with the bitter loneliness of old age.

He saw the figure of the girl standing with the three Germans by the water’s edge, watching them as they slid away. The ebb caught the boat and hurried her quietly out into the stream; Focquet was heaving on a halliard forward and the heavy nut-brown sail crept slowly up the mast. For a moment he lost sight of Nicole as a mist dimmed his eyes; then he saw her again clearly, still standing motionless beside the Germans. Then the gloom shrouded all of them, and all that he could see was the faint outline of the hill against the starry sky.

In deep sorrow, he turned and looked forward to the open sea. But tears blinded him, and he could see nothing of the entrance.

Ronnie said: ‘May I work the rudder, Mr. Howard?’

The old man did not answer him. The little boy repeated his question.

Rose said: ‘I do feel sick.’

He roused himself and turned to their immediate needs with heavy heart. They had no warm clothes and no
blankets to keep off the chill of the night sea. He spoke a few sentences to Focquet and found him mystified at their deliverance; he found that the young man intended to cross straight over to Falmouth. He had no compass and no chart for the sea crossing of a hundred miles or so, but said he knew the way. He thought that it would take a day and a night, perhaps a little longer. They had no food with them, but he had a couple of bottles of red wine and a beaker of water.

They pulled a sail out from the forepeak and made a resting-place for the children. The old man took Anna and made her comfortable in a corner first, and put her in the charge of Rose. But Rose, for once, displayed little of her maternal instinct; she was preoccupied with her own troubles.

In a very few minutes she was sick, leaning over the side of the boat under the old man’s instructions. One by one the children followed her example as they reached the open sea; they passed Le Trepied, a black reef of rock, with so much wailing that they might just as well have had the engine running after all. In spite of the quick motion of the boat the old man did not feel unwell. Of the children, the only one unaffected was Pierre, who stood by Focquet at the stern, gazing at the moonlight on the water ahead of them.

They turned at the Libenter buoy and headed to the north. In a lull between the requirements of the children Howard said to Focquet: ‘You are sure that you know which way to steer?’

The young Frenchman nodded. He glanced at the moon and at the dim loom of the land behind them, and at the Great Bear shimmering in the north. Then he put
out his hand. ‘That way,’ he said. ‘That is where Falmouth is.’ He called it ‘Fallmoot’. ‘In the morning we will use the engine; then we will get there before evening.’

A fresh wailing from the bows drew the old man away. An hour later most of the children were lying exhausted in an uneasy doze; Howard was able to sit down himself and rest. He glanced back at the land. It was practically lost to sight; only a dim shadow showed where France lay behind them. He stared back at Brittany with deep regret, in bitter lonely sadness. With all his heart he wished that he was back there with Nicole.

Presently he roused himself. They were not home yet; he must not give way to depression. He got up restlessly and stared around. There was a steady little night breeze from the south-east; they were making about four knots.

‘It is going well,’ said Focquet. ‘If this wind holds we shall hardly need the engine.’

The young fisherman was sitting on a thwart smoking a
caporal
. He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘To the right,’ he said, without moving. ‘Put it this way. So. Keep her at that, and look always at your star.’

The old man became aware that little Pierre was at the helm, thrusting with the whole weight of his body on the big tiller. He said to Focquet: ‘Can that little one steer a boat?’

The young man spat into the sea. ‘He is learning. He is quick, that one. It prevents sea-sickness, to sail the ship. By the time that we reach England he will be a helmsman.’

The old man turned to Pierre. ‘You can do that very well,’ he said. ‘How do you know which way to go?’

In the dim light of the waning moon he saw Pierre staring straight ahead. ‘Focquet told me,’ he replied.
The old man had to strain to catch his little voice above the lapping of the waves. ‘He said, to sail at those square stars up there.’ He raised his little arm and pointed at the Bear. ‘That is where we are going to, m’sieur. That is the way to America, under those stars. There is so much food there that you can give some to a dog and have him for your friend. Mademoiselle Nicole told me so.’

Presently he grew tired; the boat began to wander from the Bear. Focquet threw the stump of his cigarette into the sea and routed out a heap of sacking. Howard took the helm and the young man arranged a sleepy little boy upon the floor beside their feet. After a time Focquet lay down himself on the bare boards and slept for an hour while the old man sailed the boat on through the starlight.

All night they saw no ships at all upon the sea. Ships may have been near them, but if so they were sailing without lights and did not trouble them. But in the half-light of dawn, at about half-past four, a destroyer came towards them from the west, throwing a deep, feathery bow wave of white foam aside as she cut through the water, bearing down on them.

She slowed a quarter of a mile away and turned from a grey, menacing spear into rather a battered, rusty ship, menacing still, but worn with much hard work. A young man in duffle coat and service cap shouted at them from the bridge, megaphone in hand:
‘Vous êtes Français?’

Howard shouted back: ‘Some of us are English.’

The young man waved at him cheerfully. ‘Can you get to Plymouth all right?’

‘We want to go to Falmouth.’ The whine of the destroyer’s fans and the lapping of the waves made conversation difficult.

‘You’ve got to go to Plymouth. Plymouth! Is that all right for you?’

Howard spoke quickly to Focquet, and then nodded to the ship. The young officer waved at him again and stepped back. There was a sudden foaming at the stern and the destroyer shot away upon her course up-Channel. They were left tossing in the creamy effervescence of her wake.

They altered course two points towards the east and started up the engine, giving them about six knots of speed. The children roused, and in failing misery began to vomit again. They were all cold, and very tired, and desperately hungry.

Presently the sun came up and the day grew warm. The old man gave them all a little drink of wine and water.

All morning they plugged on over a sunlit, summer sea. Now and again the young Frenchman asked Howard the time, studied the sun, and made a correction to his course. At noon a thin blue line of land appeared ahead of them to the north.

At about three o’clock a trawler closed them, and asked who they were, and, as they tossed beside her, showed them the high land of Rame Head on the horizon.

At about half-past five they were off Rame Head. A motor-launch, a little yacht in time of peace, ranged up alongside them; an R.N.V.R. lieutenant questioned them again. ‘You know the Cattewater?’ he shouted to Howard. ‘Where the flying-boats are? That’s right. Go up there and into the basin on the north side. All refugees land at the fish quay in the basin. Got that? Okay.’

The launch sheered off and went upon her way. The fishing-boat nosed in past Rame Head, past Cawsand,
past the breakwater into the shelter of the Sound. Ahead of them lay Plymouth on its hills, grey and peaceful by its harbour in the evening sunlight. Howard stared at it and sighed a little. It seemed to him that he had been happier in France than he would be in his own land.

The sight of the warships in the Sound, the land, and the calmer water revived the children a little; they began to look about and take an interest again. Under the old man’s guidance Focquet threaded his way through the warships; off Drake’s Island they came to the wind and lowered the brown sail. Then, under engine only, they made their way to the fish quay.

There were other boats before them at the quay, boats full of an assortment of mixed nationalities, clambering ashore and into England. They lay off for a quarter of an hour before they could get to the steps, while the gulls screamed around them, and stolid men in blue jerseys looked down upon them, and holiday girls in summer cotton frocks took photographs of the scene.

At last they were all stumbling up the steps to join the crowd of refugees in the fish-market. Howard was still in the clothes of a Breton labourer, unshaven, and very, very tired. The children, hungry and exhausted, clustered round him.

A masterful woman, trim and neat in the uniform of the W.V.S., shepherded them to a bench.
‘Asseyez vous là
,’ she said in very bad French, ‘
jusqu’on peut vous attendre.
’

Howard collapsed on to the seat and sat there half in coma, utterly exhausted. Once or twice women in uniform came to them and asked them questions, which he answered mechanically. Half an hour later a young girl brought them cups of tea, which they took gratefully.

Refreshed, the old man took more interest in his surroundings. He heard a cultured Englishwoman’s voice.

‘There’s that lot over there, Mrs. Dyson. All those children with the two men.’

‘What nationality are they?’

‘They seem to be a mixed lot. There’s rather an attractive little girl there who speaks German.’

‘Poor little thing! She must be Austrian.’

Another voice said: ‘Some of those children are English.’

There was an exclamation of concern. ‘I had no idea! But they’re in such a
state!
Have you seen their poor little heads? My dear, they’re
lousy
, every one of them.’ There was a shocked pause. ‘That horrible old man—I wonder how he came to be in charge of them.’

The old man closed his eyes, smiling a little. This was the England that he knew and understood. This was peace.

The last bomb had fallen, the last gun had fired; over in the east the fires were dying down. Then came the long notes of the ‘All Clear’ from different quarters of the town.

We got up stiffly from our chairs. I went over to the long window at the far end of the room, pulled back the curtains and threw back the shutters. The glass from the window fell in on the carpet with a crash; the wind blew fresh into our faces with a bitter, acrid smell of burning.

Down in the streets below tired men in raincoats, gum-boots, and tin-hats were tending a small motor pump. There was a noise like a thousand jangling cut-glass chandeliers as men in the houses opposite poked the remains of broken windows from the frames, letting the glass fall on the pavements, going methodically from room to room.

A cold, grey light was spreading over London. It was raining a little.

I turned from the window. ‘Did you get them over to the States?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘They all went together. I sent a wireless telegram to the Cavanaghs offering to send Sheila and Ronnie, and Tenois asked if he might send Rose. I got a woman that I know to go with them, and take them to Coates Harbor.’

‘And Anna too?’

He nodded. ‘Anna went too.’ We moved towards the door. ‘I had a letter this week from her uncle in White
Falls. He said that he had sent a cable to his brother in Germany, so that ought to be all right.’

‘Your daughter must have had a bit of a shock when they arrived,’ I said.