“Come on,” cried Sandrine, dragging Henry into a narrow side street, so ruined that they had to climb over piles of collapsed walls and roofs to get through it. “Let’s go!”
“Where are we going?” asked Henry.
“The tunnels.”
They slithered and staggered over the mounds of broken masonry and stones, all the time listening for the approach of the Germans, for the whine of their shells, the sharp bark of their rifles. But they heard nothing, cocooned within the tumbled ruins through which Sandrine led them.
She pushed him left into a short cul-de-sac and suddenly stopped, dropping to the floor of the road. “In here,” she called, lifting a stone to the side with ease. A dark square tunnel was revealed, leading downwards into the black, a ladder running down one wall. “Down here,” she said, pointing to the tunnel.
“What’s down here?” Henry asked, ominously.
Sandrine smiled and Henry longed to kiss her. “Escape,” she said. “These tunnels lead all the way to Arras.”
Henry beamed. “Sandrine, I think I love you!” he announced.
She blew a raspberry and tutted. “Only think?” she replied, hiding a smirk. “We will have to do something about that!” She swung her legs over the edge of the hole.
“Do you have a lantern or a light? It looks awfully dark in there?”
She gave her lover an odd look. “Henry, do you even need to ask? You know I think of everything! There’s a lantern at the bottom of the ladder.” She was soon swallowed up in the darkness below. Henry looked back one final time to the devastation of the village. Everywhere he looked he saw only signs of death and destruction. He looked back to the yawning hole. He knew it was time to leave.