They go back down, arguing the merits and demerits of Napoleon. Was he a little Hitler? Or a great civiliser of Europe? Revolutionary or dictator? About Wellington Ellie has no doubt: duke, prime minister, reactionary bastard. He’d have gone to the guillotine, and deserved it.
The driver listens to their argument as they drive back to the main road. ‘Who gives a shit?’ he says.
13
Namur. Bastions, ramparts, the slippery flow of a great river. Beneath the city walls they stop to buy a newspaper and write postcards. James notices that Ellie’s postcard home is addressed solely to her father. A bleak missive: We’re fine. Hope Mother is OK. Love, Ellie. The newspaper runs stories about the war in Vietnam, about disturbances in France, about dictatorial colonels in Greece. A long editorial asks whether Russian forces will invade Czechoslovakia as they did twelve years ago in Hungary.
Beyond Namur the countryside changes. No longer the dull flats of Flanders but now a crumple in the continent’s mantle that gives rolling hills and woods. Their lift drops them in the main square of Marche, an ordinary little town where they find a brasserie with tables outside under the trees. They sit in the afternoon sun and drink dark, slightly sweet beer. The map shows that they have done almost one hundred and fifty miles.
After buying bread and charcuterie they set off in evening sunshine along the road to Bastogne. The countryside has a mellow, timeless quality to it, spacious and open, as though no one could do it any harm. Towards seven o’clock they stop at a farmhouse and Ellie is pushed towards the door to communicate with the natives. ‘Bonsoir, Madame,’ she says to the woman who answers her knock. ‘On fait l’autostop vers l’Italie. S’il vous plaît, avez-vous un endroit où on peut mettre la tente?’
The woman’s face is stolid as a potato. She turns and calls to someone inside.
‘What did you say?’ James asks.
‘Is there somewhere we can pitch a tent?’
The woman turns back. ‘Une canadienne?’
James is indignant. ‘Canadian? No! Je suis English. Anglais!’
This brings laughter. ‘Shut up, James,’ Ellie says. ‘Oui, Madame. Seulement une canadienne.’ There’s a brief discussion, a waving of arms and a pitying smile in James’s direction accompanied by laughter from the woman. At that moment a little girl emerges from the shadows of the house and, with great solemnity, leads them round the back. ‘Voilà la cerisaie,’ she announces in a piping voice, pointing beyond outhouses to where there’s an orchard, placid in the evening sunshine, the trees laden with fruit. Cherries. A cherry orchard.
Ellie dumps her rucksack on the ground. ‘How very literary,’ she says. ‘Or is that lost on you?’
‘Everything’s lost on me. What was all that about being Canadian?’
‘A canadienne is a tent, you berk.’
‘How the hell do you know that?’
‘Camping,’ Ellie admits reluctantly. ‘With the Guides. We went to a jamboree in Vence in the south of France.’
‘You were a Girl Guide? For fuck’s sake! And you told me all that crap about camping on the lawn with your brother.’
‘That was true. The tent on the lawn was true.’
‘But you never mentioned the Guides, or jamborees or anything like that. What were you? Brown Owl?’
‘That’s Brownies.’
‘It’s all the same. Bloody silly games. How does a Girl Guide light her fire?’ He dumps his rucksack beside hers and looks at her questioningly. ‘Well?’
‘I don’t know. How does a Girl Guide light her fire?’
‘She rubs against a Boy Scout.’
‘Ha ha.’
He unrolls the tent in the long grass beneath the trees: a strip of bright nylon with rings and cords and zips attached.
‘Orange,’ Ellie observes disparagingly, as though orange is a colour that has long been out of fashion in the tentage world. Naff, maybe.
James tosses a small bundle of aluminium poles onto it. ‘Go on then – show us how you do it.’
‘You think I can’t?’
‘Show me.’
In a few minutes, beneath the grave eyes of the little girl and with disconcerting skill, Ellie has the tent pitched. Cautiously she unzips the entrance and peers in. ‘Am I meant to get in there with you?’
‘Wasn’t it like that with the Boy Scouts? You get inside the tent and they get inside you.’
‘Don’t be so crude. I didn’t sleep a wink on the bloody ferry, and now this.’
‘This is all right. You can sleep like a baby, in my arms.’ He pulls out his sleeping bag and unrolls it inside the tent. Called by the woman, the little girl has disappeared. They are left alone with their paltry meal and their tent. Fando and Lis. On the road to Tar.
‘We haven’t got anything to drink,’ Ellie complains.
James pulls two bottles of beer out of the side pocket of his rucksack. They have foil round the neck, like miniature champagne bottles. ‘Here you are. I got them on the ferry.’ He glances at the label. ‘Stella Artois. Never heard of it. Not the kind of thing a red-blooded Englishman would be happy with, but beggars can’t be boozers.’
‘If I want a pee?’
‘I thought you were a Girl Guide. Just wander off into the cherry orchard and commune with nature.’
‘Sounds like Chekhov.’
‘Easier in those days.’
‘Easier?’
‘Long skirts and no knickers.’
‘They wore knickers!’
While they are arguing about that the little girl returns, silently bearing a large paper bag full of cherries like an offering to the gods who have blessed her with their presence. ‘Merci beaucoup,’ is all that James can manage, which seems paltry under the circumstances. ‘Merci, merci. Très bon,’ he adds despairingly.
The little girl laughs and runs off to tell her mother about the strange man who can’t really talk properly. Ellie is delighted with the gift. Perhaps it fits in with her idea of the generosity of the peasant class. ‘How kind. And it saves us having to steal them.’
So they sit together at the opening of the tent and eat their supper of bread and rillettes with cherries to follow. It is almost idyllic. Mainly Ellie talks, that quick, energetic talk, of what she thinks and what she intends, of how the day has gone and how she doesn’t really care about sleeping in a tent. ‘Actually,’ she concedes, ‘it’s quite fun.’
They take it in turns to wash at a tap on a nearby outhouse. Teeth are cleaned, armpits self-consciously splashed.
‘Now what?’ James asks. He blows up the airbeds, light-headed with the effort, then pushes them into the tent and stands up. The sun is setting, brushing peach and apricot into the cherry orchard. It is beautiful in the way that the ordinary can be beautiful. Just somewhere nondescript in Europe, in a cherry orchard amidst farmland where armies once tramped. And the tent is there between them, something between a double bed and a single coffin lying beneath the trees. Ellie dives inside. ‘I’ll tell you when,’ she calls from within.
He waits. Noises come from inside the tent, of movement, of things being taken off and stowed away. ‘Come,’ Ellie says, peremptorily. He unzips the entrance and peers in. She’s sitting cross-legged at the far end of the space, bathed in light strained through the fabric of the tent, shades of ochre and amber. She’s wearing a T-shirt and underpants and a smile; before her is what’s left of the bag of cherries and a tin of Gold Leaf tobacco.