Chapter Ten

IN THE EAST the dawn was beginning to break, the dark horizon showing a streak of grey. The chickens rustled on their perches. Outside, the cock strutted. When Sophia woke up, grey light was penetrating the stable. She felt warm and dreamy. She saw a figure beside her. The dreaminess rushed from her. Reality took over. She sat up, throwing off the greatcoat. Her sudden movement brought Captain Marsh awake, and he was at once on his feet, his eyes darting as if the enemy was on his tail. Sophia stared up at him, at his set face and stiff figure, outlined by creeping grey dawn.

‘You are not in the sky,’ she said.

His face relaxed and was warmed by a smile, and Sophia, who felt the night had dispelled her clouds, was shocked as confusion returned.

‘I was dreaming,’ he said, and ran a hand through his thick, untidy hair. He looked around. The seeping light was spreading, painting the whitewashed stable walls a pale grey. The implications of retreating darkness aroused him to urgency. ‘We must go,’ he said, ‘or the farmer will kick us out and pepper us.’

‘I am ready,’ she said, avoiding his eyes.

Seeing the tumbling mass of her bright hair, he asked, ‘Where’s your hat?’

‘Lost,’ she said.

‘Where?’

‘How do I know?’ She forced herself into hostility. She stood up, brushed past him, went to the door and looked out at the encroaching dawn. He came up beside her. He saw the strutting cock, proud in the new light.

‘There may be an egg or two we can take,’ he said.

‘If there are eggs, there must be chickens,’ she said, ‘so why take only the eggs? Why not wring one poor creature’s neck and take that too?’

‘Yes, why not? I’ve some French francs we can leave in payment.’

She looked at him, her blue eyes searching.

‘How very considerate of you,’ she said.

‘It seems only fair,’ he said as they emerged into misty grey. He made his way towards a tumbledown chicken house. Entering, he saw four eggs nestling in the straw-lined boxes, laid overnight. He put them carefully into the pockets of the greatcoat. The chickens began to squawk, hop and run about. The cock, mottling with anger, crowed in hoarse rage. A gate banged. Sophia called out.

‘Quickly! Run!’

He came out at the double, and they ran, both of them, into the spreading dawn light and into the fields. The farmer, out of his house, shook a furious fist at them.

It was seven-thirty in the morning before two mechanics from the transport depot arrived at the Lutargne auberge with a new distributor head for Major Kirsten’s car. It had been impossible to make the journey overnight, they said. However, it did not take long to fit the new head. Major Kirsten then collected Elissa from her room. They went downstairs to settle their small bill with Pierre Gascoigne. He was polishing his counter. He accepted the settlement courteously.

Major Kirsten smiled.

‘By the way, m’sieur,’ he said, ‘I believe you had other guests here last night.’

The proprietor, ready for this, shrugged philosophically and said, ‘Am I to understand he was one of your men, mon Commandant?’

‘Tell me about him,’ said the major, while Elissa stood by. She had had a good night’s sleep and felt very refreshed. The excitements of yesterday had given her a lively anticipation of what today might bring forth.

With another shrug, Pierre Gascoigne said, ‘I must betray a confidence, it seems. Yes, there were two other guests, a German soldier and his lady friend. They asked for a room and a little supper. They also asked for nothing to be said, he being only a private, and a German one, you understand, and she being obviously of good family.’

‘Of good German family?’ enquired the major.

‘German? I thought her French,’ said the proprietor truthfully. ‘She spoke in French, and so did the soldier.’

‘Ah, so?’ said the major with a lift of an eyebrow.

‘I felt, mon Commandant, that he had absented himself without permission and hoped to return to his unit before his absence was noticed. They were only here a few hours and seemed most attached to each other. So I kept quiet about them, which in my trade is often part of the service guests expect.’

‘Describe them, if you would, m’sieur,’ said Major Kirsten, and Elissa wondered if his appreciation of his opponent’s finesse was good or bad for the proprietor.

Since Pierre Gascoigne had received descriptions yesterday from a German lieutenant in charge of a search party, and would therefore have been expected to recognize and report persons who fitted, he embarked on specious descriptions of his own. Major Kirsten listened admiringly.

‘So that is how you saw them,’ he said.

‘I’m not an unobservant man,’ said the proprietor with a straight face.

‘Some are gifted in this respect, m’sieur, and some are not. I’ve known several people describe the same man in a way that indicated they all saw him differently. However, thank you for your information, and I quite understand the discretion you exercise on behalf of any guests in need of it.’

‘We have a good reputation as hosts, mon Commandant,’ said Pierre Gascoigne, without the flicker of an eyelash. ‘May I ask, am I right in thinking you to be the man’s commanding officer?’

‘If I am, and if he was indeed a man whose presence here was suspect, I came very close to catching him out.’ Major Kirsten looked as if that amused him. ‘I think we can say – ah, you didn’t give me his name.’

‘I didn’t ask him for it, mon Commandant.’

‘Or the young lady?’

‘Neither of them,’ said Pierre Gascoigne.

‘Extremely discreet of you, m’sieur.’

Recognizing the major as a man who could respond to equivocation with satire, Pierre Gascoigne smiled politely. The major nodded, and he and Elissa left.

‘He was very plausible,’ said Elissa on their way to the car.

‘Had the war been in its infancy, we might have found the time and inclination to knock a few holes in his story,’ said Major Kirsten. ‘As things are, we can let him rest. We’ve at least discovered that our thinking lunatic has acquired a German uniform. That’s in addition to a beautiful young German lady and the distributor head of our car. How has he managed so much with Sophia as his prisoner? Heavens, one might suppose she’s been more of a help to him than a burden.’

‘With a revolver in my ribs, Major, I should be a weak creature myself,’ said Elissa.

‘A point,’ conceded the major. ‘Now – wait, I think before we leave I’ll telephone Colonel Hoffner. He may have some new information, and he at least needs to know the quarry now looks like a German soldier.’

Elissa sat in the car to wait. When Major Kirsten returned, he took his seat beside her looking very intrigued. He informed her that Colonel Hoffner had received a telephone call late last night from Captain Vorster. This concerned a Bugatti car containing a luggage case with a label bearing the name of Sophia von Feldermann. There was no one in the car. It had apparently been abandoned some ten kilometres from Douai, close to the road leading from Denain, forty kilometres south-east of Douai. A dispatch rider had arrived at Headquarters in Valenciennes with a scribbled report for General von Feldermann. The general had passed it to Captain Vorster and told him to deal with it. Captain Vorster had telephoned Colonel Hoffner, no doubt because he had been told to as a first step. The colonel had sent two men to mount a watch on the car in case the general’s daughter returned to it. So far she had not.

‘Colonel Hoffner now knows who she is,’ said Elissa.

‘Yes. A pity. It’s an embarrassment for the general.’

‘Major, why didn’t Colonel Hoffner telephone you with this news last night?’

‘Because at the time when I spoke to him from this place in the evening, I told him I’d be moving on. A little later, when I decided we should hang around, I omitted to let him know.’

‘The car is still where it was left?’ asked Elissa.

‘It is. I have the location. We’ll go there.’

‘Yes, Major,’ said Elissa and started the staff car. ‘Do you think the Bugatti was abandoned because the Englishman suddenly found the road far too crowded and therefore far too risky? Last night four divisions were due to move up. Many roads would have been busy for hours.’

‘You have such information at your fingertips?’ Major Kirsten smiled approvingly at her. ‘You’re a remarkable young lady, Elissa. And you’re right. Our man was forced to leave the car and run for it, taking our suffering Sophia with him. Let’s get going. I’ll read the map for you.’

‘I hope I shall be up to coping with new events,’ said Elissa.

‘You will,’ said Major Kirsten. Lieutenant Landsberg was indeed a gem, he thought. She was also rather appealing. ‘Colonel Hoffner, by the way, has dispatched a new search party.’

As she drove away from the auberge, Elissa said, ‘But you would still like us to find Miss von Feldermann?’

‘Yes, I would.’

Captain Marsh put a finger on his map.

‘We’re somewhere around here,’ he said.

He and Sophia were sheltering just inside a wood, facing a terrain of rolling, undulating fields, and he had made a guess that the Nord river was a few kilometres to the west, with a main road in between. He felt he and Sophia were about eight kilometres from Douai.

Sophia, sitting beside him, her back against a tree, looked at the spot he was indicating on the map. Hatless, her long fair hair was loose and flowing.

‘I imagine you’re right,’ she said.

It had been some time since they had left that farm at a run. They had trekked across country, avoiding using roads of any kind, and had gone to ground more than once when sighting farmworkers. Once they had heard the noise of slow-moving vehicles that reminded them of yesterday’s pursuers. Today, Captain Marsh knew the hunters were undoubtedly aware of Sophia’s abandoned Bugatti, and Sophia knew her luggage case would have been inspected. Also, Captain Marsh had left the German helmet in the car.

‘We might consider making a dash across this other road,’ he said, ‘and using the river as our guide to Douai.’

‘Swimming?’ said Sophia. Her nerves were on edge, and she was sensitive to every movement he made beside her.

‘I don’t think either of us would care for that. But I’d very much like to get close enough to Douai so that we could slip into the town by dark. I suppose I might have to find a boat, while you could simply use the bridge.’

‘You’ve agreed to help me reach Douai,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t mean I want to be delivered into the arms of the guards on the bridge. Because of my father, every German soldier in Douai is probably looking for me. You had better think of something better than depositing me on the bridge.’

He laughed. He thought her very droll in the way she had put that. Sophia, affected by so many confusing emotions and so many nerve-racking incidents, felt a rush of temper so wild that she slapped his face. Jaw tingling, he stared at her in astonishment, then shook his head and laughed again.

That sent her out of all her senses, and she went for him. Because of all her humiliations and inexplicable actions, she launched herself at him in an uncontrollable desire to scratch. He caught her wrists, holding her off. She wrenched them free. Then they were locked in impossible confrontation, rolling over leaf mould and twigs, he in shock and she like a provoked tigress.

‘Sophia, for God’s sake –’

‘How dare you laugh at me, how dare you!’

He held her, for her own sake, pinning her arms, and she stared fiercely up at him, eyes glittering and body twisting and heaving. Her hair was all about her head and face, her mouth exhaling tortured breath. Hating him, she brought one knee sharply up. It punched his stomach hard. It hurt. What with that and the pain of his broken finger, there was no help for what he did next, not in his own mind. He kissed her, pressing his lips firmly to hers. Her involuntary cry was smothered. The craziest sensations of suffering engulfed her. Her writhing body stiffened and sagged. Shudders travelled through her, tormenting every limb. Her imprisoned lips tightened as she clenched her teeth, resisting the kiss, only for incalculable reaction to take such a hold of her that her teeth parted and her lips yielded.

The kiss, prolonged and hungry, stupefied them both.

He lifted his head and looked down at her crimson face, his expression that of a man confronted by the unimaginable.

‘Sophia – I’m sorry, desperately sorry – forgive me. That was unpardonable – I’m sorry.’

She turned her face away, her body hot and clamouring, her senses reeling. Her dizzy eyes took in movement, the movement of an approaching man. He wore the thick blue blouse and black trousers of a French peasant, and over his shoulder was a spade. He was walking towards the wood, straight towards them.

‘There’s a man,’ she gasped.

‘Quickly, we must move.’

‘No – it’s too late – we must do this.’ She wound her arms around his neck. He came out of stupefying incredulity and played the game of pretence with her, his mouth moving lightly over her cheek. For all the pretence, Sophia’s body shivered. They heard the man enter the wood, his booted feet turning winter leaves. He saw them. Sophia, lying on her back, with Captain Marsh beside her and leaning over her, stared up at the Frenchman in simulated shock. Sturdy and weatherbeaten, surprise slowing his trudge, his eyes opened wide. To him, the picture was of a man in a German greatcoat enjoying a tender moment with a lovely young lady whose face was deeply flushed and whose magnificent blonde hair was dishevelled. He said nothing. He walked on, going through the wood to the farmland beyond.

Sophia sat up, trembling, her face averted. Captain Marsh, aware that his behaviour had been unforgivable, was at a loss for the right words.

‘Sophia –’

‘You should not have laughed at me,’ she said, her voice husky.

‘I know that now.’

‘I have never behaved like that before, like an uncivilized Russian peasant. I am ashamed of myself.’

‘I’m hardly proud of what I did. You must forgive me.’

Sophia, face still averted, every emotion indefinable, said, ‘Do you always cure hysteria in a woman in that way?’

‘No, and I’ve never had to. And you weren’t hysterical, only very angry.’ Captain Marsh was intensely penitent. ‘Believe me, I wasn’t laughing at you, I simply thought that what you said about not wanting to be deposited on a bridge – and the way you said it – was irresistible.’

‘Do you mean ridiculous?’ She sounded cold.

‘No. Delicious.’

‘That is not a word that should be used between two people at war with each other,’ said Sophia, and forced herself to think again of Fritz. Fritz was so necessary to her; they had so much in common concerning the absurdities of the high and mighty. She knew he wanted them to become lovers. And they would, yes, they would.

‘Sophia, I must—’ Captain Marsh broke off as the sky, full of scudding March clouds and stretches of blue, erupted with sound. It was a sound familiar to him, an aerial dogfight. They were far in over the German lines, the British or French planes up there, and it had to be a flight from Richtofen’s squadron that was engaging them. He came quickly to his feet and walked to the edge of the wood. He looked upwards, searching the sky. The planes were high, too high for him to distinguish between Allied and German, but there they were, those that were out of the clouds. They seemed invisibly linked in the flowing pattern of their manoeuvres. From the ground, there was no impression of speed. Rather, they seemed to float, to drift, or to lazily dance. The noise of their engines was like a power-charged buzzing, with a varying pitch intermittently interrupted by the sound of machine-gun fire. On the rim of the deadly dance, the pattern broke as two planes angled in descent. Noses down, they plunged. Other planes followed in diving pursuit. Unidentifiable shapes gradually materialized into recognizable machines. The first two were German – Fokker triplanes. Chasing them were four Sopwith Camels. The Fokkers screamed and the Camels whined. Out of the high blue descended another formation, a flight of Albatros planes which had been lying in wait while the Fokkers dallied to bait the Camels.

The Fokkers came out of their dive, their paint as blue as the sky, and began to fly fast to the north. The Camels held to the chase, roaring after them in reckless unawareness that they had been lured and tempted. The Albatros formation closed in on them from above.

The Fokkers and Camels streamed northwards. The Albatros machines, red markings vivid, split formation to attack the Camels from the rear. The Camels, pilots suddenly alerting to the trap about to be sprung, stood up, left the Fokkers alone, and soared towards the clouds in fast ascent. The Albatroses followed. The sailing clouds received the Camels. The red machines of Richtofen’s squadron veered, skirting the white to climb high into the blue and into the sun.

The sounds were lost and the planes became invisible.

‘The war is going on up there?’ Sophia appeared beside Captain Marsh, her face lifted, her eyes straining in search of the unseen planes. A brisk eddy of wind caught her hair and tossed the strands around her head.

‘Yes, it’s still going on.’

‘And I have a few scars of my own now,’ said Sophia, hands thrust into her coat pocket and her eyes turning to scan the countryside.

He felt unable to comment on that. He listened to the distant rumbling of British batteries near Arras. The Allied armies had been relatively quiet of late, taking something of a rest after four years of devastating conflict. The launching of a new offensive awaited the arrival of General Pershing’s American forces.

He searched his conscience. Early yesterday morning, which now seemed ages ago, the unexpected appearance of a car and its lady driver at the scene of his crash-landing had seemed entirely fortuitous, especially as he had assumed she was French. Should he have let her go when he discovered she was German? He had not been in the mood to, and her car had been too valuable to him. And he had, after all, been shot down by a mercilessly persistent Richtofen, a hero to her. He had not felt disposed to play the gentleman. Unwilling though she had naturally been to cooperate with him, her usefulness had become important, and the complex challenge she presented as a spirited German girl had never been less than intriguingly mettlesome. She was undeniably beautiful. That fact had merely been noticeable at first. Now it was disturbing. He had said theirs was an awkward relationship. From the moment he had compulsively kissed her, it had become an impossible one, especially for her.

‘I was wrong in forcing you to help me,’ he said, ‘and I made things far worse by my moment of insanity a little while ago. If you wish to see me hanged, I’d not blame you.’

‘No?’ Sophia was doing some searching of her own. Not of her conscience, but her emotions. And she was discovering nothing comfortable about any of them. She should have killed him for his assault on her lips. It was the second of two such assaults. She had the means to kill him, her long and deadly hatpin, taken from her hat yesterday evening. It had caused her to lose the hat, but that had been a small thing compared with the gain to her defensive strength. But she had not used the long steel pin when he had kissed her. It had been to hand, threaded in the skirt of her coat, but she had not even thought about it. Instead, her lips had betrayed her, clinging to his in crazy response. Worse, immediately afterwards, she had acted to give a French farmworker the impression that she and Captain Marsh were a harmless courting couple, and that he was not the English airman everyone in the area must know was wanted by the Germans. The act had no rationality at all to it, for no one, in any case, would expect a Frenchman to run to any Germans with his suspicions loud on his tongue. What was she doing, what was happening to her? With an effort, she said, ‘Yes, it was unforgivable of you, but I would rather you said nothing more about it.’

She could not help the bitter note, aimed as much at herself as him. He had in a single day brought her to the edge of a strange darkness and made her foothold perilously insecure. She recalled the moment when he had saved her from the icy canal. She knew that that had its own association with her sense of insecurity.

Her eyes, still fixed on fields and pastures, failed to register the implications of distant movements until she heard Captain Marsh draw a quick breath.

Then she gasped, ‘Look!’

He drew her back into the shelter of the trees. From there, they peered into the distance. The crisp March sunlight played its revealing part. The movements resolved into the definable figures of soldiers on foot, an extended line of them, advancing steadily in an obvious and methodical search of the terrain. Captain Marsh felt his chances were narrowing. The Germans had to know by now that he was on foot.

‘They’ll reach us. They’ll surround this place,’ said Sophia. Why she felt sad she did not know, unless it was because they would take her as well as Captain Marsh, and escort her back to her father. But was it so desperately vital, her assignation with Fritz? Her mother could not, in the end, stop her marrying him. She would never literally chain her up. Even so, she felt inexplicably sad as she watched the long line of soldiers advancing.

‘We’ll be surrounded if we stay here,’ said Captain Marsh. ‘They know we’ve no car now. They probably think –’ He paused, and she saw a faint smile. ‘They probably think I’ve a gun to your head.’

‘In effect,’ said Sophia quietly, ‘you have had a gun to my head from the beginning.’

‘Yes, and that’s what you must tell everyone. On no account must you admit to anyone that there was a time when you weren’t under duress.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘There’s no time for a discussion now. If you’re still determined to get to Fritz we must move. If we break out on the other side of this wood, we’ll at least be shielded while we make a run for new cover.’

‘I will come,’ she said.

They cast a final glance at the oncoming searchers, then turned and made a quick way through the wood. Emerging, they were faced by the familiar vistas of farmlands, wandering hedges and a few wooded areas. Away to the left was a barn, large and isolated. Everything looked very quiet. Not a single person could be seen. As far as northern France was concerned, Sophia was beginning to believe that all but a few of its men were in the trenches.

‘We shall be seen,’ she said. ‘There’s nowhere we can hide except behind hedges.’

‘We can’t stay here,’ said Captain Marsh, and they began to move over the open ground. ‘Do you see that copse down there beyond the barn? If we can get to it, and then to that other patch of trees farther on and to the left, we’d have the barn between us and them, providing we made our dash at the right moment. Then we’d have to think about circling back to get behind them. It’s the one way to escape them. Run, Sophia – that is, if you want to.’

She ran with him. He headed fast for the first objective, Sophia behind him, picking up her skirts and freeing her supple legs. He was going away from her, and she had a feeling he was ready to separate himself from her, to give her the freedom to choose her own way. If he thought to ease his conscience by doing that, he was not allowing for her bitter determination to see he did not. She lengthened her stride. As they began to pass the open end of the high barn on their left, he pulled up so sharply that she almost ran into him. He turned very quickly and plunged into the barn, Sophia following.

‘We’re in trouble,’ he said.

‘But those soldiers haven’t reached the wood yet.’

She stiffened as he took her by the arm and drew her cautiously forward to the opening.

‘Take a look to the left,’ he said, ‘but don’t show yourself. If they’re moving fast, they’ve seen us.’

She peered out. Rising from a dip in the distance, in line with the second copse he had pointed out, she saw more men. They were strung out in much the same way as the soldiers, and they too were advancing on the wood, but from the opposite direction. They were Luftwaffe men. She did not, however, think they were moving fast. She drew back.

‘All this is because my father is not a man to sit and do nothing,’ she said. ‘Even at a time like this, he has managed to organize a comprehensive search for me.’

‘A time like this?’ said Captain Marsh. ‘What does that mean?’

Sophia, angry with herself at her new indiscretion, said, ‘It means you’ve turned my absence into a crisis. It means my father will find me, and you too.’

‘I don’t think I want to stay here and make it easy for him.’

‘You can’t run any more,’ she said. ‘You’ll be seen as soon as you leave this barn.’

‘I’ll risk it,’ he said.

‘No, wait.’

‘Sophia, it’s time we parted.’

‘No, wait,’ she said again, and looked around the barn. There was a large hayloft, pitchforks and, hanging from a hook, an old leather apron. ‘We’ve a few minutes before anyone gets here. I still want to reach Douai. Give me your scarf and boots. Where did you get those boots?’

‘I found them.’

‘Never mind. Give them to me, and your scarf. Quickly.’

‘Sophia –’

‘Quickly!’ Sophia was agitated but insistent. ‘Do you want to get away or not?’

He unwound his flying scarf from beneath the collar of the greatcoat. She bound it around her head, tucking up and hiding her hair, and it became a good imitation of a peasant woman’s scarf. He took off the black boots given to him by Pierre Gascoigne. She unlaced her own boots, rather more elegant than his, and put the black boots on. She removed her coat and gloves, lifted the large leather apron from its hook and donned it. It hid most of her dress. She stooped, swept her hands over the dusty floor of the barn and rubbed a little of the dirt into her face. He watched in amazement as she turned herself into a farmworker with a dust-marked face and very dirty hands.

‘For God’s sake, what are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Making myself presentable – in a way,’ she said. ‘When the men arrive, I’ll speak no German, only French.’ She pointed to a huge pile of loose hay beside the barn ladder. ‘That’s your only chance, not the loft. They’ll search the loft. Take my coat and boots. Put my coat over yourself, because when they come in I shall stick a pitchfork into the pile of hay. With my coat and that greatcoat, the prongs shouldn’t bite you. I must make them think that whoever might be hiding in the loft, there’s no one under that hay on the floor.’

‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ said Captain Marsh.

‘No – I don’t,’ said Sophia. They listened. The wood they had left was alive with the sounds of men. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing at all, or why, except that I’m as determined to live my own life as you are to escape. We are reluctant partners. Bury yourself under that hay, lying flat, or stand there and do nothing and be of no help to me or yourself.’

He spent a few precious seconds trying to understand her, but Sophia did not even understand herself – or if she did she closed her mind to it.

‘Sophia, for God’s sake, if this doesn’t work, do you realize just how suspect your part in it will look?’

‘Hide yourself,’ she whispered.

Taking her boots, gloves and coat, he moved to the pile of fallen hay. He could hear the German soldiers clearly now. They were breaking out of the wood. He made a deep rift in the hay, uncovering the floor. He lay on his back and put her coat over himself. Quickly, she began to pile the hay thickly above him, using a pitchfork. She massed the hay high. She heard them coming, the soldiers, she heard their voices. She heard them at the entrance to the barn. She turned, the black boots feeling big and clumsy on her feet.

Five soldiers were looking at her, their rifles slung and their faces in shadow beneath their low helmets. She heard others outside the barn, moving around it. The five men entered and glanced about them, noting the loft. Sophia wondered how the situation would develop if a farmworker arrived, or the farmer himself. Her heart, beating fast, beat faster. She knew herself to be quite mad.

The dry barn smelled sweetly of fodder. Its size interested the soldiers. Sophia’s ragged nerves became raw, but she said nothing. The men wandered about and looked. She stood motionless, eyeing them as she supposed a Frenchwoman would, impassively and without welcome. She knew she must be distant and unhelpful. That was how most French people were towards Germans, although it was the French who had declared war.

Eyes were on her. They were seeing her, she hoped, as the hard-working daughter of a French farmer, or simply as a French peasant. The madness of her role hammered at her mind.

One man broke the silence.

‘Miss?’ he said.