Night Journey (23 page)

Andrews grunted. “Well, I'm sorry about Dwight. He'll be hard to replace. Here, Mencken, put this rucksack on.”

I got into it with difficulty, for Dwight had been a narrower built man; Andrews began to adjust the straps.

“You never liked him, did you?” he said.

“Who? Dwight? Oh, that's not so.” It had been Andrews I had not liked, but I could hardly say so.

“Probably not your type, Mencken. He was the sahib type … Not that his career had ever been very distinguished. He got turned out of Sandhurst for some shady business and went into the last war in the ranks. He only rose to be acting-major when the others were killed off. What difference does it make? He was a serviceman you could rely on for anything. He came to Italy in the first place because of his lungs. Did all sorts of poor jobs before he drifted into this.…”

The train was fairly racing now. Andrews dabbed his face with cream, and then wiped it.

“Some people thought him a snob. Maybe you did. Maybe snobbery is different in Vienna. Dwight hated soiling his hands … And mad crazy about horses, even though he'd never owned one since his Sandhurst days. I think he took this work not so much became he liked it as because it helped him to live nearly the way he wanted to. Hungarian with a bit of money. Flat in Rome. Enough to eat and drink and smoke. But it was no good asking him to do dirty work. He'd got to be the gentleman. Oh, well. But for
this
piece of dirty work to-night he
insisted
on taking she chief part.…”

I peered out again. The lake had now come full into view, glimmering like a silver dish in the moonlight.

“Your ticket,” I said sharply to Andrews. “Did you not book only to one of the mountain stations?”

He nodded. “ But I helped myself to one of the through tickets to Basle. They'll pass me out on that.”

The brakes were on.

“Good-bye, Mencken,” said Andrews. “I'm not coming through the barrier with you. You and Jane can risk it together if you feel like it.”

He had a soft greasy hand.

We were in the suburbs of the town. Sweat was on my forehead again and I brushed it away. I had never known a train to take so long to stop.

At last signals, another train, lights, points, we came into the station. And stopped. The platform was on the corridor side. Jane rose, but Andrews held up his hand. There were footsteps and we waited for them to pass. Voices on the platform, the usual bustle, the usual shouts.

Andrews got up.

At that moment, from the compartment next to ours, a woman began to scream.

“Fräulein Volkmann,” said Andrews, “ has got rid of her gag.”

These were the last words I heard him speak as he led the way towards the door of the carriage.

Our wait after the train had stopped had cleared the corridor, and there was no one about. So far no one, it seemed, had heard the screaming. We reached the door and were blocked going down the steps by a porter lifting down baggage.

“Porter, monsieur?”

“No,” said Andrews.

“Porter, mad'moiselle?”

Jane shook her head.

I was last out, and as I got down I thought I heard someone going down the train towards the screaming. It was almost inaudible from outside the train because of all the other noises. There were not enough people about to hide us. And the lights were too bright.

On the long walk to the barrier Andrews stopped to buy a paper. It meant that we should reach the barrier well ahead of him. It was a generous gesture and one for which I shall always hold that unlikeable man in special esteem; for it was a race against time; the moment the contents of the carriage were discovered the barrier would be closed.

A small queue of people were waiting to pass out. We fell into line. A man at the front of the queue had stopped and was arguing because he was being asked to pay extra.

I turned and stared down the platform for the expected running official. None yet came. Andrews had joined the queue about fifteen people behind us. We moved up, came to the ticket collector, handed over our

tickets and were through.…
We walked slowly out of the station. Jane leaned against me,

and I think she was feeling faint. Near the very entrance I steered

her into a dark shadow.
“Are you …?”
“No, I'm O.K.”
“I think we must wait and see if Andrews is clear.
We waited.
Through a break in the clouds the moon came out, flattened at

one side like a lemon that had been trodden on. The town roofs

glistened with drying rain.
Andrews did not come.
“I must go back and see,” I said.
Her grip tightened on my arm. “There may be another exit …”
Then Andrews came. We saw him at the back of three or four

others, walking with a slouch, his hands in his pockets. We let him

go by, knowing his anger if he had found us waiting. Then we

followed.
But soon Jane stopped. “This isn't your way. Robert. We'll—have

to separate.”
“I
must
see you safely to your place.”
She shook her head emphatically. “In a few minutes the whole

town will be out. They'll telephone Goldarthe and find no one of

our description left the train there. Then they'll comb Lucerne. The

Swiss police are efficient. We've perhaps ten minutes at the most.”
I hesitated, haunted by my own sense of futility and doom.
“Not for long,” she said, “it may not be for long.”
“How can we know? The odds are so much against us.”
“Odds are often that way.”
“While you are still in Italy …”
“It may not be for long,” she said, like a child trying to comfort

herself as well as me.
We were in the deep shadow of a house when we said goodbye.

I remember the keen but no longer cold freshness of the air after

the musty heat of the carriage; I remember the brightness of the moon on the other side of the street and the darkness of our shadow as if we were under an awning; I remember the distant whistling of a train.

I remember Jane.

“Take great care,” I said.

“Take great care,” she said.

I kissed her eyes and found them wet. I buried my face against her neck and took a deep breath, trying to remember by touch and smell and heart, trying to remember.

Then we broke apart and went our ways, she in the direction of the lake, I towards the river and the old town.

Never have I felt so much alone.

I slept that night in a gaunt old house above the Mühlen-brücke, slept heavily despite everything, and for fourteen hours. It was the last undisturbed sleep I was to have for some time.

Most of the next night I lay hidden among milk cans in a van jolting westward.

Westward not eastward, I was relieved to note. Although I had hardly been consulted in the matter, I was aware that an organisation was coming into operation on my behalf and no pains were being spared. Before daybreak we reached Lausanne, and there I went to earth for seven days while the hue and cry must have raged about me. (For murder is murder and is a civil crime of the first degree, and war did not, could not, enter into it. And it did not matter who had fired the shot, we were all equally culpable. And it had happened on Swiss territory, and it was of paramount importance that the Swiss government should not give Hitler any cause to take offence.)

The man who sheltered me was head of a big dried-milk business, and although on the one occasion I met him he was prosaic and rather unfriendly, he did his job well and fed me well and hid me well, and that was all that mattered.

During those seven days of waiting there was nothing to do but try fretfully to rest, and worry over Jane, and in the night be disturbed by constant tangled dreams in which the train usually figured. But sometimes I was outside the door of Lorenzo & Co., hammering on it while the Gestapo crept up behind. And sometimes I was back in Vienna after my father's arrest, listening for the tramp of studded boots.

Always I would wake sweating and sit up and peer round the loft, trying by a recognition of semi-familiar things to find reassurance. But the incubus of fear sat on my shoulders and often would not move until the coming of first light.

It was an actual relief when the time of waiting was over, and in spite of everything the rest had done me good. My head had quite healed and only throbbed occasionally when I bent down. During this interval my hair was dyed black, and I was encouraged to shave lightly each day with a very blunt safety razor so that by the end of the week there was a strong dirty stubble on my face.

On the Friday night I left Ouchy in the back of an old peasant's cart and we jogged along to a hamlet west of Vevey, where I boarded a small boat taking market produce down the lake to Geneva. In the gentle evening breeze the vessel was allowed unaccountably to drift near the south side of the lake, and here one of the two brothers manning the boat rowed me ashore in the dinghy—very grudgingly, for it had been contracted that I should swim, and this I had never learned to do—and very gingerly, with scarcely moving oars, although previously he had assured me that there were never guards nowadays at this point.

I slipped over the side into three feet of water and waded ashore.

In the cloudy dark it was difficult either to see or be seen, but I found the railway embankment I'd been told of, crossed the line, and moved silently on into France. There was no alarm.

It could be that the worst was over. Within certain limits. I was now a free agent. I carried French papers and had a plausible story if challenged; though I meant if possible not to be challenged. I was dressed in an old walking suit with a knapsack in which, among other things, were French currency, a brandy flask, a small bottle of hair dye marked “lung tonic”, a torch, a map, a pocket compass.

Unfortunately, though I speak German and English and Italian almost without accent, my French is not good: there is always for some reason a guttural undertone, and although the words come freely I am not above grammatical mistakes, or groping for the right expression.

Almost all the way to begin I followed that railway line—since the Haute Savoie is no country to wander in indiscriminately even with the help of a compass. Travelling by night I made a detour to avoid Evian and Thonon, and spent the next day, a wet grey autumnal one, under a haystack south of Lully. The next night I came again within measurable distance of Swiss territory and was glad to change course and strike south, first because where there are land frontiers the lonely stranger is always suspect, and second and more important because I was not far from German-occupied France, and the last thing I wanted was to blunder into some pocket of territory which my map did not show.

I lost my way four times. The whole district was on the verge of mountainous, and to avoid worse mistakes, I followed the valley of the Arve. Off my route by ten-miles, I slept that day near St. Pierre, but moved on again by the afternoon, feeling progress was too slow.

Annecy at long last, reached and skirted. Fatigued and footsore I was tempted to stop early, but went on and shortly after struck the main Lyons road. Here there was good luck: an old lorry stopped and a hoarse voice offered a lift. Knowing I ought to refuse, I climbed gratefully in and was in Lyons by ten in the morning.

Having had my story and my indifferent French accepted without question by the grey-haired driver of the lorry, himself from the Loire, I began to feel more comfortable about both. I caught the afternoon train for Marseilles.

From a room in a cheap lodging house off the Place de la Joliette I began to frequent the rambling dock area of the largest city of unoccupied France. Not for me the handsome offices of the
Compagnie Générale Transatlantique
. Just someone who, for a consideration, might accept a passenger, or sign me on as a member of the crew and ask no questions. As a last resort I had been given an address to use but advised to shift for myself if possible.

On the second evening, conversation with the master of a tramp steamer who had put in that morning and was leaving on the Monday for Rabat with a cargo of bricks and tiles. He would call at Barcelona and Tangier. He said yes, he would not be averse to taking a passenger if one came along with the money, though the accommodation was poor and no comfort to speak of. Why anyone should wish to travel with him … He looked sidelong at me.

“Were you wanting to leave the country in haste?”

“In a way,” I agreed. “Mind, there is nothing wrong, but I have no exit permit and I hear it takes weeks sometimes to get one through. And here's my uncle in Tangier offering me a good job if I can get there next week.”

The seaman sipped his drink. “You will not get out without a permit,” he said sombrely. “They have tightened up everything since I was here last. Orders of the Boche, they say. The docks are watched day and night.”

“Why is that?”

He shrugged. “Plenty of people the Boche wants are still in this corner of France.”

“But why co-operate to help your enemy?”

“The German is no longer the enemy, my friend. He is the victor. There has been a treaty signed, you remember.”

“I should be willing to pay well,” I said. “I would have thought an arrangement could be made.”

“With me, ah yes. With a sensible man, money speaks. But not to the danger of his own business.” He considered me regretfully, shook his head and sighed. “I would do it of course if it were not certain to fail. Too many already have been caught. If you have nothing to hide, monsieur, get your permit and we will talk business.”

Two other conversations followed this general line; the second man opealy suspected me of being a German agent sent to try to catch him out. It meant that I must ask for help after all.

At the upper end of the Rue Noailles is the Restaurant Anglais—an ostentatious name, I felt. M. Gaston, the proprietor, although he had been notified of my possible arrival, was not at all anxious to help, but he agreed that an attempt to leave the country without proper authority was ill-advised—if the proper authority could be got. To be caught boarding a ship without correct papers would be the end of me. He looked me up and down, not disguising very well his opinion that if he had to risk his own freedom he preferred to do so for some distinguished combatant unmistakably French, rather than for a polyglot of some sort with a bad record. However, grudgingly he agreed he might do what he could; his brother-in-law was a
juge d'instruction
. If I would leave my
carte d'identité
and passport with him and call back on Satarday night.…