In a telephone-booth the old man found the name of Rougeron in the directory; they lived in an apartment in the Rue Vaugiraud. He did not ring up, feeling the matter to be a little difficult for the telephone. Instead, he asked the way, and walked round to the place, still pushing the pram, the children trailing after him.
Rue Vaugiraud was a narrow street of tall, grey shuttered houses. He rang the bell of the house, and the door opened silently before him, disclosing the common staircase. Rougeron lived on the second floor. He went upstairs slowly, for he was rather short of breath, the children following him. He rang the bell of the apartment.
There was the sound of women's voices from behind the door. There was a step and the door opened before him. It was the daughter; the one that he remembered eighteen months before at Cidoton.
She said: 'What is it?'
In the passage it was a little dark. 'Mademoiselle,' he said, 'I have come to see your father, monsieur le colonel. I do not know if you will remember me; we have met before. At Cidoton.'
She did not answer for a moment. The old man blinked his eyes; in his fatigue it seemed to him that she was holding tight on to the door. He recognised her very well. She wore her hair in the same close curled French manner; she wore a grey cloth skirt and a dark blue jumper, with a black scarf at the neck.
She said at last. 'My father is away from home. I - I remember you very well, monsieur.'
He said easily in French: 'It is very charming of you to say so, mademoiselle. My name is Howard.'
'I know that.'
'Will monsieur le colonel be back today?'
She said: 'He has been gone for three months, Monsieur Howard. He was near Metz. That is the last we have heard.'
He had expected as much, but the disappointment was no less keen. He hesitated and then drew back.
'I am so sorry,' he said. 'I had hoped to see monsieur le colonel, as I was in Chartres. You have my sympathy, mademoiselle. I will not intrude any further on your anxiety.'
She said: 'Is it - is it anything that I could discuss with you, Monsieur Howard?' He got a queer impression from her manner that she was pleading, trying to detain him at the door.
He could not burden a girl and her mother with his troubles; they had troubles of their own to face. 'It is nothing, mademoiselle,' he said. 'Merely a little personal matter that I wanted to talk over with your father."
She drew herself up and faced him, looking him in the eyes. 'I understand that you wish to see my father, Monsieur Howard,' she said quietly. 'But he is away - we do not know where. And I... I am not a child. I know very well what you have come to talk about. We can talk of this together, you and I.'
She drew back from the door. 'Will you not come in and sit down?' she said.
Chapter 7
He turned and motioned to the children. Then he glanced at the girl, and caught an expression of surprise, bewilderment, on her face. There are rather a lot of us, I'm afraid,' he said apologetically.
She said: 'But... I do not understand, Monsieur Howard. Are these your children?'
He smiled. 'I'm looking after them. They aren't really mine.' He hesitated and then said: 'I am in a position of some difficulty, mademoiselle.'
'Oh...'
'I wished to talk it over with your father.' He wrinkled his brows in perplexity. 'Did you think that it was something different?'
She said, hastily: 'No, monsieur - not at all.' And then she swung round arid called: 'Maman! Come quickly; here is Monsieur Howard, from Cidoton!'
The little woman that Howard remembered came bustling out; the old man greeted her ceremoniously. Then for a few minutes he stood with the children pressed close round him in the little salon of the flat, trying to make the two women understand his presence with them. It was not an easy task.
The mother gave it up. 'Well, here they are,' she said, content to let the why and wherefore pass. 'Have they had déjeuner? Are they hungry?'
The children smiled shyly. Howard said: 'Madame, they are always hungry. But do not derange yourself; we can get déjeuner in the town perhaps?'
She said that that was not to be thought of. 'Nicole, stay with m'sieur for a little, while I make arrangements.' She bustled off into the kitchen.
The girl turned to the old man. 'Will you sit down and rest a little,' she said. 'You seem to be very tired.' She turned to the children. 'And you, too, you sit down and stay quiet; déjeuner will be ready before long.'
The old man looked down at his hands, grimed with dirt. He had not washed properly, or shaved, since leaving Dijon. 'I am desolated that I should appear so dirty,' he said. 'Presently, perhaps I could wash?'
She smiled at him and he found comfort in her smile. 'It is not easy to keep clean in times like these,' she said. 'Tell me from the beginning, monsieur - how did you come to be in France at all?'
He lay back in the chair. It would be better to tell her the whole thing; indeed, he was aching to tell somebody, to talk over his position. 'You must understand, mademoiselle,' he began, 'that I was in great trouble early in the year. My only son was killed. He was in the Royal Air Force, you know. He was killed on a bombing raid.'
She said: 'I know, monsieur. I have the deepest sympathy for you.'
He hesitated, not quite sure if he had understood her correctly. Some idiom had probably misled him. He went on: 'It was intolerable to stay in England. I wanted a change of scene, to see new faces.'
He plunged into his story. He told her about the Cavanaghs at Cidoton. He told her of Sheila's illness, of their delay at Dijon. He told her about the chambermaid, about la petite Rose. He told her how they had become stranded at Joigny, and touched lightly on the horror of the Montargis road, because Pierre was with them in the room. He told her about the Royal Air Force men, and about the little Dutch boy they had found in Pithiviers. Then he sketched briefly how they had reached Chartres.
It took about a quarter of an hour tb tell, in the slow, measured, easy tones of an old man. In the end she turned to him in wonder.
'So really, monsieur, none of these little ones have anything to do with you at all?'
'I suppose not,' he said, 'if you like to look at it that way.'
She pressed the point. 'But you could have left the two in Dijon for their parents to fetch from Geneva? You would have been able then, yourself, to have reached England in good time.'
He smiled slowly. 'I suppose so.'
She stared at him. 'We French people will never understand the English,' she said softly. And then she turned aside.
He was a little puzzled. 'I beg your pardon?'
She got to her feet. 'You will wish to wash,' she said. 'Come, I will show you. And then, I will see that the little ones also wash.'
She led him to an untidy bathroom; manifestly, they kept no servant in the flat. He looked around for a man's gear, hoping for a razor, but the colonel had been away too long. Howard contented himself with a wash, resolved at the first opportunity to see if he could get a shave.
The girl took the children to a bedroom, and washed them one by one quite thoroughly. Then it was time for déjeuner. By padding out the midday meal with rice, Madame Rougeron had produced a risotto; they sat down to it round the table in the salon and had the first civilised meal that Howard had eaten since Dijon.