Graham Swift - Shuttlecock

The door was opened, warily, by a woman, in her forties, with an oil lamp, clutching the folds of her dressing-gown. Her eyes went wide as saucers.

There was no time for elaborate explanations:

‘ Madame, je suis un agent Anglais. J’ai échappé aux Boches. Je vous en prie, donnez-moi des vêtements .’

This was the first time, in addressing a stranger, that I had dispensed with my French ‘cover’. I called myself an ‘ agent Anglais ’. I thought this would add to the effect.

My potential saviour stared at me for several seconds. She was interested less in my nakedness than in the filth and blood-stains that covered me. For a moment her face indicated nothing. Then she said, in the most collected of voices: ‘ Entrez monsieur. Attendez ici .’ And I knew I would be provided for.

She left me and returned in no time with a large blanket, towels and clothes; then went out again and reappeared with a bowl of warm water and a cloth. She beckoned me into a room and spread the blanket over a sturdy armchair.

‘ Asseyez-vous. Lavez-vous et mettez ces vêtements .’

I was touched by the way that in the midst of harbouring a fugitive ally she was concerned for her armchair.

She went to a sideboard, took out a bottle of wine and a tumbler.

‘ Buvez. Je vais vous apporter quelque chose à manger .’

It was only now as I began to bathe myself that I realized how I had suffered in the course of my flight. My feet and ankles were raw, bloody, deeply gashed in several places and — for the first time — stabbingly painful. All this was on top of what had been wrought at the Château. A sense of having no time to spare, together with the pain involved, made me none too thorough about the washing. I slipped on the underwear and trousers I had been given. They were a shade too small.

The woman returned with soup, bread and cheese. Now that I was decently clad she allowed herself to inspect me more closely and to examine my wounds. She knelt and looked at my feet, uttered a brief exclamation of sympathy and began rinsing them gently. This hurt a great deal. ‘ Allez — mangez, buvez ,’ she said. She spread towels under my feet so that the splashes of blood and filth would not touch the floor. It struck me that this was to avoid future evidence of my presence; but it must have already left incriminating footprints in the hallway. I realized the extreme risk she was running. She was a capable, dignified — and handsome woman, with reserves of warmth behind her alert grey eyes and disciplined, unpanicking features. Circumstances lend attraction to women — but this reflection is unfair to her.

I gulped at the wine. Though I had been starved for several days and my belly must have craved sustenance, I could not face the food.

‘ Ces vêtements, madame. Ils sont à votre mari? ’

‘ Oui. Les Boches l’ont tué. Il y a un an .’

She left the room and returned with some thick socks and a pair of the sturdy leather boots beloved by the Maquisards and almost impossible, at this stage of the war, to get hold of. I had always preferred to be lighter shod myself, but I did not complain.

As I was pulling on these boots — like the clothes; they were a size too small and consequently, though they gave protection, they exacerbated the pain of my existing wounds — we heard the unmistakable noise of a German ‘arrival’. Cars, the squeal of tyres, commands — the dreaded barking of dogs. The sounds came from the centre of the village.

We both stood up. Stabs of pain shot up my legs.

‘I must go,’ I said. I wanted to quash any attempt by this good woman to hide me. But she seemed already to have concluded for herself that I stood a better chance by flight.

I laced my boots. ‘You must hide all this,’ I said, pointing to the stained towels and blanket, the tray of uneaten food.

‘Don’t worry. They will know nothing.’

I believed her.

The sounds from the centre of the village were beginning to spread out. She went to a back window.

‘Quickly.’

She ushered me to the door through which I had entered and opened it. She must have taken in the significance of the dogs (what presence of mind!) for she pointed to the right (the opposite direction to the one in which I had arrived) and said: ‘Over there — there is a stream. Then after, the forest.’

I had no time to say more than ‘ Merci madame. Mille fois, merci .’ We embraced quickly, just as, in France, two men would have embraced in the same situation. Later, I reflected on this woman’s extraordinary coolness and bravery — all without asking me questions. I was quite sure she would cope with the searching Germans. I did not know who she was and she did not know me. I promised myself that whenever it was possible I would return to thank her properly. But I confess, to my shame, I was never able to trace her.

I made off in the direction she had pointed out. I had ascertained from a clock in the house that the time was half past one. There were perhaps four hours of darkness left.

I crossed the little stream, slipping, almost disastrously, on a boulder, and made for the trees. I was now back in the mad world of flicking branches and clawing brambles, with my pursuers, this time, definitely on my trail. I was soon experiencing the paradox that rest, in the middle of great effort, can produce exhaustion. For a good twenty minutes, in the farmhouse, I had regained my breath, quenched my thirst, had my aches and wounds nursed, and the result of all this was not renewed energy but redoubled fatigue. Every movement was now becoming a distinct labour. On top of this, the boots I had squeezed into were beginning to make the already painful condition of my feet intolerable. At some point along the way I did a seemingly senseless thing. I took them off and threw them away (only an hour before I had been craving shoes), retaining only the woollen socks. I even debated whether to remove my borrowed clothing; for though, like the boots, they offered protection against the spears and barbs of the forest, they seemed, after several days of nakedness, a weighty encumbrance.

I was now, evidently, in a sorry state: making rash decisions based on my immediate physical sensations without any degree of forethought. How would my unshod feet help me when I had to emerge into daylit streets? As I threw off the tight-fitting jacket, it did not occur to me that I was laying a convenient trail of divested garments for my pursuers. Rather, it seemed that, quite deliberately and actually — not as some metaphorical gesture — I was trying to turn myself into an anonymous creature of the woods. In this irrational idea hope seemed to lie. Perhaps I was delirious. Through all the agonies of my flight, I did not lose the sense that the trees, the leaf-strewn ground I trod were my friends. In fact, it grew. Amongst the pines and chestnuts there were sometimes small rustlings and scurryings. Owls hooted. Even as I blundered on, I thought: nocturnal animals are fleeing from me, just as I am fleeing my hunters. If only I could follow their example, disappear into holes and roots. Merge with the forest.…

At some time after my departure from the village — a matter of hours or only moments, I do not know — I seemed to hear the noise of a stream behind me and of dogs crossing it and tracking along its banks. I had that sensation which sometimes comes in nightmares: that while you are straining every muscle to escape some pursuer, you are really making no ground at all; you remain helplessly in-motion-yet-stationary while your enemy closes. At another time I thought I heard, close behind me, German voices — the snapping voices familiar from the Château. I even thought I saw lights flashing at me through the trees. I don’t know, now, whether I really saw or heard these things or whether they were hallucinations. Once, gunfire seemed to rip the air. When I stumbled and fell it took an age to get up. Then a time came when I could no longer remain on my feet and had to make the decision that the hunted rabbit or the cornered mouse has to make as the dogs draw in or the cat prepares to leap: to crouch, to huddle, offering no token of defence, waiting either to be pounced on and destroyed or for some miraculous intervention of destiny.