The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [40]
“Remember the Germans singing at night?” he asked.
Gisèle shuddered. “That detestable music,” she said.
15.
AGAIN AND AGAIN, DURING THE SIX WEEKS OF HIDING IN CHAUNY, he had tried to imagine the crew’s whereabouts. He alphabetized the guys and staged imaginary escape scenarios. On the feather bed in the back room, or stuffed in the little dugout behind the armoire, he wondered if any of the guys stuck together, if any of them had been turned over to the Germans. Maybe they were hidden in the church basement. He imagined a hidden door behind the church organ. He saw Hadley crossing the Channel on a fishing boat—torpedoed. He thought of a hundred ways to escape. And a hundred ways to be captured. He imagined a POW camp.
He thought about the Dirty Lily’s nose art and how they had all celebrated the artist who painted it, a Molesworth mechanic with a flair for pinups. The crew sprayed beer on the plane to christen her. And they sprayed beer on Webb, who had known a certain Lily in London.
People came rushing through the field, as if on wings themselves. He guided the Dirty Lily down onto the mud-brown field. She pointed toward the village, a huddled grouping of gray buildings with a deliberate church spire. It seemed that every resident was startled onto the field. They were waving. He saw them even as he was descending. The Dirty Lily stopped short of the nest of buildings at the end of the field.
Then he was in the woods, away from the field.
A girl on her bicycle saw him through the trees and signaled to him. She was small and thin, in a light wool coat and scarf. Maybe twelve years old. Or fifteen. Her shoes were heavy and worn. Her bicycle had a small bell. She warned him, “Monsieur, les Allemands!”
She spoke a little schoolgirl English.
“Your clothing,” she whispered. “You must hide it. Stay here. I will bring you other clothing.” She put her finger to her lips. “Shh.”
If she came back, he would ask her which country this was, Belgium or France. He could hear vehicles approaching. The local residents would not be driving, petrol was so scarce. He retreated into the woods as the sounds came closer. The voices and vehicles clustered around the dying plane. Where was Hadley? Hadn’t they run to the woods together? Webb, he thought, was dead. But they had hauled Webb out. Folded next to him in the cockpit, not responding. Blood in his lap.
“Everybody’s out,” said Hadley, appearing at the edge of the woods. Or maybe he had been there all along.
“Is Stewart out?”
“Accounted for.”
Where was Hootie? Hadn’t he seen Hootie lying pale and lifeless in the field?
Over and over, in hiding, he replayed the crash scene, wondering if the girl on the bicycle ever returned with clothing for him.
“I BROUGHT YOU HERE from my cousin Claude’s,” Pierre was saying now. “Do you remember?”
“Yes, that wild bicycle ride in the dark!”
“We were on the bicycle together,” Pierre said with a laugh. “You pedaled while I sat on the handlebars.”
Marshall outlined for the Alberts his erratic journey from the crash in Belgium to their house in Chauny—the farmer with the threatening scythe, the three nights in a barn while the Resistance checked him out, then several nights in the home of the women in black, where he hid in the upstairs room.
“Then the Résistance took me to Claude’s, but the convoyer who was supposed to meet me there didn’t show up, and they dumped me out in the field! I thought I had been betrayed.”
“No, that was correct. They didn’t want to be seen with you at Claude’s.”
“They pointed to the barn, I remember, and I ran through a field in the dark and fell down a couple of times.”
“And then you were safe in the barn.”
MARSHALL HAD HIDDEN UP to his neck in a pile of scratchy, dried weeds and grasses, his nose dripping from a sneezing fit. The noise of his breath on the hay was raucous in his ears but to other ears perhaps no louder than a wisp of dried grass rustling. A shadow passed over him, and he heard two voices mumbling angrily in