But Marc couldn’t make it to Paris without something decent on his feet, so he didn’t have much choice, and he raced into the orphanage. The dust that had blown out of the fireplaces had settled and it stuck to his damp soles as he ran up the stairs.
He’d planned to go all the way up to the attic, but he could hear Tomas up there with two of the oldest boys. As he peered up the stairs he could see them standing in the hallway, inspecting the damaged chimney. If the director recognised the stolen pigskin bag slung over Marc’s back his escape would come to an abrupt and painful end.
This meant he had to risk getting boots from the first floor. The orphans had dozens of rivalries, but the biggest was between boys who slept in the attic and boys who slept on the first floor. New arrivals assigned to one floor were immediately forced to run the gauntlet of the other, where they would be mercilessly kicked and punched as they tried to reach the brick wall at the far end of the corridor. Any boy who showed cowardice would be further battered by his own roommates.
Because the bedrooms were so crammed, boys had to shed their footwear in the doorways before entering. A few had returned for their boots, but there were still several pairs in the doorway of the first bedroom as Marc stepped inside.
He’d hoped everyone would be out, but a ten year old called Victor sat on his bunk, nursing an arm in a cast.
‘Hey!’ he shouted aggressively. ‘Get off our floor, attic boy.’
Marc tried to think up some clever reason why he needed someone else’s boots but there was no way around it. ‘Mind your own business, cripple.’
Marc eyed the boots on the floor. They were all huge, except for one pair, which he knew belonged to a kid called Noel who was apprenticed to the local blacksmith. Marc grabbed the boots by their laces. This rankled, because Noel was one of the nicest kids in the orphanage.
‘Put them back,’ Victor said firmly, though he didn’t come any closer because Marc was strong and had two arms to fight with.
‘Fifty francs if you keep your trap shut,’ Marc said, pulling a note out of his shorts.
Victor’s eyes bulged when he saw the money and Marc thought he was going to take it, but Victor wasn’t a fool. Fifty francs was only useful if there was somewhere to spend it and even the dumbest orphan knew that going into the village with that kind of cash would lead to an inquisition followed by a beating in the director’s office.
‘Put them down, now,’ Victor said firmly. ‘I’ll tell the lads and you’ll get such a kicking.’
Marc thought about beating Victor up. He reckoned he could do it easily enough, but there was bound to be yelling and the director was close enough to hear.
‘Just tell Noel that I owe him one,’ Marc said sadly, as he backed out of the room and swung the boots over his shoulder before jogging towards the stairs.
‘Are you thick or something?’ Victor screamed, jumping off his bed to give chase.
Marc was no slouch and Victor was two years younger, but the gash on his thigh slowed him down and Victor was right on his back as he reached the ground floor. Victor screamed out for help as Marc whizzed past the kitchen doorway. It arrived in the form of a sixteen-year-old roommate called Sebastien, who happened to be coming inside.
‘He’s nicked Noel’s boots!’ Victor shouted.
Marc almost ran straight into the teenager, but managed to spin on the ball of his foot and clatter into Victor, leaving him sprawled out at the bottom of the stairs. He landed awkwardly on his cast and moaned in pain.
Two French soldiers and a nun were blocking Marc from heading out the back, which left the kitchen as his only option. A half-conscious soldier with a chunk of shrapnel in his arm sat at the table as Marc ran in. There was no door, so he raced the length of the room and vaulted into the huge sink, where giant pots and pans used to cook for a hundred kids were scrubbed after each meal.
The window behind this sink was shut and Marc lost valuable time as he wrestled with a tight brass handle. As the bewildered soldier looked on, Marc swung the window outwards and jumped through.
The drop was less than a metre, but Marc’s weakened leg buckled and the palm he put out to save himself hit the jagged edge of a stone. The pain made him gasp and by the time he’d found his feet Sebastien’s frighteningly muscular torso was squeezing through the gap.
With his leg so weak, Marc knew he’d never make it to the field where he’d stashed the bike before the teenager caught up. His only chance would be if he attacked Sebastien while he was trapped in the window frame and, after briefly considering swinging at him with the boots, Marc realised that the window itself was the best weapon.
Sebastien saw what was going to happen and shouted out as Marc grabbed the window frame. With his hands trapped at his sides, there was nothing Sebastien could do as the pane of glass smashed over the top of his head.
Marc didn’t stand around to gawp, but Sebastien sounded like he was in a lot of pain and beads of blood were welling around a large gash in his forehead. It wasn’t a pretty sight and it scared the wits out of Marc. Five minutes earlier he could have ditched the director’s money and backed out, but now there were stolen boots, panes of broken glass and one of the biggest kids in the orphanage needing his face stitched. There was no going back.
Luckily, everyone else was still around the front of the building and Marc had a clear run as he ducked through the washing towards the field. His hand and his thigh hurt badly and he stung in a dozen other places where he’d been caned, but adrenaline is a great painkiller and Marc’s was flowing in buckets.
As he pushed himself through a low hedge into the field, he looked back at the orphanage and felt sick. Despite all the bad food, the noise, the heat, the beatings and the bullying, there was still part of him that wanted to be able to climb back on his bunk and fall asleep.
The hugeness of what Marc had committed himself to was all-consuming. He was at the most important turning point of his twelve years and, as he bent down to grab the bike, a great burst of acid erupted from his throat.
He wondered if he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life.
The orphans were allowed to use a tatty bicycle when they were sent to the village on an errand, but it was years since Marc had ridden it and the director’s brand new Peugeot was a different beast: adult-sized, with decent brakes, three gears and the saddle set high. It took a few kilometres to get the feel of it but even then it wasn’t a comfortable ride.
There was no traffic heading north and the bombed trucks prevented anything with four wheels coming along the road behind him, but he passed huddles of refugees every few hundred metres. The lucky ones had horses and carts. Those without used prams, or handcarts nailed together from scrap. Some were piled impossibly high with mattresses and pots and pans, while others served as platforms for sleeping children.
By the time Marc reached the village his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. His confidence in the saddle had grown and he’d worked out the value of having gears. The bakery at the edge of the village appeared to have caught a bomb blast and rubble had spilled into the road, but his face was known around here so he didn’t slow down to look.
The cobbles in the village square made the bike shudder and Marc felt a rush of excitement as he followed a direction sign pointing at
Beauvais 5km
. The first part of this was a steep hill and, when he reached the brow, he decided that there was enough space between himself and the orphanage to risk making a stop.
Marc pulled into a shallow ditch at the roadside, mopping the sweat from his brow on to his bare arm as he stepped off the bike. He was short of breath and he regretted not bringing any water.
He sat on a hump in the dry grass and swapped his shorts for a white shirt, corduroy trousers, socks and finally the boots. He’d never worn proper boots before and his first steps were an exploration of their heaviness and the unyielding soles. They didn’t seem a bad fit.
Although Marc was more comfortable barefoot, the boots were a thrill. They made him feel grown up and for a few moments he sensed freedom and excitement. But it wasn’t long before he considered that someone might be after him and he quickly swung the pigskin over his back and straddled the bike for the journey downhill.
Marc had wanted to see Beauvais for as long as he could remember. It was a town of less than 50,000 people, but to a boy from nowhere the cathedral, the cinemas and the shops with handmade chocolates and cream cakes piled in the windows were the stuff of legend.
But the city was on the main invasion route heading towards Paris and the German air force’s attempts to soften it up had turned Marc’s dream into a nightmare. The final stretch of road into town was like hell, with the smell of burning fuel in the air and curls of smoke drifting across the face of the moon. The road was partially blocked by a crater with the remains of a car tilted into it. Charred trees at the roadside had been cut to make a clear path for traffic, but this ground was uneven and Marc was forced to dismount.
Marc wheeled his bike close to the road’s edge and noticed a line of bodies covered with blankets or jackets. As if this wasn’t spooky enough a huge rat scuttled across his path and cut into the trees. A glance into the crater exposed him to the shadowy outlines of rats and crows bickering over blood and intestines that had spilled when a body had been dragged away.
Completely revolted, Marc was hit by the reality of being alone. He’d just passed two elderly refugees wheeling pet birds and a ginger cat and he considered running back and begging them for help.
But realistically they were in no position to help anyone. Marc looked towards the black outline of Beauvais and contemplated turning back towards the orphanage. If a man important enough to own a smart car could end up with his guts spilled across the road, what chance did a twelve-year-old orphan have?
Trouble was, he had burned his bridges. He could just imagine Lanier and the others laughing their arses off when they heard that he’d run away, only to arrive back within the hour. And as for the reactions of Sebastien and Director Tomas …
Almost unconsciously, Marc picked up his heavy boots and pushed the bike towards Beauvais. Once he was past the crater he remounted and was soon cycling cautiously through dark streets with buildings close on either side. Most had their shutters closed for the night. All the lights were blacked out to prevent the city being picked out by German pilots, but several fires lingered from an earlier raid and explosions had shattered windows everywhere. Most of the glass had been swept into gutters, but it was still across the road in places and Marc feared a puncture.
Things became livelier as he freewheeled the bottom of a hill and turned on to one of the town’s main boulevards. Like everywhere else in northern France, the population of Beauvais had split between those who’d fled south and those who’d abandoned themselves to whatever fate the Germans had in store.
The stay-behinds seemed determined to enjoy their last breath of freedom. The air was warm and the cafés whose owners had stayed in town were crammed with people. Although the street lanterns had been switched off and each café had black curtains or shutters drawn across the windows to keep out the light, Marc saw pinpricks of candlelight on the outdoor tables and the orange glow of cigarettes dancing expressively in the hands of people who’d had too much to drink.
The mass of chatter was nothing out of the ordinary for a street of bars and cafés, but Marc had never seen so many adults in one place before and their apparent ease in near black surroundings made him feel even more out of place.
He pulled up when he came to a horse trough with a drinking fountain mounted on the brick plinth behind it. After dropping the bike he leaned into the spout and gasped with relief as he gulped cool water.
‘Change?’ a man asked noisily, making Marc jump.
Water dribbled down Marc’s chin as he backed away from the fountain and eyed the old man. He wore only shorts and boots, but was so filthy that it took Marc a few seconds to realise that he wasn’t in some kind of fancy-dress gorilla suit.
‘Anything you can spare,’ the man smiled, as he held out his hand. ‘Just a few coins.’
As he said this, Marc caught a noseful of booze, sweat and puke. He scrambled backwards, stumbling over his bike before standing it up and riding on in a panic.
At the next junction Marc found a signpost pointing towards the train station. He knew it was approximately sixty kilometres to Paris and according to the railway map pinned up at his school there were trains to everywhere in France once you got there.
Marc suffered an emotional explosion as he rode around the corner and got his first glimpse of the place where his mother had abandoned him. The feeling was neither good nor bad, but it was powerful for the few moments until it turned into disappointment.
In Marc’s imagination Beauvais station had always been a fantastic place, with engines venting steam under a wrought-iron roof, boys selling newspapers and the bustle of expensively-dressed people with places to go. But Beauvais was on a rural branch line and its station was merely two open platforms, with a ticket office, a waiting room and a café that looked as if it had been boarded up for some years.