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.