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![with the (in more senses than one) overcrowded condition of No. 49.
For that historic mansion had gathered innumerable inmates to its
breast during the long years of emptiness and decay. And these
inmates made the Basket-makers' lives a burden to them.
The cold, too, was penetrating, it ate through their scanty clothes, it
bit through flesh to the very bone. The stove was an irony, a tiny
flame in a frozen desert. Every one was perished, Madame
Malhomme not least of all, for, seeing her daughter shivering, she
stripped off her only petticoat and forced her to put it on.
At night they lay in their clothes under their miserable blankets.
(Bar-le-Duc is not a very large nor a very rich town, and in giving
what it did to such numbers of people it showed itself generous
indeed. In ordinary times its population is not more, and is probably
less, than 17,000, so an influx of 4000 destitute refugees taxed it
heavily.)
The unavoidable publicities of their existence filled the women with
shame and dismay. Sleeping "comme des bêtes sur la paille,"[4] or,
more often still, lying awake staring out into the unfriendly dark,
what dreams, what memories must have been theirs! How often
they must have seen the village, its cosy little homes, each with its
garden basking in the sun, the river flowing by, and the great osier
beds that were the pride of them all.
They seem to have lived very much to themselves, these sturdy
artisans, rarely leaving their valley, and intermarrying to an unusual
extent. You find the same names cropping up again and again:
Jacquemot, Riot, or Malhomme. Like Quakers, every one seemed to
be the cousin of every one else. And they were well-to-do. It is safe
to presume that there was no poverty in the village. Their baskets
were justly famous throughout France, and the average family wage
was about £3 a week. In addition they had the produce of their
garden, the inevitable pig being fattened for the high destiny of the
soupe au lard, rabbits and poultry. If Heaven denied them the gift of
physical beauty it had not been niggardly in other respects. Best of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2920-250327030623-d892d3e0/75/Investors-Guide-to-the-United-Kingdom-3rd-Edition-Gmb-Publishing-42-2048.jpg)
Investors Guide to the United Kingdom 3rd Edition Gmb Publishing
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- 5. Investors Guide tothe United Kingdom 3rd Edition Gmb Publishing Digital Instant Download Author(s): Gmb Publishing, Jonathan Reuvid ISBN(s): 9781846730689, 1846730686 Edition: 3rd File Details: PDF, 4.10 MB Year: 2007 Language: english
- 7. Investors’ Guide tothe United Kingdom
- 9. GLOBAL MARKET BRIEFINGS Investors’Guide to the United Kingdom Third Edition Consultant Editor: Jonathan Reuvid Published in Association with: UK Trade & Investment
- 10. The views inthis book are those of the authors and are not necessarily the same as those of UK Trade & Investment Publishers’ note Every possible effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this publication is accurate at the time of going to press and neither the publishers nor any of the authors, editors, contributors or sponsors can accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No responsibility for loss or damage occasioned to any person acting, or refraining from action, as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by the editors, authors, the publisher or any of the contributors or sponsors. Users and readers of this publication may copy or download portions of the material herein for personal use, and may include portions of this material in internal reports and/or reports to customers, and on an occasional and infrequent basis individual articles from the material, provided that such articles (or portions of articles) are attributed to this publication by name, the individual contributor of the portion used and GMB Publishing Ltd. Users and readers of this publication shall not reproduce, distribute, display, sell, publish, broadcast, repurpose, or circulate the material to any third party, or cre- ate new collective works for resale or for redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works, without the prior written permission of GMB Publishing Ltd. GMB Publishing Ltd. Hereford House 23-24 Smithfield Street 525 South 4th Street, #241 London EC1A 9LF Philadelphia, PA 19147 United Kingdom United States of America www.globalmarketbriefings.com This third edition first published 2007 by GMB Publishing Ltd. © GMB Publishing Ltd. and contributors Hardcopy ISBN 978-1-846730-68-9 E-book ISBN 978-1-846730-69-6 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in Publication Data Typeset in 10/12pt New Century School book by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, India
- 11. Contents Foreword ix List ofContributors xi Regional and City Profiles xvii PART 1 Economic Overview 1.1 The UK Economy and Investment Environment 3 Jonathan Reuvid and UK Trade & Investment 1.2 The United Kingdom and the European Union 9 Jonathan Reuvid 1.3 Trade Information for Investment Decisions 12 Roy Chegwin, Editor of Export Focus Magazine PART 2 Investment and Start-up Considerations 2.1 Overview for Inward Investors 17 Jonathan Martin and Anna Halliday, Watson, Farley & Williams LLP 2.2 Grants and Incentives within the United Kingdom 27 John Devonald, PNO Consultants Ltd 2.3 UK Competition Law and Policy 33 Andrew Bailey, Watson, Farley, & Williams LLP 2.4 Company Formation – Methods and Legal Implications 42 Ian Saunders, Artaius Company Services Limited 2.5 Commercial Banking Services 50 Nick Stephens, HSBC 2.6 Finance for Companies 60 Nick Stephens, HSBC 2.7 Financial Reporting and Accounting – An Overview 69 Michael Bordoley with Jitendra Pattani and Bee Lean Chew, Wilder Coe
- 12. vi Contents 2.8 BusinessTaxation 79 Tim Cook, Wilder Coe 2.9 Key Business Taxation Planning Pointers 90 Tim Cook, Wilder Coe 2.10 Outsourcing 96 Alfred Levy, Artaius Ltd PART 3 Key Investment Sectors and Locations 3.1 AIM – The Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange 103 Jonathan Martin, Watson, Farley & Williams LLP 3.2 Roles of the Nomad and the Broker on the Alternative Investment Market 113 Tony Rawlinson and Simon Sacerdoti, City Financial Asso- ciates Limited 3.3 Mergers & Acquisitions and Joint Ventures 119 Jonathan Martin and Tanvir Dhanoa, Watson, Farley & Williams LLP 3.4 Financial Services 127 Jonathan Reuvid 3.5 The UK Commercial Property Market 132 EMEA Research, Jones Lang LaSalle, London, UK 3.6 Residential Property Investment 150 Lucian Cook, Director, Savills Residential Research 3.7 Agricultural Property Investment 156 Richard Binning, Savills 3.8 Technology and Innovation – The Cambridge Phenomenon 160 Alan Barrell and Mark Littlewood, Library House, Cambridge 3.9 Renewable Energy: A UK Perspective 171 Neil Budd, Watson Farley & Williams LLP 3.10 Offshore Oil and Gas: Exploration and Production 180 Michael Wachtel and Philip Mace, Watson, Farley & Williams LLP 3.11 Liquefied Natural Gas, Gas Storage and Access to Infrastructure 188 Anna M. F. Soroko, Watson, Farley & Williams LLP 3.12 London – As a Premier Investment Location 196 Michael Charlton, Think London
- 13. Contents vii PART 4The Corporate and Personal Legal Environment 4.1 Intellectual Property 207 Mark Tooke and Rachel Kennedy, Watson, Farley & Williams LLP 4.2 Regulation of Financial Services 216 Jonathan Martin and Ravinder Sandhu, Watson, Farley & Williams LLP 4.3 UK Employment Law 223 Liz Buchan, Asha Kumar and Devan Khagram, Watson, Farley & Williams LLP 4.4 Pensions, Insured Benefits and Option Plans 236 Liz Buchan and Rhodri Thomas, Watson, Farley & Williams LLP 4.5 UK Taxation for Foreign Nationals 246 Tim Cook, Wilder Coe 4.6 Money Laundering Regulations 256 Mark Saunders, Wilder Coe 4.7 UK Immigration 261 Angharad Harris and Melissa Vangeen, Watson, Farley & Williams LLP PART 5 Industry Sectors of Opportunity 5.1 Art and Antiques 273 James Goodwin 5.2 The Automotive Industry 280 Mark Norcliffe 5.3 Biotechnology 291 Jeanette Walker, ERBI 5.4 Chemical Industries 302 Neil Harvey and Alan Eastwood, Chemical Industries Association 5.5 Creative Industries 309 Jonathan Reuvid 5.6 ICT 313 5.7 Life Sciences 316 5.8 Pharmaceuticals 318 Lilly
- 14. viii Contents 5.9 Retail322 Jonathan Reuvid 5.10 Software 324 Charles Ward, Intellect UK Appendix I – Contributors’ Contact Details 330
- 15. Foreword I am delightedto provide this foreword to the 2007 edition of the Investors’ Guide to the United Kingdom. UK Trade & Investment is pleased to have contributed to the content for this independent book. I hope you find it useful. The United Kingdom’s success at attracting foreign direct investment remains outstanding and all the signs are that this trend will continue in the coming year. Offering a solid business-friendly environment in which companies can prosper, the UK economy’s strength is underpinned by large investments in public services and infrastructure, including education, health and transportation. Combined with the global scale of resources on offer to companies, this makes the United Kingdom the location of choice in which to conduct business. Renowned for its traditions, and being recognized as an open, globally engaged society, the United Kingdom is also increasingly acclaimed as an innovator, with a unique spirit, eccentricity and all-round creative energy. The United Kingdom has a constant appetite to challenge, invent, question and create and we are a recognized leader in creativity and innovation, acting as a magnet that attracts the best of global creative talent, not least linked into our many world-class universities. For companies to grow they need outstanding support networks and the United Kingdom has well-established clusters of business services that are truly world class. As well as boasting a large market and quality suppliers, the United Kingdom also offers global business leaders the opportunity to interact with the very best of their international peers. In short, it plugs companies into a vital international network of connections. Just like the most successful global businesses, UK Trade & Investment is constantly looking at ways to improve its offering. In 2006,we launched a new five-year strategy, Prosperity in a Changing World, which aims to ensure that the United Kingdom will continue to attract the best investors from overseas. To this end, the organization is committed to building on the strengths of its overseas network and improving its services to customers. All this will help to ensure that the United Kingdom – and the overseas companies that invest here – stay ahead of the game. In the United Kingdom, companies, including many of the world’s major corporations, are connected directly into the heart of global finance, global creative and professional services, global media and global talent. They enjoy access to world-class science and academia and link into a wide-ranging net- work of smaller enterprises, many of which are also world leaders in their fields.
- 16. x Foreword A unique,multiculturaland entrepreneurial economy,the United Kingdom is at the hub of international business, bringing the world to every company’s door. In short, it is a springboard to global growth. Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham Minister of State for Trade and Investment
- 17. List of Contributors Watson,Farley and Williams LLP Corporate Jonathan Martin is a partner in the International Corporate Group of Watson, Farley & Williams LLP, dealing with a range of corporate and com- mercial transactions and advisory matters, including equity fundraisings and other corporate finance transactions, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and restructurings. Tanvir Dhanoa is an associate in the International Corporate Group of Watson, Farley & Williams LLP, specializing in general corporate and cor- porate finance transactions with experience in international mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and business reorganizations. Ravinder Sandhu is an associate in the International Corporate group of Watson, Farley & Williams LLP, specializing in a broad range of gen- eral corporate and corporate finance transactions including mergers and acquisitions, equity fundraisings, group reorganizations and joint ventures. Anna Halliday is an associate at Watson, Farley & Williams LLP, special- izing in a broad range of corporate work including corporate finance, joint ventures, group reorganizations, mergers and acquisitions and commercial transactions. Employment Liz Buchan is a partner of Watson, Farley & Williams LLP, specializing in employment law and employee incentives and a former member of the Law Society’s Employment Law Committee. Asha Kumar is an associate at Watson, Farley and Williams LLP special- izing in employment law and cross-border employment law issues. She has gained wealth of experience and has advised on all aspects of employment law including issues associated with recruitment, employment and termi- nation. She has also assisted with the implementation of global business restructures.
- 18. xii List ofContributors Rhodri Thomas is an associate at Watson, Farley and Williams LLP, specializing in employment law and a contributor to Discrimination in Employment – Law and Practice, 2006, Law Society Publishing. Devan Khagram is a trainee at Watson, Farley & Williams LLP. He joined the firm in September 2005 and will be qualifying into the firm’s employment and immigration department in September 2007. Energy and Projects Anna Soroko joined Watson, Farley & Williams in January 2006 as a consultant and has over 20 years experience advising major utilities and oil and gas companies on a wide range of international matters, partic- ularly on projects relating to infrastructure including being the Central Area Transmission System (CATS) pipeline lawyer for 3 years. Anna is both an English and a Texas qualified lawyer and has worked in a number of countries, including the United States, Saudi Arabia and UAE, both in- house in major international organizations and in private practice. Anna is also an elected director of the East of England Energy Group, which business-driven energy industry association represents over 280 companies throughout the energy chain. She has wide commercial and legal expe- rience in Mergers & Acquisitions, corporate restructurings, negotiation of Gas/LNG Sales arrangements, carbon capture and storage, and negotia- tion of a US$1 billion LNG/Power project in Turkey, project lawyer for the Great Yarmouth Power Plant. Recently, Anna has been advising on and managing all legal work for the Excelerate Energy Teesside GasPort Project for which she won The Lawyer 2007 Infrastructure Team of the Year Award. Neil Budd is an associate at Watson, Farley & Williams LLP, specializing in energy and construction. He has worked on a number of renewable energy projects, both in the UK and internationally, including onshore and offshore windfarms and biomass power plants. Philip Mace is a consultant at Watson, Farley & Williams LLP, specializing in energy related M&A, private equity and project work. He has worked in the oil and gas industry for many years and has experience of major trans- actions in the North Sea, the Middle East and most other major oil and gas regions. Fabiola Céspedes is a consultant at Watson, Farley & Williams LLP, spe- cialized in dealing with M&A transactions, onshore and offshore upstream operations and joint ventures. She has advised on transaction in Norway, UK,Trinidad and Tobago, Spain and Bolivia and has dealt with major indus- try oil and gas players such as BP, Repsol, Shell, ExxonMobil, Petrobras and Total.
- 19. List of Contributorsxiii Law EU & Competition Andrew Bailey is an associate at Watson, Farley & Williams LLP specializ- ing in EU and competition law. Andrew advises clients in relation to UK and EC merger control, market investigation in both the UK and throughout the EU and the behavioural aspects of competition law. Immigration Angharad Harris is a partner at Watson, Farley & Williams LLP, special- izing in all aspects of employment law and business immigration and is a member of the Law Society’s Employment Law Committee. Melissa Vangeen advises on business immigration, including work permits, the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme, applications for sole representa- tives, investors, business persons and retirement as well as applications for indefinite leave to remain and naturalization. Melissa also advises in rela- tion to immigration applications outside of the Immigration Rules and on applications to come to the UK. Intellectual Property Mark Tooke joined Watson, Farley & Williams in 2001 and is an associate in the International Corporate Group. Mark has particular experience of assisting clients in the technology and media sectors. Identifying the most advantageous was to protect, exploit and finance intellectual property assets. Rachel Kennedy is a trainee at Watson, Farley & Williams LLP. She joined the firm in September 2006 and will be qualifying as a solicitor in September 2008. Wilder Coe and Artauis Limited Robert Coe is the senior and founding partner of Wilder Coe. Within the practice, Robert’s key role is advising on corporate finance transactions including mergers and acquisitions, pre-flotation restructuring, fund raising and business financing. Robert has vast experience in the public arena, having acted as non- executive chairman of Sterling Group plc, senior independent director of Hercules Property Services plc, Finance director of Probus Estates plc, finance director of New Media plc during its transition from Ofex to AIM and finance director of Hardy Amies plc. Currently, Robert is a non-executive director of City Financial Associates AIM listed companies.
- 20. xiv List ofContributors Tim Cook is a tax partner at Wilder Coe, which he joined in 1996. He now heads up the firm’s personal tax department. In addition to managing the personal tax team, Tim handles tax returns, capital gains tax, trusts, inheritance tax and Inland Revenue investigations. His areas of expertise include tax planning, pensions, emigration and trusts. He works primarily with entrepreneurs, families and gentry. Mark Saunders has been with Wilder Coe since 1984 and has almost 30 years accountancy experience. His technical areas of expertise include audit, the preparation of financial statements, taxation, business planning and the UK management of subsidiaries of US companies with Sarbanes Oxley com- pliance work. He also deals with IFRS-related matters and acts as an adviser to family firms. Client sectors include property, entertainment, retail, financial industry clients, charities and the timber trade. Mark also has a continuing interest in the financial sector and carries out Financial Services authority audits. He is responsible for IT at Wilder Coe and is also the nominated money-laundering reporting officer, which has led him to act as a consultant on the Money Laundering Regulations. Mark was instrumental in gaining membership of the firm to Integra, an international association of accounting firms, and now sits on its global board. Michael Bordoley has been withWilder Coe since 1991 and is an audit part- ner. In this role, he is responsible for advising clients on budgetary control and forecasts. Although working across a broad sector range, Michael specializes in SMEs, family businesses, travel agencies and insurance brokers and char- ities. He advises clients on all aspects of furthering a business from the day-to-day running to specialist areas and dealing with legislation. Bee Chew joined Wilder Coe in 1997 and was promoted to partner in 2005. As a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Entertainment and Media Industry Group, she has vast experience in the film production industry as well as property and currency exchange. Bee specializes in dealing with international business such as investment in China. He regularly attends and actively promotes networking for Women in Business events. Norman Cowan merged his Chartered Accountants practice in December 2000 with Wilder Coe and now heads the business recovery department. Norman’s experience gained in the discipline of insolvency has provided him with an analytical investigative ability and a considerable depth of knowl- edge in insolvency and commercial law. His expertise covers a wide range of industries and professions of differing sizes and characteristics. On a number of occasions Norman has been appointed by the Court to act as a Receiver to determine internal disputes in respect of companies and partnerships. As a member of the Expert Witness Institute, he has also received a number of instructions to act as a single and joint expert witness.
- 21. Exploring the Varietyof Random Documents with Different Content
- 22. down from everyquarter of the town, the priest mechanically chanting, a few soldiers grouped round the coffin, a weeping woman or two following close behind. Of late—since Verdun, I think—the tiny guard of honour no longer treads the road, and the friendless soldier dying far from home goes alone to his last resting-place upon the hill. There the open graves are always waiting. The wooden black crosses have spread far out over the hill-side, climbing up and across till no one dare estimate their number. Five thousand, a grave-digger told us long, long ago. Since then Verdun has written her name in blood across the sky, Verdun impregnable because her rampart was the heart of the manhood of France, Verdun supreme because the flower of that manhood laid down their lives in order to keep her so. Yes, the chanting of the priests brings an odd lump into one's throat, but one day we saw a little ceremony that moved us more deeply still. It was early morning, a strain of martial music rose on the air. We hurried to the windows and saw a company of soldiers coming down the boulevard. They passed our house, marched to the far end, halted, and then turning, ranged themselves in a great semicircle beyond the window. To say that their movements lacked the cleanness and precision which an English regiment would have shown is to put the matter mildly. Their business was to form three sides of a square. They formed it, shuffling and dodging, elbowing, scraping their feet, falling into their places by the Grace of God while a fat fussy officer skirmished about for all the world like an agitated curate at a Sunday School treat. The fourth side of the square consisted of the pavement and a crowd of women, children and lads, a crowd with a gap in the middle where, like a rock rising above the waters of sympathy, stood two chairs on which two soldiers, mutilés de la guerre, were sitting. Brave men both. They had distinguished themselves in fight, and this morning France was to do them honour.
- 23. An officer readaloud something we could not hear, and then a general stepped forward and pinned the Croix de Guerre upon their breasts, and colonels and staff officers shook them by the hand, and the band broke into the Marseillaise and the watching crowd tried to raise a cheer. But their voice died in their throat, no sound would come, for the Song of the Guns was in their ears and out across the hills their own men were fighting, to come home to them, perhaps, one day as these men had come, or it might be never to come home at all. The cheer became a sob, the voice of a stricken nation, of suffering heart-sick womanhood waiting ... waiting. So the band played a lively tune and the soldiers marched away, the crowd melted silently about its daily work and for a time the boulevard was deserted, deserted save for him who sat huddled into his deep arm-chair, the Croix de Guerre upon his breast and the pitiless sunlight streaming down upon the pavements he would never tread again. A few weeks later the bands march by again. It is evening, and the shadows are lengthening. We mingle with the crowd and see a tall, stern man with aloof, inflexible, unsmiling face pass up and down the lines of the guard of honour drawn up to receive him. A shorter, stouter man is at his side. "Vive Kitchenaire!" The densely packed crowds take up the cry. "Vive l'Angleterre!" Ah, it is God Save the King that the band is playing now. "Vive Kitchenaire." Again the shout goes up. The short, stout man greets the crowd, and a mighty roar responds. "Vive Joffre." He smiles, but his companion never unbends. As the glorious Marseillaise thunders on the air, with unseeing eyes and ears that surely do not hear he turns away, and the dark passage of the house swallows him up. "Vive Kitchenaire!" The echoes have hardly died away when a tear-choked voice greets me. "Ah, Mademoiselle, but the news is bad to-day." Tears are rolling
- 24. down the littleFrenchwoman's face. So deep is her grief I fear a personal loss. But she shakes her head. No, it is not that. She hands me a paper and, stunned, I read the news. As I cross the street and turn towards home the world seems shadowed. Sorrow has drawn her veils closely about the town—sorrow for the man whom it trusted and whose privilege it had been to honour.
- 25. CHAPTER V SETTLING-IN Our firstduty on arriving in the town was to go to the Bureau de Police and ask for a permis de séjour. We understood that without it there would be short shrift and a shorter journey into a world which has not yet been surveyed. So we sallied forth to the Bureau at break of day, and there we interviewed an old grognard—the only really grumpy person I met in France—who scowled at us and scolded us and called the devil to witness that these English names are barbarous, the chatter of monkeys, unintelligible to any civilised ear. We soothed him with shaking knees; suppose he refused us permission to reside in the town? And presently he melted. He never really liquified, you know, there was always a crust; but once or twice on subsequent occasions a drop, just a teeny, weeny drop of the milk of human kindness oozed through. He demanded our photographs, and when he saw my "finished-while-you-wait" his belief in our Simian ancestry took indestructible form. The number of my photographs now scattered over France on imposing documents is incalculable, and the number of times I have had to howl my age into unsympathetic ears so great that all my natural modesty in dealing with so delicate a subject has wilted away. The grognard dismissed us at length, feeling like the worm that perisheth, and a fortnight or so later presented us with our permis de séjour (which warned us that any infringement of its regulations would expose us to immediate arrest as spies), and with an esoteric document called an Extrait du Registre d'Immatriculation whose purpose in history we were never able to determine. No one ever asked to see it, no one ever asked to see our permis de séjour, in fact the gendarmes of the town showed a reprehensible lack of interest in our proceedings.
- 26. In addition tothese we were provided as time went on with a carte d'identité, a permission to circulate on a bicycle in districts specified, a permission to take photographs not of military interest, and later on with a carnet d'étranger which gripped us in a tight fist, kept us at the end of a very short chain, and made us rue the day we were born. And of course we had our passports as well. Not being a cyclist, I used that particular permission when tramping on the Sabbath beyond the confines of the town. Once a bright military star tried to stop some one who followed my example. "It is a permission to cycle. You are on foot," he argued. "But the bicycle could not get here without me," she replied, and her merciless logic dimmed his light. As for me, I carried all my papers on all occasions that took me past a sentry. It offended my freeborn British independence to be held up by a blue-coated creature with a bayonet in his hand on a road that I choose to grace with my presence, and so I took a mild revenge. The stoutest sentry quailed before such evidence of rectitude, and indeed we secretly believed that sheer curiosity prompted many a "Halte-là." Once as I trudged a road far from Bar two gorgeous individuals mounted on prancing chargers swept past me. A moment later they drew rein, and with those eyes of seventh sense that are at the back of every woman's head I knew they were studying my retreating form. A lunatic or a spy? Surely only one or the other would wear that grey dress. A shout, "Holà." I marched on. If French military police wish to accost me they must observe at least a measure of propriety. Again the "Holà." My shoulders crinkled. Would a bullet whiz between? A thunder of galloping hoofs, a horse racing by in a cloud of dust, a swirl and a gendarme majestically barring the way. "Where are you going, Madame?" Stifling a desire to ask what business it was of his, I replied suavely —
- 27. "To Bar-le-Duc." "Bar-le-Duc? Butit is miles from here." "Eh bien? What of it? On se promene." "I must ask to see your papers." Out they all came, a goodly bunch. He took them, appalled. He fingered them; he stared. "Madame is English?" "But certainly? What did Monsieur suppose?" The papers are thrust into my hand, he salutes, flicks his horse with a spur, and I am alone on the undulating road with the woods just touched by spring's soft wing, spreading all about me. But this happened when sentries and bayonets had lost their terror. There were days when we treated them with more respect. Familiarity breeds contempt—when one knows that the bayonet is not sharpened. Our papers in order, our heads no longer wobbling on our shoulders, our next duty was to call on the élite of the town. In France you don't wait to be called upon, you call. It was nerve-racking work for two miserable foreigners, one of whom had almost no French, while that of the other abjectly deserted her in moments of perturbation. But we survived it, perhaps because every one was out. Only at Madame B.'s did we find people at home, and she—how she must have sighed when we departed! We all laboured heavily in the vineyard, but fright, shyness, the barrier of language prevented us— on that day at least—from gathering much fruit. Exhausted, humbled to the dust, thinking of all the brilliant things we might have said if only we could have taken the invaluable Bellows with us, we crawled home to seek comfort in a brioche de Lorraine and a cup of China tea which we had to make for ourselves, as "Madame" had not yet learned the method. In fact there were many things she had not
- 28. learned, and oneof them was what the English understand by the word rubbish. It was a subject on which for many a day her views and ours unhappily rarely coincided. Once we caught her in the Common-room, casting baleful eyes on cherished treasures. "Do you wish that I shall throw away these ordures, Mademoiselle?" she asked. Ordures! Ye gods! A bucketful of gladioli and stocks and all sorts of delicious things gathered in the curé's garden at Naives, and she called them ordures. With a shriek we fell upon her and her broom. Did she not know they were flowers? What devil of ignorance possessed her that she should call them rubbish? "Flowers! bien entendu, but what does one want with flowers in a sitting-room? The petals fall, they are des ordures." Again the insulting word. "Don't you like flowers, Madame?" we asked, and she turned resigned eyes to ours. These English! Perhaps the good God who made them understood them, but as for her, Odille Drouet ... With a shrug she consigned us to the limbo of the inscrutable. A garden was the place for flowers, why should we bring them into the house? French logic. Why, indeed? Madame never understood us, but I think she grew to tolerate us in the end, and perhaps even to like us a little for our own queer sakes. Once, when she had been with us for a few weeks, she exclaimed so bitterly, "I wish I had never seen the English," we wondered what we could possibly have done to offend her. Agitated inquiries relieved our minds. We were merely a disagreeable incident of the war. If the Germans had not pillaged France we would not have come to Bar-le-Duc. Cause and effect linked us with the Boche in her mind, and I think she never looked at us without seeing the Crown Prince leering over our shoulder.
- 29. A woman ofstrange passivity of temper, a fatalist—like so many of her countrymen—she had a face that Botticelli would have worshipped. Masses of dark hair exquisitely neat were coiled on her head (why, oh why, do our English women wear hats? Is not half a French woman's attraction in the simple dignity of the uncovered head? I never realised the vulgarising properties of hat till I lived in France), her eyes were dark, her brows delicately pencilled, her features regular. Gentleness, resignation, patience were all we saw in her. She had one of the saddest faces I have ever seen. No doubt she had good reason to be sad. Her husband, a well-to-do farmer, died of consumption in the years before the war, and she who now cooked and scrubbed and dusted and tidied for us once drove her own buggy, once ruled a comfortable house and superintended the vagaries of three servants. In her fine old cupboards were stores of handspun linen sheets, sixty pairs at least, and ten or twelve dozen handspun, handmade chemises. Six lits montés testified to the luxury of her home; on the walls hung rare pottery, Lunéville, Sarréguemin and the like. A lit monté is a definite sign of affluence, and well it may be so. The French understand at least two things thoroughly—sauces and beds. Incidentally I believe that the French woman does not exist who cannot make a good omelette. I saw one made once in five minutes over a smoky wood fire, the pan poised scientifically on two or three crosswise sticks. An English woman cooking on such an altar would have offered us an imitation of chamois leather, charred, toughened and impregnated with smoke. Madame the wife of the Mayor of Vavincourt offered us—dare I describe it? Perhaps one day I shall write a sonnet to that omelette; it must not be dishonoured in prose. Yes, the French can cook, and they can make beds, and unless you have stretched your wearied limbs in a real lit monté, unless you have sunk fathoms deep in its downy nest and have felt the light, exquisite warmth of the duvet steal through your limbs, you have never known what comfort is.
- 30. You gaze atit with awe when you see it first, wondering how you are to get in. I know women who had to climb upon a chair every night in order to scale the feathery heights. For my own part, being long of limb, I found a flying leap the most graceful means of access, but there are connoisseurs who recommend a short ladder. Piled on the top of a palliasse and a mattress are a huge bed of feathers, spotless sheets, a single blanket, a coverlet, and then the crimson silk-covered duvet, over which is spread a canopy of lace. The cost must be fabulous, though oddly enough no one ever mentioned a probable price. But no refugee can speak of her lost lits montés without tears. Madame had six of them, and cattle in her byre, and horses in her stable, and all the costly implements of a well-stocked farm. Yet for months she lived with her little girl, her father, and her mother in a single room in the Place de la Halle, a dark, narrow, grimy room that no soap and water could clean. Her bed was a sack of straw laid upon the ground, and—until the Society provided them—she had no sheets, no pillow-cases, indeed I doubt if she even had a pillow. Her farm is razed to the ground, and no doubt some fat unimaginative sausage-filled Hausfrau sleeps under her sheets and cuddles contentedly under her duvet o' nights. The little party of four were six weeks on the road to Bar from that farm beyond Montfaucon, and during the whole time they never ate hot food and rarely cooked food. No wonder Madame seldom laughed— those weeks of haunting fear and present misery were never forgotten—no wonder it was months before we shook her out of her settled apathy and saw some life, some animation grow again in her quiet face. If sometimes we felt inclined to shake her for other reasons than those of humanity her caution was to blame. Never did she commit herself. To every question inviting an opinion she returned the same exasperating reply, "C'est comme vous voulez, Mademoiselle." I believe if we had asked her to buy antelopes' tongues and
- 31. kangaroos' tails fordinner she would have replied equably, tonelessly, "C'est comme vous voulez." Whether the point at issue was a warm winter jacket, or a table, or a holiday on the Sabbath, or cabbage for dinner, the answer was always the same. Once in a moment of excitement—but this was when she had got used to us, and found we were not so awful as we looked—she exclaimed, "Oh, mais taisez-vous, Mademoiselle," and we felt as if an earthquake had riven the town. Later she developed a quiet humour, but she always remained aloof. Unlike Madame Philipot who succeeded her, she never showed the least interest in the refugees who besieged our door. "C'est une dame." The head insinuated through the door would be withdrawn and we left to the joys of conjecture. The "lady" might be that ragged villain from the rue Phulpin, wife of a shepherd, a drunken dissolute vagabond who pawned her all for liquor, or it might be Madame B., while "C'est un Monsieur" might conceal a General of Division, or the Service de Ville claiming two francs for delivery of a parcel, in its cryptic folds. She had no curiosity, vulgar or intellectual, that we could discover. She was invariably patient, sweet-tempered, gentle of voice, courteous of phrase. She came to her work punctually at seven; going home, unless cataclysms happened, at twelve. If the cataclysms did occur, even through no fault of our own, we felt as guilty as if we had murdered babies in their sleep, Madame being an orderly soul who detested irregularity. And punctually at half-past four she would come back again, cook the dinner, wash up la vaisselle and quietly disappear at eight. The manner of her going was characteristic. French women seem to have a horror of being out alone after dark (perhaps they have excellent reason for it, they know their countrymen better than I do), and Madame was no exception to the rule. Perhaps she was merely bowing her head to national code, the
- 32. rigid comme ilfaut, perhaps it was a question of temperament. Anyway the fact emerged, Madame would not walk home alone. Who, then, should accompany her? Her parents were old and nearly bedridden, she had no husband, brother, or friend. The crazy English who careered about at all hours of the day and night? We had our work to do. Juliana was ordered to fetch her. This savouring of adventure and responsibility fell in with Juliana's mood. She consented. Now she was her mother's younger daughter and her age was twelve. Can you understand the psychology of it? This is how I read it. A child was safe on the soldier-frequented road, a mother with her child would not be intercepted, but a good-looking woman alone—well, as the French say, that was quite another paire de bottines. What would have happened had Juliana declined the honour, I simply dare not conjecture. For that damsel did precisely as she pleased. Her mother's passivity, fatalism, call it what you will, was the mainspring of all her relations with her children. "Que voulez- vous? She wishes it." Or quite simply, "Juliana does not wish it," closed the door against all remonstrance. Madame was a strong- willed woman, she never yielded an iota to us, but her children ruled. When the elder girl, aged fourteen and well-placed with a good family in Paris, came to Bar for a fortnight and then refused to go back, Madame shrugged. Some one in Paris may have been, indeed was, seriously inconvenienced, but "Que voulez-vous?" "Don't you wish her to go back, Madame?" "But certainly. What should she do here? It is not fit for a young girl, but que voul——" We fled. Parental authority seems to be a negligible quantity in France. So far as I could see children did very much as they liked, and were often spoiled to the verge of objectionableness. Yet the steadfastness, courage, thoughtfulness and whole-souled sanity of many a young girl—or a child—would put older and wiser heads to shame.
- 33. A puzzling people,these French, who refute to-morrow nearly every opinion they tempt you to formulate about them to-day. If English women struggling with "chars" and "generals" knew the value of a French femme de ménage there would be a stampede across the Channel in search of her. She does your marketing much more cheaply than you could do it yourself, she keeps her accounts neatly, she is punctual, scrupulously honest, dependable and trustworthy. She may not be clean with British cleanness, her dusting may be superficial (her own phrase, "passer un torchon," aptly describes it), but she understands comfort, and in nearly twenty months' experience of her I never knew a dinner spoiled or a dish unpalatably served. Of course it is arguable that Madame was not a femme de ménage, nor of the servant class at all. Granted! But there were others. There was the bonne à tout faire (general servant) of the old curé at N. who ruled him with a rod of iron and cooked him dinners fit for a king. And there was Eugénie, the Abbé B.'s Eugénie, who, loving him with a dog-like devotion, was his counsellor and his friend. She corrected him for his good when she thought he needed it, but she mothered and cared for him in his exile from his loved village— French trenches run through it to-day—as only a single-minded woman could. Yes, Madame—whether ours or some one else's—is a treasure, and we guarded ours as the apple of our eye. There were moments when we positively cringed before her, so afraid were we that she might leave us; for she hated cooking, hers having always been the life of the fields, and though no self-respecting Frenchwoman regards herself as a servant or as a menial, there must have been many hours when the cruelty of her position bit deep. Nevertheless she bore with us for a year, and then the air raids began. And the air raids shattered the nerves of Juliana—a brave little soul, but delicate (we feared tainted with her father's malady); and flight in the night to the nearest cellar, unfortunately some distance away, brought the shadow of Death too close to the home. So the elders counselled
- 34. flight. Juliana beggedto be taken away. Madame wished to remain. The matter hung in uncertainty for some days, then eight alarms and two raids in twenty-four hours settled it. The alarms began on Friday morning; on Saturday Madame told us that the old people would stay in Bar no longer and she had applied for the necessary papers. They were going south to the Ain on the morrow. Not a word of regret or apology for leaving us at a moment's notice, or for giving us no time in which to replace her. Why apologise since she could neither alter nor prevent? She went through no wish of her own, went at midday, just walked out as she had done every day for a year, but came back next morning to say good-bye and ask us to store some odds and ends. When she had a settled address would we send them on? So she went away, and our memory of her is of one who never fought circumstances, never wrestled with Fate. When the storms beat upon her, when rude winds blew, she bowed her head and allowed them to carry her where they listed. I think the spring of her life must have broken on that August day when she turned her cattle out on the fields and, closing the door behind her, walked out of her house for ever.
- 35. CHAPTER VI THE BASKET-MAKERSOF VAUX-LES-PALAMIES The long hot days of summer pursued their stifling way, yet were all too short for the work we had in hand. There were families to be visited, case-papers to be written up, card-indexes to be filled in, and bales to be unpacked. There were clothes to be sorted, there were people in their hundreds to be fitted with coats and trousers and shirts and underlinen and skirts and blouses, and the thousand and one things to be coped with in the Clothes-room. When Satan visits Relief workers he always lives in the Clothes-room. And there he takes a malicious delight in turning the contents of the shelves upside down and in hiding from view the outfit you chose so carefully yesterday evening for Madame Hougelot, or Madame Collignon, so that when you come to look for it in the morning, lo! it is gone. And Madame is waiting with her six children on the stairs, and the hall is a whirlpool of slowly-circling humanity, who want everything under the sun and much that is above it. Truly the way of the Relief worker is hard. But it has its compensations. You live for a month, for instance, on one exquisite episode. You are giving a party; you have invited some fifteen hundred guests. You spread them out over several days, bien entendu, and in the generosity of your heart you decide that each shall have a present. You sit at the receipt of custom, issuing your cards with the name of each guest written thereon, and to you comes Madame Ponnain. (That is not her real name, but it serves.) Yes, she is a refugee and she has two children. She would like three cards. Bon. You inscribe her name, you gaze at her questioningly. "There is Georgette, she has two years." Bon. Georgette is inscribed.
- 36. And then? Madame hesitates.There is the baby. Bon. His are? "Eh bien, il n'est pas encore au monde." You suggest that the unborn cannot ... "Mais mademoiselle—si il y a des étrennes (gifts)?" Perhaps, perhaps; one doesn't know. The Ponnains were a people of much discrimination. He might arrive in time. Quel dommage, then, if he had no ticket! He discriminated. He gets his ticket, and you register anew your homage to French foresightfulness and thrift. And then you go back to the Clothes-room. You climb over mountains of petticoats and chemises, all of the same size and all made to fit a child of three. There are thousands of them, they obsess you. You dream at night that you are smothering under a hill of petticoats while irate refugees, whose children are all over five and half-naked, hurl the chemises and—other things at you, uttering round French maledictions in ear-splitting tones. You wade through the wretched things, you eat them, sleep them; your brain reels, you say things about work-parties which, if published, would cause an explosion, and the Pope would excommunicate you and the Foreign Office hand you your passports. You write frantic letters to headquarters, then you grow cold, waxing sarcastic. You hint that marriage as an institution existed in France before 1912, and that the first baby was not born in that year of blindfold peace. And you add a rider to the effect that many, indeed most, of your cherished émigrées are not slum-dwellers fighting for rags at a jumble sale, but respectable people who don't go about in ragged trousers or with splashes of brown or yellow paint on a blue serge dress. Then
- 37. you are conscience-stricken,for some of the bales have been packed by Sanity, and the contents collected by Reason. There are many white crows in the flock. A ring at the door interrupts, perhaps happily, your epistolary labours. It is the Service de Ville, a surly person but faithful. He has six bales. They are immense. You go down, you try to roll one up the stairs. Your comrade in labour is four feet six and weighs seven stone. The bale weighs—or seems to weigh—a ton. Sisyphus is not more impotent than you. Then an angel appears. It is Madame. "I heard the efforts," she remarks, and indeed our puffings and pantings and blowings and swearings must have been audible almost at the Front. She puts her solid shoulder under the bale. It floats lightly up the stairs. Then you begin to unpack. It is dirty work, and destroys the whiteness of your hands. Never mind. Remember les pauvres émigrées, and that we are si devouée, you know. Everything under heaven has, I verily believe, come at one time or another out of our bales—except live stock and joints of beef. Concertinas in senile decay, mandolines without keys, guitars without strings, jam leaking over a velvet gown, tons of old newspapers and magazines—all English, of course, and subsequently sold as waste-paper, hats that have braved many a battle and breeze, boots without soles, ball dresses, satin slippers (what do people think refugees need in the War Zone?), greasy articles of apparel, the mere handling of which makes our fingers shine, dirty underlinen, single socks and stockings, married socks that are like the Irishman's shirt—made of holes, another hundred dozen of petticoats for children aged three, and once—how we laughed over it!—a red velvet dress that I swear had been filched from an organ- grinder's monkey, and with it a pair of-of—well, you know. They were made of blue serge, and when held out at width stretched all across the Common-room. The biggest Mynheer that ever smoked a pipe by the Zuyder Zee would have been lost in them, and as they
- 38. were neither malenor female, only some sort "of giddy harumphrodite" could have worn them. Sometimes we fell upon stale cough lozenges, on mouldering biscuits, on dried fruits, on chocolate, on chewing-gum, on moth- eaten bearskin rugs, or on a brilliant yellow satin coverlet with LOVE in large green capitals on it. The tale is unending, but it was not all tragic. There were many days when our hearts sang in gladness, when good, useful, sensible things emerged from the bales and we fitted our people out in style. But all the rubbish in the world must have been dumped upon France in the last two years. Never has there been such a sweeping out of cupboards, such a rummaging of dust-bins. The hobble skirts that submerged us at one period nearly drove us into an early grave. Picture us, with a skirt in hand. It is twenty-seven inches round the tail, perhaps twenty-three round the waist. And Madame, who waits with such touching confidence in the discrimination of Les Anglaises, tells you that she is forte. As you look at her you believe it. It is half a day's journey to walk round her. You pace the wide circle thoughtfully, you make rapid calculations, you give it up. The thing simply cannot be done. And you send up a wild prayer that before ever there comes another war French women of the fields will take to artificial means of restraining their figures. As it is, like Marguerite, many of them occupy vast continents of space when they take their walks abroad. And when they stand on the staircase, smiling deprecatingly at you, and you have nothing that will fit.... And when it does fit it is blue, or green, and they have a passion for black. Something discreet. Something they can go to Mass in. I often wonder why they worship their God in such dolorous guise. Something, too, they can mourn in. So many are en deuil. Once a woman who came for clothes demanded black, refusing a good coat because it was blue. The cousin of her husband had died five months before, and never had she been able to mourn him. If the English would give her un peu de deuil? She waited weeks. She got
- 39. it and wentforth smiling happily upon an appreciative world, ready to mourn at last. The weather is stifling, the Clothes-room an inferno. The last visitor for the morning has been sent contentedly away—she may come back to-morrow, though, and tell us that the dress of Madeleine does not fit, and may she have one the same as that which Madame Charton got? Now the dress of Madame Charton's Marie was new and of good serge, whereas that of Madeleine was slightly worn and of light summer material. But then Marie had an old petticoat, whereas Madeleine had a new one. But this concession to equality finds no favour in the eyes of Madeleine's mother. She has looked upon the serge and lusted after it. We suggest that a tuck, a little arrangement.... She goes away. And in the house in rue Paradis there is lamentation, and Marie, I grieve to say, lifts up her shrill treble and crows. It is one of the minor tragedies of life. Alas, that there are so many! But as Madame the mother of Madeleine departs, we know nothing of the reckoning that waits us on the morrow. We only know that we promised to go and see the Basket-makers to-day, that time is flying, and haste suicidal with the thermometer at steaming-point. "Madame, we are going out. We cannot see any one else." Bon. Madame is a Cerberus. She will write down the names of callers and so ease our minds while we are away. We fling on our hats, we arm ourselves with pencil and notebook, and wend our way up the Avenue du Château to the rue des Ducs de Bar. It is well to choose this route sometimes, though it is longer than that of the rue St. Jean, for it goes past the old gateway and shows you the view over the rue de Véel. It is wise to look down on the rue de Véel; it is rather foolhardy to walk in it. For motor-lorries whiz through it at a murderous speed, garbage makes meteoric flights from windows, the drainage screams to Heaven, every house
- 40. is a tenementhouse, most of them are foul and vermin-ridden, and all are packed with refugees. Well, perhaps not quite all. Even the rue de Véel has its bright particular spots, one of them being the house, set a little back from the street, in which Pétain, "On-les-aura Pétain," lived during the battle of Verdun. The street lies in a deep hollow, with cultivated hills rising steeply above it. Higher up there are woods on the far side, while above the sweeping Avenue du Château the houses are piled one above the other in tumbled, picturesque confusion. Once in the rue des Ducs we go straight to No. 49, through a double-winged door into a courtyard, up a flight of worn steps into a wee narrow lobby, rather dark and noisome, and then, if any one cries Entrez! in response to our knock, into a great wide room. That some one would cry it is certain, for the room is a human hive. It swarms with people. Short, thickset, sturdy, rather heavily-built people, whose beauty is not their strong point, but whose honesty is. And another, for they have many, is their industry; and yet another, dear to the heart of the Relief worker, is their gratitude for any little help or sympathy that may be given them. And, poor souls, they did need help. Think of it! One room the factory, dining-room, bedroom, smoking-room, sitting-room of forty people. Some old, some young. Women, girls and men. It appalled you as you went in. On one side, down all its length, and also along the top palliasses were laid on the floor, so close they almost touched. Piled neatly on these were scanty rugs or blankets. No sheets or linen of any kind until our Society provided them. There was only one bed—a gift from the Society—and in that sat a little old woman bolt upright. Her skin was the colour of old parchment, it was seamed and lined and criss-crossed with wrinkles, for she was over eighty years of age. But her spirit was still young. She could enjoy a little joke.
- 41. "Yes, I rememberthe war of Soixante-dix," she said, "but it was not like this. Ma fois, non! Les Prussiens—oh, they were good to us." Her eyes twinkled. "They lived in our house. They were like children." "Madame, Madame! Confess now that 'vous avez fait la coquette' with those Prussians." Whereupon she cackled a big, "Ho, ho! Écoutez ce qu'elle dit!" and a shrivelled finger poked me facetiously in the ribs. But if the Basket-makers made friends with the Germans in those far-off days, they hate them now. Hate them with bitter, deadly hatred. "Ah, les barbares! les sauvages! les rosses!" Madame Walfard would cry, her face inflamed with anger. Her mother, badly wounded by a shell, had become paralysed, so there is perhaps some excuse for her venom. But for the most part they are too busy to waste time in revilings. The little old woman is the only idle person in the room. Squatting on low stools under the windows—there are four or five set in the length of the wall—the rest work unceasingly, small basins of water, sheaves of osier, tools, finished baskets, and piles of osier-ends strewn all about them. Down the middle of the room runs a long table, littered with mugs, bowls, cooking utensils, odds and ends of every description. There is only one stove, a small one, utterly inadequate for the size of the room. On it all their cooking has to be done. I used to wonder if they ever quarrelled. As time went on and I came to know them better, Madame Malhomme and Madame Jacquemot told me many a tale of their life in Vaux-les-Palamies, of the opening days of war and of their subsequent flight from their village. Madame Malhomme, daughter of the little old lady who had once dared to flirt with a Prussian, lived in the big room in the rue Des Ducs for nearly a year. Then Madame B. established her and her family in a little house about half a mile from the town, where they had nothing to trouble them save the depredations of an occasional rat, a negligible nuisance compared
- 42. with the (inmore senses than one) overcrowded condition of No. 49. For that historic mansion had gathered innumerable inmates to its breast during the long years of emptiness and decay. And these inmates made the Basket-makers' lives a burden to them. The cold, too, was penetrating, it ate through their scanty clothes, it bit through flesh to the very bone. The stove was an irony, a tiny flame in a frozen desert. Every one was perished, Madame Malhomme not least of all, for, seeing her daughter shivering, she stripped off her only petticoat and forced her to put it on. At night they lay in their clothes under their miserable blankets. (Bar-le-Duc is not a very large nor a very rich town, and in giving what it did to such numbers of people it showed itself generous indeed. In ordinary times its population is not more, and is probably less, than 17,000, so an influx of 4000 destitute refugees taxed it heavily.) The unavoidable publicities of their existence filled the women with shame and dismay. Sleeping "comme des bêtes sur la paille,"[4] or, more often still, lying awake staring out into the unfriendly dark, what dreams, what memories must have been theirs! How often they must have seen the village, its cosy little homes, each with its garden basking in the sun, the river flowing by, and the great osier beds that were the pride of them all. They seem to have lived very much to themselves, these sturdy artisans, rarely leaving their valley, and intermarrying to an unusual extent. You find the same names cropping up again and again: Jacquemot, Riot, or Malhomme. Like Quakers, every one seemed to be the cousin of every one else. And they were well-to-do. It is safe to presume that there was no poverty in the village. Their baskets were justly famous throughout France, and the average family wage was about £3 a week. In addition they had the produce of their garden, the inevitable pig being fattened for the high destiny of the soupe au lard, rabbits and poultry. If Heaven denied them the gift of physical beauty it had not been niggardly in other respects. Best of
- 43. all, it gavethem the gift of labour. In the spring pruning and tending the osier, then cutting it, and piling it into great stacks which had to be saturated with water every day during the hot weather, planting and digging in their gardens, looking after the rabbits and the pig, and in winter plying their trade. Life moved serenely and contentedly in Vaux-les-Palamies until the dark angel of destruction passed over it and brushed it with his wings. The Basket-makers don't like the Boche; indeed, they entertain a reasonable prejudice against him. He foisted himself upon them, making their lives a burden to them; he was coarse, brutal and overbearing, he no more considered their feelings than he would those of a rotten cabbage-stalk thrown out upon the refuse-heap of a German town. He stayed with them for a week. When he went away he bequeathed them a prolific legacy. Madame Malhomme will tell you of it if you ask her—at least she will when she knows you well. She is not proud of it. "Ah, qu'ils sont sales, ces Boches," she says with a shudder. She bought insecticide, she was afraid to look her neighbours in the face. It did not occur to her at first that her troubles were not personal and individual. Then one day she screwed up her courage and asked the question. The answers were all in the affirmative. No one was without. So when news came that the Boche was returning, Vaux-les- Palamies girded up its loins and fled. Shells were falling on the village, so they dared not spend time in extensive packings; in fact, they made little if any attempt to pack at all. Madame's sister-in-law was wounded in the shoulder, and the wound, untended for days, began to crawl. Her description of it does not remind you of a rose- scented garden. It was thrust on me as a privilege. So was a view of the shoulder. The latter was no longer crawling. It was exquisitely white and clean, but it had a hole in it into which a child might drive its fist.
- 44. And so aftermuch tribulation they found themselves in Bar-le-Duc, and theirs was the only instance that came under our notice of a village emigrating en masse, and settling itself tribally into its new quarters. Even the Mayor came with them, and it was he who eventually succeeded in getting a supply of osier and putting them into touch with a market again. But their activities are sadly restricted, and they make none of their famous baskets de fantaisie now, the osier being dear and much of it bad, so their profit is very, very small. I was in Bar for some months before I met Madame Jacquemot. And then it was Madame B. who introduced me to her. Her mother, an old lady of eighty-two, had been in hospital; was now rather better, and back again with her family in the rue Maréchale. Would the Society give her sheets? As the dispenser of other people's bounty I graciously opined that it would, and calling on Madame Jacquemot, told her so. Her mother was startlingly like the old lady at No. 49, small, thin, wiry, and bird-like in her movements. She had had shingles, poor soul, and talked of the ceinture de feu which had scorched her weary little body. She talked of the Germans too. Ah, then you should have seen her! How her eyes flashed! She would straighten herself and all her tiny frame would become infused with a majesty, a dignity that transfigured her. Once a German soldier demanded something of her, and when she told him quite truthfully that she had not got it, he doubled his fist and dealt her a staggering blow on the breast. And she was such a little scrap of humanity, just an old, old woman with a brave, tender heart and the cleanest and honestest of souls. She got her sheets and a good warm shawl—I am afraid we took very special trouble with that paquet, choosing the best of our little gifts for her—and soon afterwards I went to see her again. As we sat in the dusky room while Madame Jacquemot told stories, describing the method of cultivating the osier, showing how the baskets are made, the old lady began to cough and "hem" and make fluttering movements with her hands. Madame Jacquemot, thickset and broad-beamed like most of her people—she had a fleshy nose and blue eyes, I remember, hair
- 45. turning grey, apallid, rather unhealthy complexion and a humorous mouth—got up, and going to an inner room returned almost immediately with a quaintly-shaped basket in her hands. The old lady took it from her and held it out to me. "It is for you," she said. "And when you go home to England you will tell people that it was made for you by an old woman of eighty-two, a refugee, who was ill and in hospital for months. I chose the osier specially, there is not a bad bit in the basket. And it is long, long since I have made a basket. I haven't made one since we left home. But I wanted to make one for you because you have been kind to us." I have that basket now; I shall keep it always and think of the feeble fingers that twined the osier, fingers that were never to twine it again, for the gallant spirit that fought so gamely was growing more and more weary. The old bear transplanting badly, they yearn for their chimney corner and the familiar things that are all their world. The long exile from her beloved village told upon her heart, joy fell from her and, saddened and desolate, she slipped quietly away. "She just fluttered away like a little bird," her daughter said, and I was glad to know she had not suffered at the last. "Ah, if only I could see the village again," she would often say. "If only I might be buried there. To die here, among strangers.... Ah, mademoiselle, do you think the war will soon be over? Si seulement...." To die and be buried among her own people. To die at home. It was all she asked for, all she had left to wish for in the world. She would look at me with imploring, trustful eyes. Les Anglaises, they must know. Surely I could tell her? And in the autumn one would say, "It will be over in the spring," and in the winter cry, "Ah yes, in the summer." But spring came and summer followed, and still the guns reverberated across the hills, and winter came and the Harvest of Death was still in the reaping.
- 46. Surely God musthave His own Roll of Honour for those who have fallen in the war, and many a humble name that the world has never heard of will be written on it in letters of gold.
- 47. CHAPTER VII IN WHICHWE PLAY TRUANT I Without wishing in the least to malign my fellow-men, I am minded to declare that a vast percentage of them are hypocrites. Not that they know it or would believe you if you told them so. Your true poseur imposes acutely on himself, believing implicitly in his own deceptions; but the discerning mind is ever swift to catch an attitude, and never more so than when it is struck before the Mirror of Charity. Consequently, when people tell me they go to the War Zone in singleness of purpose, anxious only to succour the stricken, I take leave to be incredulous. The thing is impossible. Every one who isn't a slug likes to go to the War Zone, every one who isn't an animated suet-pudding wants to see a battlefield, or a devastated village, or a trench, or a dug-out, and we all want souvenirs de la guerre, shell cases, bits of bomb or shrapnel, the head of the Crown Prince on a charger, or the helmet of a Death's Head Hussar. And do we not all love adventure, and variety—unless fear has made imbeciles of us, and the chance of distinguishing ourselves, of winning the Legion of Honour in a shell-swept village, or the Croix de Guerre under the iron rain of a Taube? I believe we do, though few of us confess it. We prefer to look superior, to pretend we "care nothing for all that," and so I cry, "Hypocrites! Search your hearts for your motives and you will find them as complex as the machinery that keeps you alive." Search mine for my motive and you will find it compounded of many simples, but of their nature and composition it is not for me to
- 48. speak. Has itnot been written that I am a modest woman? And methinks indifferent honest. That is why I am going to tell you about Villers-aux-Vents. You must not labour under a delusion that life was all hard work and no play in the War Zone. It was no high-souled purpose that led us to Villers. It was just curiosity, common curiosity. Later on we spent a night (Saturday night, of course) at Greux, and visited the shrine of Jeanne D'Arc at Domremy, but that was not out of curiosity. It was hero-worship coupled with a passion for historical research. And we planned to go to Toul and Nancy. Now when people make plans they should carry them out. The gods rarely send the dish of opportunity round a second time, and when the Carnet d'Étranger chained us body and soul to l'autorité compétente militaire there was no second time. The dish had gone by; it would never come again. Wherefore I am wrath with the gods, and still more wrath with myself, for I have not seen Nancy, and I have not seen Toul, and if the old grognard had been in good humour I might even have gone to Verdun. Maddening, isn't it? Especially as then, when our work was only, so to speak, getting into its stride, we might have virtuously spared the time. Later on when it increased, and when we bowed to a Directrice who has found the secret of perpetual motion, we worked Saturday, Sundays and all sometimes; but in 1915 we were not yet super-normal men. We could still enjoy a holiday. And so we decided to go to Villers-aux-Vents. To go before winter had snatched the gold mantle from the limbs of autumn, to go while yet the sun was high and the long day stretched before us, languorous, beautiful. And the manner of our going was thus, by train to Révigny at 7.20 a.m., and then on foot over the road. Now it is written that if you get into a westward-bound omnibus train at Bar-le-Duc, in fulness of time you will arrive at Révigny. The train will be packed with soldiers, so of course you travel first-or
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