While Still We Live by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online

wouldn’t have to wait for a free train? A Frenchman argued bitterly with an Italian. A Rumanian family quarrelled loudly among themselves. A woman, who evidently believed in travelling with her jewellery, complained and complained. She had lost a hatbox. A fat, dark-haired, sallow-faced man was buttonholing every station employee he could see. It never seemed to dawn on him that these hurrying, harassed men had each his own job to do. “I’m a neutral,” the fat man kept saying. “I’ve a neutral’s rights. The Embassy told me there would be a train, tonight. Where’s that train?” The only silent people, it seemed, were three young American chorus girls with immaculate hair and elaborate shoes, and a tight-lipped Englishwoman whose dull clothes spelled governess. These four had drawn together. They stood beside a worried Cook’s Tour agent, and listened, with amusement and disapproval respectively, to the unanswerable questions which bombarded the unfortunate man.
    Professor Korytowski had managed to attract the attention of the Cook’s Tour man. In Polish, he asked quickly if there was to be a train, if they should wait?
    The man, his thin face thinner under the wide scoop of his official cap, nodded. “There is to be a train, specially provided.” His tone said, “But why, in God’s name, for such people?”
    “Thank you. We shall wait, then,” Professor Korytowski replied.
    Someone said behind them, “A Pole! Imagine that! When they should be staying at home to fight!”
    Sheila turned to face the elbowing woman who carried a dog under her arm.
    “Don’t worry. Your dog can have my place on the train,” she said clearly, and walked away. Professor Korytowski managed to reach her as she struggled free from the last of the crowd.
    “But there is a train, Sheila. Any minute perhaps.”
    Sheila, still telling herself what she could have said to the woman, still thinking of bitter, stinging phrases now that it was too late, looked up in silence at Professor Korytowski.
    “With these objects?” she asked at last. The scorn in her voice, the vehemence in her eyes left Professor Korytowski no reply. He looked worriedly towards the notice board, but Sheila was already walking out of the station.

4
    THE OLD SQUARE
    Sheila twisted once more on the narrow bed. Outside, she heard the cool sound of water as the porter hosed the pavement. It must be nearly morning, she thought. The sound of voices from the living-room still came mumbling through the hall, like the intermittent stirring in a hive of bees. Can’t sleep , can’t sleep, ticked the clock on the bookcase. Can’t sleep, can’t sleep, hissed the water against the house wall.
    “Can’t sleep. How can I? How can anyone?” Sheila said bitterly to the ceiling. “If,” she told herself, “you hadn’t been so very high and mighty at the station last night, if you hadn’t had so much pride that you didn’t want to be seen even dead with that crowd of hysterics, you’d now be on a train. And soon you would be arriving in a country where it would be safe enough for your fellow-travellers to regain their good humour and elegant charm. As Mr. Stevens would say, ‘So what?’ All right, so what?” But the fact remained that today and tomorrowand tomorrow she would also refuse to get on a train. Well, call it pride; but she wasn’t going to start scrambling to leave Warsaw. Not after the kind of scene she had witnessed at the station last night. The only trouble was money. She had stayed so much longer than she expected that she hadn’t much left. She would have to write to Uncle Matthews in London, explaining her point of view: a nice, long chatty letter to keep him from worrying. He would send her some money through the Embassy.
    She listened to the hoof beats of many horses being driven through the empty streets. Now and again, there was the dull rumble of tanks and heavy trucks. At other times, there was the creaking and groaning of farm carts