THE INVISIBLE VICTORY

l'agonie.'_

_'C'est la guerre, madame.'_

Outside Vendфme there was an air-raid warning, another gendarme on a bicycle blowing his whistle and waving at us furiously.

'Should we get in the ditch?' asked Elizabeth halfheartedly, coming to a halt.

'Far too dirty.'

'They're always false alarms, anyway.'

_'Je meurs de mort naturelle,'_ asserted Madame Chalmar, holding her head resignedly.

Tours is like a filleted fish. Its backbone filled the long straight rue Nationale, from which run short side-streets. It is only 140 miles from Paris, but it took us twelve hours before we crawled in the unending line of traffic over the Pont Wilson, which crossed the Loire at its head. Madame Chalmar's excitement seemed to have expelled her headache and sensations of impending death. She directed us to the house of her friend Monsieur Perronet, a lawyer, her informant of Lamartine's whereabouts. We found him a fat, affable gingery man with a pudding-faced amiable wife, who at once offered to put us up. He seemed still an enthusiast for the British, or at least expressed no hostility. Or perhaps he was like the Good Soldier Schweik, with a placid nature proof against the cruel vicissitudes of Europe.

Lamartine had been in Tours a week, he assured Madame Chalmer, staying at a small hotel behind the station. He had come to Perronet _toucher un chиque._ I had the strong impression that the lawyer disliked him. I wanted to beard the doctor there and then, but Madame Chalmer declared herself prostrate. Elizabeth and myself were worn out, and took the excuse to postpone an embarrassing confrontation. We had planned to spend one night in Tours before driving due north to Cherbourg. I felt no urgency. The Germans were no longer attacking, but consolidating their front along the Somme. They were likely to be in the same place at Christmas. I certainly could not conceive their tanks shortly racing for the Pyrenees with the speed of peacetime touring cars.

Elizabeth and I shared the best spare bedroom, which was full of massive old-fashioned furniture, its curtains faded sharply where they had caught the sun, and as inhospitable as a museum. 'The sheets are damp,' said Elizabeth as she got into bed.

There was an air-raid warning during the night. Monsieur Perronet banged on the door in agitation, but we preferred to stay where we were. We lay holding each other tight in the particularly intense blackness of French shutters.

'That fleeing lieutenant last night-' she said. When we had left that morning, Jean-Baptiste was still asleep. 'Do you suppose he'll be shot as a deserter?'

'The French can't shoot half their Army.'

'He didn't like us a bit, did he?'

'The French think that we got them into the war.'

'They hadn't the guts to get themselves into it.'

'You know what the German propaganda leaflets make of the situation-_England Will Fight to the Last Frenchman.'_

'I suppose people will believe anything if it's repeated often enough,' Elizabeth decided. 'Even that Bovril prevents that sinking feeling and Skegness is so bracing.'

'Newspaper readers can be divided into three groups,' I quoted. 'Those who believe everything, those who believe nothing and those who examine everything critically. The first group is by far the largest, the third regards all journalists as rascals.'

'What nasty cynic said that?'

'Hitler, in _Mein Kampf._ Would you have imagined five years ago that we should be lying in bed in the middle of a French provincial town discussing the psychology of the masses?'

'Would you have imagined five years ago that you'd have taken my virginity?'

'That's putting it a little far, isn't it?'

'It's the principle of the thing.'

'Five years ago I was the butler's boy.'

'It's very strange, darling, to think that I'm in bed with the father of my housemaid's baby.'

'Was that remark necessary?'

We had become aware of the drone of a plane. We heard in the distance the unmistakable crump of bombs. 'Five,' counted Elizabeth. 'Do you think he's carrying a round half-dozen?'

'No ack-ack fire,' I observed.

'All the ack-ack guns are in the Maginot Line.'

We lay silent, both wondering in secret fear if the plane would turn towards us. But it droned away like an irritating wasp. 'Will you promise me something, Elizabeth?'

'Is there anything left?' she asked in a simple voice.

'That you'll never again treat me with that awful bright-young-thing manner.'

'That was my defence. If I'd treated intensely any single one of the men who were after me, then I should have found myself in love, and desperately miserable because I felt bound to rebuff all the others. I'm very sйrieuse, you know.'

'I was the only one of your adoring little circle who did know that all along.'

'And if I had taken them all seriously, I should have won the reputation of a nymphomaniac, which would only have aggravated the problem.'

'I thought you were falling in love with Archie.'

'Oh, Archie! Good heavens, no. He's not nearly intelligent enough.'

'I'm assuming you're in love with me?'

'Only assuming? Isn't that a rather indelicate-even an insulting-remark in the circumstances?'

I held her tighter. 'Your mother wouldn't approve of it. Nor your father, I think, either.'

'He isn't my father,' she said bluntly. It was the first time she had mentioned this. 'Do you ever see your daughter?'

'Never. She's evacuated somewhere safely, I suppose. I could have kept in touch with Mrs Packer, but I wanted to pretend the whole episode hadn't happened. People at Oxford think I'm a donnish bachelor.'

She snuggled closer to me. 'I'll come to Oxford, darling, just as soon as I'm given leave.'

'Oxford looks lovely just now.'

The all clear blew. 'I wonder who got the sixth bomb?' asked Elizabeth sleepily.

When we came downstairs in the morning, the TSF was playing loudly in the salon. Maurice Chevalier was singing _Ma Pomme,_ followed by advertisements for coffee, hair tonic, cream cheese and brassiиres.

'Ssh!' said Madame Perronet, leaning close to the set, finger to lips.

_'Ici Radio Paris…'_ I could not understand the news bulletin, but Madame Perronet's expression served well enough. At four o'clock on that morning of Wednesday June 5, the Germans had attacked with a vast flash of artillery from the mouth of the Somme to where the River Aisne met the River Ailette, 125 miles away near Reims.

_'Les Allemands on mis la balle en jeu,'_ she said grimly, shrugging her plump shoulders.

'I suppose we are going to get home all right?' remarked Elizabeth.

'We'll get back from somewhere, even if it's from St Nazaire,' I told her confidently. 'The whole of France can't simply collapse in front of the Nazis.'

Madame Chalmar was so devastated after yesterday's drive that she had to eat breakfast in bed. She appeared about nine, dressed as though going on her honeymoon. She wore a small close hat with a feather, a low cut green silk dress, silk stockings and shoes with very high heels. She still had her white gloves and umbrella, she was brightly made up, and the vivacity of her smile indicated full recovery from her exhaustion. As she started on foot for Lamartine's hotel, chattering feverishly to Elizabeth and myself, it dawned on me that she expected to find him there with another woman, with luck in bed. The rival would have to look pretty good that morning to bear comparison.

The small hotel was like so many in France, an indistinguishable slice of a street-long block of tall, shuttered stone buildings. In the hall, a harassed porter in a yellow-and-black striped waistcoat with alpaca sleeves guarded a bank of pigeon-holes with dangling brass keys. He was arguing fiercely with half a dozen travel-worn men and women standing amid cheap suitcases and bundles, desperate for a roof. Madame Chalmar asked in a sweet, social