'We're going to walk on to Montargis,' he explained to the children. The bus won't go.'
'Why not?' asked Ronnie.
'There's something the matter with the engine.'
'Oh - may I go and see?'
Howard said firmly: 'Not now. We're just going to walk on.' He turned to Rose. 'You will like walking more than riding in the bus, I know.'
She said: 'I did feel so ill.'
'It was very hot. You're feeling better now?'
She smiled. 'Oui, monsieur.'
They started out to walk in the direction of Montargis. The heat of the day was passing; it was not yet cool, but it was bearable for walking. They went very slowly, limited by the rate at which Sheila walked, which was slow. The old man strolled patiently along. It was no good worrying the children with attempts to hurry them; they had many miles to cover and he must let them go at their own pace.
Presently they came to the place where the second load of bombs had dropped.
There were two great craters in the road, and three more among the trees at the verge. There had been a cart of some sort there. There was little crowd of people busy at the side of the road; too late, he thought to make a detour from what he feared to let the children see.
Ronnie said clearly and with interest: 'Are those dead people, Mr Howard?'
He steered them over to the other side of the road. 'Yes,' he said quietly. 'You must be very sorry for them.'
'May I go and see?'
'No,' he said. 'You mustn't go and look at people when they're dead. They want to be left alone.'
'Dead people do look funny, don't they, Mr Howard?'
He could not think of what to say to that one, and herded them past in silence. Sheila was singing a little song and showed no interest; Rose crossed herself and walked by quickly with averted eyes.
They strolled on at their slow pace up the road. If there had been a side road Howard would have taken it, but there was no side road. It was impossible to make a detour other than by walking through the fields; it would not help him to turn back towards Joigny. It was better to go on.
They passed other casualties, but the children seemed to take little interest. He shepherded them along as quickly as he could; when they had passed the target for the final load of bombs there would probably be an end to this parade of death. He could see that place now, half a mile ahead. There were two motor-cars jammed in the road, and several trees seemed to have fallen.
Slowly, so slowly, they approached the place. One of the cars was wrecked beyond redemption. It was a Citroen front drive saloon; the bomb had burst immediately ahead of it, splitting the radiator in two and blasting in the windscreen. Then a tree had fallen straight on top of it, crushing the roof down till it touched the chassis. There was much blood on the road.
Four men, from a decrepit old de Dion, were struggling to lift the tree to clear the road for their own car to pass. On the grass verge a quiet heap was roughly covered by a rug.
Pulling and heaving at the tree, the men rolled it from the car and dragged it back, clearing a narrow passage with great difficulty. They wiped their brows, sweating, and clambered back into their old two-seater. Howard stopped by them as the driver started his engine.
'Killed?' he asked quietly.
The man said bitterly: 'What do you think? The filthy Bodies!' He let the clutch in and the car moved slowly forward round the tree and up the road ahead of them.
Fifty yards up the road it stopped. One of the men leaned back and shouted at him: 'You - with the children. You! Gardez le petit gosse!'
They let the clutch in and drove on. Howard looked down in bewilderment at Rose. 'What did he mean?'
'He said there was a little boy,' she said.
He looked around. 'There's no little boy here.'
Ronnie said: 'There's only dead people here. Under that rug.' He pointed with his finger.
Sheila awoke to the world about her. 'I want to see the dead people.'
The old man took her hand firmly in his own. 'Nobody goes to look at them,' he said. 'I told you that.' He stared around him in bewilderment.
Sheila said: 'Well, may I go and play with the boy?'
'There's no boy here, my dear.'
'Yes there is. Over there.'
She pointed to the far side of the road, twenty yards beyond the tree. A little boy of five or six was standing there, in fact, utterly motionless. He was dressed in grey, grey stockings above the knee, grey shorts, and a grey jersey. He was standing absolutely still, staring down the road towards them. His face was a dead, greyish white in colour.
Howard caught his breath at the sight of him, and said very softly: 'Oh, my God!' He had never seen a child looking like that, in all his seventy years.
He crossed quickly over to him, the children following. The little boy stood motionless as he approached, staring at him vacantly. The old man said: 'Are you hurt at all?'
There was no answer. The child did not appear to have heard him.
'Don't be afraid,' Howard said. Awkwardly he dropped down on one knee. 'What is your name?'
There was no answer. Howard looked round for some help, but for the moment there were no pedestrians. A couple of cars passed slowly circumnavigating the tree, and then a lorry full of weary, unshaven French soldiers. There was nobody to give him any help.
He got to his feet again, desperately perplexed. He must go on his way, not only to reach Montargis, but also to remove his children from the sight of that appalling car, capable, if they realised its grim significance, of haunting them for the rest of their lives. He could not stay a moment longer than was necessary in that place. Equally, it seemed impossible to leave this child. In the next village, or at any rate in Montargis, there would be a convent; he would take him to the nuns.
He crossed quickly to the other side of the road, telling the children to stay where they were. He lifted up a corner of the rug. They were a fairly well-dressed couple, not more than thirty years old, terribly mutilated in death. He nerved himself and opened the man's coat. There was a wallet in the inside pocket; he opened it, and there was the identity-card. Jean Duchot, of 8 bis, Rue de la Victoire, Lille.
He took the wallet and some letters and stuffed them into his pocket; he would turn them over to the next gendarme he saw. Somebody would have to arrange the burial of the bodies, but that was not his affair.
He went back to the children. Sheila came running to him, laughing. 'He is a funny little boy,' she said merrily. 'He won't say anything at all!'
The other two had stepped back and were staring with childish intensity at the white-faced boy in grey, still staring blankly at the ruins of the car. Howard put down the cases and took Sheila by the hand. 'Don't bother him,' he said. 'I don't suppose he wants to play just now.'
'Why doesn't he want to play?'
He did not answer that, but said to Rose and Ronnie: 'You take one of the cases each for a little bit.' He went up to the little boy and said to him: 'Will you come with us? We're all going to Montargis.'
There was no answer, no sign that he had heard.
For a moment Howard stood in perplexity; then he stooped and took his hand. In that hot afternoon it was a chilly, damp hand that he felt. 'Allans, mon vieux,' he said, with gentle firmness, 'we're going to Montargis.' He turned to the road; the boy in grey stirred and trotted docilely beside him. Leading one child with either hand, the old man strolled down the long road, the other children followed behind, each with a case.
More traffic overtook them, and now there was noticeable a greater proportion of military lorries mingled with the cars. Not only the civilians streamed towards the west; a good number of soldiers seemed to be going that way too. The lorries crashed and clattered on their old-fashioned solid rubber tyres, grinding their ancient gears. Half of them had acetylene headlamps garnishing the radiators, relics of the armies of 1918, stored twenty years in transport sheds behind the barracks in quiet country towns. Now they were out on the road again, but going in the
