Chapter Forty Two
Au Vieux Bourg
Drawing heavily on his cigarette, the man in the work-stained blue overalls and the dark beret continued to regard them with hostile eyes. A more unlikely trio of thieves would, he thought, be impossible to imagine: three young boys, all of them well-spoken and one of whom, along with a small dog, were surprisingly, presently sitting seated before him in his very own wheelbarrow.
"Qu'est-ce que vous faites ici? Laissez moi la brouette!" he demanded angrily.
While Max may well have needed the help of both Danny and Robert to help him in negotiating the steps of the carriage down onto the platform of the railway station back at St. Jean de Maurienne when it came to speaking French, it transpired that he had inherited his mother's gift for both learning and speaking foreign languages.
Despite the fact that until now Max had never spoken with a working man, he rose magnificently to the occasion. In what, at least to both Danny and Robert, sounded flawless and perfect French, with Fritz held fast in his arms, Max, who was still sitting in the wheelbarrow quickly apprised the old man, its owner, of what it was that had befallen the three of them. When he had finished his tale he fell silent and smiled shyly up at both Danny and Robert; his two cousins standing agog with amazement.
The man regarded the three boys thoughtfully for an instant.
"Et les trois..." Slowly, he pointed to each of the boys in turn. "Vraiment, vous venez de l'express?"
"Oui, comme je vous ai dit". Max nodded his head in affirmation of the fact that, yes, however incredible it might seem, all three of them, came from off the Rome Express. Evidently the man must have read his thoughts.
"Incroyable!" he exclaimed.
Still seated in the wheel barrow, Max moaned softly and gently massaged his injured knee. When asked what was wrong with him, keeping things simple, he explained to the inquisitive Frenchman merely that he had suffered a fall. Asked if he could stand, Max now did his very best to do so. Having been told to place his hands around the man's neck, Max found himself hoisted gently out of the wheelbarrow. Then, with Max held fast in his arms, the Frenchman indicated to Danny and Robert that they should follow on behind, bringing along with them both little Fritz and the wheelbarrow.
A short walk back down the deserted road brought them once again to the level crossing and the solitary house standing close beside it which, it turned out, was the Frenchman's home, a Monsieur Duval and who it seemed worked for the railways. With Max still held in his arms, having shown Danny and Robert where to leave the wheel barrow, he led them round to the rear of the property, past a chicken coop with a flock of clucking hens, pecking and scratching about in the dirt and in through the back door. Totally unobserved, sitting in the branches of a nearby tree, the golden eagle sat motionless and bided its time.
On entering the house, for Danny, Robert and Max, the first thing which all they noticed was that the dimly lit kitchen was filled with the delicious smell of freshly baked bread. At the same time too, they saw a tall, dark-haired, middle aged woman, thin-lipped, wearing an apron turn, straighten up and who now, with her arms akimbo, stood and surveyed them coldly from beside a massive stone fireplace.
When her husband returned both suddenly and unexpectedly Madame Thérèse Duval had been in the process of taking a batch of freshly baked loaves from out of the oven set deep in the smoke blackened rear wall of the massive granite fireplace. At the sound of the latch being raised and the back door of the kitchen opening, Madame Duval had stood up and turned, ready with a biting, sarcastic remark upon her lips with which to berate her long-suffering husband, Henri, over what it was he had forgotten this time. She had still not forgiven him for the loss, the previous night, of one of her plumpest chickens which had vanished, seemingly inexplicably, from out of the cobbled yard at the rear of the house, lost presumably to a fox which had, understandably, availed himself of what was freely on offer. Of course, if Duval had done as he should have and seen that the hens were securely shut up in the hen-coop, then the loss would not have occurred in the first place.
But, having spent a hour or so last night with his cronies, including Georges, her sister Patricia's reprobate of a husband, drinking a succession of pastis down at Legrand's bar the previous evening to celebrate the promotion to captain of their son Nicolas, a pilot with the French air force, was it any wonder that he had forgotten? In the circumstances, decided Madame Duval, it was only surprising that Henri had managed to find his way home but then there was only one road and if he followed it long enough, it would bring him, eventually, to the railway and the level crossing here at Le Vieux Bourg; provided of course that he set off for home in the right direction in the first place. He and Georges had ended up down in St. Jean before now!
However, instead, for once words failed Madame Duval as she now found herself confronted by the sight of her errant husband with three boys and a dog in tow, the youngest lad held fast in his arms and the two others following closely behind with the little dog on a long leash. In a manner worthy of Mary, countess of Grantham, Madame Duval raised an expressive pair of eyebrows. Unsurprisingly, the initial welcome she afforded to the three bedraggled boys and their dog was decidedly lukewarm.
"Nom d'un chien! Qu'est-ce qui se passe? Encore tes compagnons de beuverie?" she asked of her husband sarcastically.
Then seeing how pale the youngest of the three boys was, her hand flew instantly to her mouth and her heart went out to him. "Le pauvre petit!" Madame Duval, whose eldest boy Jean had been a sickly child, bustled to the settle and plumped up the cushions, fetching a woollen blanket from out of a wooden chest, as her husband set Max down gently, adding by way of explanation how he had come to find the three boys and that in the case of Max, it was his knee that was causing him trouble. Silently, Danny and Robert stood watching while their young cousin was made as comfortable as possible, certainly more comfortable than he had been in the wheel barrow, then placed little Fritz into his arms. Thereafter, having pronounced that the three boys looked both tired and utterly famished, Madame Duval bustled importantly about the kitchen fetching food and crockery; for his part Monsieur Duval indicating to Danny and Robert that they should sit themselves down on one of the benches placed alongside the long wooden table which occupied the centre of the room.
While Jean Duval had indeed been a sickly child, that had not stopped him joining up with his pals at the start of the Great War. When in August 1914 he had returned to Le Vieux Bourg from the recruiting office in Modane and told his parents what he had done, for all that he was twenty, the first thing his mother did was to box his ears.
However, what was done, could not be undone and for the first two years of the war, at least for the Duvals, all went well. Then came the telegram which they had dreaded, announcing that Jean had been killed at Verdun, with similar telegrams also being received simultaneously by several of their neighbours informing them of the death of their own sons, all friends of Jean and who like him had been serving in the 151 Regiment d'Infanterie de Ligne; a handful of over 377,000 French casualties who lost their lives during the ten month long battle fought there at Verdun, its commanding heights, ringed by a string of powerful forts, overlooking the River Meuse.
Fortunately, at but eleven years old, their youngest child, another boy, Nicolas, had been too young to fight. Then, despite or indeed perhaps because of what had happened to his elder brother, in 1924, aged twenty one, much to his mother's grief and incredulity, Nicolas Duval had joined the French air force. After this turn of events, unsurprisingly the only three of her brood whom Madame Duval considered to have any sense at all was her daughter Marie, married to Antoine Bonnemort, a solid, dependable predictable chap with a steady job as a booking clerk with the Compagnie PLM down the line at the station in Modane, and who now had three children of her own.
Seated here at the end of the long, scrubbed wooden table in the heavily beamed, smoke-stained, stone flagged kitchen of the crossing keeper's lonely house at Le Vieux Bourg, any words, whether in Irish, English, let alone French or German, would have been quite incapable of expressing the admiration which at the present moment, both Danny and Robert felt for their young Austrian cousin.
"Mangez-vous, mangez-vous!" encouraged the tall, dark-haired, aproned woman. She now smiled warmly at them and indicated with the fingers of her hands that all three boys should eat what had been placed before them, bowls of steaming hot chocolate and a basket filled with hunks of freshly baked bread. Her husband, Henri, did likewise, clapping Danny, who was seated closest to him, heartily around the shoulders.
"Eat... we... eat," Max called cheerfully from the settle by way of further explanation, although none was really necessary. Seated next to Robert, Danny grinned at both his cousins while all three of them applied themselves with gusto to both the bread and the bowls of chocolate, during the course of which Monsieur Duval spoke to Max in French.
Evidently having understood what it was that Max had told him, Henri patted Fritz's little head and leaving the three boys seated contentedly drinking from their bowls, he disappeared out into the quarry tiled passage, to the telephone, from where he made two calls. When he had finished speaking to whoever it was he had been talking, Monsieur Duval came back into the kitchen and sat himself down on the settle where he spoke quickly to Max, although whatever it was that passed between them as yet remained a mystery to both Danny and Robert.
Sensing their evident lack of understanding, Henri nodded to his wife who took down a framed black and white photograph from off the kitchen wall and, with evident pride, now set it on the table in front of the two other boys but at the same time placing it in such a way so that it was visible also to Max. The picture was of a young man in uniform sitting astride a powerful motorbike.
Monsieur Duval nodded at Max.
"His..." Max pointed towards the photograph. "His... son," explained Max somewhat hesitantly. "A... Jagdflieger. Mein Vater... the... same". He then stretched out his arms and did his best to mimic the sound of an aeroplane engine.
"Ah, his son. He's a pilot! Just like your father! But how on earth is that going to help us catch up with the train?" asked Danny who looked questioningly at Robert who, raising his head from his bowl, his mouth rimmed liberally with chocolate, merely shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
"Search me, Dan. Mmm! This is yummy!"
"Trust you to be t'inking of your feckin tum for sure!" exclaimed Danny good naturedly.
Rob said nothing. Instead, he merely laughed.
"Well, it is!"
For a moment, Max stared blankly at Danny and Robert, wondering how on earth he could make his cousins understand. Suddenly he grinned and then pointed excitedly towards the motorcycle in the photograph. For Danny the penny now dropped. He nodded his head in understanding and a broad smile spread across his face.
"His son... He's going to take us ... on his motorcycle?"
"Ja!" Max nodded his head promptly.
"But... there won't be enough room. There are three of us and Fritz as well," observed Robert, now having finished his chocolate.
For the moment, young Max looked completely nonplussed. To try and make him understand what Rob meant, Danny pointed to himself, to Robert, then to Max and finally to Fritz who, from his vantage point seated on the settle after his recent experience with François back at the station in St. Jean de Maurienne now regarded all French cats, including that belonging to the Duvals, which was presently skulking under the kitchen table, with the utmost suspicion. To try and explain what it was he meant, Danny held up his left hand with four fingers raised, spread his hands wide and shook his head.
Suddenly Max nodded. With understanding having now dawned, he grinned and pointed excitedly once again towards the photograph.
Danny shook his head. How could he possibly make Max understand.
"No, wait. Look! There's a side car!" Robert now also jabbed his finger excitedly at the photograph.
And then, a short while later, from down the road, there came a growing throaty roar which drew nearer and nearer and in a matter of minutes, the three boys heard the unmistakable sound of a motorcycle as it puttered into the cobbled yard at the back of the house, followed by a frightened clucking of chickens.
A moment passed and a handsome, dark haired young man, wearing a worn, fleece lined leather jacket over the dark uniform of a pilot in the French air force entered the kitchen. Having greeted both his proud parents, Captain Nicolas Duval smiled warmly at the three boys and introductions were soon made, not with a moment to lose if they were to catch up with the express when it stopped at Modane before it crossed the French border and ran on down into Italy.
"Nieuport-Delage 42," observed Max, pointing proudly to another framed, black and white photograph on the wall beside the fireplace, this one of a smiling Nicolas Duval sitting in the cockpit of a bi-plane painted in the markings of the French air force. Now seated beside Max on the settle, Captain Duval nodded his head in agreement, looking suitably impressed at the young boy's evident knowledge of things aeronautical.
Not that either Danny or Robert understood a word of what was being said but, a moment later, his eyes sparkling, and as if he had known him all his life instead of only having met him but a few minutes previously, Max was happily chattering away to Nicolas in French explaining about the two-seater aeroplane which, somewhere south of Paris they had, all three of them, seen from the windows of the Rome Express and which, at least for a short while, had kept pace with their speeding train.
Despite the disparity in their ages, while it was possible that he was putting on a show of doing so, it seemed that Captain Nicolas Duval was genuinely interested in what young Max had to tell him as he sat, smiled, listened, nodded his head again several times and occasionally interjected a few words of his own. For his part, while he and his cousins finished their chocolate, Max ran on with a boy's youthful exuberance; spoke of his own father who, as a pilot with the Austro-Hungarian air force, had flown Albatrosses during the Great War and how he had been decorated by the late Emperor Karl, then plied Nicolas with all manner of questions about aircraft and airships, in particular the crash of the Italia lost in the wastes of the Arctic some four years earlier, in 1928, and the truly international rescue effort which had been mounted to save the handful of survivors stranded on the ice.
Through the window of the kitchen, the first insistent fingers of daylight could now be seen gilding the tops of the snow capped mountains and, with their hasty breakfast now over, the three boys, Max doing his very best to walk unaided, along with Fritz trotting beside him, accompanied by Nicolas Duval, all went out into the rear yard. There on the cobblestones, and indeed with a sidecar attached to it, stood the motorcycle they had all heard earlier, at the sight of which Danny's blue eyes grew round as saucers. In front of them stood a wonderful, gleaming beast of a machine, which Danny knew his Da would have loved not only to have seen but also to have ridden too. If Danny was not mistaken, it was a British Norton 16 Colonial 490cc side valve, with a top speed, if he remembered the specification correctly, of something approaching 70mph. If this wouldn't get them to Modane in time to catch the Rome Express, then nothing would.
Having fetched a thick blanket for Robert and Max's knees, with one of Nicolas's old flying jackets for Danny, arm in arm, Henri and his wife stood in the doorway to see them go. With a great deal of shaking of hands and profuse thanks being given both in English and in German on the part of the three boys, they finally made their farewells to the Duvals; in return Henri wishing them all "Good 'olidays".
With Danny now also sporting a spare pair of goggles seated on the postillion, his arms clasped tightly around Nicolas's waist just the way Da had shown him on those stolen rides up and down the track behind the house in Idrone Terrace back in Dublin, with Robert and Max, with Fritz sitting in his lap and barking his delight, all huddled together against the chill of early morning in the side car, Nicolas started the motorcycle, and the machine roared into life. Indeed, it was not a moment too soon if they were to stand any chance of catching up with the express at Modane before it crossed the frontier into Italy.
Snuggled together with Robert and his beloved Fritz in the side car, briefly lost in his own thoughts, Max reflected that he had wanted to find adventure. Well, instead, it seemed that adventure had found him. Quite what Mama would have to say about all of this remained another matter. However, even if on their return home from Italy, he was placed under Hausarrest, or as his father would have put it, confined to barracks, at Rosenberg, notwithstanding the persistent dull ache in his knee, young Max wouldn't have missed any of it for the world.
Then, at last they were off, on a madcap race against time, through the encircling snow-capped mountains, down to Modane and the Italian border. As the motorcycle and sidecar roared away off down the road and the back door of the house was closed firmly behind the Duvals, the golden eagle now seized its chance. Today, its own chicks would feast well again ... on yet another plump chicken.
At a quarter to six precisely, overshadowed on either side by towering mountains, the immaculate blue and gold coaches of the Rome Express glided in alongside the southbound platform of the railway station at Modane and came to a stand.
A short while later, with the passengers on the train now up and dressed, Fascist, black shirted members of the Italian railway police clambered aboard the coaches to begin the lengthy process of inspecting the passports and travel documents of all those travelling on the express; on this occasion with instructions also, to pay special attention to the handful of empty compartments and in which particular endeavour they were assisted by the two men in plain clothes who, unseen, had joined the train in the middle of the night at Aix-les-Bains.
In the carriage occupied by the Bransons and the Crawleys, the adults had been reassured earlier by the Chef de Bord that just as soon as the express had drawn to a stop, he would have the stationmaster here in Modane make enquires of his colleagues further back up the line, both at Chambéry and at St. Jean de Maurienne, to see if anything at all was known which would help establish the whereabouts of the three missing boys. At the present time all any of them could do was wait upon the outcome of those same enquiries.
Fraught with worry, and not just on account of their three missing sons of which there was as yet still no news, while the remaining four children remained in one compartment under the watchful eye of Nanny Bridges, the adults themselves were all out in the corridor, constantly looking up and down the thronging platform for the Chef de Bord: Matthew with Mary standing by his side, Sybil next to her, while Edith and Tom were beside the door of the compartment containing the two Meyer children.
Having made a meticulous and thorough search of the baggage cars, of each of the empty compartments they encountered, as well as inspecting assiduously the passports of one and all, the Italian railway police were now at either end of the carriage occupied by the Bransons and the Crawleys and moving slowly and inexorably towards them along the narrow corridor.
The fateful moment arrived.
"Signore, signora, i vostri passaporti per favore".
To make sure that both Tom and Edith had understood precisely the nature of his request, the man slowly repeated it, this time in heavily accented English. As the crisply attired, black shirted railway official respectfully touched the brim of his military cap, Tom fumbled with the catch of the compartment door behind him.
"Tom!" cried Edith in alarm as the door swung back. However, for his part, Tom took no notice whatsoever. Instead, standing in the now half open doorway, in the very same instant, he pulled Edith towards him.
"Kiss me!"
"Pardon?" asked Edith, not entirely certain that she had heard Tom properly.
"Kiss me!" he repeated and then, in front of a startled Mary and a horrified Sybil, without any further ado, Tom drew Edith into the tightest of embraces, his lips eagerly seeking hers.
Author's note:
Built in France in the early 1920s, the Nieuport-Delage 42 was a fighter aircraft. There were various types, all of which formed the basis of French fighter design over the next decade.
The Italia was an Italian airship used by Umberto Nobile in what was to have been his second series of flights around and over the North Pole. In May 1928, in bad weather, the airship crashed on the ice, leading, ultimately to the mounting of an international attempt to rescue the survivors. The disaster and the eventual rescue of the survivors made headlines around the world.