cocktail when she had said in English that: 'A little bit of what you fancy does you good.' Thinking back, he remembered the little twinges of pain that he had suffered when she had said that and yet he had not realised.
How close had their friendship been, then? They had written freely to each other; on top of that it seemed that they had met in Paris just before the war. No breath of that had reached him previously. But thinking back, he could remember now that there had been a space of two week-ends in June when he had seen nothing of the boy; he had assumed that duties with the squadron had prevented him from coming over to see him, or even from ringing up. Was that the time? It must have been.
His mind turned to Nicole. He had thought her a very odd young woman previously; he did not think of her in quite the same way now. Dimly he began to realise a little of her difficulties with regard to John, and to himself. It seemed that she had told her mother little about John; she had nursed her grief in silence, dumb and inarticulate. Then he had turned up, quite suddenly, at the door one day. To her secret grief he added an acute embarrassment.
He turned over again. He must let her alone, let her talk if she wanted to, be silent if she chose. If he did that, perhaps she would open out as time went on. It had been of her own volition she had told him about John.
He lay awake for several hours, turning these matters over in his mind. Presently, after a long time, he slept.
He woke in the middle of the night, to the sound of wailing. He opened his eyes; the wailing came from one of the children. He sat up, but Nicole was before him; by the time he was fully awake she was out of her bed, crouching down by a red-faced, mournful little boy sitting up and crying bitterly.
It was Willem, crying as if his heart was going to break. The girl put her arm round him and spoke to him in soft, baby French. The old man rolled out of his blanket, got up stiffly and moved over to them.
'What is it?' he enquired. 'What is the matter?'
The girl said: 'I think he has had a nightmare - that is all. Presently he will sleep again.' She turned again to comfort him.
Howard felt singularly helpless. His way with the children had been to talk to them, to treat them as equals. That simply did not work at all, unless you knew the language, and he knew no word of any language that this little Dutch boy spoke. Left to himself he might have taken him on his knee and talked to him as man to man; he could never have soothed him as this girl was soothing him.
He knelt down clumsily beside them. 'Do you think he is unwell?' he asked. 'He has perhaps eaten something that upset him?'
She shook her head; already the sobs were dying down. 'I do not think so,' she said softly. 'Last night he did this, twice. It is bad dreams, I think. Only bad dreams.'
The old man's mind drifted back to the unpleasant town of Pithiviers; it would be natural, he thought, for bad dreams to haunt the child.
He wrinkled his forehead. 'You say that he did this twice last night, mademoiselle?' he said. 'I did not know.'
She said: 'You were tired and sleeping very well. Besides your door was shut. I went to him, but each time he very soon went to sleep again.' She bent over him. 'He is almost asleep again now,' she said softly.
There was a long, long silence. The old man stared around; the long, sloping floor was lit by one dim blue light over the door. Dark forms lay huddled on palliasses here and there; two or three snorers disturbed the room; the air was thick and hot. From sleeping in his clothes he felt sticky and dirty. The pleasant, easy life that he had known in England seemed infinitely far away. This was his real life. He was a refugee, sleeping on straw in a disused cinema with a German sentry at the door, his companion a French girl, a pack of foreign children in his care. And he was tired, tired, dead tired.
The girl raised her head. She said very softly: 'He is practically asleep, this one. In a minute I will lay him down.' She paused, and then she said, 'Go back to bed, Monsieur Howard. I shall not be long.'
He shook his head and stayed there watching her. Presently, the little boy was sound asleep; she laid him gently down on his pillow and pulled the blanket round him. Then she got up. 'Now,' she said quietly, 'one can sleep again, until next time.'
He said: 'Good night, Nicole.'
She said: 'Good night. Do not get up if he should wake up. He is no trouble.'
He did not wake again in the two or three hours that were left of the night. By six o'clock the place was all astir; there was no chance of any further sleep. Howard got up and straightened out his clothes as well as he could; he felt dirty and unshaven.
The girl got the children up and, with Howard, helped them to dress. She, too, was feeling dirty and unkempt; her curly hair was draggled, and she had a headache. She would have given a great deal for a bath. But there was no bath in the place, nor even anywhere to wash.
Ronnie said: 'I don't like this place. May we sleep in a farm tomorrow?'
Rose said: 'He means tonight, m'sieur. He talks a great deal of nonsense, that one.'
Howard said: 'I'm not quite sure where we shall sleep tonight. We'll see when the time comes.'
Sheila, wriggling her shoulders in her Liberty bodice, said: 'I do itch.'
There was nothing to be done about that. To distract her mind Howard led her off with the other children to the end of the hall, where the German cook was dispensing mugs of coffee. With each mug went a large, unattractive hunk of bread. Howard left the children at a trestle table and went to draw their bread and coffee.
Nicole joined them as he brought it to the table and they all had breakfast together. The bread was hard and tasteless and the coffee bitter, acid stuff with little milk. The children did not like it, and were querulous; it needed all the tact of the old man and the girl to prevent their grumbles calling the attention of the German cook. There was some chocolate left of the provisions he had bought on the road from Joigny; he shared this out among them and this made a little relish to the meal.
Presently, they left the Cinema du Monde and, pushing the pram before them, made their way towards the railway station. The town was full of Germans parading down the streets, Germans driving lorries, Germans lounging at the doors of billets, Germans in the shops. They tried to get chocolate for the children at several shops, but the soldiers had swept the town clean of sweets of every kind. They bought a couple of long rolls of bread and a brown sausage of doubtful origin as provision for their journey. Fruit was unobtainable, but they bought a few lettuces.
At the railway station they passed the barrier without difficulty, surrendering their billeting pass to the German officer. They put the pram into the baggage-wagon on the train for Brest, and climbed up into a third-class carriage.
It was only when the train was well on the way that Howard discovered that la petite Rose was nursing a very dirty black and white kitten.
Nicole was at first inclined to be sharp with her. 'We do not want a little cat,' she said to Rose. 'No, truly we do not want that cat or any other cat. You must put him out at the next station.'
The corners of the little girl's mouth drooped, and she clutched the kitten tighter. Howard said: 'I wouldn't do that. He might get lost.'
Ronnie said: 'She might get lost, Mr Howard. Rose says it's a lady cat. How do you know it's a lady cat, Rose?'
Nicole expostulated: 'But Monsieur Howard, the little cat belongs to somebody else. It is not our cat, that one.'
He said placidly: 'It's our cat now.'
She opened her mouth to say something impetuous, thought better of it, and said nothing. Howard said: 'It is a very little thing, mademoiselle. It won't add to our difficulties, but it will give them a good deal of pleasure.'
Indeed, what he said was perfectly correct. The children were clustered round intent on the kitten, which was washing its face on Rose's lap. Willem turned to Nicole, beaming, and said something unintelligible to her. Then he turned back, watching the kitten again, entranced.
Nicole said, in a resigned tone: 'As you wish. In England, does one pick up cats and take them away like that?'
