Pied Piper

Pied Piper

Nevil Shute

First published in 1942

Chapter 1

His name is John Sidney Howard, and he is a member of my club in London. I came in for dinner that night at about eight o'clock, tired after a long day of conferences about my aspect of the war. He was just entering the club ahead of me, a tall and rather emaciated man of about seventy, a little unsteady on his feet. He tripped over the door mat as he went in and stumbled forward; the hall porter jumped out and caught him by the elbow.

He peered down at the mat and poked it with his umbrella. 'Damned thing caught my toe,' he said. 'Thank you, Peters. Getting old, I suppose.'

The man smiled. 'Several of the gentlemen have caught their foot there recently, sir,' he said. 'I was speaking to the Steward about it only the other day.'

The old man said: 'Well, speak to him again and go on speaking till he has it put right. One of these days you'll have me falling dead at your feet. You wouldn't like that to happen - eh?' He smiled quizzically.

The porter said: 'No, sir, we shouldn't like that to happen.'

'I should think not. Not the sort of thing one wants to see happen in a club. I don't want to die on a door mat. And I don't want to die in a lavatory, either. Remember the time that Colonel Macpherson died in the lavatory, Peters?'

'I do, sir. That was very distressing.'

'Yes.' He was silent for a moment. Then he said: 'Well, I don't want to die that way, either. See he gets that mat put right. Tell him I said so.'

'Very good, sir.'

The old man moved away. I had been waiting behind him while all this was going on because the porter had my letters. He gave them to me at the wicket, and I looked them through. 'Who was that?' I asked idly.

He said: 'That was Mr Howard, sir.'

'He seemed to be very much concerned about his latter end.'

The porter did not smile. 'Yes, sir. Many of the gentlemen talk in that way as they get on. Mr Howard has been a member here for a great many years.'

I said more courteously: 'Has he? I don't remember seeing him about.'

The man said: 'He has been abroad for the last few months, I think, sir. But he seems to have aged a great deal since he came back. Getting rather frail now, I'm afraid.'

I turned away. This bloody war is hard on men of his age,' I said.

'Yes, sir. That's very true.'

I went into the club, slung my gas-mask on to a peg, unbuckled my revolver-belt and hung it up, and crowned the lot with my cap. I strolled over to the tape and studied the latest news. It was neither good nor bad. Our Air Force was still knocking hell out of the Ruhr; Rumania was still desperately bickering with her neighbours. The news was as it had been for three months, since France was overrun.

I went in and had my dinner. Howard was already in the dining-room; apart from us the room was very nearly empty. He had a waiter serving him who was very nearly as old as he was himself, and as he ate his dinner the waiter stood beside his table and chatted to him. I could hardly help overhearing the subject of their conversation. They were talking about cricket, re-living the Test Matches of 1925.

Because I was eating alone I finished before Howard, and went up to pay my bill at the desk. I said to the cashier: 'That waiter over there - what's his name?'

'Jackson, sir?'

'That's right. How long has he been here?'

'Oh, he's been here a long time. All his life, you might say. Eighteen ninety-five or ninety-six he come here, I believe.'

'That's a very long time.'

The man smiled as he gave me my change. 'It is, sir. But Porson - he's been here longer than that.'

I went upstairs to the smoking-room and stopped before a table littered with periodicals. With idle interest I turned over a printed list of members. Howard, I saw, had joined the club in 1896. Master and man, then, had been rubbing shoulders all their lives.

I took a couple of illustrated weeklies, and ordered coffee. Then I crossed the room to where the two most comfortable chairs in my club stand side by side, and prepared to spend an hour of idleness before returning to my flat. In a few minutes there was a step beside me and Howard lowered his long body into the other chair. A boy, unasked, brought him coffee and brandy.

Presently he spoke. He said quietly: 'It really is a most extraordinary thing that you can't get a decent cup of coffee in this country. Even in a club like this they can't make coffee.'

I laid down my paper. If the old man wanted to talk to me, I had no great objection. All day I had been working with my eyes in my old-fashioned office, reading reports and writing dockets. It would be good to take off my spectacles for a little time and un-focus my eyes. I was very tired.

I felt in my pocket for my spectacle-case. I said: 'A chap who deals in coffee once told me that ground coffee won't keep in our climate. It's the humidity, or something.'

'Ground coffee goes off in any climate,' he said dogmatically. 'You never get a proper cup of coffee if you buy it like that. You have to buy the beans and grind it just before you make it. But that's what they won't do.'

He went on talking about coffee and chicory and things like that for a time. Then, by a natural association, we talked about the brandy. He approved of the club brandy. 'I used to have an interest in a wine business,' he said. 'A great many years ago, in Exeter. But I disposed of it soon after the last war.'

I gathered that he was a member of the Wine Committee of the club. I said: 'It must be rather interesting to run a business like that.'

'Oh, certainly,' he said with relish. 'Good wine is a most interesting study - most interesting, I can assure you.'

We were practically the only people in the long, tall room. We spoke quietly as we lay relaxed beside each other in our chairs, with long pauses between sentences. When you are tired there is pleasure in a conversation taken in sips, like old brandy.

I said: 'I used to go to Exeter a good deal when I was a boy.'

The old man said: 'I know Exeter very well indeed. I lived there for forty years.'

'My uncle had a house at Starcross.' And I told him the name.

He smiled. 'I used to act for him. We were great friends. But that's a long time ago now.'

'Act for him?'

'My firm used to act for him. I was a partner in a firm of solicitors, Fulljames and Howard.' And then, reminiscent, he told me a good deal about my uncle and about the family, about his horses and about his tenants. The talk became more and more a monologue; a word or two from me slipped in now and then kept him going. In his quiet voice he built up for me a picture of the days that now are gone for ever, the days that I remember as a boy.

I lay smoking quietly in my chair, with the fatigue soaking out of me. It was a perfect godsend to find somebody who could talk of other things besides the war. The minds of most men revolve round this war or the last war, and there is a nervous urge in them which brings the conversation round to war again. But war seems to have passed by this lean old man. He turned for his interests to milder topics.

Presently, we were talking about fishing. He was an ardent fisherman, and I have fished a little. Most naval officers take a rod and a gun with them in the ship. I had fished on odd afternoons ashore in many parts of the world, usually with the wrong sort of fly and unsuccessfully, but he was an expert. He had fished from end to end of these islands and over a great part of the Continent. In the old days the life of a country solicitor was not an exacting one.

When he spoke of fishing and of France, it put me in mind of an experience of my own. 'I saw some chaps in France doing a damn funny sort of fly fishing,' I said. 'They had a great bamboo pole about twenty-five feet long with the line tied on the end of it - no reel. They used wet flies, and trailed them about in rough water.'

He smiled. 'That's right,' he said. 'That's how they do it. Where did you see them fishing like that?'

'Near Gex,' I said. 'Practically in Switzerland.'

He smiled reflectively. 'I know that country very well - very well indeed,' he said. 'Saint-Claude. Do you know Saint-Claude?'

I shook my head. 'I don't know the Jura. That's somewhere over by Morez, isn't it?'

'Yes - not very far from Morez.' He was silent for a few moments; we rested together in that quiet room. Presently he said: 'I wanted to try that wet fly fishing in those streams this summer. It's not bad fun, you know. You have to know where the fish go for their food. It's not just a matter of dabbing the flies about anywhere. You've got to place them just as carefully as a dry fly.'

'Strategy,' I said.

That's the word. The strategy is really just the same.'

There was another of those comfortable pauses. Presently I said: 'It'll be some time before we can go fishing out there again.' So it was I who turned the conversation to the war. It's difficult to keep off the subject.

He said: 'Yes - it's a great pity. I had to come away before the water was fit to fish. It's not much good out there before the very end of May. Before then the water's all muddy and the rivers are running very full - the thawing snows, you know. Later than that, in August, there's apt to be very little water to fish in, and it gets too hot. The middle of June is the best time.'

I turned my head. 'You went out there this year?' Because the end of May that he had spoken of so casually was the time when the Germans had been pouring into France through Holland and Belgium, when we had been retreating on Dunkirk and when the French were being driven back to Paris and beyond. It didn't seem to be a terribly good time for an old man to have gone fishing in the middle of France.

He said 'I went out there in April. I meant to stay for the whole of the summer, but I had to come away.'

I stared at him, smiling a little. 'Have any difficulty in getting home?'

'No,' he said. 'Not really.'

'You had a car, I suppose?'

'No,' he said. 'I didn't have a car. I don't drive very well, and I had to give it up some years ago. My eyesight isn't what it used to be.'

'When did you leave Jura, then?' I asked.

He thought for a minute. 'June the eleventh,' he said at last. That was the day, I think.'

I wrinkled my brows in perplexity. 'Were the trains all right?' Because, in the course of my work, I had heard a good deal about conditions in France during those weeks.

He smiled. They weren't very good,' he said reflectively.

'How did you get along, then?'

He said: 'I walked a good deal of the way.'

As he spoke, there was a measured crump... crump... crump... crump, as a stick of four fell, possibly a mile away. The very solid building swayed a little, and the floors and windows creaked. We waited, tense and still. Then came the undulating wail of the sirens, and the sharp crack of gunfire from the park. The raid was on again.

'Damn and blast,' I said. 'What do we do now?'

The old man smiled patiently: 'I'm going to stay where I am.'

There was good sense in that. It's silly to be a hero to evade discomfort, but there were three very solid floors above us. We talked about it, as one does, studying the ceiling and wondering whether it would support the weight of the roof. Our reflections did not stir us from our chairs.

A young waiter came into the room, carrying a torch and with a tin hat in his hand.

He said: The shelter is in the basement, through the buttery door, sir.'

Howard said: 'Do we have to go there?'

'Not unless you wish to.'

I said: 'Are you going down there, Andrews?'

'No, sir. I'm on duty, in case of incendiary bombs, and that.'

'Well,' I said, 'get on and do whatever you've got to do. Then, when you've got a minute to spare, bring me a glass of Marsala. But go and do your job first.'

Howard said: 'I think that's a very good idea. You can bring me a glass of Marsala, too - between the incendiary bombs. You'll find me sitting here.'

'Very good, sir.'

He went away, and we relaxed again. It was about half-past ten. The waiter had turned out all the lights except for the one reading-lamp behind our heads, so that we sat there in a little pool of soft yellow light in the great shadowy room. Outside, the traffic noises, little enough in London at that time, were practically stilled. A few police whistles shrilled in the distance and a car went by at a high speed; then silence closed down on the long length of Pall Mall, but for some gunfire in the distance.

Howard asked me: 'How long do you suppose we shall have to sit here?'

Till it's over, I suppose. The last one went on for four hours.' I paused, and then I said: 'Will anyone be anxious about you?'

He said, rather quickly: 'Oh, no. I live alone, you see - in chambers.'

I nodded. 'My wife knows I'm here. I thought of ringing her up, but it's not a very good thing to clutter up the lines during a raid.'

They ask you not to do that,' he said.

Presently Andrews brought the Marsala. When he had gone away, Howard lifted up his glass and held it to the light. Then he remarked: 'Well, there are less comfortable ways of passing a raid.'

I smiled. That's true enough.' And then I turned my head. 'You said you were in France when all this started up. Did you come in for many air raids there?'

He put his glass down, seven-eighths full. 'Not real raids. There was some bombing and machine-gunning of the roads, but nothing very terrible.'

He spoke so quietly about it that it took a little time for me to realise what he had said. But then I ventured: 'It was a bit optimistic to go to France for a quiet fishing holiday, in April of this year.'

'Well, I suppose it was,' he replied thoughtfully. 'But I wanted to go.'

He said he had been very restless, that he had suffered from an urge, an imperious need to get away and to go and do something different. He was a little hesitant about his reasons for wanting to get away so badly, but then told me that he hadn't been able to get a job to do in the war.

They wouldn't have him in anything, I imagine because he was very nearly seventy years old. When war broke out he tried at once to get into the Special Constabulary; with his knowledge of the Law it seemed to him that police duty would suit him best. The police thought otherwise, having no use for constables of his age. Then he tried to become an Air Raid Warden, and suffered another disappointment. And then he tried all sorts of things.

It's very difficult for old people, for old men particularly, in a war. They cannot grow accustomed to the fact that there is little they can do to help; they suffer from frustration, and the war eats into them. Howard fell into the habit of ordering his life by the news bulletins on the wireless. Each day he got up in time to hear the seven o'clock news, had his bath, shaved, and dressed and was down to hear the eight o'clock, and went on so all day till after the midnight news, when he retired to bed. Between the bulletins he worried about the news, and read every paper he could lay his hands on till it was time to turn the wireless on again.

He lived in the country when the war broke out. He had a house at Market Saffron, not very far from Colchester. He had moved there from Exeter four years previously, after the death of his wife; as a boy he had been brought up in Market Saffron and he still had a few acquaintances in the neighbourhood. He went back there to spend the last years of his life. He bought an old country house, not very large, standing in about three acres of garden and paddock.

His married daughter came back from America and lived with him in 1938, bringing her little boy. She was married to a New York insurance man called Costello, Vice-President of his corporation and very comfortably off. She'd had a spot of bother with him. Howard didn't know the ins and outs of it and didn't bother about it much; privately, he was of the opinion that his daughter was to blame for the trouble. He was fond of his son-in-law, Costello. He didn't understand him in the least, but he liked him very well.

That's how he was living when the war broke out, with his daughter Enid and her little boy Martin, that his father would insist on calling Junior. That puzzled the old man very much.

Then the war broke out, and Costello began cabling for them to go back home to Long Island. And in the end they went. Howard backed up Costello and put pressure on his daughter, in the belief that a woman who is separated from her husband is never very happy. They went, and he was left to live alone at Market Saffron, with occasional weekend visits from his son John, a Squadron-Leader in the Royal Air Force.

Costello made a great effort, in cables many hundreds of words long, to get the old man to go too. He wasn't having any. He said that he was afraid of being in the way, that a third party would have spoilt the chance of reconciliation. But his real reason, he admitted, was that he didn't like America. He had crossed the Atlantic to stay with them when they had first been married, and he had no desire to repeat the experience. After nearly seventy years in a more equable climate he found New York intolerably hot and desperately cold in turns, and he missed the little courtesies to which he was accustomed in our feudal life. He liked his son-in-law, he loved his daughter, and her boy was one of the great interests in his life. Not all these motives were sufficient to induce him to exchange the comfort and security of England grappling in battle to the death for the strange discomforts of the land that was at peace.

So Enid and her boy sailed in October. He took them to Liverpool and saw them on the boat, and then he went back home. From then onwards he lived very much alone, though his widowed sister came and stayed with him for three weeks before Christmas, and John paid him several visits from Lincolnshire, where he had a squadron of Wellington bombers.

It was lonely for the old man, of course. In the ordinary way he would have been content with the duck-shooting and with his garden. He explained to me that he found his garden really more interesting in the winter than in the summer, because it was then that he could make his alterations. If he wanted to move a tree, or plant a new hedge, or dig out an old one - that was the time to do it. He took great pleasure in his garden, and was always moving things about.

The war spoilt all that. The news bulletins penetrated every moment of his consciousness till he could no longer take pleasure in the simple matters of his country life. He fretted that he could get nothing to do, and almost for the first occasion in his life the time hung heavily on his hands. He poured his mind out irritably to the vicar one day, and that healer of sick souls suggested that he might take up knitting for the troops.

After that, he took to coming up to London for three days a week. He got himself a little one-room flat in bachelor chambers, and took most of his meals at the club. That made things easier for him. Travelling up to London on Tuesday absorbed the best part of a day, and travelling down again on Friday absorbed another one; in the meantime odd duties had accumulated at Market Saffron so that the week-end was comparatively busy. In this way he created the illusion that he had enough to do, and he grew happier in consequence.

Then, at the beginning of March, something happened that made a great change in his life. He didn't tell me what it was.

After that, he shut up the house at Market Saffron altogether, and came to London permanently to live mostly at the club. For two or three weeks he was busy enough, but after that time started to lie heavy on his hands again. And still he could get nothing to do in the war.

It was spring by then, and a most lovely spring it was. After the hard whiter we had had, it was like opening a door. Each day he went for a walk in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and watched the crocuses as they came out, and the daffodils. The club life suited him. He felt as he walked through the park during that marvellous spring that there was a great deal to be said for living in London, provided that you could get away from it from time to tune.

As the sun grew stronger, the urge came on him to get away from England altogether for a while.

And really, there didn't seem to be any great reason why he should remain in England. The war in Finland was over, and on the western front there seemed to be complete stalemate. Matters in France were quite normal, except that on certain days of the weeks you could only have certain kinds of food. It was then that he began to think about the Jura.

The high alpine valleys were too high for him; he had been to Pontresina three years previously and had been very short of breath. But the spring flowers in the French Jura were as beautiful as anything in Switzerland, and from the high ground up above Les Rousses you can see Mont Blanc. He wanted passionately to get where he could see mountains. 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,' he said, 'from whence cometh my help.' That's how he felt about it.

He thought that if he went out there he would be just in time to see the flowers come thrusting through the snow; if he stayed on for a month or two he would come in for the fishing as the sun got wanner. He looked forward very much to fishing in those mountain streams. Very unspoilt they were, he said, and very fresh and quiet.

He wanted to see the spring, this year - to see as much of it as ever he could. He wanted to see all that new life coming on, replacing what is past. He wanted to soak himself in that. He wanted to see the hawthorn coming out along the river-banks, and the first crocuses in the fields. He wanted to see the new green of the rushes by the water's edge poking up through the dead stuff. He wanted to feel the new warmth of the sun, and the new freshness of the air. He wanted to savour all the spring there was this year - the whole of it. He wanted that more than anything else in the world, because of what had happened.

That's why he went to France.

He had much less difficulty in getting out of the country' than he had expected. He went to Cook's, and they told him how to set about it. He had to get an exit permit, and that had to be done personally. The man in the office asked him what he wanted to leave the country for.

Old Howard coughed at him. 'I can't stand the spring weather in England,' he said. 'I've been indoors most of the winter. My doctors says I've got to get into a warmer climate.' A complacent doctor had given him a certificate.

'I see,' said the official. 'You want to go down to the south of France?'

'Not right down to the south,' he said. 'I shall spend a few days in Dijon and go to the Jura as soon as the snow is off the ground.'

The man wrote out a permit for three months, on the grounds of health. So that wasn't very difficult.

Then the old man spent a deliriously happy two days with Hardy's, the fishing tackle makers in Pall Mall. He took it gently, half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the afternoon; in between he fingered and turned over his purchases, dreamed about fishing, and made up his mind what he would buy next...

He left London on the morning of April the 10th, the very morning that the news came through that Germany had invaded Denmark and Norway. He read the news in his paper in the train on the way to Dover, and it left him cold. A month previously he would have been frantic over it, jumping from wireless bulletin to newspaper and back to the wireless again. Now it passed him by as something that hardly concerned him any more. He was much more concerned whether he had brought with him enough gut casts and points. True, he was stopping for a day or two in Paris, but French gut, he said, is rotten stuff. They don't understand, and they make it so thick that the fish can't help seeing it, even with a wet fly.

His journey to Paris was not very comfortable. He got on to the steamer in Folkestone harbour at about eleven in the morning, and there they sat till the late afternoon. Trawlers and drifters and paddle-steamers and yachts, all painted grey and manned by naval ratings, came in and out of the harbour, but the cross-Channel steamer stayed at the quay. The vessel was crowded, and there weren't enough seats for lunch, and not enough food if there had been seats. Nobody could tell them what they were stopping for, although it was a pretty safe guess that it was a submarine.

At about four o'clock there were a number of heavy explosions out at sea, and soon after that they cast off and got away.

It was quite dark when they got to Boulogne, and things were rather disorganised. In the dim light the Douane took an age to pass the luggage, there was no train to meet the boat, and not enough porters to go round. He had to take a taxi to the station and wait for the next train to Paris, at about nine o'clock. It was a stopping train, crowded, and running very late. It was after one o'clock when they finally did get to Paris.

They had taken eighteen hours over a journey that takes six in normal times. Howard was tired, very tired indeed. His heart began to trouble him at Boulogne and he noticed people looking at him queerly; he knew that meant that he had gone a bad colour. However, he had a little bottle with him that he carried for that sort of incident; he took a dose of that when he got into the train and felt a good deal better.

He went to the Hôtel Girodet, a little place just off the Champs Elysees near the top, that he had stayed at before. Most of the staff he knew had been called up for military service, but they were very kind to him and made him comfortable. He stayed in bed till lunch-time the first day and rested in his room most of the afternoon, but next morning he was feeling quite himself, and went out to the Louvre.

All his life he had found great satisfaction in pictures -real pictures, as he called them, to distinguish them from impressionism. He was particularly fond of the Flemish school. He spent some time that morning sitting on a bench in front of Chardin's still life of pipes and drinking-vessels on a stone table. And then, he told me, he went and had a look at the artist's portrait of himself. He took great pleasure in the strong, kind face of the man who had done such very good work, over two hundred years ago.

That's all he saw that morning at the Louvre. Just that chap, and his work.

He went on next day towards the Jura. He was still feeling a little shaky after the fatigue of the crossing, so that day he only went as far as Dijon. At the Gare de Lyons he bought a paper casually and looked it over, though he had lost all interest in the war. There was a tremendous amount of bother over Norway and Denmark, which didn't seem to him to be worth quite so much attention. It was a good long way away.

Normally that journey takes about three hours, but the railways were in a bad state of disorganisation. They told him that it was because of troop movements. The Rapide was an hour late in leaving Paris, and it lost another two hours on the way. It was nearly dinner-time when he reached Dijon, and he was very thankful that he had decided to stop there. He had his bags carried to a little hotel just opposite the station, and they gave him a very good dinner in the restaurant. Then he took a cup of coffee and a cointreau in the café and went up to bed at about half-past nine, not too tired to sleep well.

He was really feeling very well next day, better than he had felt for a long time past. The change of air, added to the change of scene, had done that for him. He had coffee in his room and got up slowly; he went down at about ten o'clock and the sun was shining, and it was warm and fresh out in the street. He walked up through the town to the Hôtel de Ville and found Dijon just as he remembered it from his last visit, about eighteen months before. There was the shop where they had bought their berets, and he smiled again to see the name, AU PAUVRE DIABLE. And there was the shop where John had bought himself a pair of skis, but he didn't linger there for very long.

He had his lunch at the hotel and took the afternoon train on into the Jura: he found that the local trains were running better than the main line ones. He changed at Andelot and took the branch line up into the hills. All afternoon the little engine puffed along its single track, pulling its two old coaches through a country dripping with thawing snow. The snow slithered and cascaded off the slopes into the little streams that now were rushing torrents for a brief season. The pines were shooting with fresh green, but the meadows were still deep in a grey, slushy mess. In the high spots of the fields where grass was showing, he noticed a few crocuses. He'd come at the right time, and he was very, very glad of it.

The train stopped for half an hour at Morez, and then went on to Saint-Claude. It got there just at dusk. He had sent a telegram from Dijon to the Hôtel de la Haute Montagne at Cidoton asking them to send a car down for him, because it's eleven miles and you can't always get a car in Saint-Claude. The hotel car was there to meet him, a ten-year-old Chrysler driven by the concierge, who was a diamond-cutter when he wasn't working at the hotel. But Howard only found that out afterwards; the man had come to the hotel since his last visit.

He took the old man's bags and put them in the back of the car, and they started off for Cidoton. For the first five miles the road runs up a gorge, turning in hairpin bends up the side of the mountain. Then, on the high ground, it runs straight over the meadows and between the woods. After a winter spent in London, the air was unbelievably sweet. Howard sat beside the driver, but he was too absorbed in the beauty of that drive in the fading light to talk much to him. They spoke once about the war, and the driver told him that almost every able-bodied man in the district had been called up. He himself was exempt, because the diamond dust had got into his lungs.

The Hôtel de la Haute Montagne is an old coaching-house. It has about fifteen bedrooms, and in the season it's a skiing centre. Cidoton is a tiny hamlet - fifteen or twenty cottages, no more. The hotel is the only house of any size in the place; the hills sweep down to it all round, fine slopes of pasture dotted here and there with pinewoods. It's very quiet and peaceful in Cidoton, even in the winter season when the village is filled with young French people on thek skis. That was as it had been when he was there before.

It was dark when they drew up at the hotel. Howard went slowly up the stone steps to the door, the concierge following behind him with the bags. The old man pushed open the heavy oak door and went into the hall. By his side, the door leading into the estaminet flew open, and there was Madame Lucard, buxom and cheerful as she had been the year before, with the children round her and the maids grinning over her shoulder. Lucard himself was away with the Chasseurs Alpins.

They gave him a vociferous French welcome. He had not thought to find himself so well remembered, but it's not very common for English people to go deep into the Jura. They chattered at him nineteen to the dozen. Was he well? Had he made a good crossing of the Manche? He had stopped in Paris? And in Dijon also? That was good. It was very tiring to travel in this sale war. He had brought a fishing-rod with hun this time, instead of skis? That was good. He would take a glass of Pernod with Madame?

And then, Monsieur votre fils, he was well too?

Well, they had to know. He turned away from her blindly. 'Madame,' he said, 'mon fils est mort. ll est tombé de son avion, au-dessus de Heligoland Bight.'

Chapter 2

Howard settled down at Cidoton quite comfortably. The fresh mountain air did him a world of good; it revived his appetite and brought him quiet, restful sleep at night. The little rustic company of the estaminet amused and interested him, too. He knew a good deal of rural matters and he spoke good, slightly academic French. He was a good mixer and the fanners accepted him into their company, and talked freely to him of the matters of their daily life. It may be that the loss of his son helped to break the ice.

He did not find them noticeably enthusiastic for the war.

He was not happy for the first fortnight, but he was probably happier than he would have been in London. While the snow lasted, the slopes were haunted for him. In his short walks along the road before the woodland paths became available, at each new slope of snow he thought to see John come hurtling over the brow, stem-christie to a traverse, and vanish in a white flurry that sped down into the valley. Sometimes the fair-haired French girl, Nicole, who came from Chartres, seemed to be with him, flying along with him in the same flurry of snow. That was the most painful impression of all.

Presently as the sun grew stronger, the snow went away. There was the sound of tinkling water everywhere, and bare grass showed where there had been white slopes. Then flowers began to appear and his walks had a new interest. As the snow passed his bad dreams passed with it; the green flowering fields held no memories for him. He grew much more settled as the spring drew on.

Mrs Cavanagh helped him, too.

He had been worried and annoyed to find an English woman staying in the hotel, so far from the tourist track. He had not come to France to speak English or to think in English. For the first week he sedulously avoided her, together with her two children. He did not have to meet them. They spent a great part of their time in the salon; there were no other visitors in the hotel in between time. He lived mostly in his bedroom or else in the estaminet, where he played innumerable games of draughts with the habitués.

Cavanagh, they told him, was an official in the League of Nations at Geneva, not more than twenty miles away as the crow flies. He was evidently fearful of an invasion of Switzerland by the Germans, and had prudently sent his wife and children into Allied France. They had been at Cidoton for a month; each week-end he motored across the border to visit them. Howard saw hun the first Saturday that he was there, a sandy-haired, worried-looking man of forty-five or so.

The following week-end Howard had a short talk with him. To the old solicitor, Cavanagh appeared to be oddly unpractical. He was devoted to the League of Nations even in this time of war.

'A lot of people say that the League has been a failure,' he explained. 'Now, I think that is very unfair. If you look at the record of that last twenty years you'll see a record of achievement that no other organisation can show. Look at what the League did in the matter of the drug traffic!' And so on.

About the war, he said: The only failure that can be laid to the account of the League is its failure to inspire the nations with faith in its ideals. And that means propaganda. And propaganda costs money. If the nations had spent one-tenth of what they have spent in armaments on the League, there would have been no war.'

After half an hour of this, old Howard came to the conclusion that Mr Cavanagh was a tedious fellow. He bore with him from a natural politeness, and because the man was evidently genuine, but he made his escape as soon as he decently could. The extent of his sincerity was not made plain to Howard till the day he met Mrs Cavanagh in the woods, and walked a mile back to the hotel with her.

He found her a devoted echo of her man. 'Eustace would never leave the League,' she said. 'Even if the Germans were to enter Switzerland, he'd never leave Geneva. There's still such great work to be done.'

The old man looked at her over his spectacles. 'But would the Germans let him go on doing it if they got into Switzerland?'

'Why, of course they would,' she said. 'The League is international. I know, of course, that Germany is no longer a member of the League. But she appreciates our non-political activities. The League prides itself that it could function equally well in any country, or under any government. If it could not do that, it couldn't be said to be truly international, could it?'

'No,' said Howard, 'I suppose it couldn't.'

They walked on for a few steps in silence. 'But if Geneva really were invaded by the Germans,' he said at last, 'would your husband stay there?'

'Of course. It would be very disloyal if he didn't.' She paused, and then she said: That's why he sent me out here with the children, into France.'

She explained to him that they had no ties in England. For ten years they had lived in Geneva; both children had been born there. In that time they had seldom returned to England, even on holiday. It had barely occurred to them that she should take the children back to England, so far away from him. Cidoton, just across the border into France, was far enough.

'It's only just for a few weeks, until the situation clears a little,' she said placidly. Then we shall be able to go home.' To her, Geneva was home.

He left her at the entrance to the hotel, but next day at déjeuner she smiled at him when he came into the room, and asked him if he had enjoyed his walk.

'I went as far as the Pointe des Neiges,' he said courteously. 'It was delightful up there this morning, quite delightful.'

After that they often passed a word or two together, and he fell into the habit of sitting with her for a quarter of an hour each evening after dinner in the salon, drinking a cup of coffee. He got to know the children too.

There were two of them. Ronald was a dark-haired little boy of eight, whose toy train littered the floor of the salon with its tin lines. He was mechanical, and would stand fascinated at the garage door while the concierge laboured to induce ten-year-old spark-plugs to fire the mixture in the ten-year-old Chrysler. Old Howard came up behind him once.

'Could you drive a car like that?' he asked gently.

'Mais oui - c'est facile, ça' French came more easily to this little boy than English. 'You climb up in the seat and steer with the wheel.'

'But could you start it?'

'You just push the button, et elle va. That's the 'lectric starter.' He pointed to the knob.

'That's right. But it would be a very big car for you to manage.'

The child said: 'Big cars are easier to drive than little ones. Have you got a car?'

Howard shook his head. 'Not now. I used to have one.'

'What son was it?'

The old man looked down helplessly. 'I really forget,' he said. 'I think it was a Standard.'

Ronald looked up at him, incredulous. 'Don't you remember?'

But Howard couldn't.

The other child was Sheila, just five years old. Her drawings littered the floor of the salon; for the moment her life was filled with a passion for coloured chalks. Once as Howard came downstairs he found her sitting in a heap on the landing at a turn of the staircase, drawing industriously on the fly-leaf of a book. The first tread of the flight served as a desk.

He stooped down by her. 'What are you drawing?'

She did not answer.

'Won't you show me?' he said. And then: 'The chalks are lovely colours.'

He knelt down rheumatically on one knee. 'It looks like a lady.'

She looked up at him. 'Lady with a dog,' she said.

'Where's the dog?' He looked at the smudged pastel streaks.

She was silent. 'Shall I draw the dog, walking behind on a lead?' he said.

She nodded vigorously. Howard bent to his task, his knees aching. But his hand had lost whatever cunning it might once have had, and his dog became a pig.

Sheila said: 'Ladies don't take pigs for a walk.'

His ready wit had not deserted the solicitor. 'This one did,' he said. 'This is the little pig that went to market.'

The child pondered this. 'Draw the little pig that stayed at home,' she said, 'and the little piggy eating roast beef.' But Howard's knees would stand no more of it. He stumbled to his feet. 'I'll do that for you tomorrow.'

It was only at that stage he realised that his picture of the lady leading a pig embellished the fly-leaf of A Child's Life of Jesus.

Next day after déjeuner she was waiting for him in the hall. 'Mummy said I might ask you if you wanted a sweet.' She held up a grubby paper bag with a sticky mass in the bottom.

Howard said gravely: Thank you very much.' He fumbled in the bag and picked out a morsel which he put into his mouth. Thank you, Sheila.'

She turned, and ran from him through the estaminet into the big kitchen of the inn. He heard her chattering in there in fluent French to Madam Lucard as she offered her sweets.

He turned, and Mrs Cavanagh was on the stairs. The old man wiped his fingers furtively on the handkerchief in his pocket. They speak French beautifully,' he said.

She smiled. They do, don't they? The little school they go to is French-speaking, of course.'

He said: 'They just picked it up, I suppose?'

'Oh yes. We didn't have to teach it to them.'

He got to know the children slightly after that and passed the time of day with them whenever he met them alone; on their side they said: 'Good morning, Mr Howard,' as if it was a lesson that they had been taught - which indeed it was. He would have liked to get to know them better, but he was shy, with the diffidence of age. He used to sit and watch them playing in the garden underneath the pine-trees sometimes, mysterious games that he would have liked to have known about, that touched dim chords of memory sixty years back. He did have one success with them, however.

As the sun grew warmer and the grass drier he took to sitting out in the garden after déjeuner for half an hour, in a deck-chair. He was sitting so one day while the children played among the trees. He watched them covertly. It seemed that they wanted to play a game they called attention which demanded a whistle, and they had no whistle.

The little boy said: 'I can whistle with my mouth,' and proceeded to demonstrate the art.

His sister pursed up her immature lips and produced only a wet splutter. From his deck-chair the old man spoke up suddenly.

'I'll make you a whistle, if you like,' he said.

They were silent, staring at him doubtfully. 'Would you like me to make you a whistle?' he enquired.

'When?' asked Ronald.

'Now. I'll make you one out of a bit of that tree.' He nodded to a hazel bush.

They stared at him, incredulous. He got up from his chair and cut a twig the thickness of his little finger from the bush. 'Like this.'

He sat down again, and began to fashion a whistle with the pen-knife that he kept for scraping out his pipe. It was a trick that he had practised throughout his life, for John first and then for Enid when they had been children, more recently for little Martin Costello. The Cavanagh children stood by him watching his slow, wrinkled fingers as they worked; in their faces incredulity melted into interest. He stripped the bark from the twig, cut deftly with the little knife, and bound the bark back into place. He put it to his lips, and it gave out a shrill note.

They were delighted, and he gave it to the little girl, 'You can whistle with your mouth,' he said to Ronald, 'but she can't.'

'Will you make me one tomorrow?'

'All right, I'll make you one tomorrow.' They went off together, and whistled all over the hotel and through the village, till the bark crushed beneath the grip of a hot hand. But the whistle was still good for taking to bed, together with a Teddy and a doll called Melanic.

'It was so very kind of you to make that whistle for the children,' Mrs Cavanagh said that night, over coffee. 'They were simply thrilled with it.'

'Children always like a whistle, especially if they see it made,' the old man said. It was one of the basic truths that he had learned in a long life, and he stated it simply.

'They told me how quickly you made it,' she said. 'You must have made a great many.'

'Yes,' he said, 'I've made a good many whistles in my time.' He fell into a reverie, thinking of all the whistles he had made for John and Enid, so many years ago, in the quiet garden of the house at Exeter. Enid who had grown up and married and gone to live in the United States. John, who had grown up and gone into the Air Force. John.

He forced his mind back to the present. 'I'm glad they liked it,' he said. 'I promised Ronald that I'd make him one tomorrow.'

Tomorrow was the tenth of May. As the old man sat in his deck-chair beneath the trees carving a whistle for Ronald, German troops were pouring into Holland, beating down the Dutch Army. The Dutch Air Force was flinging its full strength of forty fighting planes against the Luftwaffe. A thousand traitors leapt into activity; all through the day the parachutists dropped from the sky. In Cidoton the only radio happened to be switched off, and so Howard whittled at his hazel twig in peace.

It did not break his peace much when they switched it on. In Cidoton the war seemed very far away; with Switzerland to insulate them from the Germans the village was able to view the war dispassionately. Belgium was being invaded again, as in the last war; the sale Boche! This time Holland, too, was in it; so many more to fight on the side of France. Perhaps they would not penetrate into France at all this time, with Holland to be conquered and assimilated first.

In all this, Howard acquiesced. He could remember very clearly how the war had gone before. He had been in it for a short time, in the Yeomanry, but had been quickly invalided out with rheumatic fever. The cockpit of Europe would take the shock of the fighting as it usually did; there was nothing new in that. In Cidoton, it made no change. He listened to the news from time to time in a detached manner, without great interest. Presently fishing would begin; the snow was gone from the low levels and the mountain streams were running less violently each day.

The retreat from Brussels did not interest him much; it had all happened before. He felt a trace of disquiet when Abbeville was reached, but he was no great strategist, and did not realise all that was involved. He got his first great shock when Leopold, King of the Belgians, laid down his arms on the 29th May. That had not happened in the last war, and it upset him.

But on that day nothing could upset him for very long. He was going fishing for the first time next morning, and the evening was occupied in sorting out his gear, soaking his casts and selecting flies. He walked six miles next day and caught three blue trout. He got back tired and happy at about six o'clock, had dinner, and went up immediately to bed. In that way he missed the first radio broadcasts of the evacuation of Dunkirk.

Next day he was jerked finally from his complacence. He sat by the radio in the estaminet for most of the day, distressed and worried. The gallant retreat from the beaches stirred him as nothing had for months; for the first time he began to feel a desire to return to England. He knew that if he went, there would be nothing for him to do, but he wanted to be back. He wanted to be in the thick of things again, seeing the British uniforms in the streets, sharing the tension and anxiety. Cidoton irked him with its rustic indifference to the war., By the 4th June the last forces had left Dunkirk, Paris had had its one and only air-raid, and Howard had made up his mind. He admitted as much that night to Mrs Cavanagh.

'I don't like the look of things at all,' he said. 'Not at all. I think I shall go home. At a time like this, a man's place is in his own country.'

She looked at him, startled. 'But surely, you're not afraid that the Germans will come here, Mr Howard? They couldn't get as far as this.' She smiled reassuringly.

'No,' he said, 'they won't get much farther than they are now. But at the same time, I think I shall go home. ' He paused, and then he said a little wistfully: 'I might be able to get into the A. R. P.'

She knitted on quietly. 'I shall miss having you to talk to in the evenings,' she said. 'The children will miss you, too.'

'It has been a great pleasure to have known them,' he said. 'I shall miss them.'

She said: 'Sheila enjoyed the little walk you took her for. She put the flowers in her tooth-mug.'

It was not the old man's way to act precipitately, but he gave a week's notice to Madame Lucard that night and planned to leave on the eleventh. He did it in the estaminet, and provoked a lively discussion on the ethics of his case, in which most of the village took part. At the end of an hour's discussion, and a round of Pernod, the general opinion was favourable to him. It was hard on Madame Lucard to lose her best guest, the gendarme said, and sad for them to lose their English Camarade, but without doubt an old soldier should be in his own country in these times. Monsieur was very right. But he would return, perhaps?

Howard said that he hoped to return within a very few weeks, when the dangerous stage of the war had passed.

Next day he began to prepare for his journey. He did not hurry over it because he meant to stay his week out. In fact, he had another day's fishing and caught another two blue trout. There was a lull in the righting for a few days after the evacuation from Dunkirk and he went through a day of indecision, but then the Germans thrust again on the Somme and he went on preparing to go home.

On the ninth of June Cavanagh appeared, having driven unexpectedly from Geneva in his little car. He seemed more worried and distrait than usual, and vanished into the bedroom with his wife. The children were sent out to play in the garden.

An hour later he tapped on the door of Howard's bedroom. The old man had been reading in a chair and had dropped asleep, the book idle on his lap. He woke at the second tap, settled his spectacles, and said: 'Come in!'

He stared with surprise at his visitor, and got up. 'This is a great pleasure,' he said formally. 'But what brings you out here in the middle of the week? Have you got a holiday?'

Cavanagh seemed a little dashed. 'I've taken a day off,' he said after a moment. 'May I come in?'

'By all means.' The old man bustled round and cleared a heap of books from the only other chair in the room.

Then he offered his guest a cigarette. 'Won't you sit down?'

The other sat down diffidently. 'What do you think of the war?' he asked.

Howard said: 'I think it very serious. I don't like the news at all.'

'Nor do I. I hear you're going home?'

'Yes, I'm going back to England. I feel that at a time like this my place is there.'

There was a short silence. Then Cavanagh said: 'In Geneva we think that Switzerland will be invaded.'

Howard looked at him with interest. 'Do you, now! Is that going to be the next thing?'

'I think so. I think that it may happen very soon.'

There was a pause. Then Howard said: 'If that happened, what would you do?'

The little sandy-haired man from Geneva got up and walked over to the window. He stood for a moment looking out over the meadows and the pinewoods. Then he turned back into the room. 'I should have to stay in Geneva,' he said. 'I've got my work to do.'

'Would that be very - wise?'

'No,' said Cavanagh frankly. 'But it's what I have made up my mind to do.'

He came back and sat down again. 'I've been talking it over with Felicity,' he said. 'I've got to stay there. Even in German occupation there would still be work for us to do. It's not going to be pleasant. It's not going to be profitable. But it's going to be worth doing.'

'Would the Germans allow the League to function at all?'

'We have positive assurances that they will.'

'What does your wife think about it?' asked Howard.

'She thinks that it's the proper thing to do. She wants to come back to Geneva with me.'

'Oh The other turned to him. 'It's really about that that I looked in to see you,' he said. 'If we do that, things may go hardly with us before the war is over. If the Allies win they'll win by the blockade. There won't be much to eat in any German territory.'

Howard stared at the little man in wonder. 'I suppose not.' He had not credited Cavanagh with such cool courage.

'It's the children,' the other said apologetically. 'We were thinking - Felicity was wondering... if you could possibly take them back to England with you, when you go.'

He went on hurriedly, before Howard could speak: 'It's only just to take them to my sister's house in Oxford, up on Boars Hill. As a matter of fact, I could send her a telegram and she could meet you at Southampton with the car, and drive them straight to Oxford. It's asking an awful lot, I'm afraid. If you feel you couldn't manage it... we'll understand.'

Howard stared at him. 'My dear chap,' he said, 'I should be only too glad to do anything I can to help. But I must tell you, that at my age I don't stand travel very well. I was quite ill for a couple of days in Paris, on my way out here. I'm nearly seventy, you know. It would be safer if you put your children in the care of somebody a little more robust.'

Cavanagh said: 'That may be so. But as a matter of fact, there is nobody. The alternative would be for Felicity to take the children back to England herself.'

There was a pause. The old man said: 'I see. She doesn't want to do that?'

The other shook his head. 'We want to be together,' he said, a little pitifully. 'It may be for years.'

Howard stared at him. 'You can count on me to do anything within my power,' he said. 'Whether you would be wise to send the children home with me is something that you only can decide. If I were to die on the journey it might cause a good deal of trouble, both for your sister in Oxford and for the children.'

Cavanagh smiled. 'I'm quite prepared to take that risk,' he said. 'It's a small one compared with all the other risks one has to take these days.'

The old man smiled slowly. 'Well, I've been going seventy years and I've not died yet. I suppose I may last a few weeks longer.'

'Then you'll take them?'

'Of course I will, if that's what you want me to do.'

Cavanagh went away to tell his wife, leaving the old man in a flutter. He had planned to stay in Dijon and in Paris for a night as he had done on the way out; it now seemed to him that it would be wiser if he were to travel straight through to Calais. Actually it meant no changes in his arrangements to do that, because he had booked no rooms and taken no tickets. The changes were in his plans; he had to get accustomed to the new idea.

Could he manage the two children by himself, or would it be wiser to engage a village girl from Cidoton to travel with them as far as Calais to act as a bonne? He did not know if a girl could be found to come with them. Perhaps Madame Lucard would know somebody...

It was only later that he realised that Calais was in German hands, and that his best route across the Channel would be by way of St Malo to Southampton.

He came down presently, and met Felicity Cavanagh in the salon. She caught his hand. 'It's so very, very kind of you to do this for us,' she said. It seemed to hun that she had been crying a little.

'Not in the least,' he said. 'I shall enjoy having them as travelling companions.'

She smiled. 'I've just told them. They're simply thrilled. They're terribly excited to be going home with you.' It was the first time that he had heard her speak of England as home.

He broached the matter of a girl to her, and they went together to see Madame Lucard. But Cidoton proved to be incapable of producing anybody willing to go with them to St Malo, or even as far as Paris. 'It doesn't matter in the least,' said Howard. 'After all, we shall be home in twenty-four hours. I'm sure we shall get on famously together.'

She looked at him. 'Would you like me to come with you as far as Paris? I could do that, and then go back to Geneva.'

He said: 'Not at all - not at all. You stay with your man. Just tell me about their clothes and what they say, er, when they want to retire. Then you won't need to worry any more about them.'

He went up with her that evening to see them in bed. He said to Ronald: 'So you're coming back to England with me, eh, to stay with your auntie?'

The little boy looked up at him with shining eyes. 'Yes, please! Are we going in a train?'

Howard said: 'Yes, we'll be a long time in the train.'

'Will it have a steam engine, or a 'lectric one?'

'Oh - a steam engine, I think. Yes, certainly, a steam engine.'

'How many wheels will it have?' But this was past the old man's capacity.

Sheila piped up. 'Will we have dinner in the train?'

'Yes,' he said, 'you'll have your dinner in the train. I expect you'll have your tea and your breakfast in it too.'

'Oo... Oo,' she said. And then, incredulously, 'Breakfast in the train?'

Ronald stared at him. 'Where will we sleep?'

His father said: 'You'll sleep in the train, Ronnie. In a little bed to yourself.'

'Really sleep in the train?' He swung round to the old man. 'Mr Howard, please - may I sleep next to the engine?'

Sheila said: 'Me too. I want to sleep next to the engine.'

Presently their mother got them settled down to sleep. She followed the men downstairs. 'I'm fixing up with Madame Lucard to pack a hamper with all your meals,' she said. 'It'll be easier for you to give them their meals in the wagon lit than to bother with them in the restaurant car.'

Howard said: 'That's really very kind. It's much better that way.'

She smiled. 'I know what it is, travelling with children.'

He dined with them that night, and went early to bed. He was pleasantly tired, and slept very well; he woke early, as he usually did, and lay in bed revolving in his mind all the various matters that he had to attend to. Finally he got up, feeling uncommonly well. It did not occur to him that this was because he had a job to do, for the first time in many months.

The next day was spent in a flutter of business. The children were taking little with them in the way of luggage; one small portmanteau held the clothes for both of them. With their mother to assist him the old man learned the intricacies of their garments, and how they went to bed, and what they had to eat.

Once Mrs Cavanagh stopped and looked at him. 'Really,' she said, 'you'd rather that I came with you to Paris, wouldn't you?'

'Not in the least,' he said. 'I assure you, they will be quite all right with me.'

She stood silent for a minute. 'I believe they will,' she said slowly. 'Yes, I believe they'll be all right with you.'

She said no more about Paris.

Cavanagh had returned to Geneva, but he turned up again that night for dinner. He took Howard aside and gave him the money for their journey. 'I can't tell you how terribly grateful we are to you,' he muttered. 'It just makes all the difference to know that the kids will be in England.'

The old man said: 'Don't worry about them any more. They'll be quite safe with me. I've had children of my own to look after, you know.'

He did not dine with them that night, judging it better to leave them alone together with the children. Everything was ready for his journey; his portmanteaux were packed, his rods in the long tubular travelling-case. There was nothing more to be done.

He went up to his room. It was bright moonlight, and he stood for a while at his window looking out over the pastures and the woods towards the mountains. It was very quiet and still.

He turned uneasily from the window. It had no right to be so peaceful, here in the Jura. Two or three hundred miles to the north the French were fighting desperately along the Somme; the peace in Cidoton was suddenly unpleasant to him, ominous. The bustle and the occupation that his charge of the children had brought to him had changed his point of view; he now wanted very much to be in England, in a scene of greater action. He was glad to be leaving. The peace of Cidoton had helped him over a bad time, but it was time that he moved on.

Next morning all was bustle. He was down early, but the children and their parents were before him. They all had their petit déjeuner together in the dining-room; as a last lesson Howard learned to soften the crusts of the rolls for the children by soaking them in coffee. Then the old Chrysler was at the door to take them down to Saint-Claude.

The leave-taking was short and awkward. Howard had said everything that there was to say to the Cavanaghs, and the children were eager to climb into the car. It meant nothing to them that they were leaving their mother, possibly for years; the delicious prospect of a long drive to Saint-Claude and a day and a night in a real train with a steam engine filled their minds. Their father and mother kissed them, awkward and red-faced, but the meaning of the parting escaped the children altogether. Howard stood by, embarrassed.

Mrs Cavanagh muttered: 'Good-bye, my darlings,' and turned away.

Ronald said: 'May I sit by the driver?'

Sheila said: 'I want to sit by the driver, too.'

Howard stepped forward. 'You're both going to sit behind with me.' He bundled them into the back of the car. Then he turned back to their mother. 'They're very happy,' he said gently. 'That's the main thing, after all.'

He got into the car; it moved off down the road, and that miserable business was all over.

He sat in the middle of the seat with one child on each side of him for equity in the facilities for looking out. From time to time one saw a goat or a donkey and announced the fact in mixed French and English; then the other one would scramble over the old man to see the wonder. Howard spent most of the drive putting them back into their own seats.

Half an hour later they drew up at the station of Saint-Claude. The concierge helped them out of the car. 'They are pretty children,' he said in French to Howard. 'Their father and mother will be very sad, I think.'

The old man answered him in French: 'That is true. But in war, children should stay quiet in their own country. I think their mother has decided wisely.'

The man shrugged his shoulders; it was clear that he did not agree. 'How could war come to Cidoton?'

He carried their luggage to a first-class compartment and helped Howard to register the portmanteaux. Presently the little train puffed out up the valley, and Saint-Claude was left behind. That was the morning on which Italy declared war on the Allies, and the Germans crossed the Seine to the north of Paris.

Chapter 3

Half an hour after leaving Morez the children were already bored. Howard was watching for this, and had made his preparations. In the attaché case that he carried with him he had secreted a number of little amusements for them, given to him by their mother. He pulled out a scribbling-pad and a couple of coloured pencils, and set them to drawing ships.

By the time they got to Andelot, three hours later, they had had their lunch; the carriage was littered with sandwich wrappings and with orange peel; an empty bottle that had contained milk stood underneath a seat. Sheila had had a little sleep, curled up by old Howard with her head resting on his lap; Ronnie had stood looking out of the window most of the way, singing a little song in French about numerals - Un, deux, trois, Allans dans les bois - Quatre, cinq, six, Cueillir des cerises...

Howard felt that he knew his numerals quite well by the time they got to Andelot. He had to rouse Sheila from a heavy slumber as they drew into the little country station where they had to change. She woke up hot and fretful and began to cry a little for no reason at all. The old man wiped her eyes, got out of the carriage, lifted the children down on to the platform, and then got back into the carriage for the hand luggage. There were no porters on the platform, but it seemed that that was inevitable in France in war-time. He had not expected it to be different.

He walked along the platform carrying the hand luggage, with the two children beside him; he modified his pace to suit their rate of walking, which was slow. At the Bureau, he found a stout, black-haired stationmaster.

Howard enquired if the Rapide from Switzerland was likely to be late.

The man said that the Rapide would not arrive. No trains from Switzerland would arrive.

Dumbfounded, Howard expostulated. It was intolerable that one had not been told that at Saint-Claude. How, then, could one proceed to Dijon?

The stationmaster said that Monsieur might rest tranquil. A train would run from the frontier at Vallorbes to Dijon. It was incessantly expected. It had been incessantly expected for two hours.

Howard returned to the children and his luggage, annoyed and worried. The failure of the Rapide meant that he could not travel through to Paris in the train from Andelot, but must make a change at Dijon. By the time he got there it would be evening, and there was no knowing how long he would have to wait there for a train to Paris, or whether he could get a sleeping berth for the children. Travelling by himself it would have been annoying: with two children to look after it became a serious matter.

He set himself to amuse them. Ronnie was interested in the railway trucks and the signals and the shunting engine; apart from his incessant questions about matters that Howard did not understand he was very little trouble. Sheila was different. She was quite unlike the child that he had known in Cidoton, peevish and fretful, and continually crying without energy. The old man tried a variety of ways to rouse her interest, without a great deal of success.

An hour and forty minutes later, when he was thoroughly worn out, the train for Dijon pulled into the station. It was very full, but he managed to find one seat in a first-class carriage and took Sheila on his knee, where she fell asleep again before so very long. Ronnie stood by the door looking out of the window, chattering in French to a fat old woman in a corner.

Presently this woman leaned forward to Howard. She said: 'Your little one has fever, is it not so?'

Startled, he said in French: 'But no. She is a little tired.'

She fixed him with beady black eyes. 'She has a fever. It is not right to bring a child with fever in the train. It is not hygienic. I do not like to travel with a child that has a fever.'

'I assure you, madame,' he said, 'you deceive yourself.' But a horrible suspicion was creeping over him.

She appealed to the rest of the carriage. 'I,' she ejaculated, '- it is I who deceive myself, then! Let me tell you, m'sieur, it is not I who deceive myself. But no, certainly. It is you, m'sieur, truly, you who are deceived. I tell you that your little one has fever, and you do very wrong to bring her in a train with others who are healthy. Look at her colour, and her skin! She has scarlet fever, or chicken-pox, or some horrible disease that clean people do not get.' She turned vehemently to the others in the carriage. 'Imagine, bringing a child in that condition in the train!'

There was a grunt from the other occupants. One said: 'It is not correct. It should not be allowed.'

Howard turned to the woman. 'Madame,' he said, 'you have children of your own, I think?'

She snorted at him. 'Five,' she said. 'But never have I travelled with a child in that condition. It is not right, that.'

He said: 'Madame, I ask for your help. These children are not my own, but I am taking them to England for a friend, because in these times it is better that children should be in their own country. I did not know the little one was feverish. Tell me, what would you do, as her mother?'

She shrugged her shoulder, still angry. 'I? I have nothing to do with it at all, m'sieur, I assure you of that. I would say, let children of that age stay with their mother. That is the place for such children. It is getting hot and travelling in trains that gives children fever.'

With a sinking heart Howard realised that there was some truth in what she said. From the other end of the carriage somebody said: 'English children are very often ill. The mothers do not look after their children properly. They expose them to currents of air and then the children get fever.'

There was general agreement in the carriage. Howard turned again to the woman. 'Madame,' he said, 'do you think this fever is infectious? If it is so, I will get out at the next station. But as for me, I think she is only tired.'

The little beady eyes of the old peasant woman fixed him. 'Has she got spots?'

'I - I don't think so. I don't know.'

She snorted. 'Give her to me.' She reached out and took Sheila from him, settled her on a capacious lap, and deftly removed her coat. With quick fingers she undid the child's clothes and had a good look at her back and front. 'She has no spots,' she said, replacing the garments. 'But fever - poor little one, she is hot as fire. It is not right to expose a child in this condition, m'sieur. She should be in bed.'

Howard reached out for Sheila and took her back; the Frenchwoman was certainly right. He thanked her for her help. 'It is clear to me that she must go to bed when we arrive at Dijon,' he said. 'Should she see a doctor?'

The old woman shrugged her shoulders. 'It is not necessary. A tisane from the chemist, and she will be well. But you must not give her wine while she has fever. Wine is very heating to the blood.'

Howard said: 'I understand, madame. She shall not have wine.'

'Not even mixed with water, or with coffee.'

'No. She should have milk?'

'Milk will not hurt her. Many people say that children should drink as much milk as wine.' This provoked a discussion on infant welfare that lasted till they got to Dijon.

The station at Dijon was a seething mass of soldiers. With the utmost difficulty Howard got the children and his bags out of the train. He had an attache case and a suitcase and the tin tube that held his rods with hun in the carriage; the rest of his luggage with the little portmanteau that held the children's clothes was registered through to Paris. Carrying Sheila in his arms and leading Ronnie by the hand, he could not carry any of his luggage; he was forced to leave everything in a corner of the station platform and thrust his way with the two children through the crowd towards the exit.

The square before the station was a mass of lorries and troops. He threaded his way through and across the road to the hotel that he had stayed at before, startled and bewildered by the evident confusion of the town. He forced his way through to the hotel with the children; at the desk the girl recognised him, but told him that all the rooms were taken by the military.

'But, mademoiselle,' he said, 'I have a sick child to look after.' He explained.

The girl said: 'It is difficult for you, m'sieur. But what can I do?'

He smiled slowly. 'You can go and fetch Madame, and perhaps it will be possible for us to arrange something.'

Twenty minutes later he was in possession of a room with one large double bed, and apologising to an indignant French subaltern whose capitaine had ordered him to double up with another officer.

The bonne, a stout, untidy woman bulging out of her clothes, bustled about and made the room tidy. 'The poor little one,' she said. 'She is ill - yes? Be tranquil, monsieur. Without doubt, she has a little chill, or she has eaten something bad. All will be well, two days, three days, perhaps. Then she will be quite well again.' She smoothed the bed and crossed to Howard, sitting on a chair still holding Sheila in his arms. There, monsieur. All is now ready.'

The old man looked up at her. 'I thank you,' he said courteously. 'One thing more. If I put her to bed now, would you come back and stay with her while I go to get a doctor?'

The woman said: 'But certainly, monsieur. The poor little one.' She watched him as he began to undress Sheila on his lap; at the disturbance she began to cry again. The Frenchwoman smiled broadly, and began a stream of motherly French chatter to the child, who gradually stopped crying. In a minute or so Howard had surrendered Sheila to her, and was watching. The bonne looked up at him. 'Go and look for your doctor, monsieur, if you wish. I will stay with them for a little.'

He left them, and went down to the desk in the hall, and asked where he could find a doctor. In the thronging crowd the girl paused for a moment. 'I do not know, m'sieur... yes. One of the officers dining in the restaurant - he is a médecin major.'

The old man pressed into the crowded restaurant. Practically every table was taken by officers, for the most part glum and silent. They seemed to the Englishman to be a fat, untidy-looking lot; about half of them were unshaven. After some enquiry he found the médecin major just finishing his meal, and explained the position to him. The man took up his red velvet cap and followed him upstairs.

Ten minutes later he said: 'Be easy, monsieur. She must stay warm in bed tomorrow, and perhaps longer. But tomorrow I think that there will be no fever any more.'

Howard asked: 'What has she got?'

The man shrugged his shoulders indifferently. 'She is not infectious. Perhaps she has been hot, and playing in a current of air. Children, you understand, get fever easily. The temperature goes up quite high and very quickly. Then in a few hours, down again...'

He turned away. 'Keep her in bed, monsieur. And light food only; I will tell Madame below. No wine.'

'No,' said Howard. He took out his note-case. 'Without doubt,' he said, 'there is a fee.'

A note passed. The Frenchman folded it and put it in the breast pocket of his tunic. He paused for a moment. 'You go to England?' he enquired.

Howard nodded. 'I shall take them to Paris as soon as she can travel, and then to England by St Malo.'

There was a momentary silence. The fat, unshaven officer stood for a moment staring at the child in the bed. At last he said: 'It may be necessary that you should go to Brest. Always, there will be boats for England at Brest.'

The old man stared at him. 'But there is a service from St Malo.'

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. 'It is very near the Front. Perhaps there will be only military traffic there.' He hesitated, and then said: 'It seems that the sales Bodies have crossed the Seine, near Rheims. Only a few, you understand. They will be easily thrown back.' He spoke without assurance.

Howard said quietly: 'That is bad news.'

The man said bitterly: 'Everything to do with this war is bad news. It was a bad day for France when she allowed herself to be dragged into it.'

He turned and went downstairs. Howard followed him, and got from the restaurant a jug of cold milk and a few little plain cakes for the children and, as an afterthought, a couple of feet of bread for his own supper. He carried these things through the crowded hall and up the stairs to his own room, afraid to leave the children very long.

Ronnie was standing at the window, staring out into the street. 'There's lots and lots of camions and motors at the station,' he said excitedly. 'And guns, too. Real guns, with motors pulling them! May we go down and see?'

'Not now,' said the old man. 'It's time you were in bed.'

He gave the children their supper of cakes, and milk out of a tooth-glass; Sheila seemed cooler, and drank her milk with very little coaxing. Then it was time to put Ronnie to bed in the big bed beside his sister. The little boy asked: 'Where are my pyjamas?'

Howard said. 'At the station. We'll put you into bed in your shirt for a start, just for fun. Then I'll go and get your pyjamas.'

He made a game of it with them, and tucked them up carefully one at each side of the big bed, with a bolster down the middle. 'Now you be good,' he said. 'I'm just going to get the luggage. I'll leave the light on. You won't be afraid?'

Sheila did not answer; she was already nearly asleep, curled up, flushed and tousled on the pillow. Ronnie said sleepily: 'May we see the guns and the camions tomorrow?'

'If you're good.'

He left them, and went down to the hall. The restaurant and the café were more crowded than ever; in the throng there was no hope at all of getting anyone to help him with the luggage. He pushed his way to the door and went out into the street, bewildered at the atmosphere of the town, and more than a little worried.

He found the station yard thronged with lorries and guns, with a few light tanks. Most of the guns were horse-drawn; the teams stood in their harness by the limbers as if ready to move on at any moment. Around them lorries rumbled in the darkness, with much melodious shouting in the broad tones of the southern French.

The station, again, was thronged with troops. They covered all the platforms, smoking and spitting wearily, squatting on the dirty asphalt in the half-light, resting their backs against anything that offered. Howard crossed to the arrival platform and searched painstakingly for his luggage among the recumbent forms. He found the tin case with his rods and he found the small attache case; the suitcase had vanished, nor could he discover any trace of the registered luggage.

He had not expected any more, but the loss of the suitcase was a serious matter. He knew that when he got to Paris he would find the registered luggage waiting for him in the consigne, were it six months later. But the suitcase had apparently been stolen; either that, or it had been placed in safe keeping by some zealous railway official. In the circumstances that did not seem probable. He would look for it in the morning; in the meantime they must all get on without pyjamas for the night. He made his way back to the hotel, and up to the bedroom again.

Both children were sleeping; Sheila was hot and restless and had thrown off most of her coverings. He spread them over her more lightly, and went down to the restaurant to see if he could get a meal for himself. A tired waiter refused point-blank to serve him, there was no food left in the hotel. Howard bought a small bottle of brandy in the café, and went up to the bedroom again, to dine off brandy and water, and his length of bread.

Presently he stretched himself to sleep uneasily in the arm-chair, desperately worried over what the next day would bring. One fact consoled him; he had his rods, quite safe.

Dawn came at five and found him still dozing uneasily in the chair, half covered by the dust-cover from the bed. The children woke soon after that and began chattering and playing in the bed; the old man stirred and sat up stiffly in his chair. He rubbed a hand over his face; he was feeling very ill. Then the children claimed his attention and he got up and put them right.

There was no chance of any further sleep; already there was much tramping to and fro in the hotel. In the station yard outside his window, lorries, tanks, and guns were on the move; the grinding of the caterpillar tracks, the roar of exhausts, the chink of harness and the stamping of the teams made up a melody of war. He turned back to the children; Sheila was better, but still obviously unwell. He brought the basin to the bed and washed her face and arms; then he combed her hair with the small pocket comb that he had found in the attache case, one of the few small toilet articles he had. He took her temperature, under the arm for fear that she might chew on the thermometer.

It came out a degree above normal; he tried vainly to recall how much he should add on for the arm. In any case, it didn't matter much; she'd have to stay in bed. He got Ronnie up, washed him, and set him to dress himself; then he sponged over his own face and rang the bell for the femme de chambre. He was unshaven, but that could wait.

She came presently, and exclaimed when she saw the chair and coverlet: 'Monsieur has slept so?' she said. 'But there was room in bed for all of you!'

He felt a little foolish. 'The little one is ill,' he said. 'When a child is ill, she should have room. I was quite comfortable.'

Her eyes softened, and she clucked her tongue again. 'Tonight I will find another mattress,' she said. 'Be assured, monsieur, I will arrange something.'

He ordered coffee and rolls and jam; she went away and came back presently with a loaded tray. As she set it down on the dressing-table, he ventured: 'I must go out this morning to look for my luggage, and to buy a few things. I will take the little boy with me; I shall not be very long. Would you listen for the little girl, in case she cries?'

The woman beamed at him. 'Assuredly. But it will not be necessary for monsieur to hurry. I will bring la petite Rose, and she can play with the little sick one.'

Howard said: 'Rose?'

He stood for ten minutes, listening to a torrent of family history. Little Rose was ten years old, the daughter of the woman's brother, who was in England. No doubt monsieur had met her brother? Tenois was the name, Henri Tenois. He was in London, the wine waiter at the Hotel Dickens, in Russell Square. He was a widower, so the femme de chambre made a home for la petite Rose. And so on, minute after minute.

Howard had to exercise a good deal of tact to get rid of her before his coffee cooled.

An hour later, spruce and shaved and leading Ronnie by the hand, he went out into the street. The little boy, dressed in beret, overcoat, and socks, looked typically French; by contrast Howard in his old tweed suit looked very English. For ten minutes he fulfilled his promise in the market square, letting the child drink in his fill of camions, guns, and tanks. They stopped by one caterpillar vehicle, smaller than the rest.

'Celui-ci,' said Ronnie clearly, 'c'est un char de combat.'

The driver smiled broadly. 'That's right,' he said in French.

Howard said in French: 'I should have called it a tank, myself.'

'No, no, no,' the little boy said earnestly. 'A tank is much bigger, monsieur. Truly.'

The driver laughed. 'I've got one myself just like that, back in Nancy. He'll be driving one of these before he's much older, le petit chou.'

They passed on, and into the station. For hah0 an hour they searched the platforms, still thronged with the tired troops, but found no sign of the lost suitcase. Nor could the overworked and worried officials give any help. At the end of that time Howard gave it up; it would be better to buy a few little things for the children that he could carry in the attache case when they moved on. The loss of a suitcase was not an unmixed disaster for a man with a weak heart in time of war.

They left the station and walked up towards the centre of the town to buy pyjamas for the children. They bought some purple sweets called cassis to take back with them for Sheila, and they bought a large green picture-book called Bahar the Elephant. Then they turned back to the hotel.

Ronnie said presently: 'There's a motor-car from England, monsieur. What sort is it?'

The old man said: 'I don't suppose I can tell you that.' But he looked across the road to the filling-station. It was a big open touring car, roughly sprayed dull green all over, much splashed and stained with mud. It was evidently weeks smee it had had a wash. Around it, two or three men were bustling to get it filled with petrol, oil, and water. One of them was manipulating the air hose at the wheels.

One of the men seemed vaguely familiar to the old man. He stopped and stared across the road, trying to place where they had met. Then he remembered; it was in his club six months before. The man was Roger Dickinson; something to do with a newspaper. The Morning Record - that was it. He was quite a well-known man in his own line.

Howard crossed the road to him, leading Ronnie by the hand. 'Morning,' he said. 'Mr Roger Dickinson, isn't it?'

The man turned quickly, cloth in hand; he had been cleaning off the windscreen. Recognition dawned in his eyes. 'I remember,' he said. 'In the Wanderers' Club...'

'Howard is the name.'

'I remember.' The man stared at him. 'What are you doing now?'

The old man said: 'I'm on my way to Paris, but I'm hung up here for a few days, I'm afraid.' He told Dickinson about Sheila.

The newspaperman said: 'You'd better get out, quick.'

'Why do you say that?'

The newspaperman stared at him, turning the soiled cloth over in his hands. 'Well, the Germans are across the Marne.' The old man stared at him. 'And now the Italians are coming up from the south.'

He did not quite take in the latter sentence. 'Across the Marne?' he said. 'Oh, that's very bad. Very bad indeed. But what are the French doing?'

'Running like rabbits,' said Dickinson.

There was a momentary silence. 'What did you say that the Italians were doing?'

'They've declared war on France. Didn't you know?'

The old man shook his head. 'Nobody told me that.'

'It only happened yesterday. The French may not have announced it yet, but it's true enough.'

By their side a little petrol flooded out from the full tank on to the road; one of the men removed the hose and slammed the snap catch of the filler cap with a metallic clang. 'That's the lot,' he said to Dickinson. 'I'll slip across and get a few brioches, and then we'd better get going.'

Dickinson turned to Howard. 'You must get out of this,' he said. 'At once. You'll be all right if you can get to Paris by tonight - at least, I think you will. There are boats still running from St Malo.'

The old man stared at him. 'That's out of the question, Dickinson. The other child has got a temperature.'

The man shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, I tell you honestly, the French won't hold. They're broken now - already. I'm not being sensationalist. It's true.'

Howard stood staring up the street. 'Where are you making for?'

'I'm going down into Savoy to see what the Italians are doing in that part. And then, we're getting out. Maybe Marseilles, perhaps across the frontier into Spain.'

The old man smiled. 'Good luck,' he said. 'Don't get too near the fighting.'

The other said: 'What are you going to do, yourself?'

'I don't quite know. I'll have to think about it.'

He turned away towards the hotel, leading Ronnie by the hand. A hundred yards down the road the mud-stained, green car came softly up behind, and edged into the kerb beside him.

Dickinson leaned out of the driver's seat. 'Look, Howard," he said. 'There's room for you with us, with the two kids as well. We can take the children on our knees all right. It's going to be hard going for the next few days; we'll be driving all night, in spells. But if you can be ready in ten minutes with the other kid, I'll wait.'

The old man stared thoughtfully into the car. It was a generous offer, made by a generous man. There were four of them already in the car, and a great mass of luggage; it was difficult to see how another adult could be possibly squeezed in, let alone two children. It was an open body, with an exiguous canvas hood and no side screens. Driving all night in that through the mountains would be a bitter trial for a little girl of five with a temperature.

He said: 'It's very, very kind of you. But really, I think we'd better make our own way.'

The other said: 'All right. You've plenty of money, I suppose?'

The old man reassured him on that point, and the big car slid away and vanished down the road. Ronnie watched it, half crying. Presently he sniffed, and Howard noticed him.

'What's the matter?' he said kindly. 'What is it?'

There was no answer. Tears were very near.

Howard searched his mind for childish trouble. 'Was it the motor-car?' he said. 'Did you think we were going to have a ride in it?'

The little boy nodded dumbly.

The old man stooped and wiped his eyes. 'Never mind,' he said. 'We'll wait till Sheila gets rid of her cold, and then we'll all go for a ride together.' It was in his mind to hire a car, if possible, to take them all the way from Dijon to St Malo and the boat. It would cost a good bit of money, but the emergency seemed to justify the expense.

'Soon?'

'Perhaps the day after tomorrow, if she's well enough to enjoy it with us.'

'May we go and see the camions and the chars de combat after déjeuner?

'If they're still there we'll go and see them, just for a little.' He must do something to make up for the disappointment. But when they reached the station yard, the lorries and the armoured cars were gone. There were only a few decrepit-looking horses picketed beneath the tawdry advertisements for Byrrh and Pernod.

Up in the bedroom things were very happy. La petite Rose was there, a shy little girl with long black hair and an advanced maternal instinct. Already Sheila was devoted to her. La petite Rose had made a rabbit from two of Howard's dirty handkerchiefs and three little bits of string, and this rabbit had a burrow in the bedclothes on Ronnie's side of the bed; when you said 'Boo' he dived back into his burrow, manipulated ingeniously by la petite Rose. Sheila, bright-eyed, struggled to tell old Howard all about it in mixed French and English. In the middle of their chatter three aeroplanes passed very low over the station and the hotel.

Howard undid his parcels, and gave Sheila the picture-book about Bahar the Elephant. Babar was an old friend of la petite Rose, and well known; she took the book and drew Ronnie to the bed, and began to read the story to them. The little boy soon tired of. it; aeroplanes were more in his line, and he went and leaned out of the window hoping to see another one go by.

Howard left them there, and went down to the hall of the hotel to telephone. With great difficulty, and great patience, he got through at last to the hotel at Cidoton; obviously he must do his best to let Cavanagh know the difficulties of the journey. He spoke to Madame Lucard, but the Cavanaghs had left the day before, to go back to Geneva. No doubt they imagined that he was practically in England by that time.

He tried to put a call through to Cavanagh at the League of Nations in Geneva, and was told curtly that the service into Switzerland had been suspended. He enquired about the telegraph service, and was told that all telegrams to Switzerland must be taken personally to the Bureau de Ville for censoring before they could be accepted for despatch. There was said to be a very long queue at the censor's table.

It was time for déjeuner; he gave up the struggle to communicate with Cavanagh for the time being. Indeed, he had been apathetic about it from the start. With the clear vision of age he knew that it was not much good; if he should get in touch with the parents it would still be impossible for him to cross the border back to them, or for them to come to him. He would have to carry on and get the children home to England as he had undertaken to do; no help could come from Switzerland.

The hotel was curiously still, and empty; it seemed today that all the soldiers were elsewhere. He went into the restaurant and ordered lunch to be sent up to the bedroom on a tray, both for himself and for the children.

It came presently, brought by the femme de chambre. There was much excited French about the pictures of Babar, and about the handkerchief rabbit. The woman beamed all over; it was the sort of party that she understood.

Howard said: 'It has been very, very kind of you to let la petite Rose be with la petite Sheila. Already they are friends.'

The woman spoke volubly. 'It is nothing, monsieur -nothing at all. Rose likes more than anything to play with little children, or with kittens, or young dogs. Truly, she is a little mother, that one.' She rubbed the child's head affectionately. 'She will come back after déjeuner, if monsieur desires?'

Sheila said: 'I want Rose to come back after déjeuner, Monsieur Howard.'

He turned slowly: 'You'd better go to sleep after déjeuner.' He turned to the woman. 'If she could come back at four o'clock?' To Rose: 'Would you like to come and have tea with us this afternoon - English tea?'

She said shyly: 'Oui, monsieur.'

She went away and Howard gave the children their dinner. Sheila was still hot with a slight temperature. He put the tray outside the door when they had finished, and made Ronnie lie down on the bed with his sister. Then he stretched out in the arm-chair, and began to read to them from a book given to him by their mother, called Amelianne at the Circus. Before very long the children were asleep: Howard laid down the book and slept for an hour himself.

Later in the afternoon he walked up through the town again to the Bureau de Ville, leading Ronnie by the hand, with a long telegram to Cavanagh in his pocket. He searched for some time for the right office, and finally found it, picketed by an anxious and discontented crowd of French people. The door was shut. The censor had closed the office and gone off for the evening, nobody knew where. The office would be open again at nine in the morning.

'It is not right, that,' said the people. But it appeared that there was nothing to be done about it.

Howard walked back with Ronnie to the hotel. There were troops in the town again, and a long convoy of lorries blocked the northward road near the station. In the station yard three very large tanks were parked, bristling with guns, formidable in design but dirty and unkempt. Their tired crews were refuelling them from a tank lorry, working slowly and sullenly, without enthusiasm. A little chill shot through the old man as he watched them bungling their work. What was it Dickinson had said? 'Running like rabbits.'

It could not possibly be true. The French had always fought magnificently.

At Ronnie's urgent plea they crossed to the square, and spent some time examining the tanks. The little boy told him: They can go right over walls and houses even. Right over!'

The old man stared at the monsters. It might be true, but he was not impressed with what he saw. 'They don't look very comfortable,' he said mildly.

Ronnie scoffed at him. 'They go ever so fast, and all the guns go bang, bang, bang.' He turned to Howard. 'Are they going to-stay here all night?'

'I don't know. I expect they will. Come on, now; Sheila will want her tea. I expect you want yours, too.'

Food was a magnet, but Ronnie looked back longingly over his shoulder. 'May we come and see them tomorrow?'

'If they're still here.'

Things were still happy in the bedroom. La petite Rose, it seemed, knew a game which involved the imitation of animals in endless repetition- My great-aunt lives in Tours, In a house with a cherry-tree With a little mouse (squeak, squeak)

And a big lion (roar, roar)

And a wood pigeon (coo, coo)... and so on quite indefinitely. It was a game that made no great demand on the intelligence, and Sheila wanted nothing better. Presently, they were all playing it; it was so that the femme de chambre found them.

She came in with the tea, laughing all over her face. 'In Touraine I learned that, as a little girl, myself,' she said. 'It is pretty, is it not? All children like "my great-aunt lives in Tours" - always, always. In England, monsieur, do the children play like that?'

'Much the same,' he said. 'Children in every country play the same games.'

He gave them their milk and bread and butter and jam. Near the Bureau de Ville he had seen a shop selling ginger-bread cakes, the tops of which were covered in crystallised fruits and sweets. He had bought one of these; as he was quite unused to housekeeping it was three times as large as was necessary. He cut it with his pen-knife on the dressing-table and they all had a slice. It was a very merry tea-party, so merry that the grinding of caterpillar tracks and the roaring of exhausts outside the window passed them by unnoticed.

They played a little more after tea; then he washed the children as the femme de chambre re-made the bed. She helped him to undress them and put them into their new pyjamas; then she held Sheila on her capacious lap while the old man took her temperature carefully under the arm. It was still a degree or so above normal, though the child was obviously better; whatever had been wrong with her was passing off. It would not be right, he decided, to travel on the next day; he had no wish to be held up with another illness in less comfortable surroundings.. But on the day after that, he thought it should be possible to get away. If they started very early in the morning they would get through to St Malo in the day. He would see about the car that night.

Presently, both the children were in bed, and kissed good night. He stood in the passage outside the room with the femme de chambre and her little girl. 'Tonight, monsieur,' she said, 'presently, when they are asleep, I will bring a mattress and make up a bed for monsieur on the floor. It will be better than the arm-chair, that.'

'You are very kind,' he said. 'I don't know why you should be so very, very good to us. I am most grateful.' She said: 'But monsieur, it is you who are kind...' He went down to the lobby, wondering a little at the effusive nature of the French.

Again the hotel was full of officers. He pushed his way to the desk and said to the girl: 'I want to hire a car, not now, but the day after tomorrow - for a long journey. Can you tell me which garage would be the best?' She said: 'For a long journey, monsieur? How far?'

'To St Malo, in Normandy. The little girl is still not very well. I think it will be easier to take her home by car.'

She said doubtfully: 'The Garage Citroën would be the best. But it will not be easy, monsieur. You understand - the cars have all been taken for the army. It would be easier to go by train.' He shook his head. 'I'd rather go by car.' She eyed him for a moment. 'Monsieur is going away, then, the day after tomorrow?'

'Yes, if the little girl is well enough to travel.' She said, awkwardly: 'I am desolated, but it will be necessary for monsieur to go then, at the latest. If the little one is still ill, we will try to find a room for monsieur in the town. But we have heard this afternoon, the hotel is to be taken over tomorrow by the Bureau Principal of the railway, from Paris.'

He stared at her. 'Are they moving the offices from Paris, then?'

She shook her head. 'I only know what I have told you, monsieur. All our guests must leave.'

He was silent for a minute. Then he said: 'What did you say was the name of the garage?'

'The Garage Citroën, monsieur. I will telephone and ask them, if you wish?'

He said: 'Please do.'

She turned away and went into the box; he waited at the desk, worried and anxious. He felt that the net of circumstances was closing in on him, driving him where he did not want to go. The car to St Malo was the knife that would cut through his difficulties and free him. Through the glass of the booth he saw her speaking volubly into ihe telephone; he waited on tenterhooks.

She came back presently. 'It is impossible,' she said. 'There is no car available for such a journey. I regret -Monsieur Duval, the proprietor of the garage, regrets also but monsieur will have to go by train.'

He said very quietly: 'Surely it would be possible to arrange something? There must be a car of some sort or another?'

She shrugged her shoulders. 'Monsieur could go to see Monsieur Duval perhaps, at the garage. If anybody in Dijon could produce a car for such a journey it would be he.'

She gave him directions for finding the garage; ten minutes later he was in the Frenchman's office. The garage owner was quite positive. 'A car, yes,' he declared. 'That is the least thing, monsieur, I could find the car. But petrol - not a litre that has not been taken by the army. Only by fraud can I get petrol for the car - you understand? And then, the roads. It is not possible to make one's way along the road to Paris, not possible at all, monsieur.'

'Finally,' he said, 'I could not find a driver for a journey such as that. The Germans are across the Seine, monsieur; they are across the Marne. Who knows where they will be the day after tomorrow?'

The old man was silent.

The Frenchman said: 'If monsieur wishes to get back to England he should go by train, and he should go very soon.'

Howard thanked him for the advice, and went out into the street. Dusk was falling; he moved along the pavement, deep in thought. He stopped by a café and went in, and ordered a Pernod with water. He took the drink and went and sat down at a table by the wall, and stayed there for some time, staring at the garish advertisements of cordials on the walls.

Things had grown serious. If he left now, at once, it might be possible to win through to St Malo and to England; if he delayed another thirty-six hours it might very well be that St Malo would be overwhelmed and smothered in the tide of the German rush, as Calais had been smothered, and Boulogne. It seemed incredible that they could still be coming on so fast. Surely, surely, they would be checked before they got to Paris? It could not possibly be true that Paris would fall?

He did not like this evacuation of the railway offices from Paris. That had an ugly sound.

He could go back now to the hotel. He could get both the children up and dress them, pay the bill at the hotel, and take them to the station. Ronnie would be all right. Sheila - well, after all, she had a coat. Perhaps he could get hold of a shawl to wrap her up in. True it was night-time and the trains would be irregular; they might have to sit about for hours on the platform in the night waiting for a train that never came. But he would be getting the children back to England, as he had promised Cavanagh.

But then, if Sheila should get worse? Suppose she took a chill and got pneumonia?

If that should happen, he would never forgive himself. The children were in his care; it was not caring for them if he went stampeding to the station in the middle of the night to start on a long, uncertain journey regardless of their weakness and their illness. That wasn't prudence. That was... fright.

He smiled a little at himself. That's what it was, just fright - something to be conquered. Looking after children, after all, meant caring for them in sickness. That's what it meant. It was quite clear. He'd taken the responsibility for them, and he must see it through, even though it now seemed likely to land him into difficulties that he had not quite anticipated when he first took on the job.

He got up and went back to the hotel. In the lobby the girl said to him: 'Monsieur has found a car?'

He shook his head. 'I shall stay here till the day after tomorrow. Then, if the little girl is well, we will go on by train.'

He paused. 'One thing, mademoiselle. I will only be able to take one little bag for the three of us, that I can carry myself. If I leave my fishing-rods, would you look after them for me for a time?'

'But certainly, monsieur. They will be quite safe.'

He went into the restaurant and found a seat for dinner. It was a great relief to him that he had found a means to place his rods in safety. Now that that little problem had been solved, he was amazed to find how greatly it had been distressing him; with that disposed of he could face the future with a calmer mind.

He went up to the bedroom shortly after dinner. The femme de chambre met him in the corridor, the yellow, dingy, corridor of bedrooms, lit only by a low-power lamp without a shade. 'I have made monsieur a bed on the floor,' she said in a low tone. 'You will see.' She turned away.

That was very kind of you,' he said. He paused, and looked curiously at her. In the dim light he could not see very clearly, but he had the impression that she was sobbing.

'Is anything the matter?' he asked gently.

She lifted the corner of her apron to her eyes. 'It is nothing,' she muttered. 'Nothing at all.'

He hesitated, irresolute. He could not leave her, could not just walk into his bedroom and shut the door, if she was in trouble. She had been too helpful with the children. 'Is it Madame?' he said. 'Has she complained about your work? If so, I will speak to her. I will tell her how much you have helped me.'

She shook her head and wiped her eyes.

'It is not that, monsieur,' she said. 'But - I am dismissed. I am to go tomorrow.'

He was amazed. 'But why?'

'Five years,' she said. 'Five years I have been with Madame - in all seasons of the year, monsieur - five years continuously! And now, to be dismissed at the day! It is intolerable, that.' She began to weep a little louder.

The old man said: 'But why has Madame done this?'

She said: 'Have you not heard? The hotel is closing tomorrow. It is to be an office for the railway.' She raised her tear-stained face. 'All of us are dismissed, monsieur, everyone. I do not know what will happen to me, and la petite Rose.'

He was dumbfounded, not knowing what to say to help the woman. Obviously, if the hotel was to be an office for the railway staff, there would be no need for any chamber-maids; the whole hotel staff would have to go. He hesitated, irresolute.

'You will be all right,' he said at last. 'It will be easy for so good a femme de chambre as you to get another job.'

She shook her head. 'It is not so. All the hotels are closing, and what family can now afford a servant? You are kind, monsieur, but it is not so. I do not know how we shall live.'

'You have some relations, or family, that you can go to, no doubt?'

'There is nobody, monsieur. Only my brother, father of little Rose, and he is in England.'

Howard remembered the wine waiter at the Dickens Hotel in Russell Square. He said a word or two of meagre comfort and optimism to the woman; presently he escaped into the bedroom. It was impossible for him to give her any help in her great trouble.

She had made him quite a comfortable bed on a mattress laid on the floor. He went over to the children's bed and took a look at them; they were sleeping very deeply, though Sheila still seemed hot. He sat for a little reading in the arm-chair, but he soon grew tired; he had not slept properly the night before and he had had an anxious and a worrying day. Presently he undressed, and went to bed on the floor.

When he awoke the dawn was bright; from the window there came a great groaning clatter as a tank got under way and lumbered up the road. The children were awake and playing in the bed; he lay for a little, simulating sleep, and then got up. Sheila was cool, and apparently quite well.

He dressed himself and took her temperature. It was very slightly above normal still; evidently, whatever it was that had upset her was passing off. He washed them both and set Ronnie to dress himself, then went downstairs to order breakfast.

The hotel routine was already disarranged. Furniture was being taken from the restaurant; it was clear that no more meals would be served there. He found his way into the kitchen, where he discovered the femme de chambre in depressed consultation with the other servants, and arranged for a tray to be sent up to his room.

That was a worrying, trying sort of day. The news from the north was uniformly bad; in the town people stood about in little groups talking in low tones. He went to the station after breakfast with Ronnie, to enquire about the trains to Paris, leaving Sheila in bed in the devoted care of la petite Rose. They told him at the station that the trains to Paris were much disorganised 'a cause de la situation militaire,' but trains were leaving every three or four hours. So far as they knew, the services from Paris to St Malo were normal, though that was on the Chemin de L'Ouest.

He walked up with Ronnie to the centre of the town, and ventured rather timidly into the children's department of a very large store. A buxom Frenchwoman came forward to serve him, and sold him a couple of woollen jerseys for the children and a grey, fleecy blanket. He bought the latter more by instinct than by reason, fearful of the difficulties of the journey. Of all difficulties, the one he dreaded most was that the children would get ill again.

They bought a few more sweets, and went back to the hotel. Already the hall was thronged with seedy-looking French officials, querulous from their journey and disputing over offices. The girl from the desk met Howard as he went upstairs. He could keep his room for one more night, she said; after that he must get out. She would try and arrange for meals to be sent to the room, but he would understand - it would not be as she would wish the service.

He thanked her and went up upstairs. La petite Rose was reading about Babar to Sheila from the picture-book; she was curled up in a heap on the bed and they were looking at the pictures together. Sheila looked up at Howard, bright and vivacious, as he remembered her at Cidoton.

'Regardez,' she said, 'voici Jacko climbing right up the queue de Babar on to his back!' She wriggled in exquisite amusement. 'Isn't he naughty!.'

He stopped and looked at the picture with them. 'He is a naughty monkey, isn't he?' he said.

Sheila said: 'Drefully naughty.'

Rose said very softly: 'Qu'est-ce que monsieur a dit?'

Ronnie explained to her in French, and the bilingual children went on in the language of the country. To Howard they always spoke in English, but French came naturally to them when playing with other children. It was not easy for the old man to determine in which language they were most at home. On the whole, Ronnie seemed to prefer to speak in English. Sheila slipped more naturally into French, perhaps because she was younger and more recently in charge of nurses.

The children were quite happy by themselves. Howard got out the attaché case and looked at it; it was very small to hold necessities for three of them. He decided that Ronnie might carry that one, and he would get a rather larger case to carry himself, to supplement it. Fired by this idea, he went out of the bedroom to go to buy a cheap fibre case.

On the landing he met the femme de chambre. She hesitated, then stopped him.

'Monsieur is leaving tomorrow?' she said.

'I have to go away, because they want the room,' he replied. 'But I think the little girl is well enough to travel.

I shall get her up for déjeuner, and then this afternoon she can come out for a little walk with us.'

'Ah, that will be good for her. A little walk, in the sun.' She hesitated again, and then she said: 'Monsieur is travelling direct to England?'

He nodded. 'I shall not stay in Paris. I shall take the first train to St Malo.'

She turned her face up to him, lined and prematurely old, beseechingly. 'Monsieur - it is terrible to ask. Would you take la petite Rose with you, to England?'

He was silent; he did not quite know what to say to that. She went on hurriedly.

'I have the money for the fare, monsieur. And Rose is a good little girl - oh, she is so good, that one. She would not trouble monsieur, no more than a little mouse.'

Every instinct warned the old man that he must kill this thing stone dead - quick. Though he would not admit it to himself, he knew that to win through to England would take all his energy, burdened as he was with two little children. In the background of his mind lurked fear, fear of impending, absolute disaster.

He stared down at the tear-stained, anxious face, and temporised. 'But why do you want to send her to England?' he asked. 'The war will never come to Dijon. She will be quite safe here.'

The woman said: 'I have no money, monsieur. Her father is in England, but he cannot send money to us here. It is better that she should go to England, now.'

He said: 'Perhaps I could arrange to help him to send money.' There was still a substantial balance on his letter of credit. 'You do not want her to leave you, do you?'

She said: 'Monsieur, things are happening in France that you English do not understand. We are afraid of what is coming, all of us...'

They were silent for a moment.

'I know things are very bad,' he said quietly. 'It may be difficult for me, an Englishman, to get to England now. I don't think it will be - but it may. Suppose I could not get her out of the country for some reason?'

She wrinkled her face up and lifted the corner of her apron to her eyes. 'In England she would be safe,' she muttered. 'I do not know what is going to happen to us, here in Dijon. I am afraid.' She began to cry again.

He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. There,' he said. 'I will think about it this afternoon. It's not a thing to be decided in a hurry.' He made his escape from her, and went down to the street.

Once out in the street, he quite forgot what he had come for. Absent-mindedly he walked towards the centre of the town, wondering how he could evade the charge of another child. Presently, he sat down in a café and ordered himself a bock.

It was not that he had anything against la petite Rose. On the contrary, he liked the child; she was a quiet, motherly little thing. But she would be another drag on him at a time when he knew with every instinct of his being that he could tolerate no further drags. He knew himself to be in danger. The sweep and drive of Germany down in France was no secret any longer; it was like the rush through Belgium had been in the last war, only more intense. If he delayed a moment longer than was necessary, he would be engulfed by the invading army. For an Englishman that meant a concentration camp, for a man of his age that probably meant death.

From his chair on the pavement he stared out on the quiet, sunlit Place. Bad times were coming for the French; he and his children must get out of it, damn quick. If the Germans conquered they would bring with them, inevitably, their trail of pillage and starvation, gradually mounting towards anarchy as they faced the inevitable defeat. He must not let his children be caught in that. Children in France, if she were beaten down, would have a terrible time.

It was bad luck on little Rose. He had nothing against her; indeed, she had helped him in the last two days. He would have found it difficult to manage Sheila if Rose had not been there. She had kept the little girl, hardly more than a baby, happy and amused in a way that Howard himself could never have managed alone.

It was a pity that it was impossible to take her. In normal times he might have been glad of her; he had tried in Cidoton to find a young girl who would travel with them to Calais. True, Rose was only ten years old, but she was peasant-French; they grew up very quickly...

Was it impossible to take her?

Now it seemed desperately cruel, impossible to leave her behind.

He sat there miserably irresolute for hah0 an hour. In the end he got up and walked slowly back to the hotel, desperately worried. In his appearance he had aged five years.

He met the femme de chambre on the landing. 'I have made up my mind,' he said heavily. 'La petite Rose may come with us to England; I will take her to her father. She must be ready to start tomorrow morning, at seven o'clock.'

Chapter 4

That night Howard slept very little. He lay on his bed on the floor, revolving in his mind the things he had to do, the various alternative plans he must make if things should go awry. He had no fear that they would not reach Paris. They would get there all right; there was a train every three or four hours. But after that - what then? Would he be able to get out of Paris again, to St Malo for the boat to England? That was the knotty point. Paris had stood a siege before, in 1870; it might well be that she was going to stand another one. With three children on his hands he could not let himself be caught in a besieged city. Somehow or other he must find out about the journey to England before they got to Paris.

He got up at about half-past five, and shaved and dressed. Then he awoke the children; they were fretful at being roused and Sheila cried a little, so that he had to stop and take her on his lap and wipe her eyes and make a fuss of her. In spite of the tears she was cool and well, and after a time submitted to be washed and dressed.

Ronnie said, sleepily: 'Are we going in the motor-car?'

'No,' said the old man, 'not today, I couldn't get a car to go in.'

'Are we going in a char de combat?

'No. We're going in a train.'

'Is that the train we're going to sleep in?'

Howard shook his head patiently. 'I couldn't manage that, either. We may have to sleep in it, but I hope that we'll be on the sea tonight.'

'On a ship?'

'Yes. Go on and clean your teeth; I've put the toothpaste on the brush for you.'

There was a thunderous roar above the hotel, and an aeroplane swept low over the station. It flew away directly in a line with their window, a twin-engined, low-wing monoplane, dark green in colour. In the distance there was a little, desultory rattle, like musketry fire on a distant range.

The old man sat on the bed, staring at it as it receded in the distance. It couldn't possibly...

Ronnie said: 'Wasn't that one low, Mr Howard?'

They'd never have the nerve to fly so low as that. It must have been a French one. 'Very low,' he said, a little unsteadily. 'Go on and clean your teeth.'

Presently there was a tap on the door, and the/emme de chambre was there bearing a tray of coffee and rolls. Behind her came la petite Rose, dressed in her Sunday best, with a large black straw hat, a tight black overcoat, and white socks. She looked very uncomfortable.

Howard said kindly in French: 'Good morning, Rose. Are you coming with us to England?'

She said: 'Oui, monsieur.'

The femme de chambre said: 'All night she has been talking about going in the train, and going to England, and going to live with her father. She has hardly slept at all, that one.' There was a twist in her smile as she spoke; it seemed to Howard that she was not far from tears again.

'That's fine,' he said. He turned to the femme de chambre.

'Sit down and have a cup of coffee with us. Rose will, won't you, Rose?'

The woman said: 'Merci, monsieur. But I have the sandwiches to prepare, and I have had my coffee.' She rubbed the little girl's shoulder. 'Would you like another cup of coffee, ma petite?'

She left Rose with them and went out. In the bedroom Howard sat the children down, each with a buttered roll to eat and a cup full of weak coffee to drink. The children ate very slowly; he had finished his own meal by the time they were only half-way through. He pottered about and packed up their small luggage; Rose had her own things in a little attache case on the floor beside her.

The children ate on industriously. The femme de chambre came back with several large, badly-wrapped parcels of food for the journey, and a very large wine bottle full of milk. There,' she said unsteadily. 'Nobody will starve today!'

The children laughed merrily at the poor joke. Rose had finished, and Ronnie was engulfing the last mouthful, but Sheila was still eating steadily. There was nothing now to wait for, and the old man was anxious to get to the station for fear that they might miss a train. 'You don't want that,' he said to Sheila, indicating her half-eaten roll. 'You'd better leave it. We've got to go now.'

'I want it,' she said mutinously.

'But we've got to go now.'

'I want it.'

He was not going to waste energy over that. 'All right,' he said, 'you can bring it along with you.' He picked up their bags and shepherded them all out into the corridor and down the stairs.

At the door of the hotel he turned to the/emme de chambre. 'If there is any difficulty I shall come back here,' he said.

'Otherwise, as I said, I will send a telegram when we reach England, and Rose is with her father.'

She said quickly: 'But monsieur must not pay for that, Henri will send the telegram.'

He was touched. 'Anyway, it will be sent directly we arrive in London. Au revoir, mademoiselle.'

'Au revoir, monsieur. Bonne chance.' She stood and watched them as he guided the three children across the road in the thin morning sunlight, the tears running all unheeded down the furrows of her face.

In the station there was great confusion. It was quite impossible to find out the times or likelihood of trains, or whether, amongst all the thronging soldiers, there would be seats for children. The most that he could learn was that trains for Paris came in at Quai 4 and that there had been two since midnight. He went to the booking-office to get a ticket for Rose, but it was closed.

'One does not take tickets any more,' a bystander said. 'It is not necessary.'

The old man stared at him. 'One pays, then, on the train, perhaps?'

The man shrugged his shoulders. 'Perhaps.'

There was nobody to check tickets as they passed on to the platform. He led the children through the crowd, Sheila still chewing her half-eaten roll of bread, clutched firmly in a hand already hot. Quai 4 was practically deserted, rather to his surprise. There did not seem to be great competition to get to Paris; all the traffic seemed to be the other way.

He saw an engine-driver, and approached him: 'It is here that the train for Paris will arrive?'

'But certainly.'

The statement was not reassuring. The empty spaces of the platform oppressed the old man; they were unnatural, ominous. He walked along to a seat and put down all the parcels and attaché cases on it, then settled down to wait until a train should come.

The children began running up and down the platform, playing games of their own making. Presently, mindful of the chill that had delayed him, he called Ronnie and Sheila to hun and took off their coats, thinking to put them on when they were in the train. As an afterthought he turned to Rose.

'You also,' he said. 'You will be better playing without your coat, and the hat.'

He took them off and put them on the seat beside him. Then he lit his pipe, and settled down to wait in patience for the train.

It came at about half-past eight, when they had been there for an hour and a half. There were a few people on the platform by that time, not very many. It steamed into the station, towering above them; there were two soldiers on the footplate of the engine with the train crew.

To his delight, it was not a crowded train. He made as quickly as he could for a first-class compartment, and found one occupied only by two morose officers of the Armée de l'Air. The children swarmed on to the seats and climbed all over the carriage, examining everything, chattering to each other in mixed French and English. The two officers looked blacker; before five minutes had elapsed they had got up, swearing below their breath, and had removed to another-carriage.

Howard looked at them helplessly as they went. He would have liked to apologise, but he didn't know how to put it.

Presently, he got the children to sit down. Mindful of chills, he said: 'You'd better put your coats on now. Rose, you put yours on, too.'

He proceeded to put Sheila into hers. Rose looked around the carriage blankly. 'Monsieur - where is my coat? And my hat, also?'

He looked up. 'Eh? You had them when we got into the train?'

But she had not had them. She had rushed with the other children to the carriage, heedless, while Howard hurried along behind her, burdened with luggage. Her coat and hat had been left on the station bench.

Her face wrinkled up, and she began to cry. The old man stared at her irritably for a moment; he had thought that she would be a help to him. Then the patience borne of seventy years of disappointments came to his aid; he sat down and drew her to him, wiping her eyes. 'Don't bother about it,' he said gently. 'We'll get another hat and another coat in Paris. You shall choose them yourself.'

She sobbed: 'But they were so expensive.'

He wiped her eyes again. 'Never mind,' he said. 'It couldn't be helped. I'll tell your aunt when I send the telegram that it wasn't your fault.'

Presently she stopped crying. Howard undid one of his many parcels of food and they all had a bit of an orange to eat, and all troubles were forgotten.

The train went slowly, stopping at every station and occasionally in between. From Dijon to Tonnerre is seventy miles; they pulled out of that station at about half-past eleven, three hours after leaving Dijon. The children had stood the journey pretty well so far; for the last hour they had been running up and down the corridor shouting, while the old man dozed uneasily in a corner of the compartment.

He roused after Tonnerre, and fetched them all back into the carriage for déjeuner of sandwiches and milk and oranges. They ate slowly, with frequent distractions to look out of the window. Sandwiches had a tendency to become mislaid during these pauses, and to vanish down between the cushions of the seats. Presently they were full. He gave them each a cup of milk, and laid Sheila down to rest on the seat, covered over with the blanket he had bought in Dijon. He made Rose and Ronnie sit down quietly and look at Babar; then he was able to rest himself.

From Tonnerre to Joigny is thirty miles. The train was going slower than ever, stopping for long periods for no apparent reason. Once, during one of these pauses, a large flight of aeroplanes passed by the window, flying very high; the old man was shocked to hear the noise of gunfire, and to see a few white puffs of smoke burst in the cloudless sky far, far below them. It seemed incredible, but they must be German. He strained his eyes for fighters so far as he could do without calling the attention of the children from their books, but there were no fighters to be seen. The machines wheeled slowly round and headed back towards the east, unhindered by the ineffective fire.

The old man sank back into his seat, full of doubts and fears.

He was dozing a little when the train pulled into Joigny soon after one o'clock. It stood there in the station in the hot sunlight, interminably. Presently a man came down the corridor.

'Descendez, monsieur,' he said. 'This train goes no farther.'

Howard stared up at him dumbfounded. 'But - this is the Paris train?'

'It is necessary to change here. One must descend.'

'When will the next train leave for Paris?'

'I do not know, monsieur. That is a military affair.' He got the children into their coats, gathered his things together, and presently was on the platform, burdened with his luggage, with the three children trailing after him. He went straight to the station-master's office. There was an officer there, a capitaine des transports. The old man asked a few straight questions, and got straight answers.

'There will be no more trains for Paris, monsieur. None at all. I cannot tell you why, but no more trains will run north from Joigny.'

There was a finality in his tone that brooked no argument. The old man said: 'I am travelling to St Malo, for England, with these children. How would you advise me to get there?'

The young officer stared at him. 'St Malo? That is not the easiest journey, now, monsieur.' He thought for a moment. 'There would be trains from Chartres... And in one hour, at half-past two, there is an autobus for Montargis... You must go by Montargis, monsieur. By the autobus to Montargis, then to Pithiviers, from Pithiviers to Angerville, and from Angerville to Chartres. From Chartres you will be able to go by train to St Malo.'

He turned to an angry Frenchwoman behind Howard, and the old man was elbowed out of the way. He retired on to the platform, striving to remember the names of the places that he had just heard. Then he thought of his little Baedeker and got it out, and traced the recommended course across country to Chartres. It skirted round Paris, sixty miles farther west. So long as there were buses one could get to Chartres that way, but Heaven alone knew how long it would take.

He knew the ropes where French country autobuses were concerned. He went and found the bus out in the station yard, and sat in it with the children. If he had been ten minutes later he would not have found a seat.

Worried and distracted by the chatter of the children, he tried to plan his course. To go on to Montargis seemed the only thing to do, but was he wise to do it? Would it not be better to try and travel back to Dijon? The route that he had been given through Montargis to Chartres was quite a sensible one according to his Baedeker; it lay along ar good main road for the whole of the hundred miles or so to Chartres. This bus would give him a good lift of thirty-five or forty miles on the way, so that by the time he left it he would be within sixty miles of Chartres and the railway to St Malo; provided he could get a bus to carry him that sixty miles he would be quite all right. If all went well he would reach Chartres that night, and St Malo the next morning; then the cross-channel boat and he would be home in England.

It seemed all right, but was it really wise? He could get back to Dijon, possibly, though even that did not seem very certain. But if he got back there, what then? With the Germans driving forward into France from the north,, and the Italians coming up from the south, Dijon seemed to be between two fires. He could not stay indefinitely in Dijon. It was better, surely, to take courage and go forward in the bus, by north and west in the direction of the Channel and home.

The bus became filled with a hot, sweating crowd of French country people. All were agitated and upset, all bore enormous packages with them, all were heading to the west. Howard took Sheila on his knee to make more room and squeezed Ronnie standing up between his legs. Rose pressed up against him, and an enormous woman with a very small infant in her arms shared the seat with them. From the conversation of the people in the bus Howard learned that the Germans were still pouring on, but that Paris would be defended to the last. Nobody knew how far the Germans had advanced, how near to Joigny they might be. It was wise to move, to go and stay with relations farther to the west.

One man said: 'The Chamber has left Paris. It is now at Tours.' Somebody else said that that rumour was not true, and a desultory argument began. Nobody seemed to take much interest in the Chamber; Paris and the life of cities meant very little to these peasants and near-peasants.

It was suffocatingly hot in the bus. The two English children stood it better than Howard could have expected; la petite Rose seemed to be more affected than they were. Howard, looking down, saw that she had gone very white. He bent towards her.

'Are you tired?' he said kindly. She shook her head mutely. He turned and struggled with the window at his side; presently he succeeded in opening it a little and letting in a current of warm, fresh air.

Presently the driver climbed into his seat, and the grossly overloaded vehicle lumbered from the square.

The movement brought a little more air into the bus.

They left the town after a couple of stops, carrying an additional load of people on the roof. They started out along the long straight roads of France, dusty and in poor repair. The dust swirled round the heavy vehicle; it drove in at the open window, powdering them all. Ronnie, standing between the old man's legs, clung to the window, avid for all that he could see; Howard turned Sheila on his lap with difficulty, so that she could see out too.

Beside him, presently, Rose made a little wailing cry. Howard looked down, and saw her face white with a light greenish hue; before he could do anything to help her she had vomited on the floor.

For a moment he was startled and disgusted. Then patience came back to him; children couldn't help that sort of thing. She was coughing and weeping; he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped her face and comforted her.

'Pauvre petite chou,' he said awkwardly. 'You will be better now. It is the heat.'

With some struggling he moved Sheila over and lifted Rose up on his knee, so that she could see out and have more air. She was still crying bitterly; he wiped her eyes and talked to her as gently as he could. The broad woman by him smiled serenely, quite unmoved by the disaster.

'It is the rocking,' she said in soft Midland French, 'like the sea. Always I have been sick when, as a little girl, I have travelled. Always, always. In the train and in the bus, always, quite the same.' She bent down. 'Sois tranquille, ma petite,' she said. 'It is nothing, that.'

Rose glanced up at her, and stopped crying. Howard chose the cleanest corner of his handkerchief and wiped her eyes. Thereafter she sat very quiet and subdued on his knee, watching the slowly moving scene outside the window.

'I'm never sick in motor-cars,' said Ronnie proudly in English. The woman looked at them with new curiosity; hitherto they had spoken in French.

The road was full of traffic, all heading to the west. Old battered motor-cars, lorries, mule carts, donkey-carts, all were loaded to disintegration point with people making for Montargis. These wound in and out among the crowds of people pushing hand-carts, perambulators, wheelbarrows even, all loaded with their goods. It was incredible to Howard; it seemed as though the whole countryside were in flight before the armies. The women working in the fields looked up from time to time in pauses of their work to stare at the strange cavalcade on the highway. Then they bent again to the harvest of their roots; the work in hand was more important than the strange tides that flowed on the road.

Halfway to Montargis the bus heeled slowly to the near side. The driver wrestled with the steering; a clattering bump, rhythmic, came from the near back wheel. The vehicle drew slowly to a stop beside the road.

The driver got down from his seat to have a look. Then he walked slowly back to the entrance to the bus. 'Un pneu,' he said succinctly, 'il faut descende - tout le monde. We must change the wheel.'

Howard got down with relief. They had been sitting in the bus for nearly two hours, of which an hour had been on the road. The children were hot and tired and fretful; a change would obviously be a good thing. He took them one by one behind a little bush in decent manner; a proceeding which did not escape the little crowd of passengers collected by the bus. They nudged each other. 'C'est un anglais...'

The driver, helped by a couple of passengers, wrestled to jack up the bus and get the flat wheel off. Howard watched them working for a little time; then it occurred to him that this was a good opportunity to give the children tea. He fetched his parcel of food from the rack, and took the children a few yards up the road from the crowd. He sat them down on the grass verge in the shade of a tree, and gave them sandwiches and milk.

The road stretched out towards the west, dead straight. As far as he could see it was thronged with vehicles, all moving the same way. He felt it really was a most extraordinary sight, a thing that he had never seen before, a population in migration.

Presently Rose said she heard an aeroplane.

Instinctively, Howard turned his head. He could hear nothing.

'I hear it,' Ronnie said. 'Lots of aeroplanes.'

Sheila said: 'I want to hear the aeroplane.'

'Silly,' said Ronnie. 'There's lots of them. Can't you hear?'

The old man strained his ears, but he could hear nothing. 'Can you see where they are?' he asked, nonchalantly. A cold fear lurked in the background of his mind.

The children scanned the sky. 'V'là,' said Rose, pointing suddenly. Trots avions - là.'

Ronnie twisted round in excitement to Howard. 'They're coming down towards us! Do you think we'll see them close?'

'Where are they?' he enquired. He strained his eyes in the direction from which they had come. 'Oh, I see. They won't come anywhere near here. Look, they're going down over there.'

'Oh..." said Ronnie, disappointed. 'I did want to see them close.'

They watched the aircraft losing height towards the road, about two miles away. Howard expected to see them land among the fields beside the road, but they did not land. They flattened out and flew along just above the tree-tops, one on each side of the road and one behind flying down the middle. A little crackling rattle sounded from them as they came. The old man stared, incredulous - it could not be...

Then, in a quick succession, from the rear machine, five bombs fell on the road. Howard saw the bombs actually leave the aeroplane, saw five great spurts of flame on the road, saw queer, odd fragments hurled into the air.

From the bus a woman shrieked: 'Les Allemands!' and pandemonium broke loose. The driver of the little Peugeot car fifty yards away saw the gesticulations of the crowd, looked back over his shoulder, and drove straight into the back of a mule cart, smashing one of its wheels and cascading the occupants and load on to the road. The French around the bus dashed madly for the door, hoping for shelter in the glass and plywood body, and jammed in a struggling, pitiful mob in the entrance. The machines flew on towards them, their machine-guns spitting flame. The rear machine, its bombs discharged, flew forward and to the right; with a weaving motion the machine on the right dropped back to the rear centre, ready in its turn to bomb the road.

There was no time to do anything, to go anywhere, nor was there anywhere to go. Howard caught Sheila and Ronnie and pulled them close to him, flat on the ground. He shouted to Rose to lie down, quickly.

Then the machines were on them, low-winged, single engined monoplanes with curious bent wings, dark green in colour. A burst of fire was poured into the bus from the machines to right and left; a stream of tracer-bullets shot forward up the road from the centre aircraft. A few bullets lickered straight over Howard and his children on the grass and spattered in the ground a few yards behind them.

For a moment Howard saw the gunner in the rear cockpit as he fired at them. He was a young man, not more than twenty, with a keen, tanned face. He wore a yellow students' corps cap, and he was laughing as he fired.

Then the two flanking aircraft had passed, and the centre one was very near. Looking up, the old man could see the bombs slung in their racks beneath the wing; he watched in agony for them to fall. They did not fall. The machine passed by them, not a hundred feet away. He watched it as it went, sick with relief. He saw the bombs leave the machine three hundred yards up the road, and watched dumbly as the debris flew upwards. He saw the wheel of a cart go sailing through the air, to land in the field.

Then that graceful, weaving dance began again, the machine in the rear changing places with the one on the left. They vanished in the distance; presently Howard heard the thunder of another load of bombs on the road.

He released the children, and sat up on the grass. Ronnie was flushed and exerted. 'Weren't they close!' he said. 'I did see them well. Did you see them well, Sheila? Did you hear them firing the guns?'

He was ecstatically pleased. Sheila was quite unaffected. She said: 'May I have some orange?'

Howard said slowly and mechanically: 'No, you've had enough to eat. Drink up your milk.' He turned to Rose and found her inclined to tears. He knelt up and moved over to her. 'Did anything hit you?' he asked in French.

She shook her head dumbly.

'Don't cry, then,' he said kindly. 'Come and drink your milk. It'll be good for you.'

She turned her face up to him. 'Are they coming back? I don't like the noise they make.'

He patted her on the shoulder. 'Never mind,' he said a little unsteadily. 'The noise won't hurt you. I don't think they're coming back.' He filled up the one cup with milk and gave it to her. 'Have a drink.'

Ronnie said: 'I wasn't frightened, was I?'

Sheila echoed: 'I wasn't frightened, was I?'

The old man said patiently: 'Nobody was frightened. Rose doesn't like that sort of noise, but that's not being frightened.' He stared over to the little crowd around the bus. Something had happened there; he must go and see. 'You can have an orange,' he said. 'One-third each. Will you peel it, Rose?'

'Mais oui, monsieur.'

He left the children happy in the prospect of more food, and went slowly to the bus. There was a violent and distracted clamour from the crowd; most of the women were in tears of fright and rage. But to his astonishment, there were no casualties save one old woman who had lost two fingers of her left hand, severed cleanly near the knuckles by a bullet. Three women, well accustomed to first aid in accidents on the farm, were tending her, not inexpertly.

Howard was amazed that no one had been killed. From the right a dozen bullets had entered the body of the bus towards the rear; from the left the front wheels, bonnet and radiator had been badly shot about. Between the two the crowd of peasants milling round the door had escaped injury. Even the crowd in the small Peugeot had escaped, though one of the women in the mule cart was shot through the thigh. The mule itself was dying in the road.

There was nothing he could do to help the wounded women. His attention was attracted by a gloomy little knot of men around the driver of the bus; they had lifted the bonnet and were staring despondently at the engine. The old man joined them; he knew little of machinery, but it was evident even to him that all was not quite right. A great pool of water lay beneath the engine of the bus; from holes in radiator and cylinder casting the brown, rusty water still ran out.

One of the men turned aside to spit. 'Ça ne marche, plus,' he said succinctly.

It took a moment or two for the full meaning of this to come home to Howard. 'What does one do?' he asked the driver. 'Will there be another bus?'

'Not unless they find a madman for a driver.' There was a strained silence. Then the driver said: 'Il faut continuer à pied.'

It became apparent to Howard that this was nothing but the ugly truth. It was about four in the afternoon and Montargis was twenty-five kilometres, say fifteen miles, farther on, nearer to them than Joigny. They had passed one or two villages on the road from Joigny; no doubt one or two more lay ahead before Montargis. But there would be no chance of buses starting at these places, nor was there any reasonable chance of a hotel.

It was appalling, but it was the only thing. He and the children would have to walk, very likely the whole of the way to Montargis.

He went into the wrecked body of the bus and collected their things, the two attache cases, the little suitcase, and the remaining parcels of food. There was too much for him to carry very far unless the children could carry some of it; he knew that that would not be satisfactory for long. Sheila could carry nothing; indeed, she would have to be carried herself a great deal of the way. Ronnie and Rose, if they were to walk fifteen miles, would have to travel light.

He took his burdens back to the children and laid them down on the grass. It was impossible to take the suitcase with them; he packed it with the things that they could spare most easily and left it in the bus in the faint hope that one day it might somehow be retrieved. That left the two bulging little cases and the parcels of food. He could carry those himself.

'We're going to walk on to Montargis,' he explained to the children. The bus won't go.'

'Why not?' asked Ronnie.

'There's something the matter with the engine.'

'Oh - may I go and see?'

Howard said firmly: 'Not now. We're just going to walk on.' He turned to Rose. 'You will like walking more than riding in the bus, I know.'

She said: 'I did feel so ill.'

'It was very hot. You're feeling better now?'

She smiled. 'Oui, monsieur.'

They started out to walk in the direction of Montargis. The heat of the day was passing; it was not yet cool, but it was bearable for walking. They went very slowly, limited by the rate at which Sheila walked, which was slow. The old man strolled patiently along. It was no good worrying the children with attempts to hurry them; they had many miles to cover and he must let them go at their own pace.

Presently they came to the place where the second load of bombs had dropped.

There were two great craters in the road, and three more among the trees at the verge. There had been a cart of some sort there. There was little crowd of people busy at the side of the road; too late, he thought to make a detour from what he feared to let the children see.

Ronnie said clearly and with interest: 'Are those dead people, Mr Howard?'

He steered them over to the other side of the road. 'Yes,' he said quietly. 'You must be very sorry for them.'

'May I go and see?'

'No,' he said. 'You mustn't go and look at people when they're dead. They want to be left alone.'

'Dead people do look funny, don't they, Mr Howard?'

He could not think of what to say to that one, and herded them past in silence. Sheila was singing a little song and showed no interest; Rose crossed herself and walked by quickly with averted eyes.

They strolled on at their slow pace up the road. If there had been a side road Howard would have taken it, but there was no side road. It was impossible to make a detour other than by walking through the fields; it would not help him to turn back towards Joigny. It was better to go on.

They passed other casualties, but the children seemed to take little interest. He shepherded them along as quickly as he could; when they had passed the target for the final load of bombs there would probably be an end to this parade of death. He could see that place now, half a mile ahead. There were two motor-cars jammed in the road, and several trees seemed to have fallen.

Slowly, so slowly, they approached the place. One of the cars was wrecked beyond redemption. It was a Citroën front drive saloon; the bomb had burst immediately ahead of it, splitting the radiator in two and blasting in the windscreen. Then a tree had fallen straight on top of it, crushing the roof down till it touched the chassis. There was much blood on the road.

Four men, from a decrepit old de Dion, were struggling to lift the tree to clear the road for their own car to pass. On the grass verge a quiet heap was roughly covered by a rug.

Pulling and heaving at the tree, the men rolled it from the car and dragged it back, clearing a narrow passage with great difficulty. They wiped their brows, sweating, and clambered back into their old two-seater. Howard stopped by them as the driver started his engine.

'Killed?' he asked quietly.

The man said bitterly: 'What do you think? The filthy Bodies!' He let the clutch in and the car moved slowly forward round the tree and up the road ahead of them.

Fifty yards up the road it stopped. One of the men leaned back and shouted at him: 'You - with the children. You! Gardez le petit gosse!'

They let the clutch in and drove on. Howard looked down in bewilderment at Rose. 'What did he mean?'

'He said there was a little boy,' she said.

He looked around. 'There's no little boy here.'

Ronnie said: 'There's only dead people here. Under that rug.' He pointed with his finger.

Sheila awoke to the world about her. 'I want to see the dead people.'

The old man took her hand firmly in his own. 'Nobody goes to look at them,' he said. 'I told you that.' He stared around him in bewilderment.

Sheila said: 'Well, may I go and play with the boy?'

'There's no boy here, my dear.'

'Yes there is. Over there.'

She pointed to the far side of the road, twenty yards beyond the tree. A little boy of five or six was standing there, in fact, utterly motionless. He was dressed in grey, grey stockings above the knee, grey shorts, and a grey jersey. He was standing absolutely still, staring down the road towards them. His face was a dead, greyish white in colour.

Howard caught his breath at the sight of him, and said very softly: 'Oh, my God!' He had never seen a child looking like that, in all his seventy years.

He crossed quickly over to him, the children following. The little boy stood motionless as he approached, staring at him vacantly. The old man said: 'Are you hurt at all?'

There was no answer. The child did not appear to have heard him.

'Don't be afraid,' Howard said. Awkwardly he dropped down on one knee. 'What is your name?'

There was no answer. Howard looked round for some help, but for the moment there were no pedestrians. A couple of cars passed slowly circumnavigating the tree, and then a lorry full of weary, unshaven French soldiers. There was nobody to give him any help.

He got to his feet again, desperately perplexed. He must go on his way, not only to reach Montargis, but also to remove his children from the sight of that appalling car, capable, if they realised its grim significance, of haunting them for the rest of their lives. He could not stay a moment longer than was necessary in that place. Equally, it seemed impossible to leave this child. In the next village, or at any rate in Montargis, there would be a convent; he would take him to the nuns.

He crossed quickly to the other side of the road, telling the children to stay where they were. He lifted up a corner of the rug. They were a fairly well-dressed couple, not more than thirty years old, terribly mutilated in death. He nerved himself and opened the man's coat. There was a wallet in the inside pocket; he opened it, and there was the identity-card. Jean Duchot, of 8 bis, Rue de la Victoire, Lille.

He took the wallet and some letters and stuffed them into his pocket; he would turn them over to the next gendarme he saw. Somebody would have to arrange the burial of the bodies, but that was not his affair.

He went back to the children. Sheila came running to him, laughing. 'He is a funny little boy,' she said merrily. 'He won't say anything at all!'

The other two had stepped back and were staring with childish intensity at the white-faced boy in grey, still staring blankly at the ruins of the car. Howard put down the cases and took Sheila by the hand. 'Don't bother him,' he said. 'I don't suppose he wants to play just now.'

'Why doesn't he want to play?'

He did not answer that, but said to Rose and Ronnie: 'You take one of the cases each for a little bit.' He went up to the little boy and said to him: 'Will you come with us? We're all going to Montargis.'

There was no answer, no sign that he had heard.

For a moment Howard stood in perplexity; then he stooped and took his hand. In that hot afternoon it was a chilly, damp hand that he felt. 'Allans, mon vieux,' he said, with gentle firmness, 'we're going to Montargis.' He turned to the road; the boy in grey stirred and trotted docilely beside him. Leading one child with either hand, the old man strolled down the long road, the other children followed behind, each with a case.

More traffic overtook them, and now there was noticeable a greater proportion of military lorries mingled with the cars. Not only the civilians streamed towards the west; a good number of soldiers seemed to be going that way too. The lorries crashed and clattered on their old-fashioned solid rubber tyres, grinding their ancient gears. Half of them had acetylene headlamps garnishing the radiators, relics of the armies of 1918, stored twenty years in transport sheds behind the barracks in quiet country towns. Now they were out on the road again, but going in the other direction.