Silence Over Dunkerque (14 page)

Beside them that morning was a well-groomed Airedale, her tail pert and cocky. The old vet had carefully combed and plucked her, then the Sergeant had given her a bath in a large wooden tub in the stable. Now she appeared thinner, much thinner, not shaggy and unkempt any more, but sleek and trim as she trotted along proudly at their side.

Nearing the city, the two men were amazed by the destruction. Veterans of a fierce and bloody struggle, they had seen nothing worse, even at Dunkerque. The ancient seaport was ruined, its streets full of rubble, block after block of homes and flats leveled, the surviving population searching in the ruins or wandering around homeless. The three went past a sorry group of Algerian prisoners, listlessly clearing a road for the passage of German trucks and cars, the only vehicles moving.

Not far from the harbor, which was somehow intact in the midst of chaos, they finally reached a row of houses, with a small café in the middle, its plate-glass windows shattered. The sheet of cardboard in the front did not make the interior lighter. As they entered, a tiny bell on the door tinkled. The owner, in the dimness behind the zinc counter, was wiping some glasses with a dirty rag and talking to someone in the rear.

“
’Jour, M’sieur,”
said Gisèle.

The man behind the bar looked at her, glanced at the two men with her, grunted. She walked to the back of the dingy room where a single customer sat with a glass of beer on his table. He wore a turtleneck sweater, a blue reefer, and a pair of thick stockings in sea boots. On the table was the dark blue cap of a sailing captain. She went up and kissed him on both stubby cheeks.

“Bon jour, mon oncle.”

“Eh, petite, bon jour. Et ton grandpére, il existe toujours?”

“Ouai,”
she replied. Then surveying the room with attention to make sure nobody else was around, she leaned toward her uncle, a thickset figure. “These are the gentlemen of whom I spoke to you yesterday,” she whispered.

“Um... um...” he grunted, extending a flabby hand to each Englishman in turn. They seized his hand and quickly dropped it, then sat down. For a while the uncle sat drinking his beer, not impolite, just indifferent. The Sergeant felt he was ten years old, reporting to a new teacher in a new school. Fingers twisted in his chair, fingering his beret. Strange folks, these French.

Obviously this was an appraisal, not an interview. Rather it was a kind of examination in which the ruddy-faced seaman appeared to be estimating them—their abilities, courage, most of all their value and importance. Perhaps, thought the Sergeant, he’s weighing us in the balance, wondering whether we are worth risking his life for. One could hardly blame him, considering the risks to be run. Yet he recalled that morning on the cliff at the farm and how Gisèle had only hesitated a second.

The captain sipped his beer silently. The owner, arranging the few unbroken bottles on the shelves behind the bar, apparently paid no attention whatever to them. The Sergeant wondered. He knew from his winter behind the lines that more than one barman in the local pub had been in the pay of the Germans, reporting not only on the troops but what they said when drunk. So he became more and more uneasy.

Suddenly the captain rose. He was older than he had seemed, which was probably why he had not been called up by the Navy. The hand he extended was enormous.

“Bon. A demain, six heures.”
This time each man felt firmness and vigor in his grip.

Tomorrow at
six?
This much the Sergeant understood. But what did it mean—six in the morning or six at night? And where were they going, what would happen, could they trust this man, so taciturn, unlike many of his race? England was but eighteen miles away, yet for them it was as distant as Greenland. If they relied on him—but if they didn’t, what then?

“Merci, mon oncle”
said Gisèle. He leaned toward her, and again she kissed both sides of his stubbly face. Certainly there was no shortage of garlic in France, whatever else was lacking. Then returning, she nodded, walked to the door, and held it open. The little bell that had greeted them sounded once more as she did so.

“Bon jour, M’sieur le patron,”
she said, nodding to the owner behind the bar, who grunted a reply. Closing the door, she took them each by the hand and led them down the sunny street, around the shell craters and bomb holes, over the piles of rubbish and masonry, across the fallen wires. The few persons around seemed dazed by the destruction.

“Talkative feller, ain’t he?” suggested Fingers.

“Sh!”

Two German officers, one with a monocle in his eye, walked toward them and glanced up quickly. What they saw were two men in wooden sabots and fishermen’s blouses, with berets on their heads. They held the hands of a young girl between them. At one side walked a perky dog. The Sergeant had to fight an impulse to turn round as they passed, to see whether the Germans were watching. It took all his control to saunter on, holding the hand of Gisèle, not hurrying or seeming to.

Silently they walked along the Coulogne Road in the midday sun. A truck roared up from behind, and they stood to one side as the dust cloud passed. It was filled with British soldiers, standing, many clinging to each other, in the jolting, swaying vehicle. It went past, followed by a scout car with four Germans and a couple of machine guns. The whole thing took only seconds. They looked at each other quickly. Poor beggars, off to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.

It wasn’t until they reached the veterinary’s and were behind closed doors that they learned they were to leave the next evening by sea. The uncle owned a small trawler, one of a fishing fleet permitted to go outside the harbor twice a week. There was a crew of three or four besides the captain. He was shipping them on as sailors. The vessels were obliged to keep within five miles of the coast, and were invariably accompanied by a German E-boat to be sure they did. The captain planned to put them off in a rowboat in the dark. From then on, it would be up to them.

The little old man sat at the table, leaning toward the Sergeant, explaining the whole scheme in his slow, precise French. In turn the Sergeant translated to Fingers, who was a city boy and distrusted the sea.

“Rowing across the English Channel, eh? My painted aunt, that’s risky.”

“Seems so. Yet we can’t stay here, endangering the lives of these people. What’s the choice? Walk to Switzerland? Or down to Spain? Care to tramp to Spain, clean across France?”

“Not me. Not in these wooden things. My feet are all blisters now.”

The Sergeant turned to the veterinary.
“Bon. Demain. Nous partons.”

At about two they had eaten and were sitting around the kitchen table. Gisèle had given the daily meal to the dogs outside, soup with a little horse meat in it. The Airedale had eaten the scraps from the table and wanted more. Helped by Madame Bonnet, the young girl was washing the dishes, while the old man was teaching Fingers a card game called
belote.

Voices suddenly came from without. They were harsh sounds, terrifying everyone in the room. The dog, who had been stretched out with her paws across the feet of the Sergeant, rose to her haunches, feeling danger, growling softly.

He put his hand on her back. She was quivering. “Down, girl, down,” he said gently.

Two figures in gray uniforms passed by the open window. The door, bolted, was tried from outside, yanked at, then it shuddered under the blows of a gun butt.

“Offnen Sie!”

They sat motionless with fear. Once again the question arose in the mind of the Sergeant. Should he rush into the next room, leap from a side window, and chance it in the heavy forest behind the house, or sit there suffering helplessly? Fingers looked at him anxiously. Both were paralyzed by indecision. Had the Sergeant jumped, Fingers would instantly have followed; the Sergeant sat, so he sat. True, by jumping from a window they might escape; but where would that leave Gisèle? And her mother and grandfather? By sitting quietly and doing nothing, it might be possible to escape detection.

Or so he decided.

“Oeffnen! Schnell
...
Schnell....”

It was an urgent command, curt, ugly. Only the girl seemed able to act. Her braids fluttered about her shoulders as she leaped for the door, shoved back the bolt, and flung it open.

Two German privates with automatic pistols tramped in and took a menacing position at each side of the door. A non-commissioned officer, his helmet well over his face, followed.

“Papiere!”
The familiar word.

“Sie sind Herr Doktor Dupont?”

His voice was unfriendly. The group about the table reached for their identity cards, the two Britishers more slowly than the others. Now that the Sergeant had recovered his poise, he was sizing up the situation, wondering whether he could grab the pistol of the non-com.

Another German uniform passed by the window at this minute and followed the others into the room. This was a familiar and welcome face. The young soldier who had brought the sick dachshund greeted them all, smiling.

“Guten Abend, meine Herren.”

Turning to the non-com, he let loose a volley of incomprehensible German, which neither the two Britishers nor the French understood. His comrade merely nodded, kept examining their identity cards held toward him. Fortunately he had taken Madame Bonnet’s first, next that of the veterinary, and now he reached across for the Sergeant’s, thumbed and worn like the others. Then he glanced casually at Fingers’, who held his extended and open.

The soldier whose dog had been sick was shaking hands with the old man, exclaiming,
“Mein Hund ist viel besser geworden... ja, ja.”

The German non-com, evidently anxious to check the houses left in Coulogne and get back to the cafés in town, was in a hurry. He gave a guttural command. The men at the door turned and went out. He waved to the other soldier and left too.

“Et merci, Herr Doktor, merci,”
said the blond boy. He leaned and patted the Airedale, who, at this sign of friendliness, immediately responded by raising her left paw in greeting. Enchanted at such a recognition, he took her paw, pleased she remembered him. Then turning, he bowed and went out.

There was a long moment of silence over the room as his bespectacled face went past the window. Finally Madame Bonnet ejaculated,
“For
...
mee
...
dable...
.”

D
ESPITE THEIR AGES
, now it was Gisèle who took charge. Madame Bonnet had stormed, slapped, threatened, but in the end she had collapsed, said nothing to the German patrol. She knew she was beaten. Gisèle was boss. Not only did she do the cooking, with her mother helping, she gave orders to her parent who, often with a frown on her face, obeyed.

“Passe-moi le sel.
Now the parsley. Cut up the carrots.”

Madame Bonnet, not answering, did what she was told.

Thus it was Gisèle who went to market with a black string bag over her arm, her braids fluttering as she walked, leaving Madame at home to clean and make beds. Gisèle it was who spent the afternoon walking miles up and down the country road in the rain to find food. At a lonely farm well back from the main highway she got a scrawny chicken, next a small piece of cheese and a loaf of bread at a half-ruined
épicerie,
and some endives from a neighbor’s garden. The Sergeant could merely guess at what it cost, because food was impossible to obtain in such chaos and disaster.

He was unable to sleep that night. It was good to be on the road again, to be leaving, to lift the cloud of danger from the old veterinary and the two women. Yet he felt regretful at parting from them, going on to safety, and leaving them in continual danger. However, any move was vastly better than no move, better than sitting helpless and idle under enemy eyes. This was the job of a soldier, this was his duty—to escape and reach England. But he hated to leave the family and especially the Girl Scout, who had risked her life for two strangers to whom she owed nothing.

Over and over again as he lay in that tiny attic he asked himself the same question. “Would my family do the same? Would we risk our lives for two French soldiers trying to escape in a foreign land?”

It was raining harder the next morning. There was a cold wind from the water, but the red-tiled kitchen, polished by the two Englishmen, was cozy with the fire burning in the stove. They had also helped the veterinary with his many sick animals, then on hands and knees had washed and scrubbed the office. It hadn’t, he declared, looked so clean for years. They believed him.

About noon, after washing at the pump outside, they returned to the kitchen where the women were preparing what each man hoped would be his last meal in France. Both women wore black aprons. Gisèle bossed her mother, and Madame Bonnet grumbled but obeyed her with quick hands and deft fingers. The girl came over during a calm moment and sat on the arm of the Sergeant’s chair, ruffling his blond hair. He liked it.

“You need a haircut,” she said.

Penelope sometimes sat on the arm of his chair at home and said the same thing.

The girl inspected him closely. “Ah, if I had some sharp scissors, I would cut it myself.... Attention,
Maman,
attention. The soup is boiling over.”

For the first time the Sergeant had an insight into the amount of time and tender work that went into the preparation of a French meal. There was a lot of effort, yet both women—and especially Gisèle—seemed happy as they moved from stove to table, from table to pantry, from pantry to table again. At moments the girl even hummed a song. There was more than care and attention going into that meal. There was love mixed up with everything cooking.

Early in the afternoon the strong winds off the Channel dissipated the storm clouds, and the July sunshine swept over the red-tiled kitchen floor. Gisèle put a blue-and-yellow tablecloth over the table, got out the napkins to match, placed a huge bunch of freshly picked sweet peas in the middle. When dinner was nearly ready, she raced upstairs, reappearing in a flowered cotton dress.