He said easily in French: 'It is very charming of you to say so, mademoiselle. My name is Howard.'
'I know that.'
'Will monsieur le colonel be back today?'
She said: 'He has been gone for three months, Monsieur Howard. He was near Metz. That is the last we have heard.'
He had expected as much, but the disappointment was no less keen. He hesitated and then drew back.
'I am so sorry,' he said. 'I had hoped to see monsieur le colonel, as I was in Chartres. You have my sympathy, mademoiselle. I will not intrude any further on your anxiety.'
She said: 'Is it - is it anything that I could discuss with you, Monsieur Howard?' He got a queer impression from her manner that she was pleading, trying to detain him at the door.
He could not burden a girl and her mother with his troubles; they had troubles of their own to face. 'It is nothing, mademoiselle,' he said. 'Merely a little personal matter that I wanted to talk over with your father.'
She drew herself up and faced him, looking him in the eyes. 'I understand that you wish to see my father, Monsieur Howard,' she said quietly. 'But he is away - we do not know where. And I... I am not a child. I know very well what you have come to talk about. We can talk of this together, you and I.'
She drew back from the door. 'Will you not come in and sit down?' she said.
Chapter 7
He turned and motioned to the children. Then he glanced at the girl, and caught an expression of surprise, bewilderment, on her face. There are rather a lot of us, I'm afraid,' he said apologetically.
She said: 'But... I do not understand, Monsieur Howard. Are these your children?'
He smiled. 'I'm looking after them. They aren't really mine.' He hesitated and then said: 'I am in a position of some difficulty, mademoiselle.'
'Oh...'
'I wished to talk it over with your father.' He wrinkled his brows in perplexity. 'Did you think that it was something different?'
She said, hastily: 'No, monsieur - not at all.' And then she swung round arid called: 'Maman! Come quickly; here is Monsieur Howard, from Cidoton!'
The little woman that Howard remembered came bustling out; the old man greeted her ceremoniously. Then for a few minutes he stood with the children pressed close round him in the little salon of the flat, trying to make the two women understand his presence with them. It was not an easy task.
The mother gave it up. 'Well, here they are,' she said, content to let the why and wherefore pass. 'Have they had dejeuner? Are they hungry?'
The children smiled shyly. Howard said: 'Madame, they are always hungry. But do not derange yourself; we can get dejeuner in the town perhaps?'
She said that that was not to be thought of. 'Nicole, stay with m'sieur for a little, while I make arrangements.' She bustled off into the kitchen.
The girl turned to the old man. 'Will you sit down and rest a little,' she said. 'You seem to be very tired.' She turned to the children. 'And you, too, you sit down and stay quiet; dejeuner will be ready before long.'
The old man looked down at his hands, grimed with dirt. He had not washed properly, or shaved, since leaving Dijon. 'I am desolated that I should appear so dirty,' he said. 'Presently, perhaps I could wash?'
She smiled at him and he found comfort in her smile. 'It is not easy to keep clean in times like these,' she said. 'Tell me from the beginning, monsieur - how did you come to be in France at all?'
He lay back in the chair. It would be better to tell her the whole thing; indeed, he was aching to tell somebody, to talk over his position. 'You must understand, mademoiselle,' he began, 'that I was in great trouble early in the year. My only son was killed. He was in the Royal Air Force, you know. He was killed on a bombing raid.'
She said: 'I know, monsieur. I have the deepest sympathy for you.'
He hesitated, not quite sure if he had understood her correctly. Some idiom had probably misled him. He went on: 'It was intolerable to stay in England. I wanted a change of scene, to see new faces.'
He plunged into his story. He told her about the Cavanaghs at Cidoton. He told her of Sheila's illness, of their delay at Dijon. He told her about the chambermaid, about la petite Rose. He told her how they had become stranded at Joigny, and touched lightly on the horror of the Montargis road, because Pierre was with them in the room. He told her about the Royal Air Force men, and about the little Dutch boy they had found in Pithiviers. Then he sketched briefly how they had reached Chartres.
It took about a quarter of an hour tb tell, in the slow, measured, easy tones of an old man. In the end she turned to him in wonder.
'So really, monsieur, none of these little ones have anything to do with you at all?'
'I suppose not,' he said, 'if you like to look at it that way.'
She pressed the point. 'But you could have left the two in Dijon for their parents to fetch from Geneva? You would have been able then, yourself, to have reached England in good time.'
He smiled slowly. 'I suppose so.'
She stared at him. 'We French people will never understand the English,' she said softly. And then she turned aside.
He was a little puzzled. 'I beg your pardon?'
She got to her feet. 'You will wish to wash,' she said. 'Come, I will show you. And then, I will see that the little ones also wash.'
She led him to an untidy bathroom; manifestly, they kept no servant in the flat. He looked around for a man's gear, hoping for a razor, but the colonel had been away too long. Howard contented himself with a wash, resolved at the first opportunity to see if he could get a shave.
The girl took the children to a bedroom, and washed them one by one quite thoroughly. Then it was time for dejeuner. By padding out the midday meal with rice, Madame Rougeron had produced a risotto; they sat down to it round the table in the salon and had the first civilised meal that Howard had eaten since Dijon.
And after lunch, sitting round the littered table over coffee, while the children played together in a corner of the salon, he discussed his future with them.
'I wanted to get back to England, of course,' he said. 'I still want to. But at the moment it seems difficult.'
Madame Rougeron said: 'There are no boats to England now, m'sieur. The Germans have stopped everything.'
He nodded. 'I was afraid so,' he said quietly. 'It would have been better if I had gone back to Switzerland.'
The girl shrugged her shoulders. 'It is always easy to be wise later,' she said. 'At the time, a week ago, we all thought that Switzerland would be invaded. I think so still. I do not think that Switzerland would be at all a good place for you to go.'
There was a silence.
Madame said: 'These other children, monsieur. The one called Pierre and the other little Dutchman. Would you have taken them to England?'
Sheila, bored with playing on the floor, came up and pulled his sleeve, distracting hun. 'I want to go out for a walk, M'sieur Howard, may we go out for a walk and see some tanks?'
He put his arm round her absently. 'Not just now,' he said. 'Stay quiet for a little. We'll go out presently.' He turned to Madame Rougeron. 'I don't see that I can leave them, unless with their relations,' he said. 'I have been thinking about this a good deal. It might be very difficult to find their relations at this time.'
The mother said: 'That is very true.'
Pursuing his train of thought, he said: 'If I could get them to England, I think I'd send them over to America until the war is over. They would be quite safe there.' He explained. 'My daughter, who lives in the United States, has a big house on Long Island. She would make a home for them till the war ends, and then we could try and find their parents.'
