Night Journey by Winston Graham
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 vo
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.…
“How safe am I without papers in the meantime?” I asked.
“Not safe at all. Do not go out. Come about this time on Saturday.”
As I left he added: “There are many German agents in Marseilles, and io some cases they are attempting to supervise our own police arrangements. It is necessary for everyone to act with the utmost caution.”
The next three days I spent Indoors, but ordered newspapers and read them with apprehension. Though no account was accurate, the best and fullest was in a paper published on the previous Sunday when I was struggling out of the valley of the Arve.
“From our Zürich Correspondent.
“Further dramatic light has now been shed on ine murder of Dr von Riehl, the highly-placed German official, in the Milan-Basle express of last Wednesday week. The crime is now attributed to the activities of a famous British spy and saboteur who recently arrived in Italy and is directing widespread attempts to disrupt the Italian war economy.
“In a fracas which developed while the train was passing through the mountainous San Gotthardo region, one of the assassins who had been hired to commit the crime was also killed. He is thought to have been a Hungarian of the Magyar aristocracy. The other has so far escaped all efforts to bring him to justice.
“It is known that the British agent was himself on the train at the time and took a part in the crime. This has been established by a member of the German delegation who was trussed up with bandages which had been used by a Milanese hospital the day before when the secret agent was treated for minor injuries following a street accident.
“There has been an acceleration of the pursuit, and an arrest is expected shortly.
“A British official interviewed in Zurich last night declined to comment on this report. If the truth is as stated it would appear that the European war is about to enter on a new and bitter stage, not unlike the internecine terrorism which for some years preceded the outbreak of war last September.”
It was disconcerting to think of the bandages. On what else had we slipped up? It was disconcerting also to be invested with the major part. The angle from which the article was written disturbed me. Dwight had seen further than Andrews in the matter. How far would we be regarded as common criminals elsewhere?
On Saturday by the midday post a package was delivered addressed to me. Inside were my papers returned: stamped on a page of the passport was my exit permit. An unsigned note said: “Do not call here again. Do not relax your precautions. Avoid the police.”
It was more than I had dared to hope. From experience coming out, I knew that I should have little difficulty in getting a Spanish transit visa once I reached Barcelona. That night I found the French skipper who was leaving on the morning tide on Monday for Barcelona, Tangier and Rabat. He agreed to take me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The first wan light of Monday’s daybreak was barely showing over the harbour as I walked through the drizzle to the Bassin Lazaret. The tramp steamer Grive, was easy to find in She semi-darkness; she had had the French colours newly painted on her superstructure, and three men in greasy overalls were retracing the flag painted, for the better view of airmen of all nations, on her hatch.
The dock was empty. A seagull screamed its welcome to the dawn. With a sensation of release I turned to go up the gangway. A hand touched my arm.
Two men, one in civilian clothes, one a policeman.
“Monsieur is a passenger in this ship?”
“Yes.”
Please to show me your carte d’identité exit permit.” It was the civilian speaking.
I handed him what he wanted and he scrutinised them with a torch and then scrutinised me. The policeman flashed a torch in my face. The papers were returned. “ You will kindly come with us.”
I looked my alarm. “ What?”
“You must come with us.”
“For what reason?”
“We wish to ask you a few questions.”
“Are my papers not in order?”
“New instructions have been issued that all persons leaving the port shall be questioned by the police. A special watch is kept for those who try to slip away in cargo boats.”
I thought for a moment of some desperate bid to escape. My eyes ran the length of the ship. One man had splashed the first stroke of blue paint on the hatch. The captain was not to be seen.
“You’re authority?”
“I am the authority,” said the policeman.
I shrugged dully. I felt overwhelmed by this ultimate defeat on the very brink of freedom. “Very well.”
I did not enjoy the walk to the préfecture. “Avoid the police,” Gaston had writt
In the préfecture I waited half an hour in a bare whitewashed room and then was taken into another room where there was a Commissaire de Police. He was a tall dark man with a long narrow nose and a soiled collar with untidy flapping points. At another desk under the window sat a uniformed policeman who looked very sleepy but occasionally roused himself to take notes.
The plain-clothes agent explained in a few words and then left, but the policeman who had been with him took up a position by the door as if, absurdly enough, I might try to escape.
The Commissaire fixed me with a very sharp gaze and then began to thumb through my papers. I knew that the stamp imprint covering the passport photograph had been faked, and it was possible that the exit permit also was a forgery. I felt that this was not a man who would miss much.
“Julius Favel,” he said at length.
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Kindly explain your reasons for leaving France.”
I did so. I had been working in Morocco for some years prior to the war. At the outbreak of war I had been ill, but in May of this year had come to France to join my regiment. Because of the collapse of France I had not succeeded in doing this in time, and after staying with relatives in Lyons I had decided to return to North Africa, where an uncle, who lived in Rabat, had offered me work.
The story sounded thin and unconvincing told in this gaunt, lofty room under the piercing eye of the Commissaire. I began to see it would never do.
Silence except for the sound of the thin man opposite breathing through his nose.
You speak French indifferently for a Frenchman, M. Favel.”
“I was born in Saigon.”
“So I see. Your father and mother were French?”
“They were French nationals. My father came from Bordeaux but my mother was Annamese.”
The Commissaire rolled himself a cigarette.
I said: “ My father died young. I was brought up by my mother so that French has always been my second language.”