Graham Swift - Shuttlecock

I twisted my head round and looked up at the towering southern wall of the Château — like some piece of extraordinary stage scenery. No visible lights, searchlights or otherwise; stars veiled by patches of cloud. No noise. I was surprised by this. Perhaps it was later in the night than I imagined, or else, the centre of activity of the Château being the courtyard, the outer walls remained undisturbed. Looking before me again, I could see no sentry posts or machine-gun positions. The Château was not decked out like a prisoner-of-war camp with barbed-wire fencing. My captors must have relied on the internal security of the building — or on the fact that most of their charges were soon in too debilitated a condition to escape. It seemed inconceivable, nonetheless, that the place was not patrolled by sentries who made complete circuits of the walls. I had glimpsed already, en route to interrogations, the sentries on the terrace at the rear of the Château and perhaps they made regular tours of the side-wings. At any rate, I could see no Germans at present and I could hear no tell-tale crunch of approaching boots on the gravel. A last thought made me delay no more. It was the thought of my cell door being opened and of my bare feet being visible through the hole in the wall; and, strangely, it was the thought not so much of how cruel discovery would be at this point, but of how ridiculous it would look.

I began to crawl half over and half through the lavender bush. These plants are tougher than you think, and this was not so straightforward. Another absurd position in which to be caught. But, having got my knees clear of the wall, I raised myself, dashed across the gravel path, fell on to all fours amongst the frames and herb-beds and, in a strange quadruped shuffle, reached the doorway in the wall. No alarms were raised. The darkened vegetable patches and fruit bushes in the kitchen garden and the fresh night air seemed to welcome me like conspiring friends. In those few yards I cut my bare feet on sharp stones. Moreover, that friendly night air (this was September, in hilly country) was chill on my unclothed flesh. I scarcely noticed these things at first — though they were to matter later.

The doorway in the wall contained no door. I waited, listened, peered cautiously through the entrance; heard, saw nothing. The scene the other side of the wall was black and indistinguishable because of the backdrop of trees. But these same trees would cover my escape. I stepped forward through the opening — and came all but face to face with a sentry.

One has miraculous good fortune, and then one has miserable bad luck. The section of wall — about ten yards of it — between my doorway and the Château proper must have been used by sentries patrolling the buildings as a convenient urinal. Even as I peered out a sentry must have been doing what even the most dutiful of sentries are now and then constrained to do. At the point when I emerged he finished and turned to his left. He saw my unclad body, I saw his pale face, about five yards away from me.

Curious encounters take place in war-time. A naked Englishman meets an armed German with his hands on his fly-buttons. They should either fight or flee, but they do neither. For a frozen second they stare at each other in surprise and curiosity. I believe it was my nakedness that saved me. The expression on my German’s face was an appalled, even an offended one. Had I been clothed, I am convinced he would have reached for his rifle at once. Perhaps there is something disarming about an enemy with no clothes on; or perhaps a man feels absurd levelling a gun with his flies undone.

At any rate, I had time to turn and run, and before the German could gather his wits and take aim I was already hidden by darkness. I had been spotted, nonetheless. The alarm would be given; and I had the narrowest of head-starts. Darkness was my chief ally. But it was also a hindrance to speedy flight. You must try yourself running naked through wooded or even semi-wooded country in the dark to realize how quickly one’s feet become punctured and lacerated, one’s whole body and face whipped and torn by boughs and brambles, and how at every pace one runs the risk of a violent fall over some unseen obstacle or down some hidden ditch. In a short space I was cut and bleeding and had no idea which way I was heading. I would have given anything for a pair of shoes. I had reached the boundary of the Château grounds and plunged into thick woods, but I had no means of preventing myself travelling unwittingly in a circle back towards my pursuers.

I experienced all the agonies of a hunted animal. And yet I remember that, in the first stages at least, I scarcely felt any physical pain. I even felt a strange rush of gratitude for these branches and thick tangles of foliage which, even as I pushed on, scratched and snared me. Since then I have come to believe — a blatant case of the pathetic fallacy, no doubt — that the woods and the trees are always on the side of the fugitive and the victim, never on the side of the oppressor.

I halted now and then to recover my breath and to listen out. I heard no noise of a chase; but I had no idea how much distance I had put between me and the Château. I could simply stop and hide the night in the woods.

It was unlikely that a search would discover me in this sort of country — it was even possible that the Germans, in their present general state of retreat, would fail to mount a search at all. But at any moment the yapping of blood-hounds might demolish this optimism. It was also plain to me that a naked man, in daylight, would not be hard to pick out. I had to find some clothes before dawn.

I formed a rough plan. Assuming that I was travelling in a generally south-easterly direction, I ought gradually to veer towards the south-west and hope to strike one of the small tributaries of the Doubs. This would be a means of shaking off pursuit by dogs. Then my aim must be, avoiding the roads, to find clothing somehow at one of the hamlets in the region of Combe-les-Dames. I could, of course, seek refuge in one of these villages, but I dismissed the idea. It was too close to the Château for comfort, I did not know any reliable hide-outs and, now the retreat was in full swing, this whole region was probably swarming with Germans. It was by hiding in an unfamiliar village that I had been caught before. I had more faith, once I was clad and shod, in keeping to the woods and the cover of the country and heading on towards the villages near Besançon where I knew I could find friends. Not the least of my considerations here — though it really counted for little in a distance of a few miles — was that in travelling south-west I would be travelling against the direction of the German retreat and, emotionally at least, towards deliverance. What I did not know at that time was that the Germans were already pulling out of Besançon and that the Americans were pushing across from the Ognon to secure the retreat-route along the Doubs.

And what I also did not know was the actual direction I had been moving in and how many hours of darkness remained to me. I had assumed dawn was not far off. It was in fact only midnight. I had also trusted that I was travelling south-east, whereas in fact I had already, unwittingly, veered — too far — south-west and was doing the very thing I feared — circling the Château at no great distance from it. I missed the Doubs tributary. I eventually came upon a village. But certain features of it, even dimly visible from the distance, told me it was Frécourt, a village scarcely two kilometres from the Château and the very first place the Germans would search.

But, believing daylight was imminent, I had little choice. I battered at the door of an outlying farmhouse. You may imagine the scene, which in retrospect has strong touches of the grotesque and the comic, though at the time such notions counted for very little. I was a naked man, filthy and blood-smeared, hammering at the door of complete strangers. I did not think of the reaction of the occupants. I was only concerned that they would not hand me over to the Germans. Some trace of civilized delicacy still clung to me in my primitive state and I tore a leafy branch from a bush for purposes of decency. I stood like Adam after the Fall.