The Foundling's War Read Online Free Page B

St Lawrence, offering his apologies for not hitherto having appreciated his martyrdom. Jean, having familiarised himself with the tankette’s various directional levers, was following the tracks made by Palfy, who had dived into a series of dusty paths bordered by yellowed, overripe wheat and parched grass. The harvest of 1940 was superb, but there were no men to take it in. From time to time across the fields they saw the distant figures of women in white headscarves, cutting wheat by hand and forking the crop into carts drawn by Percherons whose coats trickled with sweat. But no one turned to watch the two strange vehicles lurching noisily into and out of view in plumes ofdust. Jean felt an intoxicating sense of freedom. No more yapping NCOs to order pathetically inadequate defensive fire or a premature withdrawal. He and crazy Palfy were going on holiday, to tour France’s agricultural heartland and discover its bistros where the
patronne
, in vowels as round as her hips, served ‘her’
pâté de campagne
, ‘her’ beef stew, ‘her’ local wine and the pears from ‘her’ garden. But the farms looked like the
Mary Celeste
, the famous brigantine discovered still under sail in the middle of the ocean, without a crew, with breakfast served on the table, the fire still lit in the galley and not a soul on board. They stopped at some of these farms and called out, and no one came. There might be a dog barking, pigs snuffling in the rubbish, cows with swollen udders mooing in the pastures, but apart from the few women they glimpsed, busy bringing in the wheat, France had been emptied of its population by the wave of a magic wand, with the single exception of a disabled man in a wheelchair whom the pigs would eventually deal with too, for lack of anything better to eat.
    His mouth painfully dry from the dust, his stomach empty, his head burning, and still with the taste of his exhausting nausea on his tongue, Jean’s mind began to wander. The war was ending just when it could have become amusing and comfortable, riding in this tracked contraption after having marched themselves to a standstill ever since the Ardennes, chasing the ghosts of promised trucks that would miraculously allow the regiment to rest and re-form. But the trucks had archives of documents to save, tons and tons of archives that headquarters were relying on to exact their revenge one day.
    The first evening they broke open the door of an abandoned farm. A slab of butter still sat on the pantry shelf. Picallon, brought up in the country, milked the cows and brought a jug of cream to the table. They found ham and
saucisson
in the cellar, and some bottles of light red wine and apples. Unmade beds told of a hasty flight. Palfy went looking for bedsheets and found piles of them in a cupboard; picking up a sheet, he rubbed the linen between his thumb and index finger.
    â€˜Obviously it’s not satin, and there’s no trace of a monogram. Butthe mistress of the house washes her own linen and hangs it to dry in the meadow. Even in London you won’t find whiteness like this any more. We must make do. In any case we have no right to ask for too much, my friends. I must remind you that there’s a war on, in case you’ve forgotten, for youth is terribly forgetful.’
    â€˜You’re amazing,’ Picallon said. ‘You’ve seen everything, you know everything. Without you we’d either be dead or have been taken prisoner.’
    â€˜Perhaps I’m actually God!’ Palfy suggested, modestly.
    â€˜No, definitely not, I know you’re not Him. I may be naive, but I’m not that naive.’
    Night was falling. They lit candles and stuck them in glasses on the big table in the main room.
    â€˜Look at us, back in the good old days at Eaton Square all over again,’ Jean said. ‘All that’s missing is Price and his white gloves.’
    Picallon was astonished that his