The Escape Read online

  Mr Clarke looked back at them and welled up with parental pride. Rosie usually gave her brother a hard time but they’d pulled together now, just like they’d done when their mother died a year earlier. Paul even slept with his cheek resting on his big sister’s shoulder.

  Clarke himself was exhausted, but the roads were opening up as the refugees on foot made camp for the night and he didn’t want to miss the chance to make progress. After driving further between ten and eleven o’clock than he’d managed in the previous four hours, he reached into the leather pocket inside his door, pulled out a small tin filled with Benzedrine pills and popped two into his mouth. The drug was a staple of salesmen, truck drivers and anyone else who couldn’t afford to go to sleep.

  *

  At sunrise the Citroën formed part of a vast queue of vehicles waiting to cross a bridge into the town of Tours. Clarke was satisfied with his night’s work, having driven more than a hundred kilometres beyond his original target of Orléans and making almost half of the distance between Paris and Bordeaux, where he hoped to find a ship to England.

  But the car didn’t budge for the next two hours. The kids woke up and while Paul dashed into the grass verge at the side of the road to urinate, Rosie played mother, dividing up stale bread, jam and left-over slices of a bacon joint for their breakfast.

  ‘What’s the hold-up?’ Mr Clarke said, leaning out of the car and addressing a lanky man who was walking along the verge from the front of the queue.

  ‘Looks like the army,’ he explained. ‘The Germans have bombed two of the bridges into town and the other one took a blast. There’s a military convoy waiting to cross over, so the engineers are trying to shore it up.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound too good,’ Mr Clarke said gravely. ‘Is it possible to get over on foot?’

  The man nodded, and rustled a paper bag containing two loaves of bread. ‘People are walking across the railway bridge,’ he explained. ‘The centre of town isn’t far. There are a few cafés open. I was dead lucky. I got to the bakery just as it opened; less than a dozen people in the queue.’

  Mr Clarke thanked the man again and looked around at the kids in the back. ‘Looks like we’re going to be stuck here for a good while. How about we wander into town? We might be able to get some decent food and if the post office is open I might even have another stab at calling Henderson.’

  ‘I thought he’d left the Embassy for good,’ Paul said.

  ‘I expect he has,’ Mr Clarke said, nodding. ‘But I’ve got his home number. There’s a chance I’ll catch him there.’

  ‘What about the car?’ Rosie asked. ‘Is it safe to leave our things here? What if the Germans catch up with us?’

  ‘We’re still in French territory,’ Mr Clarke said, as he got out and slammed his door. ‘Our things should be safe for half an hour if we lock all the doors. The Germans didn’t follow us out of Paris and their chances of finding us with so many people on the road are slim to nil.’

  It was a glorious morning and although Tours had been bombed, the damage was light compared with the cities further north. What’s more, it had been some time since the last air raid and there was a noticeable absence of smoke or the smell of burning.

  For a few hundred metres Paul could almost imagine that the trip was part of a holiday outing. The illusion was shattered when they left the road and began clambering up a gravel embankment leading towards the railway tracks.

  An old lady with horrible leg ulcers had made it up with two heavy bags, but the strain had done her in and she’d keeled over when she reached the top. She lay on her back, convulsing, while her tearful husband held her hand and dabbed her forehead with a handkerchief.

  Like everyone else, Clarke and his children avoided eye contact as they walked by. Small acts of kindness were possible – helping to repair a broken cart, or carrying a crying child for a few kilometres – but nobody had the resources to deal with major crises and the only way to cope with the suffering was by shutting it out.

  Once the Clarkes were across the bridge, a short scramble down a railway embankment and a gap in a wire fence took them into the commercial district on the south side of town.

  ‘Used to be a big electrical store along there,’ Mr Clarke said, aiming his pointing finger down a side street. ‘The old girl who ran it would only deal with French or American companies. I could never sell the old buzzard a damned thing.’

  Paul and Rosie both smiled as they brushed past displaced people. The locals and refugees who’d travelled by car were hard to tell apart, but the ones who’d come on foot were stooped, dusty figures that lingered in every courtyard and doorway like a plague.

  Mr Clarke was familiar with the street, but not exactly sure where it fitted into the overall layout of Tours. ‘If I recall correctly there’s a large square with a post office in that direction,’ he said. But then he stepped into the empty road and shook his head. ‘No, actually it’s this way. Definitely.’

  ‘You said that two streets ago,’ Paul said.

  As they walked down a pedestrian alleyway they passed by a tiny café, with just four tables and a line of stools in front of the counter. Mr Clarke caught the smell of coffee as Paul’s eyes were drawn towards fresh baked croissants, piled on the countertop. They’d already passed a couple of cafés, but because of its obscure location this was the first that wasn’t either closed or swamped with customers.

  Paul and Rosie grabbed the only free table while their father walked to the counter to place their order. It came to three times what he’d expected to pay, but the proprietress shrugged and told him that coffee, flour and sugar were in short supply. Prices had skyrocketed and she was barely covering her costs.

  As Mr Clarke settled at the table with his cup, he heard a vague thumping sound and his coffee cup rattled

  against its saucer.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Paul asked.

  His question was answered by the whine of an air-raid siren. Everyone in the café sat up a little straighter as the proprietress stepped out from behind the counter and hurried to lock the café door.

  ‘We get swarms of refugees in here otherwise,’ she explained, to nobody in particular. ‘If it gets bad, some of us can shelter under the stairs.’

  As she stepped back towards the counter three young boys raced down the alleyway outside, followed by an enormously fat woman, straining the life out of a moped. Rosie found this sight hilarious and gave Paul a jab to make him turn and look.

  ‘You wouldn’t want her to sit on you,’ he said, before laughing so hard that he blew the foam off his steamed milk.

  Mr Clarke thought it was funny himself, but everyone in the tiny café could overhear so he reprimanded the kids for being rude. Before they could reply another explosion threw him forwards and coffee spilled over into his lap.

  ‘Getting closer,’ Rosie said, as she grabbed a napkin and threw it across the table at her dad.

  Paul cocked his ear towards the window. The gloomy alleyway muffled the sounds from above but aeroplane engines were now clearly audible. ‘Sounds like there’s a few of them,’ he noted warily.

  The third explosion was the loudest yet and it caused the giant espresso machine to lurch dangerously across the countertop. One of the valves broke open and pressurised steam began blasting out with a high-pitched whistle. The proprietress wrapped a cloth over her hand and tried turning a knob to stop it, but only succeeded in burning herself.

  Her yelp brought an elderly man out from the back of the café. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  As he said this a bomb hit a building less than thirty metres away. Paul, Rosie and their father lurched one way before being thrown back the other. The large Venetian blind in the window clattered to the ground as a massive chunk of plaster dropped out of the ceiling.

  Paul screamed out as it hit the woman at the next table with such force that her chair split and her face banged sickeningly against the tabletop. Out in the alleyway a great tearing sound erupted
, followed by a storm of roof tiles and masonry. The electric lights flickered before going out and the metal tray of croissants clattered off the countertop as dust filled the air.

  Mr Clarke caught a scent in his nostrils and immediately stood up. ‘Gas leak,’ he shouted, as he moved quickly towards the miraculously unbroken front window and looked up to check that the rubble had stopped raining down outside.

  The others in the café could also smell gas and a man stubbed out his cigarette as Clarke frantically tugged at the door. The blast had made the building shift, causing the wooden door-frame to move and wedging the door itself firmly into position.

  ‘Come on, you two,’ he shouted to the kids, almost falling backwards as he got the door open.

  As Paul, Rosie and everyone except the woman who’d been hit by the plaster piled out of the café, another bomb exploded. This one was several streets away, but the tremor was still enough to dislodge more roof tiles.

  Paul looked up and saw a huge section of brickwork crashing towards him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  For the first time he could remember, Marc wasn’t woken by the director yelling or other kids jumping on his bed. He was on a sofa, covered with a blanket. It took a few moments to remember how he’d got here and be hit with the immensity of what he’d done the night before.

  He sat up, aching all over from the beating, as he looked at the dressing on his knee. Sabine, the waitress, had fixed it using bandage and cotton wool and whilst it looked rather dramatic it was clearly the work of someone who had no clue what they were doing.

  Marc remembered how beautiful Sabine’s painted nails were and her bright, lipsticked smile when she gave him the tissue to wipe his eyes. He pulled his legs off the sofa, put his foot down on something soft and shiny and realised to his horror that it was a bra.

  He flicked it away with his big toe as he looked across the little bed-sit room and saw that Sabine wasn’t in her bed. But her belongings were scattered everywhere: a dressing gown thrown down, a newspaper covered with bright red toenail clippings, a rug dusted with talcum powder.

  Whichever way you cut it, Sabine was a slob. Marc stood up and looked around to make sure that his boots, clothes and money were present, then stepped warily across the wooden floor, both intrigued and horrified by Sabine’s dirty underwear.

  ‘Morning, skipper,’ Sabine said, making Marc jump as she slid back the door of her tiny bathroom.

  She wore only a lacy red bra and knickers and Marc was overpowered by a shot of lust, mangled with embarrassment. The only youngish women he knew were the nuns at the orphanage and even if one of them had ever appeared without her habit, he very much doubted that they wore underwear like that.

  ‘Would you like your gown?’ Marc spluttered as he pulled it off the floor, toppling a half-filled mug of mildewing coffee and cigarette ash.

  ‘Aren’t you a gentleman,’ she said, as Marc rescued the cup.

  When Sabine stepped up close to grab the gown her breasts were dead level with Marc’s face. He didn’t know where to look and he was so red he felt like his head was going to melt.

  ‘You’re the first person ever to call me a gentleman,’ Marc said.

  ‘And you’re the first man who’s ever encouraged me to put clothes on,’ Sabine laughed. ‘How’s your knee?’

  ‘OK, I think,’ he said, grinning with relief as she covered up with the gown. ‘You did a nice job with the bandage.’

  ‘You think?’ she said. ‘I’ve never done one before. We can go downstairs and get some breakfast from the bar in a minute. Then I’ll try sorting you out some transport so that you can get to your … who was it you said?’

  ‘My uncle,’ Marc lied. ‘I need to get to Paris to see my uncle. Maybe I can go back to the station and see if there’s a train.’

  Marc cringed again as Sabine sat on the edge of her single bed and pulled a stocking up her leg.

  ‘You won’t need a train,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘There’s always soldiers and truck drivers coming through the bar. I’ll tell them you’re my little nephew and get one of them to give you a lift.’

  ‘I’ve got money,’ Marc said.

  ‘Oh don’t worry about that.’ Sabine smiled. ‘A free beer and a flash of cleavage and they’ll take you to Outer Mongolia if I ask them.’

  ‘You think?’ Marc smiled, but he didn’t doubt it for a second. He was only too aware of how girls as pretty as Sabine can play tricks with your mind.

  It was nine a.m. and downstairs the café was already open and doing a reasonable trade. Sabine was off duty, so she sat at a table with Marc and they ate croissants with jam. Once they’d eaten she eyed up a couple of rowdy military police officers out on the terrace and pushed her boobs out as she gave them a sob story about how her little nephew needed to get to Paris to see his parents and couldn’t get on a train.

  After dashing back upstairs to grab his things and kissing Sabine goodbye, Marc clambered into the filthy rear compartment of a canvas-covered army truck and set off towards Paris. He shared the space with a jangling mass of abandoned helmets and rifles, a crate of rattling cider bottles and two muddy Alsatians that looked ferocious, but seemed content to lie down and let the journey pass with as little fuss as possible.

  Up front, the driver took great pleasure in blasting his horn and forcing refugees out of the road. It was cruel, but Marc couldn’t help laughing as the passenger leaned out of the cab and yelled ten points for an elderly woman who fell over and twenty-five for a heavily laden handcart that toppled into a ditch.

  ‘Peasants,’ the driver said to Marc, when he pulled up and stood urinating over the back wheel of the truck. His posh accent indicated a good background. ‘France is shit, the war is shit, everything’s shit!’

  ‘Vive la shitty France,’ his companion yelled from up front.

  Then the driver asked Marc to pass out four bottles of cider and told him that he could take one for himself. Marc had tasted alcohol a couple of times, but he’d never been drunk and didn’t think it would be a good state in which to arrive in a strange city.

  After climbing back into the cab, the driver set off even more erratically, swerving between lanes and blasting the horn. The speed also crept up and Marc could no longer see the funny side as he was thrown around the rear compartment. Even the dogs stood up and started scratching against the floor and barking like mad.

  ‘Slow down!’ Marc screamed, as he banged on the rear of the cab. ‘You’re gonna get us all killed.’

  The passenger looked back through the little window. Cider drizzled from the corner of his mouth as he smiled at Marc. ‘What’s your problem?’ he shouted. ‘What do you think the Boche are gonna do when they get hold of us, eh? Don’t you get it, kid? We’re already as good as dead.’

  At the next turn the tyres on one side lifted off the ground and crashed down, jarring Marc’s back and shattering several of the remaining cider bottles. He couldn’t see much of the road ahead through the small window into the cab, but he desperately grabbed one of the poles holding up the canvas roof as he sensed that they were braking hard. After a brief skid they were off-road, juddering violently as stones and rocks clattered against the truck’s metal underside.

  They came to a mercifully gentle halt as the truck fought a losing battle with heavy undergrowth. Marc was trembling and gasping for breath, but seemed free of serious injury. He thought it unlikely that the driver would be in any state to drive on but he wasn’t prepared to take chances and, as the dogs scrambled back to their feet, he grabbed his bag and jumped out the back.

  He landed in a tangle of earth and roots torn up by the truck. Thirty metres away the road was lined with the bedraggled column of open-backed troop carriers and horse-drawn artillery that the driver had swerved to avoid.

  An officer with his pistol drawn was jogging towards Marc with three of his men a few paces behind. A second group was cutting through the trees towards the front of the truck.

  ‘H
ands up,’ the officer shouted to Marc. ‘What the devil is this?’

  Marc didn’t like having a gun pointed at him. ‘I was just riding in the back,’ he explained nervously. ‘They went crazy.’

  As the team at the front of the truck grabbed the doors and pulled out the driver and his companion, one of the bewildered Alsatians scrambled over the back flap and yelped pitifully.

  ‘Big branch straight through the windscreen, sir,’ one of the soldiers at the front shouted. ‘Driver’s dead for sure and the other bloke’s in a right mess.’

  The officer turned away and shook his head. ‘Drunks,’ he sneered. ‘Deserters, most likely, and I’m not wasting any more time on them. Let’s move out.’

  ‘Are you heading to Paris?’ Marc asked. ‘Can I get a ride?’

  The officer looked as though his head was going to explode. ‘Piss off, boy. This is the French Army, not a bloody taxi service.’

  But one of the soldiers was more sympathetic. ‘You’re only a few kilometres out and our horses are tired. You’ll do just as well to walk.’

  ‘What about the dogs, sir? Shall we bring them along?’ his colleague asked.

  ‘What the bloody hell do I want with a couple of filthy dogs?’ the officer shouted. ‘Shoot them. Might as well put the other bugger out of his misery too if you don’t think he’s going to make it.’

  The soldier alongside the officer pulled up his rifle and shot the Alsatian clean through the head. It was harder to see the second dog inside the truck and the first shot hit it in the gut. It squealed desperately for several seconds before a second blast put it out of its misery.

  Marc waited to hear a fourth shot as he staggered back towards the road, shaking with fear. But despite the officer’s suggestion to put the man out of his misery, the bullet never came.