The Tunnel by Eric Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

in the aircraft when it landed in a great lake not far from here. He was not hurt at all. He was taken by the Germans – they arrived before I could get there.’
    It must have been ours, Peter thought. Good old Wally. And this chap had tried to help him, too. ‘Have you helped many airman?’ he asked.
    The schoolmaster smiled and lifted his hand in a typical classroom gesture. ‘No – it is better that you should not ask me questions.’
    ‘The Germans will guess that I have crossed into Holland,’ Peter said.
    The man moved to the fireplace and stood looking into the fire. ‘I will move you as soon as it is dark. For the time it is best that you should sleep. The woman will dry your clothes and this evening, when it is dark, I will come for you.’ He spoke to the woman in their own tongue, giving her instructions; then he turned to Peter again and held out his hand. He had an odd, professional manner – more like a doctor than a schoolmaster. He bowed from the waist, said something to the child and took her mother with him out into the yard.
    When the woman came back into the kitchen she motioned Peter to follow her, and took him to a small bedroom at the top of the house, a room whose sloping ceiling reminded him of his bedroom at home. She said something in Dutch and he understood that she would return in a few minutes for his clothes. At first he felt reluctant to let them out of his sight, particularly the boots, knowing that he would be helpless without them; but he realized that he could not go on alone, that he was warm and dry, and that he could sleep now while plans were being made.
    He undressed completely and as he climbed into the high bed with its soft feather mattress and bulky eiderdown, he felt ridiculously safe. It was as though he had come home again.
    He was asleep before the woman came to take his clothes away.
    Then it was night and the woman held a candle in her hand. ‘Kommen Sie!’ She was shaking him by the shoulder. ‘Kommen Sie! schnell, schnell!’ She left the candle on the chest by the bed, and he could tell by the way she ran down the stairs that he must hurry. His clothes, dry and neatly folded, were on the chair by the bed. The woman had even mended the tear in his trousers.
    As he dressed he felt that everything was going well. He was convinced that it was Wally who had escaped from the crashed aircraft, and he was glad that he was safe. For himself, he was as good as home again. The schoolmaster had seemed to know what he was about. Quietly confident. Peter grinned as he dressed. He and his brother had never been ‘absolutely certain,’ but always ‘quietly confident.’ It had been part of their private language.
    When he got downstairs the schoolmaster was not there. Instead, he saw a young woman dressed in a blue-belted raincoat with a dark scarf round her head. The scarf and the hair that escaped from under it were covered with fine raindrops that glittered in the light of the candle. She seemed excited and spoke to him in English.
    ‘My husband has been arrested. He was stealing a car. They must not know that it was for you, or they will shoot him. You must go.’
    ‘Who are you?’ he asked, losing in that instant all his former confidence, feeling that he had made a mistake in coming here.
    ‘I have come to tell you that you leave the house.’ She turned to the woman and spoke to her in Dutch, and then to Peter in English. ‘This woman is already a widow and if they find you here she will be shot – and the children will be orphans. The farm will be burned. My husband … If they know that he was helping you … Please go!’
    She began to gather his things together, the boots from the fireplace, the Irvin jacket from the chair. ‘They may be coming soon,’ she said. ‘Keep away from the roads and when you get far from here ask at another farm – perhaps they will help you. But here it is too dangerous.’ She pushed the flying jacket at him and compelled