Pied Piper

       When he spoke of fishing and of France, it put me in mind of an experience of my own. 'I saw some chaps in France doing a damn funny sort of fly fishing,' I said. 'They had a great bamboo pole about twenty-five feet long with the line tied on the end of it - no reel. They used wet flies, and trailed them about in rough water.'

       He smiled. 'That's right,' he said. 'That's how they do it. Where did you see them fishing like that?'

       'Near Gex,' I said. 'Practically in Switzerland.'

       He smiled reflectively. 'I know that country very well - very well indeed,' he said. 'Saint-Claude. Do you know Saint-Claude?'

       I shook my head. 'I don't know the Jura. That's somewhere over by Morez, isn't it?'

       'Yes - not very far from Morez.' He was silent for a few moments; we rested together in that quiet room. Presently he said: 'I wanted to try that wet fly fishing in those streams this summer. It's not bad fun, you know. You have to know where the fish go for their food. It's not just a matter of dabbing the flies about anywhere. You've got to place them just as carefully as a dry fly.'

       'Strategy,' I said.

       That's the word. The strategy is really just the same.'

       There was another of those comfortable pauses. Presently I said: 'It'll be some time before we can go fishing out there again.' So it was I who turned the conversation to the war. It's difficult to keep off the subject.

       He said: 'Yes - it's a great pity. I had to come away before the water was fit to fish. It's not much good out there before the very end of May. Before then the water's all muddy and the rivers are running very full - the thawing snows, you know. Later than that, in August, there's apt to be very little water to fish in, and it gets too hot. The middle of June is the best time.'

       I turned my head. 'You went out there this year?' Because the end of May that he had spoken of so casually was the time when the Germans had been pouring into France through Holland and Belgium, when we had been retreating on Dunkirk and when the French were being driven back to Paris and beyond. It didn't seem to be a terribly good time for an old man to have gone fishing in the middle of France.

       He said 'I went out there in April. I meant to stay for the whole of the summer, but I had to come away.'

       I stared at him, smiling a little. 'Have any difficulty in getting home?'

       'No,' he said. 'Not really.'

       'You had a car, I suppose?'

       'No,' he said. 'I didn't have a car. I don't drive very well, and I had to give it up some years ago. My eyesight isn't what it used to be.'

       'When did you leave Jura, then?' I asked.

       He thought for a minute. 'June the eleventh,' he said at last. That was the day, I think.'

       I wrinkled my brows in perplexity. 'Were the trains all right?' Because, in the course of my work, I had heard a good deal about conditions in France during those weeks.

       He smiled. They weren't very good,' he said reflectively.

       'How did you get along, then?'

       He said: 'I walked a good deal of the way.'

       As he spoke, there was a measured crump... crump... crump... crump, as a stick of four fell, possibly a mile away. The very solid building swayed a little, and the floors and windows creaked. We waited, tense and still. Then came the undulating wail of the sirens, and the sharp crack of gunfire from the park. The raid was on again.

       'Damn and blast,' I said. 'What do we do now?'

       The old man smiled patiently: 'I'm going to stay where I am.'

       There was good sense in that. It's silly to be a hero to evade discomfort, but there were three very solid floors above us. We talked about it, as one does, studying the ceiling and wondering whether it would support the weight of the roof. Our reflections did not stir us from our chairs.

       A young waiter came into the room, carrying a torch and with a tin hat in his hand.

       He said: The shelter is in the basement, through the buttery door, sir.'

       Howard said: 'Do we have to go there?'

       'Not unless you wish to.'

       I said: 'Are you going down there, Andrews?'

       'No, sir. I'm on duty, in case of incendiary bombs, and that.'

       'Well,' I said, 'get on and do whatever you've got to do. Then, when you've got a minute to spare, bring me a glass of Marsala. But go and do your job first.'

       Howard said: 'I think that's a very good idea. You can bring me a glass of Marsala, too - between the incendiary bombs. You'll find me sitting here.'

       'Very good, sir.'

       He went away, and we relaxed again. It was about half-past ten. The waiter had turned out all the lights except for the one reading-lamp behind our heads, so that we sat there in a little pool of soft yellow light in the great shadowy room. Outside, the traffic noises, little enough in London at that time, were practically stilled. A few police whistles shrilled in the distance and a car went by at a high speed; then silence closed down on the long length of Pall Mall, but for some gunfire in the distance.

       Howard asked me: 'How long do you suppose we shall have to sit here?'

       Till it's over, I suppose. The last one went on for four hours.' I paused, and then I said: 'Will anyone be anxious about you?'

       He said, rather quickly: 'Oh, no. I live alone, you see - in chambers.'

       I nodded. 'My wife knows I'm here. I thought of ringing her up, but it's not a very good thing to clutter up the lines during a raid.'

       They ask you not to do that,' he said.

       Presently Andrews brought the Marsala. When he had gone away, Howard lifted up his glass and held it to the light. Then he remarked: 'Well, there are less comfortable ways of passing a raid.'

       I smiled. That's true enough.' And then I turned my head. 'You said you were in France when all this started up. Did you come in for many air raids there?'

       He put his glass down, seven-eighths full. 'Not real raids. There was some bombing and machine-gunning of the roads, but nothing very terrible.'

       He spoke so quietly about it that it took a little time for me to realise what he had said. But then I ventured: 'It was a bit optimistic to go to France for a quiet fishing holiday, in April of this year.'

       'Well, I suppose it was,' he replied thoughtfully. 'But I wanted to go.'

       He said he had been very restless, that he had suffered from an urge, an imperious need to get away and to go and do something different. He was a little hesitant about his reasons for wanting to get away so badly, but then told me that he hadn't been able to get a job to do in the war.

       They wouldn't have him in anything, I imagine because he was very nearly seventy years old. When war broke out he tried at once to get into the Special Constabulary; with his knowledge of the Law it seemed to him that police duty would suit him best. The police thought otherwise, having no use for constables of his age. Then he tried to become an Air Raid Warden, and suffered another disappointment. And then he tried all sorts of things.