The Happy Foreigner | Page 5

said another. "Where is he?"
"In the old limousine by the water tap. He is quiet. Don't frighten him by coming all together." Chairs and benches were pushed back, and the men stood up in groups.
"We will go round by the gate in case he makes a run for it. Better not use force if one can help it...."
Fanny and her companion went out to the car. "Where is my food and wine?" called the man.
"It's coming," answered Fanny, "they are doing it up in the kitchen."
"Well, I can't wait. I must go without it. I can't keep the King waiting." And he opened the door of the limousine. As he stood on the step he held a bundle of rusty weapons.
"What's that you've got?"
"Bosche daggers," he said. "See!" He held one towards her, without letting it go from his hand.
"Where did you find those?"
"On the battlefields." He climbed down the steps.
"Stay a moment," said Fanny. "I'm in a difficulty. Will you help me?"
"What's that? But I've no time...."
"Do you know about cars?"
"I was in the trade," he nodded his head.
"I have trouble ... I cannot tell what to do. Will you come and see?"
"If it's a matter of a moment. But I must be away."
"If you leave all those things in the car you could fetch them as you go," suggested Fanny, eyeing the daggers.
The man whistled and screwed up one eye. "When one believes in Freedom one must go armed," he said. "Show me the car."
Going with her to the car-shed he looked at the spark-plugs of the car, at her suggestion unscrewing three from their seatings. At the fourth he grew tired, and said fretfully: "Now I must be off. You know I must. The King expects me."
He walked to the gate of the yard, and she saw the men behind the gate about to close on him. "You're not wearing your decorations!" she called after him. He stopped, looked down, looked a little troubled.
She took the gilt safety pin from her tie, the safety pin that held her collar to her blouse at the back, and another from the back of her skirt, and pinned them along his poor coat. An ambulance drove quickly into the yard, and three men, descending from it, hurried towards them. At sight of them the poor madman grew frantic, and turning upon Fanny he cried: "You are against me!" then ran across the yard. She shut her eyes that she might not see them hunt the lover of freedom, and only opened them when a man cried in triumph: "We'll take you to the King!"
"Pauvre malheureux!" muttered the drivers in the yard.
Day followed day and there was plenty of work. Officers had to be driven upon rounds of two hundred kilometres a day--interviewing mayors of ruined villages, listening to claims, assessing damage caused by French troops in billets. Others inspected distant motor parks. Others made offers to purchase old iron among the villages in order to prove thefts from the battlefields.
The early start at dawn, the flying miles, the winter dusk, the long hours of travel by the faint light of the acetylene lamps filled day after day; the unsavoury meal eaten alone by the stove, the book read alone in the cubicle, the fitful sleep upon the stretcher, filled night after night.
A loneliness beyond anything she had ever known settled upon Fanny. She found comfort in a look, a cry, a whistle. The smiles of strange men upon the road whom she would never see again became her social intercourse. The lost smiles of kind Americans, the lost, mocking whistles of Frenchmen, the scream of a nigger, the twittering surprise of a Chinese scavenger.
Yet she was glad to have come, for half the world was here. There could have been nothing like it since the Tower of Babel. The country around her was a vast tract of men sick with longing for the four corners of the earth.
"Have you got to be here?" asked an American.
"No, I wanted to come."
The eye of the American said "Fool!"
"Are you paid to come here?" asked a Frenchman.
"No. In a sense, I pay to come." The eye of the Frenchman said, "Englishwoman!"
Each day she drove in a wash of rain. Each night she returned long after dark, and putting her car in the garage, felt her way up the inky road by the rushing of the river at its edge, crossed the wooden bridge, and entered the cell which she tried to make her personal haven.
But if personal, it was the personality of a dog; it had the character of a kennel. She had brought no furnishings with her from England; she could buy nothing in the town. The wooden floor was swamped by the rain which blew through the window; the paper on