Henderson's Boys: The Escape (13 page)

The man raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought you’d be heading south.’

‘Probably.’ Marc shrugged.

‘But you’re all alone. Aren’t you meeting up with someone?’

‘Yes,’ Marc lied hurriedly. ‘I’ve got an uncle down south. But it’s safer to walk by night. Easier to take cover.’

‘Ahh.’ The man nodded. ‘Sensible. You might find a bed at the Dormitory Raquel. It’s a rough old place though: labourers, kitchen staff. Mostly Russians and Poles. But it’s cheap and I doubt they’d mind taking a boy if you pay up front.’

Marc didn’t seem sure. ‘So you’d recommend it?’

The man broke into a booming laugh. ‘I’d recommend the Ritz. But judging by the state of your clothing your budget won’t stretch to five thousand francs a night.’

‘You’re right there,’ Marc smiled, as he mopped up the last of his soup with the bread.

After Marc had handed over payment, the man tore a sheet off the notepad inside his apron and sketched out the route to the Dormitory Raquel.

‘Thanks very much,’ Marc said, as he quickly checked the map to ensure it made sense. ‘So I turn left out of here?’

The man nodded. Marc didn’t catch exactly what his wife said as he walked out, but the tone was definitely caustic.

As Marc followed the pencil markings on the map – second left by the big church – he felt a little more settled but also bloated, because he’d eaten two meals and it wasn’t yet noon. After the church he began walking up a steep hill along a street of detached houses.

They had once been luxurious residences, but the neighbourhood had clearly fallen out of fashion. Façades were cracked, windows boarded and front gardens were pocket-sized jungles. To make matters even more depressing, the sky seemed to be darkening for a storm.

The last house in the street was Dormitory Raquel. Marc stepped up a front path with moss growing through cracks in the concrete and nervously approached the front door, on which hung a great list of rules:
No credit, no pets, no Jews, no Senegalese, no gambling, no noise, no women, no singing, no smoking in bed and
absolutely
no refunds
. Beneath this, the list was repeated in other languages for the benefit of Poles, Russians and Germans.

‘Hello?’ Marc said nervously as he pushed the front door open.

He jumped as a toilet cistern thundered in a small room to his left. The door opened and a bare-chested man emerged, followed by an appalling stench that didn’t mix well with Marc’s full stomach. He briefly glimpsed into the room and saw mould on the walls, a rusted cistern and a toilet that looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in decades.

‘Sorry,’ the man said, speaking bad French with a Russian accent. ‘Didn’t know you were waiting.’

Marc cleared his throat. ‘Do you work here? I was thinking about getting a bed.’

The man pointed at the ceiling. ‘Madame Raquel, she’s upstairs.’

As Marc moved deeper into the house, he was overwhelmed by the smell of cigarettes and old sweat. By the time he reached the top of the stairs he wanted to turn away and run out, but he was stunned as he looked into a dormitory and saw an elderly man lying naked on his bed. He had a wild beard in which chunks of his own vomit hung like Christmas decorations.

There were four beds crammed into the room and the sheets on each were stained yellow and singed with dozens of cigarette burns. The window was boarded over and the filthy linoleum floor was strewn with beer bottles and newspaper.

Marc was horrified; he hadn’t come to Paris to end up living in such squalor. At least at the orphanage the nuns made all the boys bathe and change clothes regularly. He was about to turn and run back down the stairs when a large woman that he took to be Madame Raquel emerged from a bedroom with a stern face.

‘Any more bother from you,’ she said, wagging her finger at a patron, ‘any more, and I’ll have my lads break every bone in your body and throw you out in the gutter where you belong.’ Then she turned to Marc. ‘Who are you looking for, kid?’

‘Erm, how much is a bed?’ he asked meekly.

‘Six francs a night up here. Eight downstairs, which includes breakfast. Minimum stay is three nights and a ten-franc deposit on your sheets. Any messing around and you’re out on your arse. No refunds.’

Marc nodded uncertainly.

After a few moments’ silence, Madame Raquel lost her cool. ‘So?’ she shouted. ‘Haven’t got all day. Do you want a bed or not?’

Marc shuddered with fright. Raquel scared him and he felt his hand drifting obediently towards the money in his trousers, but then he heard steps behind him and he saw that the old man now stood naked in the doorway of his bedroom.

‘Put some clothes on, you dirty old bastard,’ Raquel shouted.

Marc knew there was no way he could stay here, but he was too scared to say so in case Madame Raquel had a go at him.

‘I don’t have my money with me,’ Marc said weakly. ‘I’ll come back later.’

He turned to hurry down the stairs, but the naked man was ahead of him and he was forced to watch as the old tramp staggered down to the toilet, while Madame Raquel gave him a stare that made his face hot.

‘You won’t find anywhere cheaper,’ she shouted, as Marc finally had a chance to run down the staircase. He stepped out on to the doorstep and inhaled fresh air as if his life depended upon it. He hadn’t touched anything inside the house, but just being in there made his skin crawl and he’d sooner have spent a night in the cowshed on Morel’s farm.

Marc started walking back down the hill. He was disappointed that he hadn’t solved the accommodation problem and wondered about going back to the café and asking the friendly man if he knew of a slightly more upmarket dorm. But his paranoid side put him off: maybe the waiter knew how vile the Dormitory Raquel was and had sent him there as a joke.

The sky was now black, but Marc didn’t mind the prospect of rain. The atmosphere was smoky from the bombing and he thought it would clear the air. By the time he was halfway down the hill a few spots had started hitting the pavement. They seemed unusually dark, but he wasn’t alarmed until a drop ran down his forehead and touched his eyelid.

Suddenly his eye was stinging and, as the rain grew harder, he noticed that each drop hitting his shirt left a grey stain behind. The fires that had burned after the previous night’s air raid had sent millions of tonnes of smoke and ash into the atmosphere and now it was falling as black rain.

A gust of wind turned the rain into a dark curtain. Marc had grey streaks running all over his skin as he closed his mouth tight and shielded his eyes with a hand. He glanced around desperately for somewhere to shelter. The church at the bottom of the hill would have been ideal, but it was still a couple of minutes away, even if he ran.

Marc noticed that the nearest house had a small porch. The front gate was blocked by the overgrown hedge on either side, but he ducked through and ran up to the front door, then stood under a stone archway just as the rain started to really belt down.

Dark swirls streamed down a path made from black and white tiles as Marc stared through a crack in the wooden shutters into the front room. Given the state of the garden he was surprised to see that it was reasonably well furnished, although he noticed that the soft furnishings were covered in brown dustsheets, as if the owner had gone away for a long time.

As the rain pelted, Marc started wondering about the house. It looked pretty comfortable inside and, with the Germans on the march, it didn’t seem likely that the owner would be returning any time soon. Maybe he could break in.

Rosie cleaned up Paul’s cuts with disinfectant, then they began sorting through the luggage and packing bare essentials into two small suitcases: clothes, their mother’s jewellery, their father’s gold cufflinks, a French road map, toothbrushes and a few small items of toiletries. The most painful decision was over the photo album. They’d never manage to carry the whole thing, with its heavy cardboard cover, so they each took a few favourites and solemnly left behind hundreds of photographs mounted on black pages, with comments written in white pencil by their mother.

Then the siblings made a careful study of their father’s wallet and pocket book to see if they could find a number for Charles Henderson. They sat close on the dry grass beside the car, wading through scribbled notes and details of department-store buyers, shipping-line engineers, members of the French military and jottings on restaurants and hotels where their father had found a good meal or comfortable bed during his days on the road. But they couldn’t find any contact details for Henderson.

‘Hopeless,’ Rosie declared, after three-quarters of an hour. ‘I think we’d better get moving.’

Paul insisted on taking his best drawings and pens and as she was older and stronger, Rosie took both her belongings and the case with the documents inside. It was a dead weight and she was forced to switch arms even before they’d walked a full kilometre.

‘We need a pram or a trolley,’ Rosie said. ‘Quite a few people died in the square – we might find one abandoned there.’

‘I guess,’ Paul said. ‘But it probably would have been blasted to bits.’

‘Well maybe there’s a shop then,’ Rosie said. ‘You know, one that sells old prams or something? There’s no way I can lug all this lot to Bordeaux.’

Paul looked uncertainly at his sister. ‘If we go back to the square, do you think Dad might still be there?’

‘How should I know?’ Rosie snapped. ‘If you’ve got better ideas, Paul, I’m all ears.’

A few local trains seemed to be running and a railwayman stood at the bottom of the bridge, ordering the stream of refugees not to cross. Instead, they had to walk more than two kilometres to the road bridge that had been repaired by the army and then another kilometre back to the centre of Tours.

By the time Paul and Rosie reached the town centre their shoulders ached and their clothes were darkened by sweat. Every so often a car would hoot all of the pedestrians out of the road, giving the pair a stark reminder of how their status had plummeted.

Still, they had their health, which was more than could be said for those who’d already spent days on their feet. They were also far from the only unaccompanied children on the road. In some instances mothers had been killed, leaving kids of Rosie’s age in charge of younger siblings and carts laden with an entire family’s possessions.

The bombed square had been sealed off with wooden barriers and the cobbles were awash with huge puddles where the fire service had successfully attacked multiple blazes. Only a few smouldering embers remained and these were under careful watch from firemen who doused them with spray from their hoses.

Paul could not help but glance towards the doorway where their father had died. It was now empty.

But the biggest change since they’d left the square was that the roof of the civic building had caught light and collapsed on to the floors below it. The resulting cascade had left a spectacular mound of rubble and burnt office furniture, with two scorched walls standing erect on either side.

‘Useless,’ Paul groaned, as he stared at the mangled carcasses of market stalls. ‘There’s no trolley here.’

‘Excuse me,’ Rosie said, as she approached an exhausted-looking fireman who stood in front of a red and white barrier, puffing on a cigarette. ‘Do you know the town well?’

‘Lived here all my life,’ he said, nodding.

‘We need a trolley or a pram,’ Rosie explained. ‘Any idea where we might get hold of one?’

The fireman looked unsure, but after a few seconds he made a gesture with his hand. ‘Two streets over that way there’s a road with a couple of second-hand shops. But right now there are certain things that can’t be had for any amount of money and I suspect wheeled carts are one of them.’

Paul looked dejected as they turned away.

‘There is one thing,’ the fireman called after them, brightening up as he pointed in the opposite direction. ‘You could try St Peter’s church. The priest has been helping out refugees all week. It’s a two-minute walk and if there’s anyone who can help you, he’s your man.’

‘Thanks,’ Rosie said, smiling. ‘We’ll give it a go.’

They dragged the cases for another hundred metres until they found a side street with a gothic church behind tall iron gates. It was approaching the middle of the day and with the sun high, the church’s well-tended garden and neat surrounding lawns made an extraordinary oasis amidst the chaos of the bombed town. But as the siblings passed through the gates, they were shocked by a line of bodies. They had all been covered with sheets or clothing, but in many cases blood had soaked through and flies swarmed to the smell.

‘It’s you!’ Hugo said excitedly, as he ran out of the church doorway, pointing at the largest of the bodies. ‘There’s your daddy. I told them about you, but I don’t know your names.’

Paul was stunned by the reappearance of his dad, but the real horror was the two bodies of young children laid out alongside. None of the deaths was just, but the death of kids too small to even know what war was seemed like the worst thing of all.

‘Did you find your mummy?’ Rosie asked.

Hugo nodded, before pointing into the distance. ‘They took her away. These are ones nobody knows.’