My Father's War, page 8
Anyway, we got back safely, if pale and shaken and very subdued. Monsieur Sureau told a distraught Madame Baudin what had happened and she thanked him profusely and gave him coffee and cake, which kept retribution from us for a short while. But we didn’t lose anything by waiting: when it came it was the worst, worst ever dressing-down I have ever had in my whole life. Even when Dad was really angry with me for doing something stupid it wasn’t half as bad as that.
Worst of all, though I know I should feel bad for frightening Madame Baudin, I don’t at all. She might be Paul’s grandmother but she is no relation to me, and she has no right to yell at me like that or to lock me in as though I had done something criminal of which I should be ashamed! Well I’m not. Not at all. I am glad, glad, glad we went to Monsieur Sureau’s place, because now I don’t have to think anymore that my father might have done something wrong. No matter what Madame Baudin says (and she says there is no proof, no proof at all, that my father is on a secret mission, that I mustn’t indulge in romantic fancies, and that Monsieur Sureau did right not to encourage my mother in such foolishness), I believe with every bit of me that it IS the truth. He is a real genuine hero who is risking his life every day and I am so proud of him even though I am so scared too—and scared for Mum, but so proud of her too! And if Madame Baudin thinks that is stupid, then good luck to her. I don’t care at all what she thinks! She’s just old and she doesn’t understand.
March 23
Locked in my room all day today. Even had to have my meals here. The shells are still falling but I have drawn the curtains, I can’t see the flashes and I am shutting my ears to the bangs and crashes. Besides, today it feels as though they have moved further away. Maybe our boys are forcing them back now—pray God that it be so.
Last night before I went to sleep (and after Madame Baudin had locked me in), I wrote everything down. And then I re-read it this morning and worked out some important things:
1. We know one of the leads Mum was given by May—and that is Monsieur Sureau. Mum went to see him because May must have found out Dad had planned to see him. Why would he do that? Because Sureau has links with the spy-people? Or for other reasons? Whatever, it might mean Monsieur Sureau knows more than he’s letting on.
2. On the other hand, there is the other lead—the other person Mum had been told about. Who is it? We don’t know. And the only way of knowing that is to ask May Pryce. We have to speak to her.
3. But she has gone to rejoin her unit.
4. Which has to be near the frontline—nurses are there to look after the wounded, and the casualty stations can’t be too far away from the battlefield or too many people might die on the way to be treated.
5. Those places Madame Baudin talked about the other day—that’s where the troops and the nurses will be heading. I looked them up in the atlas: Albert, Corbie, Villers-Bretonneux. They are about fifteen or twenty kilometres from Amiens. About ten miles or so in our reckoning. Not very far. Less than a day’s walk. But it might as well be the moon, for I can’t even think of getting away, with Madame Baudin watching me like a hawk.
March 24
I’m almost used to the shelling now. Almost—though sometimes there’s a really bad one that makes me jump. But Madame Baudin says they aren’t any closer yet. Today she allowed us out of our rooms (Paul had also been confined to his). But we had to be in her sight or Julie’s. And we weren’t allowed to talk privately together, in case we ‘get up to other tricks’, as Julie told us sternly. It is unpleasant, but there is nothing we can do about it.
At one stage Madame Baudin was talking to Julie about how the Clermonts had taken in their cousins, refugees from Villers-Bretonneux. I pricked up my ears about that, because I know that’s in the direction the Germans are advancing to, and I was hoping to hear details of what was happening there, but to no avail. And I didn’t dare to ask any questions, in case she suspects I am planning something she wouldn’t approve of. She is so suspicious now that I can’t even pretend I’m asking casually. She came unexpectedly into my room after just one knock this afternoon, just as I was reading over what I’d written yesterday. I only just had time to shove it out of sight under the bed.
She said, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
I hope she doesn’t look under the bed. I don’t want her reading my book. Knowing my thoughts. My feelings. She’d keep me under triple lock if she knew.
‘Annie, I know this has been hard for you. But I want you to understand I’m doing this for your own good.’
‘Mmm,’ I said, thinking that adults always say that when actually they just want to stop you from doing what you want.
She sighed. ‘Annie, please listen. You can’t help either of your parents by putting yourself in such danger. What if you had been killed, or injured?’
‘But I wasn’t,’ I muttered.
‘No—but you’re not immortal, child. Not invincible. Your mother asked me to look after you. How could I explain to her that bad things had happened to you because I was negligent in my duty?’
‘Nothing happened,’ I mumbled.
She flashed out, ‘Don’t be so stubborn, child! It could have done. We could have lost both of you. And for no reason.’
‘But you didn’t lose us. And we found out about Dad.’
‘What did you find out? Rumours, possibilities. No solid facts.’
‘Monsieur Sureau said—’
‘Precisely nothing. Apart from the fact he didn’t know your father and had never met him. The rest—you and Paul have woven it yourselves.’
‘No. He told Mum that Dad—’
‘He gave his opinion. He didn’t tell her any facts. How could he? He had no idea what your father had been doing.’
‘Maybe he just didn’t want to tell us.’
‘For goodness sake, Annie. You have to face facts.’
I wanted her to get out of my room, to stop badgering me, to leave me alone! I said between gritted teeth, ‘You just don’t understand.’
‘Oh but I do, Annie. I really do. And that’s why I want to keep you safe. Your parents—they are grown people. Responsible for their own choices. But you’re a child. You don’t know how the world works.’ Her voice grew stern. ‘And you are under my care and protection till your mother returns. And that’s that.’
I swallowed. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘For heaven’s sake. Life’s not fair, Annie. Don’t you know that yet?’
‘No,’ I said bitterly, ‘I’m just a child, remember? I don’t know anything.’
‘Oh, Annie.’ She held out a hand to me, but I ignored it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, very quietly. ‘I was too harsh. This wasn’t your idea after all, but Paul’s.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘We were in it together. Don’t blame him. He just knew I wanted so much to …’ I bit my lip, because suddenly I was choked and I couldn’t bring out any more words. I felt so angry, so sad, and most of all so helpless. I hate so much being just a kid, just someone you can just order around and tell lies to and treat like some sort of puppet. Paul understands. But no grown-up can. Not even Mum. Not even Dad. Certainly not old Madame Baudin.
She sighed. ‘You are good, brave children, both of you, and I have no doubt you both thought you were doing the right thing,’ she said gently. ‘But you must promise me not to do it again.’
I wanted to say, ‘How can I, anyway, with you watching me all the time?’ but I knew it was useless. If I keep fighting back, she’s going to stay suspicious of me. So I nodded and said ‘All right, I won’t.’ It’s not a lie, because I’m not planning to ‘do it again’—that is, I’m not planning to go see Sureau again, because I’m sure we’ll get nothing more out of him. And at the moment I can’t work out how I’m going to get to the frontline, but I don’t want her to think that’s what I’d like to do or she’ll go completely mad and will lock me up forever.
‘Good. I’m so glad. Now come down and have dinner. Julie’s made a bit of a treat for us—she’s opened a jar of preserved duck and a tin of beans and we’ll have a cassoulet, just like they have in the south. It’ll smell like herbs and sunshine and peaceful hillsides and it will make us all feel a deal better. What do you say?’
‘It sounds nice,’ I said politely, and then she smiled and we went downstairs.
March 26
Today during a longish lull in the shelling we had a surprise visit from Monsieur Clermont, who brought us some tins and some dried goods ‘to top up your supplies’. And the newspaper too. ‘The news always gets through somehow, those newspaper boys, brave in their own way too, eh?’ Monsieur Clermont said, and Madame Baudin agreed.
He told us what was in the paper, even before we read it. Most of it we knew already. The Germans are advancing en masse, with tanks and infantry and cavalry and artillery, across the Hindenburg Line to the north-east where they’ve been ensconced for months, advancing rapidly across eastern France, fighting every bit of the way. There’s an item about Amiens being pounded by artillery, which of course is no news to us, but so it appears are Reims and Montdidier and several other places, and there are fears Paris itself is the ultimate target. If they capture Amiens (God forbid), then their way might be straight to Paris.
‘It’s clear,’ said Monsieur Clermont, ‘that the Germans, hugely reinforced by their returned troops from the Russian front, are throwing everything at us in a massive effort to regain every bit of ground they were pushed back from so painfully two years ago—but it’s not so clear that we can push them back.’
It says in the paper that ‘the enemy are in huge numbers and we have our backs to the wall, but we will fight every millimetre of the way and we will never ever surrender.’ Monsieur Clermont says that the newspaper-hawker who brought the papers this morning told him that our troops are fighting back heroically but are overwhelmed by numbers and are being pushed back and back. Reinforcements are pouring in from Flanders and other places as fast as they can bus and truck and train them in, and are being flung at the battlefield in a desperate attempt to stem the tide. The roads are choked with troops going one way and refugees going the other. Nobody knows what’s going to happen, but everyone fears the worst.
March 27
This morning when I got up (before the shelling started—I’ve taken to getting up early so I can be downstairs before the noise starts) I found a short note from Paul, pushed under my door. It said:
Have you read The Scarlet Pimpernel yet?
Nothing else. I couldn’t work it out. Why send me a note like that at a time like this? Honestly, he is a very strange person.
But then I thought, he might be strange, but he’s certainly not stupid. He knows we can’t talk openly about the things we really want to discuss, so he’s trying to tell me something in a way that his grandmother won’t think of as ‘getting up to tricks’. Anyway, I had nothing better to do. So I got the book out and I read it. It’s set in the French Revolution, about a mysterious character called the Scarlet Pimpernel who saves people from the guillotine under the very noses of the bloodthirsty guards. His exploits get more and more daring and all the revolutionary soldiers are looking for him everywhere, but nobody has any idea who he really is. There’s a man called Chauvelin who really hates the Pimpernel and wants to unmask him, but he keeps failing. Meanwhile, in England, there’s this lady called Marguerite whose brother is in danger, and she wants her English husband, Sir Percy, who’s a silly sort of man, to help her. But he won’t, so she gets really upset and decides to go to France herself to look for her brother.
Anyway, it’s a good story, and jolly exciting, but at first I could not understand why Paul would be so keen I read it. And then, quite suddenly, I got it. The Scarlet Pimpernel was like a secret agent. He went behind enemy lines. And just like any secret agent must, he was going not as himself, but in disguise. To his enemies he must seem ordinary, harmless, even stupid. That way nobody would guess at the bravery, the razor-sharp mind, the sheer daring and real motives of the man behind the mask.
That’s what Paul must mean. Dad must have gone in disguise. Not as a German—not only can he not speak German, but it would seem odd for some stray German to be wandering without his unit in France. No, he would have gone as a Frenchman. After all, he spoke French. Dad used to be in an amateur theatrical group at home. I’ve seen him giving an impression of a bent old cove—he had it down pat, right down to the stoop in his walk, the quaver in his voice, and the talcum powder in his hair to whiten it. I can just imagine him getting kitted up in some simple old man disguise and slipping through enemy lines.
March 28
Managed to have a word with Paul alone today. Told him what I thought, and he nodded. ‘Knew you’d see it once you read it.’
‘You could just have told me.’
‘Not with Grandmother breathing down our necks!’
‘That’s true. Trouble is,’ I said, ‘how does that get us any further? We have no idea what he went disguised as and we don’t …’
And then my voice died away and my throat tightened as I remembered something. Monsieur Clermont saying ‘The news, it must get through, no matter what.’ I think of a picture on a crumpled newspaper page: eager soldiers clustered around a wandering pedlar: an old woman, in cloak and clogs, handing out her goods as fast as she could sell them. And what she was selling to her eager buyers were newspapers—that she’d transported in a wheelbarrow.
The wheelbarrow Mum had offered to buy from Monsieur Sureau! I had dismissed as being of little importance. But now I felt prickly all over.
‘What’s the matter?’ Paul said. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
I explained. He said slowly, ‘You think that’s how your father got through? But surely the Germans would be suspicious. Newspaper-sellers are usually well-informed. They’d know where the line was. Pretending to wander across it by accident wouldn’t cut much ice with the Boche. And even if it did, at best they’d just boot you back. Wasted effort.’
‘I agree, it wouldn’t get you through German lines. But it could get you to the front. It wasn’t a man in the picture, Paul—but a woman.’
He stared at me. ‘You mean—you think that’s what your mother has done?’
‘Yes.’
‘But Sureau did not sell her his wheelbarrow.’
‘She could have got one from someone else. Anyone. She could even have stolen one, if she had to.’
‘I suppose that is a—’ he began, then gave an exclamation.
‘What is it?’
He said excitedly, ‘The Clermonts were robbed the night your mother disappeared. Do you recall what the burglars took?’
I whispered, ‘Clogs, flour—and newspapers! Oh my God, Paul. Then it’s true! That’s what she’s done!’
He frowned. ‘Clogs and papers, yes, I can understand. But flour?’
‘Because she didn’t have talcum powder with her,’ I said slowly. ‘And she had to have something, to make her look old.’
We stared at each other. But before either of us could speak again, Madame Baudin came into the room, making us jump guiltily apart. She didn’t notice. She said vaguely, ‘Oh, there you are. Is everything all right?’
‘Quite, quite,’ said Paul. ‘We were—er—’
‘We were discussing The Scarlet Pimpernel,’ I said boldly. ‘Paul lent it to me.’
‘Ah yes,’ she said, obviously only half-listening. ‘Glad you children are getting on. Now, Paul, if you don’t mind, will you please go and help Julie with lunch?’
‘I’ll help too,’ I said.
‘No. Stay here with me, child. Sit here, next to me.’
Noticing for the first time how pale she was and how her thin hands shook, I said hesitantly, ‘Madame Baudin, are you unwell?’
‘No. Just a little—tired. Perhaps this shelling is getting to me after all. Perhaps I’m getting old. Or perhaps it’s because I haven’t slept properly in days.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘Anyway, let’s not talk about that, but about something more cheerful. This book of Paul’s—did you enjoy it?’
‘Oh, very much.’
‘That was the one Captain Packard gave him,’ she said. ‘A nice young man, that one. I wonder what’s happened to—’ She broke off, then went on brightly. ‘Do you know, I’ve never read it, not even in French. Would you like to tell me what it’s about?’
So I did, and as I told the story, getting more and more tangled up and forgetting things and getting mixed up, I saw her eyelids drooping and drooping. After a little while she gave a gentle snore, and I knew she was asleep. So I tiptoed out of the room and left her sleeping there, and went to help Paul and Julie in the kitchen.
March 29
Monsieur Clermont came round again. He looks as though he’s not sleeping properly either; there are dark circles under his eyes. He spent ages with Madame Baudin in the drawing room. I don’t know what they talked about, but when I came down I found Julie in the kitchen, crying. Found out later that’s because she’s leaving us to go and stay with family in Brittany. Her nerves, she said, can’t take any more of what she calls this ‘war of attrition’. She keeps weeping and saying she’s sorry to leave us in the lurch. I was surprised, because I thought she seemed so calm and collected. It just goes to show. Madame Baudin said Julie must not worry about us, we quite understood, and we would cope, even though we would miss her good cooking. And Julie cried even more.
Night
Julie’s gone. Monsieur Clermont took her to the station this afternoon. It felt odd at dinner tonight without her there. I had to help Madame Baudin prepare dinner. I didn’t mind, except that she was in a bit of a brown study and hardly spoke. She looks so tired. Dinner was a rather silent affair, none of us really had the heart for chat.
I keep imagining Mum as the old woman in the newspaper photo, standing in the muddy path, handing out newspapers. And asking questions. A shiver goes over me. It’s not just the shells and bullets and bayonets I’m afraid of, for my mother. I remember Monsieur Sureau’s words about being careful of the kinds of questions you ask. Oh please, please, please God, let her be careful. Let her be safe. Let them both be safe …
