The road stretched out towards the west, dead straight. As far as he could see it was thronged with vehicles, all moving the same way. He felt it really was a most extraordinary sight, a thing that he had never seen before, a population in migration.
Presently Rose said she heard an aeroplane.
Instinctively, Howard turned his head. He could hear nothing.
'I hear it,' Ronnie said. 'Lots of aeroplanes.'
Sheila said: 'I want to hear the aeroplane.'
'Silly,' said Ronnie. 'There's lots of them. Can't you hear?'
The old man strained his ears, but he could hear nothing. 'Can you see where they are?' he asked, nonchalantly. A cold fear lurked in the background of his mind.
The children scanned the sky. 'V'la,' said Rose, pointing suddenly. Trots avions - la.'
Ronnie twisted round in excitement to Howard. 'They're coming down towards us! Do you think we'll see them close?'
'Where are they?' he enquired. He strained his eyes in the direction from which they had come. 'Oh, I see. They won't come anywhere near here. Look, they're going down over there.'
'Oh...' said Ronnie, disappointed. 'I did want to see them close.'
They watched the aircraft losing height towards the road, about two miles away. Howard expected to see them land among the fields beside the road, but they did not land. They flattened out and flew along just above the tree-tops, one on each side of the road and one behind flying down the middle. A little crackling rattle sounded from them as they came. The old man stared, incredulous - it could not be...
Then, in a quick succession, from the rear machine, five bombs fell on the road. Howard saw the bombs actually leave the aeroplane, saw five great spurts of flame on the road, saw queer, odd fragments hurled into the air.
From the bus a woman shrieked: 'Les Allemands!' and pandemonium broke loose. The driver of the little Peugeot car fifty yards away saw the gesticulations of the crowd, looked back over his shoulder, and drove straight into the back of a mule cart, smashing one of its wheels and cascading the occupants and load on to the road. The French around the bus dashed madly for the door, hoping for shelter in the glass and plywood body, and jammed in a struggling, pitiful mob in the entrance. The machines flew on towards them, their machine-guns spitting flame. The rear machine, its bombs discharged, flew forward and to the right; with a weaving motion the machine on the right dropped back to the rear centre, ready in its turn to bomb the road.
There was no time to do anything, to go anywhere, nor was there anywhere to go. Howard caught Sheila and Ronnie and pulled them close to him, flat on the ground. He shouted to Rose to lie down, quickly.
Then the machines were on them, low-winged, single engined monoplanes with curious bent wings, dark green in colour. A burst of fire was poured into the bus from the machines to right and left; a stream of tracer- bullets shot forward up the road from the centre aircraft. A few bullets lickered straight over Howard and his children on the grass and spattered in the ground a few yards behind them.
For a moment Howard saw the gunner in the rear cockpit as he fired at them. He was a young man, not more than twenty, with a keen, tanned face. He wore a yellow students' corps cap, and he was laughing as he fired.
Then the two flanking aircraft had passed, and the centre one was very near. Looking up, the old man could see the bombs slung in their racks beneath the wing; he watched in agony for them to fall. They did not fall. The machine passed by them, not a hundred feet away. He watched it as it went, sick with relief. He saw the bombs leave the machine three hundred yards up the road, and watched dumbly as the debris flew upwards. He saw the wheel of a cart go sailing through the air, to land in the field.
Then that graceful, weaving dance began again, the machine in the rear changing places with the one on the left. They vanished in the distance; presently Howard heard the thunder of another load of bombs on the road.
He released the children, and sat up on the grass. Ronnie was flushed and exerted. 'Weren't they close!' he said. 'I did see them well. Did you see them well, Sheila? Did you hear them firing the guns?'
He was ecstatically pleased. Sheila was quite unaffected. She said: 'May I have some orange?'
Howard said slowly and mechanically: 'No, you've had enough to eat. Drink up your milk.' He turned to Rose and found her inclined to tears. He knelt up and moved over to her. 'Did anything hit you?' he asked in French.
She shook her head dumbly.
'Don't cry, then,' he said kindly. 'Come and drink your milk. It'll be good for you.'
She turned her face up to him. 'Are they coming back? I don't like the noise they make.'
He patted her on the shoulder. 'Never mind,' he said a little unsteadily. 'The noise won't hurt you. I don't think they're coming back.' He filled up the one cup with milk and gave it to her. 'Have a drink.'
Ronnie said: 'I wasn't frightened, was I?'
Sheila echoed: 'I wasn't frightened, was I?'
The old man said patiently: 'Nobody was frightened. Rose doesn't like that sort of noise, but that's not being frightened.' He stared over to the little crowd around the bus. Something had happened there; he must go and see. 'You can have an orange,' he said. 'One-third each. Will you peel it, Rose?'
'Mais oui, monsieur.'
He left the children happy in the prospect of more food, and went slowly to the bus. There was a violent and distracted clamour from the crowd; most of the women were in tears of fright and rage. But to his astonishment, there were no casualties save one old woman who had lost two fingers of her left hand, severed cleanly near the knuckles by a bullet. Three women, well accustomed to first aid in accidents on the farm, were tending her, not inexpertly.
Howard was amazed that no one had been killed. From the right a dozen bullets had entered the body of the bus towards the rear; from the left the front wheels, bonnet and radiator had been badly shot about. Between the two the crowd of peasants milling round the door had escaped injury. Even the crowd in the small Peugeot had escaped, though one of the women in the mule cart was shot through the thigh. The mule itself was dying in the road.
There was nothing he could do to help the wounded women. His attention was attracted by a gloomy little knot of men around the driver of the bus; they had lifted the bonnet and were staring despondently at the engine. The old man joined them; he knew little of machinery, but it was evident even to him that all was not quite right. A great pool of water lay beneath the engine of the bus; from holes in radiator and cylinder casting the brown, rusty water still ran out.
One of the men turned aside to spit. 'Ca ne marche, plus,' he said succinctly.
It took a moment or two for the full meaning of this to come home to Howard. 'What does one do?' he asked the driver. 'Will there be another bus?'
'Not unless they find a madman for a driver.' There was a strained silence. Then the driver said: 'Il faut continuer a pied.'
It became apparent to Howard that this was nothing but the ugly truth. It was about four in the afternoon and Montargis was twenty-five kilometres, say fifteen miles, farther on, nearer to them than Joigny. They had passed one or two villages on the road from Joigny; no doubt one or two more lay ahead before Montargis. But there would be no chance of buses starting at these places, nor was there any reasonable chance of a hotel.
It was appalling, but it was the only thing. He and the children would have to walk, very likely the whole of the way to Montargis.
He went into the wrecked body of the bus and collected their things, the two attache cases, the little suitcase, and the remaining parcels of food. There was too much for him to carry very far unless the children could carry some of it; he knew that that would not be satisfactory for long. Sheila could carry nothing; indeed, she would have to be carried herself a great deal of the way. Ronnie and Rose, if they were to walk fifteen miles, would have to travel light.
He took his burdens back to the children and laid them down on the grass. It was impossible to take the suitcase with them; he packed it with the things that they could spare most easily and left it in the bus in the faint hope that one day it might somehow be retrieved. That left the two bulging little cases and the parcels of food. He could carry those himself.
