Silence Over Dunkerque (15 page)

Her best, thought the Sergeant, observing that in her frock she certainly didn’t look like a Girl Scout any more. She was a Frenchwoman.

About three they all sat down to a thick soup of leeks and potatoes, which both the Englishmen liked. Gisèle noticed this. “Ah... you like? Yes? Good?” She rose and refilled their plates from the covered soup tureen.

Then came the tiny chicken—small indeed for five persons—a salad, the cheese, and a bottle of Normandy cider, which the old man brought up from the cellar. Afterward he held out a crumpled box, broke the one thin cigar in two, and extended each half, a few inches long, to the two guests. Fortunately the Sergeant didn’t smoke, so the veterinary puffed on it with visible pleasure.

At four they were still talking when Gisèle moved to the window and stood watching. Outside could be heard the tramp-tramp of German patrols along the Calais Road. From where she stood it was possible to observe the enemy coming and going. Finally she nodded to her grandfather, who brought out a small portable radio from his office closet. Working over the dials for some time, he produced merely static at first, then torrents of French, Dutch, and German broadcasts, until at last it came through. Gentle and low, with the radio turned well down and Gisèle still beside the window, the words came clearly from across the Channel.

“Ici Londres.”
It was the French transmission of the British Broadcasting Company in London with the evening news. The Sergeant realized it was France’s sole contact with reality and the outer world.

“Ah, voilà,”
said the old man in a contented voice.

The commentator was a Frenchman speaking to the French, so rapidly that most of what he said was unintelligible to the Sergeant. But it was interesting to watch the expressions change around the table. He could catch words, phrases, sentences, enough to understand a little and see their effect upon this isolated family. Berlin was bombed by the R.A.F. They were pleased. The German Army had reached and sealed the Spanish border. They groaned. The British Navy had defeated the Italians in a sea battle off Taranto. The Australian cruiser
Sydney
had sunk the Italian cruiser
Bartolomeo Colleoni.
Expressions of joy and delight went around the table, in which even Madame Bonnet joined.

“Ah, les macaronis,”
said the old man with contempt.

He snapped the radio off as the broadcast finished. Gisèle returned to her place at table. The old man leaned across to the Sergeant, speaking slowly and distinctly. England, he declared, would never give in; no, never. She had not surrendered to Napoleon,
alors!
Napoleon, like Hitler, had stood on that cliff out there and looked across at the houses of Dover, yet never reached them. No, England would not fall to Hitler; he was sure, he knew it.

In their hearts, the two Englishmen did also.

While they were eating, the Sergeant had been uncomfortably aware that these people had given their food, had shared their last bread, something more valuable than money. What could he do for them in return? Nothing, perhaps, except leave—for better or worse. Perhaps this gift of safety was the best present he could bestow.

They reached the end. The toasts had been drunk in old brandy—to France, to England, to Churchill, to the Royal Navy. Next, everyone, even Madame Bonnet, kissed the two men on both cheeks. A month before they would have flinched at this curious custom, now they accepted it without embarrassment because of their affection and gratitude for these people who had sheltered and protected them.

Gisèle went to a cupboard, yanked out a straw hat with an elastic, and put it on. The hat was a kind of symbol of the day’s importance, a round yellow hat with a curled-up brim and a red ribbon hanging down the back of her neck. The hat sat on the back of her head at a jaunty angle, characteristically smart and somehow defiant.

They stepped out into the afternoon sunshine. Once the little old man with the wispy beard on his chin had seemed ridiculous. Now they knew him for what he was—strong, brave, unyielding. Courage, the Sergeant realized, wears many uniforms.

He turned at the gate.
“Merci, Madame Bonnet. Merci beaucoup, merci. Merci, Monsieur Dupont, mille fois merci.
One of these days you’ll see us again, be sure of that!”

Even Fingers was thanking them in French.
“Adieu, mes amis, adieu.”
The old man stood at the gate, waving, as they went off with Gisèle down the road. He was no longer a strange, almost pathetic figure. He was a man, strong with the strength of France.

“Adieu... et bonne chance”
he shouted. A German patrol was coming up the road, their boots rasping on the pavement, but the veterinary paid no attention.

Beside the Sergeant trotted the Airedale, obviously superior to the colleagues around the house whom she was leaving behind. She was proud to have attached herself, by the force of her character, to someone who understood and loved her. Indeed, there was no question of leaving her. She was one of them, had shared their dangers and their loneliness. Well she knew it.

Between the two men, serious as ever, walked Gisèle in that flowered dress. Under one arm was a small bundle, wrapped in a newspaper and tied with stout string. The Sergeant knew it was food for their journey, what they both prayed was the last stage of all. This food she had scrounged from heaven knew where or how. Should he accept it and deprive them of something they needed? No, that was hardly the question. The question, rather, was how to refuse it.

He glanced mechanically at the freshly pasted posters on the ruined walls. For the first time he realized exactly what these posters, which he had hardly read before, were telling the people of Calais.

Avis aux Citoyens de Calais.
A warning to the citizens of Calais.

“Yesterday at dawn the citizen Henri Descailles, rue Pasteur, 4, was shot by the authorities for having concealed a British soldier in his home.”

Underneath, again:
Avis aux Citoyens de Calais.

If the girl noticed it—and she must have, for they passed several such signs—she gave no indication. Instead she pushed on until they reached the block of houses by the port. The tiny bell of the café tinkled as they entered, the dog squeezing in at the heels of the Sergeant. Behind the zinc bar a blowzy woman was washing dirty tumblers in a pail of questionable water.

They glanced around in the dimness. The café was empty.

“Bon soir, Madame,”
said Gisèle mechanically.

The woman half smiled at them and continued slopping the greasy water over the tumblers.
“Bon-jour, tons et toutes.”

Did she know who they were or why they had come? Was she friendly, or an informer? Was she—or her husband—in the pay of the Germans? They sat down prudently at a table in the rear, and inasmuch as the girl said nothing, nobody spoke.

Immediately an army corps of flies settled over them, swarmed about their heads, their faces, over their hands, buzzed in the air. It was agony to be so close to leaving, and have to sit still, doing nothing. Was the captain ever coming? He had said six; it was twenty past the hour. Had he been picked up by the Germans? Perhaps the sweep of the trawlers had been postponed for military reasons. Or worst of all, did the man feel that taking them along was a risk he did not care to endure, and did he hate to see them to say no?

A dozen conjectures came to the mind of the Sergeant. Then the bell tinkled joyously, and a squat figure poked its way into the café. He waddled toward them with the walk of one whose life has been spent aboard ship. Greeting each one with the usual hand shake, he accepted the kisses of the girl upon his cheeks, still unshaven.

“Allons.”
Let’s go.

The bell sounded as the door opened and they stepped into the street. The docks were only a block away. They could see the German sentries pacing back and forth at the gate.

As usual, Gisèle took charge. She shoved the package into the arms of the Sergeant, stood on tiptoes, and kissed Fingers on both cheeks. The Sergeant bent over, and she threw both arms around him. There were tears in her big eyes as she kissed him.

He wanted to say things, things she would always recall. But as ever at such moments, his French deserted him. He could only stammer.

“Nous reviendrons.”
We shall return.

She clung to him until he set her gently on the ground. The Airedale, feeling the charged tension, sat lifting her paw. Gisèle glanced up at him, her eyes serious as usual. She smiled, and the gap in her front teeth was plainly visible.

“Ouai. J’en suis sûr.”

Then quickly, without a word more, she turned and marched down the Coulogne Road, her hair tossing on her shoulders in the wind, the yellow straw hat bobbing on the back of her head.

The package in his hand, the Sergeant stood watching her. Courage, he thought, wears many uniforms. And none.

T
HEY DID NOT ENTER
the nearest gate to the docks, but went past with the captain and walked about half a mile across the ruined city to the outer harbor. It was easy to see why. The inner harbor was full of sunken wrecks, masts sticking from the water, vessels capsized in the mud—a British destroyer with half the stern blown off, a couple of French frigates, sticking up at strange angles; merchant ships; tugs; fishing boats, most of them badly damaged. Eventually they reached a destroyed lock to an inner basin. Here a German sentry held them up, glanced with indifference at their papers, and allowed them to pass across a plank to the maritime station where the daily cross-Channel steamers from Dover had once docked.

The station itself was flattened, and they had to climb over a pile of masonry, then creep around huge shell holes, and so along the quay to the seaward end, where six small trawlers were berthed. The captain jumped heavily down to the deck of the third, with no question from the German sentries pacing back and forth. The two Englishmen and the dog followed. The vessel had a name on the stern:
Marie-Louise, Calais.

The captain stood on the deck bellowing, “Léon.
Allô,
Léon.”

Instantly a grimy figure in a blue-denim coverall stuck his head up from below. His face was covered with black grease; evidently he had been working on the engine. With a malevolent glance he surveyed the two strangers and the dog as the captain descended the companionway.

Several minutes later his head reappeared and he beckoned them down. The boat was divided into wooden compartments for the fish, with a winch for hauling the nets. The cabin house up front had a kind of wardroom underneath, with a couple of bunks and a small stove. The engines were forward. To make the Britishers more like sailors, the captain ordered them to put on the greasy coveralls that Léon, somewhat grudgingly, produced. Their smocks were dirtied, and they began to look the parts they were to play.

Sending them on deck, the captain and Léon turned to the engines. As they emerged, the dog greeted them with delight, barking furiously. Glancing about, they observed there was activity on every trawler.

The Sergeant had learned patience the hard way over years in the army. Yet this final wait as the vessels got ready to leave was hardest of all. Hidden in Madame Bonnet’s loft at the farm, he had only wanted to be on the way, somewhere, anywhere German patrols were not passing by continually day and night. Now, on the
Marie-Louise,
he could hardly force himself to lean back, relaxed, and wait. It was as difficult a thing as he had ever done.

“Aha! I knew all this was far too easy,” said Fingers quietly. The Sergeant, perched on a bollard, turned. A German patrol was examining the nearest vessel, tromping below to be sure nobody was hidden away, then reappearing to check the crew lined up on deck.

From the cabin came the spluttering of their engines. Other trawlers were starting up too, getting ready to cast off when passed by the German security. The patrol—an officer, a non-com with an automatic, and two armed soldiers—stepped from the next boat and came toward them. They jumped onto the deck of the
Marie-Louise.

What they saw as they boarded her was the usual French sailor in a dirty smock, arms folded, sitting on a bollard with a brown-and-black dog at his feet. Another in an equally dingy costume lounged on the rail, the tiniest butt of a cigarette between his teeth. Both badly needed a shave.

The German officer looked at them with contempt and shouted,
“Kapitän.”

The head of the captain immediately appeared in the companionway. He stumbled up on deck, a spanner in one hand, mumbling something and saluting the officer in a negligent manner. The greeting was not precisely derisive but almost.

The German stepped over and shouted below,
“Hinauf.”

Léon, covered with grease, came slowly and sullenly up on deck. The captain ranged them in line as the German strode over, took his identity card, slapped it open, closed it with a glance, and reached for the Sergeant’s. The test was over in one breath, the card was handed back, then Léon’s, and finally Fingers’—all returned by the German with rather a regretful air. Next, followed by Léon and the captain, he went below.

Unable to sit still, the Sergeant rose and began unrolling a large fishing net, as they were doing in the adjoining trawler. Fingers joined him.

“It’s being so cheerful,” he said in his ear, “as keeps me going. But this, I dunno....”

The Germans could be heard below, poking about in the lockers, turning over the bunks, thumping the sides of the cabin in a search for stowaways. Then came a conversation, which became an argument and degenerated into a dispute. From above they could catch occasional words and phrases, enough for them to realize that the
Marie-Louise
was shipping an extra hand. Apparently the officer was demanding the reason, apparently unsatisfied with the answer.

At last they all appeared on deck, talking, arguing, the captain rubbing his shoulder. He leaned down, grasping the net, going through an eloquent pantomime to indicate that he was unable to use his right arm. Up ahead, one of the trawlers was casting off, her engine churning gently, and the Sergeant observed her moving into mid-channel, soon followed by another vessel, and a third.